Pew Pew Nano Down!

It's the first of December and I am happy to say that November is over. Not because time is moving forward faster than ever and with it my impending aging and death (lol?), but because Nanowrimo is over for another year and I did it.

Yay!

I wrote 50k words this month and it feels hella good. To celebrate, I am staying in tonight, eating lamington ice cream and playing video games. This is the life!!

I'm also particularly happy with how it actually went this year. As I've said before, I'm a serial pantser. But all that pantsing paid off this time round, as halfway through writing myself in circles I was suddenly afflicted with *inspiration*. Now I'm legit interested in my story, I've got more ideas for it, and even better, it's not anywhere near finished which means it should be a good length when it finally is. Hurrah!

I wore this outfit the other day to see my kewl friends Shit Sex play. I was feeling special so I even did fakey eyelashes, which is unusual for me. For some reason I end up completely dressed up for random casual things like work and a gig, but when some real occasion comes up I'm running late and staying somewhere and barely have any makeup to work with. W/e! Life is fun. This outfit was inspired by my new fave girl, Becky G, in her video Shower. I even did all the makeups but I don't know how to photograph that so you'll have to take my word for it.

Uhhhh those are my new docs. I will quote my Nana, who said, "I know why you had to buy those shoes. They're an extension of you." She knows what it's all about.

Now for the rest of the year I've gotta quickly get another Moss Piglet out, gather the relevant presents and hopefully get some sleep-ins at some point.

I'm flying through books this year too. I recently finished both The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Both amazing writers, WOC and telling stories that more people need to hear in order to understand the experiences of specifically black people in America. Especially in the light of Ferguson. If more people read books like these they might be less ignorant and racist. You would hope, anyway. That Rookie roundup was perfect.

Now I'm reading Wetlands. It is both digusting and amazing. I can't wait to finish and watch the movie. It's both relatable and so extreme at the same time. I'm just so glad someone wrote a book about the stuff people do in private. It's so refreshing for it to be out in the open. Especially reading it on the tram, I get a kick (in the same way I think the main character, Helen, would) thinking about people catching sentences about period sex and butt cleaning accidentally.

Books are the best.

Hello blog/ Modern Polaxis / Megahex / Moss Piglet

Haiiii how's it going? The worst thing about not blogging is that I know I've been wearing some rad-ass outfits but haven't documented them. I will forget! They will be gone forever!! Damn. This/some combination of this has been a regular recently. My housemate was giving a bunch of clothes to charity and I took these pants out of the pile. Sorry charity.

I think I will start using this blog more actively though, and not just to document my outfits, but I've got a bunch of article ideas and I probably should start writing them up. I've always thought of articles as, like, adult writing for grown-ups, but for real they are mostly just a bunch of opinions. Of which I have many.

Having new experiences is great for writing too. I now work at a games store and it's giving me a lot of new interactions with different types of people who never came into the bar.

****UPDATE****

As I was writing this, the mail arrived. With it, came Modern Polaxis, a comic by Sutu that I donated to on kickstarter. It is ridic!!!

I added a bit more to my donation to get his other comic, Krysalis, which looks amazing. But the thing about Modern Polaxis is that it's an 'Augmented Reality' comic book, which means when I put my ipad camera over it (with an app) the pages are animated! So cyberpunk!!

I also went to All Star Comics last week to get Sugar Skull, the new Charles Burns, and I ended up grabbing Megahex and also meeting Cazz from Nerd Burger, who works there! She's super nice and wears the best clothes.

I'd only read one interview before with the guy who makes Megahex, and it made me pretty interested to read it. I was not only enthralled but left thinking about the characters for days. Definitely recommend for anyone who's ever had shitty friends who smoke way too much weed.

Sugar Skull was great. Yet again the artwork was strange and familiar at the same time. I was a little disappointed in the story I guess, but maybe I was expecting something other than what he does? It felt like it petered out a bit after all that build up. Then again, that's what he does - reality with a large dose of the surreal. I preferred the surreal bits. It was still really good.

