Year 2 - Day 200
Oct. 2nd, 2021 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI don't know how much longer I can keep these daily missives up to be honest. I'm growing weary of it. Yesterday I considered just posting a photo. Today much the same.
The brain - it doesn't wish to function. I told mother today that all I wanted to do was star blissfully into space and not think about anything. I need to run the robot vacuum around the apartment and clean out my fridge, the area beneath the sink, put out mouse traps, and switch the summer clothes for the fall ones. But alas, I'm procrastinating. My mind doesn't want to function, it wants to do nothing. It's tired. It's not been getting enough sleep and feels over-taxed.
That said, I've been playing around with the new fantasy novel today. Told Wales about it - and she asked what it was about, which is always a tough thing, because I'm never really sure when I'm writing the thing. I'm an intuitive writer...which makes it hard for me to write pitches, query letters or synopsises.
Me: The working title is Darkholm.
Wales: DarkHome? That sounds sort of cool. (I hear Darkholm).
ME: Uh..It may be problematic because I didn't realize until recently - that I'd grabbed the name from a comic book character. I had no idea where it came from, until the character's last name popped up all of a sudden -
Wales: Dark Home? Did I get it wrong?
Me: Oh, Dark Home? No, Darkholm. Although Dark Home is a cool title, hmm. The other was just a working title. It's the characters last name - which I can actually keep because you can't copyright a character's name unless its distinctive and this one isn't really. (ie. You can't copyright or rather trademark Buffy but you can trademark Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean do you have any idea how many shadowkats there are online??)
Wales: So what's it about?
ME: Okay, I'm playing with it so not completely certain. It's not meant to be that dark. It does have a romantic element - because I can't write anything without it at the moment, because I'm craving romance.
Wales: I'm sorry.
ME: Don't be. It is what it is. Anyhow it's about a young woman who leaves her mother and her lover and their world for the harsh human world of her father. The mother's world is the world of the Fae or elemental magic. The magic is who you are. And only those who are born with it practice it.
Wales: What happens if you are Fae and don't have any magical abilities?
Me: They all do. The fae are one with elements, part of nature. It's who they are. And they have different ones. But unlike the human world of magic, the magic is natural, it is part of the natural balance. The human world - magic has a price. There's rules, boundaries, prices, and sacrifices with magic. It's about give and take - because magical ability doesn't come naturally to the humans, it's not inside them. So they have to handle it differently. It's not intutitive, it's taught learned.
Wales: Interesting -
Me: This is not easy for me, because when I write I don't really think about these sort of things - I just write the story I'm craving. Anyhow, the woman's parents made a deal of sorts. Her childhood would be in her mother's world or the world of the fae for about 16 or 20 years (haven't decided yet...)
Wales: So is she fae or human - or
Me: She's about 60% fae and maybe 40% human. Her father is part fae, but he's embraced the human world fully and her mother is full fae. At any rate, she has to leave her lover and mother to spend the next 16 or so years in her father's world, at the end of which, she can choose which world she wishes to stay fully in, and embrace. Her mother's or father's.
Also, there's a twist - her father cheats and does a memory spell so all her memories of her mother, her lover and her mother's world are gone. She doesn't even know it exists or the fae exist. Her father has rewritten her memories and history - so she won't want to go back because she won't know about it.
Wales: Sounds like Stockholm Syndrom.
Me: Not really, and I'm kind of subverting things a bit.
Wales: Also reminds me of a reversion of the Persephone myth. Where her mother hunts her down in Hades, where she resides with her lover.
Me: Yeah, I'm subverting a few fantasy tropes in there. Instead of the human world being better - I'm choosing the fae, and instead of the father - I'm going with the mother. Also the coming of age is female instead of male. It's not entirely subverted...but the lover is more balanced and bisexual.
Wales: Sounds intriguing.
Me: I'm just playing. But I tend to write stuff I can't find. And I'm craving this story right now - but can't find it anywhere. I look, but eventually give up and write it myself. I don't really care about getting it published, and I'm not into marketing it or any of that crap. I'd like folks to be able to read it - but I don't want the criticism, and I don't need the accolades really and I definitely don't want the fame, signing the books or sitting on panels at conventions. I'm not even sure I care if anyone pays me for it. I write because I want the story out of me like some weird sort of release.
The day got away from Wales and I before we did anything with it. She took a sleep aid and woke up at 11, and I slept until 8 and puttered about on the internet, and fiddled with the aforementioned fantasy novel.
Wales wants to go to Greenwood Cemetery. I would like to go anywhere else.
Me: I suppose we could go. But I'm bored of Greenwood Cemetery.
