Of Words and Guns
Sep. 27th, 2012 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiIn the course of exploring the various fandoms I've acquired over the years I've poked around a number of fan-run wikis on the internet, and I've found that one of the problems with them is that they almost always feature bad writing. I am not without sympathy for these troubled but enthusiastic wiki-contributers, because from my own work free-lancing for the L5R rpg I know how hard it is to write material like that. I can do non-fiction prose for an imaginary setting, but usually the process is about as easy as squeezing blood from a stone. And I have an editor to watch for the places I might go off the rails. But being sympathetic to the writers doesn't make things easier to read.
However. I've started to read up on handguns for a non-L5R writing project (because there will be no guns in Rokugan, period, end of sentence) and discovered the Devil May Cry series page at the Internet Movie Firearm Database. The prose is well-organized, smoothly written, informative, and--incredibly--in several places is it very funny. Possibly my favorite sentence in the piece:
Ok, that's astonishingly bad physics, but I approve of not messing up pretty clothes so I guess it's a wash?
Anyway, this wiki looks like it could be very useful to me. I am totally ignorant of everything to do with guns (well, not everything...I know they tend to make loud noises and kill people) and this gives me references! Which I can go and look at! So that I can describe things with something approaching accuracy! It is a good day, in spite of having woken up two hours before my alarm today.
However. I've started to read up on handguns for a non-L5R writing project (because there will be no guns in Rokugan, period, end of sentence) and discovered the Devil May Cry series page at the Internet Movie Firearm Database. The prose is well-organized, smoothly written, informative, and--incredibly--in several places is it very funny. Possibly my favorite sentence in the piece:
One of the special moves has perhaps the most ridiculous physics in the series, which is saying something in a series where being impaled through the chest often fails to even injure the victim's clothes: Dante is said to use a "trick shot" to ricochet the bullet off multiple surfaces to make it go faster.
Ok, that's astonishingly bad physics, but I approve of not messing up pretty clothes so I guess it's a wash?
Anyway, this wiki looks like it could be very useful to me. I am totally ignorant of everything to do with guns (well, not everything...I know they tend to make loud noises and kill people) and this gives me references! Which I can go and look at! So that I can describe things with something approaching accuracy! It is a good day, in spite of having woken up two hours before my alarm today.
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Date: 2012-09-28 04:39 am (UTC)Thank you for linking it!
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Date: 2012-09-28 11:30 am (UTC)