Airship pirates, back to work, and the Queen of Crows

Will was right. There is something amusing about blasting Abney Park's Aether Shanties while trying to navigate the winter roads of Northern Indiana. A pirate airship would definitely fare better in this weather than my Corolla.

Yesterday was the first day back to work. It does suck, not being able to take the pain meds during the day. Both for the obvious reasons and for the fuzziness and exhaustion that follow during the evening. Unfortunately I've been back in insomnia mode for the last two nights, as well, so evidently all that recuperating last week used up my sleep minutes. Bah.

In less grumpifying news, I mentioned in an earlier post that the fabulous Monica Valentinelli drafted me to do editing, typesetting, and the cover illustration for her Queen of Crows project, which has been great fun. I'm slowly plugging away at my end -- even more slowly now that I've been essentially out of commission for a week -- but there has been progress. (For those who are either new to EFI, or may have stumbled across this post in a fit of whimsy, QoC is a short story set in the world of Monica's very cool Violet War novel-in-progress, Argentum. I do recommend checking it out if you get a chance.)

Artist Leanne Buckley is providing the character art for the QoC character, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how it matches up to the image evoked by Monica's writing. (M. herself seems thrilled with what she's seen so far.)  More details will follow soon on that project -- but in the meantime, here's a peek at the cover I did for the story (click to embiggen):

 

Mind you, I'll be the first to confess I'm more of a writer/editor/typesetter/webmonkey than a graphic designer.  I do like to play with Adobe programs, though, and this was a lot of fun, so I'm glad she talked me into it. I think it turned out pretty well (for an amateur!). 

Finally, this blog will be getting an overhaul in the next few weeks if I have time. There is much reorganizing and re-templating to be done. (I believe the Violet War site will see its revision first, though, so I'll post here when Monica has the new site up and running.)

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Geek of the Week

A very quick note: Lowell Francis is officially the Geek of the Week. No, really.

Hint: If you go to RPG Geek / GeekDo and post questions on that thread, I'm pretty sure he's legally required to answer them. Several of his players have already joined the RPGG regulars in attempting to whittle his typing fingers down to nubs.

And now ... back to impossible deadlines.

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Reason to Be Excited

The Monica let me read a revised version of the first few chapters of Argentum, which she's planning on sending out to publishers in the near future. I am currently unable to concentrate on making sense out of the jumbles in my own head right now, so it was a good change of pace to see how she's reworked the text so far since the first draft initially posted on the Violet War site. It definitely makes me want to flex the writing muscles a bit -- as did Otep's trick of posting an interesting photo on her blog and inviting her readers to "tell the story."

ANYWAY. I'm delighted to have a chance to witness M.'s progress on Argentum, and how the revision differs from the first draft. I wish her much luck and success on her hard work, and I hope she'll get a good bite when she's ready to start sending out the proposal packages.

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Why Does It Feel Like Monday?

I know it's Friday. So by all rights it should feel like Friday. And yet ...

I'm going to blame the weather. The Indiana Shroud is in full force, despite a couple of short-lived glimpses of brilliant blue sky and sun today. I got a face full of sunbeam for exactly one minute while I was waiting for the shuttle after lunch. It was a nice change, if too-too brief.

I'm also still a little grumpy that I had to cancel a boba tea date with Cher Mere last night so I could go home and sleep after work. That's right, no boba tea. Didn't even sound good. That's a sure sign something's off. That and sleeping for 11 hours on a Thursday night. That's weekend sleep, that is.

Today I did go in to work, but I'm still feeling a bit punky, and not in the good way. It takes a lot to make me skip a game, but ... I just want to curl up on my comfy couch tonight with some a bowl of ice cream or Cambert tea. Will will just have to put up with me crashing his territory tonight. I hope he's feeling entertaining.

Also, he found an amusing new anime on Hulu.com: Baccano! I've only watched the first episode so far, and I don't know quite how to describe it. It seems to have an odd roundabout storytelling motif in the tradition of Boogiepop Phantom, involves immortal '30s-era gangsters and lots of violence, and is stranger and funnier than I can do justice.

Have a good weekend.

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Happy Grapes and Apples Day!

