E3 2018: Microsoft

For those of you who remember, whenever the video game conference E3 comes around, I make it a point to look at what's coming.

Only this year, they decided to start E3 ON SATURDAY.  The bastards

There's Anthem ... which really looks like a combination of Titanfall and Destiny. I'm not sure that any of it is interesting enough to entice me for it it comes out in February.

Crackdown 3 ... does anyone care by now? Aside from Terry Crews chewing the scenery? They've only been piming this thing since ... I can't even keep track.

Sigh. Anyway, Microsoft started with an amazingly lackluster Halo: Infinity announcement trailer. And let's face it, that's all it was. An announcement...

And yes, this is lackluster to a guy for whom Halo actually brought me back into gaming.

We were then lectured for what felt like an hour (longest three minutes ever) and "artisans" (sigh).

And then there's Ori and the Will o the Wisps

I'll admit, this looks cute. It's the most impressive side scroller ever. I like the artwork and visual design. Though really what carries this is the music.

Then we had a trailer for Sekiro Shadows Die Twice

Holy ... well, they have some nice fire graphics. To be honest, this first trailer that makes me think "Wow, I might want to try this." Then again, it has gameplay.

On the one hand, this looks like a cross between Onimusha (which was an awesome game with a strong story) and Dark Souls (which was dark as hell for no story).

On the other hand, this looks an awful like like another game, Ghosts of Tsushima.

Let's see, more Fallout 4 updates, again.

Fallout 76 ... a prequel? Supposedly 4x the size of Fallout 4. Set in West Virginia.

Graphics are nice. But then again, at this date, they better be flipping photo realistic....

Then again, my first Fallout game is my only game thus far. Fallout 3 was just that inspiring.

Captain Spirit is... cute. From the same people who did Life is Strange, so that be entertaining.  No, I don't see that the trailer is worth sharing, really.

Metro Exodus ...

While I like the graphics, in an in-game engine. this looks too much like a Fallout setting with Wolfenstein: the New Order gameplay, all with a Russian accent.

And Kingdom Hearts 3 ... on Xbox?

Is it just me or are the voices off? Especially on Sora?

Anyway, the visuals are pretty nice. And obviously, they're doing their darnest to jam in as many Disney properties as possible. Also, a little too much Frozen-esque music, and too little feel that this is a Kingdom Hearts game. One of the nice things with the KH series is that it felt like it's own thing, with a layer of Disney on top. I had actually considered that KH3 could do without Disney, and just use the lore they already have.

Obviously, someone insisted MUST BE MAOR DISNEY.

Then again, I've only seen four Disney properties total around KH3 (Frozen, Monsters Inc, Tangled and Toy Story), which is a lot less than I recall in the other games.

Sigh.... They have a Sea of Theives expansion. How nice. They may even have a story this time. Are they going to admit that the initial release was just a beta that they wanted to test out first? Also, why does it look like that Pirates of the Caribbean is sailing into Mordor?

And then there's an EA game.  It looks nice. It's in Japanese for some reason ... eh, it's Battlefield V, and it's only there fore a few seconds.  Sorry, but EA has burned through most of my goodwill a while ago, and I've been waiting on Battlefield: Bad Company III for years now.

Forza Horizon $ ... Nice graphics. Nice cars. Cute trailer. About it.

And then there's this....

Why does it look like Bioshock's latest dystopia is being run by the Joker? Let's see, it's in the British isles, and emotions you can take in a pill. Sounds like a Doctor Who episode.

Is anyone else suffering from Dystopia burnout?

Let's see, there's another commercial for glorified MMO shooter Battlegrounds.  Again, eh.

Am I the only one decidedly unimpressed by some of these reveals? Or am I just cranky.

Tales of Vesperia ... hey, someone tell Jon that we have his next year's Dragon Award video game. It looks nice. But I think you're supposed to know what's going on to understand anything.

Then there's this ... I could tell what it was going in. The Division 2.

Oh look. they may have plot this time.

But no thanks. I don't think so. Fool me once .... well, they tried, but didn't succeed. And IT'S STILL AN MMO.  I don't want another MMO. I would like a plot please.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

... Oops. It looks like Lara just started the end of the world by accident.

It also looks amazing.

And ... Devil May Cry? 5? So they're not doing the reboot? Or are they? I can't tell  Because their reboot was simply Devil May Cry.

And ... is that the brunette from DMC3? Because I don't remember her being Southern.

Okay, I'm a little confused....

Okay, according to the rest of the conference, this is actually a sequel to DMC4.

About time.

And ... an Anime based video game called Jump Force. With Dragonball Z and .... Death Note?

Jump Force ... huh.

Let's see, a Dying Light 2 trailer that makes me even less interested than in the first game. Meh.

And... what the hell? Battletoads? They're bringing back Battletoads? I wasn't even that good at the first game, and I'm getting Nostalgia flashbacks.

Just Cause 4 ... [shrug]. Part of the problem I have is that this looks like a dozen different games, and our hero is so visibly interchangable with every other action hero trope, I have no interest.

