Macha

Details! I want details! I love da GEEK!!!

Yup, I surely do live here. It's a big place. Just to give you an idea — I am an hour's drive from the Lab where I live and both of us are well within the "Los Angeles" area — make that a 3 hour drive during rush hour. Is he going to be working here? Does he know where?...there are so many areas of the town, with varied housing costs. It can be a bit of a shock — the rent here ain't cheap.

*laugh* That's really funny. Where is your bff moving to?

Celtic harp, but I wouldn't say I'm good at it. I realized pretty early on that I had time to practice harping or practice drawing, and I'd best pick one. I have a really lovely harp though — someday it will go to someone who will make proper use of her. I bet you know "Behind Blue Eyes" too...or at least you would if you heard it. It's pretty classic. A few other others are admittedly more obscure.

I was working in an antique building in Korea town, so old that I was in an office with a mottled glass panel set in the door and a transom on top. I always wanted to paint my name on the door in gold copperplate, with "graphic artist" underneath looking like it should say "private investigator." It was that kind of building. It wasn't the best neighborhood, about a block up from the Wiltern theatre, which I could see clearly from my window. I suppose it wasn't the worst either though. There was a Korean version of a greasy spoon downstairs that served up an amazingly tasty fried kimchee rice dish and all the noodle soup a girl could want for under $5. There was a noise. Loud. Probably louder after being bounced off the sides of the buildings. Not nearly as quiet as a clap of thunder hitting the tree right next to you. No backfire from a car's exhaust pipe could be that loud. I looked out the window, to the street corner, where I saw a group of Asian (given the neighborhood, probably Korean) teenagers standing. A few other kids—torn up jackets, blue jeans—running away caddy-corner across the construction site for the new Metro station. They looked Mexican-American, although they were not facing me, so I couldn't be certain. The teenagers who remained had shocked expressions on their faces. Not scared exactly — this was numb shock. One boy had his hands to his stomach, and he stood there, for a long second, with hardly any expression on his face at all. Then the blood seeped out from under his fingers, from where he had been shot. I'd seen a lot of shootings in movies and TV shows. I have repeatedly been told that we are desensitized to it as a society. But I tell you that no blood I have ever seen in any movie looked as red, as horribly, terrifyingly crimson, as the red that spread out over his white t-shirt. I called 911 — I'm told over a hundred people in the surrounding offices called 911 — even as several of my coworkers raced out to try to help. It had happened in broad daylight, on a busy street, and it had taken just a moment. I never found out what happened to the teenager — if he survived. The ambulance arrived quickly, so I'd like to think he did, but truthfully, I don't know. It didn't even make the papers, which I guess means he probably lived. I don't know why he was shot. I'm quite sure it's in an LAPD file somewhere listed as a "gangland shooting." It's Korea town, right? That sort of thing happens in Korea town. And in Inglewood and in Compton and anyplace else in Los Angeles, it seems. Yesterday, it was Venice. I found out while waiting for the bus this morning, when a man sat down next to me and started chatting in a friendly fashion. (It is, honestly, one of the things I love about living in Inglewood — that men and women will sit down next to you and start chatting as if you grew up together.) He had a copy of the LA Times with him, and he started telling me about a boy in Venice who was killed trying to keep gang members from stealing his brother's silver cross. The fight spilled out into the parking lot of the school, and one of the gang members had pulled out a gun and shot the young man once, in the chest, killing him. The victim had not been a member of any gangs; he was only trying to protect his little brother. "Why would they do that?" The man said, clearly mystified. "Why would anyone kill someone else over a cross? Don't they realize what the cross means?" He was trying to make sense of it, and failing. And I had no words with which to comfort him. Can there be explanations for something like this? Can one make sense of it? The papers are already saying it was racially motivated. The attackers were African-American and the victim was Mexican-American, after all. The local police are making preparations for the expected counter-attacks by rival Latino gangs, which will, in all probability end in more shootings and the deaths of more innocent people. And all I can think is everyone's blood is the same color red.

