So, theme. Cutting the last post off here sort of inflated expectations for the theme post, so prepare to be disappointed. I only have a few things to say about it and none of them are particularly awesome. In fact, I can summarize everything I want to say in one sentence: I believe theme is an equal but separate force to elements of craft like characterization, plot, and setting.

Like I mentioned in the last entry, I often find myself having to choose a theme, or at least a thematic idea of sorts, to direct my choices for a story I'm building from the ground up. The elderly female naturalist studying that alien world will grow differently based on which direction I choose - environmental, feminist, and so on. The conflicts she's confronted with may not be quite the same between one theme and the next, and the audience might be vastly different. (How many average male SF/F fans are concerned about feminist issues? Maybe more than I think, but that wouldn't be too hard.) So in the beginning, theme has a part to play, and functions sort of like a stage for everything else to take place on. But it doesn't end there, because as you write a story, it changes, and the theme you start out with might not be the one you finish with.

In school, we were encouraged to start with characters and plot points, and leave messy problems like theme for the revision stage, after we had analyzed our stories a couple of times and figured out what we were trying to say. But it often seemed to me that other writers already had a set of themes they were interested in, which tended to show up in their stories regardless of what they thought they were writing about. For example, I'm very attached to the idea that what society calls "evil" is the result of being human, a manifestation of our least-admirable traits and desires, not a nebulous, spiritual source of evil. When I look at my most developed original stories, I see this coming up in every one of them. Characters like Krelian, Lehran, or Maglor probably appeal to me so much because of this personal theme, so it shows up in my reading preferences too. While I rarely start with this theme in mind, it's safe to assume it'll pop up in a certain percentage of them and dictate choices I make, and thus be there for me to polish up later.

My original beef with the statement that Miyazaki wrote theme-driven stories was rooted in this: stories often suggest themes (which is why you can find so many to argue when you're writing for a lit class), and part of the process of refining your work is choosing that theme and playing it up in all aspects of the work (character, plot, setting, dialogue) so it seems that single idea drives everything. He may or may not have started out with a theme in his pocket, but he definitely ended with one, so it directed the content of the final product. Maybe it's a sign of more skill than I possess that he can choose a theme from the beginning, write his story, and play the same theme up in the final draft, but if he did that, if his theme directed all of his character choices, all of his setting and dialogue decisions - does that make it any less a character-driven story? Because when I watched Spirited Away, I did not see a theme-driven story; I saw Chihiro's story. Because the theme was so pervasive, it became more than a motor to drive the story. Rather, it was the frame of the car, which contained all the other parts and mechanisms, while Chihiro was at the wheel. (Yikes.)

I said in a comment to someone that I believe Miyazaki is awesome enough to start with a theme and sneeze out an entire story, complete with characters and what they say and do, all in the space of an hour - but if he can do that, it's experience that makes it possible. Starting with theme does often produce stories that are boring as hell when you read them at the workshop level, but I also doubt the stories I read in college workshops were anywhere close to being finished. Who's to say the boring-ass, theme-driven story you just read for class won't turn into a character-driven, seriously theme-y piece in two more drafts? Nothing.

This is probably very different from what I would've said two years ago. I should go back and look.

Anyway, a theme has no story or personality, and is therefore useless by itself. Without other elements in play (say, a character already made), it can't suggest a story to you, and the characters you might create based on a theme like "there's no such thing as evil, only humanity" are probably not immediately compelling. This is why, when I started thinking about it seriously - and that wasn't too long ago, so my views will probably change a lot as I go - I saw theme as a frame or a stage, something that influences the production (you don't want to walk off into the wings when you're still saying your lines), and not something that might drive a story to the exclusion of the other elements.

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Maybe that sounds like an easy answer. The rote, proper answer, straight out of the writing program, is that you can't have a successful story without any of these things, but there are writers out there proving that wrong all over the place. If you're good enough, you can make a story happen without all the other baggage, I'm sure, and make people grateful for it, too. But that harkens back to another thing they love to say in class: you have to master the rules before you break them.

I can see how that might be a problem. It is for me! All the time.

As for theme, and whether it can drive a story by itself, maybe it's just how you think about it. That'll never happen in my conception of story elements as it is right now, because I just don't view it that way. And if I'm completely honest, I almost never consider theme at all - but it keeps showing up, even when I don't want it there.

