A very useful piece of software. It wasn't until I imported my text into it and started arranging it that a glaring flaw in the structure made itself apparent, leading to the physical act of arranging it making me think of a better way to structure it in the first place. Very cool! I am so organized now! (Not. But I am getting there.) I also really like how I can put my research links and articles into it for easier access. Because there's the not so organized thing.

Now if only it could actually write my story for me...

Happy New Year, dear Flisters! I hope 2012 is a much kinder year to everyone than 2011 was.

And Happy Birthday, Rose!!


I have never actually written down resolutions, so in the spirit of keeping myself honest over the next year:

Resolutions:
* To write something (1000 words?) every day. Better something than nothing, even a journal post is better than nothing. This winter so far makes me feel as if I am mentally atrophying.

* Write reviews of some of the interesting books I have read (no, not the romances >_> Although... I do wonder if I am the only one around that likes them?)

* Get back on the healthful eating train. The holidays are over, yo.
* To that end, develop menus for the week ahead of time instead of on the fly. Get groceries based on menu.

* Housekeeping (enough said). Resubscribe to Flylady for inspiration.

* Thinking seriously about knee replacement (the thought of that is utterly terrifying, not sure about this one at all. Chronic, essentially untreatable pain vs horrific hospital experience and very odd physician?)

...Turned 10 today. It seems so weird, like literally just yesterday she was born. Although, now I think back on it, some of those early months were not so rosy (colic until 6 months ;_; ). But still, I feel rather misty about the whole thing. They're so cute before they learn to talk.

I made roast chicken and root veggies for birthday dinner. She ate the chicken, but not the veggies (insert mom-ly frown here). And strawberry shortcake for birthday dessert.

She wants Red Velvet cupcakes for the cake at her Bday party. Is Red Velvet Cake a Maryland/ southern US thing? Is there such a thing in other parts of the country/ world? It really is kind of a freakish item.

...To all my f-listers who celebrate!

Hope you have a wonderful and fun day. Off to the in-laws for me, where I shall feast-- and then nap!

GOD this looks good. And so darkly delicious. I adore the pictorial that accompanies the instructions: pure gold. I may have to give this a shot when it is a bit colder out. It looks a bit rich for summer/ fall. I bet it would be good with a steaming cup of hazelnut coffee-- but not when it is 80 degrees or warmer out.

Schadenfreude Pie

Speaking of pie baking, I have made several fruit pies this summer. My latest was a delicious creation featuring Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples. Honeycrisp apples are my new favorite: they are just like eating apple cider, and wonderfully crunchy and crisp as well (as one might expect from the name). I cheated and used premade Pillsbury crusts, though. >_> It turned out awesomely-- just a delectable hint of tartness to accompany the sweetness and spice. I really dislike desserts that are all about the sweetness, and nothing else.

If anyone cares:

2 Granny Smith
3 Honeycrisp
1 lime (or lemon. I had limes and not lemons)
1/4 C light brown sugar
1/2 C sugar
1.5 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 C whole wheat flour

Preheat oven to 425. Peel and slice the apples thinly; squeeze the lime over the apples slices. Add the rest of the stuff and mix. Dot with butter or margarine. ( I use Brummel and Brown brand because it has no transfatty acids. Also it has enough salt so that in applications like this you don't need to add salt to the recipe to balance it all out.) Put in pie shell, cover with top crust, and bake for 45 minutes or so.

I was gonna add a pinch or two of cardamom, because I bet that would be wonderful, but I couldn't find it when I needed it (hidden as it was behind the mixer). I used some in a peach pie and it was delectable.

So lauand wrote a post about Ayano Yamane. We had a brief discussion about Viewfinder, which I don't care for, and which she does (and that's fine). We both agree that Ayano Yamane is a wonderful artist and creates beautiful artwork, even though I don't care for her one story. I still love Crimson Spell, her other manga she is currently working on.

But that got me thinking about why I don't care for Viewfinder, which many fans adore. The main reason is that one of the main characters is an utter (and rapetastic) asshole, so that kind of puts me off. I don't hate it though, and have actually read all of it to date via scanlation.

