Book and FFXI (RL then FFXI)
Mar. 17th, 2006 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserYay, new icon! I need to edit it a little when I get home. I want to add 'Unf!' to it. Heehee.
Okay, since I'll never talk about that second book if I wait till my usual nighttime post (I only have time to rush some FFXI stuff out then), I'll do it now!
A few months ago I saw a movie called Riverworld. I loved the plot: people die in the real world and are resurrected along a river. People of all time periods. Everyone's reborn naked, healthy, and of about 25 years of age. I goggled it once it was finished, and found out that it was based on a series of books (by Philip Jose Farmer), so I ran right out and bought them.
It wasn't until many months later that I started reading them, and boy was I disappointed. I knew the books would be nothing like the movie, but hey, even if the basic ideas remained the same I should still enjoy the tale!
WRONG-O. I learned a lesson: No matter how good the story is, no matter how much potential an idea has, if the main character is utterly unlikeable, how can you enjoy the story?
Book #1's main character was the type of person I would avoid like the plague in RL. He wasn't unlikeable because he had faults (it's a good thing to have faults in a character!), it was his personality that was so unpleasant.
I was happy to see that Book #2 was about totally different people. Yay! No more unlikeable main character! But the main character in book 2 was actually worse. Ugh.
And worse than that, the other main character in book 2 talked in an lisp and an accent. The writer typed both out. The results were something like this:
"Tham, ah thee tha thu don't apprethiate tha ah can thee that he distunithests..."
I wish I had the book with me, because the actual text was actually worse than that. A main character in the book, one who talked a lot, and his dialogue was nearly impossible to read. (I gave up trying after the first chapter.)
If that wasn't enough, the books aren't believable at all: The only tools these people have are ones made out of flint. When a meteor falls to earth, they make a riverboat (three stories tall! Sonar! Electric power! TV!) out of it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
The reason I'm boggling over this and not just tossing them aside as bad books is that this guy won many awards for this series. Hugo award and others. I don't understand it, not one little bit.
Luckily I have only one more left to read (there are more in the series, but I own just the first three), then I can toss them all out.
---
FFXI: It's such a good thing that I LJ post after logging off, it gets things out of my system. Happily I settled down after ranting/posting and actually was able to sleep last night.
Somehow I succeeded in pulling a muscle in my leg while playing last night. o.O I guess I was so tense for so long, it must have kinked up. Hurts like heck to walk (it's directly behind my ankle).
Tonight and Saturday I will be doing NOTHING. Or rather, nothing stressful or hard. No XPing. Not helping with anything which requires sneaking/invisibling. Nothing.
I have a crapload of crafting I need and want to do, and I need to do some farming along with that. (Maybe mining too, but I might just buy zinc instead. I hate mining.) I also want to work on skilling throwing (will do it as RDM with darts, they get a F in throwing, but that's still good enough for now.)
And two things I must do:
1) Call out my NPC and see the GK I spent 700K on. He's had it for two days now and I haven't even seen it yet. Bitch, I paid a lot of money for that weapon, I want to see it! You will show it to me! Tonight!
2) I might solo a mob or two as NIN, because I just got a gun and I was dying to use it last night (but instead of getting to use it I was just dying! Haw haw haw). I really want to see how it works and how much damage it does.
3) Related to #1: Must use up the charges on my tactics pearl. Not to mention the main pearl, which I haven't used in days...
I really, really, really want to XP NIN, but I have no idea when I'll get a chance to. I'm betting Tuesday will be my first chance. Maybe starting Tuesday I'll XP NIN every day and not stop until I get this out of my system...
Okay, since I'll never talk about that second book if I wait till my usual nighttime post (I only have time to rush some FFXI stuff out then), I'll do it now!
A few months ago I saw a movie called Riverworld. I loved the plot: people die in the real world and are resurrected along a river. People of all time periods. Everyone's reborn naked, healthy, and of about 25 years of age. I goggled it once it was finished, and found out that it was based on a series of books (by Philip Jose Farmer), so I ran right out and bought them.
It wasn't until many months later that I started reading them, and boy was I disappointed. I knew the books would be nothing like the movie, but hey, even if the basic ideas remained the same I should still enjoy the tale!
WRONG-O. I learned a lesson: No matter how good the story is, no matter how much potential an idea has, if the main character is utterly unlikeable, how can you enjoy the story?
Book #1's main character was the type of person I would avoid like the plague in RL. He wasn't unlikeable because he had faults (it's a good thing to have faults in a character!), it was his personality that was so unpleasant.
I was happy to see that Book #2 was about totally different people. Yay! No more unlikeable main character! But the main character in book 2 was actually worse. Ugh.
And worse than that, the other main character in book 2 talked in an lisp and an accent. The writer typed both out. The results were something like this:
"Tham, ah thee tha thu don't apprethiate tha ah can thee that he distunithests..."
I wish I had the book with me, because the actual text was actually worse than that. A main character in the book, one who talked a lot, and his dialogue was nearly impossible to read. (I gave up trying after the first chapter.)
If that wasn't enough, the books aren't believable at all: The only tools these people have are ones made out of flint. When a meteor falls to earth, they make a riverboat (three stories tall! Sonar! Electric power! TV!) out of it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
The reason I'm boggling over this and not just tossing them aside as bad books is that this guy won many awards for this series. Hugo award and others. I don't understand it, not one little bit.
