I've had my pretty firesteel knife for a few months now... and I'm still yet to pick a name for her. I know it's a she, but I still haven't figured out a good name for her. I am inclined towards a goddess involving Fire or a feminine name that means fire in some way, but I have no been able to find something that I like the sound of. Anyone have any suggestions?

Looking For Group is offering a plush of Richard, who is both absolutely horrible and so awesome, all rolled into one. Read the comic, or check out the Slaugher the World YouTube video if you don't believe me. Anyhow, they're doing a preorder for the plush right now, and they're only going to order as many as they have preorders for, so if I want one, it needs to be ordered in the next week. I want one, but I probably shouldn't spend the money on it given all the other things that take up my money (things I need, as well as things I don't need, but want and therefore impulse buy).

I'm going to leave it up to you guys. Vote in my poll.

Do I need a Richard Plushie?

* Please only select this option if you intend to actually buy the plushie for me. I will be very sad if someone builds up my hopes and no little plush Dick arrives for me later.

So, I've been spending a lot of time working with Diziara, Spiegel and the USS Takeda Shingen lately, and using this to ramp my way back up to more frequent writing, I'm starting to move forward with another writing project of mine again. This one not taking place in someone else's universe, and if I can keep some sort of focus, I'd consider trying to get published if/when I actually get anywhere with it.

The one thing I'm sorely wanting for lately though is a good beta reader or three. I've had people here and there who were good at it, and I felt like they actually pushed me towards writing better stuff based upon the feedback they gave me, and the questions they asked me. For varying reasons, I've fallen out of contact with all these people, and it's frustrating as I'm starting to write again and failing to have anyone who can give me real feedback.

I've been trying to provoke feedback out of jport lately, as he and I have been talking quite frequently again, but he's not giving me anything better than "it's interesting" and "I'm not good at giving feedback". I know he's capable of the sort of thought processes needed for such feedback, given other conversations I've held with him, but he's either not interested or out thinking himself and crippling the thought process before it can reach me. Either way, it's not panning out.

I do need beta readers though. Anyone out there interested? I'm not sure what I'd be able to do in return, but I am seeking people who are interested in occasionally getting a draft of whatever prose I'm currently hacking away at, and giving me constructive criticism. I figure most of you on my friends list would know what this means, but I've found so many people will claim to understand this concept, then do silly things like say "that's nice" or "that's interesting" and not be able to tell me what they found nice or interesting about it. You like the characters? Why? Are they realistic, do they have distinct personalities? You hate the characters? Is it because you believe they're poorly constructed, or is it because the personality is such that were you to encounter them on the street, you'd be inclined towards punching their lights out? Dialog seem forced? Concepts seem awkward, poorly phrased?

I could easily go on, constructive feedback is something I've found very hard to get because of the number of jackasses out there who claim to be artists and writers, but then throw a fit when someone say anything other than ego boosting positive only feedback. I can't improve if people don't make me aware of the flaws. It's entirely possible that I've probably already noticed at least half of what you might have to mention, but sometimes I'm not sure if these are things that are actually problems to other people, or me being a perfectionist bitch, and other times, I am just not sure what it is that's making me unhappy with my piece and it helps to have another perspective to find the flaws. Also, all drama posted in my journal aside, when it comes to my art and prose, I do not have a weak ego and I understand there is a long way to go from where I am.

At any rate, all that ranting and pleading for beta readers aside, those of you not interested in taking on the task of beta reading, you can still give me some feedback that I'll find useful and get a teaser bit of character introduction from the piece I'm currently working on. I am trying to decide how to reference this character in the descriptive bits. Her given name's Glinda, but she answers to Linda, so which should I actually call her when talking about her outside of dialog? Here's the first bit she's been included in:

I've started constructing a list of music that Diziara would likely listen to. I think she hits me as a punk and metal girl with some opera mixed in for fun (both Klingon and Terran). Since she minored in 20th century Earth History in the Academy, I would assume this would introduce her to most of her earth based music preferences. Anyone have some suggestions for what should be included in her "ideal" playlist? Everything I've decided suits her so far has been tagged dizi soundtrack on last.fm. Anyone have any suggestions on what would continue the established trends?

