Bibliotech

How LFR Saved my Marriage

2011-12-22T06:49:00.000-08:00

No, not really. But snappy title, huh?

I'm going to come right out and say it. That controversial thing. I love LFR. I think it's a great addition to the game, and if I could change it, it would only be to wish it had been in from the beginning of Cataclysm.

But for the grace of ~~God~~ the Aspects go we...

It came up in discussion yesterday when one of the forum MVPs brought this thread to my attention. Particular the comment that said one of the problems with LFR was that there were no instant consequences for wiping - they could keep wiping over and over again. We ended up having a good laugh over this, which spawned the shortlived hashtag on twitter #LFRwipeconsequences, but it's a good example of how ludicrous the expectations of LFR really are. The consequences of LFR versus a normal raid (say with a guild):

1) The obvious one, applicable to both: you wipe. Wiping is a consquence!
2) LFR: the repeated offenders get vote kicked. Usually this is pretty easy. LFR replaces the lost members in seconds. Guild run: Officers talk it over, talk to the offending parties. Maybe they get benched for the night. A new raider has to be found and brought it.
3) LFR: the good players get frustrated and leave. Guild run: the good players reform their raid team. This takes time.

I would hazard there are more instantaneous consequences during an LFR raid than a guild run, where officers are trying to balance downing bosses with a harmonious, happy, well-fed raid team. Now, the replacement solutions are equally quick and easy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, particularly in a case like mine where I play and raid on a PST server despite living EST.

Another frequent complaint is the idea that you're not making friends in LFR (and prior to this, LFD) because you form up, kill bosses, drop group, etc. Untrue. We've actually added a handful of re-rolls and recruits to our guild since LFR started by meeting fun and sassy cats in a raid group. On the other hand, when you just want to get in, kill some bosses and go, you can do that without a problem.

Our guild does have a little ten man raid group that could and for someone who is a 'you kind of have to be there' learner like me, LFR does help me learn the encounters. Instead of learning 5 or 6 abilities each fight, I've learned most of them on LFR already, where a misstep doesn't mean a wipe, but practicing the motions is still good for me. When we do normals, now I'm learning one or two more abilities instead of all six at once. it's a good system that works for me.

Madness will consume you.

But really, the coolest thing of all was finishing off a flawless LFR run the other night with my husband, who works anywhere from 60-80 hours a week. We used to raid together in TBC before his job made it impossible to keep up with farming, strat-research and the late hours. He enjoys learning his class and playing well, but the sheer amount of work that regular raiding requires was beyond his time constraints. LFR has let us raid together again and it doesn't matter to either of us it was a nerfed encounter. When Deathwing fell and we got to watch the end cinematic together, it was awesome.

I love LFR! How about you?

Blizzard Contest 2011 Winners!

2011-12-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

Early yesterday morning, Blizzard announced the official winners of the 2011 Writing Contest!

Winner:
"The Exit" by Danny McAleese

Finalists (in alphabetical order):
"Anatomy of Demons" by David Patterson
"Daughter of Lordaeron" by Marika Kermode
"Echo of Pride" by Martin Arthur Paul Wilson
"Reforged" by Anthony Dickson
"The Future of Lordaeron" by Tyler F.M. Edwards
"The Heavier Burden" by Erica Cargle
"The Stranger" by Walter Handloser

I'll admit, there's not much in the title of the winning entry to go on: it could easily be a WoW, Diablo or Starcraft, but if the past two winners are any indication, it will be excellent. On the forums, CM Daxxari said the following:

By way of explanation, our story contests inevitably prompt the innocent inquiry, "Can I post my story on my website?" This intonation regularly results in an altercation featuring a flurry of agitation, speculation, admonition, and inevitable degeneration into contention, to which it is my intention to add an adjudication which I hope will ease future consternation:

The stories can be posted, as long as they're not used to directly generate revenue.

So, an author could use their story as part of a writing portfolio or post it on their website, and that would be fine so long as it isn't used to generate income.

So if you submitted a story to the Writing Contest and would like it linked here, let me know! For now, here's one from the forums, honorable mention, "Warrior's Hands" by Allison Utterback. My own, "Haven of the Windless Sea" will be posted later this week.

Congratulations to all the winner's this year!

Dragon Soul 4.3 - One Week On

2011-12-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

As of tomorrow, it will be one week since 4.3 dropped, and what a hectic week it's been. Between racing to finish Nanowrimo (3000 words to go when the 30th rolled around; though that's not even close to the dark-horse come-back one of the regional members made that day of 11k before midnight), getting my paladin tuned up for Firelands on Saturday night, and Darkmoon Faire dropping yesterday, it's been one hell of a scramble.

It's important that the tank looks and feels her best before stepping into Rag's domain.

Of the major changes 4.3 introduced, transmogrification hit #1 for me, clocking in at about 12+ hours of running TBC content for gear (purple Judgment for my paladin, getting rep for my rogue's Opportunist set), hitting up retro raids with my guild and farming up bizzaro items like Soul Essences for those hard to fill slots like gloves for my mage. For those of you who are driven to make as many sets as humanly possible, the addon MogIt is an invaluable resource. (Thanks to Cynwise for this tip!)

Sadly, my Tirisfal set remains incomplete for another week.

There were also the new heroics to step into! And while the allure of i378 gear is strong, go in with a guild group if you can, take your time and see the sights, especially in the new Well of Eternity instance, which is one of our first (and possibly only) looks into old Kaldorei culture. It's also a great place to brush up on your ~~Malfurion hate~~ ~~Tyrande accent~~ occasional reminders that Illidan was a pretty cool guy, aside from that chugging demon juice stuff. And of course the loot is excellent - nearly every caster in our guild is currently rocking a Foul Gift of the Demon Lord.

Darkmoon Faire opened yesterday, and it's just as fun as it was on the PTR. Just in case it wasn't totally obvious, while I love raiding and dungeons, the flavour type events like transmog, archaeology and DMF have always been at the heart and soul of my WoW experiences.

I mean, it's right there on my title.

Games! Easy profession experience for alts! More new pets and mounts you can shake a Corn-Breaded Sausage at. Reports on getting a Sea Pony have been particularly favourable towards 100 or fewer casts, so grab a pole and dip into the waters; the other fish are the same as from low-level fishing areas, so no need to be scared off. And of course, if you come across a Shipwreck Debris pool, you can't catch garbage from pools! (But you might catch a Sea Turtle.)

Most of the games and items are detailed excellently in Apple Cider Mage's guide to the Faire here, so I won't rehash covered territory, but be sure to pick up your Adventurer's Guide while you are there, because you don't want to miss out on the extra tickets turning in artifacts can bring you. At the moment, 'appropriately leveled' seems to be unclear; I was getting artifact quest items from dungeons as low as Blackrock Depths, but grisly trophies would only drop from green monsters and up. But that includes monsters in high-level Wrath dungeons if you're running those for gear, so be sure to have it on you at all times! (With Void Storage now live, no excuses for bag space being at a premium.)

The best part about 4.3, no doubt in conjunction with the goodies promised for annual passes, is that our guild roster is packed with people all day and night. The end of each major patch brings fatigue and new ones bring out old friends again, and that's been the best part. Well, that and the pretty new gear.

Have you been enjoying 4.3? What's your favourite parts so far?

Heart's Blood, White Ribbons (Trigger warnings for rape)

2011-11-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

Whenever I make the statement that while I don't believe men can be feminists, I do think they have roles to play within feminism, there's inevitably one or two men (or women!) asking, "Well, like what?"

Guys, here's your chance.

The White Ribbon campaign is an international awareness movement devoted to stopping violence against women. A lot of their promotional materials are devoted to educating and encouraging men to take up action against men perpetuating violence against women. Before the derailing penny gets laid on the tracks, let's cover it:

Yes, men get raped too. Their assault is typically perpetuated by other men. Yes, women have committed rape - but they account for less than 2% of all sexual assaults committed, and this includes: statutory rape (teacher/student), abuse of their own children or abuse perpetuated on another woman. So of that already tiny percent, an even smaller percent is female-on-male abuse. Savvy? When I say his/he when talking about rapists, I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass.

Now, I often feel very strongly about violence against women, both for personal reasons and the more lofty goal of, "it's fucking gross, don't do that shit". But whenever it happens within something you consider your community, you get reminded of how very far men have to go in telling each other not to rape.

One of the gold-making bloggers, Alyzande aka Gold Queen has been extremely candid in blogging about her recent experience with violence and rape. (TW for suicide at link.) Because she is a woman on the internet, being honest about her experience, people think this gives them license to be gross dicks about it, judging her or doubting her story.

