#because it feels very solid as a piece of fiction set in the early modern period but it ain't. RIP

[an-ruraiocht]

it's the fact that there clearly is research underpinning it just like. not enough to actually go for the right century. it's the late fifteenth century (probably) (going by references to the king, they haven't actually given a year), not the seventeenth century, believe it or not people's ideas about things changed over time!! there were some pretty huge things that happened in between those periods actually!! such as the fucking reformations!!

witchcraft and sexuality, those are the two things where people constantly assign early modern beliefs to medieval characters and they are two things that actually did shift somewhat significantly

sometimes i read a book that's supposed to be set in the medieval period but the characters' worldview feels modern and that sucks. but sometimes it feels historical but it still doesn't feel medieval. i'm reading one rn that feels frankly seventeenth century in vibes and attitudes and that's almost worse

[basedkikuenjoyer]

I finished another novel right before the end of the year, one I figured would be good but ended up surprising me. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. And I can solidify it's importance really quickly. George Orwell cited it as a huge influence on his landmark 1984. Huxley denied it being one on Brave New World but that's been disputed and notably the big feminist dystopian authors like Margaret Atwood and Ursula K le Guin have a lot of good things to say about this one. We was written by a Russian author during the very early days of the Soviet Union. Which gives things a very different tone if you keep in mind he's writing this well before the most brutal years with Stalin. This one is much more about taking the Bolshevik ethos to it's logical conclusion mixed with a pretty heavy critique of religion. The shared space of ideologies trying to create a "perfect" society.

What does that look like in practice? We don't see as much brutality in the United State. A city under a great glass dome where everyone moves according to a very orderly schedule. The apartments are all glass as well, there's no privacy aside from brief scheduled sexual encounters and it's all very stable, very sterile. Where I feel this one really shines is in the mindset of our protagonist, spaceship engineer D-503. It made me realize right away how other dystopian heroes are often written to be relatable to us to the point they don't always make sense if the world's been like that for a while. Like, it makes sense for June in The Handmaid's Tale because Gilead is still in its early stages but D-503? He feels very appropriately alien to the reader. The writing style to convey this really makes We stand out, because he describes things so mathematically and like someone who has only known this society that existed long before him. Makes it a little harder to read, but the book is also broken up into 40 very digestible journal entry chapters so it balances out.

All in all, solid piece of literature. Has that element of a lot of foundational pieces in a genre where the norms it didn't set really stand out. I feel like especially if you look at the newer wave of dystopian YA fiction there's been this trend since 1984 of focusing more and more on the gore and the appeal of following revolutionary zeal because we all want to stand up against something. Which isn't a bad thing but it takes away from the critique of modern society the genre is supposed to be. Not saying it's a fault of The Hunger Games, but have you ever noticed how popular that series is with people today who are completely unable to recognize they themselves are championing the elements of our culture it criticizes? By being willing to be less accessible, having a protagonist that really feels like part of his world, We nails it better than anything else I've come across.

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2020 review

view the image in higher quality here! (open the image in a new tab to zoom in.) thank you to my dearest @yvesdot for the template

transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! for reference, you can find my projects here :-) overall, new and old followers, thank you for another good year over here! [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your h

january

i spent late 2019-early 2020 working on 2019’s nano project, quark, aka the speculative fiction thing about new york city and prophets and dissections of the chosen one trope and gay people. quark is my second-oldest project (five years!), but it’s also probably the most ambitious, so it’s been... difficult to wrangle into place, and i didn’t end up finishing a first draft. oh, well.

enjoy a snippet that is devastatingly emblematic of everything about quark. the tone. the homoerotic tension. the ensemble cast all talking over each other. the fact that caelum has spent pretty much this entire scene crying. fun autopsy report meeting.

Marble stares at the notebook in Shade’s hands. Or maybe he’s staring at Shade’s hands. Dawn feels a little voyeuristic, so she does what she does and says a dumb and unrelated thing: “Augustus, I think this pizza-on-the-floor thing is hurting my ass.”

Augustus flutters his hands. “Sometimes nonconformity is painful.”

“At least we’re originals,” Caelum mumbles into his sleeve.

“Exactly,” Augustus says.

“True originality doesn’t exist,” Marble says.

“Oh,” Shade deadpans, “it’s going to be a fun autopsy report meeting.”

It isn’t.

february

in january i stressed myself out trying to make the plot of quark work. so in february, i decided to take some time and write something Entirely For Fun. like, entirely for fun, no rules. and. my god. how do i explain the project i started calling “third eye for the bad guy.”

it was an unholy mashup of many of my past hyperfixations, including the gone series, a tale of two cities, warrior cats, and the left hand of darkness. one of the characters was a canon scalie and one was a canon fictionkinnie. it centered around a polycule of wannabe-evil-overlord high schoolers. i only wrote like three chapters but i was lost in the sauce for all of february and then i just… like… wiped it from my mind and moved on? somehow??? one character was a werewolf and that literally wasn’t relevant at ALL

I.

Someone was going to die on these steps.

This had been Ivy Lee Palomo’s thought last year during the all-school photo, and it rose in her mind again now. The one hundred marble stairs leading up to the great double doors of Saint Constantine Academy were the school’s pride and glory, steep as the mountain, sharp as the blade under Ivy Lee’s skirt. With the cutting wind and snow glazing the stone more often than not, with the freshmen wild and wired on their first day of their first year, it was really only a matter of time before someone slipped and cracked their fucking head open.

It wasn’t going to be her. Not when she had Doc Martens and reflexes like an electric coil. Still. Ivy Lee didn’t want to watch someone die. She didn’t get along with dead people.

march

in march, i got back to the project i’d started in 2019 - AMT, my podcast! it’s a shakespeare retelling set in a modern high school; this excerpt is funnier and also more unnerving in context. (double, double, toil and trouble...)

INDRAJIT: What the hell are you doing?

[PAUSE.]

DEE (like she’s lying): Making pasta.

[ALL THREE OF THEM LAUGH.]

NONA: That’s right.

MORA: We have the keys to Mab’s office.

DEE: We’re using her stove.

NONA: To make pasta.

DEE: Do you want some?

[A TENSE PAUSE.]

INDRAJIT: No.

april

and darkling rears its head! all of my other projects have existed for at least a year; darkling (specfic king lear retelling) is... special. it was conceived in april, when i started hyperfixating on king lear, and i still managed to write an absolutely ridiculous amount of content for it. it was like the power of hyperfixation let me speedrun the entire process. which. okay.

iv: control

They say Cressida Stayer was nine years old when she turned her hair to gold. They laid her down in bed blonde, and the next morning, the waves cascading down her shoulders were solid metal, glinting harshly in the sunlight, weighing her down, creating that odd head-cocked expression she still wears now. Nine years old. Two or three years before most people develop enough magic skills to dye a single curl. Much less transfigure their hair into precious metal.

People also say Leovald Stayer’s immediate reaction was to hack it off her head and melt it down for cash. But generally they say that part a lot quieter.

may

in may i wrote AMT episode 15, by which i mean that in may there was a day when i sat in my room with the door shut for literally five straight hours listening to the same three songs on loop as i wrote the climax of one of the plotlines of AMT. so. that sure was… a day.

ISAAC: Do you want… do you want someone to drive you home? Hawk, you’re worrying me -

HAWK (almost cutting him off): Don’t. Don’t say that. I’m here to help. With your… thing.

ISAAC (quietly): I… don’t know if you should be here to see this.

HAWK (a little louder, more audibly upset): Well - what else am I going to do? Go home and - and have my dads talk at me and - and not be able to answer them? Because I can’t? I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

[PAUSE.]

ISAAC (V.O.): I wonder if this is what he feels like, on the outside, looking in at me. Watching someone else hurting. Helpless and afraid.

He still fits perfectly in my arms. I rest my chin on top of his head and pull him close to me, like I can stop him from shaking, like I can stop anything from happening the way I know it’s going to. I bury my face in his hair. He smells so familiar. He’s so warm.

God, Hawk. I love you so much. You shouldn’t be here to see this. Something bad’s gonna happen. And you’re not the kind of person who belongs in a tragedy.

june

okay, honestly, i should talk about “night shift” here, because in june i wrote a whole short story in one night (and then foamed over it for a week), but i am still in the process of submitting it places! so i am terrified to put even a sentence of it online. instead: the other thing i did this month was to finish AMT! (sixteen episodes and somewhere around 175k, iirc, but don’t quote me.) these lines are the opener to the final episode!

RAHMA (V.O.): The combined series of sophomore year disasters stretched through November. It’s June now. It’s taken me… a long time to get this all put together. I was going to make a vlog about it, initially - well, calling it a vlog sounds frivolous. I was going to make a video recounting the whole deal. All of it. From when I kissed Avery Fairchilde to the very last night. I scripted dozens of drafts; I put together dozens of bullet-pointed lists of what to cover… and it was never enough. Because Avery and I weren’t the only ones involved. Even if I was only focused on the two of us, it wasn’t just the two of us.

So… I gathered up everyone else. The whole town of Ellisburg is still talking about the week the town went crazy, but it wasn’t just a week. There was a lot leading up to it. And I think if anyone’s going to talk about it, it should be us. The people who lived it. So here we are. The most ambitious Rahma Ashiq production of all time - at least so far.

july

every july i pause whatever else i’m doing to celebrate the birthday of aurum & argentate, twins from my oldest and dearest WIP The Mortal Realm. july fifteenth! mark your calendars. they’re princes, though argentate would really rather not be; you can read the full birthday piece here.

“Do you… plan to get dressed?” A bit of the usual humor crept back into Aurum’s voice. “Although if you want to speak to the kingdom in your underthings, by all means, you have my full support.”

Argentate scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t dressed, no, but the usual malaise hung over his shoulders like a cloak. Guilt. Nerves. The sick sense that he hadn’t done something he was supposed to. The numb knowledge that it was too late to change a thing.

“I meant to,” he said. “Get dressed, I mean.” The rest went unsaid: I have just been sitting here. On the floor. Thinking about how I should get dressed.

“Ah,” Aurum said, extending his hand. “The traditional route. We’ll save the nude speeches for the future, then.”

Argentate took his hand, stumbling a little as Aurum pulled him to his feet. He steadied himself on the closest wall, taking a few deep breaths. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His hands found their way to the cross, again and again.

august

this summer, i wrote an entire draft of Valentine Van Velt is Dead, AKA “holden caulfield goes to exposure therapy,” AKA the weird little personal side project i keep tucked into my coat. interesting features include second-person narration from a narrator who doesn’t like the main character all that much. so reading it is kind of like the book wants to kill you? with an added dash of general melancholy.

You used to live here. That’s the thing that’s got you feeling so off.

You didn’t recognize your old house. I mean, you kind of did. You remembered that the road was on a hill. That hill felt like a goddamn forty-five degree angle when you were a kid. But if you didn’t have the address written down you wouldn’t have known it at all. It would have been just another little suburban house in rows of perfect little towns that make your skin crawl.

So now you’re in this diner looking out a gross smudgy window trying to block out the elevator music pumping through the speakers in the ceiling or whatever. I don’t know how speakers work. You’re trying to tune that shit out. The waitress comes over and catches you by surprise so you just point at some coffee thing on the menu so she’ll go away. For the record: you don’t drink coffee.

There’s a public library across the street. A little square building. You probably used to go there. The lady comes over and thunks your coffee on the table and gives you a kind of look, like she wants to know what in the goddamn hell you think you’re doing here and not at school. You sip your coffee and look out the window until she leaves you alone again. And then you spit it back into the cup because, for the record: you don’t drink coffee.

september

i spent september and october prepping for nano, so i was mostly working on darkling...

It’s late spring; still, at this time of night, on a rooftop, there’s a chill. The wind plays with the end of Ruby’s coat, with her hair. She hands the bottle off to Jasper, stares up at the fogged-over sky, wishes she were lying in Dany’s arms in Dany’s bed instead of here. Wishes, even, that Dany were the one on the roof with her. At least then they’d be cold together. At least then she wouldn’t have to imagine what Dany would say; she could just listen, and watch Dany’s flashing smile and her flinty eyes.

(She cuddles. This is another thing Dany does that Dany probably shouldn’t do, based on everything about Dany; it’s not like rattlesnakes cuddle. But Dany likes to nuzzle into Ruby’s side and rest her head on Ruby’s collarbones and toss an arm over Ruby’s chest, and hold her down like she’s worried she’ll float off somewhere. She’ll card her fingers through Ruby’s hair and hum. Even though they could get caught, even though she’s probably got better places to be - Dany cuddles.)

Ruby imagines it, momentarily, both of them on the roof together, sprawled like horrifyingly beautiful gargoyles, sharp teeth flashing, blood running hot. Up here - it’d be like they ruled the world.

But whatever. Jasper’s fun. He’s hot. He’s got a sharp tongue in a lot more ways than one. And she likes when he lets the mask down. She likes seeing the soft bits underneath. She wants to sink her teeth and nails into them so hard she draws blood. Masks don’t bleed. Ruby would know; that’s why she is what she is.

october

...though i was also in creative writing class in school, and thus ended up writing a bunch of poems of varying quality (my teacher had a real thing for poetry) and also one darklingverse short story where rory and cressida hold hands! which you can find here.

Lorelai Rory Flowers is afraid of thunder.

This is a bit of an embarrassing thing to admit, as they’re seventeen (“at least seventeen,” they like to tell people, “maybe two hundred, who’s to say?”) and generally wise beyond their years, or whatever it is that adults say about kids with too much psychological baggage. Being afraid of thunder is not a very wise-beyond-one’s-years trait. And yet the state of affairs remains: loud noises make Rory want to melt into the earth. Back when they still went to school, even the fire alarm sent them scuttling under their desk to hide.

Right now, in the elevator, all they can do is shrink into their sweater.

They haven’t let go of Cressida’s hand yet.

november

and then november of course was nano which was an adventure all the way through. (opening tumblr on the fifth day of nano to find out about d*stiel... was something.)

“Apologize to me. Or get out of my house.”

Gracen’s voice is very, very low. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her at all. Then he spins, eyes blazing. “What did you say?”

Gracen watches her own chest heave. She pushes herself up off the desk, stands with the effort of pushing a mountain off of her back. Leovald is six-foot-four. Gracen is six-foot-two. In her heels, in the heels she must wear to be a professional woman, to be a lady - they are the same height.

