#5, "Suppliant's Elegy"

And to think I’d expected a short snappy funny thing about vampires or something.

Go right here to read it. Spoilers may follow in this entry, especially in comments.


Well, staying up all night writing poetry and crying are two new ones on me, but there we go. An Experience. Quite a surreal one, too, because they weren’t my tears.

This thing took me all last night and all of today to write. I did only get home at 21:something yesterday, mind (film didn’t show; they faffed around then gave out refunds). The idea had been growing in my head throughout the tram ride home, and by then it was clear that this was what Wanted To Be Written. Indeed, it was clear that it would be written Right Now or nothing else would.

It was 03:00 when Slen tells me I finally went to sleep, and I was up at 10:00 continuing. It’s now gone 21:00, I’ve just posted it, and apart from a break to clear my head, I’ve been niggling painfully at this all the time. A night and a day. EPIC, MAN.

Would have gone faster if I’d had access to Thesaurus.com and Rhyme Zone. I was worried I was getting too reliant on those anyway…

The writing skill(?) is mine, the emotion was all courtesy of the narrating character. The narrating character will not answer any questions about this, though, so please direct (gentle) feedback to me.

I’m aware that “those” and “burnt” can be nitpicked, but the former is right for the character and the latter was bolstering rather an important line, so tough.

The title is half a nod to WS Gilbert (down to the waist). As for the other half, I knew an elegy was a mourning poem (or rather, knew there was a word and bashed Google and Wikipedia to find it). I’d never heard of elegaic meter before. I might try that sometime. Sounds hard.

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#4, "Manoeuvres"

Manoeuvres

4 February 2008

Ignore the awestruck roaring of the crowd:
Trajectory laid in—no, missed again.
A pause to lick the paws—so what? I’m proud—
Evaluate—huge pupils—ascertain
The squirming of the string—outflank! contain!
Left hook!—where was I? Routed! Battle won!
I tire. Away. You bore me to disdain.
Wait, don’t pick up the cord. I wasn’t done.
My back feet knead. You watch. This next bit’s fun.
Surprise assault! The fervent foe is cowed!
Wait, whizzing overhead?—kick, bite!—I’ll none
Of that! The rules, you fools, that’s not allowed.
No matter. Triumph crowns my grand campaign:
The treacherous, deceptive shoelace slain.


For Ree. Vespers, Charly and any other cat-lovers may join in too. ;)

Spenserian sonnet again but with even more restricted rhyme scheme, abab bcbc caca bb—I’m sure there’s a proper name for it*. Iambic pentameter again, obviously.

*edit: No, apparently not. Looks like I’m the only one on the web to date (with any combination of spaces). The only one to talk about it, anyway.

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#3, "I can sympathise, really. You're tiny and frail"

I forgot to do this on Friday and remembered late last night. The theme this week is a request from Zenbie.

“I can sympathise, really. You’re tiny and frail”

20 January 2008

I can sympathise, really. You’re tiny and frail
And you’ve no armour-plating, not even a tail,
Not to mention those teeth come to little avail—
You’re like wise little worms—
So this saddling business I’ll let you assail
On conditional terms.

But the nose-mounted maser is awkward and square
And the tack to support it unpleasant to wear
For it pinches and rubs—it’s as well I’ve no hair
Or I’d suffer a pluck—
My reptilian muzzle’s more comf’table bare
So you’re shit out of luck.


The form is called a Burns stanza, which I grabbed at random because it’s Burns supper season. The meter is anapestic tetrameter and dimeter. Or it is unless I screwed up, ROFL.

As a bonus because this was late, I’ll transcribe my notes from last night with the crap stanza I wrote purely to remind me how the format I’d chosen is supposed to go.

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Northern Lights (Golden Compass) film

Herewith the excoriation. Spoilers for books and film.

Not nearly enough establishing of the daemons, what they can do and so on. Considering I was there for the shapeshifting talking animals, I was entirely gypped. They needed one more reinforcement of “you never ever EVER touch someone else’s”, too.

Two instances of people with identical daemons (both pairs of guards done for stupid symmetry reasons), which is wrong.

