2025-W46 EOW Report
Anti-Goal Cycling
- This week didn’t feel like I did a LOT OF dev work on prj:WHEEL for some reason. I know I sat down to do a lot of it on Friday. Thursday was a write off (Sigur Ros Wednesday night concert). What happened earlier this week? I think I was writing out STRCs on index cards in anticipation of getting myself into the position of being able to write stories faster for the MRK SSC. That did take up Monday and Tuesday I think. I would like other think these STRC index cards along with my RLTS index cards will help me move faster, but it could also be another one of those codifying exercises I’m so good at doing that doesn’t really seem to produce actual output. Who knows. We’ll see. I’ll text it out during the MRK SSC. That said… how am I feeling about prj:WHEEL? I think I have the bones down and I need to start writing. But there’s that horrible part in me where I want to – as always and forever – want to play with the language as well. So on Saturday, while I was getting all-weather tires for the Highlander, I sat down with Henry V (1599) and read/studied it. Go to scene 2.2 before the tires were done. Do I have to give my characters the ability to speak in iambic pentameter? No, of course not. Do I want to? Yes. Yes I do. That said, I really could and should start drafting everything else but the dialogue.
- In the MRK SSC Discord for the next Cohort.
- So my audiobook revival is still happening. I burnt through more of Geoffrey Parker’s Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (2019). I’ve been slowly, slowly, ever so slowly going through this book and I finally caved and sped it up to 1.75X. My rationale behind this is, I’m probably not going to retain as much as if I had read the actual text anyway, plus, when it’s reading at 1X, I actually find it harder to follow along, so at 1.75X, I’m actually forced to pay attention more anyway. I think it works. And then side note: after consuming The Children of Henry VIII (1996) by Alison Weir at 2X, I hunted for others in the “Elizabeth Trilogy”, only to see neither Wives nor Elizabeth herself was available. I put a “notify me” on the former and on Friday morning, ping!, hey, it’s FVRL, we got you a copy. Just for you. But then I got distracted and borrowed The High Middle Ages (2001) by The Great Courses with professor Philip Daileader AS WELL, and that’s what I listened to while working up this weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday this weekend in fact, because I missed Thursday due to the Sigur Ros concert on Wednesday night. It’s very good and I’m surprised at how much I can retain at 2X no problem, but also these 30m (15m at my speed) modules are really well structured. Daileader summarizes the last lecture at the top of the class, and then he summarizes his major points at the end of the class, and he never drops more than 5-6 major points per lecture. Why did the population of Europe blow up between 1000-1300? Three techs: plough to aerate, horses to pull (instead of oxen), and water mills. List of three. What made the nobles stop being so damn violent (toxic masculinity)? Peace/Truce of Church (fail), some rules written in Latin (nattering fail), and finally chaplains making up the Chilvalric Code and writing a ton of romance, redirecting their energy to using violence for good, and putting ladies on pedestals (not a total win, but definitely made enough changes). Look at that. Again. Rule of three.
Four Thousand Weeks
| Wks Lft | HP |
|---|---|
| 1668/4000 | 41.700% |
- I’m writing this section last and it seems like I’ve written “Sigur Ros” a million times already. This is such a 1% problem to complain about. Oh no, I had to attend one of the most amazing live performances I’ve ever witnessed… on a Wednesday. And yet, there it is. Wednesday night, or any weekday night is just not conducive to my hyper-packed schedule. Messes my carefully wrought routine up. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. One of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had. Would I complain again that it was on a weekday night? Yes. I would do that again too.
- As I mentioned above already Henry V (1599) at the Toyota Dealership. I wasn’t reading the lines aloud aloud… like I wasn’t enunciating and projecting or anything… but I was definitely reading them probably enough for the people sitting next to me to hear. So here you are, at Toyota, waiting for your vehicle maintenance, drinking your complimentary coffee in the cheap paper cup from their fancy espresso machine… and there’s this middle-aged Asian dude reading Shakespeare aloud. Gawd!
