#the first four years little house original series paperback | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amplesalty · 4 years

Text

Halloween 2020 - Day 1 - The Stand (1994) - Episode 1 The Plague

Gee, an epic post-apocalyptic story about an out of control pandemic. Never heard that one before.

Much as we like to tie the Halloween season to the Christmas one by opening up with a festive horror movie, why not link back to the TV binging that provided some content to this blog earlier in the year by partaking in this mini series? We’re only covering part one here today as this is like four feature length episodes. In a worst case scenario, the rest will serve as backups that I can plug in if I’m having an off day so to help me from falling behind. But ideally they’ll go up once a week on the same day as a standard movie post. You manage to go back to actually doing 31 entries for the first time in donkeys years and it all goes to your head and you suddenly think you can do 34!

This has actually been on my list for quite a while now, we do love a good (or bad) Stephen King adaptation around here and I have a distinct memory of seeing this on TV when I was a kid. I’m guessing it must have played over a few nights over here at some point or maybe over a bank holiday or something? Not that I really remember much in the way of details, just the cornfields and a creepy face which we’ll get on to.

It’s something that’s stuck with me over all these years, I actually got a copy of the book at one point in what must have been the early to mid 2000’s. Still have it actually, I dug it out for the sake of this entry. Seems it’s a version from 1980 from it’s first run as a paperback in the UK. Seems to have a page or two missing near the start in amongst all the copywright business but otherwise it’s in okay shape.

Even has some writing on the first page that I can only make out in parts, one section seems to read ‘an old man beats a mule’. Or perhaps, more pertinently to this story, a mute...

Cover seems a bit dull and non descript compared to the various other ones that have come out over the years. There’s something interesting to this original version with the two figures fighting, very much a literal take on the good versus evil nature of the story with one figure dressed in light colours and the other dark. The dark figure is wielding a scythe which is obviously closely associated with the Grim Reaper. Seems to have some form of beak sticking out of its hood too and the robes and shoes seem to be almost harlequin or jester type clothes?

I wasn’t really expecting much going into it, especially based on the 1990 mini-series of It. I think because of the nature of It being partly set in the 60’s, as well the contemporary portion which just looks very 80’s, gives it this image in my head of being very dated. Outside of a few actors like Tim Curry, John Ritter and Seth Green, there’s not really any notable stars in it either and even though, Green’s notably arguably came much later on. The Stand though? This thing has some names, even if the bigger ones are just small cameos. Amongst the main cast you’ve got Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Obviously Ringwald isn’t a massive star or anything and is only really known for that string of John Hughes movies in the 80’s but around this time was peak Sinise. He’s not long removed from starring in Of Mice and Men (...and men....and men...) and would have roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Ransom in the following years. Plus that big stretch in CSI:NY in the 00’s. But then you’ve got people like Ed Harris and Kathy Bates showing up, albeit briefly but these guys have some clout. I mean, Bates had just won the Academy Award a few years prior for her role in Misery so maybe she felt compelled to do more work under the King umbrella. Even the more minor roles seem like a roll call of ‘hey, it’s you!’ with Ken Jenkins (AKA Bob Kelso from Scrubs), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the proprietor of Joe Bob’s Drive In, Joe Bob Briggs.

The landscape of TV feels very different today with actors much more willing to work in the field as it’s taken on much more artistic integrity. The greater availability of shows after they’ve aired, be it through DVR, home media or streaming, has enabled people to watch in far greater numbers. There was a time when the big break was deemed to be making it to Hollywood and starring in motion picture epics but it seems more and more that story tellers are moving away from the relatively cramped 2 hour-ish format of the silver screen to having their vision play out over a long form story and the big name actors are following suit. I feel like things would have been very different back in the early 90’s so to have these names attached.

Seems for a long time there were plans to turn this into a movie, it’s even referred to during a ‘making of’ feature on the blu-ray (pretty much the only feature on there I might add) as a ‘motion picture epic’ but this must have been done way into production so either they were confused or trying to mislead viewers for some reason? Apparently in the early 80’s the idea was for the success of Creepshow to finance production of The Stand but took until the early 90’s for everyone to finally settle on the miniseries.

Very much a big budget affair too for a TV Show, $6m per episode. And it’s needed given the scale of the story, taking place in all these different locations, the special effetcs and with so many characters involved with over 125 speaking roles across the series. It’s definitely a jump up from It, even though that had the two different time periods, it only had a budget of $12m across its two parts compared to the $24m here across four parts.

But to finally address the massive elephant in the room, this story centers around an outbreak of a strain of influenza seemingly created in some shadowy government facility. After something goes awry in the lab, a doomed insider pleads with the guy watching the main gate to seal the facility but he instead piss bolts for his nearby house and hurriedly bundles his wife and child into their car as they make their escape. Everyone else is not nearly as fortunate though as the camera pans the facility, lifeless corpses strewn throughout that have seemingly dropped dead in the middle of their everyday activities, there’s even one guy doubled over on a ping pong table. All of this is set to the sounds of BOC’s Don’t Fear the Reaper and culminates with the image of a crow picking at a doll dropped by the child in the rush out of the front gate. The crow features prominently on the front cover of the blu-ray I have, perched atop of a skull. Though, I know they’re going for the whole post-apocalyptic vibe but what about the superflu is causing the road to burn up and crack like that? The bird also shows up a fair bit throughout the episode, I was going to talk about it being a raven and how such birds are linked with ill omen and death but it’s a crow apparently. Who knew? Not me, I’m no ornithologist. It also seems to be very closely linked with a mysterious figure that is alluded to throughout, a ‘dark man’ or monster.

When the original carrier of the disease makes his way into Arnette, Texas, and crashes into the gas station that Sinise’s character Stu Redman is working at, his dying words are of his efforts to escape from a dark man that was chasing him and that no one can out run him. Maybe in that moment you’d think this is just a state of delirium and he’s speaking oddly poetically about trying to outrun Death himself but as the show goes on, more and more people speak of this dark man, almost as if everyone in the grip of this disease comes to share this vision.

And speaking of visions, we can’t forget Mother Abigail and her cornfields. Both Lowe and Sinise’s characters are whisked away in their dreams to the middle of nowhere where a centurion on her porch warns of them of an ominous future. Think Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 only with much less chem addiction. The only thing Mama Abigail needs is her bread. What is it with King and fields anyway? You’ve got In the Tall Grass, plus the corn fields here and in Children of the Corn. There’s probably more I’m forgetting too. It’s either cornfields, writers in distress or killer ‘whatever I can see in front of me whilst I’m pitching this story’ with this guy.

In a way though it’s good that the show takes this supernatural turn because otherwise this would be a little too on the nose to be watching in this current climate. It’s very eerie to see such similar events play out on screen, starting with the widespread rumours and misinformation. It starts out innocently enough with talk of this so called superflu being downplayed, covered up by the government as an anthrax attack or outbreak of swineflu. I remember back to those more innocent times at the start of the year when COVID was naively dismissed as little more than another flavour of the month disease like the swineflu, sars or ebola that would be here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got things like the sense of paranoia suddenly surrounding a simple cough or sneeze, talks of quarantines, social distancing, the implementation of masks (which one reporter describes as not being able to stop a flu germ with a hangover) to the more disturbing scene of lethal force being used against a TV news crew who refuse to surrender footage they’ve shot of army troops disposing of bodies. Granted, we never got anywhere near that level, I think the worst we had was that guy from CNN getting arrested or that Aussie reporter being pushed over.

They even managed to mirror how universal a pandemic like this is, from the common man to the height of celebrity. One of the characters we’re introduced to is a singer who, whilst he seems to be one of the few lucky to have some immunity, still sees his mother succumb to the virus. Just like we saw with the likes of BoJo or Tom Hanks, it really is a great leveller and, as a wise man once said, ‘You might be a King or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper!’. I guess we can take solice that we haven’t quite had the societal collapse that this show manages to pull off in less than a week, with Times Square on fire and a guy running around shooting people like he’s in Falling Down. That’s not to say we wont get there, we seem to be hovering more around general civil disobedience right now with the growing frustration of lockdown and PPE spilling out into protests.

It makes for compelling viewing to see how quickly things break down from simply a man having the sniffles to people being rounded up from their homes and ushered into army vehicles. There’s a lot to take in as the show has to establish the events taking place and introducing it’s multitude of characters so there’s not really much room to breathe. Hopefully episode 2 can relax a little now and give the cast some time to grow. There’s still some standout performances though such as Redman’s growing frustration at being cooped up in a test facility, lashing out at the doctors and nurses coming in in their hazmat suits, prodding and poking him. It would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Dr. Dietz. They have one argument where they nearly come to blows before having a big showdown by the end, with the Doc being one of the last staff members left alive, seemingly crazed by their inability to find any answers in Redman’s tests and he threatens to take his frustrations out on Redman by shooting him. He might be immune to the virus but I bet he’s not immune to a bullet. Dietz starts out with this complete lack of empathy, almost to the point of having a rather cheery deposition considering the circumstances, as he finds some fascination in the speed at which the virus causes death. But he becomes more and more short tempered and threatening as the days wear on and it would have been good to see a more gradual descent.

The aforementioned Ed Harris plays General Starkey overseeing the initial bioweapon project and the fallout of it’s outbreak, perhaps overseeing to a fault as it becomes pretty clear from his ever increasing five o’clock shadow, dishevelled clothing and massive bags under his eyes that he’s slept very sparingly since the initial breach in containment. I think for the entire time we see him, his screen never changes from a shot of one of the cooks at the base of the initial outbreak slumped over, face down in the meal he was preparing. It makes a bit of a change to go from the quite verbal exchanges of Redman and Dietz to Starkey’s physical appearance and facial expressions putting across his mood.

#Halloween 2020 #Stephen King #The Stand

2 notes · View notes

innuendostudios · 5 years

Video

youtube

We’re talking about adventure games again! Or, more accurately, we’re speaking in the context of adventure games about why some genres are hard to define, different ways of thinking about genre, and what genre is even for.

If you'd like to see more work like this, please back me on Patreon! Transcript below the cut.

Hi! Welcome back to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? Meditations on the life, death, and rebirth of the adventure game.

Adventure game.

Ad. Ven. Ture. Game.

What kind of name is that, “adventure game”? It’s an atypical way of categorizing video games, I’ll say that much. We usually give game genres titles like "first-person shooter," "real time strategy," “turn-based role-playing game.” Real nuts-and-bolts kinda stuff. Meanwhile, "adventure" seemingly belongs on a turnstyle of airport paperbacks, in between "mystery" and "romance." When they slap that word on a game box, what is it supposed to communicate to us?

Other one-word genres, I can see how they get their name. A horror game is horrifying, a fighting game earns its title. But how is exploring an empty, suburban house an adventure? Why is exploring a universe not?

When I started this series, I offered up the rough-and-tumble definition of adventure game, “puzzles and plots,” and said maybe we’ll come up with a better definition later. That was… four years ago. Sorry about that. I know it’s a little late, and a lot has changed, but I did promise. So we’re gonna do it.

Today’s question is: What makes an adventure game an adventure game?

This is a tricky sort of question to ask, because, upon asking, we might stumble down the highway to “what makes an adventure novel an adventure novel?”, “what makes a rail shooter not an RPG?”, and that road inevitably terminates with “what even is genre?”, the answer to which is a bit beyond the scope of a YouTube video essay… or, it would be on anyone else’s channel, but this is Innuendo Studios. We’ll take the long road.

Welcome to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? A philosophical interrogation into the meaning of genre in and beyond the gaming idiom, with the adventure game as our guide.

***

The historical perspective reveals only so much, but it is a place to begin.

If you don’t know the story, in 1976, Will Crowther released Colossal Cave Adventure, a text-based story game set in an underground land loosely based on a real Kentucky cave system. The game would describe what was happening in a given location, and players would type simple commands to perform tasks and progress the narrative, usually a verb linked to a noun like a book that writes itself and responds to directives. This was the first of what we’ve come to call “interactive fiction.”

Crowther’s game - often abbreviated, simply, Adventure - inspired a number similar titles, most famously Zork, which was called an “adventure game” for the same reason Rise of the Triad was called a “Doom clone” - because they were more or less mechanically identical to the games they descended from. This is where the genre gets its title.

But the evolution from then to now has been oddly zero-sum, every addition a subtraction. As more and more adventure games came out, the text descriptions were eventually replaced with graphics, still images replaced with animations, the parser replaced with a verb list, and the keyboard itself replaced with a mouse. In the progression of Zork to Mystery House to King’s Quest to Maniac Mansion to Monkey Island, you can see how each link in the chain is a logical progression from the game preceding and into the one that follows. But you end up with a genre that began comprised entirely of words on a screen but that, by the early 90’s, typically possessed but did not, strictly speaking, require language. There is no question wordless experiences like Dropsy and Kairo are direct descendents of Monkey Island and Myst; that they are therefore in the same genre as Wishbringer, despite zero obvious mechanical overlap, is, for a medium that typically names its genres after their mechanics… weird.

(Also, for anyone confused: Nintendo used to delineate games that explored a continuous world from games that leapt across a series of discrete levels by calling the latter “platformers” and the former “adventures,” and an earlier game in that model was the Atari game Adventure, which was, itself, a graphical adaptation of the Crowther original, so what 90’s kids think of when they hear “a game in the style of Adventure” depends on whether they played on computer or console, but that lineage eventually embraced the even fuzzier “action-adventure” and is not what we’re here to discuss.)

So the connection between the genre’s beginnings and its current incarnation is less mechanical than philosophical. Spiritual, even. Something connects this to this, and we’re here to pin down what.

Now, you may be readying to say, “Ian, it’s clear the determinant of what is or isn’t an adventure game is pure association and there is no underlying logic, you don’t need to think this hard about everything,” which, ha ha, you must be new here. I would counter that, as soon as a genre has a name, people will (not entirely on purpose) start placing parameters around what they consider part of that genre. Even if it’s just association, there is some method to which associations matter and which ones don’t. So shush, we’re trying to have a conversation.

***

Another one-word genre named after a philosophical connection to a single game is the roguelike, christened after 1980’s Rogue. And, in 2008, members of the International Roguelike Development Conference in Berlin set about trying to define the genre. (I promise I’m not just going to summarize that one episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit.) Attendees began with a corpus of five games that, despite not yet having an agreed-upon definition, were, unequivocally, roguelikes, an attitude roughly analogous with the Supreme Court’s classification of pornography: “even if I can’t define it, I know it when I see it.” And, from these five games, they attempted to deduce what makes a roguelike a roguelike.

So perhaps we can follow their example. We’ll take a corpus of five games and see what they have in common. How about The Secret of Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Myst, Beneath a Steel Sky, and Trinity? All five visually and mechanically dissimilar - three third-person and two-dimensional, one first-person and three-dimensional, and one second-person and made of text (no-dimensional?) - yet no one would dispute they’re all adventure games.

Okay! We can see a lot of common features: dialogue trees, inventory, fetch quests. But here’s the rub: to define the genre by the first two would be to leave out Myst, and defining it by the third would leave out Gabriel Knight, and, honestly, any one of these would exclude LOOM, which I think anyone who’s played one would look at and say, “I know an adventure game when I see one.”

