You Feel True and Beautiful Passion

"I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face... it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds. Until it returns, as it does, to all men. And then you must make really good love again."

I want to play a game where you have to make terrible decisions for the whole game. All bad decisions, all tough ones. Every single decision you make means losing one thing that's vitally important to you as a person for something else that's vitally important to you as a person. You don't just get to make the decision and play on, though. The gameplay comes in making you work to make sure that the decision comes to fruition. Then... at the very, very end.. after nothing but horrible decisions and pain and loss, you get to make one that lets everybody lives and everyone goes home hoppy.

"I think the metaphor broke my spleen."

I've had a very pleasant afternoon, and the evening promises to be even better overall. Beer and good company, and lots more study. Also did some watches some dishes, and washed some movies. I wonder if you can guess what I watched. There is a cookie for anyone who can list them.

"Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do."

I'm A Backer and...

I'm a backer, and if you like good RPGs, then you should be, too. There are four days left as of this writing. And what they've accomplished so far with their funding has already been incredible. There has already been enough funding to make it a primary goal for the project to be released on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. With that wide of a distribution, a large gameworld, shared friend characters, and a simultaneous release of developer tools, Shadowrun Returns promises to be an explosive revisiting of a fantastic gameworld setting.

If I pass my CCNA exam this week, I'm going to up my subscription level to the 125$ level for those sweet dogtags. I think that those are an excellent way to release a game with bonus material. But every penny you put into backing this game goes to making it a bigger, better story, with more characters, more locations, and more to do, and with better music. They even just announced that the original score designer will be working on the track for the new game. I hope to see everyone who backs it in the forums later... and possibly.. on the street in a backer t-shirt.

And finally, I leave you with music. One of the best songs I've heard lately, and a good cover of a great song:


Part of me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way

Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying." - Andy Dufresne said those words during one of the more touching moments in "Shawshank Redemption 2: Shank Harder" when, because of inmate politics, he is forced to eliminate Red in Mexican prison. I shed a tear because it was so painful to watch, and beautiful at the same time. The cinematography from the very moment when he thrusts the shank in manages to capture in a real and perfectly visually symbolic way, that the shank is his penis.

I saw "John Carter" with my mom this Saturday, and it is pretty obvious why it is one of the biggest commercial failures ever. I mean, the movie wasn't that bad. The only things that were really wrong with it were the writing and the acting. You might, almost rightfully so, suggest that those are the only things about a movie, but.. you'd be wrong. First of all, the movie actually had an okay story, if the only thing you took away from a scene(that is to say, if you were able to look past the actors and the words coming out of their mouth) is the strictest view of events(such as, in this scene these characters met and did this) then the plot points are not bad. But the actors and the writers of the dialog just destroy it.

The cinematography is really beautiful, and manages to capture the emotions you're supposed to feel from every scene. It's actually kind of weird feeling something from a visual standpoint while the actors voice words that make you feel the complete opposite. And finally, from a special effects standpoint, they managed to create a pretty cool looking vision of Mars, and a cool 20's pulp sci fi world. But for real.. don't pay money to see that trash. It really could have been good, it was pretty close to it. My mom liked it,though. She claims to have just not to have seen the same bad acting or felt that the dialog were as cliched and cheap. Probably the worst written character in the movie is John Carter himself. *shrug*

Some Things are Just Simply Beautiful

It's just one of those things that lights your soul on fire. Soundwaves that make you shiver.

I Love it When People Say Cool Things

"Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell me that we are done making the world." - Jerry Holkins

Kings died, kingdoms fell.

"I don't regret the kingdoms - what sense in borders and nations and patriotism? But I miss the kings." - Maude

Really busy weekend. Painting, and having family over, and seeing Zac's mom. Got that back room all fixed up and re-painted with a little help. Lots of elbow grease and perspiration and it looks quite nice. Will have the new curtains up some time this week, soon as I get the right colors picked out. Going to put up curtains in my room too, to keep the sunlight out while I'm trying to sleep. The day star is my mortal enemy.

In other news, attempts to create an MMORPG equivalent to "Ladies Night", extra quotations around the "Ladies", are right around the corner. I, personally, predict rampant transgender roleplaying, far more so than usual. And, given the obvious intelligence and talent it takes to make a game of any caliber, I wonder how deliberate this is. Is it deliberate social engineering to assault gender identity at large? Possibly. Unlikely. Only time will tell, but if it's a crappy game, I'm not even sure anyone will give two shits if women get to play it for less money. I mean, if it's a bad game, paying less money to play it is like getting paid less money for an airplane ticket nowadays. Sure, it's cheaper for something that has a "value", but you're still paying for the privilege to have the lowest common denominator of security staff expose and observe and possibly fondle your junk in what is indistinguishable from a cattle line. So your guess is as good as mine who comes out the "winner" in that situation. Hint, it's still probably the person who paid less for that privilege.

My recommendation, just don't flirt with anyone while you play that game. No matter who you are and which way you swing. There's no winner when you don't know what you're grinding on or what is grinding against you.

More likely than not, this is just the misguided attempt to be more gender friendly in games, along with a lot of other justifications. You can't really work on something that long without thinking about it from multiple angles and justifications. But that's probably where it started. It works in bars, I suppose, but are bar settings really the direction that MMO's want to go? Even if you did, though, alcohol is a huge motivator there. And real sex. Or maybe it's a sort of genuine attempt at real gender outreach, but if it is, it's still really alienating to everyone involved, and in a community that is known for shirking the rules through fraud, gender neutrality and multi gender communities are not likely to be forthcoming, just lots and lots and lots of lonely guys pretending to be women for a discount. Trying to think of ways to hit on each other.

Posting from work today:

Light painting chronicle:

"Vice, Virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of
too much *life.* Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then
you're bound to live life fully." - Maude