Letting Go

One of the hardest things I ever had to do was let go.  Let me explain:

Last night I caught up with Annie, who has been around but very unavailable for the most part.  You know, that real life thing, it’s a pain in the ass sometimes, and at times it’s worse for some than others.

But we were back on the air together–Again, for the First Time!–and we talked about role playing, and writing, and all around things like that.  While we were talking, by the way, I was pulling down old posts we’d made for our characters from another role playing board–run by some notorious psycho bitch who some would call Jill–and I wasn’t paying attention to little things like when those post were made, because I was chatting with Annie and doing a lot of formatting to take the stuff I was clipping from an internet board and put it in Scrivener so it was readable.

So in the middle of our conversation, I decided to sneak a peek at when the post I was clipping was made, and I was totally shocked.  ”Holy shit,” I said, “this thread was created April 1 last year.  We were in the owlery a year ago.”

The Trip to the Owlery was an important milestone for these crazy kids, for that was the first time shy, reserved, somewhat unemotional, and totally clueless to the ways of women Kerry gave Annie a very simple, single, kiss on her cheek.  And what was the end result?  Annie swooned, and went right off her heels and onto her back into the straw and owl poop.

Yeah, I know how to win them over, don’t I?

I mentioned just the other day that Annie was very responsible for getting me to write, to bring me to this point where I am the writer I am today, so I feel a connection to her.  Which is why when she mentioned that she was ready to write again, but she was also a little scared because . . . to put it bluntly, it would mean “putting herself out there” again, and she was a little scared that she couldn’t.

I know that feeling very well.  You have things you want to say.  You have things you want to put on paper or screen or even scribbles in the mud if that’s what you liked to do–and you have the feeling that the moment you start putting those words down, and you read them, and you see where you are going . . . you get this sensation in the pit of your heart that feels like rats are trying to chew their way into your left ventricular.

Do I know this feeling well.

Writers deal in words, but they also deal in emotions.  As with any artistic endeavor, you are often tearing out itty bitty chunks of your soul and arranging them in a way that will make sense to others.  And the fear you have is that, after all that hard work, some mouth breaking cretin is going to come along, look at the results of self-mastication, and say, “LOL, u r so stupid!  This story suckz!”

You see some shit like that, and you want to jam your head through the flats screen where you gave birth to that story.  It forces you to reevaluate what you’ve done, and it’s going to leave you very gun shy when the time comes to do your next story.

If you ever get to that point again.

I’ve done the Woody Allen thing, where I was of the opinion that everything I’ve done is total crap, and there’s maybe one of two things I’ve done that are okay.  Yeah, I’m crazy–but I’m not that crazy, not anymore.  I’ve let people read my work, and some of them have actually been crazy enough to pay me for it!  I’ve gotten feedback, and the majority of it is good if not great.  I’m not one for believing my own hype, but I have come to the conclusion that while I might not write as well as the greatest, I can write.  And it’s something that, in its own way, is good.

You get there by letting go, and not in a Venus and Mars sort of way.  You open up and you, as dangerous as it might be, you put your heart on the page.  I did that with Transporting.  There were things I had to write that, from an emotional standpoint, I could not write, I could not face.  Annie helped me understand how to open up, and I was able to finish that novel.

So, Annie, when you read this–and I know you will, because I’ll be linking it to you–don’t be afraid to go there again.  Don’t be afraid to let go and put it right out there on the line.

Because if you fall–

Kerry will be there to catch you before you hit the owl poop.

Supper’s On

It’s a week to go before the insanity that is NaNoWriMo kicks off–and kicks a few of us in the groin.  Right now my Works in Progress are sort of on . . . well, they are done.  I don’t really, at this point, have a WiP in P.  I’m looking at my notes for my soon-to-be novel, more or less doing a Neo-style psych up before I have to jump off the building and write like a mad man.

You know where this is going, right?  I’m driving myself crazy with what I’m going to do, am I gonna be able to keep up, am I gonna create something that’s gonna be worth while?

Naw.

You know, I’m having very few of those thoughts.  Yes, I’m having bad thoughts off and on, but as far as the novel to be goes, very few of them are turned in that direction.  I know I have to do a little tweaking on the notes, but nothing major.  I’ll knock that off this week and be ready to go to down.

But I noticed something over the weekend.  When I wasn’t moping like a sick dog (yes, I was moping, what can I say?), I wondered why I wasn’t writing anything.  Something, anything.  I just had to do it.

