Random Update, plus NaNo Fail
...which is not to say that I'm failing at NaNo, just that I'm not really liking my story at this point. It feels like of like a giant pile of words that got mushed together. Also: I keep accidentally switching to present tense, because I love writing in present tense. But I'm stupid and didn't think that I would be able to carry present tense through a 50,000 word novel, so I started writing the thing in past tense. And now, 31,000 words in, I can't really change it.
I am using present tense for flashbacks, though. Odd, stylistic choice.
In other news, laser tag is awesome. Very awesome. Even if it is incredibly annoying when you end up stuck in the same group as 20 eight-year-old boys who follow you around, clump into giant groups, and whine whenever they get shot.
However, sniping everyone from a corner is lovely. Also: I didn't know that my green nail polish fluoresced under black lights. Apparently, it does.
Finally starting to get into playing Assassin's Creed (the original one, not the new one), even though I only end up playing it for maybe 15-30 minutes at a time. It's far more fun when you have friends there to make amusing comments at the screen with.
Playing it kind of reminds me of my old Prince of Persia days, when I would accidentally jump off things the wrong way and fall to my death. Only now it's: 'Look! Altair's jumping off that tower into the hay! Oh, the hay was on the other side of that...oops', and 'Oooo, a river! Let's jump it! OMG I'M DROWNING ALTAIR YOU SUCK SO MUCH!!!'
...I have fun yelling at video games.
And, just because I can, here's some writing from a loooong time ago. Meaning March/April, after I finished playing Kotor and decided that I'd much rather ship Revan with Canderous than with Carth.
He doesn't think of her as a kid even though he calls her by it, the word making her roll her eyes at him like he was an idiot of some sort. For a moment, he thinks she's going to make some comment about how he should call her by her name, but instead he gets a lopsided smile before she spins on her heels and strides away, her vibroblades bouncing at her hip in time with her step.
She doesn't walk like a kid, that's for sure. But she doesn't walk like a woman either, not like the type of women he's seen all too often, the ones with the crimson painted lips and heels too tall to run in, the ones who swing their hips and smile coyly and whisper lies and promises through ribbons of smoke, the scent of spice rising from powdered faces. She's not sex on legs, not an invitation, nothing like cantina whores and the degraded filth of Nar Shadaa and the corridors of Taris' hidden levels.
Instead, she's deadly as sin, a hooded viper of a women with wild hair and pale eyes against dark skin, and she walks with a hand always brushing against the hilt of one of the blades at her side. Sometimes, she walks with her heels hitting the ground first, a distinctive tap-tap through the ship to announce her presence, sometimes with the tips of her toes hitting first, her weight never settled, ready to pivot and turn and run two feet of sonic-charged metal through someone's ribcage.
It's the walk the tells him the most about a person, and her walk is that of someone who knows death and violence.
It's something he can respect, even as he calls her kid instead of anything else.
*
He's the only one on the ship when she comes back, but he's quiet and thinks that she's overlooked him when she heads straight to the workbench and begins fiddling with bits of metal and something that shines like crystal. Her fingers are long and dark, picking through rings of steel and threading wires. She's good with circuitry, he thinks as he continues to clean detritus and grit out of the power cell slot on one of his blaster rifles. Good with droids and doors and anything they need to get into. He's more of the physical sort, the one who will bash his way through whatever he needs to get through, lacking the finesse to fit two wires together or the skills to sit for minutes or hours and listen to the clicking and beeping of wires to decode the sequence to a door.
Still, he's (somewhat) surprised when she throws down whatever she's working on so that it clangs - metal on metal - and then lets herself sort of fall back onto the ground so that she's lying all sprawled out on the grating.
There's something elegant in her fall, he thinks, how she lands so that the force slides over her spine, how her arms come out on either side of her for a moment, hit the ground a moment after the rest of her and absorb the impact like flesh shock absorbers. It's the fall of someone who knows how to fall (and he knows the forms, how the body hits the ground with limbs in positions that keep the shock from lingering in the bones, how to roll and fall and stay within feet of the starting place).
