Seems Gamespot isn't too keen on posting my cover image for The River of Blood (I don't blame them, I'm sure it's only a glitch). I sometimes feel like Gamespot is at odds with fostering its own community, the way they spread themselves thin by trying to give their users as much to do here as possible in light of the fact they're merely a gaming news site.

Speaking of news and games... 

I've begun the earliest possible stages of creating a hypertext game based on one of my poems. I'd tried to write a text adventure some time ago, but it never came together because I could never settle on a programming language. It was a dead heat between one called Alan-IF and Inform, both similar in nature to Infocom's old-school adventure games like Zork and H2G2. Both were fairly simple and straightforward to use, but I had a problem with how exactly the finished products worked. They could not actually produce standalone applications. In other words, in order to play a game written in Inform or Alan, you need a Z-Machine. What's a Z-Machine (also called an interpreter)? It's one of those concepts that's actually easy to understand, but tricky to explain. In short, it's an emulator, a program that's used to run other programs. If you're familiar with the Capcom Arcade Cabinet on PS3, then you've used a Z-Machine. When Infocom created their Z-Machine back in the day, the idea was brilliant: rather than port every single game of theirs to all the different platforms of personal computers available, all they had to do was make a Z-Machine that would work on those PCs, and then the games could be played normally. As long as your PC could run a Z-Machine, the entire Infocom library was at your disposal. This never struck me as terribly convenient. I mean, it's probably no different than buying a peripheral to play a game like Datura (Move) or Wii Fit (Balance Board), in fact it's more convenient since most are free and only a small download, but it could be a little more convenient. I mean, everyone has a web browser (otherwise, how are you reading this?), everyone has something that can read PDFs, everyone has a music player, why the excess baggage? 

I started thinking about all this because I saw Depression Quest on Steam's Greenlight page. I've nothing against the game (haven't delved too deep into it, but I think it's an interesting experience), but I couldn't help but wonder, "Why?" You can play the game on your PS3 by way of the browser, and of course it's already on PC because it's available on its own website. Sure, if you wanted to make a Playstation Minis game out of it, that would be something, but a download through Steam would only give you the advantage of being able to play offline, and that shouldn't require the assistance of Greenlight. Heck, remember when some websites would sell CD-ROM versions of themselves? Funny how that sort of went away. To be fair, Steam could set up something where sales of the game went to the charity mentioned on DQ's site, although you could just donate directly. 

There won't be any sort of charity or price point for my game, and you won't see it on Greenlight or any place like that. Then again, it might be fun to start a crowdfunding campaign to get me a development kit for making it into a Minis or onto XBox's Indie Channel. It'd be like Bob's Game, but hopefully with fewer headaches (pun intended and apologized for). I plan to have it available as a standalone website, though it'll probably be hosted by my Blogger page, and I do want to have some kind of offline/standalone version, possibly coded into a PDF. Michael Joyce did something similar for his CD-ROM release of his hypertext short Afternoon: A Story, though that required MSWord and had some noted compatibility issues. It will be a fairly simple game, one step above the "Escape the Room" formula, with something vaguely resembling a moral choice system, though, in keeping with my fascination with moral ambiguity (See The River of Blood), it won't be a simple "Good Ending/Bad Ending" dichotomy. 

The River of Blood

A webbing of red lace poured out from every slit in the black skirt, swaying to and fro with each of the queen's strides. Everything she did seemed to carry such an elegance, even the way her littlest finger toyed with the length of chain she held over her shoulder. Her prisoner in tow on the other end of the chain was less than taken with the queen's poise and grace.

She was a thief of notorious repute despite her age. This had bolstered her hubris into making an attempt on the queen's jewels, kept on her person at all times, even to bed. The risk would bear no reward. The hand that clamped down on the thief's wrist seemed almost to have a mind of its own, the queen only opening her eyes at the thief's startled gasp. Her majesty did not scream, instead tightening her grip as a grin crept across her face, bringing with it an amused chuckle. Fear pierced the thief to her very core, leaving her frozen in place. It was only an instant before she snapped out of it and remembered her knife, only to glance down to see it twirling in the queen's fingers. The chuckle had become a hysterical laugh. This alerted the guards, who promptly stormed into the room, surrounding the bed. The queen sighed, slackening her grip as she fell back against the pillows in mock disappointment.

