May. 9th, 2019

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://bit.ly/2Vq8oP0

I have another fic update and it is almost all uhhh can we say p*rn on this website anymore? well it’s uh er*tica anyway or whatever the algorithmically correct thing to say is, so like, I have no explanation or excuse, sometimes someone just has to do this sort of thing. I know, I’ve been going on and on about social commentary sorts of things but sometimes, listen, sometimes people just have to give each other BJs and that’s how it goes. Uh I should revise the story’s tags, I’m really not sure where I thought it would go when I created it and there’s probably inaccurate stuff in there. And I’m not sure, I should tag for discussions of reproduction, there’s going to have to be earnest discussions of dynastic succession and the like. I mean, not in the slashy part at least. 

So it’s a long and uh juicy chapter anyway. Can we say juicy? Does the algorithm flag juicy?

chapter uhhh four?, Safe, on AO3, featuring Maia/Csethiro and Csevet/Beshelar, finally

*

Deret didn’t exactly throw him down onto the bed, but he put him down without a great deal of control of the descent, so that he bounced, and then Deret was atop him, shedding trousers and unlaced boots, and his shoulders were broad and his body was heavy and his hair was a mane around both of their faces, and he wasn’t exactly pinning Csevet down, but Csevet could almost pretend he was, which again he ought not to like so much but it was Beshelar, and he did.

“Thy shoulder,” Deret said, pausing to pull a chagrined face at him, “did I–”

Csevet grabbed him by the neck and pulled him down to kiss him forcefully, and Deret took that for an answer. It was a little while before Csevet had the self-possession to answer, “The key to successfully pinning me to a wall without injury is first checking for obstructions, but fortunately there’s no protruding wall molding on that bit.”

“I did look,” Beshelar said. “It’s easier when I am not dodging thy fists.”

*
(edit:) oh now the crossposter fixes itself! sorry for a double post, DW peeps!
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://bit.ly/2H5nMWY

so i spent a little while today at work doodling out the outline of a goblin emperor a/u where Nemolis Drazhar is not killed at the same time as his father, but recalls his relegated younger half-brother to court, and then What Shenanigans Could Possibly Ensue, and I was like, there are fifteen people who would read this and it is forty chapters long at least, and then I was like, if I inverted most of the genders and set this in a different universe this would be a pretty sick original fic, so like. well. 

i could post the outline maybe, because lord knows I can’t stick to an outline anyway, but. 

(I mean, I love those fifteen people, like a lot, so, maybe I’ll write it anyway, but I’m trying to like. Live, here.)
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://bit.ly/2VnpPQg

stuft:

flowerinaflame:

I love this and it’s cute, my boy is so sincere, but did you know, hogs sleep on their sides, so their uppermost eye faces straight up the whole time they’re lying down. They can so look up, just not while standing.

However, they can’t focus at much of a distance, so they can’t see the stars anyway, no matter what angle they’re at.

Also a market-weight hog is like 200lb and by a year in age they’re more like 300lb and they only get bigger, like goldfish, and also they’ve got real sharp teeth and they’ll bite the shit out of you if you bother them. So like. 

It’s a sweet sentiment, but there’s an element of Not Knowing A Damn Thing About Hogs in it.

Also, as a counteroffer of sweet sentiments, I offer to you the sentiment of something like accepting your limitations and finding what you can really appreciate instead. Like–

If I were a severely nearsighted creature, I’d like to be offered something I could appreciate, rather than stars. Maybe give me some mud. One time we had a boar pastured by himself and temporarily he was in a spot with only a little water dish and no mud for a wallow, so I went and got a big bucket of water and dumped it out in a hollow in the ground, and then while he was rolling in that, I went back and got another one, and he rolled around in that mud for a good twenty minutes, making the most blissful noises I’ve ever heard from a pig. He did not give a shit about the stars, but boy, was he delighted with that mud.

May we all get something that delights us that we can use, and be freed from pining for stuff that won’t do us much good. 

