Still tinkering with the wording of A Sword Outwears Its Sheath to avoid some undesirable repetitions (a word like 'fickle' is really too distinctive, unfortunately, to use twice in the same fic to refer to two different people) -- of course, altering the wording at this stage of publication now involves synchronising four different copies for every change I make, which is why I really ought to have held off a day before uploading to FFnet. I *always* end up making extra edits immediately after publication, and the Dreamwidth upload is supposed to be the one where the need for those becomes apparent... but I needed to go up to the library anyway, and didn't want to waste the trip.

I did remember to add the cropped Athos-pic to the story via the Image Manager on my second trip, but forgot to further investigate what was going on with the categories :-p But I shall have to make a third trip now in order to synchronise the chapter anyhow...

I also decided that I might as well bite the bullet and upload the second chapter of "Ashes" as it currently stands (very lightly edited down from the original typed version), simply because nobody will ever go actively looking for work in that fandom, so the only chance of getting any eyes upon it at all is to have it sitting next to a recently-updated fic in my list of works, such that somebody just *might* take a look if they are checking up to see what else I have done. The chances of their getting beyond Chapter 1 are naturally even more vanishingly slender... but looking at that story I actually feel that it is better-written than this one (probably because it has more dialogue in it, which was always my strong point!)

Received another probably-AI review, this one quite poetic:( Read more... )

( I forgot all about the cover art when uploading to FFnet... )

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This evening I dissected the soggy cardboard of the six-pack, into which the roots of the seedlings had of course entwined themselves, making separating and transplanting them more and not less traumatic :-(
We have three Gysophila elegans seedlings -- which I was quite unable to separate and ended up flattening out sideways in a wide pot to try to gain some distance between the plants! -- and several Gypsophila vaccaria, even though I pulled out at least one of those at the seedling stage because it strongly resembled yet another shoo-fly. I split those between a couple of smallish pots, having emptied the supposed Coreopsis pot and transferred the smaller pink Linaria (and four healthy and vigorous possible Blue River daisies around its base!) into a wider pot, mainly in order to free up the small one -- I have no small or medium-small pots left. I then used this pot to put the possibly-white California poppy seedling from the final segment of the six-pack into. If it lives, it will be an interesting but not conclusive genetic experiment!

( Towel-tomatoes )

( Chillies )

Likewise I transplanted one of my smaller pots of marigolds into a larger one out of the motive to use the pot for something else, although most of those marigolds have been flourishing mightily and do rather need repotting! I have split up the main pot of Swan River daisies -- without labelling them, which I hope wasn't a mistake; they should be large enough to recognise now...

Right, I think I've fixed the weather (simply by substituting all reference to it with other material, as it had no function in the story other than to act as mood-setting and dialogue spacer ;-)

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My new voice teacher: Right, I think we can get you up to four octaves!
Me: I'd be quite happy to have some practical use out of three (more like two and a half for all intents and purposes)...

I embarked upon the final episode of "Twenty Years After" (it has just dawned on me that the elegaic title/theme music is in fact a slowed-down version of Nasha chest', which is effectively appropriate!) Again, this section proved unexpectedly easy to understand, even at three a.m. without subtitles or dictionary -- but I'm not sure I would have been able to follow where we'd got to without prior knowledge of the plot, because it did feel very compressed and chunky. ( Oddly lacking dynamic of friendship )

I think what has happened here is that the director has made the decision to focus on Mordaunt's activities -- and that part is effective. The scene where he casually shoots his uncle in the back of the head has a shock value that nothing else does (slightly undermined by the fact that we never see Lord Winter's face and so have no idea of the prisoner's identity until the dialogue reveals it; again, probably a conscious choice to make the act more bewilderingly random). This section is very much about Mordaunt finally discovering the identities of the men he has been hunting, and the resulting threat to their lives....

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I think I have finished† my "Three Musketeers"/"Twenty years After" one-shot, after a vast amount of struggle with the end; the final paragraph or two are constituted of about 70% crossing-out, after every sentence I carefully and laboriously formulated in my head turned out to be all wrong when I set it down on the page :-( I think I may still have a rhythm problem with this section, where I seem to have kept repeatedly coming out with similar sentence structures; too many aphorisms, I suspect.

I also appear to have managed to write my first-ever M-rated fan-fiction, in that it goes that little bit further than I think I'd be comfortable giving to a thirteen-year-old, which is the definition of the "Teen" rating. ( The episode of Athos and Madame de Chevreuse )