Living Between Two Swords

Rawr: http://modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=15617445

Six men, each unique in their own right, and yet all of them share a specific trait. Something about them caught Giuliana's attention at some point, enough to allow them in, and allow them to see her inner self more than any others. Five of them immeasurably older than her, one an ancient Gangrel warrior-scholar who speaks to her mind and draws out her baser instincts, one a witty Ventrue Occultist who speaks to her mind and keeps her from taking herself too seriously. The third, the only Haunt she’d ever allowed in her bed, initially because of his sheer eloquence and life-experience, now she meets with him sporadically simply for the fact that he saw past appearances first.
( The other two are now lost to her... )

Carl quote of the day, "Damn, I hate that you're so smart."

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

Due to work and the holidays, this evening is the first chance I’ve had to sit and even think about Whitechapel, and I’m not likely to get much more time until around Christmas. My options are to try and crank out a shitty episode, or push it back a week, and I’d rather do it right. So, in order to keep my life somewhat sane, I’m going to push back episode 10 to next Wednesday, December 30th.

 I'm going to ask off of work for the Tampa FGotM on Jan. 16th.  They're probably running Mage and Requiem that day.  I got to go to game (a couple hours late, but hey) and I had a BLAST, plus there were two new players whom I got to spend some time talking to, and their excitement for the game really rubbed off on me too.

Speaking of, anyone looking for ties to two brand new Invictus players, and have the time to dedicate to it, let me know.  They're both based in Tampa, one of them is Mekhet, the other is Gangrel.

My fave moment of the night:

I'm sitting in an Invictus meeting, and Carl walks up, "You get a text message from my character.  It says *Do you want to get into the head of a flaming Nos?*"

My response: "Is is still flaming?"

 Hot wings are awesome.  Free hot wings because I was wearing my World of Beer tank top when I picked them up and the manager wants to do business with World of Beer and thinks I can help.... are even awesomer.

Before I start my latest installment of "Head to Keyboard," I want to tell you a quick story.

A Quick Story

A while back, I made some comments on Facebook and Twitter agreeing with a writer who doesn't want people to give him their manuscripts to critique. I got some pushback from a couple of my peers saying that they would rather give advice to struggling writers, as a way of paying it forward. I was resistant to this, and I hid behind the old chestnut that there really isn't anything new to say on the subject of writing advice, especially since just about any "rule" I could lay down can be broken to great success.[1]

After a lot of reflection, the real reason is that I didn't really consider myself all that advanced of a writer that I could dole out advice with any authority. It wasn't that I thought I wasn't good, but rather that I wasn't good enough to have my advice be actually useful. In reading Chuck Wendig's "Advice You Should Probably Ignore" posts, I realized that sharing my own experiences as a writer could be beneficial in its own way, in much the same way as the early episodes of Mur Lafferty's "I Should Be Writing." I've been doing a lot of that through my episode post-mortems on Whitechapel, but I'll try to do more generalized revelations here.

For the children, you understand.

( Read more... )

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

Quick note before I dive in: yes, there isn’t any post-mortem for episode 8. I was hella busy that week preparing for a LARP event, and I thought I could catch up on that during the Q&A that got canceled. If someone really has a question about the writing process for episode 8, I’ll answer it in the comments, but otherwise I’ll just dive into episode 9 and move forward.

Author’s Commentary

Because of the previously-mentioned LARP event, I only did a couple hundred words on Saturday, and really didn’t have a chance to write a full draft at all until Sunday night. Worse, I really had no idea what was going to happen (aside from laying the tracks to the next plot point). To top it all off, I had a tie vote in the poll. So I did a lot of hasty and heavy writing and rewriting on really short notice. And yet, I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Such is the creative process.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

 I got bit by fireants at my photoshoot yesterday.  Owwie.

Name: She goes pretty much only by Sabina these days
Clan: Lasombra
Gen: Planning 8th, but quite likely 7th if I scrape together the prestige remaining
Sire: L. Nemetorius Sabinus (Josh's PC)

Inspirations:
Atia of the Julii from the HBO series Rome
Yvonnel Baenrae from Forgotten Realms (oh yeah.. drow matrons ftw.)


Very Rough Concept:
Sabina, being the Eldest childe, has been her sire's companion for over a thousand years. In that time she has seen empires rise, and crumble, only to have something new spring up from those ashes. In that time she has seen only one constant - the Preeminence of Clan Lasombra.

Her preoccupation has always been with her Clan, and those that descend from her Sire. Something akin to a brood mother, she is always interested in the going ons of the Nemetorians, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Clan as a whole.

