Regina Noctis

So much shit has happened today, I don’t even know where to begin. It began quietly enough, but has ended with my grandmother sobbing in the living room and finally shutting herself in her bedroom. My mother with a damaged knee she won’t go to the doctor about, blood in her mouth, sobbing, and convinced that she’s a horrible and evil person. John strutting around like he won. And me so furious as to be nearly incoherent for much of the evening.

The only good thing to come out of it all is that my mother has finally broken down and told me to do what I need to do in order to get John out of here. He is talking right now about moving to Salinas and living with his aunt Vickie. He has talked about doing this before, and then stayed. If he hasn’t made moves toward moving out in fairly short order, I’m going to the police station, where I can’t be interfered with by John or my grandmother, and I’m having a long discussion with them about him and seeing what can be done. If nothing else, a restraining order.

I am DONE with this shit.

The last thing I said about my cousin is that he’d moved out. He moved in with his mother. He lasted there for about two days before he came back here. He was never given permission to move back in, but grandma didn’t tell him to get out again, either. So he has moved back in.

A short time ago, he took my car without permission. He was gone in it for two hours. The next morning, when I tried to get in the car to go to school, he’d pushed down the lever that unlocks the steering column. I didn’t see that, and swung my leg in. The knee on my driving leg slammed into the lever, the edge of which wedged itself under the kneecap and shifted my kneecap out of its place, downward. That is what brought about the dislocated knee I mentioned.

I told him then that if he ever takes my car again without permission, I will turn him in for grand theft auto.

Well, he needed to go to the post office today to send in a request for deferring his student loan payments. And the fucker took my car without permission to do it.

When I tried to call the cops to report him for grand theft auto, Mom and Grandma blocked me from getting to the phone. They told me to forget it because it’s not worth doing anything about, and they don’t feel like dealing with the cops.

Which, of course, means that John will decide that my threat to turn him in if he did this again was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. And he’ll go on doing this, as well as ignore anything else I say, or do it just to piss me off, knowing that he’s safe.

I’m so angry I’m shaking. I’m furious at him, and at Grandma, and at my mother. Him for doing this, them for preventing me from doing what should be done about it.

The hell with them all. All of them. Every single last fucking one of them.

I decided some time ago that since I was between jobs and going back to college, this was the perfect opportunity for me to get the desire to have hair colored something not natural out of my system. So, earlier in the year, I stripped my hair and applied lilac dye. It didn’t particularly want to take down the length of my hair. The virgin hair colored, but the stuff that had been previously dyed a lighter shade of red than my natural color didn’t feel like being purple, even though it’d been stripped. It took a total of four bottles of dye in order to get a decent color on it. Just in time for last BayCon.

Just after BayCon, I went out to New Jersey for and ’s wedding. Luckily enough, my hair matched one of the wedding colors. This was purple, that was purple, Christophine was purple. It all worked.

It was an outdoor wedding. I’d used my purple shampoo to be sure my hair was as vibrant as possible for the wedding. But then I spent two hours in the sun, and discovered that since my hair hadn’t wanted to take the dye in the first place, it was all too happy to sunbleach out in that amount of time. I came home with hair that was purple, blond, and a kind of bluish-gray where the purple and blond melded.

Since I’m not the kind of girl who enjoys keeping up with maintenance… a part of why I normally dye my hair something close to my natural color, so as it grows out and fades a little, it approaches my own hair color and the roots are not so obvious… and the sheer amount of dye I would I have needed to maintain the color was prohibitively expensive for someone who didn’t have a job, I decided that eventually, I’d just get hair falls.

As per usual, my grandmother gave me money for my birthday. One dollar for every year, and one to grow on. I started surfing around for someplace where I could order falls that were within the price range set by my birthday money.