Wales: The timing is perfect. But I can see why you'd be bored of it.
Me: I only walked around it four to five times a week for about a year and a half. I finally got burned out sometime around July, when I realized I'd taken pictures of the same statues ten or more times.
Maybe we could try and go bird watching in it. The plus side, is generally speaking, it's not crowded.
Bro according to mother is going into the city this weekend, visiting friends and seeing exhibits at various museums.
I feel like a coward for having no such similar desires. But the idea of wondering about an indoor public space with a mask more than I have to is not appealing. Although to be fair to myself, I am doing it constantly and want a break from it. I go into work and wear a mask most of the time, except at my desk. In my apartment building, I wear it except in my apartment and to take the trash to the hallway shoot. My brother in marked contrast only wears it when he visits the city or public places that are indoors. He doesn't wear it at all in his home, property, going out to eat in his area or any of that. He lives on eleven acres of land upstate NY.
Do you ever feel as if we all living in different universes or worlds?
**
Fandom
Fan: I was hoping Disney would intervene and change the show in response to the ratings. And give me less mob and more hospital stories, small town romance, and Hallmark style romances, like I want.
Me: Well, they kind of already have - just not how you want. Ratings went up in September 2020-December 2020 when there were gunfights, people got injured, and a bomb took out characters. Also when a major villain was killed off. Ratings dived in January-March, when they focused on romances and Nixon Falls. Ratings upticked with the Peter reveal and Franco's death. Ratings dived when we went back to Nixon Falls (small town romance) and hospital stories, etc. So the network came in and had them kill off the former and reformed serial killer Franco, recast him as a doctor, and wrap up the Nixon Falls storyline. Like it or not, most people are watching this show for action, adventure, suspense, the mob, and anti-heroes. They aren't watching for hospital love affairs, hallmark romances and small town stuff. That's been the case since 1978. It's not like this is hard to find - Google Ratings, TV Line has them, and look at the boards and twitter.
Are people dumb? Or just overly self-involved?
Another interaction.
Fan: I can't wait for mobster amnesia guy who regained his memory to hit the sheets and have a hot romance with the woman who lied to him for nine months about who he is, lied to his family, and kept him from his kids. Because I love underdog romances.
ME: Don't you mean unpopular and somewhat inappropriate romances that go completely against the story thread and the canonical nature of the characters. And give me a headache?
Fan: YES! Cool beans.
Me: Sigh, you make me think of a New York Mets fan. Or an evil slash Alternate Universe fanfic writer in the making.
And you thought Buffy's shippers were bad - they've got nothing on the professionals - daytime soap opera shippers - who only watch television shows for the romance, no other reason. They only care about the romances. Nothing annoys me more when a character or storyline is completely corrupted by some idiotic writers craving to put two characters in an inappropriate and non-storyline dictated romance. The romance should further the characters storylines and be organic to them, and enhance their history and storyline. Not just happen because the writers and actors are bored.
Long running serials with multiple writers (such as Doctor Who, Daytime Soaps, Comic books) are admittedly a lot like fanfic. Actually I think they are fanfic, just authorized commercial fanfic.
Illogical thinking apparently is explained...by an article that gave me a headache. So here it is to give you one too. Bad Thinkers? Because why should I be alone in my headache induced madness. I want company, dang it.
The sad thing about the article? I shared a cubicle with the fictional Oliver when I was working at the video game developer company. Yes, the guy actually believed 9/11 was a government conspiracy and caused by the US government to start WWIII. We used to kill time arguing about it until I gave up. And Wales friend Alan, and various of her family members fit Oliver as well - they drank COVID conspiracy Kool Aid.
I think we live in a world in which it is very easy to be driven insane. There's an interesting thread on Twitter that explains..
"Why didn't older generations do something about ___?"
I think the reality of life before and during the early internet isn't something people know about. Its never depicted anywhere because it was so slooowwww and boring.
I can't stress how slow the flow of information was.
And he goes into detail - about how we didn't have cell phones, email, or social media platforms. There weren't any fanboards - fanzines, yes, fanboards no.
I remember when I first got access to email - it was in 1997. A friend sent me a Dilbert Magnet that stated - I have email so I am or something along those lines. In 1997, I was on list serves. There weren't any social media platforms. Information was provided by television outlets and newspapers. Only. We had 24/7 CNN, and broadcast news in the 1990s.
So it's not like we didn't have pandemics and health crises back then. We did. We just didn't have it as bad, and with as much information spread as quickly.
I was trying to explain that to my niece over the summer - and it blew her mind. She cannot imagine a world with smartphones, earphones, the internet, and computers. While her parents and I can. And in some respects, I preferred not having all of them. Not having access to all of that information. It wears on the brain after a bit.
