Merus

...yeah, it is the end of an era, but Oculus really fits Carmack's sensibilities of getting right down to the metal than the field of graphics currently does. It's going to be a long while before new approaches to graphics really become viable.

The only two deck-building games I like are Thunderstone and Puzzle Strike. Basically I can't handle trashing cards. Why would I want to trash cards? That card could be useful later.

Mum's talking about how the Prime Minster's going to be at the meeting she's been invited to. Yeah, this has been an odd week.

But the AAA console model is broken, and the games they make are good but you don't make money in the AAA console space by making good games.

You know you're having an interesting week when meeting a beloved TV personality is only the second-most interesting thing to happen to you that week.

Will there be a way to encourage them to get on with their space life? A perky, overweight friend robot who has a deep-and-meaningful with them about how the deceased would want them to get out there and make the most of space life, really show those asteroids who's boss? More seriously, having the residents making little memorials around about where their friends died would be pretty great.

Maybe I can bring a little of the magic back? There's an apostle mentioned in the Bible (Romans 16:7) named Junias. Junias is not a name found anywhere else in history except the Bible, which is highly unusual. The reason why is that Junias was never her name: early copies of the Bible refer to her as Junia, but her name was changed in later transcriptions by marking her name as masculine instead of feminine. Copies of the Bible that exist today still have Junias in them, even though Biblical scholars are pretty sure that line's wrong.

I loved The World's End enough to see it twice, and gained an even greater appreciation for it when reading Film Crit Hulk explain how the movie is using a sci-fi framework to depict alcoholism. (This is a Bruce Banner version for easier reading.)

It's fun finding out what people think the analogy in Elysium is, because everyone agrees it's heavy-handed but everyone has a slightly different idea on what exactly it's so clearly saying.

Honestly that'd probably work; it'd give me opportunities to blood the hands of the upper classes without having them kick puppies, and it'll give me a new faction to play with, which takes some of the pressure off the various thief crews.

Yeah, I'm deliberately trying to get words in a file rather than agonise over the perfect word choice. I have perfectionist tendencies and I'm also pretty lazy, which is a terrible combination for actually getting things done. So the story I'm writing is fantasy, and one of the character archetypes that shows up occasionally that I pretty much always enjoy is the suspicious young thief that learns to trust people. So I've built a city patterned a little off Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, where an already crime-infested area was abandoned by the police when for some reason residents objected to the police just beating up black people to keep the rest in line. Problem is, police didn't exist until relatively recently, so having a police force is a lazy anachronism. They might end up becoming part of the army in the second draft, but then I have to come up with a reason why the city slums are a hotbed of crime that the authorities are ignoring. Naturally, because I'm supposed to have a character that doesn't trust people, she needs to have a reason. But I've got basically everyone turning on her partway through the book, so I also need to make sure that has tension, and I wanted part of the character arc that she's heading down a dark path and doesn't realise it, but I think I made things too comfortable. And in trying to make her likable and give her an early motivation, I made her relatively generous and put her mum in debtor's prison, which means mum can't have been in there long because debtor's prisons are terrible. Articles are much easier to write.

I just do not get livestreaming. Like, at all. Every livestream I've ever watched has involved either waiting twenty minutes until it actually starts, or I come in in the middle without context. I don't think I've ever watched a livestream that didn't keep freezing while it buffered, except on YouTube because Google is good enough to have local servers. Unless it's like a concert or something, where context doesn't really matter, I'd far, far prefer to watch an edited video, particularly if it's one where some of the flab was cut out. I suspect part of this comes from the attitude that there's no point me putting my work up on the Internet in general because I'm basically guaranteed to not have an audience.

I think there is something to be said for Cecil not realising that he's sounding weird on the radio, but that might be one step too far. I largely agree the show'd be stronger with a more conventional radio voice. A blogger I read mentioned Cecil sounded to him like an audiobook reader; enunciating every word clearly, trading natural flow for clarity.

The tone is perfect, but I'm surprised that the National Geographic Channel is airing a mockumentary. Is this one of those cases of channel decay?

My NaNoWriMo novel is going to need a second draft pretty badly. My prose is pretty shocking - all my practice in the last few years has been non-fiction. I've kind of lost control of the main character's arc because I made everyone she knows too nice, my vague outline is revealing I have pacing problems, I have no idea how to end it and basically every detail I've made up about the limited setting I'm using I've realised I'll have to fix because it conflicts with the tone I'm going for. Which I might not even be hitting! Still, it's ironic that my greatest success in NaNoWriMo to date has been this year, where I'm doing it to practice doing long-term projects and the story I'm writing is kind of a pastiche of books I like (although said pacing problems has meant it's taken on a much cagier tone than the inspiration), as opposed to previous years, where I'm had a story that must be told.

I didn't have much of problem with Cecil's voice other than when he's reading alarming advertisements and doing a scary voice. He's clearly reading everything he's told to, including the supposedly conversational asides. I'd prefer a more natural voice, one that doesn't sound like they grabbed the least worst talent in Night Vale, but it's okay.

I thought this thread would be about Matthew Reilly novels.

I keep bouncing off Welcome to Night Vale. I like the idea of the mixing of the banal and the unknowable, but it feels like they mix in the most obvious way possible. Here is a list of things to watch out for on a camping trip, and number four is the sinister one. What relaly pulls me out of it, though, is that no-one seems upset that their family died. I can't sympathise with anyone in the town, because they don't feel human emotions. On the other hand, I liked the dog attack episode because it got closest to the tone I wanted - here is a problem, and there is something very off about this seemingly very normal problem.

FILM CRITIC HULK SMASH RAPE CULTURE

Once again, Galactic Cafe improving the game industry for everyone.

It sounds like you're getting caught by some of the RPG trappings of Rogue Legacy? I mean, if you're bouncing off the game, you're bouncing off the game, but the expectation that grinding for hours in a roguelike should get you somewhere is a really odd expectation. New equipment definitely helps you do better, but then you've got to survive long enough in the castle to start finding equipment. But I think if you're expecting Spelunky and La-Mulana, Rogue Legacy isn't for you. It's a much more sedate game.

I was very careful to not offer an exclusive definition of what a hipster is for just that reason: no-one fucking knows what a hipster is anymore! It used to be, back in the before times, hipsters were people who were busy sacrificing their financial security to do what they loved, and so they'd wear thrift store stuff because they were trying to look how they wanted on a limited budget. And then like fifteen years ago the posers started moving in from the emo subculture, so you had a collision between people whose only unifying feature was that they were true to themselves, and people who had spent no time building a self to be true to. Then something somewhere went horribly wrong, and the whole situation metastasized; if it turned out there was no subculture left and hipster just meant 'dresses funny' I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I'm sure this episode of Idle Thumbs is marvellous. Funnily, every single goth and emo I've met in real life has been a real stand-up person.

The thing that actually upset me was the casting judgement on the quality of other people's fun, which is something that I associate with someone who is intensely invested in whether or not other people see them as authentic, and are quick to disdain things in the vain hope that this is what makes one authentic. Right now we call these people hipsters; they have had many names. The beard and San Francisco and podcast was me having fun stuffing as many stereotypical 'hipster' things into one sentence as possible, which was intended as gentle teasing but maybe didn't come off that way because it was gentle teasing wrapped around a sharp point? Or possible it was a little esoteric. Anyway, please don't shave or move to Seattle on my account. I'd argue that the point of a live music show is not just to see the act performing - going to see an act perform and being the only ones there feels disappointing. I think an audience is as much a part of the point as the act.

I dearly want to plunk down money for this, but I am too poor.