Hey, did you know planning your own wedding is hard? Well, it is!

Just writing scraps and bits lately. Basically I'll be in a meeting, and something will come into my head, and I'll write it down to keep it safe. Or I'll get on to the machine before bed and bang out about a thousand words, not really stopping to edit or critique it, and let the ghost vent itself.

I honestly need to come up with a stricter regimen, and yes, I know that. I have confidence it will come in time, but right now there are invitations I need to finish.

...you do not, in fact, know it all.

I know you think you do. I have been there. I know what's going through your head right now. You've read books. You've gone to lectures. You have spent long hours with your fellow artsy friends in coffee shops, or on forums, or at Burning Man thinking about these things.

I mean, really thinking about them, man.

It's great that you're burning daylight and brainpower on this. That you have sources to back up your claims. That you can cite them effortlessly. I actually think the professor would be happy to debate them with you (he is, after all, in academia -- that's what good academics do).

However, there's a right time to do that. And the right time is not immediately after he's stood in front of 500+ people for an hour distilling a year's worth of research for them. The right time is not when all of us just want to go up and thank him for, y'know, bringing us into the industry through awesome games like Wishbringer and Loom. It is certainly not a time to dress him down and tell him that his speech was a "disservice to the gaming community".

I am not saying your deep, deep thoughts aren't valid. If I'm sneering at them, it's only because I found your behavior discourteous, and that's my reaction to that kind of behavior.

Your words were emotionally charged. You were not critical -- you were just rude. But you are young, and hopefully, you will get better.

In the end, I noted that the professor gave you his card and encouraged you to contact him to discuss your opinions. That was quite gracious of him, and appropriate.

Here's a tip: next time you're in a room full of people wanting to hear Moriarty (not you) speak, here's what you do. Get out a pen and a pad of paper. Make a note where in the discussion you disagreed with him. Write down what you disagreed with, along with your counterpoint. Then, contact him and bring it up. Voila! You have managed to fulfill your need to engage in critical discussion without annoying the fuck out of everyone around you.

Is it less dramatic than ambushing him post-lecture? Yes. Is it more constructive? Hell yes. And if your intent really is to discuss this, that's what you should be going for. Otherwise, you're just another annoying jerk that needs an urgent appointment with Batman's fist.

So, in summary: my problem is not with the argument itself. My problem was with the way you went about it. I hope that when next you contact him, you offer up at least a brief apology, something to the effect that you were strung up on caffeine and three days of GDC and you couldn't control yourself. Then, and only then, do I think you should give him your serious analysis of his presentation.

But until you can get past your need to prove how smart you are, or to tell people when they are wrong (in your opinion -- and a lecture on art, the nature of art, and whether games are art is entirely opinion), I think you should know there was at least one person in the audience who found your way of going about things unacceptable.

Yours truly,
Steph

My coworker thinks I'm an extrovert. I HAVE FOOLED THEM ALL.

I think John Scalzi sums it up well. I'm a closet introvert. At some point, I have to retreat to my den and regenerate my well of gregariousness.

As to why a closet introvert would ever want to be a producer? Well, that's just one of the many challenges I love in my life.

The two main characters I've built for the Valdemar anthologies have miles of story in my head. But because I have a scant 6,000 words to tell a story, and because I am me, I want the stories I tell to be exciting! With plot! And a character telling you about his backstory can only be so interesting.

(Then again, I'm also a huge "This American Life" fangirl, and I think sometimes that a "This Valdemarian Life" one-shot story could be fun. Maybe after Lelia and Wil have run their course.)

( Blather. Babble. Blah blah blah. )

I don't know what, if any, of this will make it through into the story, but I heard "I See a Darkness" by Bonnie "Prince" Billy and it seemed right. That's the song. I will be sick of it by the time this story is over, but I know it'll bring me through to the other side.

When this one is over, I know what I'm writing next. I don't know the music, yet, but it'll find me. And I also know Mike and I will be writing something together. It's 2011. I have a wedding, a honeymoon, and who knows what else coming. Let us hope it's all good.

So, 2010 is the year I got to have three games I worked on released. I guess after ten years I was overdue, eh?

My name's under "Platform Technology" for two Blizzard titles, and though I couldn't find a credits page for Fantasy University, I know my work's in there, mostly in the earlier content (i.e., what I'd finished before I left).

