Give me a second to get to the title, it doesn't mean what you think it does. 
I missed Monday this week, and nearly missed today too. I don't have anything coherent or clever to say today, so you're getting flash-fic, and probably not all that Well Written flash fic. It will also be without the accompanying picture, because it is a)inappropriate and b)of an actual person and that makes me feel vaguely creepy even if it is a publicity shot.
I'll explain the title after the fic, bear with me.

It's all Kate's fault. 
Well, any number of things are Kate's fault. The creepy doll in Jenna's closet. The hole in her entryway wall. The perpetual poisoning of her streaming video cue. Most of college, if either of them are being honest. 
This particular bit of Kate's fault is...
See, it started as something simple and fun. They both use the same pin-board program online, and when it starts letting you send people things...well. Jenna sent Kate something Kate would be interested in (a heard of starfish devouring a dead animal) and Kate sent Jenna a half-naked man sprawled over a car. And Jenna didn't mind that. It was a publicity still from a program she rather liked, and he was a decent looking guy (shush it) and it was a nice car. She maybe felt a little strange opening it in public, but despite the fact it was...racy, it wasn't actually bad. 
Jenna sent her back a baby octopus wearing a top-hat and let it go. 
But Kate is Kate, and she knows. So the next week there's another picture. Same actor, different still. He seems to consistently lose his shirt when he's around a camera. Jenna sends her back a picture of some vaguely creepy sea-creature.
It goes on like this for so long Jenna stops thinking of it as a thing. It's not every week. They're both busy--Kate is a research biologist this year (some people are too smart for their own good) and Jenna is steadily crawling her way up the ladder of tv-writers. It's not as glamorous as people assume. 
It's maybe a year after the random sending of pictures when she meets Kate's favorite subject. There's a really awkward three seconds where she has to strenuously remind herself that is not an appropriate opening anecdote when meeting someone you may have to work with someday (she's gotten on the writing board at a studio he's currently working with). She settles for an easy smile and a hand-shake. 
Kate has a glorious amount of fun, with the whole 'my best friend is actually working in Hollywood' thing over the next couple of years. Jenna doesn't mind. There was a point in their lives where she had a sort of glorious amount of fun with the details of Kate's life. It's why they're friends.
Men of Nature is when it becomes a problem. 
It's not the best show she's ever worked on. The lines are frequently ridiculous, and the actors are...well. They're actors. There's probably a reason writers have a low opinion of people who are paid to be pretty. And Jenna doesn't. Or she tries not to. It's one of those manly looking program that basically floats on the fact the main actors are stupidly attractive and have very little shame about crying on camera. 
It's a steady paycheck and while it may not be Shakespeare it's certainly not the worst thing on TV.
They're three seasons in when they shake everything up, replace half the show regulars(one of them with Kate's favorite subject) and tell the whole world they're taking it in a new direction. And maybe the new direction was her idea, and she's just been handed a head-writer credit on a silver platter...none of that was supposed to mean she had to do interviews with the actors. But she does them without complaint because the studio thinks it makes them look better to have a young woman on stage as their lead writer. 
If she sort of constantly sticks it to them because she's the only one that's nobodies business but hers. 
They're on a talk-show this time. Jenna, and the twelve-year-old who plays the damaged kid brother (alright, he's twenty, and she's only ten years older than he is, but he acts like an infant) named Micah, and Joe. His name's not actually Joe, but she calls him Joe in her head (which is also Kate's fault and she's not ever explaining that to anyone ever). The Green Room is nice, all stuffed couches and pretty lights. Micah sprawls like he's waiting for his adoring public to find him, clear across the other couch with one arm thrown over his head in careful disarray. 
Joe doesn't particularly like being on camera as himself, so he's pacing around the room like a caged lion. She gave up on trying to make him feel better ages ago. It didn't help, and she avoids talking to him when she can. He's nice, and professional, and she's got a crush the size of a Aussie football field (she's assuming that's bigger than an American one because it's Australian and...anyway). 
The three of them have fallen into a routine, where she and Joe ignore Micah just to twit him, and Joe paces, and Jenna dicks around on her tablet until it's time for them to go on. So when the program message pops up saying she's got a notification from Kate, she doesn't think before she taps it to bring it to the front. 
She's still calling that Kate's fault. 
Because Kate hasn't sent her the car picture in...probably six months. Lately it's been a string of weird internet comics about the Mantis Shrimp. So of course the one day she clicks on it without thinking her screen blinks for a second and then it's...Joe. Half naked, pants undone, sprawled out across the car from three shows ago. 
He chokes, and stumbles, and Jenna feels his hand land on the back of the couch, right next to her left shoulder.
She fumbles, and nearly drops her tablet before she can turn it off. "Shit. Sorry." She is going to kill Kate.
Micah is utterly uninterested in them. Or he's pretending anyway, for the moment she's going to take back every uncharitable thing she's ever said about him. This is embarrassing enough without witnesses. 
Made slightly worse when Joe drops onto the couch, a full cushion away from her--which is unusual for him, he's not good at personal boundaries generally--face the brightest red she's ever seen it when he wasn't pretending to be someone else. "So...Um..."
Jenna dropped her head forward. "My best friend has a really horrible sense of humor."
He quirked a smile at her. "That's not a normal thing, then?"
"No, it is." She flushed, and made herself look up. She worked with him, and this was going to be awkward enough all on it's own without her pretending it was a thing. Even if it was a thing, maybe just not... Jenna huffed out a breath. "But also she knew we were doing an interview together today."
"Well." He gave her an awkward smiled. "As long as she doesn't usually send you half-naked men."
"It's better if it's just you?" Jenna asked, before her brain thought through the question. "Oh my god just pretend I didn't ask that. That was a conversation killer line and we were supposed to go back to pretending that had never happened."
Joe laughed, like he couldn't help himself. "I think you've been writing too much TV. The scene breaks don't really happen in real life."
"They should." Jenna flushed. "It would make it much easier to work my way out of conversations."
"But if you got to edit think about all the fun things we'd miss." He smiled, secretive and sideways without actually looking at her. 
"Hey," the aide popped in the room then, looking around them, panting--they were always at a run, she remembered those days--and holding onto the door. "You guys are on next. It's time." 
Joe stood up and pushed a hand through his hair, settling in to be professional, while Micah bounded out of the room, excited to be on camera. 
"I feel like we should have to draw straws to see who goes last," Jenna muttered.
Joe cocked a brow at her.
"Well, I'd be all for slipping out the back, but if we let him on stage by himself he'll start trying to hump the microphone stand again." Jenna shrugged. "I don't dislike him that much."
He smiled, holding the door open for her. "Yeah. Have to keep him around, otherwise I'll wind up doing the car photo shoot."
She huffed, cheeks flushing. "I hate you."
"No you don't." 
"I'm trying."
He laughed. "So when do I get to meet this friend?"

