| Review Time: The Darkest Hour |
[Jan. 3rd, 2012|02:13 am] |
It isn't often that a movie is so unambiguous about its quality, or lack thereof. Disappointments like the Burton version of Alice in Wonderland and the Tron remake have qualities that earn them some partial redemption (some delightful costumes in the former, the bastard lovechild of David Bowie and Eddie Izzard running a nightclub in the other). Really awesome movies, likewise, tend to come with a few flaws that show that nothing's perfect.
The Darkest Hour bucks this trend in presenting a nearly uniform level of quality throughout all aspects of the film. It's too bad that level is closer to Manos: The Hands of Fate than it is to The Dark Knight.
I hate this movie. I can't say that about many movies, even in the worst of them there's something I can laugh at, enjoy the sheer awfulness of it all. But The Darkest Hour removed even that little joy and left me bitterly waiting for the movie to end, easily predicting who survives, who doesn't, and desperately wishing there was a hand-written apology by the director at the end of the credits. I'm sure this opinion will change when the makers of Rifftrax get their hands on this, because I know the talented minds there are far better than me at picking hilarity out of crap than I am.
Why do I hate it so much? Well, it's not just the fact that the characters, the action, the motivations and the aliens were all such a colossal pile of fail and plot-holes. It's the fact that they almost weren't. The movie teased me. I went in there with no expectations, fully prepared for a mindless, alien-invasion themed romp where people got ashed in entertaining fashions. Not only did it fail to provide even that, but before disappointing even those low expectations, the movie cleverly raised my hopes with slight hints that there might be quality at some point. It hurt, it actually makes me want to yell at everyone who had any say in the making of this film, to ask them what the hell they were thinking.
Quick warning, there are spoilers below. But really, the movie is just so terrible, I fail to see how I could 'ruin' it any worse than it already is by revealing plot and character details below. So, because I like to figure out why I get pissed off at the things I do, here's some specific explanations of just why this movie sucks...
( More ranting beneath ) |
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| The project of a million names |
[Dec. 18th, 2011|08:56 pm] |
I admit, I'm not the best at naming things. One of my earliest stories, something that I actually no longer have any copy of, was merely an anagram of my own name. The first RPG campaign I ran was called 'The Coming of the White Wyrm', which in retrospect sounds more like the title of a 70's BDSM flick. If Rhi and I ever have kids, she'd have to stop me from compulsively trying to change their names five or six times in their first decade of life.
Even so, while the actual label I use for any given project, I firmly believe the material contained within is made of nothing but pure Awesome. Because somehow, fate decided that my body would naturally produce that substance as a normal byproduct of the digestion of ramen and fettucini alfredo. Don't ask me why, I just eat it and excrete the Awesome.
Which isn't to say the Awesome is unchanging, because let's face it, stagnation is anathema to Awesome. Thus, whenever I undergo a project, especially if it's something that lasts more than a few months, it tends to go through several metamorphoses before anything resembling a final product is achieved. Now while each incarnation is, by necessity, made of pure Awesome, that doesn't mean that each new version of the product achieves new and higher levels of Awesome. Because it does, regardless of how many physical laws that violates.
Why? Because I'm Awesome, that's why.
So anyways, this latest project of mine, something that started almost three years ago and has consumed a majority of my creative energy since then, has gone through a number of changes. It originally started as a story I used to entertain myself inside my head while working at a dull, soulless job. This is pretty much how all my projects start. In some ways this unsettles me, as it raises the question: Is a dull, soulless job a necessary catalyst in the creation of Awesome?
The accounts of one of my idols, Tanith Lee, argues otherwise. She forced herself into full-time writing because, like me, she was sick of work soul-draining jobs. Since then she's gotten out over seventy full length novels, and her shorter stories number in the triple digits. This sets a rather high bar for me, and gives me all the more incentive to reach and beat it, because I've got a lot of stories I need to tell.
The current project has gone through a few name changes, it might have a couple more, I don't know yet. For the moment it's called the Messiah in Green saga. What is it? I could give the usual litany of adjectives such as 'Awesome', 'Incredible' and 'Epic', and while all would be entirely true, it still doesn't really explain a whole lot.
