Danika D. Potts's Blog, page 10

Lecture Series~ Building Narrative with Danika 102: Wise Sage Man

Too badass to be this old

In our previous lectures, we taught you about different types of evils or antagonists. We also touched on a powerful ally (and plot-mover-forwarder), the Golden Maiden.  She's a peach, but she isn't my favorite. That's the Wise Sage Man.

He might present in ways very familiar to you.  It's easy as hell to spot him here. Old. Check. Male. Check. Knows everything. Check. But what is he actually doing for our story?

The Wise Sage Man is incredibly useful at introducing your hero to the New World, the world outside of Normal. Ordinarily, the hero is removed from safety and dullness by the death or disappearance of parents and guardians. This is really just a way of ending the previous, known way of being. It's incredibly easy to throw an orphan into an adventure- there's no one to tell him to stay away from danger, no one to intervene on his behalf. All kinds of crazy shit can happen. We've seen it a thousand times in fantasy. But this isn't the only genre in which he serves a beautiful purpose.

Imagine your hero stands at the end of a long, dusty driveway, alongside a lonely country road, a packet of papers in hand.  A sad-looking family stands nearby, saying nothing. Everything he owns is bundled into a duffel bag at his feet. A Greyhound bus pulls up, and our teary-eyed hero boards the bus, looking back only once at his dejected family and waves, a half-hearted smile on his face. As the bus pulls away in a curling cloud of dust, the sad family walks back up the drive to the farmhouse nestled among shady trees.

The hero disembarks at the Army base, a huge, sprawling complex mobbed with soldiers and bustling with activity. As he stands there, overwhelmed, a fish out of water, he hears his very first greeting.

"Stand up straight, you walking pile of shit!"

Sir, yes sir

Enter the Wise Sage Man. Perhaps not a wizard or a mystic, this elder figure holds the key to our hero's conquering the world of the New, whatever that might be. He knows the tricks, the expectations, and he is, by golly, going to impart them to the hero, whether he likes it or not.

The Wise Sage Man helps open the door of the New World, then firmly shoves our hero through it.  The hero may be excited, or hesitant, or downright disbelieving, but the WSM exists to keep the story moving forward, so he pushes the hero. This often sounds something like:

"We're chasing the man who murdered your father."

"The plague will kill everyone if we don't find the cure."

"The artifact will fall into the wrong hands and be used against us."

I call these "The vengeance you didn't know you wanted". The WSM presents the debt owed to the hero, and then presents him the means to come collectin'. The WSM is also a giant backstory-encyclopedia, knowing more about the hero than he does himself. Which is great, because the hero has a ton of questions about the New World, and now, here is someone with the answers.

Unfortunately, the WSM can be kind of a dick. He has a tendency to hold some things back. Usually, this is only for our benefit, as the readers. We know by the end that the hero would have made different decisions if he'd had all of the information up front, but it would have been a super boring story to watch.

"Darth Vader is your father. Let's go save the princess. Oh, yeah,  she's your sister, so don't kiss her, that's gross."

So he knows a lot, he tells a little, and he's willing to guide our hero into the New World. But why?

Relation: Quite often, almost tediously often, we find out later that the mysterious WSM is a relative of the hero. Usually, this secret is revealed when the hero tries to abandon the adventure. The Golden Maiden is a good one for revealing this little trick. If it isn't a secret, there's usually a little estrangement between the relatives, so that they can explore the relationship they never really had before.

Debt: The WSM has knocked around for a bit, and he has some evils in his past to atone for. The hero's quest gives him a chance to balance things out, feel like he's making things right. Maybe he sees some of himself in the hero, and wants to help him avoid the pitfalls and traps the WSM encountered.

Duty: Less frequently, it's duty that binds a WSM to the hero, required by his position. His paycheck depends on offering guidance and oversight for the hero. We will almost always see that even if it wasn't the WSM's job, he'd still maintain his attachment and investment in the hero. Hero's a likable guy!

Best WSM ever.

The Loss

Our poor, orphaned hero, alone in the terrifying New World, has finally found a mentor to protect and guide him. The mentor is knowledgeable, skilled, or powerful (or all three), and is deeply attached to the hero. Without the mentor, he would be lost, alone again, confused about the New World and forced to rely on his own imperfect knowledge and faulty confidence.

