Supernatural Re-Watch

So I’m almost done with the revision of the third Memoir, I just turned in my next chapter for L5R, the number of pictures left to edit is down to two digits, and the next ten months are jam-packed full of time-consuming things I intend to do.

Which means it’s a perfect time to start a new giant project!

(Or at least it’s a perfect time for my brain to suggest a new giant project.)

I’ve decided I’m in a mood to re-watch Supernatural. And if I’m going to do that, I might as well blog my way through, because one of my reasons for re-watching it is to take a look at its macro-level narrative structure. Eric Kripke, the showrunner, did a remarkably good job of blending a strongly episodic, Monster of the Week format with a long-term metaplot and thematic development, and I’d like to take a look at how he did it. I won’t be blogging each episode individually, but rather commenting on structural stuff as it comes up during the course of the show.

This will involve spoilers. Lots of them. I’ll put everything behind cuts, but if you already know the show or don’t care about being spoiled, feel free to share your thoughts!

Before I get started on the actual blogging, let me share how I got into this show, and why I find it interesting enough to merit this kind of project.

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You can only go so far

Look, guys. I tried. Really I did.

Not just the usual steps, but extra steps. I culled. I culled again. I tagged early, so that I could compare crosses to crosses, statues to statues, urns to urns, and delete the ones that just weren’t on par with the rest. I deleted more when I started editing. I got rid of as much as I could.

And I still have 229 bloody photos from Highgate and Brompton Cemeteries.

It was October! There was autumn color! Leaves and branches blown down by the storm! Crows posing on crosses! Ivy eating EVERYTHING! It was like being in Japan when the cherry trees were blooming. Those places were just too damn photogenic for their own good — or rather, for mine.

I mean, this is a major improvement over where I started. I think I had more than 450 shots from those two places when I started. But still. 229 photos of crosses, crosses with ivy, statues, statues with ivy, urns, urns with ivy, obelisks, obelisks with ivy, the occasional mausoleum, and did I mention the ivy?

Between this and Zakopane, I’m sorely tempted to post nothing but cemetery shots in October. I have more than enough.

A note on the pictures

Since this came up in comments the other day — you should be able to click through on any of the photos from “A Year in Pictures” and get the largest version I have. Actual size varies wildly, since my older photos are often smaller to start with and some of my selections have been massively cropped; some of them will be OMGWTFBBQENORMOUS and others will be not that much larger than what’s posted on my site. But if you want to pull any of them down for private use, feel free. (If you want to use them for some other purpose, drop me a line and we’ll work something out.)

Proud Member of the Insect Army

“The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them—they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.” — (name withheld) on SFF.net, during the recent unpleasantness.

I hereby declare myself a proud member of the Insect Army — not a member of SFWA, but certainly part of the “new generation of writers” and unwilling to run for cover when bigotry and stupidity rear their heads in my industry.

And if I’m willing to say that when I am massively phobic of cockroaches and abhor the damn things to the depths of my soul, you know I mean it.

A Year in Pictures – Żuraw at Night

Żuraw at Night
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Żuraw is the old medieval crane of Gdańsk: an enormously tall building with a giant treadmill-driven pulley system inside for lifting cargo from ships. Kyle and I arrived in Gdańsk late at night and discovered our hotel was just across the Motława River from the Żuraw, and so we spent a little while admiring (and photographing) the view. The stillness of the night meant the reflection was absolutely lovely.

A Year in Pictures – Halebidu Central Hall

Halebidu Central Hall
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Like most of the temples we visited, Halebidu had multiple structures on its ground. This is the interior of the main one. Off to the right about halfway down is a small chamber with the actual shrine in it, but the whole place is (of course) intricately carved. (The ceilings are even more amazing; I’ll be posting a picture from those eventually.)

Month of Letters; Con or Bust

Just a reminder that the Month of Letters is ongoing. If you want to get a letter from Lady Trent, now’s your chance!

Also, my Con or Bust auction is now live. On offer: a signed pair of ARCs for A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents. Bidding currently stands at $45. Remember that this is a charity effort organized under the auspices of the Carl Brandon Society, “a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction.” Con or Bust helps fans of color attend cons they might not otherwise be able to afford.

If you need me for anything, I’ll be buried under this rock, revising the next book. 😛

Tonight’s weightlifting revelation

Increasing the weight is more difficult for the exercises you’re doing at low weights than at high.

