Author: Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

From the Vault: there is more than one thing that makes us who we are

Posted on By Wil

I'm bringing a limited-edition chapbook of gaming stories to GenCon, so Andrew and I have been digging through old entries and columns to put it together. This weekend he found and sent me the following old post, with the note: "Nothing to do with gaming, but it's REALLY short and I think we could both use the reminder from time to time"

He's right. I think we can all use the reminder from time to time.

(Imagine the sound of The Vault opening)

It drove me crazy, during the marketing and promotion of Just A Geek,
that I couldn't convince the publicity department to stop it with the
"It's a Star Trek Bio! Sci-Fi! Sci-Fi!" message and tell readers what I
wanted them to get out of the book.

The thing is, a lot of readers who expected that sort of book were
pissed because it wasn't what they got, (a few of them were pleasantly
surprised, but the ones who wanted a gossipy Star Trek tell-all let me know what
an asshole I was for misleading them and wasting their time) but readers who were at least marginally
familiar with my blog, who were looking for something different, grokked
a different fundamental story in the text. A few days ago, WWdN reader
Stephanie wrote me the following, which I reprint with her permision:

What
I took from your book is that you shouldn't let one thing you do in
your life define you – because we do several different things in our
lives and there is more than one thing that makes us who we are.

That's
a really big part of my story. I'm really glad you grokked it,
Stephanie, and I hope it inspired you and others to follow your dreams,
whatever they may be.

(Imagine the sound of The Vault closing)

singing fun fun fun

Posted on By Wil

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from John Scalzi, reminding me that my Unicorn Pegasus Kitten fanfic is due on Saturday … I'm going to skip the part about how I began to hyperventilate at the thought of actually turning something in to John that people are going to read and OH MY GOD THEY'RE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT ME AND —

Um. Let's just say that I've been working on it nonstop, so I don't blow the deadline, and I have what Anne calls "Writer brain."

(Witness: "You have writer brain." "Why do you say that?" "Because you just put the cereal in the refrigerator and the almond milk in the pantry." "Oh.")

Anyway, earlier this morning, I was typing as fast as my fingers could keep up with my brain, when my computer did this thing where the screen fritzes once, twice, then looks like something out of Videodrome, then locks up. (This has happened infrequently for a few months, and because I missed my Applecare renewal by one day, I don't have it so … I'm stuck with this until I can afford a replacement. #firstworldproblem.)

Luckily, I'd just saved, so I didn't lose any work. I stood up, sighed, and reset the machine. While it rebooted, I walked across my office and looked out the window just as a hummingbird flew around the side of my house and began taking nectar from of the flowers in the lavender bush beneath my office window.

The window was open, so I could hear the beat of its wings and its tiny voice when it chirped. It darted around the bush, and the sun turned the green feathers on its back almost iridescent. I think I caught a flash of bright red on its breast while BNL's Brian Wilson played on my Sonos.

It was an incredibly peaceful moment, and it calmed my frenzied mind. Though I hadn't planned to take a break from my work, I was glad I did. If I'd been working, I wouldn't have seen or heard it, and I was grateful to be in exactly the right place and time to have that moment.

#GAMEON!

Posted on By Wil

Just in case you haven't had your mind blown by the latest music video from The Guild, yet:

<br/><a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-music-video-game-on/y0da39gh?fg=sharenoembed" target="_new"title="Season 4 – Music Video – "Game On"">Video: Season 4 – Music Video – "Game On"</a>

I didn't know The Guild was doing another music video (and why they'd want to, having set the bar so high with Date My Avatar last year, is beyond me) until minutes before we walked out for the panel at Comic-Con, so I watched this video with my jaw on the floor, completely blown away by the whole thing. Don't forget: this was produced with no budget at all. Think about that for a second … kind of makes you want to Get Excited and Make Things, doesn't it?

Bonus happy fun fact! Today is the third anniversary of The Guild's original release. I think this is a pretty awesome way to celebrate it. Congratulations to everyone involved on making something amazing!

FLASHBACK! True Stories From Famous People

Posted on By Wil

When I was a dorky teenager, I was sort of thrust into the spotlight by Stand By Me and Star Trek.

I've written before about how weird the whole thing was, and how uncomfortable a lot of the attention made me, but it wasn't all bad; I got to do some cool things, and meet some cool people as a result.

Being a cable TV subscriber in the 80s meant that I watched a lot of Nickelodeon, so I was a fan of You Can't Do That On Television, Double Dare, Mister Wizard's World, The Third Eye, Dangermouse, and getting slimed. Because I was a kid, and because I was on TV, I was invited to lots of Nickelodeon events over the years, where I got to meet a lot of the people I'd seen on Nick (never got to meet Moose from YCDTOT, though, which was a bummer).

Once, I even got to host the Kids Choice Awards, where I met Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (Weasel! Weasel! Weasel!) and Debbie Gibson (I still get lost in her eyes, though it was painfully easy for her to shake my love.)

I really liked the people who worked at Nickelodeon, and I guess they liked me, too, because I was always getting invited to participate in things like this, which appears to have been filmed when I was 14, or right after I turned 15:

That's even more embarrassing than my Complete Dork Who Loves Batman picture (which was probably taken 6 to 12 months after this video was shot), because I am such a dork, bordering on obnoxiousness. 30 year-old me would have wanted to kick 14 or 15 year-old me in the nuts if he had seen that, but almost 38 year-old me is willing to give that kid a break; he was so excited just to be there, and he was such an awkward nerd, he really was doing the best he could.

Doing these things was so much fun, and I genuinely loved it at the time, though I really took for granted that I'd always be asked to do them. Over the years, as I faded from view and struggled, I regretted that I didn't appreciate them more (though I don't think I was capable of fully appreciating them at the time, being fourteen and fifteen and all) … so when things happen to me now, like getting to watch a private concert by the Barenaked Ladies from about 10 feet away – where Ed Robertson fucking namechecks me in a song – you can bet your Vorpal Sword I take a moment to be grateful, and take nothing for granted.

(Thanks to Joshua C who e-mailed the link)