I don't feel like listing what I am thankful for.
At dinner with my family, stepmom suggested I take a plate to my mom. She is so generous. Wow. As generous as mom is a pain....
When I cough it triggers a reflex to cough, in a vicious cycle. I usually think myself out of it a bit after I've creeped out other people. My brother says it's a good thing I don't ever smoke.
I am constantly fidgety, and it annoys people. I actually get sore if I don't move around my legs often enough. So I have to get some exercise every day.
2 health 'problems' that are advantages in today's environment. Evolution has no goal, it just random stuff surviving in different environments.
Edit: and now my sister has eaten enough to be miserable when moving things out.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
fantasy spider people
Instead of drawing a bunch of spiders in weird poses by memory, I downloaded a bunch of spider pictures and looked at them today! Thinking of spiders a lot.
The spider people are always in disguise amongst humanoids. They walk uprightish, with two pairs of legs holding them stable and two or three pairs for holding stuff. They wear humanoids' clothing for this too. I figure, if real spiders can cover themselves in ant corpses to hunt ants, spider people can wear clothes to trade with humanoids.
They do trade with humanoids. The bones and shells of what they have hunted and, um, excretions like poison/acid and web, and uhh, textiles made of them... for lots of tasty blood and broth. They keep big pack animals and bleed them without killing them.
Why are spiders even sentient? Spiders are opportunistic or patient hunters, some eat their mates, they lay 100s of eggs a few species guard them until the hatchlings disperse. Given enough food they will eat until their digestion track explodes, and they don't anesthetize their food, just paralyze it.
Fantasy giant spiders were vulnerable to summoning and binding magic, and in their tame form had a lot of advantages, being able to work together. The spider civilization is an extension of that. Hatchling spiders are still pests, they have to be indoctrinated. Only those most vulnerable to magic end up becoming civilized.
That vulnerability could go some of the way towards balancing out the acid/poison and the webbing attacks and maybe climbing or walking on water.
The spider people are always in disguise amongst humanoids. They walk uprightish, with two pairs of legs holding them stable and two or three pairs for holding stuff. They wear humanoids' clothing for this too. I figure, if real spiders can cover themselves in ant corpses to hunt ants, spider people can wear clothes to trade with humanoids.
They do trade with humanoids. The bones and shells of what they have hunted and, um, excretions like poison/acid and web, and uhh, textiles made of them... for lots of tasty blood and broth. They keep big pack animals and bleed them without killing them.
Why are spiders even sentient? Spiders are opportunistic or patient hunters, some eat their mates, they lay 100s of eggs a few species guard them until the hatchlings disperse. Given enough food they will eat until their digestion track explodes, and they don't anesthetize their food, just paralyze it.
Fantasy giant spiders were vulnerable to summoning and binding magic, and in their tame form had a lot of advantages, being able to work together. The spider civilization is an extension of that. Hatchling spiders are still pests, they have to be indoctrinated. Only those most vulnerable to magic end up becoming civilized.
That vulnerability could go some of the way towards balancing out the acid/poison and the webbing attacks and maybe climbing or walking on water.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
An idea sheet
Unearthly Aggregate sounds better now that I've slept on it.
Item worlds are based on the properties of the item. How well it is made, of what material, what markings, engravings, or embedded stones it is adorned with, and what it is (sword or bow or mirror or bottle) contribute to the seed of the world. You can enter a world and interact and make it grow to empower the item, or you could plunder it for more items and people, which reduces the item's power. Some stuff makes a world that consists entirely of a small 'dungeon,' which you can either plunder for treasure, or figure out the logic of that world and create more of it.
It all sounds so vague and undefined now that I write it, but in writing it I at least enumerate my ideas on it better.
Squidi has enumerated ideas how to do this very thoroughly (and wants people to use it). His stuff seems to evoke a very structured game, in which you need to explore things in order. I would rather a world like Pokemon Red or Ultima III-V where you must explore and experiment. Probably other Ultima games too, in fact, the whole Western RPG genre is defined by it. However, I could turn his gating algorithms inside out in order to ensure the worlds are beatable.
You can recruit people, and these people are the products of their worlds. I imagine a noncombatant hidden character would be easy to find if you enter the world of a piece of depleted rubbish, who would help do friendly NPC sidequest things and learn crafting, to help players less interested in it. Some items you would craft just to create powerful allies, like a big mirror that has more room to be covered in runes would be useful for that, though not a weapon itself. You can find people who don't use swords in a sword, but a legendary sword may hold a legendary swordsman.
After going through all that trouble, maybe the item should not be depleted if you take the legendary-item-user home. Maybe the legendary item should be sealed to the legendary-item-user. That... sounds actually like a good theme.
Item worlds are based on the properties of the item. How well it is made, of what material, what markings, engravings, or embedded stones it is adorned with, and what it is (sword or bow or mirror or bottle) contribute to the seed of the world. You can enter a world and interact and make it grow to empower the item, or you could plunder it for more items and people, which reduces the item's power. Some stuff makes a world that consists entirely of a small 'dungeon,' which you can either plunder for treasure, or figure out the logic of that world and create more of it.
It all sounds so vague and undefined now that I write it, but in writing it I at least enumerate my ideas on it better.
Squidi has enumerated ideas how to do this very thoroughly (and wants people to use it). His stuff seems to evoke a very structured game, in which you need to explore things in order. I would rather a world like Pokemon Red or Ultima III-V where you must explore and experiment. Probably other Ultima games too, in fact, the whole Western RPG genre is defined by it. However, I could turn his gating algorithms inside out in order to ensure the worlds are beatable.
