I've seen lots of guides for job applicants on how to talk to recruiters floating around the internet, but what I don't see as often are "Tips on how to talk to job candidates." I suppose that's not as required, since the recruiter is typically the one with more leverage in the arrangement and doesn't really have to worry as much about saying the wrong thing and putting someone off. Indeed, when I was unemployed right out of college, if a recruiter called me and said "Scrub my floors with a toothbrush every day for a week and maaaaaaaybe you'll get an interview" I'd probably have given it some thought.
Now that I have a job, though, things are a bit different. I'm not saying I'm planning to stay at my current place forever, but I have a baseline now. I can afford to be picky. Another side effect of having a job is that where I used to go weeks at a time without hearing anything back about applications, now I get unsolicited phone calls and LinkedIn messages from recruiters almost weekly. I've noticed, uh, a few trends. Not that I expect any recruiters to read this, but either way, following is a list of reasons I don't always jump at calling back.
Lack of any useful information about the job. I realize they are bound to respect the client's confidentiality up to a point, but you can give me more than "there's a position at this company," surely. Don't make me pry to figure out the things you know I want to know: What is the salary range? What are the benefits? As I said, in the olden days I'd have jumped for anything, but now I need something that at least matches my current benefits and offers a salary increase sufficient to justify the trouble of moving to an unfamiliar environment. I want to know right up front that I'm not wasting my time.
Awkward pretenses. This might sound harsh but: You're not my friend. I don't know you. I keep getting calls from this one guy to the effect of "Hey man, how's it going? I just thought I'd call and check up on ya, see if you were doin' ok." Bullshit. Stop acting like we're buddies. We both know all I want is a good career and all you want is your commission, so let's not pretend. I got a message a while ago asking me if I wanted to grab a cup of coffee to chat and get to know each other. That's the kind of message people should be sending to each other on OKCupid, not LinkedIn.
Calling at work. I don't mean during working hours. Most recruiting companies are 9-5, I get that and it's cool. What is not cool is calling someone at their direct extension on their current employer's line. Like, it's so remarkably unprofessional that I can't believe people actually do it yet they do.
Meaningless buzzwords. Seriously, I'm not fooled by the fluff. When you say "energetic new company with plenty of potential for growth!" I hear "unproven startup that probably has long hours and low job security that doesn't actually offer anything I don't already have." MckaylaMaroneyFace.jpg
So yeah. That. Hopefully I didn't burn any bridges and screw myself out of a 6 figure position because I drove off the wrong recruiter. Wooooops.
tl;dr I get tons of messages from recruiters now but they're all awkward and unimpressive.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
This does not bode well
Huh. I almost failed BEDA 2 days in. Woops. Well, the post I had planned to write today is going to be really long so I don't want to start it now since it's late o'clock, and I already dedicated a post to lamenting how miserably I'm going to fail at BEDA, so I guess I will resort to doing what I explicitly said I was not going to do:
I just got Dragon's Dogma today and it is a hella novel concept. The bulk of the game is a fairly standard swords/bows/spells fantasy adventure RPG, but its novelty comes from the awesome "pawn" mechanic. So you make your character, but a bit into the game you also make a second character, your pawn. You control your character directly but your pawn is always AI controlled. The AI seems pretty solid but you can help it along with simple commands. At any time you can hire two additional pawns. This is the cool part: those aren't just random NPCs. When you hire other pawns, you are hiring the primary pawns of other players, and other players can hire your pawn. If your pawn gets taken out adventuring, they will gain experience, gain knowledge of quests/enemies/areas that they can use when back with you, and even collect items to give to you when they return. The game is primarily single player but the pawn hiring adds an interesting pseudo-multiplayer community flavor (kind of like what Dark Souls had with tips).
I recommend giving it a shot. And if you play it on XBox 360, look me up. Maybe we can level each others pawns sometime. =p
tl;dr I'm bad at BEDA and Dragon's Dogma is awesome.
