Braiiiiiiiins... and WiPpet Wednesday

So there was me being all cheery about The Witcher 3 finally being released... and I've barely got to play it.  I work from home (not writing) and between that and other circumstances I've done little other than work and sleep.  So frustrating.  I feel like I'm becoming a zombie.

I've gotten no writing done at all.  Again.  Pretty sure it's a sign I should just pack it in.

But on the up side, I'm now trained in more aspects of one particular project I'm on.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a blog hop hosted by the ever-brilliant K. L. Schwengel where participants post snippets of their Works in Progress, with the twist that each snippet shared must in some way relate to the date.  It can be either via simple maths, like 27 sentences for the 27th, or via circuitous WiPpet Maths.  You can find out more, read other participants' entries and sign up for yourself over here.

And I really need to apologise 'cause I got around to absolutely no blogs whatsoever last week, which I am very much not happy about.

I'm just going to sit over here with a half-crocheted wrap over my head, that I've also not been able to do any work on, and sulk.

SO!  Today's snippet is quite long at 27 + 5 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 5 for 38 sentences that follow almost straight on from last week's, and Fayth has just offered RQ his choice of rooms.  Well.  His choice of one of two, anyway.

He gave Fayth another long, slow and completely indecipherable look, then said, “thank you,” and vanished into the tidy right-hand room, sliding the door shut behind him. 

Well, it was gratitude of a sort, he supposed. At least he hadn’t taken the room Fayth had been using ever since he bought the ship—and with it the offer of sharing. He shook his head at his stupidity and ducked into his room. Now was as good a time as any to put a shirt back on. 

He was back in the cockpit when the Rose Queen reappeared, dressed in a loose white shirt and dark trousers that were only slightly too tight across the hips. “Thank you for the clothes,” he said, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat and settling himself more comfortably against the fabric. “That is,” he suddenly hesitated, “if they were meant for me?” 

Fayth swallowed in the face of the Rose Queen’s wide eyes and bitten lower lip. Did he even know what he looked like when he did that? The thoughts that raced through Fayth’s head? And, worse, his shy nervousness screamed that his expression had nothing to do with flirting, that he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. “No. I mean, yes, they’re for you, but...” His eyes flicked down to the thigh-hugging navy trousers, then—God only knew how—he managed to drag his stare back to his face. “But I was told—I thought you were a woman, so they’re a bit...” 

“Oh. I did wonder.” The Rose Queen looked down at himself with a faint smile, pulling at the front of his shirt; Fayth wondered if another sarcastic comment would be forthcoming. “It’s roomier than I expected. They told you I was a woman?” 

“No. Well, not in so many words.” He frowned down at the controls. They didn’t need touching when the course was already set, but fiddling with them gave him something to do. “Not in any words, in fact. No mention of your sex was given at all, so I just assumed... I mean, the name...” 

He’d thought it odd at the time that the dossier on the person he was supposed to be rescuing was little more than a sheet of paper, but Matthew hadn’t been able to dig up anything relevant either. The Rose Queen as a person was one of the most secretive in the known universe—not that that squared with the man sat beside him, watching Fayth’s aimless toying with the controls with curiosity. When he spoke again, Fayth’s startled finger very almost switched off the cockpit light. “Captain Medworth felt pretty much the same way when he first saw me.” 

“He went to all the effort to steal you without knowing anything about you?” 

“So did you,” the Rose Queen said pointedly. 

“Yeah, well.” Fayth fidgeted in his seat. “I’m being paid to return you. That’s different.” 

The curve of the Rose Queen’s lips told Fayth exactly what he thought of that argument. “They wanted someone to look after the tree. I don’t think they really cared what shape the gardener came in.”

Shiny Distractions and WiPpet Wednesday

Sooo...  After another fairly unproductive week (but I wrote 271 words on Gabrys's story and... a sentence? on Jonathan's, so that's something, right?), my preorder of The Witcher III arrived yesterday and therefore I'm pretty sure that all production is now firmly out the window.  (I'm lucky it arrived at all; my bank have now frozen my account for fraud protection three times this year—third time being straight after my preorder shipped—and it's a massive pain.  Weren't so keen to protect me when I was broke!)