This compiles all the Xenogears "meta" I thought was worth leaving a direct link to, and also translations.

I think my FE posts are way more awesome, but that's just because my Xenogears posts are older.


( 2011-2012 replay, translations, so-called meta, all right this way... )

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I keep wondering if I should make an index post for fics as well, since my Xeno fics are far less numerous than Fire Emblem. But, now that I think about it, I haven't written much worth indexing... or that I would think is worth showing off now, anyway.

Some time ago queenlua wrote about different approaches to writing, in which she outlines the three main elements that might drive a story: character, plot, and theme. "If plot is what's driving a story, the first thing the author thought of while writing the story was probably, "Wouldn't it be interesting if X happened?" [...] If character is what's driving a story, then the character, or the dynamic between some set of characters, is what the author was probably thinking of..." - these two lines caught my attention at first. I wanted to respond at the time, but was still stuck in my LJ-adverse phase, and in any case we barely know each other. I'm fine when people I barely know reply in my journal with something that spans four comments because it means I wrote something worthy of discussion, but I'm also a hypocrite, and am not fine with doing that myself in someone else's journal.

Then, somewhat more recently (for me, a noob to her journal) dawn_felagund wrote on a similar topic: plot arising from character, and conversely, characters arising from plot. As she notes, the word "story" is usually defined as a sequence of events, while things like character motivation are extra, and therefore absent from the basic definition.

I'm going to hit on the plot-wrter vs. character-writer bit first, because theme is a different beast.

When I read the first post, my first thought was, "I'm both, it just depends on the context." As I've tried to get away from fanfic the last six months or so, I've noticed huge differences in how I approach my original work compared to fan work. When I'm approaching a fanfic, I primarily take the tack of, "What would happen if X and Y were locked in a prison cell together?" and run with that inspiration. Sometimes I start with plot ("How would Tellius end up in a world war and awaken the goddess if the Serenes Massacre never happened?" - which is not the plot of the Chronicle, but could be), but most of the time I'm interested in character interaction.

With no established characters ready, I can't do this with original fiction. With no fully established setting to work with, in addition, I can't even start with more than a bare-bones plot. "An elderly naturalist is pulled out of retirement to study flora on an alien world." It has potential. There's a character - sort of - and a setting-- sort of. But I came up with this to fit the requirements of a call for anthology submissions, so the character isn't even really my idea. They asked for older protagonists, and the setting has to be fantasy or SF; I could've gone anywhere with those guidelines, but the story prompt above (because that's what it is, a prodding to go further and come up with real ideas) is not very creative. They might get five stories with the same premise.

I didn't have much to go on until I considered what kind of story I wanted. You might say I started thinking about theme: is this going to reflect environmental concerns? Should I try to address the issue of colonization, how it can destroy ecosystems? Or will this be a story about age discrimination, or about trying and failing to enact change? Consider writing a fanfic AU for a minute - when you throw a character you know into a different setting or situation, part of the interest (for me, anyway) is to see how they react to different decisions, or explore what changes will happen if you throw them into an environment that would shape them differently. In the same way, it seems to be that this elderly female naturalist will become a different character depending on which situation I throw her into, so at some point - usually the beginning - I need this basic idea, this theme, to direct my characterization and setting details, even if the story ends up changing and suggesting a different one later.

Digression: I see a huge appeal in creating a world and set of characters, and then writing a million books about them - even if the stories end up repeating themselves eventually. That would be a huge advantage when sitting down to do the actual writing. I wouldn't run into the above problem at all. That, I feel, would be the sure way to maintaining one's income. And if the series becomes self-referential and starts fan-pandering, well, you do want to maintain your fanbase, don't you?

Anyway, as I kept thinking about the question of what drives a story, and how that affects its appeal, I came to the conclusion that for me, in my jumbled-up opinion, it all eventually comes out to the same thing. You may be a character writer, but characters create plot-- they have to, in most cases, or people lose interest. If your character sits and stares out a window and does nothing, and doesn't think about much, nobody gives a damn. If she does something-- plot. Instantly. Bam. She does something, and there's going to be motivation in there somewhere, which is created by history, which in turn creates the present situation, and plot. I was told over and over that conflict makes plot, but I think it's more accurate to say character makes plot, and most characters, like most people, are going to be conflicted about something. People create conflict, and the rest is just nature.

