Stardancer News

FWOOSHARIFFIC

2008-05-08T17:17:40Z

For those of you who wondered where the inspiration for Willow's hair came from...

RAWR, WAIST LENGTH!

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Thinking Out Loud

2008-05-08T11:30:05Z

• Re-reading Shell has made me think I'm going in the wrong direction with the packaging. I might do something far more understated. From the distance of a few years, it's easy to think of it as Dlane's book... but it's Thenet's, and the eperu aesthetic is austere. I'll have to do more new work for it, but a lot less than I was planning, which will mean the book will come out faster.

• Still trying to figure out a good way to scan oversized art. Kinko's has an oversize scanner, but the last scans I got back from them had digital artifacts. I ended up stitching "Hadara and the Sun King" together by hand, which was... not... fun. *sigh* Getting a scan of "Willow" I can actually print has so far been a non-starter.

• Right now "Just Because (I Love You)" is on the painting board because the paper I want to put the baby+dragon piece is in the mail. Hopefully it'll come soon because I'm utterly intimidated by "Just Because." That order also contains replacement brushes for the three that I've destroyed finishing these last two paintings... yes, I'm still trying to get a good scan for the postcards to send the people who sponsored those brushes, and they're already being replaced! *shaking head*

• I'm just now going through sketchbooks 11-20 for the Retrospective... if you want me to scan more pictures from this set, you can do that here. Remember to tell me your LJ Name so I can list you as a sponsor!

• Also, I've figured out the third illustration for the Admonishments and am trying to put that together now. I can tell it's going to be late, though. It's complicated.

• Related to all this scanning/archiving of artwork... I found somehow that I got water into one of the portfolios I use to store old originals, which ruined my original of "Ragna." I need to get more of these things out of my house before I destroy them. :P

• Finally, arielstarshadow has cracked the top five commenter list, and in doing so has asked so many questions or made so many leading statements that I'm just vibrating with the need to write or draw things. Comments are love!

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Done

2008-05-07T20:31:35Z

Hadara and the Sun King

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Philosophy, Jokku Style

2008-05-06T16:06:48Z

On the bright side, I started skipping around The Worth of a Shell and found myself reading it to the end. Aside from some minor copy-edits, I don't think I'll end up changing anything. I still believe this book. I can't wait to make it available.