Gracen wipes her nose. When she lowers her arm, there’s a streak of blood across the back of her hand. Fire shivers in her chest; her heart rings in her ears; her voice could cut steel.

“I said,” she says, low, slow, volume building, “apologize to me. Or get. Out. Of. My. House.”

december

and finally, the poem i posted this year! it’s called the beast sonnet, and you can find it in its own post over here (with commentary! how sexy.)

i kill the beast and drop down to my knees, my blade stained dark with blood of stygian hue, and for a moment these scarred hands shake free, and hold a world unfurled for me anew. but once-mourned victims, victors, vices find; fear winged me; now its absence strips me bare. my sword now dulls, my legs, my voice, my mind; the beast, pried from my throat, leaves no skill there. and still i hear it laugh, O DEVOTEE— O CHILD DEAR, NO GLORY WITHOUT ME.

i was quite productive this year; i have to think it was because i was avoiding things... the peak of my productivity happened over the summer and in november, AKA, college app hell. (almost done with the last applications! pray for me.)

a general breakdown of what occupied me this year:

(no, i don’t know why the “various other things” category ended up so large... i blame all the one-off projects i wrote a single page for, and also whatever the fuck happened in february. yes, i do know why it looks hideous; it’s because each of my WIPs has a theme color

thank you once again for spending some time at goose-books dot gov this year! what to expect for next year: well, i very much hope i can produce AMT... also hoping to get darkling ready for beta readers, so keep your eyes out!

[aion-rsa]

To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article is sponsored by:

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is Christopher Paolini’s first foray into science-fiction, and the first of potentially many stories in the Fractalverse. The story follows xenobiologist Kira Navárez as a chance encounter with an ancient, alien artifact propels her into an epic space adventure across the vast expanse of the galaxy, in a fight for the fate of humanity. We talk to the author about the writing process, his sci-fi influences, favorite shared universes, and writing hopeful science fiction.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Den of Geek: What is it about science fiction that made you want to create within that framework?

Christopher Paolini: I grew up reading as much science fiction as fantasy. So for me, it was a very natural transition. My dad was and is a huge science fiction fan. My mom was a fantasy reader, so I kind of got both genres from them. And I just love the possibilities of science fiction, and I love how a lot of science fiction talks about the future of humanity, especially as we may be moving off this planet and exploring the rest of the universe. And I was also wanting a change from fantasy after working on The Inheritance Cycle for about 12 years, from 15 to 26/27. That’s a large chunk of one’s life to be put into one project. So yeah, science fiction felt like a very natural fit.

Which came first for you, did you already have an idea that you wanted to write in science-fiction? Or did you have the idea of a whole story in one book, then decide that science fiction would fit with that idea in mind?

I had the idea for the story first and the idea first came about in 2006, 2007. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a self contained story or series, but very early on, I decided that yes, it was going to be a one book story. That became increasingly important to me the longer I worked on The Inheritance Cycle, because I didn’t finish that series until the end of 2011, and then I was touring for it mid to late 2012. So when thinking about what I wanted to do next, was like, “Well, I’d rather write a self contained story and then move onto something new.” And also I wanted to get that experience for readers of not having to wait for years and years for the next volume. The ironic thing is that it actually didn’t really take me any less time to write To Sleep than if I had broken it up and just done two or three novels.

Were there any things that you maybe didn’t want to get rid of or cut to make the story fit into one tome that you had to get rid of? If so, how did you deal with that?

No, I told the story of what I wanted to tell. I actually had a unique experience with editing with this book where my editors at Tor, along with the other changes I was making, general revisions and copy edits… They actually had me add about 30,000 words of material to the book as I was revising, which I’ve never had that experience before. So no, everything I wanted to put in the story is in the story. It’s a book that is stuffed to the gills with stuff, and hopefully readers will enjoy all of that stuff. With that said, there is lots of material within the universe and within that setting that I want to write about and have plans for that isn’t in this book. But this book itself has what it needs to have.

Do you have plans for, not necessarily a sequel, but other stories that take place within the same connected universe?

Absolutely. I mean, if people… At least in the hardcover edition of the book, they’ll see there’s the logo for the Fractalverse, not only embossed the cover, but also printed on an inside page and the Fractalverse is a setting that I’ve been working on for quite a long time. The idea is that any stories that I want to tell that aren’t explicitly fantasy can fit within the Fractalverse. So it includes the real world, the far future, the distant past. And even though some of those stories might seem a little disconnected, they will all tie together in the end.

What do you think makes a really good connected or extended shared universe?

Part of it would be theme and tone. I think about Star Wars or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or any of these big franchises, and usually there’s a certain feel associated with that franchise. You know that when you’re going to go watch a James Bond film, for example, or you’re going to go watch a Star Trek film or show, you’re going to get a certain something. So I think theme and tone is a big thing. I’m kind of in the same camp as Sanderson for this one, finding ways to tie in characters, or thematic things, or world events so that things really are interconnected on a deep level. It may not make much of a difference for any one individual story, but when you step back and look at the whole edit sets, you can see how all the pieces fit together.

What are some of your favorite extended universes, across all mediums?

The Cosmere by Sanderson would certainly be up there. Also the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, and how that ties into his other works. I’m not actually a fan of horror. I think that there are enough difficult things in the world already, without putting more of that in my head, but I really appreciate how the Dark Tower sort of ties together his other books, characters cross pollinate between his various stories. I think that’s pretty cool.

If you could choose any character from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to put into another universe that you didn’t create, which character would you put into that universe and why?

My answer probably won’t surprise you. Gregorovich.

And what universe would you put him in?

Oh geez. Almost anything, almost anything. I would love to see him in… Actually, this would make him deeply unhappy, but the way it tickles my storytelling brain, I would love to see him in Battlestar Galactica and see him grappling with divisions between the humans and the Cylons, and him being sort of an inter median between human and cyborg or even full on Android.

Were there any tropes or things you wanted to explicitly avoid in your writing for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars?

My general approach was to try to treat every character with dignity and respect the same way I would want to be treated or anyone else would want to be treated, to not make a big deal about people being the other, even if sometimes they feel like they’re the other. And also, the thing is, I’m sure there’s still going to be prejudice and discrimination and all sorts of other issues in the future. I mean, humans are humans, that’s unfortunately not going to go away. But there’s no reason to highlight that or make it a major point of your main story or character, unless that’s something you want to grapple with in a deep examination of “how can we do better?”

I wanted to know about the rules you set for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars where: you wanted it to be realistic science, you wanted it to not completely break physics, and you wanted to disallow time travel. What was the reason and the thought process behind that?

The main point for me was that I didn’t want my spaceships to be time machines. Because if you look at the physics of a lot of faster than light travel in a lot of popular franchises, the math says that the spaceships really should be capable of time travel, which, if your story’s not about time travel, having your most popular transportation method allowing for that kind of wrecks your story. So I really, really wanted to avoid that. I really wanted a technical answer that I could wrap my brain around, which would give me a really solid footing for whatever I want to write in the Fractalverse.

What was the process of figuring out how to both be very technical, but also making it where a lay person could just read To Sleep in a A Sea of Stars and actually be able to follow along?

Well, that was very important to me. Having written fantasy, I definitely ran into challenges of info dumping and, and not wanting to info dump, and how do you convey large amounts of information to your readers in a palatable fashion? I definitely learned things when working on The Inheritance Cycle and I tried to apply them in this book. So the goal was to naturally introduce readers to this universe without overloading them with technical information. If readers want that technical information it’s in the appendices at the back of the book. So in some ways it’s almost like science is to science fiction is what magic is to fantasy, it defines the rules of what is possible in that universe. And it’s important for me as the author to know all those rules, but I don’t have to dump out those on the reader all at once.

Were there any habits that you had to break in the transition from writing a fantasy series, then going into a completely different genre and a different world?

Absolutely tons. First of all, I had an established approach style in a society that I had been working with for so long that it was really second nature. So I had to work very hard to come up with a cleaner, more modern style for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I enjoyed. It actually gave me a lot more freedom in terms of the tools I had to write the book. And then also just the pacing of the book is different because To Sleep is a complete story from start to finish. That was actually a little surprising to me, because when you write a series, you really get to know the characters in a way that you just can’t in one book, because you have thousands of pages to live with them. So the pacing was different and that was also a challenge to get used to. On top of that, the fact that a spaceship does not go in faster in an emergency, unlike horses or people, where if you need to get from point A to point B faster, you can just sort of spur the horses on a little more. You can run, you can push yourself harder. Spaceships don’t really do that. Machines don’t really do that. So that put some restrictions on the logistics of moving my characters around, it was a fun restriction.

Are there any common threads between your other series and this new one?

There is a fairly significant easter egg from The Inheritance Cycle in this book that I’ll leave for readers to discover. And then there are my usual obsessions as a writer on display. For example, I find myself continually drawn towards stories of personal transformation, both physical and mental, and that’s on full display here. And a lot of questions of how the individual relates to society. What is your responsibility to people in general if society stopped caring about you as a person? Despite the fact that it’s science fiction, there is a very real ethic and physics to the story, as it proceeds, that people who are fans of that in my fantasy novels will find the same here and will enjoy that also.

If you had to choose for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to be respectfully adapted into either of the following, a TV mini series, a standalone film, or a AAA game title, which would you choose and why?

I don’t know if it’s one film, but my gut says, a film. Simply because I would love for people to experience the story in one go, that was my whole reason for putting it into one book. I mean, a miniseries or TV show could do a wonderful job of it. But the pacing is different in a TV show and the beats and the emotions are different. So yeah, my gut reaction would be a film.

What are some of your favorite stories specifically set in space across all mediums— book, TV, film, comics, video games?

Well, video games. It would be the Mass Effect series, specifically if you’re playing with Commander Shepard, who is voiced by the amazing Jennifer Hale, who we were fortunate to get to read the audiobook. And she did an absolutely fantastic job with that. The Halo series, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, old school Star Trek, the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Dune by Frank Herbert, including the David Lynch film, which I have a soft spot in my heart for. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. I know that’s science fiction, that’s not in space. I think those would be some of the big ones. Oh, a lot of Iain Banks’ sci-fi novels.

What job do you think you would have, in the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe?

Well, given that the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe includes the real universe, I have a feeling I’d have the exact job I have now, writing epic stories that people would hopefully enjoy.

If you could bring one thing from the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars universe into our real modern day, present day, what would it be and why?

If I had to pick one piece of human technology to bring, it would actually be the fusion drives from the spaceship, because that would allow us to access the rest of the solar system in a way that we can’t, and really start spreading. I mean, the solar system we have is huge. So that alone would really provide an enormous boost for us as a species.

If you had to convey what To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is about to someone or something that doesn’t communicate with language as we understand it, what vibes would you want to give off or what feeling would you try to express?

I love this question. Oh, I’m so glad you asked that. I would want to convey the same feeling that inspired me to write this book in the first place. And it would be a feeling of… A tingle down your spine, of awe and wonder, both horrible and beautiful at our place within the universe. At the fact that the universe even exists and that we exist, in a bittersweet ache, that things are never perfect, but we still have accomplished all we can. And there’s hope for the future.

That’s a really hard thing to combine into one word or one sentence. But I literally wrote this entire book to try and convey that feeling and hopefully to convey it in the very last scene, in the very last line of the book.

This is a really good time for this book, I was surprised at how delicate and hopeful it was.

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I want to write optimistic fiction, ultimately. I never wanted to leave my readers depressed when they finish one of my books. I’ve heard so many people over the years where Eragon got them into reading, or one of the books helped them, helped a person through a difficult time in their life. And it makes me think that, well, if they’d read the wrong book and the wrong time, it might’ve made life a lot harder for them. So I think it will be unlikely that you’ll ever catch me writing a grim dark fantasy or science fiction.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is out now.

The post To Sleep In A Sea of Stars and the Importance of Optimism in Sci-Fi appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[rubecso]

The Insomniacs

I wrote this short story for my fiction writing module at university. Now it’s done and submitted I’d love to hear what people think of it. It was inspired by the real (and surreal) experience I had of being awake in the early hours in a Dusseldorf hotel.

Words: 2178

The Insomniacs

The hotel was like a museum with bedrooms. Every hallway was lined with paintings of misty, continental landscapes or old nobility with jutting chins. Glass display cabinets or sculptures with missing arms or noses lurked in every corner. Thomas’ flight from London to Dusseldorf had been one of the earlier ones, so he’d sat in the lobby and watched a succession of aunts, uncles and cousins gasp in delight as they arrived, before remembering the occasion and reverting to suitably sombre expressions.

He could see why Christoph had picked this place. It was a marvel, in the day at least.

At 4am, it had a different feel. Most places did, in his experience. The succession of dead aristocrats judged him as he passed. The rolling hills and Alpine forests gained a third dimension and beckoned him to fall into them. The sculptures were somehow both more human and less so.

He wandered down to the lobby, the marble tiles cold beneath his socks. Near the entrance was a semi-circle of peculiar chairs. They were red velvet with carved, wooden ornamentations (Baroque or maybe Rococo, he wasn’t sure). Yet they had a strangely modern shape, like something in a university common room. The backrest curved at the sides and overheard, so when he sat down it enveloped him.

He was so blinkered that he didn’t notice the man sitting in the chair next to him until he spoke:

‘Finden Sie auch keinen Schlaf?’

Thomas was startled. He was used to the world being empty at 4am. He looked round to see a pair of dark eyes looking expectantly at him from a wrinkled face.

He blinked, brain digesting the words. He was fairly sure the old man had asked him if he couldn’t sleep.

‘Oh, er, jah,’ he stumbled over the unpractised language, ‘ich bin… um, ich habe…’

He stopped and sighed.

‘Sorry. My German isn’t so good tonight.’

The lines around the old man’s eyes deepened as he smiled kindly.

‘English? English is fine.’

‘Thanks.’ Thomas wore the apologetic smile of the uncomfortably British. ‘I was trying to say I have insomnia.’ He paused, watching for confusion in the old man’s face. ‘You understand?’

He nodded. Then he gestured to himself.

‘Me also.’ He leaned forward in his chair and whispered conspiratorially: ‘I have not slept in three thousand years.’

Thomas chuckled, but the old man did not (he supposed something had been lost in translation). He searched for something to say, but the man got there first:

‘This is your first time here?’

‘The hotel? Yes. My grandfather stayed here, though.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, years back.’

