Our writing homework this week is to write a holiday-themed horror story. I’ve been struggling with this one for a week and was about to write a half-hearted piece about the abomination that is the Elf of the Shelf. In a weird little coincidence, teacher decided to write on the same subject this morning. Normally, I would be deterred, but in this case, I’ll try to turn adversity into opportunity. Or, it could just be that I didn’t care for the story I was working on in the first place. So, as I prepare to write the completely-different story, I’d like to pass along this little tidbit: I really don’t care for the holidays. I don’t care for the food, I don’t care for the forced travel, I don’t care for the gifts (giving or getting), and I really, really, really don’t like the obligatory everything. My time off is precious to me and having all manner of social requirements heaped on me wears me out. I enjoy seeing a few people, and even my family, but I don’t get any joy out of an obligation being discharged. “Relief?” Yes. A lot of relief, but it isn’t worth the stress that I get prior to it. So, yeah, “bah humbug” to me. I get it. I don’t begrudge anyone their holiday merriment. Just please be kind if my smile seems a bit forced and I excuse myself from the party early.
Author: Ridley
Re-reading “Locke & Key”
I’m going to admit something right of the bat here: I don’t like scary stories. I don’t care for scary movies or books or comics or TV shows. It’s not because I find them “too scary.” I have the opposite problem: I don’t find them scary at all. This is due, in large part, to the fact that once you know it’s a “scary story,” there are very few surprises. Even the shock endings and “twists” are tropes by now. Or maybe that’s not it, maybe I’m just not wired to “get” these kinds of stories. The bottom line is that I’m not scared by scary stories. Or, rather, I wasn’t until I read Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s “Locke & Key.” I’ve never encountered such a finely-balanced story of this type. The setup ensures that the balance of power between the heroes and their antagonist shifts in unpredictable but nonetheless true-to-the-story ways. I won’t give anything away here, I’ve never had that “I can’t wait to see what happens next month” feeling from any book, not even “Sandman” at its peak. The pacing and the art are pitch perfect, and, well, just go read the books. I finally bought the last of the trade collections so I decided I’d re-read the whole story, start-to-finish. I wasn’t sure if a scary story would survive multiple readings since I already knew all the twists and the conclusion. I needn’t have worried. “Locke & Key” not only continues to work as a scary story, but the emotional arcs of the characters are even more touching the second time around. Knowing what’s going to happen, it’s a little easier to delve in to the setup and marvel at how shocking but inevitable the twists and turns are. The villain of the piece is a genuinely worthy opponent, one who deserves everything they achieve. There’s nothing remotely cardboard about any of the characters, but by having a bad guy who seems to have real agency, who has the ability to counter setbacks and come up with new plans, Hill created something approaching timelessness. The villain felt real, the heroes felt real, and the sacrifices and losses felt especially real the second time around. I am not sure I cried the first time I read “Locke & Key”, but I can assure you I did so tonight when I finished it for the second time. If you haven’t read it for yourself, I encourage you to do so. If you have read it, read it again…just have a tissue or two handy.
