You may remember back a few years ago, when this blog was young, that I was working on a space epic story about a group of spaceship crash survivors who wind up on a derelict battleship from a war some 800 years earlier, said ship suffering from some pretty serious psychological problems.

Proving that no idea truly dies, I’ve been thinking about it recently. Something occurred to me, but I can’t decide whether or not to use the idea. So I’m presenting it here for comments.

Background: The long-ago war was started by a species called the Gillig as revenge against all living things for the destruction of one of their colonies and their beloved leader. They overreacted. Long story short, the end result included the dehabitation of the Gillig home solar system and a plague that wiped out 75% of the rest of the galaxy. In the ensuing centuries, the Gillig have come to regret their actions. As part of their penance, they act subservient to pretty much everyone, despite their actual intelligence and other prowess.

In the course of the main story, it becomes known that the assembled intelligences of the galaxy are finally coming together to attempt to reestablish something like the old galactic government. Naturally, our hapless heroes will eventually threaten that progress.

Okay, so, here’s the idea: The Gillig have not merely been the galaxy’s whipping boy out of collective guilt, but have in fact been working to undo the damage they did by guiding events as servants to the powerful people to bring about the reassembly of the galaxy. In the original concept, the Gillig were a broken and scattered people without a homeworld and lacking the drive to make anything of themselves. This new idea makes them the secret manipulators of all known space.

On one hand, I wouldn’t put it past them. It’s pretty much exactly the sort of long term planning they demonstrated during their war effort. On the other hand, I like the idea of them being a scattered and broken people who are Really Sorry About The War, who maybe lack the confidence to attempt this sort of thing as well as the organization to pull it off. Although, given that everyone knows what the Gillig did way back when, having them attempt repair and then threatening it by revealing them as the secret manipulators because no one would trust anything they came up with might be a good story point.

So, what thinkest thou?

Tags: writing

It has been suggested by people in my writing group that I submit a story to the “Writers of the Future” contest.

On the upside, it’s apparently great exposure, and the winners receive an amount of money entirely out of proportion with what the rest of the market pays.  It’s judged by current leaders in the sci-fi field, so if you win, it’s because you’re good.

On the downside, the contest was created by, and is still closely affiliated with that great bastard Elron Fucking Hubbard.  I’ve got a serious moral quandary when it comes to anything with that skidmark in human form’s name on it.  I’ve got a list of actors whose movies and TV shows I refuse to watch for no reason other than they are in his cult, and I don’t want to give them any money they can then hand over to it.  I only excuse Jason Lee because he was born into it and is therefore not responsible for believing anything he was told before he developed critical thinking skills, and also because he makes a point of not prosyletizing, unlike The Teeth and The Hair.

 But I digress.  To summarize:  on one hand, potentially $5000 for a story I might get $300 for elsewhere, assuming I could sell it.  On the other, I am revolted at the idea of my story and my name in a book with that name on the cover.  I realize my opinion in this matter is extreme and not widely held.  The question is, do I hold my nose for the chance at money, or stick to my admittedly hardline principles?

Tags: writing

I got two kittens a couple weeks ago.  I gave them the names “Oscar” and “Felix” as placeholders until I came up with their real names, just so the vet would have something to call them.  Then I found out one was a girl.  They immediately became “River” and “Simon”, being siblings, and the girl cat being the sort to attack anything not nailed down.  I liked “River” but wasn’t that fond of “Simon.”  So I switched it to “Wash,” the name of another character on the show where I got “River” from.

I was talking to Mom the other night, and we were talking about the cats, and how I wasn’t fully satisfied with “Wash” either.  She, possibly joking, suggested “Ichabod.”  Which doesn’t have the person-name stigma of “Simon” on account of it hasn’t been used since Sleepy Hollow, except possibly by the Amish.

So, I have “River,” a tiny female calico/tabby who likes to poke her nose into stuff and bite things (and yet I just discovered she sleeps under my dresser instead of on my bed with me and her brother.  There’s an aside that can get me into trouble if taken out of context.) and a marmalade male who is generally skittish but protective of his sister and about twice her mass.

