The Man of Bel'Tasq Part 8

“You are a filthy braggart, Roder. A noisome and loathsome insect to your race, and a pitiful and cowardly opportunist.” Illannis drew what little moisture she could from her mouth, and spat at his feet. Roder rolled his eyes.

“Tsk, tsk, little mouse, name-calling is so… so… childish,” the troll shook his head and sighed theatrically. “You should’ve taken my offer. You don’t know how hard the captain was pressing me for your bounty. Pity though, I had plans to make you my consort, you with your pretty face, and now, since I can’t make you mine, I think I must give you to my dogs.” The troll gestured to some of the men around him, and they, grinning widely, stepped forward bearing clubs and ropes.

The laughter pressed in all around Illannis as she stood away from the wall. She placed her hand around the hilt of her sword. Broken or no, it would have to do.

“Take care not to damage her face too much, my friends,” said the troll, “The guards must be able to identify her when we turn her over. The rest of her body… well, who cares if she has trouble walking?”

The men bearing clubs came forward first, and Illannis leapt forward, drawing her broken blade, and stabbed one in the side. Before she had time to withdraw her weapon, clubs came down on her arms and back, and soon she was huddled into a little ball on the street, covering her head and sides, praying to the Weaver to end it now, to change her fate and move her death just a few second closer, just for her. It did not come.

The blows stopped, but then she felt sharp pin-pricks pierce her side and back, slashing at clothes, laughter roaring as she lashed out, trying to fruitless catch an arm that wielded a blade. She was now on her feet, but they harried her on all sides, bashing her legs and slashing her arms wherever she turned, and she was bleeding everywhere.

Her head was spinning. The world was spinning. She could not keep her footing. The crowd now pressed her in, and she fell on top of them as they shoved her to and fro, laughing all the while. Her feet fumbled over themselves, and yet they continued to toss her back and forth. Soon rough hands began tearing at her shredded clothes, and she felt many of the men feeling her body as her arms weakly tried to batter them away. Eventually, they bore her up above them, and she tried to struggle against the many arms which held her limbs apart from her.

She cried, pleading them, begging them to let her go. It was at Roder’s voice that they gently laid her on the cobblestone streets. She curled up into herself, her clothes torn to muck-smeared ribbons. She wept, and through her swollen and blood-smeared eyes she saw the tips of Roder’s highly polished boots.

“What say you now of membership?” asked the troll, “Obviously, the price to keep you will have to go up, seeing as how I’ll need to hire a physician to look at you and nurse you back to health, but you have a pretty face, and I have always been weak to a pretty face." The troll leaned in close and bared his many teeth at her.

"So, what do you say?"

The Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 7

Upon hearing the crash, Illannis ducked and then dove to the floor. When she spun around to see what had made the noise, she saw a giant man standing in the tavern common room.

He was tall, nearly seven feet tall, and he was dressed head to toe in black.  He bore a sword nearly as tall as he was and without hesitation, he swung his enormous blade.  The city guards scattered out of his way, and he buried his weapon half-way into one of the support beams. 

One of the guards leapt forward and stabbed the giant man in the side.  The man turned, wrapped his hands around the guard’s neck, and gave out a rasping, horrendous roar.  Illannis heard a pop and a crack, and the guardsman slumped to the floor, dead.  The captain of the guard lifted a whistle to his lips, and blew.

Illannis rolled to her feet, grateful for the distraction and frightened of the giant man who could take a mortal wound without a flinch.  She sprinted out the door as she heard more bootsteps and whistles. She was on the street, and putting as much distance as she could between herself and that creature.
It was when she had stopped running, hunched over and out of breath, that she stood up and realized she did not know where she was.  It was also when she realized that she had been followed as she escaped the tavern.

An old, toothless man smiled at her, and winked.

Illannis bolted.  She heard a laugh and the softly padding feet of the old man behind her. She ducked through alleyways, sprinted down avenues, hurtled over low carts and dodged through crowds of strangers.  Yet every time she glanced behind her, she saw the old man, toothless and smiling.

Her lungs ached, dry, empty, and gasping.  Her legs burned, and now she stumbled often, too tired to keep her footing. She fell to the cobblestone streets, landing on her palms and the shock sending pain to her wrists and elbows.  The old man was laughing openly, and she picked herself up and staggered to a wall.  The old man sauntered up to her, whistling through his gums.  He stopped two arm’s lengths away.  He cocked his head to the side and scratched at his ear.

“Had enough running now dearie?” he asked.
Illannis shook her head, swallowing loudly, her throat too dry, too dry.  No, she thought, Oh please, no.

Still smiling, the old man cupped his weathered hands around his mouth, and squawked like a gull. Illannis pushed herself up from the wall.  Her legs were tired, too tired.  Even through her gloves, she felt her hand slip across the filthy wall.

Soon, many boot steps approached and Illannis was measuring if she could still run.  As men and women began to filter around her, she decided that it would be better to save her energy to fight.  If she pressed them hard enough, perhaps they would kill her. Perhaps they wouldn’t try to keep her alive, to do other, much worse things, to her.

She saw Roder’s great horns floating above the heads of the crowd.  She swallowed hard, and drew herself up.  He was giving her a slow and measured applause as the crowd parted to let him through.

“My, my, my dear lady Revlin, you gave ole Nanker here quite a chase.  Not a very interesting one for him, at least, but a chase nonetheless.  You still have some fire left in you, no?”

The Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 6

The Revenant sprinted across the plains and roads. He did not eat or sleep or rest. The towns and villages he passed through would often remark about the black-cloaked stranger with a veil over his face.

“Did you see his sword?”

“Which one?”

“He had more than one?”

“Yes, a great, big one on his back, and one strapped to his side!”

“He was tall too, taller than a horse!”

“I heard the guards tried to chase him down, but after an hour the horses were too winded to continue!”

“Strange times we live in, strange times.”

The Bel’Tasq paid them no mind.  Something was drawing him west, further west, and he traveled on. He felt the sun rising, scorching his back in the morning, searing across the sky before it set, then blazing  into his veiled eyes as it dipped and sank below the horizon.  He paid no heed to the twinkling of the stars overhead, nor the bright moon as it lit his path in silver and shadow.  He ran on and on, west, further west.  He did not eat, or drink, nor slept.

It was when he neared a town based at the foot of the mountains that he slowed.  It’s walls were half in ruin, half in use.  Not wanting to argue with the city guards, he found a suitable crack, waiting for the guards to pass by, and slipped inside the town.

He wandered the streets then, smelling the rancid refuse pooling in the gutters, burnt tallow and wax, alcohol and urine.  First he went left, then right, then veered right again, unconcerned to the direction he was going, but slowly feeling out the edges of his sensations, that hook around his navel that pulled into the sky when he died, now drawing near and more near to his charge.

He did not know when he grasped his claymore, he only knew that he drew it when he heard it rattle out of its sheath and he felt its heft and weight in his hands.  Commoners dressed in threadbare rags saw him draw his weapon and scattered. His hulking steps drew him further down the street.

“GUARDS!” shouted a voice to his left. The Revenant spun on his heel, kissed his blade through his veil, and took a running leap, crashing through the window of a tavern.  Screams and shouts filled the room.  Cloaked men with drawn swords spun to face him.  He towered, far, far above them.

Smiling behind his veil, he drew his claymore back and took one mighty, giant swing.

The Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 5

“Why the rush?  Is someone looking for your blood?  I assure you, I have the resources to conceal you until I can properly discharge my financial obligation to you.”

“And have that deducted from my pay?”

Roder’s smile now reached his eyes.  “Well now, I am a business-troll after all…”

“No, thank you, just the gold, if your eminence would please.”

The troll’s smile vanished.  He tsked at her, shaking his head.  “Such a pity, Banbrig, or should I say Illannis Revlin?”
Illannis felt the shiver at her name more than she showed it, but the troll saw the subtle shift in stance, the mock reaction that came a second too late for it to be natural.

“Who?” asked Illannis.

“Dear me, dear me, Mistress Revlin, do you not think that I would enter into a business arrangement without knowing who I was working with?  Did you truly underestimate my network of information?  Did you not realize that I have built my humble empire by sending the random scrap to the city—“ Roder paused, then shouted one word:

“GUARDS!”

Boot steps clunked heavily against the wooden floorboards.  The once raucous and now silent patrons slowly filed out as four of the city’s watchmen entered through the kitchen and the front door, surrounding Illannis.

