Very first of all – I won something yesterday and it’s the most wicked awesome something I’ve seen in a long time ^_^ Tiffany Schmidt (Who has an awesome novel coming out next year), was giving away the most trippy Skittles Boombox. And I am going to be the proud owner of that spiffiness. BTW, go follow Tiffany, because she’s epic and awesome (and I’m not saying that because I won. She’s worth the read, for sure).

There’s this anime I love and laugh at and watch when I need a seemingly mindless distraction. It actually takes a level of intellect to appreciate the finer points of the series, but anyone who doesn’t want to be accused of watching mindess tripe says that, right? Anyway, it’s called Cromartie High. The main character is a decent student stuck in a high school full of deliquents. One of them decides he must be the toughest kid in school, because any bunny rabbit who can live safely amongst wolves must be one tough SOB.

There’s a character in the show who never speaks. The implication is, he’s the American and doesn’t know Japanese. This means he can’t tell them his name. So they decide to call him:

“I’m going to go with Freddie.”
“Freddie?”
“Yes. Freddie.”
“Freddie.”

This is because he looks like Freddie Mercury and spends a great deal of the cartoon posed as such. For some reason, this little snippet of dialogue amuses me to no end, and in my musings about how to rename my gods, I was reminded of it.

Based on the feedback of all you wonderful people, and my Facebook friends, and my critique partners, Thor and Loki will be renamed to Bob and Peditopbiontion in my story revision. No one actually suggested that second name, but given the random assortments of letters I received posing as names, I have to suspect that’s how they were created 😀

/amusingmyselfirreleventtangent

I’m not a fan of the revision process, but it’s because it means deleting and replacing a lot of words that took me a lot of time to write the first time around. The bit of revision I do like, though, is redefining muddy parts of the story.

I thought I had this entire story figured out, revision-wise. And then on Sunday, the last missing piece hit me. Drea has been suggesting for a while now that I remove one of the romantic relationships from the story. I’ve fought every time it’s come up, and hoped she would just forget she suggested it. And then next time we talk about major revisions she says “you know what? You should really get rid of that stuff with so-and-so.” (who doesn’t have a new name yet).

And on Sunday I realized I not only could, but I could replace it with something the part of me that’s deeply attached to my characters has been dying to do anyway. And I can get my favorite anti-hero and his stripper-not-girlfriend a lot more book time up front.

And that made my day.

Now I just have to figure out which one of them I’m going to call Freddie.