That is an excellent point, Indicolite, and one I had not considered. Thank you. Perhaps someday we will bridge that gap between a world where we can be shocked that people are being killed, and a world where they would not be killed in the first place.

Remember "A Clockwork Orange?" I remember reading an interview where Anthony Burgess said that he had based Alex and his Droogs on the smart-dressing, incredibly violent street punks who prowled the streets of London in the 50s (Although it seems likely the book was at least as much influenced by the four U.S. GI deserters who attacked and beat his pregnant wife in 1943, forcing her to miscarry.) And so I often wonder if it is that the youth of today are honestly more violent or not? It might help to clarify that the shooting I witnessed did not happen yesterday or even last year: if that young man survived he's since had time to marry and have children of his own. Can I blame it on the age? Or on the general poverty and inequity of the area in which I live? Has not crime gone hand in hand with poverty in every age, in every culture, throughout history? The gangbanger phenomenon is starting to span generations — with older members (who have survived) settling down and denouncing the violence of the gangsta life even as their children and sometimes grandchildren are running with the pack. It's easy to forget that the Bloods and Crips were being founded around the same time I was being born, and they themselves were the children of gangs formed after World War II (probably in response to the rise of racist violence directed against black communities by whites who were unhappy to see so many blacks moving to LA from the South.) How chilling is it to realize that one of the most infamous and violent of youth gangs in operation in Los Angeles in the 1940s was called the Spook Hunters? And that violence went largely unreported or unrecognized... It doesn't excuse the violence today (there is NO excuse) but I'm more inclined to blame youth, period, than today's youth. I think the argument can be made either way of course, but personally I suspect that we have always had a problem with "today's youth" in every age and every generation. But I don't honestly know which idea is more depressing. "I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC)

Fascinating. I'm reminded of all the phallic stonework they found in ancient Pompeii — of course those were attached to the brothels, weren't they?

done! (sorry, you can't see it yet.) But I'm very happy with it. And may I give a brief nod to the drama-loving, bitter and spiteful folks over at the LJ BPAL anonymeme? Thanks to them, I had a healthy dose of hate and malice to channel into my art, and I'd like to think this shirt design reflects that. What good is being an artist if you can't turn lemons into lemonade, right?

I took the bus to work this morning, because my sweetheart is out of town for a while, and I can't drive (for a variety of reasons....it's a long story.) I used to take the bus every day to work, and it was fine, although occassionally a bit scary. And this morning was about textbook, save that the bus was a little less crowded than it can be, and there were no strange encounters of any kind. But they had a TV on the bus. A nice big flatscreen tucked into the corner, playing a highly condensced version of Reuter's headlines. Now I've seen this before — but generally in nicer neighborhoods (I live in the 'hood) and while I must admit that I could see the appeal, it was a bit chilling. That was, as I recall, also my reaction to first seeing telelvision monitors in the check-out lines of supermarkets. Not a sense of "hey, that's cool!" but more of a sense of unease. I can still remember, when, as a teenager, I first realized that society was embracing the cautionary tales of cyberpunk science-fiction with open arms, that there were people who, far from being outraged or repulsed by William Gibson's societies of corporate control and vast inequity, thought that the idea of the continual survellianced society was cool. I've never met one of these people, but they must exist, because I keep seeing their handiwork, like flatscreens on grocery story check-out lines and in cars and on buses. This Max Headroom-esque idea that we should live in a society where it is impossible to escape a television screen — when did that become the rule of the day?

But it puts me in dee MOOD.... Ahem. I was about to say I have no musical training but then I remembered that I know how to play the harp and guitar. Anyway, it's focus tool for me, much the way BPAL is for certain characters.