But this was a strange weekend for me.  Beyond this little slice of writing paradise I seemed like I was floating about with little to do.  It made me feel just a little lost, because I really felt like I was wasting my time, which I was.

So what to do?

Game writing, what else?

I’ve talked about the online game I’ve done off and on since earlier in the year.  Of late it’s been more “off” than the other, mostly because I’ve been doing a lot more writing (like I did with my story Kuntilanak which, you will see if you just follow that link, is now being sold at Barnes & Noble for your Nook, so what are you waiting for?  Put some money in my pocket), but I still do it.  Why?  Because it’s good writing, because I love the characters, because I love the interaction my character has with my in-world girlfriend (yes, she is my character’s girlfriend; stop snickering), because I love the world I’ve helped create.

So I tried something different this last week.  My character and my girlfriend character were out on a field trip in the deep, dark woods of Maine, and while nothing really exciting happened to us like being attacked by bears–said likelihood of that happening goes way up if you are in the wild with another person and you’re having sex with them, just in case you wanted to know–I came up with the idea: hey, instead of us talking about walking through the forrests and finding all sort of plants and seeing the trees and oohing and ahhing when we find some unicorns (Team Unicorn, if we’re lucky), why not have the people who took us out talk about the trip with other instructors?  Get a little bit of an idea about what it was like from their point of view?

So since last Tuesday I’ve been writing.  And writing.  And I did a little more writing over the weekend–well, probably a lot more writing.  So far I’ve cranked out 4700 words since last week, and it’s probably that I did about 2000 words over the weekend alone.  It’s been a chore at times–you get that little niggling “Why are you doing this?” voice in the back of your head from time to time–but for the most part it’s been fun, and it’s been very engaging.  And it allows me to work on characters, to think like they think, to give their point of view on something that we, as playing characters, wouldn’t normally see.

Is it worthwhile to engage in something that, for the most part, is never going to see the light of day?  To spend all my time working on something that will never lead to any sort of financial benefit?

Sure.

Stephen King once stated in his book Danse Macabre (of which I have a First Edition printing, yes I do) something along the lines of, “If you write because you have to do it, then you’re a writer.  If you write because you are only trying to make money, then you’re a monkey”, and it’s a quote that I use a lot as well.  (He also said, “If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”  While I haven’t yet made enough to pay the light bill, I’m close, therefore I be talented.)  So I’m writing and creating not so much because I know what I’m doing will turn into great, impression, wonderful masterpiece–I’m doing it because I want to, because I feel like it.

Because I feel like I need to do this.

If I didn’t, would I come out here every day and share my thoughts?

In the Cold Kanvian Rain

It’s been raining here for most of the night.  Not one of those downpour-type rains where it’s pounding against the house, but rather one of those steady drizzles that maintain their constancy and volume through the day and night.

And it’s also chilly outside; it was down in the 40′s last night and it’s going to be like mid-50′s with a lot of wind today.  It’s dark, it’s crummy . . . so what else comes to mind but–

Gaming.

Oh, yeah.  I know you thought I was gonna say something else, but no: gaming came to mind.  In particular, the title of this point relates back to a game I ran so very long ago, and that makes me think about something else . . . no, not sex–

Writing.

Allow me to elucidate.

For the longest time I’ve been a gamer.  It really all started in 1974 with war gaming, but 12 years later I was getting into role playing.  It wasn’t long after that I started running games–or “GMing” for you non-gamer types–and I quickly discovered that if you wanna have a good game, you have to learn to get inventive and imaginative pretty damn fast.

I also learned that when you spend 6 hours with 4 or 5 other people, all of whom are coming up with all sorts of crack-pot shit about what they want their characters to do, and you’re trying to keep of that while remembering where you had their characters go and who their character ran into, I had to figure out a way to keep all this straight in my mind.

Thus began the creation of my game logs.

I needed these to keep my own sanity, because I knew somewhere along the line one of my players would say something like, “Oh, yeah, my character got that Warhammer from so-and-so, and it already came with that Ultimate Badness Weapon.”  And naturally, if I didn’t have any way to disprove his claim, I could find myself in a situation where I’d spend most of an hour arguing that fact.

With my log, however, I could just go to the computer, pull up the session where said player got the Warhammer (it’s a mech, Jim) and tell the player, “No, you’re wrong.  See?  You got the Normal Crappy Weapons, so sit down and be happy.”

