Stolen heredity
Some Ponyo research led me to an article about Lupin the Third, and it suddenly struck me that I should read some Lupin the First – just for purposes of self-education! Luckily the 21st century makes this pretty easy for anyone capable of reading this LJ entry; thank you Project Gutenberg for this collection of Arsene Lupin tales.
I found the first book of stories to be entertaining reading, though I noticed that Lupin resembles the Bronze Age Superman – nothing is truly a challenge for him. If author Leblanc needed Lupin to escape a locked room, frequently a subsequent scene would show him out of the room with no explanation, other than a shrugged “it’s Lupin, what do you expect?”
And this is what put the brakes to my reading of the character, when the French author decides to place Lupin against Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes in “The Blonde Lady”. It’s a pointless battle from the start; Holmes at least engages in his own equivalent of Star Trek technobabble to justify his more unlikely successes (“I can recognize hundreds of brands of cigars by their ashes, of course.”) Lupin has no such limitation, and in this tale penned by a Frenchman, the French thief walks all over the English detective.
Of course, I knew that Holmes would lose the contest – I can see the author’s name at the top of the document, after all – but I’d have enjoyed a real battle of wits, with each side forced to play their best game against the other. Instead, Holmes is shown as completely unprepared for Lupin, and incapable of causing him even mild discomfort. It’s an ungentlemanly treatment of another author’s work, and I’m hardly surprised that Conan Dolye’s estate demanded the removal of Holmes’ name from reprintings. I could not even finish the novel, such was my irritation with it.
I’ll go back to Lupin III, I think. The unstoppable thief is more fun in the slightly deranged world of anime shenanigans; but I’m glad to have briefly met his grand-dad. (Leblanc’s estate does not approve of Lupin III’s use of the name, btw, and in several countries he’s had to be called “The Wolf.” Pot, may I introduce you to kettle?)
Hey… where’s my watch?
RPG character quiz
Taken from funwithrage, since it looked entertaining.
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Out of all of your characters from any game, who would you…
Take to lunch?
I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, but my Deadlands character was a cross between Abraham Van Helsing and Egon Spengler. I think he’d have some fascinating stories and insights, and the fact that he’s slightly mad wouldn’t hurt a bit.
Want to rescue you?
“Professor K”, the mysterious mentalist I played in some Shadowrun sessions. He’s appeared in lots of fic written by our crowd, and he’s pretty good at the whole rescuing thing – plus he has some interesting resources at his disposal.
Never want to meet in a dark alley?
I don’t really play many scary or disturbing characters, but after thinking about it, I’m not sure I’d want to meet “Circy”, my World of Warcraft warlock. She looks pretty friendly most of the time, but even when they’re the “good guys”, warlocks in this game are not nice people. Besides, she’d be backed up by a Voidwalker demon or something.
Hug?
“Mirandala”, the gnome mage I play in WoW. She’s adorable, and I think of her as pretty sweet, if a little butch at the same time.
Be for a day?
“Professor K”, definitely. Knowing his backstory info that never made it into the game, I’d love the chance to play with some of his tech toys and visit some of the places he had access to… such as Federation starships. (Yeah, our Shadowrun games could get weird.)
Steal powers/skills from?
I’ve played “Nebula” in several game systems and worlds, and she’s almost always an accomplished musician, generally as a singer and keyboardist. I’d love to have those abilities gifted to me.
Take to an amusement park?
In the post-apocalyptic Deadlands: Hell on Earth, I played a powerful Wiccan whose personality and look I created by trying to imagine a very angry, bitter tzel. I think a trip to Disney World, or even Busch Gardens, would have done her a lot of good. At least she’d have some good memories to help bolster her the next time she fought techno-zombies.
See their story made into a movie?
“Professor K” and “Nebula” would require their own high-budget series, with possibly several spin-offs. Actually, I think the flying armored “Eclipse” from ptownhiker‘s Marvel Super Heroes game would be a fun movie subject, especially once the “ancient astronauts” part of his backstory came back into his life.
