Rawr! I spent a lot of time writing today, some of which I devoted to editing. I didn't think I was going to manage much of a word count because of that, but I did~ Partially because I started a new story on the side >.> And partially because some things started falling into place in Galatea!fic! Whoo ties to mythology~

Galatea!fic: 12816 words

13632 / 25000 words. 55% done!

Also, Squeak! Oh my gosh, at church tonight, the middle school choir sang...and it was one of the songs we sang at your church! How awesome is that?

I didn't get any work done today. Well, not any schoolwork, anyway; I did some cleaning and such. But I'll have to fix the schoolwork problem tomorrow. Still, only one week left before Thanksgiving week! Yay!

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
- Charlotte Whitton

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
- Noel Coward


Last night's affair was a lot of fun, but I missed pixiepilot and pudges. :( We toured my house, chatted, vented about LTUE, ate my soup and the goodies people brought (Ki's brown butter sea salt rice krispy treats were a big hit - would you share the recipe?), sang me happy birthday and ate cake, watched "Wolverine" (and laughed a lot) and then the first two episodes of the 90's "X-Men" cartoon (and also laughed a lot).

It was a good night. Sorry if my crappy couches hurt anybody's back. :P

Yakety Sax plus sped up film makes anything funny.

I wrote last night! Woot!! It's only 350 words or so, but it's fun and I wanted to share it with you. This scene takes place soon after Cassie joins the hero team.

***

( Cassie wandered the halls of the massive headquarters building, heart pounding at the reality of it all. )

***

I decided that if I'm going to write off Comic-Con, the Muse website, and all the reference books I've bought in the last year, I need to have something concrete to prove that I'm working at this as a business. The IRS might not need it as proof, the first year, but I'd like to play it safe. So I guess I should get serious about getting this behemoth off the ground and seeing if it will fly. That's my goal: Have chapter 1 written, drawn, and begun to be *posted* by the end of the year.

Which means I also need the website up and running (I may use the ComicGenesis one for now, if I can't get the official one done by the time the art's ready to go up) - and once I've got chapter 1 done, I'll pick a few of the best sequential pages, write up a synopsis (on which I've made significant headway this week), and send my proposal off to Image. :D

As we say in P90X - BRING IT!


~PS~ I've added Josh Groban's song "In Her Eyes" to my Muse playlist. Go listen to it!

So I don't remember whether I mentioned it before, but I got a call last month from my contact at the City Attorney's office. I'd sent him a letter that gave them my new address (a little late) and asking for a status report of my case.

He sounded surprised that I'd asked. He said it was in the hands of the District Court now, and gave me their number.

Today I finally called the Court to see what I needed to do. They looked it up and said that there was a hearing in May. May! The girl didn't show up at court (naturally), and so now the ball was back in the hands of the Attorney's office, whether to summon her again, or put out a warrant, or whatnot.

So I called the Attorney's office back and explained what the Court told me, and after a while the guy came back with good news. He said that it hadn't been noted in their records, and so he fixed it and put her in the queue of summons to go out tomorrow. The Court explained that if they need me to show up at a hearing or anything, they'll send me a subpoena, so I don't have to do anything else at this point.

I'm glad I checked up on it, though. Too bad I didn't check earlier.



[Then I immediately called Rory Scanlon's office (costume design professor and associate dean of the College of Fine Arts & Comm) to set up an appointment with him next week, for LTUE purposes. I think I've had my fill of stress today, so can we please not have issues at work that cause me lots of stress? I think I'd like to crawl into my little corner and just work quietly now.]


A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
- Victor Hugo

Last night Fi and I went to see BYU's production of Children of Eden, which is a Stephen Schwartz musical about the first few chapters of Genesis. Stirring material, you say--and it was. I spent a good chunk of the first act in tears.

This is more unusual than it sounds. I don't cry. I particularly do not cry in public. I think I might have got a little choked up at the end of Gallipoli once, and at the last frames of The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd and Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration, but I cannot recall any tears. There have only been a few times in my life when I've had the shoulder-shaking, gut-wrenching, tear-flowing sobs that most people generally associate with crying. This was one of them.

(I did manage to keep quiet, however. My seat-mates may be able to look over and see me bent over my lap with my face in my hands, but they shouldn't have to hear me.)

It wasn't really the production that affected me so much, though it was very good. The theology is not mine; it uses the Bible as a plot source but freely deviates in many details, and doesn't have a specifically religious point of view. In particular, there is no mention of the Savior, or of the Plan of Redemption. And this, I think, is what hit me so hard--the utter terrifying bleakness of a worldview without that great atoning sacrifice and the prospect of being reunited with our Heavenly Father someday. Adam's song "A World Without You," (track 11 here) where he's forced to choose between leaving his Father and the garden, or leaving Eve, broke my heart. And the end of the first act, where an aged and dying Eve sings to her descendants about how they must redeem their race, broke me entirely.