Is anyone interested in me posting more background work for my Vampire character? I had previously posted some of her background under the tag Jelisaveta here in my LJ, when I was still running the character in the group I built her for, but I hadn't had the right mindset to work with her again until recently. I dug up the notebook I'd started my rough draft of her background in, and I started typing up more of it, and expanding bits that were very much lacking previously. If anyone's interested in reading more of this stuff, please let me know.

I've also previously written about my skateboard courier superhero, Diamond Girl (tag: alara_lynn), but I haven't gotten in the right mind frame to work with her further yet. I suspect it might help to make another run through Snow Crash, since YT was such a heavy influence when building the character.

I also have more work I can do with Diziara, but what I've written for her has gotten so long that I need to finish the website I'm in the process of building for her journal before I can really start sharing that proper, though I have detoured into various "key" events in her life that aren't done in the journal style I've been mostly working with for her. The journal is mildly awkward, as I'm still figuring out how to effectively convey dialog and interaction in a manner that still reads like a journal. I'm usually more dialog heavy, but it's been an interesting challenge to make myself work without the dialog to convey the characters thoughts, emotions and personality. There is so much one can express about a character based upon their choice of words, and actions, that you have to figure out how to convey otherwise when you put everything into a first person journal perspective.

I also have my Serenity RPG character that I've got background working on right now. She's been kind of a challenge because I'm working with a less limited first person on her, and she did start out in Companion training, but I'm having difficulty finding source materials for what's involved in the Companion schooling process. I've been compensating for this so far by focusing on the events in her life that are outside of the Companion training, and glossing over the schooling itself in much the way someone would when they assume the person they're talking to either has a common frame of reference, or at least enough information to be spared the details. Writing dialog for the Browncoat vet she talks to in a dive bar has been fun, I love the colorful language chosen for people on the rim in the Firefly 'verse.

I have a lot of open writing projects currently, and I suppose I can make more of an effort to share more of it if I felt people were actually interested in reading what I had to write. Also, if I can ever figure out how to focus long enough to finish a story to my satisfaction, I would need beta readers before I started submitting it places to publish. First I need to get over the "can't finish anything" hurdle though. I think my problem is I go back and rework stuff too much before I've even got a complete plot line and story laid out. It's one thing to go back and clean up a story once the bulk of it is laid out, but it's another to go back and rework the beginning over and over again without even really making it to the middle.

That horrible Star Trek Mary Sue monstrosity I was waxing nostalgic about recently, that thing is a fabulous example of the rewriting the beginning before even making it to the middle. I had multiple sets of characters who I wrote in, then wrote out, then replaced and switched around. I have whole chunks where I was clearly rewriting while leaving the old mess under where I was rewriting to use as reference for the newer version. It's just a mess. Part of the reason the whole thing is better off forgotten.

I've got a black ink cartridge for my HP printer that suggests I should have installed it somewhere back in 2004. I've had it since I bought the printer because the guy who sold the printer to me said that the cartridge that came with it was a partial cartridge. While I'd done my research on what printer to buy, at the time I hadn't looked into anything else, so I stupidily believed someone at CompUSA would be accurate and truthful about such things. I've had the printer since 2002, I believe, and it's worked beautifully and I've never had to replace the blank ink ever. I've replaced the color cartridge, but that was mostly because either the blue ink dried up or ran out before the other two colors, and I still have the cartridge and only replaced it with a fresh one because I decided to do photo collages for Christmas this last year.

So, does anyone know if the blank ink cartridge I've got sitting in my shelf is likely to work when I put it into my printer on the fateful day that my black ink kicks it?