All I did today was play video games.
Didn’t work. Didn’t paint. Didn’t write. Didn’t even look at my e-mail. Played video games.
It felt great.
Am I recharged for tomorrow? We’ll find out…
Man, KOTOR1 is waaaaaay better written than KOTOR2. Or at least, a heckuva lot funnier, which in my world amounts to mostly the same thing.
Of course, there was the obligatory murder trial…I’d make up a drinking game, but at the rate games come out, that’d be one drink every eighteen months, and…
Actually, that sounds about right. *chugs*
Oh my god, fluffy neo-pagans who take themselves too seriously getting up in arms about the word “warlock.”
Oh god.
I will not drop everything I am doing and start plotting a story with a charming and decent warlock protagonist. I won’t. I won’t. I have too much to do already. I have to finish some of these things. I won’t.
Inspiration knocks but rarely, but Spite bangs on my door all damn day.
Non-Anxiety Dreams
Last night I had one of those dreams where I was late for a test I hadn’t studied for, except that somehow I actually made it to the classroom in time, and took the test, which was an essay question about ethics. And I had to write this essay along with two classmates, who were, in typical dream fashion, a girl I went to school with in third grade and the misogynistic priest character from the novel I’ve been kicking around.
And then I got the test back with an A on it.
This was not particularly terrifying. Actually, I felt rather pleased.
Then I woke up and thought “Errr….that’s not how that dream goes…?”
Apparently I’ve been out of school too long, and test anxiety just doesn’t cut any ice with my subconscious any more. Perhaps we’ll be reduced to “car with no brakes” and “teeth falling out” and the old favorite “moving dream” for anxiety in the future.
And another thing, since I’m bitching about Star Wars games this week…
Okay, if the point of being a Jedi is to surpress all passion, fine. Okay. Sure, even Vulcans get to cut loose once every seven years, but I suppose having an insanely calm ruling class is probably good for the social order. You wanna live an ascetic monastic life? Hey, knock yourself out.
And so then the point of being a Sith is thus to let your passions run wild, draw strength from them, destroy your enemies, etc. Okay. Fine.
Then how come you go to a Sith academy and lo and behold, everybody’s got metal underwear and a single bed? (Yes, I looked.) You get beaten like a bloody flagellent and fed to starving monsters and tortured on weekends. You slog through your training, achieve a sufficiently high GPA, and get to be a Sith Lord, and what do you do? You stalk around on the bridge of your bigass starship, brooding, and glare out at empty space wishing you could bitch-slap the entire galaxy simultaneously. (They all do it. “Here’s your diploma, congratulations, here’s the keys to your star destroyer…”) They don’t even get a comfy easy chair to brood in. They all gotta stand up or else levitate in lotus position.
Do you get regular massages? No! Do you have legions of hot alien women waiting on you hand and foot? No! (You get one apprentice, who will always try to kill you, and will usually dress like a freak and wear too much eye makeup in the meantime.) Do you at least get good food? Possibly, but always off camera! Do you get to sleep in late? No, because other Sith will use the extra hours in the day to take your starship so that they can brood on it instead!
What’s the fun of giving in to your unbridled passions if they’re such LAME passions!? I mean my god! A pack of Catholic high school girls could cut looser than the Sith! If you’re going to be evil, why aren’t you people ever having any fun!?
*sigh*
George Lucas just doesn’t understand human nature worth crap.
*installs KOTOR1 to get the bad taste out of her mouth*
*plays*
HEY! I know that Mandalorian! Come back here, you! I just stranded you on a dead planet I maybeblewupexcepttheydidn’tbothertoresolvethatbit like ten years in the future! My god, is that what you looked like under that faceplate?
Playing out of sequence is hard on the brain.
I become disgruntled.
Holy crap, the end of this game is limping along like a one-legged millipede.
Phrases I Never Thought I’d Utter: “You know, a cutscene of a character standing around giving needlessly elaborate exposition would have really helped back there.”
It was beautiful right up until the Jedi all died, and then they tore a hole in the force, the plot, and the gameflow, simultaneously. When you have to explain what’s happening in the little blurbs on the loading screen, (You know, the kind that usually say “Save early, save often!” or “The chief exports of the Imperial City are assassins and corn!”) because there were no explanations in the game of key plot points…yeah. Dude. I am happy to go to the Sith Academy and kill everybody in it. All you had to do was ask. A journal entry would do. But not the loading screen!
No wonder people are desperate to mod together an ending. It’s like two-thirds of a brilliant game and now it’s gotten so slapdash and nonsensical I’m half-wondering if this is actually a dream sequence and my character’ll wake up to find that one of the romantic subplots got tired of waiting for dialog options and slipped me some roofies.
Also–and completely unrelated–while I’ve loved all these games, must we having a murder trial in EVERY SINGLE ONE? I mean, KOTOR2 had one, Neverwinter Nights had two, and NWN2 upped the ante by making it your own murder trial and actually giving you a counsel for the defense, something sorely lacking in the other trials. (It’s probably sad when your lawyer is your favorite party member, but that’s another matter.) And that’s fine and good and all, but for once, could we maybe have an assault case or a hit and run or something? Just for variety? I assure you, I can put my mad Jedi skills and/or mad paladin charisma to any number of crimes. It doesn’t need to be murder at all.
And now, back to go kick my way through to another loading screen so I know what I’m supposed to do next…
Update: Wow, that ending made no sense at all. And what the heck was up with–and–why was there even–but what about the–and–I didn’t even–WHAT?
Good lord, that made the “Rocks fall, everybody dies” ending look almost triumphant.
Phew. Well, I got the first 3/5ths or so of the book going in one more or less cohesive glop.
And now I’m gonna shove it into the proverbial drawer for a week or two, because I have absolutely no distance from it whatsoever, and can’t tell who’s whining too much and who’s an idiot and whether we’re cooking with torment or merely reheating with angst.
Meanwhile, unrefined tidbits are starting to poke at my brain–random lines and scenes and character ideas and whatnot. I have no place to put them yet, so I’m left jotting one-line notes to myself, or writing a couple of paragraphs of dialog that would require a few hundred pages to become sensible. Since I’ve been dancing on the fine edge of creative burnout for awhile anyway, this doesn’t really help, but I should probably be grateful that there are ideas, instead of nothing in particular.
Most of them aren’t things I could simply turn into a painting and lay to rest that way, unfortunately. And I need to get painting again, I’m getting wracked with guilt for not painting. I’m having a hard time counting writing as Doing Real Work at the moment–not that it’s not hard, god knows, but the lack of an immediate financial pay-off is tough. While I’ve kinda gotten to a point where I have the luxury of spending time on stuff like that, in hopes that it’ll pay off eventually, I still haven’t quite overcome the feelings of guilt, and the little voice saying “Quit screwing around, do something that’ll pay the bills already!”
Eh, it’ll work itself out, I suppose…
Follow Ursula