I'd read The Last Wish and loved it (I've read it three times now) but I couldn't get into Blood of Elves at all and all the other books took so long to be published in the UK that I actually ended up with them all fan-translated from other languages before I had the physical paperbacks...  So on the whole I was a little dubious about the games, but my mother bought me The Witcher II for the 360 for my birthday, and after a somewhat convoluted saga I even got to play it—and loved it.

Because of my attention span issues (mostly that I don't exactly have an attention span) it's quite rare for me to finish games.  That's why gaming has its own New Year's Resolution: it's the best way to get me to finally finish some although, like books, I continue insist on buying them.  So with that in mind, when I say that I powered through all 30 hours of my first playthrough of The Witcher II, finished it and then promptly restarted it so I could play through the other side of the story, that should tell you just how much that game excited me.

In the end I spent 60 hours on that game, it's gorgeous, I never did find Odrin, and the Harpy feather quest has become a household running joke.

This one is even more gorgeous, and I suspect it'll take me more than 60 hours just to play it once.  It's huge.  When they said it made Skyrim look small, it doesn't seem they were exaggerating.  I've already gotten lost a couple of times, even with the quest trail marker on.  Sod finding Ciri, I'm having enough trouble finding myself...

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a weekly blog-hop where participants share excerpts from their Works in Progress that in some way relate to the date, either via simple maths (like 20 sentences for the 20th) or somewhat less simple maths such as dividing the date by the month for 4 paragraphs.  You can find out more, read other participants' entries and join in yourself here.

My picture of RQ finally rendered!  It's not much but I do like making pictures of him...  Poor Fayth is distinctly neglected in this department, I'm sorry to say, which is kind of a shame because he does have his own charm too...

Convoluted maths today so I can get my own way (which is pretty much the only reason I'll ever willingly do maths): adding together the year, 2015: 2 + 0 = 2; 1 + 5 = 6; 6 - 2 = 4.  Today is the 20th May, so 20 - 4 = 16, for sixteen sentences that follow on from Fayth and RQ making good their escape from the Orenda.

Once the ship was comfortably blazing along in slipspace, an aurora of colour dancing across the cockpit window, Fayth unbuckled his straps and stretched in his seat with his arms above his head. “That went better than expected.”

Wordlessly, the Rose Queen turned to Fayth and raised both hands, held together at the wrist.

“What’re you—oh...” Fayth’s voice trailed off as he stared at the metallic cord still binding his narrow wrists together. “But just now, you touched me—”

The Rose Queen wiggled one set of fingers at him. “Them being tied together doesn’t stop me from using them independently, you know.”

He had a point, but Fayth couldn’t help wishing that a smile had accompanied the gesture, or at least something that didn’t indicate the Rose Queen thought him a complete moron. He’d had other things on his mind, like fulfilling his request; he couldn’t be expected to remember everything.

Judging from his blank expression, the Rose Queen expected him to.

Fayth sighed as he set to work untying the knot that seemed to have worked itself tighter since he’d first tied it. Every brush of his knuckles over the Rose Queen’s soft skin sent a jolt of energy the length of his arm and straight to his heart if he was romantic—straight to his groin if he was honest—but the black-haired man sat and watched the movement of his fingers without the slightest hint he felt anything similar. And why should he? They’d known each other for less than a day and soon enough they’d never see each other again.

It was going to be a long three weeks. 

Frustrations and WiPpet Wednesday

You know that render of RQ I had cooking last week?  Well, after almost a week solid of rendering time... it turned out to be useless.  Oh sure, the background looked nice, but RQ himself?

Not so much.

The figure I use for RQ has many, many problems in Poser anyway, and I guess taking it into the external renderer somehow zeroed the shape and pose...  More than a little frustrating.  I've made some changes so it'll render faster (at the expense of those pretty rose stems; might have to revert those without RQ in shot) and it's now cooking, but it's taking its time again so the best I've got is a part-done screenshot I've added some postwork too, to compensate for my awful lighting.  One day I'll actually have a sensibly-calibrated monitor set up somewhere.

