Aim For The Heart: March 2008

My agent, Janet Reid, is offering query letter critiques. Head over to her blog and read the details. And if you didn't already know about it, Bookends has been doing a series of 100-word beginnings contests in various genres. I'm not sure how many more they'll be doing, if any, but they have a fantastic blog nonetheless.

Update: She has all the queries she wants and has removed the blog post.

I had a bit of mild drama today. My computer room's window faces the street and the neighbors on the other side of it. I usually push aside the blinds and let the sunlight in. Today I noticed my neighbor's dog was loose. Since he usually keeps his dogs behind the fence, I figured he'd return home shortly and take care of his dog.

All I knew of the dog was she was white, a boxer-type, and pregnant or had recently given birth. Since she was staying in her yard and the adjacent one, I didn't give it much thought. She was ignoring the people who walk down the street, so I didn't think she was going to be much trouble.

Then I went out to get the mail. One of my cats wanted outside to roll around on the porch. I didn't think much about it, because the dog hadn't shown any sign of wanting to leave her yard.

(Don't worry; this story has a happy ending.)

My mailbox is next to the road. When I walked down there, the dog crossed the street barking at me. My first thought was, Oh, god, she's going after the cat. I'll never make it in time.

Fortunately, she was content to just bark at me from ten feet away. We returned to the house, the dog returned to her yard, and I figured that was the end of it. Until a friend pointed out that the dog could hurt a child, something I hadn't given much thought. A search for the number to animal control turned out to be akin to trying to uncover the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit.

But, before I could call, the dog got herself caught in another neighbor's carport fence, which is made up of thin iron bars. She tried to get free and ended up only getting caught worse.

I threw on my shoes, but before I could run outside, I saw a car pull up to the house and honk. I waited, thinking perhaps they knew the dog and would get out and help it. When they didn't get out of the car, I walked across the street to see if I could help.

The occupants were a couple of elderly ladies. They weren't going to risk getting out of the car, since as it turned out, the pregnant bitch was, in fact, a pit bull. (For the record, while I'm fairly sure the dog was some sort of bull terrier breed, I wouldn't swear it was an actual pit bull.)

I figured I'd see what I could do while they called the cops. I approached to about six feet away from the dog.

grrrrrrr

OK, that obviously wasn't going to work. But I did notice she stopped fighting the fence when I talked to her. I was seriously worried she was going to break a leg or hurt her puppies if she kept fighting the fence. As long as I didn't get too close, she didn't mind me talking to her.

Well, one very cold hour later, the animal control officer was finally there. (Good thing, too, because the dog was getting antsy, and I was having trouble keeping her calm.)

I returned to my house. I didn't figure the officers would appreciate me trying to "help" someone who knew his job better than I would. And I'm sure if I put myself in harm's way and got bit, there'd be a lot of really pissed off people if that dog had to be put down. (I don't know if it would have been, and I certainly wouldn't have caused any trouble if I'd gotten bit from my own negligence, but there may be laws governing breeds like pits that would force such an action regardless.)

The dog was put into one of the police cars, where I presume she was taken to a shelter until her owner could retrieve her.

So, that was my Friday afternoon excitement. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Seriously, this is going to be one long--I don't want to use the term wankfest, but that's probably the best word for it--okay, wankfest about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Anyway, so I can quit boring Dempsey to tears over my constant talking about it, I decided to just make a massive blog post expressing my deep and everlasting love of the greatest game on earth. Feel free to stop reading now.

The developers made the game super easy to mod. Simply install the mod in the Data directory, go into the menu option and check the box next to the mod. Done! If you decide later you don't like it, go back and uncheck it. Done! That simple.

Unless you're like me and the many other mod-addicted gamers who run dozens or more mods (most I ever heard about is 270. They had to merge some to get around the 255 mod limit). For one, you have to worry about load order, and the default mod option lists them alphabetically. So you can use the Oblivion Mod Manager, a user made program, which does many things, not least of which is letting you set your mod order.

Then theres Wrye Bash. I don't know a lot of Bash other than to follow the instructions for the mods that use it. The same for the Oblivion Script Extender, which is another program that allows mod-makers to add to what Oblivion can do. You don't have to know a whole lot about these two to run your game. The most important thing to know is that if you use a mod that uses the OBSE, you have to run your game through it to get them to work. (Easy enough; just set up a shortcut on your desktop that kicks off the OBSE version of your game.)

See, a lot of the mods that have come out do things the base game doesn't do. New animations, new functionality entirely. I have a mod that adds, among other things, a lute animation to the game and lets you play the lute to increase a character's disposition toward you and even earn money.

So, what do I have my game doing?

Well, I'm running the biggest convergence of overhaul mods: FCOM. Overhaul mods are just what they sound like. They overhaul a vast majority of the game. For example, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (the "O" in FCOM), in simplest terms, overhauls every aspect of gameplay. In default Oblivion, the game world levels with you. That means you can go anywhere in the world and not worry about running into something too overpowered. OOO changes that. Now everything is leveled, though somewhat loosely. You'll spend a lot of your lower character levels very close to the Imperial City, the large capital city in the center of the game world. An OOO world is harder, much harder, than vanilla Oblivion (unmodded Oblivion).

