I don't wanna be et by Reavers

So, you remember how the Reavers were created by the Pax, a gas intended as a mellowing agent? So, funny story (pardon the simplification of some aspects of it) - there's a substance in our bodies called MAO which metabolizes excess neurotransmitters, preventing them from building up and overloading the neuron. There is a gene (MAOA, I think) which determines whether people have either high or low innate levels of MAO.

We also know that people who were maltreated as children are, statistically, somewhat more likely to become violent criminals than those who were not maltreated. Interestingly, people with high MAO levels are all about as likely to become violent criminals, regardless of past abuse. However, abused children with low MAO levels are highly likely to become violent criminals.

Now, why is this kind of scary? Because MAO inhibitors - yep, things that lower MAO levels - are common anti-depressants (not as common as they used to be though). Depressed people have lower-than-normal neurotransmitter levels, so inhibiting the MAO brings them back up to normal levels, ideally helping cure the depression. But inhibiting MAO in people with normal levels of neurotransmitters (i.e. the majority of the populace) gives us - you guessed it - neurotransmitter overload and increased chance of violence.

So, MAO inhibitors either level people out or lead to violent excitation. Sound familiar? The Pax sounds a lot like some kind of uber-MAO inhibitor, hence, dead people and Reavers. Isn't science fun?

Thanks to Karen for bringing the Reaver Gene and these facts to my attention!

Go go gadget ... Go?

In spite of homework's best efforts to the contrary, my last week has contained a healthy amount of gaming. I've restarted an Exalted campaign I started here sometime last year...four of my friends, mostly new to the whole RPG thing an all new to the Exalted world, are hitting their stride, and it's fun to see how they interact with the world compared to how the usual group does. Very different, certainly. I kinda wish a few of them were going to be around DG for the summer, they'd make great additions to the group, I think, and none of them are hippies! Huzzah!

I learned how to play Go earlier today, and it's interesting. Very simple rules, though it does seem like one of those "lifetime to master" things. Fun, and I love watching the patterns unfold on the board...something very elegant about it.

Finally, I got around to playing the Gal Civ 2 demo which Andy directed me to, and now I've played through it twice. I like it a lot more the second time through, though I'm going to have to try more to figure out what I think about the combat system; at present I'm not too big of a fan. The game itself is fun, if a bit slow (at the beginning anyay, I imagine that getting more than 3 years into a game and having a larger galaxy would be a lot more interesting but hey, them's the breaks of a demo). So, we'll see on that one. The ship editor is AMAZING though, and tons of fun to monkey around with.

Finally, I come to what I see as the cream of the week's gaming crop - the Rise of Legends demo. I cannot wait until this game comes out (unfortunately in May or something, bah) because it's the first RTS to appeal to me in a while. Basically, fantasy RTS with a really creative world and take on things; Andy, I can see this appealing to you especially just for the craziness and beauty of the world they've made. Check it out.

Odds and ends

Letting people know that I updated the Garou, Prelude below to reflect my latest edit; mostly my shift away from the "telepathy" I used for wolfen communication earlier on to a more authentic "body language" style, based on growls/barks/etc. in concert with posturing and body language to get concepts across. Obviously this will limit somewhat the complexity of communication in wolf forms, which I think adds to the flavor of the world and highlights the differences between the breeds, plus I want to reserve the "Mindspeech" for more special Garou. Oh, and I changed the last part a bit to hopefully make it more "ooh! cool!" than before.

More of the story itself, rather than frivolous editing, will hopefully follow shortly. Also, I think Carl's almost done with the artwork for the second page of the comic, so I'll try to get that up sometime soon.

In media news, Kung Fu Hustle is hysterical AND incredible. I can see why it's listed as a reference in the new Exalted book. Also, I've just started watching Lost, and while it's no BSG, it's still some pretty good TV. Too bad I hear they ultimately just tease you with most of the mysterious plotlines, but it's quite fun nonetheless. And if Frodo can become a Bible-thumping prostitute-eater, then there's nothing wrong with Pippin becoming a heroin-addict rock god. Nothing at all.

Finally, Hans expressed interest in the girlfriend mentioned in the last post. Yes, she does exist. She is not in Africa, and she's not pregnant, thank Jeebus (though apparently she'd considered telling me she was on April 1st...but then decided that it would be in poor taste, HANS, even though that was dang hilarious). Karen is quite the excellent girl, very fun, possessed of an excellent sense of humor, v. pretty, and fond of Battlestar to boot. Really, what more could a guy want?

Sometimes Poke's assessment of my school is right

/rant

He usually characterizes us with extreme generalizations (I mean, we can't ALL be hippies, otherwise those of you in DG would be able to smell the pot/BO from home), but at the moment I'm pretty annoyed at the cliched liberalism here. I mean, I'm all for most liberal things, but THINK about your political stances and actions, people. For instance, this Friday is Hurricane Katrina Reflection Day, filled with panels and mini-seminars on various aspects of the hurricane. Now, I wouldn't normally have any objection to this, but for some reason this particular cause is worthy of cancelling classes and devoting the whole fucking day to it. This from the school which has classes as normal on NATIONAL HOLIDAYS. Not like, Flag Day or Arbor Day or one of the "...and it was the best ____ ever!" at the end of a story. Holidays such as Memorial Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And yet, a horrible (but not in comparison to much of the rest of the stuff going on in the world today) natural disaster that occurred 7+ months ago somehow warrants this special treatment. WTF, Carleton, WTF. OMG, at least give us a BBQ. Ahem. It's just that, though well-intentioned, this event is not only horribly contrived but also, the special treatment being afforded it just cries out "Look prospective students who happen to be visiting around this time of year! We're really liberal here! Don't you like liberals?" Ugh. Have some PRIDE, school. And democrats. Andy's right.