I don't have my own garden -- haven't in a couple of decades or so, a situation I should rectify at some point. And I live in a small city, just far enough in that I have to make a point of driving a few miles out of the way to catch a glimpse of the familiar soybean and corn fields that surrounded me for the first 3/4 of my life. Because of the chilly weather we've had all summer, I haven't even been making the rounds on my usual late-night drives -- sadly, there's not been one single perfectly rainy, hot August night amongst the corn fields to be had this year.

Still, I find a certain amount of comfort in marking the milestones of the year. Especially when they're delicious milestones.

Today is the second of the three Neopagan harvest holidays: Autumn Equinox, Mabon, Harvest Home, Mid-Harvest ... like a lot of recently created holidays, it has quite the roster of names. I use Mabon just because I like the way it sounds, but to me, it really does just boil down to being the Grapes and Apples Harvest. Today would be a good day to visit a local vineyard or orchard ... grapes, wine, apple butter, apple cider, apple cakes, apple pancakes, grapes and apple slices with cheese ...

Hm. Is it me, or is it hungry in here?

This is also the time of year I begin to feel the baking bug again, and apples and pumpkins are almost entirely to blame for that. I don't really do much in the way of cookies and pies and that sort of thing, but oh, how I adore the loaves -- beer, zucchini, apple, and pumpkin bread -- as well as apple cake. Auzumel has agreed to show me how to make pumpkin rolls sometime in the next couple of weeks, too. Since it seems to involve some degree of finesse other than throwing things in a baking tin and setting the oven, I guess we'll see how that goes. :)

Tea starts to creep into the repertoire again this time of year, as well. Specifically black tea with just a bit of vanilla, cream and honey. My grandma always made it with milk and sugar instead of cream and honey, and called it Cambert Tea. I have no idea where the name came from, but it is apparently a staple in several branches of the family, and predates the current generations.

In other news, I'm looking forward to seeing the Tokyo String Quartet with Edige this Friday. Looking over the playlist earlier, I recognized Bela Bartok as a composer that I enjoyed quite a bit back when I was taking piano lessons so many moons ago, but I'm less familiar with Schubert and Mendlessohn. They exist in a nebulous zone of generic classical music with others who failed to catch my attention. Still, free tickets, with a wine and cheese reception afterward, should we feel the need to stay and chat with anyone. It should be a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

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Abhoth and Azathoth and the Dunwich Horror, Oh My!

I have played Arkham Horror + the Dunwich Horror expansion two nights in a row. Once with Cher Mere and her husband (we won, yay!), and once with Will, running two characters each (we got nommed, boo!).

Both were unusually long games. The first night, we faced off against Abhoth, and despite Nurse Heather making life rough for Cher Mere at the asylum (hee), it went fairly well over all. The second night was a slow but inevitable trainwreck. A series of tragedies, if you will. There was some amusement -- I ran into Nurse Sharon at the hospital, and good old Carolyn Fern-the-Psychologist (sanest woman you'll ever meet, but OMG is she slow) ended up as a super-prepared monster hunter -- but Azathoth feasted well that night, nonetheless. To give you an idea of how the entire game went, Will got poor Bob Jenkins unceremoniously gacked by pulling an Abyss encounter that sent everyone's favorite salesman to visit cranky, cranky Azathoth, who, as it turns out, was feeling rather peckish.

That card only takes effect if Azathoth is the Ancient One in play, by the way. /sigh

We also woke up the Dunwich Horror, who is a jerk. You can quote me on that. When you face him, you pull randomly from a small stack of possible configurations. The one I chose was immune to physical damage, I believe, and required five successful hits to take him down. Argh.

In other news, there were pastries from West End Bakery at work this morning. So delicious...

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Little Mermaids

Pushing through some unfinished posts that have been languishing the last couple of weeks... Here is #1.

Here there be spoilers. Do not follow the breadcrumbs if you're annoyed by that sort of thing.

I finally did get to see Ponyo with some good friends. The company was excellent, the movie was cute, and I'm glad I went. However, my reaction to the movie has been somewhat different than that of everyone else so far. While I loved the character of Ponyo herself, and the adorable old ladies, the more I thought about the movie, the more I realized how ... well, disappointed I was.

