The Alpha Legacy! one.point.oh

Alright, so... it's time for a new legacy. This one is going to be a bit different from my last. First of all, it's going to be a quasi-alphabetacy. Quasi because the only rules I'm really taking from it are that each generation will be named for their respective letter of the alphabet (which means 26 generations in all if I manage to finish and that's only slightly crazy, right?) and that there are to be a minimum of three children born in each generation. Also, there's the typical legacy rule of starting on an empty 5x5 lot with absolutely no money cheats (or hacks to make life somehow easier; of course there are a few gameplay-related ones I'm keeping in but they aren't really cheat-y). And finally, I'm attempting to make things a bit more interesting by throwing in these mini-challenges throughout; they were actually what inspired me to start this in the first place. Though I probably won't start using them until a couple of Sim-weeks in because the initial search for a spouse and scrounging for money is entertaining/stressful enough in itself, I think. But apart from those few restrictions, as last time, I'm really not keeping score or trying to accomplish much because I'm not anal enough to keep track of points and all. So... I think that's it. Onward?

( Tally ho! )



P.S. I've got a nearly-finished poem in the works right now so expect that in the next few days. I just have to tweak it a bit more than read it about three dozen times until I can no longer find anything else to nitpick over. It'll actually be my first completed poem this year; my last one was in mid-November. Also, I've got some vague notion of going through my several half-baked ideas in the near future and deciding what's salvageable and what's not. They've been collecting virtual dust on my hard drive long enough at this point... so we'll see if any of them actually go anywhere.

Dance, Darling

I first started this poem ages ago as something completely different (and completely shitty) and got so frustrated by it that I gave it up half-finished. Recently, for some reason, I got inspired to restart it pretty much from scratch. Seriously, the only thing that’s remotely similar between the two versions is the title. Also, this somehow managed to turn into a beast somewhere along the way. That always happens to me; I start out with this simple idea that I don't think will take more than a handful of stanzas to cover then I keep getting more ideas and it becomes terribly unwieldy and long-winded and I can't seem to stop it, it just keeps going and going despite my efforts. So I probably should have edited this into a short story but... I didn't. Because poems are just so much more aesthetically pleasing to me for some reason. I don't know; all of those short lines of text, especially when centered and formatted just so, look so... elegant and clean and like they have a real purpose for being there. That's not quite something you can get out of a typically-styled short story. I may have ended up going a bit overboard with the adjectives and meticulously detailed descriptions but, well, I like adjectives so shut up. I'm pretty happy with it regardless.

Soooo here it is.

I feel I should give a bit of credit where it's due. The title was borrowed from Joanna Newsom’s “Monkey & Bear”: “Dance, darlin’/Come on, will you dance, my darlin’?” The colt comparison near the beginning was shamelessly stolen from The Secret History by Donna Tartt: “She gazed at me with vacant, drunken composure, standing coltlike on the outer edge of her black-stockinged foot so the ankle was twisted inward in a startling, effortless L.” It was actually near identical to the second half of this passage when I decided that was too much and tried to make it more my own. Also, the final two lines were semi-inspired by a line in Lydia’s “Hospital”: “Sing like you just might drown/But always come back home.” Actually, it’s more like I had originally paraphrased that sentiment in a much less beautiful way and then mangled it into the end result.

P.S. Did Lee seriously just win American Idol?!? I know it's a pretty shit show in general and it has been especially shitty this year (the only person I liked was Lily, who got voted off too soon, and for awhile Siobhan, until she turned totally predictable and lame; Crystal was talented - and definitely should have won over Lee - but nothing special, really) but WTF, HONESTLY. THE GUY CANNOT SING. AT ALL. THE JUDGES SPENT ALL LAST NIGHT TRASHING HIM (at least compared to the tongue bath they gave Crystal) AND HE STILL WON. DO NOT COMPREHEND. AMERICA, I HAVE LOST WHAT LITTLE FAITH IN YOU I HAD REMAINING. FOR SHAME!

P.P.S. Speaking of predictable shittiness, the new Christina Aguilera album is, well, predictably shitty. I'll probably force myself to listen to it one more time just to say I gave it a fair chance but it is seriously underwhelming and actually pretty embarrassing. It's kind of sad what a joke she's turned into. Stripped wasn't genius by any means but it was at least interesting to listen to. This is just so lifeless and dull and "look at me! I'm so EDGY! even though I'm not actually edgy at all!" Ugh.