Pantalaimon’s voice was appropriate. Hester‘s was absolutely perfect. Scoresby’s entire portrayal was an exaggeration, but perhaps he was so in the source. I didn’t notice him much in the books.

Underwhelmed by Iorek.

Two opportunities to establish “daemon dominating other daemon = human dominating other human” elegantly and subtly, both missed. For example, Lyra talking to Asriel — instead of “Quiet, Pan” and a brief cut to the daemons, we should have heard the conversation while seeing Stelmaria staring Pan down.

Tech was good. I had no mental image, but that could have been it.

No thoughts on Asriel and Coulter. Don’t have a mental image of them, and those two actors aren’t it. Stelmaria was pretty. The monkey wasn’t pretty or savage enough.

They surprised me by letting Lyra be properly scruffy and urchinlike.

Guy playing the Magisterium agent was perfect facially, although the combover was going a bit far.

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Let's see how long I can keep this up!

A chance word by Anke this evening reminded me of my semi-resolution. Just in time!

Thus, I give you: #1, 4 January 2008, “Confidence”

(If the paragraphs are annoying, I’ll give it to you in proper format. edit: they annoyed me, so it’s now in normal format with line-breaks.)

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Email allegedly sent to police in Edinburgh

True or not, it satisfies the major Friday afternoon requirement, i.e. is funny.

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Basaltine reference pictures

Putting them here because it’s very probable I’ll want to refer to these myself. Basaltine is my hellhound character. It’s pronounced “bazzle tine” (or “baz uhl tine” if you’re American, I guess).

To sum up, he has the build of a Rottie, the size of a mastiff and German Shepherd facial features.

Build (at ‘this’ point in time): Rottweiler
NB. Ignore tails. His is longer than a natural (undocked) Rottie.
Rottie 1
(He does not stand with his hocks that far back – that’s a show-dog pose.)
Rottie 2
(This pose is a bit too bull(dog)ish)
Rottie 3
(intent)
Rottie 4
Rottie 5
Rottie 6
(Swimming – definitely!)
Rottie 7
(Honest, I wasn’t going to hump your leg…)

Size (at ‘this’ point in time): Mastiff
Basaltine’s size varies over periods of years, so we have some leeway here.
Mastiff 1
(“I would put up with this all day”)
Mastiff 2
(rrruff!)
Mastiff 3
(…)
Mastiff et al
(Mastiff pup w brindle Dane for comparison)

Shape of head and ears: German Shepherd
GSD 1
(Tail is the length shown in this picture, but held with more of a curl when happy)
GSD 2
(good head and neck, but ignore deformed stance! Stupid show rituals. Hinds as low as that should be a fault IMHO)

GSD head/ears/face reference
GSD 3
(VERY characteristic expression when wheedling)
GSD 4
(B’s fur is shorter/skin is less loose around the neck – he’s all muscle)
GSD 5
(*Mutt melts*)
GSD 6
GSD 7
GSD 8

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Monster kitten bitchfight post!

Writing/roleplaying excerpt! I’m so buzzed to have got this thing finished at last. It’s a lot longer than it seemed while co-writing it.

Jaina the vampire slayer and an acquaintance meet and exchange, er, ‘greetings’.

(In that post, anything with a Y chromosome—or alien equivalent—belongs to me. Jaina Jade is the property of ReeToes.)

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Character meme v2

Well, when I filled in the first version of this one I said if anyone wanted to come up with some less uninspiring questions, I’d fill it in again. Anke took me up on that, so now I have to round up my headpuppies again and make them talk. Whee!

Instructions:
1. Choose up to five of your own characters.
2. Make them answer the following questions.

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Writing meme: of ice cream and knackers

Meme from Erin, because if there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s talking about my damned characters. (And reading about other people’s, in many cases.)

1. Choose up to five of your own characters.
2. Make them answer the following questions.

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Monkey: Journey to the West

I did go along to Monkey: Journey to the West, having managed to score a single ticket from someone working in the building, and it was pretty good.

