pedanther

1. I still have the moustache I grew to play the villainous captain in The Duchess of Coolgardie and kept to play the upstanding colonel in the Christmas show; it seemed a pity somehow to lose it after all the time I spent cultivating it, so I've decided to keep it at least until I find out if my next role will need it. It has, however, been trimmed back to a more comfortable size now that there's no longer any call for it to be waxed into points.


2. Yesterday, I finished the first "season" of Doctor Who Legacy. I think I have to admit that I have, despite my earlier doubts, been sucked into the game, and I'm making reasonable progress at picking up the strategies. But I stand by everything I said earlier about the lack of anything resembling a plot and the Doctor Who elements being a thin veneer over mechanics that bear little or no resemblance to whatever Doctor Who thing they supposedly represent.


3. Today, while I was doing Christmas shopping, I discovered that the local toy shop, which I have been in many times before, has a door at the back, which in my defence is really only visible if you look at it at the right angle, that leads into a separate area containing what you might call toys for grown-ups (though the sign actually says "Hobbies"): scale models, miniatures, and a broader range of board and card games than the display on the main floor where every second game is another version of Monopoly. I've been wishing for ages that we had a proper game shop here that sold games like Carcassonne and Dixit and Arkham Horror, and apparently we have had the whole time and I just never knew about it. The same goes again for the local tabletop gaming club whose flyer was on the wall. (Though frankly if the only place they advertise their existence is in a room that makes me want to start quoting the "on display in the local planning office" scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I have to wonder if they don't really want to be found.)


4. Although I did not sign up for Yuletide this year, the number of Treats I've written after browsing people's Yuletide letters is greater than zero.


5. This fortnight's video link: Wanderers, an amazing short (under five minutes) science fiction film by Erik Wernquist. Watch it in full screen if you can. This reaction post by astronomer Phil Plait is worth reading afterward, but watch the film first. (hat-tip: Rosemary Kirstein, who knows a thing or two about sensawunda herself)

1. In the end, I didn't sign up for Yuletide this year; when it came down to it, I couldn't think of anything to ask for. (Though I thought of a couple of things almost as soon as signups were over, which I've carefully written down somewhere that I'll hopefully be able to find them next year.)

I may yet end up writing Treats or something, and I'm on the pinch hit list, same as every year, although being in this time zone I almost never get to see an unclaimed pinch hit of any kind, let alone an unclaimed pinch hit I can do something with.


2. Rehearsals for the Christmas show continue. Scripts are down. The song list is mostly stable (several songs were thrown out or replaced for reasons of pacing or being blatantly inappropriate to the character and/or situation) and the dances are mostly choreographed. In the big opening song-and-dance number, I'm taking full advantage of the fact that my character is explicitly called out in dialogue as being not a very good dancer.


3. I stopped going to the gym for a few months out a combination of winter and snowballing awkwardness about peripheral business like When Should I Ask For A Follow-Up Meeting With The Trainer? and What Happens When I Run Out of Spaces On This Log Sheet?, but I've started going regularly again, and I'm feeling better than I did when I wasn't.

Also, I managed to organise a follow-up meeting with the trainer (which helped me straighten out some things I'd been doing wrong) and got a new log sheet, which is a slightly different design from the old one and very helpfully includes a space for the trainer to explicitly write down when he expects to hear from me again, so I may be able to avoid a repeat of the snowballing awkwardness.


4. A few days ago, in a fit of procrastination, I downloaded the smartphone game Doctor Who: Legacy, which some of my fannish acquaintances are enthusiastic about. I don't know how much longevity it's going to have for me; in the absence of an intriguing plot (and Doctor Who: Legacy features a near-complete absence of plot), I tend to stick with a game only so long as I can coast without having to put any actual effort into mastering the tactics and strategies of the game mechanics, and I think I've about reached that point already.

[edit to add: And the "gotta collect all the Doctors and companions" aspect isn't doing it for me, because I'm not feeling like there's any meaningful connection between the collectables and the actual Doctors and companions; Rory, to pick an example, is just a cardboard cutout and some numbers and none of the things that made me like Rory-the-character so much. Though I'll admit I was a bit thrilled when Porridge showed up, because having Warwick Davis on the team will never not be a bit thrilling even if it is just cardboard-cutout Warwick Davis.]

(It's been interesting comparing Legacy to Worlds in Time, the last Doctor Who computer game I played with any regularity. The basic game mechanics are very similar, to the point that Legacy might almost feel like Worlds in Time with a lot of bits missing, except for the crucial difference that the bits Legacy does have all work much better than Worlds in Time's bits ever did.)


5. Around Halloweentime, TV Club 10 did a list of ten noteworthy TV vampire stories (limited to one episode per series, to promote variety; Buffy and Angel are represented by "Fool for Love" and "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been", respectively). Apart from the obvious candidates, the top 10 includes the 1968 Mystery and Imagination version of "Dracula" with Denholm Elliott and James Maxwell in. (There is also a list of honorable mentions, which includes an episode of my favourite underappreciated vampire series, Ultraviolet.)