ANOTHER GEARS OF WAR GAME? Geez. Aren't they done with this series yet? And mobile? AND a tactics game?

And Cyberpunk 2077 .... apparently, it's coming eventually. But no, this isn't grabbing me as much as the previous trailer. Sorry guys.

So, there are four of five games here that have actually caught my attention. We'll see how well they develop.

.... And if you have no horse in this race because you'd rather read than play games, have my novels.

Honor at Stake & Demons are Forever

The Dragons are coming.

If you don't have your ballot filled out already (either IRL or in your head,) here's my list. It includes the lists of other people, so there are options.

Just remember to vote.

#E32016 - Almost Nothing new #XboxE3

We're bringing you a special edition of the blog. Why? Because E3 is going on, and all the new games are coming. And because hashtags are fickle things.

Xbox One has finally showed us their true colors: almost nothing new. NO, really.

First, if I hear the word "diversity" one more time, I'm going to throttle the PR flak who wrote the script. Seriously, stop with the buzzwords. Or at least make new ones.

As I watched the E3 Microsoft press conference, it occurred to me that this was filled with very little content all around. Bringing back Gears of War? Bringing Gwent -- a card game within the game of Witcher 3 -- into it's own card game?

Whose bright idea was this?

Even the brand new Xbox "slim" is basically an excuse to push Windows 10 on people. Seriously, what the heck is going on with Windows 10 that they feel the need to push this on everyone in the universe? And far, far too much time was dedicated towards this concept. We accept that they have admitted that their console sucks and they have to expand it to PC. Next?

They even brought out yet another entry in the Dead Rising franchise. If you don't know it, it's basically an excuse to slaughter zombies en mass in a variety of creative ways. But Dead Rising 4 is set at Christmas, so that's different right? It's not like Batman: Arkham Origins or The Division did the same thing.

Oh wait, they did.

Battlefield 1 looks interesting. But yet another sequel

And again, yet still, they're trying to push their "Microsoft studios" television stupidity, like with Quantum Break. If you don't know what Quantum Break is, you don't want to know. Consider yourself lucky.

Here's possibly my major problem: Recore, the most original idea they had at the press conference, wasn't even expanded on.

Looks cute, doesn't it? Looks like it should be fun, right?

Good, because that's all that they showed us at E3.

And then there's Scalebound.

I will grant that this looks amazing. But I'll admit that I've been burned before.

If you want, you can look up a game called Sea of Thieves, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

There is also Halo Wars 2.  While I'm a fan of the Halo Franchise, can we stop with the sequels now? Please? Pretty please? Or at least do something strange and EXPAND on all of these things? Maybe?

At least it may have a story.

But yes, that's it. That's most of the good stuff from the hour of the press conference. Yikes, that was a waste of time.

Yeah, they spent more time telling us about specs, and very little time showing us what the specs can do. The most we got is what I showed you above.  The graphics are nice and shiny. But aside from shiny graphics -- which should be a GIVEN by now -- very little felt like this was an improvement on Xbox 360.

Verdict: It was okay. Generally uninspiring,  The CGI trailers were awesome .... but we needed a lot more gameplay, we needed more content. And I suspect that we're going to save 90% of the actual content in the individual press conferences from individual studios.

I am not inspired, but that may require more elaboration on the games already brought up. A lot more.

E3 Roundup

If you don't already know, I'm on a blog called The Catholic Geeks.

As opposed to my radio show called the Catholic Geek, singular.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of blogs on E3 this week, that make for a nice collection of upcoming games.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Opens strong at E3
Halo 5: Guardians
Recore   New IP
New controllers
Dark Souls III: Die Hardest.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Tom Clancy’s The Division

Rise of the Tomb Raider Gameplay at E3
Dedicated to one game. Only.

Fallout 4 at E3
Yup. Fallout is back.

E3 Is Doomed.
YAWN.  Doom is back

Dishonored ... Again

Super Smash Bros.

Playstation Event Fights Back with Exclusives

The Last Guardian -- new IP .... first announced 8 years ago.
Horizon: Zero Dawn -- new IP
Hitman
Street Fighter V
No Man’s Sky -- new IP
Dreams -- new IP
Firewatch -- new IP
Destiny: The Taken King.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate .... sigh.  AGAIN
Final Fantasy 7. The Remake.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Star Wars: Battlefront
Uncharted 4

Ubisoft wages war For Honor

War For Honor -- a new IP

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

EA Brings back Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge

...And Star Was: BattleFront

Square Enix Blows Up E3

Hitman

Just Cause 3

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Kingdom Hearts

Deus Ex

Nintendo isn't dead yet, With

Xenoblade Chronicles

Star Fox Zero

Super Mario Maker

Glad you came... Master Chief?

I'm not a great big fan of modern music.

Their parodies, however.....

Music blog: Halo firefight, with a violin

Yes, I know I posted a blog with Lindsay Stirling and the Halo soundtrack before.  But two things -- one, this is a different arrangement (or sounds like it to me) and two .... it has a production value. And shooting things.

I'm good.

Video Games: the Next Generation?

