Arrant Nonsense

Okay, so. I have Established Normal, and Broken It. I have shot my protagonist in the chest. I have an outline right up to the Resolution.

And it has just now occurred to me, as I wrote these words, that I don't actually need this to be a Ben story and that the ending might be better if it's not. I can still do the "werewolf who has nightmares" plot, but I can end it differently--and in a way that makes it a more "horror" ending than a "dark fantasy."

I'm also thinking that it will be better and more immediate in first person than third, and interspersing it with Very Clinical Lab Notes will up the horror quotient as we realize that the people running this place do not see this guy whose eyes we're watching the story through as a person, but as a specimen.

And this way, I can leave him in the lab at the end, having triumphed over his nightmares--but still stuck in his own head. And... oh. Oh my.

MINE IS AN EVIL LAUGH. I am a terrible, terrible person, y'all.

So, wow, the RP that ate my brain has also, apparently, eaten my LJ. Has it really been since the 3rd that I updated this thing?

The reason for that, I think, is that, well... nothing actually interesting's happening. My life is on an even keel, the rejections are coming thick and fast, and the writing is...

Honestly? Pretty much completely stalled, right now.

But that's okay. Because I have a shiny new toy I'm playing with, and it really is the Most Fun Ever. But the thing is, no one really wants to read RP logs except people who are invested in either the characters or the people playing them, and I'm pretty sure you good folks got bored with watching poor Ben get his buttons pushed a long time ago. So while I go back and read these interactions with unseemly glee, none of you (probably) are all that interested--especially when an adventure goes on for so long that it squishes the post all the way over to the side of the page and LJ collapses it on itself. Which is when I hit the "thread" button to bring up a shiny new page, but...yeah. Seven times, bit much. EVEN WHEN IT'S AWESOME.

ANYWAY. All of which is to say that... I haven't died. I haven't checked my flist in...awhile, either, because, like I say, much with the brain-eating.

If you really want to stalk Ben (and his honest-to-capital-G-God Guardian Angel, who rocks like a big rocking thing OMG), drop me a line and I'll tell you who he is over at sixwordstories. And that right there is an awesome, awesome comm. It's like the ultimate multifandom crossover crackfic. You can find yourself anywhere, doing anything, for reals. I mean, like I say: Guardian Angel -- and one I'm pretty sure the Christians on my flist would have no problem with (I sure don't). The people who play the Divine over there are an amazing bunch and they alternately have me laughing my ass off and bawling all over my keyboard.

So. That's the State of the agilebrit right now.

This is wild. Or maybe it's just me, being overly-invested. Hell if I know.

But you know that feeling you get in your chest when you're tremendously relieved by something? Like something was stopping you from taking a full breath and suddenly you can again?

I posted a thing yesterday, as Ben, wherein he basically wakes up, hogtied (I have no idea what the etiquette is on linking stuff like this, so I will refrain for now; it's not hard to find, really, if your LJ-fu is strong). And then I waited to see what would happen. Now, Ben's made friends with an honest-to-capital-G-God angel over there (which I may have mentioned). In fact, he went looking for trouble (and found it, clearly), because he was pissed on this guy's behalf and there was nothing he could actually do. In fact, Ben wasn't the only one pissed on his behalf. I was too.

So. Am I, personally, supposed to have an actual physical reaction of relief when this guy shows up to untie him? Because I did. Funny thing, someone else showed up too, in another thread, but it wasn't the same. And she showed up first.

I...just.

And the thing is, it's all improv. There's no collusion here, no actual collaboration; just a couple of people riffing from each other as fictional characters. I have no idea who the person is who's playing the angel dude, and they probably have no idea who I am (unless they've gone poking through my userpics where I credited myself as the icon maker, then came over here and put two and two together). It's ... just ...

What is this I don't even.

Is writing emotionally-charged scenes without either understating or going overboard.

I have a scene wherein Ben finds the video of the girl in the case we open on him brooding about actually being murdered. And the version I posted earlier for The Usual Suspects was...okay.

