I love reading con reports... so it seems appropriate that I should be writing one.

For most purposes, this was my first real anything convention. I went to SogenCon twice, but for various political reasons it was rather disorganized. Detour was much more interesting. The size alone shows the difference: SogenCon might have had 900 or less people. Three frelling thousand people went to Detour.

This might not seem too amazing to most of the people reading this, but it boggled the mind of this guy who lives in a small town next to a college and corporate town of 12K people. Dad said that it's the size of another local town...

So, yes. I haven't seen this much leather short of a shopping mall, this many chains probably ever, and the five women walking around in skin tight rubber, three of them dressed in Eva plugsuits, er, say no more.

I can't be too coherent, because it's my first Uber convention. But as for some of the highlights, I played the legendary Dodonpachi freaking finally, a Motoko Kusanagi cosplayer joined my twenty-people Ghost in the Shell panel, I chatted with a girl dressed as a Ragnarok Online alchemist, and I saw and slightly joined in my first rave.

When I wandered to the front of the rave, in the middle of the psychedelic lights and the electronic music in the bloody Twin Cities, I could understand why people become addicted to conventions and dances. It really does feel like you're standing in the center of the world with everything revolving around you. I hadn't felt that feeling since eighth grade.

From the Fortean Times LJ feed, which I'm freakishly happy I found:

My Bog. Where's the water?

The ten of thousands freaking in the ocean around Zanzibar. Geez.

It's one of those July days, where the heat is so vicious it's difficult to do hardly anything. Happily, the humidity isn't too high, so it's not dragging me into the soulless depths of oppression, but the computer for the novelling lies upstairs within the heat. So, as I can't do that, I think I'll experiment on my brainstorming rambles.

( Ramble on Psychological Disorders )

The power addicted prince challenged the cunning madman and pwned him.

I aimed for 100K and got 90 in half a year. I think it's pretty satisfying.

You would think I would have got more, as so many others seem to be able to do, but I was just having fun writing it and almost breezing it. It isn't really surprising, with such things as giant robots and monsters, betrayals, arrogant high bred people and a conspiracy theorist prince as the protagonist, but ... yeah.

Oddly, I think my characters weren't high powered enough for the concept and the battles weren't as epic and dangerous as they should have been. It's the same for the settings, though it's space horror opera, I didn't give as much thought to them as I might have and thought "heck with it! That's for the revisions."

Some of the motivations of the characters weren't defined very strongly, but I have a sense about my weaknesses now and should be able to find them and alter them.

But, whatever else I might say, the novel was bloody fun to write. I'm twitching to start the writing of the next one of the series and the expansion of the setting.

I have an interview online: Interview With Me, Kind Of

It's the first picture of me I have allowed online; Emily grabbed it and it's very me. I figured that, hey, what the bog, I plan to get published someday... and might as well get my picture around before someone gets there first!

The interview itself was fun to write, and it's another fifteen minutes of fame, if nothing else. If it looks like an interesting thing to do, give it a whirl!

When if you read it, Dogo/Kiriath's my default avatar. ;)

Wow.

As they haven't aired a Ghost Space episode in who knows ever, this is absolutely hilarious:

Erin Esurance. Anyone else think she's a cousin of Kim Possible?

The Esurance videos (Flash movies!) definitely resemble them, and I just think it's fun to see cheesy 60s things. :D Disturbingly, I'm the target audience of them. Grr. The question is, why doesn't the character have a video game yet? ;)

I searched around and it seems that Space Ghost's voice actor actually masqueraded as Space Ghost for the Aqua Teen movie's opening. Wow. And, uh, this Esurance character has a bit of a ... typical Internet fanbase.

Thanks to a free movie ticket and for most purposes half the price off of a theatrical movie, Furygirl and I went to Pirates 3 on Friday night. It was a bit earlier than I wanted, but we figured the family curse would catch us and we wouldn't get the opportunity to go at all if we didn't go right away.

It gave me exactly what I expected, if not as much as I had hoped. When I go to my one or two theatre movies a year, I want a series of action scenes. So I was slightly frustrated that there was way too much talking, and the surreal Jack scenes didn't seem very theatrical. Half of the movie seemed to occur on white screens...
However, I liked it, and when I thought about it I realised some things.

("You can't outrun the world" sounds like a good phrase for Sybil and the exchange "The world is getting smaller" / "There's just less in it" actually gives Jack a bit of a personality other than his insanity...)

One, the villains pwned the movie. Barbossa, Davy Jones and the witch doctor woman bloody rock.

Two is a bit more complicated and hearkens to a theory I had about Farscape. I can hide it so it doesn't chomp on anyone's journal.

