Izzy

Computer WOE

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:20:57 GMT

Back from vacation to find that my computer will not turn on. It's plugged in and everything, and the various sockets work, as does the power cord, but...no turning on. Not a giant tragedy, since it's old and I have a nifty work laptop, but I'd like to get a few files off it before it dies completely.

Can anyone in the Camberville area recommend a decent computer repair place, and do any of you know how much getting something like that repaired would cost?

Plus, "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" actually sounds interesting over there...

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:22:31 GMT

As you may or may not have guessed, I'm back from England. Which was awesome.

Getting over there was less awesome. For one thing: plane flight. For another thing: broken entertainment system. For a third thing: I don't know what combination of mutant super-strong lungs and horrifically negligent parenting produces a child who can shriek for the full six hours of an overnight flight, but there were at least three of the little sonic supersoldiers on our plane. I seriously pondered going over and "offering" the parents access to my tranquilizers, or having a word with the stewardess: "A large vodka for the squalling hellbeast in Aisle 3, please?" I got a few hours' sleep; Adam got none.

So at 5 AM, mostly sleepless and, on my part, stoned--q.v. tranquilizers--I stumble into customs and make the mistake of volunteering information--that I'm here to meet my boyfriend's family--instead of just mumbling "vacation." Cue twenty minutes of questions: where did I meet said boyfriend ("online dating" went over *well*, since the next question was whether I'd met him in person before), what he did, what I did, how much I made per year (followed by "that isn't very much, is it?") and so on. Stoned Izzy is Dumb Izzy.

They did, however, let me through instead of detaining me wherever they send suspicious American girls with better-paid British boyfriends. I met Adam's parents and sister, who seemed to like me--yay!--and then went off to London. Adam had to get his visa renewed; since we deemed it better that I not be anywhere nearby when the authorities were deciding whether to let him into the U.S. for another couple years, I waited in Hyde Park.

For, as it turned out, three hours. I had a book and everything, and it was very pretty, but...three hours. And, due to the lack of sleep and having taken the sort of tranquilizers that fuck with your short-term memory, I started to wonder, by the end, whether Adam actually existed or what, and, if he didn't exist, why I was in England, and then had to remind myself that I wasn't actually a character in a modernist play. Very, very weird. Should write a letter to my Congressman and complain.

But the rest of the trip was great. Despite all reason, Adam's family continued, at least apparently, to like me; they very nicely volunteered to take us around and do a whole bunch of touristy things, so I got to see one of the big houses, and Hampton Court Palace, and go down the Thames on one of Adam's parents' friends' boats, and eat at a whole lot of good restaurants. The whole "English food" thing is, at least for someone who likes a lot of meat in her diet, absolutely untrue; if I spent more time over there, my ass would be the size of a smallish barn. (They have fondants. Like, entire candies *made of fondant* oh my God.)

With Adam, minus family, I also went on a tour of Cambridge ("This is King's College.* And this is a really good pub...oh, and so's that one over there." "I'm beginning to sense a theme here.") including punting. Well, Adam punted; I tried and failed, because managing a ginormous steel pole when you're 5'2 isn't really possible, except in the stripper sense. So I lounged around like a thirties-movie vamp, and got a giant sunburn, which I probably deserved.

Cambridge, it is worth noting, has a bunch of vacationing students offering to give people tours by punt for money. These are mostly young men and...um...the job either requires or builds a certain degree of firm muscularity. And it was a very hot day. I noticed this, and then I did some calculations involving the fact that it takes three years to get a degree at Cambridge and the length of time I'd been out of college...

...and in conclusion, I am going to Hell.

On the other hand, single young women reading this: if you're in England at any point in the near future, I recommend Cambridge. HIGHLY.

The river is also populated by about a thousand ducks, who are very cute and who gave us massively disapproving looks when we went past them. But very cute massively disapproving looks. Aw, ducks. (Swans and geese seem to be pretty nasty, though.)

We also went up to Yorkshire (to a town called Church Fenton, which is one of the better names I've heard) to see Adam's cousins--Adam has few enough cousins that he can actually give a damn about them, the lucky guy, also his, at least the ones I've met, are pretty damn cool--and their six-month-old twins. Kids were cute, as far as the age group goes, though I only really find 'em appealing once they have more hair and less drool. I did get to see sheep up close (they're kinda cute, and have wobbly ears) and the Oldest Guard Dog Ever, on one of the nearby farms.

So it was highly cool, and I've left a bunch of stuff out in the interest of LJ actually posting this, and I've gotten home safely. Adam's in Singapore giving a paper on humanized mice; I'm in Maine until Sunday, watching all the movies I'm embarrassed to watch in front of him, plus trashy TV, plus overhearing Dad's political shows from time to time.

More as it develops.

*I'm pretty sure that's one of the ones Henry VIII founded. My trip involved a lot of Henry VIII, for some reason, and left me with the impression that he wandered around beheading wives and founding colleges, switching to one whenever he got bored with the other. This is probably erroneous.

And...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:11:00 GMT

Jessie Helms is dead.

Sometimes, I really wish I believed in Hell.

Controversial Post!

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:16:53 GMT

I had some time to kill in South Station recently. The bookstore had the 4E rules. So I opened the PHB, and I flipped through...

...and they look *good*. Seriously. I like the world; I like the "epic destiny" thing, where it seems like every character is working toward Something Big and you have a sort of idea where he or she is going; I like the definition of roles (having spent more than a couple games as the third person to have the same shtick, and thus one of at least two people feeling bored and useless); I definitely like the new simplicity of it.

Okay, I still think WotC is a bunch of Lifetime-watching wussypants for the half-orc thing (And also--you're eliminating half-orcs because of backstory problems, but you're making fucking TIEFLINGS a standard race? Did someone put Cognitive Dissonance Pills in the water out there?) and I didn't have time to look at the math-y bits. But it looks neat, it looks good, and if it takes at least twenty-five percent of the boring number-crunching bits out of combat, I'll be happy.

A couple criticisms I've heard, first the sensible and then the ridamndiculous.

1) The rules focus too much on combat.