Never trade places with, ever?
In a Technicon LARP, I played the Prince of Russia in an alternate 19th century of Imperial expansion and high-stakes diplomacy. Given the constant backstabbing, betrayal, and threats of war, I’m not sure how he ever got any sleep.
Get stuck on an island with?
Well, the flying mage “Bombardier” from Shadowrun and “Eclipse” would each be useful, as they could fly us home. “Mirandala” could teleport us out, and “Professor K’s” friends have hi-tech ways to find us and retrieve us. If I’m really seriously stuck, though, I think “Nebula” would be a pretty charming companion.
Corporate Shenanigans
Seems that I have two VHS copies of the “Gentleman’s Agreement” Shadowrun movie. I found the better of the two, but I still played with the brightness settings a bit in iMovie to make Jerry’s Toaster work show up better. The initial team meetup scene remains dark as heck, though.
This is Part One…
Writer’s Block: Firsts
My first entry dates back to October 2001 (holy heck) and is titled “Secrets”.
Such a strange feeling it is to go back through the time capsule of what was in my head seven-and-a-half years ago. My weird was goofier back then… I almost feel as though I’ve been refining it over the years.
Very happy news
I have pictures of a Nebula Award nominee in cat-alien makeup and Starfleet combat gear.
Heh heh heh. Congratulations, time_shark!
Daft music, schedules, and composing
Now that I’m digging the Daft Punk, everyone’s been saying over and over that I needed to get the Alive 2007 album. Picked it up this weekend, finally listened to it with the speakers turned up on my morning commute. That’s some fine commuting music, that is.
It looks like Starr won’t be making it to Technicon Last; she can’t get out of working that weekend. Her shifts are crazy – it’s a regular thing for her to have five days off in a row, but somehow her scheduled weekend shifts always fall on convention dates. It annoys us both. She has more than enough PTO to cover it if she took off, but that requires a great deal of shift-trading, and for some reason few of her co-workers want to work extra weekend shifts. Can’t imagine why.
I may have a very memorable con costume this year.
I like Twitter because it provides useful writing exercise in expressing onself succinctly. I shouldn’t fret, though, if I miss a few dozen because I’m away from a ‘Net connection. Most of the stuff I’ll want to know shows up in LiveJournal, and LJ’s much easier to keep up with. (Blogging of any kind forces me to keep in mind two good practices: try to avoid that cursed passive voice, and don’t write a novel where a couple of paragraphs will get my point across better.)
John Milton revisited
I’m curiously drawn to re-interpretations in modern fiction of the underpinnings of Christian theology, such as the one in the beginning of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Since I’ve enjoyed Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels, I picked up To Reign In Hell at a con or bookstore, and gave it a read.
Well, I tried to. Twice. The first couple of times, for some reason I couldn’t get a sense of the characters or the premise. Last night, I took a deep breath, and tried a third time with much more focused attention, getting much farther into it. The attempt didn’t work out…
Moar Interviewing
Had a chance to sit down and think about my answers to gryphynkit, and so here they are:
(Rules thing first: to be interviewed, reply to my post asking me to interview you. I then reply to your post with five questions. You should post your answers and this meme on your LJ, because thinking up these questions is hard, daggonit.)
1. What is your favorite episode of anything?
I choose to parse that as “Pick something you really like, and talk about your favorite episode of it.” My favorite episode of Classic Trek would have to be “The Doomsday Machine”; I loved episodes where we got to see other Starfleet vessels, making it seem less like Earth had only the one ship. There’s some (very one-sided) space battle stuff, excellent lines from Kirk and Scotty in places, and that cool pounding ‘space-predator’ soundtrack. Absolutely grade-A stuff. The digital revision isn’t bad at all, either.
2. Given the chance to meet *anyone*, real, unreal, living or not, who would your top 5 be?
1. If there’s a Creator(s) of the Universe, with a form that I can perceive and understand, then I have quite a list of questions.
