I have a question.

Before I ask the question, I just wanna mention that I’m traveling for work right now, but I will be posting tommorrow hopefully eventually start giving myself realistic deadlines. (Got back home later than I thought. More tired that I thought.)  Not for the chapter unfortunately, but something you might otherwise enjoy. Or be annoyed with, I can’t judge. But thank you for your patience with me.

Okay, I don’t want anyone to take this question to mean a damn thing, NOT A DAMN THING (Penelope), it is just a question. For writers and readers alike.

When is it okay for the protagonist to die?

“Okay” Meaning, you feel the story would lose nothing/resolve conclusively/ remain enjoyable/not make you want to sit in your bathtub with gallon of gasoline and a lighter, if the protag dies.

Please

Betray All: Part III

I might have broken wordpress. If anyone is prompted for a password on any page just leave a comment anywhere and I’ll fix it.

Apropos of Exactly Nothing…

In the future of this story two characters have a conversation. About something. At a place. Where things are happening.  And that conversation got me thinking about… stuff. This stuff might be completely banal to you, because I’m trying to get fictionally scientific, and at first I wasn’t really going to indulge my wordy theories because I was only concocting them to keep some of my story rules in check. They aren’t really going to come up, but they might be helpful to know. And I thought maybe some readers might have thought about some of what I was tossing together and could be interested in the bio-genetic flap and yap that I pulled out of thin air.

The main thought that triggered my scientific evalution was, “Jax should probably have every form of hepatitis available and Chloe should probably be on baby number 27.”

If that ever crossed your mind, you can find my convoluted explanation and subsequent rambling tangent on the origin and genetics of vampirism, here. You can thank insomnia.

BETRAY ALL: PART II !!!!!!

Sorry sorry sorry. My attention span was useless today. This is a short one. Well, for me anyway. For a number of reasons, the main one being I am a lazy lazing lazer. Part III is looking massive though. And Ten Years Prior is looking neglected.

I am so annoying…

Okay, I’m not going to make a habit out of teasers, because teasers are wrong and evil and cause global warming. At least that’s what Jax would say.  He wants it NOW!  Nevermind.  I was actually planning on updating Betray yesterday, and Ten Years tommorrow, but I did something so stupid to my pictures… so moronically idiotically stupid… I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. Let’s just leave it at me having to manually decompress like… 1000 pictures… because I fail. However, my weekend is turning out a little bit more busy, and a little bit less vegetative than I originally planned, so manual decompression can’t happen til tommorrow. But until then! I TEASE!

Why is custom content so addictive?

Coolsims just put out a new male hair that has made it absolutely imperative that I completely reshoot the next two updates for Betray to include it. This may or may not slow down the release of the next TYP, but definitely bring us to the conclusion that I’m a crank case (which I recently learned is someone whose ideal night out would include dinner, a movie, and a large pile of crystal meth. So eventually I am going to have to get out of the habit of using that label on myself and others, being that my own definition of it is quite different. But not until I reshoot with that hair.)

AtC: Dual Update

Alright, here is what is happening. Ten Years Prior is ruining everything. I was going to double update it in an attempt to finish it faster because I hate it. But since I hate it, I can’t finish it faster. Part VIII, I finished. Part IX is off running naked through the forest, high on shrooms or something, and I just can’t deal with that idiot right now. Despite my wanting TYP to be over and done with forever ago, actually trying to finish it makes me want to punch my computer in the face, so I needed to abandon it for a minute while I spent some time slamming my head into a wall. I really tried to do what I was trying to do but I just had to stop trying because I couldn’t do it.

What I am going to do, however, probably won’t work. It will probably confuse you. It will probably screw up everything, but if I don’t do it, I’m going to have to stab something, because Ten Years Prior has officially driven me insane.

In order to stem the insanity, I am resuming the main story while also finishing up TYP. If this is just really terrible form, and you all want me to just do one thing at a time, I can chill. Just putting out Betray All: Part I is making me feel better. I can glide for a minute on Betray All: Part I and chill out for long enough to force myself to finish TYP, which only has 4ish updates left to its name, and then a kind of epilogue thingy that extends the timeline a bit for more, possibly superfluous, background. BUT if it all is cool, I can continue to do dual updates until TYP is done and then go on about my merrily.

