i will

I've been trying to think of a way to describe this semester. It's not like drowning. Quite. It's like... lazily floating along on my back, barely afloat... but then occasionally a wave comes in, splashes over me, and I have to doggy paddle like the wind to stay above water for a while, until it calms down again. That's right, doggy paddle. Meh.

( Real life problems... )

Now... some brighter stuff. First the TMI. Don't read if you're squeamish about sexual type stuff. I got a new piercing: a VCH (vertical clitoral hood). I got it last Thursday. It's still healing and I've barely messed with it, but so far I'm pleased. My piercer said to wait a week or two to have sex afterward, but that she only waited five days... I only waited three, and had no problems, although we were very careful about it. /TMI

On to more casual topics. I read Fire, the other book by Kristin Cashore--a companion to Graceling. I still like Graceling a tad more, but Fire was excellent too. I really liked the world presented and how it tied into the seven kingdoms we already knew about in Graceling. It fit together very nicely. It looks like I'll be starting a roleplay in the next couple days set in the world of Fire, actually.

Annndd I haven't started my 100 stories challenge yet, even though it's practically been a week. Fail. But I have gone through a lot of my world building notes, and I've already found stuff I'd nearly forgotten about that will be really fun to play with. The problem for me will mostly be choosing what to write first, I think, haha. That and keeping it short. 100 stories of about 1,000 words each in six months might be manageable, but probably not 100 3,000+ word stories, which has so far been my tendency when it comes to world building in Eysuria.

Finally... I'm really considering making a new character worksheet type deal. I feel like I've mentioned this before... but yes. One that deals in fundamental aspects of character, not the little things like what color their eyes are. Hm.

Title: Eternity In His Touch
Genre: Fantasy - Eysuria
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,400

This was intended to be for another RCR challenge, which was based off of a fifty sentences challenge on some LJ community. Basically you are given fifty one-word prompts and you write a sentence response to each which embodies the meaning of the word. I got to 35 sentences and realized the story was done, so I didn’t enter the challenge with it, but I did like the result. Be warned: long, convoluted sentences (like I used to write regularly!).

( If I let go, if I allow the force ignited by our touch to guide my soul through its course--well, I’m not sure where I’ll end, but I know I’ll begin in rewalking all the steps that got us to this place: mine and his. )

Title: Through Agony and Ages
Genre: Fantasy - Eysuria
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,150

This is the would-be climax of my main Eysuria story arc between Aerlun, Daemien, and all their incarnations. It was written for a challenge for RCR; the challenge was to write about the one marriage in ten that doesn't end in divorce, that lasts forever (figuratively speaking). This is a slash story, first-person present-tense.

( It hurts to see the blood on his skin, even now. I ache from my own wounds, from my own exhaustion, but despite the hatred I try to feel for him... I can’t. It hurts to see him so near to broken. I have to stop. )

Found Avatar icons since I was suspiciously lacking.

Also, more picspam.


The picture in the middle? Yeah. That's a bottle of pee. Danny and I do weird things at night. x) Also, I finally got a couple halfway decent pictures of the deer in the neighborhood. A bunch of pictures were added to Photography, a couple to Oddments, and a subgallery with a couple pictures was added to Around the House.

Names is at 2,674 words. Like I said before, slow going, but at least it is going. I add at least a little every day, so far. I'll probably still add more today. I just finished Silk and Aerlun's meeting and Aerlun's near-enslavement... next will be a true introduction and an intro to the Whips, I think. As in, as of now Aerlun doesn't even know Silk's name, Silk just kept him from being collared.

Yeah, that's enough babbling about stuff no one gets but me. I was trying to find this Sora/Riku fanfiction I read a long time ago on adultfanfiction.net, before it was redesigned. I don't think I'll ever find the story again, to be honest, which is a shame since I liked it a lot. I can't remember the name, which is the biggest problem. I just remember it was after the original KH (KH2 hadn't come out yet, I don't think even CoM had come out yet), and upon leaving Kingdom Hearts Sora was caught and enslaved... and Riku finds him, and the only way to save him from his current master is to buy him away. Something like that, only much less lame than my explanation. It was definitely yaoi, fairly explicit boy-on-boy sex.

Uh yeah.

Oh! I saw a picture recently of these tattoos... this guy got the Triforce on one arm and the Deathly Hallows symbol on the other. I thought it was really cool. I wouldn't get the Deathly Hallows tattooed on me; I'm not into that particular Potter concept enough to make it a permanent part of my body. But it makes me really anxious to get my Triforce tattoo. For our two year anniversary, assuming we still want it, Danny and I are supposed to each get a Triforce tattoo... simple, but still managing to highlight courage for him and wisdom for me. We haven't decided yet, though, how to highlight our pieces or where his should go. We've got until November for that. Aside from that, I may someday get one other tattoo... perhaps involving turtles, since they're cute and my college mascot.

