For dragon enthusiasts
I did some backend work today. Everything should be up and running. There are no more new user registrations, as they all seemed to be spam.
I live on a 6.5 day week, and I’m doing Gerard next in the Nine. Given I write with the linearity squirrels run across roadways, expect a four chapter digression on Amber’s dental care scene, and illegal flouride-based shadow raves. Follow your dreams, child. Follow your dreams because they stole my money.
Who is she?
Tatianna is a created person out of shadow. She was Ledes’s last painting, a full-sized portrait of Atiana, a dead woman he bore unrequited love for. She was his Atiana as he saw her, perfect, dark, and beautiful. The creation of the painting and the drugs killed him.
Melies conjured her. Tatianna gained some knowledge from Ledes, her painter, including language and rough social norms, and some knowledge from Melies, including the basics of conjuration. She was given to Julian as a gift, and he wanted more, instructing her to remain with Melies and learn more conjuration. After teaching her, Melies took her on the pathways to Amber and gifted her to Julian again.
The shadow-magic conjuration of Tenthet did not work in Amber, and the conjuration failed. She fled Melies and Julian, and arrived in Amber alone. By her narrative appearance she is almost broke, and an accessory to robbery and possibly murder. It is unknown if she and Obrecht killed people.
What does she want?
1) A sense of self-worth and power over her own outcomes. Melies didn’t see her as a thing, Ledes created her as personal erotica, and Julian cared little for creatures of shadow. All her decisions were made for her until she fled in the forests of Arden. She wants self-determination as well as to be a person.
2) To be recognized as powerful
3) To live
Why can’t she have it?
1) She’s broke. Poverty cares nothing for who you are. She doesn’t have the money to buy a better life.
1a) Her conjuration doesn’t work in Amber. It’s the only thing she knew how to do in Tenthet and one of two sources of her power up until arriving in Arden. It doesn’t work any more. (The other source of power, sexuality, is somewhat less than she thought because there are a lot of beautiful women in Amber, more in shadow, and the people with true power, the scions of Oberon, aren’t limited by what’s around. Julian specifically includes a bolded asterisk.)
2) Shadow conjuration doesn’t work in Amber, and she isn’t of the blood.
3) Bleys is chasing her for her ring.
The Nine at AO3 Nine for Mortal Man Doomed to Die
I take commas out of titles. In JRRT’s original poem there was a comma. I know. I took it out.
Doing some updating this weekend. Will probably break the website.
Good luck, self.
March 14th is pi Day among American nerds. Yes, it’s lower case because that’s how I’ve always seen it, and pi day isn’t a very serious thing. To be a bit more accurate, pi is the lowercase Greek character, so that’s the justification. Really it’s just habit. We write month/day/year, so 3/14/YY. March 14, 2015 was a great day in the annals of useless date-based trivia, and I celebrated it greatly.
I think I had toast or something.
Anyway, as we dive into a cesspool of what will no-doubt become natinoalistic diatribes (actually, I just won’t approve any comments on this post) we lament those who lose from pi day: everyone who writes day/month/year. April doesn’t have 31 days, so they’re out of pi luck. I guess they could have pi on 3 Jan, 2014, but that comes but once a century. Lament with me. That’s 99% less pi.
People who write year, month, day, don’t get pi day but once a century either, as 2003/1/4 is past and 2103/1/4 is coming. I don’t know anyone who writes YY/DD/MM or Y/DD/MM. I am sorta curious, though.
Effort moves the keys. Inspiration comes out of movement. Discipline keeps the keys moving.
Mwahahaha. A review and sale. My evil power is growing.
Also, I gotta be clearer at a few points. I’ve got a scheme, but that doesn’t do me any good if it just looks like typos.
Time to post Amber/ME and go to the mountains.
Welcome to Wednesday, my dudes.
I suppose Thursday arrived by now, but Wednesday remains a state of mind, a place in my heart. Wednesday remains for me the day, and on this day I give thanks to Wednesday.
Tell me if you figure out my trick this post.