But it was just okay. And if it's "just okay" for someone like me, then for everyone else it's going to lay there on the page like a dead carp. So then I had to figure out how to punch it up without skating into NC-17 territory, because, while Ben is watching a snuff film (not because he wants to), I don't actually want to inflict that on my readers, y'know?

I believe I've fixed it. Rather than showing what he sees, I show what he hears and his reaction to it as he scrambles for the mute button on his computer, misses it, and hits the floor. Looking at the timestamp and knowing, irrevocably, how close he was to saving her. Feeling like he's betraying her (again) by slamming the lid of his laptop closed on her cries for help, but knowing that if he doesn't, he'll lose what tenuous hold he has left on his sanity.

*reads that back over* Wow. I...am a horrible, horrible person.

The direction I went skittering off in last night with the Zombies! story has decided to turn on its own tail and go off in an even more diabolical direction.

Which may very well be Piling On my poor main character, but it's got me cackling gleefully and twirling my imaginary mustache, and I don't hate the story any more. So, that's a Good, right?

I think... I hope I can stick an END at the bottom of this thing by five-thirty, which is when I will need to start dinner in time for us to watch the "Lost" finale...

A thousand words cracked on the Zombie!Fic.

Guess I'd better get to the part where it goes Horribly Wrong for my poor protag pretty soon. Otherwise it'll turn into another Plot Monster, and no one wants that. Least of all me. I do not need to write another iteration of "I Am Legend." Not only do I not have the chops for it, I do not have any interest in doing so.

Is it bad that I just want to bang this out so I'll have something for next quarter's Writers of the Future and then I can work on the thing I really want to work on? Not that my heart isn't in this, it totally is, but I do have other fish to fry.

Argh.

Yeah, okay, I just got a horrible mental image of the very last scene.

There is something very very very wrong with me and I hate my brain.

That being said, I'm probably going to go with it. And that means that this is definitely horror rather than...well. Whatever it was before. And that means my working title is just a working title rather than the actual title.

Also, it means that this would be far more effective as a first-person present-tense story, which I haven't done in pro-fic yet. Um. Yay?

= me

I should be writing. I have the time. I have the house basically to myself because Da Boy is in the family room watching a crash video, the Hubby is off on a four-day trip, and I'm in the front room with my laptop.

But I'm not writing. The Muse has left the building. I am singularly uninspired. Instead, I'm making (yet another) RDJ wallpaper. I have made, at last count, 47 of them. Tell me, o flist, why do I need more? Other than the fact that I've found some new pix that need to be immortalized on my desktop. *sigh* Yeah, I even went hunting lyrics from his "The Futurist" album for the tag. NOT THAT I'M OBSESSED OR ANYTHING. As you can see, I'm back in the Polaroid phase. Uncreative agilebrit is uncreative.

And, therefore, I share. Here.


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You guys need to thump me. Hard.

Oh, good God, no.

I just now realized, this second, that my protag is going to need to get married.

Not only that, but I have three good candidates, each of whose fathers will have his own special motives for wanting his daughter to marry him.

This is a love square. Except, of course, it's all very political and maybe he wants to marry someone else entirely because that's who he actually loves, and...

*headdesks repeatedly*

I AM NOT A ROMANCE WRITER. MY ROMANCE BONE HAS SUFFERED AN IRREDUCIBLE COMPOUND FRACTURE. DO NOT WANT. WE HAVE ALL SEEN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I WRITE ROMANCE AND THAT'S NOT GOOD FOR ANYONE. I WILL RUN THIS RIGHT INTO THE WALL OF WRONG. ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Not to mention the whole "Hey, he's locked himself in the dungeon because he swaps bodies with a dragon sometimes with no warning."

Just shoot me.

Considering the fact that I've basically destroyed Ben from the inside out, emotionally, it's almost a relief to hit him with something physical for a change (although there's been plenty of physical stuff, too, just not to the current extent, and it hasn't been a focus).

I think this calls for a new tag. And I may go to previous entries and back-tag stuff. Because, yeah.