      "I think we're safe," I said quietly.
      "Good!"
      "For now," I finished.
      We stood in silence, enveloped in the cool hand of the forest. Dlane gulped at the air, sounding alarmingly like she trying not to sob.
      "Ke anadi?"
      "Will it ever end?" she asked, the intonation that might have made it a question failing. "You've killed fourteen beasts and saved me from two searchers. How much longer can we be so lucky?"
      "This isn't luck, ke anadi," I said, pulling her into my arms and resuming our course down the stream. She did not resist.
      "And now without food or clothing or even your spear! How will we survive?"
      "As Jokka always have. Through skill and intelligence, and perhaps the will of the Trinity."
      "The Trinity," she said bitterly. "What Trinity? What gods?"
      "Hush, ke anadi, you're talking nonsense," I said. She could take many things from me, my anadi, but my faith in the Brightness, World and Void… that she would not have.
      Perhaps she sensed my rejection… whatever the case she rested against my chest without speaking. Her body was damp, and the soft hairs cloaking her feet had curled from the run. I found a rhythm and strode down the ravine, trying not to disturb the water.
      "Intelligence," Dlane murmured. "Always intelligence. If it is intelligence through which we survive, why do we destroy it in a third of our population?"
      I opened my mouth, then frowned. "We do not destroy intelligence, ke anadi."
      "Yes we do," Dlane said. "Breeding the anadi. It kills their minds."
      Exasperated, I asked, "And the alternative? Shall we get children on animals?"
      "In the end, that is exactly what we do," Dlane said. "And I would end up as intelligent and malleable as a ñedsu. Point me in a direction and give me a simple command, and wailing and moaning I follow."
      The image so revolted me I stumbled.
      "You see?"
      "What can I say?" I said. "What would you have us do? If we did not breed, we would grow old. There would be no laughter of the young to sustain us. The last of us would finally die and there would be no Jokka. The wind would chase clean the fields we tended, the towns we built, scour them from the earth, and it would be as if we never lived. What would the world be then?"
      "I don't know," Dlane said. "Would it matter? We would not be there to see it."
      "A world without Jokka!" I didn't stop because the motions had become mechanical, beyond my control. I walked because stopping, I would fall. "I cannot fathom it! Dlane… we are our race."
      "Why does it matter so much to you?" she asked, golden eyes rising to mine. I did not spare a glance for her; to do so would be to drown in the gold, to acknowledge her utter earnestness. To acknowledge that she could hold the death of our race in her mind with enough detachment to measure whether it was good or bad. "You will die, Thenet… and after that, you will know no more, or at least have no more concern with the Jokka."
      "How do you know?" I asked. "My death will not make me any less a Jokkad."
      "You'll be dead, Thenet. The only Jokku thing about you then will be your corpse, and even that will rot away and return to the earth," Dlane said.
      I almost dropped her.
      "When I die," I said, staring down at her, "I will be embraced by the World. It will help me to my feet and anoint me with the paint and long-cloth of the Earth and Wind. It will give me eyes of the Sky, so that I may hold the Brightness without blinking, and scales of stars that I may be held by the Void without shivering. With a spear I will hunt the unmaking spirits with all my comrades at my side, and make safe the World for the Jokka still living."
      Dlane said, "For all eternity."
      "For all eternity," I agreed.
      "How wearisome," Dlane said.

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Writing Roll, Failed (and Other Things)

2008-05-06T11:55:44Z

Maybe that was to be expected... I couldn't get the cultural context across. But I don't know if I could have, given how completely degraded the concept is of allegiance and vassalage is in our culture.

How manycolored got it, I don't know (psychic powers, maybe). But I duly apologize. Maybe I could explain the merethek in a book, but expecting people to grok it in two pages was a mistake.

Hopefully I'll do better next week.

Meanwhile, I'm considering keeping "business hours," not in terms of my actual activities, but in terms of my public availability. Mostly because the day I mentioned several years ago has finally come, where I'm forced to admit that more people want to talk to me than I can personally respond to. I don't want to reply to a well-composed email with a "Thanks for your interest! Here's my website! Enjoy!"... and that means I have months of backlogged email I haven't answered.

I guess this happens to everyone. But rather than ramping up to meet demand, I think I'm going to impose limits now. Maybe only respond to people between certain hours and in certain ways. Livejournal is nice because it allows me to have a conversation with someone in a way that many people can read it and get information from it; it's efficient, a one-to-many dialogue that still feels personal and casual.

Don't know... thinking about it.

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The Admonishments of Kherishdar: SPITE

2008-05-05T10:32:35Z

SPITE
M.C.A. Hogarth

merethek [ MARE-eh-thehk ], (noun) — A ritual in which someone of lower caste-rank pledges fealty to one of higher, and both acknowledge their mutual duties, lord to vassal. During this ritual, the higher-ranked paints a ribbon pattern on the lower with a dye (or bleach). This dye fades over the course of a year, at which point the ritual is observed again. Only Thirukedi uses permanent dyes.

