.317 x writing, movies, brokeness
Work was kind of crazy today. Not bad--I mean, it's hard to have a really horrible day when you're just standing behind a register ringing people up. But Mike texted Pat last night to say he wasn't coming to work (supposedly he had a funeral to go to, but we all know he thought he just wasn't needed because there were supposed to be two other checkers), and then when Janet showed up she was really sick and they ended up sending her home. Jimmy got back from vacation today, so he stayed until about 4:45, but then it was just Pat and me... with Tony outside loading mulch and such. Pat has apparently been awake over two days straight... his dad is in the hospital for something pretty serious and he's been trying to take care of that when he's not at work. So his temper was pretty frayed. I felt bad for him, but he didn't say anything mean to me--he was just glad I was there.
Will be glad when summer session 1 is over though, because then my work schedule will change and maybe not be quite so nonstop. I get up early all week now unless I oversleep, which happened Wednesday. Tomorrow and Sunday I have to be to work at 7, and damn but I'm tired. At least tomorrow afternoon I'll have plenty of time for an extended nap.
Need the money though. Danny and I are both feeling stretched thin. When I get paid Monday, all but $35 of my money will go straight to bills, and that's including the leftover money from this week's paycheck. Although the Monday after that my paycheck will be pretty much mine. But I need to save, build up funds again, if possible.
Saw Transformers last night, which is why I'm so tired right now. But it was really good, or at least I really enjoyed it. I was disappointed because we saw it in IMAX, and there was only one trailer before the IMAX version, for Harry Potter--which was awesome, don't get me wrong, but I'd been looking forward to the Avatar trailer. We watched it when we got home, and I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I'd be, but I think that's because it was pretty much just Aang and shots of fire nation ships and the air temple, which was all very cool. I'm fine with the casting for Aang, and I kind of like that they made his tattoos more realistic. But I'm still skeptical, and I feel that when there's a trailer with Zuko, Sokka, and Katara in it I'll feel more of that disappointment I expected.
Anyway, so Transformers was awesome, although I did speculate at certain things which I felt didn't quite make sense afterward, which seriously pissed Danny off for some reason. I can actually love a movie and still poke holes in it to a certain extent. If it wasn't possible for me to love a show/movie despite its loopholes, I wouldn't like Charmed. At all. Because its plotholes are gi-freaking-normous. Anyway, the only thing that grated at me a little in the movie was that I felt that, although they had a couple good lines, the twin robots who were supposed to be ghetto or whatever were WAY overdone. The rest had its highlights and its "eh"s, but was good overall.
But anyway. Writing.
As for "Unjoined" which I posted yesterday (on a custom friends filter, so only people like eotheod and lucidanomaly--AKA people whose journals I actively read rather than just occasionally--can see it), I certainly know it needs improvement. I've been thinking of ways to go about it.
I'm thinking the child needs to play a bigger role earlier on. I would expand the ending. I've considered other titles--perhaps "A Tragedy in Two Parts," which would make sense on two levels since the ending (when they are older) would match the beginning in development and kind of be like "part two," and also because of the eshari nature which makes their story so interesting and, well, depressing. I really want to get across that although it shouldn't be wrong for them to want to have separate bodies, the tragedy of it is that the consequence of descending into insanity is unavoidable. Of course, to the other Joined, this would be like proof that they are wrong, and it is punishment for going against nature.
Um anyway. Other title idea is "Children," or something with the word "children" in it, and theming the story a bit more around the idea that the eshari who follow in their footsteps are their children. Bring in their own son more. While they are Joined, Beia cannot bond with the child, though Sonne does a bit. But once they separate, in the week or so leading up to the judgment, Beia becomes very attached to her son. Then the consequence of leaving their son behind comes into play. They will end up leaving without him, but how willing will they be? Stuff to play with.
As to my other idea. I've been developing it with Danny. He's very helpful in giving me ideas and forcing me to look at my ideas from another perspective, although sometimes he frustrates me because he makes it sound like just because he doesn't understand or doesn't like one of my ideas, that makes it a bad one. But I appreciate that he's actually taken some interest in the story, enough to discuss it with me.
So we developed the world. This is a world in which science and magic used to coexist, but they did not get along (had different belief systems etc) and ended up going to war. Scientists are skeptical of magic. To perform magic you have to believe it works. To be directly affected by it also. And so it's hard to convince someone who doesn't believe of the validity of magic, because they cannot do it themselves and you cannot use it directly on them.