Sounds like the start of an Act Three to me.

The old, two-days-from-retirement cop takes a bullet in the shootout at the botched heist. His new, young partner watches him fall. 

The wizard is struck down by the hulking stone golem, buried under a pile of rubble at the foot of a waterfall. His apprentice cries out for him, drawing the attention of the furious golem.

Grampa played in the minor leagues as a boy, and his advice is what got Bobby this far; on the mound, facing down the hardest hitter in the sixth grade. Grampa gets chest pains during the championship game, at the top of the ninth inning. 

The WSM must be lost.

He doesn't have to die, but there must be a break. The hero and WSM must part ways, and the more painful the break, the better.

Every day, they hustlin'

Our hero must be plunged into darkness deep before he can win the day, so that means everything cool must turn straight to suck. If the WSM were to stay, the hero would never grow, never evolve, or change beyond the lost little orphan boy. With the sorrow of losing the WSM, the boy is forced to become a man, to fill the void left behind. He must stand tall, for there is no one left to stand for him. The boy begins the journey to becoming a Wise Sage Man himself. Armed with insight and tempered by sorrow, the hero presses on. And conquers.

Resurrection

We're back, bitches!

One of the benefits of living to a ripe old age is straight-up wiliness. The WSM is very, very rarely out when he's down. A lot of WSM's return from the "dead". If the WSM doesn't reappear to save the hero when he is a breath away from death, he will reappear after the hero conquers the villain, as a nice way to wrap things up. But don't get locked into fantasy tropes here either. Dead doesn't always mean dead.

 The last bank robber, bloodied and wild, draws on the young partner. The partner is out of bullets, out of back up, out of options. He closes his eyes, awaiting the end. The old, two-days-from-retirement cop rises from behind the shot-up police car, his service pistol in his hand. His left arm dangles, useless at his side. He fires his very last round.

The golem advances on the apprentice, who fires every spell he can remember. Fire, wind, water blast away at the stone golem, but it advances. The apprentice stumbles, driven back, as he scrambles, fumbling for the lightning spell. He stutters, his memory failing. At the base of the waterfall, the rubble shifts and a hand claws its way free.

Grampa's triple bypass went smashingly, and he's on the mend. Bobby brings his trophy to the hospital room and leaves it with him. Grampa promises to get better soon, and they're practicing Bobby's circle change-up pitch in no time. 

It's on now.

Remember, when you're working with narrative like this, death means change. The end of one way, the beginning of another. It doesn't have to mean the end of life function. So when the WSM comes back, the death/change has already occurred. Things aren't the same. The hero doesn't need the WSM in the same way, and the WSM can see that the hero has matured. They may not yet be equals, but the hero has earned the sage's respect.  The hero already had the WSM's affection, or his commitment, but now he can look the Wise Sage Man in the eye. This is when the old cop partner stops calling the young partner "Rookie" and refers to him by his last name. This is when the wizard starts letting his apprentice experiment, or take over some of his duties while he studies. This is when Grampa looks out the window and sees Bobby instructing his little brother Billy on how to throw a cutter.  This is the hero, learning how to be the Wise Sage himself.

-Danika

Danika's note: Throughout, I refer to the hero sometimes as "the boy". Don't be silly. Of course the hero doesn't have to be a boy. The hero can be anything. The hero can be a girl, an old woman, a fairy king, a baby squirrel, a sentient shoe. It doesn't matter. Take no offense at the terminology, just look at it as a very simple handle to help us grasp the concepts. Now go write something interesting!! 

You Are In The Business Of Customer Service or; The Buck Stops With You

Howdy gang! Wanted to talk about an important issue today that just happened here over New Year's Day leading through to today. Namely, the issue of customer service. I can tell you that so far, this is the first major problem we've encountered regarding end customer issues with picking up Rabbit in the Road.  The reason I bring this up, is because you are the FINAL LINE OF DEFENSE on customer satisfaction. It's not the guy that ships a customer's order, and it's not the vendor of your product. It's YOU.

Whether you understand it or not, you are a manufacturer of product. You are the wordsmith, you are the one that puts the words down, you are the one that puts that product into a position so that it can be consumed by a readership. You need to be willing to not only take responsibility, but also fight on behalf of the people who WANT to partake in your experience, even if it isn't necessarily your fault.