( Analytical Ramble! )

Dad just suggested that I stay away from television for about two years. You know what? I think he's absolutely right. I complained about Lost (too loudly, I think, though they say the opposite to me... do I actually talk that loud, Traveler?) and the cop outs, inconsistencies and lazy writing of the series.

It's been brewing for about a season and half, but my gosh, that sounded way too loud and cranked off. It's only a television show!

I think I could say Heck With It to the television (I only watch Galactica, Lost, and Dresden when? they renew it, occasional movies... and not a lot of anime either...) but what would I do with the family then? Grr. Argh.

I've been playing with the City of Villains character generator and playing the game itself with Zarnok. Sure, the game has its strong points, but the only reason I'm actually playing it is because it's fun to get up in the 'morning' and game with him for an hour or two. It's bloody addicting and I'm thinking of grabbing the pocketwatch to limit my activity.

No offense or anything, Zarnok; look at it right and it's actually a compliment.

It makes me realise how much fun these would be with an actual guild of players - and just why the social aspects are their strengths. The Victory Garden on Videoland has mostly diminished, the only group I've ever actually been involved with on a MUSH, but they were never really active anyway when I was with them. It feels cool to say that I have been in one, though! 8)

The most fun of the game is its character generator.

City of Villains has more options than Heroes, and even though many of them are actually variants on spikes and skulls, it's wonderful for visuals of my original characters. It's usually a challenge I have, where characters look fuzzy and indistinct - but I can see them much more clearly now.

The hell with the game; it's fun but ordinary. The character generator boggles my mind. I've found some of its limits, though. You can't have piercings, as far as I know, or spider legs crawling on a character's hair.

I don't usually write un-money-ified reviews for the fun of it for series novels other than the first one, because if someone likes the first one they keep reading them until they get boring, but these thoughts are crossposted to Jim's bulletin board. I have too many opinions jumping about the series and had to ramble them.

( Commentary about White Night )

Why do college books comment about metaphors, symbols and allegories across the same chapter?

I can get the metaphor and symbol resemblance. They each compare something to another and stand for something else, and I guess in that vein I can understand how an allegory could fit the same situation. To me, though, allegories are a little different - it's like folk tales compared with mythology.

What's your typical folk tale or fairy tale about? It's usually, as the polite version, a happy story where the characters live happily ever after. As the traditional version, there's a lot more darkness and gore - the wolf eats the grandmother or Rumplestilzkin tears himself in two. Anyone got a good folk tale book for me to prove one way or the other?

Mythology seems a lot more epic. Gods and heroes and epic battles in a weird, exotic world. This is where the concept of an allegory seems more fitting to me; it's something ambitious. Too much allegory can feel like a preachy story... but allusions can be used rather nicely. If there's an action movie built around it, rockin'.

Hey, it's a journal. I can ramble. Hey, as long as I can describe the sorts of things I like and not use the word "bizarre headtrip" for once.

I just finished reading Elaine Cunningham's Shadows in the Darkness. At first I thought it was a paranormal romance, and then it turned into a mainstream mystery novel and then it combined a few supernatural traces. I liked it, and it was a fast read, though it seemed sort of bland.

That's exactly the thing, though. It was too fast.

Shadows in the Darkness, like Ill Wind, used way too much dialogue and too little description. I want to read a novel, not a frelling television script. Furygirl's been watching Gilmore Girls episodes, and it's similar to that. The dialogue chatters along and it's hard to keep up with it.

(Lauren Graham... hmm... what?)

I think the opposite of this says why I don't like to read Uber Fantasies very much, and why novelists like Vernor Vinge and Paul McAuley drive me nuts. There's too much description and it slows my reading down. Description can help the immersion in a book, if it's good; but it can be too dense if it's not carefully concocted.

As far as I can tell, dialogue is one of my strengths. It's fun to write, but, thanks to the Dresden Files, I've been tinkering with more of the five senses. I haven't sent chapters around a while, so I'm not sure if I'm achieving what I'm planning. Speaking of Dresden, I plan to start reading Summer Knight again. Fun fun.

Anyone else see a contrast between dialogue and description?

Once in a while, the mention of symbolism can seem like a rather bizarre thing. I mean, the first thing when I started getting into the concept was the Epic Disturbing symbolism from various religious texts and such sorts of things. That works like Galactica's third season finale; you don't really know what it is, but it's blasted epic.

There's the other sorts of symbolism. Things that stand for another; that's all it actually is, as it's basic nature. It's where dreams, mythology and such things rock on.

Anyway, the ramble about the subtle approach to symbolism. I think I can catch it more often than I did a while ago; and when I can start to actually use it, it should help quite a lot. Enemy Territory's crawling toward a giant allegorical scene, and when I complete that novel, Missing Memories has every section influenced with it.

