![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You looked unusually lovely with your dark, dark hair
1. My poem "For Saint Valentine, on the Occasion of His Martyrdom" has been accepted by Goblin Fruit. It was written the day after last Valentine's Day. There are classical deaths in it.
2. Trawling the internet with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel way too late last night, we came across the trailer for Empires of the Deep. And, yes, it looks like a dysfunctional big-budget cliché of epic proportions with inexplicably non-underwater mermaids and way too much obvious CGI. It also looks a great deal like some of the not-quite-fic I was writing in early high school, obsessed with inspired by the illustrations and the flavor text on the blue cards of Magic: The Gathering: Fallen Empires (1994).* Gigantic war-sturgeons carrying crews of shell-armed mer-soldiers? Sign me up. Enormous lobsters smashing everything within reach? Deep Spawn, I've missed you! Drowned underwater temples? Twist my arm. I don't know why the tank-sized anglerfish has legs, and I still can't tell whether the opposing army is riding giant crabs or whether they're actually half-crustacean, but I'm not sure this is the kind of movie where you're supposed to care. I would almost certainly watch it, is what I'm saying, even if the story has all the depth and mystery of wet tissues. There are too many images in that bombastic trailer that thirteen-year-old me would recognize.
(Comments on that article also contain the best worst Court Jester pastiche I have seen on the internet. You are warned.)
* Ditto the green, although only the elvish half. The Thallids freaked me out sufficiently that I didn't even like to keep the cards. I was pretty much indifferent toward the other colors in that expansion, although the artifacts were good and I collected all the lands. The sunlit, bone-hung emptiness of Havenwood Battleground, I still find haunting.
3. I must write more later; I have a dentist's appointment to get to. First braces-tightening. Store of carrot-ginger soup already laid in against my return.
2. Trawling the internet with
derspatchel way too late last night, we came across the trailer for Empires of the Deep. And, yes, it looks like a dysfunctional big-budget cliché of epic proportions with inexplicably non-underwater mermaids and way too much obvious CGI. It also looks a great deal like some of the not-quite-fic I was writing in early high school, (Comments on that article also contain the best worst Court Jester pastiche I have seen on the internet. You are warned.)
* Ditto the green, although only the elvish half. The Thallids freaked me out sufficiently that I didn't even like to keep the cards. I was pretty much indifferent toward the other colors in that expansion, although the artifacts were good and I collected all the lands. The sunlit, bone-hung emptiness of Havenwood Battleground, I still find haunting.
3. I must write more later; I have a dentist's appointment to get to. First braces-tightening. Store of carrot-ginger soup already laid in against my return.
no subject
I am informed that my Magic: The Gathering color is red. :p (I played an alternate red/white control in a computer game version of the game, although due to the computer game mechanics the pure white creature deck was usually better.)
no subject
Thank you!
(I played an alternate red/white control in a computer game version of the game, although due to the computer game mechanics the pure white creature deck was usually better.)
I played mostly blue and green (and some black) out of liking for the associated mythoi. Red appealed to me when it meant dragons.
no subject
(Also in the realm of early poor M:TG card trades/sales, I knew someone once who sold his Black Lotus for $50. Whoops.)
no subject
Pyrokinesis.
(I liked Alliances; it reminded me of Fallen Empires, only cautiously hopeful. Plus a healthy dose of the numinous/creepy, which in hindsight I realize was kind of what I went to the game for. I don't care if The Dark was one of the expansions nobody liked to play, it was incredibly evocative. Everything in it was the mirror-universe version.)
(Also in the realm of early poor M:TG card trades/sales, I knew someone once who sold his Black Lotus for $50. Whoops.)
One of the saddest moments of 2012 was cleaning out the basement at
no subject
The computer game version--Shandalar something--was fun because it allowed me to play with all the super-rare stuff that I'd never have seen. It also had this thing where you "captured" cities and they represented your life points, so you started out with suck life but as you formed life-links you got more life. (Monsters would occasionally attack your cities and you'd have to fight them, etc.) It also had some "random" cards that were computer-game-only because they'd have been a sweet pain in the ass to instantiate as real game cards--anything that involved random number generator stuff for results. You could save multiple decks so long as you had cards for them and swap them in/out between battles (or maybe only while in town, I forget). It was dorky but fun? ^_^
no subject
*stares at movie pics* I...I don't know what to say. I suspect if it gets released here I'll see it on the strength of "YES, GIVE ME MERMAIDS!", but...um.
(I have an excuse for a mermaid icon!!!)
no subject
Thank you!