Title: Poison
Genre: Fantasy - Eysuria
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100

Written for... I don't even remember. Maybe Ash. It's a quickie set at the end of Aerlun's first incarnation, but the circumstances may be subject to change should I ever write the damn books.

( My hands won’t stop trembling. But I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I? )

Sooo. I had my second GEOG midterm today. I think I did well, but I mean, I thought I did well on the first one too. I studied better for the diagrams... but there are still one or two of them that I don't know if I'll get full credit on. I also got my midterm grade back in HONR267, though, and I got an A on that, so that's good news.

I was thinking about Aerlun today and how I haven't been able to start his story. And I thought maybe the beginning was wrong. I've been revising the idea a lot lately. I didn't want the typical street thief backstory since I don't think that's all that realistic when you really think about it. He'd be scavenging more often, or running an errand in exchange for some bread, something like that. Stealing sometimes, but not that much. So when I thought about it, it wasn't like he'd have that many skills beneficial to a Whip -- not like the ones Silk's supposed to see in him. He wouldn't be awesome with knives or anything like that.

So I decided... Why make him street rot at all? What if he actually stays with Keth longer and when he pisses Keth off, Keth takes him to the docks to sell him off onto a slave ship. There are no slaves in World's End (except some novelty slaves for the wealthy of Marble District), but they've been taking to selling their criminals and such off to ships headed toward the Black Coast. So he takes him to the docks to sell, and Silk stops by to pick through the slaves getting ready to be taken out of World's End, as per the usual agreement with the Whips. They aren't allowed to collar slaves until the Whips have taken their pick, but often they start anyway on adults since Whips never take in people past a certain age. The Whips let it slide usually, but this time they're trying to collar Aerlun. Silk stops them and asks about it, and they say the boy has healing experience... so he takes Aerlun, mostly out of irritation that the slavers would try to collar a child before Whip selection, but also because the boy is interesting and healing could be useful.

This would take away a few character points I really liked about Aerlun, like having explored World's End pretty thoroughly. But I suppose Keth wouldn't want him around all the time anyway. Sometimes he'd tell him to just leave, and Aerlun could use those times to explore. Not as far, of course, but pretty well. And he would have learned to scavenge and beg food for favors, even. Plus it would be really ironic later; Silk saved him from the collar, and then causes him to find his way into another later.

Aerlun will still have to be a little old for usual selection. Thirteen probably. Most kids are nine-ish. Which is another reason Silk wouldn't have taken him if not just to spite the slavers. Anyway, this is mostly because I don't want the story to span six years or something. Three or four years is a little better.

Still need to tinker with Daemien's story. Needs more of a plot. More stuff happening up until he joins that caravan.

Right well, I should try to sleep until Danny gets home.

Aerlun and Daemien’s stories, at least at the beginning, run parallel. Each story has four parts. They live worlds apart, but their lives echo each other in many ways. (It is important to note that neither of them have names for the entire first part of the story. Aerlun has many names he calls himself, from Sharp-Eyes to Fingers to Thief, but no birth name. Daemien is known in his ‘home’ as Ilek, but he hates it. Casella started calling him Ilek because he was repeating it over and over when she found him, but he learns later that it means spirit wraith, and he was screaming it because spirit wraiths just killed his family.)

So I have a problem. Aerlun and Daemien not having true names for all of the first and much of the second parts of the story isn’t so bad, I think, since it’s in first person. The trouble is that I intend to write their stories in one book, staggering their chapters. So the chapters will need to start with a designator of who the chapter is about… but I don’t know what to use for the beginning. For Daemien, I could probably use ‘Ilek’ since that’s what people call him, even if he doesn’t feel it’s his name. Aerlun, however… I could start chapters with whatever name he feels fits at the time, such as Sharp-Eyes or Adder, but I feel like it’s a bad idea so early on in the book. Readers could easily get confused as to whether it’s one character or several they’re reading about. Perhaps I could start his with ‘Fledgling Whip’ or something. Thoughts?

As another note, if I write the chapters staggered the way I want to, since there will only be four parts, the part names would be changed to fit both Aerlun and Daemien well. In other words, there wouldn’t be a Capture and a Captivity; these would be the same part, but I would choose a name that suits both characters.

( Their plots )

Okay, so I typed out some of my world building for Eysuria. I got all the basics (I think) out tonight, and I'll move on to other stuff tomorrow. So this post addresses the three Eysurian eras, the magic system, and minor talk of geography and races.

( Eysuria: The Basics )

That's about it for Eysuria's basics. It's late, so I'll go into individual areas tomorrow. I'll work on World's End, and from there probably Aerlun's plot. Hopefully start writing.