I did a fair bit of a fuss on a blog about the latest change to PVP, and the terriblness of Virtueverse. I also did a bit of work on the Cobrin`Seil book. And got some sleep.

Man, real diaries are fucking boring, aren't they?

Right now I would really like to find a way to feel like I'm good at something.

Behold, Snowblasted. These Virtueverse pages are a pleasant relief, something I can sink my teeth into with a pre-existant direction.

Right now I'm finding myself stymied for that feeling, the desire to write something interesting and creative with a direction behind it. I really am surprised how used I became to the pedestal that the SCG community gave me, a place from which to stand and speak, knowing that it would be regarded and read. On a forum, you produce something that long, and people will just snark up with tl;dr. There's no feeling of authority, or at least credence that my writing took some time and effort to create.

Anyway, much of a muchness. Snowblasted's page is up.

I've found of late that I really have been phrasing a lot of my internal dialogue like I'm a presenter on QI. It's especially amusing because that kind of informationally-excessive dialogue is pretty much exactly how I wish I could talk, going on and on and on and on and having everyone follow and not mind that I just spent twenty minutes saying 'Yes, I would like a green salad.' Maybe it's just latent lust for Stephen Fry, I don't know.

I've been flicking through more blogs of late too, trying to make damn sure that I read more than just my normal little circle of Pharyngula and Crooks and Liars. Part of this expansion has added Bad Science, Bad Astronomy, The Society for the Advancement of Dave, and Skepchick to my list of readings. Also with that I've been more inclined to follow random news stories - though I also am trying to avoid excessive reading of Fark, since as it handily reminds me, it's not really news or information, it's just unmitigated snark and funniness. Sometimes that's awesome, but I'm trying to read things that inspire me to write, rather than to just read more.

A curious story element that struck me today at the doctor's office: A lone person who arrives at the surgery every morning and acts like they're waiting for the doctor, talking - but not overly enthusiastically - to all the other patients, even asking them to mind his/her seat while they nip out for lunch or a drink or a bathroom break. In reality, this person has no friends and no home, and lives in this way for the human contact it brings. Subversion: The person in question is homeless, but is actually something of a vagrant superhero, a person with the ability to make perfect and absolute medical analysis of anyone at a glance, serving to filter information to the doctors and discouraging hypochondriacs and other time-wasters.

It's 1:45 and I haven't written anything major today. I did make a truly kick-ass dinner that I'm really proud of, but I haven't produced any writing longer than a paragraph or two. Part of it is mood - I'm not very aroused or geeky feeling - and part of it is sickness. I keep having these full-body sneezing fits and the like, which is very much bad for your Feelin' Creative.

Still, I can take comfort in that for all I've been a sputtering, suffering wreck of a man today, I have still nonetheless achieved things. I've done a lot of washing up, I've taken care of Fox and I've contacted my mother to wish her a happy birthday.

My nephew-or-niece, is, at this point... well, late. S/he was supposed to be born four days ago, but the little rascal is insisting on taking his/her time coming out. I'm not sure what to interpret that to mean, and how best to make off-colour jokes about it. My sister will have until Monday, when they'll induce her, and then I'll have to spend weeks at a time hearing about how bored she is and how much she detests the little weasel.

She won't say it, but I'll know it to be true.

Alas, nothing of any fruit back there. I got a chunk written of a story written yesterday that was kicking my ass, but nothing particularly big.

Today, nothing yet. >.>

... I can't show you. It's part of the Cobrin Seil Campaign Setting, and was a big slab of flavour text for the organisations and other groups that annoy people to not recognise when I mention them. It's going into the book though.

So today, I finished up Swivel's Virtueverse page, tidying it up and make it complete. Also, elaborating on the individual elements of the character, his voice, and the character of the AI that's slowly taking him over.

It's about 50% new material as of today. No big deal, but still, it's more than nothing.

Showing strongly, I wrote nothing today, but in my defence I was out all day. Instead I came home and fed the pets, tidied up some game stuff and said my gnights online. So to you I now say, good night.

So, as part of my general motif of treating myself better, I'm limiting myself to two glasses of pepsi max a day. I'm also trying to skip meals less, and when I'm hungry between meals, I'm snacking down on glasses of water. After a bit of poking around, it seems this isn't likely to hurt me in any major way, but it does mean I am constantly sloping off to go pee. There aren't many 'empty' foods - all the fun stuff we like that our tongue seems to react to well is usually doing that reaction with something that is, essentially, bad for us in the levels and concentrations we have. My current theory is that arsenic must taste awesome, because there's no other solid reason I can work out for this tasting metaphor. I'm sitting here, feeling snacky and peckish, but all I can think of that I want to eat is sweet stuff, things like going and frying up some apples in butter, or making myself a jam sandwich.

