Dude. Don’t get a Dell.

 

So disappointed right now. So I bought this laptop a couple months ago. Very cool machine. Beautiful toy. Big and powerful. No complaints in that respect. That being said: piece of junk. Piss-pool design, poorly manufactured, breaks down after a few  months of less than normal wear. The body is cheap, bendy plastic. I can push the bottom of the screen and it bends. The hinge that opens and closes the laptop seems to be designed to ensure that it will break outright after less than a year of regular use. The webcam lens is located precisely where you’re most likely to put your finger when you open the laptop.

Now there are dead spots in the touchscreen. There’s about a one-inch square towards the top of my screen where I have to put a lot of pressure behind my finger to make it register. Forget about a long press.

That’s the only functional problem so far, but the thing is going to break. I can feel it every time I touch it. This laptop is super cool, and it’s pretty powerful, but it was designed by a first-year art student with no background in engineering or mechanics. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this machine lasts the two years I need it for.

So disappointed. I’ll be overpaying for a Vaio next time. Touchscreen be damned. Or I’ll just live with my Android device. Unbelievably disappointed. I don’t know what else to say. Don’t buy a Dell laptop. Technically very cool, but physically they’re shitboxes. I just feel duped. Anybody else have any experience with Dell being shit? Or not? What about other laptops? Kerry has a refurbished Vaio and it’s awesome. I don’t know about HP, Toshiba or any of the smaller brands. I know my mom’s little bitty Acer isn’t too bad. Who’s got an opinion?

Sport or Not

Image via Wikipedia

Got this article from the Google. I shared and wrote a quick blurb about why gaming is not a sport.

Then I remembered all the other things that aren’t sports but most people think they are. So, here’s my list of rules for deciding whether or not something is a sport. This is similar to George Carlin’s list, but I feel mine is far more rational.

1. It has to be a game. Running is not a sport. Running is a mode of transport. Nascar, with it’s convoluted point system, could technically be considered a game. Boxing is not a game. Skiing is not a game. Gymnastics and figure skating are not games.

2. There must be a ball, or other similar focal object. Hockey, baseball, rugby, ultimate frisbee all qualify. Nacsar does not.

3. Scoring must be 100% objective. If there is room for debate as to whether something is worth a point, you’re not playing a sport. Anything with a “judge” as opposed to a “referee” is not a sport. A judge decides how many points you get for what you just did. A ref decides if you broke any rules while doing it.

4. Death must be a reasonable risk for a physically fit individual. If you can’t be killed as a direct result of participating in the game, it’s not a sport. Golf is hereby disqualified. No, Nascar is not back in. Heart attack as a result of physical stress does not count. You died because you pushed yourself too hard, not because you were running. If it cannot be said “he would have lived a long life, were it not for baseball,” the death scenario does not qualify the activity as a sport. A baseball to the head can kill a guy. A hockey skate in the throat can kill a guy. If walking to the next hole kills you, golf didn’t kill you: your fat ass did.

5. Armor. If armor is necessary to prevent physical injury or death, you can wear it and still be playing a sport. If it is not necessary and you wear it anyway, you are no longer playing a sport. Bye-bye football. Football is rugby for pussies. There’s no armor in rugby. Football is disqualified. It seems as though this rule is aimed directly at football, and it somewhat is. That being said, I never wear armor when I play football. I play it as a sport (but for rule 7). Hockey has armor because without it the sport would be a meat grinder on ice.

6. You must be an athlete to participate in a sport. A second disqualification for golf and Nascar, and one for curling. Bottom line: if a fat guy can win, it’s not a sport. I suppose that’s another disqualification for football as well. Fat guys win that all the time. Those guys could just as effectively be big, muscley Conans. Then they’d be athletes. But it’s way easier to be fat insntead. Disqualified.

7. No derivative of another game is a sport. Football is a pussy derivative of soccer and rugby. Softball is a pussy derivative of baseball (who’s rules and equipment are different enough from cricket to be considered a different game and not a derivative). Water polo is a wet derivative of… soccer? Basketball? If you want to play baseball, play f&*#ing baseball. Why is there no women’s baseball league? Because women can’t be good enough athletes to play baseball, so they need their own separate game that requires a little less hand-eye coordination and a lot less strength. Some uber-feminists say housewives devalue other women. I say it’s softball players. Here is a set of people who could certainly play baseball (a real sport). But they choose instead to do what is socially appropriate to their gender. Why don’t Americans play soccer and rugby? Because we’re all a bunch of pussies who are more concerned with our physical well-being than with having any real spectacle at the coliseum, so we need our own special sport in which nobody gets hurt and there is time in between things for commercial breaks. Why don’t muggles play quidditch? Well, because we can’t fly.

8. No method of combat or form of racing can ever be considered a sport, regardless of any other qualifications. Fencing is not a sport. Cycling is not a sport. Swimming, bobsled, skiing and shooting are not sports. Rugby is on the line.

If it breaks two or more of these rules, it is not a sport. If it only breaks one rule, I’m willing to discuss, unless it only breaks rule 7 or rule 8. Those are non-negotiable. Softball and fighting need to cease being legitimized with the label of “sport” and start being conceived of as barbaric (softball especially). I’m not above adding rule 9 to disqualify a specific activity. I’m tempted to make rules about specialized equipment and goal areas, but I don’t think they’re necessary.