Hey, I like headtrips. 8)

For instance, the Laurence Fishburne movie of Othello. Iago poisons Othello within some sort of a dungeon where he's holding chains against the wall. Othello's captured, in Iago's thrall. See the symbolism?

Then there's the Lost episode from tonight. Juliet and Benry have a scheme to lure the Lostaways into a web and Juliet ties a fast, tight knot on a rope. You gots to adore a good manipulator... and they're drawing the web around them. Rock.

It's a sort of game, really. It doesn't seem necessary, but it's fun to catch and mention. It's like a self referential drinking game with anime... there they use Christian crosses. Did Excel Saga do that? Hmmm.

BSG 2K3 doesn't take any chances, ehehe.

Though I don't know what that really was, it was freaking epic and it definitely wasn't a shark. Crossroads II, meine freunden, shows me again why drugs are not necessary to get the weird consciousness headtrips.

Apollo's monologue defined the durned show.

*humming the headtrip music*

My avatars have changed around a little. Two of them are the same, but the other four reflect my novels and personality rather more accurately than the others. It seems vaguely frustrating that I don't have an Anri, Lizzie or Vespasian avatar, though I do have thoughts for an appropriate picture for the first two of those.

However, I removed my roleplaying characters from the avatars. That's because I'm not bloody playing them anymore. I wasn't playing Sypha for months and I never roleplayed Kary much at all... so heck with the MUs. The novels are what matters to me, and they're what I want to focus on. Woot for insane writers.

Enemy Territory breezes as quickly as it was a while ago. 24K within about two months feels kind of frelling good. I don't have the 1K each day that I want to shoot for, but 500 feels satisfying with college grabbing way too much of my availability. The novel's only hopping into the first of the showdowns, and it's already addicting.

Also, my current reading:

Eternal Light, by Paul J McAuley. It's a strange thriller across a surreal setting. It's actually similar to Enemy Territory, and the author actually has a journal...

Writing the Short Story, by Jack Bickham. It's a 'how to write' book. So why am I reading it? Bickham is the mentor of Debbie Chester... who is the mentor of Jim Butcher. Hey there!

The book's a 'how to write a novel' disguised as a short story book. I think. Or else they're very similar to each other. One way or another, it's actually a good read. Then there's also the fact that the writing exercises actually seem kind of useful.

Enemy Territory seems to breeze, for some reason. One of my villains has been within about two scenes thus far of about nine, and the other villain has yet to arrive. Jim Butcher's suggestion of scenes and sequels helps a lot, and one of the sequels has already hopped into two chapters.

My main characters bloody well addict me... though Tristessa confuses me slightly. She's a former cultist, and she's not as well detailed as Vespasian and Rochelle. I've been running an interview with her, and she's finally saying things. All of my characters sound similar, I think... as I seem to write similar archetypes a bit too often... and I've heard that to find their voices, I have to find their motivations.

Though there aren't enough headtrips, though. I have to write more of them.

Anyone have a suggestion for a book to get into the mind of a cultist? The Wikipedia suggests an uber list of books, but hey, anyone else have thoughts? How about a book about dreams and symbols?

Okay, this is why I occasionally feel as though I'm a weird little hermit of the Internets.

I ran a search for Brookings, SD (We went shopping today and I got more books) and looked for the gaming store there. The list of search links showed me a person or a few on OKCupid, an online dating and networking site. Dating and networking, blast it, so I figured, hey, they look cool, why not start a chat?

Any guesses yet anyone?

I sent a message to several people, saying that I thought they seemed interesting and cool. One of them sent a message to me and told me that he doesn't trust someone who doesn't have a picture; "I'm suspicious. Very much so." I told him that his picture could simply be fabricated; and that I don't want to post one; and that, as we don't know who's real and who's not, that we should ignore that the conversation ever occurred.

And I deleted the OKCupid account. Is there anything less stalkery to do?

Thus, I ask you a question. How would you react if someone said "hi", said "the heck with this" and deleted the account. Would that make you trust the person who sent the message more, or less? I feel kind of moronic for sending the message, though. Of course the guy felt suspicious. Oy.

Oracle Dream got 40K, and that's a novella when I feel honest or a novel when I feel rather egotist. To the professionals, that's not actually a novel; but Vortex Trigger, ah, that's another breed. This afternoon, Vortex Trigger finished around 100,400 words and 47 chapters. I can call that a bloody novel.

And geez, what a fun but frustrating thing to write.

I originally wrote it as a NanoWrimo novel - but realised that I wanted to act rather serious with it. As serious as one can act, anyway, when he's writing about an elf and a rogue and an elemental storm and a general anime esque setting. Five or ten chapters show the influence of the Nano, adjectives and rambles and word count; but it slowly starts to get more coherent.

