cry havoc

To really get why this past week had its moment of OH GOD I GET IT NAOW, I need to backtrack and first explain about my mother and the medical records clerks in Montgomery Alabama. Every transfer meant going on-base in August for the usual school physical-check-up thing that you have to do when entering a new school system. And that meant going to the medical building and the medical records office, where Mom would fill out a request slip so the clerks could retrieve our records. Something like that.

Those records (from what I recall) are stored in two general collections: one for active duty military, the other for retired military. So when the clerk accepts your records request slip, the first question the clerk asks is, "active duty or retired?" Except when we were in Montgomery, the clerk didn't ask that. I was nine at the time, so my mom had just turned 30... and I recall distinctly (thanks to my mother's tone of voice and the look on her face) when the clerk accepted the paper and simply asked, "retired?"

My mother's smile was cold enough and sharp enough to cut diamonds when she replied, "active duty."

( The saga of not-needing-bifocals THANK YOU VERY MUCH, new eye prescription, a slight tangent into what astigmatism is, and a final celebration that naturally involves power tools BECAUSE MOAR POWER WAAAHHH. )

On that note, there's a chapter of Koji Ma Oshi upcoming, thanks to sharibet. (And a short story of whatever hinotori wants, and another for clarentine.) If I make it through a day without a headache, I'll consider that a good sign & will start writing, since that's at least a half-day at the computer and a bit more for polishing before posting. Fingers crossed my eyes'll be completely adjusted to new scrip in the next few days. There! Something to look forward to.

erm, assuming I don't get so happy with now-working power tools that I cut anything off. GUH. I don't even want to think about it. that I get distracted by the shiny and spend the next week doing cabinetry. *cough*

Have you ever been sitting around, waiting for a download to finish or some other chore about as exciting as watching paint dry, and thinking about a story and the big cliche in the middle of it that you've never been able to figure out a way around because then you'd deconstruct the story too far, but you couldn't come up with something to replace that facet of the plotline? And then while staring blindly at nothing in particular, an image of a book cover or a CD or maybe one of those stupid click-through ads on the 'net catches your eye and suddenly you think, oh my freaking DOG that's it!

No?

Okay, me neither.

But I think I just came awfully close.




[Two words: PONY. EXPRESS.]

As long as we're on Old Stories Week -- and given some of the possibly* accurate criticisms coming down the ff.net pipe -- what the hell, I went back and reread the first twenty or so chapters of Drums. I don't think I've done that since I revised, back in Jan 2004.

O, M, G, the pain.

Not because I think the story's truly atrocious in a plotline sense (overall), but because the craftsmanship is just so... and, damn it, the characterizations, too. There are good points -- and where those counteract fanon, it may have been enough to offset the bad points of slipping into fanon -- but some things just make me cringe.

[*I say 'possibly' because when the critique-review arrived, I couldn't actually remember enough details to know whether the crit was based on story flaws or were opinion. That's a good chunk of why I went back and finally, after all this time, reread.]

Ah, well, though I don't think I'd ever revise -- I wouldn't do that to any of the long-suffering archivists who had to code the 2003 edition, then the 2004 semi-revision -- there's a part of me that wishes I could, just as a matter of principle. Because I know I can write better than that, now, that is. What I wrote then was pretty complex and not too bad for someone who'd never written something that long and involved before, but compared to now?

Did I mention the cringing?

If you're one of the folks who've not read, and don't want spoilers, then skip this. If you have read and hated it, maybe you'll find I agree -- lo these years later -- with your complaints. Or if you didn't read because you knew beforehand you'd hate it, then maybe you'll enjoy me staring critique in the face. Who knows.

( Anyway, there be spoilers here, if such matters to you; otherwise, here be major segues into characterization analysis, too. )...and that's probably more than enough of that.

One last thing (and should I be posting this on gw_analysis, instead?) -- I just realized. With the exception of Relena, all the other 'mirror' female characters at some point or another strike out at their male counterparts. Doesn't Sally pull a gun on Wufei at some point? Hrm, I thought she did... but I know Hilde has Duo at gunpoint and backs off when he talks about his genuine reasons for assuming his role; Cathy strikes Trowa outright to snap him out of his suicidal intentions; Dorothy does her best to gut Quatre. They're not all at the same point, either, in their relationships -- Hilde's met Duo once or twice by then, and then has to apprehend him as a felon, while Cathy's been a sort of big sister to Trowa for half of the series by then, and Dorothy had only just met Quatre in person. But for each, I find it curious that they're antagonistical towards their counterpart-pilot -- and Relena is the flipside, in that it's Heero who's constantly pulling a gun on her, instead.

Hrmmm. Damn it, why does this storyline always pull me back in?