“More profitable to turn me in without paying me, and then collect my bounty?” She asked.

“Double the profits, dearie.  Standard economics.”

“And you would have kept me in debt, staying here, hiding me?”

“Very smart dearie, only a bit too late.  Captain, would you do the honors?”

A guardsmen with a badge sewn to his brown cloak stepped forward. “Illanis Revlin, for crimes against the crown and for the murder of Bontag of Ghas’Nokor, among many other heinous acts, I place you under arrest by the authority of the city watch.”

Illannis’s grip tightened around her sword again.  It had shattered in the flight from the merchant’s home.  All that remained was half the former blade length and the hilt.  It would have to do.

The Man of Bel'Tasq, Parts 3 & 4

It was dark.  Again.  He moved his limbs, and he felt his surroundings, finding himself laying in a box carved from stone.  He pressed against the surface before him, the linen wrappings around him unraveling as he pushed, and the stone slid to the side, then fell away with a crash.  He sat up, and looked around him.

“Greetings, Revenant of Bel’Tasq,” said a voice behind him.  He spun and saw a form clothed in layers of gray and rotting rags standing next to his sarcophagus.  It had the voice of an old woman, and her face was covered with a gray veil.  A Watcher, disciple of the Weaver of Fate.

He blinked in the torchlight, then stared at his leathery, linen-wrapped hands.  He took a deep breath, and spoke, dust spewing from his lips.

“Where am I?” asked the Bel’Tasq.

“The Bel’Tasq ancestral crypt.  You’ve been dead for over half a millennia.”

Bel’Tasq fingered the gaping wound at his collar bone, where the sword had plunged years before.  He climbed out of his sarcophagus.

“Where is Illannis Revlin?” he asked, setting one linen-wrapped foot on the stone floor.

“I do not know, Revenant,” said the Watcher, “The Weaver of Fate deigned only to reveal your resting place. Nothing more.”

The revenant drew himself up to his full height, looming over the old woman.  He did not remember being this tall before.  He tried to remember other things, mountains… rivers…

“Where is the Celes river?” He asked.

“Far to the west of here.  Much has changed since your internment.”

The revenant nodded, then glanced at the stone lid which had entombed him.  It had cracked and partially shattered when it landed on the floor, but he could see that his name was chiseled off.  His eyes were drawn to the faceless Watcher again.

“Where is my armor?” he asked.

---
 
Illannis gripped her sword tightly, her leather gloves murmuring against the hilt of her blade.  She took a deep breath, listening to the laughter and clatter from the open windows, and entered the seedy and ramshackle inn before her.

“Banbrig!” roared the troll at the other end of the room.  He was dressed head to toe in silk, purples and reds embroidered and inset with hammered glass that shimmered as he moved.  His twisted horns scraped the ceiling as he greeted her, and his long and bulky arms were spread wide.  The assorted men and women, goblins, and ogres, and trolls, had stopped to watch Illannis enter, and many were laughing behind their hands.

Illannis swept her cloak aside, her hand openly placed upon her sword, and strode in, chin lifted, her eyes resting on the troll alone.

“Greetings, Roder,” said she, half-way across the room now.  “I have come to collect my payment.”

“Ahh but you have already collected it!” said the troll, his mouth spreading into a wide grin. “You are now a member of our most noble order—“ many laughed at this comment, and Roder gestured genially for quiet, “and have been granted free entrance to our meager establishment, and free audience to our most august court!”  More laughter followed.

Illannis shook her head. “That was not our agreement,” she said. “I do not wish for membership.  Just the payment I was promised and then I will leave your august presence.”  The laughter began to die down.  The troll remained unfazed.

“Ahhh, but why the rush? Stay here a while! You may come to like it!”

She swept off her cap and rendered the most polite bow and smile she could muster. “If it would pardon your eminence, but I would not wish to strain your noble personage with yet another mouth to feed and manage.  Just the gold, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Well by golly gosh, aren’t you persistent?” said the troll.  “Well, unfortunately, most of my capital is tied up in many lucrative, and, dare I say, expensive affairs.  It may take a while for me to liquidate enough assets to accommodate your request.”  He turned to the crowd. “What say, two, three weeks?”  The sniggers were quite loud in the crowded, smoky room.

She replaced her cap, her eyes glancing about the interior of the inn. “I had hoped that I could depart tonight with the earnings of my labors, Roder.  Certainly, a person of your repute could easily establish a line of credit?”

The silence and stillness that enveloped the room then was sudden and swift.  Roder’s smile was plastered to his wide and toothy jaws.

Persephone Winter, Part 2

I can smell the diesel fumes and dust as the bus clears away from the entrance of our driveway. The walk is around a quarter of a mile, but the bus doesn’t have a place to turn around if it went to my doorstep, which is fine by me.  We have too much junk in our yard anyways.

Bobby wants to hold my hand as we walk to our house, and I let him.  His backpack is no longer bigger than he is, and he’s starting to discover girls.  Girls are apparently discovering him, but neither are quite sure what to do about it.  I know it won’t be long before he’ll stop holding my hand when we walk up to our house.  Nowadays he waits for the bus to drive away before he reaches for it.

“C’mon little fish,” I tell him.  He smiles up at me and begins skipping along, kicking the rocks with his dust-encased shoes.  “How was school today?”

“Good,” he says, breathless as he tries to keep up with my long steps, the steep climb, and sending the random bits of gravel left and right.  “Liam and I played handball and four square during gym. Rebecca and Joey played with us too. Ms. Griggs is teaching us how to divide fractions now too.”

He continues to chatter on like this, talking about the trading card games he played during lunch and before school, the stories he’s reading in language arts, convection currents running along the Earth’s mantle and how Hawaii is just a hotspot that’s moving below the lithosphere. I try to remember this moment, trying to file it away among the other moments that I have shared with him, knowing that they’ll smudge into this blurred mural of my memory, and echo of when Dad used to do this for me too. If he ever cared about me like I do for Bobby, then he never shows it. I know that I won’t be like him when I get out and find a husband.  If I find a husband.

Our driveway flattens out and it is a straight sprint to our front porch from here.  Bobby sees our Dad step out onto our front porch, and that’s when my brother lets go of my hand and bolts for our father.  Dad smiles, and crouches down, his arms spread wide as Bobby plunges through the tall grass and ascends our creaking steps.

Dad’s got the timeless facial features of Richard Gere.  A full head of completely white hair.  Clear and taunt skin.  No wrinkles around his eyes, but his grin reaches up to coax them out every once and a while.  I don’t know how old he is, but he’s been around for a while.  He sweeps Bobby up as my little brother giggles and screams.  I follow behind, arms across my chest, before I brush the bark of our birch tree in a silent thank you.  I can feel her branches wave and sway in response.  I want to get rid of the moss that is growing up her trunk, but she won’t let me.  She’s too kind sometimes.

We’re all eco-friendly at our house.  Solar panels on the roof. Windmills out back.  Dad doesn’t work, not in the traditional white-collar/blue collar way, but he helps with research for his friends and keeps the house, mostly. I keep the garden out back, growing our fruits and vegetables and maintaining our compost heap.  I make dinner most nights, unless Dad orders out for pizza.  Bobby mostly just plays, but Dad’s got him to help me out from time to time, along with beating back the jungle which is our front lawn.  Don’t know why Dad won’t do it himself.

“Ha ha! Hello little fish!” says our Dad, bouncing Bobby on his hip.  “Whoa, you’re getting too big for this!”  He sits my brother down, and turns to address me as I’m leaning against our tree.

“And how’s our Miss Sulky and Surly?”

Persephone Winter, Part 1

I’ve been seriously contemplating using toothpicks to prop my eyelids open.  The splinters would hurt terribly, true, but at least I’d be awake for math class.  Bobby’s got a better mind for this stuff, but he’s in middle school, and the stuff I’m working on is bit over his head.

Bobby’s my baby brother.  Half-brother, actually.  Same dad, different mom.  Dad doesn’t talk much about any of his past “conquests” in front of us, but Grandma made a comment about Bobby’s mother once.  We were sitting in the kitchen, and I was barely three days past fourteen.  Bobby was on her knee, bouncing him around.  She covered his ears before she said it.  It went something along the lines of “Oh Rusty, we all know that she was just a piece of tail.”

Apparently Bobby’s mom was a water nymph, and when dad has all of his warlock friends over for beers and football, and he thinks I’m asleep in my room, he often uses the phrase “furious copulation” when his buddies ask about her.  Cue the drunken laughter. 

