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May 11th, 2008
 | 05:37 pm - [Gaming] Something nifty to look forward to (Transhuman SF RPG_
Here's the first public announcement that I've seen for Eclipse Phase, which I worked on at the end of last year and early this year. I can't reveal any details, but I wrote around 30,000 words for it, and it's quite honestly the coolest SF rpg that I've ever worked on. It does transhuman SF of the likes of Alastair Reynolds and Ken MacLeod perfectly. Also, the cover is cool (it's the bottom-most image in the link).
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/happy.gif) pleased
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 | 01:23 pm - Phone service query: Vonage
Has anyone tried Vonage for their home phone service? After seeing an ad amidst tivoing through a commercial break, I looking into it, and $15.00/month for 500 outgoing minutes + unlimited incoming calls nationwide for a landline phone sounds exceptionally good. So, are there any pitfalls to worry about - service interuptions, hidden charges...?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/confused.gif) curious
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May 10th, 2008
 | 12:02 pm - Exploring Deep Seated Reactions
From this and many similar studies, it's become increasingly clear over the last decade that most decision-making happens at an unconscious or pre-conscious level, where various "subroutines" within our minds make many decisions and then our conscious mind attempts to explain &/or justify this decision as the one that was sensible or right.
In any case, two nights ago, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) teaotter and I were talking about some of the automatic assumptions or subroutines we each have for various sorts of decisions. We worked out two – dealing with unfamiliar situations that are not obviously dangerous or threatening, and dealing with conflict. ( Here's what we discovered )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/thoughtful.gif) contemplative
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May 9th, 2008
 | 02:21 am - Not Always Red In Tooth And Claw
bruceb pointed me to this absolutely amazing discussion of spontaneous play between carnivores of very different species, which is lovely and wonderful, and well worth viewing. In any case, I'm reminded of the discussions of cooperation instead of aggression that I linked to in this post. One of the inherent blinders we having in this culture is the idea that conflict and aggression are in some way more natural or expected than cooperation or play. I think that some part our bias in this direction comes from a combination of the inherent assumptions of conflict built into capitalism and the fact that modern Western culture as a whole was designed around the ideology of conquest.
However, in my lifetime, as I've discussed somewhat here and in the various links, I've seen belief of the primacy and unavoidability of violence and aggression become far more common that it was 30-40 years ago. I'm fairly certain that this change is largely due to a mixture of deliberate fear-mongering and non-deliberate marketing decisions made by a largely right-wing controlled mass media. In any case, regardless of the reasons, these biases often blind us to the fact that violence and aggression are only one of many equally natural responses. I very much look forward to our culture overcoming the negativity and associated cynicism of the last 30 years.
Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: The First - Tegan and Sara
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May 8th, 2008
| 02:29 pm - [Gaming] What I’d do with games I’ve worked on
I’ve written a whole lot of gaming supplements, and major portions a number of RPGs, and yet I’m essentially never tempted to play anything out of the box. I’m by nature a tinkerer and when I look at a game, my first thought is how to change it (in both setting and rules) to better fit what I would want to do with it. So, here are a number of the games that I’ve worked on and what I’d like to do with them. ( Campaign ideas found here )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/nerdy.gif) geeky
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 | 02:11 pm - Impressive steampunk article
Steampunk isn't my personal style (although it's somewhat close, and I'd certainly carry a brass-covered iphone), but I definitely appreciate it, and know several people who it works perfectly on. For them and everyone else, here's a truly impressive NYT article on steampunk style, which seems to actually "get" the idea, is in no way dismissive, and (most impressive) features images of people of all shapes, sizes, and races and with many images of both men and women. Very nice indeed.
I was especially struck by two quotes (the first by someone interviewed, the second in the text in the lovely photo gallery) that work well for me:
"This is more refined. It goes back to a time when people had some dignity.
and"the style is also an expression of a desire to return to ritual and formality..."
