Horrifyingly Inappropriate Bedtime Stories

Despite the fact that I am not a parent and don’t plan on it, I have over the last couple of years, found myself in the position of telling bedtime stories on occasion at the demand of the Fiance. And so every once in a while, late at night, I will find myself starting with “Once upon a time…” and then going on from there to tell the most horrible stories that no child on Earth should ever have to hear. I don’t remember most of these stories as I just make them up as I go along, though the Fiance seems to remember a few of them. The last story I told was apparently about “The Little Sycophant,” about a guy that wanted to suck up better than anyone else in the kingdom. Last night I had to tell another story, and this was about “The Little Yellow Bird.”

Once upon a time, there was a Little Yellow Bird that lived in a forest and decided one day that it was time to build a nest. But he couldn’t because he didn’t know how to build a nest as a result of getting kicked out of his own nest at a very young age by his drunken, neglectful mother. He was quite intent on building a nest though, and decided that he must learn. He wondered how he was going to go about this when he looked up into the sky and saw the biggest, strongest bird he’d ever laid eyes on. It flew up so high and flew so fast, it left a trail of white feathers behind it. It was chasing after a smaller bird that also left a white trail, and it managed to catch it’s prety without even touching it, by sending off a trail of whiter feathers after its victim that, upon contact, caused it to explode and burst into flame. The Little Yellow Bird decided this huge bird must be the one to teach it how to build an amazing nest, and so went off to find it and learn.

The Little Bird wandered far and wide, and eventually came across a Cute Little Rabbit that seemed to be lost.

“What’s the matter?” the Little Yellow Bird asked.

“I’ve lost my way and can’t find my mother,” the Cute Little Rabbit said.

The Little Yellow Bird was enraged. “Your drunken, neglectful mother has abandoned, just like mine did!”

“No, I just got separated, I have to find he-”

“NO! She abandoned you because she’s a no good drunk! Stay with me! I’m going to find the greatest bird in the world, and learn how to build the best nest in the world, and we can live together without our stupid, drunken, neglectful mothers!”

It took a little doing, but the Little Yellow Bird finally convinced the Cute Little Rabbit to join, and off they went. Eventually in their travels, they found a Little Deer that was frolicking through the forest while its wise mother looked on.

The Little Yellow Bird was angry, for he knew, he just knew, that that terrible mother was waiting for the right moment to get drunk and neglect her child. The Little Yellow Bird decided to save the Little Deer from this horrible fate.

“We’ve got to DO something!” the Little Yellow Bird said.

“They seem happy,” the Cute Little Bunny said.

“No! She’s just going to hurt that Little Deer when she gets drunk and angry and neglectful!”

Fortunately for the Little Yellow Bird, the Cute Little Bunny had a gift for imitating the voices of other forest creatures, and so a plan was hatched. The Little Yellow Bird went off to talk to the Little Deer, while the Cute Little Bunny hung off the edge of a huge gorge in the forest and said in its best Little Deer voice, “Mother! Mother! Help, help! I’m going to fall!”

The Mother tore through the forest straight for the gorge and plunged to her death in her effort to save her child.

“At last!” the Little Yellow Bird said to the Little Deer, “You’ve been saved! You’ll never know the pain of your drunken, neglectful mother again!”

“But my mother doesn’t drink!” the Little Deer said in tears.

“They ALL drink,” the Little Yellow Bird said. “I know. Oh, I know. Join us! I’m building a nest!”

And so, with no mother, the Little Deer joined them. The trio went on, following the trail of the great bird in the sky, and eventually they found where it lived. It was a strange place, full of metal and steel, and many humans that used words like “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system” and “Top Gun,” and “Air Defense Network.”

Here, they found one human that took pity on them, a huge, powerful man that was not too bright. Most of the people there called him “Village Idiot” or “Vi” for short as he swept up after the others. The Little Yellow Bird asked Vi, “Where is the Great Bird, please? I need to learn how to build nest for my friends and I.”

Vi looked at them and said, “Duh, what bird?”

The Little Yellow Bird explained and Vi said, “Oh, you mean the jets in the hanger! That’s over there,” he said, pointing to a large building with a curved ceiling. “That’s where they stay when the pilots don’t use them.”

“What’s a pilot?” The Little Yellow Bird asked.