For the sake of inclusivity, we could go broad, as I did with my “puzzles and plots,” and, while this does include everything on our list, it also, unavoidably, includes games that provoke the wrong reaction, like Portal - “I know a puzzle-shooter when I see one” - and Inside - “I know a puzzle-platformer when I see one.” Trying to draw a line around everything that is an adventure game while excluding everything that is not is no easy feat.

The best adventure game definitions are written in a kind of legalese; Andrew Plotkin and Clara Fernandez-Vara have both tackled this, I would say, quite well, with a lot of qualifications and a number of additional paragraphs that specify what counts as “unique results” and “object manipulation.” It takes a lot of words! And no disrespect - I can’t have an opinion in less than twenty minutes anymore - but I can’t help thinking we could go about this a different way.

What the Berliners cooked up in 2008 was, instead of a lengthily-worded definition, a list of high- and low-value factors a game may have. The absence of any one was not disqualifying, but the more it could lay claim to the more a game was… Rogue-like. These were features that could exist in any game, in any genre, but when they clustered together the Berliners drew a circle around them and say, “the roguelike is somewhere in here.”

A central idea here is that the borders are porous. If we apply this thinking to the adventure game, we could say that Inside and Portal are not lacking in adventure-ish gameplay; they simply have too low a concentration of it to be recognized as one.

This is genre not as a binary, but as a pattern of behavior.

***

So, to unpack that a little, I’m going to use an allegory, and, before I do, I want you to know: I’m sorry.

In 2014, professor and lecturer Dr. Marianna Ritchey, as a thought experiment demonstrating the socratic method (I’m sorry), hypothesized a conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro (I’m sorry) in which Socrates posed the internet’s second-favorite argument: is a hotdog a sandwich? (I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We’re doing sandwich discourse.)

Ritchey imagined Socrates asking Euthyphro to define “sandwich,” and sparking the dialectic in which Euthyphro offers up increasingly-specific definitions of “sandwich” and Socrates challenges each one with something non-sandwich that would necessarily fall under that definition: is a hotdog a sandwich? is a taco a sandwich? are three slices of bread a sandwich?

Now, in this scenario, Socrates is - as is his wont - being a bit of a tool. Euthyphro does all the work of coming up with these long, legalistic definitions and, with one, single exception, Socrates sends him back to square one. But Socrates is making a point, (or, rather, Ritchey is): can we really claim to know what a sandwich is, if we can’t explain why it’s a sandwich? Perhaps we should admit the limits of our common sense. Perhaps we should embrace the inherent uncertainty of knowledge.

Or perhaps we could tell Socrates to stop having flame wars and think like a Berliner.

Does “sandwich vs. not-sandwich” have to be a binary? Could we not argue that a sandwich has many qualities, few of them critical, but a plurality of which will increase a thing’s sandwichness? Are there many pathways to sandwichness, a certain Platonic ideal of “sandwich” that can be approximated in a variety of ways? What if the experience of “sandwich” can be evoked so strongly by one factor that some leeway is granted with others? What if many factors are present, but none quite so strongly that it generates the expected sensation? The question then becomes which factors contribute most to that experience, and how much slack can be granted on one axis provided another is rock solid.

A sandwich is not merely an object. It is a set of flavors, textures, sensations, and cultural signifiers. We so often try to define objects by the properties they possess and not by the experience they generate. But a sandwich does not exist solely on the plate, but also in the mouth, and in the mind.

Let us entertain that it’s fair to say a difference between a chip butty and a hotdog is that one feels like a sandwich and one does not.

***

In 2012, the internet was besotted with its fourth favorite argument: “Is Dear Esther a video game? You know, like really, is it, though?” And David Shute, designer of Small Worlds, a micro-exploration platformer (and maaaaaaaaybe adventure game?), countered this question with a blog post: “Are Videogames [sic] Games?”

Shute invoked the philosophical concept of qualia. A quale is a characteristic, an irreducible somethingness that a thing possesses, very hard to put into words but, once experienced, will be instantly recognizable when it is experienced again. Qualia are what allow us to, having seen a car, recognize other cars when we see them and not confuse them with motorcycles, even if we haven’t sat down to write a definition for either. And if we did try to formalize the distinction - say, “a car has four wheels and fully encloses the operator” - our Socrates might pop in to say, “Well then, friend, is this not a car? Is this not a car?” To which Shute - and, by extension, we - might comment that Socrates is, once again, being a buttface.

“If I remove the wheels from a car, then it no longer provides the basic fundamental functionality I’d expect a car to have. But it’s still a car – Its carness requires some qualification, admittedly, but it hasn’t suddenly become something else, and we don’t need to define a new category of objects for ‘things that are just like cars but can’t be driven.’”

What’s special about qualia is that they’re highly subjective and yet shockingly universal. We wouldn’t be able to function if we needed a three paragraph definition just to know what a car is. Get anywhere on Route 128?, forget about it. These arguments over the definition of “game” or “sandwich” ask us to pretend we don’t recognize what we recognize. Socrates’ whole rhetorical strategy is pretending to believe pizza is a sandwich. And anyone who doesn’t care about gatekeeping their hobby will see Dear Esther among other first-person, 3D, computer experiences and know instantly that they fall under the same umbrella. Certainly putative not-game Dear Esther has more in common with yes-game Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 2 has with, for instance, chess.

Shute goes on, “To me, it’s obvious that Dear Esther is a videogame, because it feels like one. [W]hen I play Dear Esther I’m experiencing and inhabiting that world in exactly the same way I experience and inhabit any videogame world – it has an essential videogameness that’s clearly distinct from the way I experience an architectural simulation, or a DVD menu, or a powerpoint slideshow. I might struggle to explain the distinction between them in words, or construct a diagram that neatly places everything in strict categories, but the distinction is nonetheless clear.”

This is the move from plate to mouth. If you’re trying to define the adventure game and you’re talking only about the game’s features and not what it feels like to inhabit that world, you’re not actually talking about genre.

***

So if we want to locate this adventure experience, and we agree that it can, theoretically, appear in any game, we might look for it where it stands out from the background: in an action game. Let’s see if we can find it in Uncharted. It’s a good touchstone because we know the adventure experience is about narrative gameplay, and Uncharted has always been about recreating Indiana Jones as a video game; converting narrative into gameplay.

When attempting such a conversion, a central question designers ask is, “What are my verbs?” Nathan Drake’s gotta do something in these games, so we look to the source material for inspiration. A good video game verb is something simple and repeatable, easy to map to a face button, and Indiana Jones has them in abundance: punch, shoot, run, jump, climb, swing, take cover. All simple and repeatable; you can get a lot of gameplay out of those.

But that’s not all there is to Indiana Jones, is there? There’s also… well, colonialism, but turns out that translates pretty easily! But... Indy rather famously solves ancient riddles. And he cleverly escapes certain death, and has tense conversations with estranged family members, and finds dramatic solutions to unsolvable problems. And none of these are simple and repeatable; in fact, they’re dramatic because they’re unique, and because they’re complex. And Uncharted renders all of these sequences the same way: with a button remap.

When Drake talks to his long-lost brother, or discovers the existence of Libertalia, his jumpy-shooty buttons turn into a completely different set of mechanics for just this sequence, and then go back to being jumpy-shooty. Where, typically, you have a narrative tailored around a certain set of core mechanics, here, the mechanics tailor themselves around a certain narrative experience. And each of these narrative experiences tailors the mechanics differently.

What if we made a whole genre out of that?

Adventure games are the haven for all the misfit bits of drama that don’t convert easily into traditional gameplay. In the old games, you’d never ask “what are my verbs,” because they were at the bottom of the screen. Or, if it was a parser game, your list of possible verbs was as broad as the English language; if a designer wanted to, they could, technically, have every valid action in the game involve its own, unique verb. Rather than specialized, the mechanical space of possibility is broad, the verbs open-ended, even vague, meaning different things in different contexts. The idea is that any dramatic beat can be rendered in gameplay provided you can express it with a simple sentence: push statue, talk to Henry, use sword on rope. Nathan Drake shoots upwards of 2000 people in a single game, but he’s not going to solve 2000 ancient riddles, and he shouldn’t. What makes ancient riddles interesting is you’re not going to come across very many in your life. So maybe the mechanics should be as unique as the event itself. And maybe discovering what this event’s unique mechanics are is part of the gameplay.

The best word we have for these moments is “puzzle.”

Adventure games aren’t named after their core mechanics because, by design, adventure games don’t have core mechanics. Puzzles have mechanics, learning them is the game, and they can be whatever you can imagine. Which is not to say they will be; many games over-rely on inventory and jumping peg puzzles. Even in a near-infinite space of possibility, there are paths of least resistance. But many adventure games have neither, and many are built around single mechanics that don’t appear in any other games.

An adventure game puzzle isn’t simply a thing you do to be rewarded with more plot, it is an answer to the game’s repeated question: what happens next? It was literally the prompt in many versions of Colossal Cave. How did The Stranger find the linking book that took them to Channelwood? How did Robert Cath defuse the bomb on the Orient Express? How did Manny Calavera find the florist in the sewers of El Marrow? It is story told through gameplay, and gameplay built for telling stories.

So I would amend my prior definition, “adventure games are about puzzles and plots,” to “adventure games are about puzzles as plots.”

Beyond that, if you want to know what understand the adventure game experience, you may just have to play one (I suggest Full Throttle).

***

Rick Altman argues we too often define genres by their building blocks, and not what gets built out of them. If you want to write science fiction, you have many components to work with: spaceships, time travel, nanomachines. You can make sci-fi out of that. But what if you take the component parts of science fiction and build… a breakup story? Or a tragicomic war novel? Is it still sci-fi? Let me put it to you this way: if somebody asks you to recommend some science fiction to them, and you say "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," how likely are they to say, "yes, this is exactly what I was asking for"?

Blade Runner is what happens when you use science fiction to build film noir. Dark City is what happens when you use film noir to build science fiction. So what defines a genre, the bricks, or the blueprint? Any meaningful discussion should account for both.

Adventure games are mechanically agnostic, all blueprint. You can build one out of almost anything. We took the long road because the ways we’re used to thinking about genre were insufficient.

***

So: from a few steps back, the adventure game isn’t even that weird. Game genres are usually named after their mechanics, and a small handful are left in the cold by that convention. This would have been a much shorter conversation if not for the fact that video games run on a completely different set of rules from every other medium that has genres.

...but do they, though?

What actually is genre for?

Well, Samuel R. Delany - yes! yes, I’m still talking about this guy - describes genre not as a list of ingredients but a recipe. Imagine for me that you’ve just read the following four words: “the horizon does flips.” If this is just a, for lack of a better word, “normal” story - not genre fiction - that’s gotta be some kind of metaphor, maybe for the protagonist feeling dizzy, or when the drugs start to hit. Whatever it is, it can’t be literal; the earth and sky do not change places in naturalistic fiction.

But they can in fantasy. Certainly stranger things have happened. And they can in science fiction, but by a different set of rules: now there’s a “why.” It’s gotta be something to do with gravity or the warping of space; even if the story doesn’t explain it, it has to convince you, within a certain suspension of disbelief, that such a thing is happening in our universe. Whatever it is, it’s not magic.

These four words can mean many things. Genre informs you which of the many possible interpretations is the correct one. (For what it’s worth, they’re Barenaked Ladies lyrics about being in a car crash.) The label “science fiction” isn’t there to tell you whether a story has rayguns, it’s there so you know which mechanism of interpretation you should employ.

Genre not what’s in the book. It’s how you read the book.

The opening chapters of a mystery novel may be, by the standards of any other genre, excruciatingly dull. A lot of descriptions of scenery and a dozen characters introducing themselves. But, because you know it’s a mystery, these first pages are suffused with portent, even dread, because you know someone’s probably gonna die. And some of these mundane details are just that, but some of them are clues as to who committed a crime that hasn’t even happened yet. You are alert where you would otherwise be bored. And you know to watch for clues, because you know you’re reading a mystery. Those are the genre’s mechanics.

Genre dictates the attention to be paid.

Words, sounds, and images don’t mean things on their own. They have to be interpreted. If part of genre is the audience’s experience, it’s an experience that audience co-creates, and it needs clues as to how. I’ve said before that all communication is collaborative. Here’s what results from that: all art is interactive.

Video games are not unique in this regard, they are simply at the far end of a spectrum. But if the purpose of genre is to calibrate the audience into creating the correct experience, perhaps it makes sense that the most interactive medium would name its genres after what the player is doing.

So the label “adventure game” is, to the best of its ability, doing the same thing as “adventure novel,” and as “first-person shooter,” if, perhaps, a bit inelegantly. There may be better ways to straddle all these lines, but the shorthand reference to an old text game gets the job done.

So that’s the end of our journey. I really hope we can do this again, and preferably not in another four years, but we’ll see how thing shake out. Regardless, I’m glad you were with me, and I’ll see you in the next one. It’s been an adventure.

#video essay #adventure games #who shot guybrush threepwood

80 notes · View notes

ty-talks-comics · 5 years

Text

Best of Marvel: Week of September 4th, 2019

Best of this Week: House of X #4 - Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, Marte Gracia and Clayton Cowles

No More.

Mutants have been made to suffer time after time after time because humans fear change and their inevitable obsolescence. Two of the greatest mutant extinction events have been the result of either human fear or absolute ignorance. In New X-Men (2001) we saw the utter destruction of Genosha by Bolivar Trask’s Sentinels, a massacre that resulted in the deaths of sixteen million mutants over the course of a single day. This left only a little under one million mutants left until House of M (2005) after which Wanda Maximoff decimated the mutant population, leaving only one hundred and ninety-eight left.

Thanks to the work of Moira MacTaggert and Charles Xavier with Krakoa, the mutant population is returning to normal levels and is looking to absolutely eclipse humanity in a short time span. Of course, humanity doesn’t take this too well, causing the Orchis Organization to activate itself, so it’s up to Cyclops and his band of Mutants to cast the enormous Mother Mold (a sentient machine that would create Master Molds to create Sentinels) into the blasted sun.

This issue was nothing short of heartbreaking.

Jonathan Hickman is doing something amazing with this book by showing just how strong the need for preservation is between both sides. In the last issue, one of the security team members for the Orchis station blew himself up in an effort to preserve a future where humans would be the dominant species. He wasn’t thinking about himself or his future with his wife, Dr. Gregor, the head of the station. He only wanted to ensure that The X-Men couldn’t stop the Mother Mold from being activated.

Scott’s team, now only consisting of Marvel Girl, Monet, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Mystique soldier on after Husk and Archangel are killed in the explosion. Nothing was going to stop them from completing the mission and they absolutely did, but not without each of them being killed in the process. I don’t feel the need to place a spoiler tag here because I have no doubt that either, some of the first issue of House of X takes place in the future and that they will all be reborn or that somehow they will be brought back to life as they will appear in other upcoming X-Series.

