I just forget it's Friday every Friday basically.
The days all kind of run together when you have the same work schedule every day, is the thing.
And the days were VERY similar this week--I've been coding videos at breakneck pace. Finally we finished them all; I did about, I want to say 40 of 45 or so, and my fellow coders did the other five. Well, one of them only works 10 hours a week and the other is also doing other stuff on the project, because there's almost no project staff, so there was really no alternative...it was just never going to get done unless I did it so I figured, I'll just power through it.
The idea was to get it all squared away before December since data collection would slow down any coding, but now, who knows if we'll even have winter data collection? We only have two coaches consented as of today, and next week is Thanksgiving, so I don't think people are going to be thinking about our study. We need like...I thought it was 90 coaches, but then the other day project manager started talking about 70 coaches, so who even knows. Maybe 70 is the minimum we need or something. In any case, it's not at all clear this will actually come together, and if it doesn't we'll have to do data collection in the Spring instead. It truly is the project that will never end...
It will be tough if we do Spring data collection, because I'll need to do the analyses for the final report for the other project I'm on, and that will be a priorty and we'll have limited time for it. And yet, we'll be short-handed for data collection as well, so...it could get quite tough if we have to do both. Hopefully we'll get enough coaches for winter data collection.
Other than that...it's been gloomy all week, so I've been quite sleepy. I'm still behind on my NaNo wordcount, but hopefully I can catch up a bit more over the weekend. I'm around 29k right now so I'm getting there...I ended up once again trying to work out the timeline of the backstory, which is extremely silly. Part of this is because I decided different bits of the story at different times (ReEragon wasn't outlined or planned in advance at all, I just wrote it on a whim basically). I wrote ReEragon before Brisingr came out, so we didn't know anything about Selena (in fact, when I wrote ReEragon, I literally forgot what her name was and called her Selene in a flashback). I ended up going with her as basically an innocent bystander who was trapped in an abusive relationship with Morzan. In Eragon, Brom describes Selena as being kind but proud and helping the poor, so this seemed like a reasonable characterization. Then in Brisingr of course it turned out she was like, an evil assassin but also Oromis claimed she was probably a good person because Brom said so? Her characterization is kind of weird and we never learn much about her whole deal. But Selena as an abuse victim ended up working much better than her canon backstory with ReEldest (since abusive relationships...somehow became kind of a theme? It just worked out like that somehow...). It ties in both to Durza's character arc and of course the plot twist about the Eldunari (as well as Eragon's mentor-mentee relationship with Oromis and Murtagh's relationship with his father). So I stayed with that, but then it raised the question of why the heck she got involved with Morzan to start with (at this point I had also decided that the dragons' names getting removed caused the Foresworn to become insane, important for the plot twist that they weren't actually evil). So I decided that, well, maybe she and Morzan met BEFORE he was driven insane and then she just never was able to leave. BUT it was also established that Durza knew both of them, and he has no idea about the plot twist; he met them post-name removal. So this created a huge timeline problem, because Selena is a normal human and has a normal lifespan, and she has Eragon 16 years before the start of the story, so she can't be like 70 years old at that point. So it put a limit on how far back the name removal could have happened, and also on how far back Durza could have joined Morzan. I ended up deciding that Selena could have had Eragon at like, 40, which is late in life but totally possible (my mother had me at 40, in fact). But she has to meet Morzan at a reasonable age, they obviously didn't marry when she's like ten. And it was also already established that Durza sets out on his revenge 80 years ago (and changing this would require either making Durza much younger or making Carsaib much older at time of death, both of which would get kind of weird). So all told, there ended up being about a 40-year gap to fill in between the time Durza becomes a shade and the time he meets Morzan. The thing is, although we never know quite how large Alagaesia is (the map has no scale), based on that time Eragon and Murtagh travel to Tronjheim in the first book it seems like it just is not that large, so it made no sense for Durza to just be wandering around trying to find the elves for forty years. It's just like, wtf was he DOING all that time? So