Do I call him Oscar, Simon, Wash, or Ichabod?  Or Other?

Speed Racer is ten pounds of awesome in a five pound bag.

I’m not going into details.  Suffice it to say that rather than suspend your disbelief, just leave it at home.  This is a movie that dares you to try to take it seriously.  “Plausible” is a word the script may have met in a seedy bar on the wrong side of town late one night while drunk.  Accept that now, and roll with it.  Trust me.

Everyone’s saying Hillary is going to blow out Obama in West Vriginia’s primary today because that state has a high percentage of white people.

Are the ones saying that assuming all white people are too racist to vote for a black person?  More importantly, aren’t they making that assumption based on the color of the skin of the people under discussion?  Isn’t stereotyping people based on their skin color a bad thing to do?  Isn’t it, well, racist?

For that matter, aren’t they also stereotyping black people as voting for Obama because he’s black, rather than for his policies and views?  In short, is there anyone this attitude does not insult, if you’re the sort of person to get insulted by being racially profiled?

I think I’m starting to feel oppressed and devalued as an individual.

The government gave me $600 the other day. I believe they want me to go out and spend it.

In my opinion, I shouldn’t have gotten any “economic stimulus” money. Not that I’m going to give it back. Money’s money. But I think I make enough that six bills isn’t really what I would describe as stimulating. I exist in that realm where everything I want is either 20 bucks or $2000. $600 is an awkward amount of money; enough that I don’t want to blow it frivolously, but not enough to afford anything really awesome.

I’ve decided that the US government is buying my next 20 tanks of gas. Which I somehow doubt was what they had in mind.

Guitar Hero III is one of the most fun things I’ve ever done with my pants on.

It’s like I’m playing the guitar, except good.

I enjoy doing complex things with my fingers.

I just bought a Wii.

 I swear, I ony went in to get Sweeney Todd on DVD.  I’m not even a console gamer.  Strictly PC.  But I always look on the shelf where the Wiis are supposed to be because it amuses me that in the year and a half or whatever since they’ve been on the market, I’ve never seen one for sale.  When one was suddenly there, I really don’t think I had the option to refuse.

I could probably resell it on Ebay for twice the price.  But the Lego Star Wars games were right there on the shelf.  So, y’know.

 My rationalization is that I paid more for my treadmill, and will probably get more exercise from swinging the controllers around.  Plus, my 37th birthday is coming up, which is a prime number and therefore a special occasion.

 Therefore:  goodbye, cruel world!  Hello VR Jedi goodness.

Last weekend, I found two webcomics I’d never seen before, and read them through.  Last night, I remembered them, and wanted to go see what’s happened.

But now I can’t find them.

I didn’t bookmark them.  I’m pretty sure I found them while reading a message board’s thread about webcomics, but I can’t find that thread, and am unsure which board it was on.  And I can’t remember the title of either one, or the names of any characters.  My GoogleFu has failed me.

The first one was about a redheaded girl who turns out to be a changeling.  She can manifest fairy wings.  She seems to be a modern-day girl in a fairy tale world.  She’s looking for a way to get to the faerie lands where she figures she belongs, but the fae have somehow been banished from the world.  She finds a book in a library/clocktower that is infested with bookworms that explode, destroying all the books except the one she wanted.  A librarian boy goes with her as she seeks her way home, on orders from a talking cat.  At a later point in the story, they meet a guy with a wolfskin who turns into a werewolf, but then the two guys get abducted, leaving the girl to look for them.  It’s in color, with a watercolor/pastel kind of palette.

The other one is about a teenaged girl who, pretty much against her will, becomes the witch.  It’s set in the modern day.  She goes over to some old lady’s house, and somehow gets tagged as the world’s new witch.  Her cat starts talking, and at one point she falls through the bathroom mirror into the dimension of Behind All The Bathroom Mirrors, where someone rescues her and puts her back in her bathroom.  There were only about 20 pages of this one.

I don’t only read comics about teenaged girls, by the way.  This is pure coincidence.

Of course, you realize, this means war.

Goetz/J&R needs to die extra hard.

Tags: TV