(no subject)

I just read Kinesis by Irene Wendy Wode.

So there’s this race of alien hive-minded shapeshifters who’ve been trying and failing to make peace with humanoids. The idea they eventually come up with is to have one of them shapeshift into a humanoid who doesn’t remember being a shapeshifter. This humanoid identity is fascinated by the shapeshifters and wants to understand them, so he can make peace with them from the other side of the gap.

After years of study, the humanoid finally discovers how to interpret the shapeshifter language. He’s completed a project he can present before the other humanoids, and so his memories of his life as a shapeshifter return. After a lifetime of feeling strange and isolated among the humanoids, he can rejoin the collective.

Except there’s nothing to rejoin. A third alien race infested the shapeshifters like a worm in an apple, and it hollowed out their minds. If he ever longs too desperately to rejoin the hive mind, ever lets his guard down and gives in to his natural instincts, the infection will destroy him too.

This isn’t even the end of chapter 1.

P.S. This main character is a good example of what stardust_rifle was describing in a recent post: technically genderless, but can still gay-kiss a dude.

(no subject)

I hate this. I feel fine to play video games, so it seems like I should be fine to work. But if I screw up in a video game, I load my save, and if I screw up at work, I embarrass myself when my colleagues catch my obvious mistakes. On a good day, I would be able to see these errors myself. But when was the last time I had a “good day” like that?

(no subject)

Shout out to Every Which Way But Loose. There’s a point where the comic relief sidekick is supposed to completely drop the buffoonery and seduce a woman into leaving behind everything she knows. And the actor completely botches it. Natural 1; even I could have done better than this. But then the actress does an incredible job of seeming like he’s convinced her. She arguably covers for him by emphasizing how fed up she is with her life and how much she wants to be anywhere else. And I’m like, damn, you could cast one decent actor; couldn’t you manage another?

I’m still playing Depth of Extinction

Man, Combined Arms is broken beyond belief. Every time an ally shoots an enemy, you shoot them too. Equip a drum mag so you don’t run out of ammo, and you effectively double your damage output. Not much in this game poses a threat anymore.

And then they make enemies that use Combined Arms, and your HP just evaporates.