I think my poor laptop, Sixteen, is on his last leg.  Due to a particularly intrusive and memory-hogging program my employers made me install, his already shaky fan ended up having to work in overdrive a lot more and even though I've now successfully dug the program out again the fan now runs (and rattles) non-stop.  I really need to get into the casing and see if it's off-balance or full of dust or something, but being a laptop it's not easy so... bleugh.  Not happy.  I love my crabby semi-sentient laptop and now he's on his last legs.  And honestly, I've gotten so used to the rattling noise that I'm just as worried when I can't hear it these days,

By the way, when I say 'dug out', I mean that closing instances in Task Manager didn't work (they came back) and trying to uninstall made it demand I contact my administrator for remote approval!  I should point out here I'm a freelancer, not an actual employee, and my laptop is supplied by myself at my own expense so not only was I unimpressed at this, I've now had to buy another (much cheaper) laptop to use solely for work.  I finally got the damn program out -- without administrator approval damnit, it's my laptop -- by disabling its eight different systems to let me uninstall it properly.

Aaaaaand then it turned out it had, by itself, uninstalled anything that looked remotely like an antivirus so that was fun to fix too.

I've had such a good week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a weekly blog-hop where participants share snippets of their Works in Progress on a Wednesday, and each snippet should somehow relate to the date, whether through simple means or complicated WiPpet maths.  It's hosted by the lovely K. L. Schwengel and you can read all the blogs and sign up yourself here.

They're all lovely people who hopefully I will actually be able to spend more time with this week! *growls at last week*

Against all odds I managed to write a little on The Rose Queen and a bit more of J for Jonathan, and I think I've worked out where G for Gabrys is going (i.e. longer than I expected...), so while it's not been a massively productive week it's had its moments.

Today is the 13th May 2015, so it's 13 + 5 = 18, 18 + 1 (from the year) for 19 sentences which follow straight on from last week's, where Fayth has finally managed to get himself and his passenger/prisoner/willing follower back to his ship.  There is also some profanity involved.

He’d expected the Rose Queen to be in one of the ship’s two quarters, since Fayth had pointedly left both doors open, but instead found him sat in the unused co-pilot’s seat, already securely buckled in. “Is it okay?” He asked in the face of Fayth’s blank stare. “I wanted to see.” 

Fayth shrugged. “Suit yourself.” As he busied himself with some very hurried launch procedures, the Rose Queen nodded in his peripheral vision. Damn it, damn it, damnit, why did he have to be so distractingly fucking pretty, right at a time when flicking the wrong switch at the wrong time could end up incinerating the man the Rose Queen had been so adamant about protecting. 

Well, that was a little exaggeration, but still. 

Only a little. 

It wasn’t like he was sat there to be sociable anyway: he was simply ensuring that Fayth kept his word, even though Fayth would have done so without needing to be watched. Without looking at his passenger, he thumped his middle finger into a button, “ship, open access door.” 

“Warning, Handsome Prince,” the ship’s lovely voice filled the cabin at the same time heat filled Fayth’s cheeks under the Rose Queen’s startled stare. He’d kill Matthew. “Bay is still occupied.” 

“Override,” Fayth said, adding under his breath where the ship was unlikely to pick it up, “if he doesn’t leave then call it natural selection.” 

A screen displaying the rear camera showed the naked man diving through the doorway into the waiting arms of several conspicuously-armed guards before Fayth gunned the engines, the ship’s monumental dock door began to open and the automatic failsafes sent the access door plunging down again. He turned a broad grin to the Rose Queen and flicked down the switch marked ‘lock’. 

The one-time Handsome Prince blasted from the bay in a roar of engines. 

Some A-Z Stats and WiPpet Wednesday

It's been a long time!  ...Well, a month.