Likewise, plot can't happen without a character. You can take a plot-based approach, but it seems to me that in the course of writing your story, you'll take that character you created to fill a role and make him evolve almost by accident. In my experience, one can create a thoroughly thought-out character, fill in all the blanks on the personality and history sheet, and still not know anything about them until you start writing, at which point they take on a life of their own. You never (well, I never) end up with the same character you started out with. And presumably, as you write and get to know these people, you will care about them at least as much as the plot.

So I guess to me, the idea of being a plot or character writer doesn't make sense, because to me they are exactly the same thing. My bare-bones plot up there suggests a character by default. If you cut it in half and pretend that "to study flora on an alien world" was the only idea I had, well, I need someone to enact the plot. No getting around it. But even if I have a whole plot mapped out, and start with that driving my process, the character will eventually become the most important part of the story, and therefore be the driving force. I think this is a matter of layers - the first draft, or first layer, is driven by one thing; the next one might end up driven by something else. But the finished product will probably be moved by each in equal measure.

That's all idealism up there. And I can't lie and say I've never come across a plot writer, because Arthur C. Clarke is one such, and Tolkien didn't spend too much time on individual characterization as I recall. It's there, but clearly is not the focus, especially in something like The Silmarillion. I may love Maglor, but if I'm going to write a story about him, I have to make shit up right and left. All Tolkien gave me were events and some indicators of feeling. If I work only with that, I'll write a cliche.

I'd say more about theme, which was the whole point of writing this entry, but that'll take another six or seven paragraphs, and this is already too long.


EDIT: there's discussion in the comments on DW if you're interested in that.

I need to feel like I know what I'm doing. This means I'm taking fanfic prompts again, because I sure as hell have no idea what I'm doing with my original work. What you're signing up for are short stories, ficlets, fragments, whatever I can milk out of the prompt. I make no promises the result won't suck. I'll aim to fill the first seven prompts for sure, though if I'm desperate you may not get what you signed up for. :P :P If anyone comes in after that... I'll try.

Give me prompts in this format:
1. fandom or canon
2. preferred character or characters
3. genre (eg. romance, gen, drama; also, for kicks: letter, treatise, hagiography, etc.). No porn, have pity on me.
4. sensory details of your choice (up to five)
5. a word, phrase, or set of song lyrics

Chose from the following fandoms, in no particular order:

Saiunkoku Monogatari
Suikoden III or Tierkreis (characters with reasonable screentime preferred)
Tales of Symphonia
Tales of Legendia (main characters)
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Xenogears
Hikaru no Go (you know what I like)
Abe no Seimei legends (as long as I can look it up)
Greek Underworld legends
The Silmarillion (elves preferred I will shun Turin)
Last Exile (original series)
Twelve Kingdoms (very limited; Kei, Han because it's barely there, maybe En)

I will probably regret offering the last few because I don't know the canons/facts well, but. Trying something new, blah blah.

The only writing example I can offer newcomers is When in Harmonia, which I'm told is fairly interesting even if you don't know the canon it's based on. And I'll probably regret unlocking this, but Wild Mint kinda sorta retells a Persephone story as an exercise. :|

The timetable for this is wide open. Sometimes I end up finishing everything I get, sometimes I crash and burn before I reach the fifth response. And I never edit anything.

Example prompt:
1. Saiunkoku Monogatari
2. Reishin and Houju
3. gen + letter
4. tea stains, silk, roasted duck
5. village idiot

Yes, you can ask for the example. :P

I wish I could say I've been doing tons of work, but really, I've been doing some work (not the work I should be doing), sometimes the minimum, and not always because of backaches. But! At least for once LOTRO wasn't the cause of my slacking.

For a while now I've been trying to figure out whether I'm the kind of writer that works well with an outline, or better without one. After a dozen or so stories I still can't tell.

The problem is, while I tend to stay more focused if I start with an outline written out, I almost always wander off before the end of chapter one. One chapter is enough for me to realize the structure of my story - as represented in that outline - might be correct, but is still completely inadequate for actually guiding what I write. I still stare at the most recent scene break and wonder what the hell I'm supposed to write next to bridge the gap between point A and point B, even if A and B are in the same chapter and I know exactly what they're supposed to be. As I get farther into the story, this gets worse; most of the content ends up being completely off-the-cuff, though it still ends up hitting all the proper points laid out in my outline, just not the way I originally envisioned it.