I want to cover my ears when he talks about her, to press the sides of my head so hard that I could push that memory out, but I don’t.  I keep hoping, and keep waiting, that maybe one night, one of his buddies will ask about my mom, and Dad’ll at least say her name.

Today, though, is remedial math and trying to chart parabolas.  As it stands now, I’ll have to take summer school to catch up to junior year.  I’m alright at astronomy, but I do much better at biology.  It just… makes sense.  I was grateful that the school system didn’t have enough funds to make us dissect anything this year.  I can’t stand the thought of hurting any of those poor things.  Can you imagine your entire life’s purpose is to be bred so that you could be suffocated and drowned in your own lungs, and then cut open for bored and slightly nauseas sixteen-year olds to see?

I take my glasses off and try to rub the tears of boredom out of my eyes.  I watch as the teacher punches in random numbers into an elaborate string of numbers, parenthesis, and letters, before settling on swirling a miniature dot on the makeshift graph she drew on the board.  I dutifully copy the location of her orange dot on my graph paper.  I silently pray that I’ll be able to figure it out when I get home.

Grandma gave me these glasses.  Around the time I hit my first period, anything made out of metal or plastic gave me an allergic reaction.  That includes plastic or metal frames.  When I woke up the next morning, I put my glasses on as usual and within minutes I had a rash around my face exactly where the frames pressed.

I tried to convince Dad that I couldn’t show up to school like that.  He listened to me patiently, but at the end of my stormy tirade he handed me my backpack, and told me that if I’m embarrassed now, showing up to the bus looking like I had just cried would be worse.  The next three days I sat in the front rows of my classes and squinted at the boards and projectors.

Grandma finally showed up, and she asked our birch tree in the front yard to weave a set of wooden frames for me.  Dad popped the lenses out of my old frames, and the birch encircled some of herself around them, and gave me flexible, willowy frames.  Or should I say birchy?  She’s a nice tree.  I try to keep her pruned and clear out the undergrowth for her.

“Stephanie?” says the teacher. 

I close my eyes.  Please mean Stephanie Hill.  Please mean Stephanie Hill.

“Stephanie Winter?”

Craaaaaap.

“Yes?”

“Could you please demonstrate on the board where we should chart the next point?”

My chair legs scrap against the tiled floor as I stand up and approach the board.  Just another boring day.

My First Rejection Letter

A couple weeks ago I recieved my first rejection letter.

Now to some, that would be crushingly bad for one's ego.  For me, it is just an indicator that I'm on the correct path.

I recently (re)watched a vlogbrothers video that guest starred Maureen Johnson.  In it, she said that her agent recieves about 3,500 query letters a year, and in that year, she only accepted 2 clients.  That means the chances of being accepted are about 1,750:1.  The fact that an agent took the time to look at it and form a reply (even if it was copy and paste), means that it was valuable enough to warrant 1) a look 2) consideration 3) a response.  That's amazing.

Aside from all of that, 1,750:1 is actually a manageable odd, considering the time I've given myself to get my book published here in America.  The problem is that I'm just so busy doing other things that I hardly have the time to send those letters out.

The good news is that I'm looking at working about 20+ hours a week tutoring, and about 10+ hours a week working at the restaurant.  I *could* give up my restaurant job, but I kinda need the money to help pay my bills off more quickly (I'm several thousand dollars in debt), but I think the main reason why I'm avoiding quitting my job is because I'm getting burned out from writing.

It's pretty much all I do.  That and tutor and play with kids, and I'm starting to wonder what the point in all of this is?

Yeah, yeah I'm paying my bills.

Yeah, yeah, I pretty much have and run my own business

Yeah, yeah, I know that I'll most likely keep working even if I make it "big".

I just... don't see the point in any of this.  Making a lasting effect on humanity doesn't really matter; it's been running perfectly fine without my input for thousands of years, why would it need mine?

Having personal relationships don't matter, because my feelings, wants, and desires are insignificant to the vast and immsearuably expansive universe we live in. 

So, what am I stuck with?  Just working until I die?  Even death is meaningless because *gasp* guess what? Things have been dying for MILLIONS of years.  What would my death matter?

No, I'm not contemplating suicide.  If even my death won't matter, then expediting the process is just as pointless.

Don't know if I'm going into another depressive cycle.  I am feeling more despondent lately.  Maybe I just feel like I'm trapped by logical necessity.  Nothing I feel matters.  Nothing I want matters.  Why care about anything?  Everything goes away.

Wow.  This was a bit of depressing blog post.  Hopefully I can pick it up next week?

See you then,

An Overview of Legend of Korra

Last week I talked about Legend of Korra's contrversial ending.  This week I want to talk about the entirety of the series.

The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that the entire series needed an extra season, or at least a half-season of more episodes.  I could go into detail about it, but I think having season 4's villian show up in the last episode of season 3 just to get two lines of dialogue and a name says it best.

The second is that the entire series is contracting what I call the "DBZ effect": instead of adding more story, they add more powers and characters.

This is not unusual when it comes to action/adventure television programs. With so many characters running around with so many powers, the story becomes less about the conflict the characters face and overcome, and more about who has the secret power that makes them king of the hill.  I mean, considering that iron is a metal, and iron is found in blood, does this mean that metalbenders could also be bloodbenders?

Third is that having Zaheer help Korra reconnect to her Avatar spirit was too convenient.  I mean, aside from Zaheer's "I'm a highly intelligent and enigmatic dude, so yeah I'll help you" aura, what other reason did he have to help the Avatar?  A bigger question than that, why is he and his compatriots still alive?  I mean, several armies have fought each other, killing people and soldiers by the thousands, but they can't kill a group of four people, who have proven, twice, that they are highly competent and devoted to murdering the Avatar and world leaders?  What's the point in making these special prisons and guarding them round the clock when you could execute them?

The fourth is that it had a plethora of strong female characters.  Not only does it pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors, but it has women who are not just erotic villians or damsels in distress; the women have a range of colors, emotions, and characters, and makes a special nod to deal with women's issues besides "oh did I--did I--did I not get the guy?".  George R. R. Martin said it best when he asked how he was able to write such rounded, well-written female characters: "Well, you know, I've always thought of women as people."

My fifth comment is on (of course) the show's ending.  Having Korra and Assami pair up as a romantic couple... well, I won't say that it is impossible because the groundwork was in place for their relationship, but I will say that up to that point, I think their relationship wasn't warranted, just yet.

The reason why I say this is because neither Korra nor Assami expressed sexual interest in women at all.  A simple "Kuvira, you're a beautiful, talented, and capable woman, but your methods are entirely too brutal and oppressive blah blah" from either one of them would be inocuous enough to not reveal the show's ending, but important enough to indicate their attraction to women. Personally, I think the majority of people who correctly predicted the show's ending did so out of wishful thinking rather than compiling logical and persuasive evidence.

What's more is that Korra was obviously pining away for Mako, and Bolin for Korra (and later Opal), yet we don't really get this sense for Korra and Assami.  Yeah sure, they were close, and Korra did choose Assami over everyone else to speak to while recovering, but I feel like they didn't spend enough time together to truly make their affections and their intimacy legitimate.  But that's just my opinion.

My last comment is the soundtrack is awesome.  I should be getting it in the mail today. :)

Got any thoughts about the Legend of Korra?  What were your favorite moments?  Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.

Have a lovely day!

Legend of Korra's Controversial Ending (spoilers)

A couple days ago I finally finished watching Nickelodeon's "Legend of Korra", a year after it already ended.  And I'm conflicted, to say the least.

Michael Dante Dimartino made a statement that very clearly and explicitly said that Korra and Asami were a romantic couple at the show's ending.  He notes in his statement, "For the most part, it seems like the point of the scene was understood and additional commentary wasn’t really needed from Bryan or me. But in case people were still questioning what happened in the last scene, I wanted to make a clear verbal statement to complement the show’s visual one." 

I think the reason people (including myself) needed clarification was because it came as such a shock:

A lesbian couple, in a children's cartoon?

I spent much of my weekend contemplating this ending, and wondering if it was appropriate to the story, and wondering if my vexation stemmed from any moral objection I have over homosexuality.  It's led me to some interesting places.

