Untrustworthy

Penny is an untrustworthy narrator. I've decided this is going to be how she is going to be in the long haul; a self-doubting hero. An onion, or rather, parfait; she will in following books (assuming there are following books) do the typical self-effacing hero wisecracks to hide the fact that she's terrified and doesn't think she can pull it off. And she remains blind to the fact that she really is that kind of bad-ass as she once again does pull it off.

This book in particular, though, she is hiding things from the reader. First she hides the Nine Elms scar, barely mentioning it until Ichiro points it out and asks if she's covering it up because it brings back bad memories.

In the Cult HQ sequence, the intent was that she is also hiding the way she figured out it is Fake Aki, not her friend, on the headset. She doesn't tell the reader until later. I did something like this early in the London book; a street hustler is pulling the "gift bracelet" routine on her and as far as the narrative is concerned she is blandly going along. Until she reveals that she knows that hustle all too well from LA.

But here's a new problem:

I don't know if the payoff of Fake Aki is sufficient. I don't really need the extra betrayal from Ichiro, not the way their relationship actually developed on the page (I've done the "scars" scene -- the closest this thing is going to get to a sex scene.) It would help to have a native Japanese speaker for the moment when the Chimpira show up but I can get around that easily enough.

The downsides are that there is eventually an Aki betrayal. Of a sort. In the epilogue, she's implicated as being part of the Long Game that stretches through the series. So having her replaced by a fake for a few chapters just complicates things unnecessarily.

And then there's doing the cult scenes without Aki. A lot of the quips have been Penny and Aki bouncing pop-culture and other references off each other. I realized this the moment I started to explain the color codes of the cult's ranks, which are in my mind -- and possibly in-world -- drawn from Logan's Run. Aki would have a quip about, "If someone invites you to Carousel...don't go!"

Or something. Heck, maybe it would be better to remove one more temptation. I did cut the Garth Brooks reference and a couple other things I mentioned in the last post. And I still plan to cut more.

I've also decided to leave out detail on the Ancient Aliens theories of the cult. They talk about their own spin on it, but I'm going to leave off specifics. So no name-dropping Nazca Lines and Coso Artifacts and so on, not this time around.

So...maybe no Fake Aki. I'm at 1,000 words into the final part of the book and I've re-written the scene in the car twice already. Got as far as the front door but then decided that Greek/Roman classical architecture and "Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius..." wasn't the way to go. So now I'm going for a different classic. 

Jones the Spy

Finished restoring my dad's old mandolin. He bought it when he went off to the Army, because "it's lighter than a guitar." So Korean War vintage, mass production. Which is sort of cool. I made a point of not replacing any hardware and not stripping and re-finishing anything but keeping the marks of a well-used instrument. Except for the fingerboard. That was too deeply gouged to be comfortable to play.

And I got a new locker to keep all the instruments in. Working too hard on the novel to have time to record anything just yet...but does mean I can keep practicing that bass part...

***

Starting the fourth and final part of the Japan adventure and the completely expected week of reviewing the shape of the book and seeing if the original plotting still makes sense. I have to do a little more work on the cult, particularly, how they cult.

They have to be keeping secrets because otherwise there'd be no mission. It makes most sense for plotting if they are set up onion fashion, like Freemasonry, with ever more esoteric secrets revealed as you are initiated into the higher orders. These guys are even color-coded.

But there's more work to do. The reason I like to outline loosely is the reality that when you get deep into a story, the choices you had to make have compounded. For instance; I had been thinking of an episode at a high-tech gym for a while. As I was working on other scenes, I realized it felt a little "dry," like not enough actual plot was happening. I got the idea to have Deacon opening the gym and for Penny to end up climbing "Cliffhanger" as part of the scheme to get him to invite Athena Fox into the cult.

But with that scene, and a couple of other scenes that were already in the outline, their plotting is starting to be more obvious. So it is inevitable now that the moment Penny shows up at cult HQ, Deacon is going to ask; "Why are you spying on me?"

A few days work, and I know where I want to go with it. It's a very Penny direction. She outright admits it, making up a plausible reason that lets her stay on anyhow. And then choses to go around telling everyone there during the various introductions, "Me? Oh, I'm a spy..."

I dig the holes that the archaeologists who don't sing, don't dig

 Part III is finished!

And I'm so happy I'm a revise-as-you-go, because I did a bunch of tightening on the way. Added the Uchuu Senkan Yamato bit, rewrote a chunk of the Sukeban Deka fight to give it more of a try-fail cycle. And so on.

This is a story where Penny is extremely conscious about acting -- even takes some brush-up lessons from a retired Takarasienne. So I guess it makes sense that there's also a lot of music, especially Broadway. Penny mentions a little of her own music background, dropping remarks of both a flute player who chipped her tooth in an accident in a crowded rehearsal room, and a trumpet player she seems to be claiming was the first boy she slept with (while she was still being a self-described band geek.)

