Tuesday, August 31, 2004

*shakes*

That was the best damn Literati game in history, and it was only the second round. I have a knack of taking early leads, then falling back down to earth again and not being able to get back up again, heh. That's what happened in my first match against Sara, anyway. She beat me by a fair margin. The second game, though... The battlefield was set. The two players eyed up their screens (seeing as their opponent wasn't physically tere to face them, all they could do was give evil looks to the overly-cute icons next to their usernames. One, an otter. Sleek, elegant and with sharp pointy teeth. The other, a dog with a red baseball cap. Stylish, and slobbery. Already riled up from a previous match, the score was this: Sara 1, Solo 0. You have no idea how unbelieveably close it was. It didn't look like it until I managed to get a 56-point word in (after Sara's consecutive high scores drove me into almost quitting, heh). From there it was neck and neck- the audience (being Shin, Alex, Mimmi and Kei) sat on the edge of their seats- the fight was down to the wire... SEE THE CARNAGE! The final round is tomorrow... Unfortunately Sara left before I could strike the final blow, but strike it I did. I would have liked to have waited for her to return, but... mmm. It was a great match, ad I can't wait for the final one ^_^ I never thought Internet Scrabble would be so much fun, heh.

Comments (8) | Permalink

Sunday, August 29, 2004

D.I.Y

Or, as I like to call it: Y.D.I- You Do It. We've had a cable network put in and it is so much better than the wireless, heh. Faster, the connection's stable... and we can play on the network properly now ^___^ More time spent wasting away in front of the screen for us, then. It took a fair emount of work- drilling holes, tieing cables to other cables, filling in holes, plugging things in... quite fun, actually. It reminded me of when I used to be in technology class making all these different bits and pieces. The first thing I made was a fuse tester from a plastic bow, some wire, a tiny LED and a couple of drawing pins. That worked alright. Then came a balancing man, a clock and a rather ornate wooden box. I needed help with them all, but I enjoyed making them. It's fun putting somehting together, but it's more interesting putting something together from scratch, even if the effort is more than tripled. I'd love to be able to make my own armour, but that requires a lot of practice, time and above all else equipment. So for the moment I'm happy making Zoids. The odd thing is that I never usually liked painting things I made. I'll ink in the occasional toy or two when I feel it needs something added (and I made my Transmetal II Tigerhawk look really pretty cool with a lot of silver pen), but I never got into Warhammer stuff simply because the painting looked so bloody tricky. And you needed so many coats... it just didn't seem worth the effort. I had a model plane once. Dad pretty much put it together for me. I liked Harrier Jump Jets, but I got no satisfaction from the finished product. I couldn't play with it, because it was too fragile. It didn't have stickers- it had decals, which I think are possibly the most stupid thing in the world. It wasn't even painted, so it didn't even look like a finished product. It wasn't even as if I got to build the damn thing- I was... seven or so and you needed to use plastic glue. So what was the point? Now I don't mind using glue to put stuff together, but when i was seven I was far happier with Lego, which you could completely destroy and recreate at your own will with pretty coloured pieces. And then you had the utmost satisfaction of knowing you've created something (usually) prettey decent almost completely from the raw material you have in front of you (as far as I'm concerned, Lego is a raw material). Creating stuff on computer isn't too bad, but then you can't really interact with it. It's fantastic to look at, but not incredibly tangible. I'm dying to be able to create my own 3-D characters and animate them, but the software's bloody expensive and I seem to always miss the first thirteen issues of magazines that take you through these sorts of things step by step. Sigh... Still, I've plenty of time to bugger around with things like that. Right now I'm stil behind on my writing. All of it. letters tonight, stories and RPGs tomorrow. And Ben... I'm still confused as to Yu-Gi-Oh: Worlds Collide got to where it was. i know what's happening now, but how we got there completely threw me. Me dense. Worms Armageddon rocks, by the way.