Avoiding work by writing about not avoiding work
Man, I’d forgotten how much writing on a schedule, as opposed to “whenever I feel like it” can take it out of a guy. In a previous life writing for magazines, the work was extremely spiky: Write twenty things in a week, then nothing for a month. Oddly enough, I find that easier than grinding out x number of words a day or week. There’s always a risk turning anything you enjoy into a job, or even treating it like one. My experience is that instead of loving your jobs (which is, presumably, the desired outcome), you wind up resenting or even hating the thing you enjoyed. Turning something you like to do into something you have to do isn’t always a good move. That said, sometimes it’s just a matter of self-discipline, isn’t it? I have no patience for people who say that working in any kind of steady fashion stifles their creativity. I say this as a person who’s said that from time to time but has come to recognize that it’s kind of a bullshit excuse. One of the key tricks to Getting Things Done is to do them when you don’t feel like it, and doing what you have to do to pay the bills that allow you to do the thing, or things, you love. Which is to say, time to close the blog and get back to work…
The Marxist Versus The Thing Called Yanndar
This was written in response to the Terribleminds.com Flash Fiction Challenge: Superheroes Plus. It was also an opportunity to dust off my favorite old City of Heroes character, the Marxist. Be glad it wasn’t his trusty sidekick, the nuclear-powered Robo-Christ. It was a very silly game. Swinging around and throwing his best right hook, the Marxist flailed at thin air yet again, staggered back into the corner of the room clutching his head in agony. Behind his golden mirrorshades, a stream of blood ran like tears down his cheek. The Marxist fell to his knees on the cold, black marble floor. Could this be the end of Steel City’s mightiest hero? Just this morning, Steel City’s top cop, police chief Justice, sent up the unmistakable hammer and sickle balloon. The Marxist wasted no time bounding downtown to the station. There was something happening to the children at the Hill School. The parents were starting to worry. The children weren’t playing with each other anymore, or even with their siblings. The chief sent three of his best officers in to the school. Two of them returned and quit the force on the spot. The third stayed in the school’s office and made phone calls, tearfully apologizing to everyone who’d ever helped him for two days before the calls stopped. No one has been in or out since. The Marxist would charge hell into hell armed with no more than his own two fists, but he wasn’t above improving the odds if the opportunity presented itself. Child psychologist Louis Salome was the best there was at what he did, and he’s spoken to all of the children at Hill School after the “irregularities” began. The Marxist picked up his report. He didn’t like what he read. “The children, all of them, are exhibiting a complete lack of empathy for other children. None of them will so much as lift a finger to help each other, their family, their friends or even their pets. There’s no apparent trauma or other proximate cause for this other this change in their behavior. While there is no evidence for it, each of the children described a voice calling itself ‘Yanndar’ which visited them in the darkness. One child, the Nelson boy, described ‘Yanndar’ as an invisible friend who whispered ‘helpful’ things in his ear from just out of his range of vision. Other children described similar experiences. While none of them could provide any verifiable details, the fact that they all described these phenomena suggests that it is somehow related to the change in their behavior.” “Marxist my man, what are you getting yourself into?” Just this morning, Steel City’s top cop, police chief Justice, sent up the unmistakable hammer and sickle balloon. The Marxist wasted no time bounding downtown to the station. There was something happening to the children at the Hill School. The parents were thrilled. The children were learning self-reliance. The chief sent three of his own kids to the school and was considering quitting his admittedly unfulfilling job to teach there. The building that housed the school had once been the home of disgraced industrialist Dan Rany. Rany was the great new hope of the “old” economy, building his empire on innovation and manufacturing (not to mention a family fortune). Rany made billions in government contracts making exotic alloys and telecommunications. Ironically, the whole empire collapsed when a minimum wage night watchman turned whistleblower and spilled the company secrets to the Marxist. Two months later, the DA locked the doors and Rany fled the country. It was one thing to be working on a secret device to broadcast thoughts into people’s brains for the C.I.A.; it was another to be surreptitiously shopping it to China and Russia at the same time. Some heroes are subtle. Looking up at the old Rany family crest reading “Habeo Meum”, the Marxist briefly considered knocking before putting his black leather combat boot through the door. Entering the old building, he was struck by the pervasive silence and stillness of it. This may have been a school last week, but now, it was something else entirely. Swinging around and throwing his best right how, the Marxist flailed at thin air yet again, staggered back into the corner of the room clutching his head in agony. Behind his golden mirrorshades, he caught the faintest glimpse of a grey, faceless figure out of the corner of his eye. Despite the pain, he forced his head to turn to face his foe, only for his foe to impossibly remain on the periphery of his vision. “Yanndar.” The Marxist fixed the tilt of his red beret and waited for his eyes to adjust. It was dark, but not lightless, and when his deceptively ordinary-looking shades kicked in to low-light enhancement mode, he could make out the posters on the wall. A mundane poster showing cartoon children holding hands now featured the words “Sharing is scaring” in red paint, scrawled in a childish hand. The Marxist shuddered both in disgust and actual physical revulsion to this place. The Marxist was good with his fists, but that doesn’t do much good when there’s nothing to punch. “Mr. Rany’s doing some very bad things, Mr. Marxist.” “That ain’t exactly news, Charlie. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is, can you prove it?” “Yeah, Marxist. I can prove it. It’s just that…well, my family’s got to eat. Job’s don’t grow on trees these days. Rany doesn’t pay much, but his checks don’t bounce, you know what I mean? He’s an asshole, but I got a family to feed and we’re living paycheck to paycheck” “Charlie, you’ve got nothing to lose but your chains. Say the word, and I’ll find you decent work. It’s hard, but it the pay’s ok, better than what you’re making, and you won’t be protecting the guy who’s keeping you from getting ahead” “You know, when you put it that way…you got a pen? This might take a while…..” The building that housed the school had once been the home of brilliant inventor Dan Rany. Rany was perhaps the last great industrialist and it would be by his example that Steel City, and later America, would be saved. Rany was a self-made man who proved that anyone could succeed if only they worked hard enough and kept their nose…
Because you demanded it! The Marxist in his most thrilling team up EVER!
