Principia Procrastinia
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
fhtagn's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Friday, June 5th, 2009 | | 11:09 am |
In a sudden alteration to scheduled programming ...
I found myself reading a review of last night's TV today whilst on the bus to work and it made my blood boil. The reason I read it, rather than skipping it as I usually do anything TV related, was that I chanced to see it was about a program about self-harm [1]. And, whilst most of it seemed to say that the show pretty much what I'd expect, mainly as it wittered on about pointless, self-satisfied middle class whinging, there was one bit which was infuriating. But the baffling question - why choose to slash scars across your skin rather than turn to drugs or alcohol - remained unanswered.It irritated me at first because it's meaningless - one doesn't create scars, but rather wounds which don't always scar. It's true that some cut for the scars rather than the pain and blood, but even so, the sentence is still bollocks. And that's when I realised the implication, that getting drunk and doing drugs are somehow a better, more socially acceptable response. The dismissive hypocrisy there is truly fucking offensive. To give one answer to his question, for some it's because cutting (or burning or beating or starvation or just about anything a person can conceive as a way of hurting themselves) is about regaining control. You control how deep the wound is. You control how much it bleeds. You control how long it is and where it is and how many there are. The pain is yours. Alcohol and drugs, on the other hand, are ways of relinquishing control and letting something else take care of it. Not always a bad thing, and it has its place, but that's still a very different need being fulfilled. That's not the only answer though, because in a group of n people who cut, there will be n reasons and a hell of a lot more views on the subject. It's not something which is easily described, solved and swept away. It's not even a thing in itself, so much as a symptom and also, in my somewhat unpopular view, a treatment. People cut because they feel the need to do so; their reasons for doing so are individual, as are the things which lead them to do it and the results they expect. Some cut in anger, some in misery and some when happy. Some want release, some want control and some want a permanent, present reminder to focus on. Some cut for all the above reasons and for all the above results, or none. And you know what, being treated as second class citizens who're impossible to understand because you can't be simply labled is neither pleasant nor acceptable. There's not really a point to this. I just wanted to get it out and calm down a bit. [1]I really hate this term. It's belittling and also too broad. Self-harm accurately describes cutting, but also smoking, long distance road running and eating too many rich meals. I far prefer self-mutilation, though I admit it's less appropriate for invisible injuries. | | Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | | 6:50 pm |
Seek and Ye Shall Find
( Read more... )I first heard about The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Redick from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lowellboyslash. Specifically, I heard that she's bought it for publishing in the US, and that it'd been out in the UK for a while. Of course, I ended up buying what I'm told is the "slightly inferior British edit". That may be true, but at least they spelled the word "colour" correctly. So nyer! As far as editting was concerned, by the by, I spotted nothing to complain about, not that I generally do. So, what's the book about. Um ... lots of things. The book follows many conspiring groups and the bystanders caught up in their webs as they set about trying to help themselves and their friends, spark off or avert wars and just get by. The characters span a wealth of nations and social strata, and in doing so give an excellent view of a pleasantly complex (though entirely approachable and understandable) world. The societies we see are pleasantly realistic, and unpleasantly like our own. The latter, because since one of the main characters is essentially an indentured servant and his friends likewise, we get to see just how bad things can be at the bottom, and how the top is blithely ignorant of it. There's a not particularly subtle vein of social commentary running through the book, but it does it very well, and since