‘Perhaps I met him.’

‘Do you come here a lot?’

He smiled, as if at some joke Thomas had not heard.

‘This is my hotel.’

‘Oh.’ Thomas gestured to their general surroundings. ‘And the artwork — it’s all yours?’

Another nod.

‘Wow.’ He would never have taken this simply-dressed man for a multimillionaire art collector. ‘It’s an amazing collection. Really it is.’

A spark lit in the owner’s deep, dark eyes. ‘You think so?’

‘Well,’ he gestured inarticulately, ‘of course.’

The old man stood up with surprising speed.

‘Let me show you around.’

***

As listened to the hotel owner speak about each of the artworks, Thomas felt like he should be taking notes. The old man spoke instructively. His accent was hard to place; close to German but with a melodic quality that sounded almost Italian. Thomas wondered if he was Swiss.

He seemed to know the provenance of every piece by heart; this was painted by Herr so-and-so, that was sculpted in such-and-such a century. For all Thomas knew about art history he could have been making it up as he went along, but he spoke with such authority that Thomas found it easier to believe he simply had it memorised. But more than these facts, he was full of odd little details about each piece, especially the portraits.

‘The Countess von Schrattenberg,’ he said at one point, pointing to an oil painting of a middle aged woman in an embroidered bodice with tightly curled, powdered hair and a pair of piercing, green eyes, ‘A very intelligent woman.’

He appeared to expect Thomas to reply.

‘You think so?’ he ventured.

‘I know so.’

Before Thomas could ask him to elaborate, he’d set off again. He walked briskly, hands clasped behind his back, a little bent but not overly so. He was certainly an old man, but not a frail one (or at least it seemed that way).

They carried on like this, Thomas following him up and down the hallways of the hotel and trying to take in the steady flow of facts and anecdotes. After a while, he decided the way the old man spoke about the artists and their subjects must simply be an eccentricity, or perhaps another joke that didn’t translate well. Or maybe Thomas was just too tired to get it.

One of the display cabinets stood out to Thomas. Its contents were a jumble of mismatched artefacts: fragments of pottery; metal objects twisted and bubbled with rust; some kind of carved, bone figurine; and a small, glass bottle. The bottle caught Thomas’ eye. It was green and cloudy, with a delicate handle. When he asked about it, the owner told him it dated back to Roman times. He fished out a set of keys and opened the cabinet to let him hold it. Thomas asked him if he was sure, having visions of it slipping through his fingers and shattering on the marble floor, but the owner insisted.

As Thomas turned the fragile flask over in his hands, the old man explained that it had been pulled out of the Rhine, along with everything else in the display cabinet.

‘The Romans had a fort here,’ he explained, ‘They brought in perfumes or oil in bottles like this, to trade with us Germans.’

(He meant the Germanic tribes, presumably.)

They got to talking about how long people had lived on this spot by the Rhine, how there were parts of the city where you could see the old town, and how before the town it was a village that grew up around the Roman fort, and how before that people settled along the river and lived off fish.

‘Ah,’ the old man sighed, ‘but you go back further than that, it becomes hard to remember.’

‘Hard to know, you mean?’ Thomas asked, ‘Because there aren’t written records?’

The owner regarded him silently for a few moments. Thomas wondered if he’d asked a stupid question or if it had been rude to try and correct him.

Then he shrugged. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ A thought appeared to strike him. ‘Have you walked by the river?’

‘No.’

‘You should.’

‘I might not get time.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well I’m busy tomorrow and then after that I’m leaving.’

‘Ah,’ said the old man, ‘What are you busy with?”’

‘I, er,’ Thomas shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at his socks, ‘I’ll be at a funeral. For my granddad, Christoph — the one who stayed here? It’s actually why we’re here. It was one of his requests.’

He glanced up at the owner, worried he was over-sharing. The look on the old man’s face was hard to read.

‘You were lucky,’ he replied.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘To get the rooms, on such short notice. Most of our guests book months in advance.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Thomas opened his mouth to say something more, but instead it widened into a yawn.

The old man smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

‘You should try to sleep, I think.’

***

The next night, when he heard the old man speak from the chair beside him, Thomas wasn’t surprised. Somehow he’d known he’d be waiting for him.

He’d tried to sleep. He’d been sure he would the moment he put his head down. He’d struggled to keep his eyes open all through the funeral service and the meal afterwards. Yet despite the exhaustion seeping into his limbs (nothing like insomnia to teach you the meaning of ‘bone-tired’), he still couldn’t sleep. So he let his feet carry him down to the lobby again, the marble floor somehow less solid than before. When he passed the portrait of the green-eyed Countess, he was sure he saw her move out the corner of his eye. When he sat down in the peculiar chair again, he felt like it had swallowed him whole.

Then the voice came again:

‘Did you get time to walk by the river?’

‘No. Sorry.’ He wasn’t sure why he apologised.

‘Perhaps next time.’

They lapsed into silence, deeper and heavier for the thick, velvet upholstery surrounding Thomas on all sides, muffling even the distant ticking of the grandfather clock in the lobby. Perhaps the hotel owner was comfortable with quiet, but Thomas found himself grasping for something to say. He came upon something he’d almost said last night, and once it was in his mind it was the only thing he could think of. Finally it bubbled up through his lips:

‘We did book in advance. We knew when Christoph was going to die. He did it in Switzerland. Assisted suicide.’

He turned to look at the old man, expecting him to have shrunk back in surprise or disgust. But instead he had leaned in, his dark eyes gleaming and fixed on Thomas as if he were one of the artworks on the walls.

‘Tell me more about this.’

Thomas didn’t know if it was the calm confidence of the old man’s voice, or if sleep deprivation had stripped him of the usual restrictions he put on his speech, or if it was just that for the whole day no one in his family had brought it up, even though they all knew. He didn’t know why he wanted to tell this stranger about his grandfather, but he did. He told him how intelligent he’d been, how even when Thomas was a child he’d wanted to be smart like him. How he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. How even before he’d lost his speech or his ability to dress himself, he’d planned his death in advance. How certain he’d been that he didn’t want to keep going once his memories began to leave him, how he wanted to die while he was still himself…

‘Still himself?’ the hotel owner cut in, ‘What does this mean?’

Thomas blinked; he’d almost forgotten he was talking to another person.

‘While he still had most of his memories.’

‘Ah, so.’ The old man nodded. His eyes were drifting, seeming to search for something Thomas couldn’t see. ‘This is what makes us who we are? Memories. Ah, but I did not know a person could…’ He trailed off, then gestured to Thomas. ‘Please go on.’

So Thomas told him about the clinic in Switzerland, that strange country between other countries where people went to die. He told him about the garden by the clinic, where he and his mother had walked with Christoph in his wheelchair. How it had seemed like he might change his mind at the last minute, but then he’d just stopped and said ‘Now then’, and that was it. How when he went, it was like he’d just fallen asleep.

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’

They were quiet again then, and this time Thomas was comfortable in it. He let the hotel owner break it:

‘I have one more item to show you.’

***

It was the bone figurine from the display case, the one Thomas had overlooked in favour of the Roman flask.

‘What do you think that is?’ the old man asked him as Thomas held it, running his thumb over the carved notches.

‘I don’t know.’

He waited for the old man to tell him, but instead he sighed.

‘Neither do I.’ He paused, then seemed to make a decision. ‘But I think it should go back to the river.’

Thomas looked up, frowning.

‘But it looks so old. Isn’t it valuable?’

The old man shrugged.

‘Perhaps. But what good is it if no one remembers what it’s for?’ He caught Thomas’ eye. ‘Even me?’

‘Even…?’ Thomas began, but then the owner reached out and grabbed his arm.

‘Will you do that for me? Give it back to the Rhine?’

‘I don’t…’

‘Please?’ His grip tightened. His dark eyes burned.

Thomas swallowed. Then he nodded.

***

Later, after Thomas returned to the hotel and found the owner was nowhere to be seen, he slept deeply. In his dreams he was by the Rhine again, but the city was gone. A thick, dark forest took its place, thinning out at the marshy ground by the river. The air smelled ancient.

The old man was sat by the water, dressed in animal pelts. He held a knife of flint and was carving something with it. As Thomas approached, he held it up to the light and smiled with understanding. The small, bone figurine.

He looked up at Thomas.

‘Thank you.’

[pass-the-bechdel]

Homicide: Life on the Street seasons 1-2 full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

7.69% (one of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

20.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female? 

Five (season one episode three ‘Night of the Dead Living (16.66%), episode six ‘Three Men and Adena’ (11.11%), episode eight ‘And the Rocket’s Red Glare’ (15%), and episode nine ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ (11.11%), plus season two episode one ‘See No Evil’ (12.5%)).

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty. Five who appeared in more than one episode, one who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixty-eight. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, nine who appeared in at least half the episodes, and five who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Surprisingly good, even progressive for a show from the early nineties. There are some very self-aware considerations of race, gender, and sexuality, and clear distinctions between what is considered ‘depraved’ and what is merely ‘alternative’ (distinctions which modern-day conservatives twenty-five years later seem to still be struggling with). The place where the hammer of judgment falls hardest is on any cop who allows personal prejudice to interfere with their work (average rating of 3.15).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent. To some fans, the first season is undoubtedly the best of the series, and it is certainly true that the show in that initial raw form achieved a beating heart of idiosyncratic realism that future seasons rarely - if ever - matched. That, really, is the highest praise one might levy; at its best, the show feels like reality. There have been many pale imitations of H:LOTS since its heyday, but no equals.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

I know, I didn’t do any individual episode posts. I didn’t accidentally publish this review without posting the other ones first: I decided not to write individual episode posts for this show. To be honest, I don’t love the decision, and if I ever do summary-posts-only for a show again, it’ll be under very special circumstances, because it’s really not ideal and there’s a good reason I chose the individual-episode-posts format for this blog in the first place. The only reason I’m pushing against my better judgment and doing summary-posts-only for this show is because, frankly, I think there are only maybe three people on tumblr who ever watched H:LOTS. This is possibly my favourite show in the world (top three, for sure), but it has been largely lost to the memory of history, and it’s also not generally in the habit of giving me a lot to talk about in the context of this blog, episode by episode. It has some good fodder - some fantastic fodder, even - but if I broke it down one episode at a time I fear I’d end up with a Hell of a lot of posts without a lot of content, and with even less of an interested audience. So, I’m gonna cut to the chase, and just do season summaries, touching on the good (and the bad) content in collective instead of stretched over 122 episode posts. My apologies to the three people who wish I would draw this out. 

Also worth noting as we segue into actually discussing the show: I’ve combo’d seasons one and two here because they’re only nine and four episodes long, respectively, and they are frequently packaged together (my DVDs put them all in one box). Sometimes the two seasons are actually labelled and sold as ‘season one’, and season three is consequently labelled ‘season two’, and so on, but I have avoided that unnecessary act of confusing streamlining to refer to them as they were intended and presented when they aired. There are immediate differences to be noted between the first nine episodes and the four that comprise season two: the beige colour-grading of the first season (sometimes so desaturated it almost looks like it’s in black and white) has been lifted to a more vibrant look, and the cases are a little more sensational/unusual than season one’s primarily drab and simple murders. That drab simplicity was what made the first season arguably the best, the key to its realism: murder is rarely an art, rarely complicated, rarely cleverly committed or cleverly covered up. Most of the cases in the first season are lifted directly from real-life cases depicted in journalist David Simon’s non-fiction novel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the exploration of the Baltimore Homicide Department upon which the show is based. Sensationalism or strangeness are not often part of the first season because they are not often part of reality, and the show is about the job, not the cases. It’s about the life, the people who have to dig into the ugliness of murder, and the way they deal with that, the world that their work shapes around them. I’m not normally a fan of cop shows for the way they wallow in gratuitously sick ideas, always searching for a ‘hook’ to make the crime they depict interesting by being more awful, more grisly, more voyeuristic than anything you’ve seen before. In a word, more sensational. I’ve also made no secret on this blog of my sincere disdain for so-called ‘gritty realism’, because it is commonly wildly unrealistic, and just an excuse to tell stories about horrible people being horrible to each other while the show tries to insist that that’s just how people are. Homicide’s avoidance of sensationalist narratives and its reliance on realism-for-realism’s-sake allow it to avoid the common pitfalls of both cop shows and try-hard ‘gritty realism’. It was a shake-up of the standard tv formula that almost had the show axed after one season, and which led to that ridiculously tiny second season as the network grappled with a critically-acclaimed, Emmy-winning series that was just never designed to be a big ratings winner. What made Homicide great was also what the network slowly squeezed out of it over time as they tried to shape a more traditional cop show, and it’s why no matter which season a fan chooses as their favourite, you can pretty much guarantee they won’t choose the last one. But, we’ll get to that. For now: seasons one and two.

The obvious thing we have to talk about (it is why we’re here, after all) is the ladies. Or, the lady, singular. This is not a female-heavy show, but there is at least one solid reason for that: the presence of only one female homicide detective is not a piece of token inclusion for the show, it’s an accurate reflection of the dynamics of the real-life Baltimore Homicide Department at the time. It’s an important reality here, because it’s something which significantly impacts that single female detective’s life: Kay Howard, as a character, is forced to interact with the conspicuousness of her womanhood on a regular basis. To its credit, the writing does not define Howard by her gender and she is able to have a personality and be a detective first and foremost instead of being ‘the woman, who does woman things, handles woman cases, and talks about being a woman all the time while the male characters feel compelled also to mention her femaleness whenever they notice what a woman she is, which is always’. That said, her gender is something that Howard cannot escape from in her context, something which inevitably sets her apart. This is brought up in particularly notable ways in ‘A Dog and Pony Show’, the only episode that passes the Bechdel (and does so more than once), in which Howard comes down hard on young female officer Schanne. Howard’s partner Felton calls her on it, suggesting that she hates other women, and Howard insists that the reason she is tougher on women than on men is because she expects more from them. As the only female homicide detective in town, Howard feels a strong pressure to represent her gender with conduct beyond reproach, and she takes it as a personal slight when she encounters other women whom she perceives as letting the team down, or of being appointed to their positions to satisfy quotas rather than earning them through merit. Later in the same episode, Howard and Felton have an awkward moment when Felton says he’s not even remotely attracted to her, and Howard pushes him to be honest - not because she wants him to be interested, but because she’s offended by the thought that he has stripped her of her gender in his own mind in order to perceive her as ‘just one of the guys’. Howard’s relationship with her womanhood is rife with contradictions; she is both proud of it, and dogged by internalised misogyny. She wants to be recognised as a woman with merits, but she also doesn’t want her gender to hold sway over her career or be treated as notable. She wants to represent a strong example for other women, but she also hates the expectation. And despite herself, she still wants to believe she’s attractive to men and retaining a traditional feminine appeal, at the same time as dressing in masculine attire and forgoing most of the trappings of traditional femininity. She is caught in the web of imposed societal expectations vs her identity as an individual who cannot be so plainly defined, and she doesn’t want to conform, but she does want to belong. In similar or different forms, it’s an impossible situation that is awfully familiar.