Comments (3) | Permalink

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Sounds of Solo Part 2: Anime/Game

I had a great time in Watford ^________^ Thanks, Heather. If music be the food of love, I must be bloody Casanova... Perhaps not surprisingly, anime and game soundtracks make up the bulk of my colection. I almost didn't write this post, because I didn't think I needed the piece of paper I catalogued them on and screwed it up, threw it in the bin and then realised tonight that 'Oh, I hadn't finished yet' -_-. Still, here we go: Evangelion OST 1 Evangelion OST 2 Evangelion OST3 The Evangelion one I bought on a whim, without actually having seen the series. I didn't like it for ages, until i forced myself to listen to it all the way through. It really grew on me, and there are some fantastic pieces there. Thanatos and When I Find Peace of Mind are two of my favourites. StarChild Selection Lots of songs, from Evangelion, Nadesico, His and Her Circumstances, All-Purpose Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku, Hareluya II BOY, etc Zoids (Chaotic Century) OST 1, 2 and 3 These are some of my all-time favourites, and great inspiration for scenes in Dark Conflict. Almost all of the music except the electric guitar is synthesised, but it sounds great anyway. Outlaw Star OST 1 Outlaw Star OST 2 Outlaw Star Sound and Scenario Track The third CD is mainly a radio play, but there are seven tracks of music on the small second CD (eight/nine if you include the songs on the main CD). I was annoyed that the frst two didn't contain two of the best pieces of music in the whole series, and then I found out there was a third thanks to wrist cutter ^_^. The music on that was created specially for the last four episodes, and the second and fourth tracks are simply amazing. Kou Ohtani is genius squared plus pie. Digimon Adventure 01 1 and 2 Digimon Adventure 02 1 and 2 Digimon Fourth Movie score Digimon: The Movie Soundtrack The first five listed there contain music from the Japanese Digimon series. And... the US music is far far better. BUT THEY WON'T RELEASE THE BGM!! Silly people... A few good songs here, though. Some of the music's pretty good as well- the instrumental version of 'braveheart' and one at the end of 01/1 are nice to listen to. The rest gets rather repetitive and isn't anything special. The Digimon: The Movie Soundtrack is a collection of songs from the US Movie and TV series, despite the fact that two of the songs don't appear anywhere in either o_o; Pokemon Sound Anime Collection Pokemon: Mewtwo's Counterattack Pokemon: Revelation Lugia Pokemon: Lord of the Unknown Tower Pokemon: Celebi- A Timeless Encounter These really deserve a place of their own in comparison to the US music. The Sound Anime Collection was one of the first anime sounctracks I bought, and it is still one of my favourites. Despite the series' bad rep, I can never get tired of the BGM. Although one irritating fact is that half of the 75 minutes' worth of tracks on it are made up of strange Japanese narrator bits. The first movie (Mewtwo's Counterattack) has a great soundtrack with fantastic depth, and even comes with a radio play about Mewtwo's Birth, which was pretty much included in the 4Kids-commissioned 'Mewtwo Returns'. It's great, and the song at the end is even better. The other three films are nice too, but don't contain nearly as much music. Pokemon: The First Movie Score Pokemon: Die Macht des Einzelnen Pokemon: The First Movie Soundtrack Pokemon: The Power of One Soundtrack Pokemon: Spell of the Unknown Soundtrack (shoot me now) Pokemon: TV Series OST Yes, this is the American lot. And I'll admit that I do like some of the songs on them. SOME of them. The rest can burn. The two score CDs I have of the first and second movies (the second was only released in Germany, heh) are pretty decent, but