| Life goes on.
Mythic Entertainment laid off a LOT of people yesterday--well, actually, they call it a "RIF" ("Reduction in Force"), and, actually, it started on Friday--and I was among them. Fortunately, there were plenty of warning signs, and my wife and I were more or less prepared, financially and emotionally. (I even had my desk packed up on Friday afternoon, so that all I had to do yesterday, when I was called to my exit meeting, was grab my jacket and my backpack.) So, yeah, I was ready for this. My stress level all day yesterday could be described as "low to nonexistent."
That being said, I did like the security of having a full-time job. My stress level is no doubt going to rise steadily as the last day of my severance pay approaches.
So I'm thinking I need to make good use of that time. As I've mentioned here before, I'm working on a novel. (And, by publicly stating that, I force myself to actually carry through with writing it ...) I started it some time ago, got serious about writing it in July of last year ... then got wrapped up in moving for my new job, and kind of lost momentum. Although I take it out periodically and tweak it--and think about it a lot--I generally don't have enough time, between job and home maintenance, to pursue it for more than about an hour a week.
Well, that's changing as of today. I've given myself a deadline of January 9th (two months from the date of my layoff) to finish my book. If I'm not finished by then, I'm going to use whatever free time I an scrounge to finish it. In between, I expect to do some freelance, work on some other unfinished game projects ... and, of course, carry on with those little home maintenance projects that keep popping up.
So ... when last we left off in the story, Security Chief Koziol had just made up her mind to just go ahead and break into the pharmaceutical laboratory ...
JD
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|  In a late-breaking comment it took me a while to spot, Sergio M asks:
What are the sources for your model of story analysis? Is it your personal creation? Where you inspired by any books or whatever? Which?
None of the major concepts are original to me, although I find myself wanting to change their frame of reference as I look further into these issues. It’s an evolving process.
Provenance of story terminology is tough to pin down sometimes.This is particularly an issue with procedural/adventure/serial/adventure fiction, which we are mostly emulating in RPGs. Most writing texts and workshops skew toward the standalone and literary side of things.Terms and concepts of use to working creators percolate out from writer’s rooms into DVD commentaries and out into the blogosphere. Perhaps someday an intrepid scholar will track the origins of such bedrock terms as “laying pipe” for exposition or “backstory” for a character’s past. Like roleplaying practice, it is in large degree an oral tradition which is codified haphazardly and in retrospect, and is subject to ongoing innovation and revision. The movie and TV industries have a several generation head start on us in the generation of useful story-making techniques and the jargon to go with them.
The pass/fail cycle is a well established term for adventure plotting, and not unique to me. I’m now leaning toward hope/fear as more useful for RPG-focused story analysis; that is my variation. Inconveniently, it’s used in other fields as well, and if you Google the term, you get one of my blog posts.
For scene analysis, I draw on a work written for actors, Michael Shurtleff’s Audition . Its analytical techniques were then broken out by acting teachers to be more broadly applicable than its original remit suggested. The book itself focuses on how you break a scene for a dynamic, killer audition. A mutated Shurtleff approach was all the rage in the York University (Toronto) theater department when I was taking a Fine Arts Studies degree there in the mid-80s.
The terms petitioner and granter, for the participants in a dramatic scene, are used by the legendary film editor Walter Murch, as interviewed by Michael Ondaatje in The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film . He doesn’t claim them as unique to himself, but for all I know they're his variation on a familiar concept. | |
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| Question: Do Germans see the Berlin wall as a symbol of "freedom" vs. "despotism" or as a symbol of division forced by foreign powers? | |
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| lj-userpic: The Force! lj-tags: thoughts Richard's mind blasts in 140 characters... Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter | |
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| Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there. I am so renting this movie when it comes out. Who’s with me?
Popularity: unranked [?] | |
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| I just watched last week's episode of Supernatural.
I think I may actually have split something open internally from laughing so hard. - Mood:ded
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| So I am doing NaNoWriMo this month. This is a peculiar form insanity which makes you attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words in a single month. To make matters more interesting we choose November, perhaps the most inconvenient of months to do said writing. I am 14,637 into that 50,000 and may make my head explode before it is all said and done.
That said of course I am going to make a few random observations related to my fields of interest.
V, the Reboot
Meh. I mean it looked pretty and I like many of the cast members. I don’t hate it. I just couldn’t find it in me to love it either. The characters are all too….fanfic Mary Sue. The story in the first episode should have taken a week of mini series to get out. We had the arrival of the ships, the revelation they are lizards, secret plots, and the human resistance in one episode. So far my favorite scene was between the Reporter and Anna the leader of the visitors. If the rest of the show had that sort of ethical challenge to it I would have been more interested.
Flash Forward
Science Fiction literature has often suffered from being more about the idea than the characters. They start with a premise usually based on some technical or scientific change and show you how those things change almost everything. Flash Forward is like that. I could care less about the former alcoholic FBI guy and his marriage problems or the closeted lesbians agents intimacy issues. The ideas these characters are used to explore do interest me, though. How would the world change if we all got a glimpse of our future? How would you live your life if you knew you were going to die in the next six months or you knew your wife was going to be with someone else in six months? How would you disprove this? How would you act against it? Would acting against it make it happen? That portion of the show is working and it is compelling enough for me to forgive the characters not being strong enough on their own.
7th son
Have you picked up your copy?
Fringe
Strangely I have grown to love this show. The first half of the first season is shaky but once I sank into this show I became addicted. If you watch the first 10 minutes of each episode you will have to stick around and see whats going on. The meta plot is really confused and not real well defined but each episode is a kind of weird I forgot I was missing.
