Taven Moore's Blog, page 39

Time for Me To Fly

So. I quit my job.

I had another job lined up before I put in my two weeks notice, so don’t worry about me. I’m very excited about the upcoming opportunities and my growth as a programmer. (MVC at UW Credit Union, for the curious)

That aside, it’s been a bittersweet period as I transition out of my old job. No matter what the reasons for leaving, it’s rarely so black and white that lighting torches and burning bridges seems an appropriate course of action. There are an awful lot of wonderful people on the other shoreline, but I know this is the right decision for me.

As I drove from work on the day I put in my two weeks notice, REO Speedwagon played on the radio, and I couldn’t help but turn up the volume and roll down the windows.

I know it hurts to say goodbye, but it’s time for me to fly.

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Laptop Imminent!
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There’s a Newsletter?

There’s a newsletter!

With google reader dying (and a goodly portion of my readership not using a feed reader anyway) I thought it was high time to put in the effort to set up a newsletter.

I’m using the MailChimp service, so everything ought to be on the up-and-up. They’re very particular about their security, so I felt pretty good about choosing them to provide the maintenance of the mailing lists.

Right now, the newsletter is just a weekly compilation of blog posts. It goes out on Friday mornings.

You can sign up from the sidebar and choose your email format (html, plain text, or mobile) and you can unsubscribe either from the sidebar or from the emails themselves.

Hopefully, this provides a new way for readers to stay in touch without having to jump through a lot of hoops to do so. :D

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[Perry] Creating a Strong Villain

This is a topic that I’ve struggled a lot with as a writer. If you look at my earlier works (which will NEVER happen *throws them down a well*), you’ll see that all of my villains are…flat.

They’re flat and worse, they’re BORING.

What can I say? Villains are hard.

But over the years, I’ve learned a little bit about how to make my villains stronger. Not enough yet to make them good per se…but definitely an improvement and I thought I’d share.

Because the world deserves better villains.

Evil for the sake of evil doesn’t work.

I don’t really think people are born evil. While there may be people that have a higher “douchebag” potential than others, I don’t think anyone’s born thinking about ways to take over the world.

Essentially, Stewie from Family Guy doesn’t exist.

Having a villain be evil and nefarious BECAUSE REASONS is unrealistic at best and laughable at worst.

While writing, keep at the forefront of your mind that the villain is as important to the story as the main character. The majority of protagonists out there are given exquisitely crafted backstories and a complex set of motivations for the way they’re acting…and these rich, textured characters are pitted against cardboard cutouts who want to watch the world burn just because.

The villain serves as a foil to the hero and the hero can only shine if that foil is sharp.

So spend time with your villain, give him strong, believable reasons for the way he’s acting and your story will be stronger for it.

Crazy for the sake of crazy doesn’t work.

Crazy can’t be the sole reason why your villain acts the way he does. Crazy can definitely be an attribute of a good villain, but it can’t be the sole motivation.

For a bit of comparison, we can look at the Joker from the recent Batman movies and at the character Vaas from Far Cry 3.

The Joker is crazy, there’s really no arguing that. He’s crazy with a purpose, though.

The thing is, crazy people, really crazy people tend to not think they’re crazy. As a result, their actions have to follow an internal logic that makes sense.

His goal in the movie, and his goal as a character is to show the world that everyone can be as ruthless and brutal as he is…given the right conditions. In a theme explored in the graphic novel, The Killing Joke, the Joker’s out to prove that the only difference between him and a regular person is just one bad day.

That’s a good kind of crazy. You can build a story around that kind of crazy.

Now let’s take a look at the kind of crazy you can’t build a story around.

Vaas from Far Cry 3? He’s just flat crazy. Kills without compunction or reason and doesn’t…really have any goals, per se. He just does things.

If Vaas had been the primary villain in the game, it wouldn’t have worked. Vaas doesn’t have reasons. Vaas doesn’t have goals. He just…goes around, saying things that sound kind of deep but have no real meaning.

Vaas works in this game and completely steals the screen (warning: language) every time he shows up because he’s NOT the primary antagonist. Someone else is pulling his strings and that someone else has a firm and meticulous goal in mind.

Vaas works because he’s NOT the driving force of the villains. He’s just…a very interesting side character you run into.

If he HAD been the villain? We would have ended up with something like Moriarty from the BBC Sherlock.

Moriarty started out okay. He had a firm plan and he had goals and his actions reflected those goals. As a result, when we first met him, he was a powerful, threatening figure. It seemed like he was always in control and he made a wonderful adversary for Sherlock.