Then there's Martigen's Monster Mod (the "M"). It adds over 160 new monsters, quite a few of which are completely new meshes. (Think of a mesh as the skeleton of a creature.) Foxes, bats, rabbits, and more are part of MMM. You can set undead to have a chance to rise again once you've killed them, which makes dungeon crawling extra scary.

I also have Francesco's (the "F"). It adds hundreds of new objects, some new monsters, various other changes. The only part of FCOM I don't have is Warcry (the "C". Yes, I know.)

OK, that's the largest major change. So what else? Well, there's Supreme Magicka and L.A.M.E. Both are magic overhauls. Both make magic more useful by adding dozens of new spells, increasing the timer on many other spells, fixing some spells that were broken either as too exploitable or useless.

I have some smaller mods that do less but are nonetheless very important. For example, Harvest [Flora], which is part of OOO, fixes the problem in vanilla Oblivion where harvest plants didn't change their image. In other words, it was impossible to tell if you'd harvested the plant, and you wasted a lot of time going back over areas. Now when I harvest, the image changes.

I have a mod that puts saddlebags onto my horse. I mean, when I'm dragging my weighted-down carcass out of a dungeon, loaded down with armor, weapons, potions, gold, gems, etc. it's nice to dump off some of the excess loot in case I get into a fight on the way back to town.

And finally, I have most of the major quest mods. These probably impress me the most. People created these massive quest lines, many of which are even better than almost every quest Bethsoft came up with. There's The Lost Spires, which promises about 15 hours of gameplay. I've bought games that didn't provide that much entertainment, and The Lost Spires is free. There's Blood & Mud, which completely changed the town of Bravil in addition to adding a massive questline. I have a questline I started, and I'm not even sure which one of those I installed it belongs to. All-in-all, I think the quests I've put on the game have added an extra 100 hours of play time to the game.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. At last count, I have 97 .esp or .esm files. Many of them require each other to work, so I don't actually have that many mods installed, but it's still probably 75 unique changes to the game.

It may seem strange to label a game "greatest ever" when I've changed it so much it barely resembles itself. But that's exactly why it's the greatest. Instead of saying, "This would be a great game if only it would [insert change here]," I can say, "You know, I'd like it if I could do [X]. I wonder if that's possible." There's a decent chance it is.

I never understand the people who say, "I started playing Oblivion and got bored when I realized [some aspect of the game that I've never dealt with because of my mods]." And all I can think of is, "So why didn't you fix it?"

One of the rarities in entertainment seems to be the happy relationship. Characters start out or quickly become single or marriages are rocky. The why is obvious. There are a lot of story possibilities if you can introduce a new romantic protagonist. I do it myself.

But I would love to see more stories in which the romantic couple is happy and thriving. I recently thought of this when I rewatched the last episode of season one of Medium, because season two, disc one arrived from Netflix (and the episode was a two-part, season 1/2 cliffhanger). The relationship between the heroine and her husband is strained as the season goes on. It's sad and frustrating to watch.

But take another, similar show, The Ghost Whisperer. Again, I've only seen season one, but I enjoyed it. The relationship between Jennifer Love Hewitt's character and her husband is happy. They're committed to each other. Even the one episode where they fought, you still had the impression the two characters were madly in love, that the fight wasn't a relationship-ender. I want to see more shows, more books, where this is the case.

Joss Whedon, I believe, was once quoted as saying that relationships in stories have to be bad or troublesome to be interesting, yet the marriage of Zoe and Wash in Firefly was fantastic. Let's see more of those in fiction.

This message brought to you by someone two weeks from her 14th wedding anniversary with the greatest guy in the world.

Parts: The Clonus Horror -- If you've seen The Island, you know what this movie is about. As far as MST3K movies go, this isn't one of the worst. The sound was bad, and there were some rather unfortunate camera angles, but there was a plot that had a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and the acting was on par with other movies of the time. The product placement was almost as rampant in this one as in The Island. Just substitute Old Milwaukee with Heineken. The ending was different. I kinda liked the original version's ending better. And honestly, after watching The Starfighter, this one's damn near Oscar material in comparison.

The Starfighter -- This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what not to do in a story. Here's the plot: a USAF pilot learns to fly a new kind of jet. That's not the premise. I've just given you a synopsis of everything that happens in the movie. There was no conflict, no danger, no risks, nothing. A series of uninteresting events DO NOT make a story.

Secret Agent Super Dragon -- I had to look the title of this one up on Amazon for this post. The title sounds like something a group of pre-adolescent boys would come up with. "Let's call it Secret Agent!" "No, let's call it Super Dragon!" "I know! Let's call it Secret Agent Super Dragon!!" "That's so awesome!!!"

This was a James Bond ripoff, and a bad one at that. I'd give you a rundown of the plot, but I have no idea what it is. Seriously, there was something about hallucinogenic gum, but I only know that from reading the back of the box. The climactic ending, when the hero confronts the bad guy, was over in about five seconds.

And just to finish up the box set,

The Rebel Set -- A heist movie. These guys pull off an armored car robbery. The camera work was actually decent, and it did have a plot, but that's about all I can recommend about it. The parts that should've been exciting: the heist, the betrayal, were plodding and over too quickly. The parts that should've been brushed over: the travel, went on forever.

The 'bots and Joel and Mike were in fine form, as usual, though none of these were as funny as say, Prince of Space, Space Mutiny or Hobgoblins.