***
Okay, enuf. I'm tired. I've not been sleeping well. Worrying too much, and too often. And struggling to turn it off. As if it's a water faucet with a valve.
And this song jumped into my head, actually just the first line, because I can't remember whole songs...just a phrase here or there, which is another reason I'm not a singer. Fuck Fake Friends - that's the title of the song. The lyric I remember is " Friends Come and Go , Friends Come and Go..." the song is about the hollowness of LA.
Random Photo of the Night:
The Sierra Mountain Range in Washington State...with their glaciers mostly melted...and this was in 2018.
The brain - it doesn't wish to function. I told mother today that all I wanted to do was star blissfully into space and not think about anything. I need to run the robot vacuum around the apartment and clean out my fridge, the area beneath the sink, put out mouse traps, and switch the summer clothes for the fall ones. But alas, I'm procrastinating. My mind doesn't want to function, it wants to do nothing. It's tired. It's not been getting enough sleep and feels over-taxed.
That said, I've been playing around with the new fantasy novel today. Told Wales about it - and she asked what it was about, which is always a tough thing, because I'm never really sure when I'm writing the thing. I'm an intuitive writer...which makes it hard for me to write pitches, query letters or synopsises.
Me: The working title is Darkholm.
Wales: DarkHome? That sounds sort of cool. (I hear Darkholm).
ME: Uh..It may be problematic because I didn't realize until recently - that I'd grabbed the name from a comic book character. I had no idea where it came from, until the character's last name popped up all of a sudden -
Wales: Dark Home? Did I get it wrong?
Me: Oh, Dark Home? No, Darkholm. Although Dark Home is a cool title, hmm. The other was just a working title. It's the characters last name - which I can actually keep because you can't copyright a character's name unless its distinctive and this one isn't really. (ie. You can't copyright or rather trademark Buffy but you can trademark Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean do you have any idea how many shadowkats there are online??)
Wales: So what's it about?
ME: Okay, I'm playing with it so not completely certain. It's not meant to be that dark. It does have a romantic element - because I can't write anything without it at the moment, because I'm craving romance.
Wales: I'm sorry.
ME: Don't be. It is what it is. Anyhow it's about a young woman who leaves her mother and her lover and their world for the harsh human world of her father. The mother's world is the world of the Fae or elemental magic. The magic is who you are. And only those who are born with it practice it.
Wales: What happens if you are Fae and don't have any magical abilities?
Me: They all do. The fae are one with elements, part of nature. It's who they are. And they have different ones. But unlike the human world of magic, the magic is natural, it is part of the natural balance. The human world - magic has a price. There's rules, boundaries, prices, and sacrifices with magic. It's about give and take - because magical ability doesn't come naturally to the humans, it's not inside them. So they have to handle it differently. It's not intutitive, it's taught learned.
Wales: Interesting -
Me: This is not easy for me, because when I write I don't really think about these sort of things - I just write the story I'm craving. Anyhow, the woman's parents made a deal of sorts. Her childhood would be in her mother's world or the world of the fae for about 16 or 20 years (haven't decided yet...)
Wales: So is she fae or human - or
Me: She's about 60% fae and maybe 40% human. Her father is part fae, but he's embraced the human world fully and her mother is full fae. At any rate, she has to leave her lover and mother to spend the next 16 or so years in her father's world, at the end of which, she can choose which world she wishes to stay fully in, and embrace. Her mother's or father's.
Also, there's a twist - her father cheats and does a memory spell so all her memories of her mother, her lover and her mother's world are gone. She doesn't even know it exists or the fae exist. Her father has rewritten her memories and history - so she won't want to go back because she won't know about it.
Wales: Sounds like Stockholm Syndrom.
Me: Not really, and I'm kind of subverting things a bit.
Wales: Also reminds me of a reversion of the Persephone myth. Where her mother hunts her down in Hades, where she resides with her lover.
Me: Yeah, I'm subverting a few fantasy tropes in there. Instead of the human world being better - I'm choosing the fae, and instead of the father - I'm going with the mother. Also the coming of age is female instead of male. It's not entirely subverted...but the lover is more balanced and bisexual.
Wales: Sounds intriguing.
Me: I'm just playing. But I tend to write stuff I can't find. And I'm craving this story right now - but can't find it anywhere. I look, but eventually give up and write it myself. I don't really care about getting it published, and I'm not into marketing it or any of that crap. I'd like folks to be able to read it - but I don't want the criticism, and I don't need the accolades really and I definitely don't want the fame, signing the books or sitting on panels at conventions. I'm not even sure I care if anyone pays me for it. I write because I want the story out of me like some weird sort of release.
