Between Waters

Hrm hrm hrm.

So I've decided that Harry Potter does a poor job of representing the magic-school genre, which is fertile ground for writing and which I feel must be wrested from the tyrannical grip of one JK Rowling for the betterment of writing in general. To that end I have become to compose a story that is equal parts The Lord of the Rings and Looking for Alaska with heavy doses of the Bible, American Idiot, and Persona3. In brief the main character is a girl whose magical ability is noticed by a representative of a school in the Boundary Waters between her freshmen and sophomore years in high school and who despite initial resistance ends up attending where she becomes friends with another girl named Bombay Ginny (Gin), who is in many ways Alaska in messianic clothing. The more interesting angles of the story come from the lead's interaction with Gin, through which both of their characters develope. The story explores various facets of revolution as well as how teens approach faith, love, friendship, sexuality, and just about everything else that is both interesting and important. Quite a bit of work, I'm aware, but if John Green can do it in 220some pages I think I can do it in under a thousand. The original thurst of the project was to create a Lord of the Rings level of backstory, which I have been diligently assembling as often as I've been actualy writing. There's quite a bit of speculative chemistry and physics that goes into the explanation of just how magic works, as well as some economics and history behind the underpinnings of magical society and the economy of the magical word. In fact, the goal is to provide enough information for Appendices A-F, which comes out at six, if I can count properly, though the better test will be to see how it compares to Tolkein's appendices on a word-count level. I feel that between the explanation of how magic works and thorough explorations of the politics of the magical world as well as its social structure and economy I ough to chew through quite a few pages, never mind history and all that.
On a narrative level the story is told exclusively in the first person by the lead--I call her Mary, but have yet to decide whether to reveal that as her name, or whether it even matters--in the present tense, except for numerous digressions and narrations of past events as well as some snippets of history that she presents in fairy tale form.
The writing itself has proceeded exceptionally smoothly, which leads me to believe that I may in fact complete this project, which would be a significant accomplishment after the fractured nature of the writing that I've done over the last...four years.

In other news, here's the summer reading list, as accurately as I can recall it--
Read:
In Cold Blood - Capote
My Own Country - Verghese
Outliers - Gladwell
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami
Looking for Alaska - Green
Fahrnheit 451 - Bradbury

Reading:
Darkness at Noon - Koestler
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Dune - Herbert
Last Orders - Swift
The Power and the Glory - Green
The Trial - Kafka
The Red Badge of Courage - Crane
The Economist - weekly, cover-to-cover excepting on the art exhibit article

On the Verge of WCATY, from a Different Angle

So, once more unto the breach, except this time I'm working, at least nominally. Doing grunt work, more likely than not, oh well.

Mm, don't have much to write about, I suppose...Let's see, I finished The Creation of Chastity Damnation, and am working on Islands, now--another lovely Catholic story. Well, I think it's Catholic, Christian certainly...In that vein, I've been working on reading the Bible by book alphabetically. I also snagged a copy of the Qur'an, might need to expand outside of the middle east eventually, but that may take some time.

I've made an effort to read A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it's like trying to read Dickens, so I've given that up in favor of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, which is far more interesting.

Don't know how I feel about this whole Catholic writing binge, but it's interesting...things keep getting longer and longer, which is a tad annoying. Islands should be fun, if I can get it done in under 30 pages or so, but that may not actually happen... As for Amos and The End...that's going to kick my ass. Awfully.

Hi, My Name Is/Hi, My Name Is//

So I've been gone for a while. In the interim a few things have happened:

- I started listening to Eminem again. A lot.
- I relapsed into Pokémon addiction.
- I relapsed into certain "emotional states". Oops.
- I realized I'm not disciplined enough to write anything longer than a longish short story.
- I stopped talking to my friends. Oops x10
- I started talking to other friends.
- I created an alter ego, lurking somewhere out there on teh internets. Good luck finding it.
- I realized that I'm an extremist after a fashion.
- I started reading The Economist.
- I stopped reading TIME.
- I realized how fertile Catholicism really is as a field of literary exploitation and subjugation.

Okay, so I don't even know how long it's been since I've been back here...oh well.

So the current writing projects are twofold:
- The Creation of Chastity Damnation: a story about a girl who isn't quite as crazy as her dad.
- Islands: a story about a lot of Catholics on an island (shocking!) after a minor rebellion. Lots of blood. Lots of angst (legitimate, though). And there are crosses (so blood goes with the territory, I suppose...)!
More on those when I actually get done writing them. Which is what I would be doing now if I weren't avoiding it...

Of course dinner is about to start.

Harumph. I feel bad for all those sorry bastards in Green Bay, sitting in the cold, freezing, watching the Packers lose. At least I had the opportunity to change the channel. Not that I was interested in the first place. In case you didn't know, my interest in football is strictly limited to USC playing when there is snow on the ground outside. Mostly because I watch the players huddling under fans and misters and get very jealous.

So I was going to write about something else...but I forgot about it while eating dinner. I did make dickerdoodles. And was almost disowned. Oh well.

...

I'm not even really sure why I'm here, trying to write about this in a quasi-public place. In fact, I don't know that I will. I just...It still feels rather surreal, that something like this could actually happen. You hear about how awful the economy is doing, but it comes off as just words on paper until something like this happens, and then even indirectly, you start to realize the scope of what's going on. This isn't the time or the occasion to muse about politics, but...yeah. If nothing, I'm suddenly much more thankful for my family than I've been in a long time--and I'm not passing judgment or anything like that, merely commenting that I'm, at least for now, trying not to take what I'm so fortunate to have for granted. I hope I never forget that, if nothing else.

Pests

Somebody has been tampering with my Wayfarer posters and I'm about ready to squish them, should I find out who they are. All of the emo-related posters vanished a few days after I put them up, so I printed more and stuck about 12 up on the same wall in the basement hallway. That was yesterday; by this morning they are all gone except for the writing contest guidelines. Somebody doesn't like them, apparently, because there were plenty of other posters on the same wall, all of which have remained, so it's not the janitors taking them down. Unless somebody in the administration is not a fan and ordering them to be taken down. Which could be happening. Either that or some angsty freshmen motherfucker is fighting a guerilla war against me. I'll put up more, later. Preferably a very large number right before the writing contest deadline next Wednesday. I'll have to do it all on Monday, I suppose, as I don't have any free mods on Tuesday. I may switch to black and white printing just to get them out fasters, but there will be a flood of these. Watch out.

About Putting Down Games

The best measure of a videogame is how you feel when you're done with it.

I finished Dead Space today, and though I'm glad that I don't need the tension/stress that it injected into my life, I'm quite sad that I'm done with the thing. I wish there were more, and I would replay it if I had time. I'll even continue to overlook the somewhat ambiguous ending. The very last bit of it, at least, fit perfectly with what the game is all about. Never mind the room that it leaves for a sequel.

I felt the same way about The World Ends With You--I didn't want it to be over.

With books I tend to feel satisfied and somewhat drained at the same time when I finish them, and I do get the same sort of feeling from very long RPGs, Final Fantasy VII in particular, but I'll ascribe that more to length and the time investment than anything else. But with games it's different; they're so delicious that I'm sad to leave the really good ones. Alas.

I should go try to beat Minesweeper on expert, see what that does for me emotionally.