I try not to make this a blog for solely my own personal opinions, I have another blog for that, but I read an article last week that kinda annoyed me. I deeply appreciate the artwork, the graphics, and even the storytelling of some games. The graphics of the upcoming Lara Croft game, or the storytelling of the Mass Effect trilogy, could go toe to toe with movies, and could certainly replace some actors.  I mean, seriously, look at the video below.
  

  

How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?

But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.

You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”

When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.

But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.

Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?

Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.

Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.  

You can see the difference. The position of the body isn’t as stiff, the graphics are more detailed, the colors are richer. It is visibly better.

And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.




Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.

I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?

Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?

I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else.  If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)

So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.

Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.

I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.

Month in review: November, 2011

Well, another month shot to hell.  :)

Anyway, this has been an interesting little month. This was the month I discovered Stumbleupon.com.... and I posted links to almost every single blog entry.

So, all of that adds up to this month having over 13,255 hits on the blog.  It's been a good month.  Even if I had to rewrite the top ten blog list. I may still yet have to.

Anyway...

There is a Story By Twitter coming up soon on the blog, and probably next Monday.  If you have a twitter account, find join my twitter feed (you can find a link in the right hand side). Otherwise, you may not get it for a while.

I've written characters of mine who take surveys, starting with Egyptian cop Hashim Abasi ... who has a list of enemies on his mouse pad.

And, if you ever missed a video we've done thus far, well, you can't: here are the complete Videos of A Pius Man.  Not to mention that there's also a video going around the net that makes me think I have to seriously up my A-game: a live action recreation of a video game fight from the epic game Arkham city.

Oh yes, and there is a contest going on: I hope someone has notice.

Our music blogs have had: Dragonforce's Heart of a Dragon, Final Fantasy's One Winged Angel, and Mozart. We also had Tom Smith's Cooking for 93 ... a little something for Thanksgiving.  There was also the classic science fiction summary in song Rocket Ride, by Tom Smith, as well as some Dragonforce's Where Dragons Rule.  We also had some Two steps from Hell, and the greatest beer that any bar has ever had for sale: it's Three-oh-seven Ale.

I've also had the most FAQ that any author has ever had to deal with: "Where do you get your ideas from?"  Here's an answer.

There was also some issues with Google.  Feh.

And, finally, there was a self defense review: with kill shots, Occupiers, and ... something else, I'm sure.

See you Monday.

Music Blog: 307 Ale, Halo, Dragon Rider

Yup, more music ....

By the way, before we begin, please remember that we have a contest ongoing.  Also, if you could check out some of our sponsors on the way out, it would be nice.  Thanks.

Anyway, today is the return of Filk music.

Tom Smith: 307 Ale .... the world's first hyper beer.



More below the break.

Music blog: Heart of a Dragon, One Winged Angel, and Halo

Sorry, this Tuesday, I can't honestly say that there's anything I want to blog about.....

So, music blog.

You remember back when I mentioned I was a nerd? This is proof. I present you with the most epic soundtrack I've heard in years .... the main theme for the Halo video game series.

While I originally wanted to post this video, the owner disabled embedding. Darn it.

The Videos of A Pius Man

Thus far, anyway.

I was wandering through the video section of the APM Facebook page, and I realized that I haven't done a video trailer for ... a while.

If you're relatively new, you've probably never seen any of the trailers.  Unless you're really diligent in spelunking through the FB page, then you've probably come across them.

This is where I've collected the ones done thus far.

This wasn't the first one, but it was a remodeled version of it. I cleaned up the typeface a little, and I think the visuals are spliced together better.

The images are obviously not done by me. Anyone who's found the Vatican Ninja images I've done will notice that.  They're from a lot of books that take one side of the Pope Pius XII argument, such as it is. And, just maybe, a Dan Brown novel.

I'm subtle like that.

And then, then there were the character trailers.
[More below the break]

Month in Review: August, 2011

After 10% of my daily audience gave me feedback that told me that I needed to cut down on the blog posts, I decided to give in.  And, when the posts drop from nine posts a week to four or less, a week in review seems like a waste of time, not to mention padding.

So, I'm going to see how easy it is to do a month in review. In all likelihood, it won't be too overwhelming.  But we'll see.  And, it's easy enough this month, because the first week was already wrapped up and summarized here, in what might be the last week in review.

Everyone probably remembers the four part author review of the works of John Ringo, which included free books for every one of his series.  They were broken down into Thrillers, Epics, rewriting Greek history as scifi, and the warrior ninja for God.

The music blogs this month were heavy on Tom Smith: some songs about video games, smashing faeries and the Blue Oyster Cult, a return to Firefly, and the Wiki Pirates, and blogging like the end of the world.

I also had some writing blogs.  A little bit on editing, and some more about fighting and writing with Krav Maga.

I did a self defense review of my articles on self defense, mainly because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And, I decided to have some fun this week.  I had a character of mine answer an online survey.  It was amusing. I also think some of my characters may be on drugs.

Well, that was easy.  Let's see how September goes.

Next month, we have the return of author and guest blogger Karina Fabian, and she'll talk to us a bit about her upcoming novel Mind over Mind, starting on September 13.

See you then.