The problem is that I have taken pictures for Betray All up to Part III, where I’ve only taken pictures up to the pictures you see on the site for Ten Years Prior, despite many fruitless attempts to remedy that (seriously, I’ve taken not one TYP picture since my teaser post). Betray All is taunting me. TAUNTING ME. I’ve done too much. But now that I’ve done the much, I have to release the much – veritably striking it from my consciousness through its passage into the interneted strata – or else it will sit on my brain like a toilet seat and drive me loony and next thing you know I’ll be cutting off my ear and gifting it to prostitutes. Except I’m not an artist, and it’s already been done, so that act of crazy wouldn’t be history, it would just. be. crazy.

I’m sorry, I’m having a bit of a moment. I don’t want to be an adult anymore. And wordpress is glitching my face off. And Ten Years Prior is the death of me. And my laptop ate my Velvet Goldmine dvd, over which I’m having a slight emotional crisis. And I left my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in another country and am willing to swim the Atlantic to go get it. And it has been brought to my attention that I a much better at first person fiction writing than I am at third person fiction, and this new awareness has basically ruined my life. RUINED MY LIFE. But feel free to tell me to reign in my lunacy. Really. Feel free.

DUAL UPDATE!! They are both abominably long.

Teaser?

I’m sorry guys, I… am… swamped. Literally, the swamp creature rose up out of the an angry pile of muck and crickets and sat on me. For no reason. Just to be evil. I mean, I am terrified of crickets. That is just spiteful.

I have a breather this afternoon and I’m working on updating. A massive massive update. Goal: Tommorrow. Expectation: Saturday. I have to take some pictures and do some edits, and I’m planning on stuffing two chapter parts into one… or releasing them at the same time. Or something. And I know I’m a wet sock with the emails and comments, just bear with me.

To whet your palate (or make you completely frustrated with me) A TEASER! I think?

Maybe I’m just easily amused…

… but you have to understand why I’m so intrigued by this.

I am AMAZED.  OBSESSED AND AMAZED.

But in the end, I think I just have the amusement level of a pre-schooler. You can thank aching_maserati for this picture, and for my child-like giggling for the rest of the day.  Monkey Jax. I concussed myself from laughing.

Back bearing. Gifts.

I’m just going to spew at you for a minute. That disappearance was a bit longer than I originally planned. Stuff just exploded into crazy.  I had to go on a last minute trip to China for work. Tuesday morning staff meeting went something like this:

Boss: I need somebody to go on a last minute trip to China. Someone who is able to leave tonight, met the CP rep and knows the distribution laws over there, and remembers the brief on our new distributor banks that happened last week when Veron wasn’t here. Don’t volunteer if you’ve never visited this site, like Veron, or if you have any upcoming trips, like Veron, who is going to Hertford, England in like four days and is busy preparing for that trip.

Veron: *puts on her “I don’t even know what a CP rep is” face.*

Qualified Coworker: I can go. I know all the distribution laws, heard the brief, I’m already packed and can leave right now, and the CP rep is my mom’s boyfriend. I know Cantonese and Manderin. I learned both when I spent 10 years cultivating rice fields in Dazhai for my masters thesis which was entitled “Totally Qualified For This Trip”. In fact, I still live in China. I commute in every morning from Bangkok, which isn’t even in China, but Veron doesn’t know the difference.

Boss: Mmmmm, yeah that’s nice, but despite my already stating why she’s the worst possible person to go, I’m sending Veron.

Veron: WHA??!? No no no, see, look, I’m wearing my “please don’t send me to China” face.

Qualified Coworker: I completely agree. She is much more qualified than I am to go to China. Her England trip can be postponed even though its been put off for more than a month now.

Veron: Okay, wait, T for timeout -

Boss: Veron, shut up and go to China.

