The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "The Ferrett" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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01:22 pm
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Don't Forget!
If you're in Akron, and want to head to a neat con for charity (and possibly game in a game DMed by Yours Truly), you should go to the Child's Play Fundraiser tomorrow.
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12:25 pm
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Everybody's Workin' For The Weekend
I remember when I used to live for Sunday comics. The best comics, all in color, in extra-big strips! I couldn't wait! Every morning, I'd rush next door to my Gramma's house and gut that newspaper to find that inky goodness.
Now? Most of my favorite comics are dormant on the weekend. Penny Arcade? MWF. Shortpacked? Monday through Friday. PVP? Well, sorta whenever now, but never on a Sunday. Sheldon does Sunday-style funny strips any day Dave damn well feels like it, and Schlock Mercenary usually has extra panels on Sunday, but will go to a Sunday-styled double- or triple-strip if the plot demands it. Order of the Stick is always a Sunday-style strip, and updates whenever Halley's Comet is in zenith.
So what's left? Doonesbury. That's the only day Doonesbury traditionally has a chance of being laugh out-loud funny these days.
I feel a little sorry, though. The kids these days will have no special attachment to Sunday as a day of extra fun and joy. It will be barren, just another day off to them. Alas! I imagine this is the same feeling people got in the 1940s when they realized the kids would no longer enjoy the special days the milkman delivered fresh milk to their icebox.
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06:24 pm
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Sort Of Depressing
( Cut for - well, hell, I don't even know why, honestly. )
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11:11 am
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Doin' The Job Right
She'd just gotten the big demotion at work - the kind where you get slapped down so hard, you start reconsidering your job options.
"It was great, at first," she said. "They loved me, they gave me a lot of interesting tasks, I got to do salesman stuff as a receptionist. Then I started this big project, because their files were so out of order they were losing sales. So I spent hours rearranging those damned files, getting them just right - and my boss took me in back today, told me I wasn't doing my job, and gave one of the new salesman all the things I liked doing. But I was doing a good job!"
"No you weren't," I said.
"I totally was," she contradicted me, tipping her beer bottle towards me. "Those files were costing us at least a couple of hundred a week. So all my spare time went towards making their lives better. That's my job."
"No it isn't," I said.
"I was fixing stuff!" she cried. "How can you say I wasn't doing my job?"
"Because your job is always satisfying your boss. Nothing more, nothing less. And if you don't make sure you're getting credit for the work you do, then you're failing. Did you tell your boss about what all this refiling work was going to accomplish?"
"No. He should know that."
"Never assume. Did you tell him you'd spent two hours that day, getting through the Ds, and when you were done the sales people would be able to find their catalogues at a moment's notice to quote accurate prices? Did you tell him how much money this would get him? Did you convince him that he had a problem before you spent all your spare time solving it?"
"No."
"So as far as your boss was concerned, you were dinking around in some cabinet for no reason he knew, while the real work he wanted wasn't getting done. I don't doubt you were improving the business, but your job? Is to make your boss happy. And if you do all this stuff without ensuring that your boss is on-board for everything you do, you are going to fail every time."
"So you're saying I should be a credit hog?"
"I'm saying that if you're doing something right, your boss should know exactly what you're accomplishing. Maybe he didn't think he was losing that many sales because the catalogues were all fucked up. Maybe he was even right. The point is, you were doing all this stuff and assuming that doing 'good work' was enough. But unless you make sure your boss shares your definition of good work, you're fucked."
"So what you're saying is..."
"That you had a pretty shitty boss. He should have known. But for future jobs, which may also have craptacular supervisors, make sure that you do what they want, because they're the guys signing your paycheck. Satisfy their needs, not yours. And whenever possible, talk to them to convince them that they want is what you want - because once you show them a problem you discovered and then you solve it for them, you have done a good job."
"And if my boss won't listen to reason?"
"Either get a new job or change your priorities."
I've been thinking about that conversation a lot lately, because I'm thinking about how Bush satisfied his boss, wherein Obama didn't.
See, Bush took my approach when he wanted to invade 9/11 - he did the ground work of going on the road, getting Colin Powell out there, creating a lot of concern about how Iraq was going to have nuclear weapons at any moment. He spent a lot of time saying, "Hey, America? I know you thought you didn't want a war with Iraq, but lemme tell ya - it's bad. And I can fix it for you. Just gimme the power, and I'll take care of it."