(I appreciate stars, but I can’t really see them either. Maybe if I had vision coverage on my insurance so I could get new glasses every year…)
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://bit.ly/2LHdnWO

in terms of fanfic, having participated in a fencing club in university is the gift that keeps on giving, you would not believe how much fictional mileage I’ve gotten out of having a basic grounding in the rules of right-of-way from foil/sabre fencing, and like, understanding what the difference is between a parry and a disengage, and an attack and a riposte. you don’t even have to like, know what the different lines are (your fourth, your sixth, your fifth, god i had a terrible fifth for a sabreuse) or follow all the ridiculous FIE rule changes (IDEK what they’re doing with flicks now), just the basic 101 stuff will get you really far down the path of being able to credibly throw swordplay into your fiction.

i guess it’s only certain fandoms, but for real. you don’t need to know any of it, but it’s such an easy, like, filler thing, to just have a fencing match in there somewhere that your characters can discuss knowledgeably. or if you’ve got an action sequence, you don’t have to think through how it would work, you can just kind of think of a basic fencing match action and just describe it. lord! so useful.

there’s probably other stuff like that. horses. i was a horse girl. that’s been incredibly handy; just your baseline knowledge for worldbuilding that a horse is not a car and so does not have an off switch and so will poop and not wait where you ask it to and you’re going to have to collect it or have someone in charge of it if you’re too busy being the Plot. 

and guns. actually i haven’t used guns much in writing. no that’s not true, i based an entire SGA epic off knowing how a gun works. but i have not yet used my understanding of flint-locks for anything. 

sewing, definitely; historical fashion; being aware that your character in any premodern setting would be dressed in layers and none of them zipper or have underwires, and some idea of how they behave differently than modern clothing– it all tends to add richness to worldbuilding.

you know what i wish was more popular for authors/screenwriters? understanding how pre-electric lights worked. everybody just uses candles one hundred percent of the time regardless of social caste or situation. nobody ever ever has rushlights or fat or oil lamps. nobody has ever had to trim a wick. they just– light a candle, somehow, as if by, hmm, flipping a switch. [there are exceptions. every one of martha wells’s universes has detailed worldbuilding around what kind of lights they use, for example. she first hooked me when in the opening scene of the first book of hers i read, a character had to deal with a malfunctioning wheel-lock pistol. who even KNOWS what a wheel-lock is! there’s slow match muskets in that same work, too. amazing.]

None of these things are deal-breakers or -makers, and maybe they don’t matter that much to most people’s worldbuilding. Maybe it’s just that I find it satisfying to think of them. I really like consuming fiction that has those kinds of toothy worldbuilding textures in them, and I find it so satisfying to use them as frameworks for my own worldbuilding– just an awareness that the world the characters are in is different than mine and so the things I assume, like a lightswitch being next to a door, like a car being waiting for me, with gas stations at convenient intervals, like the way modern clothing stretches to fit you and is easy to launder, like the way I have a thermostat in my house that I only occasionally have to adjust– none of those would be there, and there’d be other things instead.

but man. in 1999 when my roommates were super into fencing and i thought the road trips sounded like fun, i never really knew how much goddamn mileage i would get out of that. it would probably have consoled me, given that i was the absolute worst fencer at basically every event, and yet my muscle memory of fencing lunges has fucked me up irrevocably for every goddamn aerobics class ever. (”Why is your back leg straight? What are you doing!” “uhhh a full extension?” “Stop doing that!” “I CAN’T” protip: they mean different things when they say ‘lunge’ and in aerobics, you don’t get to stab anyone in the throat.)
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://bit.ly/2Ha4yAy
ajkal2
reblogged your post “worldbuilding textures”

[image description: tag art reading #hey look! another fencer! #ive been an epeeist for like 8 years #and some swordfights in fiction… hoo boy. #catch me screaming at pirates of the carribean #just stab them #some of the slashes in films wouldnt even make contact! #wheres the footwork #in books its a lil less Hoo Boy #but sometimes its like ‘they clashed swords!’ #GIVE ME MORE #which line are they on? why dont they disengage and hit? was it just a beat or a proper lock of blades? WTF IS GOING ON]

