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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Nick Kiddle's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, July 26th, 2008 | |
| 6:33 pm | Things I am screwing up in Dragon007: warfare Since Reilane and Belkerwin are now wanted fugitives, the only way out of Rikcoevhal is through the "disputed zone". They have a petty little spat about the precise meaning of "disputed zone" and how it differs from "battlefield", but Belkerwin is forced to concede that since their idents will no longer get them across any other border, they have to take that route. With the personal conflict still simmering nicely, disguised so that they can't talk to each other, unwilling to risk communicating across the link, they sweet-talked a bargeman into giving them a lift and walked the rest of the way to the disputed zone. Now, with their pursuers just realising where they're heading, they've arrived at the edge of the zone, just behind the Rikcoevhalat lines. The personal conflict can probably be resolved about now, since it makes sense to send a message back to Rikseillon before they risk crossing the zone. All I need to do is find them somewhere secure enough to rest, transmit and have a conversation they could have productively had two chapters ago. And therein lies my problem. I have no idea how the disputed zone looks. I have no idea how the Rikcoevhalat lines are structured or how they police the ground they're currently holding. I have no idea what's happening in the space between Rikcoevhalat and Rikseillonnat lines, or how Reilane and Belkerwin can get through without being shot by their own countrymen. I have no idea what obstacles their pursuers would face in their quest to catch the spies alive and find out how much they know and how much they've already reported. I think there may be a battle taking place at some point, but I have no idea what it would look like. I don't even know what the ground looks like. I'm guessing that settlements, plantations and maybe even hedges might have suffered from the whole "being fought over" thing, but will there be trees? Rocks? Contours? I'm sort of half-imagining a WWI-era battlefield, but I think warfare in Dragon007-world might be subtly different due to, among other things, not having great big guns to shoot the other side with (or do they? I can't work out how they would do it, but it might be possible). Not to mention the flying, fire-breathing dragons: I can see them changing things a bit. My problem is that I'm just not into military stuff. I thought I could do a fantasy story that left all that battle stuff out and concentrated on the relationships between the characters, but somehow the battle stuff sneaked in anyway. And I'm stuck. |
| Sunday, July 20th, 2008 | |
| 10:59 pm | You mean she won't be doing half the work by the time she's seven? What chores kids can do at what ages. I already set Andrea to work finding socks that match to keep her busy while I iron. She also helps put dishes and groceries away, puts junk mail in the "recyc-bin", and is already better than me at tidying up and putting toys away. |
| Saturday, July 19th, 2008 | |
| 11:56 pm | Male feminists, cis and trans I was hanging around on the fringes of a discussion about male feminists the other week, and I noticed that several people were making it clear they were talking about cis male feminists. The implication to saying it's disturbing when (cis) men describe themselves as feminists being, presumably, that it's perfectly fine when trans men do it. Now to start with, I don't even know where I stand on the question of whether men should identify as feminists. I never like claiming any label for myself, even the ones that clearly apply to me, so I'm the last person to go around telling people what labels they ought to apply to themselves. And there have been so many acrimonious discussions lately about what it means to identify as a feminist that I'm basically not in any hurry to go there. But if I accept the premise that it's disturbing when (cis) men call themselves feminists, I still don't know what to make of that implication. On the one hand, trans men do often have a more personal stake in feminism than cis men, especially early in transition. If we still have all our female parts, we're still at risk of getting pregnant. If we don't yet pass consistently, we're still exposed to sexism. And if we get outed, misogyny definitely plays a role in the way we're treated - I keep remembering that Brandon Teena was raped when he was first outed. On the other hand, I just don't like being set apart. Misogyny gets directed against gay men too - against any gender-nonconforming men. And there's nothing about being trans that makes you automatically pro-feminist. I've seen guys take on all kinds of sexist attitudes as a way of distancing themselves from women. I also knew a guy who called himself a "feminist on testosterone" (in answer to the implied criticism that he was somehow betraying the sisterhood by becoming a man) who saw no problem with calling women "love" even when they made their discomfort with it clear. This idea that trans men are special men, kinder, gentler men who understand women and women's stuff, is all over the place. It's flattering, but in the end it's not something I can be comfortable with. Some of us like to think we are kind and gentle, but so do some cis men. We deserve to be judged by the same standards as other men, and giving us a free pass unmans us. |
| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | |
| 2:37 pm | Brigg 0 Scunthorpe 2 My dad's sister offered me a lift to Brigg, saving me a cycle ride of four and a half miles. Unfortunately, her satnav chose this occasion to have some kind of nervous breakdown, which meant that the pre-season began with us driving through the back streets of Brigg, saying things like, "We can't be far away, there's another Scunny car," and, "On the other hand, they might just live here." Finally, on the street where the ground was supposed to be, I jumped out of the car and took my chances on foot. A steady stream of Scunthorpe supporters were still filtering in, but I missed the kick-off by a couple of minutes. I found Karen not far from the entrance behind the goal we were attacking and settled down to watch the match, but something wasn't right. In golden evening sunlight, the players stroked the ball around casually, as if they were having a kickabout in the park, and the supporters only broke their silence with the occasional burst of applause. I'd forgotten, in my any-match-will-do football deprivation, how little the pre-season resembles the game I've been craving. For desperate tackles and chants worth repeating, I need to wait for the start of the regular season. So the first half was mainly spent catching up with Karen on a summer's worth of gossip. The action on the pitch left a lot to be desired. Peter Winn reliably fired in crosses from just in front of us, but not a lot happened to them when they reached the penalty area. Occasionally the Brigg defence would have to scramble a ball out for a corner, but generally the keeper claimed the ball without difficulty. The highlight of the half was a long range shot from Winn that rattled the crossbar audibly. Half-time brought virtually a complete change of personnel, adding to the sense that this wasn't the football I knew. It did mean that I could see our summer signings in action, along with a host of trialists in nameless shirts. Kenny Milne looked competent in defence, but he had so little to do that it's hard to judge. While Gary Hooper was warming up, Karen said, "He looks like Billy Sharp." I scorned this observation, but once I'd watched him in action for five minutes, I could see what she meant. The second half seemed slightly more exciting than the first. That could have been the effect of watching our attacks from afar, but a few players also seemed to be trying harder, notably Ian Morris, who put in such a distinctly un-friendly tackle that the referee had to have a serious word with him. That was probably the worst tackle of the game - a far cry from certain other matches against our neighbours in recent years, when promising players have had their seasons or indeed their careers ruined. (At one point, one of the trialists did have to go off for attention. "Oh, that's OK," said Karen. "It's only a trialist. I thought it was one of our real players for a minutes.") Eventually, we got the ball in the back of the net. I didn't see a lot of it, and I suspected heavy defensive involvement, but the announcer credited Forte with the goal. Karen and I spent the next few minutes discussing the correct pronunciation of Forte's name, and mispronounced names in general, as the game became even less passionate following the goal. Supporters started leaving early - apparently it can be really tough getting out of the car park at the Hawthorns. The atmosphere was so muted I could hardly believe we were a goal up. Maybe I'd missed a couple of Brigg goals by arriving late? No, Karen assured me, there had only been the one goal that I had more-or-less seen. And then, just as she'd convinced me of this fact, Forte added a second. I had a better view of this one, and it looked good, although the quality of the defending would have made anyone look good. The game restarted, and I had just long enough to complain that the scorer hadn't been announced before the final whistle blew. I felt oddly flat as we left the ground. We'd won, but it wasn't the winning feeling I've been missing all summer. That comes in part from having something at stake, and there was no sense of anything at all being at stake. It wasn't proper football at all, just an entertaining way to spend a summer evening and a milestone marking how close we're getting to the start of the real thing. |
