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PSA: Plants Vs. Zombies 2 has shipped for iOS!

The good news: Plants Vs. Zombies 2 has finally shipped from PopCap!

The bad news: It’s iOS only, at least for now. I’ve been poking around and see at least one mention of a tweet from PopCap staff that indicates that they’re releasing to iOS first with other versions to follow later. (Source.) However, no word yet on when this is going to happen.

The good or bad news depending on your iOS device type: Apparently the game requires a front-facing camera. My friend Kaye on Facebook reported that she couldn’t install it on her first-gen iPad, because it complained about that lack of camera. Why in the world the game wants that I couldn’t tell you, but, be advised, those of you with older iOS devices.

The good or bad news depending on how you feel about free-to-play games: The iOS apps are free-to-play. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, that means you can install the games for free, but they’ll make their money selling you oodles of in-game powerups. According to what I’ve read, you are supposed to be able to play through the whole game without having to buy anything.

The HIGH-larious news: PopCap put a zombie ad on the Space Needle. BWAHAHAHAHA.

And, note to self: NO YOU MAY NOT DOWNLOAD THIS GAME UNTIL YOU FINISH AND TURN IN VENGEANCE OF THE HUNTER. JUST SAYIN’.

August 15, 2013 by
Main

Friday link roundup on yet more sexism in SF/F

There’ve been a new round of links on the question of Fake Geek Girls and general sexism in SF/F and online that I’d like to bring to your all’s attention.

First up, Dara has put up this post describing a couple of experiences she’s had online this week, experiences which spell out that there is a non-zero chance that when they try to call out issues of sexism, women will get pushback and be accused of being misandrist. Even if they’re being polite.

And for those of you who read me who don’t already follow Seanan McGuire, she’s got a couple pertinent posts up as well. One is about things she witnessed at SDCC this year, including an Emma Frost cosplayer telling male con attendees they couldn’t take her picture if they couldn’t identify her costume–and more than once, finding that they couldn’t. Some of the attendees respected her wishes and backed off. Others did not.

Seanan’s followup post here reiterates why it has become exhausting for the female portion of SF/F fandom to have to recite their laundry lists of “yes, dammit, I’m a geek, I like X, Y, and Z” credentials.

Katharine Eliska Kimbriel has something to say on the matter, too. She’s yet another woman who’s written SF/F and who’s gotten shit for it because she’s a woman. She’s also got no time for the bullshit of defending her geek credentials, because she can play that game, but honestly, she has better things to do.

And to all of this, I’ll add: all of us have better things to do. So why are we continuing to have this argument?

Because, sadly, it will continue to be necessary as long as female fans are getting the pushback that Dara describes, that Seanan describes, that Katharine describes, that keeps getting described over and over and over and over again. The main difference now is that women are shouting louder about it.

Look, guys? I like you. I want to geek out with you over all these awesome things we have available to us to enjoy in our genre. I love a lot of the words, art, and music you’ve helped create. But I’m saddened, wearied, and angered that we still live in a world where Seanan McGuire can get dismissed because girls couldn’t possibly write a zombie story–which is bullshit of the highest order, because I’ve read the Newsflesh series. Seanan slings her virology like a goddamn boss, and yet because she’s a woman, it doesn’t matter. Because GIRL COOTIES.

If you’re one of those guys who feels even momentarily threatened that women are invading your treasured space of SF/F, if you’re one of those guys who picks up a book in a bookstore and immediately dismisses it because there’s a picture of a woman on the back, and especially if you’re one of those guys who’s started slinging accusations of misandry around because you keep seeing us women pointing out that this shit is not okay, there’s a really easy solution to this.

If you want to stop getting called out on sexist behavior, stop doing sexist things.

Listening to us when we give you data would be a real nice start.

August 2, 2013 by
Main

To review or not to review

For those of you who may have missed it yesterday, it was my turn to blog on the Here Be Magic blog yesterday, so I chimed in on an interesting question that came up on the Carina authors’ loop: whether authors should review other authors’ work.

On a related note I’d like to call to your attention this post of Doranna Durgin’s, wherein she laments the most frustrating types of reviews she’s received.

