I am not, on the whole, doing well.

Yesterday and the day before I was tired all the time and ended up losing consciousness rather unexpectedly while I was in the lump of inactivity being tired leads to.  Yesterday that wasn't a problem, the day before it meant I slept through when school got out and thus didn't pick up a kid it was, basically, my one and only job to pick up.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  But I've probably done useful things elsewhere, you think.  Nope.  Not even close.  I've washed maybe three to five dishes and two sheet pans and other than that . . . I got nothing.  For almost a week.

And just to make sure we're covering all the bases, my failure includes two states.  I fucked up notifying the right people of the right things and my cat apparently got locked outside for days.  A nosy neighbor who has apparently, without my knowledge or consent, been doing up close photography of the view through my windows (nothing creepy about that) announced (to someone else) that she didn't like how I was taking care of my cat, and my cat has not been seen since.

Also, she claims that there's a family of raccoons in my attic.  Whether or not I have an attic depends very much on what you mean by the term.  If you think of an attic as a place where things can be stored or anything even remotely like that, then I very much do not have one.  If you're more of a strict definition person then yeah, there is empty space between my slanted roof and my flat ceilings.  I have not, in fact, filled that space with some form of solid matter.  So, by definition, there is an attic.

What there is not, is a floor.  Now the rooms of the house all have ceilings, so there's something there that will hold up a lighter animal even if a human foot would punch straight through, but there's a thing about the windows the neighbor would have to look through to see anything up there.

They're basically a facade to make my slant roof give the impression of a non-existent second floor (or at least the kind of attic in which [plot relevant thing] containing cardboard boxes can actually be stored) so that my house, which faces an entire street of two story homes and (on the same side of the street) is next two a three story apartment building, doesn't come off as pitifully small.  They weren't placed with any kind of care because they're nothing but decoration.  We've already established no floor anywhere up there, but for where the windows are there's no ceiling.  They're over the open air porch which isn't a room, wasn't built like one, and does not have a ceiling so much as a centimeter or so thick loose conglomeration of boards that are intended to serve more as part of the roof ventilation system than any kind of load bearing structure.

You can literally stand on my porch, outside of the house, look up, and see out of those windows through what passes for a ceiling to the porch.

There's basically nothing there (there's not supposed to be much of anything there), which is fine if you're a squirrel or small bird, but the weight of a raccoon could conceivably bring the whole thing down which would be bad.  It is, quite literally, the single hardest part of my house to make repairs to.  That's why I've never got around to fixing the whole "You can see through the house from here" thing.  That's basically a cosmetic problem (remember, it's not supposed to be airtight) repairs would need to be done from the inside, and the inside is where there's zero support.  (The underside at least allows the possibility of a ladder.)

Then again I'm not sure how much I have to worry about the claims of someone who admits to peeping through my windows and taking pictures and may have stolen my cat.

But, back to matters of the self, as opposed to one adult and three baby raccoons that may or may not exist.

I haven't just been tired and generally lacking in any kind of usefulness.

I've been feeling hopeless, and helpless, and worthless.

Though, I do have a small backlog of fiction fragments so I should be able to put some more content on here regardless of whether or not I start feeling better.

Still begging for you to nominate me for meaningless awards (since the deadline was extended)

Here's how it works:

• I can't nominate myself or my works, but I can promote them, thus the begging. (Please, please, please.)
• Nomination is done by sending, basically, a copy and pasted form into which you have inserted your nominations either:
• via email to sharper1988 [at] aim [dot] com
• or, if  you have a fanfiction.net account, via a PM to the exact same person.
• You can nominate two things per category, but you don't have to nominate anything for a given category, I certainly never have nominees for every category.
• If you want non-[chris the cynic] options, there is a self promotion thread you can look at.

What follows is a form you can copy and paste that already has my works filled into eligible categories and is otherwise blank.

If someone were to send just that I'd be rather pleased, but it could also serve as a base to which things can be added (see the self promotion thread) and from which things can be removed (for example, if you don't find Life After: Terminology funny.)