Current Mood: pleased
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 | 02:32 am - House of Suns: A truly excellent novel
I’ve been holding off finishing Alastair Reynolds’ galaxy-spanning epic, House of Suns, (which I mentioned previously in this post) because it’s his best work to date, and it’s been such a joy to read that I didn’t want it to end. Having a short break in my work, I finished it tonight, and the ending was as good as the rest. It was a novel of the power of friendship, love, forgiveness, and wonder across literally millions of years. It also contains a fairly important line that was delivered with absolutely no irony "Nonetheless, we offer you forgiveness. What is the point of being a superior civilization if you can't do that once in a while?", and another line that is something that is exceptionally true, at least for me: "Surprises are good. It's what we live for, sentients like you and me.". It is above all else an impressively humane novel and unlike much of his earlier work, not deeply sad. Alastair Reynolds and P.C. Hodgell are far and away my favorite authors, and this is the finest novel I've read in quite a number of years.
Current Mood: jubilant
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May 7th, 2008
 | 01:24 pm - Wisdom from webcomics
Todays XKCD is as good as always, but also made me think of one of the major reasons that I'm poly - I am unwilling to give up those sorts of moments.
Current Mood: amused
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| 12:47 am - Musings of an Ex-Sidekick
When I was much younger, I was always very much attracted to strange, exotic, and magical people, but considered myself to be someone whose own life and experiences were fairly mundane and that my ticket to wonders I was certain existed was to seek out various unusual people and bask in their strangeness. My preferred mode for several decades was as the sidekick and close companion to someone eccentric and wonderful. Being a sidekick was specifically an important part of how I defined myself . It’s only been within the last seven or eight years that I’ve been willing to believe that I might be such a person myself, and only very recently that I recognized that I still retained a great number of habits from those days that are no longer particular accurate reflections of who I am, even if they are sometimes useful. ( more here, including some occult oddities )
Current Mood: thoughtful
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May 5th, 2008
| 01:23 am - Geeky Musings on Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
Watching the new season of Battlestar Galactica reminded me how much I like the new show Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles – it is similar to BSG in a number of obvious and non-obvious ways, except that in The Sarah Conner Chronicles, the protagonists (or at least Sarah and perhaps John Conner) seem to be heading towards the idea that the only way to stop the cycle of violence and prevent the war is to find some way to defuse or avoid the conflict (or at least that’s my guess), while in BSG, if humanity survives is will solely be through luck or fate, and not because any of the characters has done anything remotely positive or humane.
teaotter also mentioned that she read someone comment about how they wished Joss Whedon has been in charge of T:SCC, and someone else responded that they were exceptionally pleased that he wasn’t, because for all of his virtues, one of his most obvious faults is that the only characters who can be actually heroes (as opposed to sidekicks or dependents) are those characters who can whomp the snot out of their opponents. Given that part of the point of T:SCC is that this is impossible, and the only way to defeat a terminator robot is to either have another terminator robot on your side or to be exceptionally clever and lucky (and often those are not enough, mostly you just flee). Because of the strong and clearly deliberate parallels drawn between Derek Reese and Cameron also because of and Sarah Conner’s unwillingness to accept either of their more violent and deadly solutions, I see this as precisely the sort of show Joss Whedon wouldn’t work on, in large part because it seems to be (or at least I hope it is) about finding solutions beyond violence. I could be wrong, but I’m definitely hoping I’m not and am exceptionally pleased this show is now definitely coming back for another season. ( Various fannish speculations and musings follow )
Current Mood: geeky
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May 3rd, 2008
| 01:20 am - Musing on narratives – Heroic, Trader, and Trickster Stories