Protip men: when I said there are things you can do to help feminism, this is a key one. Support survivors of assault. Don't heap on the victim blaming. If you can't help yourself from the latter, please kick yourself firmly in the nards.

BUT.

Some WoW bloggers have used this as an opportunity to spread love and support for Alyzande personally, as well as information and education on the international white ribbon campaign. I don't know who initially made this image, but it's perfect:

Click the ribbon. Do one of the things suggested on the site, especially if you're a guy asking "Okay then, what is my role in feminism?" This is it. Do this.

Free to a Good Home: Core Hound Puppy

2011-10-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

That's right! To celebrate my triumphant return from Blizzon 2011, I am giving one core hound puppy away to a lucky new forever home.

Which is to say, I'm giving away one of these bad boys:

Full goody bag list at Game Geex!

It's a Vasco authenticator, and if you don't have this in either key fob or mobile form on your smartphone, you don't get an adorable minipet for free. But also, your account can be more vulnerable to hacking. WoW accounts are among some of the most valuable returns on hacking for gold-selling; don't let your account become a statistic. No excuses, this puppy's free!

How to enter: leave a comment on this post between October 30th (that's today!) and November 5th. That's all! If you want to write a hilarious story about how aliens from outer space ate your authenticator, even better. At the end of the contest, I'll run all the comment entries through a random number generator and contact the winner to get shipping information.

I hear random number generators help prevent scenarios like this.

Rick Mercer: Greatest or Greatestest?

2011-10-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Also a great post on this video can be found right here.

Son I am Disappoint

2011-10-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Blizzcon and in true con fashion, I came home with a tiny attached guest - the common cold. So I'm sitting in my alliance hoodie with a box of tissue soul-bound to my hand. In spite of the backlog of work emails sitting in my inbox, I'm actually glad for the respite and rest, even if it does involve nails in the back of my throat.

Blizzcon was a whirlwind of 17 hours days, goggling at gorgeous cosplay, being Canadian in an American's world ("It's in the bowl over there." "Bull?" "Bowl." "Bull??" "No, the bowl. BOWL.") and awesome panels. But.

But.

(Trigger warning for suicide after the jump.)

UPDATE: Mike Morhaime's official apology. So glad that this had a satisfactory resolution!

Strangely, when the Corpsegrinder incident occurred, I was taking advantage of the (supposedly) shorter lines for the Diablo III demo with Apple Cider Mage and sucksmybrain about the Lore Q&A discussion around explicit LGBT characters in upcoming WoW stories, and how excited we'd all be if that came true. We tossed around cheery ideas about Quae and Kinelory, Koltira and Thassarian, Sassy Hardwrench (come on, with a name like that, you know Sassy is an enterprising young gay goblin.) To come out from that discussion to find that degrading homophobia was being played, promoted and even implicitly supported by the Blizzard team at the same time we were feeling hopeful about being represented by a major gaming company we loved and supported... saying it was a crushing blow is putting it mildly.

It's possible that the banality of evil is a trite phrase, but I don't think anything sums up better the conflation of the excellent time I had at Blizzcon, meeting interesting and passionate people from both the company and the fan base and then being reminded that deep down, many people still believe that LGBT individuals are less deserving of human dignity - the same people you might have been sharing a joke with, or commiserating with over the unfairness of the Forsaken' lot in the Warcraft universe - it creates a wrenching divide within you. It's flipping over a shiny dollar you found on the ground and seeing a giant stinkbug on the other side.

In the interest of fairness, L90ETC released an apology via the forums last night. I appreciate, at the very least, they acknowledge that they caused the offence, as opposed to the usual weasel words of "I'm sorry YOU were offended." Sometimes, I remember how much of a struggle it is for someone to try and see privileges they have - privilege, the insidious, nearly invisible thing we try so hard to pretend we don't hold it - but then I remember that these were uncensored slurs and suicides jokes aired in a space filled with a mob that took the idea that these are okay things to joke about to heart. A crowd that contained LGBT youth who also took the words to heart, in a completely different way. And it takes my breath away that people are still blind to how dangerous this was, after a vigorous and well-publicized campaign about suicide rates among LGBT youth.

I'm not even mad? I'm just sad, and disappointed. This is a company that's been directly responsible for my entrance into PC gaming back in 2000 with Diablo II. This is a place where I'd hoped to work someday if the stars align. The WoW community has kept my head up and my heart thrumming through tough times because of my connection to wonderful people and excellent guilds. Blizzcon was an amazing experience, and I promise to blog about the good too! But like my friend at 'mentalShaman and others disappointed by this turn of events, you've gotta purge the bad blood first.

More links:
Petition at Change.org
GLAAD (via Gaygamer)
Blizzcon LGBT Lore Q&A Question Asker gets Support

Coming soon:
Blizzcon 2011, Day One and Day Two
Authenticator Giveaway!

Blizzcon, here I come!

2011-10-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

Hope to see you there!

Time Flies When You Chuck it Out the Window

2011-10-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

Things that are coming up way too fast for my tastes:

- Blizzcon (ten days, holy crap!)
- Nanowrimo (twenty days, holy crap!)

In both cases, I feel, in the words of Illidan, NOT PREPARED. Having to renew my passport in an emergency rush when I found out I was going to Blizzcon after all at the end of August made things feel like I had time, and all of the sudden Thanksgiving is over and it's less than two weeks away. Not to mention I was distracted by a certain global story.... writing... contest.

If you're going to be there, look for the girl with the shiny silver gnomish engineer goggles on the top of her head and say hey! I will be live-tweeting news from the following panels, so be sure to click my twitter button if you've a hankering for news on:

- Opening Ceremony
- WoW general preview
- Class Talent System (WoW)
- Blizzard Publishing
- Diablo III Lore
- Classes/Items/Professions Q&A (WoW)
- Open Q&A (WoW)
- Lore and Story Q&A (WoW)
- Closing Ceremony

And a discussion: are you excited about Nanowrimo's new website? Are you participating this year? Let's chat about your ideas!

A Reading from the Letter of Paul, to the Defias

2011-10-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

"Grace and Peace to you, Edwin van Cleef. Paul greets you in his own hand. I am thankful for you and your skillful work in rebuilding the city of Stormwind as a testament to the Light.

"I urge you to make amends for the grievous faults of your members, in smiting Tiffin Wrynn in the face with a rock. Do not put on the red bandanna of vengeance. Instead, don a mantle of peace. Wrap your brow in the Light's pure strength. Was it not Bridenbad who taught us that the Light is stronger than death; the Naaru more powerful than the sting of the plague? Let King Wrynn send you alms, and let you put them forth to the poor of Westfall as amends for your crimes.

"Pray for me, and my amanuensis Anduin. Greet all the Defias with a kiss. I shall be with you shortly, after Winter's Veil. Go with the Light."

Legos AND Writing? Storybricks is a toolset after my heart.

2011-09-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

What if every time you kited a Fel Reaver to Shattrath, the Shattrath Guards start to remember your face? What if you had to navigate the father-son relationship between Varian and Anduin Wrynn via a series of complicated, spiralling quests that adapted to your solutions? What if you were able to bring Mankrik back his wife's bones?

You poor orc.

As a World of Warcraft player for over five years now, I've pretty much come to terms with the idea that there are just too many big damn heroes in the game. You solve all sorts of problems for NPCs from the hugely heroic ("Please stop this Old God from subsuming the entire planet in a waking nightmare.") to the incredibly mundane ("Please deliver this message to Jolene Draenei standing just over there.") And yet, no matter what you do, there's very little change in either the world or your relationships with the NPCs. Blizzard has made some headway with the former, when they introduced phasing to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and even threw a bone to the latter: if you encounter Gryan Stoutmantle in Grizzly Hills after completing the Defias chain for him in Westfall back in your teens and twenties, he's flagged to recognize that - but nothing specific.

<name>! I hardly recognized you in your new outfit. Still have that tunic... or did you take the chausses... or was it the staff? I can't recall, it was so long ago...

Well, I'm glad you are here to help out again. We could use all the help we can get. <name>, if you perform the way you did back in Westfall with the People's Militia, we have a chance.

These are dire times, if we don't win this battle, there may not be a Westfall to return to.

It's like the need is recognized, that people want to connect with their games, but no one is quite sure how to accomplish it.

Except of course, the game developers at Namaste who are aiming to do just that with their new Storybricks toolset. Frustrated with the lack of character development and progression in traditional MMOs, Storybricks was born out of a desire to have an evolving sense of story and relationship in gaming. I was lucky enough to chat with community manager Kelly Heckman as she walked me through a demo of the toolset and answered some of my questions.

The team brought Storybricks to GenCon after just 10 weeks of development, but what they were able to demo there is already impressive. Kelly built a small tableau for me with a citizen, a guard and a brigand.

