K.L. Tremaine's Blog, page 4

Skate Plates!

I’m posting this on my blog to avoid text-dumping in a roller derby fresh meat group on Facebook. When I upgraded my roller skates at the beginning of this year, I did a lot of research on the subject of skate plates, which I’m going to post a text summary of here.

For those who are here from my literary posts and who may be unfamiliar with the term, the “plate” is the main mechanical part of a roller skate – it’s the metal or plastic part that runs along the bottom of the skate. To the plate are typically attached two trucks, which are an axle-and-spindle arrangement that allow the wheels to turn at an angle to the direction of travel. The whole arrangement resembles a simplified diagram of a car’s undercarriage.

Where I mention weight numbers, these are for my skates – a size 8 Riedell 495 boot.

Most of my links will be to FastGirlSkates.com – where links go to a different shop it’s because FGS doesn’t carry the plate in question. Regardless, I encourage you to shop local; if you have a roller derby pro shop in town (like Derby4All in St. Paul) support them first!

SUB-$100 PLATES:

First of all are the low-quality nylons – these are the Powerdyne Thrust (if you’ve got an entry-level Riedell skate, you’ve probably got these on it), Sure-Grip Probe (see above but substitute “Sure-Grip” for “Riedell”), and Pilot Viper. They’re not “bad” in the sense of being deficient – I skated on the Thrust for a session and nylon plates ARE more forgiving than aluminum for a complete newbie – but they all have the same flaws – they twist (seriously, I can grab my Thrust plate by the wheels while attached to my skate, and visibly twist it), and they’ll eventually break, especially if you’re a heavier skater. Any of these will at best be a sidegrade from what you’ve got right now.

The higher-quality nylon plates (the Pilot Eagle and Crazy Apollo) use either a stiffer plastic (Pilot) or fiberglass stiffeners (Crazy) to produce a plate with better torsional strength. A lot of blockers apparently also use the RC Sports Sunlite plate, which is a super-light nylon plate stiffened through use of a lattice construction down the plate. It’s designed to be used en masse by roller rinks so it’s probably a fairly tough plate – it needs to survive abuse by completely unskilled skaters after all. The Sunlite is also cheap; you can buy three Sunlites for the $140 cost of a Sure-Grip Avenger Aluminum.

SUB-$160 ALLOYS

The second-cheapest alloy plate I found regardless of material was the Sure-Grip Invader, the original 45-degree plate. This one’s the second-heaviest plate I found at 519 grams. The Invader is ok if you need a 45 degree plate and cost is your primary concern. Since cost is probably NOT going to be your primary concern, let’s leave this one in the mists of history and move on. I’ve noticed that with the exception of the PowerDyne/Grn Monster Arius, 45 degree plates are universally heavier than 10 degree, because they need a longer and stiffer (and therefore heavier) kingpin to resist cracking.

Another low-end alloy plate is the PowerDyne Triton, which is by far the heaviest plate I’ve seen at 559 grams. The Triton comes with a number of entry-level Riedell and Grn Mnstr skates. If you’re starting on this, literally anything you can change to will be lighter.

Just $10 more expensive is the Sure-Grip Avanti Aluminum – for $100-or-less, this one’s a champ. The Avanti is very light and stiff – it’s a 10 degree plate that uses the same box construction as the 45 degree Avenger (get to that in a moment). I haven’t skated on this but it’s very similar to the Avenger and presumably my comments about the Avenger will apply to it except where marked.

At $120-140, the Sure-Grip Avenger Aluminum is my current plate (with 7.75% Minnesota sales tax I paid just under $130, but your price may vary depending on what kind of deal your store can get with its distributor). The Avenger is light (I’m wearing a size 5 Avenger plate in a traditional mount, the Size 5 in aluminum comes in at 471 grams), fast and agile. The received wisdom is that a 45-degree truck is less stable but more maneuverable than a 10-degree one (experienced skaters that transition to the 45 call this “squirrely”); the lesson to be learned from this received wisdom is, work on your ankle strength and balance! There’s something to be said for this received wisdom; I can tell when I’m starting to get tired because my skate will start wobbling when I’m doing one-foot glides, but when I’m fresh or skating on both feet there’s no significant difference. From an appearance standpoint the starkly angular lines and slick black finish of the Avenger Aluminum are a serious winner.

