Adam Heine: geekery

Showing posts with label geekery. Show all posts

Feedback Friday

You guys are awesome. I was all worried Wednesday's post would get nasty for some reason (even though I know you guys; who would be nasty?). Thank you to everyone who shared, to everyone who wasn't mean, and to everyone who is still reading this blog even after learning that I hear voices and indoctrinate my children. I have the best readers in the world.

So we've had the small talk. We've had the deep conversation. All that's left now is to collectively answer the most important issues facing the world today, via online poll.

If at any point you don't see an option you like, feel free to expound in the comments. (Although I intentionally limited the options so you'd have to choose. Mwa-ha-ha!). The first poll is for me. The rest are for the world.

Note: if you're on Reader or e-mail, you'll have to click through for the polls.

UPDATE: There may be some problems with voting. Try voting anyway, and with luck they'll sort themselves out. Otherwise, uh...have a nice weekend I guess.

And here you thought today was going to be even harder than Wednesday. (Heck, maybe it was. Choosing between Picard and New Kirk? That's like asking me to choose my left or right eyeball.)

Lurker Week

As I write this, I have 97 followers, almost the magic number 100,* but (a) I'm pretty sure that many people don't actually read this blog and, more importantly, (b) I hardly know any of you.

So I'm devoting my three posts this week to getting to know YOU -- in serious ways, funny ways, and maybe even potentially uncomfortable ways (don't worry, you won't have to play if you don't want to). While I'm exceedingly happy to hear from my regular commenters, I'd love LOVE to hear from folks who read but don't normally comment (commonly called lurkers). I swear, you'll never have to comment again if you don't want. But if you just let me know once this week that, yes, you're reading my blog, it'll make me all kinds of happy. Even more so if I get to learn a little bit about you.

So today it's question and answer time for you. Feel free to skip questions you don't have an answer for. Post your answers in the comments (I will too--shouldn't this go both ways after all?):

Where are you from?
Favorite genre to read?
Favorite genre to write (if you're into that sort of thing)?
Which Star Wars character would you be?
Best book you've read in the last 6 months?
Gandalf the Grey stops in for a cup of tea. What do you talk about?
Name up to 5 favorite movies.
Your pirate crew/ninja clan/former employer has given you the Black Spot. What do you do about it?

* Though 100 is really only magic in base ten. 97 is actually better: a palindrome in octal, the beginning of the lowercase characters in ASCII, the number of characters that can be typed on a standard English keyboard, and the seventh happy prime. (And really, how can you go wrong with something called a "happy prime"?).

Quitting While You're Ahead

My favorite computer game genre by far is graphic adventure. These are the games where you're given a character with a story, and where exploration and puzzle-solving is what will win. Reflexes, practice, and endless hours on the XP treadmill won't help--just persistence and a clever mind. Classic examples of the genre include the King's Quest and Space Quest series, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and (my very favorite) the Monkey Island games.

But adventure games can be frustrating. You might walk around the same screens, looking at the same objects, trying out the same inventory items over and over wondering why you can't GET THE DANG PIRATE TO GIVE YOU HIS FREAKING GOLD TOOTH!

Or something.

Then after banging your head against the wall for an hour, you'll close the game because you have to pick your kids up from school, but when you get back... you don't want to play. Because you know when you do, you'll have that same puzzle staring you in the face, mocking you.*

Does this sound like writing yet? It does to me. I'll get stuck on a plot point, staring at it for an hour, then have to close the manuscript because the baby is crying and the boys are killing each other and my wife needs to buy food (I offer to, but you know)... and when it's all over I dread going back. I dread seeing that cursor just blinking, blinking, saying, "What are you gonna write now, big fancy pants writer, huh? HUH?"

So here's what you do. It's totally non-intuitive, but it works. When you're at a part you're really excited about, don't write it. Stop and save it for next time.

I mean, obviously don't stop if you have another hour free to write. But whenever you are done, try to stop in some place where you know what happens next. Not only will you have the motivation to sit down and write next time, but you'll also have momentum to keep writing after the exciting part.