From left to right: Citizen, player, guard, brigand.

With just three NPCs, there's already a number of conflicts here. The emotive AI of Storybricks allows the NPCs wants, needs and motivations. For example, the city guard wants peace and order; the brigand, on the other hand, want chaos, presumably to aid him in his devilish pursuits. This puts the guard and brigand into conflict before the player character even arrives on the scene.

Behind the scenes of the same tableau as above.

The summary of the scene is this: The guard and the brigand already have predisposed feelings towards the player character. The brigand is unfriendly to the player character - maybe not attack on sight unfriendly, but not predisposed to making things easy for the player either. The guard, on the other hand, is friendly towards the PC. Because of the presence of the brigand on his patrol, though, he's also unhappy. He wants the player's help, but like the brigand, because of his needs and motivations, he might need some coaxing to become peppy and helpful. This leaves the completion of the quest - to get the Gorgon heart for the guard - entirely up to the player. You could kill the brigand and take the Gorgon's heart: will the guard be grateful to you you got him the item he wanted, and also removed an annoyance from his patrol? Or will he be annoyed that murder has caused further chaos in his desire for peace and quiet? If you try and steal from the brigand and fail, now you've potentially got a very unfriendly bad guy on your back, as well as an annoyed guard who might not be feeling so friendly towards you.

A more complicated scenario. Note how the different motivations are coded to be easily recognizable.

But even as the toolset allows the developers to create more and more detailed character maps, the toolset remains refreshingly understandable to my untrained eye. I've toyed with the Neverwinter Nights Aurora toolset before and come away totally frustrated. Storybricks, on the other hand, is both colour- and symbol-coded to make building the character personalities simple. Which makes sense, because their intention is, as Kelly puts it, "building a toolset with the players, rather than for the players." Their reason for including both symbol codes, as well as colour coding the toolset? To be inclusive of those with colour-blindness, which affects a large percentage of the population. Another exciting feature of the accessibility of Storybricks is that users will be able to run the client on both Mac and Windows OS, as well as being compatible with Android's SWYPE feature, allowing them to build on the go.

The people at Namaste really want this program to be user-friendly, so the gaming community feels comfortable in creating their own content. However, the plan is for something that is more Dragon Age mods than Second Life.

Thank god.

Namaste isn't interested in players creating a universe to play in, so much as allowing players to add to the already-existing game Namaste will be making. Think of it as in-game fanfiction you can play.

As a writer, I had particular interest in this element of Storybricks. I asked Kelly if she could answer a couple of questions about the ways in which the toolset will affect gaming, from both a story developer POV as well as a player's:

CT: I read that Storybricks was born out of a frustration with your standard MMORPG format as found in, say World of Warcraft, and it seems like the other games (Aion, Rift) that are trying to unseat WoW still suffer from the same kinds of grindy, linear gameplay. Do you think Storybricks will lead to the breath of fresh air MMORPG players are looking for?

KH: We took our prototype to Gen Con and later PAX trying to answer that question. Do we have something players want? Or at least think they want? Storybricks is a newer, better solution to a problem that's been solved poorly in the past - allowing players to create their own stories in the worlds they love. NeverwinterNights did it; City of Heroes and Star Trek Online have done it. But the tools have been onerous and the content limited to a few with specialized skills and a lot of time. While we expected the answer to, "Is this is a toolset you'd like to use?" to be yes, it is the implications of the emotive AI and what it does to the game experience that required feedback. The type of game we are attempting to make is difficult to describe because there's no real comparison; we can only describe what it isn't. It's not combat-focused; it's not level-centric. But it is about stories and the relationships one develops between players and NPCs so that one's actions in the world affect those relationships.

CT: How do you think this toolset will help game story developers and writers? Storybricks personally appeals to me because of how, as a writer, you spend so much time and energy devoted to world building - character motivations, faith systems, magic, fighting skills, etc. - and sometimes it feels that so little of it ends up in the game or story proper. This seems like a great way to have all of that work pay off in a genuine reaction between an NPC and a PC.

KH: Storybricks does a lot of the work of designing characters for the writer "under the hood" so to speak. For example, a guard may be an NPC who is defined by the traits honor and duty, but what does that mean? Honor and duty become the primary drives for the NPC guard; this allows for what we call Moods, or the types of relationships that are open to this NPC. These Moods might be neutral, caring, inflexible, lazy or solemn - ways the guard might feel in particular situations or between other players/NPCs. Then each mood allows for particular interactions. Inflexible interactions might be denounce, stonewall and calm down; yet if the guard is "feeling" lazy it might only dismiss. All of this is done for the player and the developer. This creates deeper characters.

And this only defines the NPC guard - a generic guard. If you wanted to make a particular guard you could give him drives of love, riches and fame on top of honor and duty and it would be a truly interesting NPC!

CT: Another aspect that affects writers quite a bit is the lore and media that occur outside the game - Ubisoft has recently put out an extensive encyclopedia for their Assassin's Creed games, and Blizzard has books released regularly detailing events that happen in the Warcraft universe. On the other hand, both franchises have rich fanfiction bases as well. Do you think Storybricks will enhance one side of the coin, or the other? Will player-created content have the kind of feeling of fanfiction (fun when you don't want the story to end, but no big deal) or something more like player created Neverwinter Nights toolsets or Dragon Age mods, that have become crucial to the main game for a lot of players?

KH:We hope that it will affect both! But we realize that most storytellers are not writers in the strictest sense of the word. They don't create worlds out of thin air. However, once a person knows enough about a subject he/she can tell a story about it. We suspect that most Storybricks stories will be of the fan fiction-type which opens up a world of possibilities. We envision a marketplace like Apple's app store for stories where players can rate a la Netflix the stories they play. Players that don't develop stories of their own can still purchase pieces of dialogue or campaigns developed by others and place those into their own game. Those stories that fit the lore and are highly rated and played frequently would be those we would work with the player to make a permanent part of the world.

On the other end of the spectrum, there will be players who simply want to use our game's assets and toolset to create their own stories that have nothing to do with the gameworld and that's just as fantastic. Whatever we need to do to allow players to tell the stories they want to do is what we're aiming for.

CT: Open-ended games where you can achieve different endings aren't new - I remember trying to get all the endings to Crono Trigger back when I was a kid. But when your in-game decisions affect someone as small as a farmer or a city guard, it seems like it fogs up the idea of game endings. How will the fluid storytelling of a game created with the Storybricks toolset affect the endings of a game?

KH: Well, if you can achieve different endings they aren't really open-ended games, just games with multiple endings. In our game, because of the nature of the relationships you'll have with NPCs, the "stories" never really end. You may get the Queen's necklace for her and she may be grateful - for a time, but because you've saved that other King's daughter from the monster she is now angry with you and if you care how she feels about you, you'll need to determine a way to get back in her favor. What's more, it may not be something you can do directly but require you to work on a relationship four degrees away, which may anger somebody else…

CT: How do you think this will change player attitudes towards NPCs? Everyone who's played Warcraft probably remembers or has heard about ganking poor Gamon in Orgrimmar (before he became a massively powerful elite, anyway) But it seems likely that if kiting Gamon out to the auction house steps and killing him results in the NPC being accosted by or turned away from, say, an important vendor because she was Gamon's sister, that might cause them to re-evaluate certain kinds of griefing. Or, I suppose, play as an utter sociopath.

KH: NPCs will no longer be simple quest givers. The quest "Kill Ten Rats and bring me Ten Rat Tails" simply doesn't exist in our world so skipping all of the flavor text to find those words won't work. If by chance you had an "I need ten rat tails" quest, then you would want to pay close attention to the mood of the NPC - how is she emoting? what interactions are available? - and really read whatever text is available. How you get those ten rat tails (kill ten rats, steal them, barter, buy then, persuade for them, etc.) becomes important when your actions can affect your relationship with the original quest giver.

CT: Exactly. Will there also be NPCs who will be the object of quests that can affect your relationship with them as well as the quest givers? Say you get the quest for the rat tails, and you kill ten rats to get them. Would this affect the PCs relationship with the local rat guy because you've suddenly killed all his pets?

KH: This is why you have to pay attention to everything you do.

According to Kelly, the delivery on Storybricks continues at a breakneck pace; they're hoping to start betas within the next 30 days, and have the tool complete within 4-6 months. It's a lot of work to build a new toolset in order to create the game Namaste wants to make, but she told me "Sometimes you have to build the hammer before you start work on the house."

If you're interested in more information on Namaste and Storybricks, be sure to check out Mana Obscura's excellent look at the tool as well.

RIP Jack Layton

2011-08-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

You were so much more than a cool mustache, and pulled off something great in your last election. You were the most constant feature of the political field of my youth. I'm going to miss the hell out of you in the years to come.