“Duh, that’s the guy that flies the plane and lands it.”

“So the pilot takes care of the plane?” the Little Yellow Bird asked, getting angry.

“No, he just flies it.”

The Little Yellow Bird grew enraged. Even the Great Bird was victimized by an angry, neglectful, drunken mother and needed to be saved! The Little Yellow Bird WOULD save the great bird!

Fortunately, Vi, unbeknownst to most of the people on the base, was an idiot savant with a flair for manipulating military defensive systems! In short order, at the Little Yellow Bird’s request, he rigged the base so that all of its mines, sentry drones, missiles and automated
artillery guns turned on the foul abusers of the great bird and turned them into mangled, screaming bloody heaps that only lived for a few more minutes after their shredding. The great bird was saved!

The Little Yellow Bird, the Cute Little Bunny, the Little Dear and Vi went to the hanger and saw the great bird. It was beautiful. Vi told them that now that entire NORAD defense system was attacking itself and civilization was about to die, no one would need this hanger anymore, and that the three friends could live there. And so that’s what they did! And they lived happily ever after, with no more drunken, neglectful mothers to hurt them!


I never said this was a good bedtime story, did I?

Games As Art

I don’t care how many of you disagree with me, I am absolutely convinced that games are going to become the next art form just as soon as they get over the stigma that things like plays, novels and movies initially had. All it’s going to take is someone that is the gaming equivalent of Orson Welles to make the gaming equivalent of Citizen Kane and we’re good to go.

If you stop and think about it, it really is a logical progression. All arts strive in some way to engage the senses, and as technology has advanced, those art forms got increasingly closer and closer to simulating life. For the longest time, movies were the ultimate expression of this, because they mixed image, sound and movement with narrative. Games do all this as well, but also bring the element of interactivity, something that no other current art form can achieve. Hell, they’re already generating the kind of controversy normally associated with works of art, and that’s because people have to acknowledge the fact that games do in fact, exert influence. Something that can be said of all art. What people are coming to realize is just how engaging that influence can be, since it takes the notion of vicarious living to a degree no art could previously reach.

I think this will probably happen in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure that a console for the home that can produce graphics indistinguishable from real life is, at most, three generations away. Or, to put it simply, Playstation 6 will have graphics as good as the CG effects of movies today, and that’s an extremely conservative estimate. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they managed to pull it off with PS4, or Xbox 720, or whatever the next generation will be after the imminent arrival of the new gear in the coming months. When this happens, when “The Great Race” is over and photorealistic graphics are achievable to the point that no one marvels at what a big deal it is, you’re going to see the same thing happen in games as what happened in film. Someone is going to see that nascent technology and find more potential in it than creating just another shooter or RPG, and they’re going to create some amazing thing with such a simple, profound idea behind it that we’re all going to wonder what the hell took people so long to come up with something so elegant. And then you’ll get the real circus as the critics start howling, and the people claim that in some deep and meaningful way, this “game” made a difference in their lives. Games already do that now to some degree with emotional storylines in some of the better RPGs, or simply influencing someone’s decision to pursue game development as a career, but gaming still needs that “breakthrough,” that game that is accessible enough in the way movies are, that everyone that plays it gets lost in it, and then gets sucker-punched with an interactive experience/story that strikes them to their emotional core.

When that happens, and when that lightning strikes twice, then three times, then four, then an avalanche…

That’s when everyone will have to admit that games just became the 10th art.

Fan Fiction For Harry

I was doing a little bit of research.

I found a website with over 16,000 pieces of Harry Potter Harry Potter fanfiction stories. They run the usual fan-fic gamut from earnest sequels to alternate histories, to cross-overs with other characters to romance and, yes, slash (For those unfamiliar with the term, “Slash” is fan-fiction, usually written by women, about homosexual relationships between characters, the earliest fan-fiction usually cited as Kirk-Spock slash).

That’s a whole lotta’ Harry Potter mania.

The reason I was doing this was because I was toying with the idea of writing a counter-argument to what I was complaining about yesterday. It would involves an enormously talented Slytherin girl who is focused, good hearted, and absolutely obsessed with winning the House Cup because there is a reward involved in winning that just might save the life of her dying mother. Over the course of the story, this Slytherin girl would receive encouragement from Snape who would tell her things like, “As you long as you work hard, you’ll win. I don’t think even Dumbledore would play favorites” and she would begin to wake up the gentle side of Draco Malfoy with her earnest belief that if you do what the teachers tell you and trust that they sincerely want to see you succeed, you will.

