NaNoWriMo 3087

I'm attempting National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. My goal this time around is to finish off the 3087 Technical Readout. Most of the history is already recorded as are the notes I want to hit with the 'Mechs.

To be honest, writing the TRO entries can get pretty grindy and there's this feeling that you're repeating a few off-the shelf phrases and terms. Best case scenario: all of that is alleviated by desperation and a mad dash to just get things done. Worst case scenario: it will be finished.

I'd say a few words about editing, but...that's probably not going to happen. Maybe I'll tinker with a few pieces when they conga line across the blog on Wednesdays, but 3087 is more exorcism than exercise at this point.

Speaking of those Wednesdays, November has four of them. I'll be pulling the best of entries from the previous week every Tuesday night and queuing it up. The rest will have to wait until the rest of the year.

Oh, hey. Full TRO listing after the cut.

The Big Night

Hey, just wanted to remind you guys that I wrote a 1,200 word guide to the electoral college for the election tonight. It's old, but updated.

Now go vote! Enjoy this brief period of easily-believed relevance before everyone loses their perspective entirely for Christmas.

And no, you are not supposed to be asking about NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo 2011: Editing is Complete

I just finished editing my NaNoWriMo 2011 work, Denver 5. I'm currently revising it, which includes adding (some) pieces I haven't written yet, punching up the parts that are written, and working out basic grammar, continuity, and typos. 

Once I'm done with that, I'll be ready to put out another version for folks to read, with the intent of getting feedback from them. My overall plan is to cycle through editing/revision and feedback cycles before calling it complete in a few months (possibly a year or so). For each cycle, I'd like to get one person who is intimately familiar with the source material (you know who you are) and one to two people who aren't so familiar with it to read and give some feedback. Ideally, each cycle except for the last will let me get feedback from people who haven't read it before, ensuring I can keep fresh eyes on it. The last cycle will be a "general" release so that everyone interested can give some input on the final version (not that I'll be super-worried about feedback at that point).

Long story short, if you want to read about super-folks being jerks assholes in a team origin story obviously written by a 20-something white middle class American dude*, then let me know.

Guidelines:

1) I'll mail you a printed, hard copy in a three-ring binder and arrange some included return postage. I can do an electronic copy, but the hard copy is a must because:

2) If I'm gonna pay to print, "bind," and ship you a 97-page booklet, you gotta be invested enough to read it, legibly mark it up, send it back to me, and be willing to arrange a conversation with me where you articulate your response to it (via phone, chat, skype, whatever).

3) This really only applies to folks I know in real life who already talk to each other about mundane stuff, but because I need fresh eyes on each revision, going to ask you guys not to share.

Anyway, comment, email, text, or hit me up on twitter if you're interested. First come first serve, just remember that because my current habitation, employment, and mood are determined by a series of daily 1D6 rolls, it might be a few weeks before any of this happens.

Thanks,

Kris

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*Niche markets. Am I right, guys?

National Novel Editing Month Something

Back in November, I cranked out 50,000 words about an old Aberrant campaign. Getting those 50,000 words was my primary goal at the time, but now I realize that making those words readable is the next big challenge. My designated National Novel Editing Month (January) came and went with only a few scant pages marked for clean up. 

As I think about it, the best way for me to police myself on this tedious really enjoyable task is to commit to posting updates of edited pages. Enjoy.

Click through for slightly larger picture.

Exit Past Through Doors on Right, Part II

Last Monday, I started a blog with the intention of talking about the best things of 2011[1], but ended up waxing nostalgic about one of Earth’s few female specimens which had gained my attention and respect.

After the assertive, confident woman I'd come to expect act so demure in a new setting, uncertainty was all I had. To this day, it's all I have. This isn’t a story where an omnipresent point of view reveals the full depths of each person’s character and the audience comes away with a clean resolution and an appreciation behind the A-Type personalities they encounter every day. It’s a real story, and like most real stories, we can only read the tea leaves and divine our own meaning from it.