Bu~u~u~t, that's bad for me, so I need to get my mind off it, so chug water I do. I find myself vaguely paranoid that I might wind up seeming like one of those body-flushing hippies who treat the body like it's an old oily machine press, something they need to wash through every few days with a constant maintenance and upkeep. Ignoring my rants about homeostasis and how you don't wind up collecting extra meat in your colon and all that crap, I was stunned, thinking about those people I know who espouse ridiculous things, and how few of them actually suffer for their odd beliefs. My mother and and my father don't feel anything for their homophobia, for example. Another woman I know believes that chemotheraphy doesn't actually do anything, and is just expensive so as to make money for doctors. Another person has vocalised that atheism is only owned by people who know the Biblical truth, and choose to pretend they don't understand it, and don't embrace it, so as to act morally free.

I dunno. I'm not thinking very clearly right now. I ran through a stack of job applications today and am now waiting by the phone for responses. Oh well, fiddle dee dee. I don't actually have anything interesting to talk about right now, nothing people want to hear me bitching about or complimenting or whatever. And I really, really don't think after the whole situation with Wall-E, people want to hear me reviewing movies, especially onces I've watched recently with friends.

Ah well.

I want to have a chance to flirt with Stephen Fry, just once. I also want to watch an episode of QI that has Christopher Hitchens as a panellist. If I can do both on the same day, surely life will be complete.

Trying to make a point of posting something or writing something every day. Nothing much yet, but today just began.

Lords I didn't sleep well last night. Just kept waking up, waking up, waking up, almost at every single hour. Worse I kept getting snippets of dreams - like working out a way to water the garden and the house at the same time so both would grow, or a handful of far more... racy dreams.

Anyway. Trying to write more.

It's very easy, I imagine, when dealing with me for more than five minutes, to get the impression that I'm a hate-soaked ogre who sees nothing to actually enjoy in the world around me. At least, I hope you do, otherwise my bid for Ogre in 2012 is doomed to failure.

Sometimes however, it is entirely feasible for a story or series or creative piece of art to punch through that calloused shell and penetrate deep into the heart of my awesome gland, prompting me to vomit rainbows and sunshine for protracted periods of time until everyone is so sick of hearing my positive opinion about something, tells me to shut up, and prompts me to become certian that people only want to hear from me when I'm being a cynical, cranky ass.

Today, I sat down, and after some false starts, watched Baccano. I started watching it while working on other things. That was my mistake - the other things are not going to get worked on, or Baccano is not going to be understood. It has a nonlinear plot and a huge cast - something like sixteen characters or so, all introduced in the opening, and then there are more introduced. It's full of nice touches and moments of surprise and delight, but I just needed to touch on something else, something that is actually, somewhat out of the realm of the characters designed by the author (as they were a novel originally).

Baccano is really fucking sexy. I mean, I'm very susceptible to some kinds of fanservice. Heaving bosoms will often just plain get me going, and provided they're nicely done, T&A are things that can get me to forgive a series of a lot of its flaws (at this point, no examples spring to mind, but I'm sure they're out there). But Baccano actually doesn't do much in the way of arse-shots or dipping cleavage and still manages to leave me constantly aghast at just how attractive all the various characters are.

There are something like, nine female characters, and three males, all of whom I would happily do naughty, naughty things to, and they aren't ever oversexed or really even highlighted. Their hotness is entirely incidental to the story at large and the designs range from ugly to attractive in style, and from plain to downright breathtaking, but there's never a sense that characters are hot because they're important, or are just as much, important because they're hot.

Overall, it's a really exciting, interesting piece, quite confusing to watch unless you're willing to actually pay attention, and it handles cannonball-style watching better than a lot of other anime I've seen lately. So go forth! Find a way to watch it, and enjoy. It's a really good series, with its own clear sense of style and great music to boot.