The thief found herself scrambling into the arms of a guard. The guard was startled by this and found himself putting a hand on her shoulder, as he might have for a lost child. By the time the thief came to her senses, she felt her arms pulled behind her, secured with heavy chain by another of the queen's men. The hand on her shoulder tightened, forcing her back round to see the queen slide off the other side of the bed and make her way to an armoire. A guard opened it as she approached, revealing an accumulation of knives buried in the wood, their points only just breaking the surface of the door. With a sweeping gesture of the queen's arm and nary a break in her stride, the thief's knife was added to the collection. A snap of fingers sent the guard holding the door out of the room with two other men following right behind. This was all so surreal for the thief. Everything from scaling of the wall to the sound of her own knife embedding itself in an armoire was running through her mind over and over again. She had been so careful, so meticulous, considered every possible failure, but all for naught. The thief stared daggers into the queen's back as she took her time slipping on a black robe over her red, lacy evening gown, reaching down to pull parts of the gown through slits in the robe, turning the whole ensemble into a performance. The queen glanced over her shoulder to smile at the thief before resuming her fitting, unphased by the stare. The thief looked on in silence.

She expected to get some sort of lecture from her royal highness before being carted off to the dungeon, or at least some gloating. What she did not expect was for the queen to turn away from the armoire dangling a heavy, iron collar from a length of chain.

"Shall we go for a walk?"

The spikes that lined the inside of the collar were not sharp enough to draw blood. Rather, they were to give incentive against not keeping pace or speaking out of turn by way of a firm pull. Still, she couldn't help but wonder if what she felt rolling down her back was merely a bead of sweat. The party walked at a leisurely pace set by the queen, the last two guards from the bedchamber marching in silence behind the thief the entirety of the seemingly endless trek from the high tower into the depths of the castle.

As they went further, the plastered masonry gave way to earthen clay with tiles of red marble arranged in a flowing mosaic. It was a simple beauty the thief had never given much thought to, always too transfixed on the opulent. The queen explained that the castle was built upon a spring which served as irrigation for the garden. The flowing warmth allowed roses to stave off withering well past the first snowfall, a spectacle beheld by only a select few. Unfortunately, her highness sighed, the spring dried up years ago. The fountain atop the source was knocked down, the entire chamber altered to serve a different purpose, one the queen insisted would be as spectacular as before. As if on cue, the end of the hallway was in sight. The thief leaned to one side to see over the queen's shoulder a fairly small door in front of which were the three guards the queen had dismissed earlier. One held out an ornate key to the queen, asking quietly if she needed them further. Her majesty held up her hand and took the key. The guards passed, the two escorts following. The thief looked back over her shoulder at them walking away, immediately regretting it, not just for the spikes scraping along her neck, but the thought of the queen pulling on the chain. She winced in anticipation, turning slowly back toward the door to find the queen patiently standing beside the open door, politely gesturing the thief to enter. It was hard to find relief in any of her majesty's shifts in manner, each act of courtesy carrying the scent of a trap. After a brief hesitation, testing to see if the queen would tighten her grip on the chain, the thief cautiously walked through the door, the queen closing it behind them.

The chamber resembled a place of worship with its domed ceiling and columns along the walls. However, there were no statues or icons, doubtless removed in favor of the queen's machinations. The columns had been methodically chiseled in places to remove their engravings. All had been adorned with iron rings through which were strewn lengths of chain. In the center was the culmination of the queen's master plan, the ultimate defacing. It was the base of the fountain that once channeled the spring. A pair of grated spouts along the edge fed into small canals that ran parallel toward the door, leading out to the garden. If there had been a statue in its center, there was no sign of it. Instead, the base had been filled in to serve as a platform for a monstrosity of engineering, a guillotine built for eight, same as the number of columns encircling the room. The thief suddenly felt sick to her stomach with the revelation of the queen's grand spectacle.

She recalled seeing one in the town square as a child, though not as elaborate as this one. It was eventually taken down, having never been used so far as she could recall, replaced with a statue of the queen. Her highness led her guest up a short flight of crude, wooden stairs. She stopped in the center and spun round on the thief, directing her attention to the array of stocks, four on each side, all occupied. Man and woman, boy and girl, young and old, it was an eclectic assortment of prisoners. The queen explained that after the spring dried up, tourism to the town declined, and stricter laws were needed to keep the rising crime rate in check. Of course, the queen chuckled, strict laws were nothing without severe punishments behind them. For a time, there was no shortage of criminals to maintain the steady flow. Prisoners from neighboring countries looking to save face were brought in under the guise of exile for a price. Still, it was never enough to match the flow of the spring, and eventually the laws worked too well. Fewer and fewer were brought to justice, slowing the new spring down to a trickle.