I remember playing City of Heroes when it first came out. I’m not sure I’ve ever purchased a game which took me longer to get from “installation” to “playing.” That’s not because the learning curve was steep or the installation was buggy or there were a gazillion updates and configuration settings to apply. No, it took me forever to get into City of Heroes because the character generation was just that good. When it comes to superheroes, look is everything. The look is even more important than the powers. There a plenty of heroes who don’t even have powers but their look is so overwhelming that it doesn’t matter. If there’s one thing a superhero game absolutely, positively must have, it’s that ability to make your hero look exactly the way you want them to look. My favorite hero, the one I played the most, was a black man wearing camo pants, combat boots, a white t-shirt with a bomb on the front, gold sunglasses, and a red beret. The Marxist used to spout slightly-altered lines from The Communist Manifesto as he pummelled bad guys into submission. The game had the tools to let you create your vision of your hero and then execute them in a way that surpasses any game I’ve played to-date. Unfortunately, the rest of the game wasn’t up to snuff and I wound up cancelling my account. Maybe if I’d stuck with it I’d have found some content that interested me, but it had turned into an endless, repetative grind. Despite that, it remains a guilty pleasure in my memory. It delivered one of the best start-of-game experiences I’ve ever had. I took DC Universe Online out for a spin, but I just couldn’t get into it. Aside from the fact that the game felt as though it’d been developed for a console, it the character generation was just dreadful. It didn’t come close to the options available in CoH. Sure, you could set you exact muscle mass and alter your eyebrow angles, but in the end, you all pretty much looked the same. Bah. I bring this up because the estemeed Mr. Chuck Wendig provides some of the most evil (and evocative) fiction-writing prompts I’ve ever seen, and this week’s prompt has me cackling with delight. I’m not sure exactly where I’m going to go with it, but it’s an opportunity to bring The Marxist back to life. Thank you, Mr. Wendig. And the rest of you? You’ve been warned…
Recursive
I need to practice writing dialogue. My dialogue sounds like my internal monologue having an argument. I can’t read it without it sounding, in my head, like me talking to me. I need to make up silly voices for characters, just so I can think in those voices when they’re talking. But, if I get good at it, those silly voices will become a part of me. So it will still be me talking to me. Grrr….
What If The Slippery Slope Is Really Just A Waterslide?
