Speaking of films: I suspect this is one of those things where the trailer is better than the end result. But the trailer is something to see.

Oh, hey guys, I've just found out they're making a God of War movie. Judging by the trailer, they've done some retooling of the concept, but I think the changes have been all for the better.

That looks amazing!!!

Valve are releasing a new game on Steam for free tomorrow. It looks like this. Anyone want to play it?

Shimmin retains its ambiguity. As far as I can see, the only changes to my articles are fun: I like "4th Edition rulebooks, whose rule-filled allure beat my Wilma defence", though "Donna’t get clever with me, mortal. I’ll smite you with divine fire" is a bit odd...

The regender machine doesn't seem to recognize me, so I remain Viorica. On the other hand, my Star Trek article is now about "Kimberly's niece Peggy and her girlfriend Alexandra." Also, it was written by Davida Gerrold.

I've never read anything by Davida Foster Wanda, and little by Edna Allison Poe. I admit I quite enjoy the works of Nellie Gaiman, even though they're not so popular around these parts. I also haven't read Danielle Brown, but I hear her works are really bad.

Vladimir Nabokov apparently remains the same. Spoilsport.

@Kyra: At least you get to be the voice of reason...

I like how Sister Magpie turns into Brother Magpie. I also like how all of these Playpen comments with their gendered language themselves become prey for the regenderer and her feminine wiles. (I don't really believe that the regenderer has wiles of any sort, I was just hoping to see if it flips that about in an interesting way.)

I am Kyle :(

I am the unfunny one from South Park.

Hm, and apparently the feminine form of "Alasdair" is..."Alasdair."

...

...


MY NAME TRANSCENDS MERE GENDER! NO CATEGORY CAN CONTAIN ME!

I AM THE DUALITY!!!!!!

Arlene? The best female equivalent of "Arthur" out there is Arlene? Man, what?

Just been playing with regender, which adjusts genders in whatever website you plug into it in various ways. You can ask it to swap them all round, use either of two popular sets of gender-neutral pronouns, or use a set of pronouns that begin with 'bl' or 'wh' in order to make some kind of point about racism I think possibly? Anyway, the gender-swap option is obviously most fun, not least when it makes mistakes. On gender-swapped Ferretbrain, for example, I get 'regendered' to James, Guy becomes Gal, and it doesn't know what to do with Rami at all.

@ Sister Magpie: Ah. My cunning plan to send you a direct message in Twitter has failed because I misunderstood how direct messaging works. Shall we try again with the original plan where you e-mail an address that has editor at the beginning and then an at-sign and after that the name of this site with a dot com at the very end?

(Hope that was sufficient circumlocution to deflect the spam-bots.)

@ Guy: As if to prove your point, my latest article, which does indeed contain footnotes with parentheses in them, is apparently written like Foster Wallace.

Also I enthuse about early modern revolutionaries in a manner reminiscent of Jonathan Swift and complain about libraries in the style of HP Lovecraft, both of which feel vaguely appropriate.

@ Sister Magpie: Aha! I didn't see that, no, though now I have. Excellent - I shall communicate my e-mail address to you through yet another electronic system of communication.

@ Kyra: Improv Everywhere does seem a lot of fun, even if it isn't really what I'd call improv. I especially liked Ted's birthday.

@Kyra: Oh wow, today's things that are not steampunk is especially shameless...

Hey folks, anyone feel like a collaboration?

Didn't know if you saw my comment to you elsewhere--Ferretbrain was being wonky and not letting me post here or get to the e-mail link you put in! I'm not expert on fanfic but I've read it enough to be up for it.

That parenthetical remark really should be a footnote (preferably with multiple sub-footnotes of its own (some of which extend outward to an almost unbelievable length to such a degree that they begin to rather overwhelm your sense of what it was that the original thing that was being footnoted was about)) if you want to write like DFW. Actually, joking aside, I think he's fantastic - a great place to start is "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" (fiction) or "Consider the Lobster" (nonfiction).

I write like Ursula Le Guin and David Foster Wallace (whoever that may be).

Sorry, I've been at large on the internet today (can't you tell): Etsy creations that aren't steampunk.

Alasdair, I also write like HP Lovecraft: ponderous and faintly racist I guess. :( :( :( UNSPEAKABLE BLASPHEMY!

In other news, I've just discovered Improv Everywhere - what delights me about these videos is the sheer sense of fun but I love the surprised enjoyment on the faces of the watchers.

I just plugged a few of my Ferretbrain articles into the thingy, and it appears I write like H. P. Lovecraft! I knew that Michel Houellebecq book I read was going to do good things for me!

Now let's just feed an old fanfic in there and...Dan Brown? OHGODWHY. (And how's this for surreality: I just fed in a Screwtape Letters pastische I wrote years ago, and now the thing tells me it reads like Vladimir Nabakov.)

@Bryn:

Did you say people don't like Wheatley? Who are these strange people?

Those would be the commenters at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Of course, listen to them and you could be forgiven for thinking that Bioshock had shot their grandmothers.

@Jamie: You'll have something by Monday.

My UCAS personal statement was apparently written much like the works of Douglas Adams. So was my physics coursework on Dark Matter. I also got Ian Fleming and, like apparently most people, Dan Brown.

Interesting fact:
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
Butts Butts Butts
...
was written by Shakespeare.

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was written by Neil Gaiman, as was
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and
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However,
aaaa
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turns out to be a little-known work of Agatha Christie, sixteen lines of 'aa' is another of David Foster Wallace, and 32 lines of just the letter a is another great work by Vladimir Nabokov. Replace them with 'b's and we're back to Foster Wallace.

If you ever feel the need to write the alphabet out twice in upper case and then lower, you're plagiarising Neil Gaiman.

My old Playpen post analysing the Gender Genie with FerretBrain articles was penned by Edgar Allan Poe. Whee!

Hmm...

Wilkie Collins writes like Charles Dickens

Robert E. Howard writes like James Joyce

The Bible writes like Kurt Vonnegut

Waah! I spoke too soon.

Although I got "I Write Like JK Rowling" from analysing one of my articles about Harry Potter, so...