But then, the kind of story this is, there are call-outs to everything going on. To movies and games, and to random things. Deacon even name-drops Garth Brooks (after someone calls him "Mr. Blue.")

The first name-drop is Guys and Dolls and a few words from "Sit down you're rocking the boat." The next named music is "Round Midnight" -- it's being played on a shakuhachi -- and both Dexter Gordon and Thelonious Monk get a name-check.

Natsumi briefly quotes "Hotaru no kikari" but she doesn't explain that it is a song, or what it means. (as it turns out...it is sung to the same tune as "Auld lang synge!") Penny also hears the Torayanse but doesn't know the name, just calling it a weird melody the crossing lights are doing.

The two theater people manning a desk at the Toei studio park say "By George, I think she's got it" but My Fair Lady is only implied. They also mention "Beru Bara," aka The Rose of Versailes, but no lyrics are mentioned.

The Yuji Ono Trio is name-checked next, but not the name of what they are playing...or their connection to Lupin III. There's also a mention of Enka but no songs are given.

The Big Bad of this story of course took his name from a Steely Dan song, and Penny references one of the lyrics when she hears this.

Vince DiCola's synth-heavy training montage from Rocky IV is described in some detail next. But Bill Conti actually gets a name-check for his work on Karate Kid at the end of that scene.

She dances to a band playing on the bank of the Kamo river, but there is no name given for the music.

In the final big exercise scene her friend Aki does mix-tape duties, starting her off with Kitaro, selected anime soundtracks including Gunbuster and All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku, and Phillip Glass gets name-checked for his scores to Mishima and Koyanaquatsi.  But the scene concludes with "Yuki no shingun" and that gets several words of lyrics on the page.

(I can do this, because it is out of copyright.)

The Hyatt Bar scene of course opens with "Whatever Lola Wants" from Damn Yankees, and "Ella" is name-checked. In the following scene "Daiku" is brought up, which is what the "Ode to Joy" as arranged for Beethoven's 9th Symphony is called. I think Penny mentioned a sing-along Messiah earlier, too.

The Robot Restaurant show has lots of music but none of it is named, and it is only briefly described; "Screamingly loud techno-pop" followed by "a rather sappy love ballad." But there is also a neko-mimi in sparkly ninja outfit singing Disney Songs, although only "When you Wish Upon a Star" is mentioned by name.

Back to the bar for "Moon River." In the next scene, a small cafe with "eclectic jazz" playing. 

Then Akiba. Music is being heard, but not described. There's also a passing reference to Babymetal but Penny doesn't realize it is the name of a group. However, "The Freaks Come Out at Night" is described. And so is the the theme to Space Battleship Yamato. And a LOT of the lyrics to "Daiku" are given in the text.

The next cafe Yuki takes her to is playing show tunes. Penny guesses that they might have started with "Be Our Guest" (from Beauty and the Beast) and perhaps Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. The name of another Takarazuka show, Blood and Snow is given but this one doesn't exist in the real world. These are really likely to get cut. There's enough going on in the scene already.

And finally we're in the Peacock Room, the last big chapter to date. There's a big band playing and, oh my god. I cut the reference to "Snake Eater" from Metal Gear Solid -- but I kept the "James Bond introduction" and Aki is still doing one of Ocelot's lines on the headset. Uncredited. 

The band is specifically named as playing a cover of Chariots of Fire, although I didn't name the arranger, there's one version that has a "funky R&B" cover of it. Similar remarks for "Go the Distance," for which I credit Hercules (but don't credit the Lois Dowesdel recording I was thinking of.) I absolutely called out Maynard Ferguson as the arranger for "Gonna Fly Now." Same remarks as above for a "groovy salsa" cover of "Zero to Hero," also from Hercules, and Casino Royale (aka they presumably played an orchestral cover of "You Know My Name.")

Some of these may go away...but I'm willing to keep the lot of them in the big ballroom scene because that's a peculiar scene on it's own. 

After this, though, the only music I know I'm going to mention is the opening theme to Abarenbo Shogun, the march from Indiana Jones, and of course "Yuki no Shingun" gets a replay.

Maybe next book I'll make her join a Norse Folk Revival Band.

(I know, I know Paris was on the blocks, but I have all the months from January through April and I can't help thinking...Winter is Coming.)

It departs now to Iskander

 Holy cow. I'm 500 words into the last chapter of Part III. I've been mainlining brass bands, though.

