You know what
*ba-ding*
Bugs the hell out of
*ba-ding*
me?
*ba-ding*
It’s when people talk to each other
*ba-ding*
on an instant messenger
*ba-ding*
and type only three or four words
*ba-ding*
at a time.
*ba-ding*
It’s bad enough that the internet
*ba-ding*
has already taken away grammar, spelling
*ba-ding*
and punctuation.
*ba-ding*
But now whenever I’m online
*ba-ding*
and someone IMs me
*ba-ding*
I discover that the internet
*ba-ding*
has now taken away
*ba-ding*
full and complete sentences.
*ba-ding*
Does life on the internet move so
*ba-ding*
fast that it cannot wait for that
*ba-ding*
archaic thing called a “paragraph?”
*ba-ding*
Not to mention that the rapid-fire
*ba-ding*
sound of the IM “ba-ding” makes me
*ba-ding*
want to kill myself.
*ba-ding*
So please. I beg you.
*ba-ding*
The next time you’re online and
*ba-ding*
IMing someone, take the time to
*ba-ding*
not only bring back, grammar, punctuation
*ba-ding*
and spelling.
*ba-ding*
Let’s make an effort to bring back
*ba-ding*
full and complete
*ba-ding*
sentences.
*ba-ding*
Or else I’m going to kill myself.

*ba-ding*

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This coming Friday (September 21, 2007), the first episode of the third (and I believe last) season of Avatar: The Last Airbender begins. Produced by Nickelodeon, Avatar is a show aimed at children that has also captured the attention of many people outside the target audience. It’s captured my attention as well, even though I originally didn’t have my interest in it. 

There are tons of articles as to why it’s so popular, discussions on the various minutia, and the like. I will be talking about the multi-Asian aspect of the show, and how it’s reflected in the setting, the characters, etc. This is going to be less of a detailed examination, and more of a ‘things I noticed’ post.

As most of the fans of the show would likely tell you, the show mainly pulls from Chinese culture. All of the ‘Bending’ (elemental manipulation) in the show is based on various forms of kung fu, and the majority of the clothing styles and other background items seem to be derived from historical Chinese items. The language is primarily derived from Chinese (I will admit to not knowing which dialect) as well, from the various names to all of the writing.

One major Chinese theme they didn’t use, however, is the elements. The elemental theme of the show pulls from the western idea of ‘four elements’ (fire, water, air, earth), and not the Chinese idea of ‘five elements’ (fire, water, metal, wood, and earth). I would guess that this is because the creators are more familiar with the ‘four elements’, and because they figured that the majority of their audience would be more familiar with it, as well. Using the Chinese elemental theme would have probably made writing the story a bit more difficult, since there wouldn’t necessarily be opposite elements, and an additional fifth nation.

But there are other Asian influences that can be seen in the show. Japanese and Korean clothing styles can be seen from time to time, though usually on minor or incidental characters. Indian philosophical and religious ideas (chakras are revealed to be vital to achieving the special Avatar state in the second season, for example) are sometimes referred to when it comes to some of the Avatar’s spirituality. And the animation style pulls from Japanese and Korean animation styles and direction.

Over the years, there have been a variety of attempts to blend the various Asian nations into a coherent world. The majority of them, in my experience, have used Japanese culture as their base, and occasionally pulled in ideas from the other Asian nations. (The D&D setting Oriental Adventures is a good example of this.) So in using Chinese culture are its base, Avatar is already fairly different from other shows of a similar bent.

These shows have also usually been the creation of non-Asian people, for some reason. They have hit varying levels of success, though from what I recall, many have tended towards ‘not very’. This time, however, the success is definitely on the side of ‘really, really successful’. I think that it helps that they have consulted with an actual kung fu sifu for the action and bending sequences, and it looks like they have done an incredible amount of research.

At this point, I’m kind of rambling, but that’s okay - my mind’s on this Friday, and what the first episode of ‘Book Three: Fire’ is going to bring.

(For the record, my favorite characters are Uncle Iroh, Ty Lee, Suki, and Sokka)

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For the past week I have been indulging in several different flavors of my geekdom. I haven’t limited myself to merely playing World of Warcraft. On Monday (which thanks to the vagaries of live theatre is my day off,) I was struck with inspiration. I logged on and rather deliberately took a number of very specific screenshots.
Then, I went to consult to a local wise woman.
I returned home triumphant and spent the rest of the afternoon knitting cheerfully away (thus also satisfying my inner knitting geek.) Now, I don’t know how many of you are knitters, but I hope that there are enough to appreciate that I have spent a number of hours now knitting World of Warcraft.
Yeah, you heard me right.

