Writing and Mishing

mishing: (verb) To run missions, as in an MMO. Example: I was mishing with Slit in Kedemoth last night. See also: getting PWN3D! by hostiles.

Sieges is determined to get out of lvl 13 as fast as she can, that way the Kedemoth Furies will leave her alone when she's mishing. And she's trying to get as many reputation points with her boss as she can, so she can run the critical missions and actually get in on the action of the storyline... just in time for the next bunch of criticals to show up in the next update, thus she won't be able to run the ones from last update. Ah well. She's up to 51 rep points and she needs nine more to get the criticals. Which means running nine more standard missions, also known as -- to quote Ingame!Flood -- "Run here, fetch that, kill this miserable wretch. I hope all these tasks aren't beginning to look the same to you." (What isn't said: "Because it's all beginning to look the same to me. ::Elegant yawn::")

And in between the client crashing -- aGAIN! ::Kicks Walrus the game dev for the lousy patch job:: -- I've been working on a few fics, including this year's Christmas fic and particularly the infamous Mpreg fic. That's actually turning out nicely: it's a great character sketch for all the characters involved, touching without being too glurgey, funny without being annoyingly goofy. And yes, Neo, you and Trin are in it, but it's not what the fanbrats or the hotheads would expect. I think you'll like it.

I know someone who isn't liking it, but thankfully he's asleep right now.

Giving up on GAFF

It seems like every time I open my mouth on there, I end up inserting my foot, or I get completely ignored, or the only response to my posts comes from Tilly, the jerk from the bottom-most pit of Sheol, who decides to reply to me with pot-shots (has any one ever told that -- and I don't use this word lightly -- bitch that a better name for her is Bully, because maybe that's what she is?!), so I'm doing the right thing:

I'm pulling the plug on GAFF, and I'm of a mind to ask the Site Guru to delete my membership on there. I've had it up to here with the conservative-bashing and Christian-bashing and slamming of otherwise good Christian websites on there (Jack Chick doesn't count, but when you see a Christian psychologist whose writings you respect get hauled through the mud, and you're not very good at defending yourself, let alone someone you respect, it kinda makes you feel helpless). And I know there's some people on here who don't think much of George W. Bush, but I still respect the guy, even though I don't agree with him on a few things; note to certain GAFFers: stop treating the people who do respect him as if they were all illiterate rednecks from the deep south.

One good thing about unplugging from GAFF: It frees up time for me to write my own fanfics.

Tree quiz!

( O Tannenbaum, o tannenbaum... )

Okay, major change of plans...

Looks like the Christmas tree comes into the house tomorrow night after my mom cleans the living room, and I ended up *not* getting the odds and ends shopping done today. So... I wrapped what presents I had ready to wrap and I worked on the Christmas fic. I have the ending written out, I just have to write the beginning and the middle, but I've been playing the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's albums in the background, which certainly helps the inspiration when it starts to run thin.

Also I've been reading Michael D. O'Brien's Sophia House, a lovely, contemplative novel about a Polish bookseller who shelters a young Hasidic Jewish man during the darkest hours of WWII... but there's so much more to this story than just that. I love O'Brien's novels: so intricately crafted, so thoughtful, so peaceful, like the icons that he paints. He takes his time telling a story, and his books are always a relief from the breakneck pace of most modern novels. And they're so well-written, they're impossible to put down: you tend to lose yourself in the dialogue between the characters.

And John has been in and out of my headspace, or at least in and out of my awareness: he's been dropping hints about a story he wants me to share, dealing with a dybbuk, a demon he locked down in the son of a Jewish friend of his some time ago. He couldn't pull the demon out, as sometimes happens if the spirit is too entrenched in a person, but he managed to get it to stop trying to harm the young man it was possessing. I may not get to this story for a while yet, not till after Christmas.

Keys and Messiahs

The idea for this post has been stuck in my head, like a splinter in my mind since last night, and this text which dunmoose posted galvanized it:

“O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of Heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.” Isaiah had prophesied, AI will place the Key of the House of David on His shoulder; when he opens, no one will shut, when he shuts, no one will open.” (22:22), and “His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over His kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever.” (9:6).

That comes from today's readings for the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church's official daily prayer, which is prayed by thousands of monks and nuns as well as some lay Catholics, at set times during the day, with different readings for the different liturgical seasons. And of course it reminded me not a little of the part in "The Matrix Reloaded" where Neo has to find and free the Keymaker, who can give him the key to the Source, and so help him continue on his path as the One. I know, from the essay on "The Matrix: Revolutions" written by Bernard White, the devout Catholic actor who played Rama-Kandra in the two sequels, found out that the Wachowski Brothers were raised Catholic (he saw so many Eucharistic and Catholic elements in the films that he ventured to ask the Brothers if they were Catholic), so I couldn't help beginning to wonder if they might have gotten this inspiration (or got an inkling of what might really be going on) from this liturgical text.

There's been a LOT written comparing the plot of the "Matrix" series with the life of Christ; there's one slightly daffy though well-intentioned Evangelical Protestant writer who wrote a book called "The Gospel Reloaded", which, from what I saw of it, sort of fell short of the mark. A lot of Christian writers see Neo, the hero, as a paralell to Christ, but the paralell is imperfect, as Stephen Faller has pointed out better than I can. He isn't *the* Christ, but he is a figure or a type of Christ. The Machines and the humans, probably unwittingly, have played out redemption history on a smaller scale.

In the film, Neo needs the key to enter the Source, where he confronts the Architect, the AI who has designed the Matrix and thus controls it. The Architect has been interpreted by some rather misguided critics, as a figure of God, but I see him as, to use a phrase coined by (I think) Theodore Sturgeon, a "microcosmic god". Rather than act as a benificent entity, the Architect is a coldly malevolent entity who has enslaved the beings in his power -- human and AI alike -- in a system of constrictive rules and regulations which stifle the spirit, where every person, every program has to have a specific purpose or else they are destroyed. But Neo has come, not to destroy the Matrix, not to tear it down, but to transform it through a power which neither the Architect nor Agent Smith, Neo's nemesis and polar opposite, cannot comprehend. So Christ came not to destroy the Old Law, but to fulfill it and renew it.