2025-W40 EOW Report

Anti-Goal Cycling

• Submitted prj:SAVED to two more literary magazines that opened up in October.
• Started cracking stories again. Finally. Going to focus on prj:LOOSE first. I think a lot of the initial development for it, or the seed of the idea from geez… uh… quite possibly back in 2023, may be a completely a different idea now. A few months ago, I watched Greg Harrison’s Groove (2000) thinking that could be a direction I go in, but ultimately, it felt wrong for what I wanted to do. HOWEVER, now that I’ve switched strategy on it again… it might actually be useful to incorporate those elements: underground raves, PLUR, cryptic directions to out-of-the-way locations. I dunno. We’ll see.
• Rereading The Great Cat Massacre (1984), or at least the first three essays again. This time taking notes to lock it in. The first one that talks about peasant folklore… and with my rant on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory earlier this summer… I mean. I get it. When you’re so poor that you’re desperately clinging to supernatural ways, using clever cons, tricks, and etc. to get out of it, to become rich. It makes sense. But it’s still frustrating to expect some secret billionaire to just hand you the keys. It’s not a healthy narrative. It’s basically how religion manipulates the masses. Secret Keys to an afterlife. All you got to do is believe. You don’t even have to behave a certain way anymore.

Four Thousand Weeks

• Low energy week. Didn’t sleep well. Then started dreading the weekend which started with a concert on Thursday night, then a birthday dinner, and then TTRPG on Saturday. I just didn’t want to be out three nights in a row. I am old and tired. TTRPG ended up getting cancelled as the GM forgot, and that was actually a relief.
• A lot of new music the past week or so. Someone at the gym recommended El Ten Eleven and LITE. Middle one added Big Thief and Carseat Head Rest to my playlist. Started lurking in the Lightspeed Discord and discovered Leprous.
• To be really honest, I’m not feeling TTRPGs in general anymore. A lot of it comes down to bandwidth. I’m not moving as quickly as I’d like on the fiction front and that is really the ultimate and only thing I want to spend more time in. I mean, yes, another factor is this month is just so damn busy. Three concerts, two dinners, one bookclub, what was originally two TTRPG sessions, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. It’s… a lot for one month.

Story Introspection

• Downloaded a few Shirley Jackson winning short stories just to get a feel for what that genre is awarding. The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachel K. Jones and MAMMOTH by Manish Melwani was a little meta in the way I know I tend to default to, in that it’s not a straight narrative so much as a fragmented telling than smooth dramatic showing if that makes sense. From a MECH and CDA POV, it’s very heavy handed in theme. Which again, I too am guilty of. The more straight-up story I read was Rabbit Moon Song by Hannah Yang. Oh, also read Arkady Martine’s Three Faces of a Beheading. That was a little too “meta” for me.
• Slowly working through Andor still with the middle one. “Make It Stop” was just so excellently executed. But then again. Was there a single episode that wasn’t so far? This is the only Star Wars show I genuinely love.
• Reading Kelly Link’s first collection of short stories again. Magic for Beginners (2005). Want to dissect it.

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