So. I got somewhere near the end and couldn't figure out how to get myself out of it. Which is, I've decided, my writing super-power. 
I'm on the fence between telling you where this came from and not. Not sure which is better.
I suppose I have to now.
Kate really has more than once (probably more than three or four times) sent me that picture. And I've opened it in public more than once stupidly, once in front of my mother, which as a bit of the inspiration for this. The rest is just so much whole cloth, but it was fun for a minute. If you exist on the internets I'm sure you've seen the picture, and know who I'm talking about. 
The only person's name I used was Kate's. Because it's her fault. As things so often are. ;)

I did a big, long, insightful post on The Art of Procrastination yesterday, and I seriously don’t have another one of those in me yet. So yeah, take what you can get you greedy content-wanting people.

1-- I can be critical of literally anything. Really. It doesn’t mean I don’t like the thing, or I don’t see all the things right with the thing. But when I sit down to talk about it, what spills out is some version of ‘It had so much potential!’
2-- I’ve never met a reading schedule I liked. When I want to read, I read. A lot. Until my eyes are about to roll out of my head and my brain is fuzzy.
3-- I’m very very bad at finishing books I don’t like. Sometimes I’m even bad at finishing books I do like. 
4-- I like exceedingly strange things. It's not a question of 'your mileage may vary,' there's at-least an eighty-percent chance it will.
5-- I worry way too much that I'm over-promising the thing I love, and then you won't love it. And then I'll have to judge you (I'll try not to, but it was so wonderful what is wrong with you).


