Tuesday, August 18, 2009

78

I've now made 78 weapons for my little Create-a-Weapon thing. Still going strong after how many years? Wonder if I can make the 100 mark. Maybe.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Everyone Else Except Me

So, a while back I posted a generalized blanket statement made by a person about the state of affairs in forum role play and dueling. And it is a generalized statement that covers a lot of ground in a very pretentious know-it-all way. Well, I recently posted the statement on the Veteran's board on GameFAQs just to see what I could get out of it. Open a dialog, see what peoples thoughts were. I didn't get much, except this: "I'd say he's right about everyone except us."

A very profound statement, and a completely ignorant one at that.

"Everyone else is bad, except us. Everyone else sucks, except us." A completely close-minded, ignorant, cut-off from reality statement. Truthfully, everyone cribs off existing tropes. That's just media, and by extention, writing in general. Fresh, witty, original stuff will always fall back on existing tropes whether intended or not. Not a bad thing, either. It just happens. I understand this very well, even if the person who originally made the statement probably didn't. However, what bothers me most is that instead of properly analyzing the statement and disproving or proving it, people have instead just either agreed (not saying why they agreed), or calling the originator of the statement a pretentious hack. Nothing has become of the actual statement beyond that. But I digress.

Going back to the statement that "he's right about everyone except us," and looking at it, it assumes that the close-minded individual believes that there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with the group he participates with. It's a rather simple fallacy, that everyone else would be in error except him and his group of friends. I've found myself to be wrong more times than I can count, and even in my own articles, especially ones past, as things change they lose their relavence. To err is human. But to believe outright that there couldn't be anything wrong with his own writing... Well, I'll leave it all up to you.

Thoughts?

Saturday, August 15, 2009

WPCA - Excerpt from "All Good Things"

All Good Things was a bit of writing a friend and I put together. Absolutely massive. We did it back in 2007. This year, in 2009, we hope to put something together that's a bit more -- how do you say -- refined. I'll probably post excerpts from that somewhere along the line. In the meantime, here's a random part from All Good Things.

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Chrysanthemum wandered. The labyrinth was playing games with her, she knew. Every time she saw a gate that led to a new area and attempted to get there, the way would turn severe. The ground would rise up, become smooth to the point where she couldn't scale it. Trees would block the path or scrubby grass with thorns and strange poisons that bit into her skin and forced her to lie for hours as her body regained whatever strange health she had. What was more, packs of roving tigermen things with spinning, cutting blades chased her now and again, following her, hunting her.

It was at those times she began to discover her own powers. At first afraid, tentative, like a baby taking its first steps in wonder and fear. She could distort her reality if she concentrated hard enough, and it was in those moments she could cause the most damage. A darkness that crept from the shadows to dismember and consume the tigermen that sought her. At first, they didn't seem afraid of her and her newfound abilities, but then, she began leaving one alive after every attack, a messenger to go back and tell the others of her power.

Some gates looked twisted when she passed them, with strange worlds beyond it. It was like looking through a mirror; mirror worlds abounded, each with their own style. Some seemed sunny, beautiful, wondrous; others were dark, sinister. She wandered pathways that had no walls, areas that had no light, areas that had no floors and she floated in space. She wondered in an off-handed way if this was what it must be like to be an addict.

She slumped against a wall, one of the few she had seen. This area was a plains clouded over in twilight; the tigermen roved here frequently, but had left her alone thus far. Why was she here, she asked herself. She groaned in annoyance. Everything was just getting so messed up and she felt she was somewhere in the middle of it all. And why couldn't daddy do something? But what could he do?

As these thoughts swam through her brain, a feeling of utter terror filled her. She opened her eyes and saw a woman lying on the ground, weeping, beaten and bruised. She sobbed for such a long time, and Chrysanthemum simply felt terrified of this woman. I know her, she thought. But who had done this to her, and why? Why would they hurt her so? What had she done to deserve this? And then a wave of anger and hatred washed over her as the phantom righted itself and stalked off into the abyss of nothingness, dissipating in a wake of fury. Chrysanthemum stared, feeling hollow for a moment.

