Richard Roberts's Blog, page 19
June 24, 2011
Ponies and Dolls
I will take a cue from Keri's blog there. She likes live action television serieses. I like cartoons. I like cartoons a lot. For those watching the internet explode in pastel pink glory, it can be taken for granted that I am a My Little Pony fan. But I'm not here to talk about ponies!
Since I'm off visiting The Old Man, I brought a selection of videos on my flash drive, and I'm rewatching Rozen Maiden. Anime, American animation, European animation, all I care is that it's a good cartoon, and Rozen Maiden is my favorite cartoon series ever, which means it's my favorite TV show ever. I can't believe I'm rewatching it for the 4th time. I'm not a big rewatcher, but there's just so much to see.
Since I just started rewatching I'm fascinated by the way the show pretends to be your standard 'magical sidekicks tournament fight' at the beginning. Admittedly that pretense doesn't last long, but I'm seeing this pattern in the particularly good dramatic animes, like Rozen Maiden and Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kodomo no Jikan, where they start out as if they were a cheap trope series so they can subvert all of the expectations and everything can fall into madness and Hell. The earliest example I can think of using that approach was Evangelion, and of course at the time I felt it was the best around.
But Rozen Maiden does it better than all of them. Now that I've seen the entire series and I know the characters, the cliche'd trope beginnings have extra meaning. They're displays of how truly, truly broken everyone on the show is. Suigintou's assassin doll really IS as halfhearted and ridiculous an attack as it seems, because Suigintou doesn't want Shinku dead. Shinku's jaded detachment isn't confidence, she's just so tired of fighting her sisters and being hurt by her owners and doesn't want to do it anymore. Then she bullies Jun into kissing the ring under her terms, and if you aren't watching for it you'd completely miss the expression of helplessly falling in love that transforms her face while they're connecting.
And in Episode 2 anybody can see Hina Ichigo completely lose it and nearly murder her owner, but now I have the perspective of seeing just how close all the dolls were to immolation at the start of the series. Shinku has become cold and withdrawn and isn't sure she's willing to fight even to save her own life anymore. Hina Ichigo can't endure abandonment and entombment again, and her personality is crumbling around her in her desperation to stop it. And Shinku could tell at a glance and while pretending to be the arrogant bully manipulates Hina Ichigo into moving in with her where she'll be safe and taken care of while she recovers. I'll never know for sure, but it was almost certainly on her mind already. After all, Suigintou was awake and just crazy enough to kill, and poor Hina Ichigo would have trouble fighting her way out of a paper bag.
I like these shows, the ones where you're justified putting this kind of thought into them. And Rozen Maiden is amazing.
June 10, 2011
The Hacksaw's Edge Of Inspiration
Tonight I woke up from a nap with enough energy, and it all fell together. Molly Of The Blood woke up. Usually it's Molly Of The Broken Spring who plots, but I've been too deprived lately. Now, see, this is why I felt I should post now. I'm one of those crazy, frenzied, passionate artists, right? Combine that with a fascination with human psychology, and a long while back I named various parts of my personality.
Molly is the name I gave my entire right brain, my creative side. She has aspects, but it's not so easy to divide them. Molly Of The Blood is the purest creative frenzy. I've read about the way the brain functions when visual artists work. They lose any sense of time, their ability to process language is severely impaired, they can't do math... when I am Molly Of The Blood, I go through all that stuff. For an hour or two there I had no personality or thoughts other than the writing, and if something else tried to get my attention it was an unwelcome intrusion. And if people tried to talk to me, I couldn't talk to them back except in a jumble of half a dozen words. Not without pushing Molly away and losing the inspiration. And yet, it's an inspiration to *write*. I assure you my outline is not only coherent, it's rather fat with literary detail. That ability with words is borrowed, allowed one tiny corner to exist.
And there are no emotions during that process. At least, none I could describe or remember. Writing is *all* I'm doing if it gets intense. But when it ends? Man, the high. I could dance on the ceiling. I'm quick witted and melodramatic and I enjoy playing with words far too much. In awhile I'll crash and be very depressed, but by then I'll be asleep, so HA! I WIN THIS ROUND, CHEMISTRY!
Does anyone else write like this?
June 5, 2011
I'm Lovin' This Depression
Unfortunately, only the emotional distractions. Life remains vigorous, if no longer miserable. I've got very little time and energy to spare, and I'm devoting most of it to writing. That means The Doll House stories are getting cleaned and arted up very slowly, because I'd rather get my next project good and started.
