TheZot

Oh, I'm going to write the bits before, and the bits after this one. The story's pretty much plotted out, the settings are in place, and I've a handle on most of the characters. The biggest problem's working out the first chapter, but that's all part of the bits that may or may not be fun. (I'm not sure yet) Hence the title, after all.

Right, I know I should be working on the last chapter of Yankee (and the first few chapters of its sequel) but I've been distracted by work and other stuff. This has been sticking in my head too -- I guess I shouldn't ever say "I wish I could write like that, but I can't" since then my brain will nag at me until I do. I think I'm calling this one By Design, but I'm not sure. It actually involves a lot of landscape architecture, though you'd not know it from this bit. Anyway, this is only a partial chapter. There's no finale (where Rick runs away, pretty damn horrified at the destruction and at how out of control he got) nor any setup. Two of the characters of the story are in this one. Phillip's a landscape architect who specializes in water features, both outdoors and indoors (which is to say he builds fountains and ponds), while Phillip's a financial planner. (Not that either of their professions makes a difference here) Rick's been essentially celibate since college because of two really bad relationships in a row and some bad stuff at home at the time -- given that he's in his early thirties it's been a long time since he's had sex of any sort, even alone. Phillip's been persuing him with some vigor for the past few months, and they've got a semi-bizarre near-friendship and courtship ritual going, as Phillip's been working hard to get under Rick's skin and Rick's not been running away. This scene takes place in the morning. Phillip's dropped in, after Rick's gotten out of the shower but before he's had breakfast or gotten dressed. There is a point to this posting, more so than just prurience (not that I've any problem with that!) I've never written a sex scene before, and I'm not sure it works out right, or if there are things missing that ought to be in. This chapter isn't here to tittilate the readers, either -- this is a pretty damn big change in their relationship, and it's supposed to show how repressed Rick has been, and that he's not anywhere near the sexless person he thought he'd turned into. The chapter that follows has some repercussions as well. Rick's convinced what he's done is rape. (Phillip's "I started it" and "Can't rape the enthusiastically willing" arguments don't work much, since Rick knows full well that it doesn't matter, he would not have stopped if Phillip had said so, and it's the disregard for consent that's getting him) Anyway, I'd appreciate a read-over and comments on it, since I know the blog's not really set up for proper editing. Stuff I've missed, things that need more explanation, bizarrely shifting architecture, physically impossible acts, or whatever. It's first-draft, so there are some missing transitions (indicated by extra blank lines), but hopefully that won't matter. Oh, yeah, and I'm pretty sure pasta sauces don't make for good prophylactics. Just for the record, you understand. By Design, chapter ten-ish (maybe) "You know you want it, Rick." Phillip practically purred that sentence, his voice low and husky. "I don't think

I've got a houseful of sick people (including me, though not nearly as badly as everyone else) so I've been up weird hours and bored to death, though not actually competent to do anything useful like write. Trolling the shub-internet's a dodgy thing at the best of times, but at 3 AM, well... Anyway, courtesy of the top site list, I found Wizard and Warrior. And some other stuff that was pretty darned good, but that's for another time. It's a Michael Moorcock riff, and a damned good one. Blood and thunder, sex and enthusiasm, the thing just screams with energy, and that's during the quiet parts. Yeah, the formatting of the first chapter or two makes some parts a little odd, yeah it needs editing like most net fiction, yeah a dozen chapters in it shifts first person viewpoints occasionally, and yeah it yanks in some gaming references (christ on a crutch, people, if you want elves that want to get laid worse than a kid in a porn shop, and will cheerfully gut you and read the future in your entrails to you, you don't need D&D you need Yates) but still, it works, as cheerfully decadent and unabasahedly proud of its warts as the source it hearkens back to. The only problem is that it's not done yet. It's OK if you don't like it. I do. And you have no idea how much I wish I could write like that. Besides, there's Samurai Cat artwork mocking a classic Frazetta piece. How can you not like that?

Dyes are weird -- the colors you get out of them depend in part on the underlying texture of the materials you're dying, since there's some optical fun at very small scales. With multi-pigment dyes (that is, dyes that depend on two or more chemicals for their color) you'll see different levels of dye uptake for the component colors depending on the material being dyed. You can also get chemical changes to the dyes as part of the dyeing process that change their colors somewhat, with the changes dependent on the materials being dyed. You can use the same dye on cotton, wool, and silk and get three very distinctly different color fabrics as an end result. -TZ

