My laptop died and it won't turn on now. That's fairly okay though. I backed up everything relatively important, you know like games I was (at least a few months ago I was) working on, I guess. Radcore. In any case, it was a tablet pc and now without it, I can't really draw because well, I don't have a tablet. In the meantime, I am just using my sister's old laptop which is also sorta broken in a number of ways that just slurp up my will to do anything creative besides writing totally lewd fan fic. This is probably more of a convenient excuse rather than something really holding me back!

In any case, I've been reading up a bit more on dramatic theory and storytelling in general. I always felt that my writing was never really solid in terms of story construction or rather anything in the sense of structure. It's interesting stuff, even if a lot of it is in the vein of, "I already knew this, but I just never really applied it, oops." You know, like everything else. I've been writing tidbits here and there, which won't be used in the actual game, Panache, at all, but they're nice little exercises to flesh out character personality and mannerisms.

Here's an example:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/785954/panxgio.htm

Xiaoai's supposed to be a really hokey character, and I'm wondering how well it comes across here, because someone actually thought she sounded cool and I went "Uhhhh." And despite attempting to write her as hokey, I really don't want the writing to become overbearing. I feel like that's been a problem with my writing. Well besides my tendency to inadequately explain things and namedrop a billion foreign terms and cockslam in inside-jokes.

I've also been watching a lot of films, most of them by Wong Kar Wai. I think those films are probably going to be pretty strong influences on Panache, at least aesthetics-wise. Christopher Doyle does some great cinematography, especially in the shots of the city at night. Plus, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels just had this really whimsical almost self-parody fashion vibe I really enjoyed. The characters hardly felt human but it actually strengthened the films because of that. Loved the soundtracks too.

Also got to watch The Twilight Samurai and that was just great. Loved how cohesive it felt despite being a daily life story. Then I watched Predator and Arnold Schwarzenegger just proves that he was the best out of all the 80's muscle-head actors. Packing in with Conan, Terminator, and Predator, the man just had a slew of legitimately good movies, at least when compared to their ilk.

I've also been listening to Happy the Man recently.

Cool.