Grrr . . .

So, in a recent LJ post, jimhines stated that if he'd only gotten his Goblin books published a few years earlier he could have caught the Hollywood market wave of twisted fairy tales, a la Shrek and the new Happily N'ever After. Basically, these movies have the same kind of flavor as his books, both published (Goblin Hero and the upcoming Goblin Quest) and those waiting to be sold and published.

I read the post, thought about it, mentally said, "At least there's no fantasy movies out there remotely close to Skewed Throne."

And then, through email, I get . . . this. It's a link to a trailer for a computer game that's either recently been released or is going to be released soon. It's about . . . an assassin. Ok, fine. How many fantasy computer games have assassins? Practically all of them. No worries. But if you continue to watch, as they point out the game's unique points, the creative way they've made the character interact with the world, climbing walls, pushing through the crowd, etc, etc, etc, they get to . . . "instinct".

The game version of instinct is . . . incredibly close to Varis' use of the river. The assassin's view of the world grays and the target is highlighted with vivid colors. No mention of bad guys appearing in red or anything like that, but if you watch the trailer . . . it's spooky.

Obviously, I couldn't have copied off of them, and they couldn't have copied off of me, since I assume creating a gaming module such as this requires years of work, just like writing ST required years of work for me. But it is kind of freaky. There was this theory posed once that ideas are like cosmic rays, passing through the world and striking a few people before moving on. And a few of those people use the idea and thus scientists, artists, etc on opposite sides of the world end up creating, writing about, etc the same thing, independently. Obviously, this is further proof that this happens, since I came up with an assassin who uses an aura-like river and they came up with an assassin using instinct.

Freaky.

But the game looks cool. Perhaps I should send the game creators a copy of Skewed Throne? Or is that inviting a lawsuit?

I'VE BEEN ROBBED!!!

At this point you're probably expecting some pithy little remark where I say that someone stole my dignity or used an idea of mine before I had a chance to write it . . . but you're wrong.

I have, actually, literally, been robbed.

The long convoluted story, in case you care (and because I need to vent):

If you may recall, this summer Binghamton suffer some flooding. I lost half of my crap, including 400+ books from my library, because the storage unit I had all of my stuff stored in preceding the renovation and move into the new 4th floor apartment downtown. I wasn't home at the time to try to save any of it. In any case, it got wet. So I spent a few miserable days cleaning out the unit and salvaging what I could, trashing the rest. There's nothing so heartbreaking to a writer/reader as throwing out paperback after paperback and hardcover after hardcover dripping water.

Now, this flood water was not exactly . . . clean. There was a film of sludge left on everything. And I mean everything. Even sealed everythings had sludge film on the inside. This sludge was incredibly fine, meaning that cleaning it with water or soap and water pretty much did nothing. So the storage unit people decided to have professionals come in and clean out the units. Fine. I was asked to move what I'd saved from the flood into an adjacent unit and to leave the keys with them so that they could clean the unit, move my crap back in, and lock it.

The cleaners came. They attempted to clean the sludge. Nothing happened. So they gave up. So the storage people moved my crap back into my unit and locked it up.

I went to inspect the stuff . . . and found that they'd lost my keys. A search began for the keys to the lock on my unit. I went in search of my extra keys to the unit. I found them . . . and found that the lock on my unit was not in fact my lock. They began to look in earnest for the correct keys to the lock on my unit. I told them that there was no real rush because I didn't really need any of the stuff in my unit at the moment. About a month later, they say they haven't found the keys and will drill the lock and replace it. I say fine. A few days later they find the keys. I stop by and we unlock the unit, put a new lock on it, and I get all of the new keys. I do a cursory inspection, meaning I went in and looked to see if all of the major furniture was there, if the TV was there, and assorted other high price items, etc. I tell them that everything looks OK but I didn't have time to do a more detailed inspection.

So today, I go back to get some things from the unit. This is the first time I've been there since that cursory inspection. I open up the unit. I begin looking for the container containing the CDs I'm looking for. I brush up against the TV box . . . and it moves. It moves FAR, FAR too easily.

And that's because the sucker is empty.

They stole my TV. Ask pbray who helped me move it into my apartment when I bought it: it's big, it's bulky, and it's heavy as shit.

The bastards stole my TV. And the CRAFTY bastards left the box so that I wouldn't know it was missing.

It's been months since I got the new lock on there. Being upset, but not stupid, I left the unit alone. I did not look for anything else or check anything else. My partner and I are going down to the main office tomorrow to bitch and demand replacement and if they want the police to come out I don't want anything else to be disturbed. Not that the police will fingerprint a TV box. That's probably small potatos to them. But just in case. And once they know that a theft occurred, and they free up the unit, THEN I'll go in and see if, say, my Xbox box is empty, or the VCR box, or if I even have any CDs left to find.

Obviously, this stuff vanished during the "mystery lock on my door" phase of the problem. I'm not sure who to blame, but the storage people are completely responsible in my opinion, since they had the keys initially, and I had no access to my stuff for at least a month while they pissed around looking for keys and whatnot.

In any case, that's the final straw. My crap is going into the 4th floor this Christmas break whether the floor is finished or not. Probably starting this week, depending on what needs to be done regarding the police. While I still have some crap left to put up there.

Putting my crap is storage was the worst decision I've ever made.