it ties in to the plot(s) it never gets in the way. Now, since it's a fantasy book, I must inevitably dwell on the magic. There's rather a lot of it, you see, and it runs from the subtle to the terrifying. The author hasn't, thus far, fallen into the trap of having a view-point character as a mage. As such, all the reader learns about magic is that it's vast (there's a lot out there, and if differs from world to world), it's exhausting and that spells carry something of their casters with them. The bulk of the magic actually seen is tied to some enchanted objects, a curse upon the main viewpoint character, and the fact that some animals "wake" to full sentience, gaining the capacity for speech. There are, however, small throw-away fantastic creations everywhere, either hinting at bits of the world driven off to the edge by humanity or (alas using the tired old cliche of) lost to the past. The Flikkermen, who live underneath cities, act as slavers and who glow when they talk, and sing songs of how the world has forgotten their great works. A cloud demon, spotted and avoided by a hawk as it takes wing back to its master. A shore, lined with shipwrecks, which curses any who take anything from it. And, of course, giant ships near the size of cities, built of trees long since extinct. A large proportion of the book takes place on the last remaining one of these. The book's pacing is a little odd, as it hops between characters and said hops tend to take place in chronological order. You therefore often return to a character after something they've been planning to do has already happened, off stage. I found this a little disconcerting at first, since I'm used to seeing pretty much everything in books, but it does mean that Resnick managed to fit a lot more in to one book, and also makes sense from the logical standpoint that you can't see everything at once. The one quibble I really have with the book also ties into the pacing - too much is tied up too fast at the end, and even though the inevitability of certain scenes wasn't a stretch of believability, the speed at which they occured and settled into place was. I suspect the heavy hand of an editor wanting to have a cleaner split between book one and two (did I mention that it's a trilogy? It's a fantasy book; of course it's book one of a trilogy). ( Things to do in England if you happen to be there and, you know, not dead )I can't decide if this is best described as pure or applied science. I lean towards the pure, myself. Certainly it's pure zymurgy (and I really don't get enough excuses to use that word). In other weird and amusing links, te presento an account of the origins of Ada Lovelace. You know how some films and books are really wonderful until you realise that depending on which bits you close your eyes to, they can be interpreted in a variety of ways. This site neatly cuts through any cosy enjoyment you might have had and presents you with the awful reality. You enjoyed Beowulf? You bastard. Didn't you know that its about colonists hiring an assassin to drive out the natives? For shame! Reminded by a recent conversation with snutters, I dredged up Rhetorical Flair as an happy reminder of the days when Bob was good. I couldn't tell you why this is funny, but it makes me laugh every time I see it, which is not often enough. | | Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | | 1:54 pm |
| | Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | | 5:03 pm |
Self-Injury Awareness Day
You know, it's been well over two years since I last cut myself deliberately. The scars have all faded and, unless you know to look for them, they're almost impossible to spot. I miss, and think about, cutting nearly every day. I'm not entirely sure what message about self-mutilation I want to get across there, but I figure a reminder that it exists is probably most important. It happens, and to a hell of a lot of people and for a hell of a lot of reasons. If you don't do it then you probably can't understand why anyone does or would, but you don't need to. It does make our lives easier if you're understanding, however. | | Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | | 1:01 pm |
Finally!
At last! Someone has gone and stated that there's no such thing as a sugar high. Thank Christ for that. Could people now please stop using it as a bloody pathetic excuse to be silly when they want to and get on with their fucking lives? Thank you. | | Saturday, December 13th, 2008 | | 4:54 pm |
Books, books and fewer books!