Yeah. This is semi-reasonable, sort of. Except that a couple years of playing boffer LARPs makes me go "So what?"

Seriously. If you want to know how a roleplaying situation goes...play it out? You can, you know. It's within the rules. And if you really need to determine what happens via dice and numbers, well, you still have a Charisma score.

Honestly, I'm kind of happy with anything that cuts down on Cat Piss Men taking thirty-seven self-reinforcing social stats, and then attempting to play Mr. Charming when they don't have the skills for it. When there's no mathsturbation you can do that compensates for your total unshowered sleazebagness in RL...well, that makes me all warm and tingly inside.

2) "It's based on MMORPGs! OH NOES!"

Okay. Here's the thing, and I don't want to sound like I'm overreacting or anything, but...

...D&D's previous editions were based ON MINIATURES WARGAMES, FUCKTARDS.

Yeah, you can make an argument that 2 and 3E had evolved away from that, and that's a reasonable argument, even if I don't entirely believe you. But there's something just laughable about getting your panties in a twist because this edition is closer to another popular form of non-RPG-gaming, only this one has less math and more players who actually shower or have (female) tits. OH THE HORROR.

Big Read, with Commentary

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:42:42 GMT

Wedding: awesome! Will write more about that later, when my brain is working better. For the moment, here's a meme.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
3.5) Strikethrough those that you tried to read, but couldn't finish out of boredom or frustration.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

Also, the numbering gets weird, because I took out "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" insofar as "Chronicles of Narnia" is on the damn list already.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte --For certain values of "love," here. I really like about eighty percent of it, but I totally skip the bit with drippy St. John and his drippy religious cousins, or whatever, insofar as I could not possibly give a damn if I had an entire vault of damn just sitting around.

Also, it's one of those books that doesn't translate well for modern sensibilities. I always *try* to understand the culture that Bronte was writing in and that Jane bought into, and I always, nonetheless, want to smack her and tell her to take Rochester up on his offer of wealth and hot secretly-not-married sex.

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee --Just read this one recently. It's awesome.
6 The Bible--I'm guessing reading/hearing parts of it doesn't count. I may take a gander at the KJV one of these days, though.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte--Yes, and oh my God is it ever a trainwreck. One day I'll write an essay on "stuff stupid people think is deeply romantic" and this will be on it.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell For class.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -- Read the first one. Am tempted to read the second two, but heard that the series a) has a giant Downer Ending, and b) is all about Pullman's Issues With God, which, no thanks.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -- Also for class. Owww.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott --Totally despite myself. And never without snickering a little at Meg's wifely obedience and the vast disapproval of ZOMG SENSATIONAL FICTION that shows up in the second half.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -- Ugh, no. Watched the movie in high school; was bored out of my skull. Plus, I've read other Hardy stuff, so I know his prose style makes me want to slit my wrists.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller --Incomprehensible and depressing. War is hell: I *get* it.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare --The "loved" here is variable. Loved the comedies, enjoyed a lot of the histories, am not much for tragedy in general. Plus, Romeo and Juliet...see the bit on "Wuthering Heights."
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks--Never heard of it.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger There needs to be a font that indicates burning hatred for a book and everything to do with it. Yeah, Holden, why don't you whine A LITTLE MORE about how hard it is to be rich and white and male? 'Cause I'm sure you can if you--oh, for fuck's sake, that was SARCASTIC, DON'T ACTUALLY DO IT...
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot Yes. I don't remember much of it very clearly, other than wanting to slap Dorothea.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell Again, totally despite myself. But I like wartime novels and I like heroines who can be bitchy to survive. Though the whole Ashley thing was flamingly stupid. </u> </b>
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yeah, though I don't remember much.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy--I have this policy where I don't read Russian novels. Much like the policy where I don't see French films. If I wanted to be depressed, I'd drink more.
25. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - See above.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis With a giant exception for The Last Battle.
34 Emma - Jane Austen - Not bad, but not as good as P&P, and Emma irritated me.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - Neat! This one I could see reading again.
36 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Why in the name of fuck is this "book" even on here? I mean, the fact that *I* read it fills me with shame and disgust, and I was doing so purely to suck up to my boss.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery Also, um, all the sequels. Shut up.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Eleanor is awesome. Margaret is awesome. I kind of wanted to chuck bricks at Marianne, but you can't have everything.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding - Also totally despite myself.
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Oh, Hell, yes. Which is especially strange because I usually have very little interest in vampires and because other Gothic-ish horror-ish stories of the period are dense and incomprehensible (e.g. Frankenstein).
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - And I would like every movie adaptation ever to stop killing off Dickon in the epilogue, plzkthx. See also the creepy-to-many-American-sensibilities Mary-and-Colin romance, which appears nowhere in the book. Dude: COUSINS.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - Again, despite myself. And despite the larval feminists in my class creaming their collective jeans over the last chapter. Yes, I know, female sexuality. Yes, I liked it too--LIKED, as in PAST TENSE, because you seem blind to the fact that there are other chapters in the damn book, Jennifer and Ashley, now please go have your college journey of self-discovery ELSEWHERE and stop ruining perfectly good books with your wide-eyed blinking.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - I have a dim memory of reading this, mostly because I have a stronger memory of hating it. Depressed people being depressed: not my thing. Also not sure why everyone gushed about it being a Big Feminist Deal, but hey.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Especially the descriptions of food.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - I recall liking it, too, if not loving it wildly.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Read it in class. Good, but too depressing for me to read it again.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - Yes, but I was too young to get a lot of it. Should re-read.
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
</u> 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory </u>
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Mostly kids' books. I'm really okay with this: a staggering amount of adult literature is amazingly depressing, and I have no desire to subject myself to that, thanks.

Sports Night

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:18:37 GMT

First of all, let me note that I'm writing this in the middle of a break between doing laundry and ironing. On a Saturday. Fuck me, when did I become June Cleaver?