Pepe Larraz absolutely killed this issue with his art alongside Marte Gracia and Clayton Cowles. Every single page has the feeling of large scale epicness to them from the vast emptiness of Krakoa’s Observation room to the different locales of the Mother Mold Base. When Mother mold itself floats into the Sun, quoting it’s own version of the Prometheus myth, it looks enormous at first and slowly descends into the much larger and grander sun. Gracia’s colors are absolutely beautiful as almost everything is bathed in the beautiful glow of the sun. Monet’s red skin shines even brighter as the cuts her way through Orchis security, Nightcrawler and Wolverine’s burning bodies create the perfect ash contrasted by the glowing blue eyes of Mother Mold as Wolverine cuts away the last anchor keeping it on the station and Karimas shining silver arms stand above Cyclops, coated in purple nanobot defeat, as the last thing we see from his visor’s reflection is Dr. Gregor aiming her gun in his face.

Gracia’s colors are vibrant and help to make Larraz’s lines even more beautiful. They make excellent use of cool blue tones for the few scenes that take place in Krakoa, establishing the still peaceful nature of that location. The space station, however, is awash in heavy yellows and oranges that only set the tone for the book and its high tension, but also works to show us just how dire everything is for either side. It’s high pressure and high stakes. Gracia did a great job of giving things the proper amount of emotional weight through color where Larraz did through excellent facial expression and action.

Normally the brightness of the sun is supposed to represent a better future, but it’s hard to tell who this brighter future is for. The X-Men, ultimately, do win in this war for survival, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. Karima, who we’ve seen standing beside Nimrod in the future, and Dr. Gregor stand in victory for this battle. Granted, we now that the future where Nimrod reigns has been nullified after Moira’s 10th death, it’s hard not to be afraid by Mother Mold’s ending proclamation and Gregor’s newfound bitter resolve.

Charles and the rest of Mutantkind can rest easy, but can they also live with the cost of what they’ve done if our predictions just so happen to be false? The purpose of Krakoa was to ensure that there would be no more needless mutant death, but in the wake of human fear, more have died. This isn’t like any other time where mutants have been killed and brought back to life years later. For some reason - it just feels heavier. Charles’ tear at the end, with Cowles amazing placement of a “No more” caption feels like a resolution. Charles Xavier is having no more death, not for any of his people and it is powerful.

---------------------------------------------------

House of X continues to be one of my most anticipated releases as the weeks go by. This story of death and rebirth keeps achieving new heights of amazing storytelling and even better art. Jonathan Hickman was the perfect choice to breathe new life into the X-Franchise as I don’t have any semblance of a clue what will be in store for the future of the X-Men.

What do the end pages of this issue mean? What will be the big fallout from the revelation of Powers of X #3? Will Pepe Larraz continue to be godlike in his presentation? We’ll find out next week in Powers of X #4.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and smell the roses.

Runner Up: Fantastic Four #14 (Legacy #659) - Dan Slott, Paco Medina, Jesus Aburtov and Joe Caramagna

Growing up, I actually thought the Fantastic Four were pretty lame. They weren’t exactly high on my radar because they were a family of explorers, scientists and just general nerds. I got seriously into comics around the time their last book hit the shelves prior to all of the Disney/Fox nonsense and that really awful movie which soured me on them even more. Things changed when I began to read Secret War (2015) and realized that there was so much more that I was missing.

I scoured my stores for back issue and trade paperbacks of everything written by Jonathan Hickman, Mark Millar and Reginald Hudlin before seeking out the older stories by George Perez, John Byrne and Roy Thomas. I learned to love their love of science, adventure and family oriented stories, so when they finally made their Marvel return, I was excited and so far they’ve done nothing but impress. This particular issue is one of the best examples of how even just dialogue, dynamics and expressions can build a great foundation for a simple yet amazing story.

The Fantastic Four have been everywhere. Other dimensions,hellscapes, universes and planets, but there's still one mission that they've never completed: their original flight to the stars. After a new gallery opens showcasing the original shuttle that they traveled on in all of its destroyed glory, Reed reminisces of that time with happiness. Ben listens to one of the original black box recordings as they were first getting hit by Cosmic Rays and he's overwhelmed with negative feelings. Two original Pilots for the space flight thank Johnny and Sue for taking their place, saying that they could have become monsters like Ben and Johnny becomes enraged with Sue having to calm him down.

These moments remind us of who these wonderful characters are and always have been. Reed is a scientific mind that's always looking to achieve more and better himself and his inventions. Ben still lives with the inner scars of his transformation despite being one of the most respected heroes in all of the Marvel Universe. Johnny is a hothead and Sue, his sister, has always been there to calm him down. The First Family have been there for each other forever, they know each other better than anyone else does. They care about each other.

Paco Medina captures each of their emotions in a Fantastic way with excellent facial expressions and body language accentuated by Jesus Aburtov's stellar colors.

Reed stands tall as he marvels at the old shuttle with his kids, his face is full of pride and joy while they look mildly unimpressed. Later while he's working on specs for a new shuttle, we can see how focused he is, how determined. His fantastic beard shows how he's aged from his previous clean shaven self, but he's even more refined.

Ben remembers the original flight with trepidation and trembles as he remember his words when he was first becoming a rock monster. He stomps around in his normal grumpiness, but by the end, knowing that Reed, Sue and Johnny know and care about him so much, he smiles and eagerly helps them on their next journey.

Johnny, being the hothead he is, does in fact show his anger as his eyes begin to turn orange after Ben is insulted, but we get an amazing flashback to when he was just a young adult in the shuttle program and the rigorous training that he was put through by Ben. This showcases just how much Johnny wanted to go to the stars and shows us how long he's been the ultra determined man that we know and love. Medina draws him going through the training with ease, only having space on his mind and the want to prove Ben and the other pilots wrong, becoming the youngest ever back up pilot in that universe.

Sue, being the ever loving sister, is the calm one as she gets Johnny to back off. She's radiant as a character and Medina portrays as her the linchpin of the family. She's the graceful one, drawn as serious as Reed, but with her normal beauty as well. She shows just how in love she is with her husband as he works on the specs and lays her head on his shoulder, smiling like she does in the flashback.

Nothing super action-y happens in this issue, in fact, one of the best moments is Johnny and Reed having a bonding moment working on the second shuttle. Both comment on how neither is using their powers to make the work easier and they share a laugh together. It's just a nice, warm moment between brothers-in-law doing something that they haven't been able to in years. It was at this time where I just fell in love all over again.

The Fantastic Four are more than just space adventures, aliens and Doctor Doom plots. They are a family in comics unlike any other. Where most teams are just friends that might hang out every once in a while, the FF are a family with a rich history and ever growing numbers with Franklin, Valeria and now Alicia Masters marrying Ben. The love is palpable and I wish I'd understood this for so many years prior. I can't wait for where this next adventure takes them, but I'm all for it.

9 notes · View notes

ayearofpike · 5 years

Text

The 2010s reprints, all at once

So if Simon & Schuster is going back to the well for Pike’s vampire books, what’s stopping them from bringing back other stories from their one-time best-selling young adult author? Form factor, perhaps. It’s the twenty-first century now, and no self-respecting teen would be caught dead reading a pocket-sized paperback. We need something big and beefy to show that we’re Serious About Literature even as we read about murderous insane girls. Fortunately, he’s written more than a couple continuations that will link together into a handy packaged bind-up. But a lot of these books were originally written twenty years ago or more, when the absence of technology and communications wasn’t something that needed to be addressed to explain why these bastards weren’t better informed. Indeed, new audiences (the ones we in education call “digital natives”) might not even understand the characters’ rationales for action without being able to step back in time and forget what they take for granted.

Is it worth rereading these new editions? How different are they from the originals? Lucky for you, I’ve decided to find out.

Remember Me

Compiles Remember Me, The Return, and The Last Story Simon Pulse, 2010 789 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-0596-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Re 2010 OCLC: 646299604 Released July 6, 2010 (per B&N)

Since this was the magical bestseller that made Pike who he was in the first place, it shouldn’t be too surprising that not much is changed or updated in this edition. Still, the very nature of the YA market having morphed into the vehicle that allows these stories to be reprinted throws a pretty massive wrinkle (like, even worse than the fact she’s publishing under her white name) into Shari’s expectation that her mom will never read Remember Me. Come on, dude — I guarantee she already read about the vampires.

The only changes I found through all three stories were giving Lenny the Latino gangbanger a CD player rather than a cassette (because 2010), saving the final story on a jump drive rather than a floppy disk (again, 2010), and swapping Shari’s green pants for blue jeans (I guess to match the outfit Jean is wearing when she falls off the balcony?). One thing that hasn’t changed: Third Book Whitewashin’ Shari is still an asshole. You’re lucky I’m so determined to be thorough, otherwise I would have never reread this shit.

To Die For

Compiles Slumber Party and Weekend Point, 2010 408 pages ISBN 978-0-545-26432-1 LOC: not listed OCLC: 679759450 Released September 1, 2010 (per B&N)

Little weirdness here, as this is a Scholastic joint rather than Simon & Schuster, but the covers are all coordinated, down to the typeface. Not sure whether the two houses worked together to try to sell their books (at Pike’s agent’s suggestion?) or whether Point saw an opportunity to mine some back catalog and tried to copy the existing presentation as close as possible.

The oldest viable stories (read: not Cheerleaders) must have some major rewrites pending for a modern audience, you’d think, but it’s not that drastic. The main complication would be these kids being able to reach someone outside the immediate group and report problems, so Pike quickly writes around that with a single line in each story establishing the locale as beyond cell service. They also both turn emergency CB radios into walkie-talkies, which isn’t even close to the same thing. It’s a little hinky at times, especially in accepting that Lara Johnson has packed an alarm clock instead of a phone, but it does the job.

Most of the rest of the changes hinge on contemporary references. Slumber Party loses its Richard-Pryor-lighting-himself-aflame-while-freebasing joke, but keeps the kids watching Dr. Zhivago at the first fateful party. Weekend has to adjust a lot more — party music is no longer on record, David Bowie becomes Bono (replacing a ten-year-old reference in 1985 with a ten-year-old reference in 2010), Angie’s Datsun is now a Camry, and song leaders are finally just cheerleaders. At times, he’s just wiped out a reference altogether: gone are Pat Benatar, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, Fonzie, Michael Jackson, and most tragically the Carpenters, which undoes a joke at Sol’s expense and removes any understandable sense from the passage they once were in. Oh well. At least he spelled “gringo” correctly in this edition.

Until the End

Compiles the Final Friends trilogy (The Party, The Dance, and The Graduation) Simon Pulse, 2011 846 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-2252-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Unt 2011 OCLC: 693810612 Released August 30, 2011 (per B&N)

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure what this compilation is doing here. Did anybody clamor at the bit for Final Friends even back in the day? I mean, there must have been some demand to let our boy write a trilogy, but even as a teenager I saw the problems embedded in this tale. Simple time-shifting adjustments weren’t gonna fix those. And this is the beefiest book of the lot, maybe to appeal to young readers who like the huge format and want to show off how much they can read. (I had it in the waiting room of my kid’s doctor this week and another dad said it was the biggest book he’d ever seen.) It’s a lot to plow through for the sake of completeness. Still, we’re committed, right?

I got like 200 pages in and did not see a single change — not even in the computer lab where Bubba is “hacking” into the district grade data bank — which made me worried I was going to just be rereading the same stories over again. And 650 pages later, GUESS WHAT. Literally the only difference is that Jessica, in bemoaning her travails with Bill, says she was “trying to seduce a gay guy” instead of merely “a gay.” Like, even the part about it taking all day to transfer 40 megabytes via modem and filling up a school computer’s hard drive is still there. This was NOT done for new fans. But reading it so fast and soon and smushed together did help me realize that The Rock does indeed have a given name. (I’ll save you the research time: Theodore Gordon.)

Bound to You

Compiles Spellbound and See You Later Simon Pulse, 2012 490 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-5971-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 OCLC: 777602521 Released August 7, 2012 (per B&N)

Maybe this is the only bind-up where the two stories could have been anything. (The Point book: those were his only two under Scholastic, so it makes sense.) There’s a back catalog of literally two dozen books not otherwise committed that they could compile. So why these two together? OK, sure, we’re four years away from the phrase “sexy lizard teens” entering the lexicon, but for sure Scavenger Hunt is better paired with Spellbound than a story about nuclear war survivors time traveling out of regret. See You Later seems like a really obtuse deep cut to me, but if he was committed to it why not pair it with The Midnight Club, which is similarly about love lost to inevitable death? I don’t really see the connection, and am too lazy to do any rationale research. But I’m not actually mad at the books — they’ve shown as two of my favorites in this reread.

Spellbound, being the oldest of the S&S catalog, does need a little reworking, particularly in the racist elements of an African shaman going to a podunk Old West high school. Pike didn’t take them all out, of course, because we have to know what a dick the boyfriend is by his connection of the dude to savage cavemen. However, the lack of cell phones is very glaring in the bits where they’re trying to find the brother/potential murder victim, and Cindy has to sit around the hospital waiting to be paged. In 2012 it’s inconceivable that high school kids wouldn’t have SOMETHING. You tried to reach the brother at his house, at his friend’s, at his girlfriend’s ... did you call him directly? Such a simple fix: “He’s not answering his cell.” It probably would have made the unease even stronger.

See You Later, hinging as it does on the main character understanding a video game, has its own needs for updating, and does it better than the Final Friends remake. Still, it’s a little slapdash. Becky works in an electronics store instead of a record store, but do these places even sell physical media computer games anymore? Even six years ago that shit was all download-only. And Ray STILL works in a bookstore ... do those still exist? Mervyn’s definitely doesn’t; they went bankrupt in 2008. As for the game itself, it requires 12 gigs of RAM rather than the paltry megabyte, which is what my newish machine runs six years later. (At the time I had ... two gigs?) Also, in the original Mark asked who won the 2010 World Series, which isn’t the future anymore in 2012 ... but it’s weird that he’s now asking about 2020, just eight years off rather than twenty. Most unsettling, though, is how the tenor of international violence rhetoric still rings true for the setting of this story, even though we’re not worried about Communists anymore. The Cold War is long over, but we’ve swung through tolerance and hope and are right back on fear.

Chain Letter

Compiles Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil Simon Pulse, 2013 456 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-7215-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Ch 2013 OCLC: 852941511 Released July 23, 2013 (per B&N)

Chain Letter was also not originally published by S&S, so it’s interesting that they’ve gotten the rights to print it in this volume. (Though they were compiled in the UK in 1994, so maybe it wasn’t too hard.) By now, though, it feels like they’re reaching, as the teen fiction world shifts yet again to futuristic dystopias and Pike doesn’t really have anything like that. Thirst was on its way out too; the fifth book appeared just before this, and we’ll note that even though Pike didn’t finish the story the sixth has yet to emerge. Curse you, unpredictable teen girls!

Not too much is different from the original editions here. Obviously Pike was throwing in his timely references that had to be cut for understandability (Nastassja Kinski?), but by Chain Letter 2 he’d learned to rein that in. Also, there’s a moment in the first one where Alison yells “Hate you!” at the attacking Caretaker, which always struck me as awkward. This version changes it to “Screw you!” which makes me think Pike originally wrote it as “Fuck you!” and had to bowdlerize for YA. Of course they have to throw some shade at snail mail, too, since that’s how the letters arrive in the first place.