      The knocks before had been frantic, angry, desperate. They'd been accompanied by cajoling, by pleas, by remonstrations. None of them had pried me from hiding.
      This knock was slow.
      Was hard.
      Was inexorable.
      I knew I would give in to it. Knowing made me panic. I faced the corner and chewed on my knuckles.
      Silence.
      Again, the knock.
      I pressed my brow against my knees. Behind my closed eyes I saw my gloved fingers trailing across fur, crossing line over line, until dye darkened to the shade of blood.
      Again, the knock.
      I shuddered. I had been granted that rarity, a true love between myself and one of my Nobles... but it had not been enough only to touch, and not to have more. So I struck at him in ritual when he could not deny me, for it had been for him to show allegiance.
      For me to paint the dye on as a sign of our relationship, lord and vassal.
      For me to do so carefully, because even the dilution of Thirukedi's preparation that is allowed us is still a poison.
      Again, the knock.
      I was afraid I had killed him.
      Again.
      Again.
      I covered my eyes and shook....
      And then the handle... moved.
      The door opened, all on its own, as I watched. And standing there was my ajzelin—my beloved, whom I'd thought never to see again. On one hand, he wore a ritual glove... but with cold iron claws. In his other hand was a jar of shadowflower dye. I thrust my shoulders back against the wall, but there was nowhere I could flee.
      He crouched across from me, his eyes sorrowful.
      "I have been permitted to bestow the bairek narili."
      Only the emperor was allowed to create bairek narili: to incise wounds while applying the dye. It often crippled... sometimes killed. And yet my fears seized on minor details. Would he mark me somewhere everyone could see? Or someplace as private as my discontent had been before I made it public with my abuse of the merethek? Petrified, I waited.
      He backed away. Looked at me sadly. Left the room. I was still staring after him when Shame lunged out of the dark and ripped through my robe at the hip. Before I could scream, he gouged the other side.
      "What your love was too kind to do, I have done," he said as I pitched forward, shrieking. "How does it feel, the merethek as punishment?"
      He rolled me onto my back and pressed my shoulder down with his foot.
      "You have lost your love's trust," Shame said. "And Thirukedi's eyes are on you now. Act with the honor and grace befitting a Regal. Let the marks remind you."
      I moaned, weak.
      "Answer me," Shame said, cold.
      "Thank you," I cried, weeping. "Thank for the grace of my Correction!"
      He tossed a blanket over me and left.

Donate.
The Admonishments of Kherishdar.

Smells Like Cloves!

2008-05-02T14:50:32Z

Raid makes an "Earth Options" wasp spray which is supposedly eco-friendly and not a biohazard.

Right. Not a biohazard. Not even to... well, wasps. In fact, I think it functions more like a friendly warning, the equivalent of shaking your head and saying, "Tsk, tsk, naughty wasps!" This is a product that's marketed to people more worried about how much bug sprays stink ("Fresh Clove Scent!") than whether it actually works. Because apparently these people don't live in Florida, which is human-habitable only because we poison everything meaner, more aggressive and more dangerous than us. Which is everything.

Anyway, I learned about this kinder, gentler, eco-friendly approach while trying to evict the wasps from their new nest on the mailbox.

haikujaguar: Whoot, good-bye, wasps! *spray*

Wasps: LOL SMELLS LIKE CLOVES

haikujaguar: Uh-oh.... *sprays more*

Wasps: HEY LOOK A HUMAN

haikujaguar: *flees!*

So, yes. The wasps laughed off the clove-scented eco-friendly spray. I came back with the Raid Neurotoxin-in-a-can and took great pleasure in watching them drop-dead midflight when a single drop hit them.

You don't mess around with some things. -_-

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Reviews and Such

2008-05-01T22:24:02Z

Meanwhile, The Fix has an excellent review of the Aphorisms discussing why the book didn't work for the reviewer. If you didn't like the shorts and couldn't articulate why, I think this reviewer did an excellent job of discussing it.

I should point out that the reviewer carefully examined the book and analyzed it, and I think he did a good job of deconstructing why it failed for him. So don't take this as upset. I could only wish all people who disliked a piece of art were so thoughtful about their reasons why. :)

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Zero-Sum

2008-05-01T17:48:11Z

Comparative pain is a game no one wins.

