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Sometimes, it's all too easy to feel like this.(img: Hernán Piñera)Sometimes, it's all too easy to feel like this.(img: Hernán Piñera)

Posting this because I saw someone, a first-time writer, quit a story I liked recently because "the haters won't stop."  I actually liked the story, it was relatively bug-free, and well-written.  No, he (I'm assuming it was a he) quit because small-minded individuals on 4chan decided to have a field day with his story.

For starters, I'm sorry that happened.  You shouldn't quit.  You're a new writer, and it's inevitable that you'll have detractors.

Stephen King has them.

JK Rowling has them.

Tolstoy had them.

Tolkein had them.

Shakespeare had them.

Dante Alleghiri had them.

Fuck, for all I know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had them - they certainly do nowadays.

The fact is, new writer, there are two things you need to understand: there are detractors, and then there are critics.  The two are different, and over thirty years of writing, I can say with confidence that sometimes, they're not always easy to tell them apart - sometimes they're even one and the same.

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Somewhere, Michael Bay is weeping because he wasn’t the one to destroy this childhood memory. (img: IGN)Somewhere, Michael Bay is weeping because he wasn’t the one to destroy this childhood memory. (img: IGN)

Admittedly, much of what I’ve heard about the new Jem & the Holograms live-action movie is hearsay, so it may very well be that not all or even none of the rumours are true. According to Wikipedia, (which is never wrong, note the sarcasm) “In a hyper-linked social media age, an orphaned teenage girl, Jerrica Benton becomes an online recording sensation, and she and her sisters embark on a music-driven scavenger hunt – one that sends them on an adventure across Los Angeles – in an attempt to unlock a final message left by her father.” So far, the fandom has been underwhelmed at the very best, claiming that the only thing the move shares with the source material are names and the title. From what I’ve seen, they’re right. I recognise a whole lot of names (and even a genderflip: Eric Raymond, the sleazy record executive and manager of the Misfits is now Erica Raymond) but nothing about this is the Jem I remember.

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I have no idea how I did this.I have no idea how I did this.

Okay, here’s my review of Amberlight.

It’s a fractal program with a unique set of features and a nearly-decent price (more on that), and it comes up with some interesting effects.  Capable of merging with your pictures and even into Photoshop, it’s a pretty nifty tool – but can it stand up against others in its class, like Chaotica?

Let’s find out.

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"This"This

Wired has published a fascinating piece on the end of the big-name videogame designer in Japan.  The article’s author, Chris Kohler, states that the videogame industry is “too expensive, too risky a business to be left up to the creative whims of a single auteur. But that’s precisely what the Japanese game business was, for a long time”, and that the departure of luminaries such as (by dint of the studios they were once attached to:) Konami’s Hideo Kojima, Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, Namco’s Toru Iwatani and Sega’s Yuji Naka.  Sure, there’s still Shigeru Miyamoto over at Nintendo, and Goichi Suda over at Gung Ho, but they’re special cases: in the former, he’s far more involved with executive decisions than the actual games, while in the latter Suda left Human Entertainment for his own company (Grasshopper), which got swallowed up by Gung Ho.

So, Kohler’s right: the age of the auteur is over.  Welcome to Hollywood, Part II.

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  1. Going Back to Reality: Ravencon, Day Three
  2. Hitting the Snooze Button: RavenCon, Day Two