Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 25

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 Apparently "on top of him" was right where Harry wanted Harris to be. He gets and uncomfortably close look at the hexenwulf's face, including his very unwolflike blue eyes (I looked it up, and this is accurate - healthy adult wolves do not have blue or brown eyes). While he's getting menaced by all those sharpely teeth, Harry reaches under Harris's fur and unclips the wolf belt, causing him to revert to human form. He then kicks Harris in the balls and bangs his head on the ground until he loses consciousness. Brutal, but not excessively so - I'm reminded of the discussion in Cold Days about the different kinds of beatings that there are. This one is meant to make Harris stop being a fucking problem, and it serves the purpose admirably. 

Tera and the Alphas want to kill Harris, even though he's no longer a threat, which is interesting for reasons we'll get to in a minute, Harry is opposed to this on general principles (that would make us the same as them, et cetera) and carries the point through a combination of sheer presence and reminding Tera that they're got wounded, and making sure they don't die is a better use of everyone's time. When Tera backs down, Harry asks if anyone else has a problem with it, which is basically just a dominance display, establishing that the authority he just asserted over Tera extends to the rest of the pack. So, full marks for subtle reinforcement of theme, or at least as subtle as it gets in this series. 

Tera has the uninjured Alphas return to human form, and sends Georgia to talk to their driver while Billy and one of the others (likely Kirby, although he isn't named or described), drag one of the hurt ones out of the alley on Harris's jacket, and Tera just picks up and carries the other, which Harry finds impressive since she (probably she, since the named Alphas otherwise unaccounted for are Andy and Marcy) appears to weigh about 150 lbs, although he may be overestimating because wolves are floof. I also want to stop real quick and appreciate that Harry does exactly zero ogling when Georgia transforms from a big wolf into a naked co-ed. Like, I think we spend more time on what Billy's naked body looks like in Summer Knight. This is especially impressive given that Georgia is pretty close to the center of Dresden's normal attraction spectrum. 

Harry wakes Harris up to question him. Harris (unnecessarily) confirms that he, Denton, and the others are hexenwulfen, but he doesn't know with whom the bargain was made - Denton handled all of that before approaching the rest of the team, presenting it as a way to take down the criminals the law doesn't seem to be able to touch, including and especially Marcone. The plan was to set up the Streetwolves to take the fall for Marcone's murder. It doesn't take a lot to make a wolf themed street gang look like more plausible suspects than a bunch of FBI agents, and it would get a bunch of dangerous criminals of the streets at the same time, never mind that they would have been innocent of this particular murder. 

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Harris describes in detail the addictive nature of the belts, comparing them favorably to cocaine, talking about how great they feel and how uncomfortable it was to not use them, how Benn and Wilson were losing their humanity. After a month off to deflect suspicion, they destroyed MacFinn's circle, because for some reason Denton thought they needed a second fall guy. I think the idea here was probably for MacFinn to go down for it in front of the supernatural community, since the White Council might very well notice that something magical was afoot. 

Harry criticizes this whole scheme as deeply messed up. Harris argues that since they have the power, they have a responsibility to use it, an uncomfortable distorted echo of Harry's thoughts at the end of the previous chapter. Harris confirms that Denton wanted the Streetwolves to kill Harry, and Harry tells Harris to deliver a message to Denton: that he'll be at Marcone's house at moonrise. He also takes a stab at explaining the difference between his own sense of having a responsibility to use his power, and the things Harris justifies with the same sentiment, saying that the hexenwulfen are letting the power use them, rather than the other way around, and that they've become animals. 

When Harris leaves, Tera tells Harry that the hexenwulfen aren't animals, becasue animals kill for food or to defend themselves, not for fun. Leaving aside the fact that apparently Tera has never met a cat, this is interesting given her earlier claim that it was the pack's right and obligation to kill Harris in retribution for his hurting two of the Alphas. I'm genuinely curious where killing as a matter of principle fits into her schema here. I'm pretty sure most animals don't do that either. 

See, I told you I'd do a Dresden Files post. Next post is gonna be a likes and reservations (and things I was fine with) for the whole first season of Wheel of Time. Also if you're caught up on the show, you should check out my fanfic, which diverges in the middle of Episode 5, if you know what I mean. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Insufficient Data - NaNo Follow Up

Fig. 1.1 Words Per Minute of each successive trial. 

This year's NaNo goal was to write 30 handwritten pages of fiction, in the form of 90 second to 10 minute writing sprints, to get a good sense of how these sprints, reminiscent of the writing I used to do while waiting for things to print or upload at my last full time job, really worked for my writing process. The results so far are promising, but ultimately inconclusive, because I only managed to do 26 sprints, comprising some six and a half handwritten pages. As a fraction of the goal, this is the worst NaNo on record, but I learned something, and isn't that what matters? 

Most obviously, as you can see clearly from the first graph there, I got faster as I went on. Writing on a tight-but-unknown time limit is a skill like any other, and with this graph you can literally see me getting better at it over time. This is important. (Yes I know the x-axis isn't labeled. It ought to say "Sprints" or something). I am weirdly into imposing a kind of soft digital Taylorism on myself, and knowing that I can get faster even with not actually that much practice is important. The average words per minute for all 26 trials was 13.87, so aiming to get higher than that every time is reasonable, at least for a while, and when I reach the point where it stops being possible to reliably beat my average if I work at it, that will also be good information to have. 

The biggest problem I discovered in the course of this experiment is that there's no obvious time to spend an unknown amount of time between 90 seconds and 10 minutes writing by hand as quickly as possible. It doesn't fit neatly into your day. There are very few times when you go "Ah, yes, this would be an excellent time to do this". Within such time constraints, being spoken more than very briefly is what the people my partner watches on YouTube would call a "run killer", so I need to either announce that I'm doing it, or find a time when I'm unlikely to be interrupted. The practical upshot of this is that if I want semi-randomized sprints to be a viable writing practice, I need to identify trigger events, circumstances that mean it makes sense to stop (or not start) doing something else and do a sprint before I carry on with my day. 