Music Blog: Dead Again in video games

Dedicated to all those who have ever run into the video game designed for the sole purpose of killing the player.

And, speaking of video games, a nice piece from Halo 3: Finish the Fight.  It starts slow, but builds nicely, and kicks in around the minute twenty mark.  Enjoy

Music to Write to: Tom Smith, Halo

Yup, another music blog.  I haven't had any complaints yet.
Tom Smith is a weird fellow who does mostly "filk" music-- pardoy songs you hear at science fiction and comic book conventions. Filk started as a misprint in a pamphlet -- the intended target being "folk" music. But, as the I is right next to the O key, there was a misfire. It's never been corrected.
And so ... Tom Smith: I want to be Peter Lorre

Mozart, Soldiers of the Wasteland, Halo (again)

Yup, I'm posting another music blog. Muwhahaha.

Did I ever mention that I'm a fan of classical music?

A Pius Man: The Video Game?

I'm starting to think that if I ever wanted A Pius Man to come to a screen, it might be a computer screen.

A while back, I did a blog post on who might play who within a movie for A Pius Man ... a year later, the post needs updating. But that'll be tomorrow.

But, in the long run, it does become a matter of ... well ... why bother? Seriously, even if the novel were picked up tomorrow, and made into a bestselling novel,

Why? Well, I believe that Hollywood is in trouble.

Click the video for a few seconds. About a minute.



This is a video game.

The week in the Blog. Halo 4, Discworld, JMS, Thor, Love, and Music

This week was rather eventful. Eight blogs, no waiting. A little review.

Monday: The first major music blog went over rather well, if the blog stats are to be believed. With Winterborn, March of Cambreadth, a little Nightwish, and a historical military tune, it had a good reception.  Monday also had the first "Inspiring Authors" article with J. Michael Straczynski, the man behind the story of the film Thor, and one of the best authors that Marvel ever screwed over.

And, for a follow up, the day ended with Spoiler Alert ... for a Video game? where we had a very brief discussion of the awesome and epic writing ever seen in a first person shooter video game -- the story arc of Halo. It was mostly in celebration of the release of the new teaser-trailer for the upcoming Halo 4 video game.

Tuesday was a brief discussion about writing a love story, using an example from, of all things, my own love life. Lord help us all.

Tuesday also saw the next music blog. Which just proves that my taste in music is deeply, deeply schizophrenic. It had the Our Father in German, This is War, by 30 Seconds to Mars, and Dragonforce's Through the Fire and the Flames, a favorite of Guitar Hero fans.

Wednesday had a small sample of the works of Terry Pratchett -- and I mean a very small sample. Oh, and some Neil Gaiman too.

The music selection was one part Doctor Who (sort of), another part Nightwish, and how to condense Greek Mythology into five minutes of music.

And Thursday ... Thursday, I got lazy. I didn't feel like doing more than posting the theme to Halo, Final Fantasy VII's One Winged Angel for orchestra, and some epic commercial music from Two Steps from Hell.

Next week, I hope to do a little better. To start with, I have a new job that involves teaching you how to kick ass and take names .... okay, basic self-defense maneuvers.  I suspect it's going to turn into a weekly roundup of interesting stuff on this blog. Once I figure out the mechanics.

Spoiler Alert for ... a video game? Halo.

Some people may have noticed that I'm a little wierd. I'm also a bit of a nerd, as my DragonCon reports and my JMS blog of today might tell you.

However, I want to discuss a little bit about one of the most epic bits of science fiction storytelling I've seen outside of Baen publishing.

The Halo video game franchise.

Yup. Video games can have epic writing.

If most of you are thinking "Thanks. We've seen Super Mario Brothers, there is no writing," I respectfully suggest you get your head out of the 80s. And parts of the 90s.

I've only recently been brought back into the world of video games by my friend Jason. He started by giving me a video game called Halo. It was a "first person shooter," which I always figured was short for "a game with no plot, but you get to shoot up anyhthing that gets in your way, or blow them up if you have grenades."

Then I started playing it.

It had a story. It had supporting characters with personalities. It had witty chapter titles and sarcastic one-liners. It was a space-sprawling epic played out on something that resembled Larry Niven's Ringworld -- an artificially designed planet called Halo.

The premise was simple enough: alien jihadists called the Covenant have discovered humans, and they really, really don't like us. The game starts with the player's ship on the run from an alien armada, and runs into Halo, a world that turns out to be a sacred artifact to the jihadists. The player's character is a bioengineered super soldier called a Spartan-II, and wears a Mjolnir battle suit (yes, it's named after the hammer of Thor). The humans get the bright idea to take over Halo before the Covenant do -- this artificial ring world is a moon-sized weapon, after all.

And then, the humans wake something up. Not quite an eldritch horror from beyond time and space, but good enough for government work. Let's just say that they're called The Flood and leave it there. They have a tendency to devour, well, everything.

After waking up said horror, another side to this little war comes up. The artificial intelligence of the Halo ring discovers that, "Hmm, the Flood creatures have been let loose. We have to stop them."