Beam up my heart Scotty :(

Partic(u)l(ar)e Suspension: Writing Genre Fiction and Implausibility

2011-08-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about writing genre fiction is the ability to achieve impossible things. You can write about women who live forever, dogs that can swim through the earth like it was water, angels descending from heaven to give a protagonist a much needed slap upside the head or a fairy burrow beneath the subway lines of Toronto. One of the worst things about genre fiction is the sloppy, implausible writing that happens sometimes. It's not just limited to writing - think of the fine arts, too. You can't rig a gryphon or a dragon if you don't understand the bones of an eagle or a lizard.

Usually, anyway.

You can't break the rules if you don't know them. That includes the rules of a completely fabricated magic system or universe setting. Even in writing fairly standard vampire stuff, there's a lot to be aware of: does sunlight kill them? (Yes.) Do they have to be invited in? (Not explicitly but they can be repulsed by a command to get out.) Can they eat human food? (Yes.) Do they have to kill to eat? (No.) And so on. There's a reason why stereotypes are popular; breaking the rules is exhausting. Okay, so my vampires can eat human food - it's a good way for them to camouflage themselves as humans because in this universe, vampires are not known to humans, a la True Blood universe. But where does the food go? Their organs don't work, they don't take nutrients from it, and they don't pee or poop. This isn't Casper where the food shoots right through them and comes out a perfectly formed pile of mushy cake. I could just choose not to address it at all, vamps eat food end of story. But why pass up a perfectly good opportunity to be hilarious? Why not have eating human food make them bloaty or gassy or bloaty and gassy? If it's a camouflage instinct, the vampire now has to balance eating to look human with gaining a 7 month food baby if he's not careful. Eventually it would just get broken down by the virulent blood of being a vampire. It doesn't matter if something's impossible, as long as its plausible. Anchor your wild ideas into the reality of the world you're creating, and you're good to go. Just be careful not to tip your hand too much - after all, when you're looking at a piece of art or playing a video game, you're not actually looking at the bones of the figure, are you? (Let's pretend for the sake of argument, we're not looking at Frida Kahlo's art, or playing a Forsaken rogue in World of Warcraft.)

The bones don't even have to be the tropes that bind genre up, either. They can be the bones of good writing. Let's face it, when an idea seizes you in its wolf jaws, you're not thinking about good grammar or sentence structure. That's fine! It can come later, in the revising process. But if at some point the bones aren't there, no amount of editing and beta reading are going to put the muscles on it. Good grammar, good sentence composition, strong ideas and voices will carry your story, no matter how impossible and make it shine. When you've got them down pat, the rule-breaking can begin.

This is not the right way to bend the rules, for example.

I love writing fantasy, horror and supernatural stuff because it's so mind-bendingly fun. Yeah, you've gotta learn the rules, but every writer has to at some point. And then you get to launch them into a black hole, twist them all up and yank them out again.

So many girls in here, where do I begin?

2011-08-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Blizzard Writing Contest has come around again, just in time for the weather to cool off enough to make writing on a coffee shop patio appealing. There's a number of things I'm hoping to see from entries, this year, but more than anything, I want to see awesome stories about awesome women. I can't ~~hug every cat~~ write every story, but there are plenty of women in the Blizzard lore that deserve face time by dedicated writers.

Heavy Hitters: These are the big name players, women who've already had their stories touched on in official books and lore. They're characters most people are likely to know and interested to read about.

i) Sylvanas Windrunner: we know who she is, where she came from, how she became the Banshee Queen. What's it like being Sylvanas without the Lich King? How does she feel being cheated of vengeance at Icecrown Citadel? Her experimentations with the plague, with the valkyr, and butting heads with Garrosh are all interesting depths to plumb.

ii) Jaina Proudmoore: is getting her own book via Christie Golden! Very exciting. But in the meantime, there's plenty to Jaina that can still be touched upon. Studying in Dalaran, the only thing she really wanted to do. The death of her father, and the role she played in it. Keeping the human survivors of Lordaeron together while fleeing to Kalimdor.

iii) Tyrande Whisperwind: again, we got a glimpse of her recently in "Seeds of Faith", but she shares billing with Malfurion. She was the one, not the humans, who sent the ships to Gilneas' aid. She dealt with Fandral's insolence for years and years. When the Shen'dralar came out of their exile prior to the Cataclysm, she accepted them back, allowing them to teach arcane magics to the young night elves.

Other (but no less interesting) NPCS:

i) Sassy Hardwrench: okay, I am gnome/dwarf to the core. But when Cata came out, I couldn't resist rolling a goblin priest to experience the new starting zones. Thrall? Trade Prince Jerkwad? Snooze. Sassy Hardwrench? NEW BFF FOR LIFE. She's tough as nails, stands by your toon, and after losing everything by standing by your character, still manages to create a town named after herself in STV. Sassy is no. 1 for my choice of women characters worth writing about.

ii) Maiev Shadowsong, Sayanna Stormrunner and the Wardens: With the Shadow Warden presence in the Molten Front, it's as good a time as any to tackle the Wardens, particularly in light of their charge escaping. How does Sayanna deal with that failure in light of a hero like Maiev who didn't rest until she had recaptured or killed her own prisoner?

iii) Mylune: Come on, does this really even need explanation?

iv) Lorna Crowley: She's a gun-toting, dog-training badass with a flower in her hair who becomes commander of the liberation movement for Gilneas. She's so badass she escapes both becoming Forsaken and Worgen. Honorable mention and equal badassitude to Gwen Armstead, as well.

v) Stormcaller Mylra: this was a great expansion for dwarves and dwarven women - if you're not a Bronzebeard, anyway. Mylra's one of the Earthen Ring shaman who helps you suss out what the deal is with the Twilight Hammer in Deepholm, and helps you fight an old god minion in Twilight Highlands. She doesn't hesitate to do what's needed.

vi) Fanny Thundermar: Another Wildhammer dwarf woman, Fanny's a prize catch for eligible bachelors due to her connections. But actually, she's also a wicked fighter, and a woman who knows what she wants in a partner. Plus, think of all the hilarious puns you can work in to shock UK and Aussie readers.

vii) Blood Raven: I'm deviating a bit from WoW lore because a) Diablo is fine too! and b) given my kajillion restarts of DII, I fought her more times than I'd like to admit. Did you know she's meant to be the corrupted form of the rogue NPC from Diablo? The demon Andariel corrupted her and a number of her sisters after a trip to Tristram (nothing good ever happens there.) Between her and Kashya, there's lots of story fodder.

The Obvious Choice:

i) Your NPC: The greatest thing about writing in the Warcraft lore - and really, any of the Blizzard IPs - is that you have your own blank slate to work with. Your character has performed all sorts of tasks, from mundane to heroic. There's surely a million stories to be told from them alone.

To all entrants in the Blizzard Writing Contest, good luck. Don't ever doubt, don't ever stop writing.

Mononucleosis is the kissing disease/it's very hard to shake but you catch it with ease

2011-07-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

Now that I've officially made my dad proud by quoting Allan Sherman, let's talk about where I've been. which is to say, nowhere, really, except a one-way ticket to monoville.

Getting mono is one of those things that changes significantly from childhood to adulthood, like getting your appendix out. Getting mono in middle school is fucking amazing for your cred: you got it because you had hot make-outs with someone, you get to miss a week or two of school and play video games, and you come back with a sexy story about fighting at death's door and beating the odds.

Getting mono as an adult sucks. You feel kind of gross for a week or so, figuring it's probably due to the humidity and month-long drought the county's been suffering. You make it through the work day just sort of skating on the pile of urgent stuff, while the less urgent stuff piles up in drifts around you. You eventually sort through the less-urgent piles searching for things that are now urgent. You go home to sleep, and wake up three or four hours later, sweat-soaked and dry-mouthed. And you think well this sucks, but it's normal.

After a week of the work->bed->couch->bed cycle, a couple of rashes, eventually you wake up one morning with the lymph nodes in your neck standing out like goose eggs and you're like "Well, shit son." I've mentioned this before, but a few years ago I tested positive for ANA, one of the markers for lupus, but I didn't have any of the usual other problems (aside from fatigue) that point to a diagnosis. But when things start acting up, I decided to go to the walk-in clinic.

"No, it's not auto-immune, I don't think," the doctor says, "Looks like mono to me." She sends me off to get blood taken, the results of which will take two weeks to arrive (aw bless your face Canadian health care). "In the meantime, is there anything I can do?" I ask. "Nope!" she says cheerfully, "Viral infections don't respond to much. Sleep as much as you can, take lots of fluids."

