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Thanksgiving Report
For posterity, I record it here.
Good Thanksgiving
--I got to finish the book I was reading, "Son of Avonar", the first of Carol Berg's "Bridge of D'Arnath" series. It attracted me because on the back it said that the heroine finds this mystery man in the woods who is either retarded or mute, and he's the key to the whole plot, and I'm wondering, it'll be interesting to see how they do this. It was interesting, and damn, her characters are awesome, and for some reason even though all the evidence was there and I wanted to believe something of the sort, I never saw the end of the book coming. Already bought the second book.
--Just after I had given her up as a lost cause, who should awake from the land of the dead but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zinniazayda? We chatted and got back up to date on some of the brainstuff, anyway. Rhys and Morcant own my soul with their evil wonderfulness, and Tabitha is a happy kitten.
--Speaking of kittens, I saw mine. I don't need to spend time with them per se, I just need to see them around and have them yelp at me for a while, and then I feel better, and also usually highly allergic.
--Decent amounts of RPing, even if I don't have the lovely logs to look back at. <3 And some by email, which is new for me, but very shiny. I like it because if the other person's away and you're just dropping in to check your email you don't have to have ever interrupted the scene and can continue it on your own, so next time you get back to your seat, maybe you'll find the game continued without you. Progress!
--No more bleeding~
--Hrrm. Should say something about family here. Well, I saw Dad? Love Dad. Thanksgiving went okay? We saw slides of my grandparents' trip to Russia, and I now can write in Cyrilic, sorta. Nobody spontaneously combusted?
Bad Thanksgiving
--Except my laptop, which this weekend decided to send up sparks and start smoking with a sort of gleeful metal-burning scent I usually associate with sparklers at Fourth of July. It is well and truly dead this time. Farewell, ZERO, you bitch.
--With ZERO was lost about 3,000 words of NaNoWriMo I was too lazy to post. Damn my laziness! It's not irretrievable... Dad took out the hard drive and bought me a USB-HD adapter the wonderfulphinnia suggested, and he's going to get the file off it, and then I'll have a special bonus in the form of 30GB of extra portable storage space. ZERO's most useful incarnation yet, because it can't even commit suicide.
--I slacked on NaNo. I'm only at 43,000 instead of 44,000, and I don't have enough days left to do that. Will write on the train. Swear it.
--My mother decided to poke me and prod me and nag me about getting a cell phone while I was home, saying again and again that I needed one and she wanted me to have one. The day she had decided we were going to go and get one, I overslept a little, and apparently Mom decided not to wake me up or in any way notify me that the "window" of time in which she was willing to buy it was passing. So by the time I woke up she was like, "I already went out today. I don't feel like going out again. We'll go later this weekend. Oh? We can't? Then we won't get you a phone I guess." Jesus Moskowitz Christ, woman, consistency is a virtue. If you're going to nag me until I'm willing, then wake me up, or make the hideous sacrifice of going out after all of fucking NOON.
--My mother insisted on watching "Elf". When I explained to her why I didn't want to see dumb comedy with no soul or even attempt at intelligence (hi, I'm your daughter, I don't like lowest common denominator humor) she said, "You have no room to talk, with what you watch." That disgusted me beyond measure. The entire genre of anime, lowered to Elf in a single suggestion. As far as I can tell she is convinced that anime can be summed up with "people screaming a lot." Yeah, Mom, that's what happens when your only exposure to it is from another room when it's in a language you don't understand.
--My sister talks all over me to other people (she asks me a question, I answer indignantly, and without listening at all she immediately begins talking to Dad about a new topic that they then get into, so never mind, Kay) and spends a ridiculous amount of time with her friends. Don't you need to breathe? Is it REALLY a crime if you hang out with them "only twice" on your five day vacation, four days of which you spend either with family or deathly ill?
--Allergies, and my cat's fleas. You're not allowed on Mama's bed when you have fleas, you stupid cat.
Son of Avonar
"Son of Avonar" is a first-person narrative of a woman (age 35) named Seri who is living in a peasant village where she has no friends and nobody will speak to her. She wasn't always. And one day while walking in the woods she comes across a very naked young man who attacks her and half-strangles her, taking her hostage in the desperate hope that the horsemen chasing him won't attack. They manage to escape alive and then the young man passes straight out. Seri runs for her life, but later on, in spite of herself, she goes back. He seems mute, is probably half-mad, and is certainly a wanted man -- but she goes back. She knows what it's like to be hunted.
Once upon a time Seri was a duke's daughter and she lived the high life. As a warrior's daughter she had been raised in the warrior way, but the relatives she spent the most time with were intellectuals, not fighters, and she met a man in her uncle's parlor who was strange and quiet and a bit exotic. His secret came out, after years of time spent among their friens in the parlor: Karon was a sorcerer, and sorcerers are vile, wicked, anathema. Karon is a healer and can't bear even to touch a weapon, much less to eat babies etc etc. His other secret comes out that night: he is in love with Seri, has been for a long time.