The thief looked around at the device, trying to work out what her part in all this was meant to be, or if this was simply the lecture and gloating she'd been anticipating from the start.The crimes of the eight were rattled off with an air of ambiguity, one a murderer, others thieves, another an artist who tried to incite a revolt, two that refused to pay taxes on their businesses, and another who merely stood in the way of the guards' pursuit of a child caught swiping apples from a cart in the market. As the queen read off these convictions, none of them said so much as a word or tried to look up. No doubt they'd been tortured, starved, or otherwise rendered broken in light of their impending fate. Rather than supporting themselves on hands and knees, the prisoners were laid on benches, wrapped in canvas and secured with straps tight enough to squeeze the life out of them. There were no baskets to catch the severed heads, only a pair of deep grooves chiseled into the brickwork that ended in rusty grates before spilling over the edge of the old fountain and out of the room. The ceiling was a mess of pulleys and gears, most of it hardly appearing necessary for a device regarded so highly for its simplicity. Even the blades themselves were atypical, perforated with several small holes instead of a clean, metallic shine.

A tug on the leash brought the thief back to attention.

"I am not telling you all this merely so I can throw you in a cell to rot, much less execute you. I am telling you this because you have a decision to make, and it is important you have context." The last word carried a biting sharpness rivaling the twin blades hanging overhead. The thief straightened up, putting her shoulders back and her head up. Impressed, the queen smiled, continuing her ominous proposal.

"You will receive a full pardon for your trespass, leaving here with a perfectly clean slate. However, if you defy my word within my kingdom or its borders again, however minuscule, you will find yourself in their position, awaiting the fall of a blade." There was a stifled sob from one of the prisoners. The queen waited patiently for silence, a delighted smile creeping across her face. It remained while she carried on. "If you decide not to do as I ask, your leave of this place becomes more complicated." With that, the queen pulled the leash taut and began waving her arm left to right, causing the thief to sway gently with it for the sake of the spikes. "So brave of you," she cooed, "Never before have I had a visitor come calling in the night like that. Despite your intent, I found the whole affair rather amusing." The thief took a step forward to put some slack in the leash. The queen mockingly pouted at having her fun ruined, only to laugh and shake her head, "A rare gem such as you belongs among my treasures. You will be my servant, my pet, and my personal plaything for whatever whims may come to mind. You shan't come to any real harm, but your life will be solely for my amusement, so long as I wish it. It could be the rest of your life, or on the morrow."

The queen reached up and pulled down on a chain, setting a few of the pulleys in motion. There was a mechanical clicking sound of gears locking into place as some of the ropes and chains above tightened.

"Either way, I'll have no need for this room anymore." The queen held out the end of the chain to the thief at eye level.

On the end of the chain was a wooden handle wrapped in leather. There were teeth marks on it.

copyright MMXIII ce RMJZ, matsugawa.blogspot.com

As I've said of writing, one of the biggest struggles to overcome with it as an artistic medium is that have near-infinite levels of undo. Granted, most mediums have their own "reset" buttons, like tearing a sheet out of the sketchbook to start fresh, painting over the canvas, and of course "clear" options in drawing programs. With writing, however, there's considerably less loss beyond, at most, paper, which you're either not using very much of anyway or you're using such an inferior grade of paper because it's only a draft. The point is, there's no effort to the undo, simply a matter of holding down the backspace button until your screen is white (or gray, or black, or blue, or whatever color you've got your text editor of choice set to). 

Something I think concerns every writer is the level of detail and immersion that comes through in the finished product. On the one hand, you want people to get immersed, to feel invested, to see what you're seeing when you write. On the other hand, your audience isn't stupid, and they're certainly not without an imagination of their own, so they neither want nor need their hand held. Chekov teaches us that the best way to approach detail is to make sure that you only include parts essential to the story and simply learn to let the rest go. If there's a gun on the mantle in act one, somebody better be waving it about and at least threatening to use it by act three. 

