Assorted things of postly interest
Apr. 5th, 2009 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6I'll start with TV. SCC was pretty good this week. I'm going to miss the series when it's gone, as I'm feeling is likely (but not officially confirmed yet, so I hope I'm wrong), despite the big, sudden events in this ep. Dollhouse has also been getting better. It's still nowhere near as good as any of Whedon's other shows, but I find myself watching it as opposed to leaving it on in the background while I do something else.
And found another episode of Prisoners of Gravity. I know none of you care but I do, helps me if I want to find a particular interview later.
This one's on Children in SF & Fantasy.
Part 1: General introduction, John Clute on stories about children and adolescents in general in SF and the SF as 'right of passage' (and the actual book by that title). Kristine-Kathryn Rusch on why SF has so few child characters compared to fantasy, the host lists some examples of kids in SF.
Part 2: (mostly) Kids in Fantasy. Mercedes Lackey on how much she draws on her own childhood to write kids, and the life of kids in medieval times. Robert Holdstock (the Bone Forest) on why he likes writing from the child's perspective, Jane Yolen on the difference between writing about children vs writing for children, and rules for writing for kids. Nancy Kress back on the topic of the lack of children in SF.
Part 3: Nancy Kress again on how having kids affected her view of the world. Other SF writers on how kids have affected their writing careers (Gwyneth Jones, Esther Friesner, Pat Cadigan). More general interview with Monica Hughes (of the Isis Trilogy): how she started writing SF for children, inspiration for the Isis Trilogy, and whether she feels she's competing with the more commercialized entertainment for children.
Speaking of children in SF/Fantasy, writing update. Really, it's mostly been slogging it again. I haven't felt particularly inspired about anything recently. However, while I was exhausted of writing one of the things I was writing on last, I still had words to write for the week and went to an old story, one of my longer unfinished novel-like works. Now, I have about 3 of them in progress at the moment, all of them sort of YA-ish (I don't write all that differently than I do when writing for adults, I'm mostly just using younger teen characters and more blatant 'omg this would be so cool to be able to do' power fantasies. I also have a few other non-YA novel ideas, I just don't have any of them in progress). This one I stopped for a while because, although I had a general idea of where the story was going, the specifics eluded me. Anyway, I figured I'd add a few thousand words of more or less padding just to meet my word count but realized I'd forgotten most of the specific details, like character names and such. So I started rereading. And y'know? I actually quite enjoyed it. I guess I had enough distance. I would almost switch over to writing that full time for a while except I still have the same problem - I know the general, but not the specifics. But maybe now that I've reread recently I'll subconsciously work on it in idle time and something will work out.
Anyay, I think the reason I still have the lack of writing-excitedness is I'm still in my winter depression, despite the fact that it's spring. I don't really feel much like _anything_ except the occasional fancy that strikes me. You're supposed to go away now, thanks! Oh well, at least I seem to have shaken that cold (or series of colds) that've been dogging me for months.
And since this post is going to be using the canadiana tag anyway, just for an idle bit of fun. A number of my friends have mentioned the Law and Order: UK series. So, as is my wont, I began to think about Law and Order: Canada. So a Canadiana Challenge for any Canadians on my flist who want to participate (either in comments or your own journal). Cast a Law and Order Canada. The rules:
1. The entire cast must be Canadian. We can be a little liberal with the definition - anyone born here even if they don't live here now, or who's lived here for a significant amount of time, _aside_ from while working on a series (so no actors that _only_ live here to film their shows). Or anyone who's identified themselves as Canadian at any point. The cast does not have to be realistic though (you can poach people from other shows)
2. You must pick the city it's set in and cast at least two police officers, two Crown Attorneys (the regular one and the elder, advisory one), one judge, and one criminal. You can cast more than that if you'd like.
3. You must also pick the crime for the first episode. As it's how L&O seems to work, it should be 'ripped from the Headlines' (even though it can be changed up a bit). The Canadian headlines, though.