Me, I’m still operating on a small enough level that I feel lucky to get ANY reviews at all, though I gotta say, I’d be right there with Doranna on being frustrated about ratings on a book that hadn’t even gotten read. I beg you, Internets: if you haven’t actually read a book yet, don’t rate or review it. It’s not fair to the author and it’s not fair to your fellow readers. And while I’m on the topic, I beg you as well to refrain from dropping poor ratings on a book for factors outside the author’s control. Like DRM or price points.

And also, I’d just like to note that A Feral Darkness does indeed remain my all time favorite Doranna Durgin book ever.

July 29, 2013 by
Main

Oh, if ONLY this existed

Angry Birds–the original, not Angry Birds Seaons or Space or Rio or Star Wars–has sucked me back in again. This is what happens when they keep releasing new levels! I have to get caught up!

But as I’ve been playing lately, I keep seeing ads for something called Angry Birds Go!, which is apparently something new that they’re working on, with a sneak glimpse of it over here.

And being, well, me, as soon as I saw the title I totally leapt right over to Ken in Science Ninja Team Gatchman and his classic cry of “Biiiiiiird GO!” whenever he enacted his transformation sequence. Which, of course, TOTALLY has had me giggling over the mental picture of a Gatchaman-themed Angry Birds game all day.

It would totally work! There are five members of Gatchaman and five Angry Birds–well, in the original release, anyway, this isn’t counting the green, orange, and pink birds that showed up later! All the piggies would be wearing Galactor helmets! And the levels would have constructions shaped like Galactor kaiju mecha!

And the boss piggie would totally be wearing a Berg Katse hat!

And while you could make an argument for the Mighty Eagle of the original game representing Ken, any fan of Gatchaman will tell you that what you really want when you need to nuke the level is the God Phoenix.

I mean, seriously, the game writes itself. I’m just a little sad that this is undoubtedly NOT what Rovio has in mind, because I’m tellin’ ya, I’d buy and play the hell out of that!

Now I totally need crossover fan art!

ETA Y’all pardon me, I’ll be over here trying to figure out which bird maps to which member of Gatchaman now. ;D

July 16, 2013 by
Main

A few things make a post

Let’s lead this post off with a couple of general reminders:

First off, the giveaway for Valor of the Healer is still in progress and running until Friday! As of this writing I have only six entrants, so your chances are really, really good at a shot at one of the two free copies I’ll be handing out. Nobody’s cleared the bar to get in on the draw for the audiobook yet, but there’s still time!

ALSO: I have a coupon for Faerie Blood live on Smashwords through Friday as well. Since Smashwords is the only place I can easily set up coupon codes, this doesn’t apply to any other place you can buy the book from, sorry! BUT, if you buy Faerie Blood directly from me any time this week I’ll apply the same 20% discount to the usual $2.99 price. I’ll also do so if you want one of my remaining print editions! So act fast!

***

Next item!

Seriously, how much of an asshole do you have to be to steal the violin from Olivier Demers?

Y’all know that name around here by now, folks. Violin player for Le Vent du Nord. I follow him on Facebook. This past weekend the Quebec trad music community had a music festival, Chant de Vielles, and to all reports it went swimmingly. Except for the part where somebody walked off with M. Demers’ violin.

Y’all may also remember that I’ve posted before about what it feels like to lose a beloved instrument. Dara can certainly tell you all about that. So believe me when I tell you that it’s a kick in the teeth. And that somebody has seen fit to steal the fiddle that makes beautiful noises like this and this and especially this… well. Treebeard’s quote from The Two Towers comes to mind: “There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery.”

And I’m just sayin’, people, my spouse is a supervillain. I have heat ray access.

***

Speaking of Treebeard or at least of things Tolkienish, if you haven’t seen it yet, I did put up Chapter 13 of the Trilingual Hobbit Reread last night!

Also, I put up part 5 of the series of posts on self-publishing.

***

And that clown car of FAIL re: sexism in publishing (with or without SFWA being involved) has yielded up another clown. My last report of Foz Meadows’ relaying how Jo Fletcher Books had taken down Rod Rees’ post and the followup to same turned out to be premature, since the posts came back up.

Turns out the second one was all about the author’s freedom of speech. Which, um, nobody was actually calling into question.

This being yet another example of people failing to remember that freedom of speech does not equal freedom from people calling you out for being an idiot or an asshole. You’re free to spout off whatever nonsense you like, yes. But the rest of us are free to call it nonsense.