This is a different elf. This guy's definitely one of those pesky recurring characters -- he's got a horrible habit of popping into stories and getting in the way. He smokes altogether too much too, but that's his problem not mine. It wouldn't be so bad if he showed up and at least pretended to be someone else but that hasn't happened yet. (And yes, some authors do get bossed around by their characters. I expect it's a sign that some amount of medication is in order...) As for coming up with plots, I'd love for it to be that easy. Hell, maybe it is that easy for some people. What tends to happen for me is that parts of the story just spring out, fully formed. Usually one or more of the characters, often a scene or two, sometimes the full plot. In some cases there's enough there to work with if there's no plot, and in some cases a plot can be ripped out and redone. (Doing that now with another story) Unfortunately if things don't gel in my head, they don't work out right on the page. Also, don't forget that these are bits and pieces that're kicking around my folder of stuff to poke at, a folder that's altogether too big for my liking some days. (Counting Yankee and its sequel, there are 24 separate gay-themed pieces in there) These are the ones that don't have enough to them, either in content or interest, to warrant any attention, well, ever. Given how long it's taken to get Yankee to the end, I seem to turn up four or five ideas with some structure to them in the time it takes me to take one to completion, so I don't think I'm ever going to get to the ones I've put up here. FWIW, I do tend to write the end of the stories I work on when I know what it is. I've no problem at all throwing out text I've written. While it's tough to do sometimes, that's OK, since the point's to get the best story I can manage under the circumstances. Knowing how a story ends is important, so if I know, I'll write it. I may go back and edit it, or throw it out and redo it if things don't turn out the way I expect they will when things get edited, but that's just life, and that's OK too.

I voted yellow, but I'll admit the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "saffron" is a flavor, not a color...

Ah, I'd not considered that angle. Our protagonist here doesn't have to be entirely sane, since we've already established that he's potentially hallucinating. It wouldn't help that his friend, if he weren't imaginary, is the sort of person who may well be ambiguous about it for a while because he thought it was funny...

Sounds like Just Hit Send by grasshopper. http://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/grasshopper/

This one's been kicking around for ages. Yes, before you mention it, I write far too much dialog -- with Yankee (and some of the other stories I've got in progress) you see the third draft. The first draft's generally 80% dialog, the second has all the intervening bits added, and the third's the cleaned up version after getting a twice-over from an editor. This story, for reasons I never did figure out but accept anyway, takes place entirely inside an apartment. That's not to say that the characters never leave, nor that they don't interact outside the apartment, just that the reader never sees those bits. I expect that's a technique that's rarely, if ever, used for good reason, but what the heck. Never claimed this was high art. (Nor sober art, for that matter) A story in scenes of dialog "Who are you?" Mike stood dripping in the doorway of his kitchen, dressed only in a beat-up old Battlestar Galactica towel. "I'm an elf, kid. Haven't you ever seen one before?" "What? I don't believe in elves!" "Wouldn't worry about it. We don't believe in you, either. Got any beer?" He started rummaging around in the refrigerator. Clinks, thuds and the odd muffled scream came drifting out. "You really ought to clean this out more often," he said, eying something green, limp, and fuzzy on the middle shelf. "Wait a minute. Elves don't drink beer!" "We would if you kept this fridge better stocked. Nice towel, by the way. Quite the fashion statement." "What?" "Just don't believe I'm drinking a beer. It should be easy." The elf popped the top off a bottle of Sam Adams and knocked back half of it in a single gulp. Mike could see that he was quickly getting in over his head, so he decided to try a different tack. "What exactly are you doing in my apartment?" "Drinking beer, of course. Why, what does it look like?" "I was thinking in broader terms

That would be fun, though Mr. Lawton is his imaginary friend, which I suppose could lead to its own set of Zany Hijinx. Or something like that. The ears are a dead giveaway, unless we want to postulate some sort of horrible mechanical rice picker accident. If I do figure out something to have the lead character do, or something important for him to learn, I expect this one could be fun -- there are more than enough possibilities to mix the real world with magic for this one to get interesting. I just have no clue what that might be. (And since I've got at least three stories fighting for my attention now, that's probably for the best...) -Dan

Oh, I'm not throwing this stuff out, and I have no doubt at least some of the characters will show up later in different stories. This is kind of a mental housecleaning, where I'm tidying up some of the things that've been kicking around in my brain. Bizzare though it may sound, firing this stuff off onto the shub-internet makes it easier to ignore it. It'd be kind of interesting to see what happens, if at some point someone does take one of these things and runs with it, if I do too. See where we all end up, and how different (or similar) the stories are.

