All of us here at dA know that written works aren't as well received as drawn ones. That's just a fact. Pictures can send a long and detailed message instantly, and moving pictures can do even more. Now I love writing, but I also love action, and it's hard to have lots of things happening all at once in a very short amount of time when it takes five minutes to read through it all. Now obviously I'd like to see my work in moving pictures someday, but that is for now unrealistic and a whole other kettle of fish (or is it can of worms?) that I really shouldn't try to open.

The logical middleground is comic or graphic novel, and it's not much of a stretch considering some of my subject matter. I'm always fascinated by the evolving mythologies of series such as X-men, Mortal Kombat and Fallout (the latter two might not be comics, but it's easy to imagine if they were), and I wonder how my work might fare in such a format.

Now this is by no means a made decision at this point; I don't know which way I'm going to go on this. For now I'm just considering possible alternatives to straight text on a page. So I'm putting the word out, for any artists that might be interested in giving this a go with me someday.

In other news, I've discovered I quite like Ellen Page. Must watch some of her movies.

Ok, so my productivity is going to be even more stagnant as I can't get the other computer's monitor working (I'm on the games computer now). I've been backing up my work but the most recent stuff is all on there and I can't get to it. It's been twitchy for a week or so, and we've been working around it with quick fix tinkering, but it seems to be properly screwed now. Hopefully we'll only need a new adapter or something; we're going to try hooking up a different monitor this afternoon to figure out exactly where the problem is.

So I've been much more productive with my writing these days, banging out a chapter before breakfast every day off I have. Normally I'm not so strong; I prefer to start the day with five or so hours of Fallout 3, at which point my brain is too buggered to bother with writing. But something has been sucking me in, making me want to get up five times during the night to use the computer (but I don't). So what it this crazy muse, this hose hooked up to the fountain of inspiration?

Facebook.

Well more accurately, a game on Facebook called Mobsters 2: Vendetta. I play till my guy runs out of energy, then go away and do something else until he recharges, at which point I log on again. And seeing as I'm already at the computer, I tend to go straight to writing after the first one. It's a good, albeit rather sad, system. But hey, it gets me results, right?

Today it only took me half an hour to finish chapter two, so I'm thinking I might power ahead into the trickier chapter three. Maybe I'll just check in with my mob man first...

Oh, and PS , I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but yesterday I beat Play With Me on expert. Hadn't tried it in months, was just feeling it on the day. Thus my theory that I don't have to practise to get good at something has been proven! Sorry, I said I wasn't going to make a big deal of it...

I have now done the appropriate legwork to confidently say that nobody in any position of significant power knows what the fuck they are doing. I had always suspected, what with moronic politicians and misinformed managers. At work, for example, the poster we've had in the break room for three years featuring various things we should keep in mind has been replaced with a brand new poster that's the exact same thing, except SAFETY has now been moved to the far left in the hopes that we'll give a fraction of a shit more about it, and the whole thing is laminated so we can't rip it down. Who felt this was important enough to devote time and resources to?

But that's not really the point. What led me to this journal was the general quality of game sequels in the past few years (as that's pretty much all that's come out). I've devised three basic laws of making a sequel:
1) Keep everything that was good.
2) Lose everything that was bad.
3) Add new good stuff.

It barely seems worth spelling out, except that nobody seems able to get these right. Now you might well say that good and bad are in the eye of the beholder, and to remove what one person thinks is bad would be removing what someone else thinks is good. Perhaps, but some things just suck, pure and simple. At the very least, when making a sequel developers should drop these bits, for example a dodgy camera (subtypes include unresponsive, hypersensitive, and just plain munted).

Examples of sequels done right would be the Ratchet series, and to a lesser extent the Jak series. Both - at least up until their third installment - kept the same basic formula and built upon existing features without harming them (e.g., R&C2 pausing the game when you open your weapon select, R&C3 adding a quick cycle of the last 3 used weapons, and Jak 3's logical allocation of twelve weapons to the four directional buttons). Burnout should get an honourable mention as well. Sequels done wrong would include Soul Calibur 3, for its absolute butchering of Survival Mode, and I suppose to other people, Tekken 4's heavily scaled back roster (though being the first Tekken I owned, it will always be my favourite).