And then I've been watching Sports Night, partly because I've never seen it and partly from the desire to ease the Dude gently into the world of Sorkin in twenty-minute doses. (Which has worked; we've Netflixed West Wing S1.) For the most part, it's awesome. I can see where there's sort of a learning curve before TWW, and I can see where the intellectual comedy mixed with Serious Business is coming from, and it's awesome.

On the other hand...Dan, in the Rebecca arc, bugs the hell out of me.

So Rebecca's this chick who Dan asks out in a series of hilarious mishaps. She turns him down. And there's an entire episode where he keeps bugging her about it, sending other people to bug her about it, and so forth, which...here, have this big bag of NO, Dan, and, by proxy, Aaron Sorkin. Jesus Christ, it's the twenty-first century, I thought we'd learned.

Since we...haven't, apparently...let me break it down for ya: if a guy asks me out, that's cool. I may say no, but as long as he's been polite about it, I'm not going to think less of him.

If a guy asks me out, and I say no, and he asks me out again, he's gonna get one of two things:

1) An alphabetical list of reasons why I won't go out with him, omitting nothing. Including "greasy hair" under "G" and "that sound you make when you eat potato chips" under T. I omit nothing; I spare no particle of ego.

2) If I'm feeling particularly wussy, a series of dodges and increasingly heavy hints. And then a description of the incidents posted all over the Internet. If I'm feeling particularly spunky, I'll use real names.

No means no. But it doesn't *just* mean "no," it also means "back the fuck off, dude." Don't ask again; don't flirt; don't hang around the person waiting for their attitude to change. 'Cause it'll change, all right: it'll go from "Nice guy, pity I don't feel it," to "You, sir, are a COLOSSAL DOUCHE."

So there's that.

Annnd of course Rebecca does neither of these things, she ends up dating him for a time*, and then Dan starts bugging her to watch a baseball game with him. Despite her lack of interest in baseball.

Gah gah GAH. If there's one thing I hate in people--whether I'm fucking them or not--it's the "try it, you'll like it" Mom-style eat-your-brussels-sprouts nagging. If I say I don't want to watch a baseball game, or that I couldn't give a damn about the various ways in which D&D surpasses GURPs stat-wise,** or whatever, ACCEPT THAT. Jesus Christ.

*Though she does prove to be the sort of fucked-up unwunderkind who goes back to her asshat husband at the end, so I'm not sure whether Sorkin was going for "women who fall for this sort of thing have Issues, and you're better off without 'em." That would make me feel better about him.

**Because seriously, y'all? Stat discussions bore the pants off me, and not in a good way. RPGs are great, I can talk about character and story and world until the proverbial cows come home, but you have five minutes to say something about classes or skill lists or races and the various little mathsturbational tricks you can do with them, and get it said, and move on, or I will go and get a book or drown myself. Lord.

Yes. This.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:43:36 GMT

From Hathor Legacy.

I particularly like the first point. As I pointed out in a comment elsewhere, "But I meant it to be flattering!" or "But I didn't mean to be offensive!" cuts no ice with me when the implication is "...and you should have known that." ("Sorry, I meant X and fucked up the phrasing," is different and valid, because it contains an apology and an acceptance of responsibility.)

If you feel like saying that sort of thing, take a look around you. Do you see people with shiny white blue-eyed horsies? Do you see a giant-ass space station? Teenagers with bulging foreheads and crazy eyes? No? Then:

1) You don't live in Crazy Fantasy World.
2) Nobody has psychic powers.
3) We therefore have no way of maaaagically reaching into your soul and figuring out what you really truly meant.
4) We are, accordingly, going to--follow along at home, Sparky, 'cause this bit's important--GO BY WHAT YOU SAY AND DO.

No shit, huh?

If you don't want to get flack for poorly stated opinions, learn to state them better. If you mean something as a compliment but the recipient doesn't take it as one, apologize and KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. Now. No, now. No, it doesn't matter what you mean, because SEE FUCKING ABOVE. If you made an honest mistake, apologize and learn from it. It ain't that hard, cupcake.

Jesus. Lern 2 play, n00bs.

More Breath of Fire Hijinks

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:42:32 GMT

* My party is up to three people: little winged girl, fox-faced ranger/offensive sorcerer that I'm disturbingly sure there's a lot of furry porn about somewhere, and my hero. When Little Winged Girl had her solo quest, the number of random encounters decreased a lot. Maybe it's 'cause she can fly; maybe it's just because the landscape does, in fact, hate plucky blue-haired guys.

*LWG uses a rapier, which is a cool change from the typical Wussy White Mage Chick Staff. (All of y'all who LARP with me may shut up now.) On the "fuck you, Squaresoft" hand, her armor type is...dresses: NiceDress, SilkGn, etc. And her shields are bracelets. Fuck you, Squaresoft.

*I can turn into three types of dragons now! Frost, fire, and lightning. They sortakinda correspond to the D&D chromatic dragons, but then, the first two types are pretty obvious. Anyhow, I can turn into a dragon. It kicks a fair amount of ass.

*A large amount of the plot until recently centered around gaining control of a giant stone robot, using it to break the giant rock the Dark Dragons had used to dam a river (by saying "Robot, destroy that rock!" because it's a giant voice-activated stone robot), having the Evil General Guy take over the robot ("while everyone's away at the wedding"--dude, if you need a village wedding to provide a distraction, your evil powers are really suckful), having the robot destroy the village and then stop, despite the general ranting at it (because it's a giant voice-activated stone robot with a conscience), regaining control of the robot, and then having the robot throw itself into a volcano in a scene not at all ripped off from T2.

This is awesome.

*In the Richest Town Ever (where the streets are literally paved with gold) I did my typical go-into-the-house-and-open-all-the-chests thing, only for one owner to freak out and have me arrested. Cool touch, but does throw the general acceptance of the kleptomaniac hero into a new light, since people apparently do notice and care. Sort of the JRPG equivalent of the "Hands of Time" musical number in Grease 2.

*Random encounters are currently pigs that summon lightning bolts. Why not?

Serious Izzy is Not That Serious

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:12:18 GMT

Yeah, I was going to post something rambly and philosophical about privacy, and when your actions in/toward fandom should affect you RL, and also that having your first-grade class vote to kick out one of its members is the act of a total and complete douche, Wendy Portillo . And I hope that story follows you around for the rest of your life, such that your name becomes a synonym for "horrible teacher" right alongside Mary Kay LeTorneau.

