Spent yesterday alternating between replaying Half-Life 2 and writing two different stories at once. This was an exercise in balanced procrastination. I need to do some serious re-outlining in the Iceland story to make sure I have properly understood my antagonistic force (she said, vaguely), and I am really really not wanting to. Sigh. Work.
Half-life 2 is a wonderful piece of story-telling, by the way, if you've never played it. It's out now on Steam for Macintosh, so I expressed my appreciation for Valve's new cross-platform-ness by paying for it again. Thought I might as well replay it. And despite having traveled that path before, five minutes in I was experiencing hatred, then later rage, and then fast-breathing panic. The next couple of hours were a tactical slaughter of fascist semi-human military police, and I knew exactly what I was fighting for.
This is what happens when game companies hire writers.
The bad guy in HL2 is named Wallace Breen. This amused Mr Pedia when he observed it when I first played it, and he asked me if it was a reference to the convicted child molester Marion Zimmer Bradley was married to most of her life, Walter Breen. (He was the subject of a couple of famous SF con scandals of the kind that make you wish fans would be a little bit less accepting of the "foibles" of their fellow fans and a little bit more into swinging baseball bats.) It's possible, and it would be funny if so.
Last night I watched the latest Doctor Who with
I observe that LJ is having DNS troubles. Maybe I should take that as a sign and go off and write like a good drone.
ETA: There are possible spoilers for House in the comments.