Though she only ekes some Bechdel action out of the one episode, Howard does interact with other women variously, though they all either have no name, or they talk about men the whole time - there were a lot of almost-passes, and some of them very strong gender-relevant  interactions, too: Howard and the therapist Kerry Weston discuss Howard’s relationships with men in terms of dealing daily with crimes largely perpetrated by men and against men, and what that means for her in also trying to form romantic attachments to men (obviously, the conversation fails the Bechdel, but it is insightful observation of the position Howard is in as a heterosexual woman in a male-dominated field), and in ‘Night of the Dead Living’ (an all-around great episode for every character), Howard has a conversation with the (unfortunately nameless) cleaning lady about the lack of funding for medical research into women’s health issues and the relationship between that and the lack of women in congress (she also has multiple conversations with her sister Carrie over the phone in that episode, but those don’t pass the Bechdel either since we only hear Kay’s side). Being the only major female character around doesn’t completely define Howard’s character, nor does the show position her in complete isolation from other women in order to tell the story of her conspicuous womanhood; there’s a good balanced recognition of gender within the narrative, and though it doesn’t score well in the raw statistics, it does do nice things for the content rating and for the messages being communicated to the audience. The complexity of Howard’s relationship with her female identity has a sad, truthful ring about it, and it’s a reflection on society and its habit of treating women like they have to sink or swim on behalf of their entire gender. It’s good stuff.

As for the non-female portion of the show, i.e. the bulk of it: I’m still pretty impressed. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t acknowledge the show’s honest and thorough representation of Baltimore as a predominantly black city, and the navigation of racial issues, tensions, and prejudices - both within and without the police force - factor significantly in the tapestry of the series (season two’s ‘See No Evil’ and ‘Black and Blue’ are prime examples). Another episode that I was particularly impressed with for its sensitive handling of content was ‘A Many Splendored Thing’, in which Bayliss and Pembleton investigate the erotic asphyxiation death of Angela Frandina, whose sexual habits are an affront to straight-laced Bayliss. Bayliss’ reactions to the particulars of Angela’s life - including working as a phone-sex operator, and frequenting a local BDSM club - range from hilarious oh-golly innocence to the decidedly un-funny taint of bigotry, as he implies that people who enjoy consensual but ‘dehumanising’ acts are sick in the head, and that Angela can’t have been a good person if she was a part of that lifestyle. Pembleton gives Bayliss a thorough wake-up call in a magnificent speech about virtues and vices, advising Bayliss to get his head out of his ass and stop pretending to live on some pure moral high-ground from which he cannot conceive of the natural variance in human behaviour. The only character who is really judged by the narrative is Bayliss, and his closed-mindedness is exposed as a dangerous precedent and declared unequivocally wrong. It’s a refreshing stance, especially for something which, in the early nineties, was even more of a poorly-represented fringe element than it is now. This episode and a few others also include measures of queer representation in an off-hand, judgment-free fashion, extremely notable in context since the AIDS epidemic was still in full-swing at the time. It’s pretty significant, for a show which is almost as old as I am. 

Other good things: the episode ‘Three Men and Adena’ in season one, aka the episode that single-handedly saved the series from the chopping block by being an Emmy-winning triumph of every possible element of film-making, and, oh, maybe objectively one of the single best episodes of television ever made. No big. Likewise, ‘Bop Gun’ in season two, which utilised the late Robin Williams in a gut-wrenching dramatic performance and consequently saved the series from the chopping block a second time, allowing it to finally start running full-length seasons as of season three. Respect, for the somewhat bizarre decision to use Ned Beatty’s Bolander - this guy:

- as the romantic contender for the series, warts and all as he variously self-sabotages and talks himself out of testing the waters of the dating pool for the first time since 1970; any thoughts of including romantic subplots for titillation are banished when you’ve got ‘The Big Man’ Bolander raging around, and thus those forays into awkward relationships are strictly character pieces, and all the better for it. And points, also, for healthy acts of support between men, toxic masculinity be gone; most notably, Crosetti with his recently-injured and bedridden friend Thormann, who is struggling to adjust to the changed world of his disabilities. Thormann is angry and despairing, declaring himself ‘not a man anymore’ after he loses control of his bowels in his bed; “It’s a natural thing that’s happening here,” Crosetti reassures, soothing Thormann’s embarrassment as he steps in to help his friend clean up, holding his hand and rubbing his back with the gentle patience of a parent. Crosetti was my first favourite character on this show, outstripped by others in the end, but beloved in his time. This review is going live on the 2nd of September for me, but it’s still September 1st in the USA, and therefore, the second anniversary of the death of Jon Polito, our dear Crosetti. This one’s for you, Jon.

Of course, there are a few little quibbles I can raise with the show, and it would be pointless for me to bother with any of this if I didn’t go ahead and raise them. Howard having a prior romantic entanglement with Tyron feels like a needless cliche, and perhaps one of those season two concessions meant to make things seem ‘sexier’; the show is better than that. Kerry Weston uses the example of female seagulls observed to form lesbian bonding pairs as an analogy for why ‘birds of a feather shouldn’t always flock together’, and it doesn’t feel like it’s intentionally homophobic, but it sure does come across that way anyway. Munch is a primarily comic-relief character, and good at it, but his volatile relationship with his girlfriend Felicia (who never appears onscreen) has disturbing shades about it that are never quite clear enough to be soundly condemned, and the general comedic attitude surrounding Munch and his delivery of any and all information regarding Felicia rubs me the wrong way. All things considered, these are pretty small-fry complaints (and almost completely contained within season two, jus’ sayin’), and in that sense they’re pretty reaffirming of the quality of the show as a whole. The characters are realistically flawed - sometimes very deeply flawed - but not horrible people, just struggling, just trying their best, sometimes ignorant of their ignorance, sometimes pushing back or lashing out in the wrong directions. They are forgivably flawed because they are realistic, and it makes them easy to engage with even when you disagree with them; the core humanity is eminently recognisable. It doesn’t seem like it should be hard to achieve that realism, and yet, here we are. Watching Homicide: Life on the Street, a show without equal, even decades after it began.

[briefpersonawombat]

A Guide on Electrical Muscle Stimulation

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has always been a little confusing to performance coaches and sports medicine professionals because the research is cloudy at best. Many of the reasons behind the limitations of science are the ethical boundaries you need to navigate, and the expectations you have with the results of those studies. I recently spent more time working with EMS, as more and more athletes are using EMS devices on their own and we are dealing with the hangover of injuries still lingering in the off-season. What I have learned is that the science is not perfect and there are no best practices.

There has been a resurgence in EMS in sport over the last five years because of Bill Knowles, Derek Hansen, and Henk Kraaijenhof sharing their experiences with athletes. I believe that EMS suit inluding electrostimulation vest has a place in sports performance and the rehabilitation of athletes, but we don’t have a solid explanation of why some athletes don’t respond to it while others seem to come alive from it. In this first piece, I will review some of the current literature on EMS and present a healthy perspective on this modality. (Part 2 will be published as “The Top 6 EMS Protocols for Sports Performance.”)

A Brief History of Electrical Muscle Stimulation in Modern Sport

Without getting into any unnecessary background on electrotherapy (such as a retelling of the way the ancient civilizations used electric fish or citing references to Volta and Galvani), it’s valuable to know how e-stim or EMS has been part of sport in the last few decades. Outside of product design, very little innovation has occurred since the 1950s, making EMS more of an art than a science. Coaches and therapists are sometimes frustrated because transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS for short, gets confused with sports electrostimulation.

To understand the difference between TENS and EMS, you need to know just a little bit about engineering and biology. TENS targets the sensory nerves, while EMS attacks the motor nerve and attempts to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. TENS is currently used—mainly in vain, in my opinion—to manage pain. In 1965, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall proposed the “gate control theory” of pain. What we know about the pain experience is extremely complex and personal, making the TENS intervention for sport very dated and extremely limited for athletes. Some research has shown positive findings, but the modality method of working with athletes in pain is lazy and proven unproductive in clinical research.

EMS focuses mainly on sending current to muscle groups in the hope of eliciting either a recovery response or a performance response later. Based on the current literature, recovery indices appear very limited, and performance benefits have shown up enough with some populations—including athletes—to be accepted as valid complementary treatments. The truth is that our understanding of electrostimulation is usually confined to a few studies on stroke victims and post-surgical wasting, and nothing I have seen has excited me.

What interests me, instead, are the clinicians who have used EMS creatively. Some of the studies on cellular and performance outcomes are strong enough to show that EMS isn’t just a placebo. I have used the Compex systems for nearly 20 years, and have some experience with the Marc Pro, PowerDot, Globus, and ARPwave. If I had to conclude which I think works best, it will be a short answer: All of them work, so choose one based on your needs and not its features.

If you were to go to a medical bookstore and check the physical therapy section on EMS, you would see that it tends to be a set of protocols based on pad placement, current settings, and scheduling sessions. This approach is nowhere near the same as what the modern clinician does and, since we are now entering the bionic athlete era with gait retraining, this only widens the gap between practice and research. It’s easy to shout that you’re ahead of the research, but without evidence, much of what clinicians do becomes like the dated RICE protocol that we still see people clinging to.

A Rapid Review of Electricity for Coaches and Therapists

Electric current can flow in different ways, such as through a wire, or something lesser known, such as a plasma state. The current generated from a muscle electrostimulator uses a conductive pad to transfer through the skin, causing the muscle to contract. The specifics of the muscle contraction will come later, but the important information is that electricity from medical muscle stimulators is more complicated than voltage and ampere. Electricity is not just about whether something is “on” or “off,” and we often take much of the technology we use for granted, especially the safety of the muscle stimulators. Most companies that get involved with e-stim devices are regulated, but it’s up to the consumer to do their homework on the quality of the product.

Experienced coaches and therapists commonly refer to stimulation parameters and share their practices, including the use of different types of settings, such as Russian Stimulation or strength protocols. Stimulation parameters and waveforms can be the subject of their own article but, for the most part, duty cycle, frequency, intensity, and ramp details are part of electrotherapy theory, but are not very well-documented. Regardless of the intimate details, many parallels exist between classic training principles and the current clinical practices of EMS use. Cycles, or waves of energy, are part of a “unified training theory” proposed by several coaches and sport scientists. EMS should be used to improve athletes, similarly to loading the body with training or rehabilitation.

Companies must do their job, not only to prove their machines are delivering exactly what they promise, but also to ensure that their products are used as intended. Most companies have terrible product education, and visiting their YouTube channels makes me cringe more than their highest simulator settings.

The Science of Electrical Contractions With Muscle

Sending electricity through a muscle group sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but that’s precisely what athletes are willing to do to get or feel better. It’s a priority to know what EMS can do physiologically and what is likely ineffective. Five years ago, pioneering researcher Nicola Maffiuletti summarized the differences between a normal muscular contraction and one from electrical stimulation in his NSCA journal article. The two types of contractions have similarities and differences that a coach should know. Overall, EMS is not going to make a major difference. However, like all things in sports training, the little things matter.

One development that throws this concept out the window is the rise in functional electrical muscle stimulation, equipped with electrostimulation shorts, which incorporates active training with the simultaneous overlay of EMS. While we can assume that the merging of both contractions will yield a hybrid result, most of the research is with disease models and only clinical rehabilitation has shown merit with this in early post-operation subjects. I have yet to see a single study with elite athletes performing EMS in conjunction with conventional training, but the case reports and work with spinal cord injury patients is promising.

Finally, EMS is used to help with neuromuscular adaptations and, while sessions may prevent atrophy, the improvements are from neural drive-like mechanisms, not from increased protein synthesis rates. EMS doesn’t directly create hypertrophy changes to the muscle, and a study on nutrition and e-stim showed no acute changes.

What is also important to know is that electrically stimulated muscles are, for the most part, superficial, and that is useful for propulsive muscle groups. Some rogue therapists are using fine needle EMS with low current for deeper muscle penetration for rehabilitation purposes. Most EMS experiences are one muscle at a time, but some athletes are getting simultaneous total body sessions. Nobody knows if total bodywork is more time-efficient or if a possible synergistic benefit exists, but down the road, studies will likely discover if there is a value beyond convenience.

The Scientific Benefits of Stimulating the Neuromuscular System

If you were to read a catalog of features and settings for a personal e-stim device, the list would be very long, ranging from relaxation massage all the way to explosive strength. While, technically, different settings will have unique stimulation protocols from the device programming in the electrostimulation center, the reality is that only three purposes exist with EMS and the research is enough to form a realistic expectation. The three EMS benefits are strength training, rehabilitation, and a little regeneration. Distilling the benefits more, you can make an argument that EMS helps with general muscle strength and facilitates low-level recovery for travel. That’s about it, but it’s enough to warrant investing in it, especially when sport moves into the unfortunate health compromise for winning.

Sports Performance

EMS and strength, and the results that may lead to jump and sprint performance, are mixed in the research. However, enough research shows that if EMS is done with specific protocols, a positive result is possible, especially with the less-trained athlete. So far, much of the work has been done with soccer, and some recent investigations of youth jumping performance and plyometrics had favorable outcomes.

