"And that's why I don't like cricket."

The accountability experiment seems to have been a bit more successful this weekend, even though I spent all of yesterday watching obscene amounts of Harry Potter and eating even more obscene amounts of Guinness-spiked chocolate cake and butter-cream-cheese icing. (It didn't help that my elder brother came wandering in my room late this afternoon to announce he is going to visit my younger brother and his family tomorrow for several days, necessitating my spending an hour this evening making cupcakes for my niece and nephew. There are dinosaur sprinkles everywhere.) But yes, I am still picking away at the Greywater .doc, but I have rather successfully ended up with 79,335 words in it. I think I'll try and kick it over the eighty thousand mark before I go to sleep, but we'll see.

I also went for a long walk today, and while doing so composed an interesting little story in my head that I think I might attempt to write longhand on one of my long flights to the US and then to the UK. I'm not much for writing longhand these days, but it does tend to be more entertaining than bad movies and scary seatmates. But even if I don't write stories, I've been thinking I ought to start taking more detailed notes on worldbuilding. I've been chatting to Neme-chan about the gods of her world and of mine, and it makes me realise how little I note down about this sort of thing. It comes up in the stories, obviously, but I never lay it out straight for myself. I should do that, so at least then I have proper references. I also need to update a lot of my maps and things, because I am always making up new towns and cities and then forgetting where and when they are. Er. Foolish child....

Still, the gods are an interesting thing for me to consider. The world I write in has a rather...complex...theological background, but although I do understand its basic structure talking to Neme about it makes me realise how many details are still missing. It's been a real joy to delve into it; I was also amused by one of my recent trawls through the dangerous waters of tvtropes.org, as I discovered the Four Temperament Ensemble and came to the conclusion that the four cardinal elementals actually fit it very well. Chaesha is sanguine, Inamoran is phlegmatic, Amanita is chloeric, and Janerin is melancholic, and each of the personality traits associated with each match not only their original personalities before their deifications completely Flanderized them, but their associated elements. SCORE.

Still, Janerin's been amusing me in both good and bad ways the last couple of days. Even though earth elementals seem to be more associated with maternalistic figures, Janerin's a male god. He's a very male god, in fact; for an association, let's go with Gaston, shall we? Because no-one's got more in common with god than Gaston! (...oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But then again I'm evil, because I'm going to link y'all to this just because I don't want you to sleep tonight.) But he was made the earth god because he comes from a long line of miners and farmers, and he's very much a hunter and a warrior. It seemed obvious, at the time. (Then again, my Elder Gods can't exactly be called good judges of character.) Thing is, when I picture him, I tend to think of Russian tsars. But when I was walking today and calling to the sheep as I wandered past their fields, I was suddenly struck with the bizarre mental image of Janerin in classic New Zealand man-of-the-land attire -- and by that I mean a black singlet, stubbies and a fedora, with a sheep under one arm and a Speights in the other. Oh, god. In retrospect, it's a good thing I can't really draw, though I do have the urge to doodle this one. Uh...

Funnily enough, Otho's started sounding more and more like a New Zealander to my ear, though he's more of the Nothing Much generation. My terrible mental image of Janerin as above comes more from the seventies STUBBIES! generation. Although one can but hope he will never be struck by the urge to roll around on a classic car in said stubbies...

BRAIN BLEACH NAO PLS.

So, yes, that was my day -- I feel somewhat guilty, mind you, because I got to writing Círa's explanation to Otho of how she came to be imprisoned at Greywater, and...well. I used to live in Abingdon with my sister, and due to both BT and Virgin being right royal c*nts about connecting our internet, we wound up getting it through Sky...which of course meant we wound up with Sky television, too. And my sister had this dreadful habit of watching any show on NatGeo that involved polar bears. I say "dreadful" because no documentary about polar bears ever ends well. I mean, even when you watch fictional polar bears something terrible has to happen to them (you know I'm looking at you, I'm-gonna-knock-your-jaw-off-Bad-Ass-Armoured-Polar-Bear-Warrior-King-panserbjørne folk...). But yeah, my sister was always watching these shows and winding up in tears. So tonight I continued the tradition, because Círa's story involves a polar bear cub. And it dies rather nastily. ...so, yes, much writing has been done, but I am still a Bad Person.

Oh, well. I'm a writer, yeah? Suppose it comes with the territory. I mean, we invite voices into our head for the sole purpose of making their lives hell in the name of entertainment. What's a story without conflict, after all? :D