Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 26

Thursday!

Mason and I will have a podcast once I'm back from teaching at the Loft's Youth Writing Conference today, but while you wait impatiently for that, you can read the newest chapter in the School for Wayward Demons that Rachel Gold/Calish and I are writing: http://entertheunseen.com/01-07-ben-takes-a-side-job/
In the aftermath of Theo's capture, we learn some interesting things about this strange new world she's stumbled into...

K. Have to keep it short for now. I've got to prep for class. But, when I return, I should have stories of that as well as a podcast.

Link SALAD Days!!

I am so amazing and busy, you can hardly keep up with me, can you?

Today is Tuesday which is my super-duper productivity day. I've posted a new installment over on Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/76031780-unjust-cause-part-26-choices-made. In this chapter, Alex thinks she's got everything figured out. So, of COURSE, the universe throws her a curveball... in the form of one Spenser Jones.

Also, Rachel Calish/Gold and I have updated our School for Wayward Demons, which you can read here: http://entertheunseen.com/01-06-everyone-catches-up-to-theo/. In this chapter, the demons finally catch up to our cheeky thief, Theo. Will she manage yet another daring escape? Tune in to find out!

I reviewed a couple of things up on MangaKast, too, in case you were curious about how I felt about the latest Ao no Exorcist chapter (61) http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/10/13/ao-no-exorcist-61/ or its spin-off Salaryman Futumashi Okumura Yukio no Aishuu http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/sorrows-of-the-salaryman-exorcist/, which, in my opinion, has the best tag line in the history of strange manga tag lines, ever: "This is my seriousness!"

Okay, wow. Impressed yet?

If not, you should know that I also taught the Loft's Open Pages class on Fan Fic last night at the Savage Public Library last night. Savage! Savage, Minnesota, which is somewhere down there with the other suburbs like Apple Valley and Burnsville. I did find it last night. Drove right to it, thanks to Google Maps, in fact. The crowd was tough, though not 'savage.' I had two students, which was twice as many as I expected. In fact, in case of disaster, I'd brought along my Japanese to study. One of the librarians decided to stay and.... I guess add warm bodies, but I find that the addition of an adult can make things awkward sometimes. Though, tbf, I was plenty awkward on my own. I had a HELL of a time speaking. Like, words... I stumbled, very uncharacteristically, through my own introduction, but I managed a fairly decent recovery (I think.)

Because there was an adult (beyond me) present, the two kids took some warming-up.

Teenagers, you know.

Plus, the whole point of Open Pages is that the class is supposed to self-direct, so I intentionally come under-prepared, with the idea that if the consensus is "We want to talk about how hard plotting is!" then we do that. But, mouths stayed firmly shut in the presence of another grown-up, so I had to run though that list y'all gave me of 'fan fic pet peeves." Luckily, my teaching style (chaotic good) lends itself to interruption and discussion, so going through that list seemed to spark thoughts, etc., and by the end there was a lot of chatter among the three of us. Also, one of the students boldly asked for time to write, so we spent the last half hour doing just that.

I never know with these things, but it felt, to me, ultimately, successful.

Probably that means I bombed.

I'm constantly surprised by why teens take a class on fan fic... and the levels that they come in at. Like last night, I had one student who didn't entirely seem clear on the concept. When it came time to write, she needed much more than a prompt. She seemed confused as to the point of fan fic, event though we'd been talking about it for about an hour. I explained that some people use fan fic to fill in the corners of a story--the bits you don't get to see, but might like to. So, for instance, if she wanted she could try writing about two of her favorite characters doing something mundane, such as grocery shopping or shopping for shoes. She seemed to thinks this was silly, since most of the time the heroes were in a life-or-death situations. When would they have time to shoe shop? I said, see, that's kind of the point. To take them out of the the plot and see what they're like in their ordinary life. But, then again, I said, not everyone likes curtain fic. So, maybe instead, I suggested, you could do a fix-it about something that bothered you in the story that you wanted to change or write something that happened after canon had finished... like the story of what Harry Potter is doing with his life after school.

Finally, she seemed to settle on something, but it was kind of baffling to me, especially in comparison to my other student who not only instantly started writing, but also said that they had a FanFictionnet that they'd been active on until they forgot their password.

So... two VERY DIFFERENT students.