The outline, I guess, ends up showing me how much I don't know about what's going to happen, when initially I thought it was supposed to do the opposite. Was this a problem with the way I was looking at outlining as a tool, or is this just one of those things that happens to writers - what they call "the story taking on a life of its own," even though I consider that a completely different phenomenon? Because I'm not talking about the plot changing on me, per se, or characterization changing, which is how I've always interpreted that phrase; I'm saying none of that was in the outline to begin with, even though my page of bullet points covers all of those things that are supposed to be Plot. And they are the plot. But they're apparently not the meat of the story.

It's possible I still do not understand what a plot is. I wouldn't be surprised.

However, there have been stories where, when faced with this problem, I created scene-by-scene outlines as I went along, so I knew were I was going to achieve my chapter goals. That helped me a lot when I was still writing the Summer Chronicle, which grew a sprawling plot I was completely unprepared for. There were so many things I wanted to do, so many events and conversations to cover, that I started each chapter with a mini outline.

Maybe I should do that more often. That would indicate I work well with thorough, even exhaustive, outlining.

On the other hand, I have also experienced that awful feeling of dead inspiration after writing an outline - I realize I don't really need to write the story once it's done, because I got it out on paper. (Or-- is it that the story never needed to be written and wouldn't have worked, and that dying inspiration is actually my subconscious editor telling me it can't work? Who knows. I've gotten used to not listening to that editor because she's a bitch. You really have no idea. If I said half the things I think, about my own stuff and other people... :D)

The Summer Chronicle is an interesting example for me, actually, because it's a work of fan fiction that forced me to create a lot, and so in a way I feel it straddles the line between purely fic and original, simply because it made me work as hard as I believe I should for every story - which I don't often do for fan fiction. I was so motivated to work on it, though; I still haven't figured out how to replicate that motivation for anything else. What made me want to think about it so much, so hard, so often? I don't feel motivated to think about other stories 24/7, which really is how often and deeply I thought about SC for most of its life, and so when I work on my outlines or start my chapters, I just... do not have the level of detail mentally worked out that I require for writing scene-by-scene outlines.

I think this may be a by-product of my tendency to create character types I like, but neglect to actually develop them before I write. So in short, it's still a characterization problem. I look at something like Rule Number One, realize I actually put some effort into creating a voice for Marcia, and see that I do not often do the same for original characters. Having that voice is a big step toward knowing how said character will react, which is kinda sorta key in deciding how a scene will play out, am I right?

Hahahasigh. But thankfully I can't blame it all on not knowing anything about characterization - when I'm starting a new story I haven't hammered out setting either, sometimes. The answer is probably that I need to do more of that preliminary work than I have actually been doing, and it makes sense I wouldn't realize that at first when fan fiction doesn't require that step most of the time.

So, what do the rest of you do? Do you like outlines? Need them? Hate them? I used to consider them a stupid restriction, and now writing without them makes me cry.

"One Hundred Essays on the Creative Process" is just a really pretentious way of saying, "I'm going to write a bunch of posts about my attempts to become a better writer." If there's one thing I write about all the time, it's, well, writing. (And me, and myself.) And sometimes the best way to work out a dilemma is to talk about it. I run into writing-related dilemmas practically every day.

Also, before we get ahead of ourselves: these are not going to be real essays. I loathe essays! I'm not going to write formally. In fact, the writing might not be great or even good, because the things I'm trying to write about are hard to even think about, in some cases, never mind putting them up in text. I will, however, attempt to keep angst to a minimum.

Anyway, the words "creative process" can cover a lot of interesting things besides craft or advancement concerns - like, oh, how the Silmarillion is an awesome example of world-building (which is really about someone else's creative process)! Or how video games like Persona 4 have inspired more interesting characterization exercises than anything I ever had to do for my classes. (Whether they work or not is another story, but that's worth posting about once I've tried.) How about Aragorn and movie adaptation? Fun can be had with these topics. All of them can be spun to apply to my writing process. Story analysis is super-important when it comes to learning craft, after all. Victory!

Yeah, it took me a week to come up with this idea. Titles: they still evade me.

For reference: the 100 Things blogging challenge that inspired this project.