…Yep. So I got back from that craziness yesterday, spent the whole trip hopeless busy and hopelessy clueless, and I’m off to the UK on Thursday. So I figured, in this little interim, I’d just leak simly insanity all over the site.

My house still isn’t quite done, but my cats have been using their pee as a method of biological warfare, and my boyfriend evicted us the minute I came back. It is nice to have cable again though. I realized last week that a heavily dvr-ed routine of Animal Planet, Gordan Ramsey, Spongebob Squarepants, liberal news media, and general access to the internet, when encountered near daily, is more addicting than heroin. If I wasn’t busyoverdosing on the crystal meth of Sharon Shinn series, screaming “BUT WHY, STUPID?!” at her characters all that week, I might have succumbed to televinternisonet withdrawal and actually considered the boyfriend’s “seriously joking” suggestion to try and steal the neighbor’s wifi. Although, I will say, much like crystal meth, there is such a thing as too much Sharon Shinn.  Her good books drive you to unhinged madness and her bad books are… just… awful.  If I ever meet her in person I am going to deliver a swift helicopter kick to the back of her head. Or kiss her full on the mouth. I haven’t made up my mind. Honestly, both actions are equally likely and may happen simultaneously, proving only that I should lay off her novels for a while. And probably never meet her in person.

“Webbed cocooned erotic spiders” showed up NINE TIMES in searched engine terms this week. I love you all. Honorable mention goes to “invader zim bedsheets” , “red fart“, “thumb war lab“, and “loooooooook“.  Schools need to start offering classes on how to do a proper web search.  Despite my entertainment, this is ridiculous. I mean, invader zim and you click on me? For seriously? What the nuts is a red fart?

I’ve been blaming this insensibility on google, because wordpress doesn’t tell you which search engines lead the parade of WTF. But I’m finding that google ignores me, unless you specifically type AtC by Veron or, more recently, webbed cocooned erotic spiders. Any other time, google totally cockblocks me, and RIGHTLY SO because I have nothing to do with invader zim, or red farts, or erotic spiders for that matter. So something told me to check out yahoo, because… yahoo is just… the broken vacuum cleaner of search engines…  I type in “invader zim bedsheets” because, WTF. GUESS who comes up as the NUMBER SEVEN result on the FIRST PAGE??!?!?! As a result of INVADER MOTHERFLIPPIN’ ZIM BEDSHEETS?! I’ll tell you. ReaperofHate on Deviant art. I know this because AtC comes up as NUMBER FRICKIN’ SIX.  And frankly, I think that ReaperofHate should be number one. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it like you mean it. Why not? Yahoo doesn’t care. Yahoo isn’t even trying.

But they aren’t being entirely brainless (although they are being purdy damn brainless). Turns out that GAYL (!!!!!)  made a comment that  mentioned invader zim bed sheets a few weeks back and apparently yahoo was just as thrilled about it as I was. Number 6. First page. Crazy.  I’ll let you know when I figure out which one of you is behind ”thumb war lab”.

Real, live parapsychologists are commenting on my post where I call bullshit on parapsychology. I’m a bit frightened.

In this episode:  Ten Years Prior: Part VII, (Ten Years Prior: Part VIII is sort of done depending on if I’ll feel like editing the pictures, so I may have something to update with later in the month), “Self Found” for those who follow the SWA Collab, AND Posing Without Pose Boxes III: Not Your Granddaddy’s Overlays. And uploading all that crap in one day sucked more ass than a fly at a horse show. Now I can allow myself to be shipped off to Britain as a sacrificial offering to the gods of adult novelty distribution. We must not anger them lest they rain down their deadly wrath of bad porn and latex allergies.

…Hmph. Look at that. I just realized why searching for “dildo” can lead you to this site.  All of this has everything to do with the update. I will be in and out, around and about. Give me a sec with emails and comments and reading and breathing and everything. Actually, give me another two weeks. Fraps and I had a falling out so I’m not as pic heavy as I usually am… but still extraordinarily pic heavy. LINKAGE BELOW.