They get married. They live together. Karon is discovered, and tortured and maimed and finally burned. They do the same to all her friends, all those friendly kindly souls from the parlor. Two months later Seri gives birth to their son, who is killed by her own brother's hands. (Her poor BROTHER. But that's TMI.) But because Seri is the duke's sister -- the duke, who is the king's champion and dearest friend -- and once intended to be the king's bride, she is granted a pardon, and allowed to live. For some reason, though, she doesn't seem very fond of the idea of living with her brother and his precious king.
They tell you all of that very easily in the narration, and ten years after all of that Seri finds a young man in the woods; he is violent and half-mad and a different person from one minute to the next, utterly gentle and sweet with a smile to melt the heart in one moment, and in the next a giant baby throwing a temper tantrum and hitting anyone who dares try to calm him. But he is unmistakably a sorcerer, and Seri won't voluntarily see anyone subjected to that same fate again.
After this point: spoilers!
Lordy, the slow unraveling of the mute temperamental Aeren to the brooding versatile D'Natheil to the familiar loving Karon was masterful. Maybe it was just me -- maybe I was too busy wondering if Seri would ever get over Karon, if I even wanted her to, if Karon would be back, because the more she relived the scenes leading up to his death and the more she relived those moments itself the more slow pieces began to fall into place and the more it seemed like maybe in his last moments Karon was close to something much more important than death.
He was a martyr; he touched something amazing and beautiful with his conviction, and those who could see that didn't let him die.
But I never expected that violent sulky individual, no matter how much he had changed or aged unnaturally during the course of the story, to be Karon at heart. Even when I saw the signs and knew that he was in love with Seri, even when she had oh mama hot flashes when he would laugh and muttered to herself about widow's lust, even when he knew things about her he shouldn't or couldn't have known, how she was scared of the dark... Because how could that violent sulky individual be Karon, who never had a violent or sulky moment in his sainted existence?
But when he told her, "There are no demons here in this darkness. I'm with you," I knew it was him. She knew it too. Impossible and wonderful. He didn't remember, he didn't know how he knew her, but it was Karon. I thought she would go mad with her happiness, from what she did next. Even if he couldn't stay with her, even if he was changed... She knew he would be back, because it was Karon and he loved her so much.
They're so beautiful and I want them.
Incidentally, at my halfway point through the second book, I have to ask... HOW MANY TIMES DOES KARON HAVE TO DIE AND/OR FORGET EVERYTHING? Argh, it breaks my heart right along with Seri's.
Leaving at 2:30, home by 8~
Good Thanksgiving
--I got to finish the book I was reading, "Son of Avonar", the first of Carol Berg's "Bridge of D'Arnath" series. It attracted me because on the back it said that the heroine finds this mystery man in the woods who is either retarded or mute, and he's the key to the whole plot, and I'm wondering, it'll be interesting to see how they do this. It was interesting, and damn, her characters are awesome, and for some reason even though all the evidence was there and I wanted to believe something of the sort, I never saw the end of the book coming. Already bought the second book.
--Just after I had given her up as a lost cause, who should awake from the land of the dead but
zinniazayda? We chatted and got back up to date on some of the brainstuff, anyway. Rhys and Morcant own my soul with their evil wonderfulness, and Tabitha is a happy kitten.--Speaking of kittens, I saw mine. I don't need to spend time with them per se, I just need to see them around and have them yelp at me for a while, and then I feel better, and also usually highly allergic.
--Decent amounts of RPing, even if I don't have the lovely logs to look back at. <3 And some by email, which is new for me, but very shiny. I like it because if the other person's away and you're just dropping in to check your email you don't have to have ever interrupted the scene and can continue it on your own, so next time you get back to your seat, maybe you'll find the game continued without you. Progress!
--No more bleeding~
--Hrrm. Should say something about family here. Well, I saw Dad? Love Dad. Thanksgiving went okay? We saw slides of my grandparents' trip to Russia, and I now can write in Cyrilic, sorta. Nobody spontaneously combusted?
Bad Thanksgiving
--Except my laptop, which this weekend decided to send up sparks and start smoking with a sort of gleeful metal-burning scent I usually associate with sparklers at Fourth of July. It is well and truly dead this time. Farewell, ZERO, you bitch.
--With ZERO was lost about 3,000 words of NaNoWriMo I was too lazy to post. Damn my laziness! It's not irretrievable... Dad took out the hard drive and bought me a USB-HD adapter the wonderful
phinnia suggested, and he's going to get the file off it, and then I'll have a special bonus in the form of 30GB of extra portable storage space. ZERO's most useful incarnation yet, because it can't even commit suicide.--I slacked on NaNo. I'm only at 43,000 instead of 44,000, and I don't have enough days left to do that. Will write on the train. Swear it.
