Snow is piling up in our yard and on our roof. It looks like a postcard outside.

Instead of working, I wasted a whole other day watching anime. Bah! I'm hopeless. Also, it was very much time wasted.

( Click for Jyo Oh Sei spoilers )

I can't remember the last time I was this upset by a story. It's really childish of me. :(

This series is a great deal more awesome than any one series has the business of being...

Brother was able to pick up a 40" Samsung 1080p LCD HDTV for less than $600. And we didn't have to wait in line at 5am to do it. Living room is much more vibrant now. Hauling it in the open trunk of a two-door while going across a major bridge was far from win, however.

Picked up a 500GB hard drive for my sister at $35 as well, plus a few other odds and ends.

This game would be more fun if the final boss didn't have about twenty seven bajillion different forms. Even indie game torment me.

T_T

Down to about 168,000 words and 750 pages or so. Maybe I'll reach 150,000 words after all? That's still an awful lot though, I guess.

*sighs* I think this stupid project is driving me mad. Already I've failed to complete a page this week solely because I've been working on it and nothing but it. I swear, this idiotic story that I've come to hate will be the death of me. -_-

Ooo! Amazon has a free Kindle app for the PC now. I shall have to try this out. Yoink!

Just passed under the 200,000 word mark. Slowly but surely I'm getting this thing under control. But only time will tell if I'm making the right cuts...

So far by going line by line through each chapter I've managed to exorcise just under 30,000 words and over 100 pages, bringing the current totals down to ~206,300 and 928 respectively. I'm only at page 209, though, so I've still got much to go. Much of the cuts are world/backstory clarifications and additional dialogue exchanges that will probably not be missed, but a lot of the character's thought process has disappeared as well. I just fear that I'm cutting too liberally and the characters are going to come off as flat, only existing enough to hurry them on to the next plot point. Yet, on the flip side, if I don't cut enough the story's only going to get bogged down in wordiness, unread.

*Sigh*

'Tis my bane, I'm afraid. I can look at a story board or a comic book page thumbnail and tell right away what is and isn't working. I can look at the finished product thereof, and know largely how I have succeeded and how I have failed. But with prose I am not nearly so adept. I can only look at it and scratch my head, wishing I were a better writer.

There are many passages in the second draft of Under a Different Moon that exist purely because I wasn't ready to start taking a butcher knife to the thing and decided to preserve it for later when I could better decide what to move around where. This includes, just off the top of my head, an entire chapter that has no purpose but to provide a bridge to a "sister story", a story that I no longer believe is necessary and doubt I will ever get around to anyway. By trimming all this, I could probably shed upwards of 30,000 words without breaking so much as a sweat.

The problem is, this would still leave me with 200,000 words.

Now, there are of course several things to consider here. One is that the work is designed with online distribution in mind, specifically serialization. Paper and binding costs, which are a major player in draconian word count limitations, are largely a non-issue in my case. The story will take however long the story needs to take.

This being said, pacing is still as much an issue as in any other medium. 200,000 words is a lot to keep up. Not to mention if I printed it out I'd need a 5" binder just to store it--those things cost $20 and up--let alone the issue of hauling such a monstrosity around (setting aside the issue of whether or not I even need to print it out at all). More importantly, though, as has been proven time and again, 200,000+ words is a lot to get someone else to read. I think it is in my best interest to cut my word count by half or more, but that brings me back to the issue of what to cut. I keep running into "Oh! I can easily exorcise this and--oh, no, wait, if that's gone, then why would the characters need to do x later?" I'm not even sure what the story does and does not need anymore, or even for whom it is meant. *Sigh*

So, in the meantime, I'm stuck with a 230,000 word finished story that no longer means as much to me as it did seven years ago and which I want to be rid of, but on the other hand I can't bear to just toss it aside and let it rot because, well, how often do I finish anything? Not to mention those seven years of work on and off that I invested into it.

...Ugh.

I just want to be finished with it. I could just upload it somewhere and say "THERE! I DID SOMETHING WITH IT! NOW I CAN FINALLY MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE", but being the perfectionist I am I also want the story to be the best that it can be.

I'm a horrible person. T_T

Wait, wait, wait, hold the presses! Final Fantasy XIII will have a different theme song, done by Leona Lewis, for the NA release?

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

You idiots. Stop changing music! It's not even a song written for the game! Gah! Square Enix, you used to be the one to avert this more often than not!

FASDFASDasdhfjasdfhjklsdfahjfasdhjasdhjkf

-_-

Everyone else is posting their desktops, so I feel obligated to do the same. I'm not posting the meme with it, because it's stupid and irrelevant.

Here is my desktop.

If you don't know where these characters are from then, one, you are living in a paper bag under a rock at the bottom of the deepest cave in the most remote part of the Amazon jungles where all the natives point and laugh at you as they pass by before going back to their cell phone (where they are likely taking a very important call from their stock broker) and, two, you're an illiterate moron because the logo is right there. I generally don't put my own work on my desktop, because I hate my own work enough as it is without having it in my face every day to realize why else it sucks. I also don't leave my desktop blank very often, as I used to, because then it just feels empty and impersonal. *shrugs* Meh.

In any case, my desktop is overdue for a cleaning. Many of these icons I didn't want there when they first showed up. But since they're usually hidden under a browser window or Windows Explorer (at least on the main screen), I also put it off.

Hmm? What's this? Square Enix has set Taito to work on a new Lufia game? And the team working on it is the same as the original? So far so good. It's not like Rise of the Sinistrals is a hard game to top. It's a simple game that somehow came together well, making itself something greater than the meager sum of its parts. Let's see if the series can make a comeback to that kind of thing.

So I'm watching Up since it came out on home video today. It doesn't matter that I've already seen it twice and I already know everything that happens... I'm only eight minutes into the movie and I'm about to break down in tears. Eight minutes! I'm not even through the opening montage yet!

Now that they've announced there will be ten nominees for best picture from here on out, I swear, if Up is not somewhere on the list innocent people will die.

Holy Gabe Newell, they're already shipping the L4D2 characters on DeviantArt.

T_T

Now go vote in the character poll.

Okay, let me get this straight: not only does your game not support dedicated servers, and force players to use your matchmaking service (that sounds ominous), but now there won't even be a way to votekick other players? You've got to be kidding me! I only ever played Call of Duty for the single-player mode, and even I'm ticked off.

I'm sorry, Infinity Ward, but you're all idiots.

Fortunately, I had no real desire to play your new game, so boycotting you will be easy.

Yes, I am browsing the internet by means of Opera.

No, I am not on a mobile phone.

NOW STOP REDIRECTING ME!

-_-

Just found out about the shootings in Fort Hood about thirty minutes ago. My parents are in Fort Knox now and, even though it's half the country away, I can't say I wasn't shaken a bit by it at first, moreso since Fort Hood isn't that far from here (by Texas standards at least). :(

Open Office, you piece of crap. Why do you persist in randomly disabling your spell check dictionary in such a way that "turning it back on" does not do anything? Do you realize how much you suck in comparison to Microsoft Office? Think about that a minute. Over three versions in and umpteen years later and you are still inferior to a Microsoft product.

Overrated sack of tripe! I ought to wipe you off my hard drive like the insignificant gnat you are.