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Hosted by Pitas Email the owners: Skimmer Raven Archive Other blogs of note: Technomancy Nezumi Mooncalf Chaobell D Psuzan |
Raven is blogging because the journal's been quiet for a while. I've got a cold still, but it has retreated to a mere annoyance. Then again, having my nice parents send me my new perscription of allergy medicine and cookies is also nice. In other news, Skimmer and I have found the first person for this semester who thinks we're sisters. Now, admittedly, Skimmer and I have similar facial shapes, glasses, and hair styles. However, it's still unnerving to hear someone asking your girlfriend if she's related to you. Hmm - as for writing, I haven't done much lately. I should go putter with the first chapter to the book, but it's a matter of cursing and seeing if I want it all in first person, or if I want some third person p.o.v. bits within it. I hate writing first person. You need to really know what a person is like because everything they say is tinged by their own assumptions, and very few people know themselves so well that they can correctly diagnose their own perspectives. Another problem with first person perspective is the fact that I have trouble seeing the purpose of using it unless if the story draws from the specific feelings of that character. In other words - I see first person perspective is most natural in stories that are . . . well, sort of the stories that have the final stinger line - you know the ones were the character goes, "And then I saw the truth, it was Marcy!" That kind of thing. The chapter I'm fighting with is a set of diary entries. The author of the diary is the mother of an important character. I'm trying to introduce a large number of important topics, and I'm trying to give a reader the sense of the world. The mother in question is noticing some very troubling things about herself. The chapter is also incredibly dull, I fear. It also is a problem since it's not about any character that is associated with the main story, and the rest of the story is in third person limited. I'm half tempted to just slip a tag in that the stuff is all a diary, and hope that it'll sound better that way. I don't know. Anyways, I should stop rambling. Raven, who wants more tea 09:44 a.m. Monday, September 24, 2001
Raven still has a bit of a cold. The fact that she should be sleeping can be discounted. It's funny, but if you could say anything about my relationship with canon - the final conclusion would be that I dislike it. I think that canon is sort of like a book of guidelines. It's like a basic pattern for a house. A house needs something to hold up something else to protect you from the rain. Everything else is just details. To bend the metaphor - one can say that you can't bend canon too far, or you will end up with the walls five miles from the roof, or walls that just collaspe. I like a fic that has good characters. I don't care if they're canon - I just want a good read. On the other hand, I don't want to read a fic where the names are just a polite bow to fit the fic to a canon. That doesn't mean it's a good story. That just means that the story is set up with John Q TargetFodder and Jane B LovelyLady. Canon has nothing to do with the quality of characters. However, if the characters in the original are better then the resulting characters in the fic, then the story is both breaking canon and making a bad fic. I don't hate it for breaking canon. I'll hate the story for being a badly written story. Canon is important if the fic is a tribute to a canon and not just a fluff read. Canon is important if the story is supposed to fit in a timeline. For example, if the story says that oh, Seifer has twitches about some lady calling him a boy, he shouldn't react happily to being called a boy by another person later. However, if it's established why he might say that boy is a perfectly fine nickname, then the story is still fitting it's own canon. I guess why I feel like this is because I've told the same story dozens of times. I've played a story from one p.o.v. and then another. I've changed characters, backgrounds, subtle shifts in mood, and wheather. The story would end the same, and start the same, but that span of the middle would shimmer from one version to another. Every scene was 'canon' but none were canon until one was chosen. The fact that there can be such a stretch of canon in my definition means that I tend to be heartless on stories that waste the potentials of their canon. A writer needs to balance on a fine line of over writing and under writing - but they should have fun. And there's something just satisfying about moving a character to a spot and moving the light to a spot, and adding one line of detail - and then the scene clicks, and the players move smoothly from begginning to end, and you cannot see it any other way. I'm not sure I'm making sense, but I guess I'm saying that people should try to stretch their wings while they write. Let a character have a melodramatic monologue, and let the villians cackle in the finest fashion. And when the drafts are done, no one will be the wiser. Raven, who really should be sleeping 12:28 a.m. Saturday, September 22, 2001