Before we move onto a slightly more detailed statistical analysis and a couple more graphs, we need to talk about the parameters of this data set, just like if we were doing real science. 

26 sprints (n = 26). Mean length of 5 minutes, 17.92 seconds. Mean word count of 71.92 words. Mean words per minute of 13.87 WPM, with a standard deviation of 3.15. Sprints were sorted into "buckets" based on their length. Bucket 1 is 90 seconds to 2 minutes, Bucket 2 is 2 to 3 minutes, Bucket 3 is 3 to 4 minutes, and so on. To illustrate the severe limitations of this data, here is an accounting of how many sprints are in each bucket. 

Bucket 1: 2
Bucket 2: 5
Bucket 3: 4
Bucket 4: 2
Bucket 5: 5
Bucket 6: 0
Bucket 7: 3
Bucket 8: 4
Bucket 9: 1

Yeah. We had no sprints in the 6-7 minute range. It stands to reason that there might not be as many in Bucket 1, since it's half the size of the others, but Bucket 4 also only had 2, and Bucket 9 only had one. This is not a good data set. There's not enough here, and there are some big holes. I've had a hard time determining how many sprints I'd need for really valid data, but it's at least a thousand. Going ahead and assessing it is largely an intellectual exercise, but we're gonna do it anyway, because I said I would post about it and because maybe we'll learn something about statistical analysis together. 

Fig. 1.2 Unadjusted Averages For Each Bucket in WPM

Behold Figure 1.2, I guess, the bar graph of the unadjusted averages for each Bucket. One of the objectively of this experiment was to figure out the best sprint length, or at least start forming a notion of it, possibly to narrow down even further in subsequent experiments until I find the Ideal Number of Seconds for a timed writing sprint. Ambitious, I realize, but. As you can see here, the 3-4 and 4-5 minute ranges are the only ones with averages over 15, and the 2-3 and 8-9 minute ranges are the only ones below the overall average of 13.87, although 9-10 is close to the line and only has one data point, so we don't know if there's drop-off after 8 minutes or if the 8-9 minute range is Especially Bad for some reason. Our four whole data points for that time range are 14.64 WPM, 12.17, 12.31, and 9.04. That middle pair suggest that Bucket 8's being below average is...legitimate, even though that 9.04 is probably the result of someone interrupting me. We're gonna talk about the 2-3 range in a minute, but first we're gonna look at the other bar graph. 

Fig. 1.3 Averages Without Outliers

The reason Bucket 2 just jumped up by more than a full word per minute is because Bucket 2 contains the only actual outlier in our data set, a 2 minute 56 second sprint in which I wrote only 36 words, coming out to 6.43 words per minute. It's still the only bucket other than 8 that comes out below the average though. Currently. I tentatively predict that with additional data, Bucket 1 will start looking more like Bucket 2, but it's hard to know for sure. Bucket 5 is pretty middle of the road here - 4 Buckets have higher averages, 3 have lower, and Bucket 6 doesn't exist. So it's exactly middle of the road. But it's also massively variable, containing both our highest WPM for a single sprint (19.44 WPM) and our lowest that isn't an outlier (8.55 WPM). These are, by the way, 5 minutes 55 seconds and 5 minutes 58 seconds respectively, so it isn't a question of a substantive difference in length, nor is it a question of being very far apart - these are sprints 13 and 26 respectively. Now, if you look back up at that Figure 1.1, you can see that something happened after #13 - there are no other major dips after that, and #14 is, at 18.56 WPM, the second highest words per minute in this experiment. I don't remember any particular thing happening around then - I didn't date these, and I probably should have, so I can't readily account for it, but it's there in the graph.

At this point there's very little to do other than continue doing as many sprints as I can and try to gather better data. If you're interested in following the progress of this experiment, you can view the spreadsheet here.  You want the tab that just says "1.5-10". And if you want another update when we have something more to talk about, let me know in the comments. 

Next post will be Dresden Files, I promise. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!

I Literally Just Want to Talk About Stepin

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CONTENT NOTE: DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE AND SUICIDAL IDEATION. Also book spoilers, and spoilers for the show through S1:E5. 

I guess I should preface this by saying that I am not okay, and I'm not entirely sure why. You guys, I haven't been this torn up by the death of a fictional character since the first time I watched Fullmetal Alchemist. It's been more than 72 hours and I'm still physically uncomfortable. I'm having nightmares. I feel like I've lost a Warder. It's bad. And I can fully account for why this is hitting me so hard. This has not been the best way to go through finals week. So instead of any kind of useful thoughts or analysis about the show, which I'm sure I'll want to go back and talk about at some point when I'm feeling less inexplicably devastated, we're gonna talk about all the ways that Stepin absolutely didn't have to die. 

First of all let me start by saying for fans of the show who have not read the books that Stepin's reaction to Kerene's death is 100% normal. Warders who outlive their Aes Sedai usually do so by seconds or minutes before managing to die in the process of avenging her death. You'll notice that Stepin tried his best to do exactly that back in Episode 4. Those who are unable to avenge their Aes Sedai, or who manage to survive doing so, are invariably suicidal, usually for years. So we're gonna start with that. Everyone, with the possible exception of Nyneave, as soon as they knew that Kerene was dead and Stepin had survived the battle, knew that he was going to try to kill himself. They knew, and aside from Lan and Nyneave, they apparently didn't care. When Lan brings it up, Moiraine says "Oh, don't worry, he'll make it long enough to return Kerene's ring." because the way most Aes Sedai see it, Stepin's death was a foregone conclusion as soon as Logain killed Kerene. 