See, while this is also Extremely Valid™, don’t get me wrong [Hi! I fenced epee intermittently, but wound up mostly fencing sabre because otherwise we couldn’t field any sabreurs, and I only did it for like two or three years and really sucked, it is impossible to overstate how terrible I was], I don’t even think it’s super necessary to describe it a whole lot? I don’t need to be shown every gory detail, though in visual media I do like it when you can follow the action somewhat realistically– like, make the effort!! But it’s like any worldbuilding thing– I’ve seen this ruminated on before. If you’re going to put two suns in the sky for aesthetics you better goddamn have some idea what having two suns would actually do to the setting. You don’t have to explain it all, but the difference between an okay work and a great work is things like that. what does it mean, practically speaking– is it ever night, then? The author really ought to spend a while and work it out entirely, so that it can then be slipped back into the description– and even the plot!– seamlessly enough that the audience isn’t left wondering. And it’s such a great feeling when you work out that, say, a moon orbiting a gas giant could plausibly have an occasional very cold long night despite otherwise being tropical, and then you can work that in to your plot and have it matter where they really are, beyond just being a pretty backdrop painting for your action.

And so you don’t really have to have studied fencing, or whatever specific technical thing I’m talking about, I don’t think, to write it well, it’s just that it’s so much easier. As with any action sequence, the author really has to block it out and understand what is going on in order to describe it. That’s what so often makes fight sequences so unsatisfying both in visual and written media– the creator just sort of put in a few cool action shots, but never addressed what actually happened. Sometimes, again, this is okay– like in the Goblin Emperor, the assassination attempt, the POV character is so terrified and also his view is entirely blocked by the person defending him, so he has no idea what happened, and the scene is told faithfully that way; there’s one clear visual, then there’s reactions and noise and then his bodyguard is lying bleeding in his lap and he’s like “what the– actual– fuck” and it’s a great vivid scene. 

But you can’t always do that, and as an author, it’s good to have another approach available. The point is, you have to understand what’s going on in order to describe it. You can’t just say “their swords clashed!”, or, worse, have a visual medium and have the fight consist of random chopped-up aesthetically-pleasing movements that have no possible tactical explanation, and expect to wind up with a powerful scene. A clash of steel! A dramatic parry to nowhere! A close-up of a determined face! More ringing of steel foley effects, the actors are very clearly aiming to hit one another’s swords and there is very clearly no effort whatsoever to hit the person, that’s not the point of this fight Doylistically and there’s no Watsonian attempt whatsoever because who cares, swords look cool. Boring. Nobody really likes that, come on! Tell a better story.

(This goes for sex scenes too, but I’m not necessarily going to get into that– my point is, you can fade to black or tell it euphemistically or be super explicit or whatever but you have to convey the important information thereby, it’s really crucial. Sex and action scenes alike– there’s a world of choices there, and they’re not necessarily the choices people wound up hung up on. I recently saw someone on Twitter I think who was like “omg please writers, yes write sex acts you haven’t done but for the love of god research them first” and uh… yes. seconded.)

But here’s the entire level of detail in the fencing sequence that prompted me to write that previous post, and bonus, I’ve just realized it’s written from the POV of a character who does not understand fencing at all and totally sees it on a “their swords clashed!” level and I literally use that line I swear I did not edit this: (semi-spoilers for a near-future chapter of Continuing Education, but I don’t think it ruins anything to find out that Csethiro’s mania for swordplay does not vanish overnight when she becomes Empress)

*Everyone else present seemed to think this was a perfectly lovely way to spend an afternoon. Telimezh hadn’t noticed their arrival, and looked in turn at each of the two participants, who saluted him with their swords, and then saluted one another with their swords, and–

“What are we doing,” Cala said, as the goblin and the Empress leapt at one another, swords clashing.

“A solid parry,” Beshelar said mildly. “Oh! Fantastic disenga– ah! Oh! She has him!”

“Point to Zhalered,” Telimezh said.