But as we, in the course of endeavor, come to find that our time rolls inexorably onwards, like a high-velocity floor mat carrying us into the future, only the date and time changes. All else remains equal. We see moving lights and colors, hear the events on autoplay videos imbedded into news stories we only wanted to read, and subjugate ourselves to the merciless torment of social media. Life continues. Time changes little, and things continue. While confinement to a flat circle builds walls around us that trap and chase us through time, we never the less must fight ruthlessly and relentlessly against habit. We must battle, and we must win.
Unnatural and yet unobvious, goblins speak in this manner. That idea excites me. My next book will run with it, for the idea has potential. It requires a retcon, but authorship fails to spark joy if we prohibit ourselves from minor games. Play games with words like basketball players dribble their balls, and the twitteratee mock the world. Cry havoc and loose the dogs. Please yourself.
My ambition to hit ~2k everyday is startling difficult. It’s not the 2k, it’s the everyday part. I write in fits and spurts. I did something like 4k today, but on many days I struggle to hit 300.
I tell myself a few things.
First, hitting wordcount is more important than not deleting wordcount later. This is a practiced skill or developed muscle. It’s more important to make progress than make good progress, for quality can be checked and revised later. Besides, a lot of the time what I do is fine, and it’s only my own poor estimation of what I write that is the problem.
Second, I tried the only writing when inspired before, and it doesn’t work. Everyone who writes will tell you this. All the great authors who write about writing agree. You’ve got to move the cursor.
Third, I have no idea what you people want.
Fourth, I’m running out of time. I’m coming to the end of this experiment of mine soon, and my attempts to stave it off are growing weak. I’m running low on money and time, and I won’t be able to do this full-time much longer.
Often I set deadlines for myself and ignore them because I’m the one setting deadlines. This isn’t one of those deadlines. This is harsh reality, and if I don’t make a lot of progress and soon, this is all going to end. Then it’s back in the other place.
You know that feeling of last-minute panic? I’ve been getting a vague anxiety for a while, and that’s a diffuse, disrupting terror that makes progress difficult. That’s falling away. Now I think of bank statements and rent payments, and if I don’t get things done, my bank will get me. I’m not in dread of some vague anything; I know I’m running out of time. And that’s focus. I’m not going out with a half-assed “I gave it my best” when I darn well know I didn’t. This little fantasy of mine is getting both buttcheeks of motivation, and boys and girls, I do squats.
Goblins in general have a language more devoted to function over form than most human tongues. Names of places and things are often concatenations of nouns or simple phrases. Phonetics are not as commonly used. Personal names are occasionally pure phonetics as well as shortened phrases that no longer have intrinsic meaning, but for places and things, this is uncommon. The separation between names and titles in non-people is slight in most goblin tongues.
Bloodharvest itself was named so because it was what goblins call a prison and what humans would call an extermination camp. The prisoners were inflicted with needless cruelty in the form of toil. While literal efforts were devoted to digging, the end goal of such labor was death of the prisoners. Their blood was harvested.
Complexity arose as it does in all aspects of goblin society by the effects of Krat. All fights are one on one in Krat. Astrologamage Elegy found no humans or elves in Bloodharvest other than Aehr’s comrades, but a great many goblin prisoners. These prisoners could not be executed explicitly, for in Krat they could fight their captors one on one until death or freedom. The combination of beating, starvation, and the perils of unsafe digging itself executed the prisoners instead.
The Temple of Luminance is another goblin location. That is the location’s name, and it is important to keep in mind that the distinction between ‘Temple of Luminance’ as a proper noun and temple as a title with luminance a modifier simply isn’t a strong distinction. Another location called the Temple of Thunder is not necessarily closer connection to the Temple of Luminance than two men, George Phillips and George Smith, are because they share a given name.
The neighbors unforunately rented an apartment in an active volcano. This is very sad. From time to time the floor of their apartment fills with lava, as one would expect, and this induces the appropriate amount of screaming from their children.
As things go, that isn’t bad.
Edit: Jokes aside, I actually really like this kind of noise. It’s nice; it means things are okay.