It turns out that the eldritch horror isn't from beyond time and space, but from one hundred million years ago. The Halo rings were built to stop them. But, the people fighting the flood back then decided to hold on to a few samples for research, and so the species wouldn't die out (I always knew rabid environmentalists would be the ruin of us).

All goes perfectly well until the player discovers how the Halo rings kill the flood-- by erradicating all life bigger than a microbe. The flood starve. End of problem. When the Spartan-II and his sidekick object to this plan, the AI that has been chattering at you for a whole level of the game turns nasty.

Did I mention that the AI is insane?

Soon, the game becomes a four-sided battle. Alien jihadists are still trying to kill you. The flood are trying to kill everyone. And the AI that you've pissed off has his own army of flying, laser-wielding drones who are also out to kill you, the flood, the jihadists, and everything else in its way.

And that's just the first game.

The Halo universe is so dense in background and in story, they've written at least half a dozen novels worth of material, and they're making more.  Comic book and Star Trek favorite Peter David has written a comic book volume from the Halo-verse, as has William C. Dietz, another author with his own writing credits -- though the first author to be offered the job was Timothy Zahn.

SPOILER ALERT.

There might be one or two people upset by the end of Halo 3.  The third game sought to wipe out the Flood, end the war with the alien jihadists, and  finally end the threat of the Halo rings.   By and large, they succeeded.

However, the character you play, the Spartan-II, is last seen drifting in space in half a starship -- bad things happen when a wormhole closes and the ship is only halfway through it.
Since Halo 3, several Halo games have been released -- prequels, side-stories, and tales that never answered the simple question: Whatever happened to Master Chief, Spartan 117

Halo Fans will be happy to know that the trail for Halo 4 starts where Halo 3 leaves off.

Music to Write To: Winterborn, Cambreadth, and Over the Hills....

Sometimes your friends know best.

After months of doing non-fiction, "high-intellect" blog posts, some of my friends could see what it was doing to me better than I could. Let's just say that they could tell I was under a strain. Also, they found the posts boring.

So, time for something fun.

It's been a while since I posted a music blog, and I really think I should get back into the swing of posting whatever I like. Which include history, blowing stuff up on paper, and doing it to really cool music.

Here's some more stuff that I enjoy writing to.

THIS. IS. DRAGONCON.... 2009

These are notes compiled from my time at DragonCon, 2009, in Atlanta, GA.  Please forgive me if some of these are incomplete.

Day 1, Thursday, September 3rd

Arriving the day before the Convention started, we went to pick up the tickets we had purchased months ago. The line for pre-registration was …. first we went to one hotel, did a U-turn to get onto one line, which u-turned onto yet another line, and that was the line to get INTO the hotel, onto the line for the pre-registration room, where we got onto that line....

Yes, we went from a line, to get onto a line, to get onto a line, to get onto a line.

The preregistration line was was a serpentine deal across a ballroom about 30 yards long, roped off and packed. Organizers kept calling out names, because there was one person to deal with people in select alphabetical segments (Adams-Alabaster, Annoying-Bradbury, etc). It took two hours to get to the front of the line, where they had broken the line up into the segments per group—and we noticed they took 5-10 minutes per member. Later, they had tried to close the pre-registration line at 9 PM, with the room still full. The registrants refused to leave, and they didn’t close until 10:30 PM.



Day 2-- and now the Convention Starts.

10 AM: For the appearance of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (together for possibly the first time in years), the line into the Hyatt hotel wrapped AROUND the hotel. We asked, discovered that Nimoy-Shatner had been moved to the Marriott Marquis—the line we saw was for watching the reunion on remote large-screen TVs. It was originally placed opposite a Babylon 5 panel, but that panel had been moved to 4PM. Our last option was a panel called “Celluloid Heroes”



“Celluloid Heroes,” with Mike Mignola (Creator of Hellboy), Helen Slater (the original movie Supergirl ), Doug Jones (“Abe Sapien,” and Silver Surfer in the films), and Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly from the first two “X-Men” films).

Items of interest:

Mignola talked about how he wasn’t called to consult for the second Hellboy movie, which gave the director Guillermo Del Toro free reign, which is probably why it was so terrible. However, when Mignola looked at the finished product of Hellboy, he decided that those characters were more Del Toro's than his own. Also, the two of them had tried for eight hours to adapt a plot from the original Hellboy comic for the second film, and failed. Also noted was that Del Toro has a great way for getting around studio “suits”—film in Eastern Europe (aka the back end of Hell), where they would not go.

Apparently, Mignola was brought into Disney to do extra concept art for a movie that would become “Journey to Atlantis”. The artists at Disney are very cliquish, looking at Mignola like “what is HE doing here?” Apparently, the artists never talk to the screenwriters at idea meetings. Mignola, on the other hand, hadn't been informed about that policy, and when he went out to lunch with the writers and talked with them, they came back and they had a different film. He doesn’t know not to speak up. Also, when he first arrived, he had a thought of “Why is there a large poster of Hellboy on the wall?” After hearing about how the Disney artists admired his technique about different things, his first thought about one of the “techniques” was “I did it that way because I can't draw feet.”

