From now on I’ll be posting on my LJ instead of here. After upgrading my Wordpress to 2.1, it looks like my Live+Press plugin is no longer working. That means I can’t crosspost to my LJ anymore. Unless I install a different plugin, which I’m not sure has all the features I need. I’m not sure where I’ll do the Blogathon, but for now you can find me over at LJ.

Current Mood:  indescribable

Stolen from ozreison:

Tell me how we first met!

Post this in your journal and have your friends respond with how they recall first meeting you.

Current Mood:  lazy

The “flashbacks” post reminded me of another thing that keeps annoying me, particularly in fantasy stories. There are clichées in fantasy (like in any other genre, too), and there are many that I dislike (as we all tend to dislike clichées), but I feel like I have to rant a bit about one of my biggest pet peeves: Self-fulfilling prophecies. I hate those with a passion, and they appear in like every other fantasy novel I read. Whether the characters try to fulfill the prophecy or try to prevent it from happening — it always is fulfilled in the end, which makes the whole story boring, predictable and pointless, as basically the ending is already given away in advance, with no interesting or unexpected twists that could mean a surprise ending. It also takes away the element of “choice” for the characters, when fate (prophecies) decide their future, instead of the characters themselves. Bleh.

SPOILERS for Doctor Who 2×12 and 2×13 Army of Ghosts/Doomsday ahead: ( Read more )

Current Mood:  creative

A recent SGA episode reminded me of something I had posted a while back in a comment. It’s not just about SGA, but about storytelling in general, both books and tv (and whatever other storytelling there is). You start in the middle of some action scene, and then backtrack to tell the reader/viewer how the characters came to be in the situation they are currently in.

It’s one thing to have the story start somewhere in the middle of the action and then go on, gradually revealing important bits throughout the storyline by letting the characters find out about it. That’s how good storytelling usually works.

It’s quite another thing to drop the reader/viewer into a random action scene and then interrupt the storyflow for stupid flashbacks that could all have been told chronologically. To me, this is cheating. The authors know that their backstory is too boring to keep the readers/viewers hooked right from the start, so they “force” them to sit through it with the use of flashbacks, instead of improving the backstory to make it more suspenseful.

It CAN be done well, but most of the time it isn’t. It certainly makes me lose my respect for the author/writer, and if it’s too bad I might drop the story completely, because I feel cheated.

But maybe that’s just me.

Current Mood:  moody

I now have a tentative working title for the Mr. Bob story: Schlechte Gesellschaft, or for the English speakers, Bad Company. It came to me this morning when I had random dialogue snippets floating around in my head. Problem is, Google told me there is already a book with that title in existence, and I also don’t think it would fit a fantasy novel very well. But for now it will suffice, and it certainly sounds better than “the Mr. Bob story”!

Current Mood:  cheerful

So I got my new computer sooner than I expected. Way sooner. Like, today!

Behold the shiny-ness!

Its hardware is among the best of the best, so I’m hoping it keeps what they promised (and I hope it will last for many years to come, too). I haven’t even tried it yet. Of course, its name will be the TARDIS. Yes, I know, it would fit better for a laptop computer, but hey, how can I resist? *grins*

Current Mood:  nerdy

Happy birthday muora!

Current Mood:  happy

I suddenly have the urge to write a story. Just for the heck of it. No planning, no plot, no nothing. I want some characters, throw them into a situation, and see what happens next and how it develops from there, without spending a year or more on pages upon pages of characterization and plot structure (yes, I’m talking about you, Mr. Bob!). Something that would, due to lack of quality, logic and typical plot structure, probably never leave the confines of my computer. But I want to try it, just once, to find out if I can do it.

Current Mood:  creative

I’m watching the DVDs of 24 season 2 and 3. I had forgotten how much I love Chloe! She’s easily my favorite character in the series (besides Jack), and that means something, because usually I find female characters boring, neutral, or annoying — at best a “yeah she’s okay but nothing to get excited about”. At least the guy characters who seem boring (sometimes) have the added bonus of being eye-candy (yes, I’m shallow).

If there has ever been a character I could really identify with, it’s Chloe. She’s so much like me, it’s eerie. She’s a computer geek. She’s an expert in her special field, but not good with people. She gets easily impatient and snaps at people. She is scowling all the time. But she has a good heart. Did I mention geek?

I admit I didn’t like her at first. That changed as more of her character was shown and we got to know her better. If I’m really that much like her (I suppose it’s difficult to judge for an outside person), I can sort of understand why people don’t like me at first sight when they don’t know me. Most of the time, they don’t bother to get to know me, either. I hope Chloe turns up in future seasons, too. That tv series has a high mortality rate.

Current Mood:  geeky