I don't have my choices yet, but may add them later.
Finally, I think I'll talk about the biggest of my recent timesinks lately. As you may remember, I got a new new computer recently. Now, my old new computer was rather old, and so I couldn't really play much in the way of games on it (I still have my old old computer, but it's pretty much just for web browsing my favorite sites, writing, and e-mail). I think the newest (non flash or simple puzzle) game I played on it was Planescape Torment. Or maybe Black and White. Whichever was newest. But now I can actually play new games. And, as it turned out, my brother had a copy of Fallout 3. So, I've been playing that. It's a post apocalyptic semi-RPG, semi-shooter. And it's reasonably fun. I think I'm about halfway through the main quest, but there are so many side quests I keep getting distracted with. I'm playing Good, because, well, I find it hard to play evil. I even started a new character to play evil for a while and whenever I tried to choose the evil conversation options I thought, "I don't want to say that, that's mean!". Not to mention things like blowing up a whole town.
Anyway, the game is fun but there are some annoyances, like characters who you just finished talking to a few seconds ago, asking you if you're back from the assignment they _just_ sent you on. And unrealistic things like where you see something happening, go away, do something else for a few days of game time, come back, and the people you left are all pretty much doing the exact same thing, as though no time had passed for them. Which got me thinking. What if you made a game that made use of that failing as a game mechanic, much like Planescape: Torment did with dying and respawning. And continued thinking and came up with a general plot sketch:
It's the future. There was some scientific experiment, perhaps one of those 'recreate the big bang' type projects. It ended disastrously, but nobody realized it at first. It blew holes through the dimensional fabric all over the world. At first, nobody noticed, except for the monsters that would pop up through them. But then, people realized... time was slowing down. At different rates for different parts of the world. The effect intensified, and the world itself stopped turning. Indeed, the solar system had lost their time. But all time hadn't stopped. A few cities, including the one the intrepid hero (the player) is from, stumbled on the process to create time. They protected their city with it and began working on a solution.
So the player is sent out with a portable time generation field, which allows time to move again in, say, a 1 mile radius around himself. For short times, in emergencies, he can pull it back in to surround himself (allowing him to stop time in combat, except against certain otherdimensional creatures who are timeless), but mostly it spreads outwards, so any town he visits runs while he's there, and then while he's gone, it stops again (unless the city has their own time generators). He has to go to various places, plug the biggest holes, and find the things needed to keep time from draining out.
Now, say we set the game in the US. Time finally 'ran out' while the day-night line was in the middle of the country. So you can cross over to a land of eternal day and one of eternal night. Except the one of eternal day, perhaps your presence 'darkens' it, as the light that was already there, frozen, 'exhausts', and there's no new light from the sun (we have to be pretty loose with how light works, of course, maybe light has 'echoes' that persist for a while in null-time or something) unless you're using a light source. He can get involved in local problems (a disaster in progress that will still be in progress if he returns, or once time starts up again, but that he can help if he can get certain supplies while time is not a factor, etc), fight monsters, encounter different time-carriers with different goals and motives (some might want to completely destroy time, others want to restore it but not until they have a particular tactical advantage in the world), etc.
Other game mechanics. Creatures who are invisible, unstoppable forces in 'time', but can be seen and destroyed when someone who has time is in a timeless area. Healing is applying regious of rapid time to injured parts of your body, your gear breaking down in a timeless area is instant-death as you become frozen like everybody else. The idea of time being a resource that 'drains away' comes from a short story I read, "Time, as it evaporates..." (title, and story, translated from the French), applied somewhat differently here, of course.
Anyway, it's pretty unformed as you can see, ideawise, but its about as formed as its going to get considering I don't actually work for a game company nor am I likely to. But as something I might be interested in playing, or a few minutes worth of amused mind-noodling, I like it.