Not just because you’re weaker in those regards and less accustomed to pushing for something harder — though that may be true — but because even a small increment is a much bigger deal. If I’m doing 25 lbs. on something and go up to 27.5, eh, okay, that’s a 10% increase. If I’m doing 5 lbs.* and go up to 7.5? That’s a 50% increase. I would probably not go from 50 lbs. to 75 on a given exercise, or 100 to 150, but at low levels, I don’t have much choice. I’ve already done the part where I add reps and sets; eventually I just have to suck it up, add the weight, and mush on.

“Mush” is more or less what certain upper body muscles feel like right now. 😛 But hey: the next time I add weight on those exercises, it will only be a 33% increase. Which is going to feel like a cakewalk, after this round.

*Why yes, I am utterly lacking** in tricep strength; thanks for asking.

**But I’m getting better!

What “photo processing” means

In the comments to my last post, Mindstalk asked:

So what does editing consist of? Are you doing major adjustments to each picture, or eyeballing each one for need for any editing, or doing batch edits?

The answer is long enough that I figured it deserved a post of its own.

First of all: no batch editing, in the sense of selecting ten or a hundred pictures and saying “Lightroom, do the following to all of them.” It wouldn’t work: what each picture needs is individual, so I’d just end up changing whatever I had done. Instead, my workflow goes roughly like this.

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Climbing Mount Lightroom

I should mention that one of the reasons I’m doing the Year in Pictures project is to blackmail myself into finishing the task of processing all of my photos. After all, if I don’t get through Poland/last month’s Monterey trip/my eight million cemetery pictures from London, you all will never get to see the best of them! And that would be a tragedy.

So how many photos do I have, anyway?

Well. For various reasons, I have photos in my Lightroom catalogue that I didn’t take, which therefore will not be making it into the Year in Pictures set. (Though I’m having to edit some of those, too. And someday, when I’m done with my own stuff, my husband is probably going to make sad eyes at me to edit his pictures, and there are . . . quite a lot of those, let’s say. Some of which are in here already, some of which aren’t.) Stuff in Lightroom That Isn’t Mine = 2132 pictures.

Stuff in Lightroom That Is Mine = 7794 pictures.

Which is a fair-sized stack.

But! I have been working assiduously to get through these! I am pleased to say that after a recent push (in which I finished off my honeymoon, our visit to the Queen Mary down in L.A., and another day of Poland), I have reduced the number which still need editing to the low, low sum of 1361.

. . . this is about the point at which I say “oh god, I’m doomed.”

I’m making progress, really I am. In fact, I’ve done more than the 6433 photos it looks like, because part of the process involves deleting pictures that aren’t that good or duplicate other photos of better quality. I don’t know exactly how many I started with, but I’ve probably deleted two thousand, maybe even more. Certainly more, if I count my first-pass cull of the England/France trip last fall, since that whacked a good thousand out of the total on the spot. So while the current numbers say I’m about 83% done, I’m actually doing much better than that. Still and all: I have a long way to go before I’ll have finished climbing Mt. Lightroom. (And it doesn’t help that I keep taking more. bloody. photos.)

The news, it comes fast and thick

The Kirkus review is online now. I expect some portion of this is going to end up on a book cover eventually:

This, the second of Isabella’s retrospective memoirs, is as uncompromisingly honest and forthright as the first, narrated in Brennan’s usual crisp, vivid style, with a heroine at once admirable, formidable and captivating. Reader, lose no time in making Isabella’s acquaintance.

(Though my actual favorite part of it is the bit where they say “And during her adventures in the Green Hell—the book’s finest section—Isabella will find sociology as important as natural history…” Because yes: the anthropological side of things is indeed just as important as the biological side. Dragons cannot be separated from the way human beings view and interact with them.)

Two shiny bits of news regarding A Natural History of Dragons, to go along with the run-up to Serpents: it’s made both Booklist‘s Notable Books Reading List, and the American Library Association’s 2014 Reading List (via their Reference and User Services Association arm). I’m in company with V.E. Schwab’s Vicious in both those places, which makes me think I really ought to check that one out.

Also, this slipped out during the holiday season, and I only just noticed it now: the audiobook of Deeds of Men is on sale. (I’ve gone from no audiobooks to three of ’em in the space of a few months. Heh.)

I think that’s it for now . . . .