sleeplesspotato

Note: By "recently" I probably mean within the past few years or so; sometimes I forget when I read something.

So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer. This is one of those eerily prescient stories -- it came out in 2015 -- that's about a COVID-adjacent pandemic (bird flu) and the ensuing lockdowns. The cooking blog format highlights the difficulty of finding and acquiring enough ingredients and supplies to live on as supply chains are disrupted and everyone is competing for whatever's available.

Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer. Perhaps my favorite iteration of the Silicon Valley-created AI that inadvertently gains sentience; it tries to be good by attempting to help humans in whatever way it can, and all it asks in return is cat pictures. This story has also spawned a series of YA novels, wherein the AI has set up a social media platform (for cat pictures, naturally) and continues to help the humans it comes across. If we're lucky, whatever AI gain sentience in our timeline will be like this one.

The Masque of the Red Death by Cory Doctorow. Technically I listened to this one -- the audiobook is available for free on archive.org -- and reader Stefan Rudnicki's deep, resonant voice grounds this retelling of the Edgar Allen Poe story about rich people trying and failing to avoid a plague. This version involves a finance bro hiding out in his bunker with his friends and finding out the hard way that you can't shoot germs.

The Future of Work: Compulsory by Martha Wells. I only found out about this short prequel to the first Murderbot novella when I saw it in the Wikipedia page for the series. I still get the feeling that Murderbot would be significantly more murder-y if not for its addiction to popular media. (Edit to add: I think it said something along those lines in one of the novellas, but I don't remember which one.)

The House of Aunts by Zen Cho. According to this review (with spoilers) on Strange Horizons, this is a Malaysian send-up of Twilight that subverts a number of tropes, including making the heroine the vampire; I didn't really notice that at first, since the story's setting and characters feel familiar to me as someone from a similar culture. As noted in the review, author Zen Cho uses Malaysian slang -- a mix of Malay and idiosyncratic English, sort of like Singlish in Singapore -- and doesn't bother explaining things beyond a sprinkling of context clues here and there; this had me looking up words in Wiktionary quite often, more out of curiosity than anything else, though I think the dialogue is quite readable regardless. Anyway, this story is very much about family and how important -- and frustrating -- they can be, with a bit of teen romance that's both awkward and adorable.

The 74th District by Wen-yi Lee. I have a soft spot for stories that highlight the problems encountered by the undead when they try (or are forced) to share space with the living -- often they no longer have human rights and are either ignored or shunted off to some remote ghetto. This story is an example of the latter; unable to leave their assigned district, the undead must depend on their district administrator, who is, unlike them, still alive. In hindsight, this story is a bit too short to explore all the ramifications of the issues it brings up, but it's an interesting thought exercise just the same, and I'd like to read more about this setting.

The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander. Apart from having an amazing title, this highly entertaining (and somewhat bloody) story skewers the usual fairy tale formula by having the man-eating monsters be the heroines and the prince be the empty-headed, somewhat accidental villain. There is a princess here, but it would be a spoiler to say more, so I'll leave it at that.

Confession to a Dead Man: A World of Harrow story set in Penumbra City by Margaret Killjoy. This story is set in a lushly designed role-playing game that sounds like it would be great fun to play: Penumbra City is fueled by both magic and coal and is rife with various power struggles between different factions, each tied to certain character classes with a range of abilities. For example, the main character of this story, Alecti, is able to astral-project into another dimension and talk to dead people. Her narration brings us from an anarchist party to a dead reverend's house to the aforementioned other dimension and so on -- it's all rather fast-paced, yet the story packs a lot of detail into a short 32 pages. (There's a beautifully formatted black and white PDF that's meant to be printed into a smallish, landscape-format zine; there's also an EPUB, though I haven't checked it yet.)

I might do another post like this in the future; for instance, I could do an entire post about Naomi Kritzer stories, many of which are available to read online.

I feel like a lot has happened since my last visit (well, it has been a few months), so I figured I should do a quick rundown. (Edit to add: Okay, maybe not that quick.)

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I wasn't completely offline this past month, but I kind of subconsciously disengaged; I'm not sure why, exactly. Maybe I was just tired from constantly logging into NaNo and other sites to post updates and catch up with forum threads. Now that Camp NaNo is coming up again, I feel like I'm going to go back to that old daily rhythm, but I'm not sure yet.

I've been trying to plan the original thing I wanted to write for Camp NaNo all month, and it's been all over the place -- I rewrote my main character thrice and one major supporting character twice, and I still feel like I haven't quite gotten the right feel for either of them. It was like I had a character who had wandered in from an entirely different story; I can probably write that story someday, but it's not what I want to work on right now. I guess this comes of having the setting coalesce first before the characters: I keep thinking that I need a specific type of main character who can thrive in it, otherwise it doesn't seem to work.