* * *

1) Best KP Style Name (include the story/series and author they're from):
          -

2) Best Original Character (include the story/series and author they're from):
          - Leela Place Possible (Place) from Being more than a Simulacrum by chris the cynic

3) Best Minor Character (include the story/series and author they're from):
          - Joss Possible from Being more than a Simulacrum by chris the cynic

4) Best Villain (include the story/series and author they're from):
          -

5) Best Songfic (include who the author is):
          -

6) Best AU Story (include the author they're from):
          - Life After by chris the cynic

7) Best Crossover/Fusion (include mention of what is getting crossed over or fused and who the author is):
          -

8) Best Alternate Pairing (include the story/series it shows in and the author):
          -

9) Best KiGo Story (include the author):
          -

10) Best Kim/Ron Story (include the author):
          -

11) Best Comedy Story (include the author):
          - Life After: Terminology by chris the cynic
          - Life After: Dancing by chris the cynic

12) Best Romance Story (include the author and it might be good to indicate who is focused on romantically to give context for voters later on):
          -

13) Best Friendship Story (include the author and it might be good to indicate the people involved to give context for voters later on):
          - Being more than a Simulacrum (Place and Joss) by chris the cynic

14) Best Action/Adventure Story (include the author):
          - Bent, not Broken by chris the cynic

15) Best Drama Story (include the author):
          -

16) Best Unlikely/Unique Story (include the author):
          - Life After by chris the cynic

17) Best One-Shot Overall (include the author):
          -

18) Best Novel-Sized Story (include the author):
          - Being more than a Simulacrum by chris the cynic

19) Best Short Story (include the author):
          -

20) Best Series Overall (include the author):
          -

21) Best Writing Team (clarify who the members are as well as providing their combined nickname):
          -

22) Best Young Author:
          -

23) Best New Author:
          -

24) Best Single Line (say what story it appears in and who the author is, and please provide some context on this line to help people understand why it's cool):
          - "The dogs were big, the dogs were scary, the dogs were fast, but they were incapable of changing direction as quickly as a human being who could reach out, grab onto something, and pivot around it as if they hated their shoulder with a fiery passion and were just begging it to become dislocated." from Life After (Part I, Chapter 3) by chris the cynic

25) Best Reviewer (and tell us why you like them, whether it's number of reviews, insightful reviews, funny reviews, or something else):
          -

26) CPNeb Kimmunity Award (who, and try to say why just in case people aren't familiar with them):
          -

27) Kimmunity Achievement Award (Who? Doesn't need to have necessarily published in 2016):
          -

28) Best Story Overall (say who the author is):
          - Forgotten Seeds by chris the cynic

29) Best Writer:
          - chris the cynic

They're not monsters

[This is what think of whenever I hear about a game, movie, or TV episode where some signal or radiation or whatever turns part of the population into mindless killers while protagonists remain immune or resistant.]

I woke up to someone's face in mine, I gave about a 90% likelihood that it was male, but you never could be sure.

It was presumably attached to the hand that was snapping at one side of my vision, darting to the other side, and snapping again.

"Your visual tracking looks good, you hearing me ok?  You understand me?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, how do I look?"

"What?"

"Do I look human?"

I pushed myself into a sitting position and asked, "What kind of a question is that?"

"Ok, so no deformities, grotesqueness, or stuff of nightmares; that's good."

I looked around.  Hospital.  Abandoned.

"What's going on?"

"The human race is killing itself off, more or less."

"Start making sense."

"Hear that weird noise on the intercom?"

Not at first.  I looked around, all of the nearby speakers had been smashed.  But after a few moments I did.  It was, difficult to describe.  It played with your senses like music, but it seemed to have no pattern.  No melody.  As if it were just random noise that drew the improbability drive lottery and managed to be be evocative by sheer chance alone.

Though I couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was evoking.

"What about it?" I asked.

"That is, for lack of a better term, the signal or the transmission.  It started broadcasting about two weeks ago and it broadcasts on everything.  The intercom here, phones, tvs, computers, radios, anything that can make noise or light is putting out its version of the signal.

"And don't bother cutting the power or anything; it doesn't help.  You've got to destroy the damned thing."  My host gave a sigh.  "You try tracking down and destroying everything remotely electronic.  Damned phones alone are--"

"You haven't said what the signal-slash-transmission does."

"If you ask most anyone else, it turns people into violent monsters; it doesn't."  A pause.  "It induces hallucinations.  You and I are on the same frequency, the same wavelength, that's why you can see I'm human and understand me as speaking English.  People on different frequencies . . ."

My host sighed again.  "Humanity is now divided into, I'd say, five to twelve different factions each of which thinks that they're the only people who are immune and everyone else has mutated into grotesque and dangerous abominations."

Skeptical me came to the forefront when I asked, "Really?"

"I'll show you once you get dressed, you're not the only one who has slept through the whole thing so far but I figured it was best not to leave people on different frequencies in the same rooms.  Could lead to unfortunate things if they woke up when I wasn't around."

I was tossed a ball of clothes.

"I think they're your size."  My host started to leave.