But it's cold and rainy and I don't feel like being all that serious.

So instead, I will rant about Winds of Fate .

Yes, I've been on a Lackey-reading kick lately (I'm trying to get back in shape, which means no *actual* non-brain candy for the next month or so, so...shut up) and, frankly, the Mage Winds stuff is pretty cool, insofar as it doesn't involve anyone's self-esteem. Plus, I like Elspeth. She's awesome. (There's a bit toward the end where Obligatory Love Interest Guy is mentioning her flaws, and "...impatient with those who were governed by emotion rather than logic," comes up, and I always go "Dude, that's NOT A FUCKING FLAW." Hee.)

Howthefuckever, Skif annoys me. And now that I'm an adult and have taken enough English classes/participated in enough arguments online, the way his Obsessive Crushy Dude behavior is treated sort of annoys me too. Lackey doesn't sanction it, exaaaactly--Elspeth is pretty impatient with it, and she doesn't, thank God, end up falling for him like she would if this was written by someone who sucked more--but he does seem to get a bit of a pass. Elspeth's frank and angry but entirely verbal "you've been puppydogging at me for weeks, FUCK OFF" speech gets a "oh, that's cruel" from her Companion, which...Gwena's generally kind of a twat*, frankly, so whatever, except that Elspeth herself then thinks she *was* cruel.

Which, no. If a guy in whom I was clearly uninterested persisted in following me around and getting in my way, he'd be going home with a pair of black eyes and a letter that essentially said "Send me a *competent* bodyguard this time, plzkthx." And if he'd actually started trying to touch me? He'd have an extremely swollen pair of balls into the bargain. I like puppies when they're dogs. I have no patience with 'em when they're supposed to be men.

But Elspeth thinks she's cruel, and Skif gets all snitty "she's not even really human" Denied Nice Guy at the end. And he doesn't even get smacked down for it--instead, he gets to fuck the hot (if unintentionally also annoying, DIE IN A FIRE, NYARA) catgirl. Meh. Not that I want him to die or anything, but it would be nice if he caught some flack for being a dipshit.

*Seriously, there are entire chapters where Skif is all "MOON OVERPROTECT LURV" and Gwena's all "SMUG SMUG POOR SKIF SMUG SMUG" and I frankly questioned how Elspeth didn't just kebab the pair of them on Need. Heraldric morals aside, that takes some pretty impressive self-control.

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:16:42 GMT

1. Your ex is on the side of the road on fire. What do you do?
My most recent ex? Try and put him out--stop, drop, and roll, dude--call 911, and wonder why he's on the East Coast.

2. Your best friend tells you she is pregnant. What is your reaction?
Either surprise or "Huh, cool!" Depends on the friend.

3. When is the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face?
It's hard to remember. Do fictional characters count? I'm reading Winds of Fate again, and Selenay could use a black eye or two.

Otherwise, probably last night on the Internet.

4. Congratulations! You just had a son. What's his name?
Something traditional: William, Henry, Alex.

5. Congratulations! You just had a daughter. What's her name?
Colleen. Or Julia.

6. What are you craving right now?
More post-work hanging out with people.

7. What was the last thing you cried about?
It was probably some book or other. If not, a friend's family illness.

8. When you buy something and your change is a penny. Do you keep it or tell them to keep the change?
Keep it, unless there's a jar. Getting the clerk to take it back is too much effort.

9. What color is your tissue box?
Don't have one at the moment.

10. Do you have a ceiling fan in your room, and if so, is there dust on that fan?
Not in mine, but in my boyfriend's. And...I don't know.

11. What is the last voicemail you received about?
Paying back my old gas bill. Whatever.

12. Scariest thing you've experienced in the last year?
Flying to California and back.

13. What do you order when you go to Taco Bell?
Chicken soft taco, extra sour cream and guacamole.

14. Have you ever had a garage sale?
Nope.

15. What was the last alcoholic beverage you had?
Belgian Winter White beer.

16.Are you happy right now?
Fairly so.

17. Who came over last?
To my place? Probably Games Night people.

18. Do you miss anybody right now?
Providence friends.

19. Dark or light jeans?
Dark.

20. What was the last movie you watched at home?
Three Musketeers, Disney version.

21. What is in your pocket?
No pockets, alas.

22. Who introduced you to your [significant other]?
The wonders of the Intertron.

23. Where do you hurt?
My feet are kinda sore.

24. What is your favorite aisle at Wal-Mart?
Books!

25. When is your birthday?
October 1.

26. What are you going to do after this?
Some more work, unless nobody's emailed me back yet, in which case I'll play Kingdom of Loathing.

27. What is your favorite dessert?
Depends on my mood. Merangues are good. So are brownies.

28. Do you have the same name as one of your relatives?
No, my parents were going for the crazy seventies "Our child shall be special and unique and not named after anyone, maaaan," thing.

29. Is someone plotting your demise?
It's conceivable. I piss off enough people.

30. Has anyone ever mistaken you for a family member?
My sister, especially when we were younger and had matching haircuts. Not so much now.

31. Does someone like you right now?
My friends and family.

32. Do you know anyone in jail/prison?
No.

33. Do you like the color green?
Depends on the shade. Emerald, hunter, and mint, yes. Olive, not so much.

34. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?
Sure.
</lj>

Non-Serious Post

Thu, 29 May 2008 17:04:13 GMT

Because I'm going to have a serious, slightly horrifying one later. Nothing to do with my personal life: this is current events and philosophy and all that stuff I generally try to avoid thinking about. But first, The Funny.

Using the wonders of SnesX and ROMS and stuff, I've acquired a copy of Breath of Fire for my computer. It seems like the perfect game for those "hurry up and wait" moments when I don't have anything else to do at work, or am on a train, or whatever, and I have vague memories of liking it as a kid. You got to turn into a dragon: that was cool. It's still kinda cool, even with the knowledge of Otherkin and "therians" and similar Oh Henry-style nutbars that taints my enjoyment of such things. (q.v. original Changeling.)