Because of the "Embassy" scene (a black-tie fundraiser at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo). It is about school athletic programs (long story) and so I was hunting up theme-appropriate music for a big band. I mean, I knew I was going to use "Gonna Fly Now," the Maynard Ferguson version (which is basically a show-off for lead trumpet players). And because I'd been following a couple of trumpet players on YouTube I knew you could do a good cover of "Go the Distance" from Hercules. I did find a couple fascinating jazz covers of John William's 2014 Olympics theme but it didn't really work for me.

Oh, and I rewrote the end of the Hikikomori Nights. It was just a little too convenient for Penny that it all worked out. So I adjusted so what really gets the Otaku singing in unison is the theme to Space Battleship Yamato. Which I listened to a lot of covers on, including quite a few by the Japanese military (sorry; "Self-Defense Force.")

But finishing the romantic Christmas dinner -- a bucket of crisp and greasy KFC -- is going to have to wait. 

I'm not sure how the 20% pass is going to go. The Tokyo chapters are most out of control. I think the Kyoto chapters are fairly manageable as far as how much "stuff" is in them. And the Cult chapters are up in the air; I want to put across the idea that the cult has built this elaborate Ancient Aliens theory around key artifacts given to humanity as part of their Uplift effort, but I'd like to do this with name-dropping as little Ancient Astronaut Greatest Hits (Nazca Lines, Yonugi Formation, etc.) and artifacts.

But I'll see. If I could somehow keep going at this weekend's pace I'd be finished with the raw book in a couple more weeks...

***

Oh, yeah. And the bass part for "Commander Shepard" is pretty much there. Still an annoying amount of fret noise, though.

This morning I inserted a comma

 Had a fun idea to open the scene; "The umbrella in my ice tea was looking at me." Very briefly looked up Yokai Cafes but I wasn't going to use a real one anyhow. And this let me set up two later things; the dangerous life of the young kitsune (don't fall in love with playing at being human) and the uncanny danger of the Yuki-onna (which I still don't know is going to be a trick Penny tries on the chimpira in the big snow scene).

And sat down and started writing and banged out the first paragraph...

And realized it won't work. I need the "Embassy Ball" to be a big, culminating moment, also the apex of the James Bond arc; black tie and earbuds and glittering fashion and dangerous people. Which means I want to ramp up, with every scene from the conclusion of "Hikikomori Night" having the accelerating sense of preparing for the big mission.

And the kitsune warning needs to fall as close as I can to entering the Imperial Hotel.

This is the thing; a lot of a story takes place in dialogue, and there are natural ways one thing in a conversation leads to another. Bringing up the fight with Sukeban Deka offers two different jumping-on points to bring Aki back into the story, but also could lead naturally into getting the final dressing and make-up prep (as she needs to cover up the bruise she took. Which Penny might insist on calling a black eye, because she thinks that sounds funnier. She did the same thing when she was shot in the hip.)

So the timing is all messed up. If I open here, I can't have Yuki spot the black eye when they first meet, and she will have already explained about the kitsune -- which I sort of want happening while she is getting into The Dress.

I did pick out The Dress, though. (That was a few days of learning both too much and too little about the complexities of formal wear for women).

So now I'm back to charting out what is best to have when, what leads best to what, and how to unfold the scenes in a logical way that still gets the acceleration I want and gets as much of the information I want across as well.

But it is writing. So with any luck I'll get several hours of productive work in before I need to stop and "relax" by going back into PhotoShop.

(About 3/4 of the way done on repainting the cover model. On the list is creating a new "widget" that will identify the series -- using the owl I have but making it more interesting -- and re-doing the title text with texture and dimension. And of course a basically new background. The next covers should go a bit quicker...)

String Section

I inherited a mandolin. Been cleaning it up; fingerboard was gouged (and grimy) so scraped that down with my violin knife, sanded it with 800-grit and re-stained it. Took all the hardware off and got the corrosion off with a combination of white wine vinegar soak and WD40 and a wire brush. 

Somewhere along that process I took pictures of some of the instruments I mean to employ on "Shepard, Jane Shepard" -- when I finally feel comfortable enough to lay down the bass part. So here's my strings:

Violin, cello (chin cello; extra-heavy strings on a slightly modified acoustic-electric), and bass (chin bass; my prototype made with Kala U-bass strings on a hand-carved neck hung on a Chinese kit body.) No viola, but given the kind of sounds I get out of the other two I don't think anyone would care.

And the winds for this project; Alto sax (yes, actually an alto. A cheap one bought open-box). Soprano sax (more-or-less; Yamaha Venova, a noble experiment of an instrument), and flute (standard C flute. And, no, I haven't been able to get a clean flutter tongue on the flute. First instrument that hasn't been easy...)

