alias_sqbr

Started watching the latest Agents of Shield (S1 Episode 10, The Bridge).
( Stopped watching the latest Agents of Shield )

Keep hearing mioawing. Cannot find cat. It’s possible that @distantcam and I have gone mad. (More mad, in my case)
Oceanesque: @sqbr @distantcam Could cat be in roof/ceiling cavity? or behind fridge etc?
@Oceanesque @distantcam This possibility has occurred to us yes. Especially since a carpenter was messing with the floor… Though why take two days to speak up about it?
HOLY CRAP, CAT CONFIRMED FOR UNDER FLOORBOARDS
Levering up floorboards now. Possible we may fail rent inspection on Thursday.
Cat still under floorboards, but we have chiselled big enough hole to give her some water and pats and for her to express her impatience
She is now passive aggressively ignoring us. Like she did for the last FOUR DAYS.
She stopped mioawing once we started chiselling, we only confirmed we hadn’t made horrible expensive mistake with iphone camera to hole.
(she swept past silently, like a small furry alien)
And now @distantcam’s dad has arrived with the crowbar :D
Cat is passive aggressively ignoring enlarged hole leading to surface.
attentive: @sqbr What a bizarre episode you’re in.
@attentive Being out of it from tummy bug, lack of sleep, running around trying to find source of mioaws is not making it any less surreal.
CAT. IS. OUT.
Incredibly nervy and hungry, but OUT. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh *happy sigh* *holds self back from hugging her, which would not appreciated*

SPOILERS. Need to get this off my chest before Cam gets home (persuading him it was awesome so now we have to share the PC: SMART MOVE)

Note: I'm still playing, so please don't spoil me! Anything in Act 1 should be safe, unless it involves Carver or Sebastian (since I didn't play a mage and haven't downloaded the DLC)
( Really, spoilers, though they're pretty vague )

Spoiler free advice:

1)Be careful clicking the dialogue options marked with a "love heart" if you want to avoid having sex with and/or rejecting that person later.
2)If someone gets annoyed at your opinions when a particular topic comes up, keep them out of your party on missions involving that subject :D
3) See the title.

(Well, no more spoilery than the trailer)

This is a deft, entertaining retelling of "A Christmas Carol", with all the nuanced and modern gender roles, racial dynamics and social commentary of the original 1843 novel(*).

But my main reaction(**) is: SCREW YOU NORTHERN HEMISPHERE WRITERS SOME PEOPLE "ON EARTH" CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS IN SUMMER. OR HAVE NO WINTER AT ALL. Also midwinter here is a little gloomy but also a period of budding greenery and refreshing rain, while midsummer is an ordeal of sun, scorched earth and broken airconditioners.

(*)Admittedly a step up from many modern adaptations.
(**)Which has also been niggling at me with a lot of the general response to christmas about the place online, but none of it was as smugly annoying as this.

Well! We have registered and picked up our bags etc (on the ground floor, for anyone else who gets confused by the Calculated Risk Rationalisation or whatever conference happening at the door connecting to the Hilton) and are waiting for the Worldcon opening ceremony which is at two. Picking up our badges saved exactly zero time since we got confused and waited in the "people who have pregistered but not picked up their badges" line anyway (which was a whole one person long for our end of the alphabet) Said hello to some people, and even though I'm resting in my room same as I have been for most afternoons lately it's cool to know that the con is there, waiting.

The scooter has been very useful in some contexts, especially any long dull travel in a straight line or when I'm backtracking a lot because I'm lost or standing about a lot (it was thus great for registering). Not suited to an umbrella and no gloves in the rain though, brr. Also, well, I'm not very good at it. I am quite embarrassingly bad at using reverse to do three point turns etc.

Yesterday I managed to TOTALLY screw up organising to meet people and yet it ended up going about as well as it possibly could. I got to meet nixwilliams which was great. We chatted for a bit and then he tagged along in the rain while I picked up my badge (much drama, since the power was out, for no real benefit) and pick up some carrots from the Spencer St IGA (they had five, two of which were off :/) And I didn't run over his feet with the scooter once!
( In which I try to untangle where I went wrong )

I'm one of those people who can miss something really obvious staring them right in the face.