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” I said, knowing that, these days, it really was. My co-worker Maria and I were enjoying a chilly autumn walk, talking a shortcut back from the convenience store, when she pointed out a gathering across the street. A dozen or so formally dressed people were gathered around a young woman in a wedding gown, kneeling on a grave. She was smiling broadly and holding back tears. Weddings will do that to you. She was, apparently, marrying her deceased mother. The happiest day of her life. “You see, I told you that was what was going to happen! You just kept saying ‘slippery slope this’ and ‘slippery slope that’ and, dammit, this is what we get!” Maria was upset. She gets that way when she’s right and no one is patting her on the back for it. She was right, but that didn’t stop me from rolling my eyes every time she brought it up. “When I was on the Council for Real American Marriage in ‘16, we warned you, we warned everyone. This is what you would get if you forced people to recognize ‘non-traditional’ marriages. You and everyone else just laughed and said we were being alarmist, but nooooo….” She drew it out, betraying her early 80’s cultural heritage. “No, you just applauded as the whole thing went down the tubes. If you’d just listened…” Her longs strides were faster now, and her intense stare was burning into some unseen point down and in front of her. She was approaching Full-On Rant status. I needed to say something before… “I swear to God, if I were in charge….” Her voice rose and her right arm pointed skyward. “Ok Maria, you were right. But, seriously, is this so bad?” She stopped (rant avoided), and turned slowly to face me (oh shit). “Yes, Mister ‘Hold Hands and Sing Kum-bay-yah’, it is ‘so bad.’ “I know we’ve been over this, but why?” She gave the look that I’ve come to recognize as the “Are you fucking kidding me?” look, a slight shrug to her shoulders and a disappointed frown on her face. “Because…because, look, quit being obtuse. What possible point can there be to marrying a dead person, or a dog, or a tree? Marriage exists for a reason, for many reasons, and none of them are served by a woman marrying a dead person. Even if you don’t believe in God (and how she managed such an admonishing tone in so few words, I’ll never know), you can’t believe that this is ‘marriage.’ “I don’t know why you’re so upset,” I said, knowing full well why she was so upset. She was upset because, in the wake of Cheval v. Gespenst, the Supreme Court had decided in favor of the defendant and the marriage was upheld. This case was seen as the tipping point in the establishment of the “We give up, so long as you’re not hurting anyone, go for it” doctrine. Maria took the defeat personally and never missed an opportunity to let everyone know the future had vindicated her beliefs. The war was lost, but the battles were never-ending. “Personally, I think it’s kind of sweet. I mean, she’s happy, and I doubt her mother cares greatly one way or the other.” Maria was undeterred. “Of course you would say that. You’ve never been married. You don’t know what it’s like to see other people deface the institution you’ve invested your whole being into upholding.” “That’s not fair,” I responded, not entirely sure that it wasn’t. “Just because I’ve never been married doesn’t mean that the Court’s decision didn’t affect me.” That was the truth, by the way. Cheval v. Gespenst and the new doctrine were applied in some truly novel and unexpected ways. “My boss is a unicorn when he’s at work. My own sister has decided to identify as an effete English hero when she’s travelling. Most of my friends and family have been affected in at least some way.” “Your sister? Really? Wow.” Maria paused briefly and her increasingly aggressive stance towards me relaxed slightly. “Sure. Doesn’t bother me at all, either. Why should it?” “Isn’t it weird?” “No…well, a little. It’s a little weird. But she’s happy. She has fun. We used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons when we were kids, so we grew up pretending to be whoever we wanted to be. She told me she realized that being who you ‘are’ is just another kind of pretending and she was tired of being herself all the time.” “That’s just nuts.” “Eh, maybe. I dunno. When I think about it, and think about how much of my personality is something I made up, or some affectation I engaged in long enough that I didn’t have to think about it anymore? I can see it. She says she thinks life’s a role-playing game anyway, and you don’t have to play the same character all the time. “ Maria was silent for a short while and made the face of a kid who was trying a spoonful of something new and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that, whatever it was, they did not like it. Then, abruptly, she scowled and pushed me back a couple of steps. “You don’t have a sister!” Busted. I couldn’t stop laughing. “No, no, hey, stop that,” I struggled to say as she continued to shove me. “I was just trying to get you to look at it differently. Hey, isn’t your wife going to wonder where you are?” “Well, you’re a fink and…” she stopped and checked the time on her phone “Oh crap, I’m supposed to be home in twenty minutes. Carla is going to kill me!” *phew* I’d been saved by the proverbial bell. “We can take this up tomorrow. Say ‘hi’ to Carla for me.’ I’d been in their wedding and they really do make a lovely couple. Note: This story is in response to the Terribleminds.com Flash Fiction Challenge: (p.s. This piece of ignorance and hate was part of the research I did for this story. I suffer for you people sometimes.) Here’s the photo:
Interstellar (with spoilers aplenty!)