In conclusion, I should totally write for video games!! Anyway, given that games play with time a lot, and how little I'm 'plugged in' to gaming news, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody already did something much like that. But it amused me anyway.
In comics, Marvel's announced Dark X-Men with a lineup of mostly people not usually in X-books, and continuing Marvel beating the adjective Dark into the ground. Personally, I'm waiting for Dark Runaways, with a returned Alex leading Topher (brought back to life for Dracula's war effort), Excavator, Penance/Hollow, and an alternate universe Squirrel Girl where she's a master thief who stole Doctor Doom's universe-travelling gear, her killer giant mutant squirrel Monkey Joe, and Mordred the Magician who's astrally inhabiting the body of Lotus, who accidentally summoned him. Or not. Anyway, although the lineup (of Dark X-Men) is kinda-sorta interesting in parts, I'm not bothering and can't wait until Marvel unDarks everything.
I think that's it for today. I do have a few memes saved up I need to get to but this is getting a bit long so I'll save them for a bit later.
Edit: Weird, while I was looking up the link to my review of Planescape: Torment, I stumbled on this post, from 2006, where (among other things), I relate a dream, that seems to be the general concept of (the most recent) New Warriors, combined with the title of Young X-Men. Marvel, are you reading my journal and stealing my ideas and making them crappier? Or reading my dreams?
And found another episode of Prisoners of Gravity. I know none of you care but I do, helps me if I want to find a particular interview later.
This one's on Children in SF & Fantasy.
Part 1: General introduction, John Clute on stories about children and adolescents in general in SF and the SF as 'right of passage' (and the actual book by that title). Kristine-Kathryn Rusch on why SF has so few child characters compared to fantasy, the host lists some examples of kids in SF.
Part 2: (mostly) Kids in Fantasy. Mercedes Lackey on how much she draws on her own childhood to write kids, and the life of kids in medieval times. Robert Holdstock (the Bone Forest) on why he likes writing from the child's perspective, Jane Yolen on the difference between writing about children vs writing for children, and rules for writing for kids. Nancy Kress back on the topic of the lack of children in SF.
Part 3: Nancy Kress again on how having kids affected her view of the world. Other SF writers on how kids have affected their writing careers (Gwyneth Jones, Esther Friesner, Pat Cadigan). More general interview with Monica Hughes (of the Isis Trilogy): how she started writing SF for children, inspiration for the Isis Trilogy, and whether she feels she's competing with the more commercialized entertainment for children.
Speaking of children in SF/Fantasy, writing update. Really, it's mostly been slogging it again. I haven't felt particularly inspired about anything recently. However, while I was exhausted of writing one of the things I was writing on last, I still had words to write for the week and went to an old story, one of my longer unfinished novel-like works. Now, I have about 3 of them in progress at the moment, all of them sort of YA-ish (I don't write all that differently than I do when writing for adults, I'm mostly just using younger teen characters and more blatant 'omg this would be so cool to be able to do' power fantasies. I also have a few other non-YA novel ideas, I just don't have any of them in progress). This one I stopped for a while because, although I had a general idea of where the story was going, the specifics eluded me. Anyway, I figured I'd add a few thousand words of more or less padding just to meet my word count but realized I'd forgotten most of the specific details, like character names and such. So I started rereading. And y'know? I actually quite enjoyed it. I guess I had enough distance. I would almost switch over to writing that full time for a while except I still have the same problem - I know the general, but not the specifics. But maybe now that I've reread recently I'll subconsciously work on it in idle time and something will work out.
Anyay, I think the reason I still have the lack of writing-excitedness is I'm still in my winter depression, despite the fact that it's spring. I don't really feel much like _anything_ except the occasional fancy that strikes me. You're supposed to go away now, thanks! Oh well, at least I seem to have shaken that cold (or series of colds) that've been dogging me for months.