First, in western culture, woman are typically seen as symbols of sexuality, virtue, and fertility.  Assami's character has always been exquisitely feminine; if we were to label rage and general aggression as "masculine", (as far as I can recall) she has never behaved in that way; she's always been gentle, kind, giving, and prone to be hurt (read: be victimized) over lashing out.  Even when she discovered her father's darker side her initial reaction was dismay over vengence.  That's not even addressing her physical portrayal: soft features, long hair, delicate and slender body, always has on a little eye shadow.

Bearing all this in mind, I asked myself, "Would it be possible for Assami to be romantically interested in women?"

If Assami were an archetype of feminity, and intrinsic to that archetype is sexuality, then the answer is yes, Assami could be interested in women.  I say this because I've heard far more stories of women having sexual encounters with other women (of various degrees) than men.  I think this is because western men tend to solidify their sexual identity by being romantically interested only in women, and any undermining of this reputation has traditionally been labelled as "unmasculine". Women, however, are more free to express their sexuality just to express their sexuality, and are capable of crossing this border with impunity.  (Indeed, even men tend to encourage this behavior.)  So it is entirely possible that Assami, as an archetype of feminity, could be romantically interested in Korra.

Which led me to the next question: "Would it be possible for Korra to be romantically interested in women?"

This question was harder to substantiate, as while Assami was definitely feminine, Korra didn't have her feminine qualities as sharply expressed as Assami.  But that didn't mean it would be impossible for Korra to have romantic feelings for women.

The masthead theme behind season four was Korra's reminisence of all of her experiences, and how she has adapted and learned to overcome each one.  Some writers say that a story isn't a story unless a character changes, and as we've explored the Avatar universe with Korra, we've seen her grow and adapt.  As far as a character goes, she's undergone so many subtle and major changes in a short while that I'm hard pressed to think of a character who is more dynamic.  Switching her interest from men to women (if indeed there was a switch) then, wouldn't be that great of a jump.

Then again, technically speaking, if Korra's identity is a cumulation of her past lives, which included both men and women, then it would make sense that her affections would transcend her gender or the gender of her romantic partners, even if (or despite that) she lost her connection to her past lives.

So the answer to that question is also a yes.  But neither one of these questions were the first that I asked myself.

My first question was "Was this the right ending?"

In my gut I knew that this was not the most convenient ending for the writers, but the most appropriate ending to that story.  I had to say that this was the best and most satisfactory ending the series could've had: somehow, some way, it just made sense.  A little sad, a little timid, but ultimately very hopeful.  I don't know if it was the perfect ending, but I'm hard pressed to think of a better one.

I'll continue my discussion and critique of Legend of Korra in next week's post.  See you there.

Photo cred: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/bryan-konietzko-korrasami-date-fan-art/

Thomas, The Protector of Children's Dreams (Story)

I hate the night time. But I hate those things more.  Little Anita was having nightmares, so her parents gave her grandmother some money and then she and her grandmother went to the store and bought me off the shelf.  She carried me around all day.  Her hair smelled of lavender.  She held me so tight, so tight.

The first night was the worst.  After her parents kissed her goodnight, her grandmother read her a story, closed the door and turned off the light.  When the grandmother’s steps faded from down the hall, Anita held me close and whispered into my ear.

“Will you stay awake for me, Thomas?”

I didn’t say a word.  Didn’t move.  I don’t know what I would’ve done if I knew I could.  She held me close and turned over. It was quiet and dark for a long, long time.  Then I heard something hiss from underneath her bed.

Shivers ran up my seams and spine.  I moved the legs I didn’t know I could move.  The floorboards creaked.

I tried to squirm out from under her arm, and then I heard something big and heavy breathing below us.  My arms and legs struggled as she held me tighter.  Something moved from underneath her bed, then rose up, its horns scraping the ceiling.

Its nostrils twitched as it sniffed the air.  Twin rows of red eyes lined its long snout.  Its teeth were the size of Anita’s fingers.  It smelled like her grandmother.

I thrashed and twisted in Anita’s arms.  The thing rose high above us and blew a sharp breath out of its nose.  I pushed her arm and slipped underneath her.  She shifted in her sleep as the creature loomed above us.

I spun around and shook her shoulders.  I spoke with words I did not know I had.

“C’mon,” I said to her, “C’mon, please, please, please, wake-up, wake-up.”

She didn’t stir; didn’t move.  She lay there sleeping, deep within her soft blankets and comforters.  When I felt the creature’s warm breath on my back, I turned around and it lean closer to us.

My legs were shaking so hard as it got closer, its red eyes blinking in the dark and the gloom of her room.  It laid a clawed hand on Anita’s arm.  I punched it in its face.

It flinched and reared back, and then snaked down towards me.  I ran, rolled, and tumbled off her bed, landing belly-first on the floor.  It lunged at me.  I scrambled out of the way, my furry feet slipping across the wooden floor.  Its claws tore into the floor as it chased me, wooden splinters pelting my back and arms.  I ran toward her toy box, and the thing raked and clawed my back. I felt my fabric blossom open.  I cried out, cotton stuffing sprouting from my wounds.

I ran, stumbled, and ran from the creature.  It didn’t follow me.  It turned around and crept back to the little one. I didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to collapse, to scream, and pound my fists on the floor, but all I thought about was how badly it would hurt her if it got close to her.  

So I ran to her toy box, flung open the lid, and began pelting it with anything I could find: wooden blocks, bouncing rubber balls, little carved chairs and tables from her doll set.  It ignored me at first, until I hit it in its nose. It whipped around, blinked at me, and crawled toward me as I showered its face and back with the little cups and saucers from her tea set.  Its lips peeled back as it slunk across the floor.  I was throwing metal jacks at it when it snatched me up in its jaws.

I screamed as its finger-sized teeth punctured my back and belly, my tiny furry fists battering its face as it chewed.  I rammed the metal jacks deep into its eyes, and it roared as I rolled out of its mouth.

I crawled toward her closet as it swiped at its face with its claws.  I held my stomach, trying to keep my cotton stuffing in as I searched through her dresses of pressed lace and linen. I was looking, searching, trying to find something, anything that I could use.  I found a croquet stick leaning in the corner of her closet.

I strode out, wooden mallet spinning in my hands.  The creature turned around to face me, most of its eyes bleeding and slammed shut.  It hissed at me as I walked closer to it.  It slunk forward, away from Anita Bennent, the little girl that held me all day.  I felt a warmth blossom within my chest, loud and hard and strong.  I spoke with words I did not know I had.

“C’mon,” I said to it, “C’mon!”

It lunged again, and I swung with everything I had, striking it on its jaw. I struck it again and again as it tried to crawl away from me, hunkered down and dragging itself back underneath the bed.  I pounded the mallet against its face and back until the shaft broke, then I speared it through its belly.  The creature fell, and its body curled around the broken haft of the croquet stick.  I walked over to its head, my hand clutching my side as I went, and I kicked it in its face.

Its fat tongue rolled out.  Its red eyes dimmed.  I kicked it again and again until I fell down weeping.  I wiped my eyes, got up, and limped back to her bed.

I climbed back up her deep comforters and blankets. Stumbled to her side, cotton fluff falling out as I went, and crawled under her arm.  Her hair smelled of lavender.  She held me so tight, so tight.

I wanted to sleep so bad, so bad, but I was so scared.  Before she went to sleep, before that creature came, she asked me to stay awake for her.  She knew what waited for her if she slept.  She knew about the things hidden in the dark.  She asked me to stay awake for her. So I did.

The dawn streamed through the window.  The creature’s body disappeared, along with the torn up floor.  When she woke up, she smiled at me and kissed my head.  I wanted to cry so bad, but I didn’t.  

The parents came in later, saw me torn up and all of her broken toys and blamed it on the dog.  The grandmother took me, restuffed and sewed me back up.  When her parents asked her if she had any nightmares last night, she smiled and said “no”.  I felt the warmth settle into my stomach when she said that. Later that day, her parents bought me a sword and helmet. 

And now every night, after her parents have kissed her goodnight and her grandmother has read her a story, after her grandmother turns off the light and closes the door, Anita holds me close to her chest and asks me if I’ll stay awake for her tonight.  I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say to her.  I don’t want to tell her how much I hate the quiet and the dark, those frozen and still moments before another creature slinks from under her bed.  I want to tell how every stitch of me wants to stay in her arms and let her hair warm my face as we drift off to sleep.  But I can’t. I can’t.  She holds me too tight.

As she sleeps, something hisses from underneath her bed.  I wriggle out from underneath her arm.  The moonlight glints off my blade as another creature rises up from the foot of her bed.  It has come out to face me.