/end rant

In other, more fun news, it's only about 14 hours until the demo of Gal Civ 2 comes out, and then I get to enjoy my delicious 4-day weekend (the upshot of the above annoying school event) with that, girlfriend, parties, and other such ways in which to fritter away my time. More work is being done on the Werewolf stories, and also EXALTED! Good times will hopefully ensue from this, and the more I see of 2nd Edition, the more I like. I'm going to be running a game for some of my friends up here, so it'll be a good chance to get a feel for the new rules for this summer.

WELL, thanks for reading this far (if you gave up earlier, well, you don't get these kind thanks, do you?) and I'm off to play a little more Murloc RPG. Classic.

Flurry of Posts (6 ticks, -2 DV)

Click for full-size goodness. This is the first page (the bottom got cut off thanks to a crappy scanner) of a werewolf comic (ahem..."graphic novel") that my friend Carl and I are working on. Thanks to my writer's block/our "edjookayshun", it hasn't seen much progress in a while, but I just sent off the direction for page 2, so hopefully it'll move along a little bit. So far, my creativity hasn't been too elusive the last few days. Here's hoping it stays.

Bouldering

It's like rock wall climbing, only with less vertigo! Yay less vertigo! I started doing the bouldering thing back fall term when, incidentally, the Rec Center got a bouldering room installed, and I was hooked, though at this point it's been a while since I last did any climbing. BUT that all changed today, when I monkeyed around on teh wall for about half an hour. Good times, good exercise. I have a giant blister and my fingers/forearms/shoulders are sore as crap, but it's a ton of fun.

Now, back to hopefully writing some more about werewolves.

Ares is staring at me

Not the god of war though, sadly. This Ares is still pretty bad-ass, though; he's a beta fish I'm taking care of while I'm here at school over spring break. Someday he'll be out of his testing phase; we're looking at a May 2006 release date if the stress test goes as hoped. *rim shot*

Ahem. So yeah, I'm here at school instead of going to the sunny beaches of Cancun and getting really drunk and flashing people with video cameras, as I've been led by the media to believe is the normal mode of behavior for college students on spring break. Given that it's below freezing and the ground is covered with snow, I have to say that it's something of a let down. But hey, I'm making money, so it all evens out.

I've also been playing Civ 4, Homeworld 2, and ChronoTrigger, all excellent games. Civ 4 is wonderful and a worthy successor to Civ 2 (I never played Civ 3, but I've heard it was solid, mostly from Poke's ramblings about it) and is immensely fun. The addition of religions to the Civ model is really interesting-they're powerful for cultural imperialism, plus they let you monkey with history in the most hilarious fashion - like my Spanish Jewish theocracy, ofr the predominantly Buddhist American empire I'm leading at the moment. Though I probably get more of a kick out of that than normal people.

ChronoTrigger is just classic. 'Nuff said. We'll ignore the fact that I never played SNES games when I was younger and that my declaring the game to be "classic" means nothing; it's really fun though.

Homeworld 2 has all the good things of Homeworld, none of the minor flaws, and massively sexier graphics. There's a mission INSIDE an asteroid field/dustcloud. Did you see the Battlestar Galactica episode where the fleet was stuck in a really dense asteroid/dust field and it was all gorgeous SFX? Yeah. That's the HW2 mission. And when your ships fire, it creates static electricity lightning. It's gorgeous. Plus the whole game has this exotic quasi-Arabic overtone and fantastic music. Yay game series that improve with time.

I can't really remember where I intended to go with this post, except that, thanks to the fairly crappy, very pulpy Werewolf Tribe novels, I may be yet again starting to get my writing mojo back. Now if I move very, very slowly, maybe I won't spook it...
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Waiting for Exalted 2.0 - those hosers at Amazon had better get it to me soon, I need to get excited about Solars finally having Charms on par with the other types of Exalts.

the value of brevity

So, I'm going to be posting Garou in smaller chunks so any of you guys reading it don't die of inordinate length. Hopefully it's more manageable this way.

Also, the zombie game I mentioned? Not terribly many zombies, as of yet. It moves pretty darn slowly, though I think that if I had anything to occupy my time other than games and my writing to suck up my time I probably wouldn't feel the slowness so much. I've already died, risen as a zombie, and then been revived by something called NecroTech....it's weird, but apparently when you die you can play AS a zombie until someone revives you, and then you go on pretty much as before. Not sure what I think of it, but I'll keep playing because I haven't had my zombie fix since Ravenholme, though DAMN that place was freaky. I mean, what other game can actually make you feel bad for setting zombies on fire?

All right, off to partay with people I haven't seen in a year. Should be...interesting. Hopefully I'll still know a few of them. People change more quickly than I would have thought.