Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Game Music

So... I was going to draw tonight... have this great sketch idea of Jaya licking her new arm. But instead I spent... jeeze... the last three? hours manually looking up & constructing the Gaslight playlist in Rdio. There are sooooo many tracks missing, it's a ridiculous tragedy. But even with that, there's still 68 available from all chapters. Good for me to listen to at work. But also a good reminder that keeping ahold of old MP3s has value. Just dug around and made sure I still had all of them on my backup drive... as well as a good handful of session recordings. Hilarious, those.

This was motivated in part because last night I pulled together some album artwork for my 4th Terminus and Midwinter playlists, which I had looked up & built quite some time ago.

There's an Academie of Magic one too, but I don't have artwork yet for it...

Now that I'm listening to the music, all I want to do draw is Lilly and her pretty pretty dresses... covered in mud. Possibly strangling someone. How are all my old sketches (mostly) not online?! Ugh...

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Two tones of good

I've just finished two books, both of which I deeply loved. They both feature strong women. Romance, to some degree, is touched upon in both. The nature of a successful relationship as well. Mystery, intrigue, action. Good books, I'd recommend all to read both though they are deeply different. It amuses me to say of both "This is what a fabulous female character is like. Why can't more characters be written like this?This shows the workings of an excellent relationship. Behold and take note! Study it!"

For one of these I say it with an ernest, honest tone. Heartfelt, friendly, wistful. Possibly a little teary eyed. That book would be Valor and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal (book 4 of 5 in the Glamorist Histories series)

The other I say with a smirk. With a grin and a wink. With the same tone that I confess my love of Cerci from Game of Thrones with and declare Silence of the Lambs to be the most romantic film ever. That book would be Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

Look away to avoid potential spoilers after the picture of Jane.

Jane of Valor and Vanity is so fucking sensible, it hurts. She's plane looking and normal. Times get tough, things get complicated, mistakes are made, but she keeps a level head. She does the things that need to be done, even when they're hard-- which frequently means emotionally hard rather than physically hard. She talks about issues, rather than letting them fester. Reading all of Jane's stories makes me happy, I'll probably cry after the next book comes out- I don't want it all to end. I wish I could have read this series when I was younger- here is an admirable but relatable character that strives to do the right thing and is a good, believable role model.

Amy's mind is amazing. The cadence, the logic, the poetry of her thoughts are seductive. Reading Gillian Flynn's writing was like drinking hot chocolate. How can you not love this: "... [we] fit together. I am a little too much, and he is a little too little. I am a thornbush, bristling from the over attention of my parents, and he is a man of a million little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into them" I itch to include a couple other quotes (oh Kindle highlights, how I love you!) but they'd be too spoiler-y... Amy's planning and commitment is admirable. She is without a doubt strong. She knows what she wants and she takes great efforts to obtain it. I wish I could be as strong and powerful as Amy.

Jane is the person I actually want to be, in real life. Amy is the person I like to imagine being, the ideal role-play character I wish I could play.

I wish all books I read starred such fully formed and compelling female leads.




(p.s. - I also just finished Ready Player One which I wish I had in book form so that I could throw it across the fucking room in rage. Reads like a Young Adult novel- which is fine, I read lots of those- but I wasn't expecting that and in the end all the "lessons" and "morals" and "take aways" from the story are shit/non-existant. At the end of it all the young white boy "wins" the love of the young white girl. She's just sitting there at the end, like some prize. Nothing challenging happened, there was no self reflection or growth. Waste of my time, I regret reading it)