2. If there are friendly, advanced alien civilizations somewhere out there, than I’d like to meet a member: I have a list of questions.
3. I would like to meet a book publisher who thinks my science-fiction novel is awesome, and wants to give me a six-figure advance on the sales. (The fact that the novel doesn’t yet exist in any coherent form is immaterial.)
4. I would very much like to have met Douglas Adams. We could talk about music and Mac stuff all day.
5. I want to meet the people on my Friends List that I never have in person. I generally friend people because I find them interesting, and most of the time, people turn out to be more so face-to-face.
3. What is the Question?
Who are you, and how do you plan to evolve into who you want to be?
4. What person/char/entity would you most like to be like?
Fictionally, I think I’d like to be somewhere between Buckaroo Banzai and the Doctor I mention below. Realistically, I’m pretty happy with who I am at base level, though there are a few qualities – mainly, ambition and drive – that I’d like to have more of.
5. Who is your favorite Doctor?
Oh, I’ve had my brief flings with Nine and Seven, but there’s really no contest: the Fourth Doctor will always be tops in my book. Never afraid to take a stand, never at a loss, fiercely loyal to his companions, unafraid to take the most disastrous situations lightly. Some might say that he’s less complex and ambiguous than his later incarnations, but that in itself is pretty interesting when one takes in his background and position.
Geek magic
Harry Potter and the Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
Hermione: Hey, I was thinking…
Ron: Not again!
Hermione: (ignoring him) None of us want to say You-Know-Who’s name because he knows when you do it, right?
Harry: Yes, he’s magically linked to the sound, it automatically draws his attention to you so he knows what you’re saying about him. Why?
Hermione: Well, back home this summer I was reading about a website called Slashdot…
Ron: What’s a ‘web site’? Not more spiders, ugh!!
Harry & Hermione: (Ignoring him)
One week later…
“Daily Prophet” barker: EXTRA! EXTRA! Harry Potter gets entire wizarding world to say Voldemort’s name at once! Dark Wizard found dead in lair with brain cells leaking out of his ears! Read All About It!
(inspired in part by the Luna-C performance at MarsCon of all seven books in 45 minutes, and by Starr)
Order of Battle
I’ve been sick for the last two days – sinus congestion, stabbing stomach pain, sore throat, fever… same old same old midwinter bug. Reluctantly, I took Tuesday off, which I think cut a couple days’ duration off this bug; it’s fading away as I sit here, leaving me with a scratchy throat and headache. I should be fine for the weekend; good thing too, as I had to do a bit of finagling to make MarsCon.
On the other hand, it means I’m woefully behind on my prep. I managed to get some studying in for the panels in which I’m involved, but my costuming took the hit, and I don’t know if I’ll have anything ready for the weekend. Since I’ll be leaving directly from work tomorrow, I have to get packed and otherwise ready tonight. Good thing I managed some laundry.
Sometime Friday afternoon, I will have to find time to take a nap if I want to do late night stuff. This is unaviodalbe, as my internal clock these days is currently set to a 5:30am – 10:30pm waking shift, and cons don’t run on that time. Considering that my Saturday panels hover around 10pm and midnight, I’ll probably need to do the same that day as well.
I need to do some restructuring of my life schedule anyway. One reason for my dryness of prose output in 2008 was that I had not made much time to sit, off by myself, and actually write something – the most I’ve gotten done in that regard is hiding in people’s offices scribbling on the Newton while monitoring their OS X Leopard installs. (Up to three hours of glorious undisturbed concentration!) It’s easy to journal in 5-minute increments at work, but I have not yet mastered the art of focusing on plot and character in those tiny chunks.
On the other hand, I’m slightly pleased with my attitude towards the problem. I’m doing better these days with creating plans of attack for my roadblocks instead of just whining about them and using them for excuses. I’m decades overdue on developing this skill.