basically his backstory gets more and more convoluted, because I'm terrible at timelines lol. It also created the problem that Morzan could not have already been insane when he destroyed Durza's tribe (because he could not have met Selena 80 years ago, as that would require her to be like 80 when she had Eragon). In ReEragon, Galbatorix claims that Morzan was unstable at the time, but I'm basically going with 'Galbatorix is actually crazy though, so maybe he just THINKS that's true and can no longer really remember how things got this way and why he is insane now'. As for why Morzan would have destroyed this random tribe, all the timeline wrangling puts Morzan's attack in the middle of the open war between Galbatorix's forces and the Riders, so maybe they just got caught in the middle of things and for some reason it seemed like they were allies of the Riders. I mean none of this backstory really is detailed in the story and also it's a fucking Inheritance Cycle fanfic, not a Shakespearean drama, so who cares, but I tend to obsess over things like this. XD
But I had already decided that Durza could speak an Urgal language, and the extra 40 years gives plenty of time for him to hang out with Urgals. So my headcanon (or, since it's my fanfic, just actual canon I guess lol) is that he basically wanders around for like the first year, doesn't really know anything about Alagaesia, eventually gets lost in the Spine, and a random Urgal happens to run across him and is like 'I'm taking him home with me' because for some reason Durza seems to evoke a lot of characters' sympathy like a weird grumpy cat. Like those cats that are all grumpy but they're SO CUTE that you just want to snuggle them! So he's just like their weird demon friend who doesn't know how mountains work and eats raw meat and weird shit. But yeah so basically Durza has a very silly, yet also very depressing backstory.
Thinking back, I think part of why Durza became a main character (he was originally supposed to be a more major villain!) was not just because he ended up having an interesting backstory, but because he ended up being slightly goofy and incompetent, and that is the sort of character I like to write about. This is actually really obvious looking back at ReEragon: at first he's all like this scary dangerous villain and he's all evil! But then he gets a sassy talking horse and keeps almost drowning and forgets to kill Faolin and Glenwing, and this is what I like in protagonists. XD This is also why Murtagh is more fun to write than Eragon: Eragon is a more staightforwardly heroic character (he's inexperienced, but not outright silly), whereas Murtagh is just a flailing bucket of angst, which is great. XD I actually think the turning point for Durza being an actual protagonist (as opposed to just betraying the Empire and then being a secondary character or a minor side-story) is when I realized while writing a chapter that I had forgotten to actually have him kill Faolin and Glenwing way back in the protagonist. I had specified that he HADN'T killed them in the initial strike, I assume because I thought it would be more menacing for him to just kill them in cold blood later, but then I forgot about them. And when I realized that, I was like, a) this solves the problem of him being way too obviously evil to be a protagonist, and b) wouldn't it be hilarious if he actually, literally forgot about them because he was too upset about losing the egg? As soon as this occurred to me, it gave the character a more ridiculous side, which in my writing is the making of a protagonist. XD
This actually happens a lot in stuff I write. For example, waaaaay back when (in like, middle school) I tried writing My First Fantasy Novel, which many people have done. XD And originally the story opened with a prologue where one of the villains killed this guy to set up the plot. But then I ended up feeling sympathetic for the poor guy, and also feeling like based on his characterization, the villain wouldn't go through with it, and he became a villain-turned-good-guy instead. And unsurprisingly, many years later when I set out to try a revamped version of that story, the bumbling almost-killed guy became the main viewpoint character, due to his awkward bumbling incompetence. The original novel had a huge sprawling cast, because I came up with the idea as a kid and didn't realize how confusing that would make it, and the ones who stayed in as core cast members were the ones who, during planning, I ended up seeing as kind of ridiculous in some way. The only characters who didn't quite fit this were the wizard who switches sides (and he IS kind of pathetic, just in a dramatic and tragic way rather than a funny way) and the bard who was the original main character (and she, too, is pathetic in a more dramatic/tragic way rather than funny). I really only write characters who are either ridiculous or tormented and tragic lol. Or both at once! Like I can come up with characters who are more stable, happy people, but I tend to get bored of writing them...haha.
