#they're relatively quick to make and i've been short on time of late

[penultimate-step]

Lately, I've been thinking about the effect of real-world time on perception of media. Or, wait, let me start from the beginning.

When I was 11, I read the book Ender's Game for some school assignment or another. I don't remember ever considering Ender a relatable character, but certainly my understanding of the events was shaped by being of an age to see the protagonist not so much as a young child but as someone of my peer group, someone who could have been slotted amongst my classmates without anybody batting an eye.

Over a decade later, I read the sequel, Speaker for the Dead; it takes place many years later, when Ender is in his thirties, and my feelings about the in-universe time skip were undeniably shaped by the real life time gap between my reading of the novels. Reading the first book back then and then the second book now created a feeling where it's almost like, I'm browsing the facebook page of someone I had known in middle school but lost contact with, checking up on how they're doing today. The real-time factor caused me to perceive it less like a timeskip, and more like a reunion - the feelings were closer to "oh wow, that's my boy! I haven't seen him in years! Wonder what he's up to?" Which in turn gave me a better position to appreciate the parts of the narrative about him struggling to find a place in his adulthood than I would have been had I perceived it more strictly as a quick skip from 11 to 20 to 36.

While musing about this, I considered a VN I played a few years back, which took place over three in-game days - except at the end of one in-game day, the game would lock you out from progressing for 24 hours real time. So that as the in-game investigator protagonist was ruminating on the information that had been discovered that day, the player would be forced to do the same. In this example, by forcing the player to experience the same timeframe as the in-game characters, the sense of it being an in-depth and extensive investigation increases, even though without the forced pauses the game would be short enough to blow through in a handful of hours real-time.

Which brings to mind how time effects things in long-running serial works. It's well known that an audience which watches an episode or reads a chapter week by week has a very different experience than one binging through whole seasons or volumes at a time, but I wonder if the real time relative to the in-universe time makes that effect stand out more? Fight scenes, for instance, have been known to take up several chapters in certain manga or webnovels. What does it do to the reader's perception, if from their point a view a fight takes a whole month, while for the characters they read about it's only been a couple hours? Readers might feel that the situation is more stressful, since the pressure of the fight has been ongoing for a long time for them, while in-universe it was a rough afternoon but no more than that. Contrastingly, when a series skips ahead or otherwise has long periods of time for characters that feel short for readers, it can feel like no time has passed and everything is still the same, unless the author really stresses the differences in world-state that occurred offscreen. Because the reader hasn't changed at all.

No conclusion here exactly, I just think it's interesting how often an audience's response to a work, the emotions felt, are more closely tied to their real-life timescale, something almost completely out of the author's control, as opposed to in-universe time, which can be intentionally shifted or played with for the sake of the narrative.

[loquaciousquark]

So, I've been absolutely blown away by your fanfiction skills lately. How on earth do you manage to churn out so many amazing stories? And they're not just quick scribbles, they're true works of art! I've been dabbling myself and it is a *struggle* to stay focused and see a story through to the end. How do you keep that laser focus going? Any tips for maintaining a consistent writing style start to finish? Your latest story has McKinley vibes. :) Your talent is truly awe-inspiring, thanks!

Ahh, thank you so much! I'm sorry, I'm not sure how I missed this message until now!

The long version is here, just answered this morning. The short version is that finishing fics is something that drives a lot of satisfaction and joy for me--it's as much a part of the process as sitting down to write in the first place--so it's something I've made a personal priority when I write. Outside of two shorter pieces, I have clearly known the ending of every story I've written before it was started, and I take a lot of setup time with my extensive outlines before I ever begin to make sure that ending is achievable, internally consistent, and a logical conclusion for the characters. It's just something that matters a lot to me, so it's something I take a lot of time working towards!

The more practical answer is that I deliberately set aside time for projects and hobbies, whether that's writing, streaming, playing video games, whatever, and I have a lifestyle that lets me do these things relatively uninterrupted. It's been harder and harder to carve out this time as I've gotten older and more established in my career; and in some ways it's gotten simpler, too, mostly because I'm now just willing to say "no, I'm staying home that day" without guilt.

As far as style, I can't speak much to that except to say that if I have one, it's made of the things I love. Patricia McKillip was a formative influence, as were Megan Whalen Turner and Patricia Wrede and honestly Brian Jacques, and as I read their books I found things they did that resonated with me, whether that was plot structure, characterization, the way they structured dialogue, their language styles and word rhythms--even down to where they put line breaks in paragraphs. Heck, I have an incredibly vivid memory of reading Matthias striking the snake in Redwall for the first time in my elementary school library and getting chills, and looking back at the paragraph over and over trying to figure out what, mechanically, he'd done there to give me such an emotional reaction.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that the more you read and love, the more you'll find things you want to emulate and make your own. My parents read LOTR to me as a bedtime story for years, and I can trace back my deep love of elevated language and high fantasy and kings and princes right to there, and to McKillip and Turner and a little DWJ and yes, even some McKinley.