Not that I've gotten to turn into a dragon yet. I've just completed the second dungeon, so I'm still hitting things with my little sword.

The story is this: despite having a name that you'd think would inspire a peaceful life of puppy-cuddling and mass lollipop distribution, Zog, the leader of the Dark Dragon family, has decided to bwahaha take over the world. So far, he seems to be doing fine with a bunch of beefy dudes (and the earthquake machine I just shut off) but there's some metaplot involving a Goddess of Desire who was sealed away because she kept the various Dragon families fighting with each other. (Seems a remarkably practical solution; I'm surprised the Greeks didn't think of it.) So Zog and his merry men will probably try and free her, there'll be general havoc-wreaking, et cetera.

All that stands between Zog and aforementioned havoc-wreaking is "Ryu," your default spunky blue-haired hero, and his BronzSD, which I'm sure will get upgraded soon. One of the nifty parts of BoF is that it has a reason for the Standard FRPG Starting Equipment Suckage: village was just destroyed by Dark Dragons, we don't exactly stock Excalibur.

Both the problem with BoF, and the reason it works well as a play-at-work game, are the standard Japanese RPG flaw: turn-based combat and random enounters. HATE. I can vaaaaguely see the point of these things--turn-based combat actually works okay during boss fights, where it means something, and random encounters give you a nifty way to try out new spells and attacks without the fear that you'll be ineffective and die. (Plus gold, XP, yadda, yadda, but I can't help but think there are other ways to deal with that.) So I can put up with a few of them.

I said A FEW. The other JRPGs I've played through--Shadow Hearts I and II, FFII, and Parasite Eve--spread the random encounters out to a nice "enh, every few minutes," level. In BoF, I can't move three pixels without getting ambushed by a slime, or a purple wild boar, or a floating eyeball, or some damn thing; nature hates spunky blue-haired boys (as, some would argue, WELL IT MIGHT). Here's a tip, Square: if you have to include an "auto-combat" function, you're doing something about the combats WRONG. Also, the "see the worldmap" button does not appear in this game, which makes trying to get anywhere a confusing, monster-filled slog.

On the other hand, the game's pretty and not wicked hard, the music's nifty, and it's not like turn-based combat is all that more pain-in-the-ass mindless than running into the letter 'k' over and over again in Moria. Plus, I hear you get to turn into a dragon.

Endgame Rides

Tue, 27 May 2008 20:18:52 GMT

Soooo...rides? For me? And a possible dude?

I'm in Somerville, but can get pretty much anywhere on the Red Line, and can be there whenever.

On Weddings

Mon, 19 May 2008 19:26:02 GMT

Now that I've finished various and sundry things, it's time to catch up on LJ! (This includes the five-question memes; I'll be posting the answers here because I am late and suck.)

But first: my cousin Chris's wedding.

It bears mentioning, before I go into my usual orgy of snark and irreverence, that it was *visually* great. St. Patrick's is a very pretty church (Lawrence itself is a fetid hellhole of impossible navigation, but that's another matter) with lovely stained-glass windows, the flowers were gorgeous, and the bride and bridesmaids all looked good, even if I personally would have chosen a less purply brown for dresses with a pink sash.

We were late--see above re: Lawrence's fetid hellholishness--and thus ended up ducking into the back pew just before the bride came in. This turned out to be a good thing.

See, I kept my composure all right during the first reading, even though I'd never before *heard* the Eve-comes-from-Adam's-rib version of Genesis. I thought it was one of those passages in the Bible that most people didn't use for readings--like most of Revelations, or the bit about women being saved through childbirth--and so was startled. But there were worse choices, and I figured I'd just make some Comments once we were out in the car.

And then there was a pause. Not a scheduled pause; rather, the sort of pause where everyone shuffles and looks around and my sister advances the "priest fell asleep" theory, which makes me have to stare straight ahead and think of something sad, because otherwise I will start giggling. (We found out later that someone was supposed to sing and, um, forgot. Oops.) To fill said pause, we had a spontaneous Bible reading--something from Saint Paul that seemed like generalized advice. "Don't be haughty--associate with those of the lower classes" is the phrase that sticks in my mind.

Then the priest gets up to give the Official Reading, by which I mean he whips out a guitar--or possibly a ukelele--and sings the story about the wedding at Caina. All of it. Verbatim. Including the bit about how "there were some jars of water, and each held ten to fifteen gallons," thank you, Song of OSHA Technical Specifications. Plus, this particular translation translates it roughly as:

Mary: "Oh no, we've run out of wine."
Jesus: "How is this my problem?"

I am not a Christian, but I never got the impression that Jesus was quite that much of a jerk. With this translation, it seems like there's a verse missing: "And Mary gave her son a ding 'round the ear and said unto him: Do not get smart with me, buster." (Or, as Dude said when I told him, "Saying that sort of thing to a Jewish mother? Well, he's got *some* special qualities.")

The sermon? The sermon was a lesson in something, and I don't know what. The priest began with "The outside world thinks you're crazy, 'cause they don't believe in long-term relationships. How can one man and one woman stay together their whole life? But it's not just you guys in this marriage. There's a third person: Jesus."

Okay, on the one hand, I get what he was trying to say, even if I object to it on several levels; on the other hand, Unfortunate Phrasing FTW. (This priest was prone to that--there was a point where he said "Chris and Stacy are going to heaven, and they're taking as many people with them as they can!" and I wondered when my cousin had become a suicide bomber.) Plus, the rest of the sermon was pretty much like that: just people have no hope of staying together, but you guys have God on your side, so it's a sure thing!*

Levels on which I object to this are the implication that nobody outside the Catholic church is going to buy into that cah-razy lifelong monogamy gig; the similar implication that non-Christian marriages are doomed doomed DOOMED; and the converse implication that, well, God wants the two of you to be together for life, so if anything goes wrong, it's because You Suck. A lot. Like, even divine intervention cannot overcome the Suckiness of You. Sinner. Bleah.