So that's what I'm continuing to do, in between still going to work, because here's the thing about adulthood - very few jobs let you take a week or two off to sleep off an unconfirmed diagnosis of an illness while your friend brings you homework to look at, laugh and go back to sleeping with a PS2 controller in your hand.

Although, my desk does have a sweet overhang that would create a perfect napping nook...

Doing the Research (also some reviews)

2011-07-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in university, I put off writing creative fiction, because essay-writing was so time-consuming, I didn't have the energy to put pen to paper at the end of the day. But I never stopped reading at night before bed. I figured if I wasn't writing, at least I wasn't letting my creative brain wither and die either. (And to be perfectly honest, the nights I went straight from the computer or TV to sleep ended with horrible, repetitive nightmares about IM or video games. You ever try to attend a morning class after spending all night catching every single pokemon? YEAH.)

If only I had caught one of these before bed...

Reading while writing creatively is an interesting exercise however. Like writing research papers, you've gotta keep current and do the research. You're not taking notes the way you would for a paper, because you're not going to be citing someone verbatim in your story typically, but you are keeping track of what's useful and what isn't for the future. You have to tightrope walk a line where you're keeping up with the genre you're working in (for me historical fiction/fantasy), but at the same time you don't necessarily want it to be too similar lest you find yourself reaching for phrases as you write, and coming out with stuff from the book you just read rather than your own grey matter. Or you find yourself thinking about your story while you read, often in situations (like late at night) when you can't exactly put down the book you're reading and go whomp out a few chapters. At least not when 7AM comes hard and fast in the morning.

I had spent some time getting caught up with ASOIAF in anticipation of the new book dropping this month, and actually it's a good compromise: GRRM's world is historical, in that it's a fantastical re-telling of the War of the Roses but also contains magical elements. I've read the whole series a couple of times, so it's easy to just let the words carry me away as I read, and pick up on neat clues I missed my first or second read.

One of my favourite historical fiction authors, Margaret George, published a new book recently as well, Elizabeth I. To my surprise, it covered only the Golden Age period of Bess' life - 1588 to her death in 1603, dealing mostly with the Spanish invasions, and the Earl of Essex' total bumblefuck in Ireland and his subsequent rebellion. While exciting in concept, the reality of Elizabeth's experiences both with the Spanish Armadas and Essex were pretty remote - all of the fighting happens away from court, where she is safely ensconced for the bulk of the novel, and the novel is written in the first person. George is tirelessly faithful historian in this instance. It doesn't always make for an exciting book, but her skill at writing means Elizabeth I was still incredibly compelling. And of course, first person POV historical fiction is of especial interest to me right now. In fact, one of George's earlier books, Mary, called Magdalene is one of the books that got me thinking about writing my own historical novel set around the time of Jesus' ministry.

I briefly tried reading Philippa Gregory's The Red Queen, another book about the War of the Roses, but reading five massive books about politics and machinations has thoroughly burned me out, so instead i moved to Lauren Oliver's YA dystopian novel, Delirium, where love is considered a disease of the nervous system, and a cure has been created for all people over the age of 18.

Wow. I haven't read Divergent yet, and I'm only half-way through Oliver's book, but if there's a spiritual successor to the Hunger Games out there, I think Delirium is going to be it. The writing is tight and intense, and the gradual release of details about the history of the protagonist's family, but also the society she lives in is really satisfying. Also, to appease the world-building dork in me, each chapter begins with quotes from books, songs and government pamphlets - not enough to drown the reader, but to give a creepily realistic feel to the culture Lena lives in.

So there you go. To understand why I write, I've got to understand why I read. This is only a small part, but an extremely important one. Without excellent writers out there showing me the way, I might not have known there was a way.

I'm not dead yet!

2011-06-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Things have been alternately hectic and slow as molasses lately, so updating my personal blog has been on a back burner. However, there are a couple of exciting things coming up:

1) a project I'm working on with some guildies for Warcraft, which requires me to finally use my MacBook for more than just looking cool at Starbucks. This is one of those 'stunning in its simplicity' type ideas that someone came up with and I'm excited to be a part of it. Hopefully I can post in more detail about it soon!

2) The first chapter of Talitha Cumi will be posted here within the month, after it has gone through the grinder that is beta + critique group. I would've loved to have it up as soon as I launched this blog, but I think the polishing up process has really made a difference so I'm glad to have waited.

In the meantime, summer is here, the weather has been gorgeous and I'm slowly becoming bffs with my new Kitchenaid mixer. Life is good.

I'd like a sweet workstation and a mecha suit. oh, and cancel the order for the mecha suit

2011-05-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I went to see Iron Man 2 in theatres with some friends. I never saw the original Iron Man but I figured it would be a fun popcorn flick (which it was!) But what really captivated my attention was Tony Stark's workstation.


SCIENCE!

As a writer, I admit that ways to move and store ideas are always something I'm on the lookout for and if they're 3D, all the better. My first hope towards a Tony Stark-esque work life was the First Else, a now-defunct phone project that featured intuitive menus that would move features you used most to the top and cool-creepy features like alerts to let you know you had an active grocery list and you were passing by a grocery store. I'm not surprised it didn't make it - Emblaze mobile is a relative no-name in a pretty competitive field, but I would've loved to try the Else.

Fortunately, Adam King has my radial organizational needs on lock with the Daily Rind planning method. I love pen and paper planners, so this is a big plus, as well as the fact that my work organizational tools are not compatible with my phone or home planner. This allows me to smoosh everything together into one sheet a day and gives me at least one set routine: each day I sit down and plan the day to come, but gives me the flexibility of changing plans or adding things in.

The other tool in my repository that lets me move things around to my tastes is Literature and Latte's Scrivener. I LOVE THIS PROGRAM SO MUCH. The outlining system lets me easily move scenes from place to place to give a narrative a smoother flow. It's got chapter word counts, and document word counts, and colour-coding. There are so many doodads and features I know I haven't found them all yet. As of yet, there is no feature allowing me to virtually crumple something up and toss it but it's coming. I CAN FEEL IT.

How do you organize your workstation and tasks? Do you like your methods? What would you change if you could? Are you, like me, eagerly awaiting 3D interactive holograms?

Hunger Games Race-Fail

2011-05-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

(Note: this was originally posted at my old dreamwidth blog)

I have a secret: I love YA novels. Some of my favourite books and series fall under the umbrella of young adult: Garth Nix's Sabriel, Kristin Cashore's Graceling/Fire, and particularly, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. This last one is causing me no end of grief, because of this recent news about its casting. This article from Racebending is a great summary of the problems I'm seeing. Hollywood's no stranger to white-washing; you'd pretty much be living under a rock if you didn't hear some of the brouhaha over M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender complete failure to respect the original material. N.K Jemisin, one of my favourite authors ever, has tons of links of various ways Hollywood lets down women, people of colour and other underprivileged groups at her blog.
In short, Katniss Everdeen, the main character of the Hunger Games, is a woman living in a dystopian future Appalachia, where many inhabitants are bi-racial or tri-racial, drawing from First Nations or black heritage, or both. Moreover, she's described as being at least bi-racial: having dark skin, long black hair and grey eyes, like most of the inhabitants of The Seam - the poor, coal mining region of her District. Her sister and mother look like the upper caste merchant class, from where her mother hails: blond hair, blue eyes, lighter skin. After the success of True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld was bantered around as being a possibility. But the casting call was for a Caucasian woman, and while I don't know if Steinfeld decided to try out or not, she's of Filipino and Jewish descent. The part has been offered to Jennifer Lawrence, another woman from the Oscars list, in Winter's Bone.

This quote from Aliya is a great place to begin:

Why would the latter possibility [that Katniss is a dark-skinned white woman] upset me enough to hate the books? Because it disallows compassion and empathy. Instead of Northern readers seeing themselves as in the position of the Capitol, they see themselves as the oppressed, hungry girl from District 12 striving against whatever form their oppressions individually take. This would be a tragedy.

But when you look at it compared to the comments from the director:

There are certain things that are very clear in the book. Rue is African-American. Thresh is African-American. Suzanne had no issues with Jen playing the role. And she thought there was a tremendous amount of flexibility. It wasn’t doctrine to her. Jen will have dark hair in the role, but that’s something movies can easily achieve. [Laughs] I promise all the avid fans of The Hunger Games that we can easily deal with Jennifer’s hair color.

Well, it seems exceedingly likely that Collins is talking about the role people of colour play in her novel. Very distinctly, they are the supporting roles to Katniss' heroism. Given that the premise of the story is about young adults forced to kill each other in an arena, it's not a big surprise that neither black characters will survive their roles. Add this to the dismissive tone about the hair dye, and it just looks like a hot mess scraped off the sidewalk, and one unlikely to fulfill Aliya's hopes for a protagonist of colour to be an agent and hero in her own right. Instead we've got subtle affirmation that the latter reading of Katniss as a model for privileged young adults to imagine themselves as rebellious heroes is the one Collins intended.