It has come to my attention, as I unpack my library, that there are some gaps in it. Could anyone who has any of my books please, well, let me know and we'll see about my collecting them at some point. I'm specifically looking for Order of the Stick's On The Origin of PCs but the other missing links would be nice too. | | Friday, December 12th, 2008 | | 12:18 pm |
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
lowellboyslash recently posted a review and commentary on Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and now it's my turn. It's an fairly entertaining book, and a very long winded way for Doctorow to explain at great length why he agrees with Heinlein's "The right to bear weapons is the right to be free." The basic thesis is this - tech-savvy high school kids fight back against the evils of the Department of Homeland Security, proving that security theatre is just that and painting authority as evil, corrupt and self-serving. Oh, and the lead character, this being a book about teenagers coming-of-age as well, gets laid. That, if anything, is one of the book's two great weaknesses. The first is that Doctorow falls into the Gilbert and Sullivan trap, and by the end of the book *everyone* is happily married or the appropriate 21st century equivalent. The second is that he keeps explaining the tech-stuff for the uninitiated, often at great length. Informative, yes, but it still comes off as condescending and rather breaks the flow of the story. Still, it's worth a read. John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is a very entertaining film. It's also utter trash and not very good trash at that. The plot is simple - on a Mars run by a lesbian matriarchy (one wonders how many lesbian matriarchs there can be), a mining crew release the wind-borne spirits of the previous inhabitants of Mars who resemble in every way possible Khornate berserkers and proceed to do what Khornate berserkers do best, but badly. Oh, and the protagonists kill lots of them. The film also has a phenomenal degree of metacharacter to it. The bulk of the film exists as a flashback as the female lead gives her report on the incident to her superior, or at least higher ranked, officers. There are occasionally flashbacks within this. And, on one memorable occasion, a flashback within a flashback within the overall flashback. This film is the bloody and incoherent cousin of an onion. And now, as moment of comic relief and a brilliant example of why I have a great deal of suspicion for most literary critics and their work - I give you the feminist reading of Portal as a game in which traditional feminine roles are subverted and male power challenged by a gun which fires glowing vaginas. | | Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | | 12:21 pm |
| | Saturday, November 29th, 2008 | | 6:51 pm |
Like bamboo
This post has grown over the time it has been in preparation. It was, originally, quite short. Oh well. Never mind. I give you: Site-pimping, books, random stuff, a wasted lagomorph and a bit about gaming. ( Good Old Games and Kamikaze Cookery )( What could be better than books? )Walking through Sheffield recently, weebleflip and I spotted a stall selling "Blue Obsidian". These smooth, transparent and pale blue lumps were further labled as "a man-made crystal" and "works on the throat". It's things like that which really make you lose faith in humanity. ( These make no sense at all ... )Several weeks back, I spent a week with the sentence, "What a waste of a perfectly good lagomorph," running through my head. Having bugged weebleflip about it and raged against Google's inability to tell me anything about it, I finally just asked snutters about it and he replied, "Road Waffles." As such, I give you a wasted lagomorph. ( You can lead a gamer to water, but you can't expect him to make a swim-check ... ) | | Friday, November 7th, 2008 | | 6:20 pm |
Well, the nice thing about the trains on the East Coast Main Line these days is definitely the free WiFi. It's thanks to that that this LJ-post is able to continue my habit of ranting about books and things for the enlightenment and amusement of my adoring fans and, of course, both people who read this blog. First up today is a brief discussion of Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz. I read it, almost amusingly, on this selfsame train three weeks ago and have been meaning to moan about it since. It's a fantasy novel set in England sans serial numbers, where the bigoted and fanatical but not actually evil Catholic Church hates a race called the Deryni who have magical powers. And then politics, rivalry and assassinations ensue. They ensue badly. The characters are bland and two dimensional. The politicking is simplistic and uninteresting. The assassinations start out with some potential but are badly described and set up, and basically too poorly explained, justified and solved to actually make me care. Oh, and the young protagonist grows up and gets magic powers. You'll never guess my opinion of said magic powers, will you? Crap. The different powers, spells and artifacts shown are simultaneously stated to be