I just got Dragon's Dogma today and it is a hella novel concept. The bulk of the game is a fairly standard swords/bows/spells fantasy adventure RPG, but its novelty comes from the awesome "pawn" mechanic. So you make your character, but a bit into the game you also make a second character, your pawn. You control your character directly but your pawn is always AI controlled. The AI seems pretty solid but you can help it along with simple commands. At any time you can hire two additional pawns. This is the cool part: those aren't just random NPCs. When you hire other pawns, you are hiring the primary pawns of other players, and other players can hire your pawn. If your pawn gets taken out adventuring, they will gain experience, gain knowledge of quests/enemies/areas that they can use when back with you, and even collect items to give to you when they return. The game is primarily single player but the pawn hiring adds an interesting pseudo-multiplayer community flavor (kind of like what Dark Souls had with tips).
I recommend giving it a shot. And if you play it on XBox 360, look me up. Maybe we can level each others pawns sometime. =p
tl;dr I'm bad at BEDA and Dragon's Dogma is awesome.
Monday, April 1, 2013
BEDA, because "Blog a few times and give up" isn't as catchy
So ExplodedSoda reminded me about BEDA. As woefully neglected as my blog is, blogging every day for a month seems like an enterprise doomed to failure (and was the last time I tried BEDA). NEVERTHELESS! I shall be an optimist! I can do it . . . maybe! I just need to find a lot of things that make me really angry so I rant about them. Or I guess I could just ramble about video games I've played lately, but I don't really want to turn this already sub-optimal space into just a watered down game review page that nobody will pay any heed to.
So I'll keep ranting. I do have one lined up, but it's long and it's late, and plus I need to pad my BEDA post count by spreading things out, chyeah.
So I'll keep ranting. I do have one lined up, but it's long and it's late, and plus I need to pad my BEDA post count by spreading things out, chyeah.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Bechdel Gaming
I assume anyone reading this is familiar with the Bechdel Test, but if you're not, have a look here: http://bechdeltest.com/
If you don't feel like clicking links, the gist of it is a movie passes the test if it meets the following criteria.
1. There are two named female characters.
2. They talk to each other.
3. About something other than a man.
The test is typically applied to movies, but I see no reason why it couldn't be applied just as well to any other story-telling medium. It's been on my mind lately, after a discussion on Reddit, and for the sake of staving off boredom and reviving my poor abandoned blog, I thought I'd test some of the games I've played lately (and games that spring to mind as I browse my Steam library). I'm not sure how far back I feel like dredging through my game-memories, so this probably won't be long, let's see how many I can think of:
Games with less than two female characters:
Jurassic Park Builder - The only female character is Malcom's daughter.
Darksiders - Only one female character, Uriel. At least, one human-like character. I guess if you include the assorted demonic monsters you get a few more.
Company of Heroes - Not surprisingly for a World War II game, there are no female characters.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - I feel it is worth noting that Lieutenant Myra is one of the best female video game characters ever, stepping up after her commanding officers are killed, holding a weary band of troops together and basically holding the defense of an entire planet together until reinforcements arrive. She also isn't burdened with fanservicey sexualization or an unnecessary romantic side story. Alas, awesome as she is, she is the only named female character in the game so no Bechdel pass here.
Orcs Must Die (1 and 2) - The only female character is the Sorceress.
2+ female characters, but they don't talk to each other:
Metro 2033 - The only two named female characters (though I don't recall their actual names) are a prostitute in the second town and the mother of a boy you rescue later in the game. They do not interact with each other.
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission - I don't recall the game's two female characters, Essi and Aurora, ever talking to each other. Of course, the story wasn't exactly this game's strong suit so I may have just forgotten.
Darksiders 2 - Though the game has several interesting female characters (Uriel, Muria, Lilith and the Seer), none of them ever talk to anyone other than Death.
Bioshock - This one is a little harder to place. The Little Sisters do talk to each other in the orphanage, but mostly about the player, and they're not named characters. I don't believe any of the named female characters chat with each other.