Slater attended the High School for the Performing Arts (the “Fame” school), and auditioned for and won the role of Supergirl immediately after graduating. While on set, she performed a Shakespeare sonnet for Peter O’Toole, who was her co-star on the film. Being from New York, she talked with her hands gesturing. O’Toole asked her to hold two dandelions between her thumbs and forefingers and do it again. She learned how to put the poetry over the performance, or, as she put it, “getting the blonde out of her speech”. She would more recently play Clark’s Kryptonian mother on “Smallville.”

Now, originally, the primary villain from John Woo's Mission Impossible II was slated to be Wolverine in the X-Men films, but Woo kept him so long, Singer and company decided to go with an Aussie actor who was playing Curly in “Oklahoma” for the London stage, some guy named Hugh Jackman. They decided “hey we gotta keep an eye on him, he’s gonna go far.” Oh yes, and after shooting, the cast would apparently head to the bar, where Patrick Stewart taught everyone “photon torpedo” acting, moving as if hit, while the camera moved. “Position #7 [Pull to the right.]”

Jones, who also played the Silver Surfer in the second Fantastic 4 movie, is signed on to a Surfer 3-picture deal. The second movie has been written by J. Michael Straczynski.


Panel 2: The Star Trek authors cavalcade: with Peter David, Alan Dean Foster, Keith DeCandido.

When the panel started, there was a brief introduction of everyone except Peter David. He simplified it by asking “Is there anyone here who DOESN’T know who I am?” Answer: no.

Simon and Schuster: the people who bring you the Trek novels have been through a massive let-go of ST editors; they've cut two in the last year. In addition, the authors were told “no more multi-book story arcs”...and there are some who are thinking that this is the end of the Trek book franchise, since the contract is expiring soon.


Editors and Paramount have a great deal of power over the plots. One idiot named Richard Arnold once told Peter David that “there are no female Borg; we haven't seen them on the show, so they don't exist” (This was before the Borg Queen and Seven of Nine). As a result, Peter David's novel “Vendetta” originally came with a disclaimer that it was “not series cannon”. David's reply “So they assimilate everyone but the women? What are they, Hasidic Jews?”

An example of Editorial Power is the Death of Kathryn Janeway—yes, Voyager fans, she'd dead, get over it. It was an idea that was given to Peter David for the book “Before Dishonor.” It was not his idea, don't yell at him for it.

DeCandido had problems writing for Will Riker; According to Peter David, Jonathan Frakes told him that he played Riker as John Wayne. David then went on to discuss how he pictured his creation of Captain Mackenzie Calhoun as Mel Gibson as Braveheart ("I was a teenage warlord"), only without the death and dismemberment.

Alan Dean Foster talked about other projects like the novelization of the first Alien movie, where he could explain things that didn't make sense in the film. Peter David asked “Why did the escape pod only hold four people? Was this ship created by the people who built the Titanic?”

David continued with, “And another thing, I'm still waiting for someone to explain gravity on most of these ships. The only time I've ever seen it done was on Babylon 5, and they even made it a plot point in one story.”



Panel 3: Angel/Buffy guest stars: Kristy Swanson (KS, the original Buffy), Charisma Carpenter (CC), Julie Benz (JB), Felicia Day (FD. Creator of The Guild ).

Miscellaneous facts here and there: Tv sets have doctors to deal with pimples.

According to KS, the original Buffy movie was a Luke Perry vehicle. The soul patch in the move was a fake, and Swanson's cat one day licked it off and ate it.

Felicia Day reads romance novels,on kindle, just because the covers are embarrassing. Also reads JD Robb, which are mystery romances.

After a large round of applause upon her arrival, CC: “I come here for the ego boost.”


Q: “Ms. Carpenter, do you read the comics?”
A: “Well, I’m at DCon, so, yes, of course I do.”



Question on favorite character development:
A, Julie Benz: I was originally supposed to be vamp girl #1.... I got a name and a story arc, so, yay!
A, Charisma Carpenter: It was a little odd giving birth to a 6’2” African-American woman (Gina Torres).
FD: “Your vagina much be huge... on the show! On the show I mean!”
Charisma Carpenter laughs: “Yeah, Franken-pussy.”

Charisma Carpenter was recently filmed for Legend of the Seeker: The lead, Craig Horner, is a Buffy fan and geeked out on her.



Q: Charisma, did you like Buffy or Angel more...?
Charisma Carpenter: “Angel, of course, it had more of me!” [Done for the laugh, I think] “Buffy was fun though.”



Q: “So, Charisma, what did you think of the five seasons of Angel?”
A: “Well, first of all, I wasn’t in the last season; I was cut in season four... then the series got canceled... MUWHAHAHA. No, with the fourth season, it was really tough. I got pregnant, and things became strained with Joss (Whedon), and it reached a breaking point when I found out I would be fired FROM A REPORTER who called to ask about it. When I was approached about doing my cameo in Season 5, I told them, 'Don't kill me. I don't want to do this if you're just going to kill me... don't kill me...' and then I heard the plot of the episode and Damnit, they killed me. When I heard how I was going to buy it, I thought, 'Wow, that’s GOOD! Joss is still the master.' So, we're good now.”

