Flutterings

Assorted goings-on:

"Unharvest," a new poem by gretacabrel at Thirteen Myna Birds

Great match between Berdych and Nadal last night (Indian Wells quarterfinal). They are two of the fittest guys on the tour, and the shotmaking got crazy-good, including an exchange of smashes in the tiebreak.

Covering the overnight shift at Room in the Inn tonight. I love it when the guys and I can spend the evening watching sports on TV - yay for March Madness!

Via lore: manga collector sentenced to six-month term; Digital Manga and other publishers/distributors canvassed for responses

The proceeds from BPAL's Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot (inspired by the Neil Gaiman short story) are donated to the The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

There's a poem in Alison Luterman's See How We Almost Fly called "The World Card," which begins:

I always wanted the World card,
naked androgynous figure striding the globe,
adorned with laurel and lightning bolts...

and oh, how it travels, all the way to

I wanted to cross the sky and come back
bearing dead stars in my hands, fossil fuel
for poems. I wanted to inhale God's breath
till it singed my lungs; to be used up by love,
to hang from a tree by my heels.
"Be careful," the old fortune-teller advised me shrewdly
at the shop where I paid her ten bucks
to turn the deck over in her ringed, swollen fingers.
"It's not always a good thing, you know --"
but I wouldn't let her finish. I didn't want good,
good was too small. I wanted the world.

From cbldf.org, via a friend: "The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has signed on as a special consultant to the defense of Chistopher Handley, an Iowa collector who faces up to 20 years in prison for possession of manga."

This is perhaps a good time to note that the BPAL scents inspired by the works of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have raised over $38,000 for the CBLDF (as of earlier this summer, and not specific to this case. As Gaiman has observed, "there are always worms nibbling away at the First Amendment").

(Disclosure: I didn't buy it direct, but I do own an imp of "Madame Tracy" and it's very nice indeed.)

Via Gaiman's blog: New Yorker vs. xkcd cartoon-off. Note use of "pulled a Palin" in one of the captions -- I wonder how long that phrase will stay comprehendable in general usage?

*thinks back to Mondale vs. Hart*
*slings cardigan over hourglass, wrenches concentration back to chores*

(1) Lack of immediate feedback doesn't mean your fic sucked. It may mean you wrote a pairing or rating that doesn't happen to appeal to the hordes. It may mean your scenario or universe isn't one that lends itself to a single sit-down skim-through and quick review. It may mean your usual peeps are going out of their minds with OMG HANUKKAH STARTS TOMORROW or other seasonal madness (when not procrastinating on coping with said madness by peeking very randomly at fics) and are holding off on several shiploads of reading until later this winter (especially the long'uns). It almost definitely means there are a couple of lurkers (or more!) who haven't quite worked up the nerve to tell you how much they enjoyed your story, because they're afeared of sounding stupid or shallow (note to the lurkers: be brave! Feedback is a wonderful thing! It encourages more fic!), or they're flummoxed by the interface, or because the !@#@# server went down just as they finally worked up the nerve to click the magic make-the-author-happy button (or won't accept their security code, or some other nonsense. The SnuSa site is working like a dream, but this has happened to me on at other archives from time to time). Or they're just indolent.

ETA: Or they got distracted by a dog throwing up on the carpet just as they were about to tell you how brilliant you are. Etc., dammit. Dinnae fash yersels over comment counts and other manifestations of popularity or lack thereof, because therein lies madness, including the odd syndrome of folks not realizing that manifestations of neediness and fragility = reader repellent. (Perhaps I simply have the heart of a black mountain troll (to steal Lee's phrase), but Author Notes along the lines of "Be kind to me" tend to trigger exactly the opposite impulse in me -- i.e., it wakes up an insane urge to kick puppies.)

(I know I've held forth on this subject before, but there are a lot of new writers/readers in this year's fests, so it seemed worth saying this again.)

(2) I will bet a tall skim cappucino (no sugar or syrups for me, thanks) that Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered (RL/SS, AU, rated R, 33000 words) is by either McKay or someone whose style very closely resembles hers. I am stating this publicly even though I was dead wrong on most of my guesses in last year's fest, because the suggestion that McKay might have written it will lure some of you into reading it now instead of saving it for later. *eg* The characterizations remind me of some of her other Snapes and Reguluses -- and speaking of Regulus, he's a delight in this. And so's the secondary pairing and the casting and the very detailed plotting. (I like AUs - when they're done well, the cleverness warms my toes and the characeterisations often make me think harder about canon. Good stuff.)