Let’s talk about Interstellar. I’m going to talk about it as though everyone who is reading this has already seen it. If you haven’t seen it and are concerned spoilers, I advise you to stop reading now. I haven’t done a lot of film reviews, so I’ll tell you what. I’ll put my impressions at the top and then, at the bottom, below the dividing line, I’ll post the more blow-by-blow take. Now that we’re on the same page… …that was a really frustrating movie, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a bad film; instead it was a film that could have been one of the greats but lost its nerve at critical moments. It was a huge film full of Big Ideas, terrific performances, amazing visuals, and some of the hokiest sentimentality you’ll see all year. I really liked this movie when it was bleak. The fact that decisions had consequences and costs, and some of the decisions felt genuinely hard, was brilliant. The sense that they were losing a race against time permeated every frame of this film. The betrayals might have been a little telegraphed, but they felt honest. I do feel like Nolan cheated on some of the physics in order to set up some visuals and some plot points, and that was annoying because it was so tight in other ways. It always threatened to unravel with sentimentality, but it never quite did. The mere fact that it was so close was distracting. All in all, I liked it and I’d recommend it, warts and all. It’s a “thinky” movie and we don’t get enough of those from Hollywood. Here’s what I liked about it: It was emotionally very, very effective. They did some of the hard science well. The performances were uniformly outstanding. It looked spectacular and, for the most part, realistic. The robots. Despite the occasional mention of love as something that transcends dimension, they didn’t really lean on metaphysics. Speaking of love, none of the characters were romantically involved with each other. They made exploring the cosmos look cool. The scenes that starkly showed the passage of time were brutal. Here’s what I didn’t like about it: They did some of the hard science quite badly. It couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a feel good movie or a bleak one. It surely didn’t need a happy ending for Matthew McConaughey. The score got out of control sometimes. The dialogue. Everyone speaks like they’re lecturing the audience rather than talking to each other. I know one person who talks like that and I find an entire film full of them a little wearying. The ending didn’t work for me. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! The films starts at a Frank Darabont pace. The unhurried first act may have made some people impatient (ok, it did), but, for my money, it set the stage appropriately. The Earth is dying of a slow apocalypse (a blight that affects all grain crops) and humanity has not only stopped exploring space, we’re denying we ever did. Former astronaut Matthew McConaughey (I’m going to use the actors’ names here) is now a farmer raising two kids by himself. His son is earthbound in every meaning of the word, while the daughter is bright and rebellious and quite obviously more-loved by her father. The haunting of the daughter’s room by the “ghost” is one of those things that probably would have worked better if we all weren’t so accustomed to how storytelling works. Even though there aren’t any explicit hints as to the ghost’s identity, most of us had a pretty good idea of who it was right from the beginning just because, in films like this, things tend to play out that way. The ghost pushes books out of her bookshelf and leaves Morse code or binary messages in the dust. One of the messages, a set of coordinates, sends McConaughey off to discover where NASA is hiding and operating in secret. As it turns out, NASA, led by the always-excellent Michael Caine, has plans to save humanity. It turns out that “someone” dropped a huge wormhole next to Saturn revealing a dozen potentially Earth-like worlds on the other side. Caine has two plans: Plan A is to build a giant ship to remove a fraction of Earth’s population through the wormhole to settle on one of the Earth-like worlds. This plan is contingent on Caine solving an equation that would provide enough power to get his huge ship off the ground. Plan B is the fallback. NASA would send a ship full of frozen embryos and a few people to thaw them. The downside of this plan, of course, is that it dooms every human on Earth. NASA has already sent individuals to each of the twelve potential new homes and have received positive reports from several of them. Caine persuades McConaughey to pilot a ship that will check up on these reports and proactively deliver some of the embryos as the same time. McConaughey bids his daughter, son, and father (did I mention his father was played by John Lithgow? I did not. He is, and he’s good, as you’d expect), but not without the daughter