That's all by way of saying that literally everyone involved was aware of the risks, and the most basic precaution, having someone keep an eye on Stepin at all times until either he accepted Alanna's offer or something else changed, wasn't observed. Absolutely no one was confused about the fact that he needed to be on suicide watch, and they just... didn't do it. Even Lan didn't until the very end. I'm inclined to give Nynaeve some leeway here, because she isn't as familiar with the mechanics of the Warder bond as literally everyone else involved, and because when she finally realized that something was more wrong than the obvious grief at the loss of someone his relationship with whom he had described as closer than husband and wife or parent and child, she makes like she's gonna follow him and then Liandrin talks to her and she does something else instead. Given that Liandrin has a "trick" of lowkey compulsion, where she can't exactly make people do what she says but she can make them want to do what she says, it's entirely possible that Nyneave's side trip into the garden wasn't entirely voluntary, and of course once Loial found her and told her Rand and Mat were in the city, that was going to take priority, at least in the short term. 

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Also in case a great deal of well-documented common knowledge about how the Warder bond works wouldn't have told again, almost literally everyone there, that Stepin needed supervision and whatever is available in terms of treatment, he tried to communicate this at least twice. Before returning Kerene's ring, when he tells Maksim and Ihvon that it's good that they'll always have each other, and then when he goes to talk to Nynaeve to ask for more goatstongue and he's got a bottle of Unspecified Alcohol with him, which he's openly holding in his hand until she turns around to look, at which point he ostentatiously wiggles it a few times before hiding it behind his back. He can't tell her, but he wants her to know. With that, and what he actually says, he is doing everything in his power to convey to the closest thing he has to a healthcare provider that he is absolutely not going to pull out of this on his own, that left to his own devices he is only going to keep getting worse. (As an aside, I don't think the getting the goatstongue was... entirely premeditated. He had lots of opportunities to kill himself before Lan decided to stay with him. He may have been thinking of it as a contingency in case, y'know, he reached the point of decision and then someone decided to get hovery (which is basically what happened), but I think he did also actually want something to help him sleep. I don't think he decided for sure until almost right before he did it, even though he knew for a long while before that that's the direction things were heading). 

On the subject of which, he was going to Nynaeve, who is a guest in the White Tower, for medical care. Where the hell was the Yellow Ajah? Where were any Greens other than Alanna, who was sort of validly trying to give him space after saying "Hey sorry that the most important person in your life died and in the process basically ripped out your sense of having any reason to exist, want to join my polycule?". (To be clear Alanna wanting to give him space does not excuse Maksim and Ihvon just...vanishing after he melts down Kerene's ring.). Like, even without them, the list of people who knew what was up and didn't have anything better to do was definitely long enough to supervise one guy who wasn't trying that hard, but he should have had access to support from the actual organization with which he was affiliated, and that was...nowhere in evidence. In the books, there are procedures for this situation, although to be fair in the books, the first part of that procedure is that normal ideas of consent where the Warder bond is concerned don't really apply to a Warder who's just lost his Aes Sedai. In the books he would have been re-bonded before he had a chance to sit down. That... it doesn't always work either. Nothing always works. With everything you can do, you lose most of them, because keeping someone alive who doesn't want to be for long enough that they can start to heal is not an easy thing to do, and this isn't like regular suicidality where getting them through this particular crisis likely means you have a minute, means you have more space to try and work on things. It doesn't stop. But you can, you know, respect someone's consent and still not make their first and apparently only responsibility upon returning to the White Tower be to go put something in the fancy ter'angreal right next to a convenient, unfenced ledge very high up in a very tall building,  leaving their friends far enough behind in the process that they wouldn't be able to get to them in time. 

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I don't know, it was weird as hell that we saw literally no other Aes Sedai, and I don't think the primary reason for that was for the sake of neglecting Stepin in order to make sure that, on a narrative level, he had room to do what he was gonna do, but it was even weirder seeing Moiraine and Alanna just kind of hang out in her room like it wasn't even a thing. I don't know where Lan was in the unspecified amount of time between Stepin returning Kerene's ring, which must have happened pretty much immediately, and the last couple of scenes. And to be clear, I know that keeping two people with him at all times wouldn't necessarily have been enough, probably wouldn't have been enough, and that his stated reasons for not becoming one of Alanna's warders had nothing to do with her polycule, his uncertainty about joining it, or Ihvon's obvious discomfort with the idea. So even if there was another Green around, he probably wouldn't have let her do it either, although I do wonder what would have happened if Nyneave had learned the weave. Also why was there still a rack of daggers in his room? They literally couldn't put together the necessary fucks to give to take the literal weapons out of his actual room where he sleeps? I don't know if any of it would have been enough. It usually isn't. But that doesn't make it any less upsetting that for the most part they didn't even try. 

NaNo stats have been compiled and scienced, so the next post, sometime in the coming week, will have graphs! Might or might not do a real Episode 5 post. Will do another Dresden Files post sometime in the soonish I promise. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Wheel of Time TV Series Episodes 1-4 - Likes and Reservations

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 The following contains detailed discussion of, and by extension massive spoilers for, the first four episodes of the Wheel of Time TV show, and potentially the entire book series. I am not a reviewer - even if I wanted to tell you what I thought without spoilers, I don't have the training for it. You have been warned. 

What I Liked:

• The racial diversity (although see the reservations section for some complications). It's not really clear from the books whether anyone in Wheel of Time is supposed to be white except the Cairhienens and some of the indigenous Shandarans). I personally pictured Two Rivers folk as having about Madeline Madden's coloring or a little lighter, and while I would have expected a bit more homogeneity than is on display here, given how long the Two Rivers has been isolated, but that's clearly less of a thing in the show in any case. 
• The girls (well, mostly Egwene) being candidates for the Dragon Reborn. It was never actually that much of a mystery in the books - The Eye of the World is mostly from Rand's perspective, for one thing. The point was never to keep readers guessing, it was to draw out elements of character and worldbuilding through their reactions to the uncertainty, and adding Egwene to the mix is a delightful complication to that. It would be incredibly convenient for Moiraine if the Dragon Reborn were a young women, eager to learn, willing to be guided, easy to bring into the culture and priorities of the White Tower, and with no reason to fear the Red Ajah or the taint on Saidin. It gives a whole different tone to that first channeling lesson. 
• Mat's backstory. I know this is a controversial one. I've seen more than one post on social media mention the "character assassination of Abell Cauthon". My thing is, first of all, mostly in the one episode in which he's appeared, Abell is passive. We know he's failing to prevent the abuse Mat and his sisters experience, but that's about all we know. More importantly, though, this backstory makes Mat make sense. It gives a reason for some of his more irritating behaviors in the early books, which will hopefully make him more sympathetic, and explains as well his anxious hovering over Rand ("Do you have a headache? I think I have some willowbark in my saddlebags.") although we haven't seen as much of that in the show so far. Also gives him a reason to be good with kids. 
• Logain. Everything. The hair, the accent, the sincerity. Just perfect. Beautiful. Also what he says about Nyneave at the end of Episode 4 is a reference to something Siuan said about Rand in The Great Hunt. 
• Alanna's canonical poly-fi triad with her two warders, and the whole interaction between Rand and Dana where she thinks he and Mat are involved. Although I would love to see that assumption repeated by someone who isn't a darkfriend. 