New MangaKast

Because you've all been waiting with baited breath... MangaKast 28 has been posted: http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/28-were-late/


It's called "We're Late" because Bleach and many of the others came out yesterday afternoon. However, because we waited (I had to work last night) the fan translations of Shingeki no Kyojin (SnK/Attack on Titan) came out so I reviewed those as well. In this podcast, Mason and I discuss Bleach, Toriko, Fairy Tail, and Shingeki no Kyojin. There is silliness with interjections of the occasional thinly-thought (what if Grimmjow is actually under the hood of “C” compulsion, has Eren been eaten before, etc.)

So, you know, if it's your thing... it's there for you.

The Hunt is On... for Japanese

 The new chapter/installment for School for Wayward Demons is up: http://entertheunseen.com/01-05-the-hunt-is-on/ 

In this chapter, Theo's breaking & entering is starting to have consequences.  People are after her.  But who will get to her first?  The good guys or the ones who want to kill her?

Check it out, if you're so inclined.

There will be more news later tonight because the Bleach chapter came out early.  Mason and I will be podcasting this evening.  We've kind of given up being perfectly timely, especially since I had to work at Roseville last night.

I thought I should also give you an update about my Japanese class.  If you've been following the story, you know that I asked the instructor (Tetsuyo) if Mason could join.  There was some hemming and hawing because Mason is significantly younger than the cut off age of 16, but he said Mason could certainly try it and, if nothing else, could audit.  Mason and I spent much of last week getting ready to knock Tetsuyo's katsushita (socks) off with all the Japanese we'd memorized.  So, around came Tuesday night and Mason I bundled off together, quizzing each other all the way...

...only to get turned away by the two administrative people who sit guard.  

Apparently, they asked after Mason further up the pike and the administration came down with a HARD NO.  The email one of the women showed me made it sound like somehow having a child in the class would destroy the "adult" experience, but just looking at that my first inkling was that there had to be some deeper story here, like maybe they just didn't want to get into the habit of letting kids in, because then there'd be a precedent.  

I was only cranky because no one told me BEFORE I showed up with kid in tow, and having him sit in the hall seemed 1) AWFUL and 2) stupid, given that he had homework to do at home.  As I dithered the ladies apologized for not contacting me... kind of.  One of them asked, "Are you registered for the class?" (to me.)  I gave her a look.  "What?  Are you kidding?  OF COURSE."  She says, "What's your name?"  I said, "Lyda." Then the two women get this look, which they exchange sort of guiltily with each other.  "Oh," the other one says, "T kept saying Lyda."  

They apparently can't cope with saying Tetsuyo.  (Any anime fan who has seen Akira can handle this name, btw.  It's not THAT hard.)

But, I'm not even horrified by that yet.  I said back, "Yeah, that's because THAT'S MY NAME."

One of the women say, "I looked on the list, but I thought that said Lydia."

Right, I thought silently, because you can't cope with a simple name like Tetsuyo, so CLEARLY THAT PERSON CAN'T SAY LYDA CORRECTLY AND GOD FORBID SOMEONE BE NAMED SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT EXPECTING.

I say, snippily, "Well, It doesn't.  My name isn't Lydia, it's Lyda.  Just like the instructor said."

On that note, I left.

I ran into the instructor, Tetsuyo, in the parking lot and told him I was going to have to drop Mason off, but I'd be back, only probably quite a bit late. He asked what was wrong, why Mason wasn't staying, but all I managed to tell him was that the administration said Mason couldn't attend.  I mean, to be fair, writing this now it's all processed in my head, but at the time I was feeling all the FEELS, and most of them were WTF.  I AM DISAPPOINTED AND ANGRY AND HAVE NO WORDS.  

To be very, very honest, I was far more bummed not to have Mason able to take the class than I think Mason was.  So, I actually spent much the car ride home and back to class again being SAD.  Mason and I had practiced so hard.  I'd had this wonderful plan to surprise Tetsuyo by having Mason introduce himself properly with bows and everything.  It was going to be cute.  Now it was not, and I was sad.  And the whole thing about "T" and them not able to cope with my name was floating around in there feeling cranky and not quite knowing why, you know?

Class itself was fine, once I was back and in the groove.  We were talking about money (and later counting), but Tetsuyo and I have this funny thing about me being the Anime fan in the class. He's clearly NOT an Anime fan. I think he's especially annoyed by it because it's a connection a lot of people taking his class have to Japan.  Probably it'd be like going to Japan and having everyone wanting to talk about something you hate, like American football.  And like not really GETTING that it's not your thing, and going on about favorite teams and players, etc.