Age of Empires III - Several named female characters, but they all live in different time periods and don't talk to each other.
EVE Online - There are many female characters, but NPCs in this game don't really interact with each other. If we count fluff, the novels do pass the test, but for the sake of this post I'm focusing exclusively on games.
Demigod - The game has two female characters, but the characters don't talk to each other. The back story for characters does allude to conversations between Sedna and her mother and the Queen of Thorns and other fairies, but these don't happen on screen so I'm placing it here.
Female characters talk to each other about a man:
Can't think of any off the top of my head.
Games that pass:
Retrovirus - Well, ok, they're all computer programs, but they have clearly gendered personas, and the female programs, Qat and the Oracle, talk several times about the virus infection and the internet.
Recettear - Recette and Tear talk to each other throughout the game about all sorts of things. They also have periodic chats with the female side characters about shop items, dungeons, booze, whatever.
Chantelise - As above. Since the main character's sister is her constant companion, the two frequently discuss a variety of things related to their adventure.
Everquest - Ignoring player characters because that's cheating, EQ still passes as Firiona Vie and Lanys T'Vyl periodically talk about beating the crap out of each other. There are surely others, but I can't begin to keep track of each conversation in a game so vast and one is enough to pass.
Borderlands 2 - A female director of the Dahl corporation tells her female security supervisor to go out and hunt monsters at one point. I don't recall what their names were, but they did have them, so we have a pass. The game very very nearly has a second qualifying conversation when Angel says that Lilith shouldn't come with to get the vault key, but she tells Roland to tell Lilith rather than telling Lilith herself (even though Lilith is in the same room).
Dawn of War - This one is tricky because its placement depends on whether or not you include the expansions, as the base game had only a single female character. In the Winter Assault and Dark Crusade expansions, Farseer Taldeer talks to other female eldar (Bonesingers, Fire Dragons and a Harlequin), but none of them have names. Soulstorm on the other hand, despite being the black sheep of the Dawn of War franchise, does clearly pass as if you play as either the Eldar or the Sisters of Battle you will hear the Farseer and the Canoness doing the typical leader vs leader smack talking.
Games I'm not sure about/forgot the details:
Strike Suit Zero - I want to say that Reynolds talks to Control/Isabella at some point but I don't recall. Reynolds does talk to a female station operator in the first mission, but she is nameless.
Sleeping Dogs - I know Sandra and whatshername (her best friend, the movie star) talk several times, but I honestly don't recall if they talk about anything other than whatshername's boyfriend or the main character.
If you don't feel like clicking links, the gist of it is a movie passes the test if it meets the following criteria.
1. There are two named female characters.
2. They talk to each other.
3. About something other than a man.
The test is typically applied to movies, but I see no reason why it couldn't be applied just as well to any other story-telling medium. It's been on my mind lately, after a discussion on Reddit, and for the sake of staving off boredom and reviving my poor abandoned blog, I thought I'd test some of the games I've played lately (and games that spring to mind as I browse my Steam library). I'm not sure how far back I feel like dredging through my game-memories, so this probably won't be long, let's see how many I can think of:
Games with less than two female characters:
Jurassic Park Builder - The only female character is Malcom's daughter.
Darksiders - Only one female character, Uriel. At least, one human-like character. I guess if you include the assorted demonic monsters you get a few more.
Company of Heroes - Not surprisingly for a World War II game, there are no female characters.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - I feel it is worth noting that Lieutenant Myra is one of the best female video game characters ever, stepping up after her commanding officers are killed, holding a weary band of troops together and basically holding the defense of an entire planet together until reinforcements arrive. She also isn't burdened with fanservicey sexualization or an unnecessary romantic side story. Alas, awesome as she is, she is the only named female character in the game so no Bechdel pass here.
Orcs Must Die (1 and 2) - The only female character is the Sorceress.
2+ female characters, but they don't talk to each other:
Metro 2033 - The only two named female characters (though I don't recall their actual names) are a prostitute in the second town and the mother of a boy you rescue later in the game. They do not interact with each other.
