Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.

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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:

[<< Previous 20 entries]

July 8th, 2009
01:50 am [Link]	Hi again! (and LOH: 056-058 ++) The momentum of silence has gotten pretty overwhelming around here. The longer I go without saying something, the greater the urge to have that "comeback" post be the greatest thing ever, the Nobel Prize-winning, sliced-toast-beating collection of devastating witticisms that will cure cancer, poverty, starvation, cholera, and the Republican party. Pretty clearly, that isn't happening. I mean, not even my writing can fix Sarah Palin.^[] But anyway! I should at least say something* and start trying to kick the silence habit. After all, I've kept myself pretty busy -- just not here. Witness: Oh hey wasn't there this novel I was posting to the Web? Even though I haven't mentioned anything about it since ... um ... May? Trent, Act II and Trent, Act III: One of our heroes gets some solid answers on what's happening with this strange game come to life. Crissy, Act VI: Crissy learns magic, and ... uh .... uh-oh. Then there was a month where I disappeared off the radar. I'm better now. And I came back with: Change of Mind -- even if you've been giving the novel a pass, this short story (~7500 words) about a mage's experiences with telepathy-as-mental-health-tool should be worth your time. A tip o' the hat to dragonzuela, who challenged me with the original concept in my Writing Requests thread. And Racing Stripes by ~baxil on deviantART -- a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait. Oh, and you knew I had an art gallery, right? The newest piece of art there is from around the time of John McCain's bar mitzvah^[], but it's the first time I've ever posted them so let's just call them "new" and be done with it. There's much more to say, as ever and always; but for now i'll be content with re-breaking the ice. Current Location:* ~/Brainstorm Current Music: Brainpool, "Who's That Man?" Tags: legend of hero, multimedia, writing (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 4th, 2009
09:27 pm [Link]	Legend of Hero delay, and 051-055 I'm taking a mental health day. Friends-locked post below describes why. I'm fine, just would like a little time. Tonight's Legend of Hero post over at ttustories is being cancelled, but normal schedule will resume on Thursday. I'm not going to post any bonus content, but I'll try to get a post or two written for this journal if I feel up to it. I've had some interesting dreams. Anyway, the kids just finished their second boss fight -- so it's a good night to browse through the archives and see what catches your eye. Considering that I haven't actually posted any updates here for the last five episodes (whoops), even those of you who follow the story regularly will have plenty of new reading available. Take your pick: Ron and Riselmian! The singer and the Archon! Kevin and David! A new boss fight starts! The boss fight ends! And now, off to dinner. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Mood: unsettled Tags: legend of hero (Leave a comment)
April 15th, 2009
02:34 pm [Link]	GIP; and Legend of Hero: 048-050 I just added my 69th user icon. Huh-huh-huh. Insert innuendo here. In other numerical-landmark news, my fantasy serial Legend of Hero just reached its 50th update! Yay! It's been a learning experience to transform "hasty NaNoWriMo novel" into "edited serial fiction", to have a single project occupy my mindset for such a sustained period of time, to meet self-imposed deadlines and push the story forward with new material and thrash into shape what was already there. I'm getting close to the end of the prewritten buffer, so in a lot of ways this is where the rubber hits the road (how long can I buckle down and start producing more new raw material at a sustainable pace?), but it also feels like an accomplishment to have gotten this far, another sign that I'm reaching the point of being able to write a saleable novel and/or other long-form fiction. It will happen. Anyway ... 50. Wow! It feels like a birthday -- and where would a birthday be without gifts? Thanks to my readers who wrote reviews of LoH -- and to Web Fiction Guide's Drew Daniels, who just this weekend gave my serial a WFG editor's imprimatur with an official 4-star review and the praise "If you are an RPG Gamer you’ll have fun with this story." The fun continues this week with a return to the main characters' explorations. Hurrah! David talks Kevin into visiting the Hall of Heroes again, shows off his new skills and equipment, and tries to teach Kevin how to unlock his own special attacks. And Trent? Don't think that he's out of the picture -- in fact, he has started his own investigation into the nature of the Shadowlands ... The statistics-obsessed geeks among you (and you're in good company) should also visit LoH's Bonuses section, where several pages of David's Shadowlands game-system notes have now been unlocked. That way I can keep the elemental crystal stuff from becoming several thousand words of tedious exposition, while still peeling back the layers for those who care. :) Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Scorpio Rising, "Goofball" Tags: legend of hero, misc life updates (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