This won't solve everything. You'll still need persistence many times (I was stuck on that stupid gold tooth for a week), but some days it just might help you get your butt in that chair when you otherwise wouldn't want to.

And if you need a little gold, give the blond-bearded pirate some bubblegum. His tooth will come right out.

* And you don't want to cheat, because then you can't brag that you figured out the game by yourself, even though it took you five years** to beat it and nobody cares anymore.

** NEVER happened.

Answers, in Which I Reveal My Secret (and Not So Secret) Loves

We're back home now, and all is as it should be. Basically. Jet lag is about a quarter the misery it was going east. Our house is in fine shape, and our kids are all super-happy to have the family back together again.

As to your questions just...well done. I'm so proud to have such curious and imaginative readers. I'll answer some today, some Wednesday, and one of them (that would be yours, Carrie) gets its own post on Friday.

Matt Delman asks: Would you like a jelly baby?

Heck. Yes. If it's gummy/chewy/not black licorice, I want it.

If the square of the hypotenuse is the same as the square of the other two sides, then what is a mouse when it splints?

Actually it's the square of the sum of the other two sides. Unless you're asking if hypothetically it weren't... In that case all 3 sides would be the same, which would mean right angles would always be 60 degrees, which would make my house only slightly less square than it already is, which of course means a mouse when it splints is slightly better than a cricket when it smokes.

Why do we drive on a parkway but park on a driveway?

Actually I drive on freeways (which are usually free) and highways (which are never high, except in Bangkok but then they are no longer free). And I have to drive on my driveway. How else am I supposed to get the car up there?

Amie McCracken asks: Besides writing and drawing what's your favorite thing to do?

Hang out with my kids. I love to talk with them, play games with them, watch movies with them, and mostly to see them grow and learn. It's aMAZing.

And, where else in the world have you been?

Not many. Evidence to the contrary, I'm not much of a world traveler. I have been to Guadalajara to visit my retired parents. And I spent a month in Kunming, China for a cultural exchange program. That trip to China was kind of where I fell in love with Asia in general.

India Drummond asks: If you had a day to yourself, and the assurance you would never get caught for anything you did, have to justify yourself, and if you wanted, no one would even know... so what would you do for those 24 hours?

I'm so boring. You've given me free reign to drive a Ferrari in the Indy 500, steal the Tower of Pisa to put in my backyard, or take a joy ride on a stealth bomber. But all I can think about is watching both seasons of Full Metal Alchemist while pigging out on various Western foods delivered to my lap.

Ricardo Bare asks: Hey Adam--have you ever read "The Edge Chronicles"?

No, but a bit of research brought up terms like steampunk, sky pirates, and sky galleons, which is no end of interesting. Let me know how they are!

Susan Kaye Quinn asks: What's the children's book that you read to your little ones so frequently that you've memorized it?

Isaac (my three year old) is the one who memorizes the books. Once he starts quoting a book over and over, I start to memorize it too. Usually the Dr. Seuss books are the culprits, being the easiest to memorize, but there's one book in particular Isaac likes: Disney's Mother Goose. I didn't take this book to the US with me, but Isaac really wanted to read it on one of his bad days. So he and I started saying as many rhymes as we could remember from it. Considering I don't even like the book, I remember a surprising amount of it.

When did you know you were an artist?

You're going to think I'm silly, but I never really thought of myself as an artist. Not until I drew this fan art for Natalie Whipple and she called me one. My little brother was always the artist, not me (he loves to say I taught him how to draw, referring to our doodles in the margins of the church bulletins on Sunday, but I never taught him this).

What's your favorite non-kid, non-writing activity?

So aside from kids (and the more predictable answers of movies, games, and anime), my favorite activity is music. Not listening, but playing. (Ironically, my brother far exceeds my skill in this too. Isn't he supposed to be in my shadow?).

The only instruments I'll claim any skill to are acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and voice. And of those, bass is my very, very favorite. Unfortunately, it's the most boring instrument in the world to play by yourself, but I get my fix at church twice a month.