The linked production doesn't do what the BYU production did--which was to end with Eve dying, and running into her Father's arms. Somehow I think that must have been a special BYU touch, because otherwise the view of God is entirely too bleak--an angry god, who created his children to keep him from being lonely and to keep him feeling young, who betrays and is betrayed by his creations again and again, goes into silent sulks, and only realizes at the end of the play that he must "let his children go" by refusing to speak to them or influence their lives ever again. It's difficult for me to comprehend how there could be any hope or joy in such a religious view, with a god whose love is so fickle, with no possibility of redemption and salvation.

I believe in a God who loves us, who has sent us here to Earth for a mortal experience that will help us learn and grow and become like him. I believe that Adam and Eve's fall from the Garden was a necessary part of that plan. God couldn't condemn His children to a mortal world of pain and suffering without their free acceptance of it--and that was a choice they couldn't have made in the pre-mortal life, before they knew what they would give up. He gave them the choice in the Garden: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, though shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Moses 4:16). And Adam and Eve made that choice freely--knowing that to do so would be to transgress, to leave the physical presence of God, and to endure all the pains and sufferings of mortality, but also knowing that they would thereby be able to fulfill the purposes of their creation, to follow the first commandment to bring children into the world, to gain knowledge and experience and grow to become like God. When Adam and Eve learned of the Plan of Redemption--that "as thou has fallen thou mayest be redeemed, and all mankind, even as many as will" (Moses 5:9) they rejoiced:

And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.

And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. (Moses 5:10-11)

I believe that God loves us perfectly, wholly, unconditionally; that He sorrows with us, in our grief; that He weeps for our sins and our suffering (Moses 7:28-32). And because He loves us, He's prepared a Plan for our salvation, a way to return to Him--the great and last and eternal sacrifice of His Son. Through Christ's Atonement we can be cleansed of our sins and become perfected, all our flaws and shortcomings washed away, so that we will once more be able to enter the presence of God after our sojourn on this earth.

We're away from home for a little while now, and we're bound to make mistakes. But God is our Father, and He has prepared a way for us to come home again. This is His work and His glory--"to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of men" (Moses 1:39). And Adam and Eve knew that work, and participated in it, choosing to fall so that we might live. "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).

After all, the Father's plan has many names. The Plan of Salvation, the Plan of Redemption--and the Plan of Happiness.

Dear Payless:

( Listen to my soapbox )

EDIT: Yes, I sent this in an actual email this morning. I got a reply this afternoon that said "thanks for your feedback; we have forwarded your comments to the appropriate department." Cool.

Just completed another negotiation, which really went rather well. I think. (I hope.) We'll see in class on Monday, when we find out how everyone else in the class did. Cutthroat competition, it is alive and well at BYU Law School. (We're all super nice about it, though...)

I've been thinking about Christmas lately, partially because I really want it to be Christmas (and for me to be at home, with my exams over), and partially because I've been talking with my mom and sisters about present possibilities. The majority of the present-givers in my immediate family are poor students: out of 14 attendees at family Christmas this year, 6 will be students, 2 will be retirees, and three of the remaining 6 will be under the age of 5. (Please pause here, while I go over my finger-counted numbers to make sure they're accurate. --And it's a good thing I did, because they were not, and have been duly corrected.) Most of us are also sensible adults who are past the gift-for-the-gift's-sake idea of present-giving and receiving, and would rather (I hope) receive a few thoughtful selections rather than the I-got-more-toys-than-you-did largesse of earlier times.

So I've been trying to think about the presents that have meant most to me in the past, and why that's so. A few were very useful objects I use constantly, like the pocket knife Dad gave me when I was 15, the camera I got from Mom and Dad, or the baking sheet Ruth gave me last year. Some have been both useful and sentimental, like the purse Rachael made for me last year, or the blown-glass dragon she and Ruth bought for me at a Renaissance Fair when I was 14 (for my birthday, but it still counts). Several times I've received books that have opened my eyes to new worlds and remained my favorites for years. And some are just fun and sweet and speak of the special relationship I have with the giver: the toothbrushes Dad gives me for every occasion, the box of cereal we all get from "Santa" every year, or Rosalind's gift of sister-time coupons. The shiny expensive gifts can be nice, but the ones that just say I love you mean a whole lot more, and are remembered far longer.

And the best part of Christmas morning isn't the gifts, anyway--it's having the whole family together and laughing.

What gifts have you appreciated the most, and why?

I just read this excellent essay by Scott Westerfield (who wrote the Uglies series, etc.) that I thought a good number of you would enjoy.