April 5th, 2009
07:56 pm [Link]	Legend of Hero: 046-047 Finally got to sit down again on the players' side of the gaming table this weekend. We haven't played the campaign that generated the CSI: Luvine tales in a few months, but it was as fun as I remember it, and the Story Dice were rolling hot. For example, at one point, we were undergoing a "Test of Body" to determine our right to take possession of a plot-critical magical artifact. Our first challenge was to have one of our characters outdrink a dwarf. So Simon the sorcerer, a crippled little shrimp of a man with a horrible constitution but an inexplicable love of hard liquor, sat down at the table. Three pints later, after ridiculously horrible rolls all around, the dwarf slumped over. Simon shrugged, finished his glass, and then collapsed too. Shortly thereafter, we ended up facing off against a half-orc barbarian who said one of us had to defeat him in single combat. Our ranger, who has got some Issues with orcs, tried and failed twice, and then sulked in a corner while he waited for us to recover enough healing magic to get him back to full strength. Simon shrugged, stepped forward, won initiative, immediately dropped the foe with a Sleep spell, and beheaded the half-orc with his own greataxe before taking a single scratch. Then we came across a barred grate we needed to bend open to proceed. I very nearly managed to singlehandedly complete the test-of-body trifecta with a STR 7 sorcerer, except that by group consensus, our ranger was told to take a shot first so that it could be even more epic when he failed and his scrawny shell of a brother succeeded. Jonas the ranger promptly rolled a 20 on his strength check and took the bars apart without blinking. Meanwhile, back in Legend of Hero, David is trying to convince Kevin and Crissy to visit the Shadowlands with him. They're game, but in Crissy: Act V they discover an unexpected obstacle. Behind the scenes, Machinations: Act VI lets us listen in on the Shadow King's inner circle, all together for the first time. How come he's not immediately throwing the full weight of his overwhelming force against the heroes? If the answer seems hackneyed, give it a few weeks: you have to play the trope straight in order to deconstruct it, after all. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Music: Something random off of the new iPod :) Tags: legend of hero, roleplaying (Leave a comment)
March 30th, 2009
12:59 am [Link]	Art update, and Legend of Hero: 042-045 I've bought a few lovely pieces of custom artwork lately. One's from jonart, who is taking commissions: ... and a Baxil portrait by talakestreal, who last I checked is still taking bargain commissions as an opportunity to test out new watercolors: $5 Watercolor Commission: Baxi by ~talakestreal on deviant ART While I've been plugging along at my own creative endeavour, which takes the form of words. The latest from Legend of Hero: Wandering Merchant Joix: Act IV - The culmination of the "Companions" arc weaves together the threads of Joix, Emile and our protagonists, and shows what happened to the Hall of Heroes. The Sunlit World: Act III - As the school day draws to a close, Crissy uses her newfound knowledge to persuade Kevin to let her join their search. The Sunlit World: Act IV - Kevin, Trent and Crissy argue about the reality of the Shadowlands on their way to Kevin's house ... then find something unexpected. Machinations: Act V - Riselmian and Gavin meet, with amusing if predictable results. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Tags: legend of hero, multimedia (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 16th, 2009