(3) A new handful of imps arrived in the mail over the weekend. The BYM liked Ivanushka and Long Night Moon best, and wasn't so crazy about Aunt Caroline's Joy Mojo (a frimp) or Sagittarius. He likes scents to be on the subtle side.

Lab descriptions:
LONG NIGHT MOON
The nights are at their longest, the sky is at its darkest. The air is still with reflective silence.

A bouquet of night-blooming flowers, petals dusted with frost. Cereus, moonflower accord, night phlox, honeysuckle, silver thyme, white mint, and blue musk.


SAGITTARIUS
Mutable Fire: the essence of striving.
Sage, clove, dandelion, balm of gilead, fig, and chamomile.


IVANUSHKA
Soft, velvety fur and warm musk, brushed by forest woods and dusted by dry leaves.

My initial impressions: I wasn't wowed by any of them, but none of them were "OMG no" either.
Ivanuskha (decant) I have to sniff hard to smell at all (not unlike Ozymandias). Kind of powdery.
Long Night Moon (decant) - sweet but not cloying. Has a bit of a bite to it - maybe a winter version of Gemini?
Sagittarius (decant) - kind of sunny and mild. I think it's the chamomile. (Doesn't quite fit the name, associations with arrows notwithstanding.)
Sol (decant from a different circle, received earlier) - heavier, more aggressive scent.
Cleopatra's Veil (sample from a different manufacturer) - interesting and pleasant. Reminds me of Chanel No. 5, but I'm not sure if they've actually anything in common. It just tickled that tendril of my sense-memory.
Aunt Caroline's Joy Mojo (lab imp) - very flamboyant. Very orange, which I personally like. (Probably wouldn't smell all that good on me, but I'll keep it for the "staying awake until stupid hours trying to catch up" nights.)

And on that note, I'm off to make cranberry-orange relish, run a gadzillion errands, and then return to hardcore comma mining. *g* *hugs all y'all*

PSA: If you're writing HP fic, do not use the word "graduate" wrt Hogwarts. To quote flamewarrior's page, "We don't graduate from school, only from university - and a graduate is someone who has completed a degree course. We simply leave school."

[This is one of those things I was clueless about myself until something came up in LJ's hp_britglish comm, and now it throws me out of a story when I see it. I happened to peek at two fics this weekend that had intriguing plots but multiple references to "when we graduated"... *sigh*]

BPAL: Tried "Despair" just now (decant of a discontinued scent). First impression is that it's actually rather sweet. Description from Kelly Neumeier: Roman chamomile, rosewood, cypress, Rose Otto, lavender, sandalwood and ylang ylang. It's on the light side -- not unpleasant, but not a standout for me.

Tears of the Phoenix: received acceptances today for two poems and three drabbles. Wheeyay! (Note: they're still taking submissions until 1 December.)

SnuSa: The good news is that I figured out what-all was wrong with the story before inflicting it upon my beta, for a change. The bad news is that I'd already eked out over 6,000 words -- some of them real darlings, too! -- and more than half of them aren't going to end up in the new version. The good news is that I'm 1,095 words into the rewrite and it's so much better than the original draft it makes me want to dance. The bad news is that it's shedding yet more light on yet more plot-cracks, and they're probably also going to require structural renovations rather merely a bit of solder and sandpaper, and DAMMIT, WHY DOESN'T MY BRAIN LOCK ONTO THESE THINGS WHEN IT'S SUPPOSED TO instead of truffling around? Cripes.

Anyway, I've had to request an extension. It's frustrating in that I'd anticipated being done by now, but being granted the time to finish it properly is a Very Good Thing. Also, aggravating as this plotbunny has been, I'm simultaneously entranced by its shenanigans: I thought I understood where it was headed next, and I thought I had a solid grip on the title, the opening line, supporting characters, setting, and a whole host of other details, and that I was stalled only on finding the precise words for the scene I'd reached. It's maddening having to chase the beast all over creation, and it will hurt if, after all this, I end up flat on my face, but right now I keep tumbling around bits of story in my head and trying to suss out how they might fit together, and they keep surprising me, and that makes me giddy.