Part of the problem is that 90% of the people in the world aren't telling. The old man sitting next to you, smiling at pictures of his grand-daughter, barely escaped a dictatorship with his life. The sweet, friendly woman you work with who seems to have it made was originally married to an abusive cop whom she had to flee on a chance weekend cross-country, chased by his buddies in the force. All the people around you... they've known death. Sickness. Suffering. Thwarted ambitions. Destroyed dreams. Loneliness. And you'd never know it from their faces.

So most of the time, you're missing data you need to play the game.

You can console yourself imagining what people are going through based on what they make public, maybe. But then, when they do share, you're suddenly forced to confront someone whose situation, objectively, must have been worse than yours. What then? You're forced to resent them for making your own feelings feel petty and small. Their experiences become nothing more than a whip you use to punish yourself for being human. You dehumanize them, turning their own suffering into something that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you. And you scar yourself, undeserving, for you are no less entitled to your emotions than they are.

Here's the truth: there's no such thing as comparative pain. There's no game. There's no way to measure, no way to win. We all come into this life and we all suffer. Some of us choose to talk about it, and some won't, but you will never understand any person's personal hell. And with very few exceptions, you will never even know they're burning.

As the movie says: the only winning move is not to play.

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haikujaguar @ 2008-04-30T15:55:00

2008-04-30T19:55:34Z

Am running a minor fever, but I uploaded a couple of sketches yesterday.

Messed Up (2)

2008-04-28T14:33:44Z

"A bizarre question."

I look up. "Oh, you're back then. What question?"

"The one implied by suggesting that one might be attracted to one's ajzelin."

"Does that happen?" I ask.

"Of course." He flips through the dictionary to see where I am with the vocabulary. "Does that matter?"

"Some people would say it matters a lot," I say. "What do you do?"

Shame lifts his brows. "The person who feels it doesn't call attention to it. The person who notices it ignores it."

"That's it?" I say.

"Is that so hard?"

"What if it's really hard to not call attention to?"

He points:

ril [ reel ], (verb) – to relieve oneself; this refers to any bodily need from hunger and thirst, to passing waste, to any sexual requirement

"Just like that," I say. "You walk into a bathroom, take care of it and come back."

"Why not?"

"Isn't that rude?"

He stares at me. "I admit, aunerai... you have defeated me at last. How is that any more rude than emptying your bladder so you can sleep?"

"Because... " I trail off. "I don't know. Do you have frank talks with your ajzelin about... responses? Assuming you have one."

He snorts. "I'm a little younger than him, so yes, it happens. Why would we need to discuss it? Frank discussions exist to set boundaries... but the boundaries of the relationship between ajzelin are already understood. We both know what to expect. Why would we need to talk about it?"

"He doesn't apologize?"

"For my bodily response?" Shame stares at me. "Do you truly apologize for such things? For being attractive? Is it something you do to someone else, to which they become captive and then they suffer?"

"I don't know," I admit, glancing at all the discussions I've been reading for days.

"Do your people have no concept of self-control?" Shame asks.

"I don't know," I say again, because I don't.

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Sketchbooks 1-10: My, What Huge Eyes You Have!

2008-04-27T14:41:37Z

Dates: February 23, 1994 to January 30, 1995.

Stories: At this point there were two major storylines brewing: Zafiil, which started out as a few roleplayed adventures and would later become a sprawling, 256,000 word novel; and my hunt for the signature story about the Eldritch and a member of the Alliance proper. I wandered through several iterations of the latter, mostly with Tam-illee (a foxlike race), but I wouldn't hit on the actual canon story of Fasianyl and Sellelvi until much later.

RPGs: At the time I was on FurryMuck, doing some limited roleplying; then I moved to Aleph Museum and finally by sketchbook 10 we see the beginnings of Genesis, the fantasy roleplaying Muck I ran for about two years.

Settings: Paradox, mostly. The observant will note that at this point I was still drawing the Pelted of this setting as muzzled furries; later on, I'd evolve them to more humanoid-looking, to go with the more science-fictional themes I was trying to write about with genetic engineering and such.