With the exception of personal information (which is clearly blocked out), this is how the situation played out.

I was contacted by reader Tim M. who was interested in reading the book. He went and made the purchase on Barnes & Noble for Rabbit in the Road to be read on his Acer Iconia tablet, mostly as a gift for his wife as she is a big reader. Strangely enough, when Tim went to download the book, it didn't appear in his library at all. There was no purchase, nothing.

Perplexed, I asked Tim to forward me his receipt for the purchase, so I could double check and see what was going on, as evidenced below:

I went and took a look at the sales information (which appears very, very quickly through Barnes & Noble's PubIt! platform), and even I could confirm that for whatever reason, the transaction never showed up. I have zero sales information for this sale. At this point, Tim has received a receipt, has even had his bank account drawn for the transaction, the works. He hasn't received a product that he paid for. Tim, at this point, is understandably livid. Following this, he took the next reasonable step and contacted customer service to try and get it sorted out and receive what he paid for. This is what he received in response.

For whatever strange reason, the downloadable sample was considered the "live" copy of the book. It wouldn't let him download it into his library because the sample was there, so he logically removed the sample so that he could download the proper copy. Be it software glitch or whatever reason, Tim now has absolutely NO ACCESS to the product he purchased. Zero. None. Customer service isn't working with him to ensure that he has it, and because of the wonkiness of the transaction? We're not receiving any royalty from it either. So far as we can both tell, this transaction simply didn't happen. We didn't receive royalty, and he didn't receive product.

Now, I could have said "Sorry bro, tough luck, I don't know what's going on" and washed my hands of it. Let me tell you why I DIDN'T. 

Because regardless of what happened, Tim isn't Barnes & Noble's customer. Sure, he gives them money and they give him a product, but he is MY CUSTOMER. He is purchasing MY PRODUCT. The actions of a vendor can and do reflect on me. If I had washed my hands of the situation, it says volumes about the content of my character, and of the "business" that we're running here, the business of happy readers and happy customers. We all know the story of "An unhappy customer is more likely to tell 10 people of the terrible experience they had." This was the situation sitting right in front of my face. A vendor screwed up and didn't want to make it right. I WANT to make it right, and so I took the following action:

This surprised Tim, and this is what he had to say in response:

Now, let's observe and analyze the situation. Because of the actions that I took, Tim absolved me of any wrongdoing that the vendor had committed to him, and by doing so, I made our bond even stronger as content creator to customer. Did we lose money by pleasing our customer? Yes. We lost the ebook sale (since the transaction seems to be floating around in Voodoo Land), and we lost a few dollars off the print copy should Tim decide to go ahead and utilize his coupon for it. But that doesn't matter.

The NUMBER ONE TENENT  OF CUSTOMER SERVICE: Repeat service, and referrals. Pleasing the customer should always come FIRST, not last.

Odds are very very likely that because of me being proactive, empathetic, and sympathetic to Tim's problem, he is more likely to say, "Hey, this guy did me a solid. Stood up and took responsibility for someone else's mess up in order to make sure I was happy."

The customer is the life blood. The reader is the life blood. If we don't have readers, all we have are words that aren't getting read. This is someone going, "Hey, this looks like a cool product. I want to enjoy it. Let me give you money because I feel that it is worth my time and my resources." Don't spit in their face, it's a privilege to receive that attention and desire to partake in what you've made. It really is in essence, this:

Barnes & Noble ended up losing a customer today, and that is unfortunate for them. I however, gained a potential life-long one. Why? Because I sat down, evaluated, saw the value of Tim's time and limited resources, and decided to make the call that making sure his being able to fully enjoy what I created was worth more to me than a couple of bucks. Tim is MORE LIKELY to recommend my book to others, and is MORE LIKELY to recommend any other product that I create, because he can say that he had a good experience dealing with me, from top to bottom.

So remember. You are the last line of defense, you are the buck stopper, it is your responsibility to fight on behalf of your product users. You need them, and if you are faithful to them, they will be faithful to you.

