Gaming, writing
Apr. 1st, 2010 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsAnother week, another overdue post...
I've become a bit more aggressive about seizing the living room for DDR, so I've been working on that. I decided to go through and post a score on every Beginner-mode song (even if it was an E); Saber Wing and SAGA seriously kicked my ass, but because I have the global setting on easy (dance meter drains as slowly as possible) I managed not to fail them, and so far I think I have an A or B on everything else. A lot of the challenge songs live at the bottom of the list, so that's sure to change soon; I may use Training Mode to work on some of them. I should also try Street Master Mode when I get through the list, and maybe see what I can do with MAX2...
I've also gotten back into it and am plugging along in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (currently in the always-annoying machine tower section; moving platforms, spikes, medusa heads, blargh). As predicted, for fanfic purposes I've gotten attached to its story now, but with some tweaks; some of it just seems unnecessarily complicated, and I had my own ideas to make it mesh with, so I'm ending up with a take on it where most-to-all of the same things happened, but not for the given reasons. Anyway, I'm loving it like a Metrovania, although I was miffed to find that it's kind of buggy, apparently rushed to market, and I had one of my spells lock it up. Grr... C'mon, make us a "Greatest Hits" version and fix it up! (Except maybe the Quest Reward glitch, I can live with that one. ^_~ I haven't tried it yet, but apparently there's an instance coming up where it's so very tempting...)
I actually got out of the house yesterday. In Jessie's town there's a church whose people tend to be very nice and relatively freethinking. Formal services still don't seem to float my boat but more informal get-togethers with people from there tend to be nice (I especially like the Pastor), and they had a "writing as a Spiritual Practice" thing so I decided to go. Pastor Ellen had been reading "Writing Down the Bones," and we just did prompts with ten-minute free-writings, no religious overtones at all, actually. It was a lot of fun. The first couple I did in a totally conversational kind of tone, but after complaining about my writer's block wherein recently it seems like I can write diaristically or in summary, but not an actual fictional scene, the last prompt ("Drop this"; from "drop this ticket . . ." written on a coil of tickets from a fundraiser that was sitting on the table) then inspired me to a little piece of flash fiction, below the cut.
Today I wasn't with people being given prompts, but something sprung up in my head which for me was rather emotionally loaded ("I want you to read this book"---I am always conflicted, always want to but am always very self-conscious about sharing music/movies/books/etc that I like with people, like I'm imposing on them) and I jumped off from it in a similar way, but as a more direct free-verse poem.
Here's what got written (be gentle now, it's ten-minute writing exercise type stuff):
"Drop This"
The two girls looked down into the hole; was it an old well? A geological warning sign? Had it been dug, and by whom? Perhaps they were old for that kind of thing, but to Alice, at least, it seemed mysterious and magical, a proof of spirits or fairies.
Melissa dropped a rock into the hole; the girls leaned in to listen closely. They didn't hear a sound, but maybe it was because Melissa drew a sharp breath.
"Is it that deep?" she wondered.
"I'll try dropping this," Alice said. The object jingled in her fingers before falling; she held her breath, hoping not to hear a sound this time either.
Silence.
"What was it?" Melissa asked.
"Oh, nothing." It had been her keys. She knew no one would come to visit, but it was worth finding the spare just that it could be possible.
*********
After the writing session, we read what we'd done aloud ("as you're comfortable," as Pastor Ellen emphasized); "It had been her keys" got a gasp.
---And the poem from today; a fore-note on this one, because I know how I would react if a friend or relative posted this, this is autobiographical, but it is not about anyone who would be reading my blog here. Just for the heck of it, I'll footnote the bits that are based on specific examples in my experience...
I want you to read this book.
Because I love this book,
And it would be pleasant
Not to love it alone.
But the "you" I want to read this book
Might not be like you at all.