The magic system is life-based. It draws energy from life force, from soul. At the basic level, you use your own energy/soul as fuel. Creative magic empowers you because the energy you send out returns greater than it was before. Neutral magic doesn't increase or decrease your power. Destructive magic uses up the energy you put in--you don't get it back. So killing anything, even a blade of grass, decreases your power, though it's hardly noticeable on a small scale.
The most powerful mages can draw magic from the souls around them--trees, animals, and in even more powerful cases from people (although only people who believe in magic). But you can only draw from another life force an amount proportionate to what you're drawing from yourself. Thus you cannot draw the life force completely out of a creature, killing it, unless you kill yourself in the process. But you can draw a small percentage from lots of life forces, like the forest around you, and thus amplify your power greatly. And several mages drawing a portion of life force from the same creature can kill it together without harming themselves more than normal destructive magic use would.
It's easiest to affect life with magic, such as healing or strengthening or even altering shape, but it is also possible to affect other things. Elements more closely associated with life are easiest to expand into, like heat, water, and air.
But anyway. So long ago this war started, and it began to go too far. Scientists came up with weapons of atomic strength, mages started abusing destructive magic.... A council of "elders" or whatever got together to try to find a solution. What they ended up doing was dividing the world into two parallels, one home to magic and one to science. Every soul was divided into two bodies, one in each world, which of course had maor consequences. In order to ensure that science doesn't crop up in the magical world or vice versa, they set up certain precautions. The half of the soul in the scientific reality contains basically all of the person's innovative spirit and skepticism, and the half in the magical reality contains pretty much all of their "stillness," for lack of a better word. This results in drastically different worlds. The magical world never advances more than it already was because it lacks innovation and will to explore new types of magic. Magic there is also much, much weaker since it is based on the strength of the soul, and the people there now only have half a soul; no one can draw magic from outside themselves anymore, and it's rare to perform the more difficult types of magic. The scientific world is all about experiments. People never really stop to sit and think something through, they just go with a theory--which leads to lots of accidents, but also tons of leaps forward in technology. Magic-versers are meditative; science-versers are active, doers, never standing still.
So my lead character is someone who has a whole soul. Basically the idea is that her mother in each world miscarried one in a set of twins, but the extra soul didn't float into the ether--it clung to the remaining twin, leaving her with two souls, but stretched between two worlds so that in each world she has half of two souls--or one complete soul. In this way she can sort of "remember" her alternate self, and she is also very powerful, and she has the characteristics of both worlds so that she can be innovative in the magical reality and contemplative in the scientific one.
But that's enough for now, I'm so tired it's getting hard to concentrate. I'll go into the rest later, but suffice to summarize: she works in both worlds almost unconsciously toward reuniting them. It will cause huge problems, but ultimately the idea is that it is wrong for them to be separate--it is wrong for people to possess half-souls, to be incomplete.
Will be glad when summer session 1 is over though, because then my work schedule will change and maybe not be quite so nonstop. I get up early all week now unless I oversleep, which happened Wednesday. Tomorrow and Sunday I have to be to work at 7, and damn but I'm tired. At least tomorrow afternoon I'll have plenty of time for an extended nap.
Need the money though. Danny and I are both feeling stretched thin. When I get paid Monday, all but $35 of my money will go straight to bills, and that's including the leftover money from this week's paycheck. Although the Monday after that my paycheck will be pretty much mine. But I need to save, build up funds again, if possible.
Saw Transformers last night, which is why I'm so tired right now. But it was really good, or at least I really enjoyed it. I was disappointed because we saw it in IMAX, and there was only one trailer before the IMAX version, for Harry Potter--which was awesome, don't get me wrong, but I'd been looking forward to the Avatar trailer. We watched it when we got home, and I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I'd be, but I think that's because it was pretty much just Aang and shots of fire nation ships and the air temple, which was all very cool. I'm fine with the casting for Aang, and I kind of like that they made his tattoos more realistic. But I'm still skeptical, and I feel that when there's a trailer with Zuko, Sokka, and Katara in it I'll feel more of that disappointment I expected.
Anyway, so Transformers was awesome, although I did speculate at certain things which I felt didn't quite make sense afterward, which seriously pissed Danny off for some reason. I can actually love a movie and still poke holes in it to a certain extent. If it wasn't possible for me to love a show/movie despite its loopholes, I wouldn't like Charmed. At all. Because its plotholes are gi-freaking-normous. Anyway, the only thing that grated at me a little in the movie was that I felt that, although they had a couple good lines, the twin robots who were supposed to be ghetto or whatever were WAY overdone. The rest had its highlights and its "eh"s, but was good overall.
But anyway. Writing.
As for "Unjoined" which I posted yesterday (on a custom friends filter, so only people like eotheod and lucidanomaly--AKA people whose journals I actively read rather than just occasionally--can see it), I certainly know it needs improvement. I've been thinking of ways to go about it.
I'm thinking the child needs to play a bigger role earlier on. I would expand the ending. I've considered other titles--perhaps "A Tragedy in Two Parts," which would make sense on two levels since the ending (when they are older) would match the beginning in development and kind of be like "part two," and also because of the eshari nature which makes their story so interesting and, well, depressing. I really want to get across that although it shouldn't be wrong for them to want to have separate bodies, the tragedy of it is that the consequence of descending into insanity is unavoidable. Of course, to the other Joined, this would be like proof that they are wrong, and it is punishment for going against nature.
Um anyway. Other title idea is "Children," or something with the word "children" in it, and theming the story a bit more around the idea that the eshari who follow in their footsteps are their children. Bring in their own son more. While they are Joined, Beia cannot bond with the child, though Sonne does a bit. But once they separate, in the week or so leading up to the judgment, Beia becomes very attached to her son. Then the consequence of leaving their son behind comes into play. They will end up leaving without him, but how willing will they be? Stuff to play with.
As to my other idea. I've been developing it with Danny. He's very helpful in giving me ideas and forcing me to look at my ideas from another perspective, although sometimes he frustrates me because he makes it sound like just because he doesn't understand or doesn't like one of my ideas, that makes it a bad one. But I appreciate that he's actually taken some interest in the story, enough to discuss it with me.
So we developed the world. This is a world in which science and magic used to coexist, but they did not get along (had different belief systems etc) and ended up going to war. Scientists are skeptical of magic. To perform magic you have to believe it works. To be directly affected by it also. And so it's hard to convince someone who doesn't believe of the validity of magic, because they cannot do it themselves and you cannot use it directly on them.
The magic system is life-based. It draws energy from life force, from soul. At the basic level, you use your own energy/soul as fuel. Creative magic empowers you because the energy you send out returns greater than it was before. Neutral magic doesn't increase or decrease your power. Destructive magic uses up the energy you put in--you don't get it back. So killing anything, even a blade of grass, decreases your power, though it's hardly noticeable on a small scale.
The most powerful mages can draw magic from the souls around them--trees, animals, and in even more powerful cases from people (although only people who believe in magic). But you can only draw from another life force an amount proportionate to what you're drawing from yourself. Thus you cannot draw the life force completely out of a creature, killing it, unless you kill yourself in the process. But you can draw a small percentage from lots of life forces, like the forest around you, and thus amplify your power greatly. And several mages drawing a portion of life force from the same creature can kill it together without harming themselves more than normal destructive magic use would.
It's easiest to affect life with magic, such as healing or strengthening or even altering shape, but it is also possible to affect other things. Elements more closely associated with life are easiest to expand into, like heat, water, and air.
But anyway. So long ago this war started, and it began to go too far. Scientists came up with weapons of atomic strength, mages started abusing destructive magic.... A council of "elders" or whatever got together to try to find a solution. What they ended up doing was dividing the world into two parallels, one home to magic and one to science. Every soul was divided into two bodies, one in each world, which of course had maor consequences. In order to ensure that science doesn't crop up in the magical world or vice versa, they set up certain precautions. The half of the soul in the scientific reality contains basically all of the person's innovative spirit and skepticism, and the half in the magical reality contains pretty much all of their "stillness," for lack of a better word. This results in drastically different worlds. The magical world never advances more than it already was because it lacks innovation and will to explore new types of magic. Magic there is also much, much weaker since it is based on the strength of the soul, and the people there now only have half a soul; no one can draw magic from outside themselves anymore, and it's rare to perform the more difficult types of magic. The scientific world is all about experiments. People never really stop to sit and think something through, they just go with a theory--which leads to lots of accidents, but also tons of leaps forward in technology. Magic-versers are meditative; science-versers are active, doers, never standing still.
So my lead character is someone who has a whole soul. Basically the idea is that her mother in each world miscarried one in a set of twins, but the extra soul didn't float into the ether--it clung to the remaining twin, leaving her with two souls, but stretched between two worlds so that in each world she has half of two souls--or one complete soul. In this way she can sort of "remember" her alternate self, and she is also very powerful, and she has the characteristics of both worlds so that she can be innovative in the magical reality and contemplative in the scientific one.
But that's enough for now, I'm so tired it's getting hard to concentrate. I'll go into the rest later, but suffice to summarize: she works in both worlds almost unconsciously toward reuniting them. It will cause huge problems, but ultimately the idea is that it is wrong for them to be separate--it is wrong for people to possess half-souls, to be incomplete.