It feels a little weird getting back into this routine, as opposed to the mildly terrifying one that was Blogging From A-Z.  I came out of the other side of that with 24 stories (some unfinished), one picture that was more convoluted to do than it looks and the unpleasant experience of sinusitis, hence one hiatus post.  I even started to get the hang of typing on my Surface keyboard, which is brilliant because I've only had it around two years now...

Lessee... some stats...

In total, I wrote 14,197 words (approximately 645 words per story), which wouldn't get me anywhere in NaNoWriMo but isn't too bad considering I've written nothing for two months.  And...

Out of 24 stories, 22 are outright finished and 2 need completing (Gabrys and Jonathan).  They span 10 series with Radial/Unravel being the one I wrote most in, with 4 stories.  I also wrote 7 standalone stories, mostly because they were obscure letters like, uh... L (but not Y or Z).  My most common rating was PG (10), followed by G (7), then 18 (4) and 15 (3).  (Who'd have thought it.)  Absolutely nothing was pre-written for the event; I did every story on the day.

I don't think I have a favourite story, though there are some things that stand out the most to me that I enjoyed writing the most, such as Corliss's introduction (fastest appearance of a sex scene of the whole lot!), the dialogue between Yirien and Aralelle, and the simple fact I wrote about Eden again for the first time in years.

Would I do it again?  Possibly...  If I wasn't a neurotic wreck incapable of writing in the two months beforehand, it could be fun.  Trying to every story every day made it a little less so.

Fun fact: not written anything since either.

WiPpet Wednesday

Another fun fact: I had totally forgotten where I'd gotten to on this.

I feel kinda like I'm sneaking back, since I've been so totally absent last month (I've been reading the snippets, just not commenting... I'm bad, I know), but between work, the sinusitis and A-Z my brain was pretty much having none of it.

WiPpet Wednesday is K. L. Schwengel's blog hop where WiP excerpts are shared, with the only criteria being that the entry has to relate to the date in some way.  It can be anything from convoluted WiPpet maths or something as simple as relating to the day.  Anyone can join in, just come along and add your WiP~

I'd be doing convoluted WiPpet maths, but I'm presently quite peeved because I've got a render of RQ cooking... and I suspended and closed the external renderer since it was using all Echo's memory and I couldn't do anything.  Opened it again and, oh look, it's forgotten all its 2 days' worth of progress and has just (re)started its Subsurface Scattering pass.  That took... 2 hours? last time.  And I'd got to 86.2% total render too...  *sighs*

SO!

Today's simple maths is 6 paragraphs for the 6th May 2015.

Fayth flexed his knuckles and winced at the sting from the grazes; at least he’d come out better than the crewman, whose clutched shirt was liberally splattered with blood from his streaming nose. And, unlike the crewman, the burn that raged under his skin meant he’d only be wearing the marks for a minute longer. “It’s a shame you decided to hang around though,” he said conversationally, swiping his thumb over the band around his wrist. Obligingly, the gull-wing door of his craft lifted itself open. “’Cause we’re just leaving and in five minutes this bay will be vented of air. You get to die naked. Maybe they’ll put it on your memorial.”

The crewman opened his mouth, but it was the Rose Queen’s gentle hand that caught his wrist as he turned those dear God why eyes up at him. “Please don’t kill him. Please...”

He should resist. The man was collateral damage at best. But something in those eyes, in that helpless expression... “Get in the ship. I’ll deal with it when he can’t make another grab for you.”

The Rose Queen nodded and padded obediently into the ship. Fayth’s skin felt bereft where his fingers had previously touched. Either the man was naïve or had more trust in Fayth than anyone in their right mind should have. Either way, to his disgust, it made him want to live up to it; he shot a glare at the naked man like it was all his fault. “Go and stand by the door. Once we’re ready to leave I’ll open it, but it’ll only be seconds before the security systems shut it again. You got that?”

The man returned the glare full-force and for a moment Fayth thought the idiot would lunge for him. To Fayth’s relief—after a moment’s clear indecision before he came to the correct conclusion that Fayth meant every word of it—he ran to the door with his bloodstained shirt clutched to his groin.

He couldn’t suppress his chuckle.