11:37 pm [Link]	Legend of Hero 038-041 I have no excuse. I admit it: I am a horrible author. Not a bad writer, mind you. But a bad author. An author's job is to get people to read his prose, and I've been quietly updating ttustories* in a timely fashion for weeks now without saying anything about it. So, briefly: Wandering Merchant Joix: Act II - Joix and Hope explore a very different-looking Hall of Heroes. Crissy: Act IV - Faced with a blatantly nonexistent phone number, Crissy calls it anyway. Wandering Merchant Joix: Act III - Joix learns the basics of crystalsmithing. And a special mention for The Wastes: Act VI - in which we meet my favorite characters of the story, two mages struggling to stay alive and ... um ... slightly less insane in the strange, desolate desert. If you haven't been reading LoH, then at least check this chapter out -- we'll be seeing more of Ron and Gavin as the story progresses (Gav's too fun not to use), and I'll let you know when they pop up again. As a side note, we're currently about 15 chapters from the end of the material that was written in November. I expect to be done with the "novel", though definitely not the story itself, hopefully by summer sometime. -- * Of course, you are free to disagree in comments if you don't like the kern of my ligatures. Current Location: ~/sofa Tags: legend of hero (Leave a comment)
February 27th, 2009
09:10 am [Link]	Google Protip: and Legend of Hero 036-037 People living in The Tomorrowlands Universe have DWIM magitechnology to do the heavy lifting when they hear a catchy song on the radio and want to find it again later. The rest of us aren't so lucky, and must get clever with mundane tools. But! With a little finesse and simple memorization, Google can be almost magical in finding songs for you. Let's say that you're listening to this mystery song on the radio and want to find out how to obtain a copy later (from your friendly local DRM-free online music seller such as Amazon, iTunes, some crazy Russian mp3 site, etc). Here's how to go about it: 1. Pick out and memorize some significant phrases. By "significant" I mean "containing more than verbal filler." If you hear a sappy love song and only remember the phrases "Ooh baby," "oh yeah," and "I love you" you're not going to get anywhere. But if the phrase is sufficiently long or distinctive, you'll get it in one: "the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now" is more than enough. Even a pair of two- or three-word snippets will work surprisingly often. The chorus of the song is generally good for this, especially since they'll repeat it several times and that makes it easier to drive it into your mind and get all the messy little prepositions right. 2. Make a beeline for a web browser. Look it up as you're settling into work after your commute or the instant you get home. Keeping the memorized phrases in the front of your mind is hard enough; setting it on the back burner is a recipe for failure. 3. Use optimal search syntax. What you want to do is feed Google (other search engines will work, but Google's very good about this) the search term: `"PHRASEONE" [ "PHRASETWO" [ "PHRASETHREE" ... ] ] lyrics` For those of you unfamiliar with Unix manual page syntax, this means that you enclose each individual phrase in quotes, include as many phrases as you want (one, two, three, etc), and end with the bare word `lyrics`. Like so: `"the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now" lyrics` Or, to repeat the one I ran this morning, `"make sure you're connected" "writing's on the wall" "stumble you might fall" lyrics`[]. Voila! 4. Optimization* This technique works better the more specific you get, but you have to have the words right. Searching for `"airwaves are clean and nobody's singing to me now"` and leaving out the "there" in the middle is totally useless. To get around this, split your single long phrase into a few brief ones and put in the words you're most certain of: `"airwaves are clean" "singing to me" lyrics`[]. See, it really doesn't take much! Is the chorus the same line repeated over and over again? Feed in the duplicate phrase inside a single pair of quotes: `"change i can change i can change"` works MUCH better than `"i can change"`. Throwing in a second significant phrase along with the repeated one works even better yet. 5. Success!* Enjoy your music, and go read Legend of Hero, where you can pick up other useful life skills such as "how to fight off a rampaging 30-foot bull-fish monster" and "etiquette for comparing notes with characters from inside your favorite role-playing game." This week's tutorial is "how to deal with your sorta-boyfriend disappearing and your gaming buddies acting weird," led by previously minor character Crissy Ellenberg. Act II: See her doodle to escape the tedium of Mr. Henderson's lectures! Hear her banter about mythology as she paints character portraits! Watch her pick up the Magical Plot Brush! Act III: Feel the suspense as Kevin evades all her questions! Thrill as she remembers the business card we last saw a few months back ... and discover, along with her, what's actually on it!! THE SUSPENSE, IT MAKES ME SHOUT!!!!1!! Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: (Guess.) Tags: geekery, legend of hero (14 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 23rd, 2009