Smallville
Yes i am still watching this show. Yes more than a few episodes have made me question why. Then they introduce Speedy or the Wonder Twins and I sit back and enjoy.
Dragon Age
I want it.
Castle
Is there nothing that Nathan Fillion can’t improve? Take a formula mystery show, add a really good cast, occasionally self aware and very clever dialog, and mix till all the lumps are out and you get a show like Castle. It is not going to blow your mind but it will make you smile.
Wire in the Blood
Just found this one on Netflix. The criminal profiler has been done before and in some cases quite well done. Millennium stands out in my mind as probably the best for managing to creepy you out with the evil that is around us. This British take on the idea is pretty standard fair story wise. The first one is a riff on Silence of the Lambs essentially. What makes the show work for me is the hero. He is terribly flawed. He takes an interest in serial killers and he maintains relationships with the ones he catches. You are never quite clear if that is because he thinks he will learn more about them or because he is messed up inside and kind of admires them, wants to be them. At least in the first season I could never peg for sure. Also he is imperfect. He fails at certain points. He is not terribly strong or even witty. He is a man with flaws and I kind of love him for them. I do occasionally get tired of perfect people always saving the day. Let my heroes be human and flawed.
That is it for now. More word count to be had tomorrow.
Originally published at McCoy's Geeky Emporium of Thought. You can comment here or there. | |
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| One that I can borrow? I'd like to spread out some of the days when no one else has them. I wouldn't do much. Just catch up on a few things.... | |
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| There's never enough time! On a side note, the Apex Book of World SF interview series continues with Aleksandar Žiljak. And I post my Best of 2009 Short List over at Jeff VanderMeer's blog. (It's just my short list! I still have other books to read before the year ends! And then the stories have to engage in Mortal Kombat before I pick a winner.) InterviewsAdvice/ArticlesNewsAnd this just arrived in the mail: (it's just one book, double covers) | |
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| I figure my generation (late Gen-X) is the last to have any real memory of the Cold War and its impact on US-Soviet relations. For my kids terrorism and wars in the Middle East will be the defining conflict in their memories. Even I don't remember most of the fear of the Cold War, just the sense that America was winning as the Soviets lost in Afghanistan and slowly introduced more and more freedoms via glasnost and peristroika. Still, I remember Red Dawn and reading Red Storm Rising, stories about actual US-Soviet conflicts. 20 years ago today though the end of Soviet tyranny began with the people of Berlin (East and West) rising up to tear down the wall that separated them for so long. Presidents Reagan and Kennedy gave two of the most remembered speeches pertaining to the Wall.
First Reagan:
Kennedy:
The Cold War didn't end with bullets or bombs or missiles. It ended with People demanding freedom. Pretty fitting I think.
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| We've put up the first draft cover and one of the interior pieces to Snows of an Early Winter (formally October Surprise), our next Call of Cthulhu adventure. Check it out here: http://www.supergeniusgames.com. | |
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| An odd little dragon, the crimson drake, makes it's appearance on KQ.com today, with art by Hugo Solis AKA ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) butterfrog. Take a bow, little dragon. After two weeks of 4E and 3E horrors, ghosts, and deadly mycolids, maybe it's time for a somewhat more traditional beast. Mini-dragons: worthy foe or tasty snack? | |
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| To elope, most literally, merely means to run away.[1] More specifically, elopement is often used to refer to a marriage conducted in sudden and secretive fashion, usually involving hurried flight away from one's place of residence together with one's beloved with the intention of getting married.
-- Wikipedia “You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.”-- Oliver Goldsmith ---- More news about Neoncon later, but for now, the important stuff. On Saturday night, driving through Vegas, while looking for a liquor store with American Honey, mnight and I drove by a neon sign that said, "Wedding Licenses." The hour was late but the sign was still on and across the street--directly across the street--was a chapel with drive thru service. Twenty minutes later, we were married. No photographers, no rings, no guests. We had Jimmy Buffett on the radio singing "Brown Eyed Girl" as a bit of coincidence. And so, ladies and gentlemen, Ro is now, officially, my ex-girlfriend. | |
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| When I got up this morning, I found a note had been slipped under my door. It was from the manager of the Palace Station Hotel & Casino asking me if I'm SURE that I really WANT to head home today. It went on to offer me the option to stay for ANOTHER night in my room for only an additional $15. While that's a terrific, deal, I don't imagine many people can just extend their stays by a day on short notice ... so the note really smacked of DESPERATION to me. Which is a shame. The Palace Station is not a high-end hotel, but it's fine ... and it's CLOSE to the strip ... and I'll probably consider staying here the next time I come to Vegas because their regular rates seem to be only about $30 a night. Of course, if they're REALLY this desperate, I don't know how much longer the Palace Station will be around. I'll cross my fingers that it is. I DO like a bargain! Now it's time for me to finish packing, head down and get my car from the valet, and drive on back to San Diego county. I'll probably be stopping in Baker, CA to get some Alien Fresh Jerky ... yummmm! I'll try to make some Twitter and Facebook posts from the road ... y'know ... just for fun. | |
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| Here's a video tour of the lich lair that's going to be in play tonight, if there's quorum for tonight's D&D session. I don't know why I made this video, but here it is:
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| ...after seeing this color 1927 film of London, it's Dunlop. (The film looks much better than this preview still.)
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View series to date here. Updated archive soon.
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