all my friends are murderers
Day 17: Something that you're proud of
Absolutely shit-all fucking nothing. I'll be proud when I actually achieve something. NEXT QUESTION.
Have to say I am mildly wigged out by the rudeness of commenters on the Lackadaisy comic. People seem to be constantly sniping at Tracy for update speed (have you SEEN how much work goes into those pages?), quality of art (what the FUCK?), whether or not their peanut brains can understand the story ... I get that the lady leaves the praising comments rather than publishing them on the grounds that criticism needs to be answered whereas publishing praise makes you look arrogant, but it does make me want to go and slap these twats a few times and ask them what wolfpack they were dragged up by.
A certain degree of amusement that regardless of whether or not we enjoyed the movie, almost everyone seems to have agreed that Loki was DA BOMB. Read Scottworth's ENTIRELY UNBIASED review.
Have received a "sorry, not this time" from the Pleasance, which was entirely expected and now frees me up to spend some of my dwindling funds on cheap flights to Copenhagen in August. I WIN. Sort of. Well, I don't win, but I ... get ... a ... I get a holiday, pbbt.
[NB: The timing is such that I'd done all my being pissed off about not getting a place before I even got the interview, so am not currently annoyed. Posting commiserations will however annoy me massively, so don't do it, or if you do do it, be aware that I'm PMSing and will take it as an excuse to have a really nasty fight with you].
Because sometimes fiction is the only solution to reality I've been motoring through a big fat China Mieville book and today I finished reading
1. While I only counted three instances of "etoliated" in the whole book, I'm going to suggest that it's the kind of word that you really only need to use once. It kind of sticks in the memory.
2. blah blah blah excellent world-building blah occasional moments of thinness/trying too hard as in Kraken blah blah blah enjoyable read interesting characters definite ability to see the author through the narrative but only because I'm aware of CM's leftwing politics, thoroughly good use of a few days' worth of free time etc.
3. With regards to Yagherek - I can really appreciate the boldness of that final reveal (even if I had suspected it for quite some time), as I can appreciate Lin's half-death over having her well or cathartically dead. I can appreciate the way that Yag is presented, and how this new information changes him both in the reader's and in Isaac's eyes. I can see the angry SJ posts now: "are we being asked to sympathise with a rapist?" - well, actually, what the majority of the book has asked you to do is to sympathise with everyone, and to judge each of them by their actions in each situation: David sold out Isaac to the militia, Benjamin didn't give up Derkhan, we're given both of their perspectives. Yagherek is the narrator and the catalyst, but that doesn't mean there is an onus on the reader to feel kindly toward him, or to forgive him. Personally I think it's an intelligent look at how complex individuals are - that they can be the terrible, horrible, indefensible thing that they have done, and they can be the grace and loyalty they have bestowed on people, as well. Sometimes domestic abusers make great statesmen. Sometimes vicious tyrants are devoted and loving fathers. We're not the same person to everyone.
I appreciate the story which leaves sympathy up to the reader. While a character or their setting may condemmn them, the reader still has to make their own mind up. And I appreciate this story's ending, all the "the major threat is removed, but we have lost incalculably, and justice has assuredly failed to be served in many cases" nuances, and the truth that whatever else happens, the city continues.
[I think the more unpleasant intimation is that I'm not left to form my own opinions any more, that everything must be filtered through an internalise projection of the sJHM, and I apparently cannot enjoy a single damn thing without feeling that I have to justify it or choke back irritation at other people's wrong reasons for liking it.]
Selling a dress uniform jacket, if anyone wants it. That's about half what I paid for it. So, you know.
From nothing in particular:
There is a scam which, in some parts of the universe, is called the Pied Piper scam. It is very simple: prior to arrival, unleash a trained beast to ravage a town or planet. Wait until it has wrought terrible havoc and slaughtered many, and a distress signal has been sent out, offer own services as monster-catcher or monster-killer - if the latter, the monster need not be trained.
Dispense with threat. Claim reward, adulation, and gratitude.
The Fifth Integration, Third Terraforming/Sphere's Scion is an expect in this scam, albeit with an important variation.
Trained monsters are expnesive, hard to control, and like most conscious entities they are leery of interacting favourably with psychopaths. He has no time for them, not when a shonky perception filter set to "nightmare" allows the scammer to wreck precise and controlled destruction himself; sure it means having to do the dirty work of killing a few hundred people himself, but the man who will later become Captain John Hart has little problem with this trifling detail. In fact, he rather enjoys it.
Also I have had the MOST MAGNIFICENT idea for a project. Sadly I am having a Paranoid, and am convinced that this magnificent idea will got the way of all my ideas that involve anyone else but me being involved in them: ie, it will fester and decay and die. Boo hiss.
