Month: March 2012

Notes from a dying laptop.

Huh.  822 words in just a bit under 57 minutes.  I think that’s actually pretty close to the “two hundred and fifty words every quarter hour.”  Mind, half of them need to be dragged out and shot, but there are words!

Had an interesting discussion about Dale (of Walking Dead), Glen Bateman (of The Stand), and Bobby (from Supernatural) with John, earlier today.  I was frustrated because I didn’t have quite the right words for them, and couldn’t pin down the common elements.  (Besides, you know, all three of them have made me cry once.  Damn characters.)

It’s hard to get into this without getting into spoilers, and my laptop is telling me “shut it down, dummy, you have 8 minutes left”, but the end result of the discussion was that we started with the idea of father figures and what they mean the hero has to do, and from there went through the concept of homemakers on to culture heros, tricksters, and civilizing influences.  TV Tropes has failed me, and that’s okay, because while it’s a nice thing to check in on occasionally I am actually perfectly fine with opinions that aren’t pre-listed on it.  (Still need a better breakdown of pet monster idea, too.)

4 minutes power left, warning light blinking, more later.

First, the hook…

A brief digression on story hooks.

There’s this thing Fallout does–all four RPGs, I mean.  I can’t speak to Tactics.  You start out with an important goal, and once you’ve done it, the elements of the world you were travelling through coalesce and you have the second bigger goal.  (You find the water chip, but the important thing is now to deal with the Master. You find get the GECK for your village, but the important thing is now to deal with the Enclave. You find out who shot you and why, but the important thing is now the second Battle of Hoover Dam and the ultimate fate of New Vegas.)

What’s important, I think, is that the first goal is not irrelevant; you do not fail at it, you never discover it didn’t matter.  But the process of achieving it results in you learning about the world, and gives you a chance to care about the second goal.  It’s interesting; and as far as I can tell, it’s fairly unique in video games.  I mean, I need to play more of them, but…

I’m not sure the technique would work as well in written stories or movies; the involvement is a bit more distant.  Still, possibly bits of it are adaptable.  Will keep an eye out for examples.

Lightning and lightning bugs.

Was thinking of movie commentary in the car this morning, and of Return of the Living Dead, and something that’s been in my head on and off came to mind:  Why isn’t there a word that defines what gender you’re attracted to, but doesn’t do so in relation to you?

I mean, the movie has a striptease scene in a graveyard, and part of the commentary (or possibly an interview I read once; regardless) is along the lines of “Yeah, we did this for the guys… If we’d known there would have been so many girls in the audience, we’d have put in eye candy for them too.”

Which is actually kind of nice to hear, but that’s a tangent–what I’m trying to address right now is that the group meeting the definition of “finds women attractive” is not the same as the group that meets the definition of “guys”.  (And yes, I get that the movie is nearly thirty years old, I am perfectly aware of colloquial assumptions, I know there is a long habit of going with the “everyone is straight until proven otherwise” assumption, and I think it’s at best a bit of a lazy and horribly erasing habit but that is neither here nor there.  So.)

So what is the word or term for people who are attracted to men or women?  As humans we tend to label and categorize and articulate; I can’t believe that there hasn’t been a term a little less unwieldy than “straight women and gay men and bisexuals of either any or all genders” created yet.  I doubt it’s a perfect term, because one of the other things we tend to do is simplify and generalize, but there has to be something.

And am I completely missing something?  Christ knows it’s possible–this knapsack is invisible, but it does one hell of a job as a pair of blinders.

Thoughts?

Edited to note:

The terms exist! They are androphile and gynophile.

Inertia

I’ve been thinking for most of the month that I should start posting again. I liked the regular writing, and beyond that, the (admittedly small) amount of structure it imposed.

I’ve been thinking I should start posting again, but as many wise people have said, thinking is not doing.

So here I am writing again. Not really high on content right now, but… Well, the words are all spelt right and assembled correctly, so that’s a start. Onwards.