[sanderssons]

The Night of a Thousand Stars - Part 1/4

((A/N: Howdy there, my dudes! As a gift for reaching 1k, here’s a fic I wrote about our boys finishing school and going off to college (well, most of them). A little bit of context: here, they’re all 18. Logan finished school two years early and is now halfway through architecture (however this may change, I haven’t made up my mind completely))

((For whoever feels lost, this piece of fiction a sequel (you could say??? it’s not exacly a spin-off, since it’s in the same verse) to the events of my fancomic/fanfiction Sanders Sons, in which the Sanders Sides are Thomas’s children (and adorable) and it can be read from the start HERE))

((Tag List: @ccecode @hrtnsolofytube @jamie-the-outcast@multifandomsonofabitch (you thought I wouldn’t tag you just because you changed your URL, but I HUNTED YOU DOWN, I REFUSED TO NOT TAG YOU) @emeliethetimelady @parano-vigilant @sanderssidesstuff @glitterincluded @evanisonfire @procrastinatingwithglitter @creepy-cupcakes @anniemiku @morallogic @fandomsandnonsense7 @tinyten9 (still not able to tag you :( ) @justanotherpurplebutterfly @2manyfandoms2count-love @syafiindahouse (welcome to the list, sweetie!))

((I hope everyone got properly tagged... Let me know again if you asked to be tagged and I didn’t tag you. Or if you want to be tagged from now on. Or if you don’t want to be tagged anymore. Or if you are in the list but wasn’t notified. Or just to freak about the fic. Or just to say hi, I’m very civilized in internet online web chatting rooms))

“Logan, should I go to the school dance?”

Logan was taken by surprise. He had been working for a couple of hours now, trying to make sense of all of the terribly done blueprints he had to fix as an extra credit assignment for college. He jumped and looked up from his desk at Virgil, standing awkwardly in the doorway of his room, pulling on the sleeves of his hoodie, his stare on the floor.  

“I think you should knock on the door before coming in”

“I didn’t come in. I’m at the door. And that’s not an answer”

“Well...” Logan rolled his chair away from his desk to face his brother, rubbing his own face to try and wake himself up. “I think you hate loud music, you hate flashing lights and you hate crowds. Therefore, a school dance sounds like a really bad idea”.

“Ah. Ok”.

Virgil turned around and left. Logan got back to his desk, but before he could return to his concentration, Virgil barged into the room again.

“But what if I have a date?”

That made Logan immediately turn his chair back to the previous position. Virgil was still staring at the ground.

“Do you?”

“It’s a hypothetical question”, he crossed his arms, absentmindedly rocking himself back and forth on his heels.  

“I know it’s not.” Logan stood up, pulling him inside the room and closing the door so nobody else would hear. “Spill it”

“I don’t have any liquids to spill”

“Spill the truth. Do you have a date that wants to take you to this dance?”

Virgil raised his eyes and sighed.

“Yes.”

“So... Why are you asking me about what to do?”

“Because! I don’t want this to be a big deal” Virgil shrugged, his hands getting a bit unsettled inside his pockets. Logan could hear the clicking of his cube device for fidgeting. “It’s just me going on a date. And possibly facing three of the things I hate most about modern society. Plus Patton will scream. I don’t want that.”

“Well... Does it have to be the dance? Maybe you could go somewhere else in the night of the dance...”

“They called me for the dance... Won’t they be upset?”

“You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

“I don’t like this. Maybe I should have a plan to propose already, so when I ask them to change plans it won’t be so scary.”

“Okay. We can make a romantic plan” Logan stopped himself, realizing how absolutely non prepared he was to prepare a romantic setting for his little brother.

“You don’t have any idea how to do that, do you?”

“Well, the only time I had to do romance, I just took them to things I wanted to see and luckily they had the same interests” Logan shrugged, picking up a pen and swinging it on his fingers. “You think you could do that?”

“I’m pretty sure they won’t want to go to the planetarium... Then a museum, maybe? It doesn’t sound very romantic...”

“Well, it can be if you two are in the mood... I don’t know, Virgil, Roman is the specialist in these kinds of things”

Virgil thought about it, starting to pace back and forth in Logan’s room. Now that Logan thought about it, he remembered hearing the same rhythm just a couple of minutes back in the next room. He must’ve been thinking for a long time before coming to him.

“If we tell Roman, he’ll freak out. Possibly scream. Bad idea.”

“Not to mention, Patton would be hurt it he knew everyone knows except for him”

“Yes, that, too. So we don’t have Roman on this one, we’re on our own”, Virgil looked at Logan, snapping his fingers. “Which means I have to try your method because I ran out of options”

“I’m not sure that’s what it means.”

“Nevermind. Be right back”

Virgil quickly left the room. Logan was unsure if he was supposed to follow his brother. He ended up deciding that no, Virgil wouldn’t want that, otherwise he would have said so. Still, Logan couldn’t go back to what he was doing before. Whatever project he was diving into before was nothing compared to his baby brother getting a date.

Of course, he was conscious Virgil and him had the same age. But he was two years ahead, he was already halfway through college. It was easy to to think of his brothers as younger, still caught up in very high-schoolish dilemmas. And even him had had a couple of dates and a kind of relationship before - despite his saltiness and general social inability - but Virgil had always been something else. It wasn’t easy for people to get to know him outside of family. And it wasn’t in Logan’s nature not to know the details of something so important.

Virgil came back a couple of minutes later to find Logan still in the same spot.

“I asked if they really want to go to the dance or if they would settle of a normal date instead”

“And?”

“They said a date would be fine. They just thought I wanted to go to the dance because I was talking about it”

“Why were you talking about the dance?”

“I was talking about the theme. It’s going to be A Night of a Thousand Stars. I made a joke. It was a funny one. Because you know, a thousand is not a lot, it’s a pretty okay night of stars. And they laughed. Then they asked if I had a date to go and I said no and they offered to take me”, Virgil realized he was rambling about it and bit his lower lip. “So, should I invite them for the museum? But what then? You can’t talk properly inside the museum, it’s not polite. We should go somewhere else after. And it can’t be here, everyone will be here...”

“Well... You guys could go for a picnic”, Logan suggested, the horrible feeling of curiosity lingering inside of him. “You love the park. Maybe if it gets dark you can stargaze together”.

“Hm... Sounds ok. But what if we get cold? What if they don’t want to stay after the museum?”

“You can take blankets... And make sure to ask if they want to”

Virgil nodded, the clicking of his cube intensifying.

“Looks like a solid plan. I’m going to do it. Be right-”

“Wait! Can you tell me who they are?”

“I can. But I won’t”

“Come on, Virgil! I helped you out! Plus, if something happened to you in this date only I knew about, father would kill me. Especially if it was someone I didn’t even know.”

Virge looked straight at his brother, squinting as if he was trying to see the possible implications this could have. Logan knew why he was hesitating so much. Everything about him always revolved around his autism. Of course Logan understood his need to have something casual, something teenage-ish and impulsive. Still, he couldn’t ignore the facts. Virgil was still his baby brother and he might need help.

“Fine. They work at the planetarium. We talked briefly over the course of the time I’ve been going there”, Virgil said, trying to be concise.

“What are they? Guy? Gal? Non-binary pal?”

“Nope. Not telling”, he shook his head, a hint of an amused smile showing in the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, come on!”

“Volume”, Virgil reminded calmly. “Listen, Logan. I’ll do everything right. I’ll call if I need anything. And I’ll leave your name on speed dial if they need to call someone for me. It will be fine. I promise”

“Well... Sounds like you have everything thought out. You sure about this?”

“I am. I haven’t been so sure about something in a long time.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you, then.”

“Thanks. I knew I could count on you, Logic”, Virgil turned around in his heels and left the room.

“Wait... Was that a nickname?!” Logan ran to the hallway, but Virgil had already closed his door.

((P.S.: Friendly reminder I’m taking suggestions, so if you ever wanted to see the boys do something, hit me up!))

[sarah-crewe]

OKAY COOL 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20

1. book you’ve reread the most times?It’s probably A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett because it was my absolute favorite when I was little and has endured to the point where I wrote my college admissions essay about it and got a quote of it tattooed on my body. Other top contenders are Matilda and the Harry Potter series, but I’ve lost count for all three so I couldn’t say for sure. 

2. top 5 books of all time?I’m morally against this question. How could I possibly pick the best five of ALL TIME?? Ridiculous, not valid. I will list a general group of favorite off my bookshelf and give you top five of the half year instead (not even counting the players handbook, which I must have read cover to cover at least 5 times). General favorites: A Little Princess, the Monster Blood Tattoo series (renamed The Foundling’s Tale series in the US) by D.M. Cornish, Matilda/The BFG/The Witches by Roald Dahl, The Glass Slipper by Eleanor Farjeon, Fugitive Pieces and Poems by Anne Michaels, the Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane series by Dorothy L. Sayers and later Jill Paton Walsh, When Women Were Warriors by Catherine Wilson, Dealing with Dragons (and the next two sequels) by Patricia C. Wrede, Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

Top 5 of the Last Six Months 5. Lumberjanes4. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okofor3. Educated by Tara Westover2. The Prince and The Dressmaker by Jen Wang1.Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

3. what is your favourite genre?Broadly, my favorite genre is probably “diverse YA fiction especially with female characters, especially with wlw characters” but that’s not really a genre. Honestly, I dabble all over the place. I like historical fic, I like scifi, I like fantasy, I like realistic modern fiction. I think it more comes down to the plot/characters/writing if I like it or not.

7. is there a series/book that got you into reading?Not that I remember, but I started reading and voraciously when I was four, so it’s a little fuzzy. I do know that I was super super into the American Girl series and the Magic Attic Club series in kindergarten, but I don’t know if that was the one that started it.

9. when do you tend to read most?I would say I read most reliably when I’m waiting for something, but, I don’t think I have an answer for the spirit of the question. Following the letter of the question, I read most often when I’ve been hooked by the book and I just need to finish it now.

15. recommend and review a book.A book I read recently, not yet mentioned, that I would recommend is The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Hurbe. It is a difficult read and I feel it’s very important to state that upfront. I think education and literature, even for young adults and adults, can have a tendency to write in such away that they can avoid standing face to face with a horror of history, letting people glance sidewise at things that have happened in order to make it sting less. Hurbe forces the reader to stare unflinchingly into a truth that many other books avoid by bringing the reader to the brink of concentration camps or by fading away early on. (Side note, another book I have read recently which also did this was Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley--an excellent look at desegregation through the eyes of teenagers at a level I never recieved in many many years of schooling.)

18. do you like historical books? which time period?I love historical books. I like pretty much any time period, but I’ve read enough that if I’m going to read something from a “popular” time period (Victorian, WWII, etc), it needs to have a really catching premise. As such, I’m interested in unique time periods, like Patricia C. Wrede’s Thirteenth Child series, which is a fantasy story set around the time of Western Expansion in the US. 

20. what are things you look for in a book?The first thing I look for is wlw and everyone knows it. Beyond that, I want respect for female characters, solid writing (but I can excuse some for a really good plot and characters), and something that hooks me/keeps me interested. I recently read a book called The Bone Witch (killer title) and the tagline was “Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise. If there's anything I've learned from him in the years since, it's that the dead hide truths as well as the living.” Killer. Fucking. Tagline. Unfortunately, the story dragged so badly, I couldn’t read it. 

thanks to @seemssostrange​ for the many questions

tagging @jennamacaroni​ and @youstartedoutrandom because book stuff

[colp76-blog]

Hello and welcome back to my Journey into Science-Fiction Part:18. I was thinking of a way to watch science-fiction films that I have might have missed and take a closer look into the ones that I have watched previously. It’s quite a simple idea really as all I have to do is find a connection with each film in order to continue my journey.

In Part:17 I watched The Blob 1988 and if you are wondering how it brought me to todays film, click on the link below.

The Blob, 1988. My Journey into Science-Fiction Part:17.

Scanners is a science-fiction horror film that was written and directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Stephen Lack, Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan and was released in January 14th 1981. Scanners was a success after making $14.3 million at the Box Office from a Budget of $4.1 million. So, what else was happening in January 1981? Hill Street Blues premiered on NC-TV in America and The Tide is High by Blondie reached No.1 in the Charts.

The world is changing as some men and women are born with telepathic and telekinetic powers, these people are called scanners. Darryl Revok is a powerful scanner with a plan for future domination. Doctor Paul Ruth needs someone who can help bring down Daryl and Cameron Vale is dispatched by ConSec to seek him out.

I have to admit that I was pretty creeped out by the Scanners poster as a child and it’s a film that I had somehow avoided, until now. I think starting this journey has made me realise I’m becoming quite the fan of David Cronenberg as I have already reviewed The Fly for this project. There is something really unique in his style and when we meet Cameron Vale Stephen Lack in the shopping mall, I am so impressed with his ability to make a film look like a piece of modern art. There is plenty of colour in the mall but it feels cold and uninviting, add the music by Howard Shore and I’m already out of my comfort zone. Cameron is an outcast of society and when he eats in a café; he can hear the thoughts of two ladies who mention just how terrible he looks. Unfortunately, for one of them, this results in Cameron’s mind sending her into spasms on the floor. Cameron looks like a man out of control and before he can get it himself together, he is chased, drugged and dragged away by a couple of very official looking men. Watching the women shake on the floor left me feeling very uncomfortable and really helps set the tone of the film. I can’t explain it but Cronenberg makes me feel completely vulnerable to feelings and images I always try to avoid. I have to say, this opening sequence reminded me of A Clockwork Orange in some ways and Stanley Kubrick is also a director I admire for the same reasons.

Cronenberg said that the film had been his most difficult to make and the fact he had to write the script while in production just shows how talented he is. I was going to write a full breakdown of the story but after reading some other reviews by writers far talented than me, I found myself a little bored with its structure and I’m wondering why that is? I think the plot is solid but I can see how Cronenberg was just trying to bring it all together. It’s not a bad film by any means but some scenes just seemed a little bland compared to the big money sequences.

I guess the most famous image from scanners is the exploding head scene. I do admire the vision that went into making it work, which included filling it with left over burger meat and blasting the prop with a real shotgun but it’s another head that made a far better impression on me. Benjamen Pierce Robert Silverman is also a scanner and Cameron has tracked him down to try and find the location of Darryl Revok. Benjamin, a successful artist lives is in his studio along with a huge gigantic head. This is when I thought this is actually a little bit more than a body horror film and it could really delve into the human psyche; well until the shotguns started firing. I thought Benjamin was a really interesting character and I have a feeling he was meant to contribute more to this film and I suppose this is when things really started to feel rushed and it puts the whole telekinesis power at a disadvantage. It really doesn’t matter how strong your powers are, if you have a lot of people with guns or even a sniper close by, your brown bread.

