MOOP!

It is interesting to realize that as part of my adult life and career, I have made active and specific choices about my handwriting and how I represent particular glyphs.

At various points throughout my childhood schooling, I have explicitly learned all-caps, mixed-case, and cursive writing. I was, presumably, taught very specifically how certain glyphs are supposed to look, and then as I aged I learned that different glyphs are represented in different ways by different people and sources --them weird typed a's with the little hat immediately spring to mind.

And so throughout my early life, my handwriting pretty much coalesced. By college, I had three specific different handwritings[1], but within each of those, I think there was probably a fairly consistent way of scribing. I don't _really_ feel like trying to dig out years worth of diary or papers or whatever, but hell, I'm pretty sure I can recognize "my handwriting" dating back close to a couple decades by now.

And then I became a daily classroom teacher for seven years. And I found myself starting to make specific active choices, some of which were different than what I had been taught. And so while the overall handwriting is recognizable, some of my characters have actually changed. And that's *fascinating* especially to consider that something which seems so ingrained and natural can be a _choice_. Does this mean I *could* give my a's little hats if I wanted to?

(that's an extra funny sentence since I am typing instead of writing, and whatever font Dreamwidth uses in its default post field already does hat the a's.)

Anyways, this post would be better with pictures, let's see if I can do anything cute with that. ( Imgs below cut! )

Anyways, what have you done with your handwriting? (Do you even write by hand? I do, all the time --on the smartboard, which is weird, but I also copy notes onto the white board so kids who are in the bathroom at inopportune times can still copy down the notes. TBF, I have switched almost all my personal writing to digital forms by this point, and I am not nearly as picky about fonts.)

~Sor
MOOP!

Four sonnets, for four former partners. Trigger warning in the second for emotional abuse. Content warning for a terrible sense of scansion, and at least once actually changing the spelling of a word to make it fit the iambs.

Enjoy.

***

By the Lightswitch

The first girlfriend I ever had was queer
(I use that not in the pejor'tive sense)
I only use the word to make things clear
Some ways we both were ladies, some: we're gents.

Our queerness was not limited to sex
In many other ways we played the strange
Reduction to normalacy did vex
Society holds bullshit -we must change!

A revolutionary at sixteen
Such little ways to warp the world around
On meeting with their standards we weren't keen
Each liked the slice of Otherness we found.

Though still we find some safety where we met
For girl scouts do not care you're gay or het

***

All for the finality

The final year of high school's meant to be
Inspiring, a time to look ahead
Because of all the ways you ruined me
Harsh memory is where my thoughts are led

You found me such a virgin, so naive
Then took your mess and shoved it in my mind
Ensnared me in your pain, I could not leave
Grabbed what you wanted, all that you could find.

Your own desire overruled my want
My feeble protestations were ignored
Until the day no longer you would haunt
I steeled myself for battle, words or sword.

None worked, the ways to break me you contrived
Fuck you, I'm not a victim. I survived.

***

For a Dragon I do Know

A dragon far out in Seattle-land
With endless talent bounded by no walls
He curls throughout the city strong and grand
Compared to him mere mortal nature palls.

But 'neath the dragon nature lies a man
And moments come where he will feel a lack
Of fitness, strength, or power all he can
No longer do and never will get back.

The dragon-man must once more find his soul
And force himself to struggle into light
Though motivation seems impossible
He will not take a fall without a fight.

This endless battle to become his best
'Tis not a destination, but a quest!

***

...To "I'll see you round, someday?"

Some days I feel I never really did
Know who you were and what you were about
Perhaps it's just I was too much a kid
Preoccupied and empathy without.

Perhaps it was there simply was more need
From me to you instead of the reverse
You spent yourself to help me to succeed
I had not time nor strength to serve as nurse.

So while I feel quite grateful for the help
I must apologize for what I lack
And lacking still, this inconsiderate whelp
To know your mind I haven't got the knack.