Okay, I'm cutting off the answers there. I'll get to the rest of these on Wednesday.

Jonathan Coulton, Chiron Beta Prime

Christmas in June? Why not? When you're imprisoned on a mining asteroid, does it really matter what month it is?

Jonathan Coulton, Code Monkey

This is easily my favorite Johnathan Coulton song. Probably because I can identify so strongly with it. It's also a pretty good AMV to go with it.

Jonathan Coulton, Baby Got Back

I got this as an internet meme a long, long time ago. Like when people actually sent things to each other via e-mail. It was the first I'd ever heard of Jonathan Coulton.

It's an acoustic cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back", and really, it's everything a cover should be. Enjoy.

Guest Post: I Need Help. Who Am I?

Emmet is an old friend of mine from real life. He's alternately a craftsman, a house painter, a pastor, and despite his confusion here, a moderate-level geek. Right now he's in Africa "doing… you know, stuff." He sometimes thinks digitally at http://emmet-blue.blogspot.com/.

After reading the request for guest bloggers I was struck by two nearly simultaneous thoughts. The first was, “Hey that sounds like fun.” The second was, “I don’t think I’m qualified to geek-out about drawing, writing, or… well Geekdom.” Don’t get me wrong, I can talk about all that stuff, but only as a visitor and not as a member. If there is one thing I’m almost 73% sure of (other than 82% of all statistics being made up), it’s that no member wants a visitor coming in and telling them how to run the place, it’s just not respectable.

This realization led me to the question, “What am I?” You see, several months ago I was on a hiking trip with a friend. One night we undertook the task of scientifically locking down the specific requirements and nuanced characteristics of many common “titles”. A non-comprehensive sampling of the list includes, geeks, dorks, nerds, preps, D-bags, A-holes, and jerks. What is the difference between an A-hole and a jerk you ask? Well it comes down to levels of intent, dedication, and self-awareness. Oddly enough, as we basked in the glory of our accomplishment, we mutually confirmed our suspicions that none of these titles fundamentally applied to either one of us. If you disagree, I’m sorry, but you’re arguing with science, nothing we can do about it.

So what am I? I have an aptitude for strategic board games (if you are new to Ticket To Ride and pick up two black cards or a black and a green on your first turn, your destination is L.A. to Miami, trust me, it just is). I have an interest in video games, but I’m inept on a PC. I love LOTR but can’t tell you the name of Gandalf’s sword or make a clever pun in Elvish. I may be treated as an honorary geek or nerd in some gatherings, but the title would be purely situational. I certainly don’t own the T-shirt (you know who you are)(for the rest of you it’s Adam that I was talking about just there, you know with the “Geek” T-shirt and all… classic).

I’m a fan of movies, but I’m not a “Film buff”. I love The Shatner but I’m not a Trekkie. That said, Seven of Nine is by far the hottest crewmember, or at least was up until the reincarnation of Uhura. Now they would have to fight for it… seriously, can we make that happen? Just checking. Likewise, I like Star Wars, but I fail at being a Fanboy. I just don’t have the energy, plus I’m a bigger fan of at least a dozen other movies. Yes, Han shot first; I mean come on, just because he doesn’t want to hear the odds, doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. When Jabba’s bounty hunter comes for you, you shoot him before he gets a chance to shoot you. Think people, this is common knowledge. I still wouldn’t write a strongly worded letter to Lucas, well okay, maybe for what he did to Jr., but not for the prequels or the continuous editing!

I find myself adept in many groups but not truly a member of any of them. I’d say that I was a poser or a chameleon, but I’m not faking interest, it’s just that my interest is passive and non-definitive. On the Myers-Briggs I’m an INTJ, also known as a “Mastermind”, which is pretty cool but hardly helpful. I mean henchman or wingman would have been more useful. Shoot, even Village Idiot would have been more definitive (stupid higher education).

Am I alone? When viewed comprehensively, are we all too complex to be classified, or am I just a member of a yet to be classified group?

Please help!