I was disappointed there weren't more instrumental tracks on the others because even though they were still cheesy, they were better than the song crapness. .hack//SIGN OST 1 .hack//SIGN OST 2 These are lovely musics ^_^ Ethereal, peaceful and oddly distant at times, it's great to listen to. And the songs by Emily Bindiger are amazing. Trigun: The First Donuts Trigun Second Donuts Service Pack The first Trigun soundtrack has most of the more prominent music in the series, and it's good stuff. I didn't think I liked the music in Trigun that much, but I couldn't stop listening to it once I had the CD ^_^; The Second Donuts Service Pack has a hilarious introduction by the Japanese Vash the Stampede speaking in English. I would write a transcript but you really have to listen to it ^_^ Very funny. Animaniacs Not an anime, but I had to put it somewhere ^_^;. Very funny songs, and useful for memorising the 50 states of America. Princess Mononoke Beautiful stuff. I noticed that Mimmi's version was slightly different to mine- perpahs there were two versions released. I'd be interested to compare the tracks and see what cropped up... But anyway, extremely good stuff. The Big O Creates a fantastic dramatic atmosphere, but the Big O main theme is the biggest rip-off of Queen's 'Flash' I have ever heard. And it gets old very quickly. Ignore that and the rests's superb. Samurai X OVA Brought to my attention by sahkiryce, hehe ^_^ She kept playing tracks of this on her site and I fell in love with them. Good good good. Fullmetal Alchemist OST 1 It's unusual for an anime series to have a full-scale orchestra behind it, but FMA does. And it's certainly no discredit, either. I gather Porno Graffiti and L'Arc~En~Ciel have performed songs for it, too. Pity they weren't on this OST... Yu-Gi-Oh OST Volume 1 (Japanese) Yu-Gi-Oh: Music to Duel By Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh soundtrack: nothing special, but the songs are nice. Music to Duel by: More cheesy stuff from 4Kids, but the instrumentals aren't too bad. Transformers: The Movie Transformers: Lighting Their Darkest Hour Perhaps more cheesy than the Pokemon songs, but in a far less irritating way. I love listening to these. 'Lighting Their Darkest hour' was a Botcon exclusive CD with all of Vince DiCola's music from the film on it. Lovely lovely lovely, but gets repetitive towards the end. And the songs aren't on the score CD. That would make it perfect. Mysterious Cities of Gold Volume 1 Mysterious Cities of Gold Volume 2 The titles are actually in French, but I'm too tired to try and remember how to spell them properly. This is an old series, but it was the very first that I absolutely loved the music from. Unfortunately the original scores were lost somewhere, so these were recreated using the help of someone they fround on the internet, heh. Missing a few of the more decent pieces from the series, but never mind. Halo Very good music... for an X-Box game. Lylat Wars I have the German edition, and I have only one piece of advice: get the Japanese one- it actually has the End Credits, as opposed to an extra 15 tracks of EXACTLY THE SAME THING. I don't listen to all of these any more. The Yu-Gi-Oh and US Pokemon CDs barely even leave my CD rack except when I'm in the mood for Billy Crawford singing the cool First movie theme, or the rather nice Japanese ending theme of YGO. It annoys me when I buy a soundtrack hoping to hear a certain piece of music on it, and it's not there. Every single soundtrack I own is guilty of this in some way (with exception to those whose series I haven't yet seen- I don't know what I'm missing, heh) except for the Transformers Movie and Halo. Well done them. I could even name the pieces of music that are missing, but I won't go that far. I'm too tired, heh. But I do miss Fred Luo's theme from Outlaw Star...

Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, August 27, 2004

Hope's Temptation

Find it here. A short story I've written... it's only a first draft, but since I have to get moving with various story things I figured I'd try getting something down that I'd had vague ideas for for months and see how much more inspiration research I need to do. I think it's turned out alright, but everyone else'll have to be the judge of that, heh. Thoughts behind it? Well... When people talk about coming out of relationships or being turned down, you pretty much only hear it from the 'dumped' person's point of view and I get the general feeling that people who say 'I don't love you' are looked upon as being somehow unnecessarily harsh, despite the fact that telling the truth in a situation like that is the best thing that you can do and can be equally as painful for the person who has to say it. It's something that's stuck with me for a long time. There was actually more conversation that I wanted to add into it, but I couldn't whittle them into that particular section. I think I'll be writing a couple more pieces along (and in) the same thread and with the same characters soon. I might change the last line of the first, or get rid of it entirely. But it's only a draft, heh. And Finally... I picked up a job application form from MVC today ^_^ Once I fill it in, I should be in good stead for getting a well-paid job over Christmas. Which'd be nice. Now (well, once my dinner's gone down. Damn soup >.>), I must write things, including letters that I'm very behind with.

Comments (5) | Permalink

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Sounds of Solo Part 1: Films

I have a very large soundtrack collection, it came to my attention as I was sorting it out today. So large, that I can divide it into two main categories and still have too much to post about. Technically speaking they aren't all mine, but a lot of them live in my room. My mum and sister often take a few to listen to, so they're all over the place. So first then, come the film soundtracks. Collectively, in no particular order, they are: Shrek (Songs and Score) Antz Chicken Run The World Is Not Enough Tomorrow Never Dies Best of Bond The Essential James Bond Star Wars: -Ultimate Episode 1 -Episode 1 -Episode 2 -Return of the Jedi Stargate Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within The 13th Warrior Armageddon Moulin Rouge (1 and 2) Terminator 2 Evita X-Men X-Men 2 Hook Pirates of the Caribbean Finding Nemo The Lion King Collection The Mummy Returns Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone The Matrix Revolutions (Dan still has this, sod >.>) Gladiator The Nightmare Before Christmas Batman Returns Edward Scissorhands Danny Elfman's Music for a Darkened Theatre Volumes 1 and 2 The Full Monty Austin Powers- The Spy Who Shagged Me The anime films I'll include in the next post since I have enough anime to warrant its own category, heh ^_^; The ones I listen to most are probably The Matrix Revolutions and Pirates of the Caribbean. There's just something about those scores that captures a certain dramatic element that makes them stand out in their own right- they're the ones I can most easily dream my scenarios to, and that's something that greatly affects the music I listen to. The World Is Not Enough and X-Men 2 have some fantastic bits in them, and Hook is one of the most beautiful scores ever created. John Williams is amazing. And British ^_~ Danny Elfman creates such a fantastic atmosphere... it's usual for a score to be diverse in separate pieces, but he can create such a bitter-sweet, eerie yet charming piece of music that combines itself together and loses none of those elements. I have a huge amount of respect for people who can create music and create it well, to such a degree that it can actually move you. Listening to Hook on its own often brings me close to tears at times. Admittedly I have to be in the right mood, but the fact that it can do that anyway is certainly something. If I had to recommend one soundtrack out of all these... it would have to depend on what you were looking for. Epic: Lord of the Rings. For romantic action, Pirates of the Caribbean. For something softer and more gentle, Hook. It depends on your style. But there are some that really stand out, regardless of what you normally like.

Comments (5) | Permalink

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Heed the Warning Bell...

I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village today. It was pretty cool on the whole. I know it was meant more as a psychological thriller than monster horror movie, but it still scared me in places (although that was usually when big theatrical noises appeared unexpectedly. They always get me >.>). I thought it was well-presented, and the ideas in it were good. I can't explain a huge amount more without going into spoilers, which I shall do by turning my text black. Mwaha. The idea that people could create a completely isolated community was... a little far-fetched to me, but I guess that wasn't entirely the point. The film made an interesting debate about the evils of money and trying to shy away from them. I think it's pretty much inevitable that some sort of crime would be committed within the community anyway, even without money. Hatred has many factors, and money isn't the root of all evil. It's just a major player. The whole 'creatures in the woods' front was a good twist, and reminded me a lot of Little Red Riding Hood. I was a little disappointed that they weren't real, and nor were they big wolves. They were big ugly boar costumes. But wouldn't the villagers have gotten suspicious that the Elders weren't around whenever the creatures appeared? And what would they do for wood if one of their houses fell foul of woodrot? The only way they could get it would be through crossing the border and chopping down trees. There weren't any within the village itself, and yet they still had firewood supplies being brought in. Silly people... I would go on more, but I can't organise my thoughts enough to create the kind of things I was hoping to talk about -_-. Ah well. The acting was good, and I liked the girl who played Ivy (I can't remember her name...). Joaquin Phoenix still looks kind of strange, though. Like Seann William Scott with the wierdish 'charming endearment' sucked out of him. Oh, I remember what i was going to talk about now. It'll have to wait until tomorrow though, heh. It's probably slightly more interesting, and with any luck I'll be writing it when I'm in a better mood for doing so. Right now I'm concerned about a wasps' nest that's been created in the attic right above the corner of my room. I've checked for areas that they might get in through, but I don't want to be forcibly evicted by bastards that shouldn't be there in the first place. Much less ones that require the spraying of vicious chemicals to get rid of. Bleh, I hate wasps.

