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Thing that is not Star Trek:
- writing! crossed the 10k word mark. My outline is getting refined to the point where I think I know what the rest of the fic is going to look like. Mostly. I think I've gotten about 3/5 of it written right now? Possibly more. There still needs to be a lot of fleshing out and cleaning up, even once I get the first draft done. And code! I have some more code to write.

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First drafts are the worst. They take forever, are the most difficult and time consuming, and they're always so bad. This one is continuing. I don't know how long it will be eventually, but it's around 7000 words right now, and there's a significant chunk of it left to write (omg). I think the worst part about a first draft is that feeling of like "I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to have to keep writing anyway until I either have something finished or I figure it out!"

I also spent a lot of last night wrestling with writing a macro for Twine, and I just gave up on getting the behavior I wanted with it when I was up at 1am staring at it until my eyes were swimming. Twine is pretty great over the hood, but under the hood it's a fragile clusterfuck, and that makes it extremely frustrating to use. OH WELL. The macro that I now have mostly does what I want, and at least it's better than the default behavior.

On the other hand, the thrill of experimenting, of playing around with the structures and the flow of text, is really fun. I'm sure it will be a disaster of characterization, worldbuilding and pacing, but too bad! I will rock on!

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It was really great wandering around Somerville this weekend as part of Somerville Open Studios. I think part of it was just enjoying looking at art, and part of it was also getting to see artist studios, seeing the converted factories with squeaky wooden floors and exposed piping, the paints, the canvases, the woodworking tools, the messy doodles on the walls. I'm always impressed by the amount of creativity in people, the number of ways in which people chose to create new things and express themselves. Not all of the art I've seen has been got, perhaps not even most of it, but I still loved seeing it. I'm not sure I'll make this a yearly trip, but it was definitely worth doing this year. It didn't hurt that the weather was gorgeous.

I've been writing a decent amount lately. The best thing about Twine is that it tickles my writing and programming brains at the same time, which is really great. Most of the code is really simple, but I had a bug yesterday! And I fixed it! That was really fun. I still don't know if this story is going to work, if the pacing is too all over the place and video-gamey, if the worldbuilding is crap (though I have had some great conversations with people about it, which was good), if the plot is too non-sensical, if I can get the emotional builds and dips right. Still, I have a plot outline, mostly, and I have approximately 4k written and coded up. There's still a lot to get to, and there are a lot of places in those first 4k that need a lot of work (a lot a lot), but I'm still enjoying it. There's something both thrilling and frustrating about a first draft, about seeing how everything is coming together and yet how long everything takes.

I don't have many interesting or deep Iron Man 3 feelings. I guess as a series of scenes, I was very entertained, but as an overall storyline or character arc, it doesn't hold up at all. Pretty much every person I've spoken to has stronger feelings about it than I did.

I also bought KotOR 1 and 2 during this weekend's Steam sale. They actually work somewhat decently under wine, and it's hilarious how quickly computer graphics age. Still, all my adolescent feelings are still lingering, and I'm really looking forward to see what sorts of improvements the KotOR 2 restoration mod makes to the overall experience of that game.

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Things have been better this past week. Boston does feel like it's been putting itself back together, day by day, piece by piece. The MBTA buses say 'Boston Strong' and 'We are one Boston' on them where they used to only tell you the route number and destination. One Heart Boston sold out their T-shirts and totebags. These pictures make me sigh and sniffle a little. I saw buses and buses full of cops going to Sean Collier's memorial drive by my office window.

But those are the sad things. I want to talk about happy things too.

I have recently run into Twine as a storytelling tool, and now I am playing around with it. I have about 1000 words of one story already written, though there is all this plot that wants to happen, and ugh. Plot is so difficult. Feelings are so easy in comparison! But I think I enjoy the way this story feels wild and untested right now. It could be awful! People could hate it! Or not understand it! Or understand it and think it is a bunch of useless tripe!

The underlying code of Twine (or Twee, which is what I like using) is just this giant clusterfuck, but the platform itself is nicely put together in a way that makes things easy. I am a writer who likes thinking about structures of stories, of how to construct a story so that all the pieces fit together, and having a plaform that not only allows you to, but also basically demands that you, break up the flow of a story is exciting. It makes you think about structure in a whole new way.

ETA: Also, azephirin, I found that game that introduced me to Twine again! It's called ALL I WANT IS FOR ALL OF MY FRIENDS TO BECOME INSANELY POWERFUL (warning: music comes on suddenly). I didn't actually read it all the way through the first time through, and I should have. Even if you are not azephirin, you should read it.

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Title: If I Needed Someone
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~17,500
Summary: BDSM AU. Kurt may be as queer as a three dollar bill, but in New York he doesn't have to pretend to act like a proper sub on top of all of that. He can hold his head up high and make his own way through the big city without some dom holding his leash. He can be anything he wants.
Notes: Based on this kink meme prompt, though I have taken a few liberties with it. I've also borrowed bits and pieces of worldbuilding from helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed and etothepii's things you don't tell me. So much love to zulu for the beta.

DW | LJ | AO3 | Tumblr

One Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed, another at large

An MBTA officer was also shot and is in the hospital. An MIT Police Officer was shot and killed. The T has been shut down for the day, and pretty much all local area schools and universities have been closed.

