...when upon waking up you find a 10 quid note someone dropped and no one claims. :D
Got a Subway for breakfast, had some coke flavored caffeine called Monster Assault, tasty stuff, bought some caffeine pills, listened to some Dresden Files: Wight Night [that's what it should be called so unless you write it down it sounds like 'White Knight' or good hero instead of 'Wight Night' or soul vampire night], had a shower, got to the library and now just procrastinating before doing some college work.
Didn't go running last night because last weekend really did a number on me, I left it too late, and today I feel great, so go do an epic run tomorrow and it'll be far more productive.
Kinda annoyed at the skin on my hands at the moment because they got freeze dried by the cold autumnal air and the epidermis is dry and tight. Freaking annoying, though minor relief comes from licking them. Need some moisturizer or something but I hate how oily that shit makes my hands for hours. I once tried to power through that shit though and my knuckles are badly scarred from where the skin dried out and cracked and bled so.
Currently trying to listen to My Chemical Romance's final album called 'Conventional Weapons' which I've only found one or two good songs on - Boy Division and Kiss the Ring. The rest are just awful bland things which only serve to evidence that some bands should bow out before their fire burns out.
There is some pop music out currently which is sticking in my head, but I've no clue what the songs are called, only heard them when moving between shops which play the stuff, and have no desire to wade through the utter crap in the top 40 to find maybe two or three songs total which appeal to me.
Lady friend is kinda annoying me at the moment because sometimes she seems hot and sometimes she seems cold and I'm not sure where I stand, and I hate not knowing where I stand. Of course this laptop is slowly reducing my care of anything which isn't pure information.
The way my brain works is semi-psychopathic; I see the world as an assemblage of information. I don't usually feel emotion, not because I can't, but because there's so much momentum behind my thoughts that I get into specific head spaces of mental thought, and analysis and deduction of incoming and outgoing information is one of my favorite head spaces. I could be emotional, or I could be creative, or I could be rational, or whatever depending on what I focus on. To get work done, to interact with computers, to play games, I don't feel emotion or use imagination, I just see, think and do. And that's where my head's at right now.
For relationships of any sort this is problematic as my lady friend talks to me and I try to rationalize and solve what she is saying instead of caring. And when she's not talking to me and off doing other stuff I don't really care about her existence. I probably should care really, but I don't because I'm occupying a head space that makes me hyperational and want to be there instead of worrying about relationship bull shit.
I'd do very well to find someone who understands this sort of thing, has as much intelligence [roughly defined as memory, deductive ability, etc.], and can run in the same sort of mode and doesn't expect me to be all warm and caring and isn't all warm and caring when on the job.
The issue of course is that I'm so weird that my sort of weirdness isn't prolific enough to make finding someone like me likely. I have to try to make do with what is available in the human population.
My lady friend isn't an ideal mate, but I don't know anyone else that's better at the moment. That's the basis of most human relationships really. Imperfect but what you've got to work with.
No call back from the recruitment company the job center referred me to last week. Going to go see them tomorrow morning before checking in with the job center.
Watching S08E03 of Doctor Who. The Promised Land is starting to reveal itself, which is interesting, and the bickering between The Doctor and Robin Hood was funny. The issue is that I've seen multiple versions of the Robin Hood tale, including the Kevin Costner full motion picture, and found it a bit lackluster so. It's still not quite matching up to the first episode of the series though. Started on a high note, and the last few episodes will probably be excellent, but the center seems a bit underwhelming.
A while back when I had nothing to use but my iPhone I got into using an online forum called Reddit.
Normally I am loath to use forums because the people who use them have the mental functions of pet rocks and the moderators are a breed of Nazi that believes that if they can get away with it then who the fuck cares about rationality or reason when they can abuse their power and ban you for breathing.
However, since I started using it, apart from the occasional troll, being banned once for 'Slap Fighting' from Ask Reddit because a flamebaiter kept harassing me*, and once being accused of stealing porno pictures and reposting them on Tumblr and infringing on copyright theft** I've enjoyed using the site overall.
* Yeah, I got banned because someone went through my post history posting insulting and nasty replies when all I said to him was that I was not going to engage him and asked him why he was doing it. Like I said, mods are universally assholes who don't care about contextual circumstances. It's in their job description to not give a fuck.