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission - I don't recall the game's two female characters, Essi and Aurora, ever talking to each other. Of course, the story wasn't exactly this game's strong suit so I may have just forgotten.
Darksiders 2 - Though the game has several interesting female characters (Uriel, Muria, Lilith and the Seer), none of them ever talk to anyone other than Death.
Bioshock - This one is a little harder to place. The Little Sisters do talk to each other in the orphanage, but mostly about the player, and they're not named characters. I don't believe any of the named female characters chat with each other.
Age of Empires III - Several named female characters, but they all live in different time periods and don't talk to each other.
EVE Online - There are many female characters, but NPCs in this game don't really interact with each other. If we count fluff, the novels do pass the test, but for the sake of this post I'm focusing exclusively on games.
Demigod - The game has two female characters, but the characters don't talk to each other. The back story for characters does allude to conversations between Sedna and her mother and the Queen of Thorns and other fairies, but these don't happen on screen so I'm placing it here.
Female characters talk to each other about a man:
Can't think of any off the top of my head.
Games that pass:
Retrovirus - Well, ok, they're all computer programs, but they have clearly gendered personas, and the female programs, Qat and the Oracle, talk several times about the virus infection and the internet.
Recettear - Recette and Tear talk to each other throughout the game about all sorts of things. They also have periodic chats with the female side characters about shop items, dungeons, booze, whatever.
Chantelise - As above. Since the main character's sister is her constant companion, the two frequently discuss a variety of things related to their adventure.
Everquest - Ignoring player characters because that's cheating, EQ still passes as Firiona Vie and Lanys T'Vyl periodically talk about beating the crap out of each other. There are surely others, but I can't begin to keep track of each conversation in a game so vast and one is enough to pass.
Borderlands 2 - A female director of the Dahl corporation tells her female security supervisor to go out and hunt monsters at one point. I don't recall what their names were, but they did have them, so we have a pass. The game very very nearly has a second qualifying conversation when Angel says that Lilith shouldn't come with to get the vault key, but she tells Roland to tell Lilith rather than telling Lilith herself (even though Lilith is in the same room).
Dawn of War - This one is tricky because its placement depends on whether or not you include the expansions, as the base game had only a single female character. In the Winter Assault and Dark Crusade expansions, Farseer Taldeer talks to other female eldar (Bonesingers, Fire Dragons and a Harlequin), but none of them have names. Soulstorm on the other hand, despite being the black sheep of the Dawn of War franchise, does clearly pass as if you play as either the Eldar or the Sisters of Battle you will hear the Farseer and the Canoness doing the typical leader vs leader smack talking.
Games I'm not sure about/forgot the details:
Strike Suit Zero - I want to say that Reynolds talks to Control/Isabella at some point but I don't recall. Reynolds does talk to a female station operator in the first mission, but she is nameless.
Sleeping Dogs - I know Sandra and whatshername (her best friend, the movie star) talk several times, but I honestly don't recall if they talk about anything other than whatshername's boyfriend or the main character.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Guns don't kill people. Stupidity kills people.
So by now everyone has heard of the CT shooting, I'm sure. The aftermath of this one on the internet and media has been similar to what happened for the last few previous ones. (How fucked up is it that we use a plural of "school shooting.") As before, the anti-gun people start shouting "THIS IS WHY NOBODY SHOULD HAVE GUNS" and the pro-gun people start shouting "THIS IS WHY EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE GUNS" and a bunch of internet slacktivists start using the event to earn internet points with shallow posts like "RT/like/share/reblog if you support the victims!"
Fucking stop it, guys. Stop focusing on guns. This is not about guns, or gun control, or gun ownership. Yes, he had a gun. Yes, he used it to kill people. Yes, guns make it easy to kill people. No, guns are not the only way to kill people. If the shooter didn't have a gun, he could use knives, blunt objects, a car, a bomb, fire, poison or any of numerous other ways to inflict harm on someone. If a person wants to harm another person they will find a way, guns or not.