Absolutely shit-all fucking nothing. I'll be proud when I actually achieve something. NEXT QUESTION.
Have to say I am mildly wigged out by the rudeness of commenters on the Lackadaisy comic. People seem to be constantly sniping at Tracy for update speed (have you SEEN how much work goes into those pages?), quality of art (what the FUCK?), whether or not their peanut brains can understand the story ... I get that the lady leaves the praising comments rather than publishing them on the grounds that criticism needs to be answered whereas publishing praise makes you look arrogant, but it does make me want to go and slap these twats a few times and ask them what wolfpack they were dragged up by.
A certain degree of amusement that regardless of whether or not we enjoyed the movie, almost everyone seems to have agreed that Loki was DA BOMB. Read Scottworth's ENTIRELY UNBIASED review.
Have received a "sorry, not this time" from the Pleasance, which was entirely expected and now frees me up to spend some of my dwindling funds on cheap flights to Copenhagen in August. I WIN. Sort of. Well, I don't win, but I ... get ... a ... I get a holiday, pbbt.
[NB: The timing is such that I'd done all my being pissed off about not getting a place before I even got the interview, so am not currently annoyed. Posting commiserations will however annoy me massively, so don't do it, or if you do do it, be aware that I'm PMSing and will take it as an excuse to have a really nasty fight with you].
Because sometimes fiction is the only solution to reality I've been motoring through a big fat China Mieville book and today I finished reading
1. While I only counted three instances of "etoliated" in the whole book, I'm going to suggest that it's the kind of word that you really only need to use once. It kind of sticks in the memory.
2. blah blah blah excellent world-building blah occasional moments of thinness/trying too hard as in Kraken blah blah blah enjoyable read interesting characters definite ability to see the author through the narrative but only because I'm aware of CM's leftwing politics, thoroughly good use of a few days' worth of free time etc.
3. With regards to Yagherek - I can really appreciate the boldness of that final reveal (even if I had suspected it for quite some time), as I can appreciate Lin's half-death over having her well or cathartically dead. I can appreciate the way that Yag is presented, and how this new information changes him both in the reader's and in Isaac's eyes. I can see the angry SJ posts now: "are we being asked to sympathise with a rapist?" - well, actually, what the majority of the book has asked you to do is to sympathise with everyone, and to judge each of them by their actions in each situation: David sold out Isaac to the militia, Benjamin didn't give up Derkhan, we're given both of their perspectives. Yagherek is the narrator and the catalyst, but that doesn't mean there is an onus on the reader to feel kindly toward him, or to forgive him. Personally I think it's an intelligent look at how complex individuals are - that they can be the terrible, horrible, indefensible thing that they have done, and they can be the grace and loyalty they have bestowed on people, as well. Sometimes domestic abusers make great statesmen. Sometimes vicious tyrants are devoted and loving fathers. We're not the same person to everyone.
I appreciate the story which leaves sympathy up to the reader. While a character or their setting may condemmn them, the reader still has to make their own mind up. And I appreciate this story's ending, all the "the major threat is removed, but we have lost incalculably, and justice has assuredly failed to be served in many cases" nuances, and the truth that whatever else happens, the city continues.
[I think the more unpleasant intimation is that I'm not left to form my own opinions any more, that everything must be filtered through an internalise projection of the sJHM, and I apparently cannot enjoy a single damn thing without feeling that I have to justify it or choke back irritation at other people's wrong reasons for liking it.]
Selling a dress uniform jacket, if anyone wants it. That's about half what I paid for it. So, you know.
From nothing in particular:
There is a scam which, in some parts of the universe, is called the Pied Piper scam. It is very simple: prior to arrival, unleash a trained beast to ravage a town or planet. Wait until it has wrought terrible havoc and slaughtered many, and a distress signal has been sent out, offer own services as monster-catcher or monster-killer - if the latter, the monster need not be trained.
Dispense with threat. Claim reward, adulation, and gratitude.
The Fifth Integration, Third Terraforming/Sphere's Scion is an expect in this scam, albeit with an important variation.
Trained monsters are expnesive, hard to control, and like most conscious entities they are leery of interacting favourably with psychopaths. He has no time for them, not when a shonky perception filter set to "nightmare" allows the scammer to wreck precise and controlled destruction himself; sure it means having to do the dirty work of killing a few hundred people himself, but the man who will later become Captain John Hart has little problem with this trifling detail. In fact, he rather enjoys it.
Also I have had the MOST MAGNIFICENT idea for a project. Sadly I am having a Paranoid, and am convinced that this magnificent idea will got the way of all my ideas that involve anyone else but me being involved in them: ie, it will fester and decay and die. Boo hiss.