I don’t mean to say that, because something is not a sport, there’s anything negative about it. It’s just that “sport” has become such a loose categorization that driving around in circles (or in a straight line) is something that most Americans consider a sport. You can be an athlete and not participate in a sport. But you cannot participate in a sport (with any degree of success) without being an athlete. Video games are not a sport, and the mere fact that someone would argue that they are is disgusting.

I mentioned quidditch above, and I will re-mention it here. Quidditch barely makes it as a sport, due to its ridiculous scoring scheme. The game goes on and on, with each goal worth a single point. When the snitch is caught, the team that catches it receives 150 points, making the whole rest of the game pretty much meaningless. Clearly, the strategy here is put your best man as the seeker and your two biggest as the beaters. The beaters should never leave the seeker’s side because he’s the only player that means anything. If he gets knocked off his broom, you lose. The rest of the team can be filled-in with whomever shows up for tryouts, because they don’t matter. It’s like the fat guys in football. They just need to be fat and be able to get in the way. Same with quidditch. You need to be able to ride a broom and stay out of the way, because you’re not scoring 151 points in the time it takes the seekers to catch the snitch. Quidditch is of course summarily disqualified for not being a sport that actual humans can play, but it comes close to disqualification due to general silliness.

I know somebody has a dissenting opinion. Let’s have it. Softball players, tell me how empowering it is to beat other women in a game that no man plays professionally.

Hope Anew: chapter 2

Okay. A quick intro. Here’s chapter two of what I have decided to call “hope anew.” A little cheesy, I know. But it serves the dual purpose of letting you know exactly what you’re reading with very little ambiguity and saying “maybe Star Wars doesn’t have to suck.” So, without further dudes, here’s draft one of part two:

A sound woke the young man. Something loud. A metal crash, then footsteps. The boy opened his eyes to barely a slit. Enough to see, but not enough to be detected if someone else was looking at him. The room was dark. He could just see the ocean out his bedroom window. There was nothing out there. Why should there be? The noise came from the corridor. He could see the soft green light spilling in beneath the door. Again, he heard the footsteps.

Not his father's footsteps. Not his mother's either. Certainly not the whir-clank of C-3PO. They stopped outside the door to his bedroom. The boy was only a little afraid. If there was someone in the house who wasn't supposed to be, the guards would not let them near his room. It was probably one of them out in the hallway. One of the guards had knocked over a wall hanging in the corridor and was trying to be quiet about cleaning it up. That must be it.

He closed his eyes and sank back into his bedding. He heard the door hiss open. This time he didn't bother opening his eyes. It was just the guard looking in on him. They all did that. They all loved his father, and by extension most of them were quite fond of the young master himself. Far from startling him further, the additional noise comforted the young prince. What he heard next did not comfort him.

“Luke.” A woman's stern voice, not his mother's, at the side of his bed. “Luke, I know you're awake and I know you can hear me.” Luke Organa opened his eyes. He started at the sight that met him. A woman knelt beside his bed. She was dressed in a black, sleeveless jumpsuit. Her hair was hidden under a cap. A little of it spilled out, and Luke was struck by its silvery color.

“Don't speak,” the woman said. Luke was inexplicably compelled to obey. “The guards are dead.” His eyes went suddenly wide. Luke would have gasped, but some indescribable force kept him from making a sound. “They have taken your father,” she continued. Luke's fear gave way to a compulsion to act. He found that he could not move. His face displayed his consternation. He was confused. What was happening?

“You need to come with me now. There's no time to talk. Just come along. Nod if you understand.” Luke nodded once. He trusted the young woman, though he could not explain why.

The woman walked to the window and looked down the face of the building. Luke's small apartment was on the third floor of the senator's mansion. It was not an especially long way down, but the boy might be injured. Injured, but not permanently damaged. The risk was acceptable. She held out her hand. Luke threw back the bedding and sprang up from the bed. His hand gently grasped her elbow.

This caught her off-guard for an instant. She had not been expecting this. Had not expected him. The Emperor had sent her to kidnap a boy. Here, she found a young man. It was nothing, but she was expecting a child, to be led around by the hand, not a youth who was going to want to help her kidnap him. That would not do. She slapped his hand, sensed his momentary shock, then his realization that this was not the moment for gallantry.

Delani waved him away from the window, then took a step back herself. From her utility belt, she removed a small molecular destabilizer. It wasn't powerful enough to injure a person, but it would certainly do a job on the window. She tossed it at the transparasteel pane. The device struck its target without a sound and fell to the ground outside, shattering upon impact. Moving swiftly, Delani stuck her head out the opening, checked the area below for any guardsmen she may have left alive. There were none.

The woman yanked her head back into the room. She turned quickly to the young prince, saying simply: “go.” Luke looked down to the ground below, and then looked at her. The trust he had somehow felt only a moment ago seemed now a little less automatic; a little less infinite. He was uncertain of whether or not to obey this woman.

“What do you mean, go?” She grabbed him by the arm and threw him against the wall beside the opening.