Themes: Babies and Pregnant Women, Lots of Women Sewing, Fashion Design. This is easily linked to the fact that I'd met my husband-to-be and gotten engaged. Well, the first bits. The fashion design has been an eternal interest. Sketchbook 8 also has the "Masquerade" series, which I linked in its entirety below.

Friendly Influences: tuftears, whom I'd met through fanzines, inspired a lot of my art at this point.

Artistically: Big eyes. A lot of ink/B&W work. Some markers and color pencil. Lots of furries, and some attempts at humans, none of them very good. At the time I was aware of how hard it was to draw people and avoided it when I could, but my fixation on the Eldritch made that difficult.

Sponsors: marykate_gift, shockwave77598, allykat, tuftears, roho, arielstarshadow, razzek and three people whose email addresses I fail to recognize despite having seen them before. I am not strong. -_-

Sketchbook 1:

Sketchbook 2:

Sketchbook 3:

Sketchbook 4:

Sketchbook 5:

Sketchbook 6:

Sketchbook 7:

Sketchbook 8:

Sketchbook 9:

Sketchbook 10:

I'm going to try to do one of these every two weeks until we hit 100! The last sponsors took care of scanning extra sketches from books 1-10. If you'd like to donate to the project, here's the post! Every person who donates will get 1 or more scans from a sketchbook uploaded.

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Hadara's Robe of Stars

2008-04-27T03:02:30Z

elusivetiger fixed my feng shui issue with my painting location (we're doing a lot of work to the house, which means things are constantly in flux; for the past few weeks I haven't liked the area I used to paint in). The result was that I was much happier and spent a lot longer working tonight than I expected. On to Hadara's robe with its finicky patterns!

Here's me painting the first layers over the frisket film.

And peeling it away... you can see how delicate it is. I was using the "extra tack" version of the film; I think in the future I might try the normal low tack, because this one stuck a little more than it needed to. Running the paper through the printer already abuses it a bit, and the film on top of that was just too much for the surface of the paper. I was basically pleased with the result, though I had to be more careful painting over the filmed areas than I think will be necessary with the lower tack film.

Where I stopped for the night. I painted the background of the patterns in, then put down the basecoat on her skin (I'm going to have such fun doing that warm toffee color!) and worked a little on the Sun King's robes before I gave up for the evening. You can see the book of patterns I was using propped up against the wall.

The scan's a little skewed, but it gives you a better look at the patterns at least:

Hadara's Robe of Stars

I have so much to do it's just falling right out of my head lately. But I think having this new painting place will help me immensely.

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Making Stuff

2008-04-25T14:46:49Z

When I'm sad, I make things. In this case, I made cake.

Lemons, lemons, lemons. Denuded lemons (I made this on Thursday, so does it count as a Naked Thursday thing, Razz, Stoker?). Lemon juice. Lemontastic. Lemonariffic. Lemonpallooza.

I sift the easy-to-clean way.

Mmm, lemon icing with lemon zest and lemon juice.

Porn we can all appreciate. FOOD PORN. Well, except for the diabetics, to whom I apologize. Virtual sugar doesn't count!

I also go a little progress on "Hadara," in the form of applying frisket.

There's liquid frisket and film frisket. The idea's the same: you put something down on the paper and paint over it, and then when you're done, you remove the dried frisket liquid or the film and you have white paper under it. Hadara's robe needed patterns, so I started drawing them onto the frisket film using a book with examples of decorative patterns from different cultures.

And here's the piece with all the frisket applied. I'll get to painting over it soon.

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Done with Over It

2008-04-24T18:46:46Z

I criticize by creation — not by finding fault.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

I should know better by now, but I don't... my rant didn't make me feel any better, and in fact I'm just feeling sadder about the whole situation, and I feel a lot more alienated.

Anything that pushes me away from loving people as a whole (even if I don't approve of an individual's behavior) is wrong for me.