There are times when one encounters an idea that significantly reshapes how one thinks about something. Today, that happened with thinking about the sorts of stories and games I both like and dislike. I love epic, grandiose, and deeply exotic settings, but often do not enjoy the sorts of novels or games typically set in them. I have various explanations for this, but today I found another, and perhaps better one. I was reading this fascinating and wonderful thread on RPG.net, and in addition to deeply loving the idea of the setting, the person who came up with this idea also wrote this passage, which reshaped my thinking about stories a bit: A crucial difference between heroic myth and trader myth is the degree to which the world can be changed. A hero is knocking his shoulders on the corners of the universe all the time; he can't help but change it all in his image. He doesn't have to work at it at all, the child of chance and privilege. A trader is a small being in a vast and endless omniverse; triumphs and failures are, by the nature of that, of the self rather than of one's surroundings. The hero is the mirror of his universe. The trader is the mirror of himself, and he has to work hard to polish that surface to the desired image. Amber (both Zelazny's books and the RPG based on them) is a heroic story, as is Exalted, especially if the PCs are Celestial Exalted – these are in fact two of the penultimate examples of heroic stories – an epically mighty hero conquers, transforms, or otherwise drastically reshapes the entire setting. I have very little interest in the most epic heroic stories. I often enjoy less epic hero stories, but I love truly epic settings and in heroic stories, these always contain equally epic (and thus to me inherently dull) heroes - the deeds and lives of exceptionally powerful demigods hold little interest for me. In such stories and games, the characters are by their nature world shapers and makers, and I ultimately find that idea to be constricting and dull.
I do not see myself in such stories and characters and I find little interest in following the ever-grander triumphs of most truly epic heroes. I don’t think such tales are inferior, they are just not for me. In vivid contrast, there’s little that I enjoy more than a good trader story. I’ve read Andre Norton’s The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars more than half a dozen times each, and on a more epic scale, I love Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. Tales of traders, scholars, and wanderers exploring settings far vaster than they are, and which they cannot and have no hope of conquering or controlling are very much the stuff of my dreams and what I prefer in the games I play and the stories I read. Which, is of course why when I write for Exalted, my heart is always in the tales of Enlightened (ie magic using) mortals, God-Blooded, and other beings who are manifestly not the lords and rulers of Creation, but merely exotic travelers and a wondrous land. I find it definitely a shame that heroic stories are almost the sole model for gaming that arent’ dark stories of hopeless horror, of which the most obvious example is Call of Cthulhu. However, not that I have a name and a concept that I didn’t have before, I can perhaps change that somewhat with my own work.
In any case, while trickster stories are more definitely not the same as trader stories, and are slightly less to my taste, I can definitely enjoy a good trickster story, which is why I definitely enjoy the epic trickster story that is Doctor Who. The Doctor does not (except on the rarest occasions and for the briefest moments) control the world he’s visiting, but he influences everyplace he goes. Of course, it’s easy for me to think of this, because Alastair Reynolds’ brilliant new novel House of Suns is in many ways a trader story, in a spectacularly epic setting. I very much loved it and highly recommend it.
Current Mood: contemplative
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May 2nd, 2008
| 01:50 am - Petal fall and the knowing of home
teaotter and I have our own names for some unique Portland, pseudo-seasons, with the most important and lovely being petal-fall – when the cherry blossoms fall from the trees in such abundance as to create snow-like drifts on the nearby streets and sidewalks. The effect is magical and lovely and always speaks to me of early spring. This year, it was several weeks late and so it coincided with elm-fall, which is the related season when all of the many elm trees (which vanished from the rest of the US long ago) loose their small coin-like seeds in similarly if less impressive drifts.
When we went to the library this last Monday, I didn't have my camera with me, but we saw a long stretch of street and sidewalk completely covered to a depth of more than an inch with cherry blossoms. When we got back home, I got my camera and went back out – I didn't walk as far as the library, but I found much that was almost as amazing and lovely. Here is some of what I saw.
( images of petal fall )
On Wednesday, I went to the Whole Foods two blocks from my house and when I was getting some food for dinner (braised cabbage and homemade chicken salad ) and some delicious, locally made dairy free coconut ice cream, I overheard two of the checkers talking about Beltaine rituals (and magical Beltaine gardening things) they were planning for later that day. Then, I walked home and saw someone sitting in a car reading a SF novel by Steve Perry that I've also read and enjoyed. Portland is home.