Anyway, I mostly don't mention it, but he was asking the class if any of us knew what the significance of the chrysthanimum (sp) is?  I said, "It's the flower of the Imperial House."  Then we get to the cherry blossom. I wait, hoping I'm not the only one, but then I say, "It's the national flower of Japan."  Tetsuyo looks surprised and asks, "Lyda-san, how do you know all this?"  I smile and say, "Anime."

He just shakes his head.

After class he asked me to stay and I learn that he's heard that the policy about not having kids under 16 is a result of some bad apple or another using Community Ed. as cheap babysitting.  That makes sense to me. I mean, Mason wouldn't be like that, but if people have abused this in the past, being firm about the age limit is suddenly far more understandable.  I told him it was fine.  (At this point I was WAY more calm) and I understood policy is policy.  He confessed to me that one of the other student is actually underage and he only found out because he got curious, given that Mason might be joining the class.  He found out this other student is only 15.  She was supposed to wait to sign up.  OR someone made an exception for HER. He was not happy with this, if only because it seemed that much more unfair to Mason.  Again, I told him it was fine.  Mason wasn't nearly as upset as I was.  I was bummed to be losing a study buddy who could have helped with an 'ear' to pronunciation, but he was still keen to learn and would keep learning from me, at home.

I think this actually made Tetsuyo sadder that he couldn't let Mason in, but I told him that Mason would sign up as soon as he was able.  Maybe, he'd even be able to join me in a later, more advanced class, if possible.

So, it kind of all worked out.  I still think it's a shame the way the two desk ladies gave me the news, especially given their weird issue with unconventional/unusual names.  But whatever.

I'll learn how to tell them to fuck off in Japanese and it will be my great revenge.  

:-)

Mooned!

Thanks to Washington Technical's 7:10 am start time, my family regularly gets up at 5:30 am so today, I hopped us all out of bed to see if we could see the lunar eclipse.  I wandered around looking at the stars in the front and back of my house, but, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, I could *NOT* see the moon.  I went inside and asked Shawn, "Where the hell is the moon supposed to even be?"  (For the record, though it would have been the perfect opportunity, she did not blink at me and say, "In the sky.")  She looked on a moon app (because we live in the future and have that) and determined that it was VERY LOW on the horizon in the West.  I convinced everyone to shuffle outside in their PJs and walk down to the end of the block.  Sure enough, there it was in its blood moon glory.

Honestly, it didn't look like much special at its peak.  Mason, however, had never seen a lunar eclipse before, so we stood there a long time admiring it.  I said to him, "That's us.  That's our shadow on the moon."  And, being the kind of nerdy mom I am, I went on to explain how lunar eclipses work and how that REALLY IS the shadow of the earth as it comes between the moon and its source of reflective light, the sun.

Several times cars came down the road and pushed us off onto the sidewalk.  I took every opportunity to loudly (for 5:30 am) to let the drivers know that they should really just stop and take a look at this special event in the sky.

As we drove Mason into school a half hour later, the moon had set so low on the horizon that it turned HUGE and kind of an orange-yellow.  With the earth's half shadow still covering it, Mason and I both remarked that it kind of looked like a giant croissant.  I agreed that if we weren't going to arrive at school only JUST in time, I would have turned the car around and headed for Bread & Chocolate for a moon-inspired croissant.

At school there was a big breakfast thing going on and there were ROTC uniformed guards all over the place. I felt very ESCORTED as they directed us around the parking lot to avoid all the extra early-morning confusion. 

So my morning was fairly dramatic and visually stunning.

And... on my way to the coffee shop I saw a hawk soaring over the highway.

Beauty is everywhere.

Now, I'm at the coffee shop, starting working on a story that I _was_ going submit to a Biblical Horror Anthology, but a friend of mine noticed what I'd failed to, which was that I'd missed the deadline by several months.  But, I'm not sure I care.  The story idea is kind of fun.  It was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic speculative story set in Sodom and/or Gomorra. A storyline and a title hit me instantly.  The title gives you a hint about the other, "Single Righteous Man Seeking Same."

We'll see how it goes.  Now that there's no anthology waiting for it, it's going to have to be sure that it stands outside of its setting, which is going to demand extra work that I probably should have planned to do at any rate.
 