The end of the story is, of course, that just as she’s on the verge of achieving victory and thinking that she has—legitimately and through endless sacrifice and hard work—managed to score a win for her house. More importantly though, this will save her mother’s life with the magical reward which she couldn’t afford otherwise. Dumbledore cruelly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by giving all those extra points to Harry and friends, thus condemning this girl’s mother to a slow, painful death. Snape is outraged, Draco swears vengeance, but the girl tries to keep a stiff upper lip about the whole thing. Even when she is brought to a private conversation with Dumbledore afterwards and it is explained to her that “Harry is the best of us. He must win. He must succeed. I’m sorry about your mother, but she’s just not as important as Harry.”

This, at least, would go some ways towards showing that not all the Slytherin kids could not possibly suck, and that perhaps the favoritism bestowed on Harry isn’t as cut and dried as it appeared in the movie. Especially if it led to someone’s—admittedly insignificant, compared to Harry—death.

Okay, So Maybe Harry Potter Teaches The Wrong Values

This is going to be an unpopular point of view, but oh well… For the record, let me just state that while I like Harry Potter, I am not a huge fan, and have only read the first three books, having gotten too lazy (or nauseated by hype) to read the remaining stories.

I am not going to rehash the old “Unsavoury celebration of pagan rituals” argument, because I think it’s silly. Actually what sparked this off was watching the first Harry Potter movie again last night. I doubt I’m spoiling anything for anyone by saying it was something that happened at the end.

Right at the end of the movie, as Dumbledore is tallying points for the various Hogwarts houses to see who wins the house cup that year, he pulls a last minute save. Slytherin is clear to win with over 400 points, while Gryffindor has only 312, putting it dead last. Dumbledore then goes on to award 170 extra points to Harry and friends, thus putting their house in the lead, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, thus beating out their hated rival.

It was the Fiance who was watching this that remaked, “It’s funny how this kind of thing seems really cool when you’re a kid, but when you grow up, you realize how unfair it is.”

Which is, of course, something I hadn’t really considered before.

Now before everyone breaks out the pitchforks and torches, this is not to say I don’t think Harry did a good thing. I think he did some amazing things in the first story, and emotionally, I was rooting for him just as much as anyone. It’s only once I took it out of the context of school and wondered about how I would react if this happened in, oh, say, an office that I started to see the undertones of Nepotism/Favoritism at work.

Basically, Dumbledore was playing favorites. All the teachers were.

On the surface, this can easily be excused by the fact that Harry is, in fact, a brave and good boy who is struggling to do the right thing, and manages just that in spectacular fashion. So it’s not that unreasonable to make a case for recognizing his amazing deeds. I now just wish that they’d done it outside of the established system they had for the House Cup competition. They could have given him an award, given him some special new privilege, given his entire House some gift, if they wanted. Instead, they ended up sending a clear message to all the other Houses; we like this kid, and the rest of you are expendable.

I admit, I am getting needlessly complex. This is, after all, a children’s story, and you need a simpler value system rather than overloading a child with the moral complexities and politicking that pervade the real world of social networks, so bear that in mind. It is easy to not want Slytherin House to win, because Rowling did a fine job of giving some very despicable faces to represent the House. Snapes comes off as a right bastard, and I personally would like to burn Draco Malfoy’s house down because he reminds me of so many arrogant, snooty kids I encountered in school.

But what about all those other Slytherin kids? What about the ones that were quick, intelligent, ambitous and focused, but NOT evil or selfish? Rowling went to great pains to point that none of these Houses were Good or Evil, merely personality traits. So over the course of school year, you had these other perfectly good kids, accomplishing their goals, acheiving their victories, and thinking they had earned a perfectly legitimate win by following the rules, only to have it taken away from them because someone else broke all the rules, giving them the clear messages that either A) What the teachers were teaching them was a huge lie, or B) The teachers taught them these things because they were already on the “loser track” of mediocrity and that the REAL lessons would be reserved for their betters, ie, Gryffindor House and it’s star members.