Messiah in Green takes place in a world much like our own, in the city of Chicago, again almost indistinguishable from our own, at a date that, while inexact, is unmistakably modern. Barely concealed beneath the surface, however, is something very different from the world we know. Certain arrangements of shadows in an alley open to empty streets on the other which which correspond to no known maps. Something lurks beneath a pool of blood, located in a chamber far below even the lowest subways and maintenance tunnels, something which seeks to draw people into its blood 'family', willing or not. Innocuous looking machines placed at well-traveled locations pump an aerosolized powder into the air which drives people slowly insane.
Of the five books in the Messiah in Green saga, the first has been completed and is currently waiting for the proper combination of luck and perseverance to result in an opportunity for publication. Today, however, marks another milestone where, in the space of about 20 jam-packed pages of notebook paper, written in a near illegible script (Bad handwriting or secret code? You decide!), the complete plot of books two through five has been committed to paper. Before this point I had the starting and end points of the story, as well as most all the major events that would take place between the two. As of today, I now know absolutely everything that will happen, and am thus ready to start work on the second novel in the series. I will consider it a personal failing if I do not have the first draft of that completed before this time next year.
Book I: The Garden Prison
Our story follows Alexandria Delacroix, a woman who is forcibly introduced to some of the unsettling truths behind what goes on in the city. Jobless, recently homeless and looking for a comfortable place to fit in, she's taken under the wing of Mika and Sasha, the self-styled exiles of the Kossack family, an insular bloodline with a rumour-haunted past. Through these new house-mates, she discovers there are things moving beneath the metaphorical surface of the city: Maccadyne, a powerful multinational corporation whose inhuman directors seek to use the Kossack family's secrets to their own ends.
Thrust into this barely-hidden tangle of secrets and horror, Alex finds herself ripped from a reality she knew and placed into a dark reflection of the literal Garden of Eden, forced to find her own way out if she ever hopes to warn Mika and Sasha of Maccadyne's intentions.
Book II: Denizens of Steel
Having escaped from the strange alternate world known as Iedin, Alex is forced to wonder just how much of her experiences there were actually real, or if it all was just an illusion. Regardless, she and her house-mates know that the inhuman heads of Maccadyne have an unhealthy interest in them. They decide that for their own good, something must be done. No matter how unlikely the chances of success, they realize they must make an attack against the powerful corporation.
In doing so, Alex discovers a certain heritage from her possibly illusory time in Iedin, a strange new way of looking at reality and using previously hidden 'backdoors' to her own advantage, and the true, demonic visage and aims of the heads of Maccadyne.
Book III: A Martyred Innocence
After the successful rescue of a friend from the depths of Maccadyne, Alex is moved from 'forgettable tool' to 'painful irritant', and the inhuman heads of the company respond in kind. Now homeless and shattered, with Mika in a biomechanically induced coma and Sasha in the hospital, Alex has to accept help from anywhere she can just to keep herself and those closest to her alive, frantically scrambling to find a safe place from the powerful grip of the corporation. In doing so, she discovers more of Maccadyne's true aims for humanity, and just how her own experiences in the parallel world of Iedin factor into it.
To temporarily extricate herself from the dangerous attention of Maccadyne, Alex now has to rely on the aid of a self-proclaimed mad scientist who treats human flesh like clay, a cult who worships an animate shadow, and a police detective who, through tailing her and the serial-killer she's been associating with, has found hints of something decidedly abnormal going on in Chicago. Of course this help comes with certain strings attached.
Book IV: The Serpent's Fruit
To establish breathing space from the threat of Maccadyne, Alex and Mika turn to the reclusive family Kossack for shelter. Mika, one of the 'exiles' of the family, is forced to confront her own tangled bloodline's secrets, its connection to Iedin and a fall from grace which spread insanity and acts of unnatural depravity among its members.
Calling upon the family's history with the supernatural, Alex finally makes her way back to the parallel world, both to finish events she helped start in motion there, and to throw a large wrench into Maccadyne's plans for world-domination.
Book V: Lure of Damnation
It's time, the line has been drawn. The heads of Maccadyne have the will and the way to take over the world, and Alex cannot let that happen. Even with great sacrifice, she only stands a small chance at actually stopping and beheading the powerful company, but a small chance is better than none. |
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| A wild Damien appears! |
[Dec. 5th, 2011|02:07 am] |
There is a strong benefit to living with a compulsive planner and worrier: You get a little more warning time on potential future mishaps.