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my all-time favorite movies. I hated it when I first saw it at age 12, but in two years time, seeing it again was transcendent. In short: I got it. I don't know exactly what it was I "got" but I know I got it. It builds an amazing world with very few elements in it, hardly any of which are explained in any overt fashion. If you've read the book, though, you see that everything has a purpose and its own reason for being. This was by design from the word go. 

A lot of people think the book is based on the film and not the other way round. Actually, it was something more cyclic and nebulous, almost kinky. John Fowles (The Magus, The Collector) said that writing a novel is easy, but that writing a screenplay is like swimming in treacle. Screenplays are only literature in the loosest possible way: they're things you can read. The difference is that a novel is a standalone work while a screenplay is an instruction manual for something else. In other words, they're not supposed to paint a complete picture; that's for the art directors, production designers, wardrobe, makeup, and anyone else who gets at least a line in the closing credits. In other words, it's a component at best. Screenplays are also meant to move in  more or less real time. A novel can have an entire chapter devoted to the architecture of the family estate, but a script has to keep things moving at the rate of a page per minute of screen time. 

To combat this, Kubrick and Clarke worked on the novel first, using a few of Clarke's short stories as jumping-off points. Once that world was fleshed out in a medium known for being far more free-form in terms of structure, length, and pacing, it was all the easier to distill it into a scene-by-scene shot list for the crew and dialogue for the cast. 

When writing shortform fiction, there's a similar sort of idea at play. It's all about efficiency and simplicity, keeping the pace while still making facetime with your details. If you're having difficulty keeping the length down or your readers complain about pacing or overexplanation, a good way to move past that habit is to get it all out there, but not in one place. 

Here's an idea: even if you can't draw, try sketching the room the action is taking place in. Use that as a guide for when you block out the action. If you succeed, there shouldn't be any confusion about location in the final piece. If your character has an unusual costume, write up a head-to-toe summary, even if its merely a list separated into sections like "head," "torso," and "legs." Think of it like a prop list for a stage play or the character customization screen in a game. Does the world this is set in have a rich history, write up a timeline by year, including bullet points of births, deaths, marriages, company buyouts, and political shifts, among other things. 

Most of this will not find its way directly into your final story, but by having it all laid out in front of you, you don't have to burn the candle at both ends by creating a world and telling you about something going on inside of it. You can focus on what's important an then go back to add in little tidbits of information or foster the seedlings you already planted along the way. 

That's the funny part about the written word, it can be obsessively specific and amusingly vague at the same time. The key to mastering it is understanding how these two ideals can coexist. 

Some people get nostalgic when they have to use pen & paper when playing a videogame, whether it's to make your own map or work out a puzzle or even just write down the solution. There was a lot of genuine excitement when the developers of Grimrock included a printable PDF of custom graph paper for people to use in lieu of the game's built-in map function. I even remember the original MYST coming with a blank notebook. If I think further back, I remember someone at a neighbor's house handing me a memo pad when I sat down to play one of the Carmen Sandiego games to work out the clues. 

I'm not a very smart person. I'm really not. 

I was a "B" student through most of middle school, high school, and the entirety of college. That may sound like a decent achievement, but it was arduous and painful. I was in Honors Algebra I in high school, and I would often be at my desk, my forehead pressed against the paper (as if trying to will the answers into existence) in tears. I'd stare at a jar of broken pencils, trying to keep things in perspective and not let it all get to me. The reasons why I struggled so much are many and varied, much of it owed to the kinds of mixed signals parents often unknowingly send to their kids when it comes to expectations. In short, unless I was told so, I wasn't allowed to be okay with anything. If I was too calm about something, I'd be chastised for not taking things seriously. If I beat myself up about something, I'd be told to calm down and keep things in perspective. There was no middle ground, the choices being to either make mountains out of molehills or get them made for me. Failure was almost always chalked up to simply not trying hard enough or wanting to win enough. 

I bring this up because I gave Machinarium a try. It's a point-and-click adventure game where you solve puzzles to get past certain obstacles and progress farther in the story. You'll gather items, talk to people (robots), you'll move things around, you'll read little schematics or symbols. The game is broken up into individual screens (sometimes two or more) of either a single room or series of rooms, each one a puzzle unto itself, with one rarely carrying over into the other. I solved the first one easy enough, but the second one resulted in me doing a search for a solution. At first, my reaction was "well, duh." but then I stopped and asked, "Well, how would I have known I could do that?" Often the solutions in these games come as a result of getting mad and clicking on anything and everything, eventually discovering the solution completely by accident. This was not a good start. 

