“As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.”
—- William Blake
qotd
About a video game I have never played
Standard“You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.”
— David Galder, Bioware employee (I don’t know his job title) (eta: he’s the lead writer for Dragon Age 2)
Quote of the day
StandardQuote of the day
Standard“My fellow citizens. In this difficult time that the country is going through, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided to relieve himself of his position as president and the Supreme military council has taken control of the state’s affairs. May God protect us.” — Omar Suleiman
The Egyptian people have managed a (mostly) peaceful revolution. The path ahead will be difficult for them, but this is a moment for celebration. Good luck.
Quote of the day, Geography edition
Standard“What a pity the people of Africa do not have the guts of the people of Egypt.”
— A caller to BBC World, comparing the demonstrations in Egypt to the rule of Laurent Gbagbo in Cote d’Ivoire.
Quote of the day
Standard“It was a hard decision because another editor had offered more money. I called up my old boss from when I’d worked in publishing to ask what I should do, and he told me that the right thing to do is always to take more money, because life is uncertain, and the professional life of a young and up-and-coming editor who might get a better job at another house at any time is especially uncertain. He was right—he’s always right—and you should keep his advice in mind. When you make a deal it’s with the publisher, not the editor. I prefer to make the risky un-fiscally responsible choice whenever possible, though, so didn’t take the bigger offer and luckily Amber didn’t abandon me. I think about the money all the time, though, and not in a wistful “ah, sliding doors” way.”
— Emily Gould from Five Writers Talk About Their Book Editors.
Actually, I could have pulled a number of different quotes from that article–that’s a rich vein right there–but this one made me laugh. (Unlike Matthew Galloway’s account of his first-ever meeting with his editor, which made me laugh and cringe.)
Give it a read. It’s pretty interesting.
New quote of the day
Standard“‘Challenging’ is a synonym for ‘fun’ around here.”
— my son’s Parkour teacher at his birthday party yesterday.
That’s going to be my new writing motto.
In other funtastic news, Circle of Enemies is available for pre-order at Amazon.com as of, well, now. It won’t ship until the end of July (the 26th, by the current plan) but you can help Amazon.com decide how big their initial order should be.
I have no idea what that means, either. I’m just vamping here.
I have lots to do today, so I’m not going to be online much. Don’t forget to check out/comment on the last minute gift suggestion posts on my blog or on LiveJournal.
Quote of the day: AFM report
Standard“One of the strange things I noticed at one of the places upstairs were two different movies in different genres with the exact same cast, and seemingly the exact same basic location. At first I thought this might be a company trying to sell the same movie twice (not everyone at AFM is honest… actually, few are) but then I realized this was a cost cutting method by the producer. They hired the same cast – including stars – and crew and shot in the same locations for two different movies. They could light one room, shoot all of the scenes for *both* films at the same time, and not waste any time taking down and setting up lights. When the middle dropped out of the business leaving only low budget and big budget films, the medium budget people had to become creative.
In the lobby I bumped into a director I know, Rolfe, who was working on the film from hell… actually, the *films* from hell. He just shot 7 different movies for the same company at the same time. The scripts were written to use the same sets and same actors, so that if 4 of the films had scenes at a police station they could all be shot at the same time. Different actors in the ensemble might play the detective in differently films, and other actors might be suspects in different films, but he had to shoot all of the police station scenes at once… and all of the other locations that each of the films shared at the same time. An actor playing the cop in one film might play the killer in another and a witness in a third film and the District Attorney in a fourth. That actor would be doing costume changes all day, and doing lines from different films all day. I think the idea behind this was for the company to make a whole slate of films at the same time, and be able to sell all of the films *now*, instead of making 7 individual films and having for each to be made before they can sell it. Whatever the reason, Rolfe had to write over 600 pages of screenplays that all used the same locations – and that’s not an easy task. These are the things that we might have to do in the indie world as screenwriters – that kind of assignment may become more common.”