"A Slayer Comes to Town" - how the Buffy universe is neither 'alternate world' or 'trespass' story, but rather both.

PS~ Footnote 1, at the end of the essay, totally describes Isaura.

They don't do poppies here. At least, someone may be handing them out over on main campus; I haven't been to check, but I rather doubt it. Veterans' Day seems to be more forgotten with each passing year.

Both of my grandfathers served in the second World War, in the Pacific Theatre. My grandfather Don, a Marine, carried a bullet in his neck for the rest of his life. My grandfather Ed served in the Army, the Navy (I believe the Seabees--correct me if I'm wrong?), and retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force reserve. My best friend's little sister is a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan.

To those who fight for our country and our freedom, and for freedom across the world, I give my most profound thanks.

And yet war is a brutal, ugly business, a monstrous waste of lives and resources and talent--humanity at its worst, and only occasionally at its best. There are times when we must fight, but we must never forget the cost.


Strange Meeting
Wilfred Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."

I need to get to work, but I just had to say:

Galatea!fic:

10038 / 10000 words. 100% done!

RAWR.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the actual fic toward some sort of ending. That'll take a while...

Tonight I finished reading one of the PDAs I'd ordered--Salvation. This story was set before/right after Dodo started traveling with the Doctor, meaning it had background on her character and some early canon info. Or, early info I'd hoped would be good for her canon, anyway.

The beginning of the book was utterly awful. There are a few things it said about Dodo's background that I liked, but the way this story started was ridiculous, made no canon sense, and was so painfully OOC for first Dodo and then Steven that I was a very, very unhappy camper. After about 80 pages, it got readable and then even interesting, but I realized that I'd long since stopped associating the book's Dodo with canon Dodo because she just...wasn't. At the very end of the book, she finally, briefly, felt IC, but...yeah, not much otherwise. On the bright side, once I'd gotten through those first 80 or so pages, I did get interested in the book and was quite engaged in the story by the end. But. I wouldn't recommend it. Even at the end, it was nothing spectacular, and at the beginning it was awful, so save yourself the trouble.

I am now left with the unfortunate dilemma of what to consider canon for Dodo and what not to. *sigh*

Anyway, thankfully I had enough time tonight to finish reading the book, do some grading, do some prep work, and do some writing. How lucky is that!

Galatea!fic:

9659 / 10000 words. 97% done!

10142 / 25000 words. 41% done!

Oh my gosh I HAVE CROSSED 10,000. Now I just need to get Galatea!fic over the 10,000 line, and step one will be complete~

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
- Mitch Hedberg


I had a thought this morning that made me really excited, when for some reason I had "We're Off to See the Wizard" stuck in my head. I was reflecting that the characters in the Wizard of Oz fully believed this nebulous "Wizard" fellow to be the solution to their problems, and their expectations were shattered when they discovered he was nothing like they had hoped. Yes, he helped them solve their problems in the end, but the circumstances were completely different from the way the characters thought they were.

I realized that that's kind of what I've been looking for in my story, in the bigger picture - the try/fail cycles of figuring out what's going on in the world and how they can fix it. I have trouble misleading people, even characters; I like things to be honest and straightforward. But in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and the gang didn't know they were wrong; they just put together their plan from limited information. Likewise, if I can give my characters bits of information along the way, from people who don't know the whole story, either, then it shouldn't be too difficult to make them work for the payoff. Specifically, I think I need to send them to someone they think has the answers, and then turn it on its head and reveal a problem that's worse/different than the one they thought they were solving.

Now I need to solidify this try/fail idea and determine how much they figure out, and from whom, and have these steps fill the different volumes with good flow and logic. Flesh out with local problems, characters' personal issues, relationship threads, and a bit of theme, and the story should pretty much write itself!

Also, I'd been keeping the light on for a fifth culture/city-state to present itself as the setting of the final book, and I think I've found one that will serve my purposes. ^____^ I'll have to research it to find out what it will require me to change, but I'm excited to try it on for fit.

Okay, yes: it probably is very weird to sit at your carrel taking pictures of your lunch. But it's the first bento I've packed in almost a month, and I'm pretty proud of it.

( Click here for pictures )

Aside from my lunch-packing success this morning, I also purchased tickets for Fi and me to attend a BYU performance of "Children of Eden," which Fi's family had urged her to see. I got tickets for the Wednesday night dress rehearsal, as they were about half-off... still $13. It better be a good show!

I came back from purchasing the tickets after Evidence, planning to enjoy a leisurely lunch and read Negotiations...until I realized that 1st Amendment was NOT canceled today, as I'd thought (our professor is in D.C. arguing before the Supreme Court!). So I left half my lunch uneaten and ran off to watch a panel discussion on reporters' privilege. Good stuff!