~Oliver

A Fistful of Signings

Just a quickie here. Hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year. The print copy of Rabbit in the Road has been roaming around since a few days before Christmas, I've had the privilege of giving my first autographs, which is damn weird. Frankly, I didn't really know what to say. After all, what exactly IS the protocol for these types of things? I don't think anyone knows and just kinda wings it. But regardless, I wanted to share a few notable ones with you!

Without further ado:

Katie!

This one is nice and silly. Katie was the cover designer for the book (and is credited as such)!

Rachel:

Rachel was our first major test reader, and continues to help me test out new features here on the blog, managing data, and was even the final eyes on the print copy before it went out. She saw it before anyone else.

And finally, Alexis:

Lexy is interesting, because she is our YOUNGEST fan, clocking in at just under 12 years old! She can't get enough of the book, though. Seriously humbling stuff.

Pretty neat when put into perspective, ain't it?

~Oliver

Final Notable Quotable of 2011: Live A Life You're Proud Of

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. " ~Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Well boys and girls, it looks to be about that time. Tick-tock goes the clock and this year comes to a close, just like all the others before it.  This will be the final post as well as the last Notable Quotable of 2011, and I wanted to share it with you.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of my favorite films of all time now, chokes me up every single time I watch it. This particular monologue is powerful indeed, and more or less encapsulates everything that I have told you about over the past few months.

Each year passes, and we get older and older. Each day goes by, and you're just a little bit more tired than you were the day before. Along with each day that passes, that's one more day you've spent not doing the things that you wanted to do with your life. Just as he said in the quote, there are no rules to this thing. Even though society and other social structures say that, "You have to do X or Y this way," you'll come to realize how often that is NOT true. There is no great secret path to success in life; The truth of the matter is, every single person on the planet is still trying to figure it out one day at a time, just like you. Some of them will admit it, others will not.

It's a brave new world every single day. The world of yesterday is not the same as the world of today, and today will definitely not be anything like tomorrow.

Tick-tock.

The world is such a wonderful, fascinating place isn't it? You made it this far; Let's go a little further.

When you wake up tomorrow, I want you to wake up and realize that the eyes that you are looking at the world with have never existed before. They're brand new, a little older and different than the ones you had last year. The world you see before you is different than the one from the year before; it's a world filled with new possibilities that you haven't yet explored.

I don't want you to spend another day of your life being unhappy and unfulfilled. Get up and go DO the things that you want to do with your life. Do you want to write? Don't wait for NaNoWriMo, don't keep waiting to write that story. Just go write it, put your words down, and then put it out there. Don't make excuses for the world to leave you unfulfilled. No one but you can realize your vision.

And this applies to anything and everything. I don't care what it is. Do you want to sing? Go SING. Sing your fool head off. Sing like no one is listening. Do you want to dance? Go do it, dance like you should be embarrassed, but aren't. Go and do everything in your life worth doing, for you. Because at the end of the day, whether you believe in a deity, a god, the spirit, or even believe in nothing at all…

…We're all going to end up in the same place. In the ground. And there's nothing that can stop that. We can delay it, but we're all going to get there at some point.

You don't want to wait until those final moments, and all you can think about is all the things that you DIDN'T do. You've made it this far, you deserve to be happy. I believe that you deserve to be happy. Craft that life that you can be proud of, one that you can wake up and smile to.

Have a fantastic, safe, and Happy New Year.

~Oliver

A Real Story: The Final Fantasy That Got Away… And Then Came Back

So, I'm going back on something that I said  I would try not to do on this blog: Talk about video games. However, I also did leave a clause in there about story. Therefore, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to tell you a story about gaming.

The following that you are about to read is real; None of this is fictionalized content. You want to know more about one half of Between Him and Her? Then here you go. As you continue to read, you'll realize that story has been a part of life for me from a very young age, even in gaming. The following was an editorial I wrote months ago about dealing with Asperger's Syndrome and being a dedicated game hobbyist, and how it has helped me function and get through problems I have encountered in my life. I never expected it to end the way that it did. 

June 2011:

I've been around video games for a long time, over 25 years now. I began my gaming career at a very young age, ironically starting with Squaresoft (now Square Enix titles). The very first NES game I EVER laid eyes on? The 3-D Battles of World Runner. So to say that Square games have always been a part of my life would be an understatement.