So stop making this about guns. Don't stop talking about them entirely, because certainly they *are* a part of it. I mean people use fucking assault rifles to shoot other people. What the fuck? However, let's not get so caught up in talk about guns that we let it eclipse the real issue here: Why the fuck would a human being want to inflict that degree of harm on other human beings? THAT is what we should be talking about.
tl;dr this isn't a gun control issue, it's a mental health issue
Fucking stop it, guys. Stop focusing on guns. This is not about guns, or gun control, or gun ownership. Yes, he had a gun. Yes, he used it to kill people. Yes, guns make it easy to kill people. No, guns are not the only way to kill people. If the shooter didn't have a gun, he could use knives, blunt objects, a car, a bomb, fire, poison or any of numerous other ways to inflict harm on someone. If a person wants to harm another person they will find a way, guns or not.
So stop making this about guns. Don't stop talking about them entirely, because certainly they *are* a part of it. I mean people use fucking assault rifles to shoot other people. What the fuck? However, let's not get so caught up in talk about guns that we let it eclipse the real issue here: Why the fuck would a human being want to inflict that degree of harm on other human beings? THAT is what we should be talking about.
tl;dr this isn't a gun control issue, it's a mental health issue
Monday, April 9, 2012
Stop being so average, averagey!
I realize that this is ancient history in internet years, but I didn't get around to writing this blogrant when it was relevant. I recently had my attention drawn to this topic again though, so now is the time! Unless I get distracted by video games and cats halfway through, but if you're reading this then I guess I trudged on to victory.
Tangential rambles aside, a while ago this picture was floating around the internets, surfacing on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and probably assorted other sites:
This picture infuriates me for a number of reasons, but what bothers me most about it isn't that it hinges on an unproved assumption about its audience (that we find one thing "hotter" than the other), nor the implication that there is a unanimous standard of hotness (though those are pretty bad). It's not even the fact that it's comparing candid paparazzi shots to professionally lit and shot staged photographs.
No, what really bothers me about this picture is that it's lashing out against people who insult and demean women based on their weight by . . . insulting and demeaning women based on their weight. I know I'm drawing a lot of conclusions from a simple caption here, but the creator (and the thousands upon thousands of people who shared, posted and tweeted it with emphatic claims of "This!" or "So true") appears to be totally oblivious to the glaring hypocrisy.
Let's back up a bit. Yes, people who are fat (or not even fat, just "not skinny") have been getting shit for a while, because of this perceived Hollywood ideal that women must be skinny. Yes, that's horrible. When young girls are starving themselves to lose weight, well, nobody sane is going to argue that things are ok. However, that doesn't mean it's ok to turn things around and go the other way.
Our society is hypercorrecting for this problem so hard that the solution to insulting people based on weight is now to insult a completely different group of people based on weight, and that, sirs and ma'ms, is some bullshit. Saying someone is "too skinny" is *exactly* as bad as saying someone is too fat. Phrases like "I don't want a sack of bones, I want a REAL woman" are every bit as demeaning and offensive as "I don't want an obese lard troll." In fact, I'd almost say the anti-skinny trend is worse because I've seen people who are so wrapped up in their anti-Hollywood white knightism that they are oblivious to the fact that they're doing exactly what they hate, parading their prejudices while patting themselves on the back for being upstanding moral paragons who chivalrously rebel against the mass produced media ideals. (That was fun to write.)
So there. The next time you're about to comment on someone's weight, replace the word "skinny" with "fat" and see how it sounds.
Tangential rambles aside, a while ago this picture was floating around the internets, surfacing on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and probably assorted other sites:
This picture infuriates me for a number of reasons, but what bothers me most about it isn't that it hinges on an unproved assumption about its audience (that we find one thing "hotter" than the other), nor the implication that there is a unanimous standard of hotness (though those are pretty bad). It's not even the fact that it's comparing candid paparazzi shots to professionally lit and shot staged photographs.