07:16 pm [Link]	Movie prediction (and Legend of Hero: 035) I'm really not a futurist at heart -- dragons are much better are guarding the what-was than the will-be -- but allow me to make a prediction. I think that, by 2050, there will be a hit romantic comedy -- not a sci-fi story, but a modern-day tale -- about a married couple having an affair with each other. At some point within my lifetime, we'll have the technology for people to quickly and painlessly change their faces and voices. (As distinct from the one-shot "Face/Off"-style identity shift.) It might be biological, nanotech, "magical," uploading your brain into different bodies, or people might have gone full-stop into robots by then; the specific method isn't important. The actual technology will probably be expensive, but that's never stopped movie protagonists before. (Filmmakers love to shoot flicks about high-powered glitzy professionals, anyway. Much better than telling the stories of the common rabble.) Husband will be secretly leading a double life thanks to the technology above. He's got a big financial services job and stable but joyless marriage in Identity A (Al), and he's a debonair "old-money" playboy freely spending his "inheritance" and sleeping around in Identity B (Bob). Wife will also be secretly leading a double life thanks to the technology above. She's got a big job too, probably but not necessarily as a lawyer, in Identity C (Christine), and she lets her hair down in some unspecified but thematically appropriate way in Identity D (Debra). ( The plot summary, straight from future-IMDB ) Yes, I know, it's so heteronormative it makes your teeth hurt. It could be a much more compelling story if it played with gender identity or gender roles or relationship structures (imagine how much zanier the comedy would be if you had a poly triad Alex, Jamie and Pat). But, even in 2050, there are going to be limits to what Hollywood will allow in a blockbuster. Anyway! Absolutely none of the above happens in the latest Legend of Hero, although there is some mutual unrequited desire goin' on. Peter and Hope take a walking tour of the Shadowlands in Wandering Merchant Joix: Act I, and end up at a location that should be familiar to regular readers ... the plot threads, they begin to weave together. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Wendy Bucklew, "Ode to Over (Heave Ho)" Tags: films, legend of hero (13 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 19th, 2009
01:09 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 033-034 So I'm back from Pantheacon. I had the convention I needed to have. It ended up being pretty exhausting, and there's a lot to write about once I scan my notes. In the meantime, it's been a little while since I mentioned anything about my serialized novel. Among other developments, I submitted Legend of Hero to Web Fiction Guide and they've obligingly provided a listing. The story itself has continued to explore David and Emile's strained relationship. In David: Act V, Emile learns of Diune's fate and has second thoughts about their teamwork, but David convinces her to stay. Then David: Act VI finds Emile trying to teach David magic -- and finally sharing that special move she hates. I gave myself Monday off due to convention recovery; tomorrow we shift back to Peter and Hope briefly before starting to check in on the friends David left behind. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Tags: legend of hero (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
February 9th, 2009
01:34 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 031-032 Wow, has it really been 32 chapters already? Why, yes! Yes it has, as you can tell by the spiffy new Table of Contents. The story returns from Filler Week with a bang, dropping David into the Shadowlands on his own in David: Act III. Well, on his own except for a character you may recognize from some earlier cutscenes. She's calling herself "Dragon Knight Emile" now. Oh, this can't be good. They team up, but soon find they get along like oil and water in David: Act IV. Words are exchanged. Awwwwwwwwk-ward. Will Emile somehow manage to put up with David long enough to follow through on the Shadow King's mysterious plan? Keep reading and we'll see! * * * If you need to cleanse your palate with something a little sillier after the intense emotions