Comments (4) | Permalink

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Whoa!

I was so very close to forgetting to post today ^_^; That would have been a shame, as I'm enjoying TehSillyCircus2, heh. Anyway, I need to find something to talk about. I had it earlier, but now it seems to have vanished... I'm often losing things, actually. Not just in memory but physically as well. There tend to be about four different places I put things, as they're where I spend most of my time or are where I enter/exit before or after various functions: the sitting-room, my bedroom, the library and the study. Black Hole Cushions The sitting-room sucks in stuff, and even though it gets cleared out every now and then it still gets messy within a matter of weeks/days/hours/now. And you can almost guarantee that if you last saw something in there, it's still there somewhere. The question is: Where? Most of the things I get given in the morning or when I'm watching TV get thrown on the sofa or the footrest, so half the seating at 'my' end of the room is filled with papers, magazines and bits of junk ^_^; Otherwise it's all dumped on a poor little folding coffee table at the other end, which hasn't been properly clear in at least a year. Things don't leave there- they migrate in rotation. So something that was on the sideboard will be on the table within a day or so, and what was on the sofa will be on the floor, etc. It's madness. And when you're desperately looking for an exercise book, cheque or appliation form that you need in five minutes' time it gets incredibly frustrating. My bedroom's a mess, but it's usually organised mess. Toys are on one side fo the bed; clothes, magazines, CDs, armour, furniture, bags, papers, homework, books, weapons, costumes, toiletries and chairs are on the other. And all Sara's letters are next to my bed ^_^ I still manage to lose things, though. They fal or get moved unintentionally when I'm looking for something else. I guess it's the cycle of mess- it has to move somewhere otherwise it roots itself and officially evolves into junk, whereby it's liable to be chucked out. Any mess that evolves too quickly gets removed from the gene pool by being thrown in the bin. So it tries to gather itself up into piles to prevent inevitable purgatory in my bin. When in piles, they hide items of possible neccessity and get moved by the person trying to find said item and hence have a new time frame with which to void becoming junk. The mess becomes piles again, and thus continues until the piles are so big you just have to get rid of them. This is known as natural selection. ...It's amazing what kind of stuff I can come up with at twenty-five to midnigh, heh. And vist Dan L's site. The online Bible translations are hilarious ^_____^