The day got away from Wales and I before we did anything with it. She took a sleep aid and woke up at 11, and I slept until 8 and puttered about on the internet, and fiddled with the aforementioned fantasy novel.
Wales wants to go to Greenwood Cemetery. I would like to go anywhere else.
Me: I suppose we could go. But I'm bored of Greenwood Cemetery.
Wales: The timing is perfect. But I can see why you'd be bored of it.
Me: I only walked around it four to five times a week for about a year and a half. I finally got burned out sometime around July, when I realized I'd taken pictures of the same statues ten or more times.
Maybe we could try and go bird watching in it. The plus side, is generally speaking, it's not crowded.
Bro according to mother is going into the city this weekend, visiting friends and seeing exhibits at various museums.
I feel like a coward for having no such similar desires. But the idea of wondering about an indoor public space with a mask more than I have to is not appealing. Although to be fair to myself, I am doing it constantly and want a break from it. I go into work and wear a mask most of the time, except at my desk. In my apartment building, I wear it except in my apartment and to take the trash to the hallway shoot. My brother in marked contrast only wears it when he visits the city or public places that are indoors. He doesn't wear it at all in his home, property, going out to eat in his area or any of that. He lives on eleven acres of land upstate NY.
Do you ever feel as if we all living in different universes or worlds?
**
Fandom
Fan: I was hoping Disney would intervene and change the show in response to the ratings. And give me less mob and more hospital stories, small town romance, and Hallmark style romances, like I want.
Me: Well, they kind of already have - just not how you want. Ratings went up in September 2020-December 2020 when there were gunfights, people got injured, and a bomb took out characters. Also when a major villain was killed off. Ratings dived in January-March, when they focused on romances and Nixon Falls. Ratings upticked with the Peter reveal and Franco's death. Ratings dived when we went back to Nixon Falls (small town romance) and hospital stories, etc. So the network came in and had them kill off the former and reformed serial killer Franco, recast him as a doctor, and wrap up the Nixon Falls storyline. Like it or not, most people are watching this show for action, adventure, suspense, the mob, and anti-heroes. They aren't watching for hospital love affairs, hallmark romances and small town stuff. That's been the case since 1978. It's not like this is hard to find - Google Ratings, TV Line has them, and look at the boards and twitter.
Are people dumb? Or just overly self-involved?
Another interaction.
Fan: I can't wait for mobster amnesia guy who regained his memory to hit the sheets and have a hot romance with the woman who lied to him for nine months about who he is, lied to his family, and kept him from his kids. Because I love underdog romances.
ME: Don't you mean unpopular and somewhat inappropriate romances that go completely against the story thread and the canonical nature of the characters. And give me a headache?
Fan: YES! Cool beans.
Me: Sigh, you make me think of a New York Mets fan. Or an evil slash Alternate Universe fanfic writer in the making.
And you thought Buffy's shippers were bad - they've got nothing on the professionals - daytime soap opera shippers - who only watch television shows for the romance, no other reason. They only care about the romances. Nothing annoys me more when a character or storyline is completely corrupted by some idiotic writers craving to put two characters in an inappropriate and non-storyline dictated romance. The romance should further the characters storylines and be organic to them, and enhance their history and storyline. Not just happen because the writers and actors are bored.
Long running serials with multiple writers (such as Doctor Who, Daytime Soaps, Comic books) are admittedly a lot like fanfic. Actually I think they are fanfic, just authorized commercial fanfic.
Illogical thinking apparently is explained...by an article that gave me a headache. So here it is to give you one too. Bad Thinkers? Because why should I be alone in my headache induced madness. I want company, dang it.
The sad thing about the article? I shared a cubicle with the fictional Oliver when I was working at the video game developer company. Yes, the guy actually believed 9/11 was a government conspiracy and caused by the US government to start WWIII. We used to kill time arguing about it until I gave up. And Wales friend Alan, and various of her family members fit Oliver as well - they drank COVID conspiracy Kool Aid.
I think we live in a world in which it is very easy to be driven insane. There's an interesting thread on Twitter that explains..
"Why didn't older generations do something about ___?"
I think the reality of life before and during the early internet isn't something people know about. Its never depicted anywhere because it was so slooowwww and boring.
I can't stress how slow the flow of information was.
And he goes into detail - about how we didn't have cell phones, email, or social media platforms. There weren't any fanboards - fanzines, yes, fanboards no.