It seems to other eyes we've found our end
Myself, I'd like to now become your friend.

***

~Sor
MOOP!

(Trigger warnings go both ways, emotional abuse reference in the second sonnet)

2004 10 13
to
2012 06 25
is
7 years, 8 months, 12 days.

Four+ false starts.
Two NaNoWriMos.
64 000 words.

I finally have a cohesive first draft for Dante Stormchilde. I am absolutely positive it is entirely terrible. But officially, anything I write from here is no longer a first draft. It's a second. Or a third. A fifth, a fifteenth.

A final.

I am one step closer to what I want from the world, and if I seem overwhelmed, it's only because this is only the second time I've finished a novel(la) length story in my life.

Cheers.

~Sor
MOOP!

I am still in California. Or, if I never bothered to mention it properly, I am in California!

Spending all my time with someone creative in the same ways in which I am creative has been really good for me. I am still Woefully Unemployed (TM), but I've also drawn a couple things, and written a couple things, and best of all, three days ago, the clone looks up at me from our Left 4 Dead game and says "wanna write a collaborative story about a zombie apocalypse?"

So that's been going very well, and I've written like 4500 words of characters I haven't used in a while fighting zombies. Which is pretty damn great.

We've also done some cooking experiments (which resulted in bacon-wrapped potato bites!) and playing way too much Left 4 Dead (<3333!) and spending too much time on Tumblr and not enough time watching Doctor Who, but whatever, honestly. Theoretically, I can watch that on my own. Keeping up with the reblogs is tres important, zohmgar. :P

Mek might've gotten me hooked on Fallen London, or at least starting to be hooked on Fallen London. I am currently more frustrated than pleased by the throttling of actions. I appreciate that they're keeping me from wasting all my time on there, but man, I have been running out of actions quickly and that's annoying, especially when I'm still very badly in explore mode and trying to figure out the game. We'll see if it sticks at all.

I miss Boston. I miss dancing. I might claim to miss being too cold, but judging by how I actually respond to temperature, it's a dirty lie. But I'm happy I'm here because...there's a reason I call him clone faster than boyfriend. Mek gets me like no one else. The conversations we have tend to be long, meandering, weird and utterly fabulous. When's the last time you jumped from Neil Poon Handler to Oglaf?

The hope of course is that I'll go home and be rejuvenated, ready to try again being a real adult. We'll see if it works at all. I am in turns optimistic towards how lovelyinteresting this summer could be (Pinewoods in July, and Alys might visit me) and shaking with fear at the lack of funds and lack of impact I am having on the world.

In the meantime though, I'm going to clutch at this creative paradise while it is still accessible to me. Lying in bed all day in my underwear writing might not sound to you like such a beast, but oh, am I satisfied.

Even if it is too damn hot.

~Sor
MOOP!

Original Tags: musings, qlife, cloneness, snowtown, writing

((Was meant to be posted before the con-report. Stupid faulty crossposting.))

There's a whole weekend to talk about at some point. There's a lot of sub-essays from the weekend to get into. There's issues to be written down and slowly sorted.

But I just had a sharp reminder that I communicate best in the written word. You can tell me anything you want, and I will appreciate the sound, and sometimes it will be all that I need. But writing things down? That makes them real.

"Planning"
"2-6 months"

Sometimes everything changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it means I'm growing up, or something equally nonsensical.

And it doesn't matter how many times he said the words, or something like them, over the course of the last week. They weren't real until he wrote them down. Remember that about me.

~Sor
MOOP!

So, I was doing NaNoWriMo this year. But it was slow going, and I had everything else ever going on, and between the sudden rush of Splash and Thanksgiving and applying to jobs and getting more meds and being an adult because oh hell do I need to, I kinda found myself giving up somewhere around 26000 words.

I mentioned this to Sparr, who'd been interested in my progress. I believe the exact phrasing I used was something like "if I walk out of this month with a job and a psychiatrist, but novel, I'm gonna call this a successful month."