But then…he falls apart. When we get near the end of his arc, it’s like the writers suddenly decided that he had to be crazy. His internal logic stops making sense. Moriarty starts doing things for apparently no rhyme or reason and it all falls flat. He goes from a threatening, dispassionate shadowy figure (like the Moriarty from the movies!) and into this…caricature of a villain.

It’s hard to care about someone you can’t understand at all.

The villain and the hero should be two sides of the same coin.

Back in high school, I was told by my Writer’s Craft teacher that a villain, a well-crafted villain is someone who could have been the hero.

Circumstances intervene, life happens and they ended up as the bad guy but in another world, they COULD have been good.

I’ve never forgotten that.

You want someone iconic? Take a look at Magneto, from the X-Men. He’s often cast as the villain of the piece due to his desire to subjugate humans but…there are reasons, no? Having lived through a concentration camp and having lost his family to one, it’s no surprise that he rebels against the idea of the government trying to ‘catalogue’ and control mutants when he’s a grown man.

In another life, in an alternate world, he could have been (and actually HAS been) a very believable hero.

For another example, take a look at the three recent James Bond movies, the ones starring Daniel Craig.

Who are the villains?

The first movie had Le Chiffre (him with the bleeding eye). The second movie had…some guy, I honestly can’t even remember his name or what he looked like, he was so forgettable.

But the third movie? The third movie had Raoul Silva, an ex-MI6 agent who’d gone rogue after being left for dead and mutilated by the same cyanide capsule that was supposed to kill him.

Of these three villains, who do you really remember? Who stood out as vibrant? Who seemed to really have a REASON? Who had a burning need to do the things they did?

To me, Le Chiffre and the second guy were largely forgettable…cardboard cutouts. Silva seemed like a man who would jump off a cliff after you for the satisfaction of wringing your neck before you both died together.

He comes across as strong to me because he could have been the hero, hell, he HAD been the hero until he was given a damned good reason not to be anymore and he turned all of that motivation and resolve to revenge.

Bolded TLDR because I can.

Villains are important. Villains are second only to the main character in terms of importance.

The simple villains might have worked well in the past (the dark lord Sauron?) but audiences have largely grown a little more sophisticated now and you’ll need a strong villain if you want your reader to really sit up and take notice.

So don’t skimp on the villain. Make him strong, give him motivations and don’t have him kick a puppy and shoot an infant BECAUSE REASONS and your story will be all the stronger for it.

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[Perry] Wherein Not All Things Need To Be Ambitious
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Honey. Real, Honest-To-Bumble Honey

Have you ever tasted honey?

I mean, real honey. Not that flavored corn syrup found in a squeezebear.

I mean REAL honey, from beekepers who love their flocks, who isolate feeding grounds and sit outside rain or shine at the farmer’s market and hope someone stops by to find out why their honey is so much more expensive than the stuff you can get at the grocery store.

Have you ever tasted THAT honey?

Let me tell you, it’s … it’s a thing, that’s what it is. An experience. A wonderment.

I feel like a wine enthusiast, waxing poetic to my friends about how the pumpkin honey has a mellow heaviness to it, a sweet warmth that rounds out the base honey flavor and tastes like smiles and warm fall days when the leaves are changing colors.

Or twirling as I talk up the goldenrod honey, sweet and light and bright and happy.

And what about the loosestrife honey? Not pure, as bees have their own opinions on how a honey should taste, and some of the naughty buzzers added some goldenrod into this batch. The loosestrife is a dark, sharp undertone to the honey, and the goldenrod tames it perfectly, resulting in a honey that tastes like dappled shadows beneath star-shaped sweetgum leaves.

Even the archer farms honey in the picture above has its own flavor profile, rich and creamy and unapologetically dark.

Mix a tablespoon of any of these honeys with a cup of greek yogurt and you’ll never want another overly-flavored yogurt pod again. Simple, plain, and pure heaven.

Have you ever tasted honey?

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13 Reasons You’re Not Successful

This? This is fantastic. Letting it speak for itself, but HERE is a link to the original blog post. The image itself links back to the original blog post, and the image has it’s own link down in the bottom.

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[Perry] Counterattack! Puzzle and Dragons

The gauntlet has been THROWN down, Tami and I will not let it pass without a response!

So this whole MinoMonsters thing seems cool and all. It’s got a lot of cute little monsters and I hear there are crates of the beasties and chains to break and you can get them to fight for you in some sort of depraved, Pokemon deathmatch, BLOOD-DRENCHED gladitorial arena…

But what about the rest of us, huh?