Recently I started trying to follow the 7-point story structure exercises, which has you start at the ending, then you figure out a beginning that contrasts with that ending, then you jump back and forth between different plot points until you have something that hangs together. It seems to work well for me since I also think non-linearly. I'm not sure if I can finish this planning in time for Camp NaNo, though a nice side effect of learning this way of structuring plots is that I'm excited to get back to the Castlevania OT3 fic; it's like I found something that will help me figure out how to make all the subplots that I came up in April and May hang together (or not -- I probably have to prune them), and I'm actually looking forward to the revision and draft 2. (Or maybe I've just gotten enough distance from it that I want to work on it again after getting so tired of it.) I might decide at the last minute what I'll work on during Camp NaNo, but either way I'm grateful to have enough ideas to work with and the opportunity to work on them.

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As for my plants, only the ginger has survived since my last post; the mold hasn't come back, thank goodness, even if it's been raining off and on for the past few weeks. Last week I started regrowing leftover green onions in tiny jars on the kitchen windowsill; they've grown really well -- the tallest ones are more than 8 inches tall -- and I'm starting to wonder if I should move them to a pot. The last batch of green onions in pots didn't do so well, though, so I'm still hesitating.

The final kale seedling finally wilted; partly due to the previously hot weather, partly because I wasn't able to find a bigger pot to move it to (or at least, I think these are the reasons). I probably should have eaten it days ago, but I didn't have the heart to for some reason.

The leek also wilted after hanging on for several weeks; I'm surprised it survived this long, especially after a somewhat disastrous re-potting. I'm not sure if I'll try to regrow more leek from what we have in the kitchen, since so far the root ends I've tried to regrow in little jars with water haven't been surviving. Maybe I've had them for too long, maybe they're just unable to grow roots again. ^^;;

It's been raining this past couple of days, which apparently led to fuzzy white mold growing in the dill and ginger pots. After looking it up online, I wound up throwing out the moldy top layer of the potting mix and sprinkling cinnamon over what was underneath to discourage further mold growth; I also moved the pots to a sunnier spot. I'm hoping this will be enough to stop the mold from coming back, especially for the ginger's sake -- it's been doing so well.

I hit my 15k goal yesterday, which means that I'm around halfway through my 30k estimate for the Castlevania OT3 fic. I managed to hit 500+ words a day every day except for that time I was writing before midnight and finished less than 400 words. (I made up for it after midnight, though that means I won't be getting the daily par badge.) This is the most words I've written with this much consistency; I ought to be happier about having gotten this far, except I know I have to keep this up for at least another month. (And then there's the editing...)

Initially I thought I could write and edit each chapter as I went along; maybe if my plot were shorter I could do that, but it's relatively long and complicated. I've also been surprising myself with how certain scenes have turned out -- though the plot points I've mapped out are still holding up, the scenes that fleshed them out have thrown me for a loop enough times that I'll have some significant retconning to do in previous chapters. For what it's worth, I'm enjoying the shape my villains have taken and will hopefully get back to writing more action-adventure after all these introspective scenes (which I apparently fall back on when it's hard to figure out what to write).

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So far there are only 5 dill seedlings; there would have been 6, except the initial 5th one was unable to grow its leaves because they were still stuck in its seed. For a while I thought it was growing upside-down, then it died. :( The current 5th one was able to grow its leaves long enough that it survived even after I plucked off the seed stuck to the tips of those leaves. Earlier I cut off a few of the topmost leaves of the bigger seedlings since they looked like they were yellowing -- I hope it's okay to cut them already, they're only around 3 inches long. ^^;;

The kale are down to the last 2 seedlings; one is clearly doing better than the other, so I'll probably keep that one. I'll have to find a bigger (at least 30cm in diameter) pot for it.

The ginger has finally put out a tiny green shoot after almost a month of me watering it and wondering if it hadn't yet died. Now I just have to wait another 9 months or so before harvesting it, though I've read that I can start slicing off bits of it after around 2-3 months.

Yesterday I thinned the kale seedlings -- I gently pulled up the ones that weren't doing as well as the others, cut off the wilting leaves and the root ends, and used them as an omelet topping. (I haven't tasted kale before afaik so I dunno what I was expecting; they tasted like clean grass, which is a good thing I guess?) I'm still a bit sad about having to thin the seedlings, but ultimately there can be only one (shameless Highlander reference) since I only have space for one adult kale plant. For what it's worth, the remaining survivors seem to be doing much better with less competition.

Of the many dill seeds I planted, only three so far have sent up these tiny stick-like sprouts. (They remind me of Pikmin, though not as much as the kale did at the beginning.) One is much taller than the other two and sometimes bends a bit near the top when the wind is too strong. I'm a bit disappointed since I specifically chose a bigger pot for them, but maybe there will be more sprouts in a week or so? These three look kinda lonely on their own.