You can recruit people, and these people are the products of their worlds. I imagine a noncombatant hidden character would be easy to find if you enter the world of a piece of depleted rubbish, who would help do friendly NPC sidequest things and learn crafting, to help players less interested in it. Some items you would craft just to create powerful allies, like a big mirror that has more room to be covered in runes would be useful for that, though not a weapon itself. You can find people who don't use swords in a sword, but a legendary sword may hold a legendary swordsman.
After going through all that trouble, maybe the item should not be depleted if you take the legendary-item-user home. Maybe the legendary item should be sealed to the legendary-item-user. That... sounds actually like a good theme.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
No daily posting
Yeah, I'm gonna just fill up large page with drawings and go to bed. I'm thinking spiders and buggies and swords. Maybe a wizard. A spider wizard is less cliche'd than a snake one, right? does it matter? I just need to create something, and after reading all day I am not very verbal. Perhaps I can hammer out more races for my ideas that grew into the clouds, based on vague knowledge of Disgaea's item world. It will have connections the opposite of apophenia; it will be holistic like Dirk Gently's detective agency? A quick check of thesaurus dot com and I find aggregate and universal sound cooler.
My next post will be for the game whose working title is Aggregate Worlds.
My next post will be for the game whose working title is Aggregate Worlds.
apartment hunting
I'm trying to help my mom find an apartment. Mostly I've been pulling ads on craigslist. I need to be braver about calling people on the phone.
NOT DAILY ENOUGH!
NOT DAILY ENOUGH!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Bugs on me.
When asleep I feel a little cat less than an inch big crawl on me, and then realize it is not a cat. Bat it off.
When walking on the bridge in Carbondale, I got hit by a red wind. The wind was full of lady birds. They liked my pink shirt.
In Omaha, after PT a butterfly landed on my hand. I was out of it due to the exertion, but it was cute. S12 thought so too.
I caught worms as a kid.
When walking on the bridge in Carbondale, I got hit by a red wind. The wind was full of lady birds. They liked my pink shirt.
In Omaha, after PT a butterfly landed on my hand. I was out of it due to the exertion, but it was cute. S12 thought so too.
I caught worms as a kid.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Write a lot month.
It is official write bunches month. There are a lot of reasons to write. Getting back in the habit of writing will make it easier later, and doing is the fastest way to improve, not just to keep from degrading. Decaying. Disintegrating. Decomposing. Death.
So much angst wrapped up here. I almost caught myself apologizing. I shall not apologize here, I will fix it instead! That is so rude to apologize as though to get permission; failing to correct flaws you see is horrible! I think the angst there has some amusement value, so I shall keep it and laugh at myself. Never shall I insult the reader's intelligence by telling them they have poor tastes for reading me.
Now I have made this post unapologetically meta. Well, meta is not necessarily bad. It is not necessarily good, either. Many a webcomic has oodles ironic layers of post-modern meta-humor without an ounce of quality. The author shows up to break the fourth wall with tired jokes. I think the last time I enjoyed the author showing up on a comic was Elf Only Inn, where the author was a Megaman recolor despite it not being a sprite comic, and the characters tied him up and beat him for candy as though a pin~ata. Also, I think he was SSKGOKU's alt in universe.
Gorillaz' cd version of Clint Eastwood is good while being meta, but it is also a good happy pot song. Meta does not carry the song, it adds to it. Silly Love Songs by Wings, and You're so Vain by Carly Simon have... honesty? in their awareness of being a song. I don't recall any popular songs that are meta without other substance, though.
Meta is a very post-modern tool in academia, but my favorite post modern stuff is not often meta. BobRauschenbergAmerica has several slice of life threads going on, absurd humor, obtuse plot. Found art and randomly generated texts need a human to sort the trash from the novel. Not every spam email text is filled with 357 apophenia. I need some substance to feed on. I suspect most humans are the same.
So much angst wrapped up here. I almost caught myself apologizing. I shall not apologize here, I will fix it instead! That is so rude to apologize as though to get permission; failing to correct flaws you see is horrible! I think the angst there has some amusement value, so I shall keep it and laugh at myself. Never shall I insult the reader's intelligence by telling them they have poor tastes for reading me.
Now I have made this post unapologetically meta. Well, meta is not necessarily bad. It is not necessarily good, either. Many a webcomic has oodles ironic layers of post-modern meta-humor without an ounce of quality. The author shows up to break the fourth wall with tired jokes. I think the last time I enjoyed the author showing up on a comic was Elf Only Inn, where the author was a Megaman recolor despite it not being a sprite comic, and the characters tied him up and beat him for candy as though a pin~ata. Also, I think he was SSKGOKU's alt in universe.
Gorillaz' cd version of Clint Eastwood is good while being meta, but it is also a good happy pot song. Meta does not carry the song, it adds to it. Silly Love Songs by Wings, and You're so Vain by Carly Simon have... honesty? in their awareness of being a song. I don't recall any popular songs that are meta without other substance, though.
Meta is a very post-modern tool in academia, but my favorite post modern stuff is not often meta. BobRauschenbergAmerica has several slice of life threads going on, absurd humor, obtuse plot. Found art and randomly generated texts need a human to sort the trash from the novel. Not every spam email text is filled with 357 apophenia. I need some substance to feed on. I suspect most humans are the same.
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