“Stay here or come with me,” she growled. “Decide now.” She didn't want to kill this boy, but she would if she couldn't get him to come with her. Luke threw her off of him, hesitated for half a moment before launching himself out the window. She followed directly after him. He had surprised Delani. She had underestimated him. That made her uncomfortable, and she resolved that it would not happen again.

As Luke followed her brisk jog through the courtyard, the absence of the house guards unsettled him. The mysterious woman had told him they were dead, but he hadn't realized that she meant all of them. Even then, where were the bodies? That wasn't important right now. At this moment, they needed to escape from whatever had killed them and had taken his father. Luke saw that the woman had already reached the front gate. He ran to catch up with her.

The gate had already been opened, presumably by the intruders that had killed the guards. They ran through it and turned left, heading West toward the landing field. From this distance, Luke could make out the silhouette of a lambda-class interstellar shuttle. He knew how to fly it. He had been taught to pilot all kinds of ships. His instructors had always complimented him on his abilities.

The closer the pair grew to the landing field, the clearer it became to Luke that the craft was not a Lambda-class, but an Imperial Landing Craft. This he also knew how to pilot, though he had never received instruction.

Once, when he was nine years old, Luke had snuck out to the landing field while a squadron of Imperial troopers was doing whatever Imperial troopers did. He had slipped unseen into the ship and studied the controls. When he noticed the troopers returning to their vessel, he stood at the bottom of the boarding ramp and saluted. As the small column marched past him up the ramp, they had turned their heads in his direction and returned the gesture. At the time, Luke had thought himself Emperor of the galaxy. Looking back on it now, he thought he understood. He was mistaken.

Pouring on speed, Luke thought to beat the woman to the craft, impressing her with his ability to pilot it. But as he gained speed, so did she. She stayed a constant distance in front of him and arrived at the boarding ramp first. As she took the first step up the ramp, two imperial troopers appeared in the doorway above.

Seeming to Luke to be startled, she leaped back, landing between the young man and the white-armored soldiers, their blaster rifles leveled at her. Delani took a moment to steady herself, and thrust her left hand at the troopers, palm forward, fingers clawed, then wrenched it back over her shoulder. The two men flew into the air and sailed across the landing field, back toward the house, landing thirty meters or so behind Luke.

The woman tossed a smirk over her shoulder at the young noble, then sprinted up the boarding ramp. Luke took half a moment to glance behind him at the stormtroopers crumpled on the ground behind him. He allowed himself a smile of surprise as he ran up the ramp after his rescuer.

“Strap in,” she called over her shoulder as she sat down in the pilot's chair. He sat in the co-pilot seat beside her and started the launch sequence. Delani was again surprised by the young man. She sensed what he was doing, sensed that he was doing it properly, and set about the task of setting the astrogation circuit.

“My name is Delani Rowan,” the woman said to her young co-pilot, as the shuttle left the ground and sped away from the landing field. “You're Luke Organa. I'm here to rescue you.”

So here’s the deal. Star Wars was such a rip off of Dune that Frank Herbert didn’t want to make a movie any more because he didn’t think anybody would be interested in seeing the same story told again in a slightly different setting. Luke Skywalker was meant to play the part of Paul Atreides, at which he failed miserably (see earlier post). So I’ve decided to make Luke Organa the same person (or at least as close as I can reasonably come) as Paul Atreides, at least initially. At least in spirit. Most of what we see of Paul is later in his life, and by that time Luke will be a different person, but young Luke and young Paul will be basically the same guy.

He’ll grow up differently of course, but to start out we’re dealing with the same pampered son of an important noble. He’s had flight training. He’s had self-defense training. He has a basic understanding of military strategy. He’s being groomed for a command position. Not, in this instance, to follow in his father’s footsteps. Lucas made that mistake with Leia. She was a senator in her own right and it never made any sense, nor had any bearing on the story. Current senator’s children don’t get elected to serve in the same office at the same time.

Getting back to the story: I had initially put in a bit where Luke thought he was being rescued by Winter, who was his nanny when he was small. A reference to the character in the Thrawn Trilogy who played the same role for Leia. I thought it made sense. Delani did the equivalent of Doctor Who’s psychic paper trick, and Luke saw what he needed to see: someone he would trust unconditionally, if only for the brief amount of time it took him to realize that it wasn’t really her. It was a nod to a character that I enjoyed and told the reader that this is a woman who knows how to manipulate people, but didn’t yet come right out and say “force-user.”

Kerry thought it was clumsy and didn’t add anything to the story and felt like I was just trying to pack in too much nostalgia for no good reason. She was of course right, so I took it out. I only just now went through and cleaned it up properly. There were still references to Winter in the version that i sent to anyone before today (lookin’ at you mom(s)).

I said I was going to call them stormtroopers just this once, but I didn’t. I restrained myself. If it was unclear at any point that I was talking about dudes in white armor with door-frame attractant sprayed across their foreheads, I will fix it.

Paul C: As I re-read this, I still feel like there’s that staccato you mentioned before. I don’t think it’s as pronounced as before (I’ve been through this bit since then), but it’s definitely still there. I maintain that it’s just the way I write. I wrote a lot of bad poetry in the time before time, and paid a lot of attention to meter (the only hard and fast rule of poetry, in my opinion). So I guess it’s just kind of ingrained in my style, even though I’m consciously not writing verse.