I want you to like it,
Even if bad things happen in it,
And the ending isn't totally happy. (1)
I want it to be all right
If it's about gay people, (2)
Or wounded apostates, (3)
Or Iranian Communists. (4)
I don't want to hear
"This author just wants to be controversial," (5)
Or get a gift in kind
Of a venerable dead man's
Hundred-page hateful sneer. (6)
When I'm moving out of your house,
I don't want to hear that I didn't respect you
Because I shared the excitement
Of an atheist's argument. (7)
I don't even want you
To explain what makes it good.
I feel that for myself;
Your analysis could only sear the blossom. (8)
So the truth is,
I wish I wanted you to read this book.
Maybe there's something better
Than loving it alone,
But I don't know where.
1. My mother can't stand anything with a whiff of injustice or violence or tragedy about it; from my end it's a pretty serious constraint.
2. I just finally---wth took me so long??---read Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home." Talk about an inadequate description, but it's a rub that it could be an issue around here...
3. "Blankets," Craig Thompson; gesturing to the part of it that I very strongly related to...
4. "Persepolis," Marjane Satrapi, finishing out the inadequately-described graphic novel passage...
5. From the obvious mistake of giving Dad "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" by John Shelby Spong. Strangely, his example was the idea that Jesus would not have known the Theory of Relativity. Makes me wonder if he even got to the "Paul was Gay" part...
6. Continuation of the same incident, his gift-in-kind of "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. I couldn't even read a page without being totally pissed off by the casually-hateful smugness, and it convinced me never to read anything by Chesterton ever if I could help it.
7. Not actually a book, but the ex had a big problem with my brief Richard Dawkins habit, and I still think the stuff I was watching him say made a lot of sense...
8. High School English, particularly Junior year, managed to wring any shred of enjoyment there may have been out of American Literature for years; it seems the classics are best enjoyed when approached independently. Dad was also an English teacher, and no one wants to discuss with him a classic that he's read... (Mom actually swore of classics for this reason, although I still think she'd like Jane Austen and the Brontes, given the chance...) I like the "sear the blossom" image here.
I've become a bit more aggressive about seizing the living room for DDR, so I've been working on that. I decided to go through and post a score on every Beginner-mode song (even if it was an E); Saber Wing and SAGA seriously kicked my ass, but because I have the global setting on easy (dance meter drains as slowly as possible) I managed not to fail them, and so far I think I have an A or B on everything else. A lot of the challenge songs live at the bottom of the list, so that's sure to change soon; I may use Training Mode to work on some of them. I should also try Street Master Mode when I get through the list, and maybe see what I can do with MAX2...
I've also gotten back into it and am plugging along in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (currently in the always-annoying machine tower section; moving platforms, spikes, medusa heads, blargh). As predicted, for fanfic purposes I've gotten attached to its story now, but with some tweaks; some of it just seems unnecessarily complicated, and I had my own ideas to make it mesh with, so I'm ending up with a take on it where most-to-all of the same things happened, but not for the given reasons. Anyway, I'm loving it like a Metrovania, although I was miffed to find that it's kind of buggy, apparently rushed to market, and I had one of my spells lock it up. Grr... C'mon, make us a "Greatest Hits" version and fix it up! (Except maybe the Quest Reward glitch, I can live with that one. ^_~ I haven't tried it yet, but apparently there's an instance coming up where it's so very tempting...)
I actually got out of the house yesterday. In Jessie's town there's a church whose people tend to be very nice and relatively freethinking. Formal services still don't seem to float my boat but more informal get-togethers with people from there tend to be nice (I especially like the Pastor), and they had a "writing as a Spiritual Practice" thing so I decided to go. Pastor Ellen had been reading "Writing Down the Bones," and we just did prompts with ten-minute free-writings, no religious overtones at all, actually. It was a lot of fun. The first couple I did in a totally conversational kind of tone, but after complaining about my writer's block wherein recently it seems like I can write diaristically or in summary, but not an actual fictional scene, the last prompt ("Drop this"; from "drop this ticket . . ." written on a coil of tickets from a fundraiser that was sitting on the table) then inspired me to a little piece of flash fiction, below the cut.