I remember when I first got access to email - it was in 1997. A friend sent me a Dilbert Magnet that stated - I have email so I am or something along those lines. In 1997, I was on list serves. There weren't any social media platforms. Information was provided by television outlets and newspapers. Only. We had 24/7 CNN, and broadcast news in the 1990s.
So it's not like we didn't have pandemics and health crises back then. We did. We just didn't have it as bad, and with as much information spread as quickly.
I was trying to explain that to my niece over the summer - and it blew her mind. She cannot imagine a world with smartphones, earphones, the internet, and computers. While her parents and I can. And in some respects, I preferred not having all of them. Not having access to all of that information. It wears on the brain after a bit.
***
Okay, enuf. I'm tired. I've not been sleeping well. Worrying too much, and too often. And struggling to turn it off. As if it's a water faucet with a valve.
And this song jumped into my head, actually just the first line, because I can't remember whole songs...just a phrase here or there, which is another reason I'm not a singer. Fuck Fake Friends - that's the title of the song. The lyric I remember is " Friends Come and Go , Friends Come and Go..." the song is about the hollowness of LA.
Random Photo of the Night:
The Sierra Mountain Range in Washington State...with their glaciers mostly melted...and this was in 2018.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-03 02:01 am (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Lord_of_Derkholm
no subject
Date: 2021-10-04 03:02 am (UTC)Also apparently others have used the title : Darkholm 1 (a really bad fantasy romance novel on Amazon) and World of Darkholm.
They won't think I'm ripping off her book. There's a lot of books that have similar names.
I'm not worried. I seriously doubt those readers will ever read my book. ;-) Also, it's the heroine's last name not the hero's. And like I said, working title, I may change it.
I mean Darkholm is also the last name of X-men's Mystique. Raven Darkholm, which pre-exists that by about twenty years. That's how it ended up in my head.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-03 03:36 am (UTC)Though, in terms of past worlds, yeah, I don't want to go around museums and such, masked, worrying about fomites, whatever. I miss that pre-pandemic world and I want it back, this contagion was interesting and different at first but now this is getting real old.
Birdwatching's an interesting thought, anything that might dress a return to the cemetery in a new frock rather than a tired one.
Please don't let posting here become a stressful obligation in any sense. I like when you can share things but it's more important that you're happier. Whatever comes to pass, I think you'll be able to ride it out.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-03 06:58 am (UTC)It is in the nature of many intellectual character traits that you don’t realize you have them, and so aren’t aware of the true extent to which your thinking is influenced by them.
I think the writer of this made a lot of reasonable points. On the nature vs. nurture argument, I've leaned closer and closer to the nature explanation, that we think the say we do primarily as the result of our observations of the world around us being filtered through hard-wired brain programming-- essentially there from birth.
That science-fiction novel that I'll almost certainly never manage to actually write was based to a great extent on this idea. In it (I posted about this before, but looooooog long ago), the lead character is a genetic scientist in the mid-to-late 2000's who discovers what he calls "the religion gene" while mapping thousands of sequences and looking for ones that show up regularly in certain personality types.
The character is a confirmed atheist in a USA that has become essentially a rigidly ruled Christian society-- think near-Taliban, but Christian based. Having found this gene sequence, and having secretly developed the technology available to re-write and then release it carried as a virus to the general population, he fights with himself as to the morality if doing so.
Will he save the human race, or end up transforming it into just another form of mass self-deception?
For myself, I try to keep the hopeful view that there are ways, as the article writer mentions near the end of the article, that we may be able to intervene constructively at an early age, while the brain still has sufficient plasticity, to re-program the innate characteristic to recognize itself, and be aware of how to correct for its effects.
*******
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with having your writing not be traditionally published, not with all the other options available to writers today.
I know that something I've been doing for a bit over the last year now is to print out a copy of one of my photographs, frame it in a basic, inexpensive but nice frame, and donate them to the people whose homes I encounter on my walks that provided the shots to me. If possible, I try to meet them first, explain that I'm an amateur photographer, and I really liked (whatever I saw in their garden or whatever), and I'd like to give them a print of it.
I've done this about 7 or 8 times now, and I find it extremely satisfying. It's not about money for me, it's about sharing the image in my mind that was rendered on the print, and hoping they like that vision also. So far I've gotten all positive feedback on the prints, but if by chance someone doesn't 'get it', that doesn't bother me. It's art-- you like what you like, just like the photos I post on my blog here at DW and before that on LJ.
I attach a note to the print specifically stating that "this is a freebie, please don't send me any money", that this is a hobby interest, and that this is my creative outlet since I can't paint or draw or sculpt or any of that cool stuff.
I very much intend to keep doing this, it's been quite enjoyable!
no subject
Date: 2021-10-03 10:42 am (UTC)