Oddly, in terms of characters I like when playing games and stuff, I really like the more kind-hearted, heroic characters! I'm just bad at writing them. Although I also like the ridiculous and flaily characters a lot too.
Thinking about ReEldest, one thing that happened was that a LOT of things ended up changing between ReEragon and ReEldest, but they were mostly things that were backstory-related. So the actual events of ReEragon mostly could stay the same (with some notable exceptions), but the MEANING of them changed. Durza's backstory and the role of the elves were probably the biggest changes, and it puts all of his flashbacks and motivations in a very, very different light. In the original concept of ReEragon, because Durza was not originally a protagonist, I hadn't developed his backstory that much beyond 'wants revenge for the sorcer he was a familiar of' because that was all that was really needed. But then he ended up being a protagonist, so while planning ReEldest I thought more on it, and was like, wow, sorcery seems SUPER CREEPY actually, like aren't they basically enslaving these spirits? So while in ReEragon all of Durza's flashbacks are more straightforwardly tragic--his family/friends were murdered and he wants to avenge them--in ReEldest they take on a much more...twisted aspect basically? The same thing happened to Brom's backstory; originally it was straightforwardly tragic (he loved someone who turned out to be a terrible person and betrayed him), but in ReEldest it becomes much worse (the person he loved actually was not evil, but Brom never realized this, and ultimately ended up fighting and killing the person he loved for the sake of a group that had abused the other person he loved most, his dragon). In a way it makes Murtagh's backstory slightly LESS bad, because his character arc involves confronting his fear that he'll turn out like his father, but his father was only cruel and abusive because of magically-induced insanity, so there's no way any of that could have been passed on to Murtagh at all.
Another interesting thing (well, interesting for me I guess, I doubt anyone else would find it interesting XD) was trying to do the original fic version, because the gender swaps ending up being way more tricky than I expected. For Eragon, the gender swap is super easy, so I sort of assumed the others would work too. But thinking about it, I realized Eragon's character arc has no real connection to the fact that he's a dude. But for some of the characters, there actually are gendered elements. For Murtagh, in particular, genderswapping both him and Morzan gave a quite different feeling to his arc, and at first I was like, why would that be? But then when I thought about it, I was like, well, in ReEragon he's the son of a violent, abusive father and he fears he also has violent tendencies and will hurt people he loves. And in US culture, these are tendencies that are seen as more masculine than feminine (although of course in reality, women and men can both be abusers). So in ReEragon, in a way Murtagh's character arc involves him struggling with two images of masculinity: Morzan, a model of violent, toxic masculinity, and Tornac, a more positive image. And he's afraid of turning out like Morzan. But because physical abuse isn't viewed, in US culture, as feminine, it has a quite different feel with Murtagh as the daughter of an abusive mother. Like US cultural images of child abuse are definitely gendered when you look at fiction, and Morzan perfectly fits the trope of an abusive father. But a genderflipped version does NOT fit trope of an abusive mother quite as well. It's interesting how certain concepts or tropes are more gendered than others.
So those are just some idle musings as I continue to not finish ReEldest. B-but it will happen eventually, I swear! I think that problem is that, ultimately, I am kind of mediocre as a fiction writer. I'm pretty good with nonfiction writing though! You should see my informational documents explaining statistical analyses. Or not I guess lol, such things have perhaps a limited audience. XD
In political news, our new President-Elect is filling out his cabinet. So far he's chosen several white nationalists. His adult children have also been heavily involved, raising questions about nepotism and conflicts of interests, given that they're also going to be running his businesses. Having white nationalists in charge of the department of justice...well, it's a grim thought. There may be some dark times ahead. (I should note here that I doubt these individuals would call themselves white nationalists; however, their policies and stated personal beliefs are essentially white nationalistic).
Nobody knows what will happen come January. But looking at all the signs so far...it seems like that great harm may be done. Particularly if they pass Paul Ryan's budget; he's very focused on cutting social welfare programs (like food stamps). There seems to be a clear intention to slash regulations across the board as well, from environmental regulations right down to the FDA. Because we need the freedom to die from food poisoning, apparently.