of the same origin and shown to have fuck all in common. Some require chanting in bad English poetry. Some the chanting of numbers in Latin whilst rearranging odd artifacts. Some require nothing but a thought. Reading minds is by turns trivial and exhausting, but apparently some artifacts allow easy teleportation without the need for anyone gifted to use them. It's clunky as hell. So, to sum that all up, don't bother with it. There's a whole series that follows after it, but I'm not going to chase them up. They'd need to be a hell of a lot better to be worth thinking about it. To counter the negativity, I instead give you something glorious. Dan Akroyd is a complete nutter; we've known that for ages. With the advent of Crystal Head Vodka, we now have proof. Watch the video, really. It's worth it for the pure astonishment. And after all, it must be good vodka - it's filtered through Diamonds[1]! Oh, and I got some results. Nice ones, too, though the follow-up work for one of them is going to be a cow. ::sighs:: Still, it was heartening after so long with nothing. And one of them slots straight into a paper Keith's written, so it looks like I'll be published from the post-doc before anything from my PhD sees the light of day,
[1] Herkimer diamonds are, in fact, not diamonds at all, but a form of quartz. Not that that probably makes a great deal of difference to either Akroyd or his customers. | | Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | | 6:02 pm |
Well, about eight years after I was first invited to Durham to visit shimgray, I made it. Pity I missed him by about five years, but given my usual sense of timing, that's scarcely worth mentioning. Durham, I've always assumed from the views I've had from the railway, is quite pretty. I was wrong. Durham is sodding gorgeous. There are hills, trees, a river, buildings of stone so old it's rotted away in the centuries of rain and a lot of twisty, turny streets. People often say that Cambridge is beautiful and I've always disagreed, saying that it's got some pretty bits but is mostly fairly generic. Durham has some generic bits, and probably some very ugly bits. The other side of the spectrum goes a lot further though, and the nice bits are just so much nicer than anything I've seen in .cam or .ox that it's not funny. It also felt so much more alive than either of the other two. I can only assume this has to do with the twisting layout and the plentiful greenery in and about the city centre, since wherever you went the view changed. Either way, a lovely place and I'll have to go back. Hell, it'd almost be worth a visit just to go back to the Victoria Inn and try the rest of the beer. I had a pint of Devil's Water there and only time constraints really kept me from having another. On a different tack entirely, I doubt there's anyone who's not familiar with Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons, a frankly hilarious, if hate-filled, diatribe about why playing Dungeons and Dragons will turn you into a Satanist. Most of us, though, thought that sort of crap was thankfully lost in the past. It seems we might have been wrong. To cut a long story short, GenCon 2008 raised $17000 at a charity auction and gave it to the Christian Children's Fund, E. Gary Gygax's chosen charity. Or rather they tried to do so and the donation was allegedly refused because they couldn't accept money of which some part had been raised from the sale of D&D books and paraphernalia. There's various fluff floating about regarding whether or not that's the real reason they didn't accept it, but the now official reason, that they don't want to be seen as endorsing a gaming convention, seems a little thin to me. Being selected as a beneficiary doesn't actually, to my knowledge, require them to do anything. Weird, either way, and worrying. | | 4:59 pm |
Films are probably another good place to start. I've watched three things recently which stuck in my head, and here they are in no particular order. Mr & Mrs Smith was just what the doctor ordered. I'm not sure how I missed this when it came out, but I only actually found out about it by seeing the spoof of it on a Simpson's Treehouse of Horror episode. The premise is simple: Two deadly assassins discover that their slightly estranged, ignorant and normal spouses are, in fact, each other. Oh, and they work for opposing agencies. Wacky hijinks ensue as they try to decide if they're actually in love or whether or not to kill each other. It's exactly as silly as that sounds and it's fun. Mindless entertainment with a good mix of laughter and big fucking guns is worth knowing about and this does that very well indeed. The Big Lebowski is also a very funny film. That's all it has in common the Mr & Mrs Smith. Following a few days in the life of total drop-out and waster Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, the film is pretty much entirely character driven, with the surreal happenings serving only to given the Dude and his friends things to riff off. The film starts out with the Dude setting off to get compensation because a chinaman pissed on his rug, and goes further off the rails from there. Just watch it - you'll thank yourself. Continuing the let's-watch-films- weebleflip-hasn't-seen theme of late, Airplane was pulled off the shelves and set spinning. I'm not going to bother explaining this one - if you haven't seen it, you should go and do so. What struck me about it was what they got away with that you just couldn't do these days without people going up in smoke. The smoking, for a start, but also the paedophilia references and the jokes about jive-talking. They lined the sacred cows up and very carefully took pot-shots at each one, carefully making sure that everyone had steak. Except, I suppose, the poor bastards who had the fish. Soon to follow - The Blues Brothers! | | 4:35 pm |