Writing and Such

It's Tuesday, so there is a new Tate installment: Bringing Balance and Force in which we learn the TRUE mission of the demon Internal Affairs agents. Dun-dun-DAAAAHHHHH.

There is also new story up on my co-writing project with Rachel Gold/Calish called, "Demons, Demons Everywhere" and is the introduction to the character of Erin.

All of this is late getting to you because my morning was IN-teresting, as we say in Minnesota. I knew I didn't have much time to get everything done because I had to go pick up Shawn by 9:30 am to get to an appointment with our lawyer. We haven't changed our wills and such since being married, so we figured we should get that all taken care of finally. At any rate, I'd just settled in and stared writing when there was a shy knock on the door. I figured it had to be too early for Mormons so I opened the door. I discovered the eldest neighbor kid. He wondered if it would be possible for me to give him and his brother a ride to school. They'd overslept and they didn't have enough cash in the house to pay to take the city bus. I hemmed and hawed, but, seriously... it seemed like the thing to do. So, I ended up giving them and their dad (who, if you have been following along is a genderqueer person named Ebony.) They use the 'her' pronoun, but call her dad. So, there you go.

Ebony joined us because... everything is more fun when Ebony is involved.

As I told Shawn later, the thing that amuses me about every interaction I have with Ebony is that I feel like we could use subtitles provided by Urban Dictionary. Plus, she is so much bolder than me. I have exactly ONE question I want to ask. "What is your preferred pronoun?" It's not a rude question and with her kids in the back saying, "Hey, Dad..." this and "Hey, Dad" that, it seems like I could just pipe up and say, "Speaking of that, do prefer he or she or yo or what?" But, somehow I never manage this.

Ebony meanwhile, just asks all the things, shamelessly.

I ended up telling her all about how Shawn is Mason's birth mom, how I ended up warming up the vial of sperm in my hand during the insemination process, and all sorts of crazy things like that. SUPER personal stuff!

On the other hand, I found out more than I wanted to about their financial situation--none of which actually surprised me (they use the food shelf, etc.) but which just made things a little more awkward (if that's possible?) Shawn and I are very rarely food insecure, but that's because we made a decision in college that we would sacrifice nearly everything to be able to buy what we wanted for food. This is why we have no cable. This is why we don't have an X-box or flat screen TV or more than one car. We dumped all those things so that we can, if we want, buy our bread at a nice bakery and put decent dinners on the table and go out eat and have pizza every so often.

We do the same thing to keep ourselves and Mason in books.

But, we *do* have the luxury of that choice. It's very clear that our neighbors don't.

Ebony, who already works ungodly hours at the Wendy's down the block, is now trying to get a second job for the holiday so they can afford something really nice for Christmas for her kids. I heard all about Nicole's health problems, too. I have a lot of respect for them. They're really working it to make a go of things.

So... that was my morning.

I should pull out the best Ebony conversational moment though:

Ebony: (after learning Shawn was Mason's birth mom) "But he really favors you."
Me: (using internal translator) "You mean he looks like me?"
Ebony: Exactly.

At first, I thought she was telling me she thought that Mason liked me better/had bonded better with me than Shawn, but given my experience with "stud" I decided to double-check.

SERIOUSLY. I need subtitles.

At any rate, I managed all that and got us off to the lawyers in no time. Tonight is going to continue this running around trend because Mason and I have Japanese class tonight AND a new book he's been waiting forever for is out today. So there's a quick stop at Barnes & Noble too. Busy! Busy!

The Redhead and the Bluenette

I put this out on Facebook (and, if I can figure out how to say it within the character limit, I may ask it on Twitter,) but, okay, so I'm teaching a class in fan fic to teens in a couple of days as part of the Loft's Youth Writing Conference, so I'm wondering are their some simple things that seem especially prevalent in fan fic writing that people could fix. For instance, in my fandom, I have to put up with people being described by their hair color, "The redhead considered this problem seriously." I can't STAND that (especially when it's some crazy made up color, like BLUEnette).

CJ Cherryh (yes, THAT one) said, "Mirrrors. NEVER let your character describe her/himself via a mirror...for one thing, avoid describing your main character in any meticulous detail...after all, your reader is supposed to identify with same." (She actually came back to add several more, including: "I can give you a string of others, upon which I may be moved to elaborate on my own page: 1. Ya killt ma mudder, ya killt ma fadder.... 2. The Enterprise tour, in which we visit all the stations/houses in the neolithic village/ and meet each person in a nice folksy way before the story starts. 3. man on the beach---the guy who wakes up naked AND amnesiac.... 4. the big gory opening battle, in which we know absolutely no one and really aren't led to like anybody. 5. the Perfect Person---a hero who, like Dudley Doright, has a gleam in his teeth and a dimple that just melts hearts. We instinctively hate such people.")

