Yearly Archives: 2015

Sleep Dep and Movies

Posted on by Henry

Hi folks!  I’ve been traveling, and if you’re familiar with my usual pattern then you know what that means.  Or you read the title of this post.

I’m now working on hour 27, with a red-eye flight as my excuse, and I have seen several more movies to talk with you about.  I don’t think I’ll be able to offer any stellar critique, but a simple yes no maybe why seems within my grasp at this point.

This time I watched Chef, Entourage, and RED 2.  I had a good time watching all of them, but had niggling feelings of doubt throughout most of them.  Chef might have had the fewest of those?  I’m not sure.

Entourage was funny, and felt like a group of totally ridiculous characters living up their ridiculousness in a larger than life fashion.  Now that I’ve looked it up and discovered that it came from a TV show of the same name which I never watched, I’m considerably less surprised.  It was a good stupid movie, and it might have been better than that but I have no idea because I was very tired at the time that I watched it.  On the plus side, it has Constance Zimmer (in a minor role, but Agents of Shield has taught me that Constance Zimmer is great).

RED 2 was basically what I’d expected, if not quite as good as I’d hoped; it’s a slightly different (and maybe not-quite-as-good) version of the original.  It’s funny that I should downplay it, as I quite enjoyed it, but even though I like its developments I’m not sure it measures up to the zest and pep of the first.  It felt like some of the original’s style was missing, though I liked Mary-Louise Parker’s character’s obsession with getting deeper into the world of spies and murder.  That felt fitting, and made a lot of excellent things possible.

And Chef… was way more of a feel-good movie than I’d expected.  I rather liked it.  It was very much a “man and his son” narrative, but it was a charming one.  Plus, I like food.

Okay, and now I’m going to stagger off and try to keep my eyes open until it’s bedtime.  My upcoming posts may be patchy as the holidays approach, but I may have some fun creative stuff to share at some point in there.

Spectre

Posted on by Henry

I don’t feel just one way about Spectre; I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m ambivalent, since I did enjoy it overall, but … well, let me think through this with you.

First, perhaps most superficially, the intro song and credit sequence didn’t do it for me.  It had a hard act to follow given Skyfall’s opening, so I’ll give it that, but it felt pretty meh.

Plot-wise, Spectre builds on all of the little dribs and drabs of plot that were left hanging in the previous three movies (all the Daniel Craig ones: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall).  This meant that I felt a little lost going into it without having seen the others recently, but when I think back on the events of the previous movies I think the requisite hooks were there.

The Daniel Craig Bond films walk a tightrope that previous Bond films haven’t really walked before.  What I mean is, it’s unusual for a Bond movie to consistently build on what’s come before in any way, so this is a bit strange.  Personally, I think they could have done better.  They laid the groundwork for this film to some extent, but it seems like they sacrificed some continuity and clarity for the sake of trying to make more traditionally individualized Bond films along the way.  Of course, if they’d done less of that, then perhaps I’d be upset about how they undid the Bond movie traditions.

So Spectre is a bit of an odd fish.  It has excellent scenes, moments in which the movie offers up the beautiful set pieces that I’ve come to hope for (and even expect) from good Bond films.  But it also feels like it fumbles itself together at times, tries to make itself one whole thing out of a number of disparate scenes that needed just a little more narrative glue to make it all gel.

I have more thoughts to share, but…

There are *SPOILERS* after this mark.

Continue reading →

Zombies in the Vineyard: a DitV hack

Posted on by Henry

Dogs in the Vineyard is an indie RPG created by Vincent Baker; it has an unusual set of dice mechanics for its conflict resolution, and as part of that it encourages players to take turns shaping the game’s narrative.  While it certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I have had a lot of fun with it.

It’s also highly moddable, much like other Vincent Baker games (Apocalypse World being a prime example).  While the DitV sourcebook describes a Wild West setting full of civil and religious strife, I’ve heard or seen others using the system to play in mafia-based story lines, Star Wars settings, feudal Japan, or even The Matrix.  And Baker hacked his own system to tell horror stories, in Afraid in the Vineyard.

So of course someone decided to modify things a little further to turn it into a storytelling system that would allow you to play in a classic zombie movie.  Sadly, while they’ve playtested their zombie hack, the ruleset that I was able to find online is nowhere near final.

I’m going to cobble something together from those notes as best as I can, and when I’ve done that I’ll share the result with you.  If you’re already familiar with DitV and Afraid, maybe you’ll enjoy taking a look too?

Rat Queens kicks ass

Posted on by Henry

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Have you got a hankering for classic badass swords & sorcery adventures?  How about a comic full of that, but with four women as the central characters instead of the usual sausagefest?

Rat Queens makes me want to tell epic and gritty fantasy stories like nothing else does.  This is a comic that left me scrawling “RAT QUEENS IS INSPIRATIONAL” on random notes late at night so that I wouldn’t be able to let it pass me by.  And of course somehow I forgot to tell YOU about it.

This is where you should go to order your fix online.  If you have a decent local comic store, you should go there instead!

Holy fuck I love this comic.