Skimmer is not in a good mood right now. Why not? Simple. Because she just spent several hours getting her computer working again. How? By hacking the registry. Why? Because her VIRUS SOFTWARE had become corrupted. That's right, kiddies. Her virus checker, her beloved, trusted virus checker, was preventing her computer from starting without going disturbingly blank for a minute or shutting down at all. So she took it off the computer. Deleted the files and regedited it away. But that doens't improve her mood a lot, since she wasted time on it. Skimmer, just *loving* technology 10:24 p.m. Thursday, September 20, 2001
Skimmer recently sent a couple of sonnets she wrote to the TMSucks Mailing List, and she was very suprised at the number of people who liked the poems, but felt that they wer beyond their capability as writers. Sonnets are ridiculously simple, which is why Skimmer writes so many of them. She'd beleive it is she's sent out a sestina and gotten that response. Rules for writing a sonnet: That's all, really. It's not that difficult. Of course, it's also a good idea to follow onw of the traditional rhyme schemes for sonnet-writing, such as Shakesperian [abab cdcd efef gg], and to follow a meter. Skimmer likes iambic pentameter and also iambic quadrameter, although she once wrote a sonnet in trochaic trimeter. Iambic meters are very close to the typical rythm of human speech in English, so it is both easy to write and sounds natural when read aloud. Skimmer encourages anyone for whom formal poetry is 'too complex' to sit down and try it. It's not as hard as one might think. It's no more difficult than good song lyrics. If some budding poets need advice she'd be glad to provide it by email. Sidenote, Skimmer has tried to jury-rig a 'link this' system like the one on the TM blog, although since this is a Pitas blog, it is very much a jury-rig. She thinks it will work but would like to point out that none of these links will actually *work* until the pages are archived, whihc will happen every twenty entries. If someone wishes to link entires still on the index page, use "index.html" instead of "arch1.html". Skimmer, displaying her skills 01:27 p.m. Thursday, September 20, 2001
Raven thinks she's coming down with a cold. Not fun at all. I'm half tempted to rant about depth versus complexity, but I doubt that I can string a sentence together that would equal a complete arguement. It's funny, but Nezumi said that he loved one plot idea because it had depth. The world around it was rounded. Half the fun, in my opinion, of writing is that you can fill things in. In one long running story that I'm telling, there's actually three whole non-existant series of novels that are semi-canon to the plot. They're mostly there because a character is a librarian, and thus would sensibly have books near her. I know people who complain if there is more then three people in a novel. It's too many to keep track of, they say. They want two people waltzing to a set tune to a neat ending. I want a ragged mess of a story with dangling lines and threads back to history and bits and pieces. I want characters that aren't merely John Q. Placeholder, but instead is John, that old guy down the street that always smelled a little like old books and coffee since he ran a cafe and bookstore. Everyone calls him Jen because there's some idiot rule on the books that all bookstore owners in his area have to be called Jen - some sort of protection for a long gone monopoly likely. Or something like that. Yes, it's complex, but it shows a life beyond the narrow plot of the story. If there is enough little stories - like John / Jen and the bookstores - there is a depth. A world where people live and work and die. There is a sun that rises in the east so the church faces that way and the sun shines through the windows on some of the holidays and it's lovely. That's a world. I think people shouldn't be afraid of putting in details. Details can always be removed, but they are sort of like evidence. If you do enough of them, then you can catch the flavor of the world and then your writing is easier. You can say that this would be here because it makes the most sense. If you've done your job well, then a reader will argree. Some people want a story that is basically one room and two people talking - I want a world, and two people slipping through the crowd. It's a matter of opinion, I guess. Raven, who's tired but doesn't want to sleep 05:50 p.m. Wednesday, September 19, 2001