Anyone who’s been in Ironforge recognizes this. This pattern is all over the walls. I spent a fair amount of time looking at those walls thinking “that would look GREAT on a sweater…” and so.

My geekdom bleeds into my art. I can’t draw, but boy, I sure can knit.
Anyone want a sweater with a gnome on it?

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Today’s art is brought to you by the number 4 and the letter Vaz.

So where to begin? Well first off, welcome one and all to the traffic
accident known as my creative process. When in conversation for what
to throw up on the spwug blog, Ms. Katy (the head cheese, big man,
head honcho, etc) showed interest in having sketches of mine put up
detailing a comic I am currently in the process of conceiving. the
following sketches were all done in 1 day, (the day right before this
blog post) and you can track the progress of my fatigue throughout.
I started this when I woke up with the initial sketch being finished
about 20 minutes prior to these notes, and once these notes are done,
I am heading to bed.

First off, a few points I want to stress:

1) When I do these sketches, I care very little for proper
perspective, anatomy and proportions. My sole goal is transferring
the images in my head to the paper. At this stage in the game,
refinement is not a concern.

2)Because these are the very first attempts at wresting the images
floating in my head, much of what you see may never reach the final
comic. Characters may change in appearance or even disappear all
together, or many, as in the case of “friends”, may get little to no
’screen” time. They exist simply to fill out a back history I need to
know in order to fill my blanks, but not necessarily important to the
over-all scheme of the finalized story. For example, the boy looks
very much like 2-D of the gorillaz at the moment and I hope to fix
that. Likewise when I do the final model sheet for “the girl” each
facial shot won’t look like it’s taken from a different genre.

Well I hope you enjoy. I’ll be happy to answer any questions after
class and don’t forget to bring textbooks next week.

Later true Cynics,

vaz

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With advice, you get what you pay for. This is certainly true with this series of columns I’m starting today. Should you take any of these musings to heart and apply them to your own lives, you do so at your own risk.

What qualifies your friendly neighborhood web monkey to wax poetic on the jutsu of love? Certainly, it’s not my successes. You’re looking at a man who never dated in high school or college, had sex for the first time at the ripe old age of 23, and divorced after a single year of marriage. Yes friends, my fail rate far exceeds my win rate. Yet my win chi destroys my fail chi! I have learned from my sad attempts to conjure love and am glad to report that I am now happily married and plan to be for the rest of my days. I hope to pass on some of the lessons that I have learned through years of fail.

Ladies, I won’t bother giving you any advice. Let’s face it. You have the Happy Fun Bags. That’s like getting 1600 on the SATs for just spelling your name correctly. You win at the loves. This guide focuses on us geeky guys who wouldn’t know love if it ripped off our pants and played tonsil hockey with our Happy Fun Bag.

You Don’t Need Any Help

Before we get to far, we have to determine whether or not you really need help. The following not-so-hypothetical situations should indicate that you’re doing just fine. You just might not recognize your good fortune.

• If you’re at a dance and two really hot girls come up to get jiggy with you, chances are at least one of them wants to see some of your “other” moves. Numbers. Get them!
• Later that evening, if one of the ladies tracks you down to your hotel room, FOR THE LOVE OF KAHLESS GET HER FREAKING NUMBER!
• If you’re sitting at a really boring event and the hot chick across from you nods for you two to sneak off together, FOLLOW THAT CHICA!
• When you’re visiting another college for a meeting and the sexy lady that you’ve met before asks if you want to spend the night, don’t worry about how you’re going to get home the next morning. Freaking spend the freaking night!
• If a sexy co-ed walks into your dorm, closes the door, locks it, and says she’s always had this “thing” for you, she’s not talking about that box set of Andromeda that you’ve been lusting after. She. Wants. YOU!
• When the super model hot woman invites you over to her place for drinks and sunsets, SHE DOESN’T JUST WANT YOU FOR CONVERSATION! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE A MOVE!

You may be thinking to yourself, man, I’ll never be in any of these situations. That’s what I thought. And because I was ill prepared, I completely failed to recognize opportunities for geek seduction that were virtually thrown at my man parts. So if you find yourself in these situations often, you don’t need any help. You just need to do something about it.

For everyone else, you might need some sort of game plan. So let’s get you started.

Target Acquired

The good news is that in this day and age, the smoking hot woman you have naughty dreams about every waking and sleeping hour probably has geeky tendencies. You’re in luck! Geek is the new chic for the ladies.

There are, however, certain basic standards that you potential target must meet before you set your sites on Geek Seduction. Don’t forget, your brain meats need stimulation, much more so than your man meats. We’re aiming for quality relationship territory here, not some one-night-stand drunken mistake. You deserve better than that so don’t you dare sell yourself short.