But the main differences are cassette recorders and phones. Obviously the kids aren’t going to tote around a whole bunch of old-school tools when we are now six years into the smartphone era. There’s some nice cleaning up in The Ancient Evil, writing around the idea that people need to (or even CAN) look numbers up in the phone book, but in lots of cases it just makes things awkward. Like, why is Joan going after the driving controls to turn the incriminating recording off if it’s on Kipp’s phone in the backseat? Why do Alison and Brenda have to sit around the kitchen waiting for a return call? Why is Kipp waiting until he gets home to check his voicemail? Did he seriously leave his phone in his room while he ran to the store and left a seven-year-old sister alone at the house? It just makes less and less sense.

You might have seen somewhere online a mention of another compilation, collecting Last Act and Master of Murder. This book does not actually exist. The ISBN and OCLC numbers associated with the title both lead to a British printing of the second half of Final Friends, by Hodder Publishing. I emailed the house just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and they responded that they’ve never printed these two stories together. There’s no record of it anywhere else, certainly not on Simon & Schuster’s Pike page, and reviews I’ve found where people have attempted to buy this collection attest to the fact that they’ve actually received a copy of Final Friends Part 2 But Not Book 2 Even Though the Second Half of Book 2 Is In It.

There also used to be another one named on Wikipedia called Time of Death, which was supposed to compile Bury Me Deep and Chain Letter, but why the hell would they do that when Chain Letter has its own sequel already? There’s not any verifiable record of such a book anywhere online, not even a flawed cross-listing like the first.

So fuhgeddaboudit. I’m done reading compilations.

7 notes · View notes

huntertales · 6 years

Text

Let’s Write a Different Ending.

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Prophet!Reader

Word Count: 4,343. // Episode Setting: The Monster at the End of This Book.

Summary: What if the “Supernatural” book series wasn’t written by Chuck Shurley? Instead, by a young woman named Y/N Y/L/N? She finds herself living out her most recent story—about the end of the world, an archangel whose sworn to protect her is moonlighting as a trickster and two fictional characters by the name of Sam and Dean are about to drag her straight into it. (Semi-rewrite from episode 4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book to—?)

Full Masterlist | My Other SPN Rewrite

Note: Is this a possible semi-rewrite of the show for my Sam girls???? Yes, it is! And no...This is not like my regular rewrite where I do it episode by episode, this is more like I’m taking Chuck’s entire plot line and writing it as the reader up until the season five finale. Along the way I’m gonna try to focus on a Sam/Reader element ‘cause my boy needs some love.

And before you fret...this is a side project. My original rewrite will always come first. Plus I’m still figuring out the details of what I want to do, but updates for this are gonna be really scarce. I don't know how many parts this will be or how many episodes I will cover, but it'll be part by part. Updates are probably gonna be scarce until I finish season six. More importantly, if you guys like this and want to see more, please let me know. I hope you guys enjoy possibly a new series!

Chapter One: It Started With a Knock.

Carver Edlund: it was a name nobody would be probably familiar with if you asked a stranger on the street who he was. To Sam and Dean, he was a man who knew too much. A thief who made a buck and gained an underground cult following from a book series he wrote called "Supernatural." Twenty four books detailing the lives of two hunters who traveled across the country in their 1967 Chevy Impala, saving people from monsters and seeking revenge on the yellowed eyed demon who killed their parents. Each action, every little personal aspect of their lives—from their upbringing, to every internal thought—was all in paperback for the world to read.

The brothers made the horrifying discovering when they were working a case in town, the first stop on the list of places to check out was some run-down looking comic store. The guy behind the counter mistook their questioning as a game of "LARPing" and failed miserably in attempting to remember the main character's names, only for the younger Winchester to correct him after the third time. That's when they discovered the first book in the bargain bin, a hidden gem abandoned with other comics no one bothered to read. The cover alone looked like a seedy romance novel someone might find on their middle middle-aged mother's nightstand. Sam and Dean found every copy they could find and examine each word.

Sam tried to figure out who this Carver Edlund was, but he was shady as the characters he wrote about. There wasn't a single paper trail or photograph of him in an attempt for either of the boys to recognize his face to figure out who he was. Best guess the guy was using a pen name to keep his identity. All they knew that the books started rolling out in early of'05, the year Sam left a life behind after tragedy hit. His girlfriend Jess, the only woman he was weeks away from asking to marry him, was killed in the same gruesome manner as his mother. The finale of the "Supernatural" series ended in of Dean being torn to bits by Lilith and Sam alone, just like reality they were forced to live in.

Sam and Dean doubted it ended here. There was someone behind this name, a person the boys were itching to have a “formal” chat with to figure out how he knew so much about them. The boys decided to start with the most obvious place to track down the author’s real name, the publishing company that printed the crap. A lovely young woman held the possible trail to finding out who it was, only it came with a test when Sam and Dean claimed to be journalists wanting to write an article about the books.

The publisher wouldn’t give up any sort of information so easily. She grilled them with all sorts of questions each of the boys got correct, but only seemed satisfied they were the real deal as she sat in her office chair, watching with a close eye as Sam unbuttoned his flannel and under shirt slightly to reveal the anti-possession tattoo on his chest. She had one of her own, right on her bare ass to show the boys. But the view that made Dean’s day wasn’t the only parting gift she gave the boys. She might not have known the true identity of the person who wrote the books, she had a current address the boys could visit. All though she warned them—authors were temperamental people.

“He’s very private.” She warned them. “Like Salinger.”

You lifted your hands away from the keyboard when you attempted the second draft of the newest edition to a series that ended months ago. But it didn’t mean the adventures that ran through your head would stop. It flowed vividly as it did after the first dream you had them and sat down to write the first page of the "Supernatural" series. You read the words back to yourself as another part of the newest story printed, waiting for your approval to join the rest of the story you were working on.

Writing was a tedious process. Some people could whip out a beginning line to sink the reader in, others thought to start in the middle and figure out the rest later. Your process was a jumbled mess. You wrote down fragments until everything connected itself together into a perfect story you were happy with. However, the newest story you were working on was a bit...different.

You sat in your office, a small room containing a desk pushed up against the window to enjoy a spacious backyard and the rainy days when you felt the most inspired. Behind was you as book shelf taller than you, crammed with novels your family collected over the years along with bound and unpublished books that haven’t seen the light of day. You reached out to grab the second cup of coffee you made for yourself and the still warm papers from the printer. Skimming the words, you snickered into the ceramic mug at what the hell you were attempting to write late last night.

You took pride in being a creative person since early childhood. Maybe it came with having both of your parents being successful writers and having a hunger for all sorts of adventures you tried to seek in reading endless books. Ever since you could hold a pen and form proper sentences you were writing down all your crazy stories. You were a daydreamer, with a wild imagination to match. Never did you think any of it would be good enough material to be published.

It was the summer before you were supposed to start your freshman year of college when you had a dream that felt so real. Normally you forgot the dream you had the night before the second you woke up. But this one stuck like glue. All day your mind wouldn’t stop replaying what you dreamed about, thinking about these characters you named Sam and Dean. For a week you had dreams that felt so vivid about them, the first adventure of many to come. Over the years you had some that were pleasant and quite enjoyable to form into words. Other ones made you wake up in a cold sweat, terrified from the horrendous things your brain could think of all on your own. You showed the first fifteen pages you had wrote nonstop in the span of three days to your parents—who suggested you to go for it. Write a novel and see where it took you.

It took you farther than you ever expected. You made the decision to publish the name under a pen name of Carver Edlund, You were afraid nobody would take an eighteen year old with no prior experience seriously. You sent the books off to every publishing company you could think of and waited for nothing but rejection letters. Almost all of them were a fail, until you got your lucky break with an Indie company that loved your work. She gushed over the first "Supernatural" book and how good it was, so good that she was reading for the second time after finishing it all in just a day. The work was so good, she desperately pleaded for more. You agreed to work on more stories, if you were granted complete and total privacy. She agreed.

You placed the cup back down on your desk in favor for a pen, deciding to edit the part you were working on last night. You felt a tinge of embarrassment from what the kind of nonsense your mind was able to come up with. It was always the day after you decided to edit. A fresh perspective to edit the mistakes you might have made and correct words that might flow better. However, it didn’t take much effort to slip back into the fictional world you thought you created.

“Sam and Dean exited the Impala and stepped onto the sidewalk. Dean took out the ripped piece of paper with the address scribbled down and read it one more time, wanting to make sure it was correct. All though he wasn’t sure what kind of house a man who wrote the lives was to look like, what they saw wasn’t what they...perceived. A small two-story house laid in front of them didn’t look like it belonged to a person they never met. It looked like every other one on this street, a white picket fence and a flourishing garden blooming this early spring. The boys knew looks could be deceiving. They wanted to make sure this was the residence of the man who knew personal details about themselves, things nobody should know.

The boys waited not a second longer. They approached the front door with trepidation. Did they really want to learn the secrets that lay beyond that door? The brothers traded soulful looks, answering the question without speaking a word. With determination, Dean pushed the doorbell with forceful...determination."

You furrowed your brow when you noticed you accidentally repeated the same word twice. You clicked on your pen and scratched out the word for something better. Before the tip of the pen could even touch the paper, you found yourself looking over your shoulder when the doorbell rang. Your dog, who had been peacefully resting at your feet, raised his head in curiosity. You rolled your eyes when he followed the behavior by a series of loud barks. You shushed the German Shepherd, mumbling for Winchester to calm down as rubbed a hand across his fur. You weren’t expecting any visitors today. And it’d been ages since you ordered any packages. You pushed yourself up to your feet, deciding to answer it anyway.

You heard a set of nail tap across the wooden floors, Winchester followed behind you to join you in the adventure of who was bugging you this early afternoon. You lived in a safe neighborhood, it was the reason why you moved here in the first place. Plus the rent was cheap. You unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door a crack to see who stood on your porch, two men you’d never seen before.

You noticed their hands were empty—no bible, no useless products to sell you. It meant the “No soliciting” sign worked. But the “Beware of Dog” didn’t ward off strangers who weren't’ here with a good explanation. You were a single woman living on your own and two men that looked to be twice your size were visiting you. Nobody could be too cautious these days with all those sickos running around. Winchester peeked his head out from behind you to see who it was.

“Excuse me, we don’t mean to bother you, but…” The man standing closest to you greets you with an expression that makes it look like he’s having a bad day. He trailed off momentarily when he saw Winchester peek his head out, the dog staring at him. The stranger continued on by asking you a question that made your welcoming smile drop slightly. “We’re looking for a Carver Edlund.”

“Never heard of the guy.” You lied straight through your teeth, shrugging your shoulders. You gave the two strangers another smile, this time, more sympathetic. “You got the wrong house.” “We’re looking for the man who wrote the ‘Supernatural’ books.” You turned your head to the second man, who’s taller, but much more nicer looking. “We know he wrote them under a fake name. But we didn’t get his real one, just his address. We were told he lives here.”

“We really need to talk to him.” The man standing next to you said, urgency in his voice. You could tell he was trying to be polite. Your swallowed slightly as you wrapped your fingers around the door frame. It seemed he could read your hesitance. “Let me guess, he’s your boyfriend. He probably likes his privacy. But this is important. Is he home, by chance? It’ll just take five minutes. That’s all.”

“Why do you want to meet him so badly?” You questioned the both of them.

“We’re...We’re really big fans.” The taller one said. You narrowed your eyes slightly when both of them share a look before directing their attention back to you. “You see, my brother and I are journalists and we were hoping to have an interview with him, see who the real man is behind these books. Shed some light on the series to gain more attention. That’s all.”

You looked at the two of them for a moment, wondering if what you were hearing was true. You had never had something like this happen before. Most journalists, all three of them, contacted you through email to try and get a personal interview with you. You never had someone show up on your front door, trying to figure out the true identity behind a book series that paid your way through college, something that started out from a vivid dream. Your body relaxed as you let out a sigh, deciding if they were big fans, you’d let him in on a secret.

“Well, since you guys went all this trouble...Hi,” You opened the door slightly wider and leaned yourself against it, your lips stretching into a smile when you spoke the truth you had been trying to hide for over four years. “The name’s Y/N Y/L/N. I’m the author of the ‘Supernatural’ books.”

"Wait, you? You’re the sucker who wrote all those books?” Your face scrunched up slightly when the man standing closest to you changed his attitude. He suddenly broke out into a smile, acting as if you told him a funny joke. You slowly nodded your head and gave him a dirty look. If he was here to make fun of your work, you’d be more than happy to tell him to shove his arrogance where the sun didn’t shine. It seemed that wasn’t the case. He sobered up when he realized you were telling the truth, he was in the right place, and he was speaking to the author. “Well, nice to meet you. Let me tell you who we are. I’m Dean. This is Sam.” He pointed a finger to the taller man stan is next to him. “The Dean and Sam you've been writing about.”

You stared at the two men standing on your porch, trying to process what they just said as the ends of your lips slowly stretched into a smile. You didn't know what you should laugh first at. The fact that these two men went through all the trouble of tracking down your publisher that you hadn't talked to in almost five months for an address to figure out who the real writer of a barely popular book series. Or they were crazy, pretending to be fictional characters you made up. You didn’t even bother wasting your breath to give a response. You stepped back and slammed the door right on their face. You reached up a hand to lock the door, but before you could, you heard the doorbell go off again.

You contemplated for a moment if you wanted to do the right thing and ignore them. Worst case scenario if they got rowdy you'd call the cops and get their asses hauled off. However, you found yourself suddenly overcome with anger when you heard them switch from the doorbell to furiously pounding on your front door. You rolled your eyes, you decided to confront the two very delusional men who needed a dose of reality.

“Look, uh... I appreciate your enthusiasm. Really, I do. It's, uh, it's always nice to hear from the fans. But how about you be like everyone else and drop me an email or something. Not show up on my doorstep like a bunch of freaks. The reason why I wrote under a fake name was so I could keep my privacy. And I’d like to keep it that way.” You spoke in a serious tone, informing them they needed to get out of here. “For your own good, I strongly suggest you get a life.”

Your left the two men with the words of advice they should take as you swung the door shut to end this conversation once and for all. Instead the one who called himself Dean thought it was a good idea to reach out a hand and slam it against the door, using his strength to keep it open.

“See, here's the thing, sweetheart. We have a life.” He said. You scoffed loudly at his words that sounded like a lie from how they were acting. You attempted once more to shut the door and lock it, but he was quicker than you. He inched himself closer so his fingers wrapped around the edge of the wood. “You've been using it to write your books.”

“Right.” You mumbled, chuckling at the tough guy act this idiot was putting on. You didn’t try and make Winchester calm down when he prowled closer to the two strangers. He let out a low, threatening growl when he sensed a changed in the atmosphere. “You have five seconds to get your hand off my door and off my property before I call the cops.”

It seemed “Dean” would take his chances with your threat. He pushed his way into your house, making you stumble slightly into the place as Winchester jumped in between the both of you, making the men suddenly stop dead in their tracks before they could do anything else. The dog began to bark incessantly and growl at the strangers when he thought one of them might try and do something stupid.