I speak not for the bloodthirsty pet battlers…but for the legions of us who want nothing more than to match colored gems together.

Is there not a game for the disenfranchised?

Is there not a game where we can fulfill our collect ‘em all urge AND wage a a peaceful war against the computer controlled denizens of strangely named dungeons?

I say to you now, yes we can!

Puzzle and Dragons is a mobile game I randomly picked up that’s completely destroying my soul and somebody help me stop before I…

…Uh…I mean, it’s a charming and not addictive game at all and we should all play together.

As friends.

Yes. As friends.

It’s essentially what you would get if Pokemon bought a couple of nice roses and invited Bejewelled out for a night of dinner and dancing before bringing Bejewelled back to the his place for a bottle of wine by the fire and then they just decided to see where the night took them.

Do you like collecting monsters? Cause there’s a metric crapton of monsters to do all the collecting with and the evolving and if there was some sort of deranged, mad scientist monster breeding functionality somewhere down the line, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Do you have the strange and insatiable urge to match colored gems together? Cause that’s all you do. You match gems together to heal and to attack and whatnot. And when you set things up just right and all these gems are cascading and matching themselves as they fall and there’s little chiming sound effects and sparkly lights, it lights up the centers in your brain that goes nuts when you win something at a slot machine in a casino.

Do you like adding random strangers to your friends lists and then never talking to them at all but occasionally using their treasured pet to do battle for you and sometimes ‘stalk’ someone’s pet to keep an eye on how they’re taking care of their pet and maybe wondering why they changed out a stronger pet you liked them having to a weaker pet you totally want to snub them for?

…>.>”

That question can essentially be boiled down to “Do you use Facebook?”. Cause IF YOU DO, there’s some of that in this game too…I guess…kinda.

DO YOU LIKE TUGGING ON A DINOSAUR’S LITTLE FOREARM AND FEEDING THEM A BUNCH OF SHINY ROCKS SO THAT THEY SPIT OUT AN EGG AND IT TURNS OUT TO BE A SILVER EGG WITH A STAR ON IT AND YOU GET ALL EXCITED AND WHEN IT HATCHES IN A BIG SHINY ANIMATION YOU GET THESE BIG LETTERS GOING VERY RARE!!!! AND YOUR INNER CHILD DOES A LITTLE DANCE INSIDE YOUR HEAD?

…And then fuelled by the screaming voice inside your head, you frantically throw all the rest of your shiny rocks at the slot machine dinosaur and he just spits out a bunch of random junk pets that you already had and you get your hopes all dashed but you still want to throw more shiny rocks at him because MAYBE NEXT TIME, you’ll win the jackpot?

Man, if you’re into that stuff at all, let me tell you, this is totally the game for you.

I don’t have a problem.

Nope.

Not even a little bit.

Puzzle and Dragons is available for both the Android and iPhone so unlike MinoMonsters (which a certain authoress may or may not have told me to totally play and friend her, only for me to find out that it was iPhone only and crushed my little gaming heart), it can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of their cell phone allegiance!

…Except for maybe Blackberry.

…Do they even have an app store for Blackberry?

*strolls off to check*

No, they have an app store but no Puzzle and Dragons.

So anyone whose allegiance lies with iPhone or Android can join me in the downward spiral of addiction.

…I mean, join me in my happyfuntimes playing this wonderful game which I totally don’t regret downloading and don’t desperately want to stop playing.

*yanks on the golden dragons arm*

….Drat.

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Missing Pokemon? Meet Mino Monsters!

I was a huge fan of the original pokemon, but I haven’t been tempted by the bloated newer versions, especially since they’re all on platforms that I don’t own (and don’t want to buy).

I’ve also been scouring iTunes, looking for something that would at least come CLOSE to how much I enjoyed those old games.

My search has ended.

MinoMonsters is a fighting monster style game, where you hunt, collect, and level up adorable elemental monsters. The art style is fantastic, and the animations are smooth and fun to watch.

Here’s a cute trailer for the game that’s fun to watch and contains some of the monsters you get to train up.

I do wish they’d done a better job teaching the UI to the user, but some creative exploration found things like the “Home” area, where you can heal your monsters for free every 45 minutes.

You can currently use three monsters at a time (swapping between them during battle without extra cost) but if you buy OR have enough friends to come knock the chains off the box on your team screen, you can actually have a fourth!

If you play the game and like it, comment with your friend codes. I’ll knock off a chain, and maybe multiple commenters can get together and start knocking chains off!