Eventually, I found ikickshins.net, and decided that this was where I’d get my falls. They just arrived today, in significantly less time than the estimated turnaround and delivery date. And I love them. They’re twist falls, in black, burgundy, purple, and blue, with a few black/burgundy and black/purple swirled accents, and strips of silver sparkle skinny s’ghetti. A picture of them (not worn) is here. I put them on the moment I got them, and I’m going to go annoy the people in my night class with them tonight. There is one person there who won’t be surprised. So far, he seems to be the only person (at least that I’ve found) on campus who knows about Goths, Rivets, etc. He and his wife are both DJs. He spins mostly Trance and Breakbeat. She spins those plus some Industrial Electronica. Everyone else is clueless. I’ve been asked what Goths are, what the music is like, what Rivets are, what they listen to, what both subcultures are like, etc. I’m not surprised. Style around here is almost always thirty or thirty-five years behind just about anywhere else.

If anyone else is looking for falls, now that I’ve seen the quality of work at ikickshins, I do recommend them.

…and there may be others who are curious but haven’t asked, this is about the 2143 Project and how the idea came about.

In the mid-90’s, shortly after I moved back to California, I discovered a place online called Ancient Sites. It was a site for history buffs, and at the time was exclusively centered on Rome. I joined and explored the site, but got bored after a relatively short time and stopped going by. Rome does have some small interest for me, but it wasn’t one of the cultures that draws my deep attention.

In 99, while involved in a miserable long-distance relationship with someone I should never have been involved with, I discovered that he was interested in history. I remembered Ancient Sites, and told him about it. When we stopped by the place, we discovered it had grown significantly. Several other cultures had been added under the Ancient Sites umbrella, including his biggest fascination, the ancient Celts, and mine, ancient Greece. In addition to the discussions of actual history, a kind of combined roleplaying and historical fiction writing had become popular as well. We both made personas on the site, but our stay was brief. Not long after, the relationship ended.

About a year later, while bored at work, I logged into AS again, as my Greek persona. I ran into someone going by Xeo Alexandros, who was head of one of the roleplay/historical fiction groups. It was called the Delian League. He had recently become head of the group, after the previous head had stepped down, and was looking to revitalize the group. He convinced me to join. In a very short time, I got very hooked on writing the semi-roleplayed cooperative historical fiction that the group did.

Within a month or so of my joining, someone with the persona Rhesa Alexandros wrote herself into one of the stories. I recognized what was going on… she found a spot where she could reasonably introduce her character into the ongoing story… but it caused a bit of a storm among the rest of the folks there. The assumption was that if someone was involved in a roleplayed romance between characters on the site, it must mean there was something between those people in real life, and anyone who stepped into those private romance subplots was obviously trying to steal one of the people involved from the other. Almost everyone involved in the group other than Rhesa or me was involved in one of these roleplayed “couples” at the time. So anytime Rhesa tried to be a part of some plot or sub-plot, it would cause another storm of stupidity. You wouldn’t believe the number of messages I got about “that brat Rhesa” trying to steal some guy from one of the women. Because I was (a) contrary like that, (b) aware of what was really going on, (c) disgusted with the reactions, (d) felt sorry for Rhesa, or (e) all of the above, I went out of my way to strike up a conversation with her and become friends. I let the others froth and rant, but didn’t let that affect how I was going to interact with Rhesa, and even used it as an opportunity to warn her about some of the more extreme stuff that was going on behind the scenes. The only reason I’d escaped the same  kind of treatment is because my entry into the Delian League had been among a group of the established women on a “girl’s night out” scenario. The other assumption held on AS was that all characters and their players were straight – rather funny, considering some of the practices of ancient Greece. So, my entry obviously couldn’t possibly mean that I was “after” someone’s “lover.”

Like me, Rhesa was really interested in the history behind the stories we were putting together, and would do her research. Many of the others didn’t bother to research at all, or else did very little, and their writing was full of anachronisms and badly done. It was good to find someone else who didn’t want to turn the whole thing into some kind of three-ring circus dressed in Greek clothing. And, aside from doing her research, Rhesa was a good writer and a poet. Unfortunately, we hadn’t really found a place where our character stories could logically mesh so we could write together, but it was still good to have at least one other person who didn’t do things like go through an entire nine months of pregnancy in about three “days” of roleplay time, while the rest of the group only experienced those three “days.”

