I'm feeling really bored right now, so I'm going to pretend I'm a 14-year-old girl from 2004 and treat my blog like a diary for a night, just for shits and giggles. No single topic, just a bunch of loosely connected thoughts and facts about my life of late. If people actually like this, maybe I'll do it semi-regularly.
So, the Firefly stuff sort of imploded. Didn't realize how little I'd want to sit and watch TV, even Firefly, during the busier parts of my summer. I have not had a weekend to myself since June 11 and won't have one until just before classes start on the 23rd. I have either been elsewhere or had my grandparents in town or, in the case of this weekend, been packing any time a weekend rolled around for the last eight weeks. That might seem irrelevant during the summer, but when you consider the fact that my parents tend to forget that I am an adult and lay claim to most of my weekday evenings, it has added up to me having precious little time to enjoy this summer. In fact, the two best days I've had at home in my two and a half month stay were the two that I spent downtown on Jury duty. I got to explore and meet people and catch lawyers off guard and sit and read in peace. It was actually pretty awesome.
Speaking of reading, I've done a lot of that this summer. I mentioned that I finally got around to Pride and Prejudice in my (intentionally) somewhat controversial post on Mr. Darcy awhile back and wrote about my thoughts upon re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Beyond those two, I also read or re-read: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere which, while not my favorite of his novels, is likely his most accessible; Boneshaker, a very solid first entry into Steampunk by Cherie Priest; Mossflower, easily my favorite of the Redwall series; and the first five books in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series.
I wrote a little bit about the first book in this series and my thoughts on Fantasy as a whole when I started into it last summer. I'm happy to say that I have, by and large, quite enjoyed the books. They aren't without their faults. My biggest issue at first was that the first two books and more clung so closely to genre norms that I often saw Startling Revelations coming hundreds of pages in advance. During the third book, though, Butcher proves that all of the tropes were not a framework but mere scaffolding, and the series begins to move based on the considerable merits of its own setting and politics. More consistent problems, for me, include an occasional tendency towards the highly visual writing that makes Fantasy a difficult genre for me and Butcher's tendency to delve into unnecessary repetition of basic facts to make sure his audience is following along (how many times in a book do we need to be reminded of the importance of body language to the Canim?). By and large, though, Butcher keeps the pace flowing rapidly and the books are a solid read for fans, or lapsed fans, of Fantasy.
All of this reading got me to finally start working a little bit on a writing project I've been muddling over for years. Unfortunately I'm not talking about The Littlest Hobo, which tends to just make me go to very, very dark places. I've mostly got the loose details of a setting and a protagonist in place and am still trying to find the plot. I've got a couple of pages of establishing material written which I may post in the not too distant future. If anybody else would like to read about a "professional" medical test subject's experiences in a corporate dystopia, let me know.
I've been watching HIMYM with my mom lately (which is both weird and perfectly natural) and I've noticed that none of the characters beyond Barney, and, to a lesser extent, Robin, are terribly consistently defined in terms of personality. Ted can be perfectly charming and respectful in one episode and nearly as big a sleaze as Barney in the next; Marshall can't decide if he's the straigh-man or the goofball; and Lilly swaps between erudite and childlike at a whim. Honestly, though, I think that's part of why the series works and an important distinction between it and Friends, to which it will probably always be compared. None of us fills exactly one role in our social groups. We put on and take off hats as the situation demands it. It's nice to see characters who are similarly varied, even if the end result is sometimes more like season 5 and less like season 4.
Been cooking lots of Mexican/Tex-Mex lately. It's kind of like when I was first learning to cook and all I could really make was stir-fry and chili. My family was so blown away that they kept on asking me to make that same thing. Now I keep on getting talked into making tacos, guacamole, and salsa for people. As much as I love it, I'm hoping to move on to something new soon. Lots of ideas for soup recipes, especially ones that involve lentils and kale (though not together...yet). Here's hoping that the occasional weirdness of cooking at altitude won't kill that plan.
Not a lot of videogame action this summer. The same thing that killed the Firefly coverage killed that. Did finally cave in and pick up Jade Empire on Xbox Originals, though. I was...a bit disappointed. After reading IGN's 10.0 review, I was expecting something a little more. Part of the problem is that silent protagonists don't work as an emotional repository when the rest of the world talks. Bioware obviously realized this by the time they were making Mass Effect, and it's amazing how taking a certain amount of control away from the player -- giving the protagonist his/her own voice and words -- enhances attachment and even ownership. Bioware is apparently going a step further even in the Dragon Age sequel, allowing the user to select only the tone of the response, not even giving any sort of textual summary at the time of choosing. I'm excited to see how that will work out.
That's it, I guess. Hopefully everybody found something of interest.
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2 comments:
Jon, I think you're the most interesting 14 year old girl I've ever met. Sorry that you haven't had any alone time, and for whatever part my wedding had in that.
I certainly agree with your comment on the non reality of silent protagonists. Playing a video game is like reading a book or watching a movie in that you insert yourself into the writer's world and, in the case of video games, take control of one of their characters. I think the misconception was that a player would want the character they're playing to look and sound like them. But, for instance, Splinter Cell isn't about Andy DeJong sneaking around killing people, it's about Sam Fisher -- and Sam Fisher has his own voice. But if he never speaks, it is much more difficult to understand his personality, and therefore, to feel attached to the character. I imagine that this is especially true in games such as Mass Effect where the player gets to impart his/her personality on the protagonist in other ways (i.e. choices).
Dude, no offense to certain other readers, but your wedding was by far the best weekend I had this summer. No apologies needed. :)
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