Poor Parthenogenesis. The unloved middle child. Maybe I'll be able to get back into it when I return to manic phase, but I tried to reread what I've done already and my brain rebelled. I absolutely do not want to be in Shem's head right now. Molly wants little kids and a brand new story, so I'm taking some of the elements I would have used on Rose Of Delphi and I'm starting a new book! And by 'starting' I mean 'Have started'. I've got the first chapter done to help me set the characters and feel, and now I'm building the overall plot outline while trying not to rush straight into chapter two. God, I'm so inspired.
Tentative working title: Quite Contrary. Mary gets lost and ends up in a fairy tale, like everyone who gets lost does. What, you think they were LYING about the yeti, aliens, giant fish, or the little town where no one spoke English and the radios and TVs didn't work? In Mary's case she accidentally becomes Red Riding Hood, and as I hope everyone knows that's a story with a very bad track record of ending well. But the Wolf's going to have his hands full, because Mary is the bitchiest nine year old that ever was. Whatever you tell her to do, she won't do the opposite. She'll find something even MORE rebellious to do.
Mmm, loving this so much. Writer's gotta write.
May 27, 2011
Next, Some Short Stories
After a month 'dry' I was barely myself and worried I didn't have it in me, so I threw myself back in with something light: A Doll House story! When I just want to write something fun, I write something shamelessly goth. Sweet Dreams was like that, a contrast from Wild Children, which I wrote because it was a story that needed telling. The Doll House is a series of stories about a place where the rarest girls have been stored for safekeeping. They can only leave if a visitor takes them back with him for a day. Each story features a different girl, and they give me a chance to take an old supernatural concept and twist it into a shape I can tell fun stories with. I just finished Doll House: Lapis Lazuli, the story of the last mermaid. She's as friendly as any man could hope for, including in the nudge-nudge-wink-wink sense, so... why is she the last?
That makes three Doll House stories finished so far, and I've decided to make them my next publishing priority. I'm finishing up the cover art, which won't be as fancy as for the books but should do okay. I'd like to offer Doll House: Inventory for free because it introduces everyone, and then put up the others for 99 cents each. Amazon doesn't like 'free', so we'll see how that goes.
I must decide what to write next. Parthenogenesis has taken such a beating. Do I have the will to finish a book that's had so many interruptions and had to be restarted once? Do I have the responsibility as a writer?
May 17, 2011
Yes, You Can Get It On Amazon
But with this out of the way, I'm back to writing new stuff. I'd like to finish the third Doll House short story and put them on the market next. After that... I'll get either my novel Wild Children or my book of fairy tales out for sale. Depends on cover art opportunities.
Meanwhile, why not a sample taken from the middle of Chapter I of Sweet Dreams for those who'd like to know what Fang's life and problems are like?
Sample from Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth
In a few nights I'd gone from avoiding everyone but Jeffery to having personal conversations with people I would have sworn would never want to talk to something like me at all. The whole idea made me feel uncomfortable at first, but then I just gave up.
"It's an act, right?" I asked her frankly. "You're putting on a show. I don't talk to a lot of demons, but you don't look or act like this."
Rather than be offended she reached out a wing, heedless of the occasional drop of blood it left on the flowers, and brushed the pile into an arc. "Is this an act?" she countered with an impish smile, "Are these really your feelings?"
"Sort of?" I hedged. She'd made her point.
She held out her hand, smiling, and introduced, "I'm Lily."
I laid my paw in it. I can shake. "Fang."
We both ended up snickering. Half the demonesses in the Dark are named something like Lilith, and half the nightmares are Fang or Claw or something. Names so generic they had to be real.
She had never put down the flower, and now she was touching it again. I had to listen to a demon actually try to sound gentle as she asked, "The girl these are for – she's another nightmare, I take it? Are these really what she wants?"
She'd gone straight to the question I'd been trying to avoid. Of course. "I don't know what she wants," I had to admit, "But probably not. Someone suggested flowers and the best I can do is give her so many it has to get her attention."
"I know I'd be impressed by the effort," she admitted, "But I'd trade a house full of regular flowers for just one, if it was picked because it was perfect for me. Think about that."
I thought about it. It was an idea. This certainly wasn't working.
