it's rained all day
Apr. 20th, 2009 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today I arrived for an appointment with my psychologist twenty-four hours early (thank heavens his office is only half a block from my house), dyed my hair and effectively covered my hands in grey blotches (but the hair looks bloody amazing), bicycled to the doctor's office for my monthly check-up without error but got horribly lost on the way home (and wet), and contemplated Mr Caruthers sewing spells into his coat. (Yes, of course he can sew. He's a thirty-five-year-old bachelor in turn-of-the-century England. He has to be able to do his own mending. Anyway, the magic in this 'verse is a bit like psychic needlework...)
So, I'm about to be on Ritalin. (Dr Kozloski wrote me a prescription, but it was too cold and rainy for me to want to ride out to Wal-Mart to fill it, so I'll do it tomorrow on my way to my eye appointment.) This will be interesting. And, I hope, fruitful. I heard a story on NPR some months back about college students selling their Ritalin and such, black-market like, to other students around finals time, and, um... the effects of the medication that the students were discussing and why they were willing to pay exorbitant prices for illegal substances? They made me jealous. The idea of being to concentrate on things is kind of exhilarating -- watch a film straight through without being constantly distracted by the inside of my own head! I've heard stories about unpleasant side-effects, and I'll certainly be watching out for them, but I'm hopeful. (Anyway I didn't have any of the horror-story reactions to Zoloft everyone talks about. It's worked quite amiably for me thus far.)
Been considering the Evangeline story a lot lately... I really ought to get it out and play with it a while.
So, I'm about to be on Ritalin. (Dr Kozloski wrote me a prescription, but it was too cold and rainy for me to want to ride out to Wal-Mart to fill it, so I'll do it tomorrow on my way to my eye appointment.) This will be interesting. And, I hope, fruitful. I heard a story on NPR some months back about college students selling their Ritalin and such, black-market like, to other students around finals time, and, um... the effects of the medication that the students were discussing and why they were willing to pay exorbitant prices for illegal substances? They made me jealous. The idea of being to concentrate on things is kind of exhilarating -- watch a film straight through without being constantly distracted by the inside of my own head! I've heard stories about unpleasant side-effects, and I'll certainly be watching out for them, but I'm hopeful. (Anyway I didn't have any of the horror-story reactions to Zoloft everyone talks about. It's worked quite amiably for me thus far.)
Been considering the Evangeline story a lot lately... I really ought to get it out and play with it a while.
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Date: 2009-04-21 01:05 am (UTC)I always thought being distracted by what is going on in my head was normal.
As for the sewing spells into a coat, I thank you! You have given me a brilliant idea for a Victorian seamstress witch that I think I am going to turn into this years Nano. Name ideas are being accepted.
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Date: 2009-04-21 03:04 am (UTC)I had another kind-of idea about the Evangeline story except I'm not sure if it would work for you (also I think it's weird that I had kind of the same ideas re: use of vampires in war that are showing up in Barbara Hambly's books, except...months before I'd even heard of them).
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Date: 2009-04-21 03:18 am (UTC)Have you been able to find Traveling With the Dead yet? I was really worried when I read the back cover and thought oh GOOD HEAVENS she stole Kyra's idea for me like fifteen years in advance, but... it's more vague? Sort of? So I still feel as though I could get away with it, if it manages to work itself out. :/ (Also LYDIA ASHER IS MADE OF WIN. Just so you know. And I swear, Ysidro gets more like Constantine all the time.)
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Date: 2009-04-21 08:18 am (UTC)As for my other idea, it's...I'd said something vague about, like, London itself sort of having a life-force except hopefully with less cheesy words? Like, I dunno, the city itself but also all the people in it and...stuff. And then after I read about Demonreach that idea kind of came up again--like, there actually is some sort of spirit in/of the city, something really old and probably fairly amoral, in that it feeds off of/is made of everything in the city and everything that happens there, and I don't know if there are any ley lines under London but that would be nice. Or maybe it has to do with how London was founded, or every big city has a genius, in this sense of the word, or...whatever. And someone is siphoning off its energy or something and slowly killing it? And the vampires twig to this first because they're so much more dependent on psychic/magical energies than people are because there are more than just physical things keeping them alive? At first I thought maybe vampires could be disappearing/dying from this but that wouldn't really be seen as a bad thing, aside from a sort of canary-in-the-mine-shaft effect. So...maybe the vampires notice and...start killing more people because...uh. Well, heck, maybe they suddenly start killing more because this draining of the city's spirit is sort of draining them too, so that's why
the Watcher's Councilneeds Evangeline? And because of her vampire she finds out why the vampires are killing more?I...have no idea if that's even close to useful, but...yeah.
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Date: 2009-04-21 05:00 pm (UTC)As to the idea of have a London with a life force, I put forth the idea that it might be slightly less cheesy, but potently more so to have some of the older buildings and foundations of London move when the city is in need of saving or when ever they feel like it.
Hope it helps. One day we need to get the cooler writers in our friends circles in one very big group chat and bounce ideas off each other.