Stay safe, you guys.

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There's this post I keep meaning to write, but I feel like maybe I'm not the one who should write it. So much of this feels too far away and yet too close. It's a tragedy that didn't touch me personally. But you know, I'm a writer. I process things by writing.

So here is a list of things:

1. If you want to donate blood, donate blood in a month or two. After a tragedy, the blood banks get flooded with donations, and the shelf life of blood is only a little less than a month.


2. It wasn't a beautiful day on Monday. It wasn't raining, but there were still gray clouds, and it was still a little cool. I lived two hours away from NYC on 9/11, and one of the things I remember about that day best was that there was a crystal clear sky, blue that stretched as far as the eye could see.


3. Boston is the first city that has ever felt like home to me. Sure, there have been houses and campuses and people, but Boston is the first city.


4. Massachusetts is one of two states who celebrates Patriots' Day. It seemed a little strange and a little silly to me when I first moved here. Don't we already have July 4? Why do we need this one, too? But now that I've been here for a few years, I get it. You don't need to explain it to me. I get it.


5. I was sitting in lunch yesterday, and my coworkers talked about it. "I was one block away. We heard the explosion and we thought that maybe it was a canon or something and then people started freaking out everywhere." "I was only a few blocks away, too. A cop came by and told us we couldn't keep standing around, that we should go inside. We had no idea what was going on, and there was all this noise and panic everywhere."


6. What gets to me about the Boston Marathon in particular is that it's such an international event, that it comes with such good will (even as the commuters curse its existence) from so many different places. I mentioned this a few times already to some people, that one thing that struck me about footage of the wreckage were those flags, so many different countries, flapping in the wind.


7. My commute has not changed. Sure, there are half-raised flags and there are new law-enforcement officials in the T stations where they weren't before, but the mechanics of my day are still the same. Maybe it's because I'm across the river, far away from ground zero. After something like this, you feel like something should be different. That we have been altered so irrevocably by this experience that it should show up somewhere that we can see, that things should slow down or stop. I go to work and I'm the same person that I was last week.


8. But maybe that's okay. Life goes on. It should.


9. This whole thing feels like an open wound, and it's healing. Boston will wear its scars. I know that this isn't unusual in other places, that this is every day for so many people. One of my other co-workers is from Columbia, and he has stories about the days when the drug cartels are angry about extradition to the US and put bombs in a shopping malls, just to make a point. People on my dwircle/flist were listening to air sirens in Tel Aviv just last year. Maybe it's selfish or maybe it's not, but I don't want this for us. I don't.


10. I hope Dennis Lehane is right about Boston. I want to believe that it's a place that will pick itself up, dust itself off and move on much the way it always has. I like think he'd know better than I would. This was his city long before it became mine.


11. There have been so many things that have made me cry in the aftermath of all this, you know, in a good way. And I hope that this is what we carry with us. There's been such an outpouring of love and support from all corners of the world, and there are so many heartwarming stories about the kindness and generosity of people. I wish it didn't take something like this to unlock that sort of goodness in people, but I guess, much like the weather around here, you need to see the worst it it to really understand what the best of it really means.

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There's been several explosions in Boston right on top of the marathon. From what I have heard, several people are dead, and many more are injured. I'm well outside of the chaos, and I have been all day, so don't worry about me.

I have been struggling a little with how I feel about this. It's Patriots' Day here in MA, in celebration of the battles of Lexington and Concord, and while it is a state holiday, this is the first year I've actually had it off from work. This morning, I went outside and walked down the street and ran into a friendly guy on a horse, yelling about how the regulars should get ready, the British were coming. There were people on the street, laughing and taking pictures. Lots of kids staring up in awe. The police were there to help control traffic.

They jokingly call it Marathon Monday here, because it is the day of the marathon, and it feels like the whole city shuts down to celebrate it. It has other meanings too, and it wouldn't surprise me if some revolutionary fuckhead decided he wanted to make a point.

If you've been following me for a while, you know how much I love Boston. This cuts deep. I was in class on 9/11 when the planes hit. We watched the news on TV. When the bell rang between periods, I felt myself walking around in a haze, unsure of what to do. I feel a little like that now.

But you know, I'm okay. So far, my friends are okay. That's the best we can hope for, I guess.

ETA: Boston peeps, @boston_police has been updating regularly: https://twitter.com/Boston_Police Stay safe.

ETA2: The Boston Globe seems to be updating more regularly: https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe

This entry was originally posted at http://thedeadparrot.dreamwidth.org/523276.html. You can comment there using OpenID or you can comment here if you prefer. :) comments there

Title: Some Boys
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~7000
Summary: Spring has always been Blaine's favorite season, when the first signs of green emerge from the patchy browns and grays of winter. Blaine goes to his NYADA audition in New York and stays with Kurt. They work through their feelings.
Notes: I started writing this about a month ago, way before all these new exciting spoilers came out, so it does not take any of them into account. The song from the title (and in the story) is Some Boys by Death Cab for Cutie.

DW | AO3 | LJ | Tumblr

I finished a draft of a new story! It needs so much work, but for now, I can go back to watching video game documentaries and getting thoroughly jossed by this show.

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