I hate the night time.  But I hate those things more.

---

Photo Cred:

http://begemott.deviantart.com/art/sweet-halloween-dreams-42197587

Police Officer plays with Harlem Kids, 1978

Source: http://imgur.com/SaAXISC

When looking at any image, be it on your screen, in a museum, or in a book, ask what factors came and collided to make this piece of human expression come before you.

Was the racism and violence in the 70's and 80's that bad if a police officer could play with these kids?  Are we de-volving or e-volving when it comes to matters of race?

Is she playing because she is also a member of a minority, and sympathizes with the plight of other minorities?

Was this one isolated moment when one person refused to treat others differently?

Will these children remember this moment too?  How will they reflect on it, years after it happened, in the social context we now live in?

I've been thinking about writing lately

Like I usually do.

Recently, I've thought about why I'm doing this.  I mean, it seems odd, devoting my life to a profession that is about ordering a bunch of dark squiggles into symbols that represent ideas, to try to move, motivate, and inspire people.  I mean, what's the point?  What's my end goal?  What's my win condition?

It just seems odd, the whole process that I'm doing.  Maybe I've been working too hard, drawn too close to the labors that I'm doing, and have forgotten the magic and wonder that comes with storytelling.  And wonder is an important aspect of writing I need to be working on more.

Some recent readers of mine have remarked that my writing style is too dense and inaccessible.  I won't begrudge them that point; I guess I haven't figured out the rhthym and pacing to keep a reader interested while also telling a story where things are going on beneath the narrative being told.  Part of that is because I can't establish wonder.

The first people who saw "Star Wars" felt like they were seeing magic enfold before them.  It was spectacular, not in the sense that it was good (which it was), but that George Lucas was able to make a spectacle.  Rowling did the same thing with her wonderous and whimsical world.  Could I ever do the same thing?

Maybe I get too distracted from what the characters are physically doing that I don't take a moment to point out the beauty of a thing, which is funny, because people IRL tend to think I speak too much when I try to explain the beauty of an idea or event, yet my writing doesn't reflect this.

Am I that serious and sober-minded?  Hmmm... I don't know.  I know that I have the potential to write a decent comedy or twelve, but that sort of thing doesn't interest me.  Serious things interest me, and any play that I do while I write is more for someone else's benefit than my own.

Aside from all that, I've noticed that there are some techniques you can use to speed up your writing narrative:

The first is dialogue.  Dialogue is interesting; that is why so many stories start off with characters speaking.

The second is that sometimes specific descriptions of every person and action is completely unnecessary.  Tolstoy (though a bit dated) will sometimes not even bother giving a name to a reoccurring character; just a profession.

Streamlining is necessary.  Kept the story moving and your readers interested.  That's what I need to learn too.

On a side note, I'm planning on starting a new fantasy webseries.  I'm not too sure when I'll do the updates, but I want to do them twice a week.  Hopefully they'll be interesting to you.

Wow, this post was all over the place, lol oh well.  Thanks for reading!  See you next week!

Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 2

The spiders lifted him up, and carried him away.  He heard their limbs and sinews pop and crack as they moved. They jostled the other occupants of the webs as they went along.  It was not long before he felt them deposit him in some other part of the webs.  He felt the webs across his face ripped from his skin, and he gasped from the pain.  Blood poured into his eyes.  He still couldn’t see.

He felt something soft and fuzzy press against his face, mopping up his blood.  His blood continued to drip, yet the clothe was persistent, wiping his eyes until he stopped bleeding. He heard a purring murmur near him, and when his eyes cleared he saw that it came for a giant spider that stood over him.  It held a strand of his cocoon in its front legs, and offered it up to him, its mandibles clicking as it spoke.

“Do you know what this says?” it asked.

He frowned, the scabs pulling at his taunt skin.  He stared at the sharp lines and squiggles written into the webbing that cocooned him.  He stared for a long, long time.

“It says ‘Bel’Tasq’,” purred the spider.

The man remembered.  The smell of dust and sweat.  Oil and leather.  Days spent training in the sun.  The man’s chapped lips parted as he spoke, the first words he had spoken in centuries.

“My father,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” said the spider, “And his father and his father before him, and your brother and sisters and cousins as well.”

His father told him to not leave the Revlin boy, to protect him from harm, as the Bel’Tasq had done centuries before.  He left anyway, for glory and battle. When he came back that morning, flushed and full of success, he found his charge slain, and his father deeply, deeply, angered.

“I failed,” said the man, finding fresh tears to shed.  The spider let him cry for awhile, before it spoke again.

“Hmmm…” it purred, “Not quite yet.”  The spider began to undo his cocoon.  The man gasped as the threads were ripped away from his bare skin.

“The last of the Revlin is in danger, and The Weaver of Fate has decided that it is not her time to die,” said the spider. The man was free, and the giant spider held him aloft as it tore at the webbings below him.

“The Weaver of Fate remembers your name, and if you are clever enough, if you are brave enough, it will be returned to you.”  The spider dropped him, and the man spun and twisted in the plummeting blackness.

“Find Illannis Revlin,” called the spider, “Who goes by the name Banbrig, in the Grishell Mountains, north of the River Celes!”

And with that, the man fell and fell, until he landed, hard. 

The Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 1

A cold blade plunged through his collar bone, the mourning mother standing above him, her eyes red, raw and misted. He saw the thin line of her mouth as she twisted the blade within him, mutilating attached muscle and sinew, puncturing his lungs and heart.  He felt himself pulled upwards, and when he saw his own body slump and collapse to the frozen earth, the pull became stronger, and he fell, tumbling into the sky.

The webs heaved below him as he landed.  Hundreds of barbs dug into his skin as he screamed and thrashed.  He was welcomed with a chorus of moans erupting all around him.  The barbs bit deeper as he writhed and roared.  Soon the webs bound him tight, and he was immobile. He could only weep and bleed, suspended in all that black, plushy darkness.

In the dark, there was no day, or night, and he did not know if minutes or months had passed.  He tried to remember the moments before the twisting blade, to dull the pain that bit into his biceps and cheeks, his legs and spine.  He tried to remember the glinting sun and the feel of sweat crawling down his back.  He tried to remember the warm meals his pale and cold fingers would wrap around, or the stink and smell of dust when his father returned from months on the road.  He tried to remember what it meant to be small, and little, and the feel of his mother’s sleeve across his cheek as she held him.  Eventually, the pain from the thousands of barbs receded, not because his memories fought them back, but because the unmarked eons he spent in the webs soon outweighed the moments before he fell into them. He cared as much about staving off the agony as he cared to stall his memories.

Time passed, and other bodies fell into the webs, the sticky strands shivering all around him as he and others moaned and screamed.  He tried to mark the time by their descent, or the spiders that would come and cocoon the young and old, women and men, trapped around him.  Hundreds, thousands fell, and then were cocooned, and taken away, and yet he still lay in the webs, bleeding and begging for a spider to come and cocoon him too.

It was after the number of spiders and people began to blur together when he stopped his counting.  Millions upon millions upon millions. He did not know how long it was, but after he cared not for the memories he had lost, or the people weeping around him, or the moans that escaped his lips, the spiders finally came, and enfolded him too. He screamed as he felt the webs cover his face and eyes.  Then they left him, and all was still, for a while. He did not know long it was, until he tried to remember his name. 

He spent what felt like centuries, trying to remember it.  He knew he knew it, before he fell, and a little after, and he could not remember it, try as he might, and later he would feel vexed because of it.  This was not because he couldn’t remember it, but that he couldn’t remember why it was important.  That was when the spiders came for a final time for him.  Their pincers clicked as they spoke.

“Is that him?”  One asked.  Another spider came and examined his barbed shroud.

“It’s him.  Take him.”

And with that, they unstuck him from the webs, and carried him away.

Harry Potter wasn't all that great (part II)

So I said in an earlier post that despite all the great things Rowling did correctly writing the Harry Potter books, there were a few things I didn't agree with.  So why was she so popular?

I think the biggest thing is that her books appeal to a large audience.  Where do you find the Harry Potter books?  In the children's section, and if you want to write a book for children, it has to establish wonder.

Wonder is a necessary part of story-telling.  Andrew Stanton says in his TED Talk (15:17) that wonder is the thing that makes people stop and stand there a while. Rowling's world has this in spades.  Part of it comes from her large cast of characters, another is the sense of whimsy and play instrinsic to every moment the characters experience.  There are poems and puzzles and this light sense of humor.  Think about it, the boys in the story often have competing worries: winning Quidditch and not dying via Voldemort.  This sense of mortal danger versus social anxiety makes the moments comical.  The mixture of danger, imagination, and humor is what makes people feel this innocent and enthusiastic wonder about her characters and story.