of ... okay, wait, let me start over. I don't think I want to use the phrase "cleanse your palate" anywhere near baphnedia's latest tongue-in-cheek TTU submission. I don't think there is a way to introduce with a straight face a story that talks about cars being "sludged", so let's just say it's a short but creative exploration of food allergies. Thanks, Baph! I'd also like to take a moment to plug another novel-in-progress. A few weeks back I stumbled across a webserial, Greg Bulmash's "Hell on $5 a Day," that caught and kept my eye. It's sharply written -- the first few chapters, set in the WWII era, have a real sense of place, and the titular journey through Hell is an engaging travelogue. It shares a number of themes with Legend of Hero, was started about the same time and is being posted at the same rate -- so it has been a source of quiet inspiration as I occasionally struggle to polish up a chapter. It's a vampire story, but it plays with vampire tropes the same way that LoH plays with video games, and the coherent structure built around them is fun to explore. Be forewarned there's explicit sex and occasional highly graphic violence, so it's not for everyone. Tags: legend of hero (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 30th, 2009
01:22 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: Filler Week It's been one hell of a week. FurCon was transformative and I'm working on a longer post about it. Before and after the con, we had baphnedia as a house guest during his drive to his new digs in Oregon; kadyg and I spent most of the evening sleeping tonight to recuperate; and I'm about to get caught up in a giant whirlwind of a weekend with about four different cross-scheduled things exploding in my face at once. Meanwhile, there's this little thing called my serial novel that I simply haven't been able to offer even enough mindspace to edit the next few sections that need to be posted. Discretion being the better part of valor, I'm calling a mulligan on it this week. If I'm lucky and/or persistent, I might get some time on Sunday night to catch my breath and get the story back on track. That doesn't mean I haven't posted anything, though! Taking a cue from one of my experiences at con -- a rousing game of Baron Munchhausen with aprivatefox, mufi, krinndnz, cryptodragon and a few other people whose names I forget -- I handed a copy of the rules to Kevin, David and Trent and let them have at it. And today I finally managed to capitalize on two years' worth of good intentions and finally* posted roaminrob's TTU story "Noboarding," an examination of one way that magic might change extreme sports. I hope its prominence makes up a little for my irresponsibility. As a reminder, TTU is always looking for a few good creators -- if something in Legend of Hero or the setting itself catches your creative fancy, write or draw or interpretive-dance away! I'm happy to field questions about the universe; post or repost anything you write (and I promise I won't take two years next time); and I'm slowly, patiently improving the wiki, little by little. So it goes. Edited to add: The Baron Munchhausen gauntlet has been thrown. Join in the fun in comments! -- * Next in queue: waywind drew some fantastic Keith Haring-style icons in TTU themes. That, and a few illustrations from the TTU sketchbook at previous cons, need to be added to the wiki for visual punch once I can sit down for a little while and focus on it enough to figure out how best to upload and link images. Current Location: ~/Brainstorm Current Music: Riven OST, "Gehn Speaks" Tags: legend of hero, ttu (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 23rd, 2009
07:57 pm [Link]	Furcon!, and Legend of Hero: 030 In San Jose for FurCon for the weekend. (Have posted contact info in a separate friends-locked post.) Had a remarkably fluid trip here and easy check-in. Somehow managed to drive through the Bay Area during Friday afternoon rush hour and yet only sit in traffic for about five minutes. baphnedia must be my traffic good-luck charm. I'll be here until Sunday night. In the meantime, those of you who aren't attending the con can enjoy the latest Legend of Hero episode, David: Act II. Kevin's gamer-geek friend comes to an epiphany about the Shadowlands ... and realizes he's going to have to take matters into his own hands. Current Location: San Jose Doubletree Current Mood: chipper Tags: conventions, legend of hero (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
January 22nd, 2009