My own shit is going alright, actually. In terms of writing, for once I've got a starting idea - I've got two characters I'm actually interested in. 'Big whoop' you might be thinking. For me this is a big deal! I usually hate everything I think of, which is the ultimate form of procrastination. I may or may not do Nanowrimo this year (it's still appealing, even to do a small part of it) but one of my *goals* on my 2014 list was 'have a substantial amount of one novel finished' and it's getting dangerously close to the end of the year again. Yeah, there are a lot of things on that list that won't be finished.

Publish two Moss Piglets was one of the other goals though, and that's going ahead as planned. The deadline for issue #3 is October 31st. So on the off chance anyone reads this, spread the word to your writer/sci-fi loving friends. Here's a lovely poster my friend and MP contributor Ashley Ronning made:

And that is all for now. :) :) :)

Making time

Wee-ooooo blog! I'm glad I haven't had time for blogging. I've been very busy, it's good to have many life things happening. Feels like it's going somewhere. Here're some pix of me the other day:

Hair flick cos why not. It was warm enough to wear shorts! Uh-mazing. These shoes are my new-ish babies. Also new in babies: I adopted a cat. Her name is Janet.

Also new in news: my band released our first E.P.

Listen and/or buy it here: http://nunofthetongue.bandcamp.com/

News in also also: Moss Piglet #2 was borned.

Buy it here: http://mosspiglet.bigcartel.com/

And my new job is amaze, my hair is new, my life is good... yada yada.

Supanova 2014

I wasn't going to cosplay this Supanova, but a week ago I watched the end of the 5th season of Adventure Time and suddenly I needed to. Canyon is Billy's ex-girlfriend, a giant motorbiking awesome lady. Obvi, her tallness was what made me relate to her so instantly. But I also happen to have green hair, so it was pretty easy to put something together. I'll add to the costume and do it again at another point.

 Supanova was fun as always, it was hilarious seeing James Callis because he IS Gaius Baltar. Like, if Gaius was an actor irl but had the exact same personality. He even told some story about how he ad-libbed a line, and the director was like, "James. That was amazing." And he told it in a totally straight-faced smug humblebrag Gaius kind of way.

The Adventure Time panel was THE BEST. Actually the best. So awesome.

Hopeless x Agent Provocateur x Me

So I definitely didn't wear this anywhere today, I mostly sat around in my pajamas on tumblr, but I'm planning on wearing it very soon. I don't get a lot of nights off unfortunately, and this week was particularly painful work-wise, but I'm now relaxing in bed with my feet up so that's nice.

I got this bra from the Agent Provocateur sale, yay! I'm really glad I bought it on mega-sale for $50. Originally it was something like $200, which I would never spend on a bra, and honestly it's not worth that much. It's not perfect, like the straps are a bit too long in places and you can't adjust them. But flaws aside, I love it very much, and it was definitely worth the price I ended up paying. As a side note, I'm also wearing my Hopeless Lingerie harness with this, and I think Hopeless are better quality than Agent. Not to mention half the price. And it's an independent business run by a woman from Melbourne. Tick tick tick.

My real life and blog friend Tegan tagged me in this question-answer type thing, so that's what I'm going to do right now. If you're the kind of person who thinks that's boring, you don't need to continue reading.

1. What am I working on now?

I'm working on the second issue of Moss Piglet, my experimental sci-fi journal. Submissions have just closed, and the entries I've received are awesome. I'm planning on making it a bi-yearly thing so if you missed out, don't worry. There'll be another one in the next six months.

I'm also working on a 10k word project for Camp Nanowrimo. The good thing about Camp is that it's not as intense as Nanowrimo. You can choose your own word limit at a minimum of 10k, which is only 334 words a day for a month. At this point in my life I don't have the time to do a 50k in a month thing, but 10k will easily be a good start towards the story I'm writing (which is a cyberpunk thing, yay!)

I'm also 'working' on finding a new job, because my current one is causing me lot of emotional stress. And I don't think that's worth any amount of money.

2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?

