Fantasy In Miniature Update

First, I want to note that I've just renamed a story on Fantasy In Miniature that was previously titled "South Krypton". I've never been satisfied with that name for a variety of reasons, in particular that it depends on an insulting stereotype of southerners that I don't want to reinforce, especially given the number of my good friends who are from in and around the Appalachian regions. The characters in the dialogue aren't southerners, so attributing the viewpoint of one of them to the south in general is just... wrong.

Why did I never change it? Because I never had anything better. And that's sad, because here's where we come to a key point: the title wasn't just offensive, it wasn't very good. These two facts? They are related. Because I settled for a cheap joke for the title, I didn't reach for anything better. It was a lazy title.

Anyway, the new title is "Man of Steel, Woman of Steel"... it's a better title in every conceivable way, actually referencing what the story's about in a way that's at least halfway clever.

The other purpose of this post is to serve as notice to my flist watchers who aren't on Twitter that Fantasy In Miniature is being updated again, and is being updated regularly. I just finished my second week of (week)daily updates, and there's a whole 'nother week's worth already on tap. The same ninja magic that's allowed the more regular, higher quality MU updates lately is also providing a steady flow of flash fiction.

Little Miss Doomshine

So, last night I dreamed about a little girl (played by the one from Little Miss Sunshine who was an aspiring supervillain and was following the plans for a catapult-driven death trap from a booklet she got from the fan club of her idol, Wile E. Coyote. (She wasn't very good at picking role models, I suppose, though given that pop culture villains tend to lose a lot I suppose it's sort of academic.) She was making a tabletop model out of folded paper to test it out before building a full-scale one. I wasn't sure how the paper version was supposed to translate to a full-scale model made out of diverse materials like metal, wood, and rubber, but it was a dream.

And the problem was that her family wanted to go somewhere but she didn't want to leave the table in the library where she was working on this until the paper catapult delivered its paper target onto the x, and it never did. It was always to the side or too far or it got hung up on the edge of the paper model of the building it was supposed to be hidden behind.

Yeah, the whole point of this trap was to launch a deadly weight over a building so it would land on a target just on the other side of the building. Seems that if you want to kill someone standing next to a building with a heavy weight, the catapult adds a few unnecessary steps.

Anyway, finally, her grandmother convinced her that the catapult was unnecessary, but not in that way. She moved the folded paper catapult off the model and did a finger-flick, paper football "kick" style, to get the paper weight (note: not paperweight) over the paper building, and told the girl the valuable lesson that if she wanted to be a real villain she should rely on herself rather than gadgets. The girl was impressed by this, but I'm even less sure how the finger-flicking version would translate to a full-sized version of the trap. Perhaps freeing her mind from the idea that she needed the catapult will inspire the girl to realize she can just drop things on people.

Hmmm, now I have an idea for the laziest supervillain ever, who does that and calls it "the gravity ray". Given that I've just learned you can rent the country of Lichtenstein, I think I have the makings of something here...

Anyway, this wasn't even my main dream. It was just the "B" plot it kept flipping back to. Once again, my B-dream had better casting than my A-dream. Most of the girl's family were just extras, but the grandmother? Played by Helen Mirren.

Whoever does the casting for my B-dreams doesn't make nearly enough.

(no subject)

So, when I made the decision to pass on going to Tennessee in the middle of April for my second Daughters of the Moon retreat, it was a difficult decision. My first one was so good for me... the whole trip to Tennessee was... that I'd decided then and there, a year in advance, that I'd definitely be going back.

The decision not to was one part money and one part the sense that I needed to be here, taking care of business here. It's just a matter of timing. Last April, my life was in upheaval anyway. Nothing was stable so there was nothing to disrupt. I had nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

This year? Right now? I have some good solid flat ground and I'm building things on top of it. The work I'm doing right now will mean that in the future I will have more money and more time to travel.

Among the reasons that I couldn't justify the expense of taking off for Tennessee despite the success of my recent endeavors is that I'm going to WisCon in May. I'm looking forward to WisCon so much more this year. It's not that I wasn't looking forward to it last time, but I knew only a very few people there, and even fewer were folks I'd met in person. I didn't know the lay of the land, how things worked, etc. I don't do terrifically well with a bunch of new people and new situations all at once.

This year, I'm going to be there with Jack and company. A lot of the people I knew from before will be there again, and then there are the people I only met at last year's WisCon who I've become better acquainted with through LJ and Facebook in recent months. That last part is really kind of key to me, being a socially anxious geek and all. There is always The Lurking Fear™ (picture this as a classic pre-code era E.C. comics cover, with a helmet-haired woman reaching with a trembling hand for a door that's partially ajar and behind it you can just see the squishy rotting leg of some kind of drowned corpse monster) that people don't actually like me, that they might not remember me or that maybe they only tolerated me because it was a public place and they were too polite to tell me to get lost.

But connecting with those same people again online (A.K.A., "my natural habitat") and having conversations with them (often longer than any conversation had in person), sharing jokes, sharing encouragement... it makes it feel less like "going and seeing those people I saw last year" and more like "going and seeing my friends". It's terribly exciting.

My plans for today? First I'm going to go back upstairs and lie down for a bit. Among the other things they're good for, weekends are good for catching up on whatever stray sleep I missed during the week and I burned through a lot of spoons earlier this afternoon when I came downstairs and found my monster of a computer had randomly unseated its RAM again. It hasn't done that for a few months; I suspect the cats must have been fighting on or near it.

When I wake up (or more likely, feel sufficiently rested despite not having been able to fall asleep), it's going to be time to do my taxes. Since I'm going to be going through my records and all, I'm also going to get a start on compiling the updated sponsors list in its new format. Whether I have anything to show for it this weekend is going to depend on how long the tax stuff takes, but at least I'll be able to get the framework in place so it can be my major non-writing activity for the week.

This is one of those things that I've put off for too long because it seems tedious and doesn't involve making up shit about elves, but like most of the stuff I put off it'll be easy to maintain once I've done it.

And, finally, a moment of zen for all my fellow U.S. citizens.