Number6's Journal

No comics today. NYX was on my list, but I decided I'd skip the trip this week (big snowstorm was supposedly today, which turned out to be a semi-heavy snowfall followed by freezing rain and the resultant slush. I think I made the right call) and get it with next week's.

Work was a bit of a pain in part due to the snow/slush (which also made things late), but also a couple random minor problems with delayed things and made me sorer. Meh. Oh well, at least it's over.

And in case you hadn't heard, LJ MAY DIE AT ANY MINUTE (no, this isn't anything updated from the other posts on the subject you may have seen on your flist, I'm just being deliberately overdramatic). I dunno, I'm not too worried. I backed everything up just in case, but I suspect it's more likely the layoffs are more designed to position for an attempt to sell the company (because then they can say that they only have X amount of staff, paid X amount of dollars), rather than a sign that LJ is going to be swallowed up into nothingness. That said, LJ lost the trust for me a long time ago, which is why I never considered buying a 'permanent' account (whereas years ago I might have, although didn't have the funds). And let's face it, when they can decide to pull the plug at any moment a permanent account is hardly permanent, and not worth paying the equivalent of (what is it?) 2 years of paid (unless you would have paid that and more already)? Anyway, should LJ go completely belly up and we must go our separate ways, well, I'm not sure where I'll go. Probably to one of the other LJ clones, because I like the formatting and such. But if you need to contact me, my e-mail address isn't hard to find (hint, I run a website and an e-mail address is listed there). Although technically if it disappears overnight e-mail _might_ not reach me as there are currently some problems with my e-mail that need to be ironed out.

Had another Sithicus dream. For those who don't know, in the 90s I ran a local computer Bulletin Board System (over the phone-lines, pre-Internet age) by that name. Every once in a while, I have a dream where I discover it's still going, still running on that old (now deceased) computer. It's odd. ( Read more... )

Writing cycle begins next week, first one after the December break. Don't have any particular _new_ ideas unfortunately, but think I'll be trying something a little different. Start writing up one of my ideas for a comic format in prose. Not to have the story meant to be in that form, but as a way of getting through my block against working on it. See, I can do fairly well in terms of 'writing off the top of my head' in prose, but in script or comic form I tend to sit there and type nothing. So I thought maybe I could try it this way. Then I'd just have to adapt my own work.

I claimed the whole weekend in the name of me, because I got ripped off this year due to Easter. Still, it was a rather lame weekend, even ignoring the general depression of the day itself.

Saturday did the family thing, though not for me, it was for Easter. And, well, the food wasn't bad, but it was still several hours sitting around mostly with people I don't know very well if at all, along with a few very noisy kids running around all the time.

Otherwise, it was like pretty much any other weekend, except with the added inconvenience of the stores being closed two days. (Though it did have one pleasant side-effect.. had to run to the gas station to get something since the grocery stores weren't open, and I noticed they have flavours of Mr. Noodles they don't have in any of the grocery stores near me... Pork, and Creamy Chicken. Tried Creamy Chicken, it was okay but I still prefer Curry Chicken, but still, cool for finding a new flavour.)

It occurs to me, that since virtually everything you can't classify supposedly tastes like "chicken", then "artificial chicken flavour" in a list of ingredients is spectacularly unhelpful and unspecific. Crocodile meat supposedly tastes like chicken, so theoretically artificial chicken flavour could be from crocodile meat. THINK ABOUT IT. Or not.

Let's see, what else is new?

I've decided that I'm going to boycott the 2008 Olympics. Not because of what's happening in Tibet, I just think the Olympics are really lame.

Finally got around to making this icon. Not quite as good as the other one since I had to pull from various sources, but still relatively pleased with it.

Oh, and I finally got around to watching The Mist, the adaptation of one of my favorite Stephen King short stories (well, novellas). So how was it? Generally, it was an excellent adaptation of the novella, faithful in almost everything but the ending. So we'll talk about the ending. (Major spoilers, of course, for both the book and movie).
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In general the effects were good but some of the monsters looked too obviously CGI, and I might have preferred a bit more use of practical effects vs CGI - like the loading dock sequence, and I would have liked a closer look at the a certain large creature (particularly the novel's description of the bugs hanging off it).

Oh, and the Mist, either the novella or the movie always reminds me of XET now, since I ripped off the idea for the Rutland TP, so I'm all nostalgic again.

This week I got one book:

Astonishing X-Men #24 (okay but this last arc's not worth the waiting)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Work was a pain. Late, and due to renovations it's a more annoying job even though the load's lighter.

Almost took the subway home (from the comic shop, anyway), due more to lateness than any tiredness, but I decided to press on. I'll need the fitness if I ever go on the long walk. Speaking of walking, did help me develop some ideas... unfortunately, they're mostly ideas for the story I'm editing now. Which is good in one level, since the story involves rapid technological progress and I was needing to add more tech stuff to the background, but I worry the story might already be getting too bloated as it is. Maybe the story's beyond my capabilities to tell well at this point, but oh well. And of course, it's a problem because that story's in the editing stage, and since tomorrow is the start of another writing cycle I need either completely new stuff to work on, or new ideas for older stuff, and I didn't get much of those. Ah well.