It also would have been easier without an actual angel hanging around behind the border watching, but Lily seemed to be interested and how do you tell someone like her she makes you nervous? Thanks to Jeffery's never-ending attempts to teach me to be more subtle I thought I knew what to do. It wasn't hard to find the right dream. All this hunting for dreams with flowers in them had made me sensitive, and the hard part was waiting for one to drift close to the border. I wanted one on the edge.
When I broke into the one I'd picked I saw flowers, but only a few. The dream was a sort of a forest, or a garden, or something in-between. I couldn't even tell if the dreamer was male or female. They were just a vague shape drifting peacefully through a lush arbor.
This wasn't about the chase. It was about setting a mood. I hid myself inside a tree until the dreamer floated past. As it did I shoved my head out through the trunk, letting the skin of the tree cling to me as I snapped and growled, claws showing through a branch and thrashing at the dreamer. By the time I ripped through and leaped out onto the grass the whole dream had changed. We were in the Dark now, and everything had turned grey and shadowy, and the dreamer had sharpened into a young man in bulky pajamas. He wasn't drifting anymore but running, dashing through bushes and between trees to escape me in the little forest.
But most dreams just aren't that big. Seconds later I leapt out of the dark at him from another direction, and when I let him pull out of sight I just waited for him to loop around and did it again. Now he was stuck in the Dark and everything was changing shape, but I couldn't let this be a dream about a big, black dog. The next time he passed by it was a pile of moss that fell out of the web-haunted branches in front of him and I was inside it, just snapping teeth and a body forming out of the grey strands. When he escaped that I found a little patch of sunflowers in a clearing. They had almost faded into the shadows, but I hid myself in one and as the dreamer was about to run right through them I lunged.
I didn't break out. Like the tree I stretched the skin of the flower over me, giving it a muzzle that reached, snapping with violent bloodlust to either side because I was getting into it now. The rest of the sunflowers stopped fading and grew their own teeth, and as I forced an arm out and started dragging myself towards him with my claws they were mutating too. Behind him thorns sprouted from the trunk of a tree and its branches curled around to yank him in, and as I burst free of the sunflower the dreamer woke up.
Around me the dream spasmed, but it didn't pop. I was actually proud as I looked around. Every vine twitched threateningly, every leaf had an oozing sheen, bushes thrashed and bit with a hundred mouths. The dream had taken on a sense of identity. It knew what it was. A new nightmare was waking up.
I had come here with a purpose, though. A clump of flowers with heavy purple-and-black blooms edged with teeth and shifting, slitted eyes between the petals – that was perfect. I grabbed a bunch of stems in my jaws and tore them free, and with a squeal of pain the dream broke up.
They were gorgeous and the dream had been so close to consciousness, so specific, they weren't going to fade any time soon. They might never fade at all. That didn't mean I wasted any time. I bolted through the vague mists that are so much of the Dark as fast as four legs could go, only partly because Lily was whistling appreciatively behind me.
My Muse's house had lodged in some kind of withered field, so dead grass stretched all around it as far as I could see and above its peaked roof hung a crescent moon. It was a good place for her to have wandered, and I hoped she'd stay there because I thought it looked very pretty. At least, I thought that as I barged in through her front door and raced into the sitting room. I might have been hurrying too much. I had to make turns through several rooms, ducking back into the same hallway a second time until I found the right door. The house was trying to keep me out.
But there she was. The flowers from before were gone already, but they'd been so out of place here it was no wonder they hadn't survived. These flowers were better, and I padded up to her as calmly as I could and laid them in her lap. The vivid markings of them, with the wine colored lace on her dress, were the only real colors in the room. The eye in each flower still moved, peering up at her, at me, at everything, hostile and staring and not quite intelligent.
But still nothing happened. I sighed as the quiet sobbing continued. The flowers at least would last a long time. I hoped they'd be there in her lap forever.
Something touched my shoulder. Lily had caught up to me, or that weird little girl Anna had dropped by again. I looked around, both proud and embarrassed, but what I saw was a thin chain stretching out of the floor, hooking itself into my spiked collar.
I felt a sudden tension. A light thrill of fear that didn't come from anything, that was impressed from outside. Shadows in the corners of the room went pitch-black, and the four statues were looking at me.
A dream had formed around the house, but this time there was no dreamer. This was my dream and she was my nightmare. More pale lines snaked out and took hold of my legs, and they were starting to pull me back towards a blank stretch of wall. The four statues, a man and a woman and two little boys, were watching me with expectant faces. Four people encased in something white and stuck in the wall.
I was in trouble.