The next puzzle involved flipping a series of switches to lower a beam to climb on. I kept trying to work out how the symbols on the switches corresponded to actions, eventually working something out that only really held up about one in every five times. I should have felt proud for solving it without the walkthrough, but I wasn't. 

To its credit, Machinarium will hold your hand on occasion, but it does so in a novel way I've never really seen before. In the upper right corner of the screen are two icons, one a question mark that isn't selectable (how this is made otherwise is never all that clear) showing a simple illustration of what should be done in order to progress. The other icon is for a notebook with a curious electronic lock. In fact, it's less a lock and more of a minigame. You suddenly get to play as a small, flying key shooting at spiders while scrolling left to right until you reach the keyhole at the end of the stage. If you complete this scrolling shooter (my favorite videogame genre, by the way), you get a rather beautifully illustrated set of storyboards revealing the solution to the screen's puzzle. In other words, it gives you the answer, but it makes you work for it. It's very novel. 

The detail of these answers varies at times, often only telling you that something is a puzzle, but not actually showing you how to solve the sliding block or red wire/black wire problem, leaving that up to you. This is where I start to develop a complex and almost abusive relationship with the game; I should be having fun, I enjoy taking on a challenge, I know there's no real pressure, and I know there's no one around to point and laugh when I need to take a few extra steps than most. So, why does the idea of getting out pen & paper feel so defeating? There was a puzzle I absolutely couldn't figure out. It was like that wolf-chicken-feed puzzle but with way more flora and fauna. The shmup hint book gave me the solution, but instead of writing it down, I tried memorizing it, even checking back every few steps. It didn't work. I started to get up to get some scratch paper and a pen, only to feel very depressed. 

I turned off the game, resolving to just come back later. Unfortunately, like I said, giving up (even briefly, with resolve to return, and after trying my best) doesn't sit well with me. It brings back a painful memory, a fight I had with someone. Someone has a go at you in frustration, and says something hurtful. The memory itself is really nothing special, certainly nothing traumatic, but it's one of those lingering echoes that comes back to haunt you at the worst possible time. A harmless little remark over a game of chess or basketball or Mario suddenly becomes this metaphor for your whole life (even though the person who made this remark is themselves barely older than you). Worse is when someone else comes along to tell the self-appointed life coach to back off, only to turn the mess into a full-on scene. Doors get slammed, chess pieces get picked up, 

Machinarium is a game that makes me very sad, but not for the reasons it probably wants me to be. 

It's been over a full year since I made a journal entry here, easily my least visible weblog. I really don't socialize here all that much, as more people are probably interested in discussing gameplay strategies or recomendations than what I end up talking about when it comes to games, like characters and stories. Speaking of which, I've been doing some writing lately. I figured, since it's still technically November, National Novel Writers Month is still going on (if drawing to a close), and this was the place where I first linked one of my last short stories Ladyhorse, I thought I'd share some writing tips I've learned and picked up over the years. Some of these are my own, most are from other (and far better) writers than me.

1. Don't stop, take a break, or get up from what you're writing unless you know what the next thing you'll put down when you get back is.

This one comes from Sir Alec Guinness, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself. Not exactly a writer by trade, but while making his memoirs, detailing not just his acting career but his rather embarassing tenure as a submarine captain in the Queen's Army (which led to a lampost in New York city getting bent backward like a hairpin), he went through a few trials and tribulations, noting that it's easy to go into something with full enthusiasm and wind up getting bogged down.

2. Cut out all those exclamation marks, and exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said this, and while I may not completely agree with it, it's still a good way to approach the way you paint a picture. My mom (an english teacher) had a saying of sorts, "If it's in quotes, anything goes." In other words, it's fine to use things like exclamation marks or bad grammar if it's a character speaking, because that's how the character may well talk. As for the prose itself, even if it's in first person, you should try to keep a level of formality and distance from the subject matter. I'd also add the caveat to never use question marks outside of dialogue, because you're ultimately writing a rhetorical question directed at the reader. Obviously, the reader can't answer, and if it's going to be addressed in the story anyway, you've not only wasted the reader's time, but also taken them out of the story.