"Oh, one other thing about the signal-transmission-thing.  It doesn't just induce the hallucinations, it keeps them synced.  If you see a zombie looking creature instead of a person, that's what I'll see too.  Reduces the chances of any of us noticing inconsistencies and starting to doubt that the monsters are real."

"If you're hallucinating just as much as anyone else," I asked, "what makes you right and everyone else wrong."

"Observation, thought, faith."

"You haven't told me your name and pronouns yet," I said.

"You haven't told me yours," my host said.  "Get dressed, we have an apocalypse to deal with."  Then my the host walked away.

I HAVE SHOES!

That is all.

Do human females usually .?.

[Apparently I last worked on this on Februrary 25th, so between breaking my ankle and getting surgery; feels like forever ago.  Might have a somewhat jumpy voice as a result]

For some reason this is in my head, jumping up and down, screaming to get out, and trying to drown out any other thoughts

Elina is an alien.  That's not her actual name, nor is it a translation.  Instead it's as close as American humans can reasonably be expected to pronounce.

Eff is a fairy.  She's one of the ones where knowing her "true" name gives individuals power over her.  When she first came to earth she almost said her true name, but stopped herself almost as soon as she started and acted as if the resulting sound were her name.  She's been using "Eff" so long now that she considers it her real name with the other being little more than a magical weakness she keeps hidden.

Tasha is a human being.  Probably with some superpower or other.

This is likely in my super person universe.

* * *

When you've just dropped your shorts and exposed yourself to your two best friends, it sort of makes your mind stop and go, Wait; what!?  How the Hell did we get here!?  Which is honestly a better thing to think about than how they won't be your two best friends any longer given what you've just let them see.

So, how did I get here?  Well E&E, my wonderful lesbian friends and team mates, apparently aren't the monogamous individuals I thought they were.  They made me an offer that I very much would have liked to take them up on, but I knew exactly what would happen if I did, so I made up excuses.

I lied.

Somehow Eff being so nice in response made it worse.  I wish you didn't feel the need to lie to us, Tash.  You could have just said you're not comfortable sharing the real reason.  We'll respect your privacy; we won't pry.  Because of course the truth would become pertinent when talking to the person who could detect lying the way a hammerhead shark detected electric fields.

Of course it came up when Eff and Elina were offering to share themselves with me, making not telling the truth feel like more of a betrayal than an ordinary lie.

Of course what they were suggesting was something I really, really wanted.

Of course, of course, of course.

I'd sighed.  I thought that maybe I'd been in one place for too long.  At least if I were driven out I wouldn't feel guilty anymore, I'd thought.  But, I also thought that maybe a middle ground was possible.  Maybe I could be selectively honest, keep the core truth hidden, and stay in this place that was the first place to be home in so long I wasn't sure if there'd really been another such place or those were just childhood fantasies that hazy memory had mistaken for reality.

So I said, "If you knew why, then you wouldn't want me around, much less as a part of your relationship."

"Whatever your secret," Elina said, trying to be comforting, "it could never break our friendship."

What if i'm a monster? I'd thought.

"You just wouldn't want me," I said.

"Surely that is for us to decide," Elina said.

Eff tried to gesture for Elina to let it go, but I'd known it wasn't likely when Elina got like this.

Part of me had known I should back off, but another part of me was extremely frustrated.  Of course I would know better, "I know what I look like under my clothes, you don't.  If you did--"

"Are you scarred?" Elina asked.  "There is nothing wrong with scars, and we would--"

"Let it go," Eff said, her hand gently grasped Elina's arm.

"Many feel ashamed of their bodies," Elina said, "but in truth all bodies are wonderful and we would never-"

Yeah, right, all sorts of people said that kind of Saturday morning cartoon bullshit.  It never proved true.  The fact that Elina seriously believed it was just . . . I had so wanted to scream.

Instead I said, "You don't want me a part of your relationship," as forcefully as I could.

"But we do," Elina said.  "This is not something we took lightly--"

"I'm serious," Eff said, "let it go."

"We discussed potential problems, could it lead to jealousy, could it make the team function less well, was this really what we wanted or just an--"

"Let.  It.  Go," Eff said.

"But she hasn't said she doesn't want this," Elina said.  "She said we wouldn't want her."

"You wouldn't," I said.

"We would," Elina said.  "We do and that--"

I was so very fucking frustrated with the whole thing.

And that is how the Hell we got here.

Both of them looking at me in shock, my shorts and panties around my knees, everything laid bare.

Elina's look changed from shock to confusion and she turned to Eff, "Do human females usually have such anatomy?"