** I do repost porn pictures from a subreddit called Gone Wild on Tumblr under another name, but only ever 1 image from any one person, I link to where I found it, and the people who post them don't give a flying fuck about who downloads and reposts them elsewhere anyway.
One of the subreddits is called No Sleep, and it's where people post scary and creepy stories from a first person perspective. OK, so it's rules [each subreddit has it's own ruleset] are retarded because you can't say...
"Good story, but insert critique of your narrative and compliment on structure here."
...without it being removed by the mods. You have to go use NoSleepOOC for that. No, in the subreddit itself you have to act like all the stories are totally legit and the posters are talking about real events as a form of ongoing roleplay. It's stupid, retarded, and ill conducive to proper feedback on creative work, but, like with Wikipedia, I have no control to make idiots grow the fuck up and see reason, so I live with it.
The reason I mention it is because what I thought would be a good idea some time ago is to turn the stories in No Sleep into anthology collections, books which could be constructed with artwork and sold in shops and online as eBooks, via Kindle and that maybe.
Some of them really are quite worth the read, and the entire process isn't that complicated for someone already trained in the design of computer games and their concomitant artistic assets.
You simply built the necessary artwork in photoshop, collect and edit together a whole bunch of stories once you have the authorization of their authors, and then publish the book via Lulu or any one of the self-publishing websites who take your money and publication dat and hand you a printed book in bulks of a thousand or so.
When I posted this I naturally started at the above base principles and got in return from other users a whole bunch of utter tripe way beyond a base concept about contracts and royalties and how it's a far better thing for a single author to seek self-publication [a hellish task which I understand requires 10,000 pitches and ten times that many rewrites or more before someone says yes, we'll take this] rather than contribute to a collected anthology, as though a novice writer doesn't need nor want to appear beside other works which encourage people to buy the volume because they know one writer and get recognition and cred.
I mean, I even got told by some stupid bastard that any author with brains wouldn't use a publisher or contribute to an anthology because the professional job role of publishers is to make money off the work of creative people.
Which is entirely true, if you take away a publisher's entire functioning workload of finding halfway decent authors, collating and editing their work, ensuring they deliver on time, making sure their work is advertised and distributed properly, etc. etc. Ya know, the entire role of administration of a creative work doesn't need to be paid for, and every author is naturally skilled in the task without any outside aid whatsoever.
I am a games designer and I design games. When you have publishers or anyone else, including programmers or artists, trying to do my job, they cock it up royally because they are not skilled in the task like I am. Likewise I don't really care about the majority of their job/s, constructing a creative artifact from a verity of sources not withstanding.
It's one thing to be a creative genius, but it's another to understand administration of creative artifacts, and someone has to pay for that service, and it's going to have to come from the revenue generated by the proliferation of the creative artifact, either to the author for doing a half assed job of it or to someone else for professional execution.
Anyway someone directed me to an eBook put together by, I think, the mods of the subreddit itself.
- http://nosleepebook.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/2014-ebook-issue-2/
I would download this and give my professional opinion on it's design, but the library I'm in doesn't allow for downloads from Mediafire [fucking idiot should not have used that when Lulu is free and available to anyone once they've made an account] but from what I remember when I checked it out on my phone a professional media designer like myself could do a lot better than this.
The point is that like most things I have an idea for making something and a lot of people show up to tell me it can't be done for a lot of bullshit reasons, think they're helping, and instead are just confirming my conviction that most of humanity needs to be fucking nurtured.
The issue I have with executing this idea here and now [apart from the obvious limitations on my time at present] is that this toy PC here can't handle running photoshop so I can't make the art assets. I can however run around No Sleep and pull together a whole bunch of stories and make a prototype then post that as a proof of concept idea on the forums.
If the authors have one iota of sense they will see my work and get on board. If they don't, and let's face it that I'm expecting that they won't, they'll go apeshit and tell me not to publish their work on the assumption that I'm trying to profit from it, because people are irrational morons.
NOTE: I'm making this note here as a preemptive I told you so [HAI DUDE FROM PAST SELF!] because from past experience I have the abilities of a prophet so I want to make it very clear that I saw this bullshit coming and have no intention of profiting from other peoples work, I'm just trying to create something here.