If I could figure out where it should go, I'd write it too. It could be an awful lot of fun, no doubt, if I just knew what was going on... That last chapter wasn't the end of Yankee -- there's one more to go, then it's on to the next thing or two. (Or three, or four...) I do actually have some stories with plots to work from. These are just some of the bits of debris rattling around in my drafts folder and my head. Dumping them out here lets me let go of the things, which is helpful -- clears the way for other stuff. Once the last chapter of Yankee's done, I expect to have the first chapter of something out within a week or two of that, though I'm not sure what. (Well, OK, that'd be Dan Weeks, which may or may not have any correspondence with Real World weeks...) -Dan

Well, OK, there's a remote possibility this one'll get touched, but I'm not betting on it. Again, it's got characters and a setting, but no plot. Pesky things, plots -- they go missing when you need them most. (Maybe I should check between the couch cushions) The substitute I know it's pretty normal for kids to have imaginary friends when they're little. Someone to play with and talk to when things get really bad, someone to confide those secrets that you just can't tell anyone else, someone to share your pain when something horrible happens and you just need someone who knows how to deal with it. I found mine the summer I was six, when my mother was dying of cancer. Our back yard ran up into a state forest. It wasn't big, but it was craggy and overgrown, and only took a few minutes of walking before you lost all signs of civilization. When things got really bad with mom I used to go wander through it, pretending it was the forest primeval, someplace deep and brooding where nothing bad happened and nobody ever died. Yeah, I know, looking back on it there's no way a six year old kid should be doing that, but Dad was so wrapped up in Mom's dying that nobody paid me any attention. I made sure to always take a compass and pocket knife with me so I could find my way home if I needed to. This made sense to a six-year-old. Probably would've been OK too, if the compass actually worked and the knife wasn't broken. It was the symbolism that was important, though. It didn't matter that they didn't work, I had a Knife and a Compass, so I would be fine. That's where I met him

Not just gay highschoolers. Kids whose parents treat them like dirt, kids with parents who fight constantly, kids with parents who are completely missing from their lives, kids who're abused by their parents... there are a lot of people who fantasize about running away. (And it doesn't stop once you get out of high school. Hit a mall and I'd bet you an easy 20% of the adults who, at one time or another, desperately dream of going missing) I'm pretty sure you could do this thing up as a straight story, or one with no indication of the protagonist's sexual orientation whatsoever, and still have it work. (Hell, take the "teen has enough and decides to bail" idea, add a plot and stretch it to 250 pages and you could probably hit the bestseller list) Then go, youung man, and write! Personally, I have this minor vision of the protagonist's father finding him a year later, head under a car hood doing something with its guts, and just popping out asking "Do you see the problem?" and going back to fiddling, leaving his father gaping like a fish since he still wouldn't see the problem. But, then, that's not enough to hang a story around either. Heh. Go for it -- it'll be amusing if nothing else. (Though likely incorrect, since Justin's parents fail to show exclusively because of authorial ineptitude) Anyway, Yankee's rapidly coming to its end, and I've been feeling the need for something else to work on, hence the poking about in my bits'n'pieces directory. This was one I didn't feel I'd ever take anywhere, but couldn't let go of until now. Nope, though googling that has brought much amusement into my morning. The "I am a Japanese Schoolteacher" editorials are really funny.

I hope someone does something with it too. There's no actual plot, which is the biggest problem with this thing. It's a good enough setup for a story, sure -- there's a character launched into... something, but the question is what? What happens? Where's the conflict, where's the drama? Where, in short, is the plot? I'll admit, I just don't have one here, and without one there's no story. (Though it could turn to soap opera, certainly. That's not my thing as a writer, though) Hence the launch of this into the aether. Maybe it'll inspire someone else to take it and run with it, or a variant of it, or something. Who knows, all I know is that at least having done this I can stop poking at it for a while.

Yeah, I'd say you definitely need to make it up to Chaz. No offense and all, and I know events as portrayed here are colored some but... Damn, Green, you're hard on the people around you. Some slack may be in order, if you want people to stay around you. Apologies are important when you've done something wrong (and sometimes even more important when you haven't done anything wrong) but after a while people prefer you skip the apologizing for hurting them and go straight to the not hurting them in the first place. That's not always possible, life being what it is, but keeping the moments of pain to a minimum is a good thing. -Dan

On nifty, in the relationships section, I'd recommend both Jake's Hand and Two Distinct Divisions. Disenchanted, on DaBeagle.net, has a reasonably happy ending. Sara Bell's stuff, on crvboy, along with Brite Lite, and Michael Phillips (specifically City of Dreams and definitely Center Stage) are good. DW Simon's stuff, on Literotica (http://english.literotica.com:81/stories/memberpage.php?uid=302990&page=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) /http://english.literotica.com:81/st...e=submissions) is excellent. Trolling through the Best of Nifty list at best-of-nifty.org and looking for things linking to the beginnings, relationships, or adult-friends section on nifty is a reasonably good bet too. Mmmm, and on a quick troll myself, Construction Days (nifty, gay/beginnings/construction-days) is quite good. -Dan