I also became friends with Strabo Alexandros, another good writer there who didn’t get too involved with the overly-silly stuff. He did insert some humor, but it was generally humor that could actually have happened.

About this time, the former hetaira that the character Strabo was involved with, and my character’s cousin, was absolutely determined to get my character involved with someone. She was after me constantly. Eventually, when I proved unwilling to enter some kind of roleplayed romance with the male friends she already had, she began trying to get me interested in some of the new people joining. She was one of the silliest and most historically and physically inaccurate writers in the place, and the people she was closest to were the same. So it wasn’t surprising that I resisted her attempts at playing matchmaker. Finally, just to shut her up, I said hello to one of our newest members, who was on as Tantalus Leonidas. You only have to go back to the first few posts of this journal for the great combined misunderstanding and attraction for the bad part of meeting Tantalus. However, the pros of meeting Tantalus far, far outweighed that short period of angst, and he and I became friends. He also was the kind who’d do his research and write intelligent, accurate, excellent entries in the shared story. He’s the most amazing, best as-yet-unpublished writer it’s been my privilege to meet. And that’s saying something, because the others I became good friends with there are no slouches.

Though I do repeat here what I’ve said to him, that he is an EVIL man who makes me cry way too easily with some of the stuff he writes. I’m not normally the kind who cries at something they’re reading or watching. I’m a tougher audience than that. But this man does it to me all the bloody time.

Some months later, AS died. By then, our little group of four had gotten some great plotlines going, and were really meshing well as a group. Fortunately, anothet site, Pan Historia, was opening up just about the time AS was dying. The Delian League moved there, and we continued what we’d been working on.

PH also had the added benefit of not being strictly about ancient history. There was room for modern day, world, science fiction, comedy, etc, etc. As the Delian League was taken over more and more by the silly people, and a large scandal erupted that stretched tentacles into real life, our little group of four began splintering off. We all had an interest in science fiction as well as in history, and we began “novels” on the sci-fi section of the site. Those were The Voyage of the Intrepid, The Shalahar Ring, and La Legion Etrangere. The three share a universe. We picked up some other great writers, including a friend of Rhesa’s who became the VOI Chief of Security, a friend of Tantalus’s who wrote Ambassador Happy (an Uplifted killer whale), and Dimitrii, who headed the fighter squadrons of the Intrepid and was brought in by the absolute worst writer I’d ever seen in any of the sci-fi novels. Thanks to everything going on in the Delian League, those of us involved completely dropped it, and concentrated on sci-fi.

Bad politics and an attempted hostile takeover of VOI led us to decide that PH wasn’t for us after all. Plans began to be made for our own site, The 2143 Project, where we could do our thing without having the simply awful writers like Johnny Starburst (the one who brought us Dimitrii) and without the rotten politics that were taking over PH. With our own site, we could keep it closed down to just us, or only add people who were going to work with the group rather than wreck things. We’ve talked about additional stories to add, including a fantasy world that’s been percolating through my brain since the late 80’s. We’ve debated the merits of auditioning anyone who wants to join… have them write a sample so we can get an idea of whether they’d fit in, and how.

The talk about this has been going on for quite some time now, though. Years now. Every once in a while I bring it up, because I really do miss writing these cooperative things in conjunction with these folks. It was lots of fun, addictively so, and it also was a great way to sharpen writing skills. Many’s the time I’ve felt like I was scrambling to even keep some of the best writers in the group in sight. let alone write on anything approaching an equal level with them. But that keeps me from just settling into where I am now and calling it “good enough.” It’s a challenge I like, and I think I need if I want to improve as a writer. Of the entire group, I’m probably the weakest link in the chain. The quality of my writing doesn’t really approach theirs. But that’s okay, because I learn from them and how they write when we do this.