Firstly, it was Carver not Chandler. Whatever. Skimmer dear, I think some of the problem isn't a question if the terrorists were brave or not brave or gutsy or couragous. They were fanatics that attacked a civilian target during a time that would procuce the maximam number of deaths. Fanatics are not people of reason. They live on anger - on outrage - and on their own personal vendettas. They demonize their enemies and talk of purifying wars. In ways, we are no better. But, one can say that the attack was blatent. The attack was eye opening. The attack succeeded in some ways. It was also phenomally stupid. I can't claim to have answers, or comfort. I was affected by the OKC bombing, but that was closer to me, and Oklahoma is a fairly close knit state. I am not from the Northeast. I have friends there, yes, but no kin, and no one to whom I can place a face to a name. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that to respect your enemy isn't evil. Respect doesn't mean love. I can respect tactics without loving the methods. I can respect that they were fanatics enough to step on board a plane and know that they would die. However, I do not think they were sane, or good, or on the side of "right." This may make me non-patriotic, but I'm trying to say - people should take a deep breath. Yes, it was your neighbors, your family, but - don't hate someone who says that the enemy preformed well. I could not serve the army. I could not step on a plane to die for my country. Then again, I would not. Raven, who thinks that she's making no sense. 06:39 p.m. Tuesday, September 18, 2001
... Go look at Chaobell's journal. Skimmer agrees wholeheartedly with whoever it was that posted the origional comment. The terrorist responsible for the World Trade Center plane crash may have been many things, but one thing they weren't is cowardly. The American public have said a lot of things. Skimmer hopes that upon sober reflection, they will realize how wrongheaded many of their angry rants were. Unfortunately, she know how little sober reflection the world at large is inclined to. [PS: Go look at the Apocrypha as well, and scroll down. Skimmer agrees with her comments and thinks she said it a bit better. It's easy to kill for a cause, but it takes guts to die for one. What was the old army saying? "We're not her to die for our country, we're here to make the other man die for his ..." But both at once ... well, Skimmer may be sad about the deaths of the innocent people in the Towers, but she also admires the terrorists for being willing to die for their beleifs. She feels that in the world today, so few people even bother to beleive in something that she cannot but respect those who do, and act accordingly, even if she disagrees with the beliefs.] Skimmer, knowing it's hopeless 11:37 a.m. Tuesday, September 18, 2001
Skimmer has just been to Nezumi's journal and noticed he's been plugign us again. Nezumi is a very sweet man and Skimmer and Raven love him very much. Skimmer has been running the blig through the Lynx viewer and has made a few small changes so that it displays better there. She doens't know how well it looks on the real Lynx. Would Nezumi please take a look and offer advice? Skimmer, resident HTML user 11:05 p.m. Monday, September 17, 2001
Raven's tired. Raven stayed up late talking about some plotting stuff with people. Then, Raven went to a seven thirty math class. Raven is not awake. Talking about stories is something I love. I swear, mention a book to me, and my first response is, "Did you like it?" Frankly, I almost prefer stories that people hate simply because they can say more about stories that they hate. Most of the time, when someone likes a story they say, "It's good," and say nothing more. The ability to talk about something that you like is tough without sounding like a standard advertising spokesperson or appending every statement with "this is my opinion," or "I sort of think -" Raven's going to go take another little nap and hope she can not growl at the Fiction Writing teacher. He's got us reading the "Cathedral" by Raymond Chandler. I hate the story. I've read it so many times, and the first time I predicted the ending. The ending does have power, and it is fairly believable. I just hate the rest of the story. I hate the main character, I hate the racism that he portrays and it doesn't really add to the story, I hate the sexism, and I dislike the aimless writing style. I don't think the ending expands the narrator into a newer man. It just shows the equivilent of a small window opening a crack. I'm going to go think about working on Trig and smirk about getting D semi-interested in a story plot . . . Raven, who wishes her roommate wouldn't watch soaps and leave the tv on while sleeping 01:34 p.m. Monday, September 17, 2001
Firstly Skimmer would like to thank D for adding a link to Corvidary from the Technomancy blog. This is a great honour. She likes D; they have a lot in common, she thinks. (Great minds think alike?) While Skimmer was on her way to lunch today, she had to cross a busy street. As is her usual practice, she punched the little red button and stood about two feet from the curb flipping through her Tokyo Babylon manga and waiting for the light to change. As she was doing this, she suddenly noticed the pages were flipping themselves. Also, her demure calf-length black skirt had suddenly becom a thihg-length black skirt, exposing her knees to an unwonted wind gust. She looked up to see a large yellow bus going by about a foot in front of her nose. Ee. She turned to the girl standing next to her, a nice young lady with dark hair she had never seen before, who said, "That was rather close." Skimmer nodded. The women looked down the direction the bus had come from. Bearing down on them at a slightly higher speed was an identical bus. As one they took six steps backward. Thankfully, it missed. Skimmer, who walks everywhere 12:23 p.m. Monday, September 17, 2001