Overall the movie felt sort of ... recycled. Mind you, I love the Little Mermaid tale, and I expected it to be a re-telling, not something ground-breakingly new. As well, there were some bits of nice symbolism and such -- the water kingdom, the tunnel, etc. -- and I'm all for Cate Blanchette as a sea goddess. I also loved Totoro, so I don't even think it's just that I was caught off-guard by a movie meant for younger children. (As Sherri put it, the movie was definitely not challenging, and honestly, I usually don't mind that.)

First, I was less enamored of the character designs, which struck me as vintage Miyazaki in the bad way: the fish-girls are shapeless blobs with odd heads, and I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes at the garishness of Ponyo's father.

Then there's the inclusion of some tired and unsubtle jabs of nature vs. humanity that were unnecessary. They seemed to have been plugged in out of some moral obligation, and were especially annoying because the proponent of the "wipe out the humans/return to pristine ancient ocean" camp had once been human himself. As well, the movie does an excellent job showing how pollution affects the ocean and so on -- the dialogue to that effect removed any hint of subtlety or finesse from those scenes. It reminded me of the first Miyazaki film I saw, Princess Mononoke. While it was admittedly a lovely, lovely film, I haven't the faintest desire to re-watch it, and a large part of that stems from the heavy-handed eco-thumping.

Yes, I understand that concern about the planet is a good theme. But Studio Ghibli has the talent to show the encroachment and damage and concern in a way that makes the preachy dialogue clunkier by far in comparison. Unfortunately they insist on telling us the moral of the story, as well, which ruins the effect.

The other thing I disliked was actually a little harder to pin down.

I do understand that this is supposed to be a sweet little love story; a fairy tale in which the fate of the world hinges on two five-year-olds and their innocent idea of love. Ponyo, who is a willful and spirited girl (not unlike Coraline, who survives her ordeals precisely because she is both clever and such an utter brat) makes a decision about who she's going to be, rebels against the father, and promptly tromps off to make it so -- leaving quite a wake in her path. She is the epitome of a tiny force of nature.

Her decision and her magic (presumably augmented by the potion her father was going to unleash on the poor humans) do affect the balance of nature, endangering the world, and at the same time enabling the wonders of ancient oceans to return. It is, quite literally, magic of world-shaping proportions.

Meanwhile, Sosuke, the object of Ponyo's fascination, is somewhat serious, kind, considerate and responsible (or as much as can be expected of a five-year-old boy). He saves her life in the beginning of the story, gives her the means to become human, and gives her the name Ponyo, which she gleefully adopts. (Honestly, it is better than Brunhilde or "Hey, fish girl".) He is understandably distraught when Ponyo's father retrieves the magical talking fish and traps her in a bubble under the sea.

The movie goes on as expected. Ponyo and Sosuke must make a journey, helping and trusting each other; as predicted by her father, Ponyo tires and begins to lose her magic, and Sosuke ends up pushing her along. And I think that was what finally tipped me from mild amusement to flat disappointment -- suddenly Ponyo's tale bcame just another story about a girl giving up everything (home, family, friends, and especially her own inherent magic) to join the world of the boy she loves. Why does the sacrifice have to be so complete -- and so completely one-sided?

The original version holds within it a bouquet of Christian warnings; illustrations of the inherent dangers of desire and sacrifice; soul vs. magic; humans mixing with Others (whether that meant mermaids or, I suppose, those of a different class or race). I had honestly hoped that this re-telling might bend those rules, if not outright break them. I was hoping for a little balance.

I don't consider myself one of those women who get their panties in a twist over fairy tales, but I do find myself quickly tiring of certain tropes. Maybe it's a symptom of my age, or perhaps there's a sense that some of them hit too close to home, these days.

Maybe I'm just tired of armless maidens and refrigerator girls and little mermaids.

These days I'd much rather read about women whose magic is so ingrained it can't be so easily forsaken; women clever enough and strong enough to remain true to themselves without losing that balance. I want Vasilisa or Chihiro, a Coraline or a Promethea.

If there must be a little mermaid, then let her be wise enough to understand the dangers she faces, and brave enough to turn herself to foam on the water, if need be. And once in a while, if she could turn the tables, to see what her object of desire might be willing to give up for her instead ... well, that would be a fine thing to see, as well.

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For Kaiju

Malki! must have had Kaiju in mind when he made this comic.

Also, Happy Tuesday.

There is another post in the works, but for now, that is all.

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