In Which I Prove We Will Achieve FTL Speeds by 2050

Supposedly it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Supposedly it requires an infinite amount of energy.

But I posit that science knows far less than it does not know. At one time, it was believed man could not fly, the sound barrier could not be broken, and man could not reach the moon. Not just believed, but considered scientifically impossible.

And yet we did it.

So on the assumption that science is wrong about what we cannot do, I have collected the data on speeds man has attained over the past 300 years. The trend, ladies and gentlemen, clearly shows that we will send something through space at the speed of light around the year 2050.

If not, who cares? This was fun anyway.

Admirable Sacrifice (or Why Kirk's Death was Stupid)

I hope I don't have to explain who Captain Kirk is. If I do, it's possible you're on the wrong blog.

I will go into how he died a bit though. First, you should know we're talking about the old Kirk -- William "Priceline" Shatner. Shortly after retiring, Kirk is asked to attend the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise-B (this is Star Trek Generations, btw). On that voyage, they receive a distress signal from two ships caught in a strange energy ribbon. The Enterprise is able to save them, but becomes caught itself in the ribbon. To free them, Kirk has to go engineering and alter the deflector shields.* He is successful, but just as the Enterprise escapes, the ribbon makes contact with the engineering section causing major damage. When the crew recovers, they find a gaping hole in that part of the hull, and Kirk is gone.

That was Kirk's first death. It's not bad (we'll talk about why in a second), but it wasn't his real death. See, the ribbon imprisoned Kirk in a time nexus.* Decades later, Captain Picard finds Kirk and convinces him to return to the present to help Picard stop a madman from destroying the sun of Veridian III. Kirk goes with him and together they are able to distract the villain long enough to thwart his plans. In the process, however, Kirk is wounded (or falls off a bridge -- they tried a couple versions) and dies.

* Star Trek science.

Before I go into why Kirk's death was lame, let's talk about what makes a character's sacrifice work. It's not enough that a character dies for someone (or goes to prison for them, or gives up their chance at becoming a rockstar, or lets them have the last tater tot, etc. -- sacrifice can mean a lot of things). If you want the reader to admire the character's compassion, their sacrifice has to be IMPORTANT, it has to be RIGHT, and it has to be NECESSARY.

The character has to sacrifice for something important. It has to matter, and it has to be in proportion to what the character is giving up. If Jack risks his life so that his buddy Bonzo can win the National Texas Hold 'Em Tournament, that's not very admirable. On the other hand, if Bonzo needs to win the tournament so the mob won't kill him and his family, Jack's sacrifice is a lot more worthy.

The character has to sacrifice for what's right. Readers sympathize with characters that are doing the right thing. Jack's sacrifice for Bonzo's family might be important, but if his "family" is a child prostitution racket, well... no one's going to give Jack any awards.

The character's sacrifice has to be necessary. If there was an alternative, but the character chose sacrifice anyway, no one will admire it. If all Jack had to do was loan Bonzo some money, we're going to think he's stupid, not noble.

Let's look at Kirk's deaths now and see if we can figure out what went wrong. First his death on Enterprise-B. Important? He saved the lives of many people, so yes. Right? The people he saved were (so far as we know) good people. Check. Necessary? The movie set it up such that Kirk had to be the one in engineering (at least, there wasn't time to explain it to someone else -- in any case, if he sent someone else to do it, he'd have been a jerk). Check.

It was a good death for a character as big as Captain Kirk. Later, when you find out Kirk's alive, it's kind of cool. He survived! That's just what such a great captain deserves, right? But then he died again. Was his second death important? Technically. He saved lives, though we were never really made to care about the Veridian people, so it's arguable. Was it right? Again, we were never really shown any Veridian characters. While we assume they are innocents, to the reader they are faceless. Yes it was right, but only technically. Necessary? Arguable. Kirk knew what Picard was asking was dangerous, but from a story standpoint, there's no reason Picard needed Kirk to pull it off.