Cold, calm, and collected... she's something of an ice queen, and since the Anarch Revolt, more of her innate cruelty has rose to the surface when it became more acceptable to be openly doing something other than Humanity. A scion of the Cold Path of Night, well, she's pretty damn good at it.

She was quick to side with the Sabbat along with her Sire, but to those most intimate with her, it is quite clear that she views this 'spat' similarly to the divide within the Clan during the Shadow Reconquistia, that eventually one side (that being the Sabbat side, of course) will win out, and Cainite society will be reunited again and forged into something better than it was before, free of Antediluvian control.

All Kindred Ties:
- Descendants - You can even be of lower Generation, so long as you don't have issues of diablerizing your way down.. preferably in the good ol' Lasombra method of the Courts of Blood (if they were other Lasombra). I don't know about taking anti's yet... we'll see.
- Lasombra planning to be Friends of the Night. I don't know how the club is going to handle this, or how they handled it in the past, but it's my intention to have been one and involved as a Blood Courtier for many many centuries.
- Vampires who would have been on the Iberian Peninsula anytime after 460 AD.
- I don't want to have ever been a Prince, or the like, in my background. I'm thinking she would have filled a more Chamberlain-esque role depending on the time period.

Sabbat Ties:
- While I am staying away from an Occultish or Fighty concept (omfg, right?), I am going to be a complete social beast. If you think you would find need of a more socially and charismatic inclined Lasombra, <---
- If we can do it, she's going to be a proponent of the cold war atmosphere between the Sabbat and the Camarilla. Without venue walls, I feel like this sort of thing is going to be necessary. This doesn’t mean she likes the Camarilla, associates with the Camarilla, or anything of that sort. But she likes to watch them fear, and suffer in that fear, knowing that those shadowy group of Elders that just walked into their Elysium could probably devour all of their faces at any given moment.

Cam ties:
- Poor motherfuckers that have accidentally ran into her in the years since the Anarch Revolt. She wouldn’t have killed you. Death is too good for your kind. It is better to prove you and your beliefs wrong, and revel in knowing that I am right when the time comes.
- I’m open to some other ideas too. Hit me up.

Epidemiology - A
Archaeological Methods - A

GPA maintained at 3.95

Hell Yeah!

I'm going to actually get to game again. I'm going to the 4Winds game tomorrow, my first chance in a loooong time to do anything more than a simple proxy.

This is what happens when you stay out too late and the sun comes up.
(Hint: This is the latest photo from Michael Park.)

I just found out, via Facebook, that my sister got engaged.

( Click to Read the Life Twitter-tronic... )

Josh sold me on playing his Lasombra childe, so that's the route we are taking.

I am now oddly looking forward to Sabbat, mostly because he's been grinning ear to ear about it and it's kind of cute.

So that's that, I guess, and once they have an official addendum or settings guide or whatever put out, I'll start soliciting for character ties.

Monday, my birthday, began early, it was my first real "Day back" to work at the Hollywood house. The packing frenzy caused such a mess, I almost didn't know where to start. But start I did, and just worked hard.

In the afternoon, I saw a neighbor who I asked if Bulk Pick up had already happened last week. He said no. So I called up the City and found out I needed to have my bulk garbage curbside that same evening. So 3:30pm, and I started Hacking at old grungy carpet, cutting it, shredding it by hand, or just rip/tearing it up. Then I rolled it tightly, and even tied it just to make sure it'd be nicer for the guys to garbage it.

While doing the carpeting tearing up, A guy in an old pick up truck came by, saw the front door open (for the lovely breezes I get) and asked if I had any Steel or Aluminum type things, old appliances, even small ones, so he could recycle them. Lo and behold, I remembered the pile of steel pipes in the back yard, also gave him the very dead bicycle still in the screen room. This guy saved me a LOT of work, and I'm happy he'll get some money for it.

Yeah it was hard work on my birthday, but it was satisfying to know I now wouldn't have to spend like 100 dollars getting a special pick up, as normally you're not allowed to throw away rugs, only on bulk day, once a month.

Tuesday was time to check out the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. I wanted some tiles to fix the counter top, of the counter the former owners added. Currently its CDX (Outside grade) plywood, 3 feet by 2 feet, with a fake back splash... painted white, likely with outside paint, as its the only thing they had that used white flat paint. I stored things on it, never used it for food.

But as I have at the house, one of those Blond pine wood tables with the white tile in the center, along with a matching microwave cart, I figured white tile of the same kind would/should be a huge improvement. The kitchen is just a bit over 8 by 9 feet, and the main counter top (with a large stainless steel sink in it) is only 66 inches across (by the standard 2 feet depth), so this additional 33 inches is needed.

