Tag Archives | mourning the incompability between life and plans

Best Paragraph I’ve Read This Year

Posted on April 26, 2012 in Thoughts & Musings

Start small. Very small. As small as possible. Thinky brain gets over-excited and has delusions of grandeur.

Preach it!

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Cross Pollination AKA doing more than one thing is useful!

Posted on February 1, 2012 in On Silent Suns, On Traces of Chaos

So… Between the painting of Traces of Chaos and murdering the population of Skyrim (and, admittingly, killing everything that dares to cross Fem!Shepard in Mass Effect 2.) I’ve been quietly working on my second comic, Silent Suns1.

Silent Suns features an ensemble cast. Not something I’d ever done on my own, but these characters have been developed together with John, a good friend of mine2. This resulted in one of the most important writing lessons I ever got in my short career: Every character has to be crafted for the maximum ammount of useful inter-character conflict3.

In the first book you’ve got the Pilot, the Tech, the Playboy, the Killer and the Doctor. Not many characters, are they? Both the Playboy and the Killer sleep around, but they clash about their respective attitudes towards their partners. The Killer and the Doctor clash about their choice of profession. The Pilot and the Tech about the demands of their ship and their respective definitions of feminity. The Pilot is a bit of a prude and goody-two-shoes, which nicely leads to conflict with the Playboy and the Killer. The doctor’s prim and proper, the Engineer’s rarely seen without being covered in greese and oil. The doctor feels responsible for the Pilot and the Engineer, being the oldest person on the ship, whereas the Pilot firmly believes she should be in charge.

A wonderful recipe for tasty, tasty drama small and big. And the best thing is, it arises naturally.

So what does that mean for Traces of Chaos?

I never really thought about this before, mainly because the common writing advice is “make the most interesting character the main-character” and well, Siendes has by far the most interesting character arc in ToC. And it is a good advice, really, but very, very few characters can carry a whole story on their own.  Siendes can’t. She needs support.

The Another Life storyline’s fine in that regard, just due it’s setting. It’s “Siendes among humans” afterall. Mona’s good on keeping Siendes on her toes (it’s why they married)  and Asar von Prehn, well, you’ll see. I am going to tweak some minor characters a bit, but Another Life is full of foils for my dear Des.

The main story is another matter.

Siendes needs a foil, somebody on her side she can clash with, preferable somebody she likes but who can still keep her on her toes. Siendes, unchecked, tends to be a bit of a bully.

Welp.

Maybe I can introduce Shivret earlier than planned, we’ll see. I have at least six months to think about that properly and I’m sure I’ll find a way.

Footnotes:

  1. Silent Suns is a spin off only in the sense that it is set in the same universe as ToC – but the story plays in Andromeda instead of the Milkyway, so there will be a minimum of cross over. You definitivly can enjoy one comic completly without having to even touch the second on. ↩
  2. The original plan for this comic was me doing art and worldbuilding with him doing the writing duty, but, as usual, life intervened and John had to pass off the writing duties to me. We’re both sad about this. ↩
  3. Story = Conflict. Conflict = Story. This is the fundamental truth of story telling. The best characters are those that suffer oooh so pretty when you rip their dreams, hopes, hearts and desires to a bloody pulp and force-feed it to them with huge vat of sulfric acid. ↩
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I’m being painfully adult today…

Posted on December 8, 2011 in Thoughts & Musings

I’m sorting out my budget.

It wouldn’t be that bad, if it weren’t for all that unpredictable crap you just know will always happen.  Sometimes a dentist bill will rack up hundrets of euros, sometimes it’s a sudden birthday1 or wedding presents. How am I supposed to get vacation and clothing into that budget? I haven’t bought a single pair of shoes in a year, I’m down to one pair of boots and one pair of sandals!

Question for you guys: Do you budget for that? If so, how do you decide how much you need for that and where to keep it?

Because I know myself – if I budget too much, I won’t keep it, if I budget too little, I screw over myself.

This was definitivly the wrong month to give up sweets. Or to become mature about my spending habits, one of these.

Footnotes:

  1. Birthdays and holidays in general sneak up on me each year, those stealthy bastards, and Christmas is the worst of the fucking lot. ↩
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Plans for the rest of this year

Posted on May 26, 2011 in Thoughts & Musings
    1. Get a tatto: preferable an abstract grayscale sleeve covering my left shoulder
    2. restart my TaeKwonDo training – or any other actually useful martial arts, one in which one actually fights
    3. turn weightlifting into a hobby
    4. buy a corsett and a fifties-mafia-boss hat
    5. learn flower arrengement
    6. Get into a group for zen meditation – at least try it twice

Let’s see how much I chicken out of, shall we?

*evil grin*

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