In this case it was the reminder that, ready or not, our lives will be drastically changing in less than a year. I've spent the last half decade living in the rather small, somewhat isolated (if you don't have a car, but still a fair trip with nasty gas prices even if you do have one) town of Whitewater, have spent a fair bit of my online time bitching about it.
Now that it's all going to be changing soon... well, I'll admit I'm not ready for it.
Thankfully since Rhi brought this up in early December, I have another five and a half months to get ready for it, as opposed to shuffling it away into a mental no-go zone and suddenly realizing it a week before I move.
First off the bad stuff: It's not going to be an easy move. Leaving alone the fact that we aren't fully sure what vehicular means we'll be taking from one location to the other, there's plenty of other stuff to worry about. Money's not going to be easy, we're kind of treading financial water as it is, and both a location and a job switch will result in some necessary sinking. Interim housing is a concern: Rhi graduates in the spring, whatever stipends and housing allowances she's earned won't come until next fall, that leaves a few months where we're going to be in limbo, as it were, and have a cat to worry about to boot.
All of that is both dependent upon, and in the shadow of the biggest concern: We're not yet certain where we're going, though it's narrowed down to three locations for grad-school. The easiest, Milwaukee, involves the least amount of stress. It'll be trivial to get our stuff and establish a living situation up there, and I'm confident in my ability to claw my way into a somewhat productive job. Chicago, the most prestigious option for Rhi, is sort of a balance of good and bad. The good: We know the city, aren't too far away, and have plenty of friends and family nearby. For Rhi, the U of Chicago is by far the best school for her academic future. The bad: For me the job situation will be a complete bitch. For Rhi, the U of Chicago is one of the most stressful, cutthroat institutions to do grad-school in. Choice number three is Santa Cruz. The good is it's a great school in a beautiful location with a not-completely-shot job market and great potential for both of us. The bad is we still don't know how we're going to afford and coordinate a cross-country trip with our possessions and a neurotic cat.
These have been our biggest worries as of late, but on the plus side it's good to get them out now when we actually have the time to deal with them.
In happier news: I'm leaving Whitewater. I'm leaving the desolate no-man's land between Milwaukee and Madison. While I don't know for sure where I'm going, know it's going to be a very rough road between here and there, I know the end result will be far better than here.
Normally I'd say something about never updating that often, and I admit I probably won't be updating much after this either. I kind of curl into my own little hermitage out here, and will likely do so again between now and when I actually move out. I have a full-time job that saps my energy, for the sake of my sanity and feelings of self-validation, I dedicate most of what's left into insular, creative pursuits. While I have hope for the coming changes, until then my situation here won't change.
So this isn't a completely miserable update: While I consider this section of my life sort of 'meh', with the bright spots of mah Rhi being beyond awesome and wonderful and helping keep me sane, occasional talks with the best goddamn little sister in the world, and the sporadic ability to bury my occasional depressive fits in drawing and writing... I can now see an end to several of the more pressing 'meh' elements, and beginning a leg of my life's journey that promises to be an exciting change in environment and mindset. |
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| A novel update (yay puns!) |
[Sep. 18th, 2011|02:25 pm] |
For those who don't follow Facebook: I've completed the first draft of The Garden Prison, book one of the Messiah in Green saga. While initially clocking in at about 175,000 words, I have no idea how much and which direction that's going to change when I get finished with the proofreading/editing process.
Here's about as much of a teaser as I can give in a public venue without damaging future publishing prospects:
( Holy hell it's a chapter! ) |
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| I like Lexx: An Overview |
[Aug. 16th, 2011|12:39 am] |
Science fiction has generally never been the most popular genre in a general sense. While there have been a few exceptions that have become staples of popular culture, even that popularity is somewhat backhanded. Where someone can be wholly into sports, cars, or what have you and still be considered stereotypically acceptable, if someone's an avid follower of a certain sci-fi series, they'll inevitably get saddled with labels such as 'geek' and 'nerd', and at best their interests will be viewed as slightly eccentric as opposed to perfectly acceptable.