I've been writing two books simultaneously for the longest time, perhaps because doing any serious world-building on one setting will inevitably send me screaming into the arms of another for a time. So it was no suprise to me that after doing quite a bit of work on linguistics for the fantasy book I found myself itching to finish a couple scenes for the sci-fi book. And since I'm both writer and artist, I took a yearning to do some sketching. So a brief sketch of the main character of my sci-fi book. She had very short hair for the longest time, but uh...she insisted. Does she look like a woman it's healthy to say no to?

I do love me the Mrs. Peel. Thank you!

Absolutely hysterical, Heretic. I wonder why the emphasis on male genetalia? Thanks for the photos!!

I tell people I don't have a TV and they just look at me like I'm some crazy woman who probably has a cabin in the woods and her own manifesto on the evils of technology. And then I have to reassure them that I still have the internet and I still have video games, and I'm not saying I'm better, just that I don't have time for that many screens starring back at me. I think Gibson had some neat ideas, but he was quick to point out the potential drawbacks of any significant advance of technology. What's the quote? "Whenever science makes a discover, the devil grabs it while the angels are the debating the best way to use it?" It seems strange to me, still, that in my neighborhood, which has problems with crime and gangs and the buses arriving at all (let alone on time) that someone down in City Hall took the time and energy to push through funding to make sure we had our TVs. It has an almost "let them eat cake" vibe to it. Spend that money on fixing up the buses, or keeping the fares low. That would be more helpful than flatscreens.

Ice Queen is very minty. Without question. It also happens to be my all-time favorite LE scent. I would recommend Szepasszony (cool, rainy, whispy AND evil), Dracul (works for girls as well as men,) Sacred Whore of Babylon, and Gamorrah. I found Les Infortunes de la Vertu to be sublimely bad-girl (you know DeSade's women and their love of flensing knives.) I also agree with Fyre_in_Winter's bad girl suggestions. You may also wish to try Sed Non Satiata.

Yeah, I am at the point where I feel like I can hit it pretty close. Sometimes it's a struggle though. I've got a painting (of the same character, Weaver) that I probably spent two weeks on, and was never satisfied. And last night inspiration struck, and I had a much more workable portrait in about an hour. That's just how it goes sometimes. Weaver's always been hard to draw — she's lean and hard and very un-curvy (she repeatedly describes herself as flat-chested in the novel.) I always want to make her a little more voluptuous than she really is, problably because on some level I still envision her as a sci-fi take on a Chandler-esque blonde femme fatale. Of course, I had some friends who did not have my drawing skills, and they would go through magazine articles and clip out photos for their characters. Create a little dossier. This is what so and so looks like, this is their house, etc. The programs aren't hard to learn. Not really. I probably use no more than half a dozen tools in Corel Painter and they make it very intuitive. You can mix colors just like you would on a palette and the brushes will all be familiar. They usually have a 30-day free trial on the web site, which I recommend you try some day when you have the time to play with it. It's fun.

