The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I think I said this a couple of days ago- I do not remember the last time I was this excited about anything, and I fully expect this game to eat my life for a month. I will probably post a character creation video on the channel at 8:00 and then full coverage starts tomorrow. If you need me, call my wife.
Love y’all. ELDEN RIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG
Perhaps the sound of a million baby-men all wailing at once alerted you; there is to be a new Doctor Who, or maybe a new Doctor, hell, I don’t watch the show, I don’t think “Doctor Who” is actually the character’s name, but maybe it is– and at any rate, the Doctor is to be played by a Person of Feminine Aspect, a Vagina-Haver, a Breasted-American, except she’s not American and Breasted-Brit sounds like some sort of snack food. A girl! Playing a character who used to be played by a man with a penis!
I assume Peter Capaldi has a penis. And all the others, whatever their names are. Steve or James or Bonbon or something else British. I’m only assuming they all had penises. I’ve never seen any of their penises. But apparently they were really important to all this Time Lord business.
So, yeah, there’s a girl in a show now and oh so many judgment-challenged sillymen are oh so very upset. And here’s the thing: I’ve kinda been jonesing for a new Nerd Thing lately that I could pay attention to? I’m tired of Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones has worn very very thin and I was never into the TV series anyway, and I’m not actually certain that the new Star Trek is actually watchable by regular people who don’t have some sort of arcane CBS subscription that I refuse to find out anything about. But I can watch this new Doctor Who thing, right? And knowing that me watching it is a tiny thorn in the ample sides of some very horrible people brings me pleasure, so there’s that.
I have actually tried to get into Doctor Who on a few occasions and failed. With the notable exception of Monty Python, British entertainment does tend to bounce off of me a bit, and every previous episode of the program I’ve tried to watch really didn’t get anywhere with me. But for some reason I downloaded the two-part season finale of Season 10, which was Capaldi’s final season (although I understand there’s some sort of Christmas special thing coming, where he’ll actually end his run?) and damn if I wasn’t well and hooked despite not really having the vaguest idea what the fuck was going on or who any of the non-Capaldi characters were. The Cybermen should have been Power Rangers-level cheesy nonsense but somehow they worked, and I was suitably creeped out by them.
And so: I shall be partaking of this new LadyWho person, and hopefully I will enjoy it. And if not, meh. At least I annoyed some idiots. That’s always worth something, right?
PS: Is “Dr. Who” some sort of faux pas? I keep wanting to spell it that way and changing it back to eliminate the abbreviation. Is it like Spider-Man, where if you don’t include the hyphen you die in seven days?
Right; that story yesterday. I don’t know, maybe I’ve talked about this before, but what the hell, let’s talk about it again: the Internet is really freaking weird, people.
You’ve heard of the Twitter, right? I don’t follow anyone I actually know because nobody real actually uses Twitter. (Wait, no. I follow one person I know in the real world. But I think she’ll state as fast as anyone that she’s not real on Twitter either.) Who do I follow? Writers, mostly.
I spent all of last weekend reading short stories, mostly short stories by Saladin Ahmed and Nnedi Okorafor, both of whom have recently released collections that I either bought (Okorafor) or downloaded (Ahmed). Both of these authors are talented and awesome and you should pay attention to them. And I follow both of them on Twitter. Note that the first links are to their twitter feeds and the second are to the books I was reading. (And, oh, hell, Engraved on the Eye is free right now as a Kindle download– go get it right now! Then pay for a paper copy of Throne of the Crescent Moon, which is one of my two or three favorite books of 2013.)
Now, important fact: I tend to get authors’ styles stuck in my head when I read a lot of them. No bullshit about it: I wouldn’t have written Crossroads had I not spent the weekend bathing my brain in short stories by these two writers. No chance at all.
Here’s where Twitter is ridiculous: I came close– damn close— to Tweeting a link to the damn story to the two of them and being all “OH HAY DUDEZ LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!1!”
Which, I’m pretty sure, is the rough interwubz equivalent of running up to them in the grocery and tossing my screenplay in their cart or something like that. It’s wankerish, which is why I didn’t do it. But… jeez, Twitter makes it so easy. I chastised Nathan Fillion the other day, for God’s sake. I didn’t notice until I hit send that I’d also included Alan Tudyk and Patrick fucking Rothfuss in the tweet. What the hell. Which, okay, granted, this is what they signed up for, is direct interaction with people, but… shit, they don’t need to hear my nonsense.
(I finish that sentence and remember that I’ve already Tweeted at Saladin Ahmed about Engraved on the Eye this week; I definitely can’t do it twice.)
I dunno; it’s weird. On the one hand, maybe “Hey, here’s this stupid thing I wrote; you inspired it” is something that people don’t mind seeing. On the other hand, there’s this weird fan boyish hey important dude please read my shit vibe to it that I don’t like at all.
(Then there’s the whole nah, dude, they’re people too, just like you, they’re not special just because you’ve heard of them and they’ve not heard of you thing, but I swear to god the issue here is that they’re strangers and not celebrities. I wouldn’t randomly pull you out of a crowd to make you read my nonsense either; presumably most of y’all came here on your own.)
And that, boys and girls, is why Infinitefreetime is too damn old for Twitter.
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