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Thrift Shop Redux (Twice)

By now, most of you have probably heard the super-popular Thrift Shop by Macklemore. It’s worth a listen (it contains naughty words, so don’t blare it over your work speakers).

Here, I’ll link it for you, to make it easy.

So, pretty good, right? But wait, there’s more! The Postmodern Jukebox Band did a “vintage style” cover of the song, and I gotta tell you folks, it’s freaking awesome.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! (I know, right? How could it get better than that?)

I’m glad you asked, because I’m gonna tell you. French Electro Swing DJs Bart & Baker saw the cover and said to themselves, “Howsabout we make that a modern Electro Swing song?” And then they DID.

As Reddit so cleverly put it, “thus creating a “modern” remix of a “vintage” remake of a “modern” song.”

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[Perry] Pringles Books

We all have these moments.

…Well, for the sake of this post, I’m going to assume that we all have these moments and just continue on.

So you’ve read this absolutely amazing book or you’ve just finished an epic, 7 book, trumpets and heroic sacrifices fantasy epic masterpieceopus, right?

So you’ve finally reached the end and this mood settles over you.

You’re a little sad that it’s over. You feel a little bit lost, maybe feeling suddenly purpose-less.

It’s okay, I understand.

It happens to all of us.

But here’s the thing. We get to that point, after we’ve just broken off a long-term relationship we’ve been having with a book and we still feel like reading.

You don’t want to immediately jump into another long term relationship. That’s just badnewsbears for everyone all around. It’s bad for you because you’re definitely NOT ready for another commitment quite yet and it’s bad for the book you choose to try and tackle because, let’s be honest here, they deserve better from us to be the rebound book, you know?

So what do you do?

You pick up some Pringles books.

And no, I’m not talking about books about the origins and history of Pringles chips (though Tami has a joke to share about that topic *nudgenudge).

Do you know what the original slogan for Pringles was?

“Once you pop, you just can’t stop.”

To me, Pringles books are the ones I read in between the heavy hitters, the ones looking for me to get down on one knee and offer up a diamond ring by the time we get to chapter 2.

Pringles books are spontaneous and flirty. They’re okay with the lack of commitment and they just want to have a bit of fun.

Pringles books are those stories that you KNOW won’t blow your mind. They’re light-hearted, easy to read and they don’t ask much of you. They know that they won’t be the one you chase for the rest of your life and they’re okay with that, so long as they’re able to spend some time with you.

In short?

Pringles books are palate cleansers, the sort of FUN read that you go through to refresh yourself after a monster of a story.

Currently (at the time of writing this post), my Pringles books was the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. It’s not all that deep and the character interactions…kind of remind me of a daytime soap opera (in space!)? At the same time, it’s just this nice, easy on the brain-power, rollicking space adventure and that’s just what I needed after pushing through the book I was reading before.

But we all have them.

More importantly, we’ve all NEEDED them at one point or another.

So in recent memory, what sort of Pringles books have you gone through?

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Meditation For The Rest Of Us

“Meditation” conjures up images of monks in a secluded mountain monastery, cross-legged and intoning a haunting note.

Me? I meditate at my desk sometimes.

Meditation isn’t prayer, not in the traditional sense, anyway.

According to Wikipedia, Meditation is:

Meditation is a practice in which an individual trains the mind or induces a mode of consciousness, either to realize some benefit or as an end in itself.

Which is awfully fancy-schmancy, if’n you ask me.

When I mediate, I take deep breaths, close my eyes, and relax.

Sometimes, I count my breath. Breathe in (one…two…three…four), breathe out (one…two…three…four).

Sometimes, I daydream, often inserting myself into a particularly vivid world, or befriending wonderful characters from stories I’ve been exposed to recently.

This Reddit Thread has even more wonderful options, such as visualizing that you are a glass container filled with dark smoke. Every inbound breath adds white smoke, swirling through your body while exhaling dispels some of the darkness.

One person even imagines themselves breathing in all the hate in the world and neutralizing it with love, breathing out forgiveness.

It doesn’t have to take long. Sometimes, a few deep breaths will do. Other times, I can go for ten or even fifteen minutes before I feel truly relaxed.

The trick is to realize there isn’t a right way or a wrong way, and you’re not failing if your brain is scrambling around like a squirrel on a caffeine binge. Acknowledge the worries and grocery lists and to-do list and every other random thought your brain squirrel shoves at your consciousness, then let it slide away. For just a few minutes, those worries are unimportant. They’ll still be there for you when you’re done. You’re not shirking your duties or being a bad person.

You’re just sitting quietly, breathing.

And sometimes? That can make all the difference in the world.

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