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  The early establishment of Lan and Nyneave's relationship. We don't actually see much of their time together in the early books, especially their non-squabbling time, and Nyneave's irritability is less frustrating when we're not in close third from her perspective. 
  
• The greater religious diversity. Everyone here still is clearly part of the same religion, just like in the books, but we see more culturally specific practices in the show (Lan's thing in Episode 4, the added religious connotations of Bel Tine. disagreements about the nature of the Wheel (Logain and Moiraine), and a clearer sense of how the Way of the Leaf connects to the setting's religion. More generally, I liked Ila's articulation of how the setting's particular view of reincarnation can make very, very long-term thinking seem reasonable. 
• Moiraine having had a dog, and dogs reacting badly to Owyn. I'm all for getting rid of the weird "cats are female, dogs are male" binary from the books, although I hope there are still cats at the Tower. 
• Moiraine being unconscious for a solid chunk of the first 3 episodes, rather than arbitrarily refusing to answer questions. In the 90s, "wizard mentor refuses to explain anything", was practically mandatory, but it was always irritating and it hasn't aged well. 
• Mat's younger sisters getting low-key adopted by the al'Veres after he leaves, rather than having Egwene's book-canon younger sisters established and then never mentioned again after The Great Hunt. This is neater. 

What I Have Reservations About

• The Whitecloaks. It seems like they are going for a much less nuanced, more unambiguously evil version of the Whitecloaks, and within that context, replacing Byar with Valda makes a lot of sense, but I don't love the decision to make them more straightforward bad guys. I don't know how they're gonna handle Galad with this, and that makes me nervous because he's an easy character to get wrong. I have fucking questions about how they managed to capture and burn an Aes Sedai. This is not a thing they can really do in the books, much as they might like to, "live witches being notoriously difficult to hang". With Byar not so far having made an appearance, I don't know if they're just not including Dain or what. Clearly this show isn't hurting for queer rep, but I'd like to see them improve upon the queer rep that already exists as well. Actually not a bigot!Bornhald Sr. (or massive hypocrite!Bornhald Sr.) is...a thing.
• The tune Fain whistles also being in Shadar Logoth. It was not adequately legible for people who haven't read the books, and then it's not reinforced in anything resembling a timely manner. 
• The handling of black characters whose names are not Nynaeve al'Meara. Between Fain, Valda, and Dana, the villains so far are skewing black, and the black characters are skewing villainous. (I am not counting Egwene, for the time being, because I honestly have no idea if Indigenous Australians count as black for these purposes). Yes, Liandrin is the whitest person in existence, but she hasn't been revealed as a darkfriend yet. Fain is immediately sketch, and Dana and Valda respectively attempt and commit murder in the episodes in which they're introduced. Meanwhile on the non-villain side, Karene is the only one of the Aes Sedai whose death is timed so that she can't be healed. (The magical reversibility of death in this setting essentially operates on the 5 second rule). And then there's the thing with Perrin. 

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  The thing with Perrin. Let me start this part by saying that I have seen what Rafe had to say about it after, and I am not reassured.  I have no idea what could happen at this point to make Laila's death not a clear cut and frankly rather ham-fisted case of fridging. I'm also not sure I like where the show is going with Perrin's character if this is where they're starting. Rafe talked in an AMA about needing an "iconic moment of violence" for Perrin, and "whether he'll choose the axe or the hammer", but that was never really the thing in the books. Perrin's difficulty wit violence in the books is about rejecting the false dichotomy, which he has to do like three times before he can make it stick. It's about learning to apply his normal restraint and deliberation to violent situations, rather than hesitating until he either has no options left or is too caught up in the moment to make good decisions. But I must emphasize that even in the latter case, Perrin never just impulsively hurt someone he cared about. He was constantly worried that he would, but he never actually did, and that's kind of important. I have...concerns, also, about the big introductory moment for the only black man in the core cast being the brutal murder of his (white) wife. I know the going theory is that Laila was a darkfriend, but that's not enough on it's own unless maybe if Perrin's wolfbrother power set is being expanded to include a very accurate ability to sense who is and isn't a darkfriend. Even then I'd have concerns. I shan't say there's no way to make this work, but I will say that I can't see one right now. (I am saying my thoughts about the handling of black characters despite the fact that I am very much not black. For reactions of some actual black people, I enthusiastically recommend checking out Everyday Negroes's series of reaction videos on Youtube). 
• The rewording of the Three Oaths. Changing "man" to "person" in the second Oath is fine, and get's rid of the unused loophole for Ebou Dari marriage knives and the like. I'm more concerned about removing "except against darkfriends or shadowspawn" from the third Oath. This is a ways down the line, but it means they're going to have to either exclude or substantially change the circumstances of Elaida assaulting Egwene with the One Power in The Gathering Storm. She was only able to do that because she genuinely believed Egwene was a darkfriend. With the new wording, she'd have to believe her life was actually in immediate danger. 
• Are we gonna get Elyas at any point?
• The group sent to capture Logain. Why were only half the usual number of Sisters sent, and why only three strong enough to to maintain a shield. Why weren't the weaker Aes Sedai working in a circle to take a turn containing Logain, take some pressure of the others? All my thoughts here are, of course, predicated on the assumption that nothing is different from the books that we haven't already been told about, which is unlikely. It could have been bad intel concerning Logain's strength in the Power or indeed whether he could channel at all. Galina is currently Highest of the Red, so it's possible she was hoping to get Karene, Alanna, or even Liandrin (in the latter case, this would be some kind of intra-Black Ajah power grab, but that's a thing that happens). It's also possible that Galina, or Liandrin, was hoping for a pretext for Logain's extrajudicial gentling. In the books, this would have been going against Ishamael's orders, but the opening scene suggests that in this turning of the Wheel, the Vileness may have been allowed to continue longer. Heck, for all I know, people could have started getting out of the Bore a skosh earlier, and Galina, or Liandrin, could be taking her orders from Lanfear, who would certainly want a potential rival to Lews Theren gotten out of the way with as little fuss as possible. 
• The Aes Sedai being more overtly classist. I guess they're getting rid of the thing where girls who learn to channel on their own tend to just like, die. Which is fair. That one's actually and 80s trope, mostly, and the books never really did anything with it. But unless they're changing the thing where there's been an increasing shortage of channelers (which would raise more questions than it answers), I can't think why they would turn away someone who did exactly what, in the books, the Aes Sedai insist is the proper thing for a young woman who can channel to do. 
• Putting the Ajah colors on the tings. It's a cool visual, but there are multiple points in the books where Accepted are told to let themselves be mistaken for Aes Sedai on the basis of their things, and if the rings include Ajah colors, then Accepted, who have not yet chosen an Ajah, can't wear them. I can totally see Siuan giving the girls the rings early (and this could be interesting as far as Nynaeve claiming to be Green and then choosing Yellow), but it's untidy. 

