I will be busy this week, running a larp at The Wayfinder Experience’s staff week. I’m afraid that this means that I’m unlikely to post anything this week. I know I’d only just gotten back into the rhythm of posting twice a week, but don’t worry. I’ll be back. Until then, enjoy yourselves, and maybe check out the beautiful cyberpunk hack of Lady Blackbird, Always/Never/Now.
Flash Fiction: What Have I Done?
This week’s (second) flash fiction is brought to you courtesy of Chuck Wendig’s challenge on terribleminds. I rolled randomly and got “An accident occurs which may be no accident.” My first attempt started going somewhere but ultimately bored me. My second attempt was, I think, much better. Also potentially disturbing.
Enjoy.
Flash Fan Fiction? Have Some Zelgan
You can thank FigmentForms for this one. Despite my love of other people’s works and my love of writing things, I have never before, to the best of my knowledge, written fan fiction. Unless you count works based on RPGs that I’ve run or played in, in which case I’ve been doing it for a while?
Anyway. FigmentForms has a beautiful comic which is itself fanfic, exploring an alternate Hyrule in which Zelda and Ganondorf consider marrying one another for reasons of state. This is the link to the chronological archive. This is a link to the “all things Zelgan” section, which encompasses others’ work as well. I had not even thought of Zelgan as a thing until I read this comic, and now I eagerly await every new installment. If you like Zelda games, or like pretty art, I strongly suggest checking it out.
This piece tickled me this morning, and I’ve been happily writing it on and off all day. It’s set some time after the current state of the comic (#63 at time of post) and explores what happens shortly after Rinku gets her hands on some bombchus, though it focuses more on Zelda and Ganondorf than on Rinku.
Enjoy!
The Story of a Sword
I had an idea a while back, something that came to me while I was lying in bed at night. It’s an unfortunately productive time for my imagination, when I’d like to sleep but instead often come up with story ideas. Then I struggle to record them and whatever resonance they hold for me before they slip away, and when I wake in the morning and stare at whatever I’ve written down I have to wonder why I thought it was a good idea.
Wait, no, I’m mixing this idea up with many others that I have. *This* one came to me while I was supposed to be listening to a presentation. I promptly jotted it down on my phone and emailed it to myself. Anyway, I’ve elaborated on what I think the opening of the story is and I’ll share that opening scene with you today. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not, it’ll probably change… but first you’ll have a chance to enjoy it.
The Nice Guys
The tag line really shouldn’t surprise you. I certainly wasn’t surprised by the fact that the same director (Shane Black) did Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I wasn’t surprised because The Nice Guys is a fundamentally similar movie: grim and irreverent, full of dark humor, with heroes who just aren’t that heroic. The intrigue our protagonists investigate is convoluted and seedy, they wind up in trouble way above their pay grade, and nobody comes up smelling like roses. Like I said, they’re very similar movies. Whatever its faults may have been, I liked Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I can say the same thing about The Nice Guys.
Good News & Current Projects
I’m settling back in to the East coast, my body is on the mend, and I’m waiting to find out whether or not I’m about to get sick again. So far so good!
I don’t have a new fiction post for you today, or a new review, but I can tell you all about a fun thing that I’m doing for The Wayfinder Experience (a large scale improv theater summer camp… aka LARP camp for kids). I wrote a game at the beginning of this year that loosely uses the setting of the stories Trouble Close Behind, Bloody Expanse, and Hot Mess, and which follows the events of Bloody Expanse by seeing what happens to the town of Shepherd’s Brook many years later. Read on for more details!
Reunions!
Fun fact. I graduated from college five years after I graduated from high school. This means that all those big 5, 10, etc year reunion things fall on the same calendar year for me. This is a bit awkward, as you might imagine, when it comes to planning.
When I’m also recovering from mono during the same stretch of time that all of those reunions are happening… well. My apologies for continuing to be slow with my posts, but I’m seeing folks I haven’t seen in years and having a very good time doing so. And when I’m not doing that, I’m sleeping.
Do not fret, I’m still here. I’m simply busy. I’ll be back with you soon.
Flash Fiction: The One You Don’t Hear
Another flash fic piece for you here, using another prompt from Chuck Wendig (“It starts with a bang”). This one goes eight words over the limit, but I think it works this way. It’s in the same flooded future setting as my previous pieces about Pat & Pat, and about Latour (I Bow To None). Enjoy!
Kinky Boots
Goodness that movie was fun. If you haven’t already seen it, I’d heartily recommend it. There’s a lot to like.
I’m not even sure where to start. How about “heartwarming British comedy about saving a shoe factory by producing boots for drag queens”? I think that hits all the requisite notes without divulging any relevant details. There’s a good deal of gendered pressure and expectations in here that rings especially true of the 2000’s to me… which is funny because I know that it’s still around and still real. I guess it seems like there’s more awareness of other options these days than it felt like there was at that time? Or maybe I’m more aware of other options now than I was then. I don’t feel like I’m being especially clear with my words, and I’m just going to move on.
One of the things that I think I liked most about the movie is that, while the movie tries to be about Charlie Price, straight white guy, it really feels easy to me to read it as being about Chiwetel Ejiofor’s drag queen Lola — a focus that I think is made especially clear with the dance sequence on the boardwalk during the opening credits. I quite like Ejiofor in general, and I’m very happy with him in this movie.
After spending so much time last semester reading Truby’s book on the anatomy of stories (and specifically movies) I had fun looking at the film for the elements of structure he describes. It was a pleasant change from his obsession with Sunset Boulevard, which I’m now both curious about and very reluctant to watch.
Finally, yes, I’m still semi-feverish: I veer into fever at the drop of a hat, even if I don’t spend all of my time there now. And the random onset of fatigue is exciting and annoying. Nothing quite like knowing that you could hit a wall at any given moment to make you reluctant to go anywhere. I’ll do my best to keep up with posts, but I expect that my schedule will continue to be slippery while I’m sorting out my mono symptoms.
A Fever Sampler
Still feverish, though not as bad.
But while I’ve had this fever (and haven’t been writing my regular posts) I’ve watched and read several things that you might like to hear about.
First, Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is incredible. It’s coarse and dirty and poignant and magical and HOT DAMN. It tells the story of a group of caravan guards, and of those amongst them who are both human and more than human. Nate, I think you are basically required to read this. For the rest of you, to paraphrase Gabriel Squalia, “Hi, I’m Henry White and you should read Kai Ashante Wilson.”
I think I need to read that book again to figure out who the narrator really is. And figure out how Wilson works so well with disparate timeline inclusions.
Second, I saw Red Tails because I really wanted to see WWII planes, and because the story of the Tuskegee airmen seems like such a rich vein. While I certainly got to see WWII planes, Red Tails was about as disappointing as the many reviews had said it would be. It’s not that they were working with a lack of talent, because that cast was about as awesome as you could ask for. But somehow a story that could have been incredible came off feeling trite. You could see most of the character and plot beats coming from a distance, and they rarely felt very exciting. So I had fun watching planes zoom around in the sky, and wondered how it was that they had turned one of the most impressive feats of military aviation history AND of resistance to institutional racism into “just another feel-good war movie.” Oh well.
Fistful of Wits 