“That was her touch!” Beshelar said loudly, finally sounding indignant.

Telimezh turned and saw him, and did a double-take, but then said, frowning, “She didn’t have right-of-way, she did not complete the parry.”

“It was a disengage!” Beshelar said. “It’s a valid–”

“If one does not stop the attack,” Telimezh said, “then it doesn’t matter if the return blow lands.”

“Ah,” the Empress said, “but his attacking blow did not land, there was only one contact! Avoidance of the attack is just as good as stopping the attack.”

“This is valid,” Zhalered said, “she won the angle, and only her touch landed, so it is just as effective as if she had stopped the attack. We concede the touch; the point is our lady’s.”

“We thought your attack had landed,” Telimezh said.

Both participants shook their head. “It fell short,” Zhalered said.

“Ah,” Telimezh said, grimacing. “This is why we need line judges.”

“Or sharp blades,” the Empress said, grinning toothily.

“At any rate,” Telimezh said, “that brings the score to–”

“Why have we not stopped this?” Cala demanded, finally catching up to Beshelar. “What is going on?” 

*
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
My schedule for the summer is filling up.
I told myself I'd work it out this year so I didn't wind up driving endlessly back and forth across the state. It's hard to avoid; chicken slaughters are evenly-spaced, so I can't stay for two unless I stay three weeks in a row.
I'd told myself I could spend more time at the farm this summer because I paid my car off and so I don't need to earn as much money. But there keep being things that the dayjob needs me for, so I have to schedule myself there, and work around it.

Oh well. I'll work it out. And probably what's going to happen is that all summer long, I will have to drive back and forth every other week, and that's just how it is. And what also happens is that I wind up spending the weekends driving and the weeks working, so I never get a day off either, that isn't spent in a car. (Saturdays are work days at the farm, so the number of times I show up in time to work on Saturday, or leave after work on Saturday; well, that's just how it goes.) (Last year on more than one occasion I got up at 3 or 4 in the morning to make it to the farm in time to help with something.)

And in the midst of this, Dude is like... "We should go on vacation."
Last summer I was like "bro summers are hard for me, schedule the next vacation for winter or early spring ok" and he was like "ok" and then spring came and went. It is fucking June, basically and he's just now like, "oh hm, we gotta go somewhere" and I was like "idk a long weekend?" and he's like "no we should go on a proper vacation."
Just. Just.
Agh.

I *love* the idea of vacations, but as I am not paid when I am not at work, and in some cases I am not paid when I *am* at work, and like I'm not going to freak out or anything, but like. *deep breaths* We can get by just fine on Dude's income mostly in the summer, that's fine; I'm basically volunteering and that's what we do instead of charitable donations etc., but it is hard for me to take yet more time off and the late winter/early spring is when I am a huddled mass of depression and would really like a break, and June is really not the time for me to take off. Also I am now booked solid for every single fucking day until July, and in July I start having days I've tentatively scheduled with my BFF for various things we're planning to do, so if he wants to schedule something we're down to, like, the dregs.

And he isn't; he wants me to think of something. Where can we go that's nice and not too far and we haven't been before? BRO I DON'T KNOW. I've suggested every place I can think of already and none of them suit, so. Clearly you've got something in mind! So book it! And at this point you're gonna have to go by yourself!

I am tired and have been tired all week for no reason, and it's all a lot of brainfog and woe and aggravation. I tell you what vacation I want:
I want to go somewhere, with like, a cabin, maybe on a lake, and it's got a big porch that looks out on a nice view, and it's got fast wifi and a lovely open-plan kitchen, and we show up with a cooler full of groceries and nobody bothers us for a week and I get a shitload of writing done. Maybe take a hike or two during the day, maybe dip myself into the lake once or maybe it's too cold, i don't honestly give a fuck. Mostly, I sit on my ass and I get to write as much as I want and nobody talks to me.

But I don't know how to explain that. I sort of tried, and he was like "nah", so. I'm out of ideas.

Profile

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
dragonlady7

January 2024

S M T W T F S
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 2627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 02:54 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios