Pendulum - Propane Nightmares (official site)
Pendulum is some hot and long-standing music. Originally drum-and-bass (shit like this - give it until 1:37, there’s a build here) they now do more electro-clash-muddled-with-rock-and-hey-doesn’t-he-kind-of-sound-like-that-dude-from-the-offspring-esque stuff (the above-linked Propane Nightmares), both of which I like.
I’ve been bad and not paying attention, and while my back was turned, my friends did awesome things!
First of all, there’s Sharon Mock’s beautiful story The Armature of Flight up at Fantasy. I won’t ruin it for you, except to say that really, beautiful is the only word I can think to describe it. It’s carefully rendered and subtly tragic. Love it.
And then there’s Shweta Narayan who is always busy with something. Her story, The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, is first available through Shimmer’s Clockwork Jungle edition. And now, it’s going to be reprinted in the Steampunk Reloaded Anthology as edited by the ever-stupendous VanderMeers, Ann and Jeff. (Ann, for those unaware, is EIC of Weird Tales, and is overflowing with passion about writers developing their craft. I’ve mentioned Jeff before, but to recap: he’s an odd one. They did the previous Steampunk Anthology which was, I feel, a good representation of what Steampunk is for beginners, and was in need of a companion, which I’m glad to hear is coming out.) And all of her publication madness means she’s eligible for a Campbell. If you have the ability to nominate her, and appreciate her fiction (first taste is free… — also note that this is another story getting itself into an anthology!), please do so.
Whew. Gotta toddle off and see what else I’ve missed.
ETA: I have also been informed by Monsieur Kaolin (of the awesome GUD Magazine) that indeed a second taste of Shweta’s fiction is free. Which paints me as a dirty, filthy liar. I won’t deny it.
LCD Soundsystem: official site, rad song on youtube
Musics from Britain that apparently does quite well for itself, and has been doing so since 2002. Mixing in parts punk and electro with an unobtrusive dash of disco, just enough to give it flavor, does not overwhelm. I say give ‘em a listen.
There have been two recent events that contribute to this blog post.
One of the events, which becomes two events if you slice it right, is the creation of a “self-publishing branch” by two professional publishers, Harlequin and Thomas Nelson. These events have caused a lot of drama (warning: epic thread is epic, and massive timesink of external linking). To sum: RWA, MWA, and SFWA have dropped both publishers from their lists of acceptable publishing credits. The well-respected publishing watchdog Writer Beware has relatively scathing posts about these two moves. WB is definitely not an alarmist blog, and is very careful about the language used concerning publishers, due to living under persistent threat of lawsuit. So if WB calls you out in unequivocal language, son, you done fucked up.
The other is that I rediscovered this article. Which is a lot less to read than the above.
If you ever hit up any of these “self-publishing” sites for testimonials (more on the scare quotes later) you’ll see hearts like cups filled with effervescence, spilling over in their joy of having Their Story in book form, surrounded by stock photos of Not The Actual Author Because They Can’t Smile Quite As Disarmingly As This Soft-Focused Photo Of A Woman Done In Pastels.
These publishers, in their efforts to entice you, will engage in a persuasive speech of the downtrodden author, kept down by “the man” as embodied by traditional publishing, mocked openly by the gatekeepers who presume to call themselves literary agents, the verysame agents who go on to demand a sizable portion of your hard-won advance for doing something so simple as passing your manuscript to an editor. Their arguments are propped up by strawmen at best, and like all modern persuasive speeches, they’re going to net only Kool-Aid drinkers and the uninformed. The rest of us know better.
But I’m not really interested in persuading the Kool-Aid drinkers to change their ways. I’ve said it before, I’m saying it again, and I’ll keep saying it: I’m selfish, my time is valuable, and I’m not going to waste it. If anyone should be enticed by dreamily-painted arguments instead of numbers and fact, then I don’t mind seeing their wallet molested because they feel Night Travels of the Elven Vampire “deserves to be read.”
As far as convincing those who are unaware of this world? There are many other places that can help them far better than I can. WB as listed above, AbsoluteWrite, and the still-useful Snarkives do this and I’m not a fan of doubling work.
Aside: Before I get into what I wanted to discuss, I’ll clarify those scare quotes. Self-publishing and Vanity Publishing are two different things. Self-publishing is where the author owns the ISBN and the product. Vanity publishing is where the author does not. They both require out-of-pocket expenditure to have the final product of a sheaf of paper with a glossy page on either end, both will not likely land in bookstores, and both require authors to bust their asses to get people other than close kith and kin to buy the books. But self-publishing tends not to lie about what it is. Vanity does. Especially on the points I listed.
Aside, continued: Legitimate self-publishing is, in my opinion, pretty awesome. It lets you bind your family history in a book. It lets you collect grandma’s recipes to hand to your kids and their kids. It helps make your niche paper on the parallels of microorganism reproduction and Internet memes accessible to the public. It doesn’t get your book mentioned on Oprah, but it gets your work out to interested audiences. And, you own said book. Not so with Vanity, which targets a different audience (hopeful novelists) with a different goal (you might get discovered this way and become all super-famous and shit).
Anywhoozle.
For those who didn’t want to read the article I linked (that’s okay, it’s six pages for a small point) I’ll summarize it here, sloppily: people with self-control do better in life. For those of you who did read the article (good job): yes, a lot more than that happened in the article, but that’s all I care about, and I’d be very happy if you went along with me on that one point, thanks.
The Marshmallow Experiment. You set a marshmallow in front of a child. Tell them if they don’t eat it for fifteen minutes, then they get a second marshmallow. Some children are able to resist. Others are not. The children who said no to the marshmallow in favor of two marshmallows have, across the board, done better in life, because they were able to weigh short-term gain and long-term gain.
You see where I’m going with this.
Vanity presses are the now-marshmallow. It’s the one sitting on your desk, teasing you. Give in and you’ll have that book in your hands tomorrow! Professional, traditional publishing is the later-marshmallow. Why wasn’t your novel published? Well, because it sucks and you need to work on that. Maybe your characters are flat. Maybe your prose is dead on the page. Maybe your story isn’t compelling. You’re trying to sell your book to people who love books, both pre- and post-publication. The masses who pick up DaVinci Code are not your audience. The people who just “pop in to have a quick look” and walk out with an armful of new titles because omg I didn’t know he’d just released a new book, and I’ve heard a lot about this series I should check it out, and I totally love her medical mysteries and she blurbed this other author’s medical mystery so I want to read that, and… you get the idea. This is your audience. And these people? They’ve read a lot. A lot. They’re going to be harder to convince of how awesome your book is.
Writing is hard. Your first draft needs work. Your first novel isn’t likely to get published (but zomg it took a year to write!). But if you work at your craft with your eye on the distant prize of being a Professional Author instead of just a hobbyist and ignore the temptation of just having a book in your hands with your name on it, you’re going to be a fair sight better off.
This is the metacognition part. Think about how you think about publishing. Do you think being published is a human right, alongside clean water and a Louis Vuitton bag? Well, it’s not. Never was. It is the result of hard work, diligence, and a creative streak, and in this like all things the world owes you nothing. If the temptation of Vanity presses prove overwhelming, play metacognative tricks. Ignore the low-hanging fruit which is rotted at the core. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Play with your stories, worlds, characters. Read more. Go to conventions. Blog. When a Vanity press creeps into your periphery, turn your head and focus.
And if you honestly hate working at the craft of writing, find something better to do. Painting, interior design, blacksmithing, I don’t care. If you really want to write stories but don’t want to deal with serious publication, I suggest posting online and pursuing fanfiction. Scratches the writing itch, you get to share your work, and there’s no cost out of pocket. Just don’t waste your time doing something for the wrong reasons that makes you unhappy. You time is as precious as mine is.
Say no to the Now Marshmallow. Find your Later Marshmallow and go get it.
Heat oven to 350F.