It's not a huge secret that Battle Royale is one of my favourite movies. Exceedingly troubled? Yes. Exceedingly troubling? Also yes. A few years ago, around the time Quentin Tarantino was making Kill Bill, he made noises about how much he loved Takako Chigusa in Battle Royale (and in fact hired the actress to be Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill vol.1) and would give anything to remake it, but a story about children killing each other would never fly in America.

More to the point, we all breathed a sigh of relief, because the monstrosity that was the Shall We Dance? remake failed predominantly because the notion of the tightly-wound Japanese salaryman was not really something most North Americans could sympathize with, and a great deal of the paranoia and fear motivating the writing of Battle Royale (and then later, the filming) is different.

But if Hunger Games succeeds, if America finds movies about children killing each other palatable, what's stopping a Battle Royale remake with a funky, ironic Tarantino soundtrack and all-white cast? Japanese remakes have been happening for years - The Ring and The Grudge are two pretty major ones. All the same, a Battle Royale remake would be different than these. Part of it is not bearing able to hear the dorky, sweet teen dialogue become slick Tarantino soliloquies. But a bigger part is that, like the Hunger Games changes, it seems to tell young kids of colour that while their stories are tragic, movie-goers really only care about stories when they happen to cute little white kids.

As much as I love the Hunger Games novels, I only hope this movie flops as terribly as the ATLA movie did.

Game of Thrones: Halftime Discussion

2011-05-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

We're five episodes into the ten-episode season of Game of Thrones. It's been so successful that a second season was greenlit after the pilot alone, and rumors are out that season three has been signed off on as well. There's been a lot of different recaps out there - Television Without Pity and Entertainment Weekly both have recaps each week - but I want to focus less on plot development and more on the character arcs and shifts between novel and show. ASOIAF is largely a character driven story, and I really want to delve into how these changes affect the characters. Because this is about the differences between the books and the tv show, be aware there are definitely spoilers for the first book, and likely the next three.


Sansa doesn't like people spoiling themselves accidentally.

So far, Ned Stark, Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister have all been pitch perfect. Ned and Tyrion, as fan favourites of the books, are no real surprise and I'm glad that Sansa, who is definitely not a favourite, hasn't changed, because I loved her in the books. Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon is wonderful too.

Arya and Bran Stark are both extremely faithful to the books, and they are not characters I loved while reading, but I am loving them now. Both Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead-Wright are flawless with perfect combination of childishness and solemnity.

Cersei Lannister: her changes are subtle, but they're there. She's omnipresent in ways that she wasn't in the books. Though it's implied that her and Robert visited with Bran when he was comatose, in the show we actually see it and you can't tell if Cersei is truly reliving losing a child of her own or if she's casing the joint for the later attempt on Bran's life or maybe both. She visits Ned Stark to get a handle on how much he has learned about her and Jaime without tipping her hand overmuch. We haven't met Tywin Lannister yet, but you get the sense that she is truly his heir as she believes in the books because she is cool where Jaime is hot-headed and quietly savvy where Tyrion is too smart to know when too shut up. It's hard to get this sense of Cersei in the early books because she's not a point-of-view character yet, and by the time she gets her own narrative, she's going off the rails due to personal tragedy and incompetence. Her scene with Robert in episode five was, as my husband said, "the first time there was any honest conversation between two people in five episodes." It's a scene we get to see because the show isn't (and really, can't) do the unique POV style narrative the books have, and it's one of the best scenes the show has had.

Catelyn Tully Stark: She has changed from the books, and I'm not sure it's an arc I liked at first. In the books, Catelyn is the one who encourages Ned to go south, first because she understands what this new Robert is like before Ned does and refusing him would only cause resentment, and then after receiving Lysa's letter, so Ned can figure out how Jon Arryn died. In the show, she is dragging against Ned's honour every step of the way. Contrast this with her vicious hatred of Jon Snow in the books, which is toned down quite a bit for the show, and Catelyn's depth is smoothed out a little too much for my liking. Like Sansa, Cat's another one who wasn't a favourite, mostly because fans love Jon Snow and she doesn't, so the logical choice is to say terrible things about Cat as a woman and mother. But consider the world she lives in, where bastards are not only not brought home to live with the family, but are ignored at best or at worst killed without anyone really caring. Jon gets a family who likes him, training worth of a nobleman in sword and riding, a roof over his head, and a father who respects him. The only one who doesn't is Catelyn, and it's pretty clearly shown she is fierce in protecting her family's interests and Jon directly contradicts those interests. Also, she has always been loyal in her marriage to Ned and she loves him too, and I think Jon rankles her for those reasons - knowing that no matter how much Ned loves and respects her, there is a physical reminder of something he cannot share with her there. So. Yes, her treatment of Jon is shitty but it's real, and I respect that. And of course, from the attack on Bran's life onward, Cat becomes the BAMF we all know and love. And by all, I mean, the three Catelyn fangirls out there.

Daenerys Targaryen: The change that bothered me more than anything was Dany's arc. In the books and the show both, we meet Dany as the abused younger sister of an exiled king who seems to be following rather closely in his father's footsteps as a mad one. Though the Targaryens marry brother to sister to keep their Ptolemaic bloodlines pure and Dany expects to marry her brother in a few years, she ends up married to Khal Drogo, a fierce leader of the Dothraki horse lords. An awful situation for a thirteen year old (in the books) or a ~17 year old (in the show.) But. In the books, during the wedding, Dany speaks to her husband after receiving the gift of a beautiful horse to thank him, and he smiles at her. Later, during the consummation, though she's crying and afraid, he takes the time to get her familiar with his body and her own and she says "yes" before sex. In the show, they don't speak at all, and even though Dany is crying and afraid, Khal Drogo keeps telling her "no" and pulling her clothes off before forcing her to her hands and knees. It's alarming and uncomfortable in both situations, and it's most certainly rape in both situations. But the book makes explicit in ways the show doesn't that thought Daenerys would not have chosen this for herself, it's a space free from her overbearing, abusive brother, and a place where she can make choices and agency for herself. This tentative step on the road to self-actualization is what makes her growth stronger in the book. In the show, it's just a victim being abused by a new abuser, and while Dany does go on to gain confidence to rebuff her brother and fall in love with Drogo (as she does in the books), you still remember that she started out abused, was abused more and then is on this path to further abuse. It's Break the Cutie on a horrific scale. I suppose the argument can be made that since Dany had to be aged upwards for the nudity to fly with audiences, there had to be visual cues of how awful the situation was but I don't buy it. For one, you still had assholes arguing that what happened on the show wasn't rape, because she was married (and here I thought marital rape being illegal was common knowledge but there you go), but it's still pretty obvious she's being sold into slavery in exchange for an army to a culture that's portrayed as barbaric and cruel (and I could go into how the wedding of brown people doing awful things to each other and dancing lewdly while white people look on in horror is awful in its own right, but that's been covered extensively, especially at this great Racialicious piece.) In short, I am disappointed with this character change the most because Dany has so far to go in becoming Dothraki and this really twists the knife into that. For more reason, Isaac Butler covers this really well here.

Jaime Lannister: Like Cersei, Jaime doesn't get a POV narrative until the later books, and like his sister, we see a more ubiquitous and interesting Jaime right from the beginning of Game of Thrones. You see him share war stories with Barristan Selmy and the king, and Jory Cassel. He gives us background on what led him to kill Aerys Targaryen and makes it seem like a pretty good idea, actually. On the other hand, the casualness with which he shoves Bran in episode one is breathtaking, and he takes cheery pleasure in his brutality in fighting the Starks. It sets up the dichotomy between Kingsguard and Kingslayer Jaimes very early, and given the changes to Cersei's character as well, it's only fair Jaime matches her.

Renly and Loras: more sexy exposition, can't argue with that. Also makes explicit something GRRM said was implied in the books, but again, people making comments on Renly or Loras' preferences in the book are limited in their point of view. Most of the character changes come from things that are implied or thought to be known in the books, but must be shown explicitly in the show because limited POV narrative is hard to translate to screen (see also: Harry Potter.) Loras being the one pressuring Renly into kingship is interesting, and because the relationship is made explicit for the show, it means the Tyrells are showing their hand early. I wonder how close Loras is to his grandmother? I heard she's rather thorny. I also thought this was a clever nod to why Sansa gets a rose, and yet Loras doesn't remember her at all.

Minor linguistic quibble: I'm curious as to why Lysa Tully Arryn is know as Lie-sa, instead of Lee-sa, when every other instead of a 'y' vowel is pronounced as a short y: Catelyn, Aerys, Daenerys, Tully. It just seems awkward.

