evil northern overlord

Random and Pilcrowe's investigations bring them to a staple of Novembers past and present. Meanwhile. Tildeworth has some advice for the oncoming storm that is Week Two.

"This is literally the worst pirates versus ninjas scene ever," whined Steve the Ninja, in the background.

The hardest thing with Random is balancing the cracky silliness with the serious side of things. I think that's an issue with a lot of these types of story. You don't want to be all grimdark because you're dealing with a silly concept, but nor do you want the silly to overload the fact that you're dealing with what are hopefully rounded characters with fears and hopes.

Semi related I took a trip out last night to see a late showing of Inside Out. So many feels. Sniff. But it's exactly the sort of movie I hope Random is as good as, if that makes sense. The sort of genre that inspired it. Take a weird idea, and make a damn fine story.

I am so whacked today, thanks to the conference call that would not end. If I find who invented meetings, they are dead at my hands. I swear.

Some stuff:

Moar Ryll. World stuff, new places, plants, animals, and some stuff about the Archetypes (super powerful NPC guys, you no can has, mine all mine, ah ha haaaa, etc).

I'm doing a map commission! Fun!

It struck me when I was adding stuff to the Ryll site that there's got to be a significant drop in people online who've ever made a webpage, or even know how. They probably think of it as some weird, unknowable thing... and that's sad, because HTML is not scary and CSS is not scary. But when I showed some people at work what I was doing while working on some work related pages, they just looked perplexed. Not so long ago, if you were online, you probably knew something. Now... it's just nonsense. It's sad. Doesn't have to be this way... also, I feel old again.

Cool stuff now. I've been on Meetup for a while but to be honest it's kind of worthless when sending me anything I might be interested in. Until recently when I got a note about a starter friendly D&D group starting up in Brighton. I know sod all about D&D apart from what I've picked up from Order of the Stick, but... what the hell. I put my name down, because I wanted to see what it was like. There should be a session on Saturday, if the guy organising it can find a venue. I hope it's fun. I'm nervous and clueless but I know I'd regret it if I didn't give it a try.

I also think I'm the only girl on the confirmed list, but eh, what the hell.

I know I'm being super late to the party, but everyone, drop what you're doing and go see Home right away because it is amazing. I decided to go on a whim because I'd heard good things about it, and I was sick of never seeing Dreamworks stuff in the cinema and later on finding out they'd done another great film with bad advertising. Don't regret it one bit. I cried so much.

Every day is best day ever.

Other stuff, I'm trying to get my doll art out and around more places, so I brushed the dust off the G+ account I got shoved into creating. Clicky. Seems a reasonable place and I figured I should get around to using it since they dropped their legal name only rules last year. Which, by the way, I'm very grateful for. It's good to see somewhere get rid of a harmful policy despite the cried of "wahhh trolls."

Was still pretty miffed to find that it whined at me when I put up "Leopardcorgi Creatures" as a name that I wasn't getting "the best experience" or some such crap. Same when it complained that my profile picture didn't include a face. You can ignore the "warnings" but I still found it pretty rude to suggest such things. For me, an internet full of legal names is nowhere near the best experience. Try telling that crap to the scared teenager I used to be, who ventured online and began to find out who they really were when they weren't just a bullied schoolkid. Again, I seriously appreciate backing down on the name rules, but the warning rides right over years of online culture and honestly, makes me feel a bit displaced. As if a bunch of strangers just muscled into my home...

I was also pretty alarmed to find a photo tagging feature, but very relieved that I could turn that crap off rather than have to manually untag things. Less impressed by the fact that I stumbled upon that setting by accident. Something like that should be obvious. And man do I get bored with uncustomisable pages. White and grey boxes, everywhere. How dull.

Aside from that it seems pretty good and usable at least...and honestly most of my gripes are with current social media design trends all over rather than G+ specifically... so I'll at least keep on going there for now, and I could see myself continuing to use it. Happy to say hi there if you like!

I had an awesome time and so did Frankie! 2/10 mechanoids agree, she has a lovely bum.



I take back every fear I had about cons, it was the best weekend ever and I can't wait for the next one... but right now I'm exhausted after a weekend of minimal sleep and cross country travel, so a proper write-up will follow. Threw some pics up on Tumblr for anyone that wants a peek at the many adventures of Frankenstein the Holy Mother until then!

But now... now I'm going to sleep forever. Or at least until I have to get up for work.

Easter doesn't mean much for me beyond a couple of extra days off, I admit. Sometimes it's kind of sad, not having any sort of markers during the year, thing set aside from usual life. Just a couple of days when you don't work. Not that I'm complaining about those, but...

But it's a nice day today. The sun was out. I did some reading through my Random draft and attacked it with the red pen whilst sitting in a sunbeam, and okay, now I see why cats like it so much. Sitting in sunbeams, that is, not attacking things with a red pen. Unless maybe they're one of those polydactyls with an extra opposable digit, then you watch out.

I've just been out to do some writing for Camp, and when I got outside, it was the first day of the year in which I didn't have to wear a coat. Nevermind not wearing a coat, it's practically t-shirt weather out there right now! I took an extra long walk through the park, past the pond (there's a swan couple nesting right now!) and through the trees. And you know, maybe that's how I like to mark things. The first day of the year where you don't have to wear a coat. It means something, doesn't it?

I guess if you don't have traditions, you can always make your own.

Some people do it by accident. Some people, and these are the ones with no sense of self preservation, do it on purpose, with 39 other people, and don't bother to get any sleeping done while they're at it, because there is writing to do.

You already know which one I am.

So! I will be spending the night here from 7 tonight until 7 tomorrow, and there will be much writing to do. I don't know how much exactly. I would love to finish the story during the event, but I would also like it to reach at least 70K. At the moment it's at 60, which was my original "okay let's shoot for this then" goal, once I passed 50K with story left to tell. So all bets are off. I think 70K is a good estimate of this story's end, but can I hit it tonight? Time's not an issue, at least.

Packing now. Got the travel mug, got the Alphasmart, got the magical Vaporeon scarf of writing power. I've done this before, so I'm not nervous... not too nervous. To be fair, the last time I did this, I'd finished the novel and had moved on to some advance work on MFS. This is a really different situation just for that. But it's going to be cool. Things will get done. Much fun will be had.

I've been waiting all month for this!

Oh hi there, (certain asshole political party) poster! What are you doing on the messageboard on the park? Here, let me take you down and toss you in the bin where you belong.

Hey, I don't feel any remorse. They're racist, homophobic, and they ruined purple. And I like purple.

Besides, if they wanted it to stay there, they should have paid to put it behind the glass like everything else on the board. And hell, I was this close to walking past and imagining how a good person would tear it down, and then realising I daydream too much about what a good person would do, and maybe I should be one.

And purple, dammit.

This is Part 1, in which I pull off a 10K day and obtain a shiny Eevee, in case you were curious.

I kept on meaning to post this for a while and was being a lazy bum about it, but here it all is now. I really have to get out of the habit of seeing longer posts as a chore. Anyway as I said in the first post of this series, in the last few years I'd been lapsing in how much I got into the spirit of NaNo. I was participating and winning, but not really getting into the social aspects of it. But because the forums last year were such a nice place, and I wanted more places to socialise, I jumped in. Initially I afflicted with Brighton but after trying out write ins both there and in London, I decided to stick with the latter.

The third weekend of NaNo was NaNorilla, a novelling crawl across London. You go to places, you write a bit, and then you go somewhere else. Having only ever done normal venue based write ins, this was something I really wanted to try out.

( The day, with photos )

Next time: Doctor Who, and the London Literary Lockin. Or: why London is tied with Yorkshire for best region.