Also, since the overwhelming majority of the poll in my last post voted for me to post future writing at painted_on_sky and only mention it here on kilerkki, if you have any free time in the next few days which you are dying to fill with the first chapter of an unfinished work, check out the first chapter of The Demon Wars here. If you don't have access to painted_on_sky, just drop me a line and I'll friend you. It's a pretty painless process, and I'd love to hear what you think. :)

Just caught up on two weeks' worth of Mentalist... HOO-BOY! Fun stuff. I'm sure Jane knows about Rigsby and Van Pelt - he saw it in the pilot, after all. I'm sad that I didn't find out til now, though.

And Jane with the inmates was hilarious. I wasn't super impressed with his manner of escape, but it was amusing nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to more, as always.

I also watched 1 episode of Stargate Universe, so I have this weekend's left. And I have to watch this week's Vampire Diaries, too. I guess it's a good thing that some of my shows have taken time off in the last couple weeks, cuz I've been too busy to watch them. :(


By the way, does anybody watch "Lie to Me"?

My writing momentum has been seriously slowing down these last couple days, but thankfully I've had the necessary time over the weekend to fight against that. The same isn't likely to be true of school nights, so we'll see what happens this week...

I've been quite stuck plotwise for a couple days and trying to scrounge my word count by adding an opening, going back and making edits, and prolonging the conversation before they go anywhere. Jchan asked if she could help unstick me.

Me: I'm just not sure what to do when they get the town of the women
Me: I don't know what they'll find there or anything about the characters
Jchan: crossdress?

Yeah. So. IT'S ALL HER FAULT, OKAY? Oh my gosh, I have to choose outfits for Oliver and Four to be cross-dressing in now XD.

Galatea!fic:

8264 / 10000 words. 83% done!

Total:

8424 / 25000 words. 34% done!

Also, today I've been watching season one of the Sarah Jane Adventures with my mom and really enjoying it. That show is so fun! And Luke is adorable ♥.

Tomorrow night (Monday), at 9pm, my brother's doing a small cabaret (like couples figure skating, but without the skates) performance on campus, 270 RB. I haven't seen his routine yet, and he's competing at Dancesport on Saturday, but this one is free! Anybody want to join me? :)

After Friday's post about my lack of motivation to study, I am a little ashamed to admit this...but hey, it's Sunday, I shouldn't be studying anyway! >.>

So although 9 a.m. regular church was cancelled this morning in favor of 2 p.m. Stake Conference, I have made good use of my morning. I slept in till 8:30, and then I worked on Demon Wars, which is an urban fantasy I'm now writing solo after some collaborative efforts didn't work out. I've decided to use Demon Wars and Firedrake for my very, very modified caer_awen/NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) goal of 10,000 words (which breaks down to about 2,000 - 3,000 words a weekend and shouldn't infringe on my study time at all). Progress so far, with the first chapter of Demon Wars complete:

4111 / 10000 words. 41% done!

Also, this weekend I have done laundry, tidied my room, made bread, bought jeans, bought foundation, played a little Okami, talked to my mom, watched Bruce Lee pwn Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon, and made soba noodles with zucchini, tofu, and bok choy. (Note to self: pre-cook the vegetables next time. But it was still very tasty, even if I forgot to add the zucchini until late in the stir-frying, and thus the soba noodles and tofu broke up more than they should have. I will have leftovers for a long time.)

Finally, a poll:

Poll #1482525 Writing/Reading Preferences
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Ki should post any future original writing:

Since everyone else is doing this, I scoured my bookshelf for some recognizable material..and caused a pretty awesome avalanche. Oops.

Taken from taelow (and others):

☇ Take four books off your bookshelf.
☇ Write the first sentence
☇ Write the last sentence on page fifty
☇ Write the second sentence on page one hundred
☇ Write the next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
☇ Write the final sentence of the book
☇ Let your friends guess what book it is.

( Book Meme )

Dad's out of town, so Mom and I are hanging out this weekend. We went shopping and go lunch out--at Panda Express (yes, that counts as eating out). My fortune made me crack up so much:

Avoid unchallenging occupations - they waste your talents.

Don't worry, Panda Express. I'm keeping that in mind XD

Also, my Amazon order arrived! I now own two PDAs--the two with One, Steven, and Dodo. Laugh if you will. This could complicate my writing goal >.> But I'm hoping to inspire myself to continue the Dodo fic! Also, I cannot stop listening to this song. *loves it*

Costco has their annual great big tins of Walker's shortbread cookies in stock. These are the best shortbread cookies to ever be packaged. I have a tin. I am a happy person right now. ^_____^