In spite of the problems, Game of Thrones remains one of the best book to screen adaptations in a long time: faithful without being stunted or flattened, original scenes that serve to enhance the story in a suitable manner for a tv show, incredible casting, excellent effects. Though I'm not happy with it, I'm not surprised that most of the characters that lost nuance were women, and I hope that as the show grows, so do they.

What's a Talitha Cumi?

2011-05-09T16:23:00.000-07:00

Originally this next entry was going to be about Game of Thrones, the differences between the book and the television show, and how much of a bamf Catelyn Tully Stark is for mother's day, but eyeballing the promos for episode 5, I'd like to wait. I figured, since this blog is in equal parts about my love of reading and writing as it is about more visual (and visible) forms of nerdery, it would be a good time to talk about Talitha Cumi. Yes, this entry is the Lisa Simpson ("Springfield's answer to a question nobody asked!") of blog entries.

Talitha Cumi is my first novel, about a vampire who is alive during the time of Jesus' ministry in Galilee and Judea. Though I'd started a number of novels before, about a super prepared couple facing down a zombie apocalypse and about an infestation of angels who destroy their earth with the single-minded devotion to an absent God, this was the one that went the distance. Aside from the glib answer of cashing in on a current trend in novels, one that will no doubt be long buried (get it, har har), Talitha Cumi sparked out of two things:

1) my biblical studies degree. During my brief stint as an amateur theologian, I did a handful of exegeses on various Old and New Testament texts and I realized that the Gospel of Mark was my favourite: short but dense, like a good shortbread cookie made with real butter. One passage particularly stands out, because it's so coy and such a puzzle. During the passion of Jesus, where he is arrested in the garden, the narrator relates that one of Jesus' disciples is caught by the soldiers but tears away, leaving his robe behind in the hands of the bemused guard and scarpering off naked. This man is never mentioned before, nor after this incident. First of all, why didn't anyone tell me before the Bible is this hilarious? Secondly, this incident makes for a very good place for an original character to be born. And thus, Nikos, vampire disciple, fleeing before dawn comes.

In addition to crafting a bitching drink for a summer day, Bellini did some painting on the side.

2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: to be fair, I have only seen a handful of BtVS episodes. Angry nerds and Whedonites, line up to the left please. So all I know about this was relayed to me by a friend, who insisted that at one point, Spike jokes about this very thing:

If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually there it would've been like Woodstock. I was at Woodstock. I fed off a flower person and I spent six hours watching my hand move.

Oh Spike, of course no vampires were there for the crucifixion. It was daylight, you silly vampire. But the solar eclipse that happened offered some interesting possibilities, so off I went.

Talitha Cumi follows a bored young (relatively speaking) vampire named Nikos who is traveling through Galilee from parts unknown. While passing the evening with some Roman soldiers, he encounters two young women named Martha and Mary, traveling with a young Jewish teacher and a number of men and women. He doesn't think much of it until he runs into them again and again.

Jesus' band has ever been a group of outcasts, women, widows and lepers. Why not a vampire? Nikos has no interest in joining the charismatic young teacher, content to stay one or two steps ahead of his murderous maker until circumstances force him to meet up with Jesus. And once there, he finds he doesn't want to leave Jesus' side - or at the very least, Martha's.

For something that started as a joke, writing Talitha Cumi has been an exercise in discipline and exploring the boundaries of my own studies and faith. I was surprised and pleased to find that the practice of imagining the minute details of a scriptural passage was a form of monastic prayer. And indeed, very surprised when the sample passage given to me to practice with was the passage from John where Martha admonishes Jesus for lingering too long and allowing her brother Lazarus to die.

It was interesting too, to imagine the groups and people that surrounded Jesus. We know of the usual suspects: Simon Peter and Andrew; James and John, the "sons of Thunder;" Judas, of course; to a lesser extent little John or the one whom Jesus loved and 'doubting Thomas'. Also, though, where people who knew Jesus well enough to consider themselves his disciples - Joseph of Arimethea, who gave up his costly tomb; Nicodemus the Pharisee, who could only visit Jesus under cover of darkness (hmm); Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus over whose body Jesus wept; Joanna and Mary Magdalene, women cursed with demons whom Jesus cured. Even in a story about outcasts, there are those still more outcast than the outcasts. I found in storytelling, I was gravitating towards telling their stories, and thus Nikos gravitated towards them too.

I'm about 60% of the way complete with my first draft. Not as far as I'd like, and yet farther than I've ever dreamed. Though I'd love dearly for this story to be as far reaching as possible via publication, because I do think it's a good story, fun, kind of painful and worthy of being read, just to complete it would be my dearest wish.

I'm pretty open about discussing plot, character studies, ideas, etc. because I mean, I can't really spoil a lot of the big ticket items (spoiler alert: jesus is alive trololol) so if there's anything you'd like to know, ask in the comments.

Where's Reese Witherspoon When you Need Her?

2011-05-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of feelings swirling around inside me as a result of the election this morning. We've got your disappointment and embarrassment that for the first time in Canadian history a government had been found in contempt of Parliament, and that government was just re-elected with a new majority that they didn't hold previously. More disappointment that it seems like the tactics of certain members aligned with the Conservative government, like attempting to interfere with ballots and telling people their polling stations had moved, along with campaigning on election day, seemed to have worked out for them. Disgust at liberal folks complaining and comparing this new elected government to Nazism, or flinging epithets at the ethnic minorities who voted Conservative for ruining the country. Glad that the NDP, the party I first voted for after turning 18, has finally broken into the Canadian political scene in such an incredible way. Happy for Elizabeth May gaining her seat, and bringing her incredible work ethic and beliefs to the table.

There's more: fear concerning women's rights and reproductive rights, aboriginal rights, LGBTQ rights, health care and education support. Anger at Harper personally for continuing to push and push and push until things shook out exactly the way he wanted it. Disappointed with people complaining that this isn't democracy - until there's proof of voter fraud, this is democracy with its lumps and scars. If the electoral system needs reworking (and I believe it does) that still does not make this election illegal, particularly when the opposition (rightfully) pushed for it.

I won't give up. I won't surrender. If the Canadian government plans to revisit its abortion laws, we will fight. If Canadians have to vote on gay marriage again, we will campaign tirelessly. This isn't the end, it's only the beginning.

More Work?

2011-04-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

My brain is pretty much an endless litany of this right now:

As a result, my blogging will likely be pretty sporadic for a week or two. If there are any topics you'd be interested in hearing me blather about, post it in the comments and I'll whomp up some blogs-on-demand!

The Short Secret Life of a Gaga Stan

2011-04-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

When it came to the Gaga thing, I was beyond late. I was aware of Love Game when it came out, but I wasn't really interested in it or Poker Face until a friend set it to a fan video of Vin Diesel movies, and since I would watch the man eat phonebooks and listen to paint dry, I ended up liking the song purely for that reason.

But when Bad Romance came out I was like "Wow, dancy pop music that's also a little dark and weird. I could dig this." Even Tarantino trying to remind me he existed in the video for Telephone couldn't put a damper on me listening to the Fame Monster while working out or walking to work or farming battlegrounds back when you still needed tokens for gear and mounts.

But.

Now it's Weird Al versus Lady Gaga, and Gaga doesn't stand a chance. I was also pretty ready to give up on, thanks to the bland re-furbishing of "Express Yourself" that "Born this Way" was, complete with racial varnishing.

Even stranger was how some fundamentalist Christian groups latched on it, erased all the references to human sexuality (but not the racial stuff!) and set it to drums and acoustic guitar for praise music. I'm not totally surprised by this: both Gaga and evangelical Christians have a deep personal relationship with their saviour. It's just that one is Gaga and one is Jesus.

But Weird Al. Be still my heart. I have loved you since you came to Sudbury and made fun of it.


Don't worry, the water only looks like this in the springtime.

I've always liked his style, except maybe when it ended up in an awkward discussion with one of my babysitting charges about what 'gay' meant. Polka grunge? Classic. Harvey the Hamster? Still sing it to the hamsters in pet stores. He's right up there with Beakman for men with funny hair on tv during my impressionable years.

So to hear that he had to cut his vacation. with his daughter. on her birthday. to record a song Gaga already had the lyrics to and presumably knows the melody of, just because she wanted to hear it just seems cruel. "Your song implies that I'm vain and self-centred? Even though you'll donate the proceeds to Human Rights Foundations to negate the sting of parody a supposed human rights anthem? YOU JUST WAIT AND SEE HOW VAIN AND SELF-CENTERED GAGA CAN BE."