That sort of fits with Well Written Wednesday, right? 

"Mondays never go well."

Thera looked at the Head Novate through tired, unimpressed eyes. "It's Wednesday."

"I know dear." The older woman strolled through the walled garden, examining the beds one by one. 

It was the youngest girl's day to do the weeding, and because they had just started someone always had to come behind them and ensure they'd not pulled up any of the plants.

"Don't you agree, Thera?"

Thera sighed, and carefully replanted a seedling someone had clearly started to uproot. "That Monday's never go well?"

The Head Novate nodded happily.

Thera nearly bit down on her words. She'd joined the sanctuary on a Monday. A clear bright fall day where she'd been walked up to the gates by her mother and handed over to the sisters like a donated pig.

"I haven't noticed."

The Head Novate smiled, shaking her head. "You are always so politic."

Thera had learned. She'd been a Novate for six years now, from eleven to seventeen. She'd learned some fine skills. When not to speak. When not to even think of speaking. When to bow. When to smile and agree happily. When to smile and agree solemnly. 

How to make jam.

The jam was probably her most useful skill. Because someday when she was alone, when the day came they let her check the girl's weed pulling skills on her own then she'd sneak one of the st of henbane. And then, while the others were all spending the evening in line to the loo, she would be off...

"Come come dear," the Head Novate said quietly. "The henbane isn't ready yet anyway." She patted Thera on the shoulder, and walked toward the kitchen. "Besides, fall is a bad time of year for a sea voyage."

Thera sighed, and focused back on the job at hand. "It's still Wednesday."

I have no explanations for this. It just decided to hang out in my head tonight. Also, you really shouldn't give people henbane. It's not pleasant, and it probably wouldn't kill anybody but all the same...

And can you guess how little I'm paying attention to these titles anymore?

I feel like this Sci-Fi Friday needs to be audience participation. Given the amount of content I've managed this week, I'm allowed to be a little lazy.

So, write me a tagline for the picture. Make it as silly or as serious as you like.

Unclear on what a tagline is, look at some of these. Even if you know what a tagline is, go look. Just trust me.

One of the joys of the internet is the fact I can be in two places at once.

Hopefully not so much in the creepy way displayed in the painting there.

For a few months now, on this blog I've been trying a rotation of theme days. Miscellaneous Monday, Well Written Wednesday, and Sci-Fi Friday. I fail about as often as I succeed. Ask any newspaper columnist ever about how not-simple repetitive content is.

But this week my themes line up, between this blog and The Art of Procrastination, so I'm cross posting. They will be as ships that pass in the night. Seriously, stop looking for ice-bergs, it'll be fine.

Yes, alright. I'm being lazy and trying to write four blog posts this week instead of  five. So what? Were you--amorphous internet people you--going to offer to write one of those for me?

Didn't think so.



Anyway, it's Wednesday and that means we talk about things that are well-written. Or not, as the case may be.

There's been a sudden increase of slush pile in my life lately. And I know what writers think and say about the dreaded Slush. Let me tell you about the Slush from the other side.

Golden Fleece Press isn't by any means my first experience with a slush-pile. I've had plenty of occasion in my life to read things that should never have seen the light of day. I once reviewed a romance novel that has forever become my yard-stick for fail on a level I can barely articulate. It was long, and awful, and shaped about eighty percent of my views on the usefulness of historical accuracy in entertainment.

There was another one that involved badly conceived time-travel and characters even biblical-level plague would have been too good an end for.

I once rather stupidly, in the annals of my life squiring writers, offered online assistance to literally anyone who wanted help with their novel plot. What followed was three hours of incomprehensible, werewolf-themed shenanigans I will never get back and I feel their absence keenly.

These are the worst cases. The hyperbole--great spaghetti monster in the sky do I wish it was--infused funnies. The truly bad. But we all have ideas that die on the vine, or that should die on the vine. Apparently there's a knack for learning which ones those are. I can sympathize with that, even if I'm doing it backwards and sideways over my rolled eyes because just why.

What I can't get, I refuse to get, are the misplaced submissions. Why would you relegate yourself to the slush needlessly? And also we said it was a journal for children. Have you met children? They're the little things we used to be before life taught us there were worse things than spinach and math homework. We wanted Bunnicula, not Pet Cemetery.

