strangetwn_god

Bat Out of Hell, written to be the ultimate roadkill love song.



Born to Run

Picked this up because it was on sale and a recipient of a World Fantasy Award nomination. Only about 1/3rd of the way through it, but it's interesting so far.

Although it's firmly a "companion animal" novel, it manages to avoid the more syrupy, wish-fulfillment aspects of the subgenre by making the companion animals into a visible stigma associated with crime and guilt. The result adds a bit of conflict back into an idea that's been often justifiably criticized as pretty ponies and pocket dragons. There's also an implicit social metaphor in making the companion animal a visible sign of a criminal past.

Have been announced. A pretty diverse set of books and authors.

Yeah, that's not remotely suggestive.

( Read more... )




I've figured that the best way to cheat the whole courtship/compatibility problem is to have your heirs date classmates, and then throw a birthday party for your best friend. Nothing like grabbing the teen sweetheart. So Lakshmi Martinez gets Bonnie Simovitch of the great personality and unfortunate hair. 



Since I'm trying out Generations, I throw a batchelorette party for Lakshmi, which turns out to be just as tasteless as the real thing. The exotic dancer shows up, sets up in the bathroom, and gets immediately shooed out. And unlike every other party, the guests just won't go home. I had the exotic dancer and two other guests sleeping on lawnchairs.



After a morning's sleep and a shower, it's time for the of Lakshmi and Bonnie of the unfortunate hair.



Constance of the behive hair, is really excited by the wedding. She's so excited, she spends the next three hours of game time throwing rice at an empty arch.



Three discoveries about weddings in Generations:
1: You get valuable prizes and gifts.
2: Newlyweds are extremely affectionate with each other.
3: They have a "get frisky" interaction, which appears to mean, "let's have a quickie."



Since I'm the impatient sort, Bonnie of the less unfortunate hair calls the adoption agency the next day. The day after Chandra arrives I get the doll, and pretty soon I have toddler-doll interactions. Toddlers are obsessed with the magic doll. And the magic doll is obsessed with the toddler, teleporting to whatever room the toddler happens to be in.



So Chandra ages up. Eats cake goes to bed, and is awakened by Bink the Doll. I can't figure out if this is cute or creepy.

I've figured out why the new Smufs creep me out, it's because seeing them on screen, I expect them to turn into this:

I was looking back over my old Sims 2 journals and feeling kind of bummed. Some of them were not that bad and I had the motivation to create. On the other hand, playing games with a self-imposed publication schedule became a significant drag.

Arguments for: I don't do enough "sit down and write" time. The publication industry is changing in various ways and I know some people who do better with self-publishing than trying to rise out of the slush pile, and it's not like I have a traditional writing career to ruin at this point.  A self-imposed deadline of one chapter a week or two would probably be less stressful than trying to binge with nano. Cherrie Priest managed it, and of course Dickens is famous for originally working in serial form.

Arguments against: I generally have bad follow-through. Why do I think that anyone would want to read it? And shouldn't I be chasing down and strangling my dream of jumping out of the slush pile to become a modestly successful writer?

The story in question would likely be my Nano 2010 Truthteller rather than Sister Raven, which is a bit too tender and dear to put out in that way. I've been working on Sister Raven in some form for over 15 years.

I was holding off on getting an expansion because my 9-Generation legacy was starting to get intolerably slow load times. I probably didn't help things much by sending siblings off into the neighborhood to fill it up with second and third cousins, all of whom have the full family tree.

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I watch old television.

For some reason, I've started to watch Babylon 5 now that I'm finally over the negative association I had with a certain ex who took it way too seriously. Anyway, it's a mixed-bag of a science fiction series. On the one hand, it has a tendency to get overbearing and preachy, especially when it comes to the whole Delenn/Sheridan interspecies partnership as the chosen ones of a prophesy (involving wibbly-wobbly time travel) to save the galaxy from Big Bad.

On the other hand, where the show has some real magic to it is in dealing with the Little Bad of Londo-G'Kar-Vir. For most of the first season, Londo plays Bugs Bunny to G'Kar's overly serious Elmer Fudd. That changes when Londo takes a devil's deal to rekindle a centuries-old war between Londo's Centauri and G'Kar's Narn, with obvious parallels to Poland, Palestine, and Vietnam.

Londo is a nicely conflicted villain who embodies Neil Gaiman's maxim, "The cost of getting what you want, is getting what you wanted." G'Kar, no less a bigot than Londo, emerges as the moral prophet of the series. While Vir is the sorrowful low-level functionary who can't do much more than stutter apologies or say, "I told you so."

One of the best scenes involves minimal dialogue, Vir backs into an elevator to find an angry G'Kar staring at him. Over the course of a long silent minute, Vir works up the courage to mutter a heartfelt apology. G'Kar lets Vir hang for long moments, before delivering a poetic rejection.

It's the small moments like this where the show shines, and it's tendency to get preachy is forgivable.

In other random spew, I'm thinking about getting the Generations expansion for Sims 3, but I'm holding off until I get my current family through the 10th generation. Although I'm starting to have the ugly load-time curse at Generation 9.