Kirk's second death hit the right points (important, right, necessary), but it hit them weakly. After all the dangers he had been through, readers expect a death in proportion to the character. A minor character dying for the same reasons might have been a worthy sacrifice, but this was James T. Kirk. It was made worse by the fact that we already thought Kirk had died, and his first death was more worthy than his second.

But it's okay, because we can learn something from it. If you want a character to be admired for their sacrifice, make it important, right, and necessary. And if you bring a character back to life, make sure his second death is more important than his first.

J. J. Abrams, I'm looking at you.

Jonathan Coulton, Re: Your Brains

(Re: my previous post on your ideas never (ever) getting stolen, Writer Beware has some helpful information on copyrights. Of particular note: all original expression is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form (including all your posts and comments on the internet)).

Okay, so if you already know Jonathan Coulton, just skip to the video and enjoy.

For the rest of you, Jonathan Coulton is very important in the geek world. He's a singer/songwriter in the legacy of Weird Al, but he tends toward original songs more than parodies. His songs are geeky, weird, and often hilarious. If you've been around the internet a while, you may have heard his folksy, acoustic cover of "Baby Got Back." Or the ending credits of Portal -- that was also him.

Probably better than telling you is showing you who he is. This song is about a horde of zombies trying to get at some humans in a mall. One of the zombies is a former coworker of a survivor -- the kind of coworker you want to blast in the face with a sawed-off shotgun (even before he was a zombie).

Here, just watch (lyrics below the video):

Re: Your Brains

Heya Tom, it's Bob, from the office down the hall.
Good to see you buddy, how've you been?
Things have been okay for me except that I'm a zombie now.
I really wish you'd let us in.
I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demands,
but here's an FYI: you're all gonna die screaming.

All we wanna do is eat your brains!
We're not unreasonable. I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes.
All we wanna do is eat your brains!
We're at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise:
if you open up the doors,
we'll all come inside and eat your brains.

I don't want to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?
Spend your whole life locked inside a mall?
Maybe that's okay for now, but someday you'll be out of food and guns.
Then you'll have to make the call.
I'm not surprised to see you haven't thought it through enough.
You never had the head for all that bigger picture stuff,
but, Tom, that's what I do, and I plan on eating you slowly.

I'd like to help you Tom, in any way I can.
I sure appreciate the way you're working with me.
I'm not a monster Tom, well... technically I am.
I guess I am.

Got another meeting Tom, maybe we could wrap this up.
I know we'll get to common ground somehow.
Meanwhile I'll report back to my colleagues who are chewing on the doors.
I guess we'll table this for now.
I'm glad to see you take constructive criticism well.
Thank you for your time. I know we're all busy as hell.
And we'll put this thing to bed
when I bash your head open.

That Thing Where I Draw: We Do Hard Things

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how I don't like the word "talent". It's a post about how I learned that I shouldn't quit something just because I'm not good at it right away, or because it's too hard. Natalie told me she had framed the saying "We Do Hard Things". I loved the idea: we don't quit when something gets hard -- hard things are what we do!

I wanted a picture like that in my house, but I didn't want just the words. It was five months before I figured out what I did want:

"We shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo... I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for... But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually...

"But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten."

It's Not You, Wilhelm. It's Me.

I remember the first time we met, Wilhelm. It was in this HyperCard game back in the 80's. You were the sound that played when I did something stupid and died. This sound.

Back then, I liked you for who you were -- I had no idea you were famous. To me, you were just "that scream I assigned as my computer's shutdown sound."

Then one day I was watching Star Wars. A stormtrooper got shot, and I heard you as he fell down a shaft. When I asked you about it, you told me everything. "I'm an old joke," you said. "They call me the Wilhelm Scream." You mentioned some old movies you were in -- the kind I'd have seen on MST3K -- before George Lucas found you. "And you know how GEORGE is about inside jokes."

It was kind of awesome. You were a big deal, and I was in on it. I'd be watching a movie with my friends and be all like, "Hey, I know that scream! That's the sound from when the bad guy died in Temple of Doom." My friends thought I was cool.*

* You have to know my friends.

That was twenty years ago. Now...