So I'm going to go back to what has worked for me. I'm going to make things. You can decide on your own what you think and feel about the subject. You can go through my art archive and find neuters and celibates, hermaphrodites who are not sex objects... you can find relationships of every kind, romantic and platonic, between every conceivable human gender and several alien. You can explore with me all the different family structures I draw and write about, read stories about non-sexual touch, or contextually appropriate touch.

While I reserve the right to say some things in bad taste, (because I wouldn't be what I am if I didn't find discourtesy abhorrent), we can talk about the work. You can read what you want into it. And whatever comes of that, comes of it.

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Over It

2008-04-24T09:50:25Z

I wasn't planning on saying anything about the recent SF/F kerfluffle...

...but watching it, I realize no one is saying what I'm thinking, and what I'm thinking is that if you really wanted to be revolutionary and go forth to take back something that's been lost, you'd go reclaim non-sexual touch. Because it would be totally shocking to me to attend a convention without having someone make an inappropriate comment to me or do something inappropriate that made me glad I brought friends to get in the way of idiots. Because despite the vast army of celibates, priests and neuters that I write about, people will inevitably decide that the handful of characters with strange sex lives must be the truer reflection of WHO I AM and therefore they MUST ask me if they can have sex with me. Because sometimes I think people are incapable of appreciating beauty without wanting to find some way to get off on it.

There's never been an SF/F convention where I wasn't constantly making sure I wasn't alone... and yes, I worry about it more at cons than I do in normal situations. If you haven't noticed why this is necessary, you're not living in the real world. To be honest, the furries are far safer; I've never, ever had the same level of problems at a furry con.

Yeah, I just said that furries were more polite about sex than the average SF/F fan.

I'm sure I'm not the only one absolutely exhausted with society's puerile and ultimately boring fixation with sex. Yes, it can be wonderful, no it's not the key to enlightenment. Can we move on now?

I've written about this before, but I'll say it again: if you really want to be counter-cultural, you'll champion celibacy. Go for it! I'm waiting!

...still waiting....

Yeah. Not so revolutionary now, are you.

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Painting Line-Up

2008-04-23T18:45:43Z

I'm still working on the retrospective... finishing Willow pretty much knocked all the brain out of my head for the nonce. But for those of you who are interested, here's my tentative painting line-up (excluding illustrations for books in progress):

Hadara and the Sun King
I've wanted to do this one for a while, and it shouldn't take me long; it's pretty simple. Plus, I'm looking forward to doing Hadara's toffee-colored skin. Already started on it.

Just Because (I Love You)
This one I'm framing and keeping. But you can buy prints. I've started this one too.

Baby's Companion
By popular demand, and because it's sweet. I'll probably hang a print in the baby's room, if I like the results enough.

Scale Model
Because this one should be a blast and it's funny to boot.

As soon as I'm happy with the "Willow" scan I'll start figuring out how to put together the postcards for brush sponsors, and prints will be available. Watch this space. :)

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Willow, the Moon and Night, Complete

2008-04-23T13:33:28Z

Willow, the Moon and Night

Size: 12x16
New brushes used up: 4.
Old brushes destroyed beyond repair: 1
Times I dipped my brush in kosher salt: 6
Times I dipped my brush in coffee, green tea, my glass of water, my milk or my gin & tonic: 11

*fallover*

fallsover

2008-04-23T01:07:38Z

"Willow" is finally done.

Finally done. After months and months of work. It's done. I ruined four of the new brushes to finish it, but 40+ man-hours later, it's done.

*tip-toes to table, sets it down and backs away to let it dry*

*fallsover*

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Awesome

2008-04-22T20:33:43Z

floorlamps, you rock, thank you. Your comment on this piece has given me a thought for an Admonishment. :)

Flipping through these sketchbooks, I realize how much pleasure and inspiration I get from friends and viewers. I don't know how many pictures of Vasiht'h are stryck's fault, but surely a great deal of them. thedigitalkuri made me draw more pictures of Galatea... and men with beards are often razzek's doing. That's not even touching people who've had long-term influences on my art, people I'll mention as I go through the retrospective... the ones who for years have been making me think, laugh or pick up a pencil to answer, "What if," "Why not," and "How come."