My game logs became something more than just a way of seeing what happened.  Because I didn’t want bore myself with a lot of cold, hard facts, I tried to write my logs in a way that were, shall we say, entertaining?  Now, sure: I would be the only one looking at them, but why not be a little inventive when describing the sort of crazy hell that is a role playing session?  I mean, if you’re a writer, you gotta entertain yourself as well as your audience, right?

And while I was writing I decided to extend that into the world of the characters.  During the 2 ^1/2 year run of my MechWarrior game I wrote 6 articles by one Winslow Duke, who had a very unique outlook on life, politics, and war in that particular 31^st Century universe.  When I ran Cyberpunk for nearly the same amount of time I was always doing little writeups for the players, giving their characters a bit of a personalized window the events of the world.

And when things started moving more onto the Internet, my logs went there as well.

Eventually I started running a couple of games based off 0f TV shows, Farscape and Serenity.  Both these games had established online communities, and as I wrote up my logs I began posting them for others to see.  Why?  Because I wanted people to see what I was doing, but also because I wanted to entertain.  By this time my logs were getting more detailed, but they were turning more into semi-stories than simple explanations of what had happened during a game.

There was some great writing in my logs, and I feel it helped me at the time learn to be not only descriptive, but it helped improve my imagination as well.  Running a good game is like creating a good story: they are both one in the same in my mind.  And so, when you write about what happened during that session, you want to try to impart the feeling of what happened to the people who are reading.

I’ve lost my logs to my early games, but I still have my last two.  To say I keep detailed recording off all that happened would be damning those logs with faint praise.  My Serenity logs ran 108 pages and 64,200 words, while my Farscape logs ran 150 pages and 89,900 words.  And I have to say, I have some great writing in there, ’cause at the time, I really needed to entertain myself.

I’ve told people that one day I’m going to publish these logs, because they do show how I was developing as a writer–and they’re damn fun to read.  Or at least I think so.  Maybe people who aren’t into gaming would find them interesting.  I would hope they’d look at the writing and examine the creativity that went into the story behind the writing, and understand and enjoy what I was doing.

And if you, the reader, like what I was doing, then I succeeded.

Because, in the end, it’s always about being entertaining.

Wonder Twins

My nights have been very strange of late, very strange.  Last night was no exception . . ..

Did the outline for my NaNo novel, and damn, are there a lot of scenes!  But by doing this scene-by-scene outline, I was able to see where the story should go, where the action is going to take place (Third Act, naturally), and I was able to add in all the “filler” stuff that I’ve wondered about from the time when I’d started putting this idea together a year ago.  Then I had an idea; now I really seem to have the beginnings of a novel.

And then it was late night talking with my friend about the characters we role play . . . and that, believe me, was a lot of fun.  It’s been a while since we’ve gotten into playing, and when we started discussing things that would happen to them years from now–things of a very personal nature, mind you–the feeling I had was one of excitement and anticipation.

Because I like creating characters, I like doing stories–and working like this with another person is like collaborating on a novel with someone who thinks the same way as you.  You get into each other’s head and you start to see where they are going, and they see where you are going, and before you know it you have both arrived at the same point with two different characters.

It’s a great feeling.  It’s one that I wish I could do on a regular basis with my writing, and produce works that are memorable.  While most people will never get a chance to read what we are doing, trust me: it’s going into great places.

And that’s what I’m starting to enjoy with the whole writing process: the art of creation.  When talking to my writer friend about her NaNo novel, you start getting into what they are doing and it opens you up: it makes you see things that you might not have ever considered before, and for those things that you have, you start to twist them around just a tiny bit to make them feel more at home in your world.

My world is sort of filed out, but only in the sense that I have a large canvas upon which to play, I’ve done just a touch of framing, and now comes the time when I need to fill it in with the details.  It’s like the feel of the city itself.  I’ve said the story is going to be a “paranormal steampunkish science fiction” mashup, and that’s putting it lightly.  I know how I want the city to feel, but now I gotta take all the stuff I just said and I gotta make a city that looks that way.  And I need to know a few more rules, and I need to add some players (this came up while I was putting scenes together), and before you know it I’m gonna have a real story on my hands.

No erotica today–though I do have some naughty things in mind for a certain someone; no strange dreams–though I had one that was not only strange, it was extremely unpleasant.

Today I’m all about creating things.  I’m all about building characters.