Today I wasn't with people being given prompts, but something sprung up in my head which for me was rather emotionally loaded ("I want you to read this book"---I am always conflicted, always want to but am always very self-conscious about sharing music/movies/books/etc that I like with people, like I'm imposing on them) and I jumped off from it in a similar way, but as a more direct free-verse poem.
Here's what got written (be gentle now, it's ten-minute writing exercise type stuff):
"Drop This"
The two girls looked down into the hole; was it an old well? A geological warning sign? Had it been dug, and by whom? Perhaps they were old for that kind of thing, but to Alice, at least, it seemed mysterious and magical, a proof of spirits or fairies.
Melissa dropped a rock into the hole; the girls leaned in to listen closely. They didn't hear a sound, but maybe it was because Melissa drew a sharp breath.
"Is it that deep?" she wondered.
"I'll try dropping this," Alice said. The object jingled in her fingers before falling; she held her breath, hoping not to hear a sound this time either.
Silence.
"What was it?" Melissa asked.
"Oh, nothing." It had been her keys. She knew no one would come to visit, but it was worth finding the spare just that it could be possible.
*********
After the writing session, we read what we'd done aloud ("as you're comfortable," as Pastor Ellen emphasized); "It had been her keys" got a gasp.
---And the poem from today; a fore-note on this one, because I know how I would react if a friend or relative posted this, this is autobiographical, but it is not about anyone who would be reading my blog here. Just for the heck of it, I'll footnote the bits that are based on specific examples in my experience...
I want you to read this book.
Because I love this book,
And it would be pleasant
Not to love it alone.
But the "you" I want to read this book
Might not be like you at all.
I want you to like it,
Even if bad things happen in it,
And the ending isn't totally happy. (1)
I want it to be all right
If it's about gay people, (2)
Or wounded apostates, (3)
Or Iranian Communists. (4)
I don't want to hear
"This author just wants to be controversial," (5)
Or get a gift in kind
Of a venerable dead man's
Hundred-page hateful sneer. (6)
When I'm moving out of your house,
I don't want to hear that I didn't respect you
Because I shared the excitement
Of an atheist's argument. (7)
I don't even want you
To explain what makes it good.
I feel that for myself;
Your analysis could only sear the blossom. (8)
So the truth is,
I wish I wanted you to read this book.
Maybe there's something better
Than loving it alone,
But I don't know where.
1. My mother can't stand anything with a whiff of injustice or violence or tragedy about it; from my end it's a pretty serious constraint.
2. I just finally---wth took me so long??---read Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home." Talk about an inadequate description, but it's a rub that it could be an issue around here...
3. "Blankets," Craig Thompson; gesturing to the part of it that I very strongly related to...
4. "Persepolis," Marjane Satrapi, finishing out the inadequately-described graphic novel passage...
5. From the obvious mistake of giving Dad "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" by John Shelby Spong. Strangely, his example was the idea that Jesus would not have known the Theory of Relativity. Makes me wonder if he even got to the "Paul was Gay" part...
6. Continuation of the same incident, his gift-in-kind of "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. I couldn't even read a page without being totally pissed off by the casually-hateful smugness, and it convinced me never to read anything by Chesterton ever if I could help it.
7. Not actually a book, but the ex had a big problem with my brief Richard Dawkins habit, and I still think the stuff I was watching him say made a lot of sense...
8. High School English, particularly Junior year, managed to wring any shred of enjoyment there may have been out of American Literature for years; it seems the classics are best enjoyed when approached independently. Dad was also an English teacher, and no one wants to discuss with him a classic that he's read... (Mom actually swore of classics for this reason, although I still think she'd like Jane Austen and the Brontes, given the chance...) I like the "sear the blossom" image here.