This recipe came out a bit carrot-cake-esque. I suspect it was the use of nutmeg and cinnamon. Next time I make this recipe, I will cut back on the cinnamon and cut the nutmeg entirely, see how that helps the flavor. Overall, the cake itself is very lightly flavored, so I recommend going easy on the lemon in your frosting.
Also, I made these as regular old muffins the next day, glazing the tops with a sugary lemon-juice mixture. Those went over really well.
I decided to try an idea. The Friday Rad. Like Music Monday except I share the coolest thing I done seen on the internet all week.
CL!CK: A Lego Short Film. It’s a short film done in stop-motion, which conveys the iterative process that is creativity, with fantastic music and wonderful visual direction. Seriously, I want to shake the hand of whoever did the sound for that thing.
Of course if you follow me on twitter this sort of thing will prove utterly useless. But perhaps I have followers here that aren’t on twitter? I haven’t the mechanisms to measure these metrics. And that’s a lot of M’s.
Note to self: sort out why I can’t fscking embed youtube videos. Nothing works. Also, site redesign. I really want to get on that. Something simple.
With a bonus level at the end.
Disclaimer: If you think a game should have been on this list and it wasn’t, it’s likely I simply haven’t played it. Bear in mind, I am but one woman, and in this decade I finished high school, college, started a master’s degree, went through some roughness, moved out of my parents’ basement, and in general did shit.
Listed in no true order except that my favoritest of ever is the last one…
Anyone who knows me knows I’ve sunk too many hours of my life into this game. Even running a /played on every one of my characters across every server is inaccurate, because I’ve deleted level 25 characters for petty reasons, like not liking their name or eye color or whatever. I still miss the days of rolling through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair with nothing between me and death save a priest who likes to remind warlocks that they have healthstones and life tap is not an excuse.
The game that clearly played too much tabletop Call of Cthulhu, persistently demanding you roll for sanity and taking particular delight in your rolling a 1. I loved how obviously this game read Poe and Lovecraft and maybe a few history books. And anybody who has played this remembers the tub. That’s all I have to say.
I’m really goddamn lucky Metroid Prime and Super Metroid came out in different decades. If I ever had to make the call between those two… well, it’d go to Super Metroid, but then I’d miss out on talking about teh darmaz surrounding Metroid Prime. The transition to 3D was ill-received by fans, until they actually played it, and then shut the hell up except for the occasional breathless utterances of gratitude. It managed to maintain the feel of Metroid, but move into a more FPS feel. Still doesn’t beat Super Metroid for Best Metroid Game Ever, but it’s been a wonderful addition to the series.
Wacky art, hilarious writing, incredible character, fun, unique, yet intuitive gameplay… all of that is just longhand for “Double-Fine.” For those unfamiliar, Double-Fine is headed by Tim Schafer, who was responsible for the fun subset of LucasArts games, before Lucas decided to focus on the Star Wars IP, ride it hard and put it away wet. Schafer decided balls to that and ran off to make the same kinds of games, to the same kind of critical acclaim, but maybe weaker sales. I don’t know. Money is a mystery to me. Point is, if you missed this one, then fuck you, go fix it.
If you missed the meme, then I don’t know what to do with you. The only downside to this game is that it’s too short, and I mean this sincerely. You can roll out of bed on Saturday morning and blast this game beginning-to-end in the time it takes the WBKids morning line-up to wrap (make sure your DVR records Ben 10). Made as a final project by some clever assholes at DigiPen, music by Jonathan Coulton, this is the cleverest game to come out in some time. If you don’t understand, watch the trailer.
Look, I don’t even like shooters. It’s thanks to the afore-mentioned Metroid Prime that I can even play in the first-person view. But this game rocked me, and I never would have played it if it wasn’t for the Orange Box. Personally, I favored the Doctor, because it’s fun keeping a rampaging Heavy alive, and if he drops due to sheer idiocy (seen it happen) I can sweep in with my needle gun and hacksaw and handle bidnizz (trufax). The trailers and ads for this game are hilarious, and worth your time searching for on the toobz.