That's what I got for now. I might post updates as new episodes come out, time permitting, and if not I'll do something about Season 1 when the whole thing is out. Expect a post about how Nano went sometime this weekend or early next week. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Thing!

NaNo Goals 2021

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We're more than halfway through NaNo at this point, of course, but while I've been more or less totally radio silent, I am doing something. Longtime readers are of course aware that I don't try to write 50,000 words in November. As you can see from the progress bars, 50,000 words is my fiction writing goal for this entire year. Instead, I set a goal as a number of handwritten pages to complete during November. 

This year, the goal is 30 pages, a bit more than my average over the 3 years that I've been approaching NaNo this way. We're also adding a little bit of a twist: I will be doing those 30 pages entirely in 90 second to 10 minute randomized, timed writing sprints, so that I can get some information on how well those work for me. The post on how NaNo went this year is likely to be as late as this post saying what I'm even trying to do, and it will involve graphs. You have been warned. 

I am also making a small change to one of this year's other goals: I originally defined "movies" as movies I have never seen before, but I am expanding the space of what counts as a movie to include movies I have only seen once, and movies I haven't seen in 12 or more years. Depending on how this goes, I might similarly loosen the criteria on what counts as reading a book (as opposed to a reread), or I might incorporating a certain amount of re-watching into my goals for next year. 

Freelance work continues at an all time high - it's actually gotten more intense since the last time I mentioned it, and I have no real expectation that things will calm down before mid December. I will try to post something about the Wheel of Time (excited!) show before Season 1 is actually over, but who the heck knows. Until we meet again - be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 24

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Harry is thoroughly freaked out that his magic didn't work, and more frightened by that than he is by the active three-way battle with which he is currently sharing a room. He's concerned, not unjustifiably, that he somehow seriously damaged his ability to use magic, with the way he overextended himself under the influence of the stimulant potion. This is a threat not only to his livelihood and immediate safety but to his identity. Being a wizard isn't about being good at magic, it's about what you do with it, how you choose to exercise that power, but without his powerful magic, there would be no choice to make, and he wouldn't be a wizard anymore. Interestingly, he doesn't express the worry that he does in Dead Beat, that one or more failed spells could erode his belief in his ability to cast, creating a cyclical loss of power. Of course, in Dead Beat, the initial problem is a phobia, not magical burnout, and that may make a difference. 

Marcone and Henricks manage to get into a truck and smash their way out of the building with it, all the white shooting at the Streetwolves and the Feds, who are in any case far more interested in fighting each other than in anything Marcone is doing. Denton is still in human form, giving directions to Benn and Wilson, but Harry catches sight of his wolf belt. 

There's a scrabbling sound, something trying to dig under the wall, and when a pay comes through, Harry, who is having an intense kind of day, smashes it with the wrench, until he puts his head near the hole to make threats, giving Tera the opportunity to tell him to knock it off and let the Alphas rescue him. He lets the get back to digging, but a minute later he hears fighting on the other side of the hole, and Tera doesn't answer when he asks what's going on. But this point, Denton has killed Lana the lycanthrope, the one who was chanting "kill him" when Harry first encountered the Streetwolves. I don't think the similarity between "Lana" and "Lara" is a coincidence here. The former, with her predatory instincts and facility in calling up the aggressive energy of the pack, very much feels like an abortive initial attempt at the latter, and thank goodness Butcher waited four books after this one to try and write Lara for real. Fool Moon has some deeply troubling things to say about female sexuality, even if it's already doing noticeably better than Storm Front. Tera and Susan, both "good guys" (and interestingly, both women of color - I am not sure what to make of this aspect of it, if anything), enjoy being the recipients of sexual desire, and are willing to use their bodies to get what they want. And that's apparently fine. But Lana and Benn aren't content to be objects of desire - they want openly and intensely. And the narrative condemns them as villains for it, and then kills them. 

On the subject of which, as the battle hits a lull, Benn starts pressuring Denton to shift, trying to leverage a combination of sexual desire, bloodlust, and addition to make him do it. He's holding out pretty well, until Parker comes shambling back out of the shadows. Such a direct threat is apparently his breaking point. He and Benn both shift, and then they, along with Wilson, kill parker in just the worst way. They eat him. It's bad. 