I’m all about the story.

Taking the D Train

Last night was interesting: I tried, for the first time in a long time, to remind myself to dream, and to remember my dreams.  Of late I’ve only been remembering bits and pieces here and there, though what I have remembered has been short and vivid.

So I reminded myself, set myself a goal to do this.

And it somewhat worked out.  Congratulations.  Next thing you know I’ll be kicking Freddy Kurger’s ass around.

For one I remember being in a control room, handing out advice and help where I could.  The other one, part of it took place on a road in the town where I grew up, and part of it involved being on a train with someone and getting off at the wrong stop, but no one would believe that we were where we were suppose to be . . . it’s a dream, remember?  Oh, and a lot of the motif seemed right out of some strange Art Deco world.

Now, once more, an interesting face: everyone in the dream other than me were women.  There wasn’t a guy in sight.  Once more, ramp down the idea that I’m having some strange little party going on in my head where I’m the only guy in a world of good looking women.  Not like that.  In the first I was sort of like the friendly guy who helps out with everything, and in the second . . . well, I was traveling with someone I know.  Not a kinky feeling or sex toy in sight, just straight up being nice.

Very strange to go there, or so it feels.  I’m going to keep trying this, see what happens.  And you know, I might just get a good story out of one of these suckers.

Yesterday was more world building, and when it comes to figuring out how magic works–oi!  I know it’s been done before, but I have to, have to know how it works in the story I’m doing for NaNaWrtMo.  There is a certain elegance to world building, because it allows you to really fine tune things considerably.  I know that some writers just go lazy on you, start making up shit from the start and then when things seem like they’re going pear shaped, they give you the, “It’s all supernatural, dude” line like that should be cool, don’t worry.

I guess it’s the old programmer in me that says, “Hey, this has to make sense, there has to be some internal logic to the story, if a person is called a sorceress instead of a witch, there has to be a reason.”  And there is in my story, which means I have to work into the natural order of things why she’s a sorceress and not just a witch . . .  Yeah, really, it’s a lot of fun when it comes right down to it, because you have to work that brain of yours, you have to get the imagination rolling, you need to work that brain the say way you should be working out at the gym instead of typing away at the computer.  (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)

Yesterday saw something else: I jumped back into the role playing game that I’d started a while back.  Between all the writing I’ve done and various other things, it seemed like myself and the friend I play with had to step back for a while and regroup.  The total time away was almost a month, and once we got back into it, everything seemed to flow smoothly–although my friend stated that she thought her character has “changed” while we were away . . .  It seemed her character had gotten a little more relaxed, a bit less stressed out over the way things were going.

This isn’t a bad thing, mind you.  You step away for any period of time from a game character and start looking at them, and then start looking at how you play them . . . and then start looking at your life, and suddenly you began to get a different feel not just for them, but for everything.

A lot of times a person will come back and go, “Fuck it; I can’t play this character any more,” because they feel as if they’ve hit the wall and discovered that if they keep playing they’re going to turn into a psychopathic killer who can only love a person they know they’ll end up disemboweling with a garden trowel (and in some games this is pretty much a standard life path), but with my friend that’s not the case.  We both know where her character and my character are headed (hint: it will involve a white dress and babies), so there’s no need to think about a huge amount of gaming drama.  It’s just that–suddenly her character let something slip away, and she not only noticed it, but I noticed it as well.

I feel, if you were to put it in some type of gaming vernacular, it happened at the right time.  Our characters were with a group of people–fellow students and the instructor–and we were relaxing after what could be described as a grueling class.  But the mood was cordial; the discussion wasn’t about what we’d just did, it was about ancillary things, about things people enjoyed, a little about the school . . . it was about us.  And with the examination of the character, I feel it fits well that all of a sudden, BAM!  She relaxed and develops something of a new outlook.

So there is more gaming to come, more to our character’s stories.  Eventually we’ll get older, we’ll begin to see things with the eyes not of children but of young adults . . . hey, who are we kidding?  We both know where they are going, and what is going to happen to them during the next few years.

The story of their lives is there; all that remains is the writing.

Silk or Slime

Today is one of those strange days for me.  I awoke with the next scene of my erotic story fresh in my head, which is nothing unusual for me; quite often I come out of a half-sleep like state feeling as if I’m in a dream and during those times it’s as if I’m having a vision.  I’ve had this happen in ways that’s very lovely, and in other ways that leave me lying in bed moments later going, “What the hell just happened?”