So the books entertain children because of wonder... yet why do so many adults read it?  Part of it is from the aforemention wonder, another part is the sheer length of the series.  HP is easily over 2k pages long, and had over one MILLION words to the enitre series.  That sort of length usually requires an adult attention span and stamina to complete.  On top of that, every story was a mystery, and often the clues were so subtle and hidden (at least to me it was) that it would keep the interest of even adult readers.  That's not to mention the complexity of the story as the character (and its readers) aged and their understanding of the world became more naunced and discerning.

But wonder and complexity aren't the only two reasons why Harry Potter remains so popular; every story has to teach us something about life and ourselves.  Stephen King once said that "Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity."  That's not to mention the many other concepts HP fans have noted, among them: education should never have a political agenda, there is nothing more important than family, and that we shouldn't be afraid of our weirdness, but celebrate it. 

These are all wonderful insights, however I think a couple that gets too frequently overlooked is the concept of racial equality and that birth grants privilege but not talent or character.  I think racial equality gets some of the best examination in Order of the Phoenix, with challenges over keeping Hagrid's half-brother, or Dobby and Kreacher's servitude, or how the centuars view themselves over how the wizards view.  I have no qualms about how Rowling presented this first concept, but I do have objections to the second.

In the series we learn about how Voldemort believes children of full wizarding families are inherently superior to "Mud-Bloods" or "Half-Bloods", and that Squibs and Muggles are an abomination which should be viewed with either out-right malice or disdain.  Dumbledore is ultimately against this ideal, and constantly professes his support for the half-giant Hagrid as well as witches and wizards from non-wizarding families.  So we shouldn't judge people based on their birth or their early childhood... yet we know that even as a young child Voldemort was something of a prodigy when it came to magic.  I mean, as a little kid, he not only could control his magic, he could do it without a wand.  How can we disregard talent as a matter of birth when the main villian (and possibly Dumbledore) was born talented?  How can we disregard "talent is a matter of birth" when people from wizarding families can't perform magic?

While characters like Hermoine and Snape offset this disparity (because both worked hard at perfecting their magical abilities), the fact that Squibs exist and there seems to be no direct system indicating magical talent, heritage as an indicator of magical ability runs contra to the philosophies that Dumbledore and Voldemort espouse.

In Colin Stokes's TED talk, he points out that many of the films of today feature heroes who were born with powers and are coerced by fate to defeat the villian with violence.  In comparison, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz defeats the wicked witch through making friends and being a leader.  Now this former concept is not something unique to stories of today; many of the Greek classics like Hercules, Oedipus, and Odeseus were born talented and had prophesies somehow attached to their lives, and there is something moving about seeing an individual character having to face and defeat evil by themselves.  It takes a strong individual to face death alone, and alone, triumphing over it, but Stokes's point about Dorothy uniting people to overcome the antagonist... I like that better.

Call me an American, but I don't think birth is a guaranteed indicator of later success, and ever since watching this TED Talk, I've made means to write stories which are closer to the ethic from The Wizard of Oz; the protagonist wins because they worked hard and the support system around them helps them succeed.  I know that this is no longer (or in some ways, was never) true, but I don't think people should feel entitled to success; I think they should work for it, and people should work for success, together.

Thanks for reading.  Hopefully I won't get that much hatemail.

See you next week (hopefully). ;)

Harry Potter wasn't all that great.

I know, I know, I'm sorry; but it's the truth.

Don't get me wrong, Rowling wrote Harry Potter well, but the more I read her work the more I see her making decisions I don't agree with. 

I know what you're probably thinking: what's this know-nothing "writer" thinking, saying that HP wasn't a masterpiece?  Doesn't he see her string of awards?  Doesn't he know that she was the first billionaire writer? All before age 50?

Well, Rowling's popularity was much better earned than many other writers, and frankly her style is so radically different than mine it's hard to judge who is a better writer just because she does things differently than I do.  I mean, she did a lot of things correctly when she wrote the HP series. 

First, her characters were distinct and memorable.  Sometimes writers fall into the pit of "talking head syndrome", in which the characters feel more like puppets getting manipulated by a single operator than distinct personas in a living world.  Everything from Hagrid's thick accent to Snape's disdain for Harry makes the characters more different and believable than the rest of the expansive cast set in the HP universe.  Think about it for a second, if I mention half-moon spectacles, who do you think of?  Bushy hair and buck teeth? Hooked nose and greasy hair?  That's not to mention a lightning-shaped scar, or an electric blue eye, or some of the great and memorable dialogue from the books. 

Remember how badly Umbridge was treating the students and faculty, and that Madam Pomfrey would resign out of protest, only she'd "worry about who would take care of the students if they got hurt"?  What about how McGonagall's eyes misted up when Harry and Ron said that they wanted to visit Hermoine? The details of the characters are so different that you have to remind yourself that Fluer, Peeves, Dedalus Diggle, and Dobby all had lines written by one person.  Simple details like Molly Weasley telling Ginny and Hermoine about how she brewed a love potion as a girl, and how, for some reason, telling this story included a lot of giggling, makes the characters feel geniune and unique.

Second, she provokes an emotional reaction from her readers, not as a fandom (like the Beliebers), but by her sheer skill as a writer.  Do you remember the fury you felt at Umbridge as she forced Harry to harm himself, night after night, or your frustration that Harry kept isolating himself and raged at his two best friends at the slightest provocation?  The confusion of how to view Dumbledore from a more complex and complete light as Rowling uncovered his past to us?  Or how badly Harry was crushing over Cho, and how much she was crushing over him, as well as the awkwardness of their relationship over Cedric?

What about how hard you threw your book after completing The Half-Blood Prince?

Finally, Rowling made sure that every element from the first book related to the last, and that all the clues you needed to solve to the mystery within each book, and the entire series, was provided for you all along.  After a second or third reading, it becomes so glaringly obvious, the stuff you miss, that you kinda kick yourself for not paying attention.  Then again, the details to solve each puzzle were buried so cleverly that you shouldn't blame yourself too much for not getting it the first time, especially if you're an 11-year-old just getting into the series.

So, I've praised Rowling over and over (as if she needs reaffirmation from myself or others), why do I think the books could've been written better?  My first objection is that she doesn't spend enough time to establish settings in which characters are speaking to each other.  Sometimes I have to go back and remind myself where the characters are having a dialogue.  You could chalk that up to my quasi-ADD, but Rowling does tend to cover a lot of ground in a sentence or two, and because she spends so much time describing one scene (let's say the greenhouses for Herbalogy), when we switch to another (let's say the Griffindor common room), I get confused as to why there is a roaring fire next to all of these potted plants.

My second qualm is a tough objection to substantiate, due to the audience the books were written for, but it is a huge thing when it comes to writing a good, intelligent, story: Rowling tells us too much, and doesn't show enough.  With any children's book there will always be a small amount of hand-holding when telling a story; a juvenile's experience is often not cultivated enough for serious introspection to pick up on the subtleties of a scene.  That being said, sometimes she takes a shortcut and tells us directly what is being said, done, or felt, and doesn't let the reader come to their own conclusions. 

In the end, is this a bad or good thing?  To tell the truth, I don't know enough about YA fiction to make final judgement on it, and I haven't decided how I ultimately feel about it.

My final objection is over Order of the Phoenix.  I'm not too sure if she hired anyone to review and edit her book, or people were to afraid to "correct the master", or that her publisher gave her too much freedom to write, but Order of the Phoenix was entirely too long.  Harry hadn't left his summer home at Privet Drive until almost 200 pages in, yet Sorcerer's Stone was less than 300 pages in its entirety.  By the time Harry arrived at Hogwarts in Order of the Phoenix, Harry was already on his way to fight Voldemort in Sorcerer's Stone.  It's not that I'm against long books, it's just that I feel like I saw many instances where Rowling could've eliminated a description or short phrase to make the narrative tighter and more streamlined.

Speaking of going too long, I need to wrap this post up!

Next week, I'll talk about the popularity of Harry Potter, and why it was so successful, along with (another) one of my objections.

See you there ;)

Bonus Saturday

So, I was supposed to do my post on thursday...

Yeah so it's saturday now, but I swear I can explain...