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Critique is on my mind because I have to take the original project I'm supposed to be working on and start editing in changes, some of which were suggested or inspired by critique. Once that's done, I'll probably have to put it up again for another reading, because this is draft seven, and I am way too close to this story to see it clearly, at least in my opinion. As my "vision" has gotten clearer to me, the perspective of the reader has gotten away. I think this must happen with every long project I work on. I vaguely remember the same thing happening with my Summer Chronicle fic.

School got me used to critique. At the very least, I'm not a complete prima donna when I get the criticism I signed up for, and I try to thank my critics when that option is available. I try not to argue. I try not to give in to the urge to explain what I really meant by this passage, etc., because that always, always turns into, "this is why I'm right and you're completely wrong, and I just wanted you to know that." But critique is still really hard for me to deal with: I have to take a day or two after getting one to let the immediate, emotional reaction die down, because it has never stopped feeling like "there are problems with your story" equals "there are problems with you," just like story rejections can also feel like a rejection of oneself. It isn't like that. I know it isn't. Every time I've had the opportunity to play editor for something, my rejections have had nothing to do with who the writers are or what their worth as people is supposed to be. It was always just that the story didn't fit my needs.

Emotion and logic just don't get along. My emotions say there's something wrong with me every time a story of mine is imperfect, and lately I've started to realize that this feeling isn't quite the same as getting rejected / being a reject; it's more like the feeling of being wrong. It's like having proof that you're wrong dropped in your lap, in front of a bunch of people who expected you to be right, and their respect for you as a person is directly related to how right you are - or aren't, now. You should know this, the feeling says. You've been studying this for ten years and you still can't do it? You're a failure.

Every single story. Every single critique! No wonder I'm depressed all the time, right? I've never written it down quite like this before, and looking at the feeling in plain text makes me want to wince. But my preference for critique from people I don't know (eg. fellow students) makes more sense now; I don't care as much about the opinions of strangers, so I can look at their critiques with a clearer mind.

I hate being wrong. I hate hate hate it. This probably has its roots in family drama I won't mention here, but I mean, nobody really likes being wrong that I know of. It sucks to realize you made a mistake, and people aren't nice when they let you know it. Being told I'm wrong, especially about something I'm supposed to know or be good at, is like a punch to my Shadow-of-the-Colossus weak spot. All my life I've placed too much emphasis on my work as a representation of self-worth, and not enough on qualities I might have as a person. (Your guess is as good as mine, actually; I can't think of any good ones.) I have no idea how to combat that, so I have to try the secondary problem: why am I looking at a flawed draft like it means I've done "writing" wrong? No matter how often I see other writers talk about how flawed their early drafts are, I feel like my flawed, early drafts are just not the same thing and therefore not okay.

So with all of this in mind, my writing problem at the moment is this: I'm afraid to look at the last draft of the story I mentioned earlier because I know I'm going to see I'm wrong, and I don't want to. I'm afraid to see I've done it wrong. Really, I'm just afraid to see it. At all.

I can't edit this story and make it not-wrong unless I look at it.

It took me a month to figure out "fear of being wrong" is what was really bothering me-- to which I say, fuck that. Fuck that.

Except I still haven't looked at it yet.

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Goals for fixing this:
1. stop thinking of being critiqued as being wrong.
2. look at the goddamned story and swallow "being wrong" if I have to so I can get it done.
3. I might want to look into the psychological issues associated with fear of being wrong someday, when it won't cost me $135 per appointment. lol insurance!

This is harder than it sounds. We all have our different perspectives and problems; for some people being critiqued (or being wrong) is no big deal, and I only wish I could be one of those people right now.

1. This is why I have the 'lolzlj' tag...
So... normally I don't care what LJ does with their site design, but the new cut links aren't that great. It's a lot less obvious what they are, for one. The little scissor icon doesn't do a very good job of contrasting cuts with external links. I suppose I'm so used to the old way (bolded in parentheses) that I can't say for sure if that would've been confusing to new users, but my gut says this way will be even more confusing.

Not sure why this seemed like a good idea. It makes cuts blend in with the rest of the entry, which isn't a good idea of you want people to click on them. :/ If the cut links would expand and collapse instead of switching pages, that might make it work, buuuuut they don't, unless there's a new option I haven't heard about because I never read the news comm. DW does it, though. Clearly it's possible to make it not-terrible.

