“When you are born” The golem said softly, “your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off staircases, saying your first words without fearing someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you’re half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it’s so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you’ll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not so many facilities in your world that provide the kinds of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.”
– Lye, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making (Catherynne Valente)
Monthly Archives: July 2012
15 posts
In April, when we started the show KieryGeek, I didn’t really take the time to give any bit of origin story. Mostly because I wanted to get the show off the ground, but as we make our way into season two, I thought it would be a good idea to start off on the right foot and give what will be a background for the following episodes and the way I react to things.
I didn’t grow up a gamer, and I never read any fantasy until after I got married 3 years ago. I played the PC version of Frogger and a lego racing game. We got a gamecube (which I think was obsolete at the time, but still getting games?) when I was 14ish and I played a little bit of Mario. I suck at racing games and don’t do well with FPS so I was never able, and never had the time to really get into it. I didn’t see Lord of the Rings or Star Wars until I was 16 or so, and it took me a long time to understand what was going on. Although, I started Star Wars with Episode 1 instead of Episode 4, which is possibly a crime in itself.
While I didn’t engage in the traditional geekling things growing up, I always identified as one – exhibited the same obsessive qualities (and was on a debate team, so there’s that) and was actively involved in whatever I focused on to the minute detail. If you ever feel like going at something in the constitution and lack the context, I can still dig that out and take you on. That was my obsession in school – history, context, politics, the founding, and how it has changed and relates to us today. Quantum detail – I read everything I could, had several pocket constitutions and my own copy of the federalist and antifederalist papers for context.
Everything I know about traditional geek culture, all the things I completely obsess over now, are things I’ve just really discovered in the last 3 years. Don’t come to me for comic book recommendations, but if you want to implode over Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Firefly, or MMO/RPG video games, I’m your girl.
My art journal and painting themes are quickly becoming permission slips for myself. Focusing on granting my heart the thing it needs at that moment and somehow silencing my very loud, harsh, inner critic.
She’s a bitch and always tells me what to do, doesn’t let me sleep when I need to and is generally just cruel. She comes out the most when I need a break, and makes me feel bad about not doing things immediately and has no patience. She claims the world will end if those chores aren’t done right now and berates me when I wait and condescendingly tells me “If you had done it earlier, you wouldn’t have to do it now while you’re trying to do this other thing.”
Or, her other favorite:
“You’re really stupid and worthless, you should have been doing something constructive instead. Something to make money instead of doing all this useless crap. You’re not even good at anything anyway”
Somedays, she holds me hostage and I can’t bring myself to do anything (literally).
After wrestling all day with Miss Monday, I realized that art would be the one thing to make her go away. While it’s text and words, is the permission I needed to see and Miss Monday decided to start backing off. Finally.
Actually, I’m neither of those things, anymore. I generally try my best not to be rude, but after two attempts, I feel confident in calling myself (finally) ginger!
I dyed my hair a few days ago, using Revlon’s bright auburn but it didn’t really stick. I’ve had the hardest time finding a red that came with a bleaching kit. The only one I’ve found locally is Splat, which I love, but I’m not really going for fire-engine red (as truly epic as it is). So I picked up a Garnier “brownish-red” dye kit at Target (yay for no bad smells that give me headaches for two days like the last one!) and left that in my hair for an hour, reapplying at will.
The picture quality is really bad, but the red actually stuck and looks really good. My hair was successfully lightened up a few shades too and has a pleasantly fruity smell. Not quite as nice as my blue dye, but significantly nicer than the last round.
Looks like season two of KieryGeek is going to feature a ginger after all! ^.^
When I first started making my web series, I didn’t know what I was doing. Honestly, I still don’t know what I’m doing, but season two is getting a lot more thought put into it than season one did – for good reason. Season one was all about getting myself to actually do the show, and do it regularly. Season two, is going to be about making KieryGeek a little bit closer to epic – which means changes to the set, the format, the frequency, and an introduction to new elements.
I had the idea this afternoon, that in the few weeks I have left of pre-production and with the amount of related thoughts constantly swirling through my mind, I would do a series of blog posts on the preproduction process and things I’m working on.
This month didn’t go as well as I planned for pre-production, but it’s starting to shape back up. I have notes strewn across at least three notebooks, not to mention a to-do list and notes on my computer. I’ve had so many ideas swirling that it’s frustrating and I’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to feasibly have guests on the show without flying them all to my apartment.
Much to my emotional and psychological relief, I finally figured out how I’m going to handle guests – a blend of technology with Google hangouts, individual audio recording, and the magic of editing. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. Preliminary tests seem to work well enough.