Comments (5) | Permalink

Monday, August 23, 2004

Cries of the Many

I sometimes find it hard to understand popular culture. Fashion, trends, styles... most of them are lost on me. I tend to ignore things like Big Brother, because the producers have stopped trying to get people who are genuinely interesting and just get people who argue, have sex and generally aren't very pleasant characters anyway. At least, that's what I've understood of it. I don't suppose I've ever been one for many mainstream popular things except films, but they tend to have a slightly different audience to TV shows and are made for different reasons. And people go and watch them for different reasons- to oogle stars (Aragorn's much more attractive than Legolas, by the way ^_~), to see things blow up or to brainless/intellectual in any amounts. I never saw xXx, because personally I don't like Vin Diesel and I think the film looks pretty sh*te anyway. But thousands of people go to see films that really aren't very good, and things that could be really decent are missing out as a result. It's a shame. I'm sure there'd be a better market for more decent stuff if people actually paid attention to it. *coughs* Another thing that puzzles me is how some MyO sites are so popular even though there are no comments and all they ever post up is quizzes...*coughs* And that's another thing that gets me- clothes fashion. Some are so damned impractical it's unbelieveable. I remember seeing a girl wearing these really baggy jeans in the rain and the bottoms were completely wrecked. They'd soaked up so much water and they were ripped to shreds, pretty much. I know goth/grunge/whatever yout to call it fashion tends to build itself on rips and tears (and they do look pretty cool in the right places), but it wouldn't strike me as being very comfortable to wear in the rain, or in heavy heat. Obviously you'd have other clothes for that, but they just don't look right on me. I think more form-fitting trousers are much nicer, even if they are a little baggy. Six-foot wide tubes of denim don't do anything for me, heh. They do even less for the idiot guys who wear them with the crotch around their knees. No, I'm serious. They actually wear them lower than the height they should (and in most cases, legally) be held at. And the worst thing is, it's the people who should do it least who do it most (i.e. really hairy/flabby/ugly people. My English Language class was rife with those). HEY, LOOK AT ME! I'll never wear a T-Shirt with a slogan on it with one exception, and that is the Red Dwarf one I have that says 'Smeg Head' one one side, and 'Better Smeg Than Dead' on the other. That's cool ^_^. And others are cool/funny too, but I don't like the ones in the shops here. They're all references to sex and/or sexist jokes (e.g. usually something about 'Giving Head'). The designers' excuse might be 'It's taking the piss out of people who say those things', but as far as I'm concerned if you wear that T-Shirt, you're still advertising the fact that you're an idiot. Alright, so they're not all about sex. But the rest of the designs are crap anyway. I will probably wear something with rips in at at some point, but I wouldn't buy anything unless I thought it was really good. You can buy a pair of jeans ripped at the knee for about... 30-40 quid somewhere. But elsewhere you can buy a brand new, ripless pair of jeans for £20. If you really wanted a hole, why not do it yourself for half the price? They're only charging you 20 pounds extra because one of their workers took three seconds to slash the knee. Ones with the 'rip' sewn on (on an additional piece of fabric) are nicer, and they don't let the elements in so much. I don't know. I'm probably talking to the wrong people, heh ^_^; I know ripped and baggy jeans are fashionable. And on the right people they look really cool. Otherwise it makes you look like you've something to hide, heh. Celebrity SOS People's obsessions with celebrity is plastered everywhere, too. It means less to be famous than it did say, 30-40 years ago because it's become so much easier to do so. Congratulations to those stars who remain out of the public eye, heh. But some people won't leave them alone. I've had enough of hearing about Britney Spears' marriages or J-Lo's buttocks. What's stupid is that it can take priority over news that will affect people in far greater ways; say the doings of a Government/murderer/natural disaster. It's not as if knowing how many people the members of Busted have slept with will help you actually really know them any better, or enrich your life any more. But... I guess there's always something people want to build themselves to. They need some sort of place to aim for else there'd be no direction or motivation of anything. It just frustrates me that if I want to become a film actor, I'm going to have to put up with all this as well, heh. One Last Thing... My Guestbook entries have been disappearing o_o; Anyone else noticed this?

Comments (6) | Permalink

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Gears, Wheels and The Spaces Inbetween