Julie Benz will be in a new movie, a sequel to “Reservoir Dogs”, where her character wears 6-inch Louis Vuitton heels to crime scenes (Charisma Carpenter hugs her and says “I love you!”).



Q: What badass do you want to play next?
Charisma Carpenter: “I wanna play Julie! Or any Quentin Tarantino Heroine.” (Kill Bill’s Bride)
Q: No, I mean a real person.
Charisma Carpenter: “Julie is a real person!”
Julie Benz: No I’m not.
Charisma Carpenter: --Or I'd play Wonder Woman, but Joss isn’t involved with that anymore, so never mind.
Julie Benz: Well, as far as real people go, I was once mistaken for Kristy Swanson.
Kristy Swanson: You don’t look like me.

And, finally, one last exchange.



Charisma Carpenter: Julie bit me once.
Julie Benz: I liked it.
Charisma Carpenter: And then I hit you, and I liked it!


Panel 4: Apocalypse Rising Track,:the writers panel, starring John Ringo, SM Stirling, and Michael Z. Williamson.

When John Ringo's on a panel, by the way, expect to hear very little from anyone else. He doesn't seem to like the sound of his own voice, and though he came into the panel after driving 6 hours in 18, he still takes over

John Ringo: “I find it funny that this is a panel of disasters and someone just handed me a novelization of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen....

“Now, with Post Apocalyptic fiction, it's a way for a writer to make the world over in his own image, using the most unlikely hero—usually a version of themselves. In fact, the Western tradition has been scarred by it, with the Plague, which killed a third of Europe.

“Oh, and by the way, did anyone here see Cloverfield? I just wanted them all to die! Does anyone here known anyone as stupid as those people?

“One of the various problems with our modern world is that the Sun occasionally burbs. And that's fine if you're an ancient Roman, not so good for us. Right now, if we lost modern technology, it would be worse and more devastating than a nuclear war; with technology, we can support a planet of six billion people. If we lose modern technology, the planet has has a max capacity to support only 450-500 million people. Please realize that the “normal” world is not America, it's Darfur and Saudia Arabia.

“In 1869, there was the Carrington event, a solar storm that lasted for hours, hit the entire planet with a barrage of electromagnetic pulse. Now, it doesn't effect telegraphs. Us, not so lucky. Then again, in Tennesee, we can live off of squirrels--75 squirrels per person. And I live in Chattanooga, with the Tennessee Valley Authority. They'd have the power back up in two months.”

Miscellanous someone [most likely Stirling] “As for what's left afterwards... for example, archaeologists found a 3800-year-old clay tablet from town destroyed by Hammurabi. It had a stone letter in it. They were all excited and such, the first such letter they found of this kind.... what was on it? 'This is the third letter I have written regarding the silver you owe me…' The second one was 'You have not written me in the three years since your marriage…'

“And speaking of modern technology, Los Angeles.... You put a city in the desert? Really?”

Ringo: No I didn’t.

MZ Williamson [I think]: “As for after the fall, and what would be left, in my book, I had them retell Star Wars as their myth, only with the siege tower of doom instead of the Death Star, and they found a Star Trek Technical manual and decided to put it together themselves...after all, it had been done before.”

Stirling [I also think]: “James Clavell, the English author, was a POW in a Japanese camp in WW2, which he turned into his novel King Rat. After the war, he walked around the streets of London with two tins of sardines in his pockets because he had learned that he could survive on two tins and a pound of rice should everything fall apart.”

Ringo: by the way, for the record, the average lifespan of a lone wolf is about six months. Humans are also pack animals. Should the crap hit the fan, you can have all the food in the world, but that won't help if there are thirty people surrounding your house. Get friends.



Panel 5, 4PM. John Ringo reading

“Has anyone read Princess of Wands?” EVERY HAND shot up. “OK, then.” Working on the sequel for 18 months. Problems: Should he do it as one novel? Vignettes? What order should the vignettes be? And how do you top the last book?

Eventually, the reading was “Live Free or Die” (“no relation to the Bruce Willis movie”).
Premise of this book: a Libertarian with a napoleon complex becomes richest and most powerful man on Earth.
It starts with a statement of the real Scientific principle “Hm, that’s odd.”

And it leads into SkyWatch: watching the skies and the stars for things that can crash into the Earth and kill us. The joke is those that who can’t teach, go to SkyWatch.

And then they find a 10.4 KM concentric circle in space.

“Is this a joke?”
“It's from the Germans, they don’t have a sense of humor.”
“You do know what shape that's in, right?”
"Yeah, it’s a halo; maybe it’s Covenant. At the speed and angle, it won't hit us, but keep an eye on it, when it hits something, the explosion will be REALLY COOL."

Several weeks later: “Um, it's stopped.” Oh crap.

Cut to the White House Switchboard.