My Trusty Editor^tm read over the first scene and was impressed.  It’s good to get the reaction you set out to get, and I wasn’t disappointed.  And it’s reactions of that nature that make me want to keep on writing.  That’s probably what today’s little vision in my brain meant to me: here it is, you need to take this and put it in your computer.  Or on your Seagate.  Or some damn place where electronic media is kept.

So today I should continue with the story . . . or will I?  That’s the strange part.  I’ve got all this stuff going on in my head, but the inclination to write–it keeps jumping away from me, just staying out of reach like a coy lover playing hard to get.  Oh, muse: why do you tease me so?  Why don’t you come sit in my lap and get comfortable?  Why not shower me with your sexiness?

Maybe my muse is waiting for me to burn some worthless asshole down . . ..

Just to warn people–I’m gonna rant.  So if you wanna bail, feel free to do so.

That said, onward–

If you read the thoughts that leak from my mind you’ll have gathered that I don’t deal very well with stupid people.  And by “stupid” I don’t necessarily mean people with meager intelligence, though they usually get on my nerves simply by showing their ignorance far too many times.

And in my time I’ve run into my share of these individuals.  Most of the time it’s a quick encounter and there’s little pain.  Other times shit drags on for far too long and the experience stays with me, festering like a batch of bad brew in your bathtub.

I’ve run into a few of these people while gaming.  The majority of gamers are great people, but I have encounters a fair share of bullies, liars and all-around assholes.  And every so often you run into someone who so completely fits the description of “complete psycho bitch” that you wonder why no one has ever published a paper on said person in a psychiatric journal.

I encountered one of the later a few months ago.  She ran a role playing board that I was on for a while, and when someone I knew left their board because said Complete Psycho Bitch (hereon known as CPB) went off on this person I knew one too many times, I left with them.  Because of this snubbing of said CPB we were both given the Ban Hammer of the Gods, which when all in life is considered isn’t that huge a deal.

Now, yes: I will cop to the fact that I have returned to their board every so often and acted the part of a pestering asshole.  Why?  Because CPB doesn’t understand that someone with 25+ years in IT knows how to spoof their Ban Hammers and set up various characters on their board under assumed names.  So every once in a while I’ll go in and poke the hornet’s nest just to see what flies out, and the last time I did that some of the players on the board wondered who I was and what I’d sort of character I’d had on the prior incarnation of their current board, which led to CPB going into a complete mental meltdown and ban access to her C-Box to all by those who were members–

So I have laid off poking the nest more because, hey, I had my fun.

But last night I decide to check out their C-Box because I can (old age and treachery beats CPBs all the time) and discovered a comment.  Rather than paraphrase it, I’ll just give you the full cut & paste version CPB thinks I can’t see:

 

15 Sep 11, 09:45 PM

Jill: Nothing he (this would be me) is saying is true plot info, he’s just trying to stir up crap because he’s friends with someone who isn’t smart enough to like me. 

 

And this is where I get pissed off.

You see, “someone who isn’t smart enough to like me” is my friend who was treated like something sub-human and treated to rants that would make Child Services come and remove your kids if you had any.  Of course what CPB–and for the hell of it, lets call her Jill, shall we, since that is her name . . . what Psycho Jill forgets is that this ”someone who isn’t smart enough to like me” ran three of her prior boards because Psycho Jill (or Jilly Beans, I just can’t figure out what to call her today) has all the impulse control and emotional stability of a 6 year old with ADHD who’s consumed an entire container of cake frosting, and dealing with anyone other than the voices in her head telling her that everyone is out to get her was just too damn hard.

I know you’ll never see this post, Psycho Jill, but then again maybe you will.  So let me ask you: did you ever pay back people who you’ve conned into buying you cosmetics and Facebook ads?  Did you ban someone because their boyfriend was an older guy and you just couldn’t deal with that, or were you pissed off because she simply stop kissing your ass and you cast her to the same dust bin you do everyone else who grows tired of eating your shit?

And as a GM with 20+ years, can I ask: why didn’t you want my help with your board?  Afraid I knew my shit just a little too well and I’d make you look bad?  I mean, I know your ego is made of rice paper, Psycho Jill, and the idea that someone knows more than you is just a little too hard to take . . . is that why, on your last board, you deleted my posts where I called your ass out on something and said you were wrong?  Or was it something more personal?  I mean, it’s not like I said you’re a petty gamer who only wants to RP with certain people and that you create new characters on a whim because you simply not bright enough to develop an old one properly, right?