Well...the weather was nice today. It's supposed to be pretty good tomorrow, too. Not much else to say about this week overall.
And the days were VERY similar this week--I've been coding videos at breakneck pace. Finally we finished them all; I did about, I want to say 40 of 45 or so, and my fellow coders did the other five. Well, one of them only works 10 hours a week and the other is also doing other stuff on the project, because there's almost no project staff, so there was really no alternative...it was just never going to get done unless I did it so I figured, I'll just power through it.
The idea was to get it all squared away before December since data collection would slow down any coding, but now, who knows if we'll even have winter data collection? We only have two coaches consented as of today, and next week is Thanksgiving, so I don't think people are going to be thinking about our study. We need like...I thought it was 90 coaches, but then the other day project manager started talking about 70 coaches, so who even knows. Maybe 70 is the minimum we need or something. In any case, it's not at all clear this will actually come together, and if it doesn't we'll have to do data collection in the Spring instead. It truly is the project that will never end...
It will be tough if we do Spring data collection, because I'll need to do the analyses for the final report for the other project I'm on, and that will be a priorty and we'll have limited time for it. And yet, we'll be short-handed for data collection as well, so...it could get quite tough if we have to do both. Hopefully we'll get enough coaches for winter data collection.
Other than that...it's been gloomy all week, so I've been quite sleepy. I'm still behind on my NaNo wordcount, but hopefully I can catch up a bit more over the weekend. I'm around 29k right now so I'm getting there...I ended up once again trying to work out the timeline of the backstory, which is extremely silly. Part of this is because I decided different bits of the story at different times (ReEragon wasn't outlined or planned in advance at all, I just wrote it on a whim basically). I wrote ReEragon before Brisingr came out, so we didn't know anything about Selena (in fact, when I wrote ReEragon, I literally forgot what her name was and called her Selene in a flashback). I ended up going with her as basically an innocent bystander who was trapped in an abusive relationship with Morzan. In Eragon, Brom describes Selena as being kind but proud and helping the poor, so this seemed like a reasonable characterization. Then in Brisingr of course it turned out she was like, an evil assassin but also Oromis claimed she was probably a good person because Brom said so? Her characterization is kind of weird and we never learn much about her whole deal. But Selena as an abuse victim ended up working much better than her canon backstory with ReEldest (since abusive relationships...somehow became kind of a theme? It just worked out like that somehow...). It ties in both to Durza's character arc and of course the plot twist about the Eldunari (as well as Eragon's mentor-mentee relationship with Oromis and Murtagh's relationship with his father). So I stayed with that, but then it raised the question of why the heck she got involved with Morzan to start with (at this point I had also decided that the dragons' names getting removed caused the Foresworn to become insane, important for the plot twist that they weren't actually evil). So I decided that, well, maybe she and Morzan met BEFORE he was driven insane and then she just never was able to leave. BUT it was also established that Durza knew both of them, and he has no idea about the plot twist; he met them post-name removal. So this created a huge timeline problem, because Selena is a normal human and has a normal lifespan, and she has Eragon 16 years before the start of the story, so she can't be like 70 years old at that point. So it put a limit on how far back the name removal could have happened, and also on how far back Durza could have joined Morzan. I ended up deciding that Selena could have had Eragon at like, 40, which is late in life but totally possible (my mother had me at 40, in fact). But she has to meet Morzan at a reasonable age, they obviously didn't marry when she's like ten. And it was also already established that Durza sets out on his revenge 80 years ago (and changing this would require either making Durza much younger or making Carsaib much older at time of death, both of which would get kind of weird). So all told, there ended up being about a 40-year gap to fill in between the time Durza becomes a shade and the time he meets Morzan. The thing is, although we never know quite how large Alagaesia is (the map has no scale), based on that time Eragon and Murtagh travel to Tronjheim in the first book it seems like it just is not that large, so it made no sense for Durza to just be wandering around trying to find the elves for forty years. It's just like, wtf was he DOING all that time? So basically his backstory gets more and more convoluted, because I'm terrible at timelines lol. It also created the problem