eighthphase: (persona//epic fail)
So I got my stuff for English finished. And I made up missing wordcount from yesterday.

That's about it.

I still have to do today's 2k and also that ten-paragraph government midterm paper I've been putting off for weeks that's due tomorrow... and also at least some of the relevant reading, because I do believe I'm expected to quote shit. My wordcount is currently 6277 and I picked which of the two prompts I'm going to write and I have done absolutely nothing else because I'm a fucking loser!

Real college students procrastinate, kids.

I have at least been vaguely social in the form of making posts in the NaNo forums, so I guess there's that. I wouldn't have thought of posting last year at all - hell I wouldn't have thought of posting last month - so at least I've worked up the nerve to shout into the abyss. (Also Amber asked for photos of my Aradia costume and I linked her to the post I made and she reblogged it and said I was really cute! 0//////////0 That kind of made my day a little bit.)

So far, in the last 6k words, I've learned that Jacob eats a metric fuckton (this is probably going to be something mages in general do) and that he's being a little shithead and decided he didn't want to act like John, and furthermore that he didn't want to be the generic male protagonist, either! On the one hand, at least he's more interesting, but on the other hand... dude, you're going off-outline! Stop fucking up my plans!

He hasn't warmed up to Gareth as much as I thought he would. This is probably because he's neither your typical magical girl candidate nor (apparently) your generic male protagonist, and so just because Gareth saved his life doesn't mean he's going to hop to Gareth's quest and start the fucking plot like a good little protagonist. (It's also partly Gareth's fault for doing his best Kyubey impression, because Kyubey is a creepy little fucker. And if Jacob were supposed to be Madoka it might even work, but Gareth is supposed to be Kero in this analogy and that makes Jacob Sakura, which means he's supposed to decide to start collecting the magic plot devices already damn it.)

I've introduced another character, one who we won't be properly meeting until the end of the book, although she will pop in from time to time before then. (Actually I think she has three more appearances until the characters learn who she is.) And then I realised as I started writing the Jacob section after that that, uh, her bit should probably break up Jacob's morning routine and him actually being at school. Which would be fine, because I can just move it later, except... I have to actually get Jacob to school, first. And he's decided he'd rather wake up early and then bum around the kitchen drinking coffee with his dad. Put some fucking clothes on and get an Egg McMuffin or something, asshole! (Or even better, get some Breakfast Jacks. It's not like the Jack-in-the-Box isn't right next to your fucking school. I know it is, because you go to my old school!)

...Actually, he totally should get some Breakfast Jacks and also some bacon cheddar fries, because those things are delicious and he eats a metric fuckton and would therefore appreciate the calories anyway and oh shit I made myself hungry. I guess I'll go heat up some leftovers or something. (And cover them in shredded cheese because some genius bought some and then didn't put it on his shelf, so it's fair game.)

(no subject)

Friday, 2 November 2012 10:56 pm
eighthphase: (pharos//bb death)
And then I finally hit four thousand words! About fucking time. So I actually secretly got to what's pretty much the end of chapter two, oops. I'd hoped it might shake out a bit longer, but since chapter one is a monster comparatively I guess it evens out.

Writing eighteen-year-old boy is not quite what I'd expected. Mostly my characters just swear more than I usually have characters swear, but I felt Jacob's reactions were a bit off. And then he kind of started snapping and that felt about right, so I guess there's that.

I realised belatedly that there are not nearly the usual amount of awesome ladies in this story so far, or even very many ladies at all. And the ladies that are there aren't exactly... awesome. Leesha's first two lines are about how eating a lot makes you fat (and in her next appearance she points out that there are times you should question free pizza, although she certainly doesn't turn it down). Estrella is okay, although she doesn't have any dialogue and is in fact only discussed. Maddie doesn't even technically show up, she just gets talked about. And then there's the unnamed lady who attacks Jacob and is subdued by Gareth with... surprisingly little effort. I know the whole plot centres around two ladies being awesome (well, three ladies technically, although Amelia is an antagonist) but so far I feel very bad about the lack of non-awesome ladies.

(I actually felt so bad that I went so far as to decide that the unnamed lady knight who attacks Jacob for his source is named Cordelia, the mage who she works for is Emily, and that Emily is a painter and she wants to use the soulcatcher to cure her boyfriend's cancer so that they can get married and be happy together. ...Shit, writing that down makes me feel worse, since it isn't going to happen at all ever. Fuck.)