| Monday, July 14th, 2008 | |
| 11:46 pm | A couple of things I'm late posting Belledame brings us the story of Kyle Payne. Kyle Payne is a male radical feminist who does presentations on the evils of porn and blogs about how emotionally affected he is by it all. Kyle Payne also assaulted a young woman while she was passed out, and videoed the assault. He accepted some plea bargain or other, he's currently waiting to be sentenced, and he's still blogging as if nothing had happened. The whole story drips with wtf, but this was the one part that made my brain explode hardest. Kyle Payne on the subject of women's abuse stories: One day I’ll write a book. Well, hopefully several. But this book in particular will be a compilation of all the stories shared with me by survivors. Women (of a variety of different backgrounds) raped, beaten, groped, stalked, threatened, drugged, coerced, tortured, pissed on, and emotionally abused by men (of a variety of different backgrounds). Women have shared their stories of abuse and degradation with this man. They trusted him that much. And he ... no, there's my brain shutting down again in self-defence. The other story that tripped the wtf-meter recently was about the magazine editor who sent a rejection letter peppered with racial slurs and assorted derogatory remarks about people from the Middle East. It found its way out into the wider world, and for some reason much of the discussion centred around whether it's the done thing to make rejection letters public. There are probably two views on whether it's acceptable to publish a random rejection letter that says nothing more than "I can't use your story and here's why" (I always came down on the side of acceptability, and have indeed shared 100% of the rejection letters I've received since I started blogging); when it comes to a rejection like the one Sanders wrote, it's a bit different. Etiquette-based arguments go out of the window on the grounds that it's something of an etiquette breach to let loose with the racial slurs in the first place, and you might almost say that the recipients have a duty to explose that sort of thing rather than give the impression of condoning it by their silence. Interestingly, it looks like the recipient originally published it with quite a different idea in mind. And of course, Sanders is representing himself as a poor beleaguered truth-teller under siege from the forces of political correctness. |
| Thursday, July 10th, 2008 | |
| 11:28 pm | Clearing something up Last season, Scunthorpe United achieved their highest league position since 1964. And yet we got relegated. How can this be? Just because our finishing position was the highest we managed in forty-odd years, that doesn't imply it was high enough to earn us another season in the relative big time. "Highest" needs a context, and in the context of Scunthorpe's progress since 1964, it doesn't mean anything all that great. Feel free to generalise this reasoning to other situations where it might apply. |
| Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 | |
| 6:58 pm | Do Not Want There's a Sandman story about a mediocre writer who enslaves a Muse and forces her to provide him with the ideas he fears he cannot come up with on his own. When his treatment of her becomes intolerable, she calls on the Sandman, her ex, to help. The Sandman, appalled by the writer's actions and his attempts to justify them, serves up a horribly ironic punishment: he gives the writer enough ideas to break his brain. I'm pretty sure I haven't tried enslaving any Muses, but for some reason I'm suffering the same punishment. So many seductive ideas drift through my brain, and many of them stick, insisting that I need to attend to them or regret it for the rest of my pitiful life. Well, I'm attending to them, but possibly not in the way they were hoping. At the present time, I do not want to write any more Left Behind fanfic1. I do not want to write any more chapters of Smut. I do not want to write the beginning and continuation of Revenge Erotica. I do not want to write a novel where the heroes are all girly-men. I do not want to write a novel about a vampire draining the vitality from LGBT youth under the guise of "reprogramming". I do not want to write the novel I didn't get round to planning for NaNo last year. I do not want to explore the gendered assumptions underpinning the "Boom de yada" advert. I do not want to write about how reality should properly be called complexity. I also do not want to make my leftover chip oil into soap. I think it would probably smell of chips, which is not an entirely positive quality for soap to possess. I do not want to buy a bottle of fresh, unused sunflower oil for the purposes of making soap. I do not want to try rendering down any kind of animal fat for the purposes of making soap. I do not, at this stage of my life, want anything to do with soap beyond buying it in the supermarket and washing my damn hands with it. I do not want to make a knife out of a tin can and a piece of scrap leather to see how hard it is. I do not want to write a novel about people who make knives out of tin cans and scrap leather. I do not want to write a novel about generational conflict and folk beliefs in the Isle of Axholme. I do not want to write a novel about vampires living rough in Scunthorpe. Now that I've made all that clear, perhaps whatever is tormenting me with these ideas will leave me alone. 1Nor do I want to write an essay explaining why I feel "fanfic" is the appropriate term. |
| Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | |
| 11:50 pm | Things I am screwing up in Dragon007: mules Early in Dragon007, Reilane and Belkerwin make a long journey across Rikcoevhal by mule cart. I wondered whether a cart was really appropriate technology - perhaps a travois would be more in keeping with the world - but I had no doubts about the mules pulling it. Until yesterday, when Andrea brought me her Farm Songs book and pointed to a picture of a donkey. "Horsie," she said. I explained that it was a donkey, a different kind of animal from a horsie, although sufficiently close that horses and donkeys can interbreed, and the dreadful realisation struck. Mules are the offspring of horse and donkey, and like most hybrids, they're sterile. (According to Wikipedia, there are occasionally fertile mules, but it's not something you'd want to rely on.) In the world of Dragon007, genetic engineering is the hammer to which all technological needs are the nail. Reilane sneers at Belkerwin for growing his own cabbages because they cannot possibly be a patch on the genetically engineered ones. But who would go to the trouble of genetically engineering a creature that can't pass on its painstakingly modified genes to another generation? I'm coming up with a few possible explanations. It could be that "mule" refers to a donkey that's been genetically modified to be more like a horse (or indeed vice versa). It could be that Rikcoevhal has been pouring so many resources into military research for so long that transport companies have been forced back onto old-fashioned methods of improving their beasts of burden. It could be that no reader apart from me will even see genetically engineered mules as a worldbuilding flaw. Or maybe I need to err on the side of safety and just change all the mules to donkeys. |
| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | |
| 12:43 pm | The evolution of a third hand There used to be a Black&Decker advert that never failed to get me shouting at the screen. It had an image of a man struggling with some DIY task, and the voiceover said, "Because the evolution of a third hand is taking a bit too long..." (buy this gadget that will free up a hand for you.) Yes, yes, funny and light-hearted and everything, but everyone who talks about evolution as if it was something you could hand a shopping list to is playing right into the creationists' hands. After loudly contradicting the television a few dozen times, I came up with another objection. We already did evolve something that's a sight more useful than a third hand: the ability to co-operate. Who needs a third hand hanging around all the time when your mate can lend you one whenever you happen to need it? (Of course, you may then have to put up with the mate hanging around all the time and drinking your beer, but nothing's perfect.) The other night, I realised something else we've evolved that's relevent. We've evolved the ability to make hand-freeing gadgets (as well as annoying adverts for them, *sigh*). Any time we spot a deficiency in ourselves now, we don't have to wait a hundred generations and hope evolution irons it out. We can use technology to fill the gap in a fraction of the time. We've evolved the ability not to be limited by evolution. |
| Monday, June 30th, 2008 | |
| 1:14 pm | Boom de yada I finally know what this xkcd was all about. I was going to complain that it's cheating to rhyme "transistors" with "your sister", but then I remembered that I've been teaching Andrea to rhyme "Mourinho" with "physio" and therefore have absolutely no room to talk. |
| Saturday, June 28th, 2008 | |
| 1:42 am | I would love one of those Spotted on Yahoo: "What outfits compliment my body?" They meant complement, of course, but how good would an outfit be that complimented your body? I'm imagining a shirt that told me, at regular intervals through the day, what nice-looking pecs I have, or a pair of jeans that kept remarking on my hot backside. It would certainly be a better confidence booster than all that advice about dressing right for your body shape. (Of course, I'd have to be careful. The wrong outfit might decide to tell me how deliciously curvy and feminine I looked, which wouldn't be such a confidence boost.) |
| Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | |
| 11:05 pm | Name change update It's been over a month since I changed my name, and things are still very slowly getting changed over. Alliance&Leicester wanted me to prove I was really me, which I did by sending a copy of a letter from the tax credits, which surely no identity thief could have got their hands on. With that in hand, they changed everything over and sent me a new cheque book. My debit card is in the name of "N C Kiddle", so they don't actually have to send a new one, but they might. Nationwide, despite the worrying bit on the form, changed everything over without complaint. GM win a prize for changing my name but still calling me Miss, but it's OK because they changed it when I phoned up and complained. The Student Loans Company agreed to change everything based on a phone call, as did Anglian Water and eon. BT and onetel, on the other hand, despite taking my word for my name when I opened the accounts, wanted me to send them a copy of my "marriage certificate", because apparently people change their forenames and leave their surnames alone when they get married now. The big three that I haven't notified yet are the taxman, the DWP and the DVLA. I was hoping to get a doctor's letter saying that I'm having treatment for gender dysphoria, in order to change the gender marker along with the name, but my GP doesn't feel she can write one until after I've seen the psychiatrist. I find the whole business extremely frustrating, not least because it shouldn't need a medical specialist to explain that someone who changes his name to a boy's name has gender dysphoria. I have to notify them of my new name, though. Theoretically, I shouldn't need a doctor's note to get a title that matches my name, but I don't trust government departments to be that simple. The change of gender marker doesn't do a lot, since I'll be female for social security purposes until I can change my birth certificate - which makes it all the more baffling that I need a doctor's note. I'm planning to write a letter informing them that I've changed my name, glossing over the doctor's note aspect and hoping they will at least change name and title without too much unnecessary drama. |
| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 | |
| 3:12 pm | Ideas - just what I don't need There's a very popular series of novels called Left Behind, which dramatise one sect's idea of the end of the world. I've got a copy of the first book: it's a moderately readable thriller, if you overlook little things like the way no-one reacts to the disappearance of all the children in the world. Fred Clark at slacktivist has been patiently dissecting it to bring the flaws into sharper relief for those of us who miss the finer details in our rush to find out who dies. Some fans of Fred's work set up a blog called Right Behind, using the basic premise of Left Behind and dealing with some aspects that the original authors didn't really give much consideration to. I asked for posting rights many months ago, but never got anything into postable shape because ... yeah. This week, I finally wrote something. It was supposed to scratch one very specific itch - people who know me reasonably well can probably figure out who these slightly-disguised characters are based on - and it wasn't supposed to go anywhere. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought there should be more to the story. Assuming Clare gets what she wants, what then? I doubt the people who have lost children will be all that happy for her. Even Clare herself is going to have some rough times as she comes to terms with the fact that her baby has three siblings sie will probably never get to meet. Doctors are going to want to monitor the hell out of her to make sure whatever caused the disappearances (fetuses vanished along with children) doesn't happen again, and there will very likely be some media coverage of the "Human race rests on your shoulders - how do you feel about that?" variety. Plenty of interesting stories in that, even without getting into the idea that the world will end before the poor kid turns seven. Let's recap. I've reached the very toughest part of Dragon007, I've got no shortage of Jaybook essays in need of serious fixing up, I've offered to write for the Scunthorpe United programme, and now I'm being seduced by fanfic. (Is it still fanfic if we're not keen on the original work?) On the positive side, at least my mind is still capable of having new ideas. |
| Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 | |