No, what really bothers me about this picture is that it's lashing out against people who insult and demean women based on their weight by . . . insulting and demeaning women based on their weight. I know I'm drawing a lot of conclusions from a simple caption here, but the creator (and the thousands upon thousands of people who shared, posted and tweeted it with emphatic claims of "This!" or "So true") appears to be totally oblivious to the glaring hypocrisy.
Let's back up a bit. Yes, people who are fat (or not even fat, just "not skinny") have been getting shit for a while, because of this perceived Hollywood ideal that women must be skinny. Yes, that's horrible. When young girls are starving themselves to lose weight, well, nobody sane is going to argue that things are ok. However, that doesn't mean it's ok to turn things around and go the other way.
Our society is hypercorrecting for this problem so hard that the solution to insulting people based on weight is now to insult a completely different group of people based on weight, and that, sirs and ma'ms, is some bullshit. Saying someone is "too skinny" is *exactly* as bad as saying someone is too fat. Phrases like "I don't want a sack of bones, I want a REAL woman" are every bit as demeaning and offensive as "I don't want an obese lard troll." In fact, I'd almost say the anti-skinny trend is worse because I've seen people who are so wrapped up in their anti-Hollywood white knightism that they are oblivious to the fact that they're doing exactly what they hate, parading their prejudices while patting themselves on the back for being upstanding moral paragons who chivalrously rebel against the mass produced media ideals. (That was fun to write.)
So there. The next time you're about to comment on someone's weight, replace the word "skinny" with "fat" and see how it sounds.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Xenodreams
So I don't usually use this blog for "personal" posts, but eh, I needed somewhere to write this.
Like most folks, I forget most of my dreams. Occasionally, however, I remember a long on with surprising clarity. When that happens I usually feel compelled to write it down somewhere, so let's see how that goes.
The dream started with a remake of Xenogears (an old but awesome PS1 game) with voice acting and 3D characters rather than sprites, but somehow I ended up watching/playing Xenosaga (its 3 part PS2 successor). As it often goes in dreams, I eventually ended up inside interacting with the characters, sorta.
So we were at this enemy space station fightin' one of the big bads. We beat him back but realize he's not beaten for long and we need to make our escape (which is similar to what happened in the actual game). The party finds a bunch of fighters and we commandeer them to make our escape. I ended up being co-pilot for Jin Uzuki, the main character's brother, which is weird because he wasn't even in the game that scene was from, but he's a cool guy so I didn't complain. Once we got our helmets on and the cockpit closed and figured out the flight controls we were off on a whirlwind big city adventure.
Neither of us were experienced with the craft, but being the smart fellows we were, we figured we'd learn as we went along. We sort of did, but we also sort of flew into some sort of anomaly that sent us flying back in time.
We ended up in like, 1940s Detroit or something. There were a bunch of teenagers cleaning up a park nearby, and for some reason Jin hopped out and started helping. Nobody seemed to question the fact that a middle aged Japanese man with a giant Katana and a futuristic flightsuit had just appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a rake.
Our ship appeared to have mysteriously developed cloaking ability, so I wandered around a bit before returning and hopping out as well. The party seemed to have finished their project, so Jin and I joined a few of them to go awanderin'. We were a bit irked at having landed in an age without many of the technological conveniences we were used to (by the standards of the far futurey space age, brick buidings were like mud huts) but we tried to do our best to settle in. After all, there were far worse times we could be sent to.
We got along well with some of our new acquaintances, but we were still thrilled when we learned that the Zohar (a mysterious, powerful and important relic that plays a large part in the Xeno* games) was being used in experiments in a nearby lab. This didn't make much sense since the Zohar should've been in Africa at the time wouldn't be discovered for like 100 more years, but whatevs. Dream logic.
Figuring that this might somehow have our solution, we took our little ship and broke into the lab, sneaking/crashing our way to the Zohar. Jin worked some magic which looked deceptively like mashing buttons and hoping for the best, and us, our ship and 2 unlucky security guards who happened to be nearby all got sucked into a flash of light and ended up in a desert somewhere.