In terms of Moss Piglet, I've purposely set out to make a journal that's different from the majority of literary journals that are currently being published. (I love being on a high horse!) I've just found that the serious tone in both stories and the artwork in current journals is really boring. Like really boring. Like I don't even want to pick them up because they all have that same vibe. So I wanted MP to be willfully low brow. That's not to say that some of the stories aren't serious, because they are. But I want there to be variety. Silly/sad/funny/scary/whatever. No style out of bounds. And no particular style favoured. So the people submitting will feel free to write in whatever way they want, rather than trying to force their style to fit a journal's style in order to get published.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Who knows?! Nah, I write what I do because I feel like doing it, to be honest. I blog because I like having a record of my thoughts for the past couple of years. It's for myself basically. Because, as Tegan wrote, my memory is not good at all. So it's nice to remember things.

I guess people usually write journals, but I feel more comfortable writing at a computer.

4. What is my writing process?

Slack off, slack off, watch American Horror Story, spend hours on tumblr, slack off some more, then WRITE 50,000 WORDS IN ONE MONTH

then slack off for a year.


Thanks Tegan for the thingy! I don't really have anyone to else to tag apart from Hamish or Oscar I guess, who probably wouldn't do it. And apologies for those of you who were expecting a thoughtful blogpost and got pictures of my bra.

And oh yeah, I have this hair now. Surprise!

Ode to Lana Winters

I have to say, I love American Horror Story. I love it in the same way I love Stephen King - it's cheesy, kind of B-grade, but tells an awesome story that you get weirdly obsessed with. I just finished watching Asylum, the last of the three seasons I hadn't watched. I think it was the best of all of them, with Murder House second and Coven third. They just really went hardcore on the whole 'bad things happening to innocent people' idea. A story where someone you can relate to is helpless to other people and things, constantly trying to escape but trapped, now that's the kind of story people are gripped by. It's also a very relevant story in this current climate of asylum seeker detention centers. The show is made in America so I'm not sure the parallel was intended, but nonetheless it feels like a metaphor.

Something else I love about this show is the amount of interesting female characters it has, all with their own stories. Some strong, some weak. But not weak in the sense that they're a stereotype with no background. Weak as in they have their own struggles and they've been beaten down by them. The characters themselves have all been written strongly.

Unfortunately I think it is overwhelmingly a white show, especially seasons 1 and 2, with the exception of Britne Oldford who was awesome, but didn't play a very big part. Possibly they took that criticism when they were making Coven, which obviously has the amazing Gabourney Sidibe and a small cast of other incredible black women making up the voodoo coven. Like, that's awesome and all, but I wish they would start casting other minority actors in roles which aren't to do with their race at all. You know? Just as the main characters. Who aren't involved in race-related storylines. That would be nice.

Ok, on to the other stuff I guess. Lana Winters' outfits at the end of Asylum were off the chain! They almost made me want to wear skirt suits, pointy stilletos and fur coats... almost. Here're some examples:

And here are a few I just found on ebay... because you never know, maybe one day I'll reform my sneaker and tshirt wearing ways and become uber-glam.

uh, this one is mine. don't even.

Sooo excellent. Powerful journalist lady looks all the way.

Not actually grumpy

Hello there! I hope the new year is finding you well. It's finding me very well tbh. The general vibe, as far as I can tell from tumblr, is fuck last year this year rules? Which is something I can get behind. I'm glad I've documented the past few years on this blog, because I can see my own progression and remember that I've come a long way. I'm feeling very positive. I'm doing cheesy *positivity* things without shame, because they make me feel better. #Survival is so much more important than nonchalance and being cool. That is the theme this year. Shake off the shackles of irony and sarcasm. Stop pretending you don't care about yourself and what happens to you. Tell yourself you can do things. It makes you realise you weren't being realistic, you were actually holding yourself back.

Things I have done this year already:

1. Revisited my nano 2012 story and begun editing it.
2. Worked on the story of my nano 2013 story.
3. Started a story for a competition.
4. Almost sold out of Moss Piglet #1, and sold it at the zine fair yesterday.
5. Kind of successfully pushed work out of my mind while I'm not there (a work in progress)
6. Bought a new cymbal that I am in love with.
7. Hung out with nice people more. (being less socially anxious)(a work in progress)
8. Made some jewelry.
9. Played some gigs. (Bar Open + Boney)

So yeah. Going well.


How are you?