Bard (whose presence I most definitely miss on the forums) and some other folks helped me out with a lot of my early concerns about invented language. Like the map-making, it's something I'm doing because it seems necessary — because the world just reads false if too much in it is easily identifiable as German or French or what-have-you. And I've found language is often a quandry in fantasy literature. It is, by its very nature, a suspension of disbelief. So many words in the English language derrive from distinct cultural identity — the word "tawdry" could not exist without medieval Catholicism, and both "platinum" and "cannibal" would not exist without the Spanish conquest in the New World. It's an almost endless list. I've seen plenty of writers caution beginners not to use anachronistic words in their fantasy works. But...it's ALL a bit anachronistic, isn't it? Unless your fantasy world is set in 17th century England (which has happened of course) it's unlikely that they're speaking English. Any time we pick up a fantasy book set in some truly "fantasy" land, whether it be Middle-Earth, or Earthsea, etc., we have to accept that we are reading an approximation, and not the "native tongue." Sure, there are some missteps which should be obvious (we know not to use "freeway" or "airplane" unless there is a reason such things would exist) but most people wouldn't think not to use loan-words like "sabotage" or "juggernaut." Am I to avoid those words because they wouldn't be "correct?" They're such good words! Useful, sturdy words that do their job beautifully. I like them. Steven Brust has a lot of fun with his languages, such as the tendency of every sentient race in his Dragaeran books to call themselves something that translates in English as "Human" or his place names. I remember one that, when broken down and translated, was revealed to mean "Ford Ford Ford Ford Ford" as each race who conquered the region kept the old ruler's name for the ford and then tacked on "ford" in their own language for clarity. The absurdity of it is brilliantly real. So, after some thought on the matter, I decided that I would mess around with the language when 1)it would prove more poetic and unique than the English equivalent, such as for proper nouns, or 2)when using the English word would be jarring. For example, there is a race in my fantasy world that uses titanium as their metal of choice, using magic to reach the absurdly high temperatures required to work with it. But I can't call it titanium, can I? Not without my reader giving me a very strange look. And if I think titanium would be a bit too anachronistic in tone, what about aluminium? Oh boy. So clearly there was some need for an invented language, if only to give the reader a word that is unfamiliar rather than a word that seems wrong. Many years ago, Jeffrey Henning (over at Langmaker.com) uploaded a very interesting little excel spreadsheet that allowed you to enter 400 root words and used that to derrive a vocabulary of 4,000 final words — more than enough for any language you might ever need. But I was never entirely happy with it. For one thing, it organized its vocabulary alphabetically by the sample language "Duplex" used in the spreadsheet, which meant that you were stuck using Excel's find feature if you wanted look up a specific word (and if you sorted by a different method to make the English words alphabetical you screwed up the spreadsheet.) Many of the vocabulary was clunky or unnecessary for a fantasy novel — a lot of the vocabulary attemped to come up with new words for technology or countries or advanced science terms. So I took the idea and recreated it. I ended up with 450 root words, but so far I'm very, very happy with the results. Which is good...because now that I have my map done, I need to go back and name everything

You are free to steal my ideas as long as you steal them professionally, i.e. make sure to sell them to a nice fence who will melt them down, recast them, and sell them to an unsuspecting public as something that couldn't possible have been grabbed from MY house. I think that's just called "research" and "inspiration," right? Have you ever read "The Roads of Heaven" series by Melissa Scott? Oh, now there's a glorious use of an elemental magic system — all sorts of symbolic Hermetic alchemy, and what made it so fun was that it was science-fiction! So all the tropes of space battles and stellar empires, but run by elite Hermetic orders and secret cabals. She made spell-casting, the actual act of creating magic, exciting and sexy when she could have just said "X casts a divination." Good stuff. And of course I can't steal it — I don't think there's any chance in hell that I could do it better. I think the biggest influence on my magical system was a book...oh, I'm trying to remember the name....I have it at home. Language and Cerebral development, or something like. Not an occult book at all, and certainly not "elemental." So I completely understand what you mean about taking inspiration from non-traditional sources. I'll PM you about the specifics. Oh, there IS jewelry.

Fantastic post, Indicolite. Thanks! I had a bit of a brainstorm last night, so I'm currently in the process of classifying phonetic sounds by elemental type (a whole lot of things in my fantasy world are divided up by classical Greek elemental division: air, earth, fire, water.) So I had this idea that instead of a male/female division of noun gender, that I might have an elemental division. Still playing with the idea to see if it will work. Ideally, I want it to be there but not hit people over the head with it.