Deliriously entertaining, especially when you’re sitting in line at PAX. My best memory for this game is being stuck on one puzzle for a half hour, and bringing it to the PAX help desk. The Enforcer solved it for me, admitting he, too, was stuck on it for forty-five minutes before getting it. Kind of him. A collection of fun brainteaser puzzles with quaint art and a cute mystery. If you have a DS and you don’t have this game (there’s two now) you’re doing it wrong.
All I have to say is I was a motherfucker with Peach, Kirby, and Jigglypuff.
Seung Mina. Taki. Sophitia. Talim. Raphael. Astaroth. Voldo. Ivy. Yoshimitsu. Cervantes. Link on the GameCube. Spawn on the XBox. Nobody remembers who was on the PS2, but that’s okay, doesn’t matter, why would you ever play a fighter game with anything that isn’t the GCN controller? (More on this later.) I rocked this game in arcades and on the Dreamcast for hours on end, and continued to do so on the GameCube. A good, fun 3D fighter, well executed.
If you haven’t played this, kill yourself. You’ve missed out on the rebirth of the Resident Evil series, and the template from which RE5 was lazily lifted. If you wonder how much I loved this game, note that I named my beta fish Leon Kennedy. Yeah. That happened.
I’ll rate this not only as one of the top games of the past decade, but also one of the most ignored. It enjoyed a renaissance some years down the line, but not enough to justify the dust it collected on shelves. It’s action-adventure, it’s stealth, it’s alien abduction and government conspiracy, it’s quirky, fun, and a hell of a good time. And, by now, it’s got to be super-cheap.
Do I even need to say it?
Made by the guys who gave us Ico (as if you couldn’t tell from the art style) this game is everything that is good about games, condensed. Boss battle after boss battle, and each one is fun. There’s really nothing bad to be said about this game. Anyone I know who has played it has fallen head-over-heels in love with it.
Try explaining this game to someone, and they’ll think you’re crazy. Here. I’ll try: “Your father, the King of All Cosmos, has destroyed every star in the night sky on a drunken bender. It is now up to you, the Prince of All Cosmos, to fix it. You will do so by rolling around sticky balls and picking things up and those sticky balls become stars.” Yep. And somehow this was some of the most fun, creative, unique gameplay of the year. If that don’t sell you, check out the opening theme.
Sure, it’s apparent the writers read Atlas Shrugged, but don’t let that deter you. Artistically rendered, wonderfully written, intense gameplay, and subtly horrifying, this game will knock you on your ass, even if you hate the FPS genre. Fort Frolic was so incredible I restarted the game just to play it again.
If you haven’t played F-Zero before, I don’t know what to do with you. This is the pinnacle of non-realistic racers, the exact opposite of Gran Turismo. You don’t steer, you drift. The speeds you’re racing at can’t handle sharp movement. The gameplay hasn’t really changed from the original on the SNES, because it didn’t need to. Race for three laps, boost takes away from your life, power up strips to regenerate life, and boost bars to get you through the patches when you’re low on health. This was a favorite at Steak Night in college.
There’s a divided camp here, on where this game peaked. I’m a fan of the GCN version. Others say the N64 version is superior. Either way, this is a game worth your time. Change the setting to maximize the madness that items can induce, because this game isn’t about speed, it’s about awesome upsets. As for me? I brought the Blue Sparks.
This is and isn’t a rough call for me, which Fatal Frame to pick as the top. Both one and two are incredible (we’re not going to mention three). But Crimson Butterfly tips it over for me because this is the first, and thus far only, game to have ever successfully given me nightmares. The graphics here have aged beautifully. The game is wonderfully laid out, knowing just when to let you feel safe, and just when to horrify you. Pick this game up, play the first level, and then come to grips with the fact that what you have gone through is one very tiny house, and you have only fought one ghost. This? This shit right here? That was your fucking tutorial.
There’s a reason Yahtzee called this game the pinnacle of storytelling in games. Say what you will about the controls, but when you come to story, characters, atmosphere, camera positioning, replayability, general cohesiveness of a game, this one’s hard to beat. This game has aged wonderfully, and is playable even a decade later. If you can handle creepiness and horror, this is the best of the series, very closely followed by the first. (The only reason the first loses out to the second, for me, is the controls.)