I'll still form the book, because if nothing else it'll look good in my portfolio as 'I made an anthology book, isn't it uber cool' even if the morons who wrote the content won't allow me to publish it so we can both profit from it's distribution out into the world.
Like I've always said, I can but try, and also like I've always said, the universe usually sneers at anything I try and tries to kill it with prejudice. Doesn't stop me from trying though, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still breathing.
Right, I need a widdle and maybe a drink and I really need to get some college work done, so I think I've rambled on enough for one day.
The above eBook and a few other projects [including buying merchandise from airport lost and abandoned luggage sales from auctions held in London, UK, and selling it on eBay] will have to wait until I have more time and money to invest in doing it.
Hope anyone reading this is having a nice day like me. :)
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
07/10/2014
15/06/2014
On Falling...
NOTE: The following might be a bit of a mess. Currently ill, wrote this around 3am originally, and presently in no condition to edit it for beans. Posting it anyway.
Again; healthy for years, now I have a fitness test for a job, hai, allow me to give you a bad case of flu or infection or some stupid shit that makes you feel like death.
---
As the messengers who rebelled against the farther of all fell from grace, so to does the mind of a man against the farther of time.
---
- POST REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
Open that to cross check what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with the subject.
---
In this context however I refer to the 'Fall' of The Discworld by Terry Pratchett as entropy and fate saw fit to inflict Alzheimers on one of the great literary minds and he has covertly handed off, I suspect, the Discworld Chronicles to Stephen Baxter, his co-author on The Long Earth series [unrelated to the Discworld, and something like a sci-fi alt-future series].
For those who read the series, and are more observant than the average human, you may be familiar with quite a dramatic change in the structure which started around Unseen Academicals, which was book 37 of the series, and continued, in the adult series, into Snuff, 39 and really hit hard in Raising Steam, book 40.
Loss of key identity of certain characters established over multiple volumes, lack of humor and subtly, and blatant retconning [the rewriting of established lore to suit the present] even beyond the marvelous 'Thief of Time Retcon Solution'*.
Snuff was something of a decline. Not the abject nonsense that is Raising Steam, but certainly not in the same grade as Thud!, the previous Watch novel. You have to note presentation and handling of the books content. Being a country copper is nothing like being a city policeman. The theme and structure worked, quality content, but its format was degrading from the flowing narrative of all previous Discworld novels to clunky set pieces which didn't intermix.
...I'm finding this hard to word, but imagine threads.
A good story is all about interwoven threads, seemingly interconnecting randomly, but there's always a central plot which is inexorably progressed by each thread as they touch the core. This is a proper narrative.
A bad story is a pulsing line of threads, the core being prodded by a thread, retracted and then prodded by the next, each prod a set piece, like an artists artifact, and an improper narrative.
Making Money and every other book previously was the central protagonist being touched by a succession of threads. Unseen Academicals was similar in it's smooth flow. Snuff had set pieces but it still managed to bridge them together.
...Then Raising Steam crash landed...
That book, good grief.
Beyond all this, and back to my original point, is that you have the aforementioned issue of set pieces. There is very little continuity between each of the events.
Half the time the author is going on about the personal worlds of people whose only real connection to the books events is that they sent a letter to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork for some reason.
The book moves forward, but by jerks and starts, and with the bastardization of the Discworld's own lore it makes an avid fan like me twitch and cringe every disconnected and randomized scene.
This fucking mess I highly suspect, on the grounds that it reads almost precisely like The Long Earth series in structural format, was written mostly by Stephen Baxter who is now authoring the Discworld because Terry Pratchett's brain has succumbed to Alzheimers and the series is worth too much, both culturally and fiscally, to let it die with him.
I've got nothing to prove it but the cross comparison between this book and The Long Earth series, and most people probably can't see it, but I've got enough to prove it to myself, and generally speaking that's all that matters.
In my view this is where the series will fall to it's grave, if not commercially than at least in terms of quality.
It's a shame because some of the best Discworld titles were, in the adult series which is all I personally read, 29 Night Watch, 33 Going Postal, 34 Thud!, and 36 Making Money. I mean, I love pretty much all of them from 4 Mort onwards because it was by the forth title Terry found his feet and started to make the magic happen, but those last few before Unseen Academicals were where he really shone as far as I'm concerned.
