Offensive Squid

this was easy to get, given that it is available on the kindle. I passed the halfway mark on the commute this morning. Also, based on this facebook comment, he owes me a beer.

"Jesus, I just noticed that the Kindle edition is selling for virtually the same price as the trade paperback. That's fucking usurious, is what that is."

(no, not really. don't think this tips the fan author beer tribute balance any).

Has anyone else read it yet?

sheila said:

There is a conversation on games and body-types chosen for avatars, where I said it is tedious that the avatars end up ripped and idealized. Why can't they be more interesting and varied? ScotC over there followed up with some points from the perspective of an illustrator to explain why that would be more difficult than I think….[snip],

..I disagree with "confuse the issue of the character's humanity" as being a bad thing. But maybe it works better in a novel than in a game. In stories like these you want to confuse the issue!

Agree!  Clearly, you want confusion in a scifi novel – experiencing The Other as Self is part of the appeal.

 

It’s a human leg that cheats just a little bit towards a bird-legged standard, but not enough for someone at a glance to go, “oh, she has bird legs” (and incidentally, lose any bit of physical appeal she had).

This one was sad. I don't think he meant to imply what I thought as a tangent here — wouldn't it be sad if your partner had their leg blown off–would they lose any bit of physical appeal because they had no leg or wanted to use a prosthetic that didn't look human?

There was a robot thing going around the blogosphere a while back that could give much better functionality for gripping things, kind of like a beanbag rather than something with fingers. That doesn't look very human-standard, but maybe would be much more comfortable as a foot when you are trying to walk and would have trouble with a gait otherwise. or whatever.

…your partner's leg is blown off and suddenly you no longer consider them as an attractive mate? :(

 

If that was his thought, he's over-generalizing.  People never get credit for their sexual flexibiltity, even in the face of the facts of the pervasiveness and incredible variety of human sexual expression.  See: Rule 34.  See also: http://www.callahanonline.com/ 

Oh, H, and you asked what kind of avatar one would have used in second life. Even if your "you" was generic, I wanted to say–I never played in second life. not enough computer, time, artistic ability. But in general, I get embarrassed at picking some idealized version of myself, or some idealized fiction, for representation. It's out of wack with who I am (I usually am plain, though I can clean up okay). I like to be always pretty or exceptional, but I'm not. Picking an avatar like that would seem too exhibitionist.

Or at least permanently picking it. Sometimes I pick rather good pictures of me for my profiles, though eventually I switch back to more common ones. It's like putting on nice clothes from time to time.

I get embarrassed for people who think they have to put their best face forward all the time, are they so insecure? I also get embarrassed when people pick hyper-whatevered characters for games. I used to play pencil and paper rpgs and remember a male GM who picked a very ripped NPC for a session where my character was supposed to be intrigued enough to interact with at a bar. It had me think to myself that the guy probably had issues if his imagination came up with characters like that for NPCS until I found out that the NPCs was represented that way from the character sheet he used.*

* I wasn't used to GMs using NPC characters from game material. I started playing rpgs with housemates in college, and my housemates came up with their NPCs and story lines from scratch.

Hljothlegur said:

---

ha ha!  A prepackaged NPC with 6-pack abs!  Yeah, I seem to remember the NPC were creations of the GM, and we were not to expect a drawing of the character, so you would get descriptions like so: 

"Okay, now you're inside, you see a hunched over figure in a cloak, with a walking stick, and he says to you…"  Then the GM would voice the guy and it would be an imitation of Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein.  So you had the visual. 

Oh, the GM would do these types of things too, and had good voices iirc, but would take inspiration from all kinds of games, so did sometimes have NPCs that were from some place.

For that particular NPC, I decided to trust the GM's plotting skills and play along having my character be intrigued. That GM was pretty good at plotting.

I also get embarrassed when people pick hyper-whatevered characters for games.

What, you don't find an unkillable 50th level rock-guitar-playing Elf bristling with magical items fun? 

No, more like if some guy decides to play a character who is a female, thus goes with huge breasts and wasp waiste. Or if they go with their own gender and have the huge muscles and no neck.

Those are silly. silly silly silly. For example, if you want to play a ninja librarian, you should look nondescript. No one ever suspects the plain ninja librarian.

I am not so good with computer games so I am going off on a rpg tangent. actually, I am not so good with rpgs either. I get annoyed at rules then become a nuisance because I wish the combat would be done already. and I don't optimize skills very well either, so then I am not holding my own in combat.

Post edited 9:32 am – March 27, 2011 by sheila

Andrea_A said:

Ok, I didn't dare to read the thread (spoilers, for the moment being limited to the excerpt),

I haven't really posted many spoilers (I think?) here, just chatty stuff about comments in the blog post. I'm waiting a little bit until people have read more of the book.

I have some appreciative quotes of cool imagery that would be cool to excerpt. and would later like to talk about the technology of the suite (and maybe ethics)

but I think that I found a logical glitch on page 56:

… Humans, chimpanzees and gorillas are most vulnerable;

the spore is debilitating but apparently nonlethal to orangutans, gibbons

and Old World monkeys, although it may simply take longer

for the agent to reach lethal levels in these taxa.* Tarsids, Omomyids

and Old World monkeys appear to be relatively immune.

I n my opinion the second one has to be "New World monkeys".

Edit: But maybe it isn't a real misstake and Watts wanted to show how confused the writer of the report had been …

I saw this quote, and maybe some typos, but I can't remember them.

I hadn't thought of what you said in your edit. Maybe putting [sic] next to it would convey that idea. The conceit of the book is a wiki-leaks inspired expose, so the authors of it could add editor comments like that to the raw data. I don't know that the material from the wiki-leaks analog would insert editorial comments.

Post edited 9:48 pm – March 27, 2011 by Hljothlegur

Bought and am reading Crysis Legion.  Maybe my expectations were too high after reading The Island with all its complexity and literary junk, but I hate this book so far.  OMG, this is like walking barefoot over hot coals – I am walking faster and faster to get it over with.  Maybe it will get better.

Pray for Hljóðlegur.

(dang, trying to quote replies is nigh impossible on a phone).

re: ChangeLog vs no tranparency

The Onion iirc reported on the amazon fiasco "amazon uses up world's supply of irony"

I was thinking it would be more wikilike talk pages where there are fictional discussions and editorial commentary. (could have readers play along, but would want some moderation to let through well written incharactercomments)

(in that sf game I was in I made up a 'technical' doc with a changelog at the begining about some monster aliens we kept encountering. gm was not a programmer so I have no idea how ocd he thought I was. ha! plus I used a template similar to the technical doc templates from work, and let me tell you, where I worked was one of the most process heavy places. double ha, think if someone thought I had the personality of the embodiement of Process at that place, which might happen if one didn't have the context)

Andrea_A said:

[...]
Sorry, neither having Kindle nor Amazon account. But I'm using kindlegen to convert html for Mobipocket reader (having an abandoned alpha version of Mobipocket reader for java on my phone. The WLAN-only Kindle seems to be an interesting piece of hardware (++ for the web browser). 

now that they are trying to get kindle apps for hardware platforms other than a kindle (e.g. phones, desktops) you could borrow an ebook from someone even if you don't have an actual kindle.

web browser has been around since the inception, just very rudimentary.