“Look, we’re not here to hurt you.” The one who thought he was Sam reassured you. Your face scrunched up from his words that sounded the least bit comforting. Their actions spoke louder, and it screamed they were a bunch of lunatics. “We just want to know how you’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” You asked them. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Are you a hunter?” The other man questioned you.

“What? Are you high or something? Get out of my house. Now” You ordered, as if you had any sort of authority to do such a thing. It took all of your control to keep your voice steady as your heart pounded roughly against your ribcage. The two men didn’t listen, they just stared at you, waiting for an answer. "I'm a writer. That's it."

“Then how do you know so much about demons and tulpas and changelings?” Dean threw out a few fictional monsters you wrote about in your series. You backed away slowly, wondering how to stop this situation before it could escalate to the nightmares a single woman had while living on her own. Murdered, robbery...other things that made a shiver run down your spine just form the thought.

“I read a lot of science fiction and horror books. H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King all that stuff. That’s where most it came from. And I did research, too. I wanted it to be realistic as possible.” You admitted. You thought the answers would be enough, but the one who thought of himself as Dean wouldn’t back down so easily. “Look, is this some kind of weird ‘Misery’ thing because I killed off Dean?”

“It’s not a ‘Misery’ thing. Believe me, we are not fans.” He said, shaking his head at the accusation. You didn’t believe one word he spoke. The man looked down at your dog when he heard it stop barking but showing no signs of backing down. Because it thought his owner was in danger. He quickly realized barging in like this made a wrong impression. They didn’t think a twenty something year old woman wrote their lives. The man changed his tone of voice, into more of a calm one. “Look, we aren’t here to break your legs. We just wanna talk. That’s it. Five minutes. And then we’ll be out of your hair for good.”

You didn’t feel the least bit reassured by his promise, but as a sign of good faith, or stupidity on your part, you stepped forward and shushed Winchester to keep quiet. You ushered him to back down and reassured that everything was fine. You stared at the two men in front of you, wondering if they were going to keep to their word.

“Fine. Who are you?” You asked them. “Really?”

“I’m Sam. This is Dean.” The taller man must have thought you were stupid when they tried to keep pulling this little act.

You rolled your eyes and pushed yourself back up to your feet, trying your hardest not to lose your patience with them. “For the last time, Sam and Dean are fictional characters.” You told them in a quiet, strained voice from what was going on. “I made them up! They're not real!”

The two men thought they could change your mind with some proof. You didn’t know why, but you found yourself following outside to their car—which was a 1967 Chevy Impala, color black and in mint condition, kept a single scratch on it. You’d never seen one in person, but she was a sight for sore eyes. Winchester trailed behind you to the outside and sat himself down on the sidewalk after you told him to. He was quiet, but he remained diligent, waiting for one of them men to try something.

The one who called himself Dean wanted you to take a look at the inside of their trunk, the words were a bit more creepier than he expected. You crossed your arms over your chest, expecting it to be empty and for one of them to shove you inside before locking you in there. When the trunk opened up, it wasn’t empty and you remained where you stood, but what you saw was even more horrifying. You inhaled a deep breath as you felt your eyes jumping around at all the stuff they had in there, an arsenal for a mad man.

“Are those real guns?” You asked in a meek tone.

“Yup.” The one who thought of himself as Dean said. You swallowed when he pointed out all the things you mentioned in the book. “This is real rock salt, these are real fake IDs.”

“Well, I got to hand it to you guys. You really are my number one fans. That’s,” You scratched the back of your neck as you felt yourself choosing the flight option in this situation. You nervously chuckled and began to slowly back away, hoping you might be able to dash inside the house and call the cops before things got too far. They were crazy, you thought. Obsessed. “That’s awesome. So, I-I think I've got some posters in the house.” You turned so fast on the back of your heels, you had a shot at running for your life. But before you could take a single step to safety, you heard the one who was pretending to be Dean spoke up. “Y/N, stop.” He called out to you, and for some reason, you listened to him.

“You lay one finger on me and I’ll start screaming.” You warned them as you turned back around to face the two men. You gave them a deadly glare as Winchester pushed himself back up on all four legs and came back over to you. "What the hell do you want?"

“How much do you know?” The taller one, Sam, questioned you with all sorts of things that you had written about in the secrecy of your own office. “Do you know about the angels? Or Lilith breaking seals?”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” You mumbled, shaking your head from what he was asking you. You looked at the two men in front of you with a confused expression from what was going on, all of a sudden you had a few questions of your own. “How do you know about that?”

“The question is,” This supposed Dean asked, “how do you?”

You furrowed your brow slightly, "'Cause I wrote it."

“You kept writing?” Sam, or so he called himself, wondered.

“Yeah, even after the publisher went bankrupt, but those books never came out. Nobody's ever seen them except for me.” You said, telling them as you pointed a thumb over your shoulder and to your house. You suddenly felt a nudge against your leg, the dog was growing funny all of a sudden when he let out a low whine. You rolled your eyes and gave him a command, speaking his name for the first time in front of the boys. “Winchester, sit.”

"You named your dog Winchester?" You nodded your head, knowing this was the conversation that you would make up the lie that it was about how your dad was a big fan of guns and you named the dog after him. The man decided to formally introduce himself. "Well, nice that's a mighty fine coincidence. Cause you see, like I said...I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother, Sam."

You looked up from your dog after you began to subconsciously ran a hand through his fur to try and calm him down. You felt your face fall in surprise from what they told you. "Last names were never in the books. I never told anybody that. I never even wrote it down. Nobody knows I even wrote those books. People only think I named my dog after a freaking gun. You mumbled. You suddenly felt yourself hit with a dizzy spell from the things that were slowly connecting in your head. You stared at the two men in front of you, the ones you had wrote God knows how many books on and years of dreams about. Alive and in the flesh. “Sam and Dean Winchester...Well, nice to meet you.”

[Next Part]

202 notes · View notes

recentanimenews · 4 years

Text

Manga the Week of 10/7/20

SEAN: It’s October, and we are all having pumpkin spice something!

Dark Horse debuts Blade of the Immortal!… again. Deluxe hardcover this time, 576 pages, even has a bookmark ribbon to show it’s class.

ASH: Blade of the Immortal holds a very special place in my heart. While I didn’t double-dip for the paperback omnibus edition, I will be picking up these new deluxe hardcovers; Dark Horse has been doing a beautiful job with them.

ANNA: I’m sort of tempted but I also have such limited bookshelf space!

SEAN: J-Novel Club has some print titles for us. Ascendance of a Bookworm 6, How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord 12, I Shall Survive Using Potions! 2, In Another World with My Smartphone 12, and the 4th Marginal Operation manga.

ASH: Ascendance of a Bookworm is the one catching my eye here.

The digital debut is A Lily Blooms in Another World, a one-shot light novel by the author of Sexiled. It’s an “otome game villainess” story (where our heroine, once again, loves the villainess – see two weeks ago for more of this), but I loved Sexiled, so will definitely be giving this a chance.

ASH: Oh! I hadn’t made the author connection yet! Sexiled is indeed great, so I may need to add this one to my list, too. (If/when it is released in print.)

SEAN: Also, Discommunication’s 5th manga volume, I Shall Survive Using Potions! 5, the 5th Infinite Dendrogram manga, and Slayers 2.

Kodansha… let’s see. In print, we get Granblue Fantasy 5 and Maga-Tsuki 11-13 (which ends the series, a series that started so long ago I forget what it’s about. It has brides on the cover, though.)

Digitally, the debut is Four Kisses, in Secret (Kisu wa Kossori to). This is a one-shot short story collection of four one-shots that appeared in Dessert. Expect romance.

And 35 volumes of Shaman King. We discussed this before, but the delay has finished, and they’re due out next week.

And we get Cells at Work: Bacteria! 4, Chihayafuru 22, A Condition Called Love 6, Grand Blue Dreaming 11, Our Precious Conversations 7 (the final volume), Smile Down the Runway 14, Star⇄Crossed!! 3, That Time I Got Reincarnated (Again!) as a Workaholic Slime 2 (also a final volume), To Be Next to You 10 (also also a final volume), and You Got Me, Sempai! 9.

MICHELLE: Of course, I must cheer for more Chihayafuru but am also happy for the conclusion of To Be Next to You, which I’ve really enjoyed. I also need to read Our Precious Conversations at some point, as it’s by the creator of My Little Monster, which I liked.

ANNA: One of these days I need to catch up on Chihayafuru, I have a few digital volumes stockpiled.

SEAN: Seven Seas has only one print release next week, Made in Abyss Official Anthology – Layer 1: Irredeemable Cave Raiders. As noted, this is a doujinshi anthology of the popular manga.

ASH: I haven’t read much of Made in Abyss yet myself, but I do still like seeing these sorts of anthologies released.

SEAN: Digitally we see a 7th volume of Reincarnated As a Sword.

This is the one-month anniversary of my saying “Tokyopop has the 6th omnibus volume of Aria the Masterpiece.” And it’s still true! Ah, 2020, truly the most delay-filled year…

Vertical gives us a 6th Kino’s Journey, and also wants to let you know that Dissolving Classroom and Velveteen and Mandala are out digitally now.

Viz knows that this first week of the month belongs to them, and has pulled out all the stops. We start with Chainsaw Man, a highly acclaimed fan favorite… from the author of Fire Punch. Somehow those two things go together. I’ve been told it’s a lot of fun, but also really defines the “black” in “black comedy”.

ASH: I’ve likewise heard some great things about Chainsaw Man! I wasn’t a huge fan of Fire Punch, but I plan on checking this series out.

ANNA: I thought it was fun.

SEAN: Moriarty the Patriot (Yuukoku no Moriarty) is the other debut, a Jump Square series reimagining Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes as a protagonist.

ASH: Another one about which I am curious.

MICHELLE: Me too!

ANNA: This was not on my radar before but this sounds interesting.

SEAN: And there’s Revolutionary Girl Utena: After the Revolution, a one-shot manga volume from the Utena manga creator. The Utena manga and I do not get on, but I’ve heard that there are things to like about this.

ASH: I really liked The Adolescence of Utena manga, but I haven’t actually read the manga series. (Shocking, I know!!) I’ll be fixing that in the near future, and will be picking up After the Revolution, too.

MICHELLE: I’ve read the original and The Adolescence of Utena, but it was in 2006, right before I started reviewing. I remember a little. In general, I don’t have a lot of patience with narratives that don’t make complete sense, but I will still probably check out After the Revolution.

SEAN: Ao Haru Ride has its 13th and final volume, and The Demon Prince of Momochi House has its 16th and final volume.

ASH: I’m a couple volume behind with The Demon Prince of Momochi House, but as a whole I’ve been enjoying it.

MICHELLE: So many final volumes this week!

ANNA: Ah! I didn’t realize these series were concluding! Both very good.

SEAN: We also see An Incurable Case of Love 5, Jujutsu Kaisen 6, My Hero Academia 25, Naruto: Sasuke’s Story (a novel), One-Punch Man 21, Prince Freya 3, We Never Learn 12, and Yona of the Dawn 26.

ASH: Oooh, some other good titles from Viz, too.

MICHELLE: Forsooth!

ANNA: This is a happy week for me!

SEAN: Meanwhile, no one woke Yen when September ended, as they still have some releases that slid to next week. Including a debut… well, sequel… ACCA-13 PS. As you can imagine, this is an epilogue to the original.

ASH: Natsume Ono is one of the creators whose work I will always make a point to read.

SEAN: There’s also the 3rd Combatants Will Be Dispatched! manga, Hatsu*Haru 12, and Triage X 20.

What manga is in the autumn of your year?

By: Sean Gaffney

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

1 note · View note

sententiavera · 4 years

Text

About that book you’re reading…

When I was in college, I subscribed to a book club sponsored by Time Magazine. It sent you four books, their choice, three times a year. I was introduced to a broad array of genre, both fiction and non-fiction. One of those books was Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. I loved it and it led to my lifelong love of science fiction.

Recently, the Dedalus catalog of remaindered books had offered newly printed classic science fiction paperbacks for less than $5 apiece. I bought a new copy of the Chronicles and several of Asimov’s robot series. I figured with the stay home order, I would have time to read it again. Have you ever picked up a book you read years ago and been bitterly disappointed?

It is not that the writing is poor, or the story didn’t work, it was the cultural setting, the characters, the accepted behaviors that upset me. The misogyny was expected. He was writing for a predominantly male audience who would not read something with a strong woman or a woman in charge. His mid-20th Century society had not yet gotten used to women working outside the home. While his acceptance of the “canals” of Mars was understandable, knowing what we do about Mars now, it was hard to accept but if I imagine that it was some other planet, I could excuse it. What I could not accept was the actions of the all-American teams sent to the planet. The Ugly American writ large; in case you are not familiar with that book it was a satire published in 1958 that portrayed the arrogance and stupidity many of the official sent to represent America in foreign countries. It has been recalled recently when several of the current administrations ambassadors and other supposed diplomates have made serious mistakes due to a total ignorance of what they were doing or where they were. The early ships to Mars in the book had only one or two in the crew. They seemed to know there was life on the planet but had little training to deal with the first contact. Perhaps Bradbury was attempting satire but if so, he missed. I read one of his later chapters set in what to us is the near future (2026) of an AI controlled house cooking meals, cleaning, and entertaining even though the family were dead from an atomic blast. At the time, I was so taken with the story, I attempted to paint a picture of the house replete with partially covered skeletons on the front lawn. Like my understanding of the story, it was less than successful. It was a sad lose of innocence.

I have had a similar experience with other stories. One of my favorite stories as a child was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sydney, published in 1880. Dedalus again has a reproduction of the original book and I intended it for my grandchildren. When it arrived, I did my usual, read the book before I gifted it. I was appalled. Here, the cultural acceptance of characteristic we know to be learned, not born was too much. Just because you are born into a social class does not mean you are born knowing how to behave. The young widow with a house full of children struggles to support her family by doing sewing for others in the small town. She married beneath her station in life, so the family does not know he has died. They live in a run-down, rented house and the children have adventures but their inborn goodness because of their late father’s status and their mother’s previous social class always carries the day. In the end, a rich distant relation recognizes their inborn classiness and rescues them back to an upper class living with servants and a fancy house. The mother is forgiven of her major social sin, marring for love and not for class. Yuk. The book has stayed in my library.

Many British books also reflect this point of view, that birth over comes upbringing. My favorite example is from the series The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. As much as I love the books for their subtle religious undertones, the book The Horse and His Boy is just too much. In the title book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it can be understood that the only human children in the country are bound to be the nobles of prophecy. However, in the later book, it really is a fantasy that a boy raised by an illiterate fisherman on a remote beach knows how to act like noble royalty. He is the rightful heir to the throne of a country whose evil uncle tries to kill by throwing the baby off the ship in a basket. Rather than drown, he is washed up on the beach and raised by the fisherman. He is rescued by a talking horse from Narnia who ‘recognizes” he is a noble and off they go to reclaim his throne. Excuse me?