My friend Sari said: "In a similar vain, trying to come up with a number of different descriptors for someone in one paragraph instead of using pronouns, which do indeed, have a use."

Naomi Kritzer said: "Said-isms. "She exclaimed" "he snorted" "she sighed" "he grumbled." The rule of thumb I gave my daughters is to stick with "said" and "asked" 90% of the time. Once out of ten tags you can use another word, or an adverb. This runs counter to what a lot of kids are taught in English class, but it's really, really good advice."

Other thoughts?

Also, this week is "Spirit Week" (pre-Homecomming, I think,) at Mason's school.  Today was mustache day.  Is it me, or does Mason, look surprisingly like Jamie from Mythbusters?

Mason:





Jamie from Mythbusters:



Personally, give our kid a beret, and I think it's uncanny, really!

Tomorrow, the only thing required for Spirit Week is something "Disney."  Mason is going to wear a Star Wars shirt, since Disney recently acquired the rights to the Star Wars universe.  Wednesday is "Pink Day" so we went to Good Will yesterday and managed to score not only a fairly masculine hot pink shirt, but also a pair of pink jeans in Mason's size.  He also bought a wig, but I'm pretty sure he's going to lose his bottle to wear it:



He was weirdly cute about this wig.  Because we don't do a whole lot of gender-shaming, Mason wore the wig around the house for several hours because it made him feel kind of fancy. Eventually he took it off because, "Long hair is a pain.  It gets into everything."  

Yep, Even More Me (and Mason)

 No doubt you're tired from reading all the stories and such that I've been putting out there, well, here's ONE MORE THING: our podcast --

mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/26-picking-up-sticks/
 

Thursday means New Content Too!

You know, if the universe rewarded people who wrote a LOT of fictional content, I'm fairly sure I'd be eligible for SOMETHING. :-)

Today, on offer, is the second chapter of the project that I'm doing with my fellow writer Rachel Gold/Calish and the artists Mandie Brasington and Alexis Cooke, the School for Wayward Demons and Misfit Witches. This chapter is called "Lily Has No Choice: entertheunseen.com/lily-has-no-choice/ and introduces demon-hunter, tracker extraordinary (retired) Lily, who is a character from Rachel Calish's book The Demon Abraxas. (There might be other cameos too....) :-)

Anyway, I hope you'll go check it out.  I'm very proud of the work I've put into this project.  It's a fun ensemble cast and was generally such a blast to write.

I'm Learning Japanese, I'm Learning Japanese, I really think so!

 Though I may possibly be the most annoying student in the history of students.  TBF, I'm the kind of student I love to have.  I'm engaged, willing to interrupt, ask lots of questions, and am generally 110% present and participating. HOWEVER, this tends to result in moments like last night....

Shimano-sensei: We have two words for the number four in Japanese yon, and shi.  But we rarely say shi because it's extremely unlucky.
Class: baffled silence, waiting for more information.
Me:  You should tell them why.
Shimano-sensei: (looking vaguely shocked) Yes.  Shi is the same sound as death.
Me: (to my neighbor, there are only eight people in the class): Also don't give gifts of things that are in the number of 4, like 4 plates."
Shimano-sensei: Oh yes, that would be VERY bad.
My desk neighbor: Really?  Wow.

The almost identical conversation hits when we reach number nine: kyū/ku (only difference is, of course, that this one means agony/suffering.)

Our instructor was born in Japan, but has lived here since college.  So, I don't know if he was building up dramatic pause before revealing or just not going to tell us.  But, we're a bunch of impatient Americans, so you know... I AM THE NAIL THAT STICKS UP THAT WILL BE HAMMERED DOWN.

Also?  Who says fan fic teaches you nothing!????!!!

But, as annoying as I am, I can not be as bad as Nancy-san who basically told Shimano-sensei not to try to explain Japanese language in terms of English, because clearly we don't actually say things the way he thinks we do.

Yikes.

BUT, I totally bulled Shimano-sensei into letting Mason audit the class. So my aggressive personality for the win.