Skimmer has been awake for almost an hour local time. She got up this early for a reason, and a good reason: she wanted to be able to go for a walk and watch the sun rise. Also, she wanted to chat online with someone who is awake at this our because she works night shift. Said late worker is a woman who is sometimes referred to as Prometheus Bounce. This is all pretty typical for a computer geek, actually, but it just occured to Skimmer how atypical it would be for most people to wake up a three in the morning so they could talk on a MOO. One of the nice things about being a computer geek is that one looks upon the strangest things as utterly normal, after all. Skimmer realizes her life has odd bits, but odd only when compared to Real Life. She also would not want it any other way. After all, what's the bloody point of being normal? Skimmer is also reading Til Death Do us Part right now, and recommends it. Skimmer, in a contemplative mood 03:44 a.m. Monday, September 17, 2001
Raven has read the "Songs of Innocence" and the "Songs of Experience" in the space of a day. Raven now does not like Blake. I'm enjoying reading this journel and the discussion of Rose's Squall muse - there's nothing I enjoy more then listening to people's shading and ideas about thier characters. I think some of it is that half of making a good character in my opinion is to make them almost alive to you. I'm not saying that they are alive - I'm saying that they are alive enough that you can guess that they would - oh, like blue more then black, and give a reason why. Half the art of pulling a story off is the details. That's partly why I don't like script fics - they often don't have details. Mooncalf writes script fics, but she makes her details in the language, the word choice, and the actions. I think that writing a script would actually be harder than a simple story simply because there is so much less words to play with. I need to get going. Need to get money from an ATM, go shopping, and test this Chinese restuarant nearby. And I need to talk about Pound in a deep meaningful manner. And I should revise that blasted story for Fiction Writing. The teacher better play being a nice critic. And, Nezumi, I'll have that thing scanned too - I just need to stop by the Business ITC. *snuggles* Raven, who wishes it was cold enough for long sleeves 12:56 p.m. Sunday, September 16, 2001
... Why? Because Skimmer is having a bad day. The weather is nice. It's very grey and cloudy. However, Skimmer won't be able to go out and enjoy it, thanks to this niggling thing called Thermodynamics homework. Her brain still wants to fit "Angels of the Silences" to a Subaru/Seishiro collage, but she doesn't have a good enough image program to do it, and that is also annoying her. Volunteers? Skimmer, still glad she's not an English major 08:32 a.m. Sunday, September 16, 2001
Okay. Skimmer went and took the Purity Test, but giving the answers that applied to a character from the stories Raven is writing - her primary character, Rook Evanhart, in fact. Got an 86.7%. This is hardly suprising considering said character's personality and tragic past. What's distrubring is that Raven took the test for Raven Glissander, her primary character and Rook's wife, and got a 90.7%. This for a woman who cheerfully carries thirty knives and once ripped a man's heart out through his mouth. The Test focuses too much on sex, in Skimmer's opinion. Skimmer, slightly confused 05:39 p.m. Saturday, September 15, 2001
Raven does not want to do her Fiction Writing assignment. This is partially because the Fiction Writing teacher has failed not only in impressing me, but also has failed ot prove any real ability to teach. Spout off platitudes, yes. Read writing practice things out of books, yes. Teach, no. Every writer is different. Some writers just need encouragement - a little push to be willing to write - or to spread their wings. Some writers need to be forced to sit and write, but when they do, the results are wonderful. Other writers write and beg only for criticism. Other writers write to be praised for writing. And some write and wish to improve. Some write because they must. I don't know what type of writer I am - or even if I fit in any of those groups. However, I want people to read my words. Not some little thing showing comprehension of the English language, or metaphor, or simile, or desciption, or flow of language, or anything. Practice is important, and every writer should do it. Not everything should be practice though. A writer needs to be willing, if they understand the rules, to blithly write incomplete sentences, write contractions, write stream of consciousness in hackorese. If it serves the story, then who can complain? I don't claim to be all knowing, but, still - that's my opinion. My teacher assigned a fifteen minute thing where you were supposed to write about an early memory. In 1st person present tense. Which happens to be my least favorite way to write something. The memory had to be circa ages 5 to 8, in authentic vocabulary. "For example," he said, "you can't say, 'my dad looked sad,' because a child doesn't understand 'sad.'" Take a child. Draw