Rounding out the sub-$160s (and I set the bar at $160 to include this) is the PowerDyne Rival. The Rival I did a fair amount of research on because it was, well, my rival to the Sure-Grip Avenger when I was necking down my choices. The Rival is a lovely plate – it’s not quite as inherently agile as the Avenger, but it’s certainly not a slouch, and like all aluminum plates it’s quite stiff and therefore translates much more of your stride into forward motion than a nylon. It’s also a very durable plate – it’s a touch heavier than the Avenger, but like the Avenger it’s made of fairly thick cast aluminum and it’ll take you beating the hell out of it for several years. I know many rollergirls who roll on the PowerDyne Rival – it’s a tough competition grade plate, and it’s just gorgeous with a powder-grey finish.

$180 AND UP:

At $190, Sure-Grip has the Avanti and Avenger again, this time in their trademark magnesium. Their magnesium plates are substantially lighter than anything else on the market, but mechanically the Avanti and Avenger in magnesium are identical to the same plates in aluminum, so my remarks on them earlier also apply to their more expensive variants. Tear O’Bite of the Nashville Roller Girls rolls on Avenger Magnesiums. Sure-Grip’s magnesium plates come in white and look really attractive next to the black aluminum Avenger.

I have a LOT less information on plates above $200 because I mostly ruled out skates above this price point early on in my information search, but here’s what I have.

For $200 we have a pair of plates with oddball kingpin angles: The 16 degree Pilot Falcon and 20 degree Crazy Venus (in anodized aluminum in a number of gorgeous colors for just $20 more). What little I’ve been able to find about these plates seems to suggest that they’re a modestly happy medium between the 10 degree and 45 degree plates, but I’d like to hear more from people who actually skate on them.

The $225 Roller Derby Elite ProOctane 7000 is an interesting one because for years and years, roller derby skaters have been warned away from skates and equipment manufactured by the Roller Derby company (which gets its name because it was founded by Leo Seltzer, who invented roller derby in the first place back in the 1930s), but their Elite line appears to be stepping up the quality to be equal to what Riedell, Sure-Grip, Bont, and other skate companies are offering. Time will tell.

The Pilot Falcon Plus at $250 is exactly what it says: A Falcon, plus – the plus in this case being the adjustable truck pivot pin.

At $300 is a plate that a lot of top-level skaters roll on: The PowerDyne Reactor Pro. It’s a very lightweight laser-cut aircraft aluminum plate, so I feel pretty confident in saying that if you buy this one it will last you a long, long time. The Reactor was developed to address problems with its predecessor, the Revenge, which was infamous for cracking and cost PowerDyne/Riedell a lot in terms of reputation for making top-level plates.

The most expensive plate that I’ve looked at is the $350 PowerDyne/Grn Mnstr Arius. As skate plates go you’re looking at the Lamborghini: Uncompromising top-level performance, for the price of a fairly good low-end bicycle.

The nice thing about skates is that even super-high-performance skates are still relatively cheap; you can buy a complete custom top-level skate with all the best parts for under $1200 (high-end bikes cost twice that much, easily), and that there are competition-grade options available at many price points. Now go out and build yourself some badass skates!

Jupiter Ascending: The movie we never knew we wanted

I’ve had Jupiter Ascending rolling over and over in my brain for the last 18 hours and my conclusion is this:

Damn if I didn’t know this at the time but this is exactly the kind of film we should be encouraging, not discouraging, our filmmakers to write. It’s a flawed – it’s got all kinds of wonderful ideas that it doesn’t give enough breathing space to – but ultimately redeeming story of how inheritances tear a family apart, told on the backdrop of an intergalactic mercantile empire run mostly by the sheer quantity of scenery Eddie Redmayne can chew without raising his voice above a whisper. Until he screams.