Books. Books always seem like a good place to start. I recently read Light by M. John Harrison and I don't recommend it. In fact, I think I'd go out of my way to suggest that people don't bother. The author seems to be under the delusion that because he doesn't understand any physics, it's OK to make up random shit and pontificate about it as if it is physics. This, in turn, justifies to his use of steam-of-consciousness inspired descriptions of things to hide the fact that he doesn't really have anything to say. There's a lot of babble which tries to be mystical and philosophical and fails, instead being incoherent. The characters barely manage one dimension, the plot is thin, circular and uninteresting and there are very few ideas in there worth any time and those that are aren't really given much. As for the Belgariad, I recently reread it and am amazed by it. It's pretty much an accepted truth by scifi fans that Eddings isn't much of an author and that he only has one plot and one set of characters. I'll not dispute that. That said, the Belgariad is where they first appeared and they're damned fun books. They're clearly aimed at fourteen year olds, by the way, but don't let that put you off. There are two things which struck me as I reread them which make the books stand out from most fantasy. The first is how culturally diverse they are - there are seven gods, and each is represented by a nation of people. What's important, however, is that each of these nations is divided into multiple cultures. There are loads of them, and they all have distinct behaviours, clothing, and economies. Yep, economies. True, they're not fleshed out much beyond favoured imports and exports, but that still puts it ahead of the pack. The second is that it skips time quite a bit. The five books are set over a period of about two years. As such, Belgarion does grow from a callow youth to a competent swordsman as is standard, but he doesn't do so in the course of a week, but rather from two years travelling with and training with some of the best warriors of the land. Taken together, these aren't really enough to make the books sound appealing, but the other ingredient is the sense of fun. The books are written with a sense of humour firmly in place, and are full of exciting, interesting and new things to see as the likable characters move from place to place. The Belgariad will never be reckoned as great literature, but as something to curl up with as comfort reading, it's some of the best. As an aside, I do like the illustration on the Amazon page I linked to for the Belgariad. Can anyone think of a better way to destroy the mechanical integrity of a sword than by doing that to the hilt? | | Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | | 5:09 pm |
| | Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | | 12:27 am |
In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt. What a joke. | | Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | | 6:59 pm |
Here's a bunch of unrelated stuff, both to each other and anything much. I'm generous with my spraff. Twice in one day, it's nearly unheard of. In a surprising turn of events, Bob the Angry Flower didn't suck recently. In fact, these two strips ( here and here) manage to recover a little of what made Bob so special way back when. They also reveal just what the true horrors of set theory and, by extension, mathematicians are. They know! They've known all along! And they didn't tell us! With less humour and more landscape, let us move onwards to the Lake District. weebleflip and I spent a happy long weekend there, walking, eating, sleeping, walking, walking, walking, eating, walking and reading books. Oh, and visiting second hand book shops and stone circles. During the weekend, I learned a new thing and had a another one I already knew confirmed. Specifically, I learned that weebleflip's response to the more magnificent and stunning hills and forests of the Lakes is, in every case, "Pretty lumpy bits." What was confirmed was that Tebay is, in fact, the centre of the universe. I'm sure I cannot be alone in hating the Olympic Games themes and shitey jingoism which seem to have consumed the country. All the adverts are sport themed. All I hear or see on the news is about sodding medals or the fact that the Australians are apparently special in that they wish that the UK had won fewer. There's also a lot about how it makes people