Within Vortex Trigger, I wrote a three act structure. The first act, a storm arrives that isn't much of a threat and acts as more of a preview; the second act involves a freaking giant battle between an elf, a rogue, hundreds of people, nature, an elemental storm and the city of Idlewait. The third act involves the corrupted city of Suspicion, and the climax isn't especially cool. So I'm very surprised that I actually wrote 100K; I thought I would get about 94 or 97.

So, what has Vortex Trigger taught me?

Battle scenes have a little difficulty than I thought. Cause and effect confuses me on occasion. I try to channel Jim Butcher's style within my writing now, but the sensory details seem rather random. It's not only Jim, actually; Ludlum wrote a lot of detail too, and I vaguely remember the sensory details seem rather similar.

I didn't have the powers and abilities of the characters as structured as I wanted and the battles seemed random for that; and for Enemy Territory and its quantum armors and carapace bodysuits, I plan to get careful about that.

And for the actual writing, I think it changes several aspects of my personality. For one, I worked at 500 words a day; and I'm shifting that up to 1000. I can get 800 rather often, but 1000s taunt me. Within this vacation from college, I'm very able to do it; but within college? That's where the other change shows.

I'm bloody more cynical. If I'm not more cynical, I'm colder; I have to get my writing addiction, damnit! I look for patterns everywhere and see if I can poke away at plots; if I can, and if something bores me, the heck about it. Supernatural? Galactica? Bah, bloody predictable. Roleplaying? Too boring, either the tabletop players look at the rules or the MUSHers chat. I have to bloody write!

So, I look at drawing books on occasion. I think of roleplaying as a hobby that bores me for now, and writing as a job.

For one thing, if I draw, I can start a comic online... something else cool to say.

Anyway...

I wrote a bloody novel!

One, it's Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. Holy heck that's a long description, but holy heck, it's a satisfying read. It's one of the strangest stories I've read in a while, other than Paradise Lost or the soulgazes of The Dresden Files. It's often called dark fantasy and horror, but, at least within this first volume, it's horror.

A cultist summoned Morpheus, called Dream, called the Sandman, and imprisoned him within the circle. The cultist looked to control Death, and we meet her at an issue of the trade paperback that I haven't read yet... but Dream is frelling cool. He's... very dry witted, looks like a bloody zombie and is a crafty bastard.

I think I know who's acting as inspiration for my arrogant prince Vespasian! Sort of.

Examples of the headtrips? Dream looks for his magic dust, and a girl's snorting it as though it's a drug. When Dream brings John Constantine (who seems a lot like Spike; yeah, that Spike) to find the dust, it's mutated the room into a mass of gore where arms and faces reach across it. Akira stuff.

Then there's a head exploding and a bargain with frelling Lucifer... and the woods of suicide. Hmm, Dante! I forgot how trippy his writing is; I think I'm shifting the Divine Comedy a bit higher on my to be read list.

The other comic? It's The Dark Phoenix Saga. It's one of the classic stories from the XMen comics, and it's actually a good, if slightly silly, read. My friend Atrius played one of the main villains from it online for a while and I can tell why. Sebastian Shaw rocks. So does Nightcrawler, curiously; I forgot how cool he is.

Also, I'm reading Gateway by Frederick Pohl, a brooding story about a one in a million space gold rush, but this is entry is for the comics.

Also, Vortex Trigger, 90 000. The mysterious rogue and the obsessed spellsculptor battle on the top of a melting soap bubble command center within the center of a storm.

Craft and Theory: Hah, now I know what postmodernism is. Though, from what I learned within the class, no one knows what the heck postmodernism is. I suppose referring to itself is kind of postmodern, hmm? White Noise is an interesting read... there's way too much noise that doesn't mean anything. Someone up for some Thoreau?

British Literature: Thanks to the class, I know how, kind of sort of, allegories and symbols work... and they also work as a way to describe headtrips. Stories such as The Faerie Queene, which I actually really liked, and Paradise Lost really can help me with the headtrip writing, I think.

Greek Myth: There. I've read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I kind of liked the Odyssey. I love legends, and Odysseus and Penelope are one of the more classic fictional couples around. No pun intended, heh. It works, though.

Computer Programming: Aha! Functions are subroutines! ... I think my programming abilities are bleh. Very very bleh.

Emily Dickinson: I think I like her. Nature and death; hey, two of my favorite subjects. She is to the whiny Goths as Casablanca is to artsy movies.

... This is a rather long entry. I shall write about my book corner in a bit. :D

Though, as a note, about 350 pages on Vortex Trigger! Anri and Devalit have discovered the plan of the villain, and there's a lot of fighting. Action scenes are a bugger to write, oddly, as I lurve them. I think I have to figure out the main characters' powers when I'm worldbuilding, not as I write.