I guess that leaves the final battle to talk about and what a fantastic ending it is. Speaking of final battles, I would just like to say just how brilliant Michael Ironside was as an actor and played some superb roles but one of my favourites is his portrayal of Ham Tyler in V and words can’t describe how much I love that TV show. In this final showdown it turns out Cameron and Darryl are actually biological brothers and to add insult to injury, Dr Paul Ruth is the father. Darryl asks Cameron to join him on a crusade to rule the world but Cameron using the same facial expression he has used throughout the entire film, politely declines. I think this is Cronenberg at his best as he uses the talents of those around him to help create a unique vision that belongs to him only. I love the intensity of this scene as Cameron and Darryl’s veins start bulging like a steroid injection on biceps and triceps day.

The moment Cameron starts to pull the flesh from his own face reminded me Raiders of the Lost Ark but done properly. Eventually Cameron bursts into flames and his eyes explode. No to worry though as it turns our Cameron isn’t dead at all, he has simply transferred his own mind into Darryl’s body. It took me a while but I finally realised what Cameron’s burnt corpse reminded me of and it’s the burning monk, 1963! I think that’s why I’m starting to love this director as that picture is so powerful that when you add it to a sci-fi film like this, it really starts to make you think about the real sacrifice humanity has made in the pursuit of freedom.

So, at the end of the day, I really enjoyed this film but I can see how Cronenberg was restricted and given the right chance, he could have created a legacy for Scanners that is far bigger than the one we have now. Watching this film also made me realise the 80’s could be remembered as the most science-fiction decade in history, we were ready to embrace the changes that was coming and the furniture and décor certainly tells you that. Now we have kind of gone back to soft furnishings and taken a step back, a real shame in my opinion. Finally, in an early scene when Cameron is learning about his powers with the Doctor, I thought this is just a poor man’s Matrix so Imagine my surprise later when Cameron uses his powers in the phone box, the circle is now complete!!

  “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” scoring sessions Composer: Howard Shore Conductor: Howard Shore London Philharmonic Orchestra + session musicians Abbey Road, London, 9&10 September 2012 Photography by Benjamin Ealovega (c) New Line Cinema 2012

So I guess that leaves me wondering where I should go to next in my journey? Well I am going to keep this one pretty simple because this is a film that I have really wanted to watch in a while and now I have my chance. Okay this film is a biopic but there is some low budget science-fiction in there. Howard Shore composed the music for Scanners and eventually worked on Ed Wood 1994 with Tim Burton and that is the film I will be watching next. I have heard so many good films about this film and im curious to see what all the fuss is about.

Thank you for visiting and what did you think of Scanners? I would love to know in the comments below and if you enjoy this review, please give it a share or a like. See you soon for Part:19 of My Journey into Science-Fiction.

http://talesfromtheneonbeach.com/my-journey-to-science-fiction/

Scanners, 1981. My Journey into Science-Fiction Part:18. Hello and welcome back to my Journey into Science-Fiction Part:18. I was thinking of a way to watch science-fiction films that I have might have missed and take a closer look into the ones that I have watched previously.

[randomuserno32]

Your Name (Kimi No Na Wa) - Review

To put it bluntly I watch a fair amount of anime, and Anime Youtubers as well for that matter. Mother’s Basement, Gigguk, Digibro, Exclamation Point (who deserves more subs to be honest), you name one: I’ll probably have watched them.

Recently one of them in particular, Gigguk, posted a video speaking about his own personal favourite anime film, the latterly released film “Your Name” (or otherwise known as “Kimi No Na Wa”), which was directed by Mikoto Shinkai. Of course, upon starting up the video, I was greeted with a spoiler warning, which understandably made me click off the video and gave me the urge to watch the film for myself.

Mikoto Shinkai is a name I’m definitely familiar with in the anime and film industry, primarily after watching his 2007 film “5 Centimetres Per Second”, which became one of my personal favourite films, mainly due to its bittersweet mood and the film’s main message of the harsh reality of “not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone”, I felt spurred on even more to check his latest piece of work out.

First off let’s talk about the fairly obvious elephant in the room, the animation. By god, this film is breathtakingly beautiful. You can tell that Shinkai has put an almost extreme amount of effort into this film as each frame is bursting with colour and detail, specifically on buildings or natural landscapes. So much so that every single one would probably be adequate on your desktop background. Plus, there’s the very impressive tracking shot that flies off from Taki’s house in Tokyo between the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, all the way out to Mitsuha’s home in Itomori. It’s a stunning shot and not only is it a complete marvel to watch, it also sells the in-movie distance between the two main characters. There’s another factor that also further improves the quality of the animation and that’s Shinkai’s usage of Licencing. Just as an example, in some of the scenes set in Tokyo during the film, a keen eye would notice that on certain buildings there are logos for such companies as Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, the list goes on. This is how much Shinkai pays attention to the detail and it definitely pays off, immersing the viewer further into Your Name’s world.

Secondly, the best part of any film, the story – I’ll be covering the plot and characters of the film here.

The film begins from the perspective of Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl living in the fictional Japanese rural town of Itomori. It’s apparent early on that Mitsuha isn’t keen on living a quiet life in the somewhat desolate town (or out in the boonies as the dub occasionally mentions) and wishes that she could be a handsome Tokyo boy in her next life. Enter Taki Tachibana, a high school boy working a small part time job at an Italian restaurant and living in Tokyo (what are the odds!). Suddenly and randomly every few days, the two swap bodies and are able to live out the other person’s life for a day (think of it a lot like Freaky Friday just not permanently). Thus, the two unanimously decide to work together to keep each other’s lives in check and also attempting to discover why both of them keep switching places, while also improving certain aspects within their lives (Mitsuha helps Taki to strike up a relationship with Miku Okudera, one of Taki’s co-workers, while Taki helps Mitsuha to become more popular at school).

I was considering going into practically extreme detail about the actual plot of the film but I realised that it would take up a large portion of the review and would (obviously) spoil the entire film. I’ll still be briefly mentioning certain characters or events that aren’t extremely important to the plot or that I haven’t mentioned so you may have to ya know, watch the actual film or follow the links below for the entire story overview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Name#Home_media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHEjDq9Lh1U

One of the main grabs of the film is that it is able to draw you in and can make the viewer really care for Taki, Mitsuha and their relationship with one-another. I’ve heard criticism of Taki and Mitsuha for being too simplistic and somewhat bland, but I would say that while you can’t call them perfect characters, to say that they are bad or mediocre would be just plain lying. They’re simplistic characters - because a majority of normal human beings are like that. Most people don’t have a hidden backstory or an underlying problem in their lives and don’t need to be incredibly complex characters in order to be good characters. The side characters are pretty good too, with Tessie being hot-headed, but friendly and understanding, and Miku being easy-going, yet thoughtful and likable. The actual story itself (which as I previously mentioned I won’t be spoiling here) is a genuinely heart-warming experience and the main twist of the film will definitely catch you off guard (trust me it’s very subtle and is revealed fantastically). The love story is also built up fantastically, and as Shinkai has done with his other films, he is able to accurately understand and portray a teenage romance, making it feel fairly natural and ordinary. The story and characters are comprehensively incredible (well to me anyway).

Next up, the soundtrack. This is a truly sublime soundtrack and the main songs of the film (“Dream Lantern”, “ZenZenZense”, “Sparkle”, etc) by Radwimps are stellar and match each scene perfectly both in mood and tone. Especially when you consider that the music was basically what shaped certain scenes of the film. Shinkai intentionally changed certain parts of the story / script to work around Radwimps’s music. This in turn helps to “supplement the dialogue and monologue of the characters” (to quote Shinkai himself). The music just syncs so well with the moments of the film and the soundtrack in general works wonders during the more emotional, awe-inspiring and light-hearted moments. Overall, a fantastic soundtrack.

Lastly, I’ll be going over the voice acting (subbed AND dubbed). And to be perfectly honest, both were pretty solid. While the dub’s no Cowboy Bebop (cause ya know every dub ever made has to be compared to Cowboy Bebop), Michael Sinterniklaas (Taki) and Stephanie Sheh (Mitsuha) put in a good shift with the exception of the odd occasional line coming across as slightly melodramatic, and (as much as I personally prefer dub to sub) the sub is of course as you’d typically expect pretty exceptional. Ryunosuke Kamiki (Taki) and Mone Kamishiraishi (Mitsuha) portray their characters and their emotions remarkably well. The side characters of both sub and dub are also fairly impressive and there is no specific actor / actress that could be pointed out as a weak point of the casting. The casting overall for both sub and dub was of the highest degree.

Final Word

Your Name was just…wow. This was a very surprising movie to me, as I hadn’t really set the film any kind of benchmark going into it and I haven’t really been a big fan of romance films over the course of my life. But Your Name has changed that for me. It’s heart-warming and charming, upbeat and dramatic, detailed and visually stunning…there’s just no perfect word to describe the film... asides from maybe beautiful. The characters are memorable and are portrayed fantastically, the animation and detail is immaculate, the story just clicks perfectly into place, it is a modern anime classic and is truly deserving of the records it has broken; even if Mikoto Shinkai disagrees with it. Just go see it. Trust me. You won’t regret anything.

Favourite Quote: “This feeling has possessed me when I think from that day...That day when the stars came falling. It was almost as if...as if a scene from a dream. Nothing more, nothing less...than a beautiful view.”

Story: 9/10

Characters: 9/10

Voice Acting: 8/10

Animation: 10/10

Soundtrack: 9/10

Overall: 9.5/10

Got any suggestions for what i should review next? Just send them to me via messages or via a post on the blog and ill see what i can do! Thanks for any and all support! :)

[bookwormcheerleader]

i was tagged by @trevorfindsthestrals (LOOK i finally got internet access on my laptop again!! Sorry it took so long) 1. Coffee or tea? tea, i had my first cup of coffee on like thursday last week 2. Black and white or color? black or soft, but not pastel, colours 3. Drawings or paintings? idk, whatever is more moving in that moment i guess 4. Dresses or skirts? dresses because i never know how to match with a skirt 5. Books or movies? how DARE you make me choose, i think books, but i wanna make movies (potentially havent really explored that yet) so it seems like the wrong answer 6. Pepsi or Coke? i dont drink fizzy drinks 7. Chinese or Italian? definitely italian on an everyday basis but i LOVE chinese too 8. Early bird or night owl? its almost midnight and i havent started my reading for tomorrow, that counts as an answer right? 9. Chocolate or vanilla? chocolate, unless its a milkshake 10. Introvert or extrovert? introvert, i don’t really like people 11. Hugs or kisses? ive never been kissed so hugs 12. Hunting or fishing? aesthetics of hunting but uh with fishing you can not put a hook on the line and just kinda sit there and chill without looking like the animal lover that your family judges you for being 13. Winter or summer? yes. idk im probably more of a summer person, but i also really like the implications of winter in that everything has to die in order to be reborn, plus i can’t really breathe in the heat, but i also have poor circulation in my extremities so the cold sucks ass 14. Spring or fall? spring, i like the crisp air of fall dont get me wrong, but the rebirth and the petrichor after a spring rain with a crisp breeze that doesnt chill you is just so relaxing 15. Rural or urban? i grew up in the woods so rural but i need to at least be kinda close to a hospital to avoid panicking  16. PC or Mac? pc 17. Tan or pale? is this preference, cuz i dont have one of those, but i am so white that i was the same color as my cheer uniform in high school 18. Cake or pie? cake, i dont like pie crust 19. Ice cream or yogurt? frozen yogurt tbh, it jsut tastes fresher and less heavy 20. Ketchup or mustard? my brother likes to mock me for how much i loved ketchup when i was like 7 as if it was yesterday 21. Sweet pickles or dill pickles? i dont like pickles 22. Comedy or mystery? can we do a hybrid where its like theyre fighting crime but have no ability to act serious, cuz im basically writing a comic book like that with @spectralflutterbeast 23. Boots or sandals? i live in a colder wetter climate so usually boots, but i love sandals 24. Silver or gold? i like white gold typically because its often a mix, it has the matching ability of silver with the warmth in color of gold 25. Pop or Rock? i grew up on steve miller and journey from my mom and simon & garfunkel from my dad 26. Dancing or singing? all i can think of is my shitty karoke the other night, so uh dancing, at least i don’t suck more at that when im drunk 27. Checkers or chess? checkers is easier and i could probably actually win, but chess is more likely to hold my attention 28. Board games or video games? we used to do family board game nights (im currently holding the winnign streak for clue because any games played without everyone dont count) (my extended family is also obsessed with card games, its how we bond, we talk shit and play cards) 29. Wine or beer? wine if i have to have one of these, i dont like fizzy stuff ever so no beer but wine dries out my mouth 30. Freckles or dimples? i have freckles, and i love it when people have dimples 31. Honey mustard or BBQ sauce? i guess bbq 32. Body weight exercises or lifting weights? idk what body weight exercises includes but i have always liked lifting weights, its something im fairly good at 33. Baseball or basketball? BASEBALL IS THE BEST I LOVE IT, i miss playing it so much but its been too long for me to feel comfortable joining an intramural team 34. Crossword puzzles or sudokus? sudoku...i think 35. Facial hair or clean shaven? preference right, um stubble.... im not big on full beards (probs cuz my dad has always had one, seriously pics from when he was 20 we are the exact same but he has a beard, he says he hasnt shaved his upper lip since he was 16) clean shaven is nice too tho 36. Crushed ice or cubed ice? i prefer no ice, but if i have to i like that ice you get in hospital cafeterias 37. Skiing or snowboarding? never been 38. Smile or game face? smirking, its the happy medium 39. Bracelet or necklace? i feel naked without any piece of my jewelry (watch on right wrist, a bracelet on my left, a necklace for me to fidget with, both sets of earrings) 40. Fruit or vegetables? fruit 41. Sausage or bacon? bacon 42. Scrambled or fried? scrambled unless its on toast 43. Dark chocolate or white chocolate? dark chocolate 44. Tattoos or piercings? i have two sets of piercings and i just got my first tattoo last month 45. Antique or brand new? antique unless its something i would feel like i couldnt be comfortable using, i always wind up with a very eclectic mix 46. Dress up or dress down? dress down, never really have a reason to dress up 47. Cowboys or aliens? cowboys, space gives me anxiiety 48. Cats or dogs? dogs 49. Pancakes or waffles? depends on who is making the pancakes 50. Bond or Bourne? uhhhh what 51. Sci-Fi or fantasy? fantasy 52. Numbers or letters? letters 53. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? lotr tbh 54. Fair or theme park? fair, i grew up in puyallup (look it up, i can even sing the old theme song) 55. Money or fame? money, i want to buy my parents and aunt nice things 56. Washing dishes or doing laundry? laundry (no icky wet food pieces!) {this is what @trevorfindsthestrals had i just could not have said it any better myself} 57. Snakes or sharks? ummm snakes? cuz theyre smaller and i can run from them if theyre dangerous 58. Orange juice or apple juice? orange 59. Sunrise or sunset? sunsets seem more satisfactory to me 60. Slacker or over-achiever?.....i dont’ know how to answer this question 61. Pen or pencil? pencil, unless im worried about it smudging, then i bought some erasable pens for that 62. Peanut butter or jelly? peanut butter is more filling but i make jam every year so theres that 63. Grammys or Oscars? oscars 64. Detailed or abstract? why cant we do both, like a painting that is overall abstract but the closer you get the more you see the things that make it what it is, ya know, like life 65. Multiple choice questions or essay questions? idk multiple choice questions are harder to get wrong for not having enough info about a particular topic, but im good at and enjoy bsing things 66. Adventurous or cautious? i wish i was more adventurous but insecurities 67. Saver or spender? yes 68. Glasses or contacts? i dont wear either 69. Laptop or desktop? laptop 70. Classic or modern? what medium 71. Personal chef or personal fitness trainer? i would like a personal trainer until i get back in the habit of it and then i would jsut need a gym buddy 72. Internet or cell phone? cell since you cna get internet on your phone 73. Call or text? social anxiety so texting  74. Curly hair or straight? mine is beach wavy 75. Shower in the morning or shower in the evening? ive been showering in the morning because i like what it does to my hair 76. Spicy or mild? spicy please 77. Marvel or DC? wonder woman was my first favorite character, like about the time that bugs life came out because i obviously had two and the other was Flick  78. Paying a mortgage or paying rent? rent, i like assurance but i dont like permanence 79. Sky dive or bungee jump? never been but uh im not that trusting so i probably am jsut gonna go with a no 80. Oreos or Chips Ahoy? chewy chips ahoy 81. Jello or pudding? jello 82. Truth or dare? im a chicken so truth 83. Roller coaster or Ferris wheel? roller coaster, ferris wheels are all of the fear with none of the fun 84. Leather or denim? I NEED BOTH I CANT CHOOSE 85. Stripes or solids? stripes and fat people lol no, solids for me 86. Bagels or muffins? bagels probably 87. Whole wheat or white? whole wheat 88. Beads or pearls? pearls, my mother was a jeweler for 13 years, i cant not 89. Hardwood or carpet? hard wood in a hall, tile or linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom and then carpet everywhere else 90. Bright colors or neutral tones? uhhhh for what, cuz it really depends  91. Be older than you are or younger than you are? i want to be like 34, not rn obviously, im enjoying being 20 and stupid, but i feel like 34 is a good age, of course thats abotu how old my bros were when i idolized them so that might be reflective of that 92. Raisins or nuts? raisins, partially because every time my dad sees nuts he says nuts for the nutty and it has become a conditioned response for me now 93. Picnic or nice restaurant? picnic 94. Black leather or brown leather? brown 95. Long hair or short hair? mines somewhere in the middle 96. “Ready, aim, fire” or “Ready, fire, aim”? wtf does the second even mean 97. Fiction or non-fiction? fiction 98. Smoking or non-smoking? i have asthma 99. Think before you talk or talk before you think? i wish i could think before i talk more than i actually do 100. Asking questions or answering questions? i like to listen to people imma tag: @kiavachiisanoob @warriorsatthedisco @colecast1 and anyone lookinng for an excuse to do one of these