proud to be British. What the crap? For all that I can't stand most sports, I acknowledge that the people willing medals have achieved a lot and worked very hard. Frankly, they deserve congratulations. As for anyone else - what the hell do you have to be proud of that someone else whom you've never met, from a different part of the country and with an utterly different accent and social background, someone in short with whom you've barely a shared language in common and nothing else, has done well based on their hard work and your absence? It's interesting for the sports enthusiasts and utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Do you think we could get the news to shut up about it? It's always funny when you see a name you recognise in the news. In this case, Karl Sandeman quoted on BBC news in an article which the explanations of the magneto- and electrocaloric effects are mangled to be entirely understandable if you already know what they are and complete gibberish if you don't. I'm particularly fond of the line 'certain materials with "magnetic dipoles" that act like tiny compass needles.' Magnetic dipoles are apparently a strange, exotic thing and also probably macroscopic. ::sighs:: That said, the phrase "order/disorder dance" is a pleasing one. By now, many people will doubtless have become aware of Lost Boys 2: The Tribe by way of Randy Milholland's comments on SomPos. Fewer of you might be aware of just how fond I was of the first film. As such, when a similar fan came to visit, we just had to watch the sequel. Wow. If you ever get the opportunity to see it, don't. Find anything else at all, even reruns of Songs of Praise redubbed into Swahili by a German with an English/French and German/Swahili dictionary and a failed GCSE French equivalent. The acting is terrible. There is one scene where the female lead manages a very convincing soulless look which fits perfectly. Unfortunately, she wears the same look through the whole thing. The script is awful. It's contrived and clumsy, poorly paced and desperately tries to recreate specific scenes from the original but completely out of context and with no style. The first film had vampires who were rebels, wild bikers with no respect for authority. This one has drunken fratboys. As Randy said, "In fairness, Feldman is the best part of Lost Boys 2 ... Poor Bastard." Yep, Cory Feldman reprises his role of Edgar Frogg, and handily since the only thing which has changed is his facial hair. It's almost terrifying. So, to summarise, don't pay for it, see it or think about it. You'll be happier that way. | | 5:56 pm |
Here we find the thoughts of the fhtagn on books. Many books, varied in topic and ... ach, fuck it. I read things. I tell you about them. The Etched City by K.J. Bishop is a very strange book. It starts off looking like a fantasy (but only in the sense that it's not on Earth) western, and then very, very slowly becomes more and more strange. It becomes, at the end, a comparatively low-magic fantasy merged with a strange grotesquery of imagery. I did enjoy it, and I'd probably read another book by the author again. Nevertheless, it was ... odd. It gets compared a great deal to the New Crobuzon books by China Mieville. This is at least partially justified, in that the sense of overwhelmingly alien and strange landscapes and people is similar. The writing style is, however, very different. As previously mentioned, I've been reading the Felix Castor books by Mike Carey and enjoying them. I do have to take a moment to bitch about something though. Specifically, the hyperintelligent idiocy of the main character. It's a common problem everywhere - characters who're nominally intelligent who then go and do very dumb things for no reason other than that it makes the plot flow. In this case, Felix has a great disdain for what he calls Necromancy, utterly incorrectly. Necromancy is what he practices; what he hates is better described as Demonology, namely the summoning and binding of demons. Nevertheless, he despises it as foolishness and nine tenths garbage. Then, in the space of very little time, he makes the acquaintance of several genuine demons, discovers that others with his gift can bind humans (specifically him) as well as demons and ghosts, is reminded that he once bound and nearly destroyed a still living soul and is plunged into some very complicated infernal politics. As a result of this he ... does not in fact read any grimoires, despite their availability, test his powers despite opportunity or ask any of the far more experienced and knowledgeable people to whom he has trivial access anything. He, for no reason other than it'd break Carey's plot, remains pig-ignorant. And that, my friends, is fucking irritating. Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth are a recently released duology by ... Elizabeth Bear. I'm sure that came as an immense surprise to everyone. These two form a complete set known as "The Stratford Man" and plonk the Promethean Age firmly in the period of that bloke well known for his good plays and also the screaming trainwreck known as "Romeo and Juliet". The two books are easy to read, entertaining and do fill in the universe of the Promethean Age books nicely. They're just, frankly, not as good as the first two. The ideas are great, as ever, but there aren't as many of them. The characters are, unfortunately, less interesting as well. This is largely because they are all, every single one of them barring three queens, male and gay or bi. Kit Marlowe's sexuality was nicely used in Whisky and Water, but here it becomes a heavy club, bludgeoning you about the head with the GayIsn'tEvil stick. This is a pity, because noone of the right wing nutjob front would ever read such a book anyway (it has faeries in it, after all) and the rest of us don't need to be told the sodding obvious. It's never as cloyingly condescending as a Mercedes Lackey book when going about it, but it is very noticeable. Aside from that, the story is fun and nicely paced, and gives an interesting and different view of the internal bickerings of the Prometheans as seen in the books set further in the future. The use of magic is nicely understated, and makes it feel like a fundamental underpinning of the world rather than the tacked-on flash-bang effects which you occasionally get. I enjoyed the books, but not nearly as much as Blood and Iron and Whisky and Water. Those two made these two leap straight to the top of the to-read pile and there were devoured immediately. Had I read these first, I'd still have gone for the other two, but they'd just have joined the pile and been read eventually. Oh, and one other flaw. At one point, the following sin is committed. "[William Shakespeare] leveraged his pen." Leverage is a noun. It is not a verb. And yes, I know it is used as a verb in US English (hah!). Given that it's first recorded use as such is in 1937 and on a different continent, that just makes it worse given the Elizabethan setting. White Wolf have just released Hunter: The Vigil, continuing a long tradition of taking words and misusing them terribly. Honestly, the use of vigil was a nice idea until they started capitalising it. In Vampire, it made sense to capitalise Masquerade - it was the highest law. Likewise Apocalypse, Ascension, Awakening and Forsaken. They all refer to significant, metaphysical points in setting. The vigil, however, is just a general term for what is, in fact, not really a vigil at all except in some circumstances, but in fact far more of, well, a hunt. Hunter: The Hunting doesn't sound wanky enough though, does it? I've only had a chance to give bits a brief once-over, but some things immediately leaped out at me. Firstly, a quick glance through the sample organisations shows some really nice story seeds and a good mix of friends and foes, regardless of your affiliation. Secondly, as is usual for WW, some things are just fucking dumb. One of the organisations is called The Lucifuges. They're comprised of the descendants of demons, and turn their infernal heritage to good. A nice enough idea. The name, however, is just dumb. Who the hell thought it a good idea to call an organisation which rejects darkness the "Fly from light"s? Then there's the fact that their mission is to find devil-children and either induct them in to the order, turning them to good, or to kill them, preventing them from turning to evil. Again, nice. Except ... there are only ever 666 members at any one time. As such, in order to gain a new member they have to kill one of their own (save that they don't, in fact, do so) and would have to kill loads of potential members just to keep the numbers balanced. It's just ... dumb. Hell, their flavour-fiction describes one member's vision of a prior member dying and thus him gaining his powers and being absorbed into the society. There's another lovely example in the pseudo-scientific powers section. Don't get me wrong, the idea of magically inspired scientists grafting bits of supernaturals onto people as (un)living cyberwear is very cool. As, indeed, are some of their examples. The Devil's Eyes, however, are special. They grant "perfect 20/20 vision" and the ability to see auras. Perfect 20/20 vision. Amazing how supernaturally keen vision is actually kinda crap. I know we're a society reduced to admiring mediocrity and banality for the sake of anything better to do, but surely an arcane techno-magical society, grafting cybernetically interfaced demon eyes into willing subjects, could do a little better than the acceptable level. | | Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | | 12:25 pm |
Attention Gmail users
Apparently, there's a nifty piece of software floating around which utterly comprises the standard gmail security. Details (and the trivial fix) can be found here. More updates will follow when I have time. | | Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | | 1:24 pm |
| | Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | | 10:00 pm |
Right. My phone is definitely gone. The new one, however, has the same number. Everyone should feel free to SMS me to make sure I know who's who, but at least the old number still works. Oh, and that's Dr fhtagn, now. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