Style isn't something you create. If anything it's a mirror, showing the reflection of what you love. If you've ever loved any part of beautiful writing, whether that's JRRT or fanfiction, it can't help but come out in what you make. :)

[globaloscillations]

Highs and Lows.

Monday (yesterday…I think?) Kristen and I explored the local airfield in the morning and while the small museum was closed we did stumble upon a Vulcan Bomber on display which was pretty cool. I also had my first pasty of the trip at Greggs a bakery chain in the north and it was pretty solid. I mean I've yet to go to wrong when it comes to pastys so. In the afternoon we headed over to the famous Hadrian's wall and I hiked up enjoy the views assuming every stonewall was "the wall" and it wasn't until later on that stumbled upon the actual 1900 year old Hadrian's wall itself and it was somewhat hidden. We considered a stop at another museum but decided not to head in as it was getting late in the day and the helpful gentlemen at the entrance indicated it was a 3 hour minimum excursion. 😳

As we were walking out of the museum my phone rang and I didn't have a great feeling. I answered it to the news that on the first full day of the two week trip the kennel had decided that Luna couldn't stay. She apparently wasn't eating for them and was presenting some other symptoms that were new at least from when I dropped her off and the felt the combination of all factors she should be seen by a vet and had to go by 6:30pm that night. Due to prior commitments my mom who was one of the emergency contacts was unable to pick Luna up. Needless to say we were scrambling (full on panicking?!) to come up with anything workable. Long story short, one of Kristen's closest New England friends came through in an absolutely herculean way and agreed to go pick Luna up and keep her for the night. I'm incredibly grateful and also totally at a loss of how we can make good on that debt. Luna being Luna was ready to go for the latest adventure. It's only been one day so we'll see but I wonder if the lesson learned is that there was a very short turnaround time for her between trips to the kennel and she just kinda gave up. Time will tell I suppose.

That crisis having been averted we resumed our plans with a tinge of guilt and headed for the night's intended destination, Twice Brewed Pub/Inn/Brewery/Observatory. Yup. The whole complex is located in an area with some of the darkest skies in the UK. They have nightly programs for observing with a ton of telescopes each group in our session got their own scope. Will who leads the program was great, knowledgeable, passionate and engaging, a powerful combination. While we were using scopes, I appreciated his talks focusing on what can be seen with the naked eye. The reality is most people don't have a telescope and probably aren't going to buy one just from one talk. But they might leave with a little more of an inclination to look up and a little more knowledge about what they're seeing once they do. Oh and if you like proper Real Ale well you can't go wrong. Pints pouring from 6 casks. I actually enjoyed the table beer which was 2.67% but still has a good taste to it so I was able to have a few while looking at stars and seeing if I could get my Pixel 6 to do its whole Astrophotography thing. The time passed pretty quickly and when it was time to roll back to the Airbnb I was shocked it was as late as it was.

Then we have Tuesday. We rolled out mid-morning intending to head for another part of Hadrian's Wall we hadn't made it to yesterday. Which as it turns out was relatively close to the brewery. As we headed up some of the hills Kristen's friend who was driving that morning noticed the car revving and not engaging the way it should be. We made a quick backtrack to the brewery and rolled in with a dead car. The rental company's minimally helpful solution to this was to dispatch the BAA (essentially Britain's AAA). A nice guy rolled up and declared what we were all already fairly confident of the clutch was toast. Both Kristen and her friend are long time drivers or manual transmissions and it was certainly not anything that has been done in a relatively short period of having the car. It turns out that rental companies in the UK don't actually care about any of that and basically have a rule that of you're sitting in the car when it goes it is your problem and you get the privilege of being on the hook for replacing said clutch. Also of note is that neither the rental insurance nor travel insurance are likely to cover "mechanical breakdowns." It all seems like a pretty convenient little operation to me and the winner is for sure not the customer. I'll leave the tale there primarily as a cautionary one to any who might consider hoping in a rental, particularly a manual, in the UK and just going.

A lot of phone calls and research has yielded fewer answers than it should. Eventually efforts for a resolution kind of timed out as the close of business came. Which leaves me here on the couch of the Airbnb with my attention focused back on Luna dog at home and hoping that things go well when my mom picks her up from Kristen's friend and that she is inclined to eat and behave. 🤞

So yeah highs and lows and a reminder that no plan even the best laid one survives contact with the proverbial enemy.