Far too many books from England accept the notion that “blood will tell” as if the influence of biology overrides all cultural influences. Lewis and his close friend J. R. R. Tolkien were raised in this Victorian notion similar to that of the Peppers discussed above. You see it in the servitude of Samwise of the Lord of the Rings. His initial devotion is that of a feudal dependent. He must go with “Mr.Frodo,” never with his buddy Frodo. The same diffidence is given to the other young Hobbits whose identity is determined by the family from which they come, so-and-so of such a manor. In the Ring trilogy, it is less pernicious because it is written for adults, not children. In the Narnia and the Pepper books, it is written directly for children and subtly designed to influence them. If you are born of a poor family, that is where you have to stay. Ambitious goals are not for you. You were born to be poor and poor means lower class, crude, uneducated. I seriously question giving those books to modern children.

Pat Gibson

March 30, 2020

0 notes

lexacourtney · 4 years

Text

Hi Sarah!

It’s been four days since I finished House of Earth and Blood and since I do not have the time at this very moment to reread it, I thought I’d do something else instead. Still tied to my love of SJM and her books, in the hopes that it would satisfy me for now.

I’ve been a SJM fan ever since 2012, when I first saw Throne of Glass on shelves in Borders…well, I think it was Borders. I don’t remember when they closed and became Books-A-Million. Neither of those stores are in the location they used to be, but I can still remember that the YA section was straight back, at the back of the store, and Throne of Glass was sitting on the top right side of the shelf. I picked it up because of the title, probably because of the cover, and then left that day with it after reading the synopsis.

Then I read it and fell in love.

Then the tedious waits began.

Waiting for each new book was always torture.

2013 gave me Crown of Midnight and a chance to meet Sarah for the first time. I think I’ve briefly talked about this signing in a NaNoWriMo post, or a Writing Journey Post, which one, I don’t remember. But in 2013 my friend and I heard about a writing workshop/signing that Sarah, Susan Dennard, Erin Bowman, Kat Zhang and Jodi Meadows were doing. By 2013 my friend and I had graduated High School and while this workshop/signing was primarily meant for high schoolers, we met the age requirement so of course we went. It was such a fun event, we’re we basically got to hang out with the authors. I even came up with my 2013 NaNoWriMo idea at that event!

It ended up running long, and we were kicked out of the library. Most of the teens had left at this point, parents needing to drive them home. We ended up taking photos outside of the library, and overall the event was a blast.

Then in 2014 I was able to meet Sarah again, and get more of my books signed! Now I had The Assassin’s Blade, Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire signed. I even have a picture of when SJM’s books only took up a small space on my shelves…those days are long over, and I can’t be more excited about it.

I’ve tried over the years to document each new release – I’ve not always been successful, and I blame my excitement. I get too excited for the new book, so the moment I get it, I sit and read it, photos be damned.

While I’m sad that the TOG series is now over – though, I could and would totally read any book that was just them living their lives happily in the aftermath of Kingdom of Ash. It doesn’t even need to have a plot. Just give me a book full of random scenes. But as I was saying, while I’m sad that the TOG series is over, SJM is continuing to put out freaking stellar content. The A Court of Thorns and Roses series is another favorite. I love Rhys and Feyre and the Inner Circle. Legit the moment after I finished A Court of Wings and Ruin for the first time, I started the series over. She just makes you fall in love with these characters, and you care so much and so deeply. Sarah is amazing at portraying emotions and tough situations, and she does it so well that they feel like they’re your emotions. At least, that’s how I feel when I read her books.

Most recently we have House of Earth and Blood, which is fucking fantastic. Like, I cannot express it enough that you need to go pick this book up. It’s instantly a favorite and definitely on my list of favorite books of 2020.

I’ve had the chance to meet Sarah a few other times over the years, mainly at various Apollycon’s, so I have a few of her books signed. My collection of SJM doesn’t rival Brigid or Jen, I wish it did. Trading for arcs of Sarah’s books is nearly impossible, and I would need more shelf space to have every copy of her books…one day. One day I’ll have all the copies.

I’ve told you all about my history with Sarah and her books, and you’ve seen bits and pieces of that history, so now I’m going to show you my little collection. I almost hesitated to post this, because comparably to my Brigid and JLA collections, this one appears…lacking. But then I thought about it, 1) I didn’t really start collection multiple copies of books until early 2019, and 2) I guess quantity isn’t what’s the most important thing about collecting. It’s about loving a series so much you do posts like this, or you just own one set.

I will obviously continue to buy Sarah’s books and I will always be a fan. I’m currently contemplating buying another copy of House of Earth and Blood…because I totally need another one? Right?

I sound a bit like a hypocrite, oh well!

So, let’s jump into this, shall we?

Quick rundown of Sarah’s Titles (even though we all know them):

Throne of Glass Series:

The Assassins Blade

Throne of Glass

Crown of Midnight

Heir of Fire

Queen of Shadows

Empire of Storms

Tower of Dawn

Kingdom of Ash

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series:

A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Mist and Fury

A Court of Wings and Ruin

A Court of Frost and Starlight

DC Icons:

Catwoman: Soul Stealer

Crescent City Series:

House of Earth and Blood

Here’s my entire collection of SJM books. They take up quite a bit of room on my shelf, and due to space constraints, i can’t really display them as I would really like to. After all, they’re all pretty large books. Kingdom of Ash x3 takes up a lot of shelf space…and yes, I need all of them. I obviously don’t have every copy, ever created of these books, but I love my little collection. They’re all well loved.

On top of US standard editions, and various exclusive editions (Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million/Target) I also have a few UK copies, as well as all of the Special Collector Editions that were printed.

Here are some links you can check out!

TOG / ACOTAR / Catwoman / CC

Let’s start with the Throne of Glass series:

I have the standard US Hardcover illustrated cover editions, minus Throne of Glass which has the original cover. I have a two copies of Tower of Dawn – one’s a standard hardcover, and one is a B&N Signed Edition. I have three copies of Kingdom of Ash – one’s a B&N edition, one is the BAM edition, one is the Target edition.

I know I’m missing a few exclusive editions here and there, and maybe one day I’ll get them, but I’m happy with this little collection.

There are quite a few books here. Tell me I don’t need more. They take up enough room as it is (lol).

Links:

TAB/TOG/COM/HOF/QOS/EOS/TOD/KOA

Pictured (top to bottom): US HC The Assassins Blade / US OG Cover Throne of Glass / US HC Crown of Midnight / US HC Heir of Fire / US HC Queen of Shadows / B&N HC Empire of Storms / US HC Tower of Dawn / B&N HC Tower of Dawn / B&N HC Kingdom of Ash / BAM HC Kingdom of Ash / Target HC Kingdom of Ash

To stay in theme, let’s look at the UK Covers:

Now, I don’t have all of them…yet. I need to place a Book Depository order. Or, I just need to go back to the UK. I *might* be going back to Scotland next year, so…we’ll see. I only have the UK paperbacks of the first three books. I actually love the fact that they’re white. It’s such a contrast to the US covers. Since I don’t currently have the US paperbacks, it was really nice being able to not have to carry around massive books during my reread.

I can’t wait until I have the whole set…though I will need another shelf for them.

Here are some links:

TOG/COM/HOF

Pictured (top to bottom): UK PB Throne of Glass / UK PB Crown of Midnight / UK PB Heir of Fire

Next, we have the Special Collector Editions.

I heard the words “Special Collector Editions” and I knew I’d need them. I hope that one day they do all the books in the series to match. These are gorgeous dust jacket-less, hardcovers with embossed gold foiling. The US Editions come with protective sleeves.

The UK Edition didn’t come in a sleeve, and I’m kind of bummed there wasn’t a UK edition of A Court of Thorns and Roses. These books are stunning, and I really need enough shelf space to truly show them off. Also I’m kind of bummed that my US Throne of Glass edition came slightly banged up in the corner. I unfortunately and annoyingly didn’t notice until I’d opened it up and pulled it out of the sleeve. It was a Christmas gift from my brother (I told him to buy it for me) and by the time I received it, I couldn’t return or exchange it. I still love it, flaw and all.

Here are some links:

UK TOG / US TOG / ACOTAR

Pictured (top to bottom): UK SE Throne of Glass / US SE Throne of Glass / US SE A Court of Thorns and Roses

And then, the A Court of Thorns and Roses Series:

I love these books. For a long while I thought I loved them more than TOG…but then I binge re-read that whole series in two month (I highly recommend reading all those books right after one another, but be prepared to be in a massive slump, and now I question everything I once thought.

Like most people, my favorite book is A Court of Mist and Fury. It’s so good and the character arcs…*chef’s kiss*. There are perfect moments in all of these books, and I’m excited for the next one set to come out…I guess next year. I am kind of bummed that the covers won’t match (tbh, not the biggest fan of the cover changes, but will undoubtedly end up buying them).

I only have the standard US hardcover editions for this series. I have a standard ACOWAR plus the BAM Edition. For ACOFAS, I have a signed copy I got through a Virtual Signing, and the BAM Edition.

Here are some links:

ACOTAR / ACOMAF / ACOWAR / ACOFAS

Pictured (top to bottom): US HC A Court of Thorns and Roses / US HC A Court of Mist and Fury / US HC A Court of Wings and Ruin / BAM HC A Court of Wings and Ruin / BAM HC A Court of Frost and Starlight / US HC A Court of Frost and Starlight.

And finally, Sarah’s latest release, the first book in the Crescent City series:

I do have a full review for this book, as I just recently read it. If you’re interested, you can check it out – here – I loved it. There were scenes that were purely cinematic. There were moments that made me cry; made me laugh; made me feel everything. I loved Bryce, Hunt, Lehabah and Syrinx. I just loved this book, and I’m dying for book 2.

It felt like SJM, but it also felt completely different. I mean that as a compliment. Like, if I didn’t already know it was written by her, and I just started reading it, I would know immediately who wrote it. Maybe it’s because it’s an urban fantasy, and not jut fantasy, or maybe it’s because there’s a crime they’re trying to solve, something about this book just felt fresh and new and wholly amazing. It deserves all the praise. This book is fantastic, and I can’t wait to add editions to my collection. I’m already contemplating getting another copy.

Here’s a link:

HOEAB

Pictured: US HC House of Earth and Blood

To close this very long post off – who knew that this Book Collection post would rival my other ones – I thought I’d just share some up close pictures of my signed copies. I don’t have every book in my collection signed, though I wish I did. I try to get at least one signed by Sarah every time I see her.

Above: US Hardcover The Assassin’s Blade

Above: US Original Hardcover Throne of Glass

Above: US Hardcover Crown of Midnight

Above: US Hardcover Heir of Fire

(I have no idea why this is signed twice – honestly. It’s not a second hand copy, it was brand new when I bought it, but I guess I must’ve taken it to an event not realizing it was signed. I guess Sarah quickly signed it again. I have no recollection of this. It’s not double signed in the picture at the top of this post, which was taken in 2014, so sometime between then and now, it got signed again.)

Above: US Hardcover Tower of Dawn

Above: US Hardcover Kingdom of Ash

Above: US Hardcover A Court of Thorns and Roses

Above: US Hardcover A Court of Frost and Starlight

And that’s it! This post is much long than I anticipated, and took a lot long to format that I thought it would! I figured it would be 1500 words tops. I guess I underestimated just how much I had to say…though to be fair, I didn’t plan on doing that whole long intro before jumping into the actual collection.

I was scrolling back through my Instagram feed (as one occasionally does, or I do) and kind of forgot that I had some of these pictures from throughout the last decade. Oh wow, it’s been almost a decade since I discovered Sarah’s books…granted I need to wait like 2 more years, give or take, but damn.

Anyways, I digress as always. I hope you enjoyed this very long post (I’m sorry!) and let me know which author you collect!

Book Collection: Sarah J. Maas (@SJMaas) A post dedicated to 8 years of reading and loving Sarah's books. #newpost #blogpost #bookpost #bookblog #books #blog #blogger #bloggerswanted #bloggerstribe #bloggingcommunity #bookish Hi Sarah! It’s been four days since I finished House of Earth and Blood and since I do not have the time at this very moment to reread it, I thought I’d do something else instead.

#Book Blog #Book Collection #Book Post #book review #Bookish #books #New Post #Reading

0 notes

greaseonmymouth · 6 years

Text

@sqvalors tagged me in this writing meme and as I have nothing better to do on this not-so-beautiful sunday, let’s have at it

1) How many works in progress do you have?

a LOT but currently I only have two active WIPs: my festivebastion fic and my H/D Big Bang fic for next year. (once festivebastion is done with I want to go back to the space AU, which I initially wanted to finish before the end of the year...)

2) Do you/would you write fanfiction?

I write a shitton of fanfiction. :’’’’D I don’t think I’ll ever stop tbh.

3) Do you prefer paper books or ebooks?

I prefer paper, but I read both kinds. I’m slightly pickier when it comes to physical books? I’m not a big fan of hardbacks because they’re so big and bulky and often really heavy...I’d like to be able to read a book without being in pain from holding it. and if the font is too tiny/too packed in a paperback it’s harder to read, where with ebooks I can just...CHANGE THE FONT SIZE. it’s like magic! I love it. I have a few books in paperback that I hunted down in ebook form because the thought of reading a book the size of a brick in tiny and tightly packed font is making me want to cry. some books (romance) are ebook only or digital first so those I’ll read digitally anyway.

4) When did you start writing?

when I learned how to write :’’’D I started Writing Seriously as a teenager, though, shitty poetry, short stories and novels, so I guess I’ve been Actively Writing for the past...17 years? give or take.

5) Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with?

Yes! I have a small handful of betas. But also, if it’s fanfic, it goes online sooner or later? my original fic so far hasn’t seen any other eyes but mine but it’s not for lack of trust, it’s because none of it is at a stage where it’s ready to meet other eyes.

I don’t really suffer from the whole “but what will other people THINK” thing that I’m given to understand a lot of other writers do? The only exception to this is gift fics for fandom exchanges and the like, where I’m writing something specifically for a person. In those cases, like with any gift giving, I’ll worry about whether the recipient likes it. But in general, in the grand scheme of things? yeah, no. My betas will give me feedback on what’s working/not working, and once the fic is out in the world it’s out of my mind as well, so. if people like it, it’s great. If they don’t, well then I don’t care? *shrugs*

6) Where is your favorite place to write?

at home. these days I do most of my writing on my ipad (gdocs app or scrivener app) which means I’m on the sofa and very comfortably so. I also write on my desktop when I feel like it or if I feel like I need a more Serious Business Vibe. I have tried the whole going to coffeeshops to write thing and tbh...I don’t like it. It’s too noisy (and also just the kind of noise I can’t stand) so it’s more stressful than anything else. If I were to leave the house to write, I’d go to a library.

7) Favorite childhood book?