Current Mood: content
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April 30th, 2008
| 01:24 am - Ups and Downs
Today was amazing. I woke up to (finally and at long last) having my comp copies of Dreams of the First Age, for Exalted. Gonzo transhumanist fantasy at its finest. I very rarely run games, and I'm tempted to run one using it. Also, I have a wonderful conversation with amberite last night and awoke this morning to an electronic copy of amberite's novel (which I had not seen before) in my email. Both DotFA and the novel were excellent. Then, I had an absolutely marvelous phone conversation with shadowmorphic, which very much made me happy and was fascinating and wonderful. After that, I spent some time with teaotter and made a very good fried tofu and sugar snap peas dish for dinner, followed by a delicious coconut-milk based banana pudding for dessert.
However, then Becca went to sleep, and after seeing Aaron and Daire yesterday, and conversations with Alice, Becca, and Jade, I'm feeling both alone and lonely. I was starting to feel this when Becca was going to bed, and she reminded me that (for the first time in my life) I occasionally needed time alone before Alice left for China. Alice gets back in a month + 3 days, which fills me with joy. It's very difficult when someone who is so much a part of my life is so far away and when most of the other people who are deeply important to me live all the way across the country. One of (several) reasons I am poly and wish to be an a long-term stable multiple partner relationship is that my social needs are quite high, and the somewhat increased amount of socializing I've been doing of late has vividly reminded me of that, in part because of the sadness I feel when I go from such interactions to solitude. When both Becca and Alice are around, I dearly love interacting with other people who are very close to me, but it's far less difficult and not particularly painful when I go from intensive interaction to even fairly brief periods of solitude. Until recently, I had not realized how much of a social interaction deficit I was running under.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/sad.gif) sad
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April 26th, 2008
| 01:39 pm - At Least They Know Their Audience
I just watched the first new (post-strike) episode of the cheezy vampire show Moonlight, it's very far from good, but I have a weakness for trashy vampire TV. Also, the male supporting lead (Jason Dohring, playing the rich and very sexy vampire Josef Kostan) is cute, and the scene where he turns our reluctant vampire hero back into a vampire (after shoving him up against a wall and throwing him around some to prove that he isn't tough enough to go up against another vampire as a human) was really hot (and deliberately so – firelight in the background, the whole deal...).
I'm baffled and annoyed that a brilliant show like Journeyman was cancelled, a good show like Blood Ties , was almost certainly cancelled, and the brilliant new show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was just barely renewed, and this trash was easily renewed. However, it does have it's (equally trashy) benefits.
Current Mood: amused
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April 25th, 2008
| 12:23 pm - Interplanetary Anachronisms
I recently watched an episode of the History Channel show The Universe on space colonization. I watched the first part of a couple of other episodes and gave up because they were far too simplistic, but I hope that this one might have something useful I could borrow for future RPG projects. Not only didn't it, it struck me as both bizarre and impressively anachronistic. It felt a whole lot like everyone in NASA and the other people they talked to still believed in a vision of space colonization that I last saw in 1950s SF.
First off, instead of being about colonizing space, the entire program was about colonizing Mars. No mention of any other planets or space colonies, orbital hotels, or anything else, just the same old 1950s dream. Instead, we had Robert Zubrin talking about his foolish Mars Direct idea, and more sensible (if equally anachronistic) people at NASA talking about their proposed plan to go to the Moon by 2020 and then use that data to help them work out a Mars mission by 2035-2040. Given that I'm certain that we have no idea how to currently make closed cycle life-support systems that will reliably work for multiple years, not to mention the radiation dangers involved in the trip, so I'm certain NASA won't be idiotic enough to listen to Zurbin.