telling him that the “ghost” sent him a message to “stay.” McConaughey, along with scientist Anne Hathaway (Caine’s daughter), and a couple of redshirts make the two year journey to Saturn. I cannot emphasize enough how beautifully shot the space scenes are. The decision to make space silent and lonely works brilliantly. After the initial rush of liftoff, the crew quickly settle in to the boredom of two years in a tin can combined with the horror of knowing just how close they are to a void that would kill them in a heartbeat. They settle in for cold sleep and awaken near Saturn within eyeshot of the wormhole. For some reason, it’s at this point that the crew decide to let McConaughey know that two of the three worlds they’re planning to visit orbit a black hole. That was a little jarring when I first saw that film, and it seems even more inexplicable the more I think about it. On the plus side, it gives them an opportunity to dip their toes in the relativity pool and talk about time dilation. The passage…
Relapse
It’s chilly and dark and very, very quiet so I think I’ll just write about me for a bit. A few months back, I wrote about how the source of my chronic health concerns had been identified and that I was on the mend. In the (unseasonably) cold light of morning, I am forced to conclude that I was being a bit too optimistic. I’m not dying, at least, I’m not dying any more than the average person is on a daily basis. I am, however, growing discouraged. I’m not a winter person to begin with, and when you combine the longer nights with the constant discomfort and aesthetically unfortunate nature of my condition…I’m not going to lie. It gets me down sometimes. That said, I’ll be seeing a very good doctor in a couple of days and I am confident that we’ll be able to treat the symptoms aggressively even if we don’t move any closer to a resolution. I have family visiting soon. I can’t believe it’s been five years since I’ve spent any amount of time with them, although it may be that I’ll remember why I haven’t seen them once we’re in close quarters. I love this time of night. I love the quiet of it. I love that I can think and even concentrate without the constant interruptions and noise and people and noise and phones and noise and….you get the idea. I’ve had to work in shared workspace environments in the past. I can say with authority that “shared workspace” offices aren’t the way to go if you want to produce anything but stress. This time of night is nice. I ought to do this more often. -Ridley
Of Straw Men and Middlemen
I’ve been meaning to write something about Interstellar since seeing it on Saturday, but I feel like I need to see it again before committing to anything. It’s a complicated, frustrating movie, and it isn’t exactly the film I thought I was going to be seeing, so I’d like to see it again before committing to anything. I know I should let this go, but Mr. Scalzi posted three more tweets in defense of “middlemen” and they’ve been stuck in the forefront of my thoughts ever sense. Here’s what he had to say: My initial reaction was “Does the word ‘middleman’ even mean what I think it means? I’ve been terribly wrong about words I thought I knew, so I checked the ol’ dictionary and came up with this: “mid·dle·manˈmidlˌman/Submitnounnoun: middle-mana person who buys goods from producers and sells them to retailers or consumers. ”we aim to maintain value for money by cutting out the middleman and selling direct”” Ok, that’s pretty much exactly what I had been thinking. Anyone who adds value to the product is, by definition, not a “middleman.” The middleman doesn’t enter the equation until after whatever you’re selling has been proofed, edited, typset, etc. The book is finished by the time the middleman enters the equation. Now, I know approximately nothing about business of publishing.. I don’t know how cleanly you can make the distinction between “middleman” and “not-middleman.” I know that, in the music industry, when you talk about “middlemen,” you’re talking about the major labels, distributors, wholesalers, and your retailers like Peaches and Tower and most especially Wal-Mart. I’m guessing these aren’t the types of middlemen that Scalzi is defending. I think we’re just talking past each other. I think we’re just taking two different meanings of the word “middleman” and talking about two very different industries (as the discussion was originally about music). I hope that’s the case. He doesn’t seem like the sort to go off the handle when his fans are trying to say “I wish more of the purchase price went to the people who actually worked on the books you write.” OK, enough on this. I happen to love John Scalzi’s work (the first e-book I purchased was one of his), I love his tweets, and I love reading his blog. We differ on this issue and I could well be in the wrong. I just couldn’t get it out of my head until I put it down on something paper-ish.