Alright. Rant over. Maybe later I'll spill into all the ways YA is the deadest vibrant market I've ever beheld.

Fingers crossed next week's round of slush will be from people who once held an affinity for celery-desiccating bunnies.

Because I'm being an over-achiever today. 

Random Fact #5385
The Armadillo is a primary carrier of Leprosy. Once, before European entrance into the new world, both the Armadillo's and the people were free of leprosy. 
This means...
Somewhere in the annals of history a Spaniard touched an Armadillo and it all went down-hill from there. 

Random Fact #5386
One of the most common ways for people to contract Leprosy? Eating Armadillo. If I could draw there would totally be a 'battle armored-pig' comic below this one. Cause it still gets you after it's dead.

Random Fact #5327
When startled, the nine-banded armadillo jumps three to four feet straight up. Get that image out of your head.

Random Fact #5390
The Nine-Banded Armadillo is the only mammal to have fully polyembryonic reproduction. This means every single time the girl Armadillo get's pregenant--and that's a set of facts for another time--she has four genetically identical offspring, all formed from the same egg but growing their own placenta and embryonic sack (do you call it an embryonic sack in mammals, or is that just chickens?). She will do this once a year for her entire adult life span. 

Is it any wonder they're slowly crawling their way north? 

And lastly...Behold, the Pink Fairy Armadillo.
What the heck.

I went on a writing jag this weekend, and at this point I'm so spaced out I can barely string a sentence together verbally. It's spring, and I always do this in the spring. I'm good until about 40000 words, and then I start to forget which way is up and I lose all ability to function in the real world.

But I refuse to miss another blog post.

Which would be admirable, if I felt like I had anything to say. (It was seriously tempting to leave all the mistakes in that sentence, because it was spectacular.)


I think this is one of those times where I need someone to sit through my giant fangasm about what I've written and then tell me to turn it into something real. You know who you are. 

Right. So this Monday is a little more Miscellaneous than normal, and a little more self-indulgent to boot. Whatevs. 

I'm lazy, and it's my anniversary this weekend, so you're getting flash fiction instead of a post. And yes, I realize how close to not-friday-anymore it is. Shush.

Jaegar Deep Sea Class PerSub, Marianas 
Twelve years. 
Twelve years, three girlfriends, three missed weddings, one Christmas his mother still wouldn't let him forget, three diplomas, and more student debt than he could count. 
Thirty eight million dollars he'd begged, borrowed, and done everything but steal for. 3 million hours designing an entire class of personal submersible. Six test dives. Two late-stage redesigns. Three grant re-fillings. 
One hiatus due to Giant Squid attack. 
All for this. Because there was a door at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and he needed to know what was behind it.
None of it had prepared him for the truth.

There are buds on the trees and birds on my deck (they like to torture the cat) and guys playing ultimate Frisbee in the field behind my house. I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be spring yet. 

So, way back in the annals of history (shut up, January was a long time ago, I have the attention span of a mayfly this time of year) I made a commitment to blog more. You can look at the list of posts under this one to tell how that's gone. 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” 
                                                                                                                      ― Winston Churchill

I've got nothing more relevant to say than Mr Churchill up there. So I'm moving on. 

Apparently the general consensus on this is that you should blog three times a week, and not blog about writing because no one wants to hear(see?) you witter on about writing three times a week. I'm probably going to fail about that, because irrespective of what everybody else thinks the conversation is about, it's always about writing to me. I promise to do my best to make it interesting.

Are you ready for the schedule? 
 
As of this week, Monday's at Words and Wonderings will be Miscellaneous Monday. There'll be a post, hopefully it'll be fun to read, I'll figure out what it's about when I sit down and start writing it. Wednesday's will the Well-Written Wednesday. That's the day for book reviews, or my take on what's happening in the writing universe, or TV/Movie (of the content variety, not the 'he's so pretty' variety) pop-culture. And last but not least Friday will be Sci-Fi Fridays and I'll trot out the latest cool thing I've found (usually getting lost while researching) and probably talk a little about it's potential in fiction. 

If I miss these you're totally allowed to brow-beat me about it. 