In short, I've been busy.  REALLY busy.  My typical day begins at 7am and I don't get back to the house until 10pm (on good days); and I'm not talking about Mon-Fri I get up early and don't get back 'till late, I'm talking about every day.  I won't go until exact details of my schedule, but let's just say that between tutoring, reading, and working at the restaurant, I've been contemplating cancelling my NetFlix subscription (total 1st world problem, I know) because I haven't used it in two months.  I don't recall the last time I sat down to play a video game (which is good), or went to the theatre (i've been to two movies in the last month, at least).

The crazy things is: I don't mind being so busy.  I feel like I'm constantly setting goals and achieving them.  In the last month or so, I've read about 8 books, not including the 6 novella-length comic book trades, and I've completely re-written an old story I wrote a while ago.  The trouble is I'm too busy doing the things that's preventing me from diving head-first into my writing career.

First, I REALLY hate my restaurant job.  Granted, I've had worse managers, worked longer hours in worse conditions, and have had to work with some of the dirtiest dirt bags ever, but I'm working really hard for pittance pay in something that is very much unrelated to what I want to do.  People (not my father) have said that I'm a pretty smart dude.  Working in a restaurant... well, let's just say that it doesn't necessarily attract the biggest and brightest minds of our generation, and the disparity between my intellect and the people around me has never been so... stark, I think.  Last Sunday, I actually contemplated asking the manager if I could just not come in that day.  While it's certainly not the #1 most dreaded thing I've ever experienced in my life, I don't recall having to drag myself into work as much as I have with this job.

Second, my tutoring job is... alright.  The kids are cute, and listen to me (mostly), and they seem like they are getting better at English.  The problem is that while I'm getting paid significantly higher than my restaurant job per-hour, I spend time outside the tutoring sessions preparing lessons, and I spend money out of my own pocket to have enough teaching materials to keep my students invested.  I could ask the parents to help buy the materials, but I feel that it would be better if I could own the materials myself so that I can use them with my other students (and not one specific family).

Paying the bills is great and everything, but I need to do some more research on entering contests and fish for more literary agents, and yet I haven't found any time to do it.  I still need to read Nicola Morgan's "How to Write a Great Synopsis" for the Caledonia Novel writing contest, and I need to parse out photos on my laptop for my daily photo posts, as well as continue to manage my twitter account to grow a following, not including reading all of the blogs and articles I find on there to help me write better.  Not to mention that I haven't worked that much on the sixth revision of my novel.  Not to mention all of the day-to-day chores I haven't been able to address yet.

My car looks like the nest of a homeless person, and I still need to send in my insurance info to the hospital that fixed my hand, while also getting the appropriate documents for my car, while still paying my speeding ticket (I was late to one of my tutoring sessions), while still looking for a job that will replace my other two jobs. 

There's just not enough time in the day, and I'm actually thankful that I introvert hardcore enough that I don't need much social interaction, otherwise socializing would also cut into the precious little time that I have.

I'm seriously contemplating taking the month of November off to participate in NaNoWriMo, and I think that the break would be good for me.  I've been also thinking about future living arrangements, something that will get me out of the house so I can work, allow me to work late at night, and be okay for me to knock out for a few hours if needed.  Not too sure what the solution will be, but I'm always open to suggestions.

I think my next post will be a short review of the Harry Potter series.  I'm expecting to recieve a lot of hate for it.  Sorry!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll see you next thursday!

The first rule about Chuck Palaniuk is do not to talk about Chuck Palaniuk

I recently finished re-reading Chuck Palaniuk's "Haunted", and I didn't realize how much his writing has affected my style.

Palaniuk describes himself as a minimalist writer.  Minimalism is a style of art that focuses on simplifying everything else to contrast the subject the artist wants the viewer to see.  It's about "cutting the fat"; keeping and mentioning only the things that are important.  He often uses things like repetition or broad, abstract strokes to describe his characters and moments.  Typically, using abstract ideas distances the reader because it doesn't give the reader a clear idea of the tangible, yet Palaniuk can capture scenes, expressions, and feelings while using a few short phrase.  That's economy of language.

A great testament to Palaniuk's writing prowess is the fact that his first book, Fight Club, is less than 50,000 words long.  Why is that important?  In publishing circles, your target audience often dictates the length of your book; younger audiences need shorter books, older need longer.  Your typical novel marketed to adults should be around 80k words.  Great fantasy epics (like Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, et cetera) should be around 120k words.  NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month) tries to encourage new writers to write a 50k word story in a month... yet by industry standards that would be considered a novella, and not a novel.  By NaNoWriMo's measuring stick, Fight Club doesn't pass the bar, and yet Palaniuk has maintained a loyal following from a short and should never have been published novel.  Crazy, right?

So why do I say that Palaniuk's style has affected mine? One of the stories in "Haunted" is about a chef who goes around killing food critics who give him a bad review.  In this story, the narrator uses specific cooking terms and injuries/problems that only a person in that particular profession would encounter.  One the stories I had written two years ago was about a catering company and the head caterer managing his people and his deadlines.  I too, use very specific cooking terms and bring up problems that only a caterer would encounter.  Eight years had passed between the time I read "Haunted" and the time I wrote that story, and yet I was writing a story that appropriated elements of Palaniuk's style.

With any artist who inspires you, you'll start practicing their style.  Eventually, if you practice long enough, their style will be incorporated to yours.  With enough influences, your style will become an algamation of multiple aritsts, and eventually becomes "your own".  As I mentioned in a previous post, Lissa Treiman says that your style is much like your signature; it gets practiced so much that it eventually just becomes short-hand for... you. :)

As much as I appreciate Palaniuk, I think he takes too much of a pessimistic view of humanity.  Fight Club often mentions our recycled, consumerist culture and how it has emasculated men.  One of the most popular quotes from the book and film was from Marla Singer's remark that terminall-ill people actually listen to you, and not just "wait for their turn to speak".  Haunted focuses on a group of wannabe writers escalating the pain and suffering they feel (actually commiting cannibalism and dismembering themselves) so that their "survival story" will be more popular by dent of painting their "captors" as truly viscious and vindictive.  The narrator points out that the American dream is about "turning your life into something you can sell".  Not a very appreciative perspective of the human race, to say the least.

I think that while a lot of people lack a certain measure of alturism and empathy, I don't think it is intrinsic to a person's nature, but a matter of reinforced choices they have decided to make.  I want to write stories that encourages people to do good, to think deeply and sharply.  Here's to trying, I guess.

See you next week. :)

Photo cred: https://thesouloftheplot.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/poster_fightclub.jpg

What do you write about?

Beyond practicing the basics of writing, there comes the choice on where to ultimately focus one’s attention on: form or idea.  Scott McCloud’s book, “Understanding Comics” highlights this concept in Chapter 6, and I think that this is an important choice to make when you’ve mastered discipline in writing.

To better explain what’s going on, form is all about technique, being able to tell a story well, while Idea is about what the story says about life, the whole of humanity, and the human experience. These days, I’m focusing on improving on the latter, and sending snippets of my thoughts to a friend.

“Scars are the evidence that life has happened”

“I don’t have the patience to lie”

“Being an adult is about managing expectations”

“Lying is bad habit to have, and a harder one to break”

“Children hope; adults cope”

Etc, etc, etc, etc.

The process is very liberating, and is a much different direction to take my writing.

I have a background in poetry, and I think poetry really helps when trying to write truly fantastic and beautiful pieces:

“Once upon a time, there was a meadow, and it was beautiful and good.  In this meadow were butterflies with wings of every color and hue; prismatic blues and greens, brilliant oranges and reds, violets and purples the envy of any robed emperor or king.  The butterflies would spend their days, floating from petal to pistal, drinking in the sweetness of morning, and the yawning glory of night.”

Wow, pretty… but what does it say about life?

I think a step beyond that, is that a story must somehow address contemporary issues.  Take Watchmen for example:

“Heard a joke once. Man goes to doctor.  Says he’s depressed.  Says life seems harsh and cruel.  Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.  Doctor says ‘Treament is simple.  Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight.  Go and see him.  That should pick you up.’  Man bursts into tears.  Says ‘But doctor, I am Pagliacci’”

Watchmen was written during the time of the Cold War.  People were scared someone will push a button and end the world.  The poor are starving, AIDs is becoming an issue, everyone is holding their breath, in an uncertain world where the future seems vaguely threatening.  To say that the audience at that time could relate would be an understatement.