Our new companions seemed a bit upset, so I used the ship's external speakers to say "So while it's perfectly reasonably for you to be upset, we ARE all stuck in a desert together, so it might be wise to stop banging on our ship so we can all work together." That seemed to placate them, so we set about the business of finding food and shelter. I found some scrawny bushes that would do for kindling, and Jin went off to find food while our guests tried to stop wanting to kill us.
Eventually Jin radio'd that he had found food, a herd of sheep (in the desert, go dream logic), and he was off to the east of us. Of course we had no idea if it was really east, but we'd seemed to have made an unspoken agreement to pretend that this planet's sun worked like Sol and did the whole rise east/set west thing. Our guests wandered off in the wrong direction, but I managed to catch up with them and set 'em right.
After a bit of wandering in what we though was Jin's direction, we found . . . an inn. In the middle of the dessert, a quaint little building like you'd find in a quiet country town. So we went in (except for some reason I crawled in through a window) and found Jin sitting at a table. The "meat" was, uh, unusual and I began to suspect that, considering we were potentially on an alien world, "sheep" had been an approximation. Nevertheless, it wasn't bad tasting and it didn't kill anyone, so it seemed to be ok.
At this point the necessities of eating forced our two guests to remove their helmets, revealing that they were not the burly angry stereotypical guard dudes I'd been expecting, but actually were two very attractive young women. It seemed we'd been able to set our differences aside and we had a more or less pleasant dinner chat. (It's worth noting that the girls were wearing high tech body armor like ours, despite having come from dream-1940s.)
Eventually we were visited by the locals, an elderly woman dressed all in brown. We tried to communicate with her, but despite trying greetings in every language we know (which for my part seemed to include a LOT of D&D languages), we were unable to find common ground. I was about to try Abyssal and Infernal but decided against it since I didn't know what kind of place this was, and what effect speaking the words of such fell tongues would have. Plus I doubt that would've worked either.
She wandered off and we went back to contemplating our food, when one of the girls heard someone calling her name. I forget what it was, which irks me, but I think it started with an M. Marika or something? We'll go with that. I advised her not to wander off alone, since we had no idea what this place was and that was more than a little bit suspicious, but she would not be denied and rushed off to find the caller. I followed her cautiously, since I didn't think my suspicions were unwarranted.
It seems I was right, as she wandered into a dark room, and some beast lurking on the ceiling snapped down to bite her. I pulled her out of the way just in time (dream hero, go!) and produced an energy blade with which I cut the creature in two, presumably killing it. We carefully made our retreat from the room and . . . I woke up. That was the end of that. Alas. Oh well, maybe I'll get to see the end of the story when I fall asleep next, though that seems unlikely.
Like most folks, I forget most of my dreams. Occasionally, however, I remember a long on with surprising clarity. When that happens I usually feel compelled to write it down somewhere, so let's see how that goes.
The dream started with a remake of Xenogears (an old but awesome PS1 game) with voice acting and 3D characters rather than sprites, but somehow I ended up watching/playing Xenosaga (its 3 part PS2 successor). As it often goes in dreams, I eventually ended up inside interacting with the characters, sorta.
So we were at this enemy space station fightin' one of the big bads. We beat him back but realize he's not beaten for long and we need to make our escape (which is similar to what happened in the actual game). The party finds a bunch of fighters and we commandeer them to make our escape. I ended up being co-pilot for Jin Uzuki, the main character's brother, which is weird because he wasn't even in the game that scene was from, but he's a cool guy so I didn't complain. Once we got our helmets on and the cockpit closed and figured out the flight controls we were off on a whirlwind big city adventure.
Neither of us were experienced with the craft, but being the smart fellows we were, we figured we'd learn as we went along. We sort of did, but we also sort of flew into some sort of anomaly that sent us flying back in time.