With a recently-relaxed download quota (February being a smaller month than normal), I've had the chance to examine a few Youtube videos that I'd been hitherto avoiding, such as this gem from Australian Spicks And Specks presenter, Tim Minchin, titled Storm. What I found the most troubling about Storm after hearing it was, well, twofold. The first thing that struck me was the periodic bother that I was myself, just as obnoxious to those people around me, spattering my mere science knowledge around, relying on evidence and a curious, inquisitive, information and evidence-driven view on the world while disregarding those people around me, being self-satisfied in the smug confrontation with Storm as if I'd either be able to pull it off nearly so well, or that I would ever have the courage to let rip on someone, stranger or otherwise about their views that I saw as bullshit. It's difficult when dealing with a stranger - not something I've personally had major issues with when the sake at stake is my own, such as when I told someone at a friend's wedding that I wrote pornography and was a staunch antitheist, prompting her gobsmacked response that she was a Youth Group Leader. The issue is that invariably, I'm going to always be dealing with someone who believes in something stupid in one of two ways. Either I'm going to be having a short ricochet off a person in which case I can't really hold out hope for the influence I have to be a positive one.

Consider the scenario. I meet a person who believes in bullshit. I am myself, my unvarnished, skeptical, evidence-driven self and voice my opinion wholeheartedly on their views. Alluvial silver is hogshit, quantum healing hands is a lie, cold reading is a circus trick that's been embraced by people as a religious experience and without actually thinking things through, these people have sold themselves as sheep to a concept that rewards them only insofar as a greater, sadder insanity would. Then that person can either react in one of two ways.

• First, the person might hear what I've said, and, in all seriousness and consideration, take to heart what I've said. They will consider the verve and the passion with which I've said it, and perhaps some part of what I've said will linger in their mind, catching fertile ground where it can amidst the lies and the bullshit. Over time, the person might enquire after such things, and come to the evidence and understanding that I have, because let's face it, unlike Christians, I can't sit around and say 'Oh, god will do the rest of the work.' It's up to me to make my point as best I can in favour of actually thinking, because they're not going to do it for me or even meet me half-way.
• Wander away muttering to themselves My, aren't atheists rude?

It is the act of the artist to bring to bear on anything he or she creates the sum of all the art he or she has experienced in his or her life. In this way, every artwork contributes to the artwork that comes after it, every little grain of sand trickling down through the hourglass of aeons and adding to our culture. To the holder of the hourglass, each and every grain is irrelevant, nothing more than dust that flows like liquid. But to the sand, each and every one of them is as mighty as a boulder, tumbling through the space and setting off reaction after reaction.

Everything that happens, happens for a reason. It's caused by the things before it and in turn, causes the things after it. Nothing every truly transpires in a vacuum. But to the human element, those watchers and readers and people of this world, who go about their lives, the vacuum is so easily felt. Everyone feels that that which they do is unimportant, so they affix meaning to things they think are greater than themselves, unable to grip the reality of it, unable to grasp the simple, unfeeling, indifferent truth: That everything that happens, happens.

Quantum theory has the unfortunate side effect of allowing ignorant people to enshrine their ignorance and equalise it with a far more defined ignorance of far better informed people. Just because there's an area where CERN and say, dirt-farmers from Arkansas overlap in their ignorance doesn't mean that the dirt-farmers should be being consulted on matters of atomic physics. Just because you and I both don't know how to translate Sanskrit doesn't make us equals on the topic of ancient cultures.

What do you think archetype boards are for?

The blaster boards are all about how they're great at doing boom and how they hardly EVER EVER DIE especially when they have a healer and greens and purples and the sun aligns with mars. The brute boards are all about how they definitely need to buff Energy Melee because it's not soloing AVs as fast as it was and that puts it behind the AV-soloing speed put forward by the other power sets. Also that electrical armour sucks. The Soldiers board is mostly about the three cool kids kicking sand in the face of the Bane because no other archetype is quite so unfair that a broadsword-sr scrapper with debuffs and crits-on-command is somehow considered the sissy one, while the kheld boards are a macro designed to punch out 'lrn2play' in response to every possible complaint about the archetype. The controller boards are mostly about arguing if Carrion Creepers actually counts as doing damage and how stupid it would be to expect controllers to buff anyone - what do people think they are, defenders? The poor hard-done by mastermind boards are about how poison isn't good at anything except soloing AVs. The scrapper boards are a place where the only complicated sentence that survives is a math equation so byzantine it cons purple to everyone except Arcanaville and people boast of their brilliance at choosing to play the game on easy mode and laugh at how silly it would be to want to feature other people on this massive, multiplayer game. Tanker boards are the last five minutes of the Doom movie - swaggering and proud, the kind of one-man army badass who takes on the whole world and everyone in the world has nothing better to do than love watching every second of him being SO SUPER - covering a facade of the first five minutes of fight club - where that same bullet-[censored] uebermensch sits in a circle with other tankers crying 'we're still men!' The corruptor boards don't seem to exist, but I'm sure they'd be full of people bragging about their dark/dark tanking better than brutes, who don't care in the first place.

