Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 69
May 6, 2011
Bicycle
Another 3 miles riding. Pretty good.
May 5, 2011
[Dork] Erasmus B Dragon
Been playing Dragon Age 2 and I noticed something potentially very clever in it, a bit of theme that I thought was interesting.
One of the initial flaps about the game came in the form of some dude complaining that, while you can pursue love interests in DA2 neither of the female interests were up to his standards, nor, in a staggering feat of projection, the standard of straight dudes everywhere, whose comparative lack of being pandered to in their romantic choices much upset him.
One of the writers shot him down quite handily, but I thought it might be fun to look for a moment at what he was saying and what he was asking for, and how he felt he, and all other straight dudes didn't get what they wanted.
Assuming that we're playing Dude!Hawke and are dismissing Fenris and Anders out of hand because teh ghey, we have the choice between Manic Pixie Dream Girl Merril and Captain Jill Sparrow with corsetry-to-put-the-architecture-of-the-city-you-inhabit-to-shame-Isabella. Both are fantasy conventionally attractive (though elves do look very distinct from humans, so maybe that could put a person off of Merril), problematic as that is. Both are character types you see in romantic context, problematic as they are.
So what's the bother? Well, in my own counter-feat of projection, I suppose that the commenter in question was put off by the Isabella's REALLY FUCKING OFT-alluded promiscuity and the elf design being somewhat divorced from the standard fetish-elf mold, which disappoints me that the fellow is so shallow, but what do I expect of all straight guys everywhere, amiright? :D
But there's an objection that I would like to see made, not because I think it's legitimate, (I think it's crap) but because I think it shows an interesting thing that DA2 did is that each of your potential romantic partners has an agenda and something that is more important to them than you, the protagonist, even after you start sleeping with them. Isabella wants to get free of someone who has something on her and go back to sea, Merril wants to restore the thingie that's going to help her people, even if it costs her her soul (magic in DA is even more ham-handedly normative than the Force), Anders wants to free the mages and Fenris wants to be free of the mages, and no amount of boning you even registers against those goals. And I think that's pretty cool. And, yeah, I see where some people who want singleminded devotion in a fantasy love interest would object. But fuck 'em. Singleminded devotion can be had for 2 sovereigns at the Blooming Rose (yeah, I know, money is for buying better equipment, to kill more bad guys, to make more money, to buy better equipment, oh, uncle Gary, what is this beast you've unleashed upon us all?).
Now I am glossing over a whole ass-tonne of problematic aspects of the game, though, depending on who you have in your party, one thing I will give it is that it will pass the Bechdel test fairly often. Also, you can have gay or straight relationships with any of the romantically available characters. Not without problematic elements there, either, but something.
Which leads me to the thing I think I appreciate most about DA2 - the fact that you, an eventually wealthy, powerful and important person in a city of apparent thousands have four, count 'em, four possible romantic partners. Or the Rose. Or your hand. And that's all. While this could be a bad point in some games, the fact that makes DA2 pull this off in my mind is that all four of them are hilariously damaged people.
Of the six companions with whom you adventure, the two most stable are a slick storyteller/criminal mastermind and a ginger Charles Bronson (cop by day, vigilante killer by night). These two, damaged as they are, are a) the most stable, which bears repeating, and b) not available as romantic partners.
No, you get your pick of severe PTSD, magic!Hulk, narcissist and pathological liar, or Darth Pixie (who could at any minute be possessed and turn into a hulking mushroom looking killing machine). I think this is awesome, because it sort of illustrates how emotionally and morally compromised a character you are playing, such that it makes normal relationships with normal people totally impossible for you, and combined with the occasional bit of outside description of your character, paints the protagonist of DA2, however you try to play zir, as kind of a monster.
{You can also download Sebastian, who is, to his credit, one of the more sympathetic and better realized examples of a devoutly religious character (and since the religion of the setting is straight up Crystal Dragon Jesus, it's pretty easy to hear most of the things he says replacing "Andraste" with "Jesus"), and I guess you can romance him, but you have the choice of ending up in a political or chaste marriage with him, which is odd enough by our standards.}
One of the initial flaps about the game came in the form of some dude complaining that, while you can pursue love interests in DA2 neither of the female interests were up to his standards, nor, in a staggering feat of projection, the standard of straight dudes everywhere, whose comparative lack of being pandered to in their romantic choices much upset him.
One of the writers shot him down quite handily, but I thought it might be fun to look for a moment at what he was saying and what he was asking for, and how he felt he, and all other straight dudes didn't get what they wanted.