3. When in doubt, make two sentences.

This is one of mine. I get asked about grammar all the time, and it's something that's really hard to give advice on for two reasons. 1) Writing is a very personal thing, and even if it's only the nuts-and-bolts I'm giving you guidance on, I'm ultimately teaching you how to bare your soul, and no one can do that but you. 2) If you have to ask for help on the fundamentals, you're doing it wrong. Look, I don't speak perfect grammar. For one thing, subject-verb agreements always throw me off and I can almost never keep a consistent verb tense throughout. I'd like to think the stories still make sense, but it is something that irks me. In any case, while I may not speak perfect grammar, I like to think I work at at least a B-grade level. I'm aware of run-ons, I know how commas work, and I know the distinction between dependent and independent clauses, among other things. These are the basics. If you don't know to look behind you in a car when you're backing out of a space, it doesn't matter how good the rest of your driving skills are; you should not be behind the wheel. It doesn't matter how good your free-throw average is; if you can't dribble the ball, you're not going to make the team. So, while I'm not interested in doing "remedial work" on whatever you can't do, I can give you a little bit of advice if you find a sentence is running away from you or going on too long or carries too many modifiers. Split it. Don't worry about how each sentence sounds on its own, if they're side-by-side in the paragraph, the reader is smart enough to connect the dots.

4. Write anything.

This is a cure for writer's block, or even a decreasing enthusiasm. I don't think I've met a single writer who never wrote an entire work in sequential order. That is, never did they skip ahead to write a later part of the story and fill in the gaps when they're more up to the task. If you'd rather stop with the opening chapters and get straight to the action in the third act, go right ahead and write it; chances are you're in the better mindset for that than what you're doing. Granted, it's entirely possible to write yourself into a corner that way, but who said anything about what you put down being set in stone? Speaking of which:

5. Avoid constnat re-writes.

Terrance Dicks was the script editor on the original Doctor Who series, namely Jon Pertwee's tenure. When writing a script for an established show with existing characters you most likely didn't create, it goes without saying that you're probably not going to hit all the right marks, especially on that first draft. On the other hand, between actors taking liberties with their lines to be more suitable to their performances (often with the guidance of the director and sometimes even the writer) as well as behind-the-scenes happenings that may lead to changes in location or structure, it's more likely that things won't get better, but worse. To minimize this sort of issue, Dicks had a rule: First draft gets reviewed and given notes before being returned to the writer for a second draft. Second draft comes in, the editor will say, "it's good, we'll take it. One or two changes, maybe, but we'll call it locked." the writer is then paid in full, and Dicks will either make those one or two changes, or--as a last resort--do a complete top-to-bottom re-write, leaving the writer's name on it if they so desire. It may sound rather unfair to the writer, but it's better than going through 8 drafts and wasting your time experimenting with things that shold already be down pat.

So, that's the best advice I think I can give. Now that I've essentially taken my own advice with point 4, I think I'm ready to go back to what I was already working on.

(insert obligatory "I AM DRUNK" disclaimer here)

* Saw The Muppets today, and found it thoroughly satisfactory; not good, not great, but far from awful. If this were the last thing the Muppets ever did, I'd be happy with it.

* Prior to The Muppets, we were, of course, treated to about 5 trailers, not the least of which was Brave, which I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to. Strong female leads always win huge points with me.

* Regarding these Neverwinter Nights fortune cards I've heard about, I love the "lady warrior" artwork; it avoids the cliches of busty women in impractical armor yet still remains sexy.

* Here's the situation: my roommate has an anxiety disorder that keeps her from going anywhere by herself. As such, she won't see a movie unless I intend to see it myself. The problem there is that I'm far more discerning of the movies that I want to go see than she is. You can probably imagine the problems this creates, least of all her asking my opinion on damn near every movie trailer we see.

* I'm utterly stuck on the "Mahna Mahna" song, especially the rendition from The Muppet Show. There's this zen-like perfection to it, not unlike an Andy Kaufman routine. It's like what Samuel Beckett said about his play What Where, "It's a thing, don't talk to me about it."

* I was once criticized by someone I was arguing with that I was the sort who should write down all my philosophies and thoughts in a book and sell copies of it on a beach. I look now over some of my weblog entries, here and elsewhere, and I actually wonder why I've never been able to write a full and cohesive longform work, apart from a 5-act play I wrote circa my senior year in high school, on which I'll only say, "Don't ask. Really, please, don't ask."

* Thanks to a variety of computer issues I've had to deal with the past week, I'm currently using Google Chromium on Jolicloud, an operating system I have something of a sordid relationship with. It has improved greatly in some areas, but not others, namely their lack of support for the Opera web browser.