Harry absolutely does not want to be around any more of this, and starts widening the hole from his side until he can squeeze through. Outside, he finds three Alphas and a naked Tera surrounding wolf-form Harris, with two other alphas injured on the ground. This is the first time we see the attack pattern that the Alphas use at least through Small Favor, where they flank their opponent and attack one at a time, without committing themselves, forcing their prey to turn around and around dodging and trying to hit any one of them without leaving themself open to a more serious attack from behind by one of the others. 

Tera tells Harry to run, to get away while he an and help MacFinn, letting her and the Alphas cover his retreat. Harry responds that she and her pack should also leave, since the other hexenwulf feds are on the way, but Tera's not going anywhere while two of the kids are down. It would mean abandoning them, which she would never countenance. Harry, for his part, isn't willing to let anyone else get hurt on his behalf tonight. He is absolutely out of fucks to give, and hits Harris with the wrench. Once. Harris takes it out of his hands pretty easily, leaving Our Hero unarmed and virtually powerless against a giant wolf monster. Again. 

It's been an extra intense couple of weeks with my freelance gigs, or this would have gone up days ago. It's got a couple more non-reread posts brewing, but the next post, in hopefully a bit less than a week, will almost certainly be Fool Moon Chapter 15. Stay tuned, and remember to be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

2021-2022 Eeveeyear Goals

Between the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 Eeveeyears (an approximation of the academic year, starting on October 1st), I doubled the number of things I was tracking, adding rereads, blog posts, and pages read to the previous year's books read, word count, and handwritten pages. The formermost was based on the fact that while rereading is easier for me than reading new books, it isn't actually less important to my writing process or general well-being, just differently important, so it made more sense to track rereading separately, rather than either disregarding it entirely (which disincentives doing it at all), or combining rereads with new reads, which is functionally a disincentive to reading new books. The other two were added to more fully capture both what I was doing (reading books, some of them long, and writing blog posts), and what I wanted to be doing (the above, without feeling like it wasn't a good use of my time, which it did when blog posts only counted towards handwritten pages and longer books took more time than shorter ones without contributing more to any of the accomplishments I was tracking). This... worked pretty well. While I once again didn't reach any of my goals, I did more in each of the original three categories in absolute terms (9 more books, 1338 more words, 23 more handwritten pages), and I feel like the additional categories did what I wanted them to do. I made time for rereading, and I got almost twice as many blog posts done in 20-21 as I did in 19-20. Including pages read helped me feel less like I was wasting time when I read longer books, but not as much as I'd hoped. It doesn't compensate effectively for the fact that very long books are often things like tabletop game manuals or textbooks - dense, concentration-intensive books that I can't get through quickly or multitask at all. 

In relative terms, I actually did worse on two of the metrics that applied both years. 213 pages out of 286 is only 74.6%, compared to the previous year's 191 out of 250, which is 76.4%. Similarly, 16,060 words is a smaller percentage of 22,096 than 14,722 is of 20,000, 72.7% compared to 73.6%. Only in my reading goal did I manage relative improvement as well as absolute. 87 books out of 111, 78.4%, compared to the previous year's 73/100. These first two are not a huge surprise, as the goals for the past year were set deliberately high - I can less readily account for how well I did with the reading, although some part of it might be attributable to having a couch to sit on, readier access to my book boxes, and half as many talkative housemates. 

I didn't end up with as much useful information about time spent as I would have liked, since the 10 and a half months during which I did not have a device capable of running my time tracking app overlapped with both years. While I will not commit such incomplete data to paper, I will say that the amount by which I fell short of my writing time goal in 2020-2021, compared with the amounts by which I fell short of my word count, page count, and blog goals is not adequately accounted for by a single month's missed time tracking. My writing goals, and in particular my fiction writing goal, were set far too low for the good of either my creative development or my professional aspirations. It is for this reason that, in defiance of any reasonable expectations that the previous two years' evidence might support, I am setting my 2021-2022 fiction writing goal to 50,000 words. 

Having once established that I am not writing enough, this may come as something of a surprise, but I am also lowering my blog post goal, from 75 to 60. Please don't worry. If I get anywhere near reaching that goal, you'll still get at least as many posts as you did this past year. The fact is that the need to produce blog posts was routinely a sticking point in my task rotation, owing partly to their being so many steps involved, and partly to the fact that everything except the Dresden Files reread is like, hard. One of my non-quantifiable goals for this year is to figure out the combination of lowered barriers and particularized goal-setting which will allow me to consistently produce advice columns, craft posts, book reviews, and Wheel of Time reread posts, without exhausting myself or losing days of productivity struggling with a single post. At any rate the draft by hand, then it up on the laptop routine will necessarily be disrupted a little, because I don't currently have a working laptop. We're looking at some combination of typing things up on a library computer, and typing things up on my phone and using the library to format and add photos. 

My 2020-2021 goals for pages written, words written, and books read were set at 150% of what I accomplished in 2019-2020. For this year, for the two goals that are entering their third year, and that I did not just abruptly and drastically increase, I averaged the previous two years' results and multiplied that by 125%, producing goals lower than last year's, but higher than I have so far actually managed to accomplish. This may still be too high, I don't know. Next year, I shall be able to play around with rates of increase, and then we'll see what's what. (I am well aware that my annual goals can't just keep going up forever, perpetual growth is a capitalist myth, but I have good reason to believe that I could be accomplishing considerably more than I am, and I don't know where the limit on that actually is. This is partly my way of feeling it out). The goal for pages read us once again based on the goal for books read, although using a more realistic 375 pages per book, rather than last year's 350. 