This formula holds for remakes too, and having played a demo of the Turtles in Time remake, it deserves shame as well. Everyone else is saying how the beat-em-up is simply outdated and that the action doesn't translate well to 3D. That may well be true, but I think the game would have been better received if they had actually remade the ENTIRE GAME. To be fair, they have put the same levels and bosses as were in one of the original versions, but why wouldn't they have picked the fuller version, the one that everybody used to play?

As it stands an entire level and a few bosses are missing, but I've noticed something more. The moveset is lacking. The SNES version, using a mere two buttons (well, technically three, but I think the moves could all be mapped to two anyway) gave you a standard combo, back attacks, two throws, three air attacks, a barge, a flip, a slide, and a clearing super attack. This gave the player incredible flexibility, allowing you to overcome severe odds without wishing you could block. The demo of the remake I played had no combo just single attacks, back attacks, two throws, one and a half air attacks (one of them is way too hard to pull off and never hits anyway), a barge and a pitiful excuse for a super attack. Why the hell didn't they put the rest of the moves in? Now I know it was just a trial version, but there's no reason why they would have left half of the moves out for the demo but put them all in the full game, not when both were released at the same time. It's just a lazy effort and Ubisoft gets no points for trying to cash in on nostalgia when they can't even do it right.

Ok I just realised that I've been out of uni for a month and with my graduation tonight, it's high time I got back to actually doing something. Since my epic plans for the Sims 3 fell through to all my sims having or adopting several children when I wasn't looking, it'll have to be writing. They say it's easier to stick to a plan if you tell people about it, so hence the journal. Not 100% sure where to start though. The options are thus:

- Continue with my comprehensive rewrite and re-envisioning of the only story I ever finished before realising my protagonist was just a vessel to introduce the supporting and much more interesting characters, and that I used the same cliche 3 chapters in a row. Protagonist needs a new name, because his old one is now tainted with his "Tidus-ness". Blech, pretentious whinging prick. This is the first of a 3-part saga, so there's a lot to consider.

- Cloak & Dagger: About a medieval assassin and his apprentice, ties into story above. It's more self-contained and requires less explanation, but I'm not sure if working on this spin-off first would be putting the cart before the horse, or an excellent way of leading into the saga to begin with. It's essentially a prequel, but there's nothing in it that necessarily has to be set up before or after the saga.

- Muse: Just a premise so far, about a ghost/being/parasite that enters people's bodies and enhances their skills and talents. Also involves a similar being that can create a physical body for itself out of ice.

- Jack: Again, a premise cobbled together from daydreams and setpieces. Basically about an irritatingly gifted young man (as in, walks past a jigsaw puzzle and puts five pieces in on the spot kind of gifted) who has no passion. He stumbles into a hostage situation, and *things happen* and he finds himself working with the police as a sort of very unofficial advisor.

- The Pen: A sort of Western about a lawless town that built up around an old prison, that is suddenly annexed and policed by an expanding nearby city. The protagonist will be a booze smuggler named Dallas Peacock.

- There's also something about street gangs, but it's warped so much over the years, flitting back and forth between realism and something more like Saints Row, that I'm not so sure what it is anymore. Still, it is the only place I've ever wanted to put one of my characters, an enigmatic crooked (or is he) detective by the name of Henry Clayton.

- Or I could get back to work on those Zel's Hidden Palace scripts. But I dunno, the passion's kinda gone for the moment. We've got so caught up with practical issues that I can't think about it creatively. Well, it shouldn't take more than a revision of what we've already done to get me back into it.

- Oh, and I really want to name a character Ornlu, but I can't find out what that means or where the hell it comes from!

There are probably more, but these are the ones on my mind. Any opinions? Suggestions? Prophecies?