The Many Travels Of
The other day, I looked a little more closely than usual at the $10 bill I was about to hand to a hot dog vendor, and noticed a stamp on the face with a website address: www.cdn-money.com.
Curious as to what the website could be, I gave the vendor a $20 instead (sorry, hot dog lady) and hung onto the stamped bill. As I suspected, the website turned out to be a currency-tracking site where users can see where their money has been since it left their wallets.
I saw a Bookcrossing book in a park a year or two ago and have always regretted not picking it up. Tracking my travelling former possessions, whether money or books, has always sounded like a delightful idea to me - reminding me of the big wide world and all the people in it who might, one day, handle the bill I spent at a coffeeshop or the book I “released” at the student lounge.
The Warrior Prophet
As a young girl my favorite genre, both for reading and writing, was fantasy. I had no idea that stories about magic and unicorns were silly, and loved drawing maps of temples, caves, cities, and mythical continents. As I grew older, however, I read less and less of it, concerned with how my reading choices would reflect upon my intellect and cultural acumen. By the time I reached my late adolescence, the books I read were either well-established literary classics or those likely to be approved by my McSweeney’s-revering friends.
But, let’s face it, I was never and never will be cool. So, it’s been a relief and a rediscovery to once again sink my teeth into a fantasy series, albeit with no unicorns. I’ve just completed the second book of the Prince of Nothing series, by R. Scott Bakker.
Of course, it isn’t “just” fantasy - it’s smart, philosophical, and literate, with an eye towards human history, philosophy, and the functioning of complex societies. There is much more depth, and much more fodder for analysis, than in most of the fluff fantasy I read as a young girl. I covered my copy of “The Darkness that Comes Before” with notes and charts and tables detailing my thoughts on the various themes and motives, usually while in a state of giddy elation.
To tell the truth, I don’t think I’d have been satisfied with fluff. But it’s a wonderful feeling to be pulled along by the author, not just by well-crafted prose or psychological insight but simply caring about the characters and wanting to know what happens to them. When one becomes focused on ‘literature’, sometimes reading-for-pleasure falls by the wayside, but with the best books, one not need be sacrificed for the other.
I did have misgivings about the book, but I will speak about them in a different post.
On Sex and Games
Susie Bright asks, in her post Poke the Doll - And Then What?:
I grew up with the first generation of boys who played Dungeons and Dragons. I always wondered how come that world wasn’t sexier. My own version of Dungeons and Barbies certainly had the erotic suspense element.
What do you think? Did you or do you ever play a computer-origin game that feeds your inner horny dragon?
Computer games were a big part of my childhood and of most of my friendships from that time. We didn’t play “official” D&D but enjoyed an ad-hoc version that we mostly made up as we went along.
It wasn’t until my late adolescence that I began wanting my computer games to be more erotic than they were. One of the big selling points of Baldur’s Gate II was the interactive “romances” that the player character could become involved in. The lovingly-crafted main character, representing the player, could engage in flirtations and eventually in sex (couched in PG-13 euphemisms) with a select few companions.
Unfortunately, the available “romance” plotlines numbered only four, with three of the four only for (presumably heterosexual) male characters.
The one romantic interest available for (again, heterosexual) female characters read as though the writer, embittered with women, had composed a list of What Women Want that read something like this:
Women Want:
1. Arrogant assholes with hints of vulnerability
2. Knights in Shining Armour
3. Rich Men
4. Men they can dream of changing for the better
Needless to say, the one available male romantic interest was not terribly interesting romantically, and female gamers were disappointed (Sequential Tart has a great article on the subject).
This is where user-created content saved the day. A group of dedicated fans managed to write their own plotlines and insert them into the game, not only creating more palatable male romantic interests but sexing up the original plotlines considerably.My favorite of the new characters was Solaufein, a brooding, philosophically-minded, Rimbaud-quoting dark elf whose dialogue was short on sexual explicitness but very high on eroticism. In addition, he would “romance” both male and female characters. I was so impressed with Solaufein that I even wound up developing quite a crush on his author, Westley Weimer.
As the Sequential Tart link above discusses, what was ultimately so disappointing about the sexual/romantic content on offer was that the idea was so full of promise. Even now, in my computer games, I find myself looking for opportunities to flirt with the in-game characters rather than chop them to bits with magical swords.