Operator: “White House Switchboard.”
Robotic voice: “WE ARE THE GLEEN. WE COME IN PEACE.”
Operator: “A prank call will only be wasting my time.”
Voice: WE. ARE. THE. GLEEN. IF YOU LOOK AT YOUR CALLER INFORMATION BOX, YOU WILL SEE THAT THIS CALL IS COMING FROM A SATELLITE. WE. ARE. USING. TO. RELAY. THE. SIGNAL. WE WILL CALL BACK IN 5 DAYS AND CALL AT NOON. GREENWICH. MEAN. TIME. PLEASE HAVE YOUR PRESIDENT CLEAR HIS SCHEDULE. HAVE. A. NICE. DAY.

Five days later, on a conference call with the G8 world leaders: “WE ARE THE GLEEN. WE COME IN PEACE. WE HAVE SENT YOU AN INTERSTELLAR GATE FOR YOUR USE TO COME INTO AND OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM. ANYONE CAN USE THE GATE AT ANY TIME AFTER YOU PAY THE OPERATING FEE. PLEASE DO NOT HAVE EXPLOSIONS WITHIN 300,000 KM OF THE GATE. THANK YOU. HAVE. A. NICE. DAY. ”

Now, to the hero—Vernon Taylor, or Taylor Vernon, no one can recall, not even Ringo. This Libertarian webcomic artist ran a SF site, which died after science fiction was superceded by events. One day, he discovered that the Gleen is addicted to maple syrup; he grabs a big rig full of 50 gallon drums of syrup, becomes their supplier, and is rich overnight.

The first story: “The Maple Syrup War”: Earth is too backwater for the Gleen to interfere, they don't have a world government body, no real political organization that the Gleen find acceptable, and that includes the UN. Every few years, the Rastor come, blow up Singapore and two other cities (because they were the brightest lit), and have tribute.

And then they take Hostages for maple syrup. Vernon sets up a transmission from his moon colony, relays it thru several satellites and Fox News. Green screen is set up behind him to add to the image of him being at home. “It may seem to you that we who collect the syrup are the servants of the people in the cities. To your collective mindset, you don't know this concept of freedom. Of individuality. Of liberty. The people in the cities... THEY ARE OUR ENEMIES. We WANT you to kill them. BLOW UP BOSTON. DESTROY NEW YORK. And please, PLEASE, NUKE DC! This is America. A place of FREEDOM. LIVE FREE OR—”
“We lost the first relay, swtiching to second.”
Picture behind him reverts to Mount Rushmore. “AND WE HAVE CGI AND GREEN SCREEN YOU ALIEN BASTARDS.”
“Lost the second one.”
“Cut.”
Afterwards, a CNN reporter says “We were hurt by what you said. You didn't mean the cities are you enemies.”
“Of course I did. They are. They're against everything we stand for. But I didn't want anyone to die.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“To quote the smartest rabbit I know, 'Please don’t throw me into that briar patch.'”



By the second vignette, Vernon has created a warship out of a 10km wide nickel asteroid, 9 trillion tons, armed with Archimedes mirrors; described as “insufficiently ambitious.”
An audience member hummed the Imperial Waltz, Ringo said “Exactly. In this, everyone's trying NOT to do the death star.”
And this armed asteroid is called Troy.



Panel 5: 
The league of redheaded stepchildren: Media tie-in authors Peter David, Timothy Zahn, Robert Greenberger, Catherine Asaro.

Most often line that they hear: “When are you going to write a REAL book? Not some Star Wars novel.” Tie-ins are a rung below SF/Fantasy.

When asked what projects he's turned down, Timothy Zahn turned down B5 —
PD: Don't worry, I did it.
TZ: Then I turned down a Halo novel.
PD: Don't worry, I did it.
TZ: I have objections to writing “Other people’s stories.”
PD: “Would you object to $100K for a screenplay?”
TZ: “Maybe, but that's weeks, a novel takes months.”
PD: “Not the way I write. I burn out keyboards. ”
TZ: My other problem with the Halo novel was that they wouldn't let me see their bible for the mythology.
PD: I didn't have a that problem. The Microsoft people were very supportive. When I was approached, I say “Yes, I love Halo,” and spend days doing research playing the game or reading strategy guides. When I handed in my outline, they said “Oh, you can't do that with this weapon, but you can with this, which is one that we haven't released yet.” But yeah, they were very supportive with me.
TZ. “Mom always liked you best.”
PD: “And is it any wonder? As for what I've turned down, I turned down writing the first Voyager novel; the show bible said Janeway was supposed to hold the ship together with willpower, spit and baling wire, between the Marquis and the starfleet crew members, the show ironed out all those rough edges.. And I turned down the novelization for Iron Man 2; Marvel was so paranoid, they insisted the writer do this with pen and paper. Then again, my theory is that if anyone asks if you can do something, then say yes! Then learn how.



Max Allan Collins wrote Road to Perdition, the novelization of movie based on his comic book. He put in background and stories that he couldn’t fit into comic. Publisher said take it out because “it wasn't in the movie.” The novelization ended up as 40k words. His revenge: he put the material into sequel.

On the Return of Swamp Thing: PD took old Alan Moore comics and rewrote the movie. Greenberger, working for DC at the time, said forget the movie, read the book.