I pulled my shorts back up.  They knew.  They'd hate me now.  I'd be driven out, I'd wander again.

Elina's question seemed to break Eff out of her own shock and she said, "Not usually. . ."

Massive understatement.  Probably about to explain how I wasn't a real lesbian because I had a penis instead of a vagina.

"But I wouldn't say it's uncommon," Eff said.

Wait, what?

"Oh," Elina said as if she'd just had a question about breakfast cereal answered.

"You're not . ? ." I tried to ask but didn't manage to find the right words to finish.

"What?" Eff asked.  "Disgusted?  Angry?  Hateful?  Feeling like rejecting you forever?  No.  We're not."

"Why would Tasha think we would react in any of those ways?" Elina asked.

"Some humans think that people like Tasha are abominable --or sick, or any number of bad things-- because they believe that all females should have the most common female anatomy and all males should have the most common male anatomy and since Tasha is a female with anatomy more commonly found in males . . ."

I don't think I've ever experienced a more surreal moment.

"They think that Tasha should change her body to match her gender?" Elina asked.

"No.  That would be unreasonable but at least make some sort of twisted sense," Eff said.  "They think that Tasha should spend her entire life pretending to be male and never, ever, show any signs of her true self."

"That is" some kind of alien profanity that likely couldn't be translated.  Elina talked like that in times of great emotion.  "It is beyond mere evil."

I finally found my voice again, "You don't-- everyone always-- I don't understand."

And I found myself in one of Elina's inescapable hugs. "I am so sorry that you have been mistreated," she said to me, "and I would never treat you like that."

Eff just looked at me with a slight grin.

Then she said, "Elina and I want you to be part of our relationship, hasn't changed in the least, so if that's what you want, just give a sign and we can move passed the chaste friend-hugs and onto the kissing."

I wasn't even sure this was real anymore.  Fever dream maybe.  But if it were real then it seemed important to do something before they changed their minds or came to their senses.  I'd lost track of my voice again, so I nodded.

Eff's smile widened considerably as she walked toward me.

Reflecting on being sold -- The Matter of Aravis, Susan Era

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings, but it would have gone with this post if not for the fact comments are long since closed.]
[You know the content notes for these by now, slavery, child abuse, lack of self worth, stuff like that.]

Part of Shasta thought that he should feel relieved. All of these years spent thinking he was broken for not being able to love his father, shouldn't some weight be lifted with the knowledge that Arsheesh wasn't his father? That Arsheesh obviously couldn't love Shasta very much if he was willing to sell him? But there was no relief. Nothing felt better. He still felt like he was deficient for not loving Arsheesh, but now he felt even worse because he also knew he wasn't loved.

He was just something Arsheesh had taken from the sea, something Arsheesh was now going to sell. Arsheesh took things from the sea and sold them every day. So what if Shasta were more valuable than the usual fish? He was still just a thing.

A thing that would soon have a new owner.

What was slavery even like? Was this slavery? Slaves did work. He did work. Maybe this was slavery. But if he was never good enough for Arsheesh, how could he hope to be good enough for this stranger, this Tarkaan? True, Shasta wasn't entirely sure what a Tarkaan was, but it was obviously something Arsheesh recognized as being above “fisherman”.

Then again, if this were slavery, perhaps things wouldn't get worse. Perhaps they'd stay the same, perhaps they'd even get better. Perhaps the Tarkaan had many slaves and so no one of them had to do as much as Shasta had had to do for Arsheesh. If there were less work in need of doing, perhaps Shasta would be able to do some of it well. Arsheesh didn't always beat him, so he must be good some of the time. If he weren't so constantly occupied maybe he could be good more of the time. Maybe even enough of the time that beatings would be rare and far between.

Perhaps, for once, Shasta could actually feel like he was doing things right.

Or perhaps that was a stupid thought.

And then there were dreams about things that Shasta had never dared to believe. He still didn't believe them, but he allowed himself indulgence. One of the the stories the traveler from the north had told was of a slave made free for doing a great deed. Some feat in battle that saved his master or something. Another told of a slave that was discovered by its family and freed.

If slaves were just humans like Shasta, and Shasta wasn't the child of Arsheesh . . . Shasta could be anyone. Maybe the reason that Shasta had barely been to the village, and always was left with the donkey when village men came to visit was that he would be recognized.

Then he could be free and . . . what did that even mean? Shasta knew that freedom was good, but he'd always thought he'd had it. If he hadn't, then what was it? Did it mean not being forced to work all the time?