Also, given that most people were talking about missions more than 25 years in the future, the first and most obvious anachronism is that everyone was talking about using chemical rockets. If NASA hasn't figured out some combination of plasma rockets and plasma sail, they really aren't doing their jobs terribly well. So, the 6 month figures for travel time to Mars (which would result in massive cosmic ray (and other fast particle) exposure for the astronauts, as well as serious problems with bone density if the ship wasn't spun) could be reduced to likely 2 months (in addition to a version of a plasma sail could reduce the particle flux experienced by the crew).
However, that was a minor anachronism compared to the big one. All the images on the show of the imagined Mars mission looked remarkably like visuals from 1950s Heinlein related novels, and I'm absolutely certain nothing remotely like this is ever going to happen. In 25 years, we're going to have laptops and similarly small computers that are significantly more powerful than the best supercomputers that exist now as well as methods of dealing with data that we can barely imagine.
As a fairly conservative prediction, I can easily see a probe being launched to Mars in 25-30 years that contains a robot probe that is capable of learning and likely able to fool the people who communicate with it that it's nearly as intelligent as they are. This probe will decide on the best course for how to carry out its mission (while regularly discussing its plans with people back on Earth) and then it will beam back its data in some high-bandwidth fashion that can be analyzed by computers as well as taken in directly by people as full sensory impressions that allow them to feel like they are seeing and touching Mars as vividly as if they were actually there. That's a conservative prediction that requires no fundamental breakthroughs.
I simply don't see people (or whatever the inhabitants of the first world are in the process of becoming in 25-30 years) going out to play Little House on Syrtis Major. With probes of the sort I'm describing (and possibly even better ones) I'm far from certain humans will ever go to Mars, much less settle there, at least not in human bodies. I find it deeply sad and rather silly that everyone on a show made within the last year was talking like they were characters in a 1950s SF novel. I definitely like the future we are likely to have far more than the one imagined back then.
Current Mood: amused
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| 12:01 am - Literary Joy
Yesterday Alastair Reynolds' latest novel House of Suns arrived from the UK. I rarely purchase new hardbacks (or new books of any sort) and even more rarely purchase books without seeing a review, but there are a few authors that I do this with, and along with P.C. Hodgell, Alastair Reynolds is at the very top of this short list. I love his work, but while it avoids the grimness, misery, and nihilism so common in modern SF, his books are often fairly sad, and I treasure the few stories of his that are somewhat happier. I'm only halfway through this book, but it seems to be one of those and is an absolute joy to read, combining a grandiose sense of wonder with marvelously complex characters, exciting plots, and the sort of exotic settings that I dearly love. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Current Mood: jubilant
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April 22nd, 2008
| 11:07 pm - The latest fandom kurfluffle
Most of you have like encountered this bit of seemingly well-intentioned but offensive bit of idiocy. I can't think of anything to say beyond the fact that I'm a huge fan of touch-positive spaces, but this is an impressively wretched, juvenile, and utterly doomed way to attempt to create one. Despite (or perhaps more accurately, because of) being male, I would feel seriously uncomfortable in such an environment and I can also completely understand the reactions of the many women who are at least equally troubled by this.
However, rather than go on, I instead direct people to comments by two people I have vast amounts of respect and admiration for, which are (from what I've seen) the best comments about all this. Here's rm's excellent and eloquent analysis. Here is what bruceb had to say about all this.
Current Mood: sad
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April 21st, 2008
 | 03:34 am - The otherkin community & my quest for belonging
After shadowmorphic's utterly amazing visit, I've thought about becoming a part of the otherkin community and how it was different for me than anything similar I'd ever experienced ( more here for those who are interested )
Current Mood: contemplative
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April 20th, 2008
April 18th, 2008
| 04:06 pm - Imaginary Worlds of Power and Solidity [weird magical stuff]
Last night, teaotter and I had a talk about created and fictional worlds, and were both struck by how much creativity, thought, and psychic energy (if one believes in such a thing) has gone into some of the most popular such places. ( Increasingly odd metaphysical speculation follows )
Current Mood: contemplative
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![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/working.gif){kind=small}
creative