Thursday, August 2, 2012

May 2012

General Stories/Ideas for Stories:
My Zombie Apocalypse Team, Part 4ish: Assessing the underground - Best description of what this is all about is probably Part Alpha from the previous month.  This is a conversation had in downtime.

Magical School Story, vague idea - So the idea is for a place where people go to learn the arts of magic and whatnot while fighting evil on the side like you do in stories like this, but the functioning of the school is really what's most important.  The fight against bad administration is much more significant than the fight against the more traditional evil of the book.

The Return to Narnia, and defending Edmund - The children realize they've returned to Narnia, Susan sets limits, the narrator is attacked with an apple.

General Twilight based stuff:
She said she wasn't hungry - Jessica fights through Edward's vampire glamour to stop him from forcing Bella into something she doesn't want to do.

Snarky Twilight stuff:
Snarky Twilight - The Encounter in Port Angeles - Bella wanders off into a non-existant warehouse district to face some nameless thugs.  She tries to explain to them that a narrator who has traveled time and space is more likely to walk away from a fight then nameless jerks, but in the end has to fight them off anyway.  Edward is a jerk, Bella tells him about the sun.

General Left Behind based stuff:
A review of the Left Behind Series - Not a story, a review.

NRA: My arm is tired - For pages in Nicolae: Rise of the Antichrist, Rayford Steele is driving a car while each of his three passengers lays a hand on him for reassurance.  This is my take on Chloe's response.

Captain Tribulation - Someone proposed Captain Tribulation, analogous to Captain Planet.  I proposed the powers for the rings, and the theme song.

From my slow trek through .hack//Sign:
What Just happened? - Episode three begins by conspicuously not addressing how episode 2 ended.  Subaru and the Sliver Knight discuss the Crimson Knights, which gives me an opportunity to ask who gets to decide what the organization is about.  Bear and BT discuss the unaddressed incident, Tsukasa, and the folklore that gives episode 3 its name.

From my slow trek through Deus Ex:
Deus Ex Training - Part 8: Ana and Stealth - We meet Anna Navarre, and go through one section of training that I can actually believe might function as part of a realistic training mission.

Other fiction related stuff:
It produces a pile of DVDs and yet still I call it taping - I listed off, with short summaries, the self recorded DVDs in a certain area of my house.  I think I might want to make a post like this again with the ones in a different area.  If I did it enough I'd create a catalog of all that I have.  Think of it as sort of a bunch of one paragraph reviews if you like.  Or don't, if you wouldn't like.

Noninteracting Magisteria and the Bechdel Test - I first noticed it in Firefly, and wrote this post when seeing it happen again in Avengers.  Men are put in roles where they interact with other men.  Women aren't put in roles where they interact with other women.  The result is fewer female to female conversations than we'd expect based on the gender breakdown of the cast alone.

People have since noticed similar things happening in unrelated works.  Not sure how I feel about that.  On the one hand, Yay, I didn't waste my time writing a post about an isolated quirk in two Joss Whedon works.  On the other hand, it's actually a thing and the world would be better if it were just an isolated quirk.  So no yay.

Canon of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - A silly look at that collection of fiction.  Originally written in a thread about rejecting the legitimacy of parts of larger works (a practice known as Fan Discontinuity) so certain things are notably absent from discussion.

Thoughts and dialog on the Star Trek Voyager episode that doesn't exist - Yes, that episode.  Speculation about the infinite improbability drive being involved, some Snarky Twilight style dialog, and a big reminder that Evolution Does Not Work That Way.

Godzilla versus The Sea Monster - I have a habit of writing when I'm tired even though I know that I make much less sense then, and this is one that I wrote late into the night just so I could be done with it.  I was told that most of the time my fear of being incoherent is unfounded, this was pointed out as an exception.  Read at your own peril.  It's about Godzilla versus the Sea Monster.

Mirror's Edge and my playing of it - A non spoiler post about playing the game.  In it I talk about the game, the difference between two dimensional and four dimensional combat, when it is appropriate to humanize the opponents, the productive uses of saving, cheats, and console commands, and stuff.

Since that was the last post of the month, the spoiler posts got pushed to last month.  But I'll list them here anyway the first was just me going through the plot point by point.  The second was a "What I would do differently" post.

Other Stuff:
This was the month of the vote of no confidence against then-University of Southern Maine President Selma Botman.  Several things on that:
Botman Update - My initial response to the results of the no confidence vote, one of my first posts about the situation Botman directly.  It includes an incomplete list of the reasons that she was bad for the university and, generally, a not-nice person.  (Also where I said that instead of the term "Botmangate" it would be better to use more words and proposed as an alternative what eventually became the tags for these posts.) 
Updated Botman Update - Later the same day as the details of Selma Botman's interpretation of the vote began to unravel. 
More Botman: Press Release - Not actually something I wrote, just a press release I reprinted.  Unlike almost everything that was reported, everything in this one appears to be true. 
Botman, Chess, and Context - In which I talk about Selma Botman's seemingly deliberate misreading of the rules by taking one of them out of context and reading it in isolation and completely disregarding everything else.  I compare it to misreading the rules of chess by making a similar dishonest stripping of context, and also, briefly, to the importance of context in the interpretation of fiction. 
The USM vote of no confidence against Selma Botman - The facts of the no confidence vote against then-President Botman without my traditional reams of commentary. 
She has since stepped down, and by down I mean sideways, and by sideways I mean I might need to write another post on the topic because there's some serious sketchiness on her end.  On the other hand, from the perspective of the University of Southern Maine it looks all good at the moment, or at least when last I checked.

Is ze even alive anymore? - About depression, dropping off the face of the earth, not noticing when people die, and wondering if people might be dead.
The nonexistence of the word Diahemeral, and what's been going on the past week or so - End of the semester I was sick, I was depressed, I accidentally invented a word, and I didn't have a working brain.  This is about all of that.

March 2012 - An index much like this one, but covering a different plot of time.

Am I being unreasonable here? - I ask for a second opinion about a situation involving optics, feelings, and foodstamps.

Quicksave, Cheating, and the Sanctity of Singleplayer - As a result of some stuff surrounding the game Mirror's Edge I once again encountered a seemingly unending argument online in gaming communities.  Short version is that some people do not feel satisfied unless everyone is prevented from doing things they don't like, even alone in the comfort of their own homes.

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[April]-[June]

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