Holy hell. What a goddamn good decade in games. You don’t even realize it until you step back and try to list what came out.
Unlike above, this is a for-reals countdown.
Why would someone so obviously a Nintendo fan hate the WiiMote? Because it hurts my fucking wrist, that’s why. I’ve been playing Metroid Prime 3 as of late, and I can’t play for very long because of that goddamn remote and my combination carpal tunnel and tendinitis. Terrible design, and worse because many games don’t support the optional GameCube controller. I’m a gamer. I don’t want to get off the damn couch for every game I play.
Oddly, I’d rather use this controller than the WiiMote, and that should be saying something. My narrow hands, suitable for delicate surgeries and withdrawing lost keys from narrow crevices, are more at home wrapped around this carved-stone controller than something that requires my wrist to twitch minutely for hours on end.
Hooray! Microsoft learned! Still not the best controller for prolonged gaming sessions, as my fingers are unable to curl, but the size is significantly more manageable.
Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m lumping all Sony controllers into one because there’s been no real change over the years. Which isn’t a bad thing. A solid design, comfortable, well crafted for extended gaming sessions. The only real difficulty is the labeling of the buttons instead of making them distinct shapes. Combos are a bit hard to learn when they tell you it’s up-over XXO and you have to look down to see what that means. Still, one of the best controller designs, a solid tradition they have no reason to change.
For my cold, wraith-like hands, nothing beats the GameCube controller. Sharp curves on the underside to allow my fingers space to curl around it, buttons placed so that combos are intuitive by touch alone, this controller is, in my opinion, the peak of controller-ness.
Here’s your Monday music dose, some Temper Trap for your ears: Science of Fear. And for funsies, I’ll toss the Filthy Duke’s Remix your way.
At some point I might comment on my holidays. Let it be noted that Christmas miracles occurred in the shape of my parents not being dreadfully embarrassed of me. The rest of my family still independently diagnoses me with Asperger’s, but what can you do?
So today I did a very silly thing: I set myself up to donate $500 to Child’s Play.
Child’s Play Charity started in 2003 (wow, has it been that long?) when the Gentlemens of Penny Arcade, The Gabe and The Tycho, decided to use the collected power of their readership, 4.5m strong at the time (likely stronger now), and funnel it at giving toys to sick kids. It has since spiraled out of control into a million-dollar-plus charity ($1.4m last year, already over $1m this year) giving money and toys to hospitals worldwide.
Note how I said “money and toys.” At PAX this year, a story was shared of a hospital in Egypt who asked — asked, because they did not want to be dishonest about where the funds were going — to buy paint for the walls. Paint. So the children aren’t surrounded by drab grey cement walls. My cold black heart grew three sizes that day.
The only problem I see with Child’s Play is that, as big as it is, I want it to be bigger.
First I tweeted that I would donate one dollar for every RT about Child’s Play (I had to not-count some because they didn’t include the Child’s Play name or URL, which is more important). Then The Gabe went and retweeted, and it became only a matter of time.
My honest hope is that this continues being RT’d. I don’t need my name attached to it anymore, because I’ve hit 500 and there’s no need for me to keep track of the RTs. I just want people to go and give what they can, and encourage others to do the same. And I want to get more people involved.
I’m sure there are haters out there, suspecting I did it for the glory. Go ahead and think that. I really don’t care. Nothing I argue will change your perspective. But at the end of the day, five hundred dollars are going from my pocket to Child’s Play, and I get to feel really good about that.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m currently working towards my master’s degree in computer engineering. This is among other things which consume my time, such as the working, the boy, the writing, the baking, the video games, the fire stuff, the pretending I’m normal so my family doesn’t cut me from the will. I am spinning many plates on sticks. Good thing most of it is Corningware.