Admittedly, most of that evidence was pretty much either made up or exaggerated to Herculean proportions, and he made the job seem about twenty times simpler than it actually would be, but getting his boss (which is to say, America) on his side first worked. By the time Bush sent troops into Iraq, an overwhelming proportion of America supported the war. And if that war had worked out, Bush would have been hailed as a great leader.
Bush took something that people didn't want, and he sold it to them.
Whereas everyone in America pretty much agrees the health care system is fucked. They might disagree on how to fix it, but most sane people are like, "Christ, we spend twice what other countries do and get about the same level of care for people who can pay - this should be fixed."
But Obama was like my friend at the sales company. He didn't go on a nationwide tour to talk about all the benefits that his programs would bring. He didn't send all of his minions out to flood the press with the stories of how our health care system actually stifled entreprenurial development by putting such a cost on small business owners and making every new company go, "Can I go without health care?" He didn't give grand speeches the way he did during the election on the need for this sweeping change he would be proposing.
Nah, he just went off and did it, assuming that everyone was on the same page and that they trusted him to get it done. And, of course, the Republicans (being smart) rewrote that assumption. Now he's struggling to try to get it through, and burning a lot of political capital.
Bush took a country and convinced them they had a need for something that, initially, they didn't want. Obama took a country that wanted something and is now struggling to give it to them. It's a lesson in satisfying your customer - and when you're an employee, the customer is ultimately your boss.
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11:25 am
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Weird, Weird, Weird
From ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) andrewducker: "In fact, Star Trek paraphernalia has so routinely been found at the homes of the pedophiles they've arrested that it has become a gruesome joke in the squad room. (On the wall, there is a Star Trek poster with the detectives' faces replacing those of the crew members). This does not mean that watching Star Trek makes you a pedophile. It does mean that if you're a pedophile, odds are you've watched a lot of Star Trek."
In this case, I really wonder whether this trend is replicated anwhere else. The "stats" are from one Toronto police department, so I'd be curious to see whether it's an aberrant cluster or a genuine distinguishing characteristic among child molesters. And it could well be that Star Trek is just something they've glommed onto, a thing they notice now because they're looking for it, and ignoring others that don't fit the profile.
Still, as a mild Trekkie, I'm not going to gut-level defensive and shout, "OMG, I LIKE STAR TREK AND I'M NOT A CHILD MOLESTER!" It could be true. And if so, I'd be curious as to where that correlation comes from.
The article itself does some interesting skylarking of TOS with Kirk and how it could play into molesters' thought patterns, which leads me to wonder whether child molesters like TOS exclusively OR that the people in the articles merely focused on the Trek they know. I mean, it would make sense if there was a specific characteristic of a flavor of Star Trek that would draw abberant people to it, but at the same time I find it difficult to believe that child molesters hold no love for Picard or Janeway.
I really have no conclusion here, since I can't even say whether the core "facts" of this article are true - but even so, I'm analyzing the hardcore Trekkies I know and trying to figure out where the overlap is. What's the attraction, if there is one?
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10:53 am
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The Usual Announcement
Tonight is Rock Band Thursday, and it's a very special one: we have all of Sergeant Pepper available for play. Will I still feed Rock Band, will I still need Rock Band, when I'm sixty-four? Or will it just be a day in the life? Drop on by and check it out. Singing is allowed, even encouraged.
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10:19 am
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Moments Of Finding Doom
Doom #1:
Borders Books and Music was my life. I loved my job at headquarters, heaving million-dollar purchase orders about and using finely-tuned algorithms to determine whether store #428 in Sandusky would get eight copies of WINDOWS 98 FOR DUMMIES or five. I got all the free books I wanted, my company was smart and on top of things, and the daily challenge of my job never stopped.
So when I heard about this Amazon company, I sniffed. Hell, we were eating Barnes and Noble's lunch, catching up to their dominance in leaps and bounds. What could a mail-order company do? They were a flash in the pan, getting some minor press because OMG IT WAS BOOKS! ON THE WEB! But everything was like that. Hell, at the time a home delivery service for groceries was getting roughly the same press because OMG IT WAS DELIVERED PEAS! ON THE WEB!