I'd be interested to know what they want out of this, but am too lazy to dig through the comments to their update post, which has surely been flooded with complaints and cat macros by now.

Whatever.


2. Started Persona 2: Innocent Sin
I've only just now cleared the Zodiac. Somehow, Maya's character is a lot different than what I expected, and I'm not sure how or why. Maybe the jacket with the hearts on it gave me certain expectations I wasn't conscious of? For one, I thought she'd be a high school student like the rest of the party. (Minus Yukki.) This isn't a bad thing, mind you, just different and kind of funny. Yukki looks like a journalist/photographer for an anime, but the hearts, man... they're too cute to look professional, I don't know!

Anyway, Persona 3 and 4 have spoiled me. I prefer their methods of making persona cards. :/ This way is grindy, probably the way it was in the first game, and well, I just hate grindy stuff like that. I guess it's not as bad as FF8's magic draw system, which just bored me to death.

The opening did make me wonder, though: what the hell happened to Philemon in the later games?

I'm sure that's a spoiler. >_>


3. Food: I am not dedicated enough
I made hominy from scratch. Tastes pretty good! However, unless one can buy this stuff already peeled, there's no way I'm doing this again. Sitting down to remove peels from two hundred kernels of corn = way too much trouble, and you can't really eat it without doing this because corn casings (or whatever you call them) are an obnoxious texture, rather like eating plastic. I'll settle for the canned variety.

I thought I was taking a short cut by not cutting off the tips to make it "flower." Hahahahahayeahno.

I finally realized that Safeway sells "ripe" bananas in huge bags at a discount, and grabbed one to make banana bread and pancakes. I have a habit of forgetting bananas are there, so usually I buy them green and let them sit on the counter for three weeks before remembering and mushing them into some kind of baked confection. But see, that natural waiting period was a good thing; now I have to make a ton of banana bread so these won't get icky.

Life is terrible, I know.


4. The "100 Things" challenge
One hundred entries. That's right. I like to hear myself type, so this seems like it'd be up my alley, only... I would contend I don't have a hundred things to say that are worth saying. As it is, I feel I should just stop commenting on other entries because I don't have anything important to say. I certainly don't for LJ entries.

All I can think of is something related to gaming. Mythology in games, or history in games, or ten posts each for ten games that actually use mythology as more than flavor text. I don't know. Pretty sure I don't have 100 things to say about Tolkien, though that might change if I get off my ass and start reading the extra material. Once I might've had 100 things to say about Fire Emblem, but I don't think I do anymore.

This came at an interesting time, as I was actually considering an internet/journal/IM hiatus. I'm not doing anything important here, but there are things I should or could be doing elsewhere.

The anime seemed pretty faithful to the game, from what I could judge up to episode 14-15, so I'm going to assume the last half was at least close to the original also. I could only read about the "true ending," though I probably will eventually finish my playthrough and see it for myself. That episode supposedly isn't coming out for a while. (August 22? I hope that date is wrong, but it'd have to be longer than the average episode to cover another end game.)

Anyway-- Nanako. ;_; ( Spoilers for everything. )

Well now. I have P2: Innocent Sin, and Digital Devil Saga has been sitting on my shelf for years. Which to play, which to play... Eventually I'm going to run out of levels and content on LOTRO, after all. :D

I wonder if they released Eternal Punishment on the Playstation Network? I purposely didn't buy it back when it was still on the shelves because I'd heard the first installment would never be released. Now that I've got Innocent Sin, it's kind of crappy I don't have a copy of the sequel.

So let's just say I had a chance to see Neverwinter about half a year ago. It was okay, not amazing. But now? It looks pretty effing amazing.

I can hardly believe it's the same game. I might actually play it. It'll be free, so why not?

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Believe it or not, I'm still keeping an eye on Fire Emblem 13. Word that it includes a generation system is exciting! I still haven't finished FE4 (and will probably be better off starting over when I decide to go for it), but the marriage/generation element was a big draw for me. So was the plot, but eh, plot, who needs it.

Ugh, I hate starting over. I kind of screwed myself over at the end of chapter two, though. I personally think that Beowolf should've been strong enough to take on the entire army guarding that last fortress with his attitude, but alas, he could not! To his credit, he came close. Then he went and died.