And the actual performed percussion; hat and kick and toms and so on are all going to be off synthesizer. Bongos, shaker (the one I made myself from shakes...well, from off-cuts), and snare (specifically, Korg WaveDrum; the only electronic drum you can play brushes on. Although for this piece, I'm playing stick.)

Pity, though, there's no part for a mandolin. (But the new strings won't even come until Monday, and it will be late next week before the finish is dry and I'm ready to re-assemble).

More useless knowledge

 We're hardwired to want to learn new skills. This can so often be a trap.

Game modding gets deep, fast. Even just dropping third-party mods into Skyrim or Fallout 4 gets complicated quickly.

Want your character to have a clean pair of pants? Well, there are mods that add some "pre-war" clothing in. But what about that cool bomber jacket? Well, oops, it was designed to be AKWR compatible and the Vortex Mod Manager won't install it. The Armor and KeyWords Resource is designed to make it easier to organize clothing items, especially those that can include the Railroad's "ballistic weave", but AKWR depends of Fallout Script Extender, which is an off-site tool that has to manually un-gzipped and compiled...

And forget heels. Because Fallout 4 was never designed for heels, so you need to use a modified skeleton, which requires multiple other script extender tools, which comes bundled with extended physics you are required to put in because otherwise Vortex barfs, oh and they are all organized around third-party body/skins, which are only partially compatible with each other...

And using third-party mods is nothing on how deep the rabbit hole gets when you try to build your own mods.

***

My first mod, made in FO4edit because the Creation Kit requires all sorts of hoops of signing up and membership and so on at Bethesda Net, including installing an entire package that tries to force you to boot through them instead of Steam, changed one number on another mod.

My second successful mod was to allow you to manufacture a battery out of a spare fusion cell you could use to power things around your settlement instead of running wires everywhere. I have a thought for the super-charged version; the Friendly Atom, which you construct from a mini-nuke and is 1-point power supply with a huge radiant distance.

At least that won't require I learn more new skills and/or download even more tools.

See, the Bethesda games use something called a nif file. In the Poser world, the polygon mesh is an obj file that just sits there in the folder. The rigging and IK and morphs and so forth are all external.

In Bethesda world, everything is folded into the nif. The official Bethesda generator models, for instance, have a spot on the nif that is designated as "wires go here." If you do something like attach generator behavior to a desk fan (a broken third-party mod I tried out) the "attach wires" animations play, but the wire never attaches.

Similarly, the animation is baked in. In the case of the desk fan, all that modder did was create a new ACTV item and attach it to the nif of an in-game static object. Which, as it turns out, had animation burned-in; it automatically goes through the entire desk fan spinning and pointing when brought into the world. And, no, the wire doesn't attach.

My genny was built on the in-game model of a fusion cell gun ammunition. I was able to get it to radiate power, be workshop constructible, and to make a sound when "switched on." But I can't stick it to walls; I'm assuming that's another nif property that an object that is normally found lying on the ground doesn't have.

One of the things that excites me is that the nif file also has a designated "sit" area, and the third-party nifScope will create a wire-frame NPC to show you how they would interact with the object. With that, and plugging in the "trigger animation file" behavior, you could have settlers go up and sit on, lean against, lie down on, or even operate any arbitrary mesh.

One of the mods in my stack right now adds constructible versions (aka you can build them in Workshop mode to add them to your settlement) of various static props with animation triggers attached. Turns out a good in-game test is to speak to your current companion and tell them "check that out." It amused the heck out of me to see Cait, the Irish pugilist, sit down on a chair that had a typing animation flag on it and she was perfectly placed to start tapping away at a computer monitor I'd placed on the nearby table. (And you can use these yourself, too, although the third-person camera isn't optimal for watching how the animation looks.)

A different mod attached animations to designated scavenging stations which means settlers can be assigned to them. The funniest one is a pre-war car, which returns a small amount of salvage to your settlement if a settler is assigned to...wash it (I'm assuming it uses the "clean counter" animation).

See, that's the problem. Once you've started, you get filled with ideas about "what could I do with this?" One thing I'd love to do (and distribute as a mod, although it is probably done by others already) is to make a larger and more classy water purifier. There's those pumps you clean up for those greenhouse robots, so there's an in-game model already that could be used...but to make it really cool, you'd want to edit the nif so it requires the business end to be submerged in water. And add some animation so you can tell when it is running...

That's the thing; when you start crawling through the editors, you see all these cool things mentioned and you wonder what it would look like, sound like, behave like if you were to build that into something...

***

Meanwhile over in the other "useless skills" I'm gearing up to record a piece that is going to require I play bass, electric guitar, flute, alto sax, trumpet, trombone, violin, chin cello, chin bass, snare, bongos, and shaker... (It also has toms and hat, plus barisax and bass 'bone but I'm not crazy....)