[enddaysengine]

Exploring the Manifest Zone - Episode 1: Introduction

Those of you who've been with me since the beginning may recall that I originally started this blog as a way to improve my writing while having some fun exploring different worlds. I'm going to keep that up, but you might also notice that I've started to branch a bit from the original monster descriptions and plot hooks (no duh!). One of the things that I've been doing recently on the Chronicles of Darkness forums has been Let's Reads of various books, including my ongoing review of Parasite Rex. I'm going to keep doing that, but I'm also going to open up my genres a bit, so you can expect to see Let's Watch and Let's Listen segments in the future on various topics and games.

That brings me to Manifest Zone. Manifest Zone is a podcast about Eberron hosted by Wayne Chang, Kristian Serrano, Scott W, and Keith Baker. It is excellent, and while I haven't finished the first episode, I've gotten some fresh new campaign ideas out of it. What I'm going to aim for in the future is to come out with Let's Listen to Manifest Zone catching my initial reaction to the podcast within a week or two of them being released. These thoughts will mostly be just reactions and unedited, so if you want to get a discussion going, feel free to reblog and comment. Manifest Zone also has a Q&A where they respond in short clips to questions. I won't be replying to those, although maybe I'll compile a bunch of them into a response later on.

So without further ado, Episode 1...

Introduction

https://manifest.zone/01-introductions/

So I know Keith loves Eberron, but I also know that Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans can make creators burnout. The fact that he's still here, still dedicated to a setting that was released 13 years ago and still has yet to see the light of day in 5e is incredible. He sounds so happy to talk Eberron yet again at the start of this podcast, and it is in some ways unbelievable. Eberron has survived and thrived not just because of Keith's grand vision, but because of the person that Keith is.

Keith, if you are reading this, thank you. You've given us far more than we deserve and Eberron fans are spoiled by your love and generosity.

It is fascinating how Wayne, Kristian, and Scott all got into Eberron and why they were motivated to do the podcast. That speaks well to having a variety of perspectives in the podcast. I'm interested to see if I can pull any of Kristian and Scott's ideas from Savage Worlds into Pathfinder. I've debated trying to run Planescape and Eberron in Chronicles of Darkness before, but never really pushed it.

I like the idea of introducing Eberron as a post-fantasy setting. In fact, I will probably include it in my next campaign pitch. Being up front with the fact that Eberron lacks many classic tropes, and the ones it does contain are often deconstructed or twisted in some way is good practice for GMs. I'd toss Eberron much more into Science Fantasy than plain Fantasy.

The way that elven lifespan impacts their culture wasn't something I had thought about until Keith brought it up in the FAQs. It has to be one of the most interesting parts of Eberron for me, even though it's underplayed. If I add another elf culture on a separate continent, I'd be curious what other alternatives are out there for how elves deal with death and memory.

Zilargo is absolutely one my favourite nations in Eberron, and there are numerous reasons for that. One is that gnomes feel like a distinct race with their niche and values that are clearly separate from both dwarves and halflings. Another is precisely the modern socio-political question that the podcast discusses; the question of how far we are willing to sacrifice privacy in the name of public security.  I  remember very early on when Eberron was first released, and Keith described Zilargo as being one of the scariest places to people who have been brought up in North America's modern culture. Unlike the Sarlona, Zilargo has made some genuinely challenging (and possibly disturbing)  political decisions, but the Zil remain relatable and understandable.  For all that I would personally absolutely disagree with the way that the Trust runs their country,  I can empathise with the why the gnomes made those decisions, and I find the implications for their culture to be fascinating. While Zilargo can fulfil an "evil nation" role in a campaign, their default presentation remains that of one political system amongst many, and they are not obvious villains. Of course, with the Trust, that's precisely the way they like it.

Lifting different storylines into RPGs is a time honoured tradition. Firefly would make for excellent fodder, but I'm more interested in the Lost story. I've heard Keith tell part of this one before, specifically the bit about the roc eating the captain, then the giant cat treating the roc like a songbird. I didn't know the bit about it being inspired by the TV show, but is sounds like an interesting scenario. Maybe I will try to write it up if I ever find the time. Diehard on an airship also sounds awesome.

The unanswered questions about Eberron are one of my favourite parts of the setting, and it is one of the things that Eberron and Golarion have in common. No one knows what caused the Mourning or what killed Aroden (well, Erik Mona knows the latter, but he isn't telling). This goes even further in Eberron than most settings. If you listen to the Speaking Stone segment on pronunciation, Keith says that the reason there are no guides how to say the names of the nations is that there is no one correct way to say them. The design team deliberately left out pronunciation guides so that Storytellers could have NPCs from different regions pronounce names differently.

The point that Wayne makes about the joy of trying to piece history and little clues together is so true. This is a common thread I see in Planescape, Chronicles of Darkness, and Eberron. History is important to all three, and they tell you as much with the spaces that are left in between what is explicitly said. They challenge you to find what fits in those gaps. There's a reason I have timelines for all three setting that I meticulously add details to so that I can see how everything relates together. It is no surprise that those three settings are my favourites.

"Wide magic" is an excellent term to describe Eberron that I haven't heard before. I like it. It's the same way that Firefly isn't high technology, its wide technology. I am guilty of calling Eberron magipunk though. The historian and teacher in me love the speculative fiction portion of Eberron's "magic as technology" premise. It is so interesting to see our world through a "mirror, magically."

The lock and key model of focus items with Dragonmarks is neat. I'll be using that one in the future.

The setting expectations bit is all very solid advice. The concept of failing forwards is very prominent in Chronicles of Darkness, and it adds to the game greatly. I'm wondering if there is some way to reward major failures that create drama and story twists in d20 like CofD does with dramatic failures and players being able to choose to turn failures into dramatic failures. Maybe extra uses of per day abilities? I'll have to think on that one.

Next episode is on the Last War. Super psyched for it.

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - A Conspiracy of Ravens

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Saichek Publicity. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

About the Book

THE BATTLE LINES HAVE BEEN DRAWN. THE WAR HAS BEGUN.

James Hicks has spent his entire life and career fighting on the front lines of terrorism for the clandestine intelligence organization known as The University. Hicks has learned that enemies can appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, and allegiances shift like the wind. But now, Hicks has finally discovered his true enemy: the criminal organization known as The Vanguard.

This shadowy group has operated as a deadly organization comprised weapons dealers, drug runners, and money launderers for decades, but has now decided to add regime change to their catastrophic agenda. But knowing the enemy is one thing. Being able to defeat it is another matter entirely. When Hicks uncovers a solid lead on his new adversaries, his world explodes. His home base is attacked, his operatives in the field are wiped out, and, for the first time, The University finds itself in open combat against an unknown enemy. In a battle that rages from the streets of Manhattan to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to the dark alleys of Berlin, Hicks will have to use every resource at his disposal to defeat A Conspiracy of Ravens.

Interview with the Author

What initially got you interested in writing? 

I’ve always been a big fan of movies, even when I was a kid. My parents favored the classics, where studios churned them out like clockwork. The plots were usually engaging and so were the actors. I also come from a family of storytellers – priests and nuns, mostly – so I was introduced to the realities of the human condition early on.

  In college, my desire to tell stories of my own grew and I took my first creative writing class. I wound up graduating with a B.A. in Political Science, but that love of storytelling never left me and I’ve been blessed to go on to have several books published.

  What genres do you write in? What drew you to writing these specific genres? 

I’ve written crime fiction, mysteries, thrillers, a war novella and I’m currently working on a western series. Eventually, I’d like to try my hand at horror, too, but not yet.

  I’ve written in these various genres because each of them allows me to tell a story about some aspect of the human experience. My crime novels set in the 1930s depict desperate people at a desperate time. I write about criminals and murderers who turn out to be the heroes of the story. They might not be someone you’d like to meet in a bar or have over for the holidays, but for the purposes of reading, they’re compelling characters.

  My spy thrillers allowed me to delve into modern day paranoia and fears of excessive government intrusion into our lives. Is someone really watching us? Who’s trying to hurt us and why? Who are the people trying to stop them? In my James Hicks series, I take a different angle on the thriller genre wherein I make Hicks believable because he’s not always likable. It’s hard for me as a reader to relate to a character who is too good. That makes them predictable. A character like Hicks allows me to show the reader the shadow world in which he lives while doing what he can to protect our way of life. I never think the reader is always going to like him. I just want to keep them interested in reading him. So far, that tactic seems to work. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some readers tell me, “Man, that Hicks is a real S.O.B., isn’t he?” I take a certain pride in that.

  My new western series is about a sheriff in Montana in 1888. I think westerns always reflect the times in which they are written. In the 1950s, they portrayed rugged individualism and family values because that’s what post-war America wanted. In the 1960s and 1970s, we saw revisionist westerns that focused more on the brutality of life back then. Heroes weren’t always heroes and few people rode off into the sunset unscathed. In the 1980s, action was the order of the day until Lonesome Dove came along and showed us how beautiful a western could be. Today, and this is certainly the case with my western, my protagonist is Aaron Mackey, a sheriff who finds himself at odds with his times. His decisions aren’t always popular, but necessary. His job isn’t to be liked. It’s to protect the town he grew up in and has been elected to serve. He’s a man driven by his own code, and sometimes that code means he does the right thing. Sometimes it might not seem that way to the other characters, but Mackey doesn’t care. He reflects a lot of the rebelliousness of our current day, where we question everything and for good reason.

  How did you break into the field? 

I had always dabbled in writing since college. I pawed at a couple of books, the first being a business thriller called TENETS OF POWER. In hindsight, the book was too long and too involved to be interesting and I didn’t have any luck in finding an agent for it. But all of my hard work didn’t go to waste. I’ve since harvested that book for plotlines in other works I’ve done, particularly in my 1930s novel PROHIBITION.

  I had workshopped PROHIBITION for a few years, then in the early 2006, I began sending it out to agents. Once again, no one bit. The feedback was always the same. No one cares about period fiction anymore.

  Then, in 2008, a friend of mine encouraged me to enter the book in TruTV’s Search for the Next Great Crime Writer contest. Much to my surprise, it beat out over 200 other novels to win the prize. I was supposed to be published by Borders, but when they went out of business, I was out of luck.

  I was fortunate enough to find Ron Fortier and Rob Davis of Airship 27 who loved the book and published it. It received great reviews and caught the eye of Jason Pinter at Polis Books. A few years later, Jason republished PROHIBITION and its sequel SLOW BURN as well as my spy-thriller SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. I’ve been with him ever since and he’s been great to work with.

    What do you want readers to take away from reading your works? 

