(no subject)

( Health crap and worries )

I'm giving up on some of my unread library books. It's not that I don't want to read them; it's that I'm having trouble pulling together enough brain to read a fluffy/silly graphic novel. I sometimes have to read a panel half a dozen times before the words penetrate. I'm not going to manage a full novel with characterization and plot threads and all that. This leaves me with five graphic novels, four novels, a book of poetry, and about fifteen hours worth of DVDs. I've got two CDs, a book on CD, a DVD, and a graphic novel waiting to be picked up from the library. There are a lot of other things, mostly CDs, that could come in today because there are copies on the shelf.

I have no idea how I can manage to string words together in order to write. I can, but I keep stopping and looking at what I've written and wondering if I'm writing word salad rather than a story or journal post.

After the blood draw, Scott and I got lunch at Plum Market and then did the grocery shopping. I made it through that, but it was harder than it should have been.

Beta wanted

I'm in need of a beta reader for a 3200 word fic set in the same world as The Very Self of the Storm.

It's DC comics adjacent with a large helping of early Smallville in the backstory, Clark/Lex, post-apocalyptic. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't need a lot of detailed knowledge of any particular bit of the DC related fandoms. Mostly because I don't have that detailed knowledge myself because that network is vast and convoluted and contradictory.

My first concern is the overwhelmingly large heaps of handwavium involved in the worldbuilding. This is set up for a time travel fix-it that I am not going to write. (Because saying I won't always works, right?) The handwavium is mostly there to explain why they haven't discussed it as a possibility sooner.

I suspect, too, that there are bits where I need more description because that's a perpetual problem for me. I'm also not sure that I've got the balance of things between the two characters right yet.

It's Lex alone in the Fortress of Solitude and talking to the Jor-El based AI there. I'm not sure that AI is plausible as any version of Jor-El, but 'any version of Jor-El' takes in such a broad swathe of characterization that I figure I can assume some version of him would be like that.

My main content warning is that Lex consistently refers to the AI as 'it' in his thoughts. Within the story, it's not clear how the AI might identify, but I'm pretty sure that this is Lex dehumanizing the AI to make himself feel better. I'm not sure that Lex actually knows (or has ever asked) what pronouns the AI would prefer.