When I told Adam about this, afterwards, he said he'd have been offended--like, walking-out offended--and I sort of intellectually understand that, because it *was* offensive. On all the levels I just mentioned. But emotionally...well, I thought it was fucking funny. My reaction was very "Oh, man, that guy's on *crack*." I wasn't angry or insulted or anything.

It's like Reactions to Offensiveness: A Study. Even more so because my mom, who is a lapsed Catholic, saw nothing either funny or offensive in the sermon: she's learned, in her own words, "to go somewhere else in my head while the priest is talking." So I think it's all down to familiarity--familiar enough to just tune it out, familiar enough to go "oh, yeah, another one of those guys, bwah" the same way I do with the Snapewives, and being unfamiliar enough to be shocked and appalled. Plus the fact that I take very few things seriously.

The reception was surprisingly tolerable. Alcohol will help with that sort of thing, and will also reveal the latest Saga of Aunt Carol, which I'll write at a later date. Leaving early: also FTW. Thank God for my sister and her lost wallet.

*With, I might add, much stress on "marriage, a sacrament between a Christian man and a Christian woman"...yeah, we GET IT.

</lj>

Aralis Rides?

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:05:56 GMT

Hey, guys!

Can anyone out there give me and Dude a ride to Aralis this Friday? We're in Cambridge, but can be elsewhere on the Red Line if need be.

Thanks!

A Bit of Self-Pity

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:12:51 GMT

So, first of all, I hate matrimony and all associated with it.

This is untrue. I've had a great time at friends' weddings; I anticipate doing so again. Cousins' weddings are another story. The third cousin's wedding in four years, which I have to go to instead of earning Aralis CP, is *definitely* another story. A story called "Izzy Has Too Many Fucking Cousins," or "Catholic Wedding Ceremonies: A Tale of Deep-Tissue Boredom," or "Why Didn't I Move to Alaska?"

Friends' weddings are awesome, in my experience, because I'm there with friends. Family weddings...the thing is, the only people at the wedding who I know are...my family. I like spending time with my immediate family; my extended family on my mother's side contains something like thirty people, all of whom bore the pants off me except for the parents of the groom, who won't have much time to talk. And there's this tiresome tradition where the guests aren't supposed to leave the reception until the bride and groom do, and the bride and groom stay for hours, which means that *I* have to stay for hours, listening to DJ Takes It Personally bitch at everyone who isn't dancing, answering the same questions about my job fifty times, and seriously considering killing myself with cocktail sticks.

Plus, all of my formal dresses are white, red, black, or floor-length. So I tried to buy a dress last night.

I don't know what I did to the Gods of Fashion, but apparently they hate me, because all the anywhere-near-formal dresses out this year are horrible yoke-wasted things that look good on exactly nobody. Seriously. I grabbed a stack and took them into the fitting room, hoping to find one that would look okay:

Dress 1: The moment I put this on, the people who manufacture my IUD started drafting an anti-defamation suit. Not happening.

Dress 2: Um. Better. Sort of. Except for a little wrinkly cummerbundy thing--is associating "folds" with "my stomach" a good idea, really? No. No, it is not.

Dress 3: BLEAH NO.

Dress 4: Seriously, are the fashion designers of the world suffering from fertility problems? Because I can think of no other reason why they chose "knocked up" as the theme for this year's dresses. It's not like it's a good look.

Dress 5: Annnd when did I get the body of Ethel Mertz? No.

Dress 6: Okay, this isn't...as bad. It's...kind of fetching. And it's seventy dollars. No. I refuse to pay seventy dollars to look "kind of fetching."

Went home. Called mother. Informed her that I would be wearing a cocktail dress, or a nice skirt and blouse, because the alternative...well, having me show up looking like I'm in my second trimester might make the wedding a little more entertaining, but not in a way I think she'd like.

And I'm totally faking a headache if the reception goes past ten.

Blerg?

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:23:11 GMT

Reading the Book of Vile Darkness, because, hey, what the hell? Some good stuff there, some of it (...cancer mages? Dude) in a very squicky way. And that's cool.

However, I really could live without the whole "Evil Traits of Evil" including sadism and masochism. I'm not particularly deep into the scene--and I find that many people who are carry the "we're dark misunderstood martyrs" act waaay too fucking far*--I'm not offended by much, but putting them in there with necrophilia, bestiality, and freaking *cannibalism* is really not okay. I can sortakinda see sadism, if it was phrased like "some people get sexual pleasure from hurting others, and a maladjusted few of those take it way too far and don't bother with things like consent" but...no.

Shove it, Monte Cook.

On a more comedic note, I still can't get my head around "Lichloved" as a feat. Yes, it's what it sounds like. Yes, ew. And "Apocalypse from the Sky" is a deeply amusing spell name.

ETA: Also amusing? "Gutwrench." The target's intestines burst from their body (I presume Temple-of-Doom style) and fly toward the caster. Who absorbs them. Yeaaah.

*Not that this is anything new to me, what with being a pagan and a gamer and hanging around with goths. Y'all, if you flagrantly ignore social standards of behavior or generally act like an attention whore, people are going to think you're a weirdo. This != ZOMG PERSECUTION. No, you cannot wear a slave collar to work. Or a robe, Whiny Guy From Customers_Suck. Fuck off.

Rides?

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:52:07 GMT

Hey, all!

I'm in need of a ride to Endgame this weekend. I live in Somerville, would want to do end-game food things, and may be accompanied by one or two burly men. Can chip in for gas etc.

Also

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:45:50 GMT

My attitude toward the whole OSB project was not improved by the first guy who posted an objection on Ferrett's LJ. Because, first of all, he was a dude, and second, his objection was basically:

"I feel that other people doing this diminishes the intimacy of touching someone's breasts. I don't kiss or touch many people [fine] and I like to feel like I'm getting a reward when I do."

Which has all kinds of ick-tastic female purity/virgin-as-prize connotations. Plus, basically, you're wanting other people to stop doing something they like because it makes you feel less special?

How very precious. Die in a fire.

Other people have totally valid objections. This dude? Does not. See also the bit about dying in a fire.

