Writing: Some Poetry

Been a while since I've posted anything up here, but today I got struck randomly with an idea for a free form poem, and wrote it in the warm, lazy hours of the afternoon. I used to write a lot of poetry back in the day, but have been off of it for several years (with one exception). Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with this one. I named this "Part One" because at some point I want to write one about the beauty of silence (this one is about its terror).

Silence, Part One

In the rift between the silence of your words

The blasting roar of ocean waves

Fills the gap between the stillness of your voice

With the pealing of a thunderous night

I ache to flee the booming madness

Of the breach between the quiet of your words

To find the light serenity,

Nuzzled in the comfort of your voice

Art: Steampunk Gentleman

Picture of my friend Nate as a Steampunk Gentleman.

Art: Steampunk Inventor

Yesterday I did this drawing of my friend Joshua Pelton in Adobe Illustrator

Oh, and by the way, converting from Vector without loosing crazy resolution is way too difficult.

Art: Shopping Some Aliens

So, over the weekend I decided to dust of the old Photoshop and do my interpretation of what Tali'Zorah from the Mass Effect universe would look like with her mask off. Most interpretations I've seen of her have looked like Night Elves from World of Warcraft, and I wasn't happy with them.

First, this is Tali as she appears in the game:

Then, here is my interpretations of her. I initially made the versions of her with the hood up and the hood down with hair, but a lot of people haven't liked the hood down one, so I also made the third without hair by removing the hair layer.

In order to make the image, I took photographs from 4 different faces (including Liz Sroka, the voice actress for Tali) and combined them together. I then did some liquification (mainly to the ear), and finally used baboon cheeks and polar bear fur to add on the blue patches and hair.

Life: Dang Furries

I recently finished my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2. I’ve long been a fan of Bioware (almost every single one of their games is on my “favorites of all time” list) and the Mass Effect series is one of their best. Anyway, among the companions available in the Mass Effect games is an alien girl by the name of Tali’Zorah, she’s one of my favorite characters in both games, I was glad she was a romance option in the second game (I won’t lie, I shipped for Tali in game). But this… this is just creepy…

…really, really creepy.

From the official Mass Effect 2 forums Tali Fan Thread:

We often speak of Tali and our fan enthusiasm towards her as though it

were a sect; the truth may not be too far off that description. Stated

in short, concise terms: We've become a movement. Each day the

self-declared "Talimancers" return, many of us familiar faces and some

new. Our exuberance and devotion to this place does not appear to be

dimming as the days go by - quite the contrary. And it is not because

of this place. No, it's because of what has been unleashed by the

creation of Tali'Zorah vas Normandy as a character. I trust we are all

painfully aware that she is not a living, breathing entity as we have

come to understand such. She has become an ideal; her spirit has

awakened something that has lain dormant deep inside many of us - each

of us either secretly aware that we craved something or perhaps going

through our daily routines unsure how to place our fingertips on it yet

instinctively aware that something is missing. Each of us share this

yearning to one degree or another and it is a shared commonality that

forges these bonds between us that have been strengthened over the past

few days. 

*involuntary shudder*

 P.S. I still hope she'll be a follower in Mass Effect 3 though

Philosophy: Science Fiction as Commentary

(this post started out as an introduction to my review of Camouflage... and then just kept growing, so I decided to make it its own post)

Joe Haldeman is best known for his novels Forever War and Forever Peace, neither of which I have read. From what I understand, however, Forever War was a scathing commentary on the Vietnam War, thereby doing what science fiction does best - thinly discussing a critique on a current problem that everybody else is perfectly comfortable critiquing without the disguise (that is, when it is critiquing an old issue that everyone is perfectly comfortable talking about out in the open).

*sigh*

I actually think that science fiction can be quite good at critiquing issues that people don't feel comfortable talking about. On the other hand it seems that, at least in modern science fiction, people do a lot of disguising of things that don't need to be disguised, just so they can pat themselves on the back for having commented on a political issue. I think now, for example, of Battlestar Galactica, which did a commentary on the Iraq War when everyone was already opposed, or District 9 which commented on apartheid (what shall we do next, make a science fiction story that is a disguised portrait of how evil the Nazis were?).

Ultimately, I don't think science fiction has to be a commentary on anything, it can tell good stories and weave important myths. But, if you're going to use it as a vehicle for veiled social commentary, at least comment on something worthy of being veiled.

Thank you.

Book Review: Camouflage

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman
2005 Nebula Award Winner for Best Novel 

My review of this will be short, because really I don't have that much to say. The basic premise involved to alien shapeshifters who had spent millions of years on Earth. So long, in fact, that both had forgotten their origins. In the near future, however, a team of scientists unearth an alien artifact that draws them both to it - the one because he is trying to discover his origins, the other because he is driven to kill any beings like him. 

 It was a fairly interesting set up, with aliens that were moderately alien in their psychology (though not enough so if you ask me). The pacing was also quite good, and I kept turning the pages waiting to find out who these aliens were, why they were on Earth, and why the one was driven to kill the other. There was too much of that modern science-fiction impulse to have frequent and pointless sex scenes. I find it all rather juvenile, but can look past it for a riveting story.

*SPOILER (mouse over to read)

Unfortunately, all that excited page turning went entirely unrewarded. The book ends with an anti-climactic battle between the two aliens, followed by the "good" one giving us exposition on who he is that only tells us information we (as the readers) already knew, and explaining that he doesn't know who the other alien is. Then he flies away.

That's it.

*END SPOILER*

This actually seems to be a chronic problem with science fiction writers. They're often brilliant at set up, but totally fall on their faces when it comes to execution.

Oh well.

Ultimately, Camouflage was neither particularly spectacular, nor entirely terrible, and so my concluding thoughts on the book are... "meh".