I have been a fan of Square through the thick, and the thin. From the loved (Final Fantasy IV), to the not so loved (Secret of Evermore, which unlike most other people, I loved), all the way to current generation. If a Square-Enix developed title comes out, there is a strong chance that it will be snatched up by me almost immediately. In all those years, I have sat down and played every locally released mainstream Final Fantasy title (in the numbered series), except for one.

The original Final Fantasy for the NES.

I was about 8 years old at the time, in a bad living situation with my older brother and mother. We were staying with my aunt and cousins, and I had just transferred schools yet AGAIN. As a rule of thumb, we kept to ourselves in the house, staying the hell out of their way and all living in one very small bedroom. Needless to say, it was a cramping experience. It goes without saying to state that we were obviously very, VERY poor and the living situation was uncomfortable at best. My mother didn't want my brother and I to have to compete with my cousins for the use of the NES, so scrimping together what money she could, she went out and got us our own that couldn't be bullied nor taken from us.

Surprisingly, the NES actually made us bond together CLOSER as a family. That was our family quality time. I still remember the first two games that we picked up; the original Megaman (with shit-tastic box art!) and Legacy of the Wizard. Later on, this would be followed by  Shadowgate (one of the greatest games of all time!) and Deja Vu, its sequel. Let me tell you, you may have had a great childhood, but for us? The weekend rolling around, Mom not having to work and us taking a field trip to the mall to go to the bookstore and look up the solution to puzzles we were stuck on in Shadowgate, and then picking up some gummi strawberries from the Tropik Sun Fruit & Nut stand. As far as I was concerned, I was in heaven…. at least for a few minutes at a time.

You will be angry that you have never heard of Ace Harding until now. Go play this game. Immediately. This is some of the best writing in video game fiction, period.

The reason I say that, is that as a kid growing up with unknown at the time Asperger's Syndrome, I was without a shadow of a doubt the black sheep of the family (no pun intended). My cousins refused to socialize with me and treated me like shit; My own brother would only interact with me when mandated by my mother. I didn't understand why at the time and it left me with feelings of being unliked and unloved. For some, it can be difficult to imagine NOT being loved by people you share blood with, but that was how it was. Vast periods of loneliness and being trapped alone with my own thoughts was a very constant and very present reality.

Although my family life was incredibly rough, my school situation was coincidentally not as bad, especially when you get around other game geeks as a 3rd grader. I had two friends, Zack and Josh. Their last names escape me, but they were without a doubt my best friends. Zack was a pretty much normal kid that was a game junkie, but Josh… he was something else. I remember he had a crazy eye tick, you know the kind of guy you think might start a fire? That kind of eye tick. Nevertheless, he was solid. Recesses were spent discussing games, reading Nintendo Power, and sharing tips and tricks with each other on the games we were stuck on.

There was a day when we were walking to our individual homes after getting off the bus. As we were walking down the block, Josh (with his CRAZY EYE no less) spotted a little sliver of green nestled inbetween the REST of the green of the grass. We all stopped to inspect and, lo and behold, it was a crisp 20 dollar bill. We were all ecstastic, obviously. To an 8 year old, 20 dollars might as well be a million. Now that I think about it, 20 dollars NOW is still roughly a million as far as I'm concerned. You can buy a lot of shit with a 20 dollar bill if you manage it right!

After cheering about our good fortune, we had the classic problem: Who was going to claim it? All 3 of us were present at the time of discovery, and although Josh was the one who saw it and had rightful claim to it, we had all decided it simply wasn't fair that way. So, they decided to base it on allowance. Zack got the biggest allowance out of all of us, 20 dollars a week, and Josh received 10 bucks every couple of days, for the usual sweets, comic books and other NECESSARY TO AN  8 YEAR OLD odds and ends. However, it came around to me and I had to hang my head in embarassment and shame. I didn't even really have a concept OF an allowance. After a few moments, Josh handed the 20 dollar bill to me. It was, to the best of my knowledge now, the first genuine gift I ever received from another person. Not only was it a gift, it was a gift of money! Money that was my own to spend! I had never had that experience before.