And since this post is going to be using the canadiana tag anyway, just for an idle bit of fun. A number of my friends have mentioned the Law and Order: UK series. So, as is my wont, I began to think about Law and Order: Canada. So a Canadiana Challenge for any Canadians on my flist who want to participate (either in comments or your own journal). Cast a Law and Order Canada. The rules:
1. The entire cast must be Canadian. We can be a little liberal with the definition - anyone born here even if they don't live here now, or who's lived here for a significant amount of time, _aside_ from while working on a series (so no actors that _only_ live here to film their shows). Or anyone who's identified themselves as Canadian at any point. The cast does not have to be realistic though (you can poach people from other shows)
2. You must pick the city it's set in and cast at least two police officers, two Crown Attorneys (the regular one and the elder, advisory one), one judge, and one criminal. You can cast more than that if you'd like.
3. You must also pick the crime for the first episode. As it's how L&O seems to work, it should be 'ripped from the Headlines' (even though it can be changed up a bit). The Canadian headlines, though.
I don't have my choices yet, but may add them later.
Finally, I think I'll talk about the biggest of my recent timesinks lately. As you may remember, I got a new new computer recently. Now, my old new computer was rather old, and so I couldn't really play much in the way of games on it (I still have my old old computer, but it's pretty much just for web browsing my favorite sites, writing, and e-mail). I think the newest (non flash or simple puzzle) game I played on it was Planescape Torment. Or maybe Black and White. Whichever was newest. But now I can actually play new games. And, as it turned out, my brother had a copy of Fallout 3. So, I've been playing that. It's a post apocalyptic semi-RPG, semi-shooter. And it's reasonably fun. I think I'm about halfway through the main quest, but there are so many side quests I keep getting distracted with. I'm playing Good, because, well, I find it hard to play evil. I even started a new character to play evil for a while and whenever I tried to choose the evil conversation options I thought, "I don't want to say that, that's mean!". Not to mention things like blowing up a whole town.
Anyway, the game is fun but there are some annoyances, like characters who you just finished talking to a few seconds ago, asking you if you're back from the assignment they _just_ sent you on. And unrealistic things like where you see something happening, go away, do something else for a few days of game time, come back, and the people you left are all pretty much doing the exact same thing, as though no time had passed for them. Which got me thinking. What if you made a game that made use of that failing as a game mechanic, much like Planescape: Torment did with dying and respawning. And continued thinking and came up with a general plot sketch:
It's the future. There was some scientific experiment, perhaps one of those 'recreate the big bang' type projects. It ended disastrously, but nobody realized it at first. It blew holes through the dimensional fabric all over the world. At first, nobody noticed, except for the monsters that would pop up through them. But then, people realized... time was slowing down. At different rates for different parts of the world. The effect intensified, and the world itself stopped turning. Indeed, the solar system had lost their time. But all time hadn't stopped. A few cities, including the one the intrepid hero (the player) is from, stumbled on the process to create time. They protected their city with it and began working on a solution.
So the player is sent out with a portable time generation field, which allows time to move again in, say, a 1 mile radius around himself. For short times, in emergencies, he can pull it back in to surround himself (allowing him to stop time in combat, except against certain otherdimensional creatures who are timeless), but mostly it spreads outwards, so any town he visits runs while he's there, and then while he's gone, it stops again (unless the city has their own time generators). He has to go to various places, plug the biggest holes, and find the things needed to keep time from draining out.
Now, say we set the game in the US. Time finally 'ran out' while the day-night line was in the middle of the country. So you can cross over to a land of eternal day and one of eternal night. Except the one of eternal day, perhaps your presence 'darkens' it, as the light that was already there, frozen, 'exhausts', and there's no new light from the sun (we have to be pretty loose with how light works, of course, maybe light has 'echoes' that persist for a while in null-time or something) unless you're using a light source. He can get involved in local problems (a disaster in progress that will still be in progress if he returns, or once time starts up again, but that he can help if he can get certain supplies while time is not a factor, etc), fight monsters, encounter different time-carriers with different goals and motives (some might want to completely destroy time, others want to restore it but not until they have a particular tactical advantage in the world), etc.