Also on the walk home, I wanted to check the time, and I saw a phone booth, which usually displays it. Except when I got there, it said, "Please hang up receiver". So I did. And then it immediately changed to "Please pick up receiver." No. Just because I do you a favour, doesn't mean I'm your little puppetmonkey. Make up your mind. Anyway, then it put the time up.

On other fronts, I'm still enjoying the Sarah Connor Chronicles quite a bit. It's going in directions I don't expect, which is often a good thing (though I still hope it goes in a couple directions I expect). And bonus points for a mention of the Singularity.

And, I suppose I should mention something about Heath Ledger. I'm not a particular fan of his -- by which I don't mean that I had any dislike for him whatsoever, just that I haven't _seen_ a whole lot he's been in. The only real connection I had to him, aside from looking forward to his role as the Joker, was that I used him as the character model/actor for Scuzz on XET. So it does hit me a _little_ more than any other actor that I don't have a particular connection to, so it was something of a shock. I think I actually said "Holy crap" when I heard it on the news. And of course, mostly, it's a tragedy for his family. Must be hard for them, especially with him being fairly young (he's actually younger than me, though I wouldn't have guessed), and him having a young daughter. I wish the best for them in the times ahead.

Since I forgot earlier, a Happy Channukah to anyone on my flist that celebrates it.

Happened to be watching an episode of Threshold on TV. You know, that show from a few years back, only lasted one season, about alien invasion of Earth and the government bringing into action it's pre-emptively designed plan just in case something like that happened? Such a mixed bag, I loved the general idea of the government's contingency plan for alien contact being brought into force, and some of the cast was great, but I didn't much care for the main plot, which seemed rather generic. I really kinda wish there'd be another series that dealt a little more seriously with mankind's first contact with aliens. Not necessarily as an "OMG they're invading, we must stop", but say the discovery of some ship, the attempts at contact. I know that sounds relatively boring for a series, but I think the secret there would to have it almost be as a sideline, the plot being about the characters. A bit like LOST, actually - in LOST, yes, there's a big Mystery about the Island, but that crawls along almost at a snail's pace, and instead we're dealing mostly with the interactions among a bunch of characters, and their backstories, etc, and the more day to day issues of surviving on the island. I'd like to see a similar approach, where it'd almost be like, say, The West Wing, except that instead of political maneuvering on the sidelines, there's the dealing with the alien stuff as it comes up (I suppose you could do a similar idea with the Singularity, which would be cool to see too). Which reminds me of my earlier wish that the last season of the West Wing dealt with first contact with an alien race. Or I'd love it if, when 24 finally goes off the air, the last season Jack Bauer deals with an alien invasion. That would be awesome. Because really, by that point, what do they have to lose? It's the last season. Might as well make it fun!

In other news, my copy of Delta Green: Eyes Only arrived today, so yay. Once I finish it I might even, just for the sake of fun, do a sort of retroactive XET Diaries post about what (if any) plot ideas I might have had/used based on it if the game was still around today.

And is it a bad idea to torture a robot while it simulates screaming in pain? (the debate's mostly in the comments).

So, somewhere in the next two to three weeks, the server on which X-Men: End Times was hosted will be going away. Because it is an ex-game, and not really used much as a hangout spot anymore, there's not really much point to me scrambling to find another place to host it (especially if it would cost money). As such, this is likely the end.

Any former players on my flist, if you want to come on to @decompile, grab any other useful information, do one last bout of future-set RP with those character, or even just say goodbye, do so before August 23 - it might be up for a few days after that, but I'm told it'll go down sometime between Aug 23 and one week later. I'll be attempting to get a copy of the DB, but I don't know if or when I'll be able to set it up to get into it, so don't count on it. I don't know if people'd be interested in setting up a time for one last online get together on it, but it's an option.

I've of course been holding fort on it, more out of tradition than anything else. So if anyone does want to get in contact with me, well, of course you're reading this journal, so that's easy. But if you want a live-er connection, I have IMing info in my profile, and actually am connected to them on a regular basis now.

Also much thanks to our sitewiz who was able and willing to host us for so long, even after we ceased being a game.

(Oh, and though I doubt any of you are out there on my flist, anyone who was on the old Children of the Atom, that's going too. I don't know what other games were hosted there, but presumably the same thing's happening).

XET F'TAGHN!

This week I'm got four books:

Cable & Deadpool #40 (Meh, felt like I just walked into part 2 of a crossover, didn't do anything for me)
Ultimate X-Men #82 (okay, not all that thrilled with the Morlocks here)
Ultimates 2 #13 (My pick of the week, just barely, though it took long enough to get here and probably wasn't worth the extra wait)
X-Factor #19 (okay, but the arc's falling a little flat for me oddly)

Full reviews up as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

At the used bookstore, I picked up "Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem", by Lois McMaster Bujold, which collects two of the Vorkosigan Novels I've yet to read (Ceteganda and Ethan of Athos), as well as a short story. So, I figured why not.