“Hey,” she says, her eyes closed. Just one word, nothing else. He waits for a few moments before saying anything.
“You need something?” he says (asks), gruffly, his eyes (not) on her.
“Oh,” she says, and she blows at the unruly dark hair that's fallen onto her dark face, across her light eyes. “Just, you know, a good lens and a power crystal that's not flawed. This one's no good; it doesn't matter if I get anything else hooked up right; no crystal, no lightsaber.”
There's silence for a moment, a minute, save for the whisk of stained fabric over power cells and the click of her nails on the grating of the floor.
“Can't help you there,” he finally says. “Don't care much for this Jedi stuff.”
“Hm.” She hums low in her throat, like some sort of large feline humanoid. “Can't say I do, either. It feels...wrong, somehow. But right. Like...” She stretches a hand up before her, like she can find the answer in the air. “It's like when you inject yourself with kolto, you know? When you jam that needle into your skin and you let it just seep into your veins, and you know it's not supposed to be there, but at the same time everything just starts working again, and all your muscles and skin and stuff start reknitting and rebuilding? Or...I dunno. Bad analogy.” She shakes her head and the metal clasp in her hair clicks on the metal of the ground.
“Makes sense,” he tells her, (not) watching the dark curls of her hair slide through the grating and across metal. His fingers tap across his blaster, slide the power cell back into place.
“Really.”
“No,” he says, and from this angle he can see the smile curve her lips, the flash of white teeth against all that darkness. “Me, I never got this whole force thing. To--”
“Metaphysical?”
“Hm.” He sights down the blaster, checking the alignment. “Do they know they gave you a defective crystal?”
She shrugs, cloth catching on metal. Her white shirt rides up, bunching around her middle. “Maybe. Could always be part of the test, you know. Should have caught on to it sooner, through.” She pushes at the ground, forcing herself up. He (doesn't) watch the curve of her spin as she curls up and balances herself on the balls of her feet before standing, (doesn't) see the vertebra click and move under the softness of her shirt.
“You going somewhere, kid?” he says, instead of anything else he could have said.
She stretches, arms rising above her head for a moment, before she flashes him a white toothed smile. “Yeah. Gonna go get myself a lightsaber made properly.”
In even other news, the 's' key on my laptop keeps sticking. This is not good.
I am using present tense for flashbacks, though. Odd, stylistic choice.
In other news, laser tag is awesome. Very awesome. Even if it is incredibly annoying when you end up stuck in the same group as 20 eight-year-old boys who follow you around, clump into giant groups, and whine whenever they get shot.
However, sniping everyone from a corner is lovely. Also: I didn't know that my green nail polish fluoresced under black lights. Apparently, it does.
Finally starting to get into playing Assassin's Creed (the original one, not the new one), even though I only end up playing it for maybe 15-30 minutes at a time. It's far more fun when you have friends there to make amusing comments at the screen with.
Playing it kind of reminds me of my old Prince of Persia days, when I would accidentally jump off things the wrong way and fall to my death. Only now it's: 'Look! Altair's jumping off that tower into the hay! Oh, the hay was on the other side of that...oops', and 'Oooo, a river! Let's jump it! OMG I'M DROWNING ALTAIR YOU SUCK SO MUCH!!!'
...I have fun yelling at video games.
And, just because I can, here's some writing from a loooong time ago. Meaning March/April, after I finished playing Kotor and decided that I'd much rather ship Revan with Canderous than with Carth.
He doesn't think of her as a kid even though he calls her by it, the word making her roll her eyes at him like he was an idiot of some sort. For a moment, he thinks she's going to make some comment about how he should call her by her name, but instead he gets a lopsided smile before she spins on her heels and strides away, her vibroblades bouncing at her hip in time with her step.
She doesn't walk like a kid, that's for sure. But she doesn't walk like a woman either, not like the type of women he's seen all too often, the ones with the crimson painted lips and heels too tall to run in, the ones who swing their hips and smile coyly and whisper lies and promises through ribbons of smoke, the scent of spice rising from powdered faces. She's not sex on legs, not an invitation, nothing like cantina whores and the degraded filth of Nar Shadaa and the corridors of Taris' hidden levels.