This isn't a rant about any perceived injustice in culture. I really don't care enough about popularity or social acceptability to place that much importance on it. It's more of a poorly constructed segue into my main point:
Any given example of sci-fi is, at best, an unexpectedly popular phenomenon in general culture, to be enjoyed, but a further study and obsession with looked upon as unusual. Being human with an insatiable need to categorize things, I tend to put science-fiction into three levels of popularity. The highest tier is that sci-fi which manages to become popular in general society and, at least for a while, become a regular fixture in pop culture. This is the level inhabited by things such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and arguably series like the new Dr. Who and the latest incarnation of Battlestar Galactica.
The second tier is occupied by those series and creations which, while having strong followings of their own, aren't generally well known among popular culture. A bit above cult, a bit below mainstream. A few good examples of this are series and movies like Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, The Fifth Element, the old Battlestar Galactica, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (any version, really), and Mystery Science Theater 3000, possibly even Farscape.
The third tier is pretty much anything below this that has seen international release. The 'cult' stuff that is not quite popular enough to even achieve the level of 'cult classic'. In my own ranking, Lexx falls somewhere near the top of this tier. It ran for four seasons on both Showtime and the Sci-Fi channel, had very brief bouts of popularity, but if you ask any non sci-fi fan, and even a decent number of sci-fi fans, they've never heard of it.
It's also easily my favourite sci-fi series in the history of ever. I fell in love with it back in my teenage years when my parents happened to watch portions of seasons 1 through 3, then re-discovered my love for it when Rhi and I went through an extended marathon through all of it. Now, being the prying little twit I am, I'm going to try and figure out just what it is about this series that so completely earned by love.
( Yeah, spoilers and stuff ahead... )
Well, that's pretty much all I have for the moment. I'm thinking about doing more of these, as this is the series I fanwhore over everything else, and there does seem to be a lack of in-depth analysis of the Lexx-verse. I think I'll start doing different looks into the cultures, technologies, organizations, general themes, science and philosophy, all of it. |
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| Damien: The Visual History |
[Aug. 10th, 2011|04:09 pm] |
I check myself out in the mirror a lot. Sometimes it's because I'm bored and just looking at various parts of my body. Sometimes, usually directly following strenuous physical exertion, it's to remark that under the influence of endorphins, I'm really fucking hot. Sometimes its to wish I had some more curves to address my often resurfacing gender ambiguity. But one thing I have noticed is that I have a lot of scars on nearly every major part of my body. The thing is that you can tell a lot about a person's history by the visual/physical effects the world's left on them over the years.
So without further ado, I present to you a massively disorganized and incomplete visual history of my body through a series of snapshots of various scars...
( Lotsa pictures, including the very rare Boy nip-slip )
Not pictured:
1) Several hernia scars that are disturbingly close to my groin, I don't quite hate you all that much.
2) A small scar on the back of my head when I had an operation for cranial meningitis while I was a toddler. At least they tell me it's a surgical scar, to this day I have the occasional urge to shave my head and see if I've got a trio of 6's tattoed back there. |
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| Rant: I'd like to support Obama for reasons not based on fear, please. |
[Aug. 2nd, 2011|02:07 am] |
Three years in, it should be enough time to make a somewhat reasonable assessment on a president's performance, yes? Let's face it, the last year will likely be purely gearing up for the election, thus near the end of year three you should be able to look back at the Commander in Chief's record and say with some authority that this is what their goals are when not pandering for re-election. And where does that leave us with Obama?
Well... not very promising, I'm sad to say.
( I guess I'm a bad liberal ) |
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| Despite social anxiety, Damien still aspires to be a revolutionary demagogue. |
[Jun. 14th, 2011|07:31 pm] |
Yes, I will suddenly update out of nowhere with little to no explanation of a sudden rant.
I have social anxiety disorder. I admit right off the bat that this is a self-diagnosis, as I have never gone in and had a proper examination over it, but more on that in a moment. The confidence behind this conclusion was the ever-reliable method of online self-testing. On the wide spectrum that makes up general anxiety disorders, my own neuroses seem to be focused in the areas of speaking on the phone, and easily triggered guilt over social situations that involve any possibility of disappointing people and/or being judged. To the point where I can occasionally get completely unreasonable fears of judgment in completely inappropriate social situations, hampering my ability to do a lot of basic things such as calling strangers, confronting anyone over a wide range of subjects, and occasionally just going out and doing stuff.
