Sal Limones

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Posts posted by Sal Limones

  1. Posted

    Two days ago the spider that lived in our shower died, after having been our unobtrusive roommate for two years. I wrote a little eulogy over here.

    Yesterday my dog Puppo came in from the backyard carrying a fledgling in her mouth. It wasn't dead, but it was badly hurt and there was no way it was gonna make it. So we had to kill it (but I didn't, because I couldn't, so Kingz was the grim hero of the day).

    Nothing has died today yet but I am a little apprehensive :I

  4. Posted

    I'd like to recommend two contemporary books that I've read in the last year and enjoyed immensely:

    The Imperfectionists: A Novel, by Tom Rachman

    Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it—and themselves—afloat.

    Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper.

    As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper’s rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder’s intentions.

    and

    Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi

    The reviews I found sell it as a love story, but I don't think that's accurate. While there is definitely a love triangle kind of thing going on and helping to move the plot forward, I wouldn't say that's what the book is about. I would say it is about a writer who always kills the women in his stories, what this says about him and his environment and how it tinges his interactions with women in the real world, and what his muse and his wife (two separate entities, one of questionable and fluctuating reality) think and do about this. This book, like the previous one I recommended, is both a collection of short stories and a single sprawling one, and likes to play with layers of reality and a few nonlinear hops here and there. It also uses a couple of archetypes to great effect, chief among them the "fox as a trickster".

    Here's some things the writer has said about it:

    Smith: What’s in a name? Why is Mr. Fox called Mr. Fox?

    Oyeyemi: Mr. Fox is called Mr. Fox because I think of him as both wild and urbane; also he’s a namesake of the English Bluebeard and an even older mythological lady killer, Reynardine (from the French for fox, Reynard). This book is full of foxes and foxgloves and fox trotting and all things fox. As to why the book itself is called Mr. Fox, that’s partly because calling it Mary Foxe seemed like bad luck for Mary--books and films that have a woman’s name as their title seem to end up with the woman dead or insane or bereft in some way, and I like Mary too much for that. But also one of my favorite writers, Barbara Comyns, wrote a book about a wily man called Mr. Fox in 1987, and even though I didn’t know about it or read it until I’d finished writing about my own Mr. Fox, I can’t help but think that’s got something to do with this business somehow.

    Smith: Where does this story come from and did it go where you thought it would go? What was the process of writing this one like?

    Oyeyemi: This story comes from having read Rebecca, which made me want to have a go at writing a Bluebeard story. Then I started reading (and re-reading) Bluebeard variants, from Jane Eyre to Alice Hoffmann’s Blue Diary to the Joseph Jacobs fairy tale “Mr. Fox,” which features a kind of linguistic battle between Mr. F. and the heroine, Lady Mary, who witnesses a murder he commits and has the guts to tell him all about himself to his face. So then I had two characters, and I was off.

    Smith: What does it mean to lose the plot? Is story different from plot? If so, how, and do they need each other? And why or why not?

    Oyeyemi: I reckon losing the plot means finding the story. The plot gets you from A to B and home again, but the story is the surrounding wilderness that you wander into, and then the bears come, and it’s impossible to tell which ones would like to invite you to a picnic and which ones would like to make a picnic of you, because they look exactly the same until you’re right up close. So I think you do need plot if you’d rather not risk approaching a story’s bears, either as a reader or a writer--it depends on what sort of story it is. Some stories don’t have very interesting bears. (Maybe you don’t agree? Maybe you think all bears of this kind are interesting, or at least, more interesting than the plot path?)

  5. Posted

    Do we explore human sexuality or do we keep it clean for families?

    Answer: Neither! Make the series appear sexualised but prevent it from actually tackling any issues related to that!

    Do we maintain a light and fun tone for ease of consumption, or traverse darker storylines to provoke thought in our viewers?

    Answer: Neither! We'll have those dark and edgy plots, but won't actually allow the series to show anything which might expose the heart of the reasons for or consequences of disturbing human behaviour.

    TV executives really are weird guys.

    They wanted the audience to get their voyeuristic pleasure on and not to think about it at all, because there's more money in cheesecake than in reexamining one's approaches and responses to sexualized imagery and situations. I'm guessing.