Assuming that we're playing Dude!Hawke and are dismissing Fenris and Anders out of hand because teh ghey, we have the choice between Manic Pixie Dream Girl Merril and Captain Jill Sparrow with corsetry-to-put-the-architecture-of-the-city-you-inhabit-to-shame-Isabella. Both are fantasy conventionally attractive (though elves do look very distinct from humans, so maybe that could put a person off of Merril), problematic as that is. Both are character types you see in romantic context, problematic as they are.
So what's the bother? Well, in my own counter-feat of projection, I suppose that the commenter in question was put off by the Isabella's REALLY FUCKING OFT-alluded promiscuity and the elf design being somewhat divorced from the standard fetish-elf mold, which disappoints me that the fellow is so shallow, but what do I expect of all straight guys everywhere, amiright? :D
But there's an objection that I would like to see made, not because I think it's legitimate, (I think it's crap) but because I think it shows an interesting thing that DA2 did is that each of your potential romantic partners has an agenda and something that is more important to them than you, the protagonist, even after you start sleeping with them. Isabella wants to get free of someone who has something on her and go back to sea, Merril wants to restore the thingie that's going to help her people, even if it costs her her soul (magic in DA is even more ham-handedly normative than the Force), Anders wants to free the mages and Fenris wants to be free of the mages, and no amount of boning you even registers against those goals. And I think that's pretty cool. And, yeah, I see where some people who want singleminded devotion in a fantasy love interest would object. But fuck 'em. Singleminded devotion can be had for 2 sovereigns at the Blooming Rose (yeah, I know, money is for buying better equipment, to kill more bad guys, to make more money, to buy better equipment, oh, uncle Gary, what is this beast you've unleashed upon us all?).
Now I am glossing over a whole ass-tonne of problematic aspects of the game, though, depending on who you have in your party, one thing I will give it is that it will pass the Bechdel test fairly often. Also, you can have gay or straight relationships with any of the romantically available characters. Not without problematic elements there, either, but something.
Which leads me to the thing I think I appreciate most about DA2 - the fact that you, an eventually wealthy, powerful and important person in a city of apparent thousands have four, count 'em, four possible romantic partners. Or the Rose. Or your hand. And that's all. While this could be a bad point in some games, the fact that makes DA2 pull this off in my mind is that all four of them are hilariously damaged people.
Of the six companions with whom you adventure, the two most stable are a slick storyteller/criminal mastermind and a ginger Charles Bronson (cop by day, vigilante killer by night). These two, damaged as they are, are a) the most stable, which bears repeating, and b) not available as romantic partners.
No, you get your pick of severe PTSD, magic!Hulk, narcissist and pathological liar, or Darth Pixie (who could at any minute be possessed and turn into a hulking mushroom looking killing machine). I think this is awesome, because it sort of illustrates how emotionally and morally compromised a character you are playing, such that it makes normal relationships with normal people totally impossible for you, and combined with the occasional bit of outside description of your character, paints the protagonist of DA2, however you try to play zir, as kind of a monster.
{You can also download Sebastian, who is, to his credit, one of the more sympathetic and better realized examples of a devoutly religious character (and since the religion of the setting is straight up Crystal Dragon Jesus, it's pretty easy to hear most of the things he says replacing "Andraste" with "Jesus"), and I guess you can romance him, but you have the choice of ending up in a political or chaste marriage with him, which is odd enough by our standards.}
Run Blogging
Dragged my sorry ass through it again, slow, but steady. Legs hurt quite a bit.
Motherfucking Pirates
Quay woke up in the hold of the Strigiform all trussed up and with a sack over his head, and I don't think you're going to find this much of a fucking revelation, but he was upset. This is a while back in time from our heroes setting off on that overfed faerie-swan abomination, perhaps even a little back from Gem confronting Spider Heart in that tavern at the end of that dirty little finger of sea. Quay set to trying to free himself of his bindings straight away, because the fact that he wasn't already free upset him just a bit more than he'd had time to expect. Not that he had a lot of time to expect. A pair of eyes like the hottest coals at the bottom of one of those fires that gives off smoke just a little too sweet and greasy and a bunch of fucking pirates slinking around to encircle him. The sack and the sap were more for the custom than the utility in this case, poor Quay just stared at those two pits of hellish light and the fucking pirates just bundled him off into the longboat while Gem looked on, just as helpless. Don't judge the poor boy too harshly, Quay is a lot of different things, depending on how fine you like to slice clever and pretty, but strong enough to shake off Red Hull's gaze, well, that's another fucking thing entirely, a thing which you will see, but not until long after it would have come in handy.
