nathalia

copied from storyfriends where I first posted this. I figured this might help.

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I've been working on my Spanish report. i've covered Pinochet's backstory until 08/23/1973 and I'm doing Allende's politics in 1970 to 1973 right now to catch up to the point where his and Pinochet's lives really collide. But because I wanted to do something else and talk a bit and whatever, maybe I just like to listen to my voice, I took my notes and talked them through while recording it. I go into tangents every once in a while which of course I won't do when I'm doing the report but this was mostly so I could hear everything out loud in my own words to see if I understood what was going on and stuff. I've talked for forty minutes ... Yes, I got hung up on Lucia's name a few times and talked a bit about Prats and in the end it will be a lot shorter because I will trim it down a lot and not go on a tangent about having been in the building that houses El Mercurio and other fun stuff like I did this time but it's impressive that I can just sit on my bed and talk for forty minutes straight knowing nobody is listening. And I recorded it all. Why? No idea. I think I feel pretty lame just sitting on my bed talking to myself and of course sitting on my bed with a mic is a lot better because this way it feels as if I've actually produced something. I listened to a podcast the other day where they were talking about the sense of accomplishment artists get compared to writers because artists have something they can show around when asked what they did and people can look at it and say they like it, with writers it's a lot harder because ... it is. And so I felt like I wouldn't be wasting so much of my time if I actually recorded that thing even though I know exactly that i won't ever listen to it again. Or maybe I will at some point and then I'll feel like posting one or two clips for V's enjoyment because she's probably the only one who will really understand what the heck I'm talking about.

I have uploaded the OLMV report to esnips and am considering posting it here to showcase my exaggeratedly empassioned opinion about The Second Hut and Silly's very naturally-sounding supposed opinion about Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies, an opinion she aquired when she read the script because I seriously doubt that she would have been able to extract that stuff from the story by herself which doesn't mean I don't love Silly, I just don't think literature is her strong suit just like I don't think feigning enthusiasm is her forte. Or writing more or less natural dialogue or coming up with original concepts to distinguish our recording from others. Or respecting punctuation. nah, I love her.

Kyle's story is getting out of control. I have written about 2k and not much has really happened with the exception of him showcasing his social awkwardness and geekiness but a plot will follow and an unexpected character has sneaked into the novel: Rob Liefeld, artist extraordinaire! Anna, Kyle's voice of reason, loves Rob Liefeld just like I love Rob Liefeld. he's just so bad that it's good. Yesterday I spent way too much time reading articles about Liefeld and laughing really, really hard at his art. One of my problems with art is that i don't seem able to really appreciate it. I can see if something is good or bad but I have to pay close attention to some of the stuff to notice just how fucked up Rob's art is and those articles really help and now I feel like reading Youngblood. There are several Liefeld drinking games but playing them is suicide. There was something in one article that I enjoyed a lot:

A fun Liefeld drinking game: take a shot for every pouch he draws on a character.  Oh great, now you have alcohol poisoning.

So yeah, Rob is in my novel now:

Anna has a sick fascination with Rob Liefeld, a phenomenon from the 90ies who made it big despite – or maybe because – his apparent inability to understand human anatomy or draw feet, his habit to add pouches upon pouches to  everything and his love for big guns – REALLY BIG GUNS. Nobody can really explain why Rob Liefeld was so popular in the 90ies, he just was and it’s more than slightly embarrassing for the medium as a whole but Anna insists on it being so bad that it’s good again.

And I don't plan to make the novel a Rob Liefeld bash-fest, he just came up. Maybe I should start working on adding a plot to the story now though. Later, when I've done more Spanish that is. But I want to throw Jun Bob Kim's name in there somewhere becuase I don't want to wait till November till I finally get to write about him. Maybe Kyle can walk into the shop when two customers are praising some Kev/Jun Bob colaboration. for universe-building purposes although I already managed to insert Maya into the story (Anna’s roommate sometimes helps out on busy weekends). the timeline is of course totally fucked up but that's how it's always been in my universe. So what if this is supposed to happen about 16 years after Letting Go and for some reason in Letting Go the same world-wide events are happening as in this story? It doesn't matter. Besides I can change Anna's roommate and just have it happen at the same time as Finding Me / Letting Go and have Janna come into the store or have Matt Hoover do a signing for some reason. Yub, that probably fits better. And in Letting Go I can mention Janna being friends with Anna or have her have a cameo without even mentioning her other connections. I love talking to myself about my timeline on my lj because this way I can spot problems better because I can't just say, "nobody will notice" and stop thinking about it.

back to work.

Today, a new pairing made itself known to me in the form of Allana and Roy. They both belong to a generation of characters that I know exist but haven't fleshed out yet (that includes Ahmik III, Ben, Charlie, Maya, Rhea and quite a few others) and probably never intended to flesh out until today Allana and Roy told me that they were an item which surprised me because they didn't even have personalities as far as I was concerned.

Allana and Roy have some of the taboo feeling that Kev and Janna or Wes and Hobbie have but with them it goes a step further. Allana is assertive and seems to know what she's doing while Roy is unsure about it all. And while Janna could probably have confided in Tahiri, Kyla or even Jason about her feelings for Kev, Roy certainly can't turn to his friends or siblings. I have no idea how they are going to play out but even if they don't work out in the end, hell, that'll make for some tension at family reunions.

This is fun because I've only ever written Allana as a plot point and now she is in her teens and is developing a personality that isn't quite like her mother's. Unlike Kyla, Allana got to be young and enjoy life because her mother did everything she could to make sure her daughter's life wouldn't be like hers. Allana is level-headed but she acts more like a teenager than Kyla ever did. She laughs and is interested in boys, although the wrong one, and I'm sure she kicks ass although I honestly always envisioned her hooking up with one of the Lieber-Shaw kids. Well, there's always Tara.