See, it's not your fault, Wilhelm. You haven't changed a bit in 58 years. It's me. I just... Sometimes I want to watch a movie in peace, yeah? Without you opening your mouth. I know, I know. It's your job. But it's like. Every. Single. Movie. You scream in Fifth Element, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tears of the Sun, Kingdom of Heaven, Sin City, all three Lord of the Rings movies...

I can understand some of them, I guess -- Indiana Jones, Avatar, Tropic Thunder. But New Moon? Anchorman? The Pacifier? You were even in an episode of Mythbusters for crying out loud!

And it's not just my movies; you're in all my kids' movies too. Even when I'm not watching, I hear you in Kung Fu Panda, Cars, even Up and Bolt. Heck, my daughters were watching Prince Caspian the other day IN THAI, and I heard you from the other room!

So, it's too much. You were cool and all, 20 years ago. But I think it's time we saw other people, or movies, or... If you could just not be in movies at all anymore. Ever. That would be great. Maybe we could talk then.

In another 20 years.

The Board Game Post

A long time ago, I said I'd do a post on board games. Unfortunately (for you, I guess) I could talk about board games for weeks without even trying. I LOVE board games. There's so much I could cover, I hardly know where to start. Consider this a broad overview for the uninitiated (with hopefully-helpful recommendations for fellow board game geeks). If you think Monopoly or Milton Bradley are representative of board games, this post is for you.

We'll start with the basics. Two board games you need to know: Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan.

Ticket to Ride is our gateway game. We teach it to our friends before introducing the harder stuff. You play as competing railroad tycoons claiming railway routes between large cities (American cities, but there's versions for Europe, Germany, and Scandinavia), earning more points for longer routes and connecting distant cities. Gameplay is a constant tension between purchasing routes (before someone else does) or grabbing more cards (so you can purchase said routes). You can learn this game in 5 minutes and still be playing 5 years later (we are).

Settlers is a bit more complicated, but even more addictive. Players compete to settle an unexplored land. They must collect and trade their resources in order to build roads, settlements, and cities before someone else does. With a board that changes every game and multiple expansions, this one hasn't gotten old since we learned it 12 years ago.

But oh my gosh, guys. That's just a cubic meter of ice on the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Carcassonne. Claim cities, roads, and fields. Bigger cities (etc.) means bigger points. The gameplay is simple (draw a tile, place a tile). The real trick is figuring out how to encourage other players to complete your cities with their tiles.

Agricola. Plow fields, raise animals, renovate your home, all while making sure your family stays fed. Way more fun and complicated than it sounds. A simpler game ("simple" here is a relative term) with similar gameplay is Puerto Rico, wherein you build a colony and plantations in the New World.

Wait, what about pirates? Plunder the islands and blow each other to smithereens in Pirate's Cove (what the heck is a smithereen?). Or bust out of prison in the simple-but-fun Cartagena, which somehow took Candy Land's game mechanics and made them interesting.

Like the party game Mafia? Try Bang! Kill the sheriff (if you're an outlaw) or the outlaws (if you're the sheriff) or everybody (if you're a renegade). But make sure you know who you're shooting at before you pull the trigger; they might be on your side.

Yahtzee fans might enjoy To Court the King. Roll the right dice combinations to attract members of the royal court. Each court member gives you new dice and abilities to help you attract more important nobles, until one of you manages to court the king himself.

Think that's it? We're still WAY above the waterline here. There's like ten games in our cabinet I haven't even mentioned, a bunch more I've played or heard about, and that's not even counting cooperative games!

I should stop before I lose more readers than I have already... But wait! I haven't told you about new versions of Risk yet. Or Lost Cities! Or Citadels! Or Formula De!! Or --

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Making Up Words (Without Sounding Like a Dork)

On Wednesday, we talked about using foreign languages in fiction without (a) sounding like a dork or (b) confusing/boring the reader. The bottom line was:

Don't do it just to show off.
Be intentional; think like the character.
Be subtle.

Today I want to talk about a related fantasy topic: making up your own language.