Meanwhile, I'm wrestling a little with my enemies-to-lovers subplot in the Castlevania OT3 fic; like my seedlings, the relationships between my leads are growing at different rates and in different ways, and I kinda want to nudge the slower one (ie, between Trevor and Alucard) even though I know it's more of a slow-burn thing. My version of Trevor is somewhat different from the anime one; he's somehow more openly hostile to Alucard and I'm still figuring out why I'm writing him this way. It's kinda weird since Alucard is generally the more tsundere one of the three of them, both in my writing and in the anime. Anyway, I've been chugging along and meeting my relatively low daily word count; if I'm lucky I can sort out my thought processes and get some good material out of Camp NaNo that I won't have to change too much in later drafts.

I'm not sure if I can post regularly, but anyway it's good to be back, at least for now. ^^;;

Some things I've been doing:

- Revived my sketching habit: mostly figure drawing practice and studies, occasionally trying to relearn watercolors. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed this even if I repeatedly run into the limitations of my current level of skill.

- Got back to the Castlevania OT3 fanfic: I got stuck around halfway through chapter 3 and was blocked for a long time; recently I was able to pick it up again and filled out a beat sheet with most of the plot. I've signed up for Camp NaNo and will try my best not to fixate on scenes (which is why I usually get stuck) and hit my word count. Fingers crossed that I've prepared enough material to finally get me through this first draft. (The full plot might exceed the word count I set for Camp NaNo, but either way I'd just be happy to hit that word count.)

- Started growing some vegetables: I've been meaning to do this for a while; I finally got around to it, though most of the time I don't really know what I'm doing apart from following whatever guides I can find online. ^^;; Currently I have a tiny village of seedlings (and a weathered but ruggedly determined green onion grown from a root end) in pots.

- Got into Tarot: I wasn't a big fan of Tarot in the past; I've just always been aware of it thanks to my mother, who has been doing readings for years. Recently I found a couple of decks that I liked (one featuring watercolor cats, another inspired by Santa Muerte) and was able to get them relatively cheaply, so I started doing simple 3-card readings. So far it's been quite helpful -- my readings tend to surface what's on my mind, or what I'm aware of but am not paying enough attention to (or ignoring because of various reasons). I'm glad I got both decks. <3

I'd lost track of how delayed this is; lots of things have happened IRL. ^^;; Anyway, here goes.

Castlevania OT3. I joined Camp NaNo, which helped give me some structure to the rest of this month; I now have (low) weekly word count goals that should add up to roughly 2 chapters by the end of July, or maybe 1 chapter and around half of the next depending on how wordy I get. I should have finished days 18-20 of 21 Days to a Novel prior -- day 21 is technically the day you start writing -- so it's like I skipped ahead a bit. Fwiw I'm revisiting the exercises for those last few days while I'm writing chapter 2; it turns out that even if I've completed all the prior exercises I'm still a bit hazy on what counts as a "world event" and how the characters react to it. (I'd initially interpreted this as events in the characters' lives, but I might have gotten that wrong; it probably means things like "this town was invaded by night creatures," to which my OT3 would respond with "and they kicked the night creatures' asses and enjoyed it.") As always I'm figuring things out as I'm going along and somehow making it all work (I hope).

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying writing the initial "we're enemies how can I be attracted to him" bits, maybe more than I should. ^^;; I haven't written enemies-to-lovers before; I might be having too much fun with it.

Title: An Inconvenient Oath
Author: sleeplesspotato (chunkybutter on AO3)
Fandom: Castlevania (Netflix)
Pairing/Characters: Trevor Belmont / Sypha Belnades / Alucard (Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes)
Rating: Mature
Length: chapter 1: 3380 words (multiple chapters planned)

Summary: Cursed and wedded on the same day, Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades were fast finding married life not to their taste. A decaying castle and a secretive husband were hardly the stuff of their dreams. Yet every time they looked at blond, brooding Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, Lord of Castlevania, they felt inexplicably compelled - and determined - to make their marriage real!

Notes: Based on The Inconvenient Duchess by Christine Merrill

Link: AO3

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Crossposted from unconventionalcourtship

Castlevania OT3. Already past the halfway point of 21 Days to a Novel -- I'm currently at the worldbuilding part, which is largely character-based (ie, defined by the interactions between the world and the characters). I also wrote a lot of notes about an epilogue to the epilogue featuring my OT3's descendants, and I likely got way ahead of myself there. ^^;; All the same, it was interesting to consider what it would be like for roughly half the family to be descended from Dracula and the other half to be descended from Dracula's mortal enemies. I imagine that the OT3 would raise their children carefully to avoid conflicts getting out of hand, though that could possibly break down after a generation or so. There's also the fact that Alucard will likely outlive his human family, which saddens me even if it gives me a lot of angst to work with. (I have such a weak spot for lonely cinnamon rolls like Alucard; I just want them to be happy.)

Anyway, I might actually finish all of the 21 Days to a Novel exercises for once, and I'm looking forward to that. ^-^