The Nice Guys

Posted on by Henry

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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.

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Good News & Current Projects

Posted on by Henry

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!

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Reunions!

Posted on by Henry

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

Posted on by Henry

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!

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Kinky Boots

Posted on by Henry

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

Posted on by Henry

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.

You’re Listening to Fever 103, WFVR

Posted on by Henry

The go to spot for all your disassociated ramblings, muscle aches, and profound desires to just get the hell back into bed if only you hadn’t sweated through all your sheets.

Yes, that was my temp this morning. I’ve cooled considerably since then, but I expect it will continue to be an adventure. I’ll resume the regular schedule some time soon, I swear.

You know, something about this made up radio station tickles my fancy. Maybe I’ll play around with it.

Depth-Based Adventure Sites

Posted on by Henry

This gallery contains 4 photos.

Originally posted on Monster Darlings:
Many of us know the joy of describing a complex dungeon and watching our friends studiously attempt to chart it out on graph paper, in many cases distorted by the “picture-telephone effect.”  And mapping out a dungeon can be serious fun for a DM.  But sometimes, adventurers want to explore…

Still Busy: Have A Paper On Lloyd Alexander and Characters’ Emotional Growth

Posted on by Henry

I don’t know if you want to read about how Lloyd Alexander constructed emotional transformation for his characters, but I wrote a paper fanboying about it last fall. I don’t want to fall out of the habit of posting something, even if I’m too busy to write a new post, so I’ll share that paper with you instead. I’m not sure how well the formatting has survived the transition. It looks legible from where I sit. Cross the vast gap of this break to enjoy it.

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End of Semester Delays

Posted on by Henry

My posting won’t go back to normal for the next two weeks, I think. I’m too distracted by the things I have to finish for my last two sets of classes.

On the up side, I have had a chance to look at lots of books recently, and I have a few to recommend.

Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is a fun story in an awesome fantasy setting. My only reservations revolve around how it follows a bunch of romance genre conventions in a way that I find a little less appealing. This isn’t because I have something against good romance work — I love Bujold’s romance stories — but because I don’t like the dynamic between the two romance leads as much as I like the rest of the story. And to be clear, most of the story isn’t very heavy on the romance. But it is definitely there.

Hmm, that sounds less like the recommendation I thought I was writing and more like a warning. It’s a fun book, and I *do* recommend it. It has an Eastern European setting with witches and magic and Baba Yaga type stuff! What more could you want? I rather enjoyed it.

And, on the picturebook front, I strongly encourage you to look at Water Is Water, published last year. It is gorgeous. It has so much detail and setting layered into each image. As a Vermonter, it gave me little nostalgic quivers. It’s worth reading.