It's impossible (perhaps illegal, and certainly blasphemous) to talk about fantasy languages without mentioning the Godfather of Fantasy Language: Mr. John Tolkien. The guy was a language nut. He invented languages for fun since he was thirteen years old. If this is you, you probably don't need to read the rest of this post. You're fine.

Most of us, however, did not specialize in graduate-level English philology. Most of us speak only one or two languages with any kind of fluency. So most of us don't really understand how language evolves or what it takes to create an artificial language that has the feel and depth of a real one. That's why a lot of amateur fantasy languages sound silly or made-up; it's obvious that they are (made-up, that is).

So how do you create a language that FEELS real, without spending years determining phonology, grammar, or how the presence of two palatal fricative dates back to the Second Age when the Atpians still had two tongues? I'll show you what I do. It's the same thing I do with most of my ideas: steal from real life, then obscure your sources.

Let's take the phrase "thank you." It's a common phrase, often borrowed between languages (e.g. the Japanese say "sankyu" as borrowed English; in California we say "gracias" as borrowed Spanish, etc.).

STEAL FROM REAL LIFE. First I need a source -- some existing, real-world language I can base my fantasy language on. I want it to be somewhat obscure, and I want to show you how you can do this without even knowing the source language (which means no Thai), so I'll pick Malay.

There's lots of ways to find foreign words in a chosen language. If I wanted to be accurate, I'd use 2-3 sites to verify, but I'm making up a language, so Google Translate it is. It translates "thank you" as "terima kasih."

Now that's pretty cool on its own. It's pretty, easy to read, and sounds totally foreign. But despite the odds, somebody who speaks Malay will probably read my novel at some point and scoff. So it's time to obscure. Two ways I typically obscure source languages are: (1) alter the letters/sounds/word order of the existing phrase and (2) mix it with some other language. I'll do both.

OBSCURE YOUR SOURCES. For my second source language, I'll pick something from the same family in the hopes it will make my made-up language sound more real. A little Wikipediage tells me Malay is an Austronesian language, and lists the major languages of that branch. I'll use Filipino (just because it's also in Google Translate) and get "salamat."

Then I mish-mash for prettiness and obfuscation. Salamat + terima = salima or salama or, slightly more obscure, sarama. For kasih, I already used the "sala" part of salamat, so I'll take mat + kasih = matak. "Sarama matak." But that feels a bit long for a thank you phrase, so I'll shorten it to "Sarama tak."

And there you go. It was a little work, but a lot less work than it took to invent Quenya, I'll tell you that. If I'm really serious about this fantasy culture/language, I'll keep a glossary of the phrases I make up in my notes, along with a note of what the source languages are (so I can repeat the process to create more phrases that sound like they could be from the same language) and links to the translation sites I used.

If the glossary gets big enough, I might (because I am a bit of a language geek) start converting the phrases into their constituent parts: individual words, verbs, maybe even conjugations. But that's breaching into Tolkien territory where I said I wouldn't go. Besides which, that would tempt me to break the rules I set forth at the top of this post; they still apply even to made up languages.

So now you know my secret. Now go forth and make cool-sounding languages. Sarama tak.

That Thing Where I Draw: Soltree Village

Life has been busy, and I haven't had time to sit down and draw. Plus (and I hate to admit this) drawing something every week stresses me out, more often than not. I may cut back from the once-a-week thing, but I'd hate to stop drawing. Anyway, giving myself more than a week to draw something means I can try some of my more ambitious ideas, instead of slapped-together Photoshop images.

But I still have old sketches to show you. This is the home of my most recent D&D character, Jakk Shadowcatcher:

Unlike most halflings, Jakk has traveled far, trading as a bounty hunter as far west as Dragon's Waste and as far east as Overwatch. But he never forgets Soltree village, where his grandfather raised him and taught him how to hunt. Even though he stays away for years at a time, he still considers it home.

A Tale of Two Johns

This is an old story from the computer game world, but there are lessons here for everyone, even writers.