- Bought a bunch of custom made Xmas cards from LD at this craft fair at Riverside Church.
- So… I’m not mindlessly shopping this past week, but I am looking at the pictures of the Pelikan M809 over and over again. I’ve visited every pen shop on the Internet and they all use more-or-less the same copy.
- Had to get stamps and found out they don’t make small denomination ones anymore. Now I have a bunch of $1.30 stamps that I can’t use because it costs $1.75 to ship to the U.S. and $3.65 international. I’ll probably just overpay on some mailings.
Story Introspection
- A little diffuse week. A little Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 on previous Sunday (weird and interesting), a little Old Moon #1 (some interesting, others over-explanatory or filled with colloquialisms which is a pet peeve of mine with fantasy), re-reading a lot of Ram V. indie stuff (crying in the office in the morning), and re-reading a lot of my monthly pulls for a second time (as I do) so now I’m all caught up on second reads. Kieron Gillen’s The Power Fantasy continues to be vegetables. It’s like this amazing, impactful literary comic. Every time I read it, I am unsettled and I can feel my mind expanded and I’m sitting in Gillen’s resonance. BUT – I never want to actually read it before I read it. It’s like I dread it. It’s like this intellectual vegetable. I know it’s good for me and once I’m reading it, I enjoy it immensely and dream of writing like Gillen, but I hate starting and I put it off. I don’t know what to say to that.
- The real artistic joy this past week of course – despite it being on a Wednesday night and messing up my week’s rhythm – was Sigur Ros with the Wordless Music Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Theatre. So haunting, so evocative, so sublime.
- Finally, also, re-read Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster for the first time since I first read it in… geez, I want to say 2016 or 2017? I forget. But I remember reading this and being floored. The concept was so startling and shocking, the eroticism and the sharp violence. I remember falling in love so hard with this story. This time around though? The first five scenes still disturbs me in the most delightful way, but once UPCOMING SPOILERS Pena removes her and the POV’s mask, it becomes this flabby, unsophisticated expo-dump of “here’s why this world is dumb, here’s why you’ve been brainwashed, here’s what’s really going on”. It was like when I watch Nolan’s Inception (2010) the third time. First time in theatre, you’re blown away. What the fuck did I just watch? It was so amazing. Second time, something feels a little off with the Leo and Elliot Page scene, there’s a lot of beautiful spectacle, but why does it not feel so spectacular anymore? Third watch – oh. It’s a GIANT ASS DISTRACTION to do a HUGE EXPO-DUMP and hope you don’t pay attention. Except with Sinner, Baker… all the cool, crazy stuff already happened and Pena and POV’s convo is them hanging around in a copse/grove and just talking about the mask, the Queen, and the oversoul. Even as Pena takes POV down into the underground, and to where they create the masks… it was expo, expo, expo… so by the time Pena gets killed, the momentum’s been lost. THIS – is an interesting storytelling problem to solve as a craft exercise. How would you fix this? I’m thinking through the scenes of Pop Squad (2006) and if it had these lulls (or in this case, an irrecoverable trench) and if Bacigalupi was deft enough to avoid it. After the shocking opening scene – elevator, Alice performance, afterparty, Rejoo Clinic, on the case with Pentle, montage of bad behavior, call Alice for number, toy store, montage, climax dining table scene. Hmm. I would say the lulls are avoided pretty well with the EXPO woven in pretty well. I mean, I guess that’s the craft of it right? How do you weave EXPO in without letting the audience see the seams? Maybe the lack of microtension in the copse/grove could’ve been fixed if Pena took POV to a hideout right away? Or zonked him out? Or maybe the gendarmes could be chasing them right away? That way, at least Pena and POV could be in a chase scene while Pena infodumps on POV? Or Pena could force POV do so something to prove their loyalty ASAP? Or Pena has to go from point A to point B… and force POV to put on a fake mask with no oversoul and as they wander the streets – there’s that microtension of “are we going to be found out?” I think all those are potentially good ways to fix that huge EXPO-DUMP past the MID.
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