Star Crossed Musing

I did not Game Chef this year. I wanted to, and thought I might, but then this whole bronchitis/hives/low potassium/dissertation thing happened and I was like, yeah, maybe not. And so I didn't. No one in the McFarland household did, although my stepdaughter at least came up with an idea. From what I've seen on G+, a lot of people were really taken with the theme and ingredients, though, and there look to be a number of fun entries to come out of it, which is awesome.  One of the things I've been musing on since I decided not to do Game Chef this year, though, is how high the bar to entry actually is for making room in game design for new designers. I mean, on the face of it, it's simple. Anyone can design a game, any time. But in reality, game design is a time sink. You need free time to think, to plan, to come up with mock-ups, to play, to write. You need stability and space and a way to find at least an hour every few days to yourself when you're not so exh...

So I'm at the point in my dissertation where it would be most convenient if my page count were rapidly increasing, but my most recent meeting with my advisor (combined with stupid health stuff that's mostly at the annoyance level but might be kicking into bronchitis (see you Tuesday, doc) has pulled that all to a grinding halt. Instead, I've had to step back and go into a bit of an organizational fury, making spreadsheets until I keel over. See, the thing about making a dissertation about objects and the role they play in fiction and how we interpret them means we have to talk about that very thing, and that means I'm making claims, and that means that I really ought to be making those claims consistently (assuming there is a consistent claim to be made) and that means that I need to organize the objects that are being used in my source texts into some sort of use-order, which means making groupings and deciding what those groupings mean (and along the way, what is ...