So now I think it's time to talk about the profusion of additional progress bars over there on your right. I've added a shitton of new goals. A few are to better capture additional angles of work I was already tracking, like fanfic chapters and words of nonfiction. I was already writing fan fiction, and counting it towards my fiction word count, but I hope that this additional metric will better allow me both to maintain regular updates and to balance it with my original fiction. Similarly, I was already writing nonfiction, in the form of blog posts and freelance assignments, which were tracked to some extent by blog posts and handwritten pages, but I hope by tracking the actual number of nonfiction words to get a better sense of how much of my writing-specific time and energy these activities consume, and to assess whether there's any validity to my anxiety that my blog posts are too short. The goal of 15,000 words is somewhat arbitrary - this is more about seeing where I end up than getting anywhere in particular, but it provides a decent basis for comparison. 

My reading time goal has been reduced from 1200 hours to 1000, because I asked around and most of the working writers I know are reading and writing at about a 1:1 ratio, not a 6:5 ratio.

All but one of the other goals are related to things I was already doing, want to do more of, and feel are worthwhile, but that I didn't feel like I could justify spending the time when they didn't contribute anything to the damn spreadsheet. These can be divided into three categories: tabletop roleplaying games, video games, and non-book media consumption. 

My partner is a tabletop game game designer, and I'm… not, but I like tabletop gaming, and spending most of ones free waking hours with someone who does them professionally makes that more salient than it otherwise might be. There's also a tabletop RPG system I've been wanting to write for like, a decade now. And I finally last year found a system that should allow me to run a campaign based on my Actual Favorite Book Series, so I'm trying to get that set up. And there's another, much more involved campaign that I've been trying to get fully prepped for years now. I have five metrics for this one: words written (on my own system, or campaign and setting notes or homebrew for either of the campaigns), hours spent (counting all time spent playing or developing, and half the time spent reading), pages read (of game manuals or similar), elements designed, and macroelements/subsystems designed. An element would be like, one feat in D&D, or one dot of a Contract in Changeling the Lost, while a macroelement might be the whole Contract, or a feat tree, but might also be like, all the combat rules. Finalizing all the feats or spells in the game would also constitute a macroelement, even if it contained feat trees that had already been counted. Having a separate count for pages of game manuals read is the big thing I'm adding to try and make the time it takes to actually cover-to-cover a game manual worthwhile. Pages of game manuals read also count towards pages read, and the books themselves will be included in the general count. 

"Video games" here mostly means my efforts to catch up on the Pokemon games (I got through most of Moon when it came out, but otherwise haven't completed a Pokemon game since Platinum), finishing Breath of the Wild, and completing my attempt at a 100% run of Majora's Mask. If I am able to obtain a Switch, PS4, or PS5 this year, my horizons on this front will broaden considerably. I have only two metrics here: time, which should be self-explanatory, and orbs, which is a shorthand for small-but-significant units of progress as appropriate to the game. Catching a Pokemon is an orb (in the regular games, not in Let's Go), and so is beating a gym leader. Beating a shrine in Breath of the Wild, getting a mask in Majora's Mask, or beating a dungeon in any Zelda game would all count. Beating an Elite Four member for the first time, or on a rematch when their team has changed, would count, but if I white out and have to start over, re-beating the ones I already got past would not. In Jak and Daxter, power cells would count, but precursor orbs, despite the name, would not, because they are too numerous and often obtained more than one at a time. Mobile games do not count for time or orbs. 

In the past two years, I've had a hard time keeping up with my RSS feed, much less catching up on and incorporating new blogs and YouTube channels. Part of that is just, y'know, have you seen the past two years? But part of it is that incentive thing again. Reading blog posts counts towards my reading time, but that's it. YouTube doesn't count at all, so from the perspective of my metric-obsessed little brain, it's wasted time. And the same for movies and TV shows, both of which are kind of important for my mental health and creative process. 

The last goal here is walking, which is measured in kilometers because I'm using Pokemon Go to track it. This is kinda like the nonfiction word count. I walk a lot, like several hours every day except during the very hottest and coldest parts of the year, and I do a lot of hard-to-track word, like planning and talking out my ideas, while walking, so distance walked is functioning as a sort of proxy for time spent doing the parts of my work that don't otherwise produce a measurable result. 

So here is the full list of my goals for the coming year:

• Books Read - 105 (includes non-rereads over 12.5k in any medium)

• Pages Read - 39,375 (includes audiobooks, does not include rereads)

• Rereads - 80

• Reading Time - 1000 Hours

• Handwritten Pages - 253

• Words of Fiction - 50,000

• Words of Nonfiction - 15,000

• Fanfiction Chapters - 25

• Blog Posts - 60

• Writing Time - 1000 Hours

• Tabletop Game Subsystems - 20

• Tabletop Game Elements - 200

• Tabletop Game Words Written - 8000

• Tabletop Game Pages Read - 2000

• Tabletop Game Time - 300 Hours

• Orbs - 300

• Video Game Time - 200 Hours

• Blog Posts Read - 365

• YouTube Videos Watched - 365

• TV Episodes Watched - 200 (does not include rewatching)

• Movies Watched - 24

• Walking - 2500 km

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 23

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Harry figures he's basically dead, but then Marcone and Hendricks show up, in what would feel like one hell of a coincidence if their impending arrival hadn't been announced at the beginning of the previous chapter. Hendricks has a very large gun, one Marcone is pretty sure will do enough damage to overcome the accelerated healing. Parker would really rather kill Dresden and, y'know, not back down in the face of Marcone's threats. Harry can see him struggling with the violent spirit within him, but that hard-won self control wins out, and he backs off. 

Marcone describes how Harley MacFinn called him, blamed him for damaging the circle, and made threats. He gets a little closer to acknowledging that he's out of his depth, saying that his parents weren't in a position to leave him anything, much less silver. This is one of the only concrete pieces of Marcone's backstory we get, excepting his history with the Becketts. It isn't a huge surprise that Marcone's parents were poor, but it's interesting to have it confirmed. It's also interesting that when he speaks of them he says "God rest their souls". This suggests at least a modicum of fondness and respect for his family of origin, and that he's at least not deeply averse to ideas of religion. The surname "Marcone" is Italian, and it seems likely that he would like people to believe he's Catholic, but since "John Marcone" is not the name he was given at birth (confirmed in "Even Hand" in Brief Cases), it wouldn't surprise me if both these aspects of his presentation are merely part of the "movie monster but better" image he's been cultivating since attaining his current position. 

