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pedanther1. I'm re-reading the last few volumes of Sandman along with Mark Reads Sandman. (To start with I just dipped into the books when I wanted to check a detail, then I started re-reading bits, and now it's definitely a continuous re-read.)
I don't think I've mentioned Mark Reads here before, though I keep meaning to. The general premise is that Mark reads a popular work of fiction that he doesn't know anything about, one chapter a day, and after each chapter he writes and blogs a post reacting to the events of the chapter and trying to predict where the story's going next.
Mark is terrible at predicting where the story is going to go next. That's a big part of the appeal. In the community that's grown up in the blog's comment section, there's a whole series of in-jokes on the theme of "this is the sound we make when Mark misses a blatant piece of foreshadowing, or innocently says something he's going to look back on and laugh/wince".
He's also an engaging writer, and wears his emotions on his sleeve. When he's happy, sad, confused, angry, it shines through his writing. And he has a more thoughtful side, which comes out when his reading matter touches on issues of culture, privilege and discrimination; Mark has had an interesting life, which he's willing to talk about when it seems relevant to how he responded to something.
Things Mark has read include Harry Potter, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, and The Hunger Games. He also has a companion blog, Mark Watches, where he's currently episode-by-episoding his way through Buffy and Angel.
2. I've more or less given up on the multiplayer aspect of Worlds in Time, the Doctor Who online multiplayer game, and am working my way through the storyline as if it were single-player mode, accompanied only by the computer-operated assistants. There's hardly ever anybody else playing at the same time as I am, and it's impossible to develop any sort of ongoing interactions because as far as I'm aware (and I've been keeping notes) I've never met any other player more than once. Not that I would want to continue interacting with most of the players I've teamed with - in my experience, with a very few shining exceptions, playing with real human beings has been much like playing with the robot assistants except that the robot assistants are more communicative.
I should say that this is not necessarily the usual experience with the game. Many players have developed groups of online friends whom they play with regularly, and have fun doing so. I just wish I knew how they did it.
3. Meanwhile, Portal 2 has an actual single-player storyline that I've been working my way through. Until recently I was finding it a bit dull, story-wise. The pattern of running you through a series of "test chambers" to introduce you to the game mechanics before the plot really kicks into gear is repeated from Portal, but in Portal it worked because along with the game mechanics you were also learning about the place where the tests were being run and the personalities of the test designer(s) and administrator(s), which provided a sense of plot progress that's missing from the test chamber sequence in Portal 2. (Having someone occasionally pop up to assure you that if you hang in a bit longer something will start happening soon rather highlighted than alleviated the problem, though I did appreciate the bit where he got attacked by the enraged bird.) That said, once Portal 2 stops pretending to be a retread of the first game and drops you into the real plot, it does get considerably more interesting.
4. For my thoughts on Brave and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, see my previous Five Things post.
5. I went to see Steel Magnolias mainly because I had several friends in the cast; I wasn't at all sure it would be my kind of thing. As it turned out, I liked it a lot. This suggests that there may be whole unexplored areas of fiction that have drifted by me because they seemed on the surface to be not my kind of thing. If so, I'm not sure I want to know; it's not as if I don't have a large enough pile of things to read and watch as it is.
(There's probably some clever way to tie this back around to point 1, since one of the things Mark Reads is built on is Mark discovering and falling in love with works that he'd previously drifted by because they superficially appeared to be not his kind of thing. But it's late, and I'm tired, and I'm not going to bother.)
I don't think I've mentioned Mark Reads here before, though I keep meaning to. The general premise is that Mark reads a popular work of fiction that he doesn't know anything about, one chapter a day, and after each chapter he writes and blogs a post reacting to the events of the chapter and trying to predict where the story's going next.
Mark is terrible at predicting where the story is going to go next. That's a big part of the appeal. In the community that's grown up in the blog's comment section, there's a whole series of in-jokes on the theme of "this is the sound we make when Mark misses a blatant piece of foreshadowing, or innocently says something he's going to look back on and laugh/wince".
He's also an engaging writer, and wears his emotions on his sleeve. When he's happy, sad, confused, angry, it shines through his writing. And he has a more thoughtful side, which comes out when his reading matter touches on issues of culture, privilege and discrimination; Mark has had an interesting life, which he's willing to talk about when it seems relevant to how he responded to something.
Things Mark has read include Harry Potter, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, and The Hunger Games. He also has a companion blog, Mark Watches, where he's currently episode-by-episoding his way through Buffy and Angel.
2. I've more or less given up on the multiplayer aspect of Worlds in Time, the Doctor Who online multiplayer game, and am working my way through the storyline as if it were single-player mode, accompanied only by the computer-operated assistants. There's hardly ever anybody else playing at the same time as I am, and it's impossible to develop any sort of ongoing interactions because as far as I'm aware (and I've been keeping notes) I've never met any other player more than once. Not that I would want to continue interacting with most of the players I've teamed with - in my experience, with a very few shining exceptions, playing with real human beings has been much like playing with the robot assistants except that the robot assistants are more communicative.
I should say that this is not necessarily the usual experience with the game. Many players have developed groups of online friends whom they play with regularly, and have fun doing so. I just wish I knew how they did it.
3. Meanwhile, Portal 2 has an actual single-player storyline that I've been working my way through. Until recently I was finding it a bit dull, story-wise. The pattern of running you through a series of "test chambers" to introduce you to the game mechanics before the plot really kicks into gear is repeated from Portal, but in Portal it worked because along with the game mechanics you were also learning about the place where the tests were being run and the personalities of the test designer(s) and administrator(s), which provided a sense of plot progress that's missing from the test chamber sequence in Portal 2. (Having someone occasionally pop up to assure you that if you hang in a bit longer something will start happening soon rather highlighted than alleviated the problem, though I did appreciate the bit where he got attacked by the enraged bird.) That said, once Portal 2 stops pretending to be a retread of the first game and drops you into the real plot, it does get considerably more interesting.
4. For my thoughts on Brave and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, see my previous Five Things post.
5. I went to see Steel Magnolias mainly because I had several friends in the cast; I wasn't at all sure it would be my kind of thing. As it turned out, I liked it a lot. This suggests that there may be whole unexplored areas of fiction that have drifted by me because they seemed on the surface to be not my kind of thing. If so, I'm not sure I want to know; it's not as if I don't have a large enough pile of things to read and watch as it is.
(There's probably some clever way to tie this back around to point 1, since one of the things Mark Reads is built on is Mark discovering and falling in love with works that he'd previously drifted by because they superficially appeared to be not his kind of thing. But it's late, and I'm tired, and I'm not going to bother.)