We parted ways from there, and I toddled the rest of the way home clunching that 20 dollar bill mercilessly, heartbeating in my chest. It was mine, I could do with it whatever I wished and no one could tell me differently. When I got home, I told my mother about what happened and she was surprised. No one made mention of what good friends that I had had who did something so selflessly… because they were white (but that's a story for a different time).  Regardless, my oldest cousin was driving at this point and everyone could tell that this 20 dollar bill was burning a hole in my pocket, and so he took me to a pawn shop, where obviously the selection of video games were plentiful, and definitely cheaper.

That was when I saw it on the shelf. A copy of Final Fantasy. Of course it wasn't in the box and there were no instructions, but I didn't care. I had a good feeling about this one. And it was right in my price range, 18.95! I had exactly enough to buy it! I left that pawnshop happy that day; It was not only the first real money I had had for myself, but I had bought my VERY FIRST VIDEO GAME! It was no one else's, it belonged to ME, and me alone.

When I got home,  I could barely contain myself. My brother though, wasn't quite as receptive. To this day I still remember the scowl on his face. It's burned into my memory, I can't get rid of it. I think disdain would be an appropriate word here.

I had the NES all to myself and could play. I sat down and popped it in, confused as all shit by the character creation system, but I managed to get through it and make my first party. I remember going for a balanced team of White Mage, Black Mage, Fighter, and Thief. It seemed like a good idea.  Naturally, I got my ass-kicked up and down the starting field for about 2 hours before it was time for bed. But that was okay! I now had all the time to slowly learn how to play and conquer this beast. Or so I thought.

The next day, I returned home from school, excited to get back to playing my new game. But I couldn't find it, at all. I looked everywhere, I was certain I had left it in the NES! Finally, after getting frustrated with searching for it for about 20 minutes, my older brother piped up "I let Calvin borrow it." He had, without any sort of permission or query, lent out MY new video game to a friend of his. I still remember how furious I was. I punched my brother as hard as I could, screaming at the top of my lungs. My aunt, my cousins, my mother? They did nothing at all. In fact, I was the one who was punished for punching and fighting, and I was grounded from the NES for a week. They completely overlooked and ignored the fact that my new game, for all intents and purposes to an 8 year old, had been STOLEN from me.

A week had passed and I had gotten antsy at this point. I queried my older brother "When is he bringing back my game?!" The response that I got was… less than pleasant.

"Oh, Calvin moved out of state."

That's right. After lending out my game to a friend without permission, that same friend? HE MOVED OUT OF THE STATE. I had no way of recovering it at all. It was now considered a lost cause. And I cried. I cried so very, VERY badly that I can only think of one other time in my life I cried that hard.

Why had he done this to me? Why did my brother do such a spiteful, hateful thing to his own baby brother? I didn't understand then, and I still don't understand now.

Like all other things, time passed and I "got over it"…. to a point. Forgiven and forgotten? No, neither. It was simply a lost cause to even bother trying to recover or pursue it. To this day, it always sits in the back of my mind, clawing at it like a beaver tearing at a dam.

Asperger's Syndrome is a strange, funny little thing in people. It manifests itself in many different ways, with some commonalities between them. Myself for example? I happen to be "cursed" so to speak, with a damn near photographic memory. Imagine, if you will, that something that happened over 21 years ago happened to you 3 hours ago instead. That is what it is like for me. It is a constant, living nightmare of hurt and emotional pain. I can't STOP remembering it, and it is as fresh as the day it occurred for me.

The years passed and I moved on to more games, bigger ones. I continued to pursue Final Fantasy every chance I got, as a natural fan of the series. And yet every time I've ever seen a copy of Final Fantasy sitting on a shelf at Funcoland or Software Etc (you know, before it became THAT company), I would pause and become nervous. The original Final Fantasy, emotionally, equates to me like a dog that has been punished for a bad action, and begins to associate a behavior with pain and henceforth, avoids it. That is the way that it has felt for me for all these years.

I have wanted to sit down and finally play the game. You might say "Well, there's tons of NES emulators out there! Finding a rom of it isn't a big deal!" or "That game has been remade PLENTY of times on current platforms! There's no reason you can't get it!" And you're right. I COULD do that.

However, the point isn't playing the game anymore… it is about returning what is RIGHTFULLY MINE. I want no  special treatment from my older brother; I want his love and genuine respect as a human being and as his KIN. I want him to make good on his great wrong. Even years later, after other people have "forgotten" about this incident, and even with me telling him in PLAIN ENGLISH? He doesn't care and refuses to, based on "it was so long ago."