And the dominator board produces people like me, cruel embittered husks who derive not pleasure from life or from its joys, but rather exist as a twisted antithesis to all things fun. We're all going to sit around and pat our own backs on our own forums. If we're not, that's probably a sign something is seriously messed up with the archetype in question. It's kinda what those forums are for - for people with a common love of an archetype to gather around and be jerks to everyone who isn't in the forum and talk about how much they love being in this particular forum.

(This whole post is parody. Seriously.)

In the middle of an invasion, the rikti all around, and she swings a punch into a heavy suit- then finds a skull-masked, white-painted face looming out of the bloody haze, blood on his hands trailing smoke as he lunges at her.

There's no thought behind it

No motivation.

They don't have an ancient grudge or a burning vendetta.

When people like that meet, people like that fight.

And the dirty secret is, they do it because it's fun.

The dirtier secret is...

If youhad this power, friends and neighbours?

You'd do it too.

Power corrupts, and these beings wield absolute power, new gods in a godless world.

She heals, completely immutable and refusing to feel any pain and bends steel rebar like it's a bendy straw. He feels the pain but it doesn't stop him, because he likes it. Fists crossed. He has the style of a boxer, and he hits like a fucking hammer with fists that crackle with some bleak harrowed fire that chills to the very bone, but she will not be stopped.

She kicks him through a wall and takes a moment to reorient herself then regrets it as he lunges out of the darkness with a ringing hit that leaves a black scorchmark where she stood. Tireless and persistent, the two of them are equals in will, an irresistable object and an immovable force.

The Rikti are gone.

They left.

They fled.

As the two titans clashed in the ruins of a supposed invasion, the invading army stood and saw what these people were doing to one another, who they were, what monsters they were facing, and they retreated, wanting nothing of this world, for now.

And as the day ends, the outline of two figures, punching, and hammering, kicking and bleeding, one trailing black blood that bursts into flame, the other seeing the world only in shades of corpuscle red, is cast against a bloody sunset.

Who falls to the knee first? Who can say. When you fight that long, that hard, the air burns and your muscles revolt. It stops being about skill and muscle and dedication and becomes about will. It becomes about being the one that snarls I will not yieldlast.

The observers have fled, the people drawing away. four city blocks destroyed. She'd killed him, twice - punching once clean through his chest and pulling his heart out, only to have it explode in her hand like an artful bomb, his ragdolled body hoisting up and healing over in a scant few seconds. The mask is torn, flaunting his face, the tattoos are obvious.

So there's nobody there to see when one adrenaline-soaked swing turns to a grab turns to an embrace turns to a biting and hateful kiss. She'd kiss him back...hungry and almost vicious....the stomp on his foot and try and kick him through a wall.

Suddenly the battle has a new dimension to it. They're not just stealing hits at opportunities, suddenly there's a sexual charge to it. She throws a haymaker that misses, he steps around, footwork as he grabs her wrist, pressing against her back, and his other hand pulls back on her hair - then headbutts her in the side of the head, flipping over her and trying to flip her over him in turn.

As the moon stays at its midpoint in the sky, capitvated by the sight them at war, the sirens begin.

The flier.

Too much carnage, too much wreckage. Arachnos has decided to step in. To contain the situation.

The thing is... as the flier comes down, Hex would pull back from her, stop - and even take a hit, as he glared up at it, tugging his gloves back and giving a grin and a snarl... then he'd point at the flier, grin at her, and say 'Dibs.'

Date:	2008-12-20 11:29
Subject:	dreams
Security:	Public
Mood:	sad

I woke up sad.

i'd had a dream
that i had a friend, kinda
i mean
he was a friend
in high school
but just in the dream
i'm not sure if i was in high school

he was indian descent,
german born
his family were all in germany
he was rich
he was kind
he was really sweet
he was artistic and friendly
i didn't just love him
so did everyone else
but i felt we were closer
with how i understood him
with how i helped him
with the funny way he pronounced my name
(it made everyone laugh,
especially me)
he was studying alongside me and my friends
he did these wonderful, inspiring things
we would talk about science
and people
and writing
and I thought of him as my best friend
the best friend i never had in high school
in years of being lost and stupid and unhappy
the friend i never had had
when we trekked across the swamplands,
for there were swamplands in the dream
which we crossed on a xylophone
that he had made
the music helped us march
and we sang like the steelworking women of eboshi
before we did, we went to one of his houses
the one in this country
to get some stuff
like candles
we were locked out for some reason
i think things were going wrong in the world
there was commotion
and dark clouds of unnatural colours
nobody but me could work out the passwords to shut things down
and access the information we were after
things like his birthday
and his favourite foods
and where he'd hide his socks
(i've no idea why he didn't just open them)
while getting the candles
i was in his room
and i unlocked a book in a book inside a wheel
and
i found his diary
full of notes on his friends
their hobbies
'Mention to Alicia the piano recital in the library'
their likes
'Steve needs help moving a sofa - get lift to his house'
and everything
'Fox's mother prefers gluten-free, remember for gift basket.'

