Me and Aldaris (p30): Discussing Zeratul

There's nothing quite like fear cleaning.  Sure, I was supposed to be at home, finishing my tax homework, but instead I'm trapped in a house I don't know, with a hell-angry Protoss outside.  Seriously, Aldaris wasn't this mad when he found out Zeratul was the one who gave the Overmind Aiur's secret location.  I'm kinda scared to step out of the door.  Thankfully, Aldaris hasn't zapped my brain or something, but he could at any moment.  Being afraid is horrible in a stranger's house, and worse still when you're just sitting there in a dark living room hoping nothing's going to happen.

Well, I didn't have my tax homework, but fortunately for my sense of needing to do something, there was a funny smell coming from the kitchen.  I took my shivering little self over that direction, and peered into the sink.  Huh.  Someone had obviously been here -- all the dirty dishes, instead of layering the counters, now hung out in the sink.

"Eh," I said outloud, because talking to oneself doesn't make a person insane at all.  "I guess I'm not too grossed out to do a stranger's dishes.  I did work in a restaurant once.  Ugh...." I reached in the other side of the double sink and plugged it up.  "Better think of something else before the scarring flashbacks happen again."

So I did the dishes.  Still too nervous to try and reach out with my mind to see what's going on with Aldaris (assuming I can), I decided to wipe the counters and the stove.  The floor needed a mopping, so I went ahead and did that.  I went ahead and vacuumed the whole living room, while I was at it.  Best yet, there were some scented candles in the closet to lay out and get rid of that dank smell that had taken over the house.  After those were lit and the place started smelling like a field of chemical flowers, I stood there and looked around.

"Huh....I wonder if dude has any paper."

There was some in a drawer in the kitchen, and a plastic cup on the counter had some pens in it.  Thus equipped with the tools of my trade, I went into the dining room and began to write.

Stuff will happen! I Swear!

Hey y'all.  Sorry for the lack of posting.

Alright, so this blog has always been sort of scatterbrained, with reviews, rantings and attempts at stories.  I never at any time had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, besides it having something to do with writing.  However, real life happens.  I have two things I want to get published, but work on them has been slow because of real life happenings.  I had school, and for the past week and a half I've been working overnight at my bookstore so that we can rearrange stuff away from the sub-lease.  Also, I need to get a better job, and my sister has been weighing very heavily on us for babysitting when she's at work.  I want to learn a language, and I've got to do something profitable with my sewing machine.

Basically, I'd really like to make more choices for my life, rather than have everyone take up time I want to use elsewhere.  It's not like Blogger's all that profitable if you don't post funny cats or messed up cakes, and particularly if one is not on youtube.  That doesn't mean that this isn't a commitment of some kind.  I want to post stuff, as seeing the number of views on my posts makes me happy, even if they're not large enough to garner me a lot through advertising.

What I'm basically trying to say is that I want to have a schedule.  If for no other reason than to please myself, I want a sense of consistency to what I do.  So, a really basic schedule is going to happen: I'll post something every Saturday.  It can be anything from a book review to another Me and Aldaris entry, but it'll be something.

For this next Saturday, I plan to post a M+A.  I've already started on it, but waiting until next Saturday to post will mean I can take some time to work on the blog after that.  I have some ideas for it, but I make no commitment as to what gets posted when.  So often my attentions go everywhere, so there's no way to know which blog I'll finish first.

In any case, thanks for reading.

Nitpickery -- Starcraft: Shadow of the Xel'Naga

Hey y'all.  It turns out that my store did have the second of the Starcraft fanfiction trilogy, Shadow of the Xel'Naga.  And guess what it has in common with all the other Starcraft novels?

Media and its Influence: An Ongoing Theory

Hey y'all.  So I just got done watching the season finale of the My Little Pony Show.  I have a sort of perverse desire to watch it, mainly to see why the thing somehow has a ton of fans while not really being all that much better than other cartoon fare, and not as good in some cases.  I suppose I could nitpick it, and chances are I will, but for now I'll just say that it was a collection of meh plotting, Dragonball Z visuals (that's good or bad depending on how much you like DBZ), a half-horrid moral, and some intriguing implications for later seasons of MLP.  Of course, they mostly screwed up whatever interesting implications they created by making Twilight a princes by the way they meh'ed through season four, so this season finale is probably going to come to nothing as well.

In other words, have fun with your show, brony boys.

My interest in this show has been a part of a larger idea I'm stewing around with in my head.  Thing is, the obsession that MLP's fans have is very comparable to Star Trek's fandom.  To Trek's credit, it's actually marketed to the adults that watch it.  To MLP's credit, the fans don't seem to be fooled into thinking the future will one day be what is on their show.  To neither of their credits, they both seem obsessed with tricking the emotionally weak into molding exactly into their singular-culture, friendship is everything newthink.

Write Club: Phrases to Avoid like the Devil

Hey y'all.  So I've done my fair share of reading/listening to noobish stories.  It's gotten to the point where I like reading off stories just so that I can correct them.  Maybe it's a neurological issue or something.  In any case, one of the signs of a noobish writer is to have bad narrative.  The thing about narrative is that there are so many ways to get it right, and so many more to get it wrong.  So the only way to really advise anyone is to go through little issues that maybe not everyone has in common.

However, there are several phrases that many new writers write, almost by accident.  It happens, mainly because the writer is getting out whatever words are trapped in his head, and maybe sounding a bit too vocal or casual, or trying too hard to be fancy.  Editing is very important in making sure you aren't using too many or awkward words, and by doing an editing run after you write instead of during, you can get your inspiration out without worrying about running out of inspiration.

So here, let me list a few of the common phrases that newer writers tend to rely a little too much on.  Some of these phrases are very bad.  Others are okay, but simply overused and obvious.  In either case, they need to be dodged.

-- That really hurt.

Nitpickery: The Little Mermaid

Hey y'all.  So how many of you have actually seen the Little Mermaid in the past ten years?  Sure, maybe some of you have kids and managed to get hold of it, but for many of us I suspect its one of those movies we think fondly of just because it's Disney.  We just assume for the rest of our lives that it's a classic, without realizing that we haven't seen it with a matured, adult mind.

End of Semester News!

Hey y'all.  So I'm not dead, but it is the end of the school semester.  My tax teacher thinks it's funny of him to give us a project where we have to form a business plan and then do its taxes as a proprietorship, S corp, and C corp.  Given that I didn't make the best grades on figuring the corporation taxes assignments, I'm not optimistic about making it out of this with good grades.  *sigh*

Okay, so I do have a Me and Aldaris entry in the works.  I want to do another top ten top ten, but I want to make sure it's on a reasonable topic.  I tried to do favorite movies, but that wasn't working out.  There were too many variables.  Probably I'm going to do favorite villains.  That sounds good, right?

Also, I may consider doing commentaries on good and bad writing styles of different writers.  I'm thinking General Patton, Margaret Thatcher, William Shatner, Sean Astin, Tony Dungy....basically, I just want to rant on all the different ways people use narrative, because I don't think it's discussed enough in writing books. This is sort of understandible, as narrative is like painting.  There's about forty bajillion ways to do it correctly.  And just as many to do it wrong.  A lot of the time you can't even call a method wrong, because a technique might work differently in the hands of different writers.

So yeah, I do need to take my blog more seriously.  I have a lot on my plate right now, what with trying to get a better job this summer and trying to work on my publishable stuff.  Thankfully, this and next week are the last of school, so hopefully I can get some blog done this next month.  Hey, maybe I can even get a once a week schedule going.