He offers Harry the contract again, and adds that, to sweeten the deal, he will arrange for CPD to take the pressure off of Murphy. Harry seriously considers this. In a rare moment of insight, he observed that Murphy is still his friend, then corrects himself, deciding instead that he is still her friend, thereby reflecting at least a vague awareness that she's the one being awful here. It's still Marcone trying to hire him though, so of course he's not actually going to do it. He tries to use magic to throw tools at everyone, but he gets is a half-hearted wiggle and a splitting headache for his trouble. This is unusual. Harry runs out of magical batteries plenty of times in the series, but he usually isn't caught quite so off guard by it. I'm guessing this is an aftereffect of the potion, or at least that showing away while under it's influence drained him in ways that he can't usually accomplish without losing consciousness. 

Parker objected strenuously to Harry's leaving with Marcone under any circumstances, and that gives Harry an idea. He asks Marcone for a pen, and when Marcone expresses understandable surprise, goes so far as to say explicitly that he'll sign. Parker, as Harry had hoped, is not having this, and goes after Hendricks with the tire iron. Hendricks starts shooting, and Harry uses the chaos as cover to run for the door. I think there's probably an interesting AU to be had in a world where Parker kept it together and Harry had to go through with signing. I've been getting back into doing fan fiction, sk I might even take a stab at writing it at some point. 

Outside, Harry is immediately confronted by Agents Denton, Benn, and Harris of the FBI. Denton tells the others that they can't let Harry get away, and they shift, revealing themselves as hexenwulfen. Harry, very sensibly, goes right back inside, and when they try to get in after him, Hendricks shoots at them through the door. So now it's a three way fight, two sides of which want to kill Harry. Our Hero does the smart thing and, grabs a wrench, and heads for the shadowy back of the room, where he hopes no one will notice him while he tries to think of a way to get out of this in one piece. 

My Laptop Died

More specifically, my laptop was killed. By my cat. She peed on it. Yeah. The odds of successfully saving it are low. Honestly at this point I'd take getting the files off it as a win, but even that is gonna take time and money which I do not currently have. 

I can type the posts up on my phone, but if there's a way to properly add and caption photos on mobile, I haven't found it yet, so actually posting them will require that I get to the library or borrow someone else's computer. I won't use pictures without crediting them, and social media doesn't like it when my posts don't have pictures. (The above is a picture I took myself of a wild raspberry plant in my yard). 

The post for Fool Moon Chapter 23 is done, and has been for a while. It will be posted sometime this week. In early October, you'll still get the usual year in review post and the new goals for the 2021-2022 Eeveeyear. If you want me to get back to a more reliable schedule, this would be a great time to consider supporting the Patreon. 

Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 22

Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Harry wakes up in the Full Moon Garage, bound hand a foot with duct tape. Despite the restraints, his wounds have been treated, he's getting an actual blood transfusion, and there's a blanket over him. Human blood suitable for transfusion, especially O-, which this must be unless the lycanthrope power set includes blood typing by scent, is expensive and kind of a pain to steal, especially compared to saline, which would have worked just as well here, so either Parker keeps blood on hand to treat his own people's injuries, or he keeps it on hand because the consumption of blood is part of what feeds the spirits to which they play host. I think both possibilities are reasonably supported by the text. Parker is an actual alpha wolf, a provider and protector to his pack, not the violent, hypermasculine stereotype perpetuated by the vast majority of urban fantasy series that actually focus on werewolves. 

Harry's probably in better condition than he has been since leaving MacFinn's house, since the last person to patch him up didn't replace any blood or fluids. But he doesn't have any way to make a circle, and without one he can't work magic delicate enough to get out of the duct tape. At this point we're reminded that his father was a stage magician, with the new detail that he had an actual white rabbit, I would just like to note here that this means Harry's early childhood was traveling the country with his father was also spent in close proximity to a live rabbit which, as far as I can recall, is never mentioned outside of this chapter. He was like, six when his father died - did he really not have any feelings about being separated from the bunny? Or did the state of Missouri actually allow him to take it with him into foster care? In any case, Harry learned some tricks from his dad, including how to escape from various restraints (although not, as we learned in Storm Front, from handcuffs). It takes some time and wiggling, but he's able to get his arms free, and get started on his legs, before he hears people coming and has to get back under the blanket before they notice he's escaping. 

It's Parker and Flat Nose, the latter of whom wants to know why they fixed up Dresden's injuries instead of just shooting him. Apparently it's because Marcone wants to see Harry, which is new information and seriously Marcone if you could just be a little less ambitious and a little more straightforward about what you want, you might actually be able to work with Harry. Flat Nose is pretty dismissive of "not bothering Marcone" as a priority, and question Parker's fitness to lead the Streetwolves if he's gonna be all cautious and reasonable and aware of long-term consequences. Apparently Flat Nose would prefer the hypermasculine stereotype to the real thing, and he hints that Parker used to embody that stereotype a lot more closely. Parker does something violent that we don't see, and very calmly explains that if Flat Nose challenges Parker again, Parker will rip his heart out. 

Photo by Natalino D'Amato on Unsplash

Harry would like to resume his escape attempt, and he can't do that if Parker's gonna keep babysitting him until Marcone shows up, so he tries his hand at antagonizing Parker, hoping to get him to go get a baseball bat or something, leave the room for a second. Parker, unfortunately, is hard to antagonize, and he laughs off Harry's first few attempts, confirming in the process that the moon plays a role in lycanthropic accelerated healing. What are the lycanthropes? How do they work? Anyway, eventually Harry starts poking at Parker's insecurities about getting older and losing control of the pack, and that does work. But the plan falls apart when, instead of leaving the room to get a weapon, Parker just picks up a tire iron and swings it at Harry's head. 

This was a short chapter. Expect the next one in probably a couple days. Wheel of time posts are on hiatus until I find an approach that doesn't take 10+ hours per section. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!