Still, I had to know the competition. We were thinking about maybe getting into this "web" thing, and as the resident Internet junkie I was asked to place a sample order. And so I did, happily, on the company's dime, ordering a book I wanted.
They said it'd take a week. Who the fuck is going to wait a week for a book? I sneered.
Two days later, the package arrived, so quickly I'd all but forgotten that I'd ordered it because I'd mentally chalked "book arrival" up as next week. It was a pretty package, like a well-designed gift, the box perfectly shaped to fit the book, an attractive logo on the outside. I was thrilled, because, dude! It's mail! Who doesn't like getting prezzies?
I rushed inside and unzipped it, only to discover not only the book I wanted right at my house, but a bunch of attractive pamphlets about books, tailored to my tastes. And I just sat there, thrumming with the future, going, this is so cool.
Then I realized that yeah, this was the competition I was squeeing over. And I thought: everything is going to change.
Doom #2:
I was sitting on the couch, watching streaming Netflix. I wanted to watch a movie that was on the DVD shelf not ten feet from me. Then I thought: What if?
So I checked Netflix, and sure enough, they had my movie. Rather than getting up and walking ten feet, I just started streaming a movie I already owned. And I looked at all those DVDs, which once looked so proud and now looked merely cumbersome, and I thought: Okay, that's gonna change everything.
Dooms Future And Past
Which is the question I ask you today. These are two moments of looking at some new piece of technology and going, "Okay, nothing's going to be the same once this takes hold." Does anyone else have these moments of "Holy shit, the future's now?" And if so, what was your moment of realizing that whole industries were going to have to shift to accomodate this change, or die?
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01:04 pm
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A Lingering Disappointment
Dear Filmmakers:
Your porno film "Century 69" says, "Sex in the 69th Century is better than ever. Take this futuristic ride to a place of orgasmic proportions."
Alas, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed to find how little progress there has been. I mean, come on - it's been nearly five thousand years of sexual evolution, and you're telling me the advances in dick-sucking technology have been nil? I was hoping for fourth-dimensional sexual positions, genetically evolved new orifi, or at least just a refinement of existing technique.
Is this some bold statement on your part, perhaps - a nihilistic statement that no matter how far man advances, he'll never escape these four sexual positions? Are you trying to say that mankind is afraid of advancement, and as such five thousand years from now we will still be having sex in the same ways with the same plasticized women?
I wonder if there's some subtle post-apocalyptic subtext I'm missing. This would explain much, because at least as the acts are depicted, the fine art of cunnilingus seems to have been tragically lost.
Also, I find it odd that with all the wonders the 69th century has to offer, we only get to see a series of stained couches and one kitchen that looks very much like those that can be found in our time. Perhaps this, too, is a signal that the future is a dystopia - sleeping on the ruins of old technology, doomed to repeat a sticky history time and time again, these women absorb blasts of semen on their cheeks as a sad way of rejecting humanity. Sure, they could absorb the seed within their bodies to breed the next generation - but ravaged and despairing, they boldly demand that their partners cover their face in semen so they can feel the possibility of one last, helpless generation of humanity slipping off their chin.
In this way, they reject the biological ethos and slowly strangle the race. These four women and these faceless, thrusting penises - they're all that's left. And they will make sure that there is no Century 70. That's what you were going for, right?
Love,
T.F.
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12:45 pm
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A Call For Help
In case you missed it, I have a slot for two gamers in this Saturday's Planescape game. As it is, I need as many players as possible so I can have a clean runthrough before my DMing for Charity on Sunday (which, I hope, someone local will attend - Child's Play is a fine charity that makes kids happy).
So if you're interested, let me know and I'll reserve a slot for ya!
Also, two gaming things:
1) Can anyone give me a ride down to Akron for the event on Sunday? Gini wants the car, and we only have the one.
2) Anyone got any good, printable, and free character generators for D&D 3/3.5? Normally, Champions is my system, but it's also hard to run a pickup game of it.
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10:04 am
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Just Sorta Random Musings
There are days I feel like creating a sex filter to write about more personal things about my sex life. Then I realize I don't particularly like the options available on LJ.
See, there are a lot of people I would want to be in on the sex filter who I don't actually read. I have a lot of people I like personally, but haven't friended on LJ because a) they update sporadically, or b) the majority of what they post about is stuff I'm not particularly interested in (quizzes, sentence-long summaries of what they had for lunch, what have you). For me, my friends list is not my actual friends (though there is a lot of overlap), but rather a bunch of people who I like to read.