Straight up-- I read a lot. I am extremely omnivorous in my reading tastes, and I am pretty hard to offend. (Viewfinder, for example, does not offend me. I just think Akihito, the other protagonist, could do a lot  better than asshole Asami. ) There can be elements in a story that I don't care for (I am looking at you, Maiden Rose, which I actually have not finished reading, but plan to), but which don't ultimately ruin the story or manga for me.

I have been wondering, then, what makes a story or manga unfinishable, and what manga/stories qualify for that dubious distinction.

For me, in novels, if the main character(s) is irredeemable or does not grow/change in some way throughout the course of the story-- I can't finish it. The most lyrical prose in the world cannot save a shitty character for me. In romances in particular, I loathe stupid, fatuous heroines. Conversely, if a character or story is interesting, I am willing to overlook roughness of prose or stylistic quirks.

In manga it becomes a little more convoluted because it is a visual as well as a written medium. I like looking at the artwork and taking in the details and what is happening in each panel, and it matters to me if the artwork is good quality or not. Nevertheless, I can accept and even embrace off-beat artwork. A good example of this is Dogs: Bullets and Carnage, the mangaka of which has come under strong criticism for his very spare artwork. I actually like the art style, but I do see and understand what the critics mean. (Also, no lie, Heine and Badou are hotties.) In addition, the storyline is really good.

Thinking about it, there has only been one manga that has failed every litmus test I have-- irredeemable character(s), (strongly) objectionable story elements, bad artwork-- and that is Okane ga Nai. Yeah, it is yaoi, and that puts it in its own bailiwick, but still.

Tl;dr: What do you guys look for in a story or manga?

I have been pondering this, because I am doing Stuff. I have been doing Stuff for quite awhile, actually, but am making headway.

Anyway, it probably isn't a huge secret that I like the historical stuff and AUs. The reason for that is because it is part of my educational background, and it intrigues me to imagine characters doing their heroic things in various settings.

Part of the problem I have with writing historical AUs is the fact that a lot of the time (for example) the psychosocial/ sexual background of the times is not really amenable to writing the story I want to write. It seems kind of goofy to worry about that when I am writing an AU that features dragons, but it does. I always wonder if it is incumbent upon me to try and be as "realistic" as possible, or if anyone other than me cares if my male characters are fucking each other in a manner that would be entirely uncharacteristic of that time period. (Renaissance Florence, if anyone cares. Which was actually an infamous center of sodomitical activity throughout the Renaissance-- but almost never with two adult males. There are some really amazingly interesting studies written on this topic, btw.))

In some ways I get around this by saying, OK, my characters are fallen gods and they think about things in a different way than their society, especially the individuals involved who are all iconoclastic to their core. And again, I am having dragons and demons and angels and other stuff in this, so does it really matter? It's already crack! (Albeit non-funny crack.) Maybe I am writing an AU of Florence! But it bugs that anal-retentive, nit-picky historian in me.

I hasten to say I don't mind if other people's stories have AU history, I love reading them and enjoy the alternative history. It's only in my own that it bugs the crap out of me.

I don't know, dear flist, does it matter? Should one strive for historical accuracy (or as accurate as you can get given the fact that one can never know everything about a given situation)? How do you handle this sort of issue, or do you handle it by ignoring it and doing what you want in the service of the story you want to tell?

Maybe I should have a little twist that makes it clear that Florence and the Renaissance timeline took a bit (or a lot) of a jog from what we know.  Hmmm. That might actually be pretty cool...

Got power back yesterday afternoon (so much for being back on within hours ;_;). I probably totally jinxed us with that comment. A tree hit the utility pole at the corner of our property, taking out a few of the neighbors' electricity and utilities as well. We also lost phone, internet and TV, which we also got back yesterday afternoon. The storm itself was quite frightenin-- loud and dark and with weird noises that we didn't know what they were. We ended up "sleeping" downstairs at the little girl's insistence. It seemed more secure for some reason. The funny thing was when we were down there I could hear a single cricket outside chirping all night long. I found it to be really reassuring, somehow.