Unfortunately I have no professional opinion backing this up because, as earlier stated, I've never been officially diagnosed. I don't have the money, let alone the time off of work, to set up and attend a psychiatric appointment to set my suspicions in stone or debunk them once and for all. So I'm forced to settle for living with my neuroses, accepting that if I want to survive, support myself and those around me, any health and mental issues that aren't at the levels of 'severely debilitating at this very moment' or 'life-threatening' are going to indefinitely be shoved onto the back-burner.
And I'm one of the luckier ones in this country.
There are plenty of folk out there dealing with much worse problems, who can't do a thing about it because every bit of money they make is dedicated towards keeping them and their families fed, keeping a roof over their heads and maintaining the vehicle that gets them to and from their under-paying, opportunistic employers. Like me, everything that's not a broken limb, punctured organ, or cancer (and sometimes even cancer, if it's not immediately debilitating) will get put on the back-burner in the name of living day to day.
And for most, there is little chance of ever getting out of this style of living. Theoretically one could be able to save a little money now and again, building up until then can propel themselves to a higher standard of living in one lump sum. But even that's gambling on the very slim possibility that nothing expensive will break down, whether its their car, their living situation, or their bodies. It's a self-sustaining cycle: Living on crap wages means nothing that's an immediate problem gets pushed aside out of sheer necessity. Except all that does is ensure the little problems that could be solved now with a little spare cash, get the opportunity to grow into much more expensive problems down the line. The twinge in a factory-worker's back that could have been taken care of with a little physical therapy turns into chronic back-pain and permanently warped muscles/bones a couple years down the line. The slight rattle your car makes going down the road that could be fixed at a small cost now turns into a permanently stalled engine later.
We're constantly forced to choose between making these small, preventative investments, or getting food on the table, making next month's rent, ensuring our children get a trip to the pediatrician. Since we don't know which initially small problems will go away on their own, which ones will eventually grow into big expensive problems later, even paying those preventative costs is a gamble of sorts, thus the need for food, a place to live, become more immediately important, and the small problems get ignored. Then, a little ways down the line, enough of these small problems turn into big problems which handily wipe out what little you've managed to save up... if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, they turn out to be far more expensive than what your pitiful wages are capable of addressing, and then you're just fucked.
A vast majority of Americans live this way. Our entire lives are a gamble against the odds against expensive problems suddenly cropping up at some point. It's a fool's bet, and virtually everyone is going to lose out in the end because, hey, shit happens. This is not a choice we make: Most simply know no other way of living, and for the few of us who do, we're to busy simply trying to survive to actually put any real work towards changing the system. We're all caught in the same rut.
And for those who do have the power to do something about it? The inherited rich, the political elite, and the top of the corporate food chain? A majority of them have no interest in changing the situation. A populace grinding along for shit wages with little hope of advancement, too tired from the struggle of survival to sit back, look around and realize just how badly they're getting screwed, makes the rich a lot richer. Thus the entire system is tilted towards keeping the poor, poor, the rich very rich. Don't believe me? Take a look at the facts:
- It's much more expensive being poor than rich. The rich person can afford to spend a couple hundred to get that twinge in their back looked at now and taken care of, the poor person cannot, and several years down the line is forced into thousands of dollars in medical debt as that twinge develops into something more serious.
- The rich person, unless they're exceedingly stupid, never has to worry about their bank account going low. The poor person can go into the red completely unexpectedly through the process of normal bill paying, and suddenly get hit with a forty-dollar overdraft fee with every necessary purchase they make.
- The rich person can get their car completely looked over should something sound out of place, the poor person is forced to ride their vehicle into the ground, then shovel out cash for either massive repairs, or a new vehicle altogether, when the old inevitably breaks down.
- Finally, take a look at interest rates. Of course everyone already know the issues with credit and the debt that can quickly accrue from that, as well as the financial troubles a poor credit rating can bring, but look at it from the other end: Once you have several million in the bank, you can actually live comfortably off the interest alone, making near a thousand dollars a week without lifting a finger. How many low-end jobs pay that well?
A large part of the problem is that people simply don't know any better. Most think and accept that this is just the way things are supposed to be. I'm not one of those people, I know there are better ways of doing things out there, you don't need to look much further than the rest of the First World.