But, like I said before, I’m not writing this for me to read. I’m writing it for an audience, of which you are a member. If the staccato(ness?) makes you not want to read any more, I should definitely change it. I’m not Cormac McCarthy.

Thanks for the Feedback

I do really appreciate the mechanical comments, but what I really want is story comments. Do you believe this? Do you believe the characters and the setting? Am I making real people here, or just place holder characters? Most importantly: does this feel too much like Star Wars? I really want to distance myself from that as much as is reasonable.

I tried really hard in the first bit to toss all the old Star Wars jargon out the window but keep it at the same time. I still called it a droid, but I also called it a mech and a robot (totally unprecedented in the context of Star Wars). I called it a lightsaber, but I also called it what it is: a sword.

I just feel like Star Wars has always been about setting and buzzwords that suck you in and make you go "oooooooooo!!! What's a "lightsaber?!" I want to distract from that with an honest-to-god good story, and if I keep saying "Droid," people are going to expect Anthony Daniels, when in reality C-3PO and R2-D2 never behaved like the robots that they ought to be.

I just want to say "look, this is obviously Star Wars, but it's not the same Star Wars you're familiar with. It will be a lot easier for you to accept that if I don't keep reminding you of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher by saying things like lightsaber and stormtrooper." And I will say those things, because everybody knows what a stormtrooper is. But that's not their name anymore. Now their "Imperial soldiers," or the derogatory "plasticmen." Naming them "stormtroopers" is like naming the Navy SEALS "death divers."

Yeah. They're Navy guys who are very good at killing people. But it's a bad idea to give your own forces ominous, scary names. I get that the Empire is a rule-by-fear organization, but calling your men on the ground "stormtroopers" makes everybody hate them as much as they fear you. These aren't policemen. They're not soldiers. They're stormtroopers. These are the guys we send in when regular army just won't get the job done without all getting killed. And now we're using them as law enforcement too. No wonder there's a rebellion every Thursday. bottom line: you can't name your cops "stormtroopers."

You can have guys called "stormtroopers," but they're not the bulk of your army. They're the three squads of commandoes that nobody is supposed to know about, but everybody does. Because it IS a good idea for the people that you want to fear you to have someone other than you to evince that fear. When somebody hears "stormtrooper" they don't think "the guys from the local garrison." They think: "Stormtroopers? Here? Pack it up. We're moving to the next continent." Because nobody wants to be on the same landmass as Darth Vader's hand-picked squad of super-soldiers except the whores and the guy who runs the ammo shop.

Droids aren't named "droids" anymore because, to be perfectly honest, most of them aren't. Droid is short for android, which denotes a machine in the shape of a man. R2-D2 doesn't fit that bill. Neither do almost all of the other robots seen in the Star Wars movies that aren't C-3PO.

So in this first bit I called it a droid. Well, I'll be calling them "stormtroopers" once as well. But only once, the first time I introduce one, so that everybody knows I'm talking about the guys in white plasteel armor with funny helmets and blaster rifles who bump their heads on doors all the time. After that first scene, they'll always be "imperial soldiers" or "imperial troops" or "troopers."

I don't know if we'll have stormtroopers. Now I kinda like the idea, but I've already got the story pretty well fleshed out (wait until you see my Death Star) and haven't decided if I want to add another mechanism. So, as I post more of the story, please, continue with the grammarictionarisms. I need to know where I need to improve my writing. But what I really, really want to know is: do you believe this and does it feel too much like Star Wars?

More Star Wars

Some of you will remember, a while back I did a post about rebooting Star Wars. I cast Jason Statham as Han Solo and Jude Law as C-3PO (both of which I stand by, for the moment. Although I’ve been watching a lot of TNG lately, and that Brent Spiner does an excellent android. When the script allows), and kind of re-thought the characters a bit.

Well, I had a writing fit today, and here’s what came out. Here’s Ewan McGregor and Hayden Panetierre (I realize she’s too old now, but she was young enough in Heroes 1. Anyway, she’s not really who I imagine, but she’s the only person I can think of who’s anything like close). Enjoy:

 

One day. Just one day. She'd been in possession of that damned eccentric lump of scrap metal for one blasted day, and now (mostly due to her own negligence), it had run off. She supposed it could be worse. It could have been stolen outright. In regards to where she knew it had gone, it may as well have been. When a little trashcan-shaped robot wanders into the Jundland Wastes, it's going to get nabbed by Tuskens. It had happened before, but this would be the last time. She would see to that.

This would be the last time one of her mechs "wandered off" into the dessert and was "found" by those filthy Sandies. The absolute nerve of those people. She was furious. It's not like she didn't know where to find them. It wasn't so much the theft itself that bothered her (though the resultant lectures and shouting matches with her uncle did) as the brazenness of it. They knew she could find them, knew that she knew they had taken the little bot. And they knew her. While they could be violent, it was hardly ever that the Sandies set upon someone for little or no reason.

She was already going to catch hell from her uncle over the little thing missing it's first day's work, and for chasing after it on her own. Damned if she was going to let this happen ever again. It was time someone stood up to those thieving man-creatures, and Leia Skywalker would be the one to do it.

In her fury, she had lost herself. Glancing down at her dunerunner's dusty instrument panel, she noticed that she was just a kilometer out from the Tuskens' camp.