12:43 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 028-029 But first, Random Wikipedia Trivia Of The Day Dried caper leaves are also used as a substitute for rennet [calf stomach byproducts. -b.] in the manufacturing of high quality cheese. One of the reasons possession of a nunchaku is illegal in many jurisdictions is that it can easily be employed as a garrote in some configurations. "Nine-fingered ballet" would be an awesome band name. Take with the usual Wikipedia grain of salt, though IIRC all three are sourced. Anyway, The Wastes: Act V reaches the climax of Peter's crisis of faith, and then we cut back to our heroes -- or at least one of them, with David: Act I offering a glimpse into his home life. If you click on those links right now, it might look like they're backward, but that's because I posted them in reverse order (as the notes on the post explain). I'll fix that as soon as both posts reach the archives, and it shouldn't affect anything in the story aside from a small perturbation of narrative flow. Also: I'm off to Further Confusion this weekend! Hope to see all of you who are attending. Tags: legend of hero (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 15th, 2009
01:49 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 025-027 I've been falling behind on reposting ttustories' Legend of Hero updates to my journal -- here's the latest batch. Along with that, a little news: The update schedule is moving to a (hopefully more sustainable) Monday/Thursday. I'm still only about halfway through the material previously written, but edits and rewrites -- and the new sections inserted along the way, like today's -- are eating up a lot of my time. Slowing down the update pace will let me focus more on continuing the story. Oh, and having a life. ;-p This week, I want to get the story submitted to Web Fiction Guide -- with the Characters page in place, it's almost feature-complete, which was the main thing holding me back before. Any other suggestions for spreading the word and potentially reaching some new readers? As to the updates: The Sunlit World: Act II follows our heroes' argument about the reality -- and the danger -- of the Shadowlands. Not content to leave philosophy well enough alone, I jumped straight into a new character's introductory story in The Wastes: III and The Wastes: IV. Peter's experiences offer our deepest look yet into the ecology -- and, not incidentally, morality* -- of the Shadowlands, and a hint that Riselmian's experiences in the Wastes may not have been the fluke they first seemed ... -- * Essay question: You're forcibly thrown into a world where people are nice to one another, with a functioning civilization, while consuming one another's children for sustenance. What are the theological implications? Discuss. `;-)` Tags: legend of hero (Leave a comment)
January 5th, 2009
06:31 pm [Link]	New year's, and Legend of Hero: 022-024 Happy New Year! It's been an eventful 2009 so far for me. I've spent a day hanging around at home writing; a day in the hospital; a day roleplaying; a day hiking; and a day at work. (I like those proportions, but I somehow doubt they're sustainable.) kadyg* and I recognized our third anniversary, but the celebration will have to wait for a week or two until we can book a room at the hot springs. I managed to get antibiotics and a tetanus booster and still walk out of the doctor's office less than $200 poorer. roaminrob and I helped kadyg take her first walk across a frozen lake. The big news, however, is that my sister got married. Congratulations, Sarah! Fun facts: This makes the number of days between our anniversaries the same as our difference in age. It's also twice the difference of how old we were when we each got married. And the span between our anniversaries is twice as long as the span between our parents' birthdays. Lastly, if you take the month and date of her anniversary date, 1 and 5, as the starting digits of an integer sequence (like the Fibonacci numbers with different starting values), the 6th term is equivalent to the number of days between our mother's birthday and her anniversary date.*** Thrills! Anyway, before my math geekery makes my readers all run away screaming, SUBJECT CHANGE! Legend of Hero continues its ambitious update schedule -- Monday, Wednesday, Friday -- and since last time I mentioned it here, we've seen Riselmian show off a special move (admit it, RPG fans, you were waiting for that, weren't you?), and the resolution of the Christmas cliffhanger. Today, the heroes return to Earth. Can't tell the players without a scorecard, so there's also a characters page with reams of thrilling statistics and appropriately thematic pixel art. And we're winding down the second major arc this week -- good time to catch up before the heroes all start delving into their own quests! -- * Getting antibiotics for a cat bite**. And if this feels like deja vu ... well, let's hope that history doesn't repeat itself. Starting in on the probiotics WAY earlier this time. Except for the "day in the hospital" thing. `]B=8(` * Assuming you're counting days in a 0-based system. But hey, we're all programmers here, right? This makes my new year's Mean Time Before Cat Bite Failure approximately 14 hours*. I know my MTBCBF has been poor recently, but this is just ridiculous. * If people were hard drives, I would so totally be Western Digital. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues" Tags:** american health care is a piece of shit, legend of hero, misc life updates (Leave a comment)