Of course, this was all relayed by microphone to her agent, since there's no computer in that egg.

See? Hardly any way to communicate at all.

You can listen to the song here. You can donate to the Human Rights Campaign here. EDIT: Excelsior! Gaga agrees to the parody.

2011-04-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Ginia Bellafante of the NYT responds to critics of her review of "Game of Thrones".

I could go in reductive circles here following the rabbit down the hole of reviewing the reviewer's reviews of their reviews, but I think it's all mostly been said, and it seems pretty obvious that the New York Times is host to a plethora of issues about women in their stories (see: every article they've ever printed on sexual assault.) One of their reviewers also showing an ignorant lack of respect for the versatility of women and their reading/tv-watching tastes doesn't really shock me.

In short, critiques are not meant to be elusively personal and wildly impressionistic beasts; that's a failing, I think, of the Enlightenment, where everything personal is okay because it's just an opinion. A critique, whether positive or negative (and there is a sense that a critique is always negative, stemming from the pejorative idea of to criticize), has to have meat to it. There has to be something in the original work to refer back to. Ms. Bellafante states in her new address that none of the people writing in had seen the show where she had, but nothing in her review indicated she had seen anything - or if she had, she didn't care enough to remember anything. Furthermore, some of the complaints were from other reviewers, who presumably, also received promo copies of the Game of Thrones.

Fortunately, negative non-reviews like the NYT didn't seem to hinder Game of Thrones' progress, as after only one episode, HBO has already greenlit season two. Hurray! I'm looking forward to catching up on episode one myself, hopefully tonight.

Gar-Starr, you have great rage in your heart

2011-04-15T19:03:00.000-07:00

In brightest day, in blackest night, I will rage vomit blood on all in my sight.

Game of Thrones? More like Game of Bones. As in 'boners'.

2011-04-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

I am conflicted about HBO's Game of Thrones. Really, really conflicted. And it hasn't even been released yet! The premiere is all set for this Sunday, April 17th. It doesn't stem from loads of feelings about George Martin's series as a whole; A Song of Ice and Fire is chock full of problems and things that make me uncomfortable, but it's also got a lot of really compelling characters and in spite of my qualms with the series, getting an actual release date for A Dance with Dragons was really exciting.

No, my current conflict is stemming from the reviews of the show thus far. I'm not even touching on the kind of "rivers of bodily fluids" fanboy/girl reviews you see from the likes of Ain't It Cool News but mainstream media. They've run the gamut from positive to negative, and yet, all of the reviews are chock full of the kind of deeply-rooted sexist beliefs that we like to think only exists in a high fantasy setting like Westeros.

Let's take a look at the positive review first from MSNBC, by Susan Young:

On the surface, HBO’s new mythical series “Game of Thrones,” based on George R.R. Martin’s phenomenally successful “A Song of Ice and Fire” best-selling novels, appears to be a total testosterone experience. But don’t try to convince young women raised on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” anxiously waiting for “Game of Thrones” that this is anything but a series geared toward geek girls.

I don't want to quibble, because more or less, this statement isn't wrong. There's a lot of war mongering, and politics, and nubile young exiled princesses that tend to be marketed towards men as action film fodder. But at the same time, doesn't the turn of phrase make it seem like the women who loved ASOIAF and were excited about it being greenlit for HBO are deluded? This phrase probably wouldn't even stand out if it weren't a theme repeated throughout the review.

Daenerys only becomes a strong contender for the throne "in her own right" as she matures through the show. But she's also a strong contender for the throne from the start of the book due to her birth. By about the halfway point of the book, she is one of two claimants with the most legitimacy. The review makes unclear which strength Dany is playing on: her birth claim, or her personal fortitude. I'd like to say the latter, except...

Catelyn Stark is accused of "inadvertantly instigating" the destruction of her entire family, like a bumbling idiot, in spite of the fact that Cat Stark is probably one of the savviest and most intuitive characters. Cersei Lannister uses sex to get ahead in a man's world. But within the context of this review, which glows about strong women characters and then only points out their crushing character flaws, she's probably not counting that as a positive thing.

Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) Not impressed with this bullshit.

On the other hand, we get negative reviews like the one in the NYTimes, which essentially complains that GoT is just too hard for women to grok, in which case they should probably go back to watching Sex and the City (explicit) and reading Twilight (implied but we'll get to that a little later.)

I think there's probably a lot to criticize about GoT; after all, there's a lot to criticize in the source material. Criticizing it as a global warming horror story? Implies you didn't pay much attention to the material you're being paid to review. That's neither here nor there in light of the glaring sexism, though:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Again, the source material is already full of this sexy illicitness. It's not being thrown in there to appease women who might get their little brains confused when they tune in like the mindless drones they are to HBO's latest and greatest. (Furthermore, if you're going to postulate how different women and men are socially with some bullshit evo psych ideologies, let's talk about how technically, women would be more into the BOOKS because they're wordy while men love the show because their visual. Right? Right.) Women don't like fantasy, so why are you creating this fantasy to pander to women? Stop drawing them into the boy's club, it's unnatural. And so on.

This whole reviews basically boils down to: "This is something women would like. And like True Blood and Twilight, things women like are universally bad. The end." And this is written by a woman, so we can add some tasty internalized sexism to the pot.

Taylor Swift, shockingly, did not write this review.

What's worse even than the shoddily slapped together MSM reviews, both positive and negative, is the way reviews are being received, particularly negative ones. I can't say it better than this blog already does, so I'm going to leave it with you to mull over. But I do think it's worth considering how deeply troubling and gendered all the reception has been around GoT. It's okay to not like it, either the book or the show. What's not okay is to gender why it's not likeable. I don't particularly like Twilight. It's not stupid because a woman wrote it, though, or because women love the books and movies. I don't like it because it's shoddily written, both stylistically and plot-wise. I don't like it because it carries incredibly unhappy and dangerous messages to young women and men. If we want our cultural cache to improve, we need to stop relying on lazy ploys when reviewing things that just continue to prop up the gender and sex status quo.

Edit: If you're planning to watch this weekend, and haven't read the books yet, check out this handy character cheat sheet.

O Frabjous Day!

2011-04-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my newly created portfolio/blog! If this were Livejournal or Tumblr, this would call for a gif party, but here I'll limit myself to just one.

Wait, I've got one more:

My name is Celine and this blog is both an exercise and a passion. I've been on the internet since the early 90s, and have been gaming and writing earlier than that. Unfortunately, back in the Commodore Days, there wasn't much of an social outlet for writing/video game geek pretensions, and so most of my Nurse Edna/Razor scribbles were relegated to a slush heap of spiral bound notebooks deep in my closet.

Writing and even reading for pleasure, ended up on a back burner throughout university, though not gaming, surprisingly. When looking at another book or another blank word document caused angry bees to roil in my colon, it was infinitely easier to pick up a controller and lose myself in a couple matches of Mario Kart or Smash Bros. I started playing World of Warcraft around the same time, because of how easy it was pick up and put down according to your time. I spent a hefty amount of time fishing up Stonescale Eels in Tanaris to fund my mount money while studying, which was a) no small feat on a PvP server, b) no small feat for a level 23 gnome on a PvP server, considering that gnomes emit pheremones to every Forsaken rogue within a 100 yard radius.

Graduation found me employed in a regular 9-5 job, and suddenly I had free time again. I spent at least two years wallowing in total fictional abandonment. It was great. It was as if one day I found out ice cream cake and coffee was not only nutritionally sustainable but good for me. It also woke up the roaring novel-writing beast in my heart, and after two aborted attempts to complete NaNoWriMo in 2007 and 2009, I finally completed the 50k mark in 2010 with the novel I'm currently working to complete, Talitha Cumi.

But once I started writing again, I realized I couldn't stop. I was writing short fiction! Poetry! Even something I hadn't touched since my online Sailor Moon RPing days as a pre-teen - fanfiction. It turns out I wasn't even all that bad at it. Warcraft is such a great medium for extra-canonical storytelling because while the story is vast and rich, there are always holes in the lore that can be poked at and pondered.

The other place where my interest in games and writing collided was with Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins. I hadn't read any spoilers or walkthroughs prior to my first playthrough, and so I was totally and utterly wrecked by the time I got to end game. My Aeducan had made some good choices, namely:

and some not good choices, which led to a really tragic ending for her. We're talking 'end of the Deathly Hallows' level tears crisis here. But, like the Blizzard writing contest, it got me thinking in detail about the lives of the NPCs after DA:O ended, about certain lacks in the current speculative fiction landscape (like amazing dwarves) and then also, how cool it must be to create the in-game story to begin with.

So there you have it: creative developer aspirant, author errant, and all around geek. Please feel free to email or post with any questions, and once again - Welcome!