I could probably keep trying to explain how much your questions, thoughts and discussions mean to me; that they keep me working when I'm tired, or give me new thoughts when I'm fresh out. But if you ever think, "Wow, I wish I could donate to one of haikujaguar's projects, but I don't have any money," then rest assured: your comments on the art are as good as gold to me. Just like the money, they keep the Story flowing.

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The One Hundred Sketchbook Retrospective!

2008-04-22T15:17:23Z

I wanted to do something special for the second week of my "vacation" and was pondering a print sale when I realized I'd run into a truly celebration-worthy milestone: after fourteen years, I've closed the covers on my 99th sketchbook! For fourteen years I've been numbering any sketchbook over 8.5x11 (the smaller ones get letters, and I'm somewhere around "P" on those). These books have fed Stardancer's art archive for years. Yesterday I put the first pencil lines down on the second page of #100. That's over 9000 sketches... more if you count those tiny lettered books!

So instead of a boring generic print sale, I'm going to do a One Hundred Sketchbook Retrospective! I'm going to summarize the trends and best art of each "decade" of sketchbooks, and if I have pieces scanned from them I'll add links.

Now, it wouldn't be any fun without audience participation! So if you'd like to join the fun, for everyone person who donates, I'll scan an unscanned piece from each book, starting with Sketchbook #1. Paypal requires at least $1 donations, but I'll probably be moved by extra money to scan more pictures. *grin*

If this project turns out to be popular, I might make a B&W hard copy available also, so you can flip through the Best Of twelve years of my work, along with my commentary.

Look for the first post tomorrow!

(P.S. For the curious, I'm going to use this money to enroll the baby in the cultural center's "Baby Music" summer class. And if there's leftover... well, paint, baby food, and fencing dues for Mommy!)

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Small Ponds

2008-04-21T16:53:02Z

A couple of days ago I went to a couple of genre websites I used to read religiously, sites that specialized in reviewing new and existing books... and I felt lost. It was like I was reading some alien language, or looking at something through a smoky glass. I felt completely removed from it. Yet another "subversive" book, undermining the tropes of the genre. Yet another Tolkien come again. Yet another ground-breaking book... breaking ground for... what? More of the same. Everything felt so... derivative. Of itself.

It reminded me suddenly of how I felt about furry fandom a few years ago... that sense of people feeding off one another, everyone crowded into a small pond, writing for one another, reviewing one another.

And I thought: "This is my genre?"

Not anymore.

And yet, you know... I still love science fiction. I still love fantasy. I still love wizards and dragons and boys with swords making their fortunes. I still love gallant space captains and multi-generational empires and robots. But the mainstream of the genre feels like an insular fortress and I'm not interested in what's behind its walls anymore. When I read these days, it's either authors I've already tried and still like, like Jack Campbell writing his Jack Geary military space operas, or it's new things I had to hunt around on the fringes to find, like alex_beecroft's The Witch's Boy.

More and more the thing that fills that void, oddly enough, is the RPG. Not because I have the time to run a new campaign... but because I know a lot of people who do, and they often say, "What would you be in this system?" or they describe their own characters. Or I look back at my older games and find something new in them. Or I read rulebooks—akaihyo sent me one recently. I get my playing online when I can, with a couple of people who make it worthwhile. This is the place that feels open-ended to me still, where you can go "Wow!" at things that people make, and where if you don't like what people make you're completely free to make up your own.

It makes me think a little about the future of storytelling, and about tailored or custom-fitted stories, where you have some influence over what you want to see; not entirely, because then how could you be delighted and surprised? But enough to be invested in the story.

If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd be uninterested in the genre mainstream industry, that the offerings in the bookstore would mostly be boring me, that I'd be turned off by the way many of those authors talk about themselves and their work, I would have been shocked. I wanted to be them. I don't anymore.