I read so many books as a kid, omfg, but enid blyton’s books definitely. Not all her books are translated to Icelandic, I don’t think, but I’m familiar with five different series (wiki tells me those are the riddle series, the secret seven, famous five, five find-outers, and the adventure series). my favourites were the adventure series, the riddle series and the famous five, and to nobody’s shock and surprise george of the famous five was my FAVOURITE EVER, because george was a girl who was a boy.

nancy drew and the hardy boys series!! I felt so betrayed when I found out that “””carolyn keene””” and “””franklin w. dixon””” were pseudonyms for a bunch of different writers, but at the same time I was like WELL THAT EXPLAINS A LOT. because much as I loved those books? ALL THE DAMN INCONSISTENCIES AND PLOTHOLES BUGGED THE HELL OUT OF ME. not all of them were translated to Icelandic, either, but I read as many as I could get my hands on (going to different libraries, I had only four nancy drew books myself and two hardy boys books). looking at wikipedia, the nancy drew books I had access to were all originally published in the thirties and early forties (there’s...so many books omfg I remember the series being like...15-18 books or so? I remember being told that at after a certain number the books were “written by her daughter” as an explanation for why they were so “different” aka why they were so terrible, wiki now tells me this is because the books were revised to change the character WOW) and the hardy boys books I had were from the 60s and 70s (also...so many books omfg there weren’t as many hardy boys books as there were nancy drew books in the libraries I frequented so I guess I always thought there just hadn’t been as many??? but there are. so many). ANYWAY. I am very pleased to find out that I (by accident?) managed to mostly avoid the shitty nancy drew books and mostly only read the ones where she’s a bamf. good good.

I also liked the little house on the prairie books. and a series about a emily who grew up to become a writer, which I later found out was written by the same author who wrote anne of green gables (I hated the anne of green gables books just fyi). and for some reason i was massively attached to the two books of zilpha keatley snyder I managed to get my hands on. they were kinda spooky books. the entire goosebumps series? i am still traumatised by some of those. oh and, there were a shitton of books by Icelandic writers I absolutely loved, but that none of you will have heard of...

8) Writing for fun or publication?

both? I wouldn’t write if it wasn’t fun, and I do write so other people can read it eventually. It goes for both fanfic and my original stuff. Only difference is really that with fanfic I have full control of the “publishing” process :pp

9) Pen and paper or computer?

both, but primarily computer. I haven’t written longhand since...I’d guess it’s been at least 5 years. I do some plotting and note-taking in hand though, and especially when it comes to plotting I like pen and paper because it’s more flexible. I keep thinking I should try to write longhand again but then I’d have to type it up and ugh :’’’D

10) Have you ever taken any writing classes?

nope. I like the idea of doing a 1 year MA in creative writing sometime, though. I think it could be a lot of fun.

11) What inspires you to write?

everything and nothing.

I’m tagging @ruffboijuliaburnsides, @actualkatebishop, @pipariperho, and anyone else who wants do to this. :)

#meme

2 notes · View notes

monstrousgourmandizingcats · 6 years

Text

I was tagged by the always-ravishing @absynthe--minded!

1) How many works in progress do you currently have? Three of substance: An original novel series I’ve been working on since 2012, an elaborate short story cycle I’ve been working on only since earlier this year, and a collaborative audio drama project I’ve been brainstorming for and planning to get off the ground with @absynthe--minded since last year. There are also a few things on indefinite-but-hopefully-not-permanent hiatus and something I wrote in my late teens that I want to substantially rewrite in the future.

2) Do you/would you write fanfiction? I have in the past and I’m sure I will in the future but I’m not working on any right now.

3) Do you prefer paper books or ebooks? Paper books, preferably either hardcover/cloth-bound or cheap paperbacks old enough to be aesthetic in a tacky sort of way (“the tape adds to the aesthetic,” @visirion says about my copy of Rebecca).

4) When did you start writing? The first pieces of my writing that survive are a little booklet that I made when I was four, in whose remote pages we read “[Illegible] is very old and worn out. A tornado wrecked it. There’s no more road any more. The food market makes the BEST peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The old car is all broken. The chugga train chugs and choos and blows out its smokestack really hard. The sky vacuum does the same thing.”, and a booklet with facts about Vikings that I made when I was five or six or so after seeing a special about Vikings on PBS (the only station my early childhood home got). I also wrote short poems about animals, one of which was published in something called the Anthology of Poetry By Young Americans in 2000. Around this time I made my debut writing long stories with something called The Cheesy Seas, which had elements of both original fiction and crossover fanfiction and starred a boy called Jimmy whom I later retconned into being seventies and eighties Boston Red Sox star Jim Rice (my babysitter-cum-amanuensis, who hated all forms of sportsball, added in an editorial comment describing one chapter as a “harrowing baseball chapter”). I slowly worked my way through various Tolkien AUs (space adventurer Aragorn!) and an abortive original fantasy epic before starting my first serious, completed story when I was sixteen (this is the one I want to rewrite some day). I still write poetry on occasion.

5) Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with? I share my fanfiction, when I write it, with a great number of people and my original fiction with trusted friends and occasionally my therapist.

6) Where is your favorite place to write? At home, cross-legged on the couch, although I’ve also had some wonderful times writing in my aunt’s house on Cape Cod.

7) Favorite childhood book? Redwall, The Hobbit, and A Child’s Garden of Verses. Anne of Green Gables is my favorite children’s book now (I have a hard time seeing The Hobbit as a children’s book any more even though I know it was actually much more definitively intended to be one than Anne was) but wasn’t when I was actually a child.

8) Writing for fun or publication? In practice, fun, but I’m serious about actually producing the audio drama and I’m working my way up to being comfortable with the idea of submitting some other stuff for publication as well.

9) Pen and paper or computer? In practice, computer, but I recently read an article about how being a serious writer can damage your family relationships so I’d like to get used to getting first drafts down on pen and paper so that when I get married I can set aside half an hour or an hour of devoted writing time and not spend a whole evening getting distracted and farting around on the internet. Net neutrality being gutted might actually be good for me psychologically even though it’s obviously borderline dystopian as public policy.

10) Have you ever taken any writing classes? I took occasional mandatory classes on critical writing throughout college but I’ve never taken a creative writing course and I’m not sure I think I should; I’m jealously protective of some orthographic and stylistic quirks that I worry a formal creative writing course would attempt to force out of me.

11) What inspires you to write? I’m more of a “concept” (wouldn’t it be interesting if X?) writer than a lot of people, but once I have a concept in mind, what inspire me to stick with it are the characters and their relationships. I have an embarrassing amount of #feels about my own writing.

I tag @goldoans, @elle-lavender, and @lesbiantrad. @elbereth-varda, I don’t actually know if you write much, but if you do I’d be interested in your answers as well!

#writing #give me love give me memes

2 notes · View notes

angeltriestoblog · 4 years

Text

The One With All The Books: My favorites + tips on how to get out of your reading slump!

Ever since I was a kid, I've been obsessed with books: while most children I knew then were preoccupied with Barbie dolls and battleships, I immersed myself in fictional worlds and found trusty companions in protagonists who embarked on adventures that transcended the limits of the physical universe. Back then, I would sleep with them under my pillow, read them in the backseat of our family car even on rather turbulent road trips, and turn to them during boring class discussions.

Over time, they ended up shaping my opinions and world views, fueling my hunger for knowledge, and inspiring me to put my own thoughts down on paper. It's safe to say I wouldn't be the person I am now, had it not been for my love for the written word. Which is why I find it odd that I haven't made any of the standard recommendation posts that would normally be found on the personal blog of someone like me. In an attempt to fix that, I'm sharing with you my eight favorites of all time, not only to give them a fitting tribute (that will still not be able to do their profound impact any justice), but also encourage you to pick up a good read! Who knows, maybe it'll change your life as much as it did to mine!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

As a kid, I loved both science and fiction, but always saw them as two concepts completely opposite from each other. When I found out that they could marry and live in perfect harmony in a genre of their own, I was over the moon. It was exciting enough, getting to teleport across universes by folding the fabric of space and time, encounter terrifying creatures who somehow parallel actual people on Earth, and learn about obscure scientific concepts. But, the fact that it manages to tie in the triumph of good over evil, and the power of familial love was just the cherry on top for me. I brought this with me everywhere I went for a solid two months, obviously with good reason.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

My mom had recommended this to me in high school, and I put off buying it for so long because I originally thought I was "too old to be reading stuff like that". Much to my surprise, what was practically disguised as a children's book, with its simple prose and watercolor illustrations, served as both as a moral allegory and criticism of the way adults operate in today's world. Though its length can trick you into thinking it's a fast read, most passages demand to be looked at a second time, reflected on, and shared to the nearest person—if you're the type to protest against annotating, you might have to rethink your stance.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

When I was in grade school, my parents had this rule where I was only allowed to buy a new book during special occasions, to control the growing number we had piling up in our house. I remember seeing this in the NBS branch in Glorietta, and having to wait until the end of the quarter to ask my parents to get it for me. Oh, well: as the cheesy saying goes, "True love waits." Although if there is anyone who loves books more than I do, it's Meggie Folchart, as she has inherited her father's gift of bringing fictional characters to life. But, when disaster strikes, as it always does, she must learn how to harness this special power and save her family. The world-building and imagery is unbelievably rich, Funke doesn't just paint a picture in your head: she creates a whole ass movie. No wonder eight year-old me put her up on a pedestal.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (the entire series, but maybe the third was my favorite) (ok it was, don't tell the two others) by Jenny Han

The blurb at the back of the book certainly doesn't do it justice: I remember finding this at a nearby Fully Booked and putting it down instantly, dismissing it as another cliche YA novel. Sure, Lara Jean Covey has to deal with all five of her unsent love letters to her crushes being mysteriously sent out, but she also grapples with important issues such as identity, family, and—in the third book—the future. I read Always and Forever, Lara Jean during the summer before I entered university, and every single line resonated with me so much I paused at the end of every chapter to take a crying selfie. Plus, Peter Kavinsky is my literary dream boy: if I ever expect my future significant other to take me on a cross-country road trip to go antique shopping, they'll only have him to blame.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

We're taught that we shouldn't judge books by their covers, but I'm glad my twelve year old self decided to brush that aside when she bought this. Although I didn't end up reading it until five years after, I devoured the thick hardbound in a day and a half, and was reduced to a ball on my couch shortly afterwards. I know the book has the most self-explanatory title, but it's just that it takes on the universal experience of first love and heartbreak so authentically. The stream of consciousness writing style and slow pacing may be an issue for some, but I reckon it adds to its charm, as it allows Min to take readers through all the motions of a relationship in a way so relatable, entering her headspace feels like slipping into a second skin.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

A friend of mine in high school had complained to me that her mother had made this required reading for her, and I suggested I'd take it off her hands for a bit. I ended up going through her copy thrice in a month. (Ah, what I would give to go back to the days when I could still afford to read on school days.) An issue a lot of books that claim to "change your life" have is that they elaborate on these supposedly groundbreaking ideas, yet fail to break them down into doable action steps. Fortunately, Covey shares his practical advice in a structured manner, complete with examples, illustrations, and the occasional dad joke, freeing it from any preachy or condescending undertones. I don't know how to say that this is the only self-help book you'll ever need without sounding like someone from the Home Shopping Network.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

This paperback intimidated me from the moment I first saw it on a shelf, because of the metaphorical title and steep price. But, good thing I got around to buying it eventually: this harrowing story is told by a promising doctor with his whole life ahead of him, who turns into a patient as soon as he is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Reading this was difficult, because I knew that no matter how hard I tried to dissect and reflect on the questions of life and death being posed by the author, I could never come close to understanding how he felt. But, that didn't make the experience any less necessary.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity is a rather difficult concept to talk about in depth, because it seems so abstract. This is why the author advises readers to treat it as a living entity: one that bestows the best of ideas to those who nurture it, complements the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and demands our full participation despite the looming presence of fear. I finished this on a school bus ride home from school, and the minute I got home, I marathoned Gilbert's TED talks and keynote speeches on YouTube: there is a distinctly tender, somewhat spiritual quality in the way she speaks about her craft, that easily makes you hang on to and follow every word she says.

Now I know books aren't everyone's go-to when looking for a way to pass the time: I've heard people say that they can't find time for it, that there's nothing out there that piques their interest, or they simply don't have the patience, given that social media posts and Netflix shows practically hold our attention spans captive in this day and age. While all are valid points, they can clearly be worked around! I was in a funk during the start of my Christmas break, because I hadn't touched a non-academic book since the new school year had started. But, I managed to finish four in the span of a month, and am currently on my fifth, as of this writing. Here are some tips I have, just in case you want to kick your reading slump in the ass as well.

Start small. Like with any habit you want to build, introduce the behavior in small increments: five push-ups, five minutes of meditation, fifty pages of a novella. Then, once you're starting to get the hang of it again and you don't feel your two brain cells shrieking for help because they can't figure out if "lived" is an actual word in the English language, you can increase it depending on your progress. This happened to me when, thanks to a notably bad case of tsundoku, I had amassed 14 (!!!) unread books in a year. I decided to tackle as soon as my vacation started, so I kicked it off with a rather easy read: Matilda by Roald Dahl, 232 pages thin, with numerous drawings.

Read something you'd actually enjoy! It's gonna be hard to stay engaged in something that doesn't excite or entice you: reading is supposed to be a hobby, not a household chore. Find something written on an interest of yours, a field of study that you've always been curious about, a person that you've looked up to for forever: I truly believe that there is no topic that hasn't been written about at this point in time.

On a somewhat related note, don't be afraid to DNF books that don't satisfy you. A lot of us pick books up because everyone else loves it, and are afraid to put it down for the fear of being othered. But, if we've all come to believe that we should sever ties with people who no longer serve us, what makes it any different for books that just don't touch our lives? I remember reading The Bell Jar when I was 13 because it came highly recommended by someone on Instagram who I found really cool. It was far too heavy for me, but I couldn't find the heart to shelf it especially after how much it cost me.

Remember that physical copies are not the only way to go. Thanks to the presence of audio and e-books, one can now enjoy stories anywhere and any time, without the daunting feel of several pages, or the burden of lugging around heavy hardbounds. (Although you are missing out on one of the best parts of reading: new book smell. Your loss.) One might find it easier to process the information this way, or even appreciate whatever the author has to say.

Talk about it with a friend! They could help keep you accountable in following through your reading goals, give you solid (and sometimes even personalized) recommendations, or accompany you in mourning over the death of a major character. It's always been a dream of mine to start or join a book club for these exact reasons, but I'm afraid this post is possibly the closest I could get to that right now. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear your suggestions and give you more of my own! Drop me a message here (or here, here, and here!) if ever you're interested.

Love and light,

Angel

#recs #angeltriestoblog #life dump #book recommendations #my favorite books #reading slump #this is why i have poor eyesight

1 note · View note

ayearofpike · 5 years

Text

Alosha

Tom Doherty Associates, 2004 303 pages, 21 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-765-34960-4 LOC: PS3566.I486 A78 2004 OCLC: 54007210 Released October 1, 2004 (per B&N)

Ali Warner has an affinity for the forest, and so she’s spending her summer vacation trying to stop logging companies from cutting down the oldest trees. But she doesn’t expect to run into something else out there, something that might be seeking to cut her down. As Ali and her friends try to uncover the mystery of who - or what - is out to get her, she starts to learn just why she is so fond of these woods, and how deep that connection goes.