In no particular order, here are some suggested guidelines:

• She must know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars (don’t laugh, I met a woman who did not. Very attractive, but completely sheltered from fandom. Thus, we had nothing in common). She doesn’t need to know that Klingons used to have smooth heads, that Anakin is a little emo nancy boy who grows up to be Darth Vader, or the nuances of warp drive. But she must know the difference. It indicates that she’s aware of and open to pop culture phenomenons which you are most likely intimately familiar with.
• Alternatively, if she’s into Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you’re good to go. Either one might be her only brush with geekdom, but they’re enough to get the conversation started.
• If she’s into manga and anime, go for it! However, if she’s into InuYasha, stay the hell away. She’s twelve and that’s illegal!
• She must appreciate your humor. She doesn’t have to fall on her ass every time you crack a joke, but she must at least smile. As a geek, your humor is one of your greatest weapons. You’re a funny mofo. You know it. And she’s got to see it.
• You must be able to hold an interesting conversation with her. If you’re too nervous to talk to her (and you shouldn’t be because you’re a magnificent specimen of man geek you sexy beast you) or if she bores you to death, chances are she’s not the one for you.
• She’s got to like you. Obvious, I know. But you can’t try to force someone to get along with you. If she doesn’t want to know you as a friend, and she’s clearly demented if that’s the case, don’t waste your time. We’re talking like as in friend like, not like as in OMGZ I can’t believe Johnny likes me I totally never knew I hope he asks me to prom like.

See, that’s not that bad. Most women, hell, most everyone you will want to interact with anyway meets those basic standards.

In short, she has to “get” you or at least “get” some aspect of you.

Once you’ve got your target, it’s time for the approach. We’ll tackle that subject next week when Super Geek Seduction Guide GO! continues!

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As I browsed my shelves and shelves of figures, thinking of what figure to talk about next, and listening to “God Knows….” by Hirano Aya; it occurred to me that one of my figures is not like the others. Yes, they’re all adorable and dangerous; but I only own one whose clothes can be removed. While thinking to myself that this was something I should rectify, it also caused me to wonder why I could remove the skirt from this one in particular…

I have a habit of buying figures simply based on the fact that I like them. This has caused many better informed friends to break the news that what I like is from eroge. I tend to shrug and move on then, with intents to get it anyway when they weren’t around.

Which brings me to the figure I’m going to talk about:

This is Hikaru from the eroge Peace@Pieces by Unison Shift.

Netting more information about the game caused a couple issues for me, one of them being entirely my fault and the other something that could only be rectified after years of study. After mistyping Piece@Peaces into a search engine multiple times, I finally face-palmed and inputted its proper name. First issue solved. Second issue, all the pages that could contain relevant information about it are in Japanese. While I could look at the page all day and enjoy the way the characters look, it has gotten me no closer to having any idea what is on the page. I’ve therefore called in an expert, who had this to say, “The Pieces are essentially shinigami who come to earth as part of their training and collect wayward souls. The main character is accidentally shot by Hikaru when she is chasing down a soul and weird things start happening to him. Hikaru’s role is pretty much to be cute, earnest, and clumsy.” When asked where the naughty stuff comes in, my source responded with, “It’s how they restore their magic power.”

Moving on…this is another really lovely figure from Alter. When it comes to quality, you really can’t get much better, though I could just be an Alter Fangirl because they produce so many of my beloved Kos-Mos figures; but that’s a whole other issue. This figure features a removable skirt, highly detailed painting, and intricate guns that read ‘truth’ and ‘lies’. The amount of detail on the figure is really astounding from the painting of the guns to the bow on her pantsu.

Go pick this one up to see for yourself and if you leave the skirt on, then no one has to know it’s from eroge.

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I have studied and appreciated music since I was a kid.  I grew up on jazz, classic rock and classical music.  I pride myself on my musical collection, which includes such jazz legends as Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey, and such classical immortals as Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saens, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, W.A. Mozart, Edvard Grieg and William Byrd.  I’m a total snob about my musical tastes.

That being said… good lord do I absolutely love metal.

I remember when I was a kid, in the midst of studying trumpet concertos and jazz standards, my mother walked into my room with a look of horror upon her face.  I was blasting Sepultura.  She slapped her forehead and said, “Dizzy Gillespie is rolling in his grave!  How can you listen to this crap?”

For me, metal is a primal release.  It is angry for me when I cannot afford to be.  It lashes out things I do not have the courage to scream at.  It speaks to the dark side of me that I have to indulge every so often to keep it well-fed and content.  And if you can get your hands on some really smart metal, their music is just as cerebrally stimulating as anything Brahms or Miles Davis composed.  It’s just much harder on the ears.