That said, the clown car is thankfully being paced by the Mach Five of WIN. Discussion is ongoing as well about the big, big issue of harassment at cons. My own Dara has chimed in on the matter over here, talking about her experiences with harassment and pointing off to a couple other excellent posts of testimony on the matter, including one from filker Brooke Abbey.

And in a case of someone knowing how to use his position of privilege for Good, John Scalzi has announced his new policy for deciding what conventions he’ll go to. Spoiler alert: he expects them to have clear harassment policies in place. Thank you, sir. This is an excellent move.

***

ETA: And OH YES I almost forgot. userinfospazzkat came up with an excellent term for the ongoing brouhaha in SF/F, and the Internet’s reaction to same: SFWAdenfreude. My immediate reaction: NEW HASHTAG! Use at will, folks!

ETA #2: THIS JUST IN: Mary Robinette Kowal, hallowed be her name, has had ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT. *wild applause* I feel a buy of all of her ebooks coming on RIGHT NOW. >:D

ETA #3: And because at this point you really do need a scorecard to keep track of all the clowns pouring out of the car, here, have a thoughtfully compiled timeline of all the events that have been going on so far this year.

July 3, 2013 by
Books, Main

WordPress geekery (and also books) for the win

I’ve been playing around with WordPress 3 for the last few days, as y’all might have guessed from a previous post. I am pleased to report that with some help from the folks on the wordpress.org support forums, I’ve successfully set up a mini-network of blogs all based off of annathepiper.org. More importantly, I’ve learned how to redirect domains to them. So once I figure out how to pull all the extra data in plugin tables from angelakorrati.com, I’ll be adding that blog to my network of blogs all running off the same install of WordPress 3. Yay!

If anyone is interested in how I did it, I’ll do a separate post detailing the steps.

Meanwhile, because I wouldn’t be me without periodic updates of Books Recently Purchased, here’s the latest roundup, all electronic:

  • The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog, one of the Amelia Peabodies by Elizabeth Peters, #7 to be precise. Bought because B&N had it at the low price of $1.99, and because I couldn’t resist–this is the one where Emerson gets amnesia. 😉
  • Moving Target, by Elizabeth Lowell. Romantic suspense/mystery. Re-purchase of a book previously owned in print.
  • Darkness and the Devil Behind Me, by Persia Walker. I’d actually previously acquired a free PDF of this, which I still have, but in the interests of Nook compability and because B&N’s selling it for only $1.99, I figured what the hell, I’d go ahead and buy it.
  • Nightkeepers, by Jessica Andersen. Paranormal romance. Another re-purchase of a book previously owned in print, given up in print only for the sake of making more space on my shelves. I’ll be re-buying her Book 3 as well as buying Book 2 for the first time, since Book 2 was the one I’d won as an ARC and I still need to buy a copy of it for real!

And that makes 170. I have a whole LOT of things on the To Buy list for the Nook, although most of them are re-buys of things I’ve traded in print copies of, and quite a few are things I still actually do have print copies of. The latter therefore do not count as part of the To Read list. I just want ’em electronically too.

Meanwhile, still left to do on the great WordPress 3 upgrade: figure out if I can adapt Tarski as a theme to support shiny new WordPress 3 menus. I’d like to have a proper menu bar.

June 22, 2010 by
Main, Music

Monday morning, damp and awful

I’m pretty sure that if I arrive at work only marginally less damp than I would have done without an umbrella, I might need to think about getting a new umbrella. My pants are wet from the knees down. Yay!

But at least I have on good warm socks and a cup of tea is steeping at my elbow.

Meanwhile I blew the weekend playing way more of our game Unwell Mel than I probably should have done, but hey, we make good games, what can I say? 😉 And has been digitizing a lot of my old filk tapes, finally–which means I can at last get this stuff onto my iPhone. We’re focusing on stuff that has not to my knowledge been released on CD, like the Technical Difficulties tapes, the Where No Man… Trek tape, the general-folk Brandywine tape that’s got some good Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish on it, and best of all, the original Elfquest tape, the one that isn’t remastered to within an inch of its life.

And this does of course mean I’ll have “Banned from Argo” on the iPhone too. <3

This'll be nice to listen to. I've missed a lot of this; when it comes to filk, I'm really more a fan of the older stuff than I am current, although I do of course like me some and and and . The Technical Difficulties and Julia Ecklar were really the people who got me interested in filk in the first place!

October 26, 2009 by