So for a sex filter, there are at least twenty people I can think of off the top of my head who I'd go, "Man, they should have access to that if they want. Which they probably would."
I could friend them and then filter them out, I suppose, but I personally hate filters. They're clunky, I always forget about them, and it seems to me that aside from the whole "topic-specific filter" thing, in practice they're generally used one of two ways: either they're giving you the illusion that someone's reading you when they're not, or they're used as a series of concentric barriers to rant and rave about people on the outside of your filters.
I'm not a big fan of either, so the whole "friend and filter" thing seems distasteful to me. If I friend you, I'm skimming you just like all the rest.
The end result is that I occasionally have a post I'd like to put behind semi-private barriers. I'm not an overly private person, but my New England gets the better of me from time to time - when I write someone customized erotica, I always feel a little silly the next day, as though I'd just hung my underwear out to dry. So I'm embarrassed enough to talk about this intensely personal stuff to people who want to hear this stuff, let alone to folks who really don't want to know that aspect of me at all.
Don't I write about personal stuff on a daily basis? Absolutely, but that's all stuff I've come to conclusions on. I hardly ever write about stuff I'm still processing, and sex is something that I never stop processing. It'd be a lot rawer, in many ways.
So if I did discuss the really wet stuff, it would have to be an opt-in thing for everyone. I would feel vulnerable enough discussing it anyway, without people going, "Whoo, that's an overshare."
(And yes, it is my journal. This is why I am telling you what I am and am not comfortable doing in my journal. What I'm not comfortable with is just going, "Fuck you, audience, listen to me blather." My journal is, on some level, a performance space, which is also why I don't post excerpts from my fiction until it's published. Anything I post in here is for public consumption, reasonably polished, and that's the way I roll.)
Also, given that what I discuss in public often involves the people I'm involved with, it's not really fair to drag them out before a small audience to have them displayed like animals in a zoo. I'd rather have the filter for those rare moments I want to discuss what happened on a given weekend and not have it broadcast to the Internets at large. (The audience would still be reasonably sized, of course, but there's a major break in scale between "talking to hundreds" and "talking to thousands.")
Alas, it looks like there's not a way under the current architecture to create a sex filter that I want. Which isn't a great loss - it's not like I'd put more than two or three posts on a given month - but it does sometimes come and go. I think, "Wow, that thing I just wrote really brings up a lot of intense issues," and then I realize that I don't want to share that with the world. Just a small segment. And then, because I have no way of reaching that small segment, it goes away.
No big loss. But a little sadness. Sometimes.
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09:34 am
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Excerpt From An Email
I've given up the trappings of being metal, that ritualistic body-shaping and hair-growing and fetishistic costuming so that everyone around me would KNOW I was X-TREME. I've quietly settled down since then into jeans and T-shirts, which are what I'm comfortable in.
I am what I am. I know this. I don't care if you think I'm mundane, and I no longer really care to announce my memberships with a tribe to all passerby. You can find out who I am by talking to me.
This feels like a cleaner, saner way to live. At least for the moment.
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08:47 am
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Musings On RPG Writing
In the beginning, there was an A, and it went straight to Z. Such was the way of computerized roleplaying games.
The storylines of RPGs have expanded somewhat since then, but every RPG has an interesting conundrum at its heart: you want to give your players the illusion of freedom, but realistically you need to keep your players pressed firmly against the rails of the plot. Sure, it'd be great if we had an RPG where you had three or four completely separate storylines - a series of noble quests for the good guy who wants to save the kingdom, a series of brutal conspiracies for the evil guy who wants to rule it, and a third series for the whacky guy who doesn't give a crap about the kingdom but wants to seduce nubile, beautiful conquests.
Alas, it's hard to justify creating large, expensive setpieces that won't be seen by two-thirds of your player base, so RPG writers do what Hollywood folks have been doing since movies began: they recycle sets. Whether you're good, bad, or just plain crazy, they have to engineer a plot where you're going to start at the carefully-balanced Shallows of Lakeshore and end up facing down the Big Bad in the very-expensive-to-create Grindguts Cave.