But I am also old-fashioned when it comes to my metal.  I can’t get behind most of this weepy, neutered stuff today that you’re supposed to listen to while you’re crying in the rain with your guyliner running down your face.   When my metal is sad, it’s because your entire viking clan was wiped out by invaders and now you must swear bloody revenge.  Or it’s because mankind did not heed the warning of the ancient prophecy and now Satan walks the burning earth.  Aah, yeah, that’s the stuff.

In my musical collection Blind Guardian is seated right next to Brahms, Sepultura chills out next to Sonny Rollins, and maybe Miles Davis will eventually rock out with Mastodon.   In the meantime I will blast Dimmu Borgir until my ears bleed when I need to escape into an angry world of misery, Satan and death… because it just helps me feel so relaxed afterwards.

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The short answer? Wikipathing.

The long answer? Wikipathing. But with an explanation as to what the hell ‘wikipathing’ is.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy… wait. Wrong explanation.

Okay, so one day, a couple of years ago, I noticed that one of my best friends, Player 2, had been on my other computer for hours, unmoving. That in itself wouldn’t have been strange, but he didn’t have a game controller in his hand, like he often did.

I asked him what he was doing, and he mumbled, “Wiki.”

I looked over, and there he was, reading an article (I don’t remember what on) intently. As I watched, he got to the bottom, then scrolled back up and clicked on a link somewhere in the body. I watched for a bit longer (well, not the whole time, I went back to my desk and came back every so often) and noticed that he kept going to other Wikipedia articles.

I asked him how long he had been doing this, and he said, “A couple of hours.” He then explained that he just felt some kind of compulsion to click on interesting links that kept him in Wikipedia.

I’ve talked to other people about it since then, and many of them mentioned similar habits. I myself have occasionally gotten caught up in the info-fest that is Wikipedia.

I know that the original name for the web, “World Wide Web” was supposed to reflect the idea that a person would go from one page to another, but I have to wonder how often that is the case these days. CNN and other commercial sites rarely link to sites other than their own, and understandably so – why give competitor’s sites the hits?

And so, that day, I came up with the term Wikipathing – to reflect the strange trail of information a person blazes when they hit good old Wikipedia.

So, what’s the strangest Wikipath you’ve ever gone down?

* I don’t know if this path is actually possible, but you never know.

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Well, a few announcements first. Then a quick rant. Then pie!

Thing the First: Dearest readers, not only is Spwug issue 3 now available for presale. Chock full of articles from our writers here AND from myriad others, there is also art, the latest installment of Captain Space, and the results of a haiku contest… C’mon, you know you want to know about the haikus.

Thing the Second: If you aren’t satisfied with merely preordering one issue, you can now order a subscription of all four yearly issues! All the art and haikus you can stand! And probably more!

Ok, that’s it for the commercials. On to the Rant.

Now, I probably won’t talk about video games EVERY time I write, but it’s on my mind a lot lately. I work in theatre as a tech, and a fair number of my fellow backstage gremlins play. Also, a fair number of the carpenters, riggers, and automation engineers are male. (Oddly enough, in my area, most of the electricians and crew chiefs are really hot girls… take THAT gender inequality!)

Thing is, the second that talk at work turns to games, and it becomes obvious that I play WoW, work seems to grind to a halt. The guys are so stunned that not only do I really, honestly play video games, that they end up gaping at me rather than putting the scenery together. This naturally holds up MY work, and all I want to do is go home on time, thanks.

So. Guys. Here’s some advice. If you suddenly discover that the hot chick next to you is, in fact, the best Halo player you’ve ever known, or that her level 70 Horde Shaman could eat your weenie Alliance warrior for breakfast, please- if you want to have ANY chance with her- don’t just stand there staring at her like she has grown another head. Take a deep breath, close your mouth. And please, try not to think “but girls don’t play video games!” We can tell when you think that.

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Beginning today we bring you a hopefully regular event we’ve decided to name with the above title. Like it implies, every Saturday we will present work by various guest artists in various stages of completion. This week we have a very talented artist who’s work can be found in various places including his own blog! So, without further ado, I give you Saturday Sketchbook!

Hi, internet! It’s Crybringer. Niche gamer, doujinshi collector in training, comic book artist and reader-at-large are among my geek credentials. I just signed up & did the draft for my comic company’s fantasy football league — that’s gotta count too!

I’ll be contributing art posts here and chiming in on the artistic side of things! Say what you will about the state of the world, but we live in an incredible renaissance of visual and audio stimulation. ANYONE, ANYWHERE at ANYTIME can create with fewer restrictions than ever. For an anime-styled, but American-hearted artist like myself, the wealth’s gotta be shared!

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two hours to GooglePediaTube the net before I get to work! See ya!

My original characters, “The Demon Mages”

Flonne from Disgaea

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