i wasn't in it
except for a note as to what he got me for christmas
that he had given me already
and how much it cost
i didn't like it much
but i had treasured it because it was from him

I woke up sad.

Date:	2008-12-20 11:12
Subject:	Writing for Women (Talen Head)
Security:	Public
Mood:	morose

For the past few months now I have been trying to finish up - hahah, start - a manuscript of erotica for an online publishing company in the perhaps-nebulous hope that I'll be able to do this for a living. I know my first article for Starcity Games was remarkably slow in being put together - I kept saying I'd do it, saying I'd do it, etc, and never did. I eventually did in a fit of pique and hey, look at me, I'm featured. However, I have to say, I have found a demographic that is more unsupportive and unhelpful than the Magic: The Gathering Website-reading community.

That is, women.

The publishing house doesn't really do much to identify itself outside of a few tropes; it wants sci-fi or fantasy fiction, outside of the norms, and it wants steamy sex scenes. I can do both - I'm reasonably sure - given that I have people who are aggressively interested in reading the writing I do for them, but it seems all the ideas I have for self-contained stories that don't feature characters directly connected to the listener are a terrible idea. At least, to listen to the people I talk to about it.

The problem is that when I discuss this subject with, well, anyone, the universal response tends to be glowing, incandescent praise for my erotic prose and a simultaneous disdain for any or all of the ideas I'm throwing at the wall. So far, I have found one female with whom I've discussed these matters, and her reaction has been excitement... over the science. Which is good - I wanted to discuss the science with her, and she seemed to like it. Hoorah for appealing to the biology geek continent. Alas, I don't think discussions of copper in the blood are going to moisten many pants across the world.

Part of this is the utter disdain it seems all the women I know hold most of the other women - either by proxy or effect. For intents and purposes, despite her massive scrotal sack I'm including Fox here as a woman. I know, it's a stretch to those of you who've met her, but it still applies.

Women seem to hate women with a fiery passion.

I might be unique but I don't think that my porn-collecting habits are better or worse than the porn-collecting habits of people's mums. I don't think that the woman with a family and kids who buys herself a dirty novel or two to keep herself entertained is somehow a worse person, and I don't think that the kind of women who like to read about submissive girls getting off with a disproportionately attractive pair of men are bad people. There's always this kind of sad pity in the voice of women with whom I discuss this matter. I'd ask men, but the few guys I've spoken to on the subject are weirded out by the idea of discussing porn at all, or, suggest I throw in lots of guy on guy gay sex. That's fine, sure, but I also think that that genre and need are pretty filled, whereas good, well-written, well-characterised straight stuff is in a deficit - possibly because all the people who would be producing it run headlong into how much audiences hate characters.

The first story idea I had was canned because the protaganist was too identifiable. That is, everyone I showed her to, who was so very like her, including the woman who had inspired this character in the first place seemed to dislike the woman, because of the flaws they shared with her. It didn't matter that the story was about the girl achieving self-respect and self-actualisation, overcoming the problems in her life and abandoning the things that she didn't like; that she was slightly overweight to begin with, that she wasn't in control of her life, was working tediously and in a cycle of stasis, it all made her completely unusable as a protaganist.

Am I that bad, really?

The new story, the one I'm working on now, has been disadined as a World of Darkness rip-off, an Underworld rip-off (hahah), the - male - main character too smart, too stupid, too easily convinced into sex, too much at the beck and call of his female cohort and too independent and annoying. He's also both ugly and sexy as hell at the same time. It's like I excel at finding people who are brilliant at providing criticism that is both conceptually devastating and yet at the same time utterly unhelpful.

The good news is I think I'm getting into my readership's heads. I'm starting to hate women too.

Me: Wouldn't it be amazing if people saw badges as a way to reflect the things you'd done, rather than things you'd avoided actually doing but wanted to be rewarded for anyway?
Back Alley Brawler: That was the original design, but clearly not what how the majority of people view them.