I...I don't know what to say. I suspect if it gets released here I'll see it on the strength of "YES, GIVE ME MERMAIDS!", but...um.
Mermaids were not quite reason enough for me to see the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, although everything about the sea-myth of the second and third films had been the saving grace of their slapdash plotting, but this looks it might have a high enough ratio of mermaids to aaaagh what no to warrant my sitting through it and just sticking my fingers in my ears and humming through the plot mechanics. There is so little true sea-strangeness onscreen, I feel like I'll take what I can find right now!
(I have an excuse for a mermaid icon!!!)
Excellent deployment of mermaid icon! (I would have used my Pacific Rim icon to reply, because at least it's ocean-born, but I have a limited number of icons on Dreamwidth.)
no subject
I still can't tell whether the opposing army is riding giant crabs or whether they're actually half-crustacean
--I'm picturing marvelous, symbiotic but detachable organisms now.
And yay for the Saint Valentine poem!
no subject
Worst-case scenario, I will get an epic takedown of a movie review out of it. And some very nice stills.
--I'm picturing marvelous, symbiotic but detachable organisms now.
Oh, like hermit crabs. Hmmm.
And yay for the Saint Valentine poem!
Thank you!
no subject
we will get the Skiffy channel doing "Crab VS Lobster: May the Best Claws Win!"
no subject
I hope that's a cooking show.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes! It was a composition exercise in emulating another artist's style. (The notes are worth reading.) You can download it here.
no subject
Now, though, I can't hear a ukelele without thinking of manic pixie dreamgirls.
no subject
Yeah! I especially like "The first time I saw you in the lotus-eaters' lair / You looked unusually lovely with your dark, dark hair," "Up from the deep where the damp moss grew," and "Trees thinning out like I might as well fly / And I breathed in my courage from the dark New York sky." They're good lines as well as really good Mountain Goats pastiche.
Now, though, I can't hear a ukelele without thinking of manic pixie dreamgirls.
Oh, no. Should I send you George Formby?
no subject
no subject
You're welcome! I discovered him a few years ago with "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock" and have been saved from seeing the ukulele as a twee instrument ever since.
no subject
no subject
Also. Damn... That could be... It won't but it could be.
no subject
Thank you!
Damn... That could be... It won't but it could be.
AND HERE YOU SEE THE PROBLEM.
(Seriously, that trailer caused me to unearth my Teva shoebox of Magic cards and look through them for Fallen Empires and other expansions I favored—The Dark, Ice Age, Homelands, Alliances—eventually determining that I should really get something better to keep them in. Also that I own cards from several expansions past the point where I really stopped collecting or playing; I think they must have been gifts from my parents, who for several years gave me booster packs or starter decks for birthdays/holidays. I got my first Revised Edition deck as a birthday present in 1994. I have bizarrely specific memories of opening a deck of Mirage for Christmas 1996. According to the symbols, I have a few cards as late as Urza's Saga, which I barely remember. I followed the game most keenly between 1994–1997, I think. Hello, would you like the short course of my history with Magic: The Gathering?)
< reads it >
< drunken sporffles >
I'd forgotten you'd see that movie! I thought it was just me, my family, and
no subject
"I'd like to think that somewhere out there, Danny Kaye is very, very disappointed in me."
I'd forgotten you'd seen that movie! I thought it was just me, my family, and osirusbrisbane.
It was my introduction to Danny Kaye when I was younger than I can remember! (I can remember seeing it for the first time, because I was unreasonably worried about Hawkins' armor being struck by lightning; I know I was very, very young; I can't estimate further than that.) I associate it with my grandparents, especially my grandmother, although "The pellet with the poison . . ." could be quoted by any member of my family given sufficient excuse. Thanks to B., I've owned it on DVD since 2011. Before then, it was classic scratchy taped-off-the-television VHS.
no subject
I used to build my Magic decks with an eye toward aesthetics. I didn't win many games, but I sure liked looking at them.
no subject
Thank you!
I used to build my Magic decks with an eye toward aesthetics. I didn't win many games, but I sure liked looking at them.
I chose a lot of my significant ones talismanically, I think, looking at them years later. But there were cards I remember coveting in the game store that were just very striking, evocative images, so that they formed stained-glass moments of narrative in my mind. Wheel of Fortune, I know, was valuable because it was rare. But I always wanted it because it looked like such a simple and devastating set of choices: the heart, the skull, the cup, the sword, and no face to be seen on the turner of the wheel. I still want one.