This, in turn, creates a really fascinating writing constriction: you have to create a separate emotional arc for each kind of player you allow. If the PC wants to be a good guy, that's great; everyone loves him, and he'll nobly set out to end the evil in the land. But if the PC wants to be a jerk (which 4.9% of you default to), then not only do you have to give him a motivation for setting out after the MacGuffin, but you have to create a set of separate goals for all your NPCs that explain why they put up with this bloodthirsty wahoo.
In other words, when writing a big RPG like this, you're essentially writing a separate storyline for each kind of playstyle you want to have. That's a lot of words. And if you do that poorly, then you run the risk of having every NPC being a punching bag. If the players feel like the NPCs are going to give you the Staff Of Plot Coupon no matter how they act, then they become less involved.
The way Bioware's gotten around that (at least partially) is to have players in your party have their own motivations. If you act too evil, the good NPCs will leave you, or even attack. Be too much of a nice guy, and that most excellent tank you've spent all that time levelling up will turn on you. Which is also a nice way to encourage a second runthrough.
The other thing Bioware has defaulted to (since it's mostly bulletproof) is to give you a Four-Plot Coupon structure. See, if it's a straight line from the start to the finish, then you run the risk of getting bored/stuck somewhere between A and Z. The standard Bioware structure is to get you past an introductory challenge, then branch off to an "open-ended" segment where you must complete four tasks before you can get to the end game - in the case of Dragon Age, you must do four things to bring the kingdom together against the Darkspawn. Those four tasks are each easily accessible, in a location with their own side quests, so you have the illusion of free will as you pick your choice of plots.
That choice, however, leads to another flaw: you're wandering around in the middle of the game with no ticking clock. Yes, everyone tells you that the Foobari invasion will start any time soon, but realistically you're just meandering and levelling up.
What they've done in Dragon Age to remedy this, however, is really brilliant: they've started tying the tasks together again. Which is to say that when I finished one quest, the only way it could be completed was to get the help of the Circle of Wizards - and when I got to the Circle of Wizards, guess what? They needed my help before they could help me out with my prior quest.
Truth is, I would have gotten to the Circle of Wizards anyway since they were on my Plot Coupon Shopping List. But requiring their help as part of my prior quest made it feel like more of a plot. Now they were a large complication, not a check-off.
BioWare's also started having triggering events in between each of the Plot Coupons to keep the story rolling. For example, when you complete your first Plot Coupons, assassins strike at you on your way to Plot Coupon #2. Complete #2, another mini-quest triggers. This gives the illusion of movement.
It's fascinating, because every RPG has the same core elements: a player, who may or may not be a jerk, must go to various locations, kill monsters, and level up enough to kill the bad guy. BioWare is obviously feeling the restraints on that, and particularly for Dragon Age (I'm just getting to Plot Coupon #3) they're really trying to battle against those shackles. They did that already (most notably in The Twist in Knights of the Old Republic, which cleverly answers an eternal RPG canard), but it's really evident that they're going for broke here.
Dragon Age has a lot of flaws thus far: a hackneyed backstory, NPCs who fucking love jumping in front of you the second you try to open a chest (HAY GUY YOU WANTED TO TALK TO ME, RITE?), some sketchy level design (why, yes, I would like to walk into an ambush of six mages who I can't hurt until they've fired the first six shots!), every NPC is a pinata full of words that you can't really skip past, and of course there's the usual poorly-explained welter of controls. But the story is fascinating to see in its mechanics, because they're definitely trying to break the mold - and it shows, and it's compelling. And for that, I have to give them the long, slow clap.
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09:00 pm
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2012: A Review
I have never before wanted to watch a movie with friends so badly. Because both E.J. and Keffy are, shall we say, big fans of science, and I would want to be there to watch their heads go splodey when the scientists on-screen explain how the Mayans predicted a thousand years ago that a galactic alignment of planets would cause the neutrinos in the sun to mutate.
Watching their heads blow up might actually be better SFX than the movie itself.
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05:10 pm
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They'll Do It Every Time
When I'm preparing for a trip, I pack my bag full of dense, beautiful books - all those novels I've been meaning to read. And I do read them... ... On the way out. By the time I board my flight back, I am exhausted, braindead, and lazy, so cracking that book of florid short stories just feels like hiking uphill. I can't do it. Fortunately, airport bookshops cater to the braindead. So I spend twenty bucks on some idiot pop "science" book like Freakonomics. This time, however, I've outdone myself. In my lap now is " Rules of the Game" - the bestselling book on how guys can get with beautiful women. "Master the art of attraction!" it claims. And because I want to see what sort of advice seems good to very lonely men, I am going to read it. I feel dumber already. Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Tags: via ljapp
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08:26 am
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Your Personal RPG Archetype
In my experience as a GM, players are like serial killers: they do what they do in order to satisfy some inner need. And like serial killers, you can extrapolate a lot about their personalities from carefully observing their evidence.