* A new Legend of Zelda game has come out, but I haven't bought it, not because I don't like the series (just because I'm basically broke right now, all but literally so), which makes me feel a bit guilty, as there seems to be a lot of criticism out there of Nintendo selling us the same game over and over again. Yes, yes, I agree that, with a few exceptions, the Zelda franchise has been largely unchanged, but at least it's a good kind of unchanged; I imagine a discussion wherein someone asks which Zelda game to play or otherwise get first, and my answer being, "Start anywhere." Seriously, with the exception of the extremely rare Philips CD-i games and maybe the earliest entries, there isn't a single Zelda game that I'd recommend over the others. There aren't many franchises I can say that about.

* I want to start a new Blogger page called Words That Stay (a reference to The Dark Crystal) devoted to some of my fiction. I'm not sure it's a good idea, though, especially considering there's no real point in light of simply doing literature uploads on DeviantART.

I've grown to hate talking about things I'm WORKING on, projects I've got IN THE WORKS, that sort of thing, especially writing. I find writing extremely difficult because I'm the sort who sweats every word, whether it's a work of fiction or a journal entry or even an e-mail to someone I've known for years. It's just an obsession of mine. Part of it comes from having an English teacher for a mother. I don't mean that in any sort of pejorative or accusational sort of tone. I don't mind for a moment the literary upbringing I had, the means by which I was taught to think critically when I read or take my time when I write. It was a school of hard knocks, to be sure, and that term becomes more and more apt when I look around the web and see others try to express themselves with only the written word at their disposal.

As some of you may know, DeviantART recently implemented a massive overhaul to its journal system. In short, it's turned journals into deviations (complete with fave and share options) and all but abolished the news section as an attempt to re-invigorate the stagnating literary community there. Frankly, I equate this move to a bookstore removing its manga section and filling up its aisles with truckloads of bundled newspapers in an attempt to help slumping sales. One outcome of this that's almost interesting is a site called Sta.sh, a kind of private file server for DeviantART not unlike Google Documents, complete with a fully-functioning word processor. I'm fascinated by typewriters and make it a point to try every text editor I come across, so I wanted to give this one a shot and write a little short story using only this new editor.

I'm not really stuck, per se, I'm just procrastinating and debating whether or not I want to even bother finishing it, and how long is too long to work at it, especially amidst everything else I'm set to write. I don't want to talk about it as I think getting notes from others this early on would just bog me down more and not really help the situation. In terms of feedback, I'd just rather have a "finished" product to work with, if that makes sense.

So, here's the problem and how it pertains to the question asked in the title of this journal: I'm taking a break from writing my own story to rant on my journal about how so many other people just can't write and how awful their attempts at storytelling are. In my defense, I'm not just hating for the sake of hating; I genuinely want to give these aspiring authors a fair shot and give them the benefit of the doubt. However, so many of them are just borderline-illiterate that it's as staggering as it is depressing. I made the remark in my journal that, while my works are far from perfect, if this were an English class, I'd probably get by with a B, give or take a plus or minus. Most of what I'm seeing on DeviantART (and a few other places), if placed in the same hypothetical classroom, would not even get a C, D, or even F; they'd get the dreaded "See Me" which is basically an F, but with a side order of public humiliation. Red-inked notes are insufficient as these works often need page-one re-writes than simple cleanups.

This journal is the first time I've even mentioned that I'm writing a story for my DeviantART page (it's not the first literature upload I've made, but it's the first I'm not announcing in a journal), and in its place, I've just been criticizing the vast majority of my contemporaries on DevART. Again, am I just being arrogant? Maybe even unconsciously jealous of their spontaneity while I continue poring over my own words?

Okay, Bethesda, let's put things in perspective: You bought the Fallout property from Interplay instead of licensing it from them, released what basically amounted to Oblivion with a texture swap and a gimmicky aiming mechanic, sued Interplay for trying to spend the money you paid them, and now you're suing an independent developer over a trademark dispute that you now have no reason to sue over.

What the Hell am I missing here? I'm trying to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but now I can't wish enough turmoil and misfortune upon you and everything you've built.

Seriously, I hope someone makes another point-and-click adventure using your game environments again; I'd call it Karma.