Technically I earned that F-minus in strategy, but whatever.

Speaking of FE, I need to finish that Kill-Everyone-Playthrough of Shadow Dragon. Horace is Mr. Awesome and I've neglected him too long.

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LOTRO is probably the reson I never reply to anyone on AIM anymore. I tend to play in the evening, which is when most people want to message me - but it's not like I'm here during the day either, as I make it a policy to try and do something with my life every day, even if that 'something' is walking down to the store to buy more grapes.

Lothlorien is ten times more elitist than Rivendell. Elrond has a members-only forge, but Lothlorien is full of elves who tell you, "Sorry, but I prefer not to use the Westron tongue," or "What are YOU doing here? The Lady is too generous." Hahahahaha, is she generous enough to save your balls from my boot? Let's see! And let's not forget that, without the right quest, trying to enter the forest gets you pincushioned with arrows.

That second example is totally made up, but I swear some elf somewhere says something like it. And anyway, I can't tell you how many times I've fallen off of those damned telans-- not at all because I wasn't paying attention, of course. Never.

I <3 Lorien. It's a beautiful environment - one of the few in the game I don't mind running back and forth in on endlessly repeatable quests!

The Foundations of Stone in Moria, though? That place is on my shit list. The fungus was bad enough; the orcs that summon mushroom allies and explode into disgusting, diseased goop really pushed it over the edge for me, though!

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Two more Kalafina CDs = get. Yay, new music!

It seems Persona 4 and Last Exile are done. I'll be watching those soon... if I can tear myself away from Mirkwood.

Okay, let's see if I can catch up on this nonsense.

I picked The God Engines up after hearing it took an interesting approach to faith, and specifically that the main character (Ean Tephe) lost his faith after witnessing what his god was really like, which is counter to what you (or I, at least) expect when a character's beliefs are in question. If the hero's faith is the wrong choice, then there is, inevitably, a right choice s/he can make-- and usually will make some time during the story.

In this novella, there is no right choice! They're all awful. Tephe doesn't get a chance to reform his beliefs, nor is it apparent if he would do so even if he had the opportunity. I thought that was especially interesting about him. This story did not go where I expected it to go, and I'm both delighted and a little appalled.

The story begins with Tephe punishing the god who is the engine to his ship, hence the title. You learn quickly that Tephe's god, who I believe remains nameless, conquers and enslaves lesser gods and uses them to power space travel. Interstellar communication is also god-powered by way of Talents granted to the faithful, and it can be assumed other ship and technology functions are handled the same way, so their faith literally powers their lives, and also literally powers their god, so to speak. This is central to the story, because the problem presented is the necessity of finding new faith - fresh faith, unrefined by time or teaching - and I think that's what makes the betrayal at the end hit so hard. I was expecting it, and I was still left blinking and laughing kind of incredulously. (You know, the kind of laugh that goes, "Ahahahah--holy shit. Ouch.")

Anyway, I appreciated that all the gods were ugly bastards, that there was no good choice, and I think the ending was appropriate. The interplay between the methods of confining enemy gods and the degrees of faith was interesting, if not completely revolutionary - they made nice metaphors for each other.

My one complaint is the sex scene. We all know I'll go out of my way to read fanfic pron, so it wasn't the existence of the scene I have a problem with, but the way it fit into the rest of the story. It didn't. It could have been glossed to get to the point, but instead the story insisted on telling a wholly unsatisfying half-scene that didn't function completely as story or porn, nor did it contribute so much I thought it needed to be there. It also bears mentioning that the women in the Rookery (i.e. the ship brothel) were the only women on the ship that I recall; the officers and crew were male. If that's the only use this nameless god has for women, well, I guess I like him even less, but. The best I can say is that they weren't portrayed negatively.

(After further thought, I wonder if this might be more evidence of the god's success in stunting or reversing humanity's maturity, but I'm just thinking out loud, here.)

Overall, I liked it. This is the first I've read of Scalzi's work, and I'm motivated to find something new of his to read.

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I think I'll put Vicarious Language down until I can find a book on sociolinguistics and get some review. While I can read and understand it, doing so takes about three times longer than any other book on my shelf because I have to keep looking things up. We must've had some in-class prep the last time I read this. :/ I will also probably not say much about Mori's Polite Lies right now either, except that it's worth reading.