So Quay had a notion of the shape he was in when he came to, and it was a sorry fucking thing to his sackcloth impaired sight. Being Shanghaied wasn't entirely beyond Quay's experience, and, indeed, there's a story he'd be glad to tell you about some far flung nation's navy who had both brothers very briefly pressed into service one time, but this is not that story. Quay expected to wake to the sunlight on the deck and a set of orders from some sea troll with breath bad enough to make mediocre sailors do what he wants so he'll point his head some other fucking direction. That he was still bound and no one was expecting him to work worried Quay.
Let's not be indirect. It fucking terrified Quay and did add that bit of urgency to his already fairly impressive native ability to squiggle out of things. But it took longer than he wanted. It was more difficult than he expected. And all this time, his storytelling imagination was at work on the worst of what his continued binding could mean (it meant that Red Hull was fucking with him, honestly, and that she wondered if Quay could get out of those ropes). He listened for the sounds of others, of chains and misery that would have meant slavery, but the sounds here were muted, the creak of timber, the distant roar of wind and wave and the muttering of tinny, indistinct voices under it all, originating everywhere and nowhere.
As for the thoughts that occupied Quay's mind as he worked his way free of binding, well, you know what, we don't have to talk about them if you don't want to. I don't want to. Let's just say that his brother and Gem entertained their versions of those thoughts, or would be in a couple of weeks when the Bloody Bed drew nigh. For his part, Quay was of a mind that there were two better paths open to him: die with some assumed greater degree of honor or live and fight, come what may. Quay discarded the former pretty quickly, but, let's be honest and let's be fair, the second option scared the fuck out of him.
Now, for a true storyteller, there is always an evil hope, something hovering just in sight, a desert mirage, in more ways than one, because, just like pirates, storytellers have a queen, and that's Scheherazade. Thing is, it's probably better to be queen of the motherfucking pirates than of storytellers. Part of that is what you have to call on when you need a man murdered or a ship plundered (storytellers can do both just fine, but they tend to let you know all about it, over and over, at length, and sometimes you just want theft and murder). Part of it, and the reason why there never has been a queen (or a king) since is that, for all her powers, Scheherazade only managed a little less than three years, no matter what they told you about her. But there it was, and while Quay told himself he could probably manage three weeks at the outside, he never truly believed that. Some people who know storytellers will tell you it's a fucking curse, that thought that they could, they might be able to spin that tale, those tales - change minds, save your life, raise you up from your humble place.
Of course, some people who know storytellers will tell you that just knowing them is fucking curse enough.
Fortunately, what we have here in Quay is a practical lad, who did entertain notions of being able to spin a tale that he could walk like an acrobat on a fucking tightrope back to the bosom of his family, but also kept working on those knots.
No one came for him, not yet, and Quay was starting to feel a certain lightness in that distressingly purse-like sense he had of his luck. And then he got the sack off his head and almost started laughing as he figured out where he'd ended up, somewhere awfully far from any fucking shore where luck held any sort of currency.
Red Hull was queen of the motherfucking pirates, and aside from a cruel business sense and a facility for murder that defies human comprehension and makes the angels fucking cringe, one needs a particular style. You might think of it as gaudy, but it's a little more complicated than that. Not a lot more fucking complicated, pirates aren't really refined fuckers by any fool's fucking standards, but there must be a completeness, and there has to be scale. Get yourself a collection of skulls or a necklace of eyeteeth, and the leading balefires of the pirating world are going to know you from amateur hour the moment you hove into view. Likewise, it's not sufficient just to create some bloody fucking tableaux of depravity to offend Caligula and make Herod blush. No, there has to be a little message, buried just deep enough to give a man whose brain is not cut of the pondering cloth pause to fucking ponder.
Let me show you what I mean. The Strigiform is significantly bigger below decks than her profile and tonnage and the immutable laws of nature would imply. I'm sure that's about as shocking to you as the sun rising in the east; I hope to fuck that, if nothing else about the ship is clear to you the Strigiform is the most ostentatiously over-magicked piece of wood since the True fucking Cross, and, clearly, in the opposite direction. Red Hull took no small amount of pride in that fact, but this is pirating, so go big or go to hell. Actually, go to hell big, too. It's pretty dreary not to rate some one on one time with the Adversary. It might not be much of a stretch to say that there are places belowdecks where no pirate has set foot in years, kind of places where you might find a young girl, a big ball of twine and some horrid bovine abomination that Red Hull picked up at Knossos and then forgot about. These things are all true, and pirates have been given cause to be impressed, especially when they get exiled below to meet the actual horrid abominations Red Hull keeps on hand for object lessons, birthday parties and bar mitvahs, but it's not quite enough, on it's own to rate much more than a title of countess among pirates.