See you Monday!
(Yes, I realize I'm an eternal optimist. Yes, I realize how annoying it is.)

PS--the title is borrowed from Robert Frost-- "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

I'm trying to do better at blogging every week, and I'm  counting this one because flip it, it's still Friday so it's still the same week I was supposed to do this in. 

It's been one of those weeks where I'm spending a lot of time trolling Tumblr, reading fanfic and writing it too because I feel like sticking my head in the sand and generally speaking my imagination is the go to place to do that. Tumblr has a...reputation for social justice and real world issues, but this is the kind of week where I pretty much just skip right on past that. Not because I don't generally agree, or don't care. Because I care too much and it tends to make me a person I don't particularly like and I don't care to subject other people to without cause. 

There's been a lot of news about fandom lately, between the sort of general run-around about Supernatural and Sherlock series 3, and that always jars me because I still exist in a head-space where the internet is it's own little corner, it's own section of society that still doesn't like to talk to the rest of them. Which is probably a function of my age more than anything else. 

Someone on Tumblr linked an article--which I'll do as well here in a second--about Sherlock and it's slightly crazy fans. If she'd have just linked the title I probably wouldn't have followed that particular white-rabbit. Very few things have the ability to actually annoy me like articles on the internet about things I care about. 

"The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly. That’s how it’s always been done. That’s how it should be done in the future, whatever Tumblr  says."
--Laurie Penny, Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase.

I highly suggest you click on the linky and go read, she's got some really good points, some that I don't necessarily agree with, but that's neither here nor there. I have this...internal twist when it comes to fandom, and I've never really explained it because I can't, it doesn't always make sense to me. But I feel like trying today, so I'm sorry but buckle up and I'll try not to make it too bumpy.

When you talk about fandom, whether it's the movies you like or the fanfiction you read or...anything, there's a certain ownership implied there. Sometimes it's quiet and a little ashamed, sometimes it's that false-bravado twenty year old's excel at that's shouting from the rooftops because I'm awesome and anything I love is awesome too and the rest of you can just go hang. Either way it's yours. And I love that. I'd give nearly anything to write the kind of stories people get that emotionally involved in.

The problem is that it's yours and sometimes you forget that it's someone else's too. This happens more in Doctor Who than nearly anywhere else I've seen in fandom. People have that one Doctor they love above all the rest, or that one companion they just can't stand. Sometimes, if you offer a dissenting opinion to that you'll open yourself up for an earful about all the ways you are wrong wrong wrong. You can't possibly be a Doctor Who fan if you only watch Ten, if you stopped because you don't like Matt Smith, if you --insert ridiculous attempt to impress my fandom ownership/head-cannon onto you here.

Fandom's full of problems, because it's full of people and for better or worse that's something human beings are good at. And that's not even broaching whether Moffat's a woman-hating arse, or Misha Collins' is a wank of epic proportions, or any of that. 

Laurie Penny makes some good points, about men in their ivory towers wanting fiction to stay on their terms, wanting their creative vision left alone (that's an over-simplification, I know) but I'm going to make a contrary one, because I get a little tired of feeling like every single conversation about a show or book's creation is whopping me over the head with King Solomon metaphors, complete with evil executives in striped ties wielding giant swords cackling 'Let's cut it in half and see which one of them really loves it.' 

Nearly every show or book I like, there are problems. Not enough diversity, not enough female characters that might actually live to the end of the episode with some inherent value to the plot, not enough guts to go the full monty--figuratively speaking--with whatever idea they're broaching the side of, etc. But that's what it feels like to me. That's part of why I write and read fan-fiction, because there's something I need that's almost there but it's not. I absolutely have every right to that, to my feelings and my desires and whatever else I'm wrapping into that package. What I don't have a right to do is tell somebody else what to do with their creative vision, not like that, not ever. Not with other fanfic writers, or people who write original content, or draw cartoons, or role play, or code video games, or make origami frogs to hop across their kitchen table. 

If I want somebody to respect my right to creativity, I have to respect theirs too. No matter how stringently I think those two people are secretly in love with each other. 

That was seriously long and I'm going to go back to hiding in my corner again until next week. Oh, and possibly post pictures of the mine-craft scarf I finally finished (YAY)