People aren’t constants; a person isn’t a static value impervious to other factors. It’s easy to see people that way:

NaNoWriMo 2011: Rejected Excerpt

Ah, The Spider, come in. I’ve been told so much about you. 

That’s nice to hear. Thanks for seeing me; I’m looking forward to working for your lab. 

Tell me a little about yourself.

I’ve got doctorates in physics, engineering, biology, and mathematics. I was Head of Research in Denver University’s Biology Department for seven years. I was Interim Dean of Sciences for six months. I ran my own research company for ten years. I’m UNITY certified. And I am widely regarded as a ruthless shadow of the night who prowls the rooftops of my city as a merciless spirit of vengeance.

Thank you. Can I ask you, as an unholy abomination of man and arthropod, can you make an antidote for your own poison…if you bite yourself by accident?

I’m…not poisonous.

Theoretically.

Theoretically, yes. Provided I had enough remaining venom to use as a basis.

Can you spin a web? If so, of what size or sizes?

I don’t do Spider-Man jokes.

I understand. If you used the teleporting device of Seth Brundle, but there was a common house spider in there with you, would you become half spider, half man-spider or would it not make much difference at all?

According to the movie, half my DNA would be overwritten with that of the spider, so yeah probably. Are we going to talk about my qualifications as a biologist, an engineer, and an administrator?

I’m sorry, the remainder of the interview will consist of The Spider questions. Now, are you attracted to spider women or human women?

Neither, I guess; male spiders often put their seed into a tiny web, which they then move to their pedipalps, which they then inject into the female’s genital opening.

So, what about a human woman who was wearing a fake spider vagina? Would you put your seed web into that?

Would you have sex with a monkey that had a human vagina?

This interview isn’t about me. What about The Outlaw?

The shapeshifting super-criminal with delusions about being my arch-nemesis?

What if you were somewhere, say a club or a bus stop or something, and there was a beautiful red head there giving you the eye.

…uh-huh…

She offers to have sex with you, but you think she might be The Outlaw.

Why? Can I tell she’s a meta or something?

No. You’re just feeling paranoid that day.

I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

She guarantees it will be the best sex of your life, and you’ll never know if it was The Outlaw or not.

I don’t know…yeah, I guess. If I’d never know.

It was The Outlaw.

Aw, c’mon!

It was The Outlaw. Deal with it. What’s spider porn like?

Pretty hot, but remember that depending on the species, the female will liquify and drink the male after.

Fair enough. When people dress in spider costumes and have sex, are they still called furries? 

I don’t know.

Because you have those little hairs on your legs.

I…still don’t know.

That’s all the questions I have for you today. Thank you for coming.

Did I get the job?

No, we don’t hire dirty spiders.  

With thanks to Saturday Night Live and Christopher Walken.

A Lone Post Emerges From a Desolate Wasteland

Hey, I spend most of last week being the only clerk on the barge and not getting a lot of sleep and not even being in the office during the hours where we're allowed to be on the internet and it was a real drag and I even took a few days off of NaNoWriMo so I'm behind on that too. Super-swear, I'll have some stuff up this week.

But hey, at least the weekend music is still updating.

Oh, November's theme seems to be the uplifting topic of domestic abuse.






Well...enjoy that then.

NaNoWriMo 2012 Update

We’re at the halfway point. How is everyone doing? Good. I’m actually halfway done. It is fucking eerie to be halfway done with a writing assignment halfway to the due date. That shit has not happened in a long, long time.

Speaking of ancient history, Monday and Tuesday officially marked the last week of Quinius. I messed it up again this year, but the things I got right were clearly great moments where I entered the very heart of my holiday and felt it beat. I wish I could be less douchey and vague about it, but that’s what I gots!

Back to NaNoWriMo. I’m at the halfway point, which should mean I’m halfway done with the story I wanted to tell. Not so! Let me demonstrate how behind/off track I am here:

NaNoWriMo 2011: The Denver Five excerpt

Eric Roberts had been working with UNITY from the very beginning. When the Lassick Incident broke, no one knew how to handle a mentally unstable, highly-manifested metahuman. He was a psychologist specializing in anxiety disorders at the time He had an office and estate in New York state, paid for with his empathic abilities, telling people about how the world wasn’t the harsh and unforgiving entity they’d imagine it was. He convinced people to trust in the innate kindness of others, to believe that most people wanted to help others.