The thing that gets you the crown, the thing that Quay noticed straightaway and made him not exactly despair, but... no, poor boy actually did despair at the sight of them; it was the lanterns.
The Strigiform is really quite well lit below, which seems a bit counter-fucking-intuitive. Those oft mentioned knaves of pirating aboard the Bloody Bed preferred the light filtered through different levels of slat and grate for that abattoir ambiance, and Spider Heart, God rot the motherfucker, he preferred a sort of Venetian carnivale effect with lots of flickering and shadowy corners. Red Hull had little paper lanterns, round ones, green as virgin spring and containing a single, dancing, frenetic point of light. They were up everywhere down below, especially where she kept the abominations, because, really, if you're only getting one look at the fuckers, you deserve a fucking eyeful. Now those lanterns did sway opposite the rock of the ship, but, really, can that possibly be a surprise? And I don't think I will shock your poor mother's heart to badly if I tell her that each of those lights is a soul, because, really, sometimes the obvious answer really is the best one. But, like any pitchman, any snake oil huckster-fuckster, any storyteller, I have to stop you, because, wait, there's more.
Quay knew this bit, he knew the lanterns for what they were right off, and he knew the point where obvious and best part company without so much as exchanging their names or sorting out whose drawers are on whose ass. The souls in the lanterns were not, as convention to this point has dictated, the souls of those who crossed her. No one I know ever learned what she did with those, which is, frankly, how it ought to be with a pirate monarch. No, the lanterns were full of her friends. Being in the lantern was a reward, and the souls in them were glad and grateful to serve, because in order to so serve, she had to wait on fishing them out of hell until they had burned enough to shed light on their own.
So yeah. Quay entertained thoughts of his trying for the storytelling crown while his head was in a sack (as do we all), but once free, he stowed that for another day and turned his thoughts toward developing his skill at navigating nautical labyrinths and ran from the place they had left him, down, twisting into the deeper parts of the Strigiform.
So Quay had a notion of the shape he was in when he came to, and it was a sorry fucking thing to his sackcloth impaired sight. Being Shanghaied wasn't entirely beyond Quay's experience, and, indeed, there's a story he'd be glad to tell you about some far flung nation's navy who had both brothers very briefly pressed into service one time, but this is not that story. Quay expected to wake to the sunlight on the deck and a set of orders from some sea troll with breath bad enough to make mediocre sailors do what he wants so he'll point his head some other fucking direction. That he was still bound and no one was expecting him to work worried Quay.
Let's not be indirect. It fucking terrified Quay and did add that bit of urgency to his already fairly impressive native ability to squiggle out of things. But it took longer than he wanted. It was more difficult than he expected. And all this time, his storytelling imagination was at work on the worst of what his continued binding could mean (it meant that Red Hull was fucking with him, honestly, and that she wondered if Quay could get out of those ropes). He listened for the sounds of others, of chains and misery that would have meant slavery, but the sounds here were muted, the creak of timber, the distant roar of wind and wave and the muttering of tinny, indistinct voices under it all, originating everywhere and nowhere.
As for the thoughts that occupied Quay's mind as he worked his way free of binding, well, you know what, we don't have to talk about them if you don't want to. I don't want to. Let's just say that his brother and Gem entertained their versions of those thoughts, or would be in a couple of weeks when the Bloody Bed drew nigh. For his part, Quay was of a mind that there were two better paths open to him: die with some assumed greater degree of honor or live and fight, come what may. Quay discarded the former pretty quickly, but, let's be honest and let's be fair, the second option scared the fuck out of him.
Now, for a true storyteller, there is always an evil hope, something hovering just in sight, a desert mirage, in more ways than one, because, just like pirates, storytellers have a queen, and that's Scheherazade. Thing is, it's probably better to be queen of the motherfucking pirates than of storytellers. Part of that is what you have to call on when you need a man murdered or a ship plundered (storytellers can do both just fine, but they tend to let you know all about it, over and over, at length, and sometimes you just want theft and murder). Part of it, and the reason why there never has been a queen (or a king) since is that, for all her powers, Scheherazade only managed a little less than three years, no matter what they told you about her. But there it was, and while Quay told himself he could probably manage three weeks at the outside, he never truly believed that. Some people who know storytellers will tell you it's a fucking curse, that thought that they could, they might be able to spin that tale, those tales - change minds, save your life, raise you up from your humble place.
