Almost a week again ! I'm slipping :-) Although I think I'm still somewhat on target for my usual aim of 100 posts a year even before things like Inktober and another Advent series of posts. Might need a little time travel though.
The perspective lost its way at the top and I'm still figuring out how to fit the legs and tail in but I think this one worked out ok and the people that it happened for seemed happy with it. This one happened as a rapid sketch done over a lunch time with the finishing and colouring done after logging off for the day. It's definitely better than the 6 days of IT Depression I did in another lunchtime way back :
Inktober's definitely something I can do in the isolation, Advent might need more creativity ... The marshmallows were tasty but sadly not enough variation, I would have thought they'd put more of their variously different marshmallows in but sadly just the 6. I've enjoyed the various Star Wars advent calendars over the years but I've been increasingly feeling like they've been getting mined out. Plus the post a day format can be a bit burny out on the mind, especially if you have the sense that you need a certain number of words to go with the theme given.
How am I doing at the moment ? I'm ok, although if you'd asked after I breathed in a chunk of extra strong mint yesterday I'd have answered different ! Oops. It felt like a rock as soon as I coughed it out of my airway and the neighbours probably wondered what was going on. All good now and I was managing to not cough too much while doing the fortnightly shopping run last night.
I think we're in for more extensions of the lockdowns here. It's not like the lockdown's been lifted, it's more that people are too dumb to observe a healthy respect for the bug that's going around and our government is too weak to give a worthwhile enforceable and sensible way to go. I think that'll lead to a bouncing up again this week and next and a needless extension of the tragedy.
Hopefully I'll be proved wrong there ! I'd like to be out and about again doing the more fun part of my job as well as wandering around places seeing shiny things and especially ... seeing friends again.
Book and game ! I've just finished reading through Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds and I'm steadily getting more drawn in to Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Game first ?
Go on then. I've recorded 16 hours in Deus Ex Mankind Divided (DXMD from here) and from nearly giving up on it early, I'm pretty well drawn into it now. Some of the reason for that is that they throw you into a prologue scenario with all of your augmented powers available, partly so they can give you a series of tutorials on them. The cover system is different, I think I'm getting used to it but there are occasions where I end up vaulting over a Something into the midst of a bunch of enemies.
You're not particularly tanky in this game, 2 enemies can be too much early on, making 3 enemies aware of you is usually Reload. The true way to play through is sneaky sneaky grabby thumpy, where you should be handling the missions through stealth and secrecy instead of shooty death. There's actually another reason for that too ... being merciful and non lethal gives you slightly more experience too, which may count in the end letting you turn on another augmentation slightly earlier.
This is actually a sign of the times with this game. It was made in 2016 when faces and face animation were a continuing development area in games ... They'd cracked being able to make amazing looking backgrounds and worlds :
I've got to the stage now where Prague is at night although I didn't take a screenshot of that last night.
But yeah, I'm steadily being drawn in to the story on this one, I've been recognising that perhaps some of the side missions need a little patience and waiting before you do them too. I think I'll have another crack at a couple of them today and see what happens and after this one finishes, I think it'll be The Outer Worlds which appeared from the Epic Store on Friday.
Book ? I finished Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds this week.
Another interesting addition to the Inhibitors trilogy although I think this suffers from the Middle Book Problem. These don't have a real introduction to the universe, that's the job of the first book. They don't have a real conclusion, that's the job of the last book. They're there to develop and bring on the plot of the Ark. Also somewhat to get everything in place for the last book. The Expanse series has felt a bit like this too, it feels like a trilogy of trilogies.
A little about the universe - it's the Human sphere around 700 years in the future. Humanity has spread to and colonised a variety of other worlds with the story being based around the backwater Resurgam system and previously important but now devastated Yellowstone. Humanity rose ... and then fell due to the impact of the Melding Plague, which mixes the biological with the mechanical in disastrous ways. This series is based in the late aftermath of this as humanity discovers and confronts what Iain M. Banks called an Outside Context Problem, encountering something utterly alien and infinitely beyond humanity's own capabilities. Or is it ...
Oh and trade and interstellar travel is done mostly via Lighthuggers, spaceships that accelerate to just below the speed of light taking subjective decades to get from system to system. At some point, I'll try a drawing of them although I get the impression that Elite's Imperial Cutter strongly resembles them with a cylindrical shell, tapering at bow and stern with an engine attached to each port and starboard on structural spars. Oh and they're 4km long too which is quite a bit longer than Elite's Imperial Cutter.
Interstellar spaceship chase - a good one too.
Megalomaniac characters - several of them.
Intrigue - aplenty.
Character flaws from psychotic to sociopathic to isolationist - makes for good reading.
Apocalyptic machines - impending.
Healthy respect for physics - no cheating with faster than light.
And a steady development of the various threads before they're drawn together in the last 100 or so pages.
One thing curious is that there are several big event type things which other authors would have spun out to another 100 or so pages each, however instead they're compressed into a summary of just a couple of pages. I think this actually works pretty well ! And the book is a very healthy 646 pages already.
I'd recommend reading an Alastair Reynolds or two. I didn't enjoy Chasm City and heavily bounced off that one. I definitely enjoyed the various shenanigans running throughout Revelation Space and Revenger and Redemption Ark is a good middle book for its series.
What's next ? I've started reading Excession. This is an Iain M. Banks book set in his Culture universe, where they face their own Outside Context Problem. One issue with the Culture books is that the Culture tends to be assured of its own superiority, this one shakes that superiority at its foundation making it a really compelling book and one I'll enjoy reading again.
Later ! More tales of the augmented struggle in Prague first.
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