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Good news, bad news

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Hey, this is Brian.

So: there’s good news and there’s bad news.

So: what? There’s always good news. And always bad news.

But here we go:

Liana and I met about a decade ago. That’s a long story. You know 2001? This movie about time. Long story. Cave dude throws that bone up into the air — it spins — sunlight — cut to spaceship. Yes, the movie says, some deliberate, ordered sequence of events happened between the bone going up into the air and this spaceship out way beyond the bleeding edge of the sky. But none of that is important, now, since we’re watching this spaceship. And that’s sort of how the movie starts. People mark time. Birthdays, durations of video screen calls, all this garbage. And by the end, there’s all this weird kick the can stuff that makes you want to lie down in the wet popcorn dust on the theater floor and feel time and space and so forth kind of loop out, and then the guy is old, and he’s walking through these rooms, and then there’s this spacebaby. And that’s sort of how the movie ends.

The point being that I could go on for a long time about Liana, how we met, what a joy it’s been to have her companionship and sweetness and laughter since. But instead I’ll jump cut to the fact that, well, she’s gone.

I never had her pegged for the ninjitsu type. True, the warning signs were all there. But she’s up and left us. She didn’t write a note. Ninjas don’t write notes. Nor do they leave forwarding addresses, or even, apparently, lock the doors on their way out.

To the ninja, every door is unlocked. Locks are illusions. Doors are illusions, too. So it makes sense, from a certain perspective.

Hers, not mine.

So now you know the bad news. To wit: ninjas don’t draw paper dolls either. Paper shurikens, maybe. But then they cut them out with the force of a thousand burning eagles and — well.

Thinking about it, I’m glad I’m still alive. I was married to a ninja!

But I feel bad for all of you, who apparently derived some satisfaction from Liana’s paperdoll art.

And I feel bad for myself. Because, come on, I don’t know where she is. Maybe she’s under the fridge. Hiding in the cabinet. Hidden in the shadow of a table leg. Waiting to strike, with the force of a thousand burning eagle paper shuriken.

Hence I’m making the best of things, and I’ll be drawing some paperdoll costumes for you. That’s the good news.

Today’s doll is a celebration of Springtime in the Rust Belt. Frog legs for springing through the mud, a stupid hat for the usual reasons, and a sandwich board bedecked with the smiling sun, token of the King of Shadows and the elves, and also the only thing anybody drinks in this state between approx. March and September.

Happy spring. Also, send me your ninja evasion tips. I’m already doing all the usual stuff: garlic, wolfsbane, mousetraps.

Min’s Royal Blue Pillbox Hat with 1960s Dress via Dress A Day

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I found Min’s blog when she linked to me a while back, and I’ve quite enjoyed perusing her charming vintage hat collection since then. (It’s called “It’s Raining Min,” which always makes me think of warriors falling off a cliff…) I really liked this royal blue pillbox, but what to partner it with? The answer came in a recent A Dress A Day post in which the weird poses of the models were discussed at length. But the outfit, a slim 1960s dress, was cute, so I borrowed the look to go with the hat, and voilà.

Red, Black and Gold Captain’s Outfit based on Puzzle Pirates

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I downloaded Puzzle Pirates the other day — it just looked too cute not to give it a try. And indeed it was very cute, and I played a good deal of it for a couple of days. There’s a lot of puzzles to try, although I only really liked one or two of them, and the world is fun too: you can do puzzles by yourself, but you can also do them as a team, everyone working on a different kind of puzzle to make your little pirate ship sail smoothly, and it’s a lot more fun doing puzzles when you feel like it’s contributing to the speed of the ship or patching up the holes. You can also buy items for your house, or cute clothes to wear, which is where today’s paperdoll comes in.

The game has a lot of different items of clothing you can buy, and then the colors can be customized. Today’s paperdoll is based on a captain’s hat, a buccaneer jacket, flare pants and buckle shoes. One interesting thing about the clothing system is that different colors cost different amounts; this ensemble uses two of the most expensive colors, black and gold, making the estimated cost well over $100,000. Changing the colors to brown, green and white lowers it to about $7,000. So, of course, Sylvia is an admirable pirate, very skilled at plundering and puzzles, and wears plenty of black and gold. (My in-game character wears plenty of white and a shirt she got for free.)

I found this site when thinking about this paperdoll: Quid Pro Clothes, which is the website for one of the in-game tailors. (Players can just do puzzles, like me, or they can get into the metagame and the economy and start their own stores, buy their own ships, etc.) This site essentially removes much of my need to play the game, because of one reason: if you sign up for the site, it lets you play with the clothes without having to spend hours and hours saving the money first. You can also look at other people’s creations; I like this take on the Greek gods.

On a side note, apologies to Mom for driving her crazy today as I enlist her help in resume creation. “Remember it goes like this: letter first, paperdoll second” she says.

Tamryn’s Outfit from Emerald Dragon

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This is from a game called Emerald Dragon, and is the outfit of the main female character, Tamryn, a mystical cleric sort. The game appeared on multiple platforms, but the SNES version was recently translated by Eien Ni Hen and released by Nightcrawler of TransCorp. So if you happen to have a fondness for fun, emotional SNES RPGs, download the patch and play it for a bit, it’s a very enjoyable game.

Tamryn herself is very much the RPG maiden archetype — mystical, gentle, indispensable caster of healing spells. (And is there some sort of mysterious, special background possibly involved? No fooling you, RPG fans) The horn at her waist is from her best friend Atrushan, who gave it to her so she could call him whenever she was in danger. The hat? No comment on the hat.

Nightcrawler also hacked Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori which I did the translation for, and it looks as if that might be the next project he gets to. I’m very excited about it, because it’s such an odd, sweet little game. Where Metal Max Returns attracted fans very easily (tanks! wastelands! tanks! dogs with guns! tanks! what’s not to like?) I think a game based on a love story and plot twists you can see coming a mile away might be a harder sell. But I love the game and can’t wait to see it released. There’s a long ways to go, though, independent of whatever work Nightcrawler still has to do — all the town, cutscene, shop dialogue is done, but there’s some things that didn’t get dumped: special cutscenes, chats with monsters, a ‘talk’ section where you talk with your group, weapon and item names, who knows what else. So even with the main translation done, this could be quite a job.