Of course, some people who know storytellers will tell you that just knowing them is fucking curse enough.
Fortunately, what we have here in Quay is a practical lad, who did entertain notions of being able to spin a tale that he could walk like an acrobat on a fucking tightrope back to the bosom of his family, but also kept working on those knots.
No one came for him, not yet, and Quay was starting to feel a certain lightness in that distressingly purse-like sense he had of his luck. And then he got the sack off his head and almost started laughing as he figured out where he'd ended up, somewhere awfully far from any fucking shore where luck held any sort of currency.
Red Hull was queen of the motherfucking pirates, and aside from a cruel business sense and a facility for murder that defies human comprehension and makes the angels fucking cringe, one needs a particular style. You might think of it as gaudy, but it's a little more complicated than that. Not a lot more fucking complicated, pirates aren't really refined fuckers by any fool's fucking standards, but there must be a completeness, and there has to be scale. Get yourself a collection of skulls or a necklace of eyeteeth, and the leading balefires of the pirating world are going to know you from amateur hour the moment you hove into view. Likewise, it's not sufficient just to create some bloody fucking tableaux of depravity to offend Caligula and make Herod blush. No, there has to be a little message, buried just deep enough to give a man whose brain is not cut of the pondering cloth pause to fucking ponder.
Let me show you what I mean. The Strigiform is significantly bigger below decks than her profile and tonnage and the immutable laws of nature would imply. I'm sure that's about as shocking to you as the sun rising in the east; I hope to fuck that, if nothing else about the ship is clear to you the Strigiform is the most ostentatiously over-magicked piece of wood since the True fucking Cross, and, clearly, in the opposite direction. Red Hull took no small amount of pride in that fact, but this is pirating, so go big or go to hell. Actually, go to hell big, too. It's pretty dreary not to rate some one on one time with the Adversary. It might not be much of a stretch to say that there are places belowdecks where no pirate has set foot in years, kind of places where you might find a young girl, a big ball of twine and some horrid bovine abomination that Red Hull picked up at Knossos and then forgot about. These things are all true, and pirates have been given cause to be impressed, especially when they get exiled below to meet the actual horrid abominations Red Hull keeps on hand for object lessons, birthday parties and bar mitvahs, but it's not quite enough, on it's own to rate much more than a title of countess among pirates.
The thing that gets you the crown, the thing that Quay noticed straightaway and made him not exactly despair, but... no, poor boy actually did despair at the sight of them; it was the lanterns.
The Strigiform is really quite well lit below, which seems a bit counter-fucking-intuitive. Those oft mentioned knaves of pirating aboard the Bloody Bed preferred the light filtered through different levels of slat and grate for that abattoir ambiance, and Spider Heart, God rot the motherfucker, he preferred a sort of Venetian carnivale effect with lots of flickering and shadowy corners. Red Hull had little paper lanterns, round ones, green as virgin spring and containing a single, dancing, frenetic point of light. They were up everywhere down below, especially where she kept the abominations, because, really, if you're only getting one look at the fuckers, you deserve a fucking eyeful. Now those lanterns did sway opposite the rock of the ship, but, really, can that possibly be a surprise? And I don't think I will shock your poor mother's heart to badly if I tell her that each of those lights is a soul, because, really, sometimes the obvious answer really is the best one. But, like any pitchman, any snake oil huckster-fuckster, any storyteller, I have to stop you, because, wait, there's more.
Quay knew this bit, he knew the lanterns for what they were right off, and he knew the point where obvious and best part company without so much as exchanging their names or sorting out whose drawers are on whose ass. The souls in the lanterns were not, as convention to this point has dictated, the souls of those who crossed her. No one I know ever learned what she did with those, which is, frankly, how it ought to be with a pirate monarch. No, the lanterns were full of her friends. Being in the lantern was a reward, and the souls in them were glad and grateful to serve, because in order to so serve, she had to wait on fishing them out of hell until they had burned enough to shed light on their own.
So yeah. Quay entertained thoughts of his trying for the storytelling crown while his head was in a sack (as do we all), but once free, he stowed that for another day and turned his thoughts toward developing his skill at navigating nautical labyrinths and ran from the place they had left him, down, twisting into the deeper parts of the Strigiform.