She had her lightsaber (properly her father's lightsaber, given to her by Ben Kenobi a year ago, when they had first met) hooked to her right hip and her blaster pistol strapped to her left. Being a Tatooine farm girl of seventeen, she had plenty of experience with the blaster and didn't doubt her ability to wield it in battle (though she had never done before). The blade, Ben had taught her. He had been reluctant at first, but she had eventually worn the old man down until he finally relented. Leia had every confidence that she would leave a smoking pile of sand people bits in the camp when she left.

As her dunespeeder hovered nearer the camp, the Tuskens took notice. There was no alarm. They recognized her vehicle and knew her well. They had no reason to expect anything but the usual whining child that had visited them so many times in the past, insisting (rightly) that they had stolen some piece of her uncle's property and demanding it's return. Sometimes they had complied, but usually not. She was, after all, just a child.

"Not anymore," Leia whispered to herself. After today, when Sandies saw her beat-up old dunespeeder on the horizon, they wouldn't laugh. After today, they would be afraid.

She pulled into the middle of the camp. It was early in the day. The second sun was just over the horizon and several of the creatures were tending a dying fire, no doubt cooking breakfast for the rest of the camp. Several of them were milling about, busying themselves with various tasks. Some (but not many) were just awaking, emerging from their little tents. Many of the sand people noticed her. One of them (one of the ones she had dealt with before) waved to her and called out a decidedly disparaging greeting. She couldn't speak their grunting gargle language, but she understood enough to know when she was being taunted.

She slammed the controls out of alignment, tossed her goggled sun hat into the storage bin beside her and launched herself over the side of the vehicle. She stood at least two heads shorter than the shortest of the Sandies and had been afraid of them (largely for just that reason) for as long as she (or they) could remember. But not today.

The one who had waved at Leia continued to call out and beckon her, amused at her arrival. He stood about forty meters from where she stood. Hand at her belt, she stalked toward him, as her dunespeeder fluttered noisily to the ground. Her slitted eyes and slightly downturned mouth spelled death. By now, several of the other Tuskens were watching the little farm girl approach her antagonist.

She stopped twenty meters from him, working herself up. She began to breathe heavy as the dessert creature continued to crow away at her. Her eyes narrowed further, her hands balled into fists. She committed herself. This has to be done. These parasites can't keep leeching off the farmers. It's not right. Someone has to stop them.

Leia quieted her mind, entering the battle state that Ben had taught her. Time slowed. She became less aware of the fact that her visual world was made up of colliding colors and more aware of the movement of the colors. Here, a spot of red fluttered in the harsh dessert wind. There, a stroke of brown walked out of her line of sight. In this state of other awareness, she always took a moment, not only to adjust to the different rate of time, but also to marvel at her own ability to make it happen. In that briefest of moments, Leia Skywalker blinked and allowed herself a slight grin at the thought of her own magnificence.

She opened her eyes, re-acquiring her target. He was still standing there, in almost the same position he had been before she had taken that brief moment of revelry. Drawing the sword from her belt and activating it, she advanced quickly toward him. She saw the raider's eyes. She saw them grow instantly wide, even as his mocking gesture was only half-finished. Then, just as she was upon him, Leia saw his eyes flicker to her left. Time resumed it's normal course as her blade struck. And froze, seemingly in mid-air.

Unable to mask her shock, the girl let out a cry. The tall man she had intended to strike fell backward and scrabbled away. Her blade hummed and crackled in the air. It took a moment for enough of her rage and shock to drain away before she realized what exactly had happened.

In the instant after she saw her prey's eyes flick away from her, another shimmering energy blade had thrust itself in front of hers. She whipped her head up and saw a grey-haired, almost old man, dressed in the sandy brown tunic common on Tatooine and a darker brown, heavy, hooded cloak. His eyes blazed with, not rage, but anger. The man swung his blade up in front of her, creating a space for his body to step into. She took half a step backwards, more surprised than perturbed, assuming a low guard. They faced each other, matching blue blades of light whirring in the swirling sand.

"Ben?" She almost didn't believe it. How did he get here so quickly? How did he know to get here at all? "But..." She stammered, dropping her guard.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, his morning thoroughly spoiled, glared down the blade of his lightsaber at the girl. "Skywalker," he growled her name. Her father's name. To the old master, all of this was too familiar. He had felt her, in the Force, an hour ago. He knew it was her, not because he had felt her presence before, but because his first instinct was that he was dreaming. Dreaming of the day Anakin Skywalker had butchered a camp full of Tuskens: men, women and children. Even across star systems, he had felt that Skywalker's anguish clearly.

Now, with no worlds between them, he had felt her rage instantly and, as soon as he realized that he was indeed awake, had immediately despaired. He had jumped on the repulsor bike Leia had left at his home (to keep it hidden from her uncle) and sped off in the direction of the disturbance. As he approached the Tusken camp, Obi-Wan had seen her jump out of her vehicle, had seen the tall man-beast taunting her, and willed the bike to go faster. It obliged.

Just as Obi-Wan felt young Leia enter the battle trance, he leapt from the bike, its momentum carrying him nearly the full distance. Just as she swung her weapon downward, he took a single step and thrust his own blade in front of it.