a frown. Ask them what that means. See if a child knows sad. They would understand it. Kids likely can't understand existensial desire for their homeland, but they'd get things like happy and sad. And he had us turn these things in. So - I wrote something depressing about a time when I was young and my parents were first noticing how my grandfather was losing his memory. Last Monday, the teacher proclaimed that we would take these scenes, and we would write about the scenes in 1st person past tense and use adult comprehension. And he wrote on my scene that my grandmother asking my age was "too cute" and that I "had" to do this scene. I don't want to write this. It'll be dark. And depressing. And the hand written draft was three pages and I have to make it fit in two pages, and he wants everything in Courier which I don't particularly like either. But - I wrote it. And revised it. And I better not have to ever see this freaking story again. I'll stop whining now. Raven, who hates writing about reality 02:21 p.m. Saturday, September 15, 2001
Skimmer has been trying to add some links over there on the sidebar. Are any of her esteemed readers aware of the actual adress of D's livejournal? Skimmer has always, before, accesed it from the kekkai.org link, and kekkai seems to be down today. Skimmer considers this highly unfortuante as it deprives her of the opportunity to continue reading Heaven Can Wait. However, she is consoling herself by reading Mooncalf's new Xenogears fic. She likes it. Skimmer has been trying to work out the intircacies of the Ivini language in her head, and isn't doing so wonderfully. However, she's getting there. Someday she will make a webpage about the Ivini language. Skimmer apologizes to Raven for vanishing and knows sh shoudl be doing her homework and keeping Raven company, but she is busy looking at Mooncalf's stuff all over again. Skimmer, avoiding Thermodynamics with a vengance 10:44 a.m. Saturday, September 15, 2001
I should also welcome people to this page. What can I tell you about myself? I'm an English major, and I'm working on a Computer Science minor purely so I can make some money. I write. Admittedly, I don't write that often, but I write. I, like most writers, have a novel halfway in progress, and I am more than willing to allow people to help me beta it. I read mostly fluffy sci-fi, fantasy, and the occasional epic poem. Online, I read, on the average, about five fanfics a day. I prefer yaoi because the romance is almost invariably less annoyingly cliched then heterosexual fics. I read a lot of angst, and I prefer happy endings. I'm just a closet romantic, I suppose. As for tv, I don't watch much. I like anime, but haven't seen a lot. I've read about enough anime that I can sound tolerably knowledgeable. To be honest, the only anime that I have seen a large part of is Gundam Wing and Sailor Moon - and the Tokyo Babylon OAVs. Sometime this fall, I'll probably buy Trigun, but I'd sooner get it shipped home instead of to the college. I play video games - mostly RPGs. Favorite RPG is probably Xenogears. The game I yelled the most at was probably Star Ocean - the Second Story. There are two types of monsters in the game that are massively annoying on an ill prepared party. One of them looks like a metal sombrero on top of a jellyfish - these little things float which makes them hard to hit. They also can paralyse the party in a fairly decent electrical attack, and can petrify the party. Petrification or Paralysation = loss of game if it's all the party. The second enemy looks like a toothy mouthed ameoba type thing. This thing can poison the party members in a large attack, it can also preform a paralysis type attack, and it can petrify the party members, and it can split like ameoba into more of itself. Poison can take off a fair amount of damage, and the party can only wear two status protection items at a time - one can cheat and use status protecting armor - if you have it. I enjoyed Star Ocean, but I severally disliked a few of the decisions in the battle mechanics. Well, I think I've rambled on enough. Raven, who does not want to read Ezra Pound 09:41 a.m. Saturday, September 15, 2001
Skimmer would like to welcome anyone who is coming here because they saw her plug on the TMSucks ML. She supposes this counts as some sort of milestone; but she's not counting that hard. Skimmer, being sociable 08:09 a.m. Saturday, September 15, 2001
Skimmer is having problems. Specifically, the load time for the (quite sensibly sized) images she's used to decorate the blog. Does anyone know someplace where Skimmer can put images that will load them onto a Pitas page and not take five hours to do so? Skimmer, expereincing technical difficulties 10:13 p.m. Friday, September 14, 2001
This opens the blog. Skimmer is writing this at her desk, after working on the page design for approximately 1 hour. Unitl she has something interesting to say, she enourages you all to go over and check out the Technomancy blog, which inspired this one. The readers are encouraged to enjoy themselves. Meanwhile, Skimmer and Raven will probably have more content up later. Skimmer, starting things off right. 03:11 p.m. Friday, September 14, 2001 |