I decided Jacob had an older brother. I had to come up with a name for that older brother and nearly called him Dirk, except that it felt 1) obvious and 2) not very fitting. Then I almost considered renaming Jacob to John and calling his brother Dave, but hell if I was going to do that. His brother's name is David, though.

I also had to come up with a synopsis for the NaNoWriMo site, and it was... not a very good synopsis. Of course, I couldn't exactly write "it's kind of like a magical girl story - the Card Captor Sakura kind of magical girl, not the Sailor Moon kind - except the protagonist is an eighteen-year-old boy" as a synopsis, since that describes the plot a bit but doesn't actually tell you much. (Actually... swap sources for Clow Cards and Eileen for Clow and it actually kind of describes the plot a lot.) I have pretty much settled on the name Soulcatcher for both title and magical device, however. So there's that.

This actually really is a lot like a magical girl story, though. The protagonist finds a thing and doesn't know what it is, then learns it's a magic thing that has a magic guardian and he has to collect more of them to make a magic device work. There's a bad guy who wants to use the magic device for evil purposes and there's a rival who doesn't want the bad guy to use the magic device but doesn't want the protagonist to use it, either, and the protagonist and the rival end up having to work together to defeat the bad guy.

Now did I just describe Card Captor Sakura or Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Actually, I think I also just described Dragon Ball Z, too. It's kind of a general description, really. (Yeah okay it's not a perfect fit for any of them but I think I made my point.)

It's late, so I think I'm just going to check on my dragons and then go to sleep. And then despair writing another 2k words tomorrow amongst research on Emily Dickinson and all the reading I have to do for that ten-paragraph essay I have to write for my midterm. (Both of those things are due on Monday and I have not started either of them.)

(no subject)

Friday, 2 November 2012 02:40 pm
eighthphase: (keats//in the stacks)
I ended up with 700 and change yesterday /: Which is okay, because so far today I'm at ~2350. So now I just need to write the other 1700! Or through to the end of chapter two, whichever I feel more like doing (spoilers: probably not the second one, considering I haven't even quite finished chapter one yet).

The only problem is that I forgot that writing about high school is fucking boring. Probably because high school itself - especially when you're a senior - is fucking boring. Jacob is well aware of that! This is probably why he sleeps through his government class. (Relatedly, he has a government class that he hates - like me right now - he's pretty eh about his English class - which I made Kay the teacher of - he doesn't like pre-cal - I hated it - and he's in journalism - which I also was my senior year. I know they say "write what you know"... of course, I'm really fucking lazy right now, so that's probably got more to do with it.)

Jacob wasn't even supposed to be in Journalism, but I needed an excuse for him to be kind of walking around and I realised belatedly that giving him a car, which I did yesterday without even really realising, meant he wouldn't be walking home, which was what he was supposed to be doing. So I thought and I thought, and I stuck him in journalism because I needed an elective, and then I thought "well I guess he can be their photographer, that should give him an excuse". So I've learned that he eats a lot, that he actually does have a few friends, and that he is a photographer. I also learned he's in AP English Lit! (Mostly because I think Kay would absolutely hate teaching regular English classes.)

If you know anything about me and/or my friends and/or the city I live in, it's really easy to see how lazy I've been with worldbuilding. Jacob basically lives in my city, he basically goes to my high school (actually he does go to my high school; it's got a common high school name so I didn't bother changing it), and some of his teachers are named after my friends. (Besides Kay, Jordan is the journalism teacher. I was going to make Marc a maths teacher but realised that Jacob's apathy in pre-cal was better served by an expy of my own pre-cal teacher.)

Also, Jacob very nearly ended up being Jacob Taylor. I was this close to just saying "yeah whatever fuck it" and making him Jacob Taylor. And then I was bored at the bus stop and actually looked up surnames and so now he is Jacob Linwood. I was much lazier with his friends and so besides two friends with normal-ish names (Tony and Leesha) he's got Anders and Desmond. Desmond is called Des all the time so it's not as obvious, but Anders is called Anders all the time, because his real name is Anderson (ooo stealth double reference) and he hates it!

I'm trying like hell to procrastinate because teenagers and high school are boring as shit but the NaNo site is being strangled by heavy traffic so there's not much else I can do.

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