I’m bad at conveying enthusiasm, but it was definitely a spectacle – lots of Chinese circus skills were given a passing demonstration (psst, the plate-twirling was fake!), and there was dancing and acrobatics. It’s primarily billed as an opera, though. The singing was pleasant. All in Mandarin. Great creature costumes and some good use of sets.

Monkey’s rages, screeching and bullying of the other characters were amusing. The monk Tripitaka was played by a girl (I think to convey purity), which won me over once I figured it out. Characterisation was brief; I wanted more of the main critters, especially with the fantastically charismatic artwork displayed around the auditorium and in the programme — which latter I would have bought if it had been priced more reasonably than a tenner ($20!).

Oh yeah; Charly will be pleased to hear that his favourite, Guan Yin, makes an appearance.

The artwork was more than just posters; during a few scene changes near the beginning, animations were projected onto the lowered curtain. These showed Monkey moving from place to place in between scenes, which were otherwise quite disjointed. Interesting approach; I expected the animations to continue throughout, and was quite disappointed when they didn’t, but I’ve always been a sucker for animated pretties.

The artwork was clearly the same style as the Gorillaz art/videos, which wasn’t a surprise because this is another project by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. I couldn’t see the pop influence in the music, but I don’t listen to much Blur or opera or Eastern music… so to me it seemed pretty Chinese and, well, pretty.

Some technical problems prevented my enjoying it too much. The performance is in Mandarin and subtitled; as an inveterate subtitle-watcher I was interested to see how this would be done. Subtitles were projected in white light onto a black strip at the bottom of the stage. Though clear and visible if you were at the front or up high, they weren’t readable to us from about halfway back in the stalls; quite simply, people’s heads were in the way. They were also having trouble with the pacing of the titles; they’d lag behind the action then three lines might appear in quick succession. I can read med jävla fart, and I still missed some.

The other main problem was that the performance uses the full height of the stage, with dancers on wires sailing overhead and the odd battle taking place in the air. But from where we were sitting, the gallery section above us prevented us seeing the top of the stage. So there was a certain amount of neck-craning, ducking down to see the action and up to see the subtitles.

Rehearsal photos from The Times (they may still block foreign IPs, I dunno)

Lots of Monkey images and video and stuff from the BBC site (I emailed them some corrections for the Imagine gallery captions. :)

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Heelwork to music

Yes, heelwork to music: that bit you see on Crufts every year when a person comes into the arena with an excited dog and does a little dance with him or her.

I’m a sucker for seeing dogs so obviously enjoying being so silly. In fact you could say I got chills… they’re multiplyin’…

Love how Carolyn uses her arm signals. Also, Golden Retrievers are made of 36 carat win. My sisters were Goldies.

And now — fight to the death!!21″!31

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Writer's block poetriez!

Omfd I just rediscovered something. Poetriez!

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The Tadpoles of Retard Island!

For your amusement and edifiction, a legend that’s been turning up in my head, along with assorted others. Snog and Anke’ve already seen this.

And you’ll need to read this first. (Just the god descriptions, not the bit marked ‘spoilers’.)

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Avatard backgrounds

It was fictitious mythology nite tonite. Hehe.

That’s background stuff I worked out for a co-op story I’m writing with others. My excuse for this enjoyable exercise (a legitimate one!) is that one character, loosely mine but technically shared, lives this stuff and I want to add some depth to her knowledge. The other reason is that the avatars are settling into my brain and demanding attention.

Religion isn’t interesting, but I love stories.


Piper was scared of the fireworks earlier this evening. Now he’s near my feet, curled up on the study room carpet and happily sleepy. Not only have the fireworks stopped, he has been brought upstairs, made a flash-bang-excluding nest, fed and provided with a litter tray. This cat really prefers indoor toilet facilities. Too bad for him, most of the year.

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How Brassycoat won the nectar of immortality, v4.0

Right, bitches, you asked for it…

…no, really, three of you did. So I listened. Therefore and whereupon, I give you the ‘hastily tacked-on magical flight chase scene deluxe’!

Just so you know, the thought process went like this (spoilers): Continue reading

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Oh no! Release rate 99!

More crazed tundra rodents behind the cut! (30kb image)

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