Devil in the Details
My writing suffers from an issue I’ve had since 3rd grade: I often find settings to be more interesting than plot. I eagerly bought the Atlas of Middle Earth when it came out, enjoy looking up technical speculations on the construction of the Ringworld (or even the Halo), and spend time considering how Hogwarts was built with such odd geometry, and why.
I think I sympathize with the authors of old Dungeons and Dragons game modules in that respect. Many of those old booklets contained fascinating, detailed maps, but the purpose to explore those maps generally centered around “looting”. Recognizing that, I tried to resurrect my old copy of Vault of the Drow as a basis for a campaign a few years back, but I didn’t do enough prep work and the effort failed. A sizeable underground metropolis shouldn’t be a place that the characters pass through with three sentences of description.
Short stories don’t tempt me as strongly to lose myself in world-building: the characters have things to do, and I need to get on with discussing what they’re up to. But a setting for a novel’s resided in my head for almost 15 years, and none of the conflicts I’ve hung on it seem adequate. In fact, many of the plots I’ve considered have a strong derivative aroma, and given my complaints that 68% of the SF/Fantasy section at Waldenbooks is actually the same book with the names and dates moved around, I’d like to make an original contribution to the field.
The work I’m doing for Decipher is having the effect of making me pay more attention to my style, anyway. I’m watching passive voice even more carefully than I had been, and checking out web pages such as Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See.
Rulebooks and Reviews
I have another gaming credit now, from a different company, no less. The rulebook for WizKids’ “MechWarrior: Age of Destruction” has been posted in PDF format, and Rain and I sit comfortably on page 47 as playtesters.
Rain and I watched “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “All The Queen’s Men” this weekend. ATQM was only worth watching for Eddie Izzard’s lines – it didn’t seem to know whether it was a comedy, a romance, or an espionage caper, so it failed at all three. And while I wouldn’t suggest that years of experience playing Shadowrun qualifies Rain and me as intelligence agents, that experience did reveal several big plot issues to us long before the trained secret agents noticed them. “Thomas Crown” opened and closed with better capers – the ending had us going, “Ohhhhhh…” – but the hour in the middle was tedious and irritating.
We’ve noticed in movies like “Ocean’s Eleven”, “National Treasure”, and these two that we’re often a little ahead of the film’s twist; this adds to the fun if the movie’s good anyway, and makes a weak movie weaker.
In the spirit of the breakdancing Soundwave, here’s another transforming mech that wants to boogie While I’m linking, southernsinger should find the premise behind this comic strip strangely familiar.
Happy belated birthday to jazzfish 🙂
Wet Christmas
They have mounted speakers on the side of downtown Norfolk buildings for the holidays. Christmas carols don’t sound quite right when it’s 60 degrees and raining outside.
I hate that I’m not buying software anymore, but a software license. Half-Life 1 was fun, but I don’t like the idea of playing Half-Life 2 enough to go online and beg for the publisher’s permission every single time I want to play it. That’s an irony, too, because a Mac version of HL2 has a much better chance of seeing daylight than the Mac HL1 did. I’d almost certainly have bought it.
DHTML Lemmings on the web. One more way to kill a few minutes anywhere there’s an Internet connection.
Ever type up a really long rant for LiveJournal, then realize that typing it’s gotten it out of your system and it’s just not that important that the rest of the world see it? 🙂
Katamari Taters
After reading about the fun that kittykatya, eeedge, jsciv and impink are having, I put a copy of Katamari Damacy (PS2) on my Wish List, and raininva bought it for my birthday. This game is incredibly surreal and trippy, and has that wonderful “let me just try this level one more time” quality. The player must rebuild stars by rolling together clumps of loose objects on Earth – you have to try it out to understand it. Highly recommended.
Finished watching the Brent Spiner episodes of Enterprise. Pretty good overall, with the last episode the strongest. Despite its enjoyability, the arc hit some of the most tiresome cliches in Star Trek: “it only takes five guys to take over a Starfleet vessel”, “with the fate of humanity at stake, we’ll nevertheless give the bad guys all the access codes they want if they threaten one of the show’s stars”, “the Enterprise isn’t worth diddly in a real fight unless the heroes know their opponent’s Secret Weak Point(tm)”. Yes, they all made sense in the story context, I’m just tired of seeing them again.
The Meyers-Briggs-Trek personality test says that I’m an INFP, much like Kes or Elim Garak. Rain’s response was “Garak? Eww! Well… hm. Actually…”
“Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew…” – Sam Gamgee rapping about taters.
Chilling out and hanging around
Happy belated birthday to southernsinger!
Almost done with the project that’s been breaking my back for the last month; a small measure of my sanity should return when it’s finally done. It’s not helping that the server room has moved to my floor, so everyone’s office is chilly all day. I may have some good story news in the next several days (hope hope).
I’m finally catching up on my Enterprise episodes. I’ve now seen the first three of the season, and I’ve been satisfied with them – nothing yet to go in my “favorite Trek episodes ever” file, but I’ve had fun and haven’t felt insulted. The mention that the NX-01 class was designed by “Captain Jeffries” was a nice nod. I’m going to try the first non-pilot Battlestar Galactica episode this week – I’ve heard that the individual episodes are much more appealing to my kind of fan than the pilot was, so I’m crossing my fingers.
Oh, yeah, Lloyd Eldred has made it into one of Decipher’s card games. (This is a old VTSFFC Halloween in-joke.)
Good quote
I wish I’d seen this one in time for trenn to make me a button of it for Rising Star:
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” -Herm Albright
Spock for President
Voting was painless, and didn’t take more than ten minutes. I was a little displeased to see the Diebold voting machines, but I must admit that the voter interface is quite adequate – clear and easy to use.
As I walked out, the Kerry guy approached me, and I braced myself; but he had only seen the Starfleet insignia on my denim jacket, and and jokingly asked how the Federation was voting this year. I replied with a grin, “As the members’ individual convictions dictate, of course,” and he accepted that with a smile. We chatted Trek for about 5 minutes, then I headed to work. I didn’t even need my extra voting hour.