What I will say, Psycho Jill, is that you’re a resident at the bottom of Sturgeon’s Revelation; I will say you are an oxygen thief; I will say you are a scummy little user who has totally bought into her own bullshit, who casts aside people as soon as you realize they are no longer into your game, who shows nothing but disrespect to those same people even as you drain them of everything (notice I didn’t say she was “disrespecting” people, because that’s not a real word and I don’t roll that way, motherfuckers).

And the person ”who isn’t smart enough to like me”–  She’s was your friend, and when you realized she wasn’t playing your game anymore you shit all over her.  Only problem is–she’s also my friend, and when you turn on my friends, you turn on me–

And you never want to turn on me, Jilly Beans.

Jill, you are one of the Worst Individuals I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering.  And one day the Karma Train is gonna pull into your station and the day that happens is the day all Hell breaks loose in your cozy little corner of the world.

And I will sit back and laugh.

Oh, and I’ll likely write you into a few of my stories whenever I need a CPB.  Hope you don’t mind, ’cause I know I don’t.

Look, I know you’re never going to see this, Psycho Jill, but I don’t care.  I needed to vent, and venting is always good.

And I’m all about feeling good.

Bury My Outrage at Geek Creed Knee

I do consider myself a geek.  I started reading science fiction at age 8 (first two novels: Earthlight and A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke); I spent afternoons glued to the TV to watch every monster movie, good or bad, made during the 1950′s (the bad won out by a long margin); in one of the only times in my then-short life I pestered the shit out of my parent until they gave in an hauled the whole family off to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in a wonderful theater with seats that actually rocked, and then, in what can only be called a classic move of almost 11 year old dickishness (just short of my birthday, yo), spent the entire ride home explaining to them what they’d just seen because, as I broadly hinted, they. just. didn’t. get. it!

So, yeah.  I’ve got the card and the secret handshake down pat.  I didn’t date a lot (more due to mental issues than anything else–but then, that just adds to my geekness, right?) and did not lose my virginity as a teenager.  I got my degree in computers, and the first computer language I learned was not BASIC but rather Assembler Language for the IBM 360–written on punch cards!

And even after I married I was still all about science fiction and role playing games and anime, and as a father I passed a little of that on to my stepson and his wife, and I hope I’m passing the geek torch to my daughter as well–and seeing as how she is a big Doctor Who fan and into anime and manga, I have to say I’ve succeeded.

That said, I don’t get outrage.  I should say “I don’t get a lot,” but when it comes right down to it, I’m pretty passive when it comes to being a fan boy.

There can be many reasons why I don’t get outraged.  Part of it is a lot of the outrage happens in geek fields that, frankly, I give less of a shit for than a honey badger gives about ripping off your face.  Like today:  George Lucas is making another change to his trundled up tart of a film series, and it’s got all the fan boys in an uproar, giving them ample opportunity to take to the Internets and talk about how, once more, Citizen George is raping their childhood.

Let me explain why he does this: because he can.

He knows that (1) you will bitch about the change, then (2) you’ll still buy the damn movie, after which (3) you’ll watch them and (4) continue to bitch until the next opportunity comes along to eat his shit.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

For me there is no caring, because I’m not into Star Wars.  Yes, I’ve seen them all; yes, I’m bored by them.  There’s real science fiction out there; move on.

But even stuff I do like, I find I get underwhelmed by a lot of the outrage out there.  About the only times I ever got incensed was when Starship Troopers came out–I was a big fan of the novel and when I heard there wouldn’t be powered armor, OMG!  It’s the end of the world!–and when it was reported that Ted Turner was going to remake Forbidden Planet–which is sort of like saying you’re going to repaint the Mona Lisa.

In the end, however, Forbidden Planet didn’t get remade–not then, but maybe now, maybe not–and Starship Troopers is one of my best liked guilty pleasures.  There just wasn’t any reason to get upset in the end, because there are too many other things going on that affect me more.

And why get pissed about things that are out of your control?  Want more Buffy?  Not gonna happen.  Firefly is stuck in rights hell and is gone except in comics; move on.

Now, if you’ll excuse me: I gotta get into my role playing character’s head and wonder how I’m going to play out the next biggest thing in his life.  Hint: it has to do with girls, but probably not the way you think . . ..