For reasons I'll address in the next day or two on my Blogger page, I've decided that I completely and utterly hate the word "podcast." I loathe it on every level. By comparison, saying "blog" is just kind of annoying, weblog doesn't roll off the tongue that smoothly, and most people think you're talking pen and paper if you say "journal" even in this day and age, so I can kind of let that one go. Podcast, however, I just can't accept anymore.

I'm calling them audiologs.

As it happens, I've been recording some. They're not the fictional ones I made some time back, though I've considered revisiting those with additional installments to that storyline as well as some others. Rather, these are just little 5-8 minute voice recordings I've been posting to my new Tumblr page, Venusian Radio. I was going to call it Vasoomian Radio, but I didn't think anyone would get the reference, and it's really not cool enough to warrant high-fives with those in the know. Also, after seeing a trailer for John Carter of Mars, I'm afraid its inevitable popularity will put posers and squares among those of the aforementioned "in the know" crowd, thus diluting their niche quality. Really, nothing about that movie looks remotely interesting; it's basically just Prince of Persia with aliens, and I hated Prince of Persia (and not just for Gemma Arterton's awful performance).

Speaking of Princes and bizarre transmissions, I saw John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness a few weeks ago courtesy of Netflix, and I adored it. It plays like a greatest hits album, packed with all the familiar elements of previous Carpenter films, complete with familiar faces like Victor Wong, Dennis Dunn, and Donald Pleasance, to name a few. It's got a lot of great ideas, like a transmission from the future received as a recurring dream by a select group of people spanning centuries. I also saw In The Mouth of Madness, and while I liked that one as well, it had the slight problem of just not really feeling like a John Carpenter film; it was more cerebral than his other works, with some rather gimmicky horror tropes breaking up some otherwise fantastic imagery and excellent creature effects.

I've been painting more (533497.deviantart.com), hence the absence, not just here but on Blogger as well. I also hadn't been playing that many games.

More recently, though, I have finally acquired a PS3, and it is awesome. I got it just about a week before the Playstation Network got hacked, which meant my demos would have to stay demos for a while. Funnily enough, I wasn't expecting to get the PS3 so soon, so prior to its unexpected arrival, I'd decided to bunker down and pick up some Wii games I'd had my eye on, like Samurai Warriors 3 and Lost in Shadow, to name a few. A Shadow's Tale (its Japanese and PAL title) is really fun, though every bad thing you've heard about the graphics is true; on the whole, it would be tolerable for the low poly-count and slightly faded textures, except that the designers decided to throw this layer of haze over everything. Seriously, it's like covering up a small spot on the carpet by emptying a jar of vodka sauce on it.

I made Singularity the first game I bought, as it was recommended by a friend after watching one of my videos about audiologs. As it happens, while I was getting the game, Bioshock 2 was on sale for about 15USD, which seemed a rather irresistable deal. Singularity is awesome, even if it has reminded me of just how bad I am at first-person shooters and how out of touch I am with the current scene. I thought Halo 2 would help prepare me for what to expect from Next-Gen, but it really is a whole new ballgame. I'm not even far in enough to have gotten the TMD, and I already feel overwhelmed. I know this game hasn't gotten a lot of good attention, but only because it's come out amidst a sea of other and similar titles.

As far as the outage goes, I just want the network back (although I will admit it'll be cool that two of the games I've got demos for will be offered for free) . As far as all the hate Sony is getting goes, I just have to roll my eyes at the people complaining and condemning them. Sure, there were some security issues, but blaming the victim is at best only part of the equation. Sony was hacked. The bank was robbed. The child was murdered. Yes, mistakes were made, but maybe we should take a cue from Valve and start helping Sony find out who did this. When Half-Life 2's source code was stolen, Gabe Newell asked the community for help, welcoming any information as to where leaked versions of the code were being found. No one seems to be doing that for Sony, and that's unfair. Granted, it's more likely that no one's actually found anything to inform of in the first place, but with news of some of the information being put up for sale on underground hacker forums, you'd think one of them would prove wrong the notion of Honor Among Thieves.

Anyway, I'm just sick of all the drama, I just want to see the other planets in Super Stardust HD and see what the Fury add-on for Wipeout HD is all about.

That's all I really want to talk about for now. I kind of want to get back to writing some fiction, but we'll see how far that goes.

Speaking of fiction, my new icon was part of a commission of a friend of mine on DeviantART named Kakumey , go check out her stuff.