Could it be like the people in those stories, the ones who had cushions and cool days and warm nights and didn't even have to walk because slaves would carry them where they needed to go?

Shasta had always dreamed of being one of those people, even though he didn't believe they were real. Dreams weren't real either.

Shasta sighed.

None of this really mattered. He'd been sold. Arsheesh obviously didn't love him, he still felt just as bad about everything he'd felt bad about before, and after sleeping with the donkey he'd be taken away to an uncertain future.

And Shasta had learned something about uncertainty: it was never good. If you weren't sure what would happen, whatever happened would be bad.

He should just go to the stable, try not to think of any of this, and snuggle up next to--

The donkey!

If he belonged to the stranger, and the donkey stayed with Arsheesh, then they might never see each other again.

Shasta ran to the stable.

-

[Previous][Index][Next]

General life update thing

So I've done something that's probably stupid.

See, I got some money.  A bunch of money.  Well, a bunch by my standards, yours may be different.  Anyway a donation that had a comma in it.  (American system where a period is a decimal point and a comma is used to separate every three digits on the left side of said point.)  Instead of using it to pay down some of my high interest debt I decided to use it to do hopeful things.  I have new shoes on the way and as of yesterday I have three boxes full of stuff-making components so that I can fabricate again.

I also finally got around to fixing the spring on my kitchen overhead light so that it could be used without standing on the table and forcing the chain back into it to reset things.  Well, I didn't actually fix the spring, I took a spring from a broken pen, twisted part of it into the right shape, cut it to size, (beat up a toenail clipper in the process, oops,) put it in place of the old spring that had broken more or less in half and then broke in another place when I was trying to see how the damned chain light switch thing was supposed to work.

The kind of fabrication I do uses silicone molds and two part polyurethane.  I am now set up to do this in a variety of colors, even "Totally looks like metal in spite of being plastic" which I've never done before.  Honestly, the color thing is new to me anyway, I think I've done it maybe once before.  Not "one bottle full of dye before" one singular time.

Of course, to do that kind of fabrication you need to have masters to make molds of and I most definitely do not have the luxury of paying shape-ways to make them for me right now.  Plus the only 3d modeling software I know (Alibre) is gone and its replacement (Geomagic) seems to be taking the "High cost for professionals that can afford it" route.

I've got some masters from times gone by that are just waiting to be implemented and there's a hack saw around here somewhere.

- - -

I've never really done fabrication stuff at Stealing Commas since by the time I started this place up I really didn't have the money and my few attempts to make a comeback using the aging materials that remained from times gone by were abject failures.

It'll be a new side of me for you to see, if I can make it work.  And that's a big if.

But there are things I overlooked when getting all of this expensive stuff, mostly on the mold making side.

I do two part molds and part of what that means is I need the kind of clay that doesn't dry out or harden, and a lot of fucking Legos.  Standard building legos that are the rectangular things you find in just about every lego set, but a lot of fucking legos.

The legos are what you use to make the border of the mold so the silicone doesn't just flow everywhere and become a milemeter thick coating of your entire work area.  You just build a large lego wall around where you want to pour your mold.  Trust me, it's worlds easier and a metric fuckton better than trying to make your wall with clay.

The clay is positively essential to two part molds because legos, for all their benefits, are rigid objects.  Unless something has a completely flat side that would make a good place for mold separation, you want to be able to have your master partially submerged in an otherwise mostly flat plane of clay when you pour the first half of the mold.  The flat plane marks where your mold will separate.  Once the mold is hardened you remove the clay, clean up imperfections on the plane, and flip the thing over, apply mold release so the new silicone doesn't bond to the old silicone, pour, wait, and have a two part mold.

The reason the plane is mostly flat is that for alignment and other reasons you generally want to have a (rounded) ridge near the outer edge of the mold if you practice the style of mold making that I do.

- - -

My ankle is still recovering instead of recovered and some days are better than others.  I'm at my full walking speed.  I'm afraid to attempt a jog or run.  I definitely still feel the fact that it's injured.

I had my first look at X-rays last visit.  The plate, which I can feel through my skin, is attached by five screws.  The injury was such that I also needed One Big Screw that is apparently unrelated to the plate.

There's a dark smudge that might be nothing, or might be cartilage reacting in a bad way to the whole ankle thing.  It's apparently worth keeping an eye on, but not so concerning as to get another look taken before the three month follow up I was going to have anyway.

- - -

So, maybe I'll get a chance to show off the fabrication side of my life that you've never seen, but I need clay and legos (and skill) none of which are completely certain.  Ankle continues to recover.  New shoes on the way.