Well, Dunkin Donuts hired me --I've got one more day of training, and then I get to start as a real live employee of a coffee mega-chain, smiling at customers and repeating their order back to them approximately several billion times. It is not at all glamorous, but they will give me paychecks, and it even pays (a little) better than I was expecting.

(Don't you fret, I've got other things on the backburner as well. There's a long-term sub position I'm really crossing my fingers for, despite all the consternation and gossip it will cause at Squares.)

And I managed to call my old psychiatrist, and he was generous enough to send me one more month's prescription of the ADHD meds. Actually being on my Concerta again (the BEST THING omg) has given me the wherewithal to call and make an appointment with a psychiatrist out in Central Square, who will hopefully be willing to work with me, and make sure that I don't have to run out of Concerta for months at a time. I'm really excited about this.

So that's what I wanted from this month. ( There were a couple other good things, too )

~Sor
MOOP!

So, here's the deal. I got a hundred and two porns. And now that I am trying to post these, someone is actively writing me more by IM.

My life, you have no idea how awesome it is.

Also, holy shit I have awesome friends.

Author's notes are in italics. Porn is not safe for work or minors. Most of the significantly noncon/dubcon ones are in a file you can request, but I don't promise I got all of them. Look, it's porn. So long as everyone is fictional and happy, it's probably all good. Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay. Just make sure all real-life partners are into it.

Author's notes are in italics.

( onward! )

So that's this year! Life has been ridiculously busy since I promised to post this, which has led to this post being worked on multiple times before I actually got anywhere with it. Sorry it's so late --hopefully the pattern of being later every year will *not* continue. I'd like to keep the contest within the confines of February at least.

Everyone who contributed to this project, be it submitting, inspiring, reading, commenting, enjoying...you are great people. Thank you for *being* great people. Thank you for making my February brighter, and making hopefully some other people's Februarys brighter

Now get to the praise. I wanna know which ones you think are the totally hottest!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: See, there's a move in Squares called "Couples Circulate"...

Some notes on Little Aliens:
Little Aliens go "bleep" a lot, making them aurally indistinguishable from certain models of robots. Luckily the two are visually dissimilar --you can recognize a Little Alien by it's wide eyes and mouth, green skin, tentacles, and abnormally long tongue. Additionally, they hardly ever clank, making it difficult for all but the least observant of researchers to confuse the two creatures.

As Little Aliens do not have hands in any traditional sense, they have some difficulty manipulating objects around them. They have a weak sense of touch, but a very strong sense of taste, strong enough that they can pick up some small amount of psychic data from licking sapient beings. Researchers are still looking for an explanation for this phenomenon, and while some skeptics hold out that being able to taste thoughts is frankly impossible, it is the common opinion from multiple different studies that sometimes the greater galaxy creates creatures that are frankly impossible.

Little Aliens thrive on happiness, and tend to behave in a nurturing manner to any creature they encounter, unless hungry. A hungry Little Alien is a sight to behold indeed --until it has eaten its fill, it will gleefully devour each and every living creature it encounters, regardless of toxicity or deliciousness. Hungry Little Aliens are easily recognizable by the red glow that gets into their eyes. Luckily, their hunger cycle occurs only once every six Typical-Earth-Lunar-Cycles (TELCs), and on a very regular schedule, making them easy pets.

They can be taught various sapient languages, but do not tend to progress past simple phrases. They communicate with others of their species through various maneuvers of the mouth, teeth, and tongue, and two Little Aliens having a long conversation has been observed to be quite similar to certain courting behaviors of other sapient races.

The courting behaviors of Little Aliens are widely varied, as they are one of the few species in the galaxy almost totally indiscriminate about partnering choice. They remain largely infertile across sapient boundaries, creating few cross-species, and do exhibit a tendency for pink-bodied beings of all species, though the preference seems to be minor.