Other game mechanics. Creatures who are invisible, unstoppable forces in 'time', but can be seen and destroyed when someone who has time is in a timeless area. Healing is applying regious of rapid time to injured parts of your body, your gear breaking down in a timeless area is instant-death as you become frozen like everybody else. The idea of time being a resource that 'drains away' comes from a short story I read, "Time, as it evaporates..." (title, and story, translated from the French), applied somewhat differently here, of course.
Anyway, it's pretty unformed as you can see, ideawise, but its about as formed as its going to get considering I don't actually work for a game company nor am I likely to. But as something I might be interested in playing, or a few minutes worth of amused mind-noodling, I like it.
In conclusion, I should totally write for video games!! Anyway, given that games play with time a lot, and how little I'm 'plugged in' to gaming news, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody already did something much like that. But it amused me anyway.
In comics, Marvel's announced Dark X-Men with a lineup of mostly people not usually in X-books, and continuing Marvel beating the adjective Dark into the ground. Personally, I'm waiting for Dark Runaways, with a returned Alex leading Topher (brought back to life for Dracula's war effort), Excavator, Penance/Hollow, and an alternate universe Squirrel Girl where she's a master thief who stole Doctor Doom's universe-travelling gear, her killer giant mutant squirrel Monkey Joe, and Mordred the Magician who's astrally inhabiting the body of Lotus, who accidentally summoned him. Or not. Anyway, although the lineup (of Dark X-Men) is kinda-sorta interesting in parts, I'm not bothering and can't wait until Marvel unDarks everything.
I think that's it for today. I do have a few memes saved up I need to get to but this is getting a bit long so I'll save them for a bit later.
Edit: Weird, while I was looking up the link to my review of Planescape: Torment, I stumbled on this post, from 2006, where (among other things), I relate a dream, that seems to be the general concept of (the most recent) New Warriors, combined with the title of Young X-Men. Marvel, are you reading my journal and stealing my ideas and making them crappier? Or reading my dreams?
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-05 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-06 02:33 pm (UTC)Alex - Alex
Topher - Sort of an anti-Karolina. She's a creature of sunshine, he's one of darkness, they're both sort of 'alien', although she was born that way and just didn't realize it until later and she was made. And of course he was briefly a Runaway.
Excavator - Like Chase, kinda a dumbass but with a cool weapon, and the Runaways fought him.
Penance - Like Molly, a mutant, but whereas Molly sort of puts on a childish exterior deliberately, Penance is forced to be somewhat childlike. And she was in Loners which is a Runaways spinoff.
Lotus/Mordred - Like Nico, a magic user. However, instead of having a magical staff inside her and fighting for control, she has a magical person. Lotus is also an old Runaway foe (although her own personality would probably be opposed to being a member of the Dark Runaways, which is why I included Mordred, who, though not a Runaways foe, is a child of a supervillain, Morgana Le Fay, so he sort of fits thematically).
Alt-Squirrel Girl's the odd-girl out. She's from an alternate universe and has a giant killer squirrel, which satisfies the 'time travel' connection and the 'Old Lace equivalent', but has had no connection to the Runaways either through having met them, or thematically from having parents, and also she's technically a mutant, when I'd wanted to have only one). But I like her, and this all just taking the idea far too seriously anyway, so I included her. She is at least kinda mirror Gert in that Gert is sort of snarky and cynical but good whereas evil Squirrel Girl would be peppy and happy and cheerful but bad.
And I've totally rambled on more than I should have to explain something that didn't especially need explaining, for something that was really only born of like a half hour of thought while eating breakfast.
So to sum up, yes, an evil Squirrel Girl would be awesome. But would the world survive?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-06 05:19 pm (UTC)