We’re back to YA, only this time it’s more along the shifted expectations of what YA is and who it should be for. I’ve talked variously about how Harry Potter really changed the way authors and publishers approached books for kids and teens, but it really is hard to overstate just what a major shift this was in the market. Like, suddenly it was not just acceptable but even cool to read a book that was aimed at a younger audience, and the young ones themselves got on board faster than anyone else. Like: you’re writing a book for me, about me, and you’re not underestimating how much I can handle or what kinds of thoughts I bring into this world? It’s no wonder it caught on so fast, and it’s no wonder adults also suddenly glommed on: we had to make up for all those juv/teen/YA years of our own when we were trying to power through some Stephen King or Danielle Steel because the stuff in our school library was for babies.

That said, we did have a temporal shift in our own lives as well as the market shift. That four-year gap in Pike production, as mentioned in the comments of the last entry, probably made a lot of readers forget about him as a modern author. Also, that whole market thing meant selling bigger and fancier books first: the hardcover edition of Alosha was released like a year before the paperback. I’m pretty sure this was the first Pike book I got out of the library rather than buying it for just that reason — I didn’t want to mess up the look of my Pike shelf by throwing a big ol’ hardback on it, and I wasn’t ready to drop $18 on a Pike book. (Of course, that all went out the window when I found The Secret of Ka at a big-box discounter in hardback, not even realizing it had come out, and was unable to walk away. And at any rate, nothing printed after 2010 came out in the smaller paperback, so I was screwed no matter what I did.)

Alosha follows the Potter wave in a couple of ways. It’s the start of a series, yes, and it’s got a teen who is beginning to realize magical origins and powers. But it goes a little deeper than that: where Rowling peppers in a handful of magical creatures to vary the world and spice up occasional interactions, Pike goes all-in on the magic race war. No surprise, if you’ve been paying attention: dude managed to work a Lord of the Rings reference into almost every Archway book, and he even got it into his Cheerleaders joint. But I think that I gave him a little more credit than he deserved the first time I read this book, largely because I hadn’t read Spooksville yet — because this is Pan’s Realm, fleshed out and beefed up and given localized importance through Ali, who is connected to the alternate dimension with the elves and dwarfs dwarves, and who will have to realize her power and importance across the series in order to seal the connection and heal the cross-dimensional wounds and hurts. I assume. (I’m not sure I’ve read all of these.)

Let’s begin. Ali is preparing for her long day of protesting by buying a sandwich at a local shop. When she comes out, she’s accosted by a tiny man who is attempting to sell her a watch and then a CD Walkman, but he doesn’t seem to know what the latter is. She rebuffs him and suggests he try to sell at the pawn shop, and then offers him her food because he’s obviously hungry. When he leaves, she realizes he’s stolen her money too, but doesn’t have time to go chasing because the lumberjacks will be showing up soon.

On her way up the mountain, she encounters the lumber manager, who asks that she please stay off the road to avoid making any trucks swerve and crash. What he means, obviously, is go home and quit bugging us, but Ali interprets his words to mean that she can still pester the lumberjacks if she just goes cross-country. But on the way she hears or maybe just senses something following her. Pike’s made her easy to see, with waist-length maroon hair (that’s literally how he writes it), so no surprise unless she wasn’t expecting loggers up in this part of the woods. She’s traversing a narrow ledge when a noise above her makes her look up — and some kind of giant hairy thing leaps out of the way seconds before a torrent of earth and rock comes down over her. She ducks into a hollow in the rock, but she’s still buried and needs to figure out how to breathe before she can figure out how to dig herself out. Luckily there’s a length of hollow bamboo unburied right next to her. Somehow. In the Pacific Northwest. (Maybe? He never exactly says. It could be coastal California, and this town could be Spooksville all over again, but it always struck me as Oregon for some reason.)

So she manages to get out and then makes her way back home, where we learn that her mom has died a year before and her dad is trying to make ends meet as a long-haul trucker, so Ali is alone a lot. She has to spend the night at her best friend’s house, in fact, because her dad is taking off again, and she tells Cindy (see? Spooksville) all about what happened to her. They agree that maybe Ali saw a bigfoot, and they’ll go the next day with their friend Steve to find footprints.

Ali’s on her way home the next morning to get supplies when she runs into the boy of her dreams, Karl Tanner. She mentions the bigfoots to him, and he seems amused but uninterested. So Ali has to go without this amazing boy, and instead goes with her dizzy friend and the fat kid who has a crush on her to try to take pictures of bigfoot prints. Sure enough, they find some, right where it would have had to be standing to dump a giant pile of dirt on Ali. But now Steve thinks that to make this irrefutable they have to find some hair. So the kids follow the tracks back down toward the river, but suddenly Ali is grabbed from behind and thrown into it.

It’s a swift river, a steep gorge, and there’s a waterfall coming up. What is she going to do? Luckily, there’s a tree bridging the banks just before the falls, and Ali manages to leap and grab it at the last second, and scooch herself to safety. But now as she’s trying to return to her friends, the bigfoots are back — three of them, forcing her back into the river. But she feels strong and secure: the current isn’t taking her anywhere this time, and she starts throwing rocks with unexpected power and accuracy. So the bigfoots take off, and now Ali is wiped out and falls asleep in the sun trying to dry out.

When she wakes up, there’s this tree she’s never noticed before, about thirty feet tall but as big around as a house, with a hole big enough to crawl into. She does it and finds this carved room inside the tree, where she sits quietly and starts asking questions — and the tree answers them. It addresses her as Alosha, which is a name she remembers but doesn’t recognize, and tells her its name is Nemi, which means “no one.” It also tells her that she’s more than she knows, and she will have to face the trials of the elements to truly know who and what she is. She’s already passed the trials of water and earth, and yet to come are fire, air, time, space, and the mystery of who she is. This is a good thing, because she also has to go to the top of the nearby mountain, 14,000 feet up, and close the Yanti, the interdimensional gate that is allowing these crazy bigfoots and thieving midgets into our world. If she doesn’t, Nemi warns, the elf and dwarf army will be using it to cross over and will then attempt to wipe out all of humanity for its sins. (I know, doesn’t sound so bad necessarily in 2018.)

But for now, Ali has to go back to her friends and plan what to do. She’s undecided right up until Steve calls with the news: a tree has fallen on the logging boss and he might not survive. Ali knows this isn’t a coincidence, and she has to act. She feels like she can trust Karl, for some reason, maybe because he’s just that much of a dreamsicle, and she tells him everything that’s going on and the task she’s been set. Karl doesn’t even fucking blink. Like, maybe he should have been named Bryce. He just starts collecting hiking and camping gear and asking when they want to go.

Steve and Cindy grudgingly come on board, but when they’re trying to buy food for the expedition they get robbed. Three guesses who. Ali is at the pawnshop in a blink, and sure enough there’s the little dude, preparing to unload a purse and a wallet. Ali finds her new strength and threatens him, and the guy breaks: of course he’s a leprechaun, hiding behind terrible stage makeup, and he’s crossed over to this dimension to be the first one to amass a pot of gold before the other leprechauns show up. He senses Ali’s power though, and that there’s more to her than she knows yet, and agrees to help on their journey when she asks. After all, someone from the other dimension might be able to help them understand what they’re facing.

So finally four kids and a leprechaun take a taxi up the side of the mountain as far as they can. Karl warns that they still have a 20-mile hike ahead of them, and they have to traverse it in two days, before the full moon totally opens the Yanti. They make it about nine before Fat Steve needs to stop, so they make camp and prepare to spend the night, with Karl taking first watch. Ali dreams about the night her mother died: a car accident, a blinding red flash, waking up in the hospital hours later. When she wakes up, the leprechaun is sneaking back into camp, but Karl doesn’t think that was a big deal — at least, not until the dark fairies show up and start shooting at them with fire lasers. Karl suggests they split up, that Ali go ahead with Cindy while he and the others work to distract the fairies so the girls can make it farther.

Of course this is a fail. It’s nighttime and Ali doesn’t know the trail, so they ultimately end up making a circle back to the camp, which is totally on fire. Oh, and there’s a bigfoot trapped inside the fire, wearing the sweater Ali lost in the rock slide. She feels bad and wants to save him, so she leaps into the circle of fire and suddenly feels strong again, like she could just ask the fire to stop burning and it would. And it does. The bigfoot is actually a troll, and after securing his promise to not eat anyone, Ali conscripts him to come along.

The dark fairies attack again, but now Ali has a fire shield, and she can still throw rocks. She knocks one fairy out of the air and steals the stones it is using to make the fire lasers. They eventually make it to the intended campsite, where the boys are waiting. Karl has taken a shot to the stomach, but everybody else is OK — even Steve, who somehow beat Karl to this point and doesn’t have a scratch on him. However, all of their gear is gone, except the backpack Ali is wearing. It’s too late to turn back now, though. They sleep a little bit longer and then press on.

As they approach the tree line, they start to hear elf warriors coming up behind them. It becomes really obvious when the arrows start flying. The only thing Ali can think of is to get across the river gorge, to where the trees are thicker and they’ll be protected. So she cuts down a tree with the fire stones and everybody gets across this bridge. But they still have to get up the mountain, and the troll is going to turn to stone if he is out in the sun too long. Both of the creatures know about a cave, though, that passes through the mountain and climbs up a bit, emerging on the backside where the travelers might be more protected. Nobody’s psyched about going in, but Ali makes them do it anyway.

They come to a set of three doors where only the middle one is unlocked, so they keep going, Then there’s another set, of seven.The first and third are open, and even though everyone is pushing and clamoring for the third, Ali insists that they use the first. And this is where the shit hits the fan. They come to a giant crevasse before too long, with a bridge fallen down on the opposite side. Karl has a rope, and manages to catch one of the hooks in the floor, but before the gang can get all the way across, the dwarf army shows up. Ali is safely on the far side, but the weight of three kids, a leprechaun and a troll is too much for the rope, and the dwarf general throwing his ax and chopping it off on the other side means all of Ali’s friends are falling into darkness. She runs, but doesn’t get far before she’s hijacked by the dark fairies, who subdue her easily as the fire stones don’t work on this side of the first door. Shit.

Ali is taken to the dark fairy hive, where she’s hung from her ankles and taunted by the queen. She seems to feel like she should know something more than she does, and the dark fairy queen sees it too, that she’s forgotten important information. It doesn’t matter, because Ali will still make a delicious dinner. She takes off and leaves Ali to dread her fate, during which time she realizes that she survived that car crash for a reason. That it wasn’t the car crashing into something — it was being crashed by someONE, someone outside, someone who had the power to make red flashes, maybe with stones. This gives her the strength to want justice, and she manages to free herself and then waylay the fairy queen when she returns, forcing her to fly Ali back up to the gorge where she lost her friends.

See, Ali has realized something. She’s noticed her watch is running backward, and the buttons she’s ripped off her shirt to mark the gang’s progress have mysteriously reappeared. So not only do the fire stones not work on this side of this door, but also time runs backwards. If she can get up to the set of seven doors before the gang gets there the first time, maybe she will be able to convince herself to make the right choice. Unfortunately, none of the group can see her, because she’s still time-shifted too far out of sync. However, Ali-2 does hear the button fall on the floor just inside the third door, right when she’s ripped it off to drop it inside the first. So she calls her friends back and they go the right way, all the way to the outside of the cave, where it is dark but they still have about 2000 feet to climb to the peak.

Before the Alis leave the cave, though, they rejoin each other, with the knowledge and test completions that both have now done. And Ali has realized something else: one of her friends is working against the effort. As they climb the last distance to the summit, she confides in Karl: Steve is a traitor, and she needs him to be held hostage before they get up to the Yanti. Karl is only too ready to help, and tapes him up to be guarded by the creatures before he climbs the last stone dome (which looks to Ali kind of like a giant igloo) with the girls.

And sure enough, there on a pedestal in the middle of the roof is the Yanti: a seven-sided band surrounding a triangle surrounding a single diamond, none of them touching but still connected all the same. Only Ali can get close enough to see it, though: the other two are stopped by some kind of force field. Karl wants to know why Ali isn’t grabbing it to stop the dimensional portal opening, and that’s when he reveals himself to be the total shitbag and not Steve. In a former life, Karl was Ali’s chief advisor in the realm of the elementals, and when she wouldn’t heed his advice to cross dimensional borders and support war against the humans, he went to the dark fairies to get done what he needed to do. And now he wants the Yanti and all its power, and he’s got a gun to Cindy’s head and will blow her pretty brains all over the mountain if Ali doesn’t give it up.

Only guess what: Ali already knew that. Gagging Steve was a ruse to make Karl overconfident. And guess what else: she already found the gun and took all the bullets out of it. You don’t have to guess, though, that her super strength and powers are way too much for Karl — but just before she kills him, he drops the bombshell that her mother is still alive. He took her out of the burning wreck and substituted some other body that the dark fairies provided. If she kills him, he warns, she’ll never find her mother. So she lets Karl walk, just before a giant rainbow halo surrounds the moon and lights up the entire mountain, and just like that the elemental army is here.

Ali wants to talk to the lord of the elves, to try to talk him out of the war. He’s all, nah dude, we’ve been over this and reborning yourself as a human girl isn’t going to change my mind. But Ali tries more persuasion: it’s because she’s taken the human form, she argues, that she KNOWS humans aren’t totally bad, and that there is some hope for the earth and all its dimensions if they’ll just stop now. But the elves are determined to fuck some shit up, and it’s too late for Ali to do anything about it.

Or is it?

By whispering her secret name into the Yanti, Ali turns it back on, just like a light switch. She commands the elementals to be gone, and they all fade out — all except the elf king, who has used his OWN secret name to stick around and then suddenly has Ali at knifepoint. She knows he isn’t going to kill her, because she knows they have a history, and sure enough the dude drops his knife and backs off. For now. He is still convinced that there is a dark evil overtaking his dimension, and the only way to get rid of it is to get rid of humans. Because, dear Ali, the darkness is a product of this dimension, and destroying its origin is necessary. So we haven’t seen the last of the elf king, or Karl probably.

But we do still have a problem: we’re stuck on top of this 14,000 foot peak with no food or water. No sweat: Ali asked for a canoe, and it’s sitting right there. They literally snowboard it down to the river and then ride the rapids all the way back to town, undoing in three hours what took them two days to traverse. Then Ali goes to the hospital to see the logging boss, and with the magic of the Yanti manages to heal his ills and save his life.Then she goes home, where her father is frantically waiting for her, and he notices that her hair has gone from maroon to bright red. Just like her mother’s.

And that’s the end of Alosha! We certainly have a neat story here, tied off while still leaving enough open ends to explore further in future tales. Obviously Ali is going to have to battle the dark evil, and obviously she’s going to attempt to find her mother and thwart Creepy Karl. Still, I don’t really know if that’s all going to get wrapped up in three books. (Spoiler: I know it won’t, because Pike has written a fourth, which he’s holding hostage until whoever has the movie rights to this one makes a move and gets it produced.) I guess all we can really do right now as Pike fans is keep moving along, and hopefully we won’t have to go back in time too far to undo our own mistakes.

3 notes · View notes