Algorithms has taught me many debatably useful things. Such as:
– patience (I will not walk out of this class to get ice cream, yes it is boring and ice cream is delicious but I must not fail this course)
– restraint (don’t throw pens at the back of that one guy’s head despite how irritating he is, despite how useless his blurted-out and incorrect responses are, despite how obnoxiously nasal his voice is, seriously guy, can you talk through your mouth, or is it just a sound-shaping peripheral?)
– and which foods not to eat in closed spaces (cafeteria chili)
But in thinking about it, many things I learned in algorithms apply to writing, so I’ve decided to list them. Don’t worry if you’re not technical, everything is explained.
Fun aside: Writing really shares many parallels with coding. For instance, style. There are some writers whose styles are so distinct that you can be handed an unlabeled page of fiction and name the author. There are programmers on my team at work whose programming styles are so unique, I can instantly pick out who wrote what.
(1) “Brute Force will be your first answer. It should not be your only answer.”
You will find a Solution to a problem. And it will be quite good and efficient, in your eyes. This will be your first Solution. But then you look further and say, well, perhaps a vector was not my best choice. And oh, look, I can actually run these two operations simultaneously. And wouldn’t it be better if I could spawn this off as a separate process and let the rest of the app continue working. Et cetera. This will be your first Solution. It better not be your only solution.
You will compose a Story. And it will be quite good and lovely, in your eyes. (Or perhaps not, depending on your particular mental configuration.) This will be your first solution to the problem of writing down your Story. But even though you really wanted a specific character to play a specific role in the ending, maybe it’s not his job. Maybe it’s her job. Maybe it’s their job together. Maybe you have to cut him entirely from the story. This is your first solution. It better not be your only. No matter how lovely you think it is, it can be more lovely.
(2) “The problem will be NP-Hard, but not too hard.”
There is a vast, gaping difference between describing a problem and solving it. Certain problems are very easy to describe. For example, the Travelling Salesman problem. You have a salesman. He is, as the name denotes, travelling. He has to fly to a bunch of cities the area he’s covering, and each city is connected by a flight, and each flight has a cost. What is the cheapest way to fly to every city, stopping at each city only once?
Sounds easy, non? If you find the solution, please let me know. I’d love to get in on that sweet multi-million-dollar action. (No, seriously. There’s heavy money on the line if you solve that in under O(n2) time.)
This is not unlike a good book. The IDEA is easy (”It’s AS I LAY DYING as a comedy set in space!”). But writing? Well that’s where the work really comes in. And the right execution will make or break it.
(3) “One problem can have infinite solutions.”
There’s the oft-said adage that there are only ten sitcom plots, and somehow these manage to get recycled into twenty seasons of the Simpsons, eleven seasons of Married With Children, and far too many seasons of Friends, seriously people, it took far too long to stop paying them. And though we’ve figured this out, it still seems fresh to viewers.
This is because while there are ten plots, or “problems” to solve, there are infinite variations on the parameters entering, and on the specific ways you can treat them to still come to the same conclusion. And if there wasn’t, we’d all have the ancient Greek plays memorized by now.
(4) “Divide and conquer.”
One of the methods of attacking a problem is to divide it into smaller, related problems. For instance, say you want to sort a list of names. One method might be to pick a random name in the list and sort the list so if the name comes before your picked name, you put it before your picked name, and if it goes after, sort it after. Then sort each remaining chunk in the same way, on and on and on, until you have a sorted list. (AKA quicksort)
Treat your novel like this. Writing a novel is a big problem. Having a huge plot is a difficult thing. So break it down into smaller bits. Your main character has to get the MacGuffin at the end and destroy it. Divide it into sub-problems: How does he find out about the MacGuffin? Who’s hiding it? How must he destroy it? Is he going to hurt anyone in the process? Divide each of those into smaller problems.
It seems like a lot, but if you tackle them one by one, you’ll have a story at the end.
(5) “Sometimes, brute force is the answer.”
You can have a lot of tricks to help you get through a problem, fun things to try, paths to go down. But at the end of the day, sometimes you have to set your ass down and just write, even though it isn’t working, even though you hate what’s on the page.
Because writers write, especially when it’s hard.
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