  12. Posted

    Congrats Kroms and Orvidos!

    I am currently doing something very scary and entirely independent. Early tests have gone well, but it could soak up a huge proportion of my remaining money, then fail. Eek.

    Basically, to make it not fail, I need to learn a huge amount about marketing, which is not something that comes naturally to me :tmeh:

    I can maybe help, I know a little about marketing. What are you looking to market, what's your target audience, etc?

  14. Posted

    I actually stopped watching the video because it made me sad and a little uncomfortable. I often ask myself whether that's the right thing to do though. I wonder if I should subject myself to things I find unpleasant to try to understand them better.

    Anyway, yeah, important things have already been said. Hopefully this being news and so on is one step closer to nobody feeling intimidated or unwelcome in the games industry and its spin-off communities and cultures.

    Nah man don't bother, it's just depressing. :(

  16. Posted

    At first when I watched that, my heart sank as she laughed along with it.

    I've done this. If you are the sort of person who laughs when you're nervous, you'll definitely find yourself reacting this way when you're in a room full of men who seem to tacitly accept the fact that this weird guy is all up in your business guessing your bra size and asking about your thighs and smelling you.

    Basically it's a version of flight in the fight-or-flight scenario where you're intimidated to the point of passivity. When you're scared like that the last thing you wanna do is escalate the situation.

    The end where she goes "OK COOL JUST SMELL ME SO I CAN GO" makes me so sad... and then he says something like "I hope she's gone to cry in the bathroom" which is PROBABLY WHAT I WOULD DO :C

  20. Posted

    The exhausted tone of this post probably belies how much it bothers me and worries me right now. I am far from accepting of this situation, but what the fuck else can I do at this point? I don't think she's actually going to step up and make the choice to change her life, even though she theoretically already did, and I think attrition will end up with the same situation coming back. I don't think I can handle that.

    Also I'm getting more and more convinced that the constant worry, stress and disappointment created by this situation in confluence with how unhappy I have been about work and study over the last couple years is resulting in up and down bouts of various physical symptoms. I'm beginning to wonder if it's even physically healthy for me to subject myself to this anymore.

    This is the most important part of your post, to me, because it sounds like even when/if she makes up her mind you're already emotionally done with the whole thing. I sympathize with her not wanting to discuss the whole thing with you though, and don't think it's really much of a sign of anything; I wouldn't wanna let anybody in on the details of the problems between me and my partner, especially if that other person would be directly affected by whatever I ended up deciding. Still, if it's affecting you physically, you should probably distance yourself from it and relax.

  21. Posted

    Nachimir you are the best.

    For content, re: life – I'm opening a new needlefelts store soon, which means I have to keep two stores stocked at all times. The second one being mostly fanart of webcomic characters (15% of sales go to the copyright holders), I'm expecting a lot of demand. I am pretty sure I can't actually keep up with this and it's probably a bad overambitious idea but oh well, too late to stop now!

  22. Posted

    I haven't seen an animated film that uses the medium that well, does so many things a live-action film couldn't do. That probably just means I haven't seen a lot/enough of the good ones - if you know Kells and have a recommendation in the same vain, please, let me know.

    General good animated film recommendations:

    • The Thief and the Cobbler - an unfinished yet stunningly gorgeous movie in more fps than your brain can handle
    • Tokyo Godfathers - beautiful and heartwrenching Japanese movie about three homeless people
    • L'Illusioniste - an animated Jacques Tati movie, full of all the lovely little details and mannerisms that make a Jacques Tati movie
    • Twice Upon A Time - technically it's an obscure technique called "lumage", which is stop motion with translucent plastic cutouts. Very difficult to find. Terrible 80's soundtrack but otherwise great.
    • The Triplets of Belleville - "delightfully retro cycling yarn that switches effortlessly back and forth through the gears from weary Gallic insouciance to frantic, jabbering mayhem (the French do, lest we forget, have that ongoing Jerry Lewis obsession)."
    • Mind Game - a crazy trip of a Japanese movie that certainly does things you can't do with live-action
    • Tintin - I went in fully expecting not to like it but I swear those are some of the best action sequences I've ever seen and they would be nigh-impossible to choreograph in live-action