(no subject)

[the_rck]

I'm still not making very good progress on the LARP. I think I've roughed out most of the changes I need to make to the characters, and I've reformatted the character sheets so that they're more easily readable on the screen (I have no idea what possessed me to use Helvetica when I wrote the stupid game back in 1994. I do everything in Times New Roman these days). I just need to nail down a couple of plot points, and then I should be able to push through with the writing. I'm going to spend some time this afternoon talking through some ideas with Scott (we're driving up to his parents' so we'll have about 45 minutes in the car each way with no way to get distracted by more interesting stuff).

"Rheotaxis" hasn't gone anywhere yet because I'm holding to my plan not to write further until the damned LARP rewrite is done. It's been hard in many ways but... I'm not exactly certain what I want to do next. I've got two directions I could go and no strong sense of which is the better approach. I can either go straight into what happens to Yohji the next day, or I can go back to Omi, Ken and Ran and make them figure out how to handle whoever comes to make sure they've survived the big empathic surge. The latter possibility will get long but could be very interesting since there are only two people I can see stopping by-- Crawford and Aya-chan. Either could be fascinating, but... If I write it, it'll shift the dynamic of the future portions of the story because I don't see how I can keep the visitor from seeing Omi up and about. If I go straight to Yohji, I keep the story focused, and I don't have to explain anything about anyone else. And Yohji *is* the main character...

I'll probably eventually end up writing fragments of both versions and see how they come out. After all, I can use any Yohji pov stuff regardless of whether or not I stick in the scene with the other characters.

I did find an interesting series of essays talking about patronage, power and law in the world of Harry Potter. (If that sort of thing interests you: http://www.livejournal.com/community/hp_essays/2004/01/29/ ). What I took away from it, though, was a sense that this was what kind of I'd been groping toward in thinking about Taisken politics. It's not entirely relevant to "Rheotaxis," but I like knowing the details that lie behind things. I may at some point write about how I think that society works. Just not this month and probably not next. Not till after the LARP and the next chapter of the fic are done.

I'm being a little crazy this month. I volunteered to rec Yami no Matsuei fics on try_this_fic. That's let me waste an incredible amount of time poking through bookmarks and looking for good fics. I'm only required to come up with one rec a week, but that seemed like a cop out when I could easily think of a dozen good stories.

Of course, trying to come up with something to put in each rec under "Why Must This Story Be Read?" is a challenge, especially when the main reason is always really "Because I had fun reading it." That just sounds lame. And it's even harder to paraphrase "Well, I had fun with this, but I also think it had some problems, but you might enjoy reading it anyway" into something dignified and enthusiastic. (Is it even possible to be both dignified and enthusiastic?) This is particularly on my mind today since the story I plan to rec next stirs up exactly such mixed feelings in me. There are a few plot points that make me want to scream and tear out my hair because they require the characters to be a lot stupider than I think they actually are-- Heck, I'm not convinced that I know anybody dumb enough to do the things they do, but... I enjoyed the story arc. I kept reading it, and I remembered it afterward.

I would, by the way, welcome suggestions regarding fics I might consider rec'ing.