that Morzan could not have already been insane when he destroyed Durza's tribe (because he could not have met Selena 80 years ago, as that would require her to be like 80 when she had Eragon). In ReEragon, Galbatorix claims that Morzan was unstable at the time, but I'm basically going with 'Galbatorix is actually crazy though, so maybe he just THINKS that's true and can no longer really remember how things got this way and why he is insane now'. As for why Morzan would have destroyed this random tribe, all the timeline wrangling puts Morzan's attack in the middle of the open war between Galbatorix's forces and the Riders, so maybe they just got caught in the middle of things and for some reason it seemed like they were allies of the Riders. I mean none of this backstory really is detailed in the story and also it's a fucking Inheritance Cycle fanfic, not a Shakespearean drama, so who cares, but I tend to obsess over things like this. XD
But I had already decided that Durza could speak an Urgal language, and the extra 40 years gives plenty of time for him to hang out with Urgals. So my headcanon (or, since it's my fanfic, just actual canon I guess lol) is that he basically wanders around for like the first year, doesn't really know anything about Alagaesia, eventually gets lost in the Spine, and a random Urgal happens to run across him and is like 'I'm taking him home with me' because for some reason Durza seems to evoke a lot of characters' sympathy like a weird grumpy cat. Like those cats that are all grumpy but they're SO CUTE that you just want to snuggle them! So he's just like their weird demon friend who doesn't know how mountains work and eats raw meat and weird shit. But yeah so basically Durza has a very silly, yet also very depressing backstory.
Thinking back, I think part of why Durza became a main character (he was originally supposed to be a more major villain!) was not just because he ended up having an interesting backstory, but because he ended up being slightly goofy and incompetent, and that is the sort of character I like to write about. This is actually really obvious looking back at ReEragon: at first he's all like this scary dangerous villain and he's all evil! But then he gets a sassy talking horse and keeps almost drowning and forgets to kill Faolin and Glenwing, and this is what I like in protagonists. XD This is also why Murtagh is more fun to write than Eragon: Eragon is a more staightforwardly heroic character (he's inexperienced, but not outright silly), whereas Murtagh is just a flailing bucket of angst, which is great. XD I actually think the turning point for Durza being an actual protagonist (as opposed to just betraying the Empire and then being a secondary character or a minor side-story) is when I realized while writing a chapter that I had forgotten to actually have him kill Faolin and Glenwing way back in the protagonist. I had specified that he HADN'T killed them in the initial strike, I assume because I thought it would be more menacing for him to just kill them in cold blood later, but then I forgot about them. And when I realized that, I was like, a) this solves the problem of him being way too obviously evil to be a protagonist, and b) wouldn't it be hilarious if he actually, literally forgot about them because he was too upset about losing the egg? As soon as this occurred to me, it gave the character a more ridiculous side, which in my writing is the making of a protagonist. XD
This actually happens a lot in stuff I write. For example, waaaaay back when (in like, middle school) I tried writing My First Fantasy Novel, which many people have done. XD And originally the story opened with a prologue where one of the villains killed this guy to set up the plot. But then I ended up feeling sympathetic for the poor guy, and also feeling like based on his characterization, the villain wouldn't go through with it, and he became a villain-turned-good-guy instead. And unsurprisingly, many years later when I set out to try a revamped version of that story, the bumbling almost-killed guy became the main viewpoint character, due to his awkward bumbling incompetence. The original novel had a huge sprawling cast, because I came up with the idea as a kid and didn't realize how confusing that would make it, and the ones who stayed in as core cast members were the ones who, during planning, I ended up seeing as kind of ridiculous in some way. The only characters who didn't quite fit this were the wizard who switches sides (and he IS kind of pathetic, just in a dramatic and tragic way rather than a funny way) and the bard who was the original main character (and she, too, is pathetic in a more dramatic/tragic way rather than funny). I really only write characters who are either ridiculous or tormented and tragic lol. Or both at once! Like I can come up with characters who are more stable, happy people, but I tend to get bored of writing them...haha.
Oddly, in terms of characters I like when playing games and stuff, I really like the more kind-hearted, heroic characters! I'm just bad at writing them. Although I also like the ridiculous and flaily characters a lot too.