For lunch I had a gypsy salami sandwich with jalapenos.

Work was okay, bit heavy.

Walk was okay... rainy and a bit painful but not as much as last week, because I fixed my shoe. And I feel like a real man, because I used duct tape to do it (don't worry, the duct tape isn't visible outside the shoe). And, as usual, walking helps clear the writing plotbunnies, and in this case helped me come up with a solution to one of the
sticking points to one of the stories I'm working on. Not 100% sure if I want to use it, but it's better than anything else I've thought of so far.

Discovered that Saw IV is apparently filming part in a set of warehouses right next to my work. Either that, or someone lost an IV and they're interested in anyone who saw it to follow an arrow inside.

Oh, I don't normally order things off the net, but I did yesterday. A small handful of my flist might also be interested. Delta Green, one of the behind-the-scenes theme inclusions on XET, has become an interesting little setting that i've grown fond of even past XET. I'm not sure I'll ever play it, but I liked reading it. Well, anyway, aside from the two core books (Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown), there were three 'chapbooks' of info, one on the Fate, one on the Mi-Go, and one on a time travel experiment gone horribly wrong. They were sold mail order, and were out of print by the time I got into it, fetching horrendously high prices on Ebay and such. Well, _finally_, Pagan Publishing collected the three chapbooks into one hardcover (along with a few new adventures).

They're selling it in a limited run of 1000 copies, sold online. So, I figured I'd bite the bullet and buy it. If you're one of the few people I know who also liked the system, you can buy it here (you can also buy a lot of other books there, but I just wanted this).

Okay, I've been MUSHless for too long. And despite my earlier vow never to admin a MU* again, I've decided the only way to get the kind of MUSH I want to play in is to run one. It's just gone on too long where I see a MU* that's sort of promising but then one big thing ticks me off and I have to back off it.

I'll probably run it off XET's former site. I've not yet settled on a theme, but I've narrowed it down to a few options:
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Okay, and as the last (planned) edition of the XET diaries, I’m going to do a few random plots ideas left out of the other posts and couple of my own ideas for XETized versions of other Marvel concepts. These aren't really 'plans' so much, because unless I was prepared to app the characters it was likely they'd never come to pass, and some of them would be impossible in a group RP session, even though they might be cool if XET were, say, an X-Men Alternate Universe comic series. But hey, since I was doing this big series of posts anyways, I decided I’d throw them in as a capper. Also, some of my ideas for ‘rehabilitating’ (or just doing cool things with) certain existing characters by using our One Year Gap at our rebirth.

Behind the cut… XET Runaways! Warlock! The Punisher! And More!
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And that’s it. My complete Plot Book for XET (again, barring something I remember way down the line and decide to post later). I hope at least some of you enjoyed it because, well, otherwise I did a whole lot of typing for nothing! Well, not for nothing… even if nobody cared, I wanted to have a record to look back on someday and smile.

Anyway, at this point I’d like to invite anyone else who wants to, to use this post (or the previous ones if its more relevant) to include their own memories of plots left undone, secrets known only to a few people that never made it to public knowledge, characters you almost apped for, or hell, even just random memories. You can either post them yourself as comments, or post links to posts elsewhere. I personally’d love to read them, even if I know them already.

Edit: Links to other XET-based log-entries as they come in: ( Read more... )

Time for another edition of the XET Diaries. Looks like this’ll probably be the second to last, so I’m going to go even more self-indulgent than usual on this one…

Of all the plots we’ve done, I think my favorites were the Hastur related plots, based on the modified Hastur mythos in Delta Green (specifically, the sourcebook Countdown). We did a number of plots where the Columbia Branch got involved with them.
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And so now I present, for the first time anywhere, the Hastur Plot Musical Homage to ‘Once More With Feeling’, Once More With Hastur!
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Aside from the Buffy musical homage in the Hastur plot, I’ve done a bunch of other filkish songs celebrating XET over the years. The first few were done as a dubious treat for the XETty awards, or hidden in secret commands on the game as an easter egg, but a couple never made it anywhere but in my own files. So, behind the cut, the full song parodies of XET!
( Magneto as the Modern Mutant General! Xavier’s private Copacabana! Under Da Sea (Cthulhu Lies Dreaming)! and more! )
Next up is our final planned entry, where I’ll just throw out a bunch of loose character concepts and plots that didn’t fit in any other entry.

This time around, we're dealing mostly with plots surrounding various organizations. Delta Green. The Office of Metahuman Affairs. Brotherhood Splinters. Weapon X. Excelsior!
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Next time around, what’s the penultimate post (at least, in terms of planned posts… there’s always the chance that months from now I’ll remember something and decide to post it)… the remains of the Hastur Plots, and the complete Songs of XET. Yes, there is a connection between the two topics. Be afraid.