Which is to say that most players, even if they play a lot of characters, generally have some core personality trait that is shared among all their PCs. Take me, for example; I've played characters from a low-life gambler who plays cards with demons for (unreliable) magic powers to a superhero who records his battle-sounds so he can sample them for club mixes later. From an outward description of the guys I've played, you'd be hard-pressed to see what the connecting tissue is, because as a writer I go balls to the wall to come up with wildly differing backgrounds.
Yet all of my PCs share one thing; they're the smartest guy in the room on one issue. Not the smartest guy in the world, mind you, but each character has a gateway to some kind of forbidden knowledge that the other PCs just don't have. Yes, I play a living supernova who burns his enemies with fire... But he's also a physicist. Yes, I'm playing an ex-jock gone to seed who's forced into investigating the Cthulhu mythos... But he also runs a chain of sportswear outlets, and is a master of marketing. The huckster knows magic secrets, the DJ knows the club scene better than anyone.
As a player, I'll be entirely happy if I get the shit beaten out of me in a losing combat if I get to have my secret knowledge mean something during the game. It's perfectly fine if Thermal winds up in chains after the big battle if his physics knowledge was the only way they could have gotten into the villains' lair.
That's what scratches my roleplaying itch. And it's constant.
Likewise, my wife comes up with wildly differing characters from an elf flickering between dimensions to a fire-priestess of a noble kingdom, but all of her characters can be summed up by Thundering Badass Crippled By Dysfunctional Family Issues. If you play with almost anyone for long enough, you'll generally note the ties that bind all their PCs - even if, quite often, they're unaware of it.
So I ask you: What's your archetype? Do you know what need it satisfies? Tell me. I want to know.
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11:53 am
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A Random Game Poll
When I play through any computerized roleplaying game for the first time, I am invariably the good guy. I make all the morally correct choices, am kind to my fellow travellers, spare my enemies, avoid kicking puppies or harvesting little children, et cetera. I am scrupulous about this, for this is the "official" record.
Then, if the game is sufficiently interesting to play through again, I start a "what if?" scenario where I play the utter bastard, making every greedy choice and slaughtering everyone in town. And I dislike this on some level, but justify it because the first time was what really happened, and this second time is just fantasy. Which is kinda stupid, but there you have it.
However, I know this is not unique. Interestingly enough, my daughter Amy started off Mass Effect with an utter jerk, but within three hours she felt bad and slowly transformed her meanie badass into a sweetness and light hero. Which led to this weird little poll:
Poll #1484469 Roleplayin'
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 313When I am playing through a computerized RPG of some sort (like Bioshock, Mass Effect, or Dragon Age), I will usually:
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09:44 am
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Star Wars Ruined My Life
My love of overthinking Star Wars has ruined my writing career. Because Darth Vader is a shivering coward, and practically no one knows it.
Wait, I'll knit those two sentences together in a moment. But first, let's talk about Vader's wussery - and when we do so, we will discuss the only three movies that matter. The word "Annie" is dead to me, and I have no idea what this "mid uh klor ee in" thing is that you're mentioning.
Thing is, in the first three movies, Vader is presented as a total badass. But if you look at what's really happening, truth is that Vader's just a hired gun, and not a particularly great one at that. In A New Hope, Vader's nothing more than Tarkin's bitch. And I use that word in the doglike sense, because not only does he do everything that Tarkin commands him to do ("Hey, stop choking that guy who insulted your whole religion!" "Okay, boss") but Leia actually calls him out. "I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash." In other words, Leia - and, presumably, everyone else in the know - understands that Vader has a leash, and someone's always holding it.
Hey, why does Vader survive the Death Star? Because he was sent out as the lead attack dog to go fight them hand-to-hand. In other words, he survives only because he's one of the most dispensable employees - a glorified Stormtrooper, a special breed of cannon fodder. Where was Tarkin? Back in what he presumed was safety.