December 30th, 2008
02:08 am [Link]	Scrabble brainteaser, and Legend of Hero: 021 On Christmas, kadyg and I travelled down to my parents' house. One of our presents to them was a Scrabble board. We ended up playing a game to break it in. On my first turn, I had a handful of 1-point letters -- including an "S". I made a Hail Mary play for the 50-point bonus you score when you use up all your tiles -- dropping the S on the end of an existing word, and building a seven-letter word that also used the S. (The board position was such that the S could have been in any position in my seven-letter word.) My word was TREANTS. My parents, not being Dungeons & Dragons geeks with a love for sentient plants, immediately challenged. We discovered that we didn't have a Scrabble dictionary handy. It wasn't in the regular dictionary we managed to dig up, so we reached a quick deal: If I took it back and played something else, I could redo my turn rather than lose it. Not wanting to give up the quick 50-point boost, I furiously anagrammed, and finally tried the same tactic again, dropping down TARTENS. ("Oh, come on, that's misspelled!" Kady immediately protested. "No, I'm not going for the things Scotsmen wear," I replied. "I'm conjugating the verb that describes when something becomes more sour." I got challenged anyway.) As this was my second try, it was ruled that if this wasn't in the dictionary either, that was it for my turn. Sadly, the arbiters of official English didn't approve of my cruftipose verbizulation. Esprit d'escalier* being what it is, it wasn't until next morning that I realized I could have thrown down a legitimate seven-letter word, immune to challenge -- even with only a moderately sized standard dictionary at hand. Facepalming ensued. Can you tell me what word I should have played with those seven letters?** The answer may or may not be in the new installment of Legend of Hero over at ttustories. You should go read it and find out! It also may or may not resolve the incredible cliffhanger in the previous episode. You should go read it and find out! Either way, further updates will continue to follow the M/W/F schedule. For the record: We're catching up on a character we haven't seen in a while, so you may also want to check Wastes: I and Wastes: II for context. -- * Technically, Super Scrabble, but I'm considering that a subset of the larger "Scrabble" genre. No, none of them were blanks. Current Location: ~/computer_desk Current Mood: devious Current Music: David Nelson Band, "Long Gone Sam" Tags:** legend of hero, riddles (21 comments \| Leave a comment)
December 27th, 2008
04:31 pm [Link]	Oh and also: Legend of Hero 020 Hall of Heroes: Warlord! Kevin, David and Trent face a formidable and unexpected challenge as they try to get home ... Legend of Hero updates M/W/F at ttustories, but I skipped Friday for a Christmas break. How will the Christmas cliffhanger resolve? Tune in 12/29 to find out. Tags: legend of hero (Leave a comment)
December 23rd, 2008
06:40 pm [Link]	Legend of Hero: 017-019 Going around my friends list right now is a link to artwork of Inuit mythological creatures. It's fantastic art -- I'm especially partial to #5 -- but a little more relevant to my current project was a side link I followed that led over to InuitMyths.com. They describe the Taqriaqsuit, or shadow people: They live like we do in a world like our own. Their world, however, is beyond our perception. They are almost never seen, but sometimes when conditions are right the Taqriaqsuit can be heard. Have you ever heard the sounds of footsteps or the sound of talking or laughing in the distance but see no one around? Maybe it was the Taqriaqsuit. ... Stories tell us that some Inuit have crossed over into their world, but few have ever returned to tell us what it is like. If the Taqriaqsuit invited you to cross over into their world for a visit, would you go? Strangely enough, that's exactly what the characters in Legend of Hero have been doing this