All things end, and should end, but I hope Terry hasn't got enough of his mind left to realize Raising Steam happened. That someone took his life's work and just shredded it in wood chipper. You'd think someone would be reviewing it before publication if he can't handle it anymore.
---
On a personal note, as a genius who values his mental facilities above all else [take it all, I don't care, so long as I can still think] I pity Terry like no one else except those of my kind.
The worst thing for someone who values their mind is to see it degrade from inside out, knowing at their core that they're losing control. Better to lose all possessions, all limbs, all life, all at once, than the mind, bit by bit, over years.
Leave me my mental acuity and you can have the rest.
---
I got something similar to say on the subject of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which was fantastic until he hit Changes, book 12, and then went off the rails and lost the plot, but that's for another day.
Adios.
---
PS: Because I have the attention span of a housefly and the creative imagination of several terminal novelists, I wrote this when I saw the image on the page on DeviantART:
- http://cvaj.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-demon-binder.html
If it wasn't for trying to be a policeman, I would gladly expand upon that and then some, but I need money to live and writing this stuff doesn't pay anything.
C'est la vie.
Again; healthy for years, now I have a fitness test for a job, hai, allow me to give you a bad case of flu or infection or some stupid shit that makes you feel like death.
---
As the messengers who rebelled against the farther of all fell from grace, so to does the mind of a man against the farther of time.
---
- POST REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
Open that to cross check what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with the subject.
---
In this context however I refer to the 'Fall' of The Discworld by Terry Pratchett as entropy and fate saw fit to inflict Alzheimers on one of the great literary minds and he has covertly handed off, I suspect, the Discworld Chronicles to Stephen Baxter, his co-author on The Long Earth series [unrelated to the Discworld, and something like a sci-fi alt-future series].
For those who read the series, and are more observant than the average human, you may be familiar with quite a dramatic change in the structure which started around Unseen Academicals, which was book 37 of the series, and continued, in the adult series, into Snuff, 39 and really hit hard in Raising Steam, book 40.
Loss of key identity of certain characters established over multiple volumes, lack of humor and subtly, and blatant retconning [the rewriting of established lore to suit the present] even beyond the marvelous 'Thief of Time Retcon Solution'*.
*Thief of Time's plot concerned history on the Discworld, and a glass clock which, once smashed, also smashed the chronological order of history.
For example, technically Brutha, one of the central protagonists of the 13th Discworld book, Small Gods, is alive during the same time period as philosophers who speak to Teppic, Pyramids, book 7, who is trained by Dr. Cruces who is justifiably killed by then Corporal Carrot, Men at Arms, book 15, who later commands an Omnian named Constable Visit-the-Infidels-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets, Feet of Clay, book 19, who states that Brutha was alive hundreds of years ago.
The temporal inconsistency is such that the relative chronology of the Discworld between individual characters over multiple books doesn't make a dam lick ah sense.
Forward Thief of Time which explains it all away as a shattering of the timeline which required a patchwork string and duck tape job to rebuild. Only an outside observer could know, e.g. readers, history monks, and Death and Susan who remark upon the inconsistency in Thief of Time itself, the whole truth of the matter.Unseen Academicals wasn't too bad, generally speaking. The usual Discworld structure and cultural exploration was there, so too was humor, character development, and the focus on a central protagonist.In the aftermath of Making Money it was an acceptable addition to the Discworld Chronicles in my opinion.
Snuff was something of a decline. Not the abject nonsense that is Raising Steam, but certainly not in the same grade as Thud!, the previous Watch novel. You have to note presentation and handling of the books content. Being a country copper is nothing like being a city policeman. The theme and structure worked, quality content, but its format was degrading from the flowing narrative of all previous Discworld novels to clunky set pieces which didn't intermix.
...I'm finding this hard to word, but imagine threads.
A good story is all about interwoven threads, seemingly interconnecting randomly, but there's always a central plot which is inexorably progressed by each thread as they touch the core. This is a proper narrative.
A bad story is a pulsing line of threads, the core being prodded by a thread, retracted and then prodded by the next, each prod a set piece, like an artists artifact, and an improper narrative.