Vader's good at killing, don't get me wrong. But "badass" has a certain connotation of freedom and independence, and Vader? Is just another gun for hire.
In fact, Empire, what happens next? Vader's in charge of a task force to find the rebels, sure, but at the end of the film he first attempts to box up his son to bring back to the Emperor without any qualms. Dude, Vader's just a glorified UPS deliveryman - and when your first plan is just to dope-de-ope bring your only offspring back to the Emperor to be brainwashed into being the Emperor's slave, well, you messed up.
And then, when it turns out that his son might almost be able to beat him, what does he do?
He begs.
Oh, don't be fooled by that James Earl Jones voice. Broken down, Vader's cry is, "HALP! I can't beat the nasty old Emperor on my own, 'cause I'm scared! But if you, a one-handed gimp I just thrashed when I got pissy, team up with me, we can do it!"
You think Vader needs Luke to beat the Emperor? Hell, no, Vader does that at the end when Luke's beaten him. No, Vader needs someone to hold his goddamned hand like a six-year-old needs Mommy to cross the street. Vader's a tough guy, sure, but badass? Badasses don't need a cheering squad to help them go off and win the day. Badasses don't beg.
Sure enough, at the end of Return of the Jedi, the only time Vader finally acts? When his son's beaten him, when the Emperor's mocking him and ignored him, when his son's about to die, and when the Emperor has his back turned, Vader finally acts. Could he have done this years ago? Sure. Hell, he's doing it with one hand and a failing life support system. But wimpy ol' Vader was just too frightened of the Emperor to do anything until Luke finally goaded him into it.
Again. That's a guy with a lot of tremendous power, but underneath? Vader's a candyass. He'll take directions from anyone because inside, he's terrified of everything. He goes and beats up people who aren't in his league at all, because he's afraid of real challenges; picture a movie where Bruce Lee only fights mooks he knows he can beat, because he's too afraid to fight the Savage Emperor by his lonesome, and you see Vader's inner scaredycat.
I love that finesse. Because people buy Vader as a badass, because the movie is largely shot from Vader's perspective (something Lucas openly admitted when he went back and, uh, didn't film three awful films). When you start pointing out that Vader really is just a gun to be shot by pretty much anyone with the will to shoot him, they start hemming and hawing and telling you how he's really a threat.
Yes. But a threat is not a badass. Vader's Woody Allen with a lightsaber.
The reason I say this ruined my writing career is because that dichotomy is one of my lit-kinks. I love writing stories from a strong first-person perspective where the lead character is flawed, and completely unaware of it. In other words, I write Vader'fic, where the lead characters appear to be strong and monotone, but underneath there's something else going on.
And that's a weakness right now, because as it is I don't have the chops to pull off something like that. Not one of those stories has sold yet.
What actually happens when I write the story is that people actually buy the lead character's opinion of themself, and they miss all the subtle clues I put in that indicate that whoah, wait a minute, things aren't quite this simple, and instead they see it as a simple "Us Good, Them Bad" story. And I can't fault them for that, because I am writing in a fashion influenced by a man who created a villain who literally millions of people see as the ultimate badass. Which Vader, as I have noted here, is not.
It's an interesting way to try to construct a story. But I need to learn to put in better clues, or achieve deeper characterization so that people can see beyond the surface, or plot better. Because as it stands, for all of its charm any scene from Star Wars makes a pretty lousy short story. I'm gonna have to find a way to either drop this lit-kink or learn to pull it off better.
In either case, I blame Lucas. He's convenient, and rich enough not to care.
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02:22 pm
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Boosting Signal
From rollick:
Checking out of the Overlook: 16 Ways to Survive a Stephen King Story. Completely, 100% accurate.
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10:34 am
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Ode To The Basket Of Halloween Candy On The Shelf Here At Work
First they came for the Milky Ways, and I did pig out — because I loved Milky Ways;
Then they came for the Butterfingers, and I did pig out — because I loved Butterfingers;
Then they came for the Nestle's Crunch bars, and I did pig out — because hey, it was chocolate;
Then they came for the Babe Ruths, and I did pig out — after searching the remains of the candy dish for a stray Butterfingers or Milky Way;
Then all was left was the Sweethearts — and nobody eats that shit.
