My Muse is a Jackass

Case in point:


Mebrit fumbled with the keys to his apartment, nearly
dropping them when he went to put them back in his
pocket. Upon opening the door and stepping inside, he was
almost entirely certain that he was hallucinating.

"Miss Kos," he called out weakly as he nudged Tiramisu
aside and shut the door behind Endrin, "why is there a dead
woman in the hallway?"

"Well, I was going to leave her in the living room, but she
clashed with the upholstery."

Time to start over...

Just to keep me from becoming cocky, NetHack decided (after I rolled up Mebby again because the thought of a patron god of afternoon tea-breaks amused me) that when I strolled down a set of stairs as a first level wizard, I should not only be displaced onto a neighboring spot and thus be unable to escape, but I should also be faced with the ghost of one of Miss Nori's previous incarnations, and an angry gnome packing a wand of sleep. Who then proceeded to zap and beat me about the head and shoulders until the wee tombstone graphic popped up.

(So if one was wondering why it took me seventeen years to beat this game...)

Sweet, Sweet Victory

So, after seventeen years of trying, I finally ascended a character in NetHack. A bloody rogue, of all things. She quite literally strolled through the Astral plane backhanding angels out of the way with a dead cockatrice.

Feeling rather flagrant and slightly incomplete at the high altar, I went looking through my belongings and used up one of my leftover wishes...


...because there would blood if Miss Nori didn't swagger off to demigoddess-hood with a pint in hand.

Tea and Sorcery

That was my NaNoWriMo project for 2008. Did I--after four years of giving up and burning out--finally drag my ass across the 50k finish line? Yes. Was the story done? Fuck, no.

As of last night, I finally decided to tie off the only truly offending loose thread in appropriately bittersweet fashion, though I'm still fiddling with how to go about it. None of this sequel-baiting dreck. Closure. The story will surely end up being more grisly (and what else could I ask of four vindictive dark elves?), but oddly enough should give the character in question something closer to a happily-ever-after.

Why am I babbling about this? Because I'm actually fairly happy with the prologue as it stands, and have released it to the wild to nibble on low-hanging branches.

Masks and Bubbers

In the interest of not making an ass of myself while working on last year's NaNo, I went back to doing a bit of research on opiates. Despite my lack of interest in actually using drugs, that one in particular I find oddly enthralling to read about. Perhaps it's because it goes so well with the whole Victorian-Steampunk thing.

Thus, I'm picking through Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater in search of something more anecdotal than dry medical reading, and have come across this gem:

...certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language,
of any man that he is _disguised_ in liquor; for, on the
contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and it is when
they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenaeus),
that men [Greek text]--display themselves in their true
complexion of character, which surely is not disguising
themselves.

I've been saying that for years. I have never bought it for a minute when anyone blamed hateful behaviour or split personalities on inebriation, but instead see it as stripping away all the polite repressions and masks to reveal whatever one truly has inside; sometimes something very ugly. The only person I personally know to have been an angry, violent drunk had a violent temper when stone cold sober. Alcohol merely peeled off the rest of the facade.

Or maybe I just feel that way because I never did anything but giggle and daydream and be more forthcoming with my sympathy while drunk: all core elements of who I am, but not ones that I readily put forth.

Who knows?

...and it's about time, too!

Cannot breathe. Laughing too hard.