We ended up in like, 1940s Detroit or something. There were a bunch of teenagers cleaning up a park nearby, and for some reason Jin hopped out and started helping. Nobody seemed to question the fact that a middle aged Japanese man with a giant Katana and a futuristic flightsuit had just appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a rake.
Our ship appeared to have mysteriously developed cloaking ability, so I wandered around a bit before returning and hopping out as well. The party seemed to have finished their project, so Jin and I joined a few of them to go awanderin'. We were a bit irked at having landed in an age without many of the technological conveniences we were used to (by the standards of the far futurey space age, brick buidings were like mud huts) but we tried to do our best to settle in. After all, there were far worse times we could be sent to.
We got along well with some of our new acquaintances, but we were still thrilled when we learned that the Zohar (a mysterious, powerful and important relic that plays a large part in the Xeno* games) was being used in experiments in a nearby lab. This didn't make much sense since the Zohar should've been in Africa at the time wouldn't be discovered for like 100 more years, but whatevs. Dream logic.
Figuring that this might somehow have our solution, we took our little ship and broke into the lab, sneaking/crashing our way to the Zohar. Jin worked some magic which looked deceptively like mashing buttons and hoping for the best, and us, our ship and 2 unlucky security guards who happened to be nearby all got sucked into a flash of light and ended up in a desert somewhere.
Our new companions seemed a bit upset, so I used the ship's external speakers to say "So while it's perfectly reasonably for you to be upset, we ARE all stuck in a desert together, so it might be wise to stop banging on our ship so we can all work together." That seemed to placate them, so we set about the business of finding food and shelter. I found some scrawny bushes that would do for kindling, and Jin went off to find food while our guests tried to stop wanting to kill us.
Eventually Jin radio'd that he had found food, a herd of sheep (in the desert, go dream logic), and he was off to the east of us. Of course we had no idea if it was really east, but we'd seemed to have made an unspoken agreement to pretend that this planet's sun worked like Sol and did the whole rise east/set west thing. Our guests wandered off in the wrong direction, but I managed to catch up with them and set 'em right.
After a bit of wandering in what we though was Jin's direction, we found . . . an inn. In the middle of the dessert, a quaint little building like you'd find in a quiet country town. So we went in (except for some reason I crawled in through a window) and found Jin sitting at a table. The "meat" was, uh, unusual and I began to suspect that, considering we were potentially on an alien world, "sheep" had been an approximation. Nevertheless, it wasn't bad tasting and it didn't kill anyone, so it seemed to be ok.
At this point the necessities of eating forced our two guests to remove their helmets, revealing that they were not the burly angry stereotypical guard dudes I'd been expecting, but actually were two very attractive young women. It seemed we'd been able to set our differences aside and we had a more or less pleasant dinner chat. (It's worth noting that the girls were wearing high tech body armor like ours, despite having come from dream-1940s.)
Eventually we were visited by the locals, an elderly woman dressed all in brown. We tried to communicate with her, but despite trying greetings in every language we know (which for my part seemed to include a LOT of D&D languages), we were unable to find common ground. I was about to try Abyssal and Infernal but decided against it since I didn't know what kind of place this was, and what effect speaking the words of such fell tongues would have. Plus I doubt that would've worked either.
She wandered off and we went back to contemplating our food, when one of the girls heard someone calling her name. I forget what it was, which irks me, but I think it started with an M. Marika or something? We'll go with that. I advised her not to wander off alone, since we had no idea what this place was and that was more than a little bit suspicious, but she would not be denied and rushed off to find the caller. I followed her cautiously, since I didn't think my suspicions were unwarranted.
It seems I was right, as she wandered into a dark room, and some beast lurking on the ceiling snapped down to bite her. I pulled her out of the way just in time (dream hero, go!) and produced an energy blade with which I cut the creature in two, presumably killing it. We carefully made our retreat from the room and . . . I woke up. That was the end of that. Alas. Oh well, maybe I'll get to see the end of the story when I fall asleep next, though that seems unlikely.
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