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07:58 am
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Questions, I Got Questions
Six-hour meetings always leave me drained, especially if they're productive ones. So I did the "three questions" meme with three friends. (It's the one where you leave a comment asking them to ask you three questions, and then you post the answers and promise to do the same in your journal. I'd always like to play, but if I posted something where I gave three questions to everyone who wanted 'em, I'd be here all day.)
Anyway, their questions:
xhollydayx:
1. What is your next hair color, or are you going to eventually go back to au natural Ferrett?
I'm pretty much choosing my hair colors at random for now, because I am eventually going to go back to au natural Ferrett - which, at the rate my hair is receding, will be a smooth, fleshy pink. I figured I might as well start going wild with the colors before my hair disappeared on me for good. My daughters want bright red, but I'm pretty sure it'd make me look like an evil clown.
2. What do you miss most about having a pet/ferrets?
I'm all kinds of stupid exciteable and goony. Dogs and ferrets can be that way, too, so I'll just go romping with them and making silly noises and wrestling with them until we're both exhausted. Playing with them unfetters my silly side.
Alas, until they invent the poopless dog, I'm about done with having allergies all the time and cleaning up poop. I'm pretty sure I could invent a sort of poopless dog by sewing portions of them shut, but that seems like it would get very expensive after a while, and they really wouldn't be that fun to play with after the first couple of days. Also, I'd get all these nasty looks from the women at the pound. So that's totally not worth it.
3. Have you always been attracted to fuller figured women? Would you be interested in a very slender woman?
You know, I have. My first real attraction on record, a girl called Dana, was a little thick.
I'm always a little weirded by saying that I'm attracted to fuller figured women because, well, that sounds like I have some sort of fetish or something. I have a type (actually, Katie Featherston from Paranormal Activity is pretty much my ideal woman, and I'm going to hate it when she loses twenty pounds for Hollywood), but in real life I usually like women for their personalities. So I could be attracted to a skinny girl, if she was cool and funny and all that stuff.
(In fact, a friend had lost so much weight that she'd wondered if I'd still be attracted to her. The answer: Yeah, because as long as she's strong enough to talk and type on a keyboard, thus transmitting her brainmeat-candy from her to me, there's gonna be an attraction.)
But I dunno. In general, I tend to get along with thick women better, and I'm not sure why. Is it because they tend to be more comfortable in their bodies? More raucous? (I'm not fond of shy women who don't speak up.) Some other hidden signal I'm responding to? I don't want to generalize overmuch, since slotting people into one aspect obscures all the exceptions to the rules - but my attraction to thick women could also be explained by me being attracted to some aspect of a personality that also tends to lead to chubbiness, and I suspect it's more about personality for me.
Or I could be full of shit. I'm not sure anyone can really rationally explain their own attractions; we only justify.
And from hps_sterling:
1. There can be only one! What is your favorite game?
Ah, such a question! How are we defining "game"? Videogame? Traditional game? Politics and seduction?
If we're going with overall game, I'd have to say at this point based on pure numbers alone, it's Rock Band. Lord knows I've spent more hours on that than anything else. But I consider videogame to be a different category of game, so if I had to choose something a little more Amish, it'd be Apples to Apples, with a good group of friends and our customized, hygrated deck of only the most interesting cards.
(Magic is a close second, and might be #1 if more people played it, but getting folks in for an all-out chaos game of six people is such a hassle that it affects my enjoyment.)
2. Do you like coffee?
I like one coffee: Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee, double milk, double liquid sugar. This is the only way I will drink coffee, and even then somehow the local Ohio branches screw this up two times out of five. It's like drink roulette. Very depressing.
3. What are your thoughts on trying new things that are outside of your comfort zone?
One of my infamous rules is that if I've never tried it before, I have to. This is not a bold claim, but rather an ingrained aspect of my personality that gets me into trouble. I have to try everything once. Newness is my fetish.
So if there's a boundary, I usually try to push it. My comfort zone is actually a little outside of my comfort zone, weirdly, because if I stay in my safe place then I start to feel like I'm in a rut and get panicky. So I try something new, and a little discomforting, and I feel better. It's odd. It's also led me to good places overall, because I tend to take large risks - which don't always pay off, but when they do I get something like the lovely experience of going to the Clarion workshop (six weeks off from work? Really?) or my lovely wife Gini. I'll take those.
If you got questions, ask.
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