I ironed out a sort of production schedule for the future – realizing that one to two people working on producing a weekly show alone with the types of things I’d like to do is going to wear us down pretty quickly. The production value of the last few episodes and especially the last episode of kierygeek dropped because of burnout and other-life-stress which made it impossible for the two of us to make it into the show that we wanted it to be.
So, a new longer schedule should enable us to make it that much better. I’m entertaining the possibility of releasing a straight-out-of-camera, unedited production video in between episodes, but we’ll see. I may just make this a permanent feature on the blog and write notes and things I have in store.
The Olympics-Opening-Ceremonies-5-Hours-Later are calling my attention, so check back for more production notes over the next few weeks!
It was a long bloody battle that lasted until near dawn. The Protectorate of Menoth’s Rainbow League fought bravely against the evil, vile, mean, persnickety forces of Khador, and lost. Darn red freezing robots. 😉
I present this slideshow of the carnage, as a memorial to the brave forces who were fiercely destroyed this morning at 3am. Nicia was taken out in the first turn, to my great displeasure because I didn’t even get to use her sword canon.
[portfolio_slideshow slideheight=300]
Video footage with a synopsis and what-I-wanted-to-do I’m sure will appear on the internet at some point in time. Much like this did.
I’ve been wanting to expand into the realm of photo-manipulation and vector art. I’ve been using Fireworks since 2006, and it’s still by far my favorite, but I recently obtained a copy of Photoshop and Illustrator (and the creative suite, because of Adobe’s cool new subscription thing) and decided that it would be a good idea to acquaint myself with working with them, because if I was able to get them down, I think my digital art would go a lot further.
So this is my first attempt – it’s me with fairy wings (with a “darker color” filter applied) in a field picture that I got from Krappweis on sxc.
Amy tossed and turned. Water was all she could think about but she couldn’t muster the strength to ask. She opened her bleary eyes and looked about the room. She found the cup; and noticed her parents asleep on chairs outside. She reached as far as she could to no avail. Defeated, she closed her eyes. In her mind, viewed the cup coming to her still outstretched arm and felt a splash. Her eyes bolted open; startled to be holding the cup she couldn’t even reach a mere moment ago, warm water dripped down her hand and wrist. Shock and panic began to overwhelm her, she tried to fake calmness as she sipped her water and gently placed the cup down on the bed rail.
A nurse must have come in and given it to me while I had my eyes closed and is probably just around the corner Amy hoped as she peered over the edge to see around the room. No one was there, the door was still shut, there was no sound besides the constant beep of the monitors and her heart beating in ears.
Amy laid back and closed her eyes. She thought of her cold toes and imagined the blankets moving over her feet. When her eyes opened, nothing had changed. She sat up and frustratedly put the scratchy blanket back over her toes and pushed the service button.
—
“Thanks, Sasha” Agent Ryan said as the screen went back into place and the other feeds came back into view. He leaned back in his chair with his pad, spun once and moved towards his desk.
“Amy, honey” Her mom whispered softly lowering herself into a chair by the bed, her father put his hand on her mother’s shoulder and looked down teary-eyed. “I’m so…sorry” Amy managed to murmur. Her parents cried and held her hand as the world faded into black again.
—
Black suit, soft steps, swipe of a card, whir of a door – the room is completely dark but responds to the touch of his finger. “Sasha” he says in a clear voice and a line of blue light makes its way around the circular room. “Agent Ryan Parker” she greeted as warmly as possible for an AI. Lights slowly came on, and images of hospital rooms appeared on a wall to the left. “Your patients are all stable, the doctors reports are on the console” he moved toward the center of the room as his work station lit up – the tablet on the desk awakened with the latest updates. He flipped through the reports scanning for anything abnormal.
An alert started going off – one of the screens to the left lit up. “Sasha, focus on that one” Ryan swiveled his chair to grab a notebook and watched intensely at the feed.
I’m afraid that the honest expression of my most vehement feelings against the things that crush my soul will (and do) make other people feel invalidated. I don’t want that to be, but at the same time, I want to be able to express myself. I don’t know if there’s room for both.
I react so violently inside to the entire concept of spawning. I have no room for children in my life or in my heart. I know myself well enough to know that even (and especially) in the case of an accident it would not be a good thing for me, my personality, or my internal life. I would lose it completely and I might hate the child, which wouldn’t be healthy or in anyone’s best interest on the whole. The idea of “creating” a “family” repels and repulses me. And I’ve spent 10 years of my life practically raising other people’s kids. I can’t do it anymore and keep myself and my sanity.
But I don’t want this completely personal sentiment to make people who have kids and have room in their heart for them to feel bad or less valid.