Now they stood, teacher and student (he had never considered Leia his apprentice), facing each other with weapons drawn. For a moment, they just stared at each other. For that long moment, Obi-Wan could feel the rage building in her again. Once again, he felt despair.

With a scream that would curdle the blood of a Krayt Dragon, the young Skywalker rushed at her teacher with a swinging blade. His despair subsided as he easily deflected her wild attack. While she was skilled with the weapon, Leia was attacking him, not with the lightsaber, but with her rage. He could outlast that. He could probably do it without injuring her, though he was prepared to kill her if it became necessary. He wouldn't repeat the same mistake he had made with Anakin: he had allowed that Skywalker to live.

The duel (if it is fair to call it that) lasted the better part of a half-hour. They traded blows, back and forth, Leia attacking furiously out of anger, Obi-Wan intentionally bashing against her guard to tire her.

"Enough of this," Leia muttered to herself. She no longer saw Ben Kenobi, her friend and teacher. She only saw the man with the other lightsaber, standing in her way. She paused for a moment, focusing herself. She made a wild, feinting swing followed by a forceful lunge.

The old man easily saw it coming. raising his sword above his head, he stepped back from her swing, spun away from her lunge, continued to whirl in a full circle. He closed his eyes as he brought his weapon down on the girl's hand to sever it from her arm, and shoved his leg sternly into her mid-section.

He heard her shriek in pain for an instant before his knee slammed the breath from her, heard her weapon sputter to its death, heard her strike the hard sand a meter or two away. With a rising sadness, the old man sensed that the fight was almost over. Almost.

Almost before she even knew she had pulled the trigger, his blade returned her blaster bolt to her left ear. Unable to scream properly, the wind still knocked out of her, she made a hideous retching sound as she writhed on the ground. Moments later, she was back on her feet, coughing, but in a perfect shooting stance (perfect for someone who's shooting at small animals, but less perfect for someone at whom others are pointing their blasters), still pointing her gun at him.

"You... Missed," she managed, between labored breaths.

"Do you believe that?" For half a moment, she looked crestfallen (in addition to looking breathless and bloody), as she realized he hadn't. That he hadn't meant to kill her. He had only meant to dissuade her from continuing the battle. He decided at that moment that the next shot would end her life.

"Leia," he growled at the child. "Have I taught you nothing?" She grimaced briefly, obviously confused.

"You said . . . Jedi . . . guardians of . . . peace . . . And . . . lightsaber . . . weapon of . . ."

"OF JUSTICE!!!" he shouted at the very summit of his lungs, cutting her off as he whirled around to face her. "Not revenge!"

Only now did Obi-Wan realize that he had not injured her. Hadn't removed her hand, at any rate. Half of her father's lightsaber lay, sliced clean, on the ground at his feet. The other half lay covered in blood at hers. Only now did he sense the wheels in her head finally beginning to turn for the first time since his arrival. Her face said she was momentarily disarmed. He turned away. He could make the kill. She was worn out. He could have his blade in her before she could blink. But he sensed something else.

Rather, it was what he did not sense that gave him pause. When he had felt Anakin's rage when he had butchered the sand people, and again when they had battled on Mustafar, there was something else. An additional component that he was only now able to recognize as an addition to rage, rather than a part of it. He was still not sure he could identify it, but it gave him the mildest hope that perhaps this Skywalker was not yet beyond salvation.

Just as he had made the decision not to kill her, his hand was forced.

"Ben . . ." she managed to whimper. He felt Leia's left foot lurch forward, felt the blaster jolt in her hand behind him. Eyes closed in resignation, with only the merest of thoughts, with no conscious effort, he twitched his blade behind his back to deflect the bolt of light. His eyes flashed open.

He spun around swiftly, in shock. The girl still stood, heavy blaster shaking in her small hand, the consternation on her face replaced by an absolute horror. She had not fired. She had only stumbled. But she had seen the flick of his weapon, and knew what it meant. Knew what would have happened, had her finger twitched a hair more than it had.

In half an instant, Obi-Wan extinguished his blade and returned it to his belt. Before Leia's eyes could process that his weapon had been deactivated, hers was sailing through the air thirty meters away, swatted from her hand by Ben's use of Force, and he was upon her, wrapping her in the heavy brown cloak he had dropped during the fight.

Part of Obi-Wan was still used to space. Even after seventeen years of life on this scorched dessert world, part of his mind still ran to dead space and cold Coruscant. He knew that, in a cold environment such as a starship, if someone's ear was burned off, body heat would rush out of the wound. If the injured was also sweating profusely from half an hour of single combat, keeping them from getting cold was supremely important.

"Ben," she croaked again, once he had lifted her into his arms. "I'm sorry." There it was. That was the missing component to her rage. Leia was capable of remorse. Anakin had slaughtered younglings and butchered Tusken Raiders because he thought it was right. It may be that he found these things hard to do, but he felt no shame in doing them. Leia's intended rampage had no such conception of righteousness. She knew she had done wrong, and she was sorry. She was genuinely sorry. Ben considered his response to the child's heartfelt regret.

"We'll talk about that later," he decided to say. "Right now, let's see about that little robot."

Please comments.