Luckily I have only one more left to read (there are more in the series, but I own just the first three), then I can toss them all out.
---
FFXI: It's such a good thing that I LJ post after logging off, it gets things out of my system. Happily I settled down after ranting/posting and actually was able to sleep last night.
Somehow I succeeded in pulling a muscle in my leg while playing last night. o.O I guess I was so tense for so long, it must have kinked up. Hurts like heck to walk (it's directly behind my ankle).
Tonight and Saturday I will be doing NOTHING. Or rather, nothing stressful or hard. No XPing. Not helping with anything which requires sneaking/invisibling. Nothing.
I have a crapload of crafting I need and want to do, and I need to do some farming along with that. (Maybe mining too, but I might just buy zinc instead. I hate mining.) I also want to work on skilling throwing (will do it as RDM with darts, they get a F in throwing, but that's still good enough for now.)
And two things I must do:
1) Call out my NPC and see the GK I spent 700K on. He's had it for two days now and I haven't even seen it yet. Bitch, I paid a lot of money for that weapon, I want to see it! You will show it to me! Tonight!
2) I might solo a mob or two as NIN, because I just got a gun and I was dying to use it last night (but instead of getting to use it I was just dying! Haw haw haw). I really want to see how it works and how much damage it does.
3) Related to #1: Must use up the charges on my tactics pearl. Not to mention the main pearl, which I haven't used in days...
I really, really, really want to XP NIN, but I have no idea when I'll get a chance to. I'm betting Tuesday will be my first chance. Maybe starting Tuesday I'll XP NIN every day and not stop until I get this out of my system...
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 09:36 pm (UTC)What made the main character of the first book so unlikeable, and how was he different from the movie characters?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 09:43 pm (UTC)When I read a book, I want to enjoy my time with it. Enjoy the story, enjoy the "people". When I spend a whole book wishing the main characters would DIE DIE DIE, it's not a very enjoyable read. :P
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 04:34 am (UTC)Guess this guy sucks as an author.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 10:08 pm (UTC)That sounds like a pretty cool idea/movie.
maybe Macguyver got resurrected there as well. He can work wonders with chewing gum, a piece of tin foil, and duct tape.
>,> ahahahaha You always take a risk when you try to convey abnormal speech patterns...annoying? most of the time! I think it's mostly due to the extra time it takes to figure out what the hell they are saying.
...how did you manage that? /boggles/ count to ten and breathe~ or, buy a controller and/or set of expendable headphones to throw ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 10:35 pm (UTC)Very very cool. People from the stone age mixing with people from our time, famous people, common people. Of course there are language/culture issues, and things from "real life" (like racism and phobias) still with people. Such amazing potential for a book...
maybe Macguyver got resurrected there as well. He can work wonders with chewing gum, a piece of tin foil, and duct tape.
Seriously, that must have been it. Otherwise how in the world would people with only flint tools make guns, sonar, cannons, massive boats? It boggles the mind.
ahahahaha You always take a risk when you try to convey abnormal speech patterns...annoying? most of the time! I think it's mostly due to the extra time it takes to figure out what the hell they are saying.
Totally. When you read, you don't want to have to look at the words and study them to figure out what in the heck they're saying, the text should just flow into you and form the picture of what's happening. *sigh*
...how did you manage that? /boggles/ count to ten and breathe~ or, buy a controller and/or set of expendable headphones to throw ;)
Stun duty keeps me somewhat tense, but add onto that dealing with idiots for five hours? Heh, I'm probably lucky that's all I did. :P
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 06:52 am (UTC)This is true. But, I think it's also a decision by the author for artistic purposes. He is trying to convey an additional detail about the character. I've often wondered how much detail is enough...just enough to let the reader's imagination do the rest, or super descriptive to give them exactly what is intended by the author? Who knows, maybe it was intended to be comical, but seen through your eyes/mind it came out quite the opposite.
Hmm, it sounds alot like Starget: SG1...
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 03:34 am (UTC)The gkt you got looks like a hagun, black and the blade is kinda thick.
The reason it's so expensive is that it runs out from the NPC that sells it right after each server maintenance, the NPC can sell like 4-5 and that's it i think now that it's been emptied out. It used to be 100k from npc when nobody bought it (no npcs) but i saw it get higher and higher price from NPC up to 800k and then disappear, and it only appears again after server maintenances now (bastok #1 might increase number available).
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 10:39 pm (UTC)Yes! And it's the nicest NPC GK I've seen so far!
The reason it's so expensive is that it runs out from the NPC that sells it right after each server maintenance
Aw, man. Is that when they show up? I tried the first day the shop was open, the first moment after conquest tally... never any for sale. I camped Norg for a couple weeks and never got one.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 12:31 pm (UTC)as long as they blow all the community members, that is.However, that book might inspire someone to take the idea and do it right, so maybe it's not all bad. I dunno. Still sucks that the books were such a letdown to you.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-18 10:37 pm (UTC)However, that book might inspire someone to take the idea and do it right, so maybe it's not all bad.
Which is what happened in this case. I did enjoy the movie a lot -- they took the basic idea and made it better.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 02:37 am (UTC)I really should learn not to comment before I'm fully awake sometimes. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 06:00 am (UTC)