Moe Lane's Blog, page 693
July 22, 2021
The ‘Latest Bite at the Apple’ DUNE trailer.
I dunno.
It’s not the casting, or even the likely changes to the plot. It’s the perennial problem with DUNE: it’s a trilogy that apparently can’t be made as a trilogy. You either end up compressing it down into a single flick, or you make a miniseries that doesn’t let you do the sweeping cinematic panoramas on a huge movie screen.
But they’re gonna keep trying, apparently. It’s like I AM LEGEND: some projects are just catnip to ambitious directors. And, heck, I’m probably gonna go see it anyway, so: good luck!
July 21, 2021
‘A Little Less Conversation.’
Ehh, I’m doing it again.
In the Mail: History of the Conquest of Mexico & History of the Conquest of Peru.
I apparently got it for extremely cheap (the price has tripled since I ordered), but the History of the Conquest of Mexico & History of the Conquest of Peru is huge. 1300 pages huge. But I am informed that it is still one of the better texts on this particular subject*, so I shall just have to awkwardly lug the book around for a while.
*Surprisingly, because it’s almost two hundred years old.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT on the July Patreon Pledge Drive!
Fiction! Microfiction! RPG stuff! For a buck a month! You can’t not sign up for this!
…Well, okay, obviously you can not sign up for this. But it’s in your best interests to join my Patreon today! Aside from everything else: in large part, it’s what lets me self-publish books. So, hey, enlightened self-interest here!
Patreon!So. Amazon has rights to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
[UPADTE: Patreon!]
That is indeed news. I suspect that many will not see this as good news, but I guess we’ll have to wait until the first episodes become available for review. Reportedly, the nudity that had been reported earlier will not be titillating, but instead be “very dark thematic material suggestive of concentration camp-type visuals of victims, a harrowing portrayal of the corruption of the Elves by dark powers to ultimately become Orcs.” So if you were dreading hot nekkid Noldor-on-Sindar action, that at least might not be actually happening.
Or it might be nothing but elf-orgies* all season. It’s kind of up to Amazon at this point.
According to the report, “for the 1st time EVER: elements & passages from ‘The Silmarillion’ and ‘Unfinished Tales’ are licensed by Amazon Studios for this adaptation [we broadly speculate those are sections of the book relative to Númenor and Rings of Power including full rights to stories licensed in the Appendices of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ which already mention Númenor and much more. Actors had posted instagram pics from Silm over the last 18 months.].”
*Whaddya mean, my edition of BORED OF THE RINGS is worth over $150 bucks? For real?
07/21/21 Snippet, DEEP IN THE HEART OF SEX FISH.
This really needed some more expansion. Ach, well, that’s how you learn.
Patreon!Emily also wore her hair a lot longer in real life than she did in the picture. She kept in a bun, with two carved white chopsticks to secure it, so that seemed like an obvious conversational gambit: “Your hairpieces. They look…” I almost said ‘pretty,’ but decided at the last second to say ‘elegant’ at the last second.
That was a better word to use, because it got a smile out of her. It was only a small one, but the wattage on it was impressive all the same. “Thank you, Bob. They’re favorites of mine.”
I looked at them — well, maybe I looked at her, and used the chopsticks as an excuse. They looked like bone, and had carvings on them that triggered a guess: “Scrimshaw?”
And it was a good guess, because she turned up the wattage on the smile a little. “Yes! My great-great grandfather carved them out of walrus bone, as a wedding gift. We’ve worn them ever since.”
“Elegant and a family heirloom?” I said. “Now I’m flattered. Because you thought this date was worth it, I mean.” Inside I winced, because it sounded a lot more stupid when I said it aloud. Don’t screw this up! But she laughed, which made me relax a little. If she thought that was funny, I probably was going to get away with sounding like a dork. At least this one time. Better make sure you take this real slow, Bob. Don’t expect any miracles here.
Tweet of the Day, …This Is Alarmingly Enticing edition.
It shouldn’t be. I grant that. But, like @JoePCunningham, I concede that there is something here.
OH YEAH pic.twitter.com/ZJ5e4ewYVY
— Josh Perry (@MrJoshPerry) July 20, 2021
July 20, 2021
Plugging along on the July Patreon pledge drive!
So close to the next target! But even now you get get fiction, microfiction, and RPG materials! At a buck a month it’s a massive bargain! Sign up today!
Patreon!07/20/21 Snippet, DEEP IN THE HEART OF SEX FISH.
I’m taking a day off from the other story because I need to really think about how bad things get for them and how they’re getting out of them, and I need to get this next chapbook in order so that I can send the files to the artist and have him do some drawing. Fortunately this project is almost ready for beta readers…
(The original can be read here.)
Patreon!I gave it a day before I started messing with the app. I could say that I felt something ominous about it, even then, but that’s not true at all. What actually happened was that I decided to try one more time on my own, because it was Friday night and that’s when people were hot to trot, right?
Well, not really. It’s not that I was rejected; it was that I was never in a place where rejection was even an option. It’s like… everybody belongs to these bubbles, right? And if you’re in one bubble and somebody’s in another one, you can’t do much about it. Sure, you can talk, share information, even be friendly; but there’s not gonna be any kind of connection — which is to say, sex.
I don’t want anybody to think I was mad at other people about this. There wasn’t any big conspiracy to keep me in my own private bubble. It had just worked out that way. And nobody was obligated to join me in my bubble, either. I wasn’t resentful, just lonely in a complicated way. Hell, getting laid might not even help — but I was willing to give it a shot anyway. So, the next afternoon I began the new and exciting journey of trying to look good in what was a glorified database entry.