Well, you've gotten the high road, and you've gotten the low road. Let me throw in the practical road. You told this guy. He's had plenty of time, you've given what sounds like an appropriate amount of space. That's all good. The end result is that it seems he doesn't want to deal with you. That definitely sucks, and it's time to write him off. No real way around it, it's gonna hurt. At least it sounds like all you got here was distance -- there's been no violence, no obvious crap, he's not been bad-mouthing you, and he's not outed you. The questions now are what do you need? And who do you want to be? You can't make him like you again if he doesn't. You can't make him comfortable if he's not. You can't bring him back if he's gone. Sucks, but there you go. I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to happen again as you get older. It'll happen because of who turns your head, it'll happen because of your religion (or lack thereof), it'll happen because of your politics, it'll happen if you move away and come back again years later. Some people just can't cope. (Hell, at some point you might be in the position of rejecting someone you like because of their or your religion, politics, or personal choices) So. This relationship's done. That hurts. Now what? The ideal here is to walk up to him, lay it out, and leave. Tell him he was your friend, his rejection hurts, you're disappointed in him, and as far as you're concerned it's over. Then tell him if he figures out how to deal then he can find you and you can see where it goes from there. That's the best you can manage. It's not very good, but sometimes you're left to choose from a selection of sucky options. If you can manage this, you should. That's where those pesky questions a few paragraphs back come in. Is that enough for you? Maybe it is. Hopefully it is, but if so you're a better man than I am. If not, what do you need to close this off? Maybe you do need a fight -- either a low key or a good vicious verbal one, or one where you try and pound the crap out of him. Maybe you do need some sort of revenge. Maybe you need to tell him to go f**k himself. Maybe you need something else. Figuring that out'll tell you something important about yourself. It might not be something you like, but often those are the most important things to know. Just... be aware that there are personal consequences no matter what you do. Being bitter has a cost, and it's not a good one. So does violence, and so does hate. They feed on themselves and once you start that way it's tough to stop, and when (or if) you finally do you may well find there's a part of you that you don't very much like. If you have to pay that cost to get it over with, then do it and be done with it. Do it knowing full well what you're doing, though. If you have to do something you don't like, you need to do it with your eyes wide open, knowing full well what you're doing and what it's going to cost you. -Dan

Well, he shows a last login time of 5:11 PM today, so he's still around...

Well, just to follow on, mark me as: -6'1" -185# -Dark blonde, going grey (currently with a beard) -Right handed -38 -Male -Gay -Married with two kids -Right handed -ISTJ (with some issues) -Virgo who doesn't do astrology -Computer consultant (specializing in compilers and virtual machines, of all things) -Occassional gym goer for practical reasons -Writer of fiction for fun and nonfiction occasionally for money -I do Karate and Kung Fu for fun -If making food involves fat, sugar, or baking, I do it enthusiastically -Fan of black and white monster, SF, and horror movies

There's a "live chat" link at the top of every page. Click on it to fire off the chat window. (You'll need to have java installed, which you undoubtedly do) On the main forum page, at the bottom, there's a list of who's currently in the chat, though even if nobody shows there may be someone there, as some nicks are invisible sometimes. -Dan

Hey, I've got two kids. Believe me, being gay is not a deal-breaker there. Yes, it is more difficult, to be sure, but if you want it, you can do it. And, as I think I keep telling people, you should have kids if you want them. There are so many that aren't wanted by their parents -- it's kind of sad that being wanted is a special gift you can give your children, but it is, and if you want to you really should. It'll mean there's at least one more child in the world who's actually wanted, and that's a good thing. -Dan

Bonobo's right -- starting anything now (or, alternately, deciding for sure not to start something now) is a mistake. Things are going to be too raw to really know how you feel, or to honestly get a relationship going to know how you and Chaz could do together. I'd tell him that too -- tell him you need a few weeks (or however long you need) for the pain to die down and for you to get your feet back under you before you'd even consider starting another relationship. It sounds like, for better or worse, he'd wait, so if he's someone worth waiting for he'll be there. (And if he's someone you don't want to wait for you once things have calmed down you should try and make it clear then, if you can) Probably the easiest way to handle Selene is to find her, give her a big kiss and tell her she was dead-on correct. Then, in the thirty seconds of stunned silence, I'd tell her you were taking time off of romance to let the pain die. You should still have enough time to run like hell before she chases you down and tries to kill you.

Behold, the power of Photoshop... (Personally I like "Thing" the best, but that's just me)

Might as well out myself here. That'd be Dan, since you can never have too many of us.