They get no nutritional value out of Jell-o, but have been shown to be abnormally fond of it. Which seems about right, as most sapients get no nutritional value out of Jell-o, and yet it is still one of the single best selling food-products in the Greater Galaxy.

Some notes on Giant Sea Slugs and Hot Space Babes:
The Giant Sea Slug is a hibernatory form of your typical Hot Space Babe. Being as Hot Space Babes require more than average amounts of heat to survive (hence the "hot"), when their core temperature drops, they create a cocoon around them, typically made of cloth, pillows, and space debris, in which they hide until their core temperature returns to something more approaching normal.

A hibernation can also be triggered by a sudden drop across the surface temperature of a Hot Space Babe. These hibernations tend not to last as long, and can often be witnessed as overnight events, rather than season-long. The shell of the Giant Space Slug in this instance will often be made of less warming material, and portions of the more typical Hot Space Babe anatomy may still be recognizable outside of the shell.

It is rumoured that one particular subspecies of Hot Space Babe has a different hibernatory form, this one known as a Magnificent Sentient Hottub rather than a Giant Space Slug. Magnificent Sentient Hottubs have the unique distinction of being one of the only hibernatory forms in the greater galaxy to host multiple creatures --four is not an uncommon collective, and there have been alleged reports of even greater numbers. The Hot Space Babes with this particular hibernatory form often seem less reluctant to return to their more typical selves.

You can recognize a Hot Space Babe by the fact that they often keep tinsel in their hair. Allegations that this is used for the purposes of wicked deviance will be met with giggles, and perhaps a murmured invitation to come back home and play with their magic wand.

Under no circumstances should you go home with a Hot Space Babe and play with its magic wand.

So, I find myself dissatisfied with certain aspects of my vocabulary.

Some of these are because they're harmful language. I'm trying to avoid using bitch, cunt, lame, crazy, insane, gyp, and more recently, idiot and moron. (and I never did get much into retarded or gay). If nothing else, I see it as a challenge --I could use a word that I've been told is harmful, or I could be clever and come up with something much more interesting. And really now, is it anywhere near as satisfying to call someone a "lame ass-faggot¹ bitch" as to casually inform them that they are "a thrice-cursed stain on the dirty socks of society"? Gets exactly the point across without using any marginalized groups as insults. Brilliant!

Starting sentences with conjunctions is one of my cardinal writing sins, and I've been working to fix that. Not well, unfortunately, but I've at least started noticing when I do it, and sometimes I even rewrite the relevant sentence.

While I highly endorse using the word fuck often and liberally (it just has such a great sound to it), even I must admit that it shows an occasional lack of creativity. Even more problematically is the fact that...well...I don't think sex should be seen as a swear! It's much too fun for that, which makes me loathe to associate a good act with whatever fuckery is going on today.

Of course, I've already mentioned in this journal that I way overuse the modifying adverb "really really", sometimes with added symbology, such as *asterisks* or _underscores_. This does such a disservice to all the other wonderful modifiers in the world, like extremely, emphatically, excellently (not to mention the ones that start with the other 25 letters of the alphabet!), and, like my overuse of my favourite expletive, shows a lack of creativity that I simply refuse to associate myself with.

It's not a lack of creativity I fear, but lack of sophistication when I like, way slip into, the totally valley ways of talkin', or start droppin' letters like a proper South'ner. It wouldn't be such a flaw if I could keep it to my actual speech, but I think like I talk like I write, and all three can be affected by my most recent media inputs. So watching TrueBlood or the Walking Dead is all well and good, but man, does it ever make me start to drawl.

Combining my first and third points, you get my discomfort with any number of religious words --God, Jesus, Christ, and damn. "For cat's sake" is a phrase I stumbled across in a book recently, and I've taken an immediate liking to the wording, meaning I may very well start using it to fill the gap left by my discomfort from asking someone else's god to damn things. Cursed serves nicely as a substitute for damn as well, but I've been a blasphemous little thing for a very long time, so fixing my ways may take some time indeed.