Mila Kunis spends entirely too much of her screen time like this, but it’s actually ok. © 2015 Warner Bros.

Spoilers are behind the cut.

I cannot personally do this movie justice. Lana Wachowski and her brother Andy have created an absolutely amazing fantasy world that is also completely tripping balls. The visuals are surreal and wonderful, with spaceships and mechs that feel simultaneously solid and airy, realistic and fantastical. The Wachowskis build a Rube Goldberg of a paperwork scene – a paperwork scene of all things – that manages to keep the screen time moving and demonstrate the prodigious bureaucratic depth of a universe where coming back from the dead can in fact happen, complete with an increasingly harried legal cyborg who eventually resorts to outright bribery to get his charge’s affairs in order.

The universe’s hidden horror is treated by its inhabitants as fundamentally reasonable, which makes it all the more horrible. The makers of Soylent Green probably wished they could have made their movie’s ending as disturbing as the scenes of blades and needles digging into the flesh of unconscious humans being processed into Regenex, the youth serum that drives the biomedical industry of this millions-of-years-old intergalactic empire.

Proving that Tropes Are Not Bad, if you’ve seen Star Wars, The Matrix, and Mass Effect, you can probably tick off all the plot points in this movie at least twenty minutes before they actually happen, but viewing them is actually a tremendous pleasure. And in how many movies does the heroine actually listen and respond right at the moment you’re about to shout at her to just kick the villain in the balls already!?

One of the things I appreciated about the movie is that Jupiter is not omnicompetent – she’s smart and brave, but Balem, Kalique, and Titus are thousands of years old each, and have had that long to learn how to lie to and manipulate everyone around them – they might feel a certain sympathetic attachment to their late mother, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to manipulate her reincarnation. Fortunately, Jupiter is a quick study.

And there’s magic science bees. BEES. That recognize her, somehow, as a noble.

If you love space opera, you should see this movie and appreciate it, warts and all, because it’s one of a tiny handful of really original sci-fi movies since the turn of the millennium. Science-fiction and especially space-opera worldbuilders need to see this film with pencil and notebook in hand.

 

We interrupt this lack of update to bring you a special announcement!

(warning: Skating nerdery incoming!)

I have my new skates. They’re Riedell 495 boots riding on a pair of Sure-Grip Avenger DA45 plates, with Vanilla Backspin wheels and Bones Reds bearings.

They look awesome and feel great. I am looking forward to these!

Photo taken at Augsburg College in the Lindell Library. :)

 

The design rules of the Veryverse

I’m working on a design document that’s going to help me with writing future Veryverse novels. It’s not quite a tech bible – though I’m working on that, and I’ll be offering it at some point – and it’s not quite a role-playing game – though I’m working on that, too.

The rule that seems the most on-point for today, the anniversary of the Challenger Disaster, though is this:

Space is utterly intolerant of incapacity, indolence and neglect.People who venture into the black without being fully prepared for its hazards never return.

First Page Friday

I’m also writing a biweekly LGBTQA column and reviews of Rat Queens at Twin Cities Geek. Check those out. Be sure to read the forums, too, if you’re a Minnesota based geek.

Behind the cut is the first page of my current rough draft.

Rollerskate Faeries Vs. Flying Saucer Mad Science

Chapter 1: The Betty Boomers

The night before it came from the sky, Magnetic Attacktion was at roller derby.

“Magnetic Attacktion’s your lead jammer!”

The wind shrieked in Magnetic Attacktion’s ears as she whipped around turn 4, legs crossing and uncrossing with deceptive slowness, wheels gliding on the ice-slick floor of a converted Minneapolis warehouse that the Mill City Derby Dolls called home. She wasn’t a speedster looking for every last bit of aerodynamic advantage, she was a cannonball bearing down on the opposing team’s wall. When “Maggie,” as her league-mates called her, got off her skates she became Tera Netic, a 34 year old grad student and library worker.