I guess this just kind of chafes at me somewhat because it reminds me a little of what bugs me about Ayn Rand, and her objectivist philosophy. When I first read it, I was amazed and filled with rage at the ignorant society that would attempt to snuff out the talents of the Chosen Few who were superior to all and didn’t have to play by the same rules. Then I wised up as I saw other people similarly affected by Rand’s writings, and watched them turn into enormous jerks that treated everyone like dirt because they had realized they were one of these Great Ubermenscheans Rand was waiting for, and everyone else was not. The end result being they acted like they were above it all, and treated others like they were not. Ayn Rand posited that there were a select, elite few that pushed the rest of ignorant humanity forward. Unfortunately, most people who read her books will come to the conclusion that she is secretly revealing to them that they are also one of these epic figures, and this gives them license to act like jerks.

In the same way, Dumbledore’s treatment of Harry and friends at the end of the first story is a similar declaration that “All you other children are merely fodder we are using to fuel this boy’s ascent.”

Let me say again, Harry’s character is impeccable. He deserves accolades, he is a brave and generous kid. I just wish he’d gotten his accolades in a way that didn’t make it abundantly clear to the entire student body that they were a secondary, expendable consideration. In the real world workplace, this kind of treatment would wreak havoc on office morale, and unless your star employee really IS one of these epic examples of humanity, he or she won’t be able to save your company when all the other embittered employees walk after getting fed up with being shown day in day out that they are dirt.

Recasting Episode III

It occurs to me that perhaps the last of the Star Wars prequels might have been saved with a little bit of recasting. Of course, retroactively this applies to the entire run of prequels, but I imagine I would have gotten a lot more enjoyment (unintentional and otherwise) had certain characters been replaced with others.

For example, Mace Windu as portrayed by Mr. T

Mace: I pity the fool who falls to the dark side, I pity him!

Clone Trooper: Your ship is ready sir.

Mace: No! I ain’t goin’ on no ship, I hate ships!

[Clone Trooper sticks a needle in his neck to knock him out]

Deeply Troubled Joaquin Phoenix as Anakin Skywalker

[When he wakes up from his dream of Padme dying]

Anakin: I had a… deeply troubling dream.

[When Palpatine reveals he is a Sith Lord]

Anakin: This is… deeply troubling.

[When he is seduced by the Dark Side]

Anakin: I am… deeply troubled.

Al Pacino as Palpatine:

Palpatine: If were half the Sith I used to be, I’D TAKE A FLAME THROWER TO THIS PLACE.

Sylvester Stallone as Chewbacca:

Chewbacca: HUAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

(Okay, admittedly not much difference there…)

Edward Norton as C-3PO

C-3PO: This is C-3PO’s outrage at being treated like a stupid droid.

Anakin: Your outrage is… deeply troubling.

C-3PO: This is C-3PO’s urge to kill asserting itself.

Keanu Reeves as Obi Wan Kenobi

Obi Wan: Dude! You are like TOTALLY giving into your hate!

Anakin: Your criticism… deeply troubles me.

[Ignites lightsaber]

Obi Wan: You are acting in a most non-triumphant manner! Like, I must totally fight you now!

[Performs "air saber". Electric guitar rocks in background. Anakin hits him in the shoulder]

Obi Wan: That is so heinous, dude…

Ian McKellen as Count Dooku:

Count: YOU… SHALL NOT… PASS!

Obi Wan: You are an EXcellent shouter, dude!

[Dooku drops a ton of rock on Obi Wan]

Obi Wan: That is so heinous, dude…

Animal from The Muppets as Yoda:

Mace: Yoda! Them fools are letting Palpatine yell in the senate!

Yoda: RAWWWWWWWRGH!

[Clamps down on Mace's arm]

Mace: I pity the fool that bites my arm…

Days Of Labor

For the next few days it’s going to be all about the commission to do the kiddy book. There’s not much time, but it’s not a tremendously taxing job, so it’ll be a busy, but not maddening thing. Of course, the timing is perfect.