past week. Their shadow world is full of surprises -- such as treasure chests and their contents, in Hall of Heroes IV. HoH V finds them debating whether to continue exploring. And in HoH VI, our heroes find a clue suggesting what happened to their mysterious benefactor. (The clue has some fairly dramatic consequences, but you'll just have to read on to find out ...) This weekend was Solstice -- we've officially turned the corner on the season, and days are growing longer rather than shorter. Hurrah! To celebrate, my gaming group and I sat down and roleplayed 'til dawn. ( And achieved a near-total party kill ... ) Speaking of karma: kadyg brought home a new Tarot deck to play around with. It was given to her because the previous two owners found it too temperamental to effectively give readings with. She showed me the deck; I shuffled it, asked "So, deck, how are you doing today?", drew a card at random, and stared into the face of "Death." I have a sneaking suspicion the deck will be on owner #5 pretty soon. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: DJ Shadow, "You Can't Go Home Again" Tags: legend of hero, magic, roleplaying (11 comments \| Leave a comment)
December 17th, 2008
12:48 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 015-016 Tonight was Tuesday night -- when the local Go club meets in downtown Nevada City. I missed it again. Came home to help the AT&T tech try to fix our sporadically dying Internet connection, and sink my brain into writing. I do miss Go, even if I feel like I don't have the bandwidth for it right now. It's become a hobby of one of my main characters, the scheming Shadow King, and I have an unfinished short story where he engages in a friendly game with a random theri while the Archon kibitzes with intent. But I do have to admit it is nice to reclaim the time. Instead, I finished another short story that's been on the queue since October, one of the quicktakes from the requests thread. I figure I'll post it this weekend. Speaking of posting stories! ttustories' Wednesday update will be slightly delayed; I can't save the most recent version to HTML from this computer. (Which is fine -- it gave me an excuse to post this instead.) And besides, if you haven't been manually checking that journal when its M/W/F updates come in, there's already new material for you there. In Hall of Heroes: Act III, our heroes finally meet some Shadowlands residents -- and run into some complications on their way home. Meanwhile, David's girlfriend stars in Crissy: Act I, trying to find out what's happening to her gaming buddies. A thought occurred to me today that I thought I'd share. I'm reaching the age where a number of my friends seem to be refocusing their lives around child-rearing, and it's certainly something kadyg and I have discussed ourselves (even if there are no child plans on the horizon). There may be something to the whole "biological clock" after all. And: The way my journal has shifted focus so dramatically in the last month or two to my writing is making me start to believe I'm being hit too. But in a different way. In a very real (if literal) sense, child-rearing is a creative process ... I just happen to be devoting that nurturing instinct to my muse instead. Suits me fine. I'm better with ideas than with kids anyway, and I did commit to working on my writing this year. Current Location: ~/computer_desk Current Music: Mike Oldfield, "The Source Of Secrets" Tags: legend of hero, writing (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
December 11th, 2008
12:44 am [Link]	Legend of Hero: 013-014 I just spent 15 minutes embellishing a personal anecdote as a lead-in to the most recent ttustories posts ... only to realize that I've already told it. Sigh. Guess it says something about the thrilling excitement of my personal life recently that I'm starting to repeat tales of my social doings. Fortunately, the muse makes up for what the grind lacks. Monday's Legend of Hero episode swings into the world beyond the portal, and Kevin and his friends' adventures are only starting. Hall of Heroes: Act I sets the scene, and they make a disturbing discovery in Act II that throws their entire trip into question. If you've been waiting to read LoH for one reason or another, now's a good time to start, with the heroes taking their first steps into the Shadowlands. Of course, starting at the beginning will give you the best experience. -- You might even level up! And admit it, couldn't you use the extra Hit Points? Current Location: ~/computer_desk Current Music: Afro Celt Sound System, "Big Cat" Tags: legend of hero (Leave a comment)

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