Believe me when I say this: When your memory is photographic, VERY few past things become "irrelevant." It is constantly relevant, simply because my brain doesn't allow it to NOT be.

Wouldn't you know it? 21 years later, I have made it a point to avoid spoiling the game for myself in all forms. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot of the game. I have been on a 20+ year spoiler blackout. I don't know a thing about it. The only thing I know is 4 Warriors of Light, and the classes. Outside of that, the entire game and its plot are a COMPLETE mystery to me.

I don't want a brand new copy of Final Fantasy (that would be ridiculously priced if you could still find it in shrink!), nor do I want some special privilege. Unlike some, when I dream, I like to dream within reason and manageably. Honestly? A dream of mine is to be able to sit down with a regular NES, shitty RF cable and all,  and a USED copy of Final Fantasy returned to me from my older brother, so I can finish the adventure that an 8 year old little boy tried to start and was denied.

I don't think that that is too much to ask. Sadly, I don't think that that dream will ever be fulfilled. Believe me when I say you have no clue how much that hurts, on the inside.

But then… fast forward to yesterday, December 28th 2011:

As you should know by now, good readers, I recently turned 30 on the 22nd of this month. It's been a very good week, very busy spending time with friends as I'm going to be moving out of the state at the end of February. Over the past year and a half in the game journalism gig, I've met all kinds of people. During the BigBang event in Ottumwa, Iowa, I happened to meet up with the Ottumwa High School Game Community, a bunch of youth with a hot-blooded passion for gaming.

I've spent a lot of time with these kids, musing back and forth about classic and current gaming. We've all become pretty good friends, and I'm honored to know that these guys even look up to me as a mentor figure, which is admittedly very strange and ODD to me. It's not uncommon for them to ask me advice concerning creative writing and more.

The guys tend to plan road trips up to town whenever they have a break period from classes. Seeing as how they're on Christmas Break, they decided to come on up and spend the day running around.  Naturally, we decided to hang out and grab a bite to eat and talk about the book Jeff and Kirby are working on, Trevor always comes along for laughs (and is big into classic gaming) and just generally have a good time. To go along with that, they'd also picked up copies of Rabbit in the Road and wanted to get it signed.

It's at this point that my buddy Jayme has also shown up and met the fellas too. Unexpectedly, Jeff pulls out the box that his copy of Rabbit in the Road came in, and then slides it over to me. My expression was quite puzzled, but he told me to reach in there, and this is what I pulled out once I got past all the packing paper.

Jeff and Trevor had, of their own accord, went out of their way to find me a copy of the original Final Fantasy for the NES. And this isn't just any old busted copy; A bonafide collector would salivate over this. The game has hardly been touched, the box has nary a dent or even scratch in the surface. It has been re-shrinked, but even then I gave the cartridge a thorough inspection. This copy is in such pristine condition, the included paper material (the instruction manual, player's guide, the maps, even the original ADS TO ORDER NINTENDO POWER MAGAZINE) were literally LIKE NEW, the creases not even bent. They had never been touched, as far as I can tell.

It is rare, INCREDIBLY rare to leave me speechless. I wasn't just speechless at this moment. I was literally stunned in shock. I had no clue this was coming, it was completely out of the blue. Tears have never come so fast to my eyes before in my life.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking "How materialistic of you." That's not the case here. What it really comes down to about this story is that when I thought nobody was paying attention, it turns out I was wrong. Someone was paying attention when I wrote that editorial. And they didn't just pay attention, they knew WHAT it was and WHY.

The important moments in life aren't about the things that we have, but about the people that care about us. I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably never reconcile in any meaningful way with my family. But someone saw the hole that was in my heart, and made an effort of their own volition to sew it shut and make me believe in people again. That's what this means, to me. Someone noticed me, and someone cared. They didn't want to see me sad anymore.

I can say, without reservation, that this is one of the biggest moments of my life. This simple gesture means even more to me than Rabbit in the Road.  These are the moments where good people, bad people, heroes, and villains are defined in life.

These kids might look up to me and treat me as a mentor figure, but the roles are suddenly reversed.

THESE TWO BOYS ARE MY HEROES. 