Comments from readers are starting to come in on The Pale Summer, and they are about what I expected. I wasn’t looking to get picked on too much for my technique, and I wasn’t. But there are structural problems and now that someone is pointing them out, I’m kind of staring at the manuscript and rolling up my metaphorical sleeves thinking, “Okay, you bastard, you and me we’re gonna’ tango for real now…”

Some of the changes will be painful, but I can see the wisdom in the suggestions. Other suggestions I’m not going to follow through on, as this is all a matter of opinion after all, and that’s the nice thing about being a novelist (Or wannabe) is that this is all really my call. It’s one of the reasons why writing books has such enormous appeal to me is that feeling that this is all your responsibility, and budgetary constraints, studio policy, or even actor’s prerogative aren’t considerations at all.

The plus side of this is I can see this bringing down my word count somewhat, and letting me flesh out some things that had really, really been bugging me. Like I love descriptive passages, but hamstrung myself in a big way for this book to keep it short. Losing entire chunks of narrative will give me the room I need to let some of those sequences breathe a little bit more. On the other hand, there are other chunks of plot that I wrote, had a great deal of fun with, and they’re not badly written at all. However, they aren’t always completely in line with the novel and if I take them out, it’s one of those things that no one will miss if they didn’t know they were there to begin with.

I’m thinking I’ll probably keep them on the side and if the book does well, flesh some of them out and release a short story collection, Interludes of Summer or something like that, kind of as a “bonus DVD” where people can see more of what was going on in the novel that they missed in the first book. At this point, length is still everything. I don’t have the luxury yet of being able to write books with no consideration for size, and so I have to keep my eye on making sure that this one is still in the publisher’s “safety/newbie author range”. The book’s not badly written, which is the first and foremost consideration for anyone looking to publish a new author, but I’m getting pretty sick of size being such a limiting factor and I’m not taking any chances with this one.

So first up, kiddy book. Second up, the reconstructive surgery on The Pale Summer. Third up, mail it (along with The Fiance’s incredible cover) and sit there twiddling my thumbs hoping this time I get a nice Christmas present in the form of a book deal.

Okay, and in the meantime, write Lost In Loveless, the children’s novel. It’s going to be interesting to see whether I find this to be too hard for me to do with my “Horrible People And Intense Scenes Of Violence” sensibilities, or whether I’ll find this a refreshing change from my usual schtick of making people incredibly miserable.

And on that note, it is time for some Turkish food. Mmm… Beef and lamb…

I Am Going To Cry

As most wannabe novelists are wont to do, I sometimes like to go into the bookstore and play the “Imagine-Your-Book-Is-There-On-The-Shelf” game. This mostly involves going to the Science Fiction and/or Fantasy section of the bookstore and finding the “S” area, and making a space in the shelf between surnames that begin with “R” and “Sc” and then… I win the game.

Okay, I never said it was a good game.

Anyway, while doing this, one thing was made abundantly clear. People who aspire to photorealistic painting or illustration techniques thrive on genre book covers. While not all of them are this way, for the most part, the vast sea of SF/F book covers tend to blend into each other as a result of a simple three step process:

1) Insert mystical/futuristic landscape

2) Insert mystical/futuristic building/ship in landscape

3) Insert main character(s) standing in foreground looking heroically off into the distance brandishing their sword/laser pistol

If Fantasy, predominant colors are green and brown. If Science Fiction, predominant colors are green and blue.

This is all terribly depressing. The novel I just finished, The Pale Summer, is for lack of a better term, an urban fantasy. At one point, for a chapter or two, it does have a fairly large tree (Of epic proportions) that appears in it, and since that’s the only recognizable “typical” fantasy element in the entire book, my fear is that the publishers are going to glom onto that one thing and give me a cover that has a mystical landscape with a giant tree in the background while the main characters stand in the foreground looking heroically off into the distance while brandishing their swords. Even though they don’t use swords. As a result, around the house, the new lament whenever I see another lushly illustrated, Tolkien-esque cover is, “Stupid, giant, magic tree…”

The fiance had warned me that she was in no way going to be happy with whatever cover I might end up with once the book went to print. To alleviate her own sense of design outrage, she said she was going to make her own cover for us to use on our house copy, one that she would actually be happy with. What she didn’t tell me was that she was going to do it soon. She made one yesterday, and now I’m incredibly morose because I would love to have this cover, and I know it’s never going to happen.

What an infintely depressing thought.

