The Tea Tree

( Winter won't stop coming, and neither will Conan's brash behaviour. )

Just a quick, rusty story after a loooong time of not writing. I love Kader, and her interactions with Conan are fun. She, like me, doesn't like kids, but unlike me, her reaction to him is to be her typical self, swearing and all. Sometimes, this gets her and Conan into trouble.

This story presents such a different Kader from usual, damn -- one who has lived with people who love her for a few years, and one who has had a meaningful job and life for what might be the first time. Doesn't stop her from being a swearing grumpy lady, though. She'll be that until the day she dies, and if there is an afterlife, probably afterward, too.

Will try to finish this and tidy it up later.

Tschuess.

Sometimes you're just driving home, thinking about your characters while trying NOT to think about the horrible shit you read about last night (seriously, no more reading about the Yugoslav wars. I think the paralyzing panic I got while driving home was a cause). And it makes you realize that one of your characters had a good chance of working as a prostitute for a while.

And thus was born Alden the Prostitute:

( TW for frank mentions of sex, including some very depraved sex )

My search history now looks extremely wrong due to the research I had to do for this. Also I haven't figured out what Layla looks like yet, whoops. I have an "Asian" -- no such thing in Malanee, but two countries in the Welen mountains were based on China and Thailand, respectively -- character I plan to introduce, but she didn't seem to fit as a prostitute (not to mention it felt wrong to do so) so she'll show up later.

And thus hopefully I'll get past the scenes where I have to pretend I know how sex and prostitution works. Oh boy!

Tschuess.

I've been playing Sims this weekend, particularly Kader, Tegre, and Eilis once they are in Arebe. They've been making me smile; Kader keeps acting very much as she does in the stories. Caring for the kids even though she hates them, getting pissy at anyone who compliments her, and during one hilarious incident, she slapped adult Conan, then beat the crap out of him. I still have NO clue what he did.

It gave me a bit of inspiration, though unfortunately it's pretty crap so far.

( Six-year-old Conan vs. mid-to-late thirties Kader, go! )

So yeah. Apologies it's crap. Hopefully it'll get a bit better as I work on it.

Tschuess.

This post may get a bit rambling, but hopefully it'll all make sense.

So on Saturday I drove down to a coastal town a hundred miles from me to visit their aquarium with some friends. This was breaking new territory for me in many ways: I invited them out, not the other way around; I was driving welllll beyond where I'd usually go; and I was leaving the house to get to their place BY 9AM. And so on and so forth.

Unfortunately ( TW for social phobia )

The good news is my friends are total sweethearts and handled me being a neurotic mess with grace. They told me it was fine if I needed to duck out if the crowds were too much, and were willing to move which table we sat at at the chocolate shop since we were right next to a table of shrieking brats (that isn't exaggeration. I kept wincing, and one of my friends started to get a headache). I felt so bad that I was such a mess, but they were understanding and encouraged me to invite them out again.

I tentatively mentioned us meeting up for board games this weekend for my birthday and they said sure, so we'll see if I get over that activation energy bump again.

I'll try to link some pictures later, but Facebook is FREAKING OUT at uploading them, and also my hands were shaking so badly that most of the photos are shit. But there are some I'll share.

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Now onto other things. First: Scott Lynch's Red Seas under Red Skies has a mother-fuckin' dark-skinned single-mother-of-two PIRATE as a character. I'm not enjoying this novel as much as the first in the series (The Lies of Locke Lamora, an excellent book), but DAMMIT that character is made of win. Apparently some asshat whined at Lynch about wish fulfillment regarding her and Lynch very bluntly told him to shut the fuck up, women need wish fulfillment too, which, <3

My favourite character is still Jean because I don't even know, he's just funny and adorable and he carries around twin hatchets, leave me alone.

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Finally, I'm almost done with the Gareth/Andy story (I know, SUPER SLOW writer). I can't figure out how to end it, which is normal for me. So here, have a random excerpt until I figure it out:

( No TWs that I can think of )

I'm not used to Andy talking so much. I don't think he is either.

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On that note, I'm going to take Red Seas with me to bed and either finish it or fall asleep trying. Hope you all are doing well.

Tschuess.

For hc_bingo, prompt "First transformation">

( TW for phantom limbs and violence including eating live things, cannibalism )

Jeez, this is even darker than the first writing of this story. But once I saw the prompt, I knew I had to rewrite when Gareth first morphs into a werewolf.

Need to clean it up some so the plot is less stereotypical and to make sure my metaphors aren't completely batshit insane. Comments welcome. Obviously, the comfort part is still to come.

Fun fact: every time I write Gareth, I get his pronouns wrong at least once.

Fun fact two: I first wrote that the cannonballs were sleeping. Slackers.

Tschuess.

Eventually I may post a whole story here, but my brain's been a tad ADD with writing lately.

cottoncandy_bingo, Deciding to have / not have children

( Read more... )

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. My new laptop came in and it is shiny and beautiful, though I may have to change the resolution settings because I am, unfortunately, blind as a bat and this text is a tad too small. I can see it and read it, but my nearsighted/astigmatism combo is making it feel a bit wobbly.

Perhaps I will make some characters in the Sims and share them. I always start fresh with new computers -- growing up my father would have to regularly format my computer's hard drive because old Windows was hilariously unstable, and that computer was just evil anyway. It meant new petz, new everything, and while technology has come along enough for me to fit the entire petz 3 game on my USB, I still start all other games with a clean slate.

Tschuess.

So I thought up a Nur story last night, and for the most part it stayed with me.

( TW for genocide )

But come on brain, usually Nur stories are HAPPY. What's this nonsense?

I actually hope to bring it around to something more heartwarming, but it will require a timeskip, I think, so we'll see.

Now back to reading about WWII war crimes (I really need to read happier Wikipedia articles) and cleaning the house.

Tschuess.

Work was crazy busy for the first half of month since our lab was due for inspection by a major accreditation facility. Think OSHA + FDA. They showed up Wednesday and there were a few moments when I thought the whole thing would fall apart... But we only got a single deficiency for an overdue fire drill, which apparently is incredible. If one more person congratulates me, I may dissolve into the floor to hide.

This weekend is very much recovery weekend, but here, have a tiny bit of writing:

( For gen bingo, one of two tropes, not sure how it will play out yet )

Rose May is such a petulant 1800s teenager.

This story will be me trying to write 1800s schooling, Welen-style. I imagine it as like modern schooling, but that is just SO inaccurate. 1800s schools were both stricter and more lax than ours. Physical discipline was commonplace, but apparently so were guns since a good chunk of the school shootings listed on Wikipedia are some punk kid shooting his own foot while playing with a gun in class.

Rose May grew up and was educated on a farm up until some serious bullshit occurred (apparently that story isn't up on DW! Will have to get it for you guys). It's only been a year since her life was violently uprooted, so naturally, her opinion of everything is shrouded in doubt.

Tschuess.

( I need to write other characters besides Kader. )

It just feels like a Kader kind of night, and tonight she's 18-years-old, fresh out of graduating WAY early from the studies portion of medical school, and ready to kick some ass, take names, and maybe perform crude 1800s surgery.