May 3, 2011
Exercise Blogging
I mowed on Saturday, biked ~6 Miles on the airline trail in Colchested on Sunday, did jack shit yesterday and ran today. And that's my story.
Cat Waxing
This is the part of Tuesday I hate. There is the initial rush to get things moving and done and out the door quickly, and then, just as my blood sugar gets low from lunch, the work pauses, sometimes resuming later, sometimes not. I really wish it were feasible for me to go home and grab a catnap before going to family dinner. As it is, I mostly make it through on energy I borrow from what the nephews are throwing off and then CRASH HARD the moment they are gone. Like sometimes I doze off at the Eburg dinner table CRASH HARD.
Gmail
Is it down this morning? Of course, if you tell me, how would I know? Ugh.
ETA Nope, just the office has a brand new cracked out proxy setting. Joy. I am, again, email capable.
ETA Nope, just the office has a brand new cracked out proxy setting. Joy. I am, again, email capable.
It's Ghoulish, but Tradition often is.
And so I commemorate the passing of yet another whose passing I am grateful to have lived to see. I hear many of my countrymen are taking great delight in his passing and others are finding that delight unseemly. Myself, I am ambivalent. It occurs to me that this one killed fewer Americans and, indeed, fewer of every category than some whose passing I have remembered in song (Ronald Reagan comes to mind, as he often does when I recount the people I am grateful to have survived), and that the actions of any one man pale utterly in the face of the structures that no one set of hands put in place, but that he killed any is enough to make my list, and so, while this world still harbors evil and those who delight in committing evil, it houses one less and that's just fine by me.
May 2, 2011
The Sword in His Head
I am trying to force myself to finish The Child in his Sword. There are, however, some problems.
I have 30000 words. They are bad wrong words. There are irreconcilable differences between what is written and what is meant to be. Like there are at least 2 fewer major characters. The protagonist as written has an eidetic memory (only a cursory reading shows I fucked that up several places) as a plot point and comes from a culture as another plot point that makes no sense to be in the setting at all. Those kinds of differences. I have a few choices, but I do no know which one to take, so I am soliciting advice.
1) I can continue on and finish the story that I was working on, as established, knowing all the while that it is wrong and bad and will be abandoned wholesale in the next round. This will not be a revision so much as a full-scale rewrite. To me, this seems pointless in the extreme, but some people swear by it.
2) Continue as if all the new things I have established since I stopped writing it are true, basically write the last half of the novel and then go back and rewrite the first part to match the second.
3) Begin the rewrite now, knowing what I know.
I have been attempting #3, but, unfortunately, I get about 500 words in and then erase what I have written. I try to take the opening from the original draft, and realize I can only get a paragraph, and I hate it. I have been having a single, extended art-fit over this, which makes me even more upset and frustrated, because despite the fact that I am incredibly delicate and my coping skills only advance to middle school level with the aid of the second Clonazepam, I really do aspire to be a grownup, and this really shatters that illusion.
So, I am asking: what would you do?
I have 30000 words. They are bad wrong words. There are irreconcilable differences between what is written and what is meant to be. Like there are at least 2 fewer major characters. The protagonist as written has an eidetic memory (only a cursory reading shows I fucked that up several places) as a plot point and comes from a culture as another plot point that makes no sense to be in the setting at all. Those kinds of differences. I have a few choices, but I do no know which one to take, so I am soliciting advice.
1) I can continue on and finish the story that I was working on, as established, knowing all the while that it is wrong and bad and will be abandoned wholesale in the next round. This will not be a revision so much as a full-scale rewrite. To me, this seems pointless in the extreme, but some people swear by it.
2) Continue as if all the new things I have established since I stopped writing it are true, basically write the last half of the novel and then go back and rewrite the first part to match the second.
3) Begin the rewrite now, knowing what I know.
I have been attempting #3, but, unfortunately, I get about 500 words in and then erase what I have written. I try to take the opening from the original draft, and realize I can only get a paragraph, and I hate it. I have been having a single, extended art-fit over this, which makes me even more upset and frustrated, because despite the fact that I am incredibly delicate and my coping skills only advance to middle school level with the aid of the second Clonazepam, I really do aspire to be a grownup, and this really shatters that illusion.
So, I am asking: what would you do?
May 1, 2011
Too Late for Fruit, too Soon for Flowers
Actually, not really. Come see my wasteland at Black Gate! I wrote it with April in mind, but the fact that it dropped on Beltane is what made it feel like, you know, first of the May, with all its sex-and-death. Happy sex-and-death day!
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