the sin never sets

[incandescens]

The day was good. Or, well, okay. It seemed a very long day. I blame the whole hour-back thing, or perhaps my flu jab, or maybe just the work. At four in the afternoon, you want to blame something.

Redlines/edits for current project are here. Isn't it astonishing how we manage to smile brilliantly in job interviews and claim that we "want a challenge", "welcome feedback", and "appreciate the opportunity to improve our work"? I may be overly cynical, but I think that's a wonderful moment for the prospective employers to assess how well the prospective employees can bite their tongues and lie. (Not bite their tongues and die, that's an entirely different context, and I've yet to see any centipedes in the vicinity.)

Okay, I'm being cynical.

I know technically that the redlines aren't that bad, but there is still the urge to scream at the monitor and make little wax figures and stick pins in them. "Does not take criticism well." Does it count if you make sure that your communications are all polite, and just do the screaming and vituperation out of earshot?

On a more cheerful -- indeed, a diametrically opposed -- note, am reading Brust's The Phoenix Guard, a blatant and admitted Dumas ripoff in a fantasy setting. It'd make marvellous background material for a Dragon-Blooded campaign for Exalted. I hope somebody uses it as such some time.

---

"Has anyone else noticed the English chauvinism in the novel _Dracula_? Count Dracula and his Transylvanian wives are all portrayed as evil bloodsuckers, but the young English lady the Count transforms into one of the undead is depicted as a pitiable victim and not wicked, though she is preying on innocent young children.
This is because, in Victorian literary tradition, the sin never sets on the British vampire."
(author unknown to me)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And I was thinking here in my happy witless fashion that the day couldn't get any worse. The lowest form of humour, you recall? Yes. Good-night.
-mjj

[ignisfatui.livejournal.com]

Read Willow.

"You could stay."

Now, I hear scraping sounds coming from under my bed. Desperate clawing fic bunnies.

And. It's. Raining.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

[incandescens]

What, you mean Sanzou's probable response to scraping noises coming from under his bed while in a rain-induced bad mood?

Ah, sorry. Couldn't resist it. If anything from my fics inspires something for your fics, all the better, and I will enjoy eventually reading it. If I have given you delight by aught that I have done, etc. (Kipling, iirc.)

[(Anonymous)]

Mmmm, probable response. Take the Laugh Point.

--Beth, too Late at Night.

[space-parasite.livejournal.com]

You should come to California and run Exalted for me!

(The UK is evil anyway (and no, that's apparently not a hoax).)

[incandescens]

I can see it now. Me holding up a sign saying, "Will GM For Money."

Shita wo kamu

[(Anonymous)]

Should I mention that biting one's tongue out is the stock way for the Evil Governor/ Yakuza Boss/ Corrupt Magistrate's Chief Henchman to die in the sword-and-samurai series? Having been taken prisoner and before he can be made to betray his employer, there's a sudden glug sound, blood, well, *glugs* out of the man's mouth, and he falls dead. Kids, do not try this at home. It's immensely painful and it actually takes a very long time to die, but the Japanese bless them think it makes as much sense as that other immensely painful way of dying, cutting your stomach open. (If there's anything to be pleased about in Mishima's vulgar and grandstanding suicide, it's that that high-flown hyper-romantic wasn't able to finish it with the flourishing gesture he wanted- he was going to write the kanji for 'sword' with his blood- because of the surprising discovery that it hurt too much.) (And 'sword' is a very simple two-stroke kanji too, she muses.)
-mjj

[(Anonymous)]

Wax effigies, eh? *beth rubs her shoulder* Ow. So this is why I get odd pains from time to time...