That I’ll never give them anything less than my best. People might not like my subject, my style or my characters, but no one can ever say I mailed it in on a novel. I believe the publishing business IS a business, so if you’re buying my product, you deserve my very best. I haven’t yet tried to write the Great American Novel and I’ve never written a book that was meant to change anyone’s life. However, when people tell me they couldn’t put the book down and can’t wait for the next one, I feel like I’ve done my job. 

  What do you find most rewarding about writing? 

I find the feedback I receive from readers to be the most consistently rewarding part of writing. The feedback has been mostly positive, but it’s been negative, too. Most of those complaints came from people who didn’t like the genre or were expecting a different kind of book. A few complaints were pointed observations made by people who know the genre very well. I took those complaints to heart and kept them in mind when I worked on the next book.

  When it comes to the art of writing itself, there’s no greater endorphin rush for me than the thrill of feeling a story take off as I’m typing it. I know it might sound weird to someone who has never written a book or a story, but these characters really do take on a life of their own. I recently started writing a novel and quickly realized I had started in the middle of the book. I had to go back and tell it from the beginning. It’s more work, but I don’t look at it that way. I look at it as the story telling itself through me. Again, we’re not talking high literature here, but I want every story I tell to be the best it can be. But when you hit that scene just right or that idea pops into my head, man, there’s nothing better than that.

  What do you find most challenging about writing? 

I find the editing process to be the most challenging part about writing. It’s also the most important part of the process. Almost anyone can sit at a keyboard and bang out a story. The editing process makes you cull it down and mold it into something cohesive and compelling. After that, I have to read it again to make sure all of the seams have been covered. And again after that. After the third pass, I can’t read it anymore because it all blurs together for me. Often, by then, my mind is already straining at the bit to move on to the next work anyway, so I rely on beta readers to help ensure I haven’t left anything out or left a gaping hole in the plot.

    What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field? 

If you’re going to be a writer, you’d better be tough. You’d better be ready for rejection and you’ve got to take criticism. That’s not always easy, especially when you’ve labored over something for months or years. You develop an attachment to it and bristle at even the slightest hint that it’s not as perfect as you envision it.

  But a mentor of mine told me long ago that writing isn’t about the writer, it’s about the writer and their relationship to the reader. I might know what I mean, but if it’s not on the page, I can’t expect the reader to divine what I mean. People are entitled to their opinion and readers are right more than they’re wrong. As long as the critique is coming from an honest place, the writer must consider it.

  The other piece of advice I’d offer a new reader is to write in secret whenever possible. That sounds crazy, I know. Conspiratorial, even, like something out of one of my spy novels. But believe me when I tell you that the act of becoming a writer is very intimidating to some people. You’re attempting to do something that most people couldn’t do even if they had the courage to try. People tend to enjoy tearing down those who attempt what they cannot. The less people who know about what you’re trying to do, the better your story will be. There will be plenty of time for the critiques I mentioned above, but first, just sit down and do it and keep doing it until it’s done. When you’re ready, show it to the world. It’ll be your scariest, but most rewarding moment.

  What type of books do you enjoy reading? 

I like thrillers, mostly. I read westerns when I’m writing a western, just to make sure my spy thriller voice doesn’t bleed into that genre. It keeps me honest and keeps me engaged. I’m not worried about another author’s work bleeding into my own. In order to write, you have to read a lot because one never knows what will spark that next idea for your story.

  Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you? 

I think people would be surprised that I’m as quiet as I am. People read my work and expect me to be a larger-than-life character. I’m really not. I prefer to keep to myself and I listen a lot. Wherever I am, I overhear how people speak to each other. I listen to their concerns and watch them on their phones on their way to and from work. Observation helps keep me grounded and, as always, gives me inspiration for my next novel or short story.

    What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work? 

All of my works are available online on Amazon, BN.com and all of the usual places in both print and e-book formats. I’m also on Facebook as Terrence P. McCauley and on Twitter as @tmccauley_nyc. My website is www.terrencemccauley.com. Feel free to drop me a line or ask me a question. And if you’ve purchased one of my books, please leave a review. They help, believe me.

  About the Author

Terrence McCauley is the award-winning author of two previous James Hicks thrillers: SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and A MURDER OF CROWS, as well as the historical crime thrillers PROHIBITION and SLOW BURN (all available from Polis Books). He is also the author of the World War I novella THE DEVIL DOGS OF BELLEAU WOOD, the proceeds of which go directly to benefit the Semper Fi Fund. His story “El Cambalache” was nominated for the Thriller Award by International Thriller Writers.

Terrence has had short stories featured in Thuglit, Spintetingler Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Big Pulp and other publications. He is a member of the New York City chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers and the International Crime Writers Association.

A proud native of The Bronx, NY, he is currently writing his next work of fiction. Please visit his website at terrencemccauley.com or follow him at @terrencepmccauley.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW – Kennedy Quinn

BLOG TOUR – Death Overdue

BLOG TOUR – A Cajun Christmas Killing

BLOG TOUR – Snifter of Death

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BLOG TOUR – A Conspiracy of Ravens was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

[charliepritchardart-blog]

Ideas or starting points for the next project

What are some aspects of the video, sound and objects that I might want to take further?

I think future lines of inquiery lie in how to use the ambiguity of the sounds, after the Alison Carlier talk on Monday she won the Jerwood drawing prize with a piece of found text that described tonal qualities etc, and to the listener it sounded like a drawing because of its label. I think this is a clever use of the ambiguity and interpretation of sound that I couldn't quite grasp in my work.

Do the Domes still have any ideas left in them?

try quicker sounds

This is all great for research but don't forget to play

Make some obstructions, respond to the words micro-macro, do a video drawing, sound drawing, mapping, filming, listening, building, balancing,

foleying 

Elizibeth price 

objects sounds and video 

pipolotti rist

viktor timofeev

invisible forces

narrative, conspiracy, creative writing, the story of concrete, plastic, television amoung the bees

cultural, theatrical plots and villains, convenient Narratives

controllable objects

new ways of sensing with contact mics

projection

DIY, home made and shit 50s sci-fi, cold war paranoia scientology, tin foil hats, the cultivation of paranoia, 

astral projection

that colourful DMT documentry

find a way to do sketches, quick ideas, how long does your 'inspiration moment' last?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwxK2pVmZgc&list=PLRj-rMaj2BqyQ47sa3qyTI5fCXgr9quyo

This dichotomy between subject matter and material seems to be widening and Im not sure if I can, or should try to marry them together, but again early days try extending both as to see what happens this happened at the start of the last project when I felt a bit iffy about doing a sound piece, again I find this is not a productive starting point for me I don't think in the ways I can push the medium of sound What are some of the topics and ways of working do I want to put more research into or develop?

Try using the news tab on google

neuroplasticity

Cynicism and irony or fully fledged conviction, in Zizek style

Scientology, conspiracy theories, mind control http://skewsme.com/tinfoilhat/

Simplicity of desires and how they are targeted with consumer devices.

Quantified self, tdcs or productivity meetups

Insect media

 I think its important to mention that in this project I have tried different methods of reflection, I've tried short handwritten notes on the fly as I'm making, longer hanwritten notes, and in the final stages of the unit, typing notes in the library as a more separated activity to the making process

Separate the making and reflection into, different activities I work best in the library in the morning

http://www.ilonasagar.com/prosopopoeiamanualhandbook

Found text as a drawing

Respond to research in a certain field, look at recent radiolabs, ask ben for more podcasts

NB When we first met, we shared an interest in the hallucinogenic drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and its effects. We ended up watching a cheesy but colourful documentary, DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2010), complete with over-the-top CGI replicating psychedelic trips. In hindsight, it summarizes important aspects of your work – like drug culture, DIY relaxation techniques, self-help and commercialized therapy culture – and how those things are represented.

DIY

Capitalising on the 'don't know' and hype of meditation, and mindfulness, much like scientology

I like the relationship you seem to have with your practice; you seem to be following it or tracking it, letting it take you places which is when unexpected things happen. The 'ambiguity of sounds' is really interesting, having a schism between sound and the visual. Your film touches on this, you might be bringing that more into your 3D work by the sounds of it. I like that contradictory  dialogue combined with this allure of fiction. seems too like sci-fi. Because the industry of mindfulness is loaded with hype, this fictitious side is relevant. There's a big "don't know' hanging over the work which makes it strong. Some of the plane/drone shots look like sets with models. 

I like the unknown particularly in 'Stalker' a recent Tarkofsky film I saw 

fordist ideas of perfect insect organisation in post ww 2, metropolis 

https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/centre/interdisciplinary-neuroscience-research/

WHAT ABOUT STRESS!?

So, what information can I gain from researchers at BU and how can this futher substantiate some of my ideas with specialist knowledge

Think about the intent I am going in with to get the best results and not to get bogged down or distracted

Don't restrict myself to specialist research I think it would be interesting to consider shiny popular things in relation to current ideas

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sideways-view/201507/the-psychology-surveillance

http://blog.cursorware.me

http://potlatch.typepad.com again http://potlatch.typepad.com

the voice and ventriloquism, embodied sounds, animism vibrating stuff, robert morris idea, sound of its own recording 

And this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA2-iMz479o&feature=em-subs_digest

This is all great for research but don't forget to play!

I like to produce work with an allure of fiction, and particularly interested in how fiction can parrallel everyday delusions I think that because we are saturated with cinematic media, cinematic moments especially with modern day popular films that has reduced the overall average time of a shot due to cgi etc. I think cinema can reinforce so many delusions and western ideas of the solid I ok so re-reflecting upon tDCS its interesting that it cuts out voices, makes people less depressed, but nothing about their worldview has changed, in buddhist terms they are not excersising the growing of compassion or states of mind that are at the core of our being. it is exteremly oversimplified with too greater reward. tDCS by its very nature could be using attatchment, a desire to transform with a few easy sessions one can be a happier person surly if hypothetically tdcs did work then someone would start to depend on it? its attractiveness is linked with comfort, the attatchment to being comfortable, also a state when nothing is practiced no effort is produced to better your state of mind. at the end of the day surly tDCS leaves you with no world view to cause a better mood but tries to physically change the mind.  other reflections on DONT LET THEM IN, the framed individuals comment was interesting, I think this quite nicely linkes up with the idea that westeners have an inherent idea of a fixed self, maybe start to look at perceeptions and ideas of self in contrast to ideas of emptiness 

How to approach the researchers

I feel like I need to know more about what I want to do in the next project to approach someone with specialist knowledge to then base some of my practice on

some of the things I would like to gain further knowledge on are

meditation + tDCS

so control is interesting here particularly how The Cognitive Control Lab have done some research into control, but my preferred intention would be to investigate this interesting polarization between wanting more control by practicing mindfullness and meditation, but then it being used as a homogenizing force of capitalism. Or with intent on producing the 'Last Man' one of Nietzsches ideas. Ok so what is wrong here from my current understanding, is the appropriation of buddhist techniques, ok they are pretty down with people interpreting their teahings, but when people do with the intent of producing a more productive workforce, then the question arises, who is in control, I spose this is more in line with hindu meditaton, achieving the single point of focus, then the buddhist part is starting a journey to nirvana to achieve enlightenment, this is where corporate mindfulness starts to draw its own cartography inside your head, chill out, relax, and have those papers in by monday. 

an important contextual issue arisees here, what companies actually use corporate mindfulness?

Could I do work experience at one of these institutions?

do any contradictions arise in the motives of buddhism and corporations that appropriate their

I have this idea that there are bad guys that are corporations this idea needs expanding who exactly am I observing here? I risk coming across as a fascist hippy here

mcdonalds for eg

control samsara, where exactly does some of the research parallel with what I am interested in?

OK so ground the email in some questions and a request to use tDCS

-attention as a currency 

-the stroop test 

-any research around affective noises and sounds? 

-any research around 

The formation, content and maintenance of goal representations

When we set out to perform a task, we do so with a mental representation of what we want to achieve (i.e. a goal/intention). 

The mental representation needs to be constructed and temporarily stored so that it can be used to perform the task at hand. 

One aim of this project is to investigate the content of these mental representations, and to investigate how changes in the content of the representations affect performance on certain tasks.

Furthermore, it is often the case that we encounter things that distract us from the task at hand, and so we need to be able to remove the influence of these distractors. Sometimes the intention to remove the influence of these distractors is not enough because:

We might be too efficient at attending to / processing the distracting object

The goal or intention is insufficiently specified

The goal representation decays too quickly (i.e. is not maintained)

We have not specified the what, when and how of the intention (e.g. we have not created what is known as an implementation intention).

A further aim of this project is to investigate whether exposure to concepts that relate to a goal or intention can boost or reinforce goal representations enabling more efficient removal of the influence of distractors. Of particular interest is how to improve goal focus in populations that have been shown to experience problems with goal maintenance (e.g. those with inattention) and how long such effects might last. 

so this is the cognition behind the goals we create in our head, are they talking about the image of thaught and the coressponding brain activity? this could be interesting

The role of the Prefrontal Cortex in cognition and behaviour

There are many theories about the role of the prefrontal region of the brain in cognition and behaviour. There are also theories about the functions of particular regions of the prefrontal cortex. For example, regions of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex and the dorselateral prefrontal cortex have been shown to be activated by tasks that require cognitive control.  Regions nearby these areas of the brain have been shown to be involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli such as chocolate and pleasant odours. Since a goal often involves the desire to obtain a reward, the interactions of these brain regions are of significant interest to anyone wanting to understand goal-directed behaviour.  This area of research aims to further understand these interactions and to investigate neural regions involved in tasks requiring cognitive control in general.

so is this only relevant to sensory rewards, like ordours and choc, or can it be applied to things like the desire to be comassionate, 

So i have to think about the merging of these ideas with the buddhist conception of the world, so one who completely sees the concept of emptiness in all things there is something between this, meditation and the 'image of thaught' how can images and concepts affect our thinking, another interesting take on this idea is again alison carliers sound drawing, there is language and sound creating the artwork in the audiences head. I'm thinking how this lines up in some way to meditation practice, particularly 'meditation on shakyamuni buddha' an article by robina courtin, this entails visualising, in specific detail the buddha in the form of "light: transparent, intangible and radient. At the level of your forehead and six feet away...' and this goes on to describe the apropriate ritual for us to "develop firm conviction in our innate perfection - our buddha potential" the westen ideas of the mind,'we say "its only in the mind" we give no value to the mind even when we are caught in it. We give no value to just thought' I like to produce work with an allure of fiction, and particularly interested in how fiction can parrallel everyday delusi