Lawrence is round tonight... again. Except this time it wasn't really intentional. I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, but... there are things I'd rather be doing. Anyway, we also had another of my friends round, who I got to know because he's the husband of mum's friend. He's very cool, likes anime and knows a heck of a lot about our computers. he's the one who's bee trying to sort out the network for us, but as it turns out we'll just have to go for a cabled network because the wireless is being interfered with so badly it's not funny. But either way as long as I have Broadband in the library I don't care that much. But since Lawrence and Mike don't know each other, I have to spend time with them separately. And both things that they were doing interested me, so I could be spending long periods of time with both whilst leaving the other on their own. It's awkward, and I don't like isolating people. *whistles idly* It's almost on exactly the same level as being isolated, although what's worse is when you're in the same room as two other people and you feel like you're on your own. Yes, it's couples time. There've been times when two friends of mine (going out with each other) have been having a private conversation or trying to excavate each other's throats with their tongues and I've just been sat there, forcing myself to wonder about where the furniture was made so that when they ask me if I'm alright I can answer truthfully. Well, half-truthfully. If I said "Well, I was looking at your table but I was really thinking about how stupid I feel sitting on my own like a nonce while trying not to watch you two search each other's bodily passages", it might not go down too well. One step up from that is a fifth wheel. Two couples, one friend of both. Although unless their moments of passion or discreet awkwardness co-incide, you can usually have a conversation with the free pair, which usually consists of sarky remarks about how rude it is to completely ignore the rest of the room; by the time they get round to it, the other couple says exactly the same thing. Buh... And then you come to a loose wheel. This tends to happen at parties where you get groups of people talking to each other and you float about between people you know, trying to lodge yourself into a nice chair and have a decent conversation. I often find myself tacking comments onto what other people say because I'm not an instigator of the conversation. And if I am, the counterpart usually gets interrupted by someone else and continues talking to them. Grr... maybe it's just a drama student thing. But all three are incredibly annoying and all come with their own unique disadvantages as well as the big "Why on Earth did I bother coming in the first place?": -The first makes you feel lonely, -The second makes you feel lonely and incompetent, because at least two of your best friends have been able to find someone suitable, -And the third makes you feel socially inept, with the bonus detriment of making you dislike parties, hence making you feel or look more antisocial and hence getting you involved in conversation even less. I try to accommodate everyone as best I can, heh, but it's not easy ^_^; Things just tend to organise themselves that way- if you're floating about it doesn't necessarily mean that you have no friends- it might just mean you have a lot of friends but they're all busy ^_^ That's my excuse, anyway. *coughs*

Comments (5) | Permalink

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Complete with Swashbuckling Action!

Lawrence is round tonight, and he's brought the Pirates of the Carribean PC game with him, heh. It wouldn't run on his computer, and is now incredibly jealous that it run on mine ^_^; He wants a new graphics card, and my 128 MB one is faring quite well... even if the CPU slows every now and then >.> It's quite a cool game, hehe. There's a lot going on, including bits of strategy, pirate sim and third-person fighting. The various bits of it are actually rather basic, and putting all the elements together amount pretty much to an open-ended RPG in which your captain character gains levels and gets better ships, conquers more pirates/armies etc. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't like pirate scenarios, either in films or games or whatever. They are incredibly cool. My older sister's got into Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, and I must admit that from hearing everything she says about them they do sound very good, and I liked the film, too. I want to try and encoroprate piratey goodness into my Nazreal fics. There's one ship that's integral to the plot, although it's not the focus of the series. I haven't decided on a name yet- either the Solaris or Coriolis or something else that's similarly interesting. Its captain is Osiris Tallon, a gold griffon in white and gold armour and a long red cloak [For those who don't know yet, Nazreal stars entirely anthropomorphic- e.g. Starfox -characters]. It's no ordinary ship, as is clear from the speed at which it cuts through the waters and the power of the guns. But what else is special is that it flies. When I was about five or six there was this clay animation made called The Fool and the Flying Ship, in which a boy made (or found, I can't remember) a ship made out of ice, and it flew. he gathered a crew of people he met along his travels and ended up having to do something for this Tsar (I believe it was a Russian animation), who betrayed them for whatever reason. They ended up beseiging his castle with incredibly scary stick soldiers that two of the travellers could create with their enchanted bundles of wood. I seem to remember it was well-written, and fantastically imaginative. Nazreal's plot is entirely different, but it would be lovely to integrate some sort of ethereal magical qualities to it, aside from the regular magical abilities that a lot of characters seem to innately possess. There's technology in it too, but only to a point. The best comparison I can think of is something like Escaflowne or Arc the Lad, where the world is sort of late 16-17th Century, but there's magic and swooshy capes and bits of lost technology and all sorts. Once I actually get past the conceptualisation, I hope it'll make for a good read. I've read a few online story series that follow similar lines and they seem to be fairly popular, but I wouldn't really know where to start advertising it. I guess joining a Webring would be a good place to start... Ideally I'd like it published properly, but I don't know whether the way I develop the story would be right for an actual book-book, or just a web book thing. Either way I'm determined to write and finish it, heh. Urgh, I have an itchy lower back. It's persisted for a few days... I think I'll put something on it. Along with the disgusting fungal infection I'm trying to get rid of, too >.> Bastard things.

Comments (5) | Permalink