(Additionally, I do tend to use Athe or Mama when I need to swear by a god --better to use my own than anyone else's, if mine have trouble with my irreverence, they can take it up with me, and I can make proper reparations.)

Going off the theme of adding things to my vocabulary rather than subtracting them, you come across my insistence that I should be using the dictionary built into Vera *far* more often than I actually do. I've been trying to make a point of it lately --when my mind wishes to use a word that I am not quite sure of the proper definition, too often I'll substitute something safer, and generally less interesting. Having a one click dictionary absolutely saves me from the conundrum, and I've been doing my best to, when confronted with a word I am only seventy percent sure I'm using correctly or so, I take the time to look it up. More often than not, I was right.

I was recently told, in no uncertain terms, that I was no longer to use the sentence structure of "I am" followed by a negative. I do things, or occasionally do not do things, and sometimes those are bad things and make me feel bad, but they don't make me a bad person. This is an amazingly tricky habit to unlearn --I've spent a long time reinforcing the fact that while I am a pretty awesome person, I also tend to behave in the fashion of an absolute buffoon, most especially where my academic career is concerned.

I don't expect I'm doing a particularly good job of the challenge, but the right-thinking parts of myself (which have too-little opportunity to speak up sometimes) consider it to absolutely be a thing for me to do. Words have power after all, and if I can steer my mind away from the concept that I am, inherently, a failure and towards the thought that perhaps sometimes I merely fail, I'm sure I'll wind up being happier all around.

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head, at least for this particular instant of my life. Because my core idea of myself is so tied into the concept of being a writer, and because I operate so deeply in words, the language and vocabulary I choose or do not choose to use is never all that far from my mind.

Adieu, mein leibchen.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: xkcd stopped me using adjectve-ass noun forever. I still use it sometimes, but I do so consciously, and always in the adjective ass-noun form.

So, I've decided to do Yuletide, despite having little-to-no experience in the world of internet fandom, and a nearly debilitating fear that I will do Everything Wrong and make the entire internet hate me. Or inadvertently find myself in the middle of OMGDRAMA.

Allegations that I just want to grow up to be Racheline someday are...well, completely true but have nothing to do with this. I just really like the concept of the Yuletide project, and anything that has a chance of getting me middlefic is a thing that I fully support.

---

Anyways. Dear person-who-is-writing-me-a-fic (Yulegoat? Why are you a Yulegoat? Oh dear, already this makes no sense!)

Hello there, lovely person who is going to write me a story! You are _super super nice_ and I just want to say thank you and also glee! about the fact that you are going to write a story just for me! That's really really cool.

I've never done this whole Yuletide thing before, and I'm not a huge fandom person (though I enjoy both writing and fannish things) and really, I'm quite concerned I am going to freak you out or something. (Mostly because one of my prompts was "genderswap mad science smut"¹) So, I hope I'm doing this mostly right --I've stolen the general format from futuresoon, since she seems to be pretty savvy about this whole fandom thing².

( So, I think here is where I babble about more elaborate things for my stories? And try not to be too verbose, which tends to be difficult for me. Also, warning, allusions to porn and kink and stuff )

Again, I hope this wasn't _way way way_ too long, and I hope you're not utterly freaked out by me or whathaveyou and I hope the plot bunnies go forth and multiply and you can catch a nice one and write the story easily! Also, I hope you find a five dollar bill and can buy a nice coffee somewhere.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: To my friendslist, if you identified the fandom without peeking under the cut, I give you three gerbils and a tin of mints. :mgrin:

2: And if you ARE Futuresoon, well then. That would be _pretty damn amazing_ is all I'm saying. And I expect one bang-up story from you, young lady! Also, like I've been saying for basically forever, we should hang out sometime. What's going on your week of March 7-13th next year?

3: *blows a kiss towards MarcMagus*