Sometimes this happens literally: looking for my water bottle when it's right in front of me. Other times it's more metaphorical, like all the times I spend days carefully drafting a Serious Business dw post only to have people point out all the huge gaping holes in my logic.

The chronic fatigue syndrome really doesn't help, but in some ways I'm actually better than I used to be just because I have better coping strategies.

Most recent example which is really irritating me: I've spent the last week or two intermittently working on a Dragon Age story. I was very happy with this story, my first real attempt at a big long complicated plot where Stuff Happens and currently 10Kish words long. I was stuck on one scene for a few days but figured out a way past it, and by dinner today had gotten very near the end and was just taking a break.

As I ate dinner and surfed the net my subconscious vaguely pondered the various aspects of the plot...and suddenly I noticed a plot hole. And the more I thought about it, the more large and gaping it was, until I realised the whole freaking story Made No Sense. ACK. One of the major plot twists is totally, 100%, completely impossible. ARRGGHHH.

I may be able to salvage it, but it will definitely mean abandoning parts of the story I really liked. Dammit.

And no, I'm not going to say what the plothole is, I want to poke at the story some more in my own head for a while. Maybe if I either give up completely or write a less plot-holey version :)

*sigh* Oh well. Maybe this is a sign I should get back to my P&P fic, which I also figured out a way past a minor hurdle for today and has a much less complicated plot with less fiddly magical worldbuilding to keep track of :)

Ok my last post seemed to end up with a lot of whitespace so I went to edit it..and found this code at the bottom:


What. The. Hell.

Via angriest: I swear to god, Disney is making "Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides".

o.O

I..just...what?

For those who aren't pathetic Tim Powers fangirls, On Stranger Tides is a totally awesome fantasy novel. It's got swashbuckling period zombie Caribbean pirates but is rather more intelligent and authentic than the movies.

I'm not 100% sure if it's confirmed that the movie is drawing on the book.

When he came to Swancon Tim Powers said when he first saw POTC he felt he'd been ripped off..then remembered how many times he'd gone on the original ride. So it goes full circle! Clearly the next film will be POTC 5: Monkey Island (the game was influenced by both the ride and the book)

I was pondering what other Cheesey Blockbuster Movie + Favourite Author combinations might happen next and thus came up with "Star Trek 2: Shards of Honour". Of course that would mean having the plot revolve around a woman. Still, imagine it: Winona Kirk finds herself stuck on a deserted planet, and encounters a Romulan scout.... (I've heard that it started as fanfic about a Federation officer and Klingon, but I think Romulans suit the reboot 'verse more)

EDIT: Some more I thought of:
Event Horizon 2: Schild's Ladder
James Bond: The Atrocity Archives
Highlander: Wild Seed
The Mummy: The Anubis Gates
Star Trek: Mirror Dance..oh wait that was Nemesis

I feel like I should be able to think of something for Mission:Impossible and Indiana Jones but nothing is coming to mind.

Magpie vs Magpie

HOW DID I NOT REALISE THIS?

I guess it explains why european literature portrays them as adorable cheeky thieves rather than violent unexpected death from above...(It really is true: in Australia, even the adorable little birds are deadly)

So I and Cam were watching "State of Play" (the original BBC miniseries, not the new american movie) It's a taut political thriller with lots of twists and turns. We were halfway through the last episode, heading towards a major revelation..and the disk stopped.

Argh! So we put it in my laptop. And it worked! Yay!
Cue impatient seconds waiting for the BBC logo to load, menu to come up etc and we go to chapter selection. And there on the screen, on the preview image for the last scene? Was a closeup up of a headline SAYING THE FINAL TWIST.

ARGH!!!

Still, overall quite good, just don't look at the frigging chapter selection. Very much a story of Flawed Manly Men doggedly pursuing a story/case/justice etc with women tending to either be background or The Secretary, The Wife, The Feisty Girl Reporter In Peril etc (non white characters tend to just get to be background and the less said about the gay characters the better) But once I resigned myself to that it was quite enjoyable and the characters well written within their bounds.