Edited to clarify: the poster wasn't just stating that he wouldn't do this, but rather that it was a bad idea for everyone because, y'know, it made him less of a Conquering Hero or whatever.

Philosophical Ramblng

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:54:57 GMT

Note: When not specifically directed at anyone, the below are...not specifically directed at anyone. Some have been prompted by recent discussion, in a sort of "Huh, I made this statement that could use some elaboration only not over there" sense, but they were sort of swirling around in my head to begin with.

1: On Peace, Love, and Understanding--and Why They Suck.

Just kidding. Sort of.

I'm all for getting along as well as we can. Letting people do their own thing? Great. (I may snicker and make catty remarks to friends if your thing is, say, wearing pink Lycra in public, but you don't have to listen and it's not going to kill you.) And if people really want to change or learn or whatever, I'm all for helping them.

But until they do, I don't think it's my job. In fact, I think that trying to get them to change, or continuing to reach out to someone who's clearly unwilling to do the heavy lifting, is a waste of time and effort. Like the man says, you got to know when to walk away. And I, in all honesty, don't think that most people change much once they're adults.

A little? Sure. But when we're talking about sixteen-year-olds, or eighteen-year-olds, there's a good chance that Toxic Drama Queen will calm down, that Cat Piss Man will learn some social skills, that The Ditz will get organized, and so forth. Once we're talking mid-twenties or so? Not so much. Adults are, for good or ill, pretty set in their ways--and, when we're talking negative traits, most of them are old enough to know better. There comes a point where you either have to accept that I forget my keys all the time and swear like a sailor, or you have to...not, and that's sad, but it's life.

Furthermore, I think too much willingness to put up with people, to try and understand them, and so forth, can actively be a bad thing. It rewards negative behavior, which I think is wrong in some sort of cosmic sense; it gives people the impression that *they* don't need to do anything, because others will make accommodations. And an excess of understanding frequently leads to nothing but you compromising what you most want, or think is right, or whatever.

Sometimes compromise is fine--I don't always have to hold out for eighties movies, or grand narrative arcs, or whatever; I can watch the Exorcist or play straight D&D, and it won't be the end of the world. (Though everyone has their own place to stand, and I think being too willing to compromise has definitely hurt some of the games I've run.) But I think that understanding, like love, is one of those qualities that the world sees as unswervingly positive when maybe it shouldn't--which is why my default is to argue against it.

2: So There's This Thing About Breasts...

Which, really, doesn't merit a whole lot of explaining. Dude suggests a system wherein women, at cons, wear buttons saying "ask if you can touch my breasts," for reasons which are partly noble--if in a sort of feel-good sixties way that makes my personal teeth hurt--and partly that, y'know, he's a dude and he wants to touch breasts. Internet explodes.

This is being debated elsewhere, in general, and I'm really not interested in debating the whole thing here. (It's nothing I'd ever do, because...con guys. ECH.) However, it raised the whole issue of peer pressure and hostile environments, and that *is* something where I seem to disagree with a lot of people.

See, the thing is, I wear skimpy clothing. I have sex; I have a lot of sex; I talk pretty freely about having a lot of sex. I observe some basic proprieties here: if a given friend says "Hey, Izzy, I have no interest in your sex life, shut up," I totally will, and I don't wear minidresses to my grandparents'. Buuut...if I was at a drunken party, we were all talking about sex, or groping each other, or whatever, and someone complained, I'd think *that person* should shut up or leave--it's a drunken party, you know what you're getting into, suck it up. Likewise, if I'm dressed to suit public decency and someone on the street comes up and complains about my lack of midriff-coverage, that person's going to get a two-word response.

And if I could, I would totally wear the skimpiest clothing ever around people who complain about other women "dressing like sluts," because...fuck you, chickie.

And furthermore, if someone doesn't want to have sex, or wear miniskirts, or whatever? That's his or her decision--but that cuts both ways. If you see me wearing a miniskirt and want one yourself, but you don't think it's "right" to dress that way? That's between you and your therapist, sweetie. If I'm making out with someone and it makes you feel bad about your True Love Waits thing? Not. My. Problem. Own your feelings, because I'm not doing it for you.

Now, I'm not sure how the whole Open Source Boob thing is different, but I can see a couple ways that it is--it's physical contact, it's at a setting where you're not prepared for it, and anything that encourages poorly-socialized geeks to ask whether they can touch women is bad, though not as bad as aforementioned geeks touching *without* asking. (EW.) But I think we need to be careful about saying "this behavior is bad because of peer pressure."

Aralis!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:00:13 GMT

Yeah, I slept for eighteen hours yesterday. (And then proceeded to get food poisoning. Man. Who knew that salad could go bad?)

I really enjoyed session, though I was a little more tense than I'd have liked: this is the first time I brought someone I was dating into a LARP, and the whole "Oh, God, I hope you like this, and don't embarrass me" thing was definitely on my mind about seventy-five percent of the time. (Thank God I knew he could roleplay beforehand--and thank God he *can* roleplay, because...man, finding out that I was actually in love with one of those "Lightning Bolt!" video dudes would have been Problematic. And possibly, nay, probably a deal-breaker.) Fortunately, he seems to have become thoroughly addicted, and nobody emailed me to say "wow, your boyfriend's a chode," so...yay!

Friday night rocked. I mean, other than the drive to the campsite (shut up, asscrack-of-nowhere-Massachusetts, and get some decent road signs while you're at it) and the subsequent discovery that 4H actually stands for Heinous Heaps of Horrible Hatred, in the form of giant fuck-off branches. We seem to have been cursed by the vengeful and omnipotent Campsite Gods or something. Oh well.

The game was excellent. I loved starting out in the Imperial Girls' School and the conversations I had there; I had a great time with hilariarex's undead hunter ("Tell Tasni I'm going to kill a vampire. I'll be back, I promise!"); and Ross's death was the squalidest thing I've ever seen in ever. And man, that was awesome. Plus, he came back the next morning, so, yay!

