Back in the Water Again

Day two back in the water, and it took me half an hour to swim a mile. The me of ten years ago couldn't even be bothered to laugh scornfully. I think all I'm getting is a look of mild disdain. 


But I know where I went wrong! It was writing those books that did it! Thinking back, I don't remember having written even one book back when I was in shape, let alone two. Yeah...that's definitely it. Well...that or seven years of math, programming, video games, and junk food. You know, one or the other. 


But I'll show the me of ten years ago.  Okay, maybe I won't show him, but I'm going to get a slight nod of respect from the bastard. And I'm going to do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.  Or a song on YouTube.  Stay tuned.

A (belated) Thanks to You

It's a little late, but I wanted to thank all of you who stuck with me through the A to Z Challenge. I hope that I managed to entertain you. I've got some new stuff planned for the blog, which I'll hopefully have ready for you soon. (Have you ever wondered if I can sing? No? Well, too bad. You're going to find out anyway.)


Keep an eye out, ridiculousness is coming.

Z is for...

 "Free at last," the nameless god's voice whispered through the endless void around me, barely heard and deafening all at once. "Free to end the chaos of the world, to bring true order in death and unlife, free to-"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, ignoring the warnings my system was displaying. It was still calculating my odds of survival despite having already reached the conclusion that I no longer existed with ninety-nine point nine nine percent accuracy. I would have to ask Pip to look that over once I got back. "I believe there may have been a misunderstanding."

A dark chuckle emanated from the space around me, the glowing eye shifting to focus all of its weight on my person. "Oh? And what might that be, little metal man?"

"Well, you see..."

Sean's head snapped up. "No," he whispered in disbelief. "No, that can't happen."

I smiled, slowly looking up from my twenty sided die, meeting his eyes as the rest of the group looked on in hushed awe. "Oh," I said, the beginnings of a maniacal laugh flirting with the edge of my voice. "Oh, it's on now."

Y is for...

"Yuan-ti?" Isaru whispered, pulling back from the edge of the corridor. "Why are there Yuan-ti abominations guarding the throne room?"

I frowned, running the numbers through my central processor. "There are estimated to be less than ten thousand of the snake people in Eberron, although census data is severely lacking around the marshes and forests of Xen'drik. It is probable that they were smuggled in by the wizard and coerced into helping him bring forth the nameless god."

"Fat chance," Pip ground her teeth over the words, bristling. "Yuan-ti are all highly psionic, especially the abominations. No, they know something." She rubbed at her horns absently, thinking. "Yuan-ti are all about bringing on the destruction of the world. Which means that they think the nameless god is going to bring it one step closer." The little Tiefling gave a bitter laugh. "They probably volunteered."

Gorma shifted from foot to foot nervously. "I don't deal well with psionics, sometimes they can get me to-"

"We know," Poppi snapped, rubbing at an ugly scar on her upper arm as she scowled at the half-Orc. "We remember the mad Kalashtar of the shadowed tower."

Gorma blinked at her in confusion. "The what? Hey, what are you doing?!" she demanded as Pip jumped up and plopped a strange helmet on the barbarian's head. Several lights lit up and gears began spinning with frenetic energy.

"That should help," Pip said tersely, priming her healing gun. "We need to get in there and disrupt whatever he's doing."

"Very well, mistress Pip." I rose, pulling free my hammer. "I shall do everything in my power to bring down the guards so that we may breach the wizard's sanctum."

X is for...

Xenogears!


So this was a video game that I enjoyed immensely, back in the day of the original Playstation. It was developed and published by Squaresoft, back before they became Square Enix (you may know them for a little series called Final Fantasy).


Xenogears is a dark, psychological, science fantasy game in the same vein as Evangelion. A combo based combat system that ranged from fist fights to fist fights with giant robots made for some interesting gameplay, and the story (which included reincarnations, memory loss, and the works of Nietzsche and Freud) was certainly complex enough to hold the attention. And even if the music was nearly identical to that of Chrono Trigger, it was still some of the best of its age.


You can read the plot synopsis as well as I can, but let me just say, this game had one of my favorite villains of all time, and if anyone ever asks you, "Do you desire power?" just say yes. You'll make some good guy very, very sad.

W is for...

Worldbuilding! Specifically in how it relates to The Will of the Elements.

Okay, so once upon a time, I sat through a lecture or two on The Lord of the Rings and the Inklings in general. One of the concepts I really took away from there was that in order to create a good book you need three things. First, you need to inspire a love of the world. Second, you need a catastrophe. Third, you need a eucatastrophe, or a catastrophe for good (get it? because Tolkien was a linguist, so he played fast and loose with the English language and was wont to slap things like "eu-" onto words).

So step one is obviously building a world that people will become invested in, that they will want to see preserved because there's something special about it. So I took our world and found a catastrophe... specifically some truly horrible episodes of Heroes. Now yes, they were painful to watch, but they got me thinking. I asked myself, "What if these random people with elemental powers evolved into something more? What if they became living incarnations of the element they were associated with?" So I thought this over. Maybe they would feel compelled to overthrow the civilization that tore the earth asunder, drank her blood and reshaped her bones. Maybe they wouldn't be so cool with the way mankind enslaved lightning and chained fire for their own benefit and comfort. Maybe water and wind should be paid a little homage, being necessary for life and all.

And thus began the War of the Elements. Oh man, let me tell you, it was epic. Earth awakening when he got pushed off that building, Wind manipulating Fire into blowing up that oil tanker to secure her aid, and all of them coming together to bust Lightning out of that cell where the government was milking him for electricity. And then their offensive, it was... oh, wait, I haven't actually written any of that yet. Basically, I came up with this story and realized that an urban fantasy adventure wasn't something I was comfortable writing just yet. But sci-fi, now that was a different story. I mean, I was triple majoring in math, physics, and chemistry for a little while back in the day, until I decided that I'd rather graduate than spend 60 hours in lab a week. Psuedo-science I could do. So I jumped forward by about five hundred years.

V is for...

Vultures!


Now, I put off writing this until the last possible minute, so it's going to basically just be a regurgitation of facts, some more interesting than others. Here we go...

First off, there are two distinct types of vultures: old world and new world. I'm specifically going to talk about new world vultures (i.e. turkey vultures and condors), mainly because I know more about them off the top of my head. But just as an aside, old world vultures are more closely related to eagles and hawks than their new world cousins, an interesting example of convergent evolution. Both fill the same ecological niche, but while old world vultures rely entirely on their eyes to spot their next meal, new world vultures have an amazingly good sense of smell and can find carcasses entirely by scent when the need arises. Fun fact here: most birds have little to no sense of smell. It's one of the reasons owls can safely prey on skunks. So if you've ever heard someone say that you shouldn't help a baby bird that's fallen out of its nest because the mother will smell you on it and kick it right back out, you can forget about that. Help the bird, or call animal control.