There are trees down all up and down the street, including an old oak trunk that landed on the evil-neighbor-at-the-end-of-the-street's trampoline, which gave me a momentary schadenfreude-ish jolly. It looks like the gentle hand of God place it squarely across the center, just like it was a tinker toy or something. Then I felt bad for snerking to myself, because he appeared really sad while he was looking at it. It's like there are Angels and Devils sitting on my shoulder: "But he's Evil!" "But now he's sad, and you are mean for laughing at him." "But... Evil!!" "Can't you just rise above it in this time of crisis?" "Grrrr. FINE." Then he nearly ran me off the road yesterday. >:| So now the Angel and Devil are back to arguing again, especially when I drive by it.

ANYWAY. There are still wires down everywhere, haphazardly strung around and about-- they haven't fastened all of them back up, at least on our street-- I guess they are just getting people powered back on and will fasten them up later. There were shreds of coax and power lines everywhere also, I guess from where falling/flying branches sliced through, but a lot of those have been tidied up as the repairmen come through. I lost most of the contents of my fridge, despite the application of ice, but most of the freezer stuff was OK, so that's good. Took out tons of trash and am doing a lot of cleaning. The roof leaked right at the end of the storm, but I am unsure if that was because of the sheer amount of water being too much to continue sluicing away from the house, or if there are shingles off. I haven't had time to check. But it wasn't much of a leak.

So all is well, overall. The tree that fell on the utility pole was an old oak, but my neighbor says it was hollow inside, and could have fallen on the family's cars (they have like 5 cars because the extended family lives there). My husband is having the vapours about losing the tree (which I can understand, it was beautiful and old and majestic as oaks tend to be), but apart from the various branches down and the one tree, and minor roof issues, we didn't suffer much property damage. We were very, very fortunate.

Hoping the folks to the north and south are coming out the other side as well, especially those of you in NY and NJ. I know lots of people got really shellacked. Still haven't heard from my brother, and he's in Vermont. :/

The Spousal Unit has had to go out of town for a couple of weeks. He left this morning around 5am or so. Good timing for him, but otherwise annoying for the rest of us. >:| He was actually kind of upset about it, so hoping we can maintain some sort of contact.

I went shopping yesterday and got drinking water and a tank full of gas, and we'll do the fill-up-the-bathtubs-with-water trick so we can flush the toilets if we lose water pressure. I went through a day of not flushing the toilets when the water main burst down the street and thought I was going to go crazy. Do not want to go there again! Today I need to move some of the crap outside closer to the walls of so it doesn't get blown into us, and charge up the items around the house that need charging. So I think we're pretty well set from a material perspective. My house is ~120 years old, and did OK through Ivan a few years back (albeit with a lot of creaking and some shingles lost on the roof), so we'll see how it goes this time around. We'll probably at least lose electricity at some point, but we seem to be near an important grid or something, because they seem to have the electricity around here restored in very short order. So I am knocking on wood.

Hope you guys further south and north are doing OK as well.

I saw an ad for an app for my phone called Pirates In Love, and the first chapter was free, so I downloaded it, and then downloaded one of the characters (the characters are where they make their money).

It's a dating game, which is a type of game I have never played before, but hey, Pirates! It's amazingly cheesy, and I should have named my character Mary Sue (instead I cringe a little that poor "Avierra" is a spineless git who ends up being kidnapped/rescued a lot and doing a great deal of cleaning and cooking), but it's cheesy and goofy in a good and amusing way. I downloaded Eduardo, the first mate, who is supposed to be sadistic and twisted, but he's just kind of snarky. I am surmising this is a cultural difference! Needless to say, Mary Sue... err... Avierra... ended up thawing Eduardo's icy heart. He wrote me letters, too.

But this is the otome game I really want to play: (this game review is TNSFW but funny as heck). Don't worry, it is relevant to most people on this list's interests, if only for the (major) LULZ.

(Thanks to freeradical9 for pointing that game out to me a few months ago!)