Child of a Hidden Sea, by A.M. Dellamonica

Posted on by Henry

Wheee, portal fiction!  When done well, this stuff is great.  I got this book for free somehow, though I can’t remember why.  I’m glad that I did.  It’s quite enjoyable.  I’ve already seen the next book in the series in my local library, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

I don’t want to spoil the fun for you, but I do want to say a few more words in favor of you reading this book.  It’s got a female protagonist and non-hetero characters, it’s got lots of sailing and boats, and it has a climax that I found very appealing.  Lots of fun.  It’s intrigue and sea-adventure wrapped up in a portal fiction premise.  What’s not to like?

Twitter flash fic

Posted on by Henry

Sorry, I’ve spent all day reading for school and writing a paper.  But I have my Chuck Wendig-inspired #talesfromblackfriday tweet for you to enjoy:

You walk down an aisle of smiling boys labeled “Jimmy”
The sign above reads:
CLASSIC AMERICAN NUCLEAR FAMILY, 80% OFF

Going back to Lloyd Alexander

Posted on by Henry

I’d forgotten just how much I enjoyed Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three and the rest of the Prydain series when I was younger.  I think I also missed a lot of the gendered subtexts (many of which are pretty overt) when I was reading Alexander’s work the first time through.  Or rather, I didn’t pay much attention to them even though they were right up in my face.  Rereading Lloyd Alexander has been a bit strange.

I’m afraid I don’t have anything more deep for you.  I have to go back to work, reading more Lloyd Alexander and Colonial and Post-Colonial theory, and writing about both of them (though not at the same time).

Though actually, on that note, there’s an excellent quote for you from Chidi Okonkwo’s piece “Casualties of Freedom” that sums up 20th century foreign policy pretty well:

“The role of the West in Third World poverty and instability has been that of pirates who, having plundered and sunk a merchant ship take up positions along the shore and shoot any survivors trying to swim to safety.”

Jessica Jones, AKA Intense

Posted on by Henry

No spoilers here, but a trigger warning seems appropriate.  This show deals with abuse and PTSD.  It’s emotionally exhausting.  I haven’t seen the whole series all the way through; that would require far more endurance than I have, and less pursuit of other things that I enjoy.

But I can tell you that from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a really good show.  It’s intense in the kind of way that leaves me with weird twisty knotting feelings in my chest, but without pushing me so far overboard that I can’t watch at all.  It makes me want to keep watching, too.

It’s funny, it’s painful, and I think it has a far better central character and set of central struggles than did Daredevil.  In fact, I think it more or less improves on Daredevil in every way.  It isn’t perfect; there are a few narrative choices so far that I disagree with or which ring false to me but… it’s GOOD.  It’s really good.  I hope you get to watch it soon.

Oh, also, the art for the intro looks a lot like Jeremy Mann’s cityscapes, which are gorgeous.

Flash Fiction: J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations – Variation 14

Posted on by Henry

This is goofy.  I’m writing a new piece of flash fiction from Chuck Wendig’s usual challenge (I’ve skipped a few, my apologies), and, well… I’m not sure what to do.  The challenge involves using a random song as both your title and as inspiration for the piece itself.  I’ve done that before; so far, so good.

I shuffled until I got a named track (my first result was “Track 9” from an untitled trance album), and now (as you can see) I’m writing a story called J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations – Variation 14.

In case you don’t know what that sounds like, here’s a video (the piece is roughly two minutes, though the video continues afterwards).  I’ve tried embedding it, but the time-specific feature doesn’t seem to be working.

My version is played by Glenn Gould, at roughly twice that speed, clocking in at 59 seconds. Please excuse me while I stare into space and figure out what the hell this means story-wise.

Right.  Got it.  This might be a little odd, but I think it works.  Enjoy!

Continue reading →

Slushpiles and Rejection Letters

Posted on by Henry

My day today has been rather full.  After reading homework in the library, I had the privilege of spending three hours going through a slushpile for someone I know (for the uninformed, a “slushpile” is what you call the vertiginous heaps of unsolicited submissions received by agents and publishing houses).

It was enlightening, and somehow encouraging and discouraging at the same time.  It puts me in mind of the internal rejection notes from Houghton Mifflin Company that I read while doing research last spring; I found reading committee notes on why HMCo shouldn’t print Poul Anderson, Philip K Dick, or even George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square.  That’s two iconic mid-1900s sci-fi authors and the 1961 Newbery Honor recipient, all rejected with pithy and sometimes caustic internal notes exchanged between the various submissions readers.

It was enlightening because I found myself rejecting anything that didn’t closely match the guidelines I’d been given, even things that I thought might have been perfectly decent books.  There were no hard feelings, the submission simply wasn’t *exactly* what I was looking for.  It was encouraging, because a number of them weren’t very good and I’d like to think that I could do a better job than that.  And it was discouraging, because in order to submit something and get an editor you need a finished manuscript, and finishing a manuscript that would be accepted is much easier with an editor.

Basically, you could do it if they’d let you, but they won’t let you until you do it.

It’s a mess.

So, it’s time for me to figure out how to finish my work.  Again.

And if your work has been rejected by people, don’t give up.  Submit again and again and again.  Everywhere you can.  Maybe you should tweak things, but do keep trying.