| 11:45 pm | Work and sleep Every so often, the government sends me another glossy pamphlet about the joys of work. I usually toss it straight into the recycling with a hollow laugh, because do they think I'm not working just because I'm not earning? Of all the problems besetting me, insufficient work is certainly not one of them. But they do get half a point for understanding the importance of the whole "setting goals and putting in effort to achieve them" thing. It seems like some people think I would be better off if I concentrated on eating and sleeping and didn't bother having aspirations at all. All that work is something I can do without when I'm feeling rough. I understand about cutting back on non-essential stuff. But lopping off everything that isn't at the very bottom of the pyramid sounds like a great way to lock myself into an ever-worsening depression. Food and sleep aren't the only things I need to stay healthy, and most of my "self-defeating" behaviours are really failing attempts to get some of the needs from higher up met. Staying online, just online, until the small hours, is about participating in a conversation with people in the US, or even Australia (hi Ryan!). People who aren't as heavily into this internet thing as me can't seem to understand that when I post a comment somewhere and hang around to see if anyone responds to it, this is my best effort at socialising. No, it's not the same as talking to people face-to-face, but most of the people I talk to face-to-face end don't get what I'm talking about. I can either explain, and be told I'm overthinking, or give up, and have nothing to say. If I didn't have internet conversations, I'd be a lot worse off. Playing solitaire is about getting my thoughts in order. Fair enough, many of my thoughts end up streaming off all over the place, dissolving into yet another tear-storm, or going round in circular grooves, but every so often my thoughts turn into an essay worth writing or a piece of plot I'm glad I thought out. I wish I could do more of the useful thinking and less of the not-so-useful kind, but just cutting down my thinking time doesn't seem like a good method of doing that. But the worst one, the one everyone gets frustrated with, is opening RoughDraft and staring at the last sentence of yesterday's work, checking my email, playing a couple of games of solitaire, counting the words to see if a few more have appeared from anywhere, setting up Excel to calculate the standard deviation of the chapter lengths, going to see whether there's a new xkcd even though I know they don't update on Tuesdays, counting the words again just in case, wandering round the blogs I occasionally check to see if there are any new updates, playing another game of solitaire, rereading an essay I wrote last December and trying not to conclude that I am teh Suck, checking my email again, finding and fixing a run-on sentence, reading my flist, playing another game of solitaire, hearing the birds begin to welcome the impending dawn and hastily bashing out five hundred slightly acceptable words so I can get a couple of hours' sleep. "Everyone", by the way, includes me. I am aware, even as I'm doing these things, that it's not helping me, but something keeps me clicking on pointless shit instead of starting to produce the damn words already. I think that something is fear, fear that I can't find the words I really need, or worse, that no-one cares what words I find. And I don't think it's a solution to that fear to give up, forget about finding any kind of word at all, and just concentrate on sleeping. I want to be more than a machine for turning food into shit: I want to be a creator of words. If I can hold the fear at arm's length for three quarters of an hour in the early hours of the morning, that's better than nothing. |
| Monday, June 23rd, 2008 | |
| 11:47 pm | And speaking of addictive... I wanted to borrow some Lego from my mum's for modelling hatcheries and moving people around them. (Note that this is already a form of procrastination.) She thought that I could model more easily on a computer, and passed me over to Alistair, who recommended SketchUp. In his defence, I should point out that he was quite open about its time-wasting toy potential, and I downloaded it anyway. It's a lot of fun. You can draw plane shapes, turn them into prisms, and cut bits out of the prisms to make all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Unless the particular weird and wonderful thing you're trying to make is a tunnel complex full of hatcheries, I've found so far. This morning, after several days of tinkering, I managed to make a grass-covered tunnel looking something like the bridge from a Brio railway set. It's proof of how much I've struggled with it that this feels like a great achievement. And I just can't resist having another go. Oh look, an extruding tool. Surely this will let me create the effect I'm looking for. Won't it? Won't it? Oh look, vegetation effects. Still no tunnels, but it looks so nice and grassy. The worst of it is, Rei and Bel are now out of the research centre for the last time. If I'm modelling anything, it ought to be mountains. But I remain convinced that if I just keep tinkering, I'll manage to build the research centre. |