I work a telecommuting job. It's not a very good job, yet it's still one of the best jobs I've ever had. While I'm daily forced to deal with my phobia of speaking with strangers on the phone, I'm at least not putting my long-term physical health on the line, and the job's close enough that, if necessary, I can walk there. I'm one of the lucky ones. Due to my position, I make a whopping ten dollars an hour, as opposed to the seven-twenty five an hour most people make. Not bad wages for a dinky desk job, right?
In the typical European country, a grocery bagger will make an average of twelve dollars an hour. A grocery bagger also has full government health coverage for less out of their paycheck than me for my piss-poor coverage. A grocery bagger will keep their coverage if they lose their job, will be guaranteed housing and enough food to survive if they can't get a new job for years. This is more than a lot of people in the US who actually have jobs can get.
If I miss more than eight days for anything other than childbirth, a death in the family, or signed doctor's notes for some nasty medical issue, I'm fired, end of story. If I work here for a full year, then and only then am I entitled to give whole days of paid vacation.
That grocery bagger? On average, at least a month's worth of paid sick and personal days right from the start of their employment, as well as indefinite unpaid days off without fear of punitive action so long as they can still do their job well. They are guaranteed paid breaks and adequate lunches, we have to start class action suits to stop wage-garnishment for going to the bathroom once or twice in an eight hour shift.
There was a recent affair in the news about how Ikea, the overseas furniture manufacturer, opened up a new plant in the states. Almost immediately reports started pouring in about the abysmal working conditions in the plant compared to its European siblings: Draconian sick-day policies, lack of health care, horrible pay, inadequate breaks. I remember looking at this, digging into the specifics, and realizing the conditions at this plant were no different than the conditions of every factory I've worked in. Europe views our working conditions the same way we view the working conditions of illegal immigrants picking oranges ten hours a day for fifty cents an hour: Effective wage-slavery.
But surely this sort of coddling of the opportunistic plebian labourer can only spell economic wore for their host country as the workforce turns into a bunch of welfare leeches, right? Let's take a look at Germany, one of the highest ranked countries in terms of workplace benefits. It turns out that not only does Germany have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, they are statistically proven to be one of the most productive and profitable countries in the world per-worker , and more economically stable than a vast majority of the world. It turns out, when you give workers good reasons to work, rather than the threat of "Eat shit from us or be homeless," the people worker harder and better.
Now the employment situation is just one single flavour in the grand banana split of what is wrong with this country. The strawberry goop next to the pineapple topping of government catering to private interest, the chocolate syrup of culturally ingrained racism and sexism, the sliced bananas of religious bigotry and homophobia, the ice cream dollops of aggressive military imperialism.
Do I hate my job? Yes, but that's not saying a lot. There are almost no employment prospects for me in this state, let alone in this country I wouldn't quickly end up despising. The problems of this job are merely symptomatic of the accepted norm in this country: Government's complete unwillingness to step in the way of the profit-making schemes of corporations, no matter how much it hurts the average worker. Remember Ikea? Why did they suddenly deviate so widely from their normal so widely from their standard conditions in Europe as soon as they opened up a plant in America? Suddenly treating their workers like crap? Because there was no law against them doing so, and thus they took the easiest route to quickest profit, fucking the average labourer over in the process. The system is tailor-made to keep the lower class into effective wage-slavery, with little to no chance of advancement from their current, miserable struggle to merely survive.
I'm more than ready to rebel.
I've often complained, angsted over the fact that I could never seem to find goals in my life worth fighting for, worth living for. I love to write, draw, and otherwise make things, but that only expresses my creative side, and does little to address my massive discontent with this country. I fight for those I love, but that's such a broad subject, the goals changing just as fast as life throws new problems their way. But this is something consistent. The screwing over of the common people has not changed and will not change without angry voices and demonstrations showing that we are not content with this.
I want to be one of those voices. I want to be one of the visible, the people forcing those in power, whether corporate or political, to acknowledge their actions (or lack thereof) are hurting people, and will have consequences for them. I want to be the voice of the discontent, the disregarded, to be the angry loud punk fighting for positive social and economic change.
