(no subject)
Jan. 29th, 2004 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zana16Have received my Evenstar pendant... I may be an entwife, but I still like pretty things. Am now browsing through the many beautiful things New Line sells, though I promised myself I would not buy anything from them except the EE DVDs. Wish I had money. Would have prettypretty swords.
Meanwhile, Carol Christ the Evil Bastard has decided to close kitchens but won't tell us which ones. I think she wants to head off a mass appeal to the alums for money to save our kitchens. I for decided about the time Smith screwed me over again (trying to take my scholarship away) that the school would not get any money from me after graduation, unless in the form of donations to the library, the Rare Book Room, or the Math Deptartment. Smith is siphoning money from exactly the places it needs to be: housing and academics. They are no longer hiring professors for tenure-track positions, meaning that class sizes are getting bigger and there is little new blood. Tuition will go up and financial aid will have to go up with it, saving us absolutely no money at all, while meanwhile quality of Smith life and Smith academics will go down. I wash my hands of them; they've made it quite clear they care nothing for student input, and little more for alumnae opinions. Fuck 'em.
Hashed out a storyline with Aprille last night, so I finally have something vaguely resembling a plot instead of a series of nebulous images. I'm having trouble with character names, as usual. In Bear's story, I could get away with just referring to the main female character as "She" because all the other characters were men, but I doubt I could get away with it now. I have named her Darcy for the time being, since I have no images attached to that name, and since the name Dacey is being used in Redemption. Darcy has entirely too much of me in her, which I am uncomfortable with, as it means self-examination. Which is rewarding, but really really hard and painful. I'm only two pages into the story and already it's difficult to write. I should stick to characters that I don't put so much of myself in. Dacey is rather like me except for the whole mass-murderer thing, but she is clearly a separate person whereas Darcy is someone I could have become. I can take a step back from Dacey, whereas with Darcy I am personally invested in the emotional life of the character. Holly (main character of Graduation) was separate enough, though much like me as well, enough like me that it was extremely difficult to write her process of growing up. Darcy is right there with me, which is hard in its own way because I'm also the omniscient narrator, and I'm afraid I'd let Darcy know too much and react too much to information she doesn't have. With Dacey I have a similar problem in that she is enough like me that I sometimes lose track and let her have reactions that would be mine in her situation. Dacey has a gentleness inside her but too often the gentleness I write in her is my own and not her brand of gentleness. Again, the omniscient narrator keeps reacting through her character with more information than the character has. As usual, I am obsessing over characters to the exclusion of all else, including plot.
Meanwhile, Carol Christ the Evil Bastard has decided to close kitchens but won't tell us which ones. I think she wants to head off a mass appeal to the alums for money to save our kitchens. I for decided about the time Smith screwed me over again (trying to take my scholarship away) that the school would not get any money from me after graduation, unless in the form of donations to the library, the Rare Book Room, or the Math Deptartment. Smith is siphoning money from exactly the places it needs to be: housing and academics. They are no longer hiring professors for tenure-track positions, meaning that class sizes are getting bigger and there is little new blood. Tuition will go up and financial aid will have to go up with it, saving us absolutely no money at all, while meanwhile quality of Smith life and Smith academics will go down. I wash my hands of them; they've made it quite clear they care nothing for student input, and little more for alumnae opinions. Fuck 'em.
Hashed out a storyline with Aprille last night, so I finally have something vaguely resembling a plot instead of a series of nebulous images. I'm having trouble with character names, as usual. In Bear's story, I could get away with just referring to the main female character as "She" because all the other characters were men, but I doubt I could get away with it now. I have named her Darcy for the time being, since I have no images attached to that name, and since the name Dacey is being used in Redemption. Darcy has entirely too much of me in her, which I am uncomfortable with, as it means self-examination. Which is rewarding, but really really hard and painful. I'm only two pages into the story and already it's difficult to write. I should stick to characters that I don't put so much of myself in. Dacey is rather like me except for the whole mass-murderer thing, but she is clearly a separate person whereas Darcy is someone I could have become. I can take a step back from Dacey, whereas with Darcy I am personally invested in the emotional life of the character. Holly (main character of Graduation) was separate enough, though much like me as well, enough like me that it was extremely difficult to write her process of growing up. Darcy is right there with me, which is hard in its own way because I'm also the omniscient narrator, and I'm afraid I'd let Darcy know too much and react too much to information she doesn't have. With Dacey I have a similar problem in that she is enough like me that I sometimes lose track and let her have reactions that would be mine in her situation. Dacey has a gentleness inside her but too often the gentleness I write in her is my own and not her brand of gentleness. Again, the omniscient narrator keeps reacting through her character with more information than the character has. As usual, I am obsessing over characters to the exclusion of all else, including plot.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-29 08:06 pm (UTC)BOARD OF TRUSTEES, PEOPLE! BOARD OF TRUSTEES! She's just the figurehead mouthpiece!
Re:
Date: 2004-01-29 08:11 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-29 08:19 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 02:48 am (UTC)No, actually it said "You will distroy Hubbard, because we have something here that you won't find other places and by throwing us to the quad bunnies as the proverbial calf you will eleminate a fantastic community in exchange for a dining room like King/Scales. Oh, and if you try and make us integrate with the quad, we will riot with flaming torches, pitchforks and illegal swords. And if you want more money, how about NOT ripping down the beautiful science buildings we alread have". Except with nicer words. Sort of. I also appologized for the confrontational tone, which she said in her reply wasn't nessisary, which makes me afraid she missed the confrontational tone and the fact that I'm fucking pissed she's going to let everyone eat lunch in Hubbard in shifts. Still, her reply was couched with, "nothing is decided yet, but we do have to save money somehow", so maybe I can convince her that "somehow" shouldn't include everyone eating lunch in my dining room. I doubt that my current suggestion of replacing her with a sock puppet, and paying it in buttons instead of cash would go down very well. Or the one about starting an offical Smith porn site. I know plenty of students who would pitch in to save our kitchens :-)
Anyway, the current plan is, if they let the quad people eat in our dining room, to go to lunch nude, emulating the german students. Anyone who stays, we don't mind having around.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 02:56 am (UTC)I also invited her to come eat lunch in Hubbard, and see for her self. Now I just hope she comes on a good day, or at all. Sigh, people can be dumb. They're trying to buy off the quad by offering our dining room as the sacrifice. But Hubbard feeds eighty, not half of campus (we assume the other half goes to Tyler). I fear UMass-esque food...
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 02:07 pm (UTC)