In 1990, id Software was formed by two men: John Carmack and John Romero. Over the next six years, id redefined PC gaming and the first-person shooter genre with games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Romero is even credited with coining the term "deathmatch."

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about to this point, here's the summary: Carmack and Romero made really good games; they were kind of a big deal).

The PC gaming world was theirs. Carmack licensed the Quake engine to multiple game developers--including Valve, who used it to make the even more groundbreaking Half Life. Professional gaming began to take off with QuakeCon. Everyone wanted to be id.

(Translation: They made lots of money).

But after Quake hit the shelves in 1996, Romero was fired, though he was going to quit anyway. His plans were ambitious, and he felt Carmack and the others were stifling him. Carmack, meanwhile, felt that Romero wasn't realistic.

(The two Johns parted ways).

Carmack--the technical powerhouse of id--pushed the technical envelope with Quake II and Quake III: Arena. Good games, well-received, and very, very pretty. But where they pushed things technically, their general design stayed the same. To the point where Quake III was little more than a deathmatch arena with no substance.

(Carmack's games were technically beautiful, but not very compelling).

Romero, meanwhile, now had the freedom to be as ambitious as he wanted. He proudly announced his masterpiece, Daikatana, would hit the shelves by Christmas the next year. They would use the Quake engine, so the technical aspect would be taken care of, leaving him and his designers only to design.

(Romero thought he didn't need Carmack's technical expertise).

Christmas, 1997 came and went with no Daikatana. Carmack had released Quake II by then, and Romero realized Daikatana was technically behind. He grabbed the new engine, not realizing at the time that it was so different from the one he knew it would require an entire rewrite of his precious game.

(Realizing his mistake, Romero tried to catch up technically and failed, badly).

By the year 2000, Daikatana had become a joke. It was made worse when the game was released with outdated graphics, crappy AI, and unforgivable loading times.

(Romero's game was super late, ugly, and impossible to play).

There's lot of morals that can be drawn from all this, but I'm going to pull one for us writers.

Carmack's technical expertise is your skill with prose, structure, and grammar. Without it, nobody will put up with your story long enough to see its brilliance.

Romero's creativity is your plot, characters, and conflict. Your prose might be beautiful, but without this nobody will care.

You need both to succeed.

That Thing Where I Draw: Arcadia/Dark Water Mash-Up

If some of you were wondering how much effort I would put into a contest winner's drawing, the answer is: a lot. Behold!

My brother is not an aspiring writer,* but we share quite a lot of the same interests. He couldn't decide between something from the Skies of Arcadia universe and that of Pirates of Dark Water, so he asked for "some kind of mix.... And maybe a monkey bird or something." Hopefully this will make up for all those years I picked on him.

A lot of reference pictures went into this (five, believe it or not), and I did very little modification of my own. So it's not exactly my own raw talent here, but man is it fun! And I put a lot more effort into this, trying things I wouldn't usually try with my own drawings. I guess pressure will do that. I may have to take requests/run contests for you guys more often. You know, for my own benefit.

* That I know of. But our interests overlap so eerily that it would not surprise me to someday find him on the same path I'm on now, just 5 years behind.

You Know That Fantasy Novel is Really the Author's D&D Game When...

It starts in a tavern.
There are four main characters, and it's unclear which one is the protagonist.
There is one protagonist and his three friends, who are different from him in every way.
The main characters are all human. Secondary characters are elves and dwarves.
The only limitation on magic is that, after a certain number of spells, magic users must sleep before they can cast more.
The villain is a human wizard.
The villain is immensely more powerful than the main characters, but despite their obvious bent on stopping him, he doesn't face them until they are strong enough to defeat him.
The main characters are referred to as a "party."
The party consists of a fighter, a thief, a cleric, and a wizard (alternatively: warrior, rogue, healer, and mage; also barbarian, burglar, priest, and sorcerer).
They take on a quest to either save the world or aid the village, for no other reason than that it's right.
Despite the fact that there are many characters more powerful than the protagonists, no one else is willing or able to take on the quest.
Anyone, anywhere, uses "adventure" as a verb.

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