ig 🏳️‍🌈

my mini Phalaenopsis has opened its final flower of this year's rebloom. it's slowly losing two lower leaves; i think it's overdue for repotting, though i want to wait until the flowers dry up.

#plants #houseplants #bloomscrolling

🐈‍⬛ sighting

#CatsOfMastodon #BlackCat #void

#WritersCoffeeClub 20. What's a (maybe silly) hill you're willing to defend?

that 'hook the reader' does not mean 'fling us into a violent fight scene with zero context or reason to care.'

so many times, i've scrolled past aggressive opening lines involving fists colliding with faces and spears stabbing into creatures with no prior setup, and it isn't exciting. it's monotonous, and infantile.

i don't need to see a gun getting shoved into someone's face in the opening line to maintain my interest. some of the best stories i've ever read started with something like 'The primroses were over' (Watership Down), 'The river flowed both ways' (The Diviners), or 'His tiny, tightly permed maternal grandmother, Anita Moody, had never liked him' (Son of a Trickster). even Jurassic Park opens with a description of the weather. i kept reading past those opening lines, because 1. i knew already from the synopsis that the story was going to get interesting, 2. curiosity is more a more compelling hook than generic sword-fighting.

'Kiwi' aeonium update

on a whim, i pruned this little aeonium to see how it would respond to bonsai techniques. interestingly, it has produced some aerial roots that give it the illusion of a buttressed trunk. it may never become anything other than an 'interesting plant' but i kind of like it. as a bonus, any rosettes i prune off are easily propagated and added to planters, or given to friends.

if grown in full sun, the colour of the leaves will turn yellow, with red tips. this plant is grown indoors under grow lights, so the leaves are green.

#plants #houseplants #succulents #bonsai

#PennedPossibilities⁩ 991. Tell us about your WIP. What is the genre or genres?

the current WIP is a sequel; the first book is available for free on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62147545/chapters/158967184

i can't talk much about the sequel without flagrant spoilers, so i'll talk about the first book.

i find the broadest description to be the best—historical fantasy, fantasy set in the past. but unlike a lot of fantasy, the focus is not on action or combat but the characters' psychological responses to the events—the biggest of these being the fall of Lucifer.

#WordWeavers 16. Would your WIP still work if you changed the gender of your MC?

if i gender-swapped my protagonists it would be a completely different story. almost the whole book is about womanhood and patriarchy, in their various forms. even the authors that inspired the book were mostly women; when the goddess Venus looms over the whole project, it makes sense to draw inspiration primarily from women's writing, to give the story that femme flair.

i think this is all to the good. if it were easy to gender swap the protagonists, it would be a sign that i had not made them, their psychology, or their struggles believable. men and women do behave differently: gender has a profound impact on our upbringings, our personalities, and the choices available to us.

we'll be going to a dog show this weekend, mostly to see the poodles. (my sister is a giant poodle person.) i'm wondering whether we'll catch sight of this lil mop again, who was a highlight from two years ago.

#poodles #MiniPoodle

#PennedPossibilities 1014. If it came down to it, would your SC choose to protect the MC in a dangerous situation?

this was the crucible Raphael passed through before the main plotline begins. he was a member of the jury that convicted Lucifer of heresy, and sentenced her to death.

long ago, Raphael was assigned the duty of raising Lucifer to maturity: he became her father surrogate, and came to love her as a parent would, even in the face of recurring, tumultuous conflicts. he intervened more than once to try and save her from herself. but the trial exceeded his power to overturn it. angel juries are not like ours: a unanimous verdict was not required; there was nothing he could do to change the outcome when he was so outnumbered.

the central question of Raphael's arc is this: would you stand with your child if doing so condemned you alongside them? is loyalty worth your life as well as theirs? i think the answer is not as simple as TV morality would have us believe.

cats jumping off the couch as i yell at every goal #hnom

i am happy to see Montreal win, but i would prefer it if they won because they played a tight game, not because their opponent blew it with a goaltending implosion. Carolina (who will face the winner of this series) swept their last two opponents, and Andersen has a .950 save percentage. it will be a hard semifinal if Montreal doesn't shape up a bit.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/canadiens-sabres-game-5-9.7199376

and just like that, it's an eight goal game #hnom