--My mother decided to poke me and prod me and nag me about getting a cell phone while I was home, saying again and again that I needed one and she wanted me to have one. The day she had decided we were going to go and get one, I overslept a little, and apparently Mom decided not to wake me up or in any way notify me that the "window" of time in which she was willing to buy it was passing. So by the time I woke up she was like, "I already went out today. I don't feel like going out again. We'll go later this weekend. Oh? We can't? Then we won't get you a phone I guess." Jesus Moskowitz Christ, woman, consistency is a virtue. If you're going to nag me until I'm willing, then wake me up, or make the hideous sacrifice of going out after all of fucking NOON.
--My mother insisted on watching "Elf". When I explained to her why I didn't want to see dumb comedy with no soul or even attempt at intelligence (hi, I'm your daughter, I don't like lowest common denominator humor) she said, "You have no room to talk, with what you watch." That disgusted me beyond measure. The entire genre of anime, lowered to Elf in a single suggestion. As far as I can tell she is convinced that anime can be summed up with "people screaming a lot." Yeah, Mom, that's what happens when your only exposure to it is from another room when it's in a language you don't understand.
--My sister talks all over me to other people (she asks me a question, I answer indignantly, and without listening at all she immediately begins talking to Dad about a new topic that they then get into, so never mind, Kay) and spends a ridiculous amount of time with her friends. Don't you need to breathe? Is it REALLY a crime if you hang out with them "only twice" on your five day vacation, four days of which you spend either with family or deathly ill?
--Allergies, and my cat's fleas. You're not allowed on Mama's bed when you have fleas, you stupid cat.
Son of Avonar
"Son of Avonar" is a first-person narrative of a woman (age 35) named Seri who is living in a peasant village where she has no friends and nobody will speak to her. She wasn't always. And one day while walking in the woods she comes across a very naked young man who attacks her and half-strangles her, taking her hostage in the desperate hope that the horsemen chasing him won't attack. They manage to escape alive and then the young man passes straight out. Seri runs for her life, but later on, in spite of herself, she goes back. He seems mute, is probably half-mad, and is certainly a wanted man -- but she goes back. She knows what it's like to be hunted.
Once upon a time Seri was a duke's daughter and she lived the high life. As a warrior's daughter she had been raised in the warrior way, but the relatives she spent the most time with were intellectuals, not fighters, and she met a man in her uncle's parlor who was strange and quiet and a bit exotic. His secret came out, after years of time spent among their friens in the parlor: Karon was a sorcerer, and sorcerers are vile, wicked, anathema. Karon is a healer and can't bear even to touch a weapon, much less to eat babies etc etc. His other secret comes out that night: he is in love with Seri, has been for a long time.
They get married. They live together. Karon is discovered, and tortured and maimed and finally burned. They do the same to all her friends, all those friendly kindly souls from the parlor. Two months later Seri gives birth to their son, who is killed by her own brother's hands. (Her poor BROTHER. But that's TMI.) But because Seri is the duke's sister -- the duke, who is the king's champion and dearest friend -- and once intended to be the king's bride, she is granted a pardon, and allowed to live. For some reason, though, she doesn't seem very fond of the idea of living with her brother and his precious king.
They tell you all of that very easily in the narration, and ten years after all of that Seri finds a young man in the woods; he is violent and half-mad and a different person from one minute to the next, utterly gentle and sweet with a smile to melt the heart in one moment, and in the next a giant baby throwing a temper tantrum and hitting anyone who dares try to calm him. But he is unmistakably a sorcerer, and Seri won't voluntarily see anyone subjected to that same fate again.
After this point: spoilers!
Lordy, the slow unraveling of the mute temperamental Aeren to the brooding versatile D'Natheil to the familiar loving Karon was masterful. Maybe it was just me -- maybe I was too busy wondering if Seri would ever get over Karon, if I even wanted her to, if Karon would be back, because the more she relived the scenes leading up to his death and the more she relived those moments itself the more slow pieces began to fall into place and the more it seemed like maybe in his last moments Karon was close to something much more important than death.
He was a martyr; he touched something amazing and beautiful with his conviction, and those who could see that didn't let him die.
But I never expected that violent sulky individual, no matter how much he had changed or aged unnaturally during the course of the story, to be Karon at heart. Even when I saw the signs and knew that he was in love with Seri, even when she had oh mama hot flashes when he would laugh and muttered to herself about widow's lust, even when he knew things about her he shouldn't or couldn't have known, how she was scared of the dark... Because how could that violent sulky individual be Karon, who never had a violent or sulky moment in his sainted existence?
But when he told her, "There are no demons here in this darkness. I'm with you," I knew it was him. She knew it too. Impossible and wonderful. He didn't remember, he didn't know how he knew her, but it was Karon. I thought she would go mad with her happiness, from what she did next. Even if he couldn't stay with her, even if he was changed... She knew he would be back, because it was Karon and he loved her so much.
They're so beautiful and I want them.
Incidentally, at my halfway point through the second book, I have to ask... HOW MANY TIMES DOES KARON HAVE TO DIE AND/OR FORGET EVERYTHING? Argh, it breaks my heart right along with Seri's.
Leaving at 2:30, home by 8~