Instead, she's deadly as sin, a hooded viper of a women with wild hair and pale eyes against dark skin, and she walks with a hand always brushing against the hilt of one of the blades at her side. Sometimes, she walks with her heels hitting the ground first, a distinctive tap-tap through the ship to announce her presence, sometimes with the tips of her toes hitting first, her weight never settled, ready to pivot and turn and run two feet of sonic-charged metal through someone's ribcage.
It's the walk the tells him the most about a person, and her walk is that of someone who knows death and violence.
It's something he can respect, even as he calls her kid instead of anything else.
*
He's the only one on the ship when she comes back, but he's quiet and thinks that she's overlooked him when she heads straight to the workbench and begins fiddling with bits of metal and something that shines like crystal. Her fingers are long and dark, picking through rings of steel and threading wires. She's good with circuitry, he thinks as he continues to clean detritus and grit out of the power cell slot on one of his blaster rifles. Good with droids and doors and anything they need to get into. He's more of the physical sort, the one who will bash his way through whatever he needs to get through, lacking the finesse to fit two wires together or the skills to sit for minutes or hours and listen to the clicking and beeping of wires to decode the sequence to a door.
Still, he's (somewhat) surprised when she throws down whatever she's working on so that it clangs - metal on metal - and then lets herself sort of fall back onto the ground so that she's lying all sprawled out on the grating.
There's something elegant in her fall, he thinks, how she lands so that the force slides over her spine, how her arms come out on either side of her for a moment, hit the ground a moment after the rest of her and absorb the impact like flesh shock absorbers. It's the fall of someone who knows how to fall (and he knows the forms, how the body hits the ground with limbs in positions that keep the shock from lingering in the bones, how to roll and fall and stay within feet of the starting place).
“Hey,” she says, her eyes closed. Just one word, nothing else. He waits for a few moments before saying anything.
“You need something?” he says (asks), gruffly, his eyes (not) on her.
“Oh,” she says, and she blows at the unruly dark hair that's fallen onto her dark face, across her light eyes. “Just, you know, a good lens and a power crystal that's not flawed. This one's no good; it doesn't matter if I get anything else hooked up right; no crystal, no lightsaber.”
There's silence for a moment, a minute, save for the whisk of stained fabric over power cells and the click of her nails on the grating of the floor.
“Can't help you there,” he finally says. “Don't care much for this Jedi stuff.”
“Hm.” She hums low in her throat, like some sort of large feline humanoid. “Can't say I do, either. It feels...wrong, somehow. But right. Like...” She stretches a hand up before her, like she can find the answer in the air. “It's like when you inject yourself with kolto, you know? When you jam that needle into your skin and you let it just seep into your veins, and you know it's not supposed to be there, but at the same time everything just starts working again, and all your muscles and skin and stuff start reknitting and rebuilding? Or...I dunno. Bad analogy.” She shakes her head and the metal clasp in her hair clicks on the metal of the ground.
“Makes sense,” he tells her, (not) watching the dark curls of her hair slide through the grating and across metal. His fingers tap across his blaster, slide the power cell back into place.
“Really.”
“No,” he says, and from this angle he can see the smile curve her lips, the flash of white teeth against all that darkness. “Me, I never got this whole force thing. To--”
“Metaphysical?”
“Hm.” He sights down the blaster, checking the alignment. “Do they know they gave you a defective crystal?”
She shrugs, cloth catching on metal. Her white shirt rides up, bunching around her middle. “Maybe. Could always be part of the test, you know. Should have caught on to it sooner, through.” She pushes at the ground, forcing herself up. He (doesn't) watch the curve of her spin as she curls up and balances herself on the balls of her feet before standing, (doesn't) see the vertebra click and move under the softness of her shirt.
“You going somewhere, kid?” he says, instead of anything else he could have said.
She stretches, arms rising above her head for a moment, before she flashes him a white toothed smile. “Yeah. Gonna go get myself a lightsaber made properly.”
In even other news, the 's' key on my laptop keeps sticking. This is not good.