So now, as I move on to the next phase of my life, I get to start it by finishing what that 8 year old started and didn't get to… we're going to play Final Fantasy, and I can put him to bed and tell him good night. That kid and I have a story we need to finish.

Jeff? Trevor? You boys show that there is still great good in the world. You are, and always will be, my friends.

Thank you.

~Oliver

Left to right, Jeff, Myself, and Trevor.

Notable Quotable: What I Do Defines Me

"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." ~Christian Bale, Batman Begins (2005)

I realized we hadn't done a notable quotable in a long while, so I wanted to bring up a rather poignant one (and yes I do realize that this is the second notable quotable I've pulled from Batman Begins; What can I say, it was good writing).

The poetic and simultaneously blunt nature of this line is moving, because it cuts out a lot of the edges and gets straight to the point. This is a great, great thing to motivate you not just as an aspiring storyteller, but also everyday in your life.



Privately, on the inside or in your home, you might think of yourself as a "good person who does the right thing." But none of that matters if NO ONE CAN SEE IT. If actions speak louder than words, then thoughts must be completely mute.

The things that you do, ARE the things that define you for other people. When you're not around, when you can't speak for yourself, people talk about the actions that you have performed, the things that they can quantify. These are the things that they use to build legacies about you, and how you will be remembered. Every day, you should get up and try to be the VERY BEST VERSION OF YOU that you can be, and not just for other people's sake, but also for your own.

There will come a point in time, where you will no longer exist in this world. How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered as the person you wish you were on the inside, or as the person that you ARE? Get up, take charge, and leave your mark on the world in exactly the way that you want it to be.

~Oliver

Last Chance!

Last chance, babies!

I just wanted to  remind you that Rabbit in the Road is on sale for .99 through tonight! Did you buy someone a reader and need to throw a great, cheap read on it? Slide over to our Amazon or Barnes and Noble page and grab a copy while it's on sale!

-Dani

Two Steps Forward…

So the work in progress, code named "LH", is underway. I know where we're going, and I know what to do next…and it's still not quite right.

I'm not here to bitch, though.  I'm  just here to say I know what it's like to hit that icky, rough patch. I'm here to tell anyone who feels like they're  stuck in the same quicksand, "You're not alone". 

Sometimes being stuck isn't anything so glamorous as writer's block. Sometimes being stuck is just…that. It's just a rough, cruddy little patch that isn't going to smooth itself out. You can turn it into a block if you wanted, I guess. I mean, you could take a car with a flat tire and haul it to the salvage yard if you wanted. Just junk the bitch and call it done. If you wanted…

I'm not going to preach and tell you how perfect I am, or how I'm never seized by doubt, or hounded by worries. I'm not impervious to discouragement or unable to be worn down by life's little cares.

But there are two kinds of writers in this world.

There are those who would write, but…

And there are those who do write, in spite of…

My pissy little problems aren't reasons to stop working on my dream. They're excuses, and as such, worthless.  I write "in spite of". The story isn't working, keep writing. The hours are long, keep writing. The this, the that, the other, keep writing.

Keep writing because your life isn't right if you don't, instead of waiting for your life to be right so you can.

-Dani

Even Game Developers Like Rabbit in the Road

Producer Troy "Aether" Hewitt, Carbine Studios, NCSoft.

Producer Troy Hewitt of  Carbine Studios (developers of upcoming mmorpg WildStar) got an opportunity to read Rabbit in the Road and said, "I was both impressed and moved," by it.

I, for one, think that that is pretty great.  Flattering, even. Enjoy, won't you?

~Oliver

Rabbit In The Hand Worth Two In The Bush

Click On The Picture for Video!

I received the proof copy of Rabbit in the Road today, and have checked over it thoroughly. Therefore, I am giving it my blessing. You can go buy it RIGHT NOW! Yes, that is me. And yes, I have a crazy voice. But now you can see what you're getting before you buy. Retail price is $12.99 USD.

https://www.createspace.com/3741030

Of course, you will also be able to purchase it through Amazon as well, but I have no ETA on when it will propagate to the normal store, maybe  a week from now or more. So if you're REALLY trying to make the Christmas clock, you can order it right now, and the shipping is quite speedy.

As an extra treat, if you order it now, just apply this discount code when you check out:  X9RCNLCE

~Oliver