Very often I hear people talking about the issues of this generation, but they are not talking about the problems that we are dealing with as much as they are addressing specific, isolated instances.  We have to widen our gaze and look at what we are dealing with today and now.  What are the issues that our generation is dealing with?  What are our feelings towards them?  What can we do to solve them?

Classics become classics because they speak to us across the ages.  Les Miserable talked about the unjust persecution of the poor, something we are still dealing with, and Watchmen talks about how one slip-up in our technology can decimate all human life on Earth.  What will you write about?  Will it stand the test of time?  Will your words be “modified in the guts of the living”?

Keep writing.  Keep dreaming.

How do you get published (a summary)

So I did an AMA on reddit about my novel and briefly spoke about how to get published.  Granted, I’m not publish (yet, I hope I can work hard enough to get published), but I’ve done some preliminary research on how to do it, and I want to share some knowledge.  Here it goes.

The biggest hurdle you’ll have to face is the fact that there are A LOT of people out there who think that just because they know how to write, they also know how to write well. 

And you are outnumbered by them, 100 to 1.

I think most of these folks think that where they lack in skill (or awareness on how bad they write), they can make up for in sheer persistence and quantity.  They are pretty much bashing their face into a keyboard until they make something novel-length(ish), and then they spend however much time, money, and effort to get their stuff published.  I’ve heard stories where people have promised everything from gift baskets to sexual favors to outright bribery to convince a publisher to pick someone up.

For all things holy, lovely, and good, please do not be one of these people.

You *do* need the persistence from these folks to get published though.  The thing that will get you to outpace them is your skill and talent at writing.  Don’t be desperate and impatient, be consistent and focused.  You’ll get there eventually.

So you’ve done your time, you’ve practiced, and you’ve honed your craft.  You can write circles around these talentless yokels.  You’ve made people laugh, cry, and return again and again to your stories and poetry.

But you’re still not getting published.

This is because publishing houses spend A LOT of money to publish a book.  They hire people to design the interior of your book, then people to design the cover, a publicist to convince bookstores to stock up on your novel, they set-up national tours to help promote your work, and they spend thousands of dollars printing it out and getting it ready to ship.  Then they pay you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a publishing company spends half a million dollars to publish on one writer, and if you were going to invest that much money into someone, you’d want assurances that they will make you money.

Think of a publisher as a bank giving out a loan, and you have no collateral.  How will they know that they can take a chance on you not defaulting on your loan?  You have to have AMAZING credit.  This means submitting your stuff to writing competitions.  Even if you don’t win, getting short-listed or long-listed goes a long way to help establish your credibility.  Convincing a literary agent to represent you also goes a long way, especially if the agent has had a track record of making a publishing house money.

Finally, sending in your manuscript, full or in part, is a waste of time and money.  Like I said before, people send in their stuff all the time, and without a literary agent, publishers simply don’t have the time or energy to sift through the giant stack of stuff on their doorstep (or inboxes).  Literary agents act as filters for publishers; they are the ones to sift through the piles of garbage to find the next Rowling or King. 

These days, if you don’t have an agent and you send in your work, they will most likely throw it away (or press delete).  No return e-mail.  No “sorry, don’t have time/not interested”.  Just gone.  How do you circumvent this?  Submit your stuff to writing contests, network at conventions, and convince a literary agent to represent you.  Hopefully she'll (most of the time it will be a "she") get you published.  Eventually.

That’s it for this week!  Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next Thursday (or maybe sooner).

Ode to an Unbrushed Cheek

Ode to an unbrushed cheek,
With fingers stiff and unmoving,
Tears that stream and trail down
That lovely face of yours

To touch that smooth, uncalloused flesh
Unworn by sorrow, untouched by grief,
And dash apart
This unbecoming corsage
Heresy! I cannot.

For tears have carved
Their place on cheeks
And have drenched
My stiff
And unmoving
Hands.

Don't Talk To Me, I'm Introverting

The thing about being human is that you always want someone you can relate to.  The thing about being an introvert is that once you can relate, you never want them around.

Shane Koyczan once said that we all carry heart-shaped jars in our chests, and that we go up to everyone we meet, screaming, “Open this for me!” 
They always say, “Not unless we break it.” 
More often than sometimes, he tells them, “Go for it.”

It’s hard to describe exactly how I feel about stuff.  I could use allegory, draw examples, project metaphors on these pages, but you’d only get a glimmer of what I’m thinking.  Every thought I have is a seed of myself, and it grows into the idea of me.  I try to plant my thoughts into everyone else’s mind, and yet they never grow into what I expect them to be.  I guess I shouldn’t feel so discouraged; afterall, I don’t expect nor want people to be like me.  Not exactly anyway.  I guess it’s true what they say: being an adult is about managing expectations.

People ask me questions to figure out where my fears and anxieties come from; they are trying to rationalize them out.  The problem is that my fears and anxieties are irrational.  They wouldn’t be fears and anxieties if they were, and I’d be lying if I said I never tried to rationalize them too.

When I was writing this, there was a party going on downstairs, and all I could think about was wanting to finish editing my book.  That and trying to express what I’m feeling in that moment.  They say that introverts feel that they express themselves better in writing than in person.  I guess this is true; give an introvert time to think and mull over what they want to say, smoothing every crack and dent, perfect the mirror-like finish of what they are thinking, you’ll see something very thoughtful and insightful.  It makes sense.  I also think it gives an introvert time to fully articulate their emotions and opinions, and it gives the reader the option to do something more worth their time so the introvert doesn’t fear monopolizing someone else’s.

It’s not the fact that we don’t value ourselves and what we say and think and feel; it just that we know some people don’t value stuff as much as we do, and it would be pointless to try to point that out otherwise.  It’s managing our expectation for other people to care as deeply as we do.

People stress me out.  Sometimes stress is a good thing, and there is this ache I sometimes have, a desire to know someone who could relate to me.  Then I realize that I’d probably get stressed out from them just being around.  I don’t know how people don’t feel stressed out by other people (and I don’t mean the day-to-day drama of living, I mean just interacting with people stresses me out).  Sometimes I envy them, just being able to switch everything off and enjoy themselves.  More often than sometimes, I never want to give up what I know and feel.

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I spread my dreams beneath your feet,
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”
~WB Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Erin's Journey Initial Reviews

Initial reviews for my first novel have been generally positive.  Most run along the lines of "It needs a little more polishing, but overall I couldn't put it down."  Very encouraging, to say the least.

I was able to send copies of the first three chapters to my writing group, and out of the seven people who read it, three people wanted personal copies.  That's AMAZING.

My main problem is that while the strength of my novel may be good, there is still room for improvement.  Part of it is practicing form, and the other is idea.

Let me explain:

Form refers to the techniques and skills implemented when creating a piece. Idea refers to the message the work sends; what it says about life, humanity, and contemporary issues.  Someone can write some very beautiful pieces, but what does the piece say about life?  What does it say about the human experience? 

My novel only has blips of these thoughts, and I think trying to jam those types of revelations into it would actually ruin it.  Maybe I can do that with my next novel, and practice doing these things in the short stories I'll be writing in the interim.

As far as form goes, I think I do decently well when it comes to expressing myself in writing; my background in poetry certainly helps in that aspect.  My main problem right now is the fact that I don't let the reader breathe between intense scenes.  One of my reviewers said:

"The action overload is another factor that made me slog through instead of devouring it all the way to the end like the voracious reader I am.  It was all gogogodododo."

In that effort, I've been drawing out some of the really action-heavy scenes, or deleting some scenes entirely.

Negative comments notwithstanding, there have been some REALLY great reviews:

"I couldn't put it down" (said multiple times)

"It was actually fun to read"

"I like [Erin] a lot.  She also terrifies me.  And is kinda gross.  And I want her as my cousin."

"The entire story is wrought with unnamed emotion (it's a very moving story of the bleakest type of redemption and the inner struggle of good vs. evil)..."

"I read that part while I was eating, and I actually gagged when I got to it."

"You have so much going on, and it made me want to constantly know what's going on."

"I love how everyone supports her and believes in her, especially Donnie."

These are REALLY great reviews, and looking through all the great things people have said makes me feel very loved.  It's hard to keep myself from crying as I'm thinking about them.

But as much as I appreciate the positive encouragement, I know that my novel still isn't good enough.  It needs to be better.  I know I can make it even greater, more moving and powerful.  I just need to keep working, and keep writing.

Excuse me while I get back to work.  :)

See you next week.