| Saturday, June 21st, 2008 | |
| 10:46 pm | No, I wouldn't jump off a cliff, but this is much more fun These Wordle things are addictive. I tried making one, of the current state of the book. It looks good, and doesn't do a bad job of summing up the themes of the book. But I couldn't just stop there, oh no. I went on to make one out of the current state of Dragon007 as well. That one wasn't quite so nice to look at, but I was already hooked. ( Plenty more wordles behind the cut ) |
| Thursday, June 19th, 2008 | |
| 11:59 pm | Things I am screwing up in Dragon007: the ending I wrote the bulk of Dragon007 for NaNo 2003. During the climactic fight scene, I got horribly bogged down, which wasn't helped by crying over the imminent departure of Alex Calvo-Garcia and getting into a little fight scene of my own. I'd just about hit 50k for the month, and I couldn't find much incentive to carry on. In May 2004, I decided that since I was updating my profile to say I'd achieved my football-watching ambition, I ought to update the number of novels I'd written as well. I picked up Dragon007 again, wrote a couple more pages to finish the fight and get the characters on their way home, and declared the snake-spliced thing finished. So it's not really surprising that the ending is currently embarrassingly bad. The bogged-down fight scene can be salvaged if I go through it with a magnifying glass and sacrifice some of the POV trickery that seemed utterly essential for some reason I can no longer remember, but chapter 20 is 768 words of pure, unadulterated fail. The story isn't finished when the fight finishes. Rei and Bel are still in the heart of enemy territory, and although they can transmit their information home, they also have blood samples that really need delivering. Not to mention the fact that I hope the reader cares whether they make it home safely themselves. I've been reading novels that I think handle the escape-as-part-of-the-action well. It's fun, but I can't see how to make it work in Dragon007. There's always some kind of terrain, like a mountain pass or a stretch of frozen sea, that the characters have to cross to reach friendly territory. But Rei and Bel travelled for three days from the nearest neutral (read: occupied) territory to reach their current location. The return journey is going to take approximately as long; perhaps they could do it faster with something that travels quicker than a mule, but it's still going to take a while. If they lose their pursuers altogether, the story fizzles out and the ending is unsatisfying, but I can't see them staying just one step ahead all the way to the border. It can probably be done, but not by me. |
| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 | |
| 10:55 pm | Medical jerks and rape comparisons ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) |
| Monday, June 16th, 2008 | |
| 12:30 am | Things I am screwing up in Dragon007: the moon Reilane and Belkerwin arrive in Pasellee on Snakeday feast, which is held on the night of the full moon. After a whole chunk of plot has taken place, Reilane sneaks into the hatcheries under cover of darkness and finds enough moonlight coming through the light-slits to tell her there's no-one about. At this point, I realised that I had no idea what the moon was doing, since I'd lost count of the number of days that had passed. A quick reread, marking each new morning, convinced me that this was the sixth full day since their arrival. Googling "Phases of the moon" convinced me that the moon would be coming up for its last quarter - still providing plenty of light to see by. I think when I wrote the first draft, I imagined Reilane seeing everything crystal clear in the moonlight. But I'd forgotten about that, so it seemed to make more sense to have her feeling her way in gloomy twilight, until I came to the moonlight reference. Could the moon be just rising, hidden from Reilane's approach by the tunnels, but providing light through the light-slits? No. Another judicious Google proved that the last-quarter moon doesn't rise until very late. By the time the moon comes up, Reilane and Belkerwin need to be out of there. Whatever Reilane uses to figure out that the hatcheries are empty, it's not going to be moonlight. |
| Friday, June 13th, 2008 | |
| 10:20 pm | The Cicada Files If you are trans and change your name so it better reflects your gender identity, remember that everyone you currently have business dealings with knows your old name. If the new name is extremely similar to the old name, it will be immediately obvious that you are changing your name because you're trans. If you choose a rather different new name, you get to say that you simply like the new name better, something that doesn't sound convincing when the difference is just two letters. Of all the people you speak to, someone is certain to ask. |