The scoreboard on the wall read 124-127, against her. It was all down to this final jam, and everything had gone well so far. Mina Menace (also known as Mina Miller) of the Crush Cuties was still struggling her way past the circled defensive wall of the Betty Boomers.

Mina broke free of her last blocker. Maggie bit hard on her mouthguard, hearing the ref whistle one of the Boomers’ blockers to the penalty box for breaking off late from Mina’s escape from the pack. Mina was too good a skater to risk a trip to the sin bin in the final jam of the game when her team was only up by three. Maggie pumped her legs hard and skated straight for a momentary hole in the Cuties’ defenses.

The hole closed up again, but not fast enough to contain the hurtling Magnetic Attacktion, and she skated through, seeing her scoring ref hold up four fingers. Mina put on a burst of speed as Maggie grinned, tapping her hips to end the jam. Barely coming around the last turn, 60 feet behind the pack, she turned and skidded to a stop.

State of the Kate: January 14th

So the first month of the new year is almost half over, and I’m starting my semester of screenwriting this week. I also have new plates on my roller skates, Sure-Grip Avengers in aluminum, which is a situation that fills me with glee.

Current writing projects:

Veronica Gray #1: Rough draft is being worked on, the complete manuscript is going to be done by March 1st.

Rollerskate Faeries vs. Flying Saucer Mad Scientists Chapter 1: “The Betty Boomers” is on track. Rough draft should be ready to hand over to my beta readers within the next couple of days and Chapter 2: “The Hidden Cloud Machine” will begin immediately thereafter.

Since the middle part of Pathfinder #69: Maiden, Mother, Crone is a complete mess, I’m busy rewriting it, so that’s an additional project on my writing pile that I wasn’t anticipating. If I’m confused and I’m the DM, my players are probably even more confused.

I’m polishing revisions on “Church of the Car” and “Secrets Which Should Remain Buried” for submission to, respectively, AWP and magazines. Also considering a rewrite of another of my short stories from the fall for conversion to a screenplay as my project for Screenwriting this semester, either “Blues on the Green Line” or “Last Witch’s Watch.”

I am also doing four monthly pieces for twincitiesgeek.com: An LGBTQA-related literature piece on the 7th, a review of Rat Queens on the 14th, a gaming-related piece on the 21st and another Rat Queens review on the 28th (the Rat Queens review on the 14th is only until I’m caught up to the current storyline, at which point I’ll replace it with something else). This month because the site only went live on the 10th, my Rat Queens review will be on the 15th, otherwise I intend to stick to that schedule, and I’ll make sure my TCG columns are reblogged on this blog.

State of the Kate

Happy 2015, everyone!

In 2015 I will be finishing 2-3 novel manuscripts (all of which are in various stages of completion already) and starting a couple more. I will also have a big serial fiction project coming soon, which will be announced in this space shortly.

On Saturday my first article for twincitiesgeek.com goes live – the working title is “Queer Off: The LGBT History of Oz Beyond the Rainbow.” I’ll be discussing the gender variance of Princess Ozma of Oz and her importance as a foundational figure in one of the earliest large fantasy universes in American speculative fiction, so stay with me!

Exciting times coming. I’m ready to write more and publish more this year!

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

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Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,200 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

You, dear readers, helped make my blog what it was in 2014, and there will be more exciting things to come in 2015.

In 2015 I resolve to

Continue getting fit
Get drafted to a roller derby league
Write a short story every week
Finish at least two of my novel manuscripts
Write at least one screenplay
In conjunction with the last point on my list, make at least one short film
Run a complete RPG campaign
Fight for a better world

I’m trying not to overreact to Leelah Alcorn’s death a fe...

I’m trying not to overreact to Leelah Alcorn’s death a few days ago.

It’s hard because at some point in my life I could have been her. So let’s work to build a world where trans kids don’t kill themselves anymore because their families don’t accept them.