"Why?" she said. "Why is it like this?"

"Because, child," a voice whispered, "those who have are envied, and those that have not desire to have and covet what their neighbor has. The concept of shared life, of union and charity is dead. Find those who have nothing and you will find those who have everything."

Chrysanthemum turned and found a strange man in a pair of pajamas staring down at her. He seemed different. His skin looked like water, his eyes were the color of empty jade. Hair that looked like space flecked with stars hung about his head in a wizened way about a balding spot and he shared a smile of crooked, black teeth with her. She suddenly wanted to poke him and see if it would cause a ripple.

"Vadel Mayr Veldrosky," he said, extending a watery looking hand, "attorney at law." The smile broadened. "Come to present my closing arguments to the jury, but they're out and the witnesses were all killed. I'm afraid this mob boss just might get away. Sad thing, too; the racket he's running is hurting a lot of people."

Monday, August 10, 2009

The Echoes

The Echo, she calls
With voices soft and languid;
Your mind, it falls
With thoughts morbid and sanguine;

Your heart, if flutters
With fearful beats and thrashings;
The words, you mutter
With teeth gnawing and gnashing;

The vocals, they rise
Returned from craggy heights;
The power, it lies
In whispers soft and light;

The wind, it blusters
With frigid hands grasping;
The thoughts you muster
Worsening with moments passing;

A scream, it echoes
Across the highest crown;
Your throat, it bellows
With lips compressed in frown;

It comes, this night
A darkness from the sky;
A suit, of might
For in this time you die;

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Rules of the Road

Me and the road. It's something. Every time I get behind the wheel of my truck I turn into some nice little ball of road rage, resplendent with middle finger action and verbose use of language. I don't know quite why, but I hate so many of the idiots I find driving around. It isn't so bad during the winter, because at least then the people in question driving have a somewhat better understanding of how to drive, especially in the snow. It's just during the summer that we get morons from other provinces who cringe at the sight of a corner and slow down -- for massive damage! The speed limit is a solid ninety kilometers an hour, but the persons in question are moving at a speed far below that. Sometimes fifty or sixty.

There is a law in place that if you are holding up traffic, to pull over and let them pass. To bad nobody actually adheres to this law, so you get these massive trains of vehicles with some family from the prairies trying to navigate through a winding mountain pass road with all the grace and aptitude of a three year old banging on a piano. It's like me with Christmas songs at that jolly time of year. I feel myself filled to the explosion point with anger at the sheer stupidity my fellow man possesses.

So, I was thinking, what with all my road rage, maybe I should weld some spikes onto the front and back of my truck and just ram people who are shitty drivers. It would certainly act as a means of diffusing my stress. And it would let the persons in front of me know just how much of a fuck up they are. That is if they aren't impaled through the back of the head by a spike. And then I'd end up in jail... But honestly, why are there so many bad drivers out there? Do the speed limit, stop being a little jerkwad, and learn to drive properly. Is it too much to ask?

Obviously yes.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Who Does Writing Anymore?

I find myself saying often that I need to write more. I used to write all the time, out of habit. Sentences, paragraphs, whole stories that could be massive arcs in and of themselves. But since returned from Afghanistan last year, it's like the desire to write has been stricken from me. I still love the endeavor of doing it, of creating and forming, of each thought transcribed into action and prose, but I can't seem to do it anymore. Much as I make the attempt to write, it's like the words that would normally have flowed from my mind to my fingers to the keyboard to the text editor have been replaced by nothingness. Ideas that were once like the fruit in a bountiful field has become fallow, empty. A feeling that someone has salted the earth of my mind weighs heavily on me.

What to do. What to write? No idea, no clue, and no desire. So where's the jumping point? Do I force it like the lid on a jar to get at the contents within, or do I grease the wheels and hope the shrieking stops? Those that do not seek never find -- so maybe it's time to seek out my muse, wherever it could be.