What didn't survive? Quests, mainly. When I left the "voice" of the game was still in the formative stage, so I expected they'd be revised or ditched completely. (And for the record, "Mad Willy Jack" is far more awesome as a tutorial NPC than "Captain Arr" ever was.)

But many of the starting creatures, NPCs, and some of the lower level, non-"Hero Shop" items and drops are my writing. The rough area stubs I came up with for the Game Design Doc also still seem to be intact, a la "Hey, you know what would be funny? A zombie town named Pleasanton!" or "I think we should work Maynard James Keenan into the game. SOMEHOW."

(I'm actually really happy with that last one. A great deal of DragonRealms was coded while listening to Ænima, and I feel like I owe Tool a debt for keeping my sanity intact while creating Bards. Whoever did the art (I'm suspecting Tracy Butler, but it could have been Candy Janney) did a great job.)

Very weird to be speaking about my partial contributions to gaming, but that's life for you. Game studios are iterative environments by nature. We build. We play. We learn. We refine. All of those steps are important. Empathy for the player is what leads to greatness.

So much of the humor of F.U. was collaborative that it's at times impossible to say what was my idea, what was someone else throwing something out to the crowd. That's how it was: all of us throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick. Then the artists spinning it into gold. Pure magic, when you nail it right.

And speaking of life: I need to figure out what story Wil (not Wheaton) wants to tell. Preferably before the story deadline is up. C'mon, Herald! Hurry it up!

Which is Lynn Viehl.

Whose books kept me company when I had no wedding or hope of anyone in my life.

Who congratulated me on my upcoming wedding after I won one of her ARC giveaways.

And who just sent me not only an ARC of her latest book (Frostfire, which has an amazing cover I was instantly lusting after), but my first wedding gift.

Thank you, Lynn. You were awesome enough to begin with, but now you kicked the awesome over the goal line into epicville.

I've been coughing today, which implies I may be coming down with something. And then this conversation happened:

Mike:
  We're almost done here. Heading out in 5. ::smooch!::

Steph:
  kk

Mike:
  I still haven't eaten...
  And I'm not inclined to wait til I get home, either.
  That okay?

Steph:
  Yup.
  I haven't eaten either.
  But I'm not terribly hungry.
  So go ahead.

Mike:
  You need to eat if you're getting sick...
  !!!

Steph:
  I'll just...waste...away.....
  ::drapes across couch::

Mike:
  Noooooooo!
   I needz youz!

Steph:
  You didn't looove meee enooougghhhh....
  ::drapes further::

Mike:
  Okay, I'll come home and we'll go find a closed restaurant.
  Bye bye.

Steph:
  ::smooch::

Note that I was perfectly fine letting him get dinner on his own, really I was. He's adorable.

Hi Livejournals. I've been writing again.

This has meant an uptick in the number of bizarre/disturbing dreams I seem to have when I go to sleep after a writing jag. Today it was post apocalyptic gun battles. Yesterday it was driving a relative to the hospital, knowing all the while that when I got there they were going to die in my arms. Not exactly stuff I want in my head.

But anyway, I am writing again. I'm also moving again. To a much bigger abode, which means I'll once again have a quiet room to do writing in. And while I'll miss being able to look up and see Mike, the truth is I probably will get more writing done when I can listen to the same song over and over again without worrying about driving my lovely love insane.

Oh, and I'm getting married.

So all in all, I guess things have happened since last we spoke.

Now, back to work.

Well, okay.

The last game I worked on as a writer and designer has had its release date set. Though I'm pretty sure 90% of what I wrote has probably been rewritten or chucked out completely, it's still vaguely exciting to see it go live. Congrats to my old gang! (And my fiancé, who is still working on it!)

The latest game I've had a part of also set its release date this week. My role is not creative with this one, however I'm still ridiculously giddy and proud that it's coming out and that I'm one of the cogs in the grand machine that gets this stuff done.

(I've always been a Kerrigan/Raynor fangirl.)

So! Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I learn that there is a style that has tournaments and trophies: Shodokan Aikido.

Though I'd heard of Tomiki/Shodokan Aikido before tonight, I hadn't been aware that some of the clubs/dojo were competitive. From the wikipedia entry at least it sounds like the ones that have tournaments do so based both on randori and kata demonstrations.

So yes, competitive aikido exists, and I shall now proceed to read the books and pretend that Murphy is somewhere down at U. of C. learning from a Shodokan sensei.

And mental note to self to, like, get back to a dojo in the new year.