When he’d seen the Lassick Incident, he’d been comfortable saying those words while hiding his own meta abilities. He’d been comfortable telling himself that discretion was a reasonable route when so much of mankind was still coming to grips with the implications of metahumanity, all too aware of how easy it was for people to focus exclusively on the dangers life’s changes presented at the loss of those opportunities.

Stopping Lassick and saving his victims cost Eric Roberts more than a comfortable practice and a nice house, but now, after helping so many metas become bearers of that message, he didn’t doubt it was the right thing for him to do.

None the less, there were less rewarding days, like today, when an invisible metahuman walks into his office, stands on his ceiling, and asks to sign up for UNITY training.

“I assume that your abilities consist of enhanced strength and the ability to mimic the coloration of any toaster pastry.”

“Um, no. I can turn invisible.” The voice sounded nervous and serious; either too stupid to get the joke or too serious, “I can also fly.”

Young too. Anxious. He took a moment to chide himself for trying to turn everyone into nails for his particular specialty of hammer.

“I think I, um, might have a selective ability to channel fundamental forces around my Ehm-field.”

Roberts leaned back. Definitely serious. And anxious. Middle class. Male. Not stupid.

“That’s certainly a thought. How much do you know about Ehm theory?”

“Just a little bit. I, uh, read about on net-uh, the internet.”

Definitely middle class and smart, but he’s pretending not to be. He wants to be the type of average citizen that doesn’t use net-plus.

Not everyone liked UNITY. Some people didn’t like it because they didn’t like metas. They didn’t like the idea of individual people randomly manifesting super human powers, they didn’t like the culture of acceptance that had largely grown up around such different people, and they didn’t like the thought that it was now slightly more likely that the person next to them in line at the grocery store could incinerate them with their eyes. There were also people who thought metas were all fine and good up to being the saviors of humanity, but who didn’t think that UNITY should be the default organization for training them. While not as vociferous or violent as the others, they did tend to be tenacious about undermining UNITY’s credibility at every turn.

Up to, and including, putting a sympathetic meta undercover at a UNITY facility.

“Go ahead and tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the rest. You might save yourself a few days of class time if you know what you’re talking about now.”

Dr. Roberts spent the next five minutes listening and nodding while filling out paperwork on his terminal. Yes, Ehm Theory was named for Doctor James Ehm, an Australian researcher believed to be the first person to manifest seven years ago. Yes, He created the first map of trans-atomic biocircuit structures created by human consciousness and how they could potentially store and release energies according to preexisting neural pathways. Yes, almost every human had an Ehm Field, but it was only manifested metas who could control and project theirs. His young visitor did a remarkable job with the dates and technical names, forgetting about his not-so-smart cover story in an effort to impress his audience.

“I am impressed,” Roberts told him at the end, “I just need your name and I’ll have your file all set up.”

“My name?”

“Yes, if that’s not too much trouble.”

There was a slight pause as Doctor Roberts considered the possibility that his visitor spent weeks practicing his approach, studying UNITY, Ehm Theory, and perhaps even Doctor Roberts and the Denver facility itself, but had never thought about the pseudonym he would use.

“I…uh, it’s just that I’m…” he was faltering badly. Roberts was worried that he’d bolt, not because he was eager to take a malcontent into his charge, but because UNITY training was a massive boon to every meta who received it and every human they interacted with thereafter.

“Take your time,” he put on his best professional voice of patience, “you can use an assumed name if you like. Most metas do.”

“I just don’t like having my name in computers. I don’t want to be shuffled around in some electronic system.” He was rambling now, too busy stalling for time to come up with an answer or a next step.

“Look, you can make something up. No pressure.”

“I’m just…cyber-paranoid.”

“That’s fine.”