Thinking about ReEldest, one thing that happened was that a LOT of things ended up changing between ReEragon and ReEldest, but they were mostly things that were backstory-related. So the actual events of ReEragon mostly could stay the same (with some notable exceptions), but the MEANING of them changed. Durza's backstory and the role of the elves were probably the biggest changes, and it puts all of his flashbacks and motivations in a very, very different light. In the original concept of ReEragon, because Durza was not originally a protagonist, I hadn't developed his backstory that much beyond 'wants revenge for the sorcer he was a familiar of' because that was all that was really needed. But then he ended up being a protagonist, so while planning ReEldest I thought more on it, and was like, wow, sorcery seems SUPER CREEPY actually, like aren't they basically enslaving these spirits? So while in ReEragon all of Durza's flashbacks are more straightforwardly tragic--his family/friends were murdered and he wants to avenge them--in ReEldest they take on a much more...twisted aspect basically? The same thing happened to Brom's backstory; originally it was straightforwardly tragic (he loved someone who turned out to be a terrible person and betrayed him), but in ReEldest it becomes much worse (the person he loved actually was not evil, but Brom never realized this, and ultimately ended up fighting and killing the person he loved for the sake of a group that had abused the other person he loved most, his dragon). In a way it makes Murtagh's backstory slightly LESS bad, because his character arc involves confronting his fear that he'll turn out like his father, but his father was only cruel and abusive because of magically-induced insanity, so there's no way any of that could have been passed on to Murtagh at all.
Another interesting thing (well, interesting for me I guess, I doubt anyone else would find it interesting XD) was trying to do the original fic version, because the gender swaps ending up being way more tricky than I expected. For Eragon, the gender swap is super easy, so I sort of assumed the others would work too. But thinking about it, I realized Eragon's character arc has no real connection to the fact that he's a dude. But for some of the characters, there actually are gendered elements. For Murtagh, in particular, genderswapping both him and Morzan gave a quite different feeling to his arc, and at first I was like, why would that be? But then when I thought about it, I was like, well, in ReEragon he's the son of a violent, abusive father and he fears he also has violent tendencies and will hurt people he loves. And in US culture, these are tendencies that are seen as more masculine than feminine (although of course in reality, women and men can both be abusers). So in ReEragon, in a way Murtagh's character arc involves him struggling with two images of masculinity: Morzan, a model of violent, toxic masculinity, and Tornac, a more positive image. And he's afraid of turning out like Morzan. But because physical abuse isn't viewed, in US culture, as feminine, it has a quite different feel with Murtagh as the daughter of an abusive mother. Like US cultural images of child abuse are definitely gendered when you look at fiction, and Morzan perfectly fits the trope of an abusive father. But a genderflipped version does NOT fit trope of an abusive mother quite as well. It's interesting how certain concepts or tropes are more gendered than others.
So those are just some idle musings as I continue to not finish ReEldest. B-but it will happen eventually, I swear! I think that problem is that, ultimately, I am kind of mediocre as a fiction writer. I'm pretty good with nonfiction writing though! You should see my informational documents explaining statistical analyses. Or not I guess lol, such things have perhaps a limited audience. XD
In political news, our new President-Elect is filling out his cabinet. So far he's chosen several white nationalists. His adult children have also been heavily involved, raising questions about nepotism and conflicts of interests, given that they're also going to be running his businesses. Having white nationalists in charge of the department of justice...well, it's a grim thought. There may be some dark times ahead. (I should note here that I doubt these individuals would call themselves white nationalists; however, their policies and stated personal beliefs are essentially white nationalistic).
Nobody knows what will happen come January. But looking at all the signs so far...it seems like that great harm may be done. Particularly if they pass Paul Ryan's budget; he's very focused on cutting social welfare programs (like food stamps). There seems to be a clear intention to slash regulations across the board as well, from environmental regulations right down to the FDA. Because we need the freedom to die from food poisoning, apparently.
Well...the weather was nice today. It's supposed to be pretty good tomorrow, too. Not much else to say about this week overall.