I’ve sometimes tried to get friends I know who write involved in this. I know that there has been improvement in the level of quality in my writing over the years I was actively involved with this group. People to learn from, plus the constant practice of writing something regularly. That isn’t necessarily apparent here in this journal, since there is no attempt at crafting what is put here. This is pretty much written as it was thought. Yes, my stream of consciousness IS this wordy, thanks for asking.

Usually, the ones who want to get published someday tell me that they just don’t have the time for this. If they’re going to be writing, they should be writing something for publication and pay, not for free online. And yeah, writing and editing for this does take some time. I think that they’re missing out when they decide this, though that’s just my opinion. Like any other skill or craft, you need to practice it to keep improving. Even the best-known professional writers do not necessarily write everything they write strictly for publication. Other aspects of their craft include reading the work of others. Not just for pleasure, but because they can also see how another author handled something, and whether it works for them or doesn’t. It also includes writing in journals, writing exercises, etc. Because it is important to keep practicing, keep improving, even if you’re publically acknowledged as one of the top of your genre. I’ve read up on this over the years. There is more to being a professional writer, a published writer, than just trying to write something with the intent of getting it published.

Writing with this group has also been giving me a start on the biggest thing I’ve always lacked – discipline. My tendency is to get caught up by an idea, start working on it, and then get caught up by the next big idea five or six pages into the last. I abandon the one I’m working on, and start up on the next. The cycle has gone on for years, ad nauseum. I have a zillion page ones. Even getting as far as page ten, however, is rare. But the writing in this group is something that I must keep up with if I want to get something in particular done or introduced. If I don’t write it, and in a timely manner, then the story will move on and what I was going to write no longer logically fits. While I’m not completely over my start-it-and-then-abandon-it tendencies, I’m getting better about it.

All of that is probably more information than you wanted, Drew. And I don’t know whether you’re interested in joining, or even if you write fiction. I’ve never heard you mention or read any of your work if you do.

I’m just hoping that it gets off the ground sometime. It’s been, what, approaching or at three years? I miss it.

So I think now is the time to bring this back up.

The 2143 Project? Someday? Soonish? Please?

*looks around at the Captain, Commander, and Security Chief*

Don’t make me beg anymore. It doesn’t suit Marines.

(After this, I will drop it. I’ll just write it off as pipe dream that will never materialize and stop hoping. Promise.)

To that tookie baker and former Keebler elf, ! Hope you had a grand birthday, m’dear. Miss you lots.

Sorry that I’m late. My attention got rather taken up by dislocating my kneecap yesterday when trying to get to school.

I seem to be coming down with my yearly bout of bronchitis.

Dammit, I don’t have time for this. Not with the huge photography project, fighting with my ISP to get access to my class website back for web design, and trying to catch up on assignments I’ve missed in web design because of my stupid ISP.

I just coughed myself awake. Now I have to try and get back to sleep. Have to be up for art history in the morning. And then rush home right after, so I can get some other things done around the house. The need to do laundry is reaching a critical stage, since I’ve been doing as little of that… and everything else… as I can while trying to get the major class projects done and iron out the connectivity problem. I’m now three weeks behind in web design because a few weeks ago, all computers could no longer access certain websites. One of those being, of course, my class site.

*sigh*

If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.

This news is enough to get me out of my post-election gloom, at least for a while.

More Pirates! MORE PIRATES, BABY!

Sequals. Notice the S at the end of the word in the article. Oh yeah.

Some of the best movie news possible for someone with a huge pirate fetish. :D

It’s looking more and more like my mantra of the lo these many months, “Anyone but Bush!” will need to change.

Anywhere but here.

If there’s another four years of him, I’m checking out.

Already looking into properties outside the US.

I can’t bear the idea of another four years of lies, “jobless recovery,” and the steady erosion of civil rights.