For the things that never make any sense! XD

[Alopecia No Hime]

I saw a Pullip in real life today. In a claw 'treasure' machine at KMart. It's package was marked Pullip and I freaked out a little bit. My mom asked me what I was looking at and I began explaining what I knew about Pullips. She said she knew that those machines are rigged and I agreed. I mean if the shelf in that thing is included then you know it's going to jam up once you get close to what you want.

But it was adorable I must say.

[Dark Angel]

I've won lots of times at the claw machines. But some of them are impossible to win because they are rigged like you said.

[Alopecia No Hime]

Yeah I remember one Halloween after lots of trick or treating when I was younger my friends and I were at this Mexican resturant, and after getting cheated out of all the quarters in our pockets (And our parents pockets.)To one of those machines, I actually went up to the counter asked to speak to the manager and told him that we've been cheated and that we wanted a refund.

We got twice the amount we lost.

[Geektopian]

Now, this is so dumb it almost needs a thread for "the things that are too dumb to talk about".

A couple weeks ago, I had a dream where I was doing a photo story series called "The Backyard Garrison" or something to that effect. It made sense because I had been looking at a couple photo sets from Mark Hogancamp's Marwencol saga, posted over at the Unofficial Ultimate Soldier Fan Page, then I re-watched a couple episodes of Sora No Woto on-line. I woke up the next morning with a pretty clear idea of the cast and back-story, along with some possible alternate titles. The whole basic concept just sort of fell together and I even worked out a lot of details to my satisfaction. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, the dumb part:
This is totally NOT the story I intended to tell, nor is it the way I've envisioned the roles for some of the dolls/characters. I've made a real effort the last couple of years to move some of my old "familiar faces" (like Meg) into supporting roles to avoid the "Mary Sue" effect. The military element is now a fairly small plot point where none of the girls are directly involved in it. Meg is a business major who decided to pursue her dream of being a historian and writer. Aimee is a shy, wannabe goth grad student. Pinkie is... well, Pinkie! You get the idea.

There's the story I want to tell and then there's the story that wants to be told. That second version takes the players back to their previous incarnations where, for example, Meg is a Captain in her country's army. She would be the "backyard garrison" commander and also probably become the way-too-Mary Sue-ish main character again. It seems like a fun concept and I feel fortunate to have it spring, Athena-like, fully formed from my head. However, I feel conflicted over hitting the reset button again and placing these characters back in to a world I had removed them from. To me, the narrative seems tired and threadbare, my challenge should be to press onward away from my comfort zone instead of re-telling the same old story. This internal conflict has caused a creative impasse and I feel unable to proceed. I'm just not sure what to do.

[Kd_Bunchanumbers]

I found a full scale Pullip Clone with a knockoff Barbie body. Thing was, her head was soft vinyl, fully rooted and just seemed like a squishy Barbie head with insert eyes. Anyone dare me to buy the knockoff Pullip for $5?

[ivory stardust]

I found a full scale Pullip Clone with a knockoff Barbie body. Thing was, her head was soft vinyl, fully rooted and just seemed like a squishy Barbie head with insert eyes. Anyone dare me to buy the knockoff Pullip for $5?

>.>

<.<

Yes! Yes, I dare you to buy the knockoff Pullip.

^__^

[Dark Angel]

They upgraded photobucket to make it better.. but now its super slow.

[Geektopian]

They upgraded photobucket to make it better.. but now its super slow.

Notice how often that seems to happen? Some service or software you use works great until the engineers upgrade it with all kinds of new, supposedly better features. Then it just royally sucks. My current favorite pet hate is the utterly worthless Top Sites feature in Apple's Safari browser. Slow, useless, excessively flashy POS app designed to provide content that most even vaguely competent 'net users can find on their own. Thankfully, it can turned off as your default homepage but it still runs in the background.

I know so many people that were having trouble with Photobucket, both with operational issues and their capricious TOS, I decided to use Picasa. I've been happy with it but now I notice they been tweaking it in what looks like an attempt at making Google accounts in to some kind of easy-to-find social network scheme. Damn it, I just want an online photo host with the ability to make albums private. And the online editor is nice too. But I'm not looking for freakin' Facebook.

[Dark Angel]

Notice how often that seems to happen? Some service or software you use works great until the engineers upgrade it with all kinds of new, supposedly better features. Then it just royally sucks. My current favorite pet hate is the utterly worthless Top Sites feature in Apple's Safari browser. Slow, useless, excessively flashy POS app designed to provide content that most even vaguely competent 'net users can find on their own. Thankfully, it can turned off as your default homepage but it still runs in the background.

I know so many people that were having trouble with Photobucket, both with operational issues and their capricious TOS, I decided to use Picasa. I've been happy with it but now I notice they been tweaking it in what looks like an attempt at making Google accounts in to some kind of easy-to-find social network scheme. Damn it, I just want an online photo host with the ability to make albums private. And the online editor is nice too. But I'm not looking for freakin' Facebook.

Amen!

[victoriavictrix]

Now, this is so dumb it almost needs a thread for "the things that are too dumb to talk about".

A couple weeks ago, I had a dream where I was doing a photo story series called "The Backyard Garrison" or something to that effect. It made sense because I had been looking at a couple photo sets from Mark Hogancamp's Marwencol saga, posted over at the Unofficial Ultimate Soldier Fan Page, then I re-watched a couple episodes of Sora No Woto on-line. I woke up the next morning with a pretty clear idea of the cast and back-story, along with some possible alternate titles. The whole basic concept just sort of fell together and I even worked out a lot of details to my satisfaction. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, the dumb part:
This is totally NOT the story I intended to tell, nor is it the way I've envisioned the roles for some of the dolls/characters. I've made a real effort the last couple of years to move some of my old "familiar faces" (like Meg) into supporting roles to avoid the "Mary Sue" effect. The military element is now a fairly small plot point where none of the girls are directly involved in it. Meg is a business major who decided to pursue her dream of being a historian and writer. Aimee is a shy, wannabe goth grad student. Pinkie is... well, Pinkie! You get the idea.

There's the story I want to tell and then there's the story that wants to be told. That second version takes the players back to their previous incarnations where, for example, Meg is a Captain in her country's army. She would be the "backyard garrison" commander and also probably become the way-too-Mary Sue-ish main character again. It seems like a fun concept and I feel fortunate to have it spring, Athena-like, fully formed from my head. However, I feel conflicted over hitting the reset button again and placing these characters back in to a world I had removed them from. To me, the narrative seems tired and threadbare, my challenge should be to press onward away from my comfort zone instead of re-telling the same old story. This internal conflict has caused a creative impasse and I feel unable to proceed. I'm just not sure what to do.

Your subconscious wants you to do this as an improvement on the old story-arc. It wants you to be aware of the Mary Sue tendencies and avoid them. It thinks this story is much more compelling than the one you want to tell, as are the characters. All I can tell you from the perspective of 80 plus books is that your subconscious is generally right.