Making Money and every other book previously was the central protagonist being touched by a succession of threads. Unseen Academicals was similar in it's smooth flow. Snuff had set pieces but it still managed to bridge them together.
...Then Raising Steam crash landed...
That book, good grief.
- It's called book 3 of the Moist Von Lipvig series, but he's only in 2/3rds of it.
- Established ideas from previous volumes are totally forgotten, including The Undertaking, which was started in Thud!, mentioned in Making Money, and then binned by Raising Steam.
- The writer skipped wholesale over Moist and Adora Belle's wedding, which was criminal.
- Several major characters either act out of character, such as Moist engaging in violence which is almost the polar opposite of his character established in his prior two volumes. Add to that Bashfulsson who a] is a modern Deep-Downer who is allied with Anhk-Morpork and b] isn't a violent guy. Thud! made a point that he was a thinking Grag, not a violent one for fucks sake.
- Or characters have their own histories retconned to such an extent that FUBAR would be appropriate in their description [notably Adora Belle's infancy being in anyway related to the Clacks when her farther invented the first commercial towers no more than 15 years prior to Raising Steam and she's around 30 years old for crying out loud].
- There is no way in hell Moist could've commanded the 1000 Golems gained by the city during the events of Making Money to do anything whatsoever. Firstly he would've had to get into the Pink Pussycat club, secondly he would've had to summon the Professor, thirdly he would've had to bargain with the guy who was notoriously misanthropic and obstreperous for command dialogue in Umian, and fourthly it wasn't even mentioned that he did any of that, but only that Moist strolled down into their tomb and said hop to it lads despite the fact that Havelock probably has a continual guard over the whole boiling of em seeing as his currency is based on the buggers.
- And Gilt and Cosmo were antagonists worthy of the description, whilst the almost irrelevant bloody figure of the neigh mad Grag Ardent wasn't anything like a good counter point.
Beyond all this, and back to my original point, is that you have the aforementioned issue of set pieces. There is very little continuity between each of the events.
Half the time the author is going on about the personal worlds of people whose only real connection to the books events is that they sent a letter to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork for some reason.
The book moves forward, but by jerks and starts, and with the bastardization of the Discworld's own lore it makes an avid fan like me twitch and cringe every disconnected and randomized scene.
This fucking mess I highly suspect, on the grounds that it reads almost precisely like The Long Earth series in structural format, was written mostly by Stephen Baxter who is now authoring the Discworld because Terry Pratchett's brain has succumbed to Alzheimers and the series is worth too much, both culturally and fiscally, to let it die with him.
I've got nothing to prove it but the cross comparison between this book and The Long Earth series, and most people probably can't see it, but I've got enough to prove it to myself, and generally speaking that's all that matters.
In my view this is where the series will fall to it's grave, if not commercially than at least in terms of quality.
It's a shame because some of the best Discworld titles were, in the adult series which is all I personally read, 29 Night Watch, 33 Going Postal, 34 Thud!, and 36 Making Money. I mean, I love pretty much all of them from 4 Mort onwards because it was by the forth title Terry found his feet and started to make the magic happen, but those last few before Unseen Academicals were where he really shone as far as I'm concerned.
All things end, and should end, but I hope Terry hasn't got enough of his mind left to realize Raising Steam happened. That someone took his life's work and just shredded it in wood chipper. You'd think someone would be reviewing it before publication if he can't handle it anymore.
---
On a personal note, as a genius who values his mental facilities above all else [take it all, I don't care, so long as I can still think] I pity Terry like no one else except those of my kind.
The worst thing for someone who values their mind is to see it degrade from inside out, knowing at their core that they're losing control. Better to lose all possessions, all limbs, all life, all at once, than the mind, bit by bit, over years.
Leave me my mental acuity and you can have the rest.
---
I got something similar to say on the subject of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which was fantastic until he hit Changes, book 12, and then went off the rails and lost the plot, but that's for another day.
Adios.
---
PS: Because I have the attention span of a housefly and the creative imagination of several terminal novelists, I wrote this when I saw the image on the page on DeviantART:
- http://cvaj.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-demon-binder.html
If it wasn't for trying to be a policeman, I would gladly expand upon that and then some, but I need money to live and writing this stuff doesn't pay anything.
C'est la vie.