 

 

Star Wars rant

Image via Wikipedia

I’m posting this first so you read it second. Read the post just after (above) this one before you read this one.

Now back to our regularly scheduled font. So first I sat down and wrote a whole ton about how I would change the characters. Somewhere in the middle of that, it occurred to me to swap Luke and Leia. Luke always was a whiney little girl, and in general no fun as a character. No inner conflict, no hard decisions. He was such a little girl, that in Return of the Jedi, when we’re presented with Mark Hamill playing a grown man, we say “bullshit.” Young Luke was such a little b*#$% that you can’t fathom that he could ever grow up. So when he does, it just feels contrived.

Also, Leia was always made out to be a powerful person but never really was one. She was fairly unimportant to the story. She’s just the damsel in distress who in two scenes, while the hero’s busy doing manly saving-the-day things, grabs the hero’s gun and takes a few shots. She’s the character that makes the movie longer because there’s got to be something for her to do. But you tend not to notice that because every other character acts like she’s important and useful. I say make them stop acting like that, but make her important and useful.

Best way to fix both of those problems: Send Luke to grow up as a senator’s son and send Leia to be a Tatooine farm girl. Now Luke isn’t a little girl so much as he is a pampered rich boy and Leia’s not useless because she’s got Luke’s part in the story. Also, she doesn’t have all that conditioning to dampen her angry streak early in her life. That makes the whole thing so much more interesting. Does that mean Leia rescues Luke from the Death Star? Maybe. Does it mean she flies an X-Wing and blows up the Death Star? Maybe. Does it mean that now Luke is completely useless? No, because Luke’s not a girl (at least not in any biological sense). At the very least, he gets killed, making him a meaningful plot element. Does it mean Han falls in love with Luke?

*pause*

No. No it doesn’t. I think one uncomfortable relationship is enough for any good story. At most, there will be the hefty bromance that was always hinted at (but never actually illustrated) in the original trilogy.

That being said, I’ve got half a mind to get rid of the Luke-Leia awkwardness. It just doesn’t make any sense. How does Obi-Wan take Luke (or in this case Leia) to the Death Star to rescue his sister and not tell him she’s his sister? Bad planning, that’s how. Craftless writers. When Luke rescued Leia from the Death Star, she wasn’t his sister. Not until Lucas let it slip to Carrie Fisher (if I have my story straight) during filming of ESB was Leia Luke’s sister. And how are both of his children in the same place at the same time ten feet away from him and Darth Vader still thinks they’re dead? Meeting one kid, maybe:

“Hey. You look an awful lot like some chick I knew about seventeen years ago. Isn’t that a coincidence? That must be why I feel like there’s a tremor in the Force. Because you remind me of her.” Fine. Fine. But when you feel the same tremor in the Force board your space station, and you know the princess is already on it, you’ve got to know something’s up. When you further discover that that kid that blew up your space station has the same last name as you (and nobody ever thought to change it), then you’ve got to sit down and say “wait a minute. He’s got my name and I feel this tremor in the Force. I feel the same thing when that girl WHO SURE LOOKS A LOT LIKE PADME AND WAS CONVENIENTLY BORN THE SAME DAY SHE DIED is around. There’s gotta be something going on there.” But no. Vader NEVER figures it out. He accidentally discovers that he has a daughter when he catches Luke thinking about her. BUT HE NEVER KNOWS WHO SHE IS!!! Come on. That’s a “villain” no well-organized rebel alliance needs to worry about.

Just full of holes. Bad, bad writing.

Also, how about Darth Vader? Evil, scary dude. But then we find out he’s not really “evil” per se. He’s more “misguided.” But if that’s the case, what’s all this nonsense about blowing up planets and enslaving entire races? Neither of those is really a grey area. Both pretty evil. My solution to that is simply this: know where the story’s going from the beginning. A New Hope was clearly meant to be a one-off. There was no “saga” until Empire Strikes Back, and there was no “Episode 1” until well after Return of the Jedi. If Darth Vader is a dude who thinks he’s doing the right thing but clearly isn’t, make him relatable. The bad guys who are easiest to hate are the ones who fall into a grey area. Gaius Baltar comes immediately to mind. Totally human, totally believable, and totally hated upon.

That being said, Darth Vader isn’t supposed to be Gaius Baltar. He’s supposed to be Darth Vader. But now (right now) when I watch A New Hope, I find myself thinking: where’s the Human Being I saw in Revenge of the Sith who would have some moral qualms about this? He would absolutely blow up a planet to enforce peace. But he would be conflicted about it. And he would totally give his children to the Emperor. But he might (might) hate himself for it. I mean, the way he is, Darth Vader (in the original trilogy) isn’t even a villain. He’s just a bad guy. Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith is a villain. He’s real. He’s believable. There’s something interesting about him. He’s not just the bad guy.

In New Star Wars, Han Solo also thinks he’s smooth less and is smooth more. If there’s one thing Han Solo wishes he was, it’s slick. Don’t get me wrong. He has his moments. Not many, but he does have them. “I know,” is one of them. “Scoundrel? I like the sound of that,” is not. In short, Han Solo needs to be more James Bond and less Jack Sparrow. Not a lot more James Bond. He just needs to be as cool as he thinks he is.