So spent almost 3 hours there, OMG I measured everything, I might even have found a new bathroom sink top, slightly used, that is like dark granite or other dark natural stone. I'm so hoping that one fits, and I can find an under mount sink to fit it. They have cheap blinds, in so many sizes, now I need a measure of all the windows, probably also the picture window and the sliding glass doors.

So I thought the tile was like 30 cents each or something... nope I was wrong it was 50 cents a square foot. So 3.00 for my tile, 3 bucks for a large quart (looks more like two quarts) of adhesive & Grout in one. Got a professional floor scraper (for a dollar!) that I need to get some nasty dried tar like stuff off the Terrazzo floor that was hiding under the ookey carpeting. Got a very nice 3 spot light fixture for 15 there, very nice, I'd say European feel to it, its heavy and strong and well made, and nice matte black.

Thursday was more a lot more work, more garbage picked up, and when that hurt, I started sweeping Walls & ceilings and thresholds, and the car port. And then I started working again on the bathroom, and took the old toilet seat off, and took it back to Home Depot, as it came with a life time warranty. I got turned down by the supervisor but told I could come back tomorrow to speak to the Manager.

I found and bought some nice yet inexpensive new light fixtures for the 3 rooms, and the hall way, new fixtures for the nearly dead 3 on the outside the house, and a new ceramic bulb holder for the laundry room. I also got the spacers and the trowel I need for the Tiling project. I got a paint tray, and new 8 inch blade for my new dollar scraper.

Tomorrow (Saturday) my electrician friend comes by to work on all the electric issues and install all my fixtures. One room's light switch... well the fixture flickers, and I tried 2 other bulbs, so its the line, and flickering could be arcing, so taped that one OFF. Hall light, if left on, begins to make "Warm/Hot" smell, like something is cooking the wiring. And the bathroom light, has the only plug in the bathroom, up in the light switch and its NOT grounded. He'll see about either installing a full plug set where the wall switch is, or replace the fixture with basically the same thing, if we can't get a proper wall outlet out of it.

Today was Free Paint from the City of Hollywood day, I got Beige, it should work out OK. Now I need to pressure clean, and then seal it, then paint it. I also have some paint from the Re-Store I can use in at least one or two of the bedrooms, and the living room. I'm going to be a busy bee.

So lots of work, I'll do the tiling tomorrow too. Gotta clean more of the kitchen as well, do a bit more sorting of stuff for SCA give aways, and probably toss more trash out, etc. So thats where I am now. Oh and

Being that my fav venue isn't hard resetting for three years (UGH!), if my Domain goes for some oWoD vampire, I'm going to give it a shot.

So far, looks like Miami will be going Sabbat.

So I'm leaning towards a Tzimisce elder, or possibly a Lasombra. I'm 300 regional away from MC 12, there's a chance I could finagle that before June... so I'll either be Gen 8 or 7.

The only time I ever played oWoD, I was a 4th Gen Malk Dark Ages NPC and never even looked at my sheet... I find it horribly ironic that I am finally going to be that girl that relies on her boyfriend to tell her what her powers do.. *head/desk* (Of course, once I'm actively playing I'm sure I'll pick up the system quick, but it's going to be so horribly bizarre for me to be playing in a system that I don't know as well if not better as the people around me.)

I guess things depend on what the new oWoD addendum looks like, in some ways, but that's the gist of it.

If I came with a warning label, what would it say?

(After you reply, post this on your own LJ to play along.)

Step One

Make a post (public, friends locked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fun ("I'd love a Snape/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ, or link to this post so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two

Surf around your friends list (or friends of friends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use--or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free--do it. Once a wish has been granted, it will be crossed off my list.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf--to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not--it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

Here is my list:

1) Get a house cleaner to do a thorough scrub of my house so I don't have to do it this time.

2) Paid off credit card (I know this is a super tall order and no one will do it, but it'd be nice to be out of debt for a bit).

3) a massage

4) A shopping spree for clothes. I've never really had more than 200 bucks to "shopping spree" with and it'd be neat to do something like they do on What not to Wear

5) Sushi dinner

6) An overnight in a luxury hotel

7) The stone in my engagement ring replaced. It's an emerald and it's been chipped so bad I'm afraid to wear it. It's why I don't and I miss having both of the rings together in a set. Even a loose dark stone (ruby, sapphire) would be nice so it won't get torn up again.

8) A spa day with skin care.

9) Laser hair removal package (so I don't have to shave things anymore).

10) Knitting lessons

11) A job

This was REALLY hard. It took me effort to come up with this list.

I will make the comments screened. No questions will be asked on an email or address request.