Yes, I may run into trouble. Yes, I may be villified, my name dragged through the mud, assaulted or worse as those with money move to crush what disturbance I cause. That's alright, I can accept these consequences, because for me, this is something worth fighting for. I might not be the brightest, most talented, or socially brave, but I have got a lot of anger, frustration, and people I love going through the same, and I want to raise some hell for them, for everyone who has to deal with this shit. |
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| Better Worlds |
[Apr. 20th, 2011|04:13 pm] |
I've done a bit of soul-searching, spent a lot of time looking up information on the subject. I'm a writer (and a sketcher, but that's a different topic), a good deal of my creative energy goes towards that end. Now recently, as in the past few months, I haven't posted much of anything new. It didn't mean I haven't been working, just that I was intent on getting something published. This prevented me from posting my material online due to a concept known as 'First Rights'. Basically, as author of my own work, I get to decide how to initially disseminate it. This decision, however, will greatly impact my prospects of ever getting that work published.
If I chose to post my material on a publicly accessible location online, I could kiss my chances of getting published goodbye. No reasonable publisher would want to touch my work, go through the effort of printing and advertising it, when anyone with an internet connection and the ability to hit ctrl-c ctrl-v could get it and reproduce it for free. So for the longest time I kept my most recent material completely offline, hoping to be able to catch a publisher's eye when I completed something, and possibly even make a profit from it.
Recently I've been re-thinking this strategy. First off, publishing's a rather competitive field, the chances of me actually getting my work accepted by a reputable label and getting it into bookstores is slim to none. The chances of doing so without having my work mildly to heavily altered by editors to better fit their target markets are absolutely zero. So if I were going into this with the aim of making a profit, I'm being kind of retarded about it.
Then I wondered, why am I going into this? Sure, I love writing, and I'll continue to do that no matter what happens with my work, but why am I so intent on getting it mass-produced? And on top of that, why am I going through the gambling route of seeking traditional publishing when much better and more assured (if less profitable) routes exist? I finally came to the conclusion that I don't have a good reason. Profit is a tertiary motive behind my writing, at the very best. So why do I want it to be mass produced?
Because I'm a huge attention whore, that's why.
Because I want complete strangers to be reading my stuff, I want to get notifications and comments out of the blue about how people love my stuff, or hate my stuff, about how it saved their marriage, accidentally summoned demons in their foyer, or somehow gave them cancer. Ideally, I'd love to be able to go to a bookstore and see my stuff on the shelves, but that's unlikely to happen even under the best of circumstances, and I'd have better luck just printing the stuff out myself sneaking it into the local Barnes & Noble.
I've decided, fuck it. My goal is to be seen by as many people as possible, so I'm going to do that. I'm once again putting all of my stuff online, I'm setting up a new wiki to collect everything together, and even inviting similarly minded people to join up and post their own stuff. I'll spam it all over the internet, and if fate and luck decide it, I'll become absurdly popular that way, rather than by jumping through publishing hoops. Profit was never my motive in the first place, after all. And if I (or others) really, desperately want to have a printed version of my stuff, I'll just throw together some cover art, go through a vanity publisher... and maybe get a few copies to secretly stick in bookstores while I'm at it. |
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| I'm as mad as hell... |
[Mar. 14th, 2011|02:19 am] |
Let's face it, I've been pissed off with recent events. A lot of people have. From the fetid abortion of a bill getting pushed through in Wisconsin, to the corporate takeover of Michigan towns, to the blatant disenfranchising of younger voters in New Hampshire. There's plenty of material going around that seems tailor made to infuriate any thinking person. Now if only there were more thinking people out there, we could actually do something about it.
Still, even the best of us occasionally lose sight of the Randian forest for the individual Koch trees. I took a step back from the multiple instances of Republican and corporate douchebaggery to look at the country as a whole, to try and figure out just how it all fit together. Not in terms of a conspiracy theory, mind you, conspiracies tend to be hidden, while this is occurring in plain sight. Well, perhaps it's for the better that most people just focus on fighting what's going on locally rather than looking at the big picture, because the big picture is something nasty enough that it can simultaneously remove all hope from those who oppose it, and cause aneurysms nation-wide thanks to the sheer amount of rage it will cause.
( Sim City 3000 prophesied the fall of the US. I know, I've read books. )
I'm a human being, god damnit, my life has value. |
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onikoneko's journal