R2-D2 needs to be a lot less Tweeky and a tiny bit more Dalek. Far, far less “beedy-beedy” (R2 was a huge helping of “beedy-beedy”) and a little more “exterminate.” Not a lot of “exterminate.” Just not so comical. C-3PO is plenty of comedy for any robot duo.

And one more note. Just how powerful is this “Force” thing anyway? Can I read people’s minds or not? If I can, then Vader should know that Luke is his son as soon as he sees him on the Death Star. Not because Luke knows who his father is (which he does, by the way), but because Luke name is Skywalker. And if I can’t, then Vader can’t know that Luke has a sister, because he only finds that out when Luke is thinking about her (God knows why) when they’re dueling on Death Star 2.

And can I have telekinesis or can I not? If I can’t, then re-write the entire saga, because telekinesis is used very prominently in several scenes in every single film. If I can then why do I ever need to do any such thing as throw a rock (or was it a skull?) at a button across the room when I could just use my telekinesis to push the button? For that matter, what am I doing in this Rancor pit in the first place? Don’t I have superhuman reflexes? When the floor falls out from under me, I just grab the edge and throw myself back up into the room. JUST LIKE LUKE DOES TEN MINUTES LATER AT THE SARLACC PIT. So many inconsistencies.

It has been my opinion (until about an hour ago) that George Lucas used to be a good writer. Now I understand how wrong I was. There were people that wrote the story for the original Star Wars trilogy who were good writers. Lucas was able to take the story that they whispered in his ear and make it look good. Wherever he did any actual writing, we get crap. But that’s not entirely true, as I think he may have actually written the first one himself. But he certainly had Joseph Campbell whispering in his ear for ESB and RotJ.

Superman never looked this good

So Steam was having a sale last week. Just Cause and Batman: Arkham Asylum were 22 bucks for both. Everybody’s been saying how great Arkham Asylum is, and Just Cause looked like fun. So I bought them.

I had “played” the demo of B:AA a few months ago, but couldn’t make it work with my gamepad. I recognized this as a design flaw and decided (at the time) against buying the game. But now I remembered that .ini files are easy to hack and I should be able to make the controls do what I want.

Woe.

Remember in Conan the Barbarian, when the adult Conan first meets up with Thulsa Doom (played by the illustrious James Earl Jones) and gets into a discussion about “the riddle of steel?” The last thing Doom says to Conan is “contemplate this on the tree of woe.” I just kept hearing that line over and over in my head as I was hacking away at the config files for this game.

I have a gamepad that looks like this:

It’s just like a playstation 2 controller. In fact, that’s why I initially bought it: so I could run a PS2 emulator on my PC. Every once in a while, a game doesn’t like it. Invariably, it’s a game that was first released on the XBox 360 and works perfectly if you just buy an xbox for windows controller, which looks like it’s exactly the same thing (but pointedly is not):

So it is with Batman: Arkham Asylum. So, after much googling and searching of forums and sitting through the game’s splash screens to play it for two seconds at a time, I finally came upon the solution.

Wow.

Batman has never looked this good. I’m a little bit upset (as I always am) that the game utilizes proprietary NVidia technology, so I can’t really crank up the graphics because I have an ATI video card. But I can’t imagine how it could look any better. Here’s what I’m talking about (all screenshots taken by me):

Batman sits in the Batcave

The Dark Knight surveys the city

The Caped Crusader communicates with Oracle

Beautiful. And the game is good. It’s really damn good. The controls (once fixed) are tight, the voice-acting borders on awesome, the story is interesting, the sound effects are good and the combat is fun and simple without feeling repetitive (although it really is). Also, the game manages to be beautiful without eating up all my more than adequate system resources (it’s a family thing. My dad had a lot of system resources too). And of course it wouldn’t be Batman without gadgets. Batarangs, grappling hooks, forensic detection vision mode, spray-adhesive explosive, parachute-cape. What else does a Batman need?

I’ll tell you what else a Batman needs. He needs prey, and Arkham has plenty. The story centers on the Joker’s escape from captivity. While chasing the clown through the asylum, Batman encounters all of his favorite nemises (nemisises?). Bane, Killer Croc and Harley Quinn are the three that I’ve encountered in the first couple hours of the game.

Not only is the game fun and cool in itself, there are also references to Arkham’s origins in the HP Lovecraft mythology. To put it simply, the place is spooky. But then, so is the Batman.

I have only two complaints about the game, and they are minor. First and most aggravating is the fact that I have a gamepad with two analog joysticks. That being said, I need to push a button to make Batman run. If I push the stick a little bit, he walks lazily to the bathroom. If I push the stick to its extreme, he walks briskly down the street. I need to push the stick and push a button to make him run.

Second: when Batman is walking or standing around (so basically when there’s nothing going on), the view looks like the last two images up above. Batman is all the way to the left side of the screen. Cinematically, awesome. Control-ishly, nightmare. You can, however, swing the camera around to whatever angle you like, making this game vastly superior to many console ports to PC.

All in all, a pretty great game. Play it. Two thumbs up. Eight out of ten (only Blizzard gets ten out of ten). If you like Batman, or you like beating up the criminally insane, or you like creeping around sanitariums at night, this game is for you.

PS Zemanta just recommended images from my own Flikr stream. Win.