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2001-12-04 Entry: "Tuesday Tiredness"

Okay - I'm tired. For some unknown reason, I'm having great trouble keeping my eyes open. My brain doesn't really want to focus on anything, which could cause problems as I'm actually supposed to be doing something today, and can't cast it aside in the rush to fix errors (as we've fixed them).

My brain can't be too tired though, as it's just run away on planning a Christmas Interactive Fiction game that just seems like a fun idea... whether it'll actually get done or not is a completely different matter...

Perhaps it's just my body that's tired - in which case you would have thought the bottle of pepsi I just drank would have woken me up at least a little - Pepsi doesn't really have the same effect on me a good shot of Coke does, but it's all we can get at the Phone Company vending outlets... but still I'm tired. No wakefulness for this puppy...

Last night's fun included Farscape (where they killed off one of the Crichtons - and obviously the one who actually had access to the wormhole knowledge), and two episodes of Codename: Eternity, thus finishing the tape. Farscape followed the tried and tested formula of killing off the guy who'd got everything - he'd got the girl, he'd got the wormhole knowledge so he could go home, he'd eliminated the gimp in his head, and he'd saved everyone from a nasty fate at the hands of nasty aliens. Okay, now we can kill him. Fortunately for the girl, there's another one of him out there - but this one is still fumbling in the dark for the wormhole knowledge, the gimp is alive and well, and he isn't really the one she fell in love with... so things could get interesting (very much so if there's actually a cartoon episode coming up, as I've vaguely read about).

This is standard plotting, guy gets everything and therefore is at peace when he dies. But when the story is about the group as a whole, you've got to set up the conflict for those he leaves behind - his loved ones (or one). So he never got home to Earth to see his dad and brother again; so Erin has to go on without him. Fortunately for them, they've got another one of him living a slightly less rosy life on the other ship - this allows them to go with the "character death" emotional payout, but leave the personalities within the group pretty much unchanged. And why the hell didn't he leave a way to access the wormhole knowledge to the other guy?!