For those of you who are curious, here it is. You can click on it to see the full size version:

It appeals to my relentlessly 80′s aesthetic of having that Nagel-esque minimalism to it. If this book should actually get published, I am seriously considering sending this off to the publishers as a mock-up and asking them to at least consider this before resorting to the Stupid, Giant, Magic Tree cover, but I know it’s hopeless. Oh well, at least my consience will be clear and I can say I tried. And at the very least, we can still take this and use it as intended, for our own personal copy, so at least one book on the planet will have a cover I’m happy with.

Stupid, Giant, Magic Tree…

This Is Your Nose. This Is Your Nose On The Grindstone. Any Questions?

It turned out to be one of those things were people say they need work done on something fast, but then kind forget for a while that you’re the one will do it, then suddenly remember again and come back to you on it.

So after several days of silence, the non-fiction children’s book is a go, and I have, I’ve been told, until the 5th of September to finish the first draft. As Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy would say, “Hm. Tricky.”

Still, it can be done, and in a way it’s not all bad. The looming deadline (For which I am in no way responsible, I love it when that happens) means that they know their time is finite and can’t be wasted, and these people have worked under the constraints of television production, so they know that you can’t really afford to much around too much. The upshot of all this translates into, “Any changes or suggestions they make will be fairly reasonable, and they won’t be making changes just for it’s own sake, because they don’t want their deadline to slip.”

So it’s off to work for me.

Why I Shouldn’t Be In An Adventurer’s Group

If, like the 80′s cartoon Dungeons & Dragons I were to find myself magically transported to a strange D20 based fantasy world, I think it would have catastrophically bad consequences for the party I end up in.

Witness my first encounter with the group alchemist:

Me: So you’re the alchemist, huh?

Him: Aye. I use these reagents and other elements in my magic.

Me: [Sniffing at a leaf that strongly resembles a marijuana plant] Hey, what’s this?

Him: Ah, that is a weed that lay people refer to as Daze-stock.

Me: Hm. Fascinating. Has anyone ever tried smoking it?

Him: What?

Me: [Slapping forehead] Amateurs… Hey, you, totally hot Elven magic girl, come here.

Her: Yes?

Me: Give me some of that parchment.

Her: If you wish, strange one, but it won’t do you any- WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?

Me: [Ripping parchment into small, rectangular strips] It’s… uh… Magic from the land I come from.

Him: Strange magic indeed, strange one. How does it work?

Me: Okay, so first we take these leaves off the po-… Daze-Stock, sorry, and then we-

[30 Minutes Later]

Me: [Taking a drag and passing it over] So? What do you think?

Him: [Scrunches face. Breaks down into hysterical laughter]

Her: I feel so… Free. And… tingly!

Me: Where?

Him: [Still laughing hysterically, tears are streaming from his eyes]

Her: Everywhere!

Me: You should dance topless.

Her: Okay! [She does it, accidently casting a minor light spell on her pants in the process. It causes her crotch to glow] Oops! I’ve got magic in my pants!

Me: [Staring slack jawed] You certainly do… Hey, stupid useless bard, come over here. Let me teach you a tune called Stairway To Heaven…

Him: [Recovering from laughter] This is strange magic indeed… [Starts giggling]

Me: Wait till you see what can be done with that Peyote of yours…

Him: What?

Me: Sorry, “desert-star”.

Him: Tell me more, strange one.

Me: Bard, scratch that. I’ll teach you Break On Through instead…

I Finished Killer 7!

And haven’t the faintest idea what happened.

If Salvador Dali had access to a development team and put Andy Warhol in charge of the art design with Fredrico Fellini directing the cutscenes, and John Woo in charge of some of the gun coreography, you might just vaguely have an idea of what the experience of the game was like. Just when you think you’re on the verge of understanding what the hell is going on, Dali pops up and puts an egg in your mouth, then screams “CHOCOLATE! EVERYWHERE!” and does a Riverdance on your feet while smelling his armpit.

Just thought I’d share that.

Random Fear Of The Day: What if I write my children’s book next and the fates see fit to make that a big seller? Will I have to go the rest of my life being known as “That wonderful children’s author” when the reality is I’d rather find out a kid’s online nickname and blow his head off repeatedly with a sniper’s rifle until he logs off and runs screaming to his mommy for emotional support? Ah heck, I’ll do that anyway…