Saturday? Also fun. Many, many thanks to egowumpus for asking me to lead a service for Sol, and to all who participated: it really made me feel like I had a role in the greater world, and I really like religion plot/discussion/spuh. I am not terribly good at improv, I fear, so I'll have to plan a service for the future.

Goblin plot ruled! So did going to look for the alchemist's master, even if we did get totally rolled. And the 19...stuff...is fascinating, if somewhat creepy.

As far as Saturday night goes...I enjoyed most of it (the disorganization started to get to me after a while, and that was the worst possible wall to fight over, but that's about it), and I sort of liked the enforced conversation in Room O'Squalor. I wish we'd brought blankets or something, and much love to Shawn for the hoodie distribution, but that's about it.

I feel a little lame about my own performance this session, system-wise--between sleep dep and worry over the dude, I forgot I had some things, forgot I *didn't* have other things, and was generally a giant fucking ditz. Bleah. Sorry about that, y'all.

Generally? Rockzor. And I look forward to next session. So does Dude, for the record.

GAH WHAT NO

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:39:11 GMT

I try to be a good post-modern, open-minded girl. I try to keep in mind that, in most cases, your kink is okay (*you* may be totally lamesauce, as may your friends, but that's another story) and that people are wired in different ways.

And then there's this. . Sewing meat to people. Sewing meat to people .

No. No no. There is a line, and on one side of the line is "not my thing but whatever" and on the other is, well, sewing goddamn meat to people. I may never eat again. Wow. I...ewwwww.

By the way, following that discussion too clearly is probably a bad idea. It gets reaaally Nightmare Fuel in places. I mean, more Nightmare Fuel than sewing meat to people, even.

EW.

Also....

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:19:32 GMT

I have it from a reliable source that grad students drink blood. From the skulls of puppies. After they have kicked said puppies.

Furthermore, they smell funny.

Vicarious Costuming Questions

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:39:51 GMT

By the way, does anyone know where to find additional LARP pants/Middle Eastern costuming for a 6'3 dude who generally takes a size XL?

The Internet may not be an option at this point. Depends on shipping time.

Thanks!

In Summary

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:28:13 GMT

1) New people are good.

2) Mentoring is good.

3) Having a separate alumni organization might be good, or not. We don't know.

4) LARPS are good. Tabletops are probably better for recruitment. Also one-shot LARPs.

5) Parties are good: alcohol makes everything better!*

6) Talking nonstop about anything that someone doesn't participate in is not the way to make them want to hang out with you more, if they don't know you particularly well. Go figure.

7) The Providence-Boston public transportation system sucks balls.

So, entirely aside from the separate-organization-for-alumni Issue, would people be interested in having a subgroup/separate group/ameboid fleshblob horror dedicated specifically to mentoring or providing resources? Maybe an alias where people could write with questions about system, requests for co-GMs or help recruiting, and so forth?

Fgs_Requests makes us sound kind of like DJs; FGS_Oracles is kiiiinda pretentious. I dunno.

And that could be a cool way to get to know people. I mean, I remember several cool conversations with egowumpus and similar people that were spawned by my somewhat-pathetic requests for military information.

*We need to run a Chaos Destroys again. I was telling the dude about it the other night.

My Thoughts on LARPing/Recruitment

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:28:05 GMT

...it's kind of like yaoi, but without the gay sex. Or at least without quite as *much* gay sex.

So there's been a whole sequence of posts re: whether tabletops are better recruiting tools than LARPs. And I think a useful distinction that hasn't been widely made yet is long-running LARPs versus one or two shots.

One-or-two-shot LARPs are *great* recruiting tools, in my experience. You get to dress up, which is great, you get to run around talking to a bunch of people, and most of the game (ifuckingdeally) involves talking and roleplay rather than Ye Olde Systeme Wankerie.* Especially if costuming's provided, it's also not a big commitment. You show up, you read your sheet, and you're good to go. These things are great--especially if they've got common themes, like Harry Potter or Castle Falkenstein, that most people can pick up easily.

Long-running LARPs? Fucking scary. Fucking scary for two reasons:

a) The vast majority of long-running non-boffer LARPs I've been in have been mostly about PVP and intrigue plot. This isn't a bad thing; it may be a feature of the medium. But it's something that I could see being really fucking intimidating to a newbie: "You mean someone can totally fuck up my good time because I'm insufficiently Machiavellian? WTFNO."

b) They *eat* Saturday night. Two Saturday nights a month. For *years*.

This, again, is fine and awesome for people who are already into the scene. I did it; I still do it, with boffer LARPs; it's great.

But it's hard to deny that, for most people, Saturday night (and, to a smaller extent, Friday night) is the night to put on something low-cut, find a place serving something alcoholic, and indulge in a little activity that the mundane world calls "trying to get laid." Cut into this on a regular basis and most new gamers, especially most college students, will back away slowly while looking nervous. And it's hard to blame them.

Boffer LARPs...I love boffer LARPs. But, again, time. And being outside. Where there are spiders, and bears, and sometimes it rains on you. The outdoors is not your friend. It took being in FGS for a couple months before I'd go to Aralis, because...dude, it's *outside*. For a *weekend*. WTF?

So I think that things like ProCon, fall one-shots, etc, are great recruitment tools. But it's important to balance them with some ongoing games that are not The Wilson LARP.

Also: it's worth bearing in mind that the best way to get someone into something is not "OMG GUYS YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS WHY ARE YOU NOT INTO THIS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD NOW I WILL TALK ABOUT IT FOR HALF AN HOUR!!!!" Seriously. I like most things Joss Wheedon's done, and I will talk about them a lot, but I have seen ConDudes who automatically and persistently change every subject to Buffy, and I have seen people on the Intarwebs flip out when someone doesn't like Firefly. These people are pariahs for a reason. And I don't think that FGS, as a whole, emulates them, but there are times, like recruitment/first meeting, when we should take a collective Valium.

*Bear in mind here that, in probably-misused Forge terminology, I am a die-hard squishy narrativist, and consider gamism or "crunchy" seven-flavors-of-math RP much the same way I do, say, scat: if you and some other consenting adults want to do it, go to, but I don't want to hear about it and DEAR GOD do not try to get me involved. EW.