I have a copy left over of The Aphorisms that I bought to send to one of those sites. I haven't yet. I don't think I will now. What to do with it now? The possibilities seem endless. I think I will make a gift of it.

Stardancer Home.

More, More, More

2008-04-21T15:17:24Z

So in the middle of my exhaustion, I figured I might as well paint, so... I did. Not just "Willow"; I hauled out a couple more to work on between her layers drying.

I made a crazy painting parlor out of the living room, with pillows, candles, music and incense. It wasn't intentional, I'm just so used to cleaning up that room for company that... well, I was on auto-pilot. But it was really pleasant, even if it did feel a trifle decadent, like painting in some kind of artist's seraglio.

I've also started keeping all my color tests/thumbnails in one clear folder, which you can see on the floor there.

This painting is almost done! I'm so close I can feel it! Another session? Two? It would be so good to be done...!

But as I said, I started a couple more to keep myself working:

In this case, it's "Just Because (I Love You)" and "Hadara and the Sun King," which I've always wanted to finish and at this point seems like serious low-hanging fruit, compared to the complexity of the things I do now!

New folks, feel free to click on the painting titles... that'll show you closer views of the pictures than these photos. :)

Tomorrow I have something special planned... plus I want to muse on reading and RPGs. But for now I flop.

Stardancer Home.

Good Things, and a Request

2008-04-19T11:37:40Z

I really enjoyed the Draw yesterday... I hope to go back to doing that monthly. Even though it's time-consuming and tiring, it leaves me happier after than before I started. Let's hope, then! Right now I'm back to being up every 2-3 hours all night (and all day), so I'm a bit frazzled. I need more sleep to do this more often!

Meanwhile, I am overwhelmed. I don't know how, but more books have sold and I am now at 56 ("60!" dracosphynx promises smugly), and ten customer reviews, all of which made me sniffle. I... well. Like I said, I'm overwhelmed...!

I'm putting together the flier at the same time I'm doing the bookplates, and had some discussion with the voices in my head:

haikujaguar: Some of these reviews are so much! It's typical to put quotes from reviews on marketing hand-outs, but... it feels like I'm being excessively proud of myself.

The Calligrapher: Excessive pride would be pretending not to value the opinions of these others, or believing that you alone will sell this work, when in fact it is the kind words of others that will truly make the difference. Bow to that truth, and ask permission.

I hope that made sense, since I haven't been sleeping much. But... um, I would be greatly honored if those of you who have written reviews, on and off Amazon, would be willing to let me put them on the flier, and whether I can attribute a name to your words. I understand if you'd rather not! But like I said... I would be honored.

Well, I already am. But... you understand, probably.

I wish I could go back to sleep. -_-

Stardancer Home.

One Card Draw Wrap-Up

2008-04-19T03:31:42Z

And... I'm done with the card draw, it looks like. If you're a sponsor and haven't gotten your card yet, please leave a comment on the post!

Today we had 64 people (counting email) and it took me almost exactly three hours from start to finish: 8:16 PM to 11:18. That was a lot of people, and a lot of work. I am tired!

There was a clear theme this month: Unicorns, Priests and Companions. This is an astonishing pattern, because of the similiarity of the first two: the Unicorn is the card of the spiritual, the pure and immaterial and the Priest is the symbol of a cloistered approach to unlocking life's mysteries, the yogi's withdrawal to meditation and the monk's study of the scriptures. The Companions, of course, is the symbol of friends and people who accompany us on our life's journey (I can just see all of them standing to one side, looking askance at the Unicorn and Priest).

If you missed getting a card drawn for you specifically, then, I would say: this is the month of the spiritual, the beautiful and the eternal. Find some friends and go out into the world and see it for all its wonders.

Thanks to the sponsors for making this possible for the community. I hope everyone had a nice time. I know I did. :)

The Balance Card Website