aesmael

Feel like today hasn't gone well. Morning walk as usual, and then watching Young Frankenstein with my pet. That was fun and checked off what I had thought of as the last major Mel Brooks movie I hadn't seen (but I was only aware of Men in Tights, Blazing Saddles and The Producers otherwise [and of The Producers had only seen the remake]) so there is still a ways to go if I want to claim that accomplishment.

After that we had this week's Fatefinders game, in which our party takes a shortcut to harpies. Since the group's paladin, Jeanne, has as her trouble aspect Can't Say No To Women, I offered that for a fate point she would be completely taken in by the harpies' song and drop her sword to approach (and none of the NPCs with them were given a chance to resist either). In return I didn't ask any of the rest of the party to roll to resist and granted that automatically. Maybe this made the conflict too easy but I bet it was more fun.

Trouble came first with the special effects. I thought I'd got inputs and outputs set up to push audio effects through the call, and thought I'd confirmed this with the group, but toward the end discovered no one had heard any of it. Some panicked tweaking later and it worked for a bit? But not effectively and we were out of the action by then anyway. So overall disappointing there.

And, and, I really have got to do better at acting out the non-player characters. A lot of the time they may as well not be present in the scene at all. That's probably where most of my preparation should be going to at the moment. Next week will make a good opportunity for that, as when they took out one of the harpies they elected to have her knocked unconscious and plucked of her feathers by the wind spell, instead of killed, and now there are noises about adopting her onto their side. That's going to be quite a challenge all round.

Worse, when one player questioned whether this could be an ethical relationship between Jeanne and the harpy (now dubbed Anya), or if harpies are mere beasts, the rest of the group was pretty scornful of the question. I think I let that go on too long and worry his feelings were hurt. Got to be careful of that, and of complete digressions. Don't want to hurt people's feelings or deflate the atmosphere of the game entirely.

Been feeling pretty flat and subdued since today's game. A while after I finally managed to set up and try streaming Zork: The Great Underground Empire. Last time I tried to play I got pretty lost, so this time I had an easel and sketch pad set up with a webcam so I could draw a map of the game's layout as I explored. Of course I got lost almost immediately anyway.

Eventually I got my bearings, and found an option in Frotz to use text-to-speech, which frees me from having to read aloud the description of each room. May help me pace too, as I won't want to accumulate too long a backlog of text to read out.

Once I got underground I rapidly had a string of bad luck, with the thief robbing me of the elven sword immediately - there was I think no action I could have taken to stop this or to recover the sword. I still had a knife but this proved ineffective against the troll guarding access to most of the complex, and when trying to find an alternate path I accidentally dropped my rope down a chasm. So, frustrated, I quit thereafter. Maybe it would have been possible to recover but I have no idea how. I'm tempted to investigate this; I'm trying to play relatively unspoiled but that may prove overly ambitious of me.

It also proved to be a mistake to be idling in a voice channel on discord, marked for streaming. The rest of the gang joined in after a short while and talked over me and off-topic to the point of narrating other games they were playing, drastically hindering my ability to focus and play and enjoy doing so. Next time I won't do that, but be warned anyone who follows the link above, that will be the bulk of the hour recorded.

Tomorrow we're back to work for the week. I wonder if I will feel the energy to journal anything after getting back home.

Saw some folk talking about the forgiveability or lack thereof of Darth Vader, particularly wert the murder of children.

The prequel films had not been made at the time Return of the Jedi had been released, and I don't believe Lucas' claims of having planned the whole thing out from the beginning, so usually I am not interested in judging the first three Star Wars films on the basis of actions or emotions depicted in the prequels. I also don't recall Luke saying at any point that he forgave Vader for his past actions, prequel or otherwise. What I remember is Luke saying he still senses good in him, which I interpret as the potential or desire to turn away from evil and to do good.

My feeling is the idea of Vader being redeemed is not that his single act of casting down the emperor, but that it represents an internal change and a commitment on his part. That, had Vader survived, he would have devoted himself to doing good and to make what restitution he could for the evils of the empire. But his single act in the throne room doesn't make him good in itself, doesn't undo the evils of his past. It is a symbol of the change in the character and the new path he is taking, as is his ghost's appearance as Anakin later on.

I don't think it's a matter of having been forgiven and I don't think the evil Vader did in the past is or can be undone.

I do think there's a potential term collision between redemption as in 'how fans feel about a character' and redemption as in 'character internals reflected in externals'. I also suspect these opinions of mine are strongly influenced by the surrounding Christian cultural context; certainly I've had to work at not using Christian-sourced terminology in the writing of this post and probably missed some nonetheless.

    Righto, here are some things I have meant to mention over the past month or so but let slip away for various reasons. If you do not happen to enjoy reading my rambling self-indulgent thoughts on storyish things, now is your chance to escape.
( longdull post of dooom )

    And that I think is that.

    Yes, it is (past) that time of year again when I ask for recommendations. Anything you think I should read, watch, play, listen to, whatever, suggest it in the comments. It can be fiction or non-fiction, just name name something(s) you think I (or everyone) need(s) to be exposed to.

When they started talking about Byzantium in Nochnoy dozor the first person I thought of was of course 12_21, though as it turns out there is nothing specifically pertaining to Byzantium in the film, it is simply a convenient old civilisation in which to set the legend. But it has me wondering what place Byzantium has in Russian culture. Is it something like the way we think of Rome? I imagine that the Byzantine Empire, since I think it was a Christianised nation longer than Rome, and I am given to think of Russians as a relatively religious people, is looked upon more favourably in Russia than Rome is in the West. But that is all uninformed guesswork.

Reading a little of the Wikipedia article on Night Watch (before stopping for fear of having too much tasty information revealed), the structure of the world reminds me very much of the way the world of Berserk is layed out. So I think I will enjoy the novel very much.

The title is a quote from the film, of course.