Oh, I'm now officially envious, because I'm...well...NOT a linguistics student. So I'm sort of bumbling through all this, piecing it together as I go along and sometimes retracing my steps and sometimes becoming completely lost in the phonetic woods. I have bought a few books: I need to take the time to READ them and use that knowledge. So I have now created the proto-language of the common origin of the four main races of my book, and now need to drift that for the four species in the "modern" day. Create the equivalent of the romance languages, if you will, with some words occassionally cropping up that have changed little over the years and some borrowing occuring. I have tried, as much as is possible, to make class and race apparent. The lower classes should not talk the same way as the upper classes, which should not talk the same as the foreigners. But I never really thought of that as a linguistic constraint per se, just attentive writing and use of voice. (I have been known to slip up on this one though. Isn't re-writing grand? ) The race that uses titanium is one of few races in my world that is genuinely immortal, and would be akin to elves. I thought it likely that their own word for the metal would be pragmatic and descriptive — unfortunately the early mythologies of the regions do not include a proto-giant race like the Titans. Other races would likely call the metal something that's the equivalent of "elven iron" I suppose. Haven't quite decided yet. The Vané themselves would probably use something like "cloud metal." Some interesting consequences came out of the decision to use real world metals in a fantasy setting, btw. For instance, knowing what titanium can and can't do had a rather large effect on the culture that uses it. Not a lot of titanium swords running around, for instance — but a whole lot of arrowheads, and chainmail (because of those gorgeously ductile properties titanium possesses.) Of course, it's unlikely the readers will ever realize what I'm talking about, but I like to know. You did all that language development last night? SO jealous...

Heh heh. Sorry, but Beth would KILL ME. And then Ted would kill me too. I'm very much anticipating the Hungry Ghost Moon too. I can't wait to see what Beth comes up with for the perfume.

Yeah, it was always her baby. It's funny: BPAL.org isn't owned by Beth and she doesn't have mod priviledges (she can look at everything, but she can't change anything), but we are constantly accused to being owned by the Lab, while a huge number of people have written that they didn't know the AlchemyLab Live Journal was owned by the Lab when it was. *sigh* Ya just can't win sometimes. I DO know it was a huge amount of stress for Beth, and so I'm glad to see it go.

So someone pointed me towards some LJ forum someone started up for the purpose of allowing people to anonymously vent their true feelings about the LJ Black Phoenix forum (and as it turned out, about bpal.org.) I read for a few entries before I had to stop, feeling absolutely sick to my stomach. Who thought this was a good idea? In my experience, anytime people can hide under a cloak of anonymity, the majority transform almost immediately into assholes. It's like passing notes in the back of the class in 7th grade or whispering to each other about how fat Susie is (and making sure Susie can hear them) — the desire to impress their peers with their capacity for cruel and malicious behavior manifests as the most horrifying vitriol. It all goes straight to "Lord of the Flies" island, because somehow, the people we meet on the internet aren't "real" people and so what we do to them smacks of the hypothetical. We don't have to be there and say these things to them face to face and deal with the chance that we might make them angry or make them cry — that we might actually have to face the consequences of our behavior first hand. It's all Unreal. We're all turned into sociopaths, because our audience comes pre-objectified for our convenience. Are there people on these forums I don't like? Of course there are! There are even people I loathe, and people who are engaged in behaviors which I find self-destructive and/or unethical, and I want to throttle them. But you know what? That's okay. I know I'm not loved by everyone myself. I can be an insufferable know-it-all bitch (hey, even my Chinese horoscope says so) and I'm not always the easiest person to get along with. I know there are people on these forums who do not like me. I'm cool with that. They don't have to like me. And — and I LOVE this — we can continue to be civil with each other, because these forums are an atmosphere where its been made abundantly clear that civil manners and behavior are the rule of the day. As such, I try not call those people names or be nasty to them — one does not DO that in polite society. My reward is that sometimes these people I once disliked become friends I really love and enjoy — because I gave myself the chance to get to know them. Of course, I suppose I could always log on somewhere anonymously and rant and rave and call people names, but honestly, what is to be gained from that?

Well, no one is ever going to see wank removed entirely, but I hear the anonymeme has been shut down by Live Journal because it overstepped the terms of the Live Journal service agreemeent: turns out that Life Journal WILL remove a site that seems to exist only as a means of harassment. Good for them.