Marshall J. Stephens's Blog, page 4

Salting the Earth of Our Memories

The Sandy Hook school shooting will never be forgotten. There is no doubt of this. The depth of senselessness and the deep, biting nature of the tragedy assures that it will be something that for a generation to come, all one has to do is say the words “Sandy Hook” or “that shooting in Connecticut” and Americans will know of what one speaks.

To a lesser extent, this will be true of the case of three kidnapped women who escaped the horrors of a home in Cleavland. Again, this is an unthinkable circumstance that came to be and a headline grabbing event.

Outside of the fact that both were committed by evil men, the two situations share one other factor. There is discussion of destroying the structures that saw these atrocities occur. With the school, it’s more than understandable as educators try to remove distractions for their students and knowing that you walk in halls where so much life was lost would certainly count as one. And one would pity the real estate agent who would be trying to sell a house that also served as a dungeon.

While these motivations are understandable, I think there’s a danger in them. These things are not simply unforgettable, they should never be forgotten. They should remain as a call to vigilance and a reminder of the depravity of which men are capable. They should be a cautionary tale and motivation for the public to not ever think that “it” can never happen to them or the one’s they love.

I say this not because I wish to be a fear-monger, but because there is real evil in the world and while we wish to not be controlled by it or cower from it, we must never ignore it.

I’m an author and one of the things author’s do is think about bad things you can do to people. The bar is set and readers are desensitized enough that occasionally we step up the bar and try to come up with something that had been heretofore unthinkable, a process that has produced both great works of challenging fiction and “torture porn” schlock like “Hostel”. But reality consistently shows that it’s stranger, more disturbing and uglier than any fiction (more beautiful and wonderful, too, but that’s another post).

I do not presume to judge the people who have suggested or moved towards getting these sites demolished. It’s not up to me to tell people how to react to the things that happen in their own home towns.

That said, if I should ever be the victim of a madman, I ask that you not destroy the location of my demise or abuse for my sake. I ask that you keep it. Turn it into a museum, maybe, but keep it. Use it as a rallying point for anyone who would rise to the challenge of making sure something like that never happens again. I would not have, in my memory, someone choose to demolish a building if it can live as a symbol of the fight to combat horrors.

There’s always the possibility that someone of sick mind might seek these places out as a shrine or the end of a pilgrimage to inspire them to similar acts. I would rather have that (and the potential for such people to expose themselves in the process) than to have the incidents, were it me on the receiving end, to be just words on a page; essentially hearsay.

There needs to be some evidence I think.

And again, this is how I feel. I’m not the victim of these crimes, I don’t know anyone who is and I won’t presume to speak for them. But there’s a fine line between giving something the proper respectful difference and sweeping it under the rug.

If I’m ever on the receiving end, I’d like for someone to make sure to err on the side of not forgetting.

Peace.

Mystery vs. Horror vs. Action vs. Urban Fantasy

Four ways

John found himself trapped in the basement. His only companions were dust, darkness and despair. At the door above, he could hear the nails of the things that wanted to eat him scratching at the door.

He found the lighter in his pocket and brought a tiny flame to life. The light was a small comfort, but more importantly revealed that, tucked into a corner of what could be his tomb, there was a large gun safe.

He’d cracked harder safes than this one. He just needed the one thing he had very little of: time.

He flung himself against the cold steel of the safe and pressed his ear above the dial. He turned the device back and forth, listening for the discreet clicks that would let him know he’d gotten part of the combination.

The first number came almost immediately: 12.

Above, the door was beginning to crack.

“C’mon, c’mon,” John muttered, and his plea was rewarded with the second number: 6.

His relief was short lived, however, as he heard the thin wooden barrier above snap as a clawed hand reached through.

He needed five more minutes. That was all. But he didn’t have it.

But he had a guess. Six was half of twelve, so maybe he’d kept the pattern.

Spinning it to 12, then 6, then 3, he grabbed the handle and tore it open.

He took a deep breath, for inside he found….

Action :

…more guns than he knew what to do with. He reached for a revolver hanging in a leather holster on the door. He opened the cylinder and found the chambers loaded with shiny, new .357 magnum shells.

“This day is looking up,” he said as he turned and shot the first horror to breech the door right between the eyes.

Horror :

…only more dust. A few empty boxes of ammunition were on one shelf, but otherwise, there was no sign the safe had ever contained it’s intended cargo.

He fell to his knees, not knowing he was weeping until he heard a tear hit the concrete floor. He wondered how he could hear such a thing, over the destruction of the door.

Then he realized there were no more sounds of wood being rent asunder. He got out his lighter and lit it, turning slowly to see if his pursuers had made it inside.

He could not even bring himself to scream when one of them smiled and blew it out.

Mystery :

…a message scrawled on the back that said, “John, Take it and meet us in the gas station on third and main. -Your Friends”.

“I’ve never been in this house,” he said. “How the hell did anyone know I’d be here?”

The scream of the things that had been pursuing him from the lab finally making it into the door brought him back to the moment.

The only item in the safe was a pump action 12 gauge, but there were over forty shells tucked into the slots on it’s sling. That would be enough to keep him alive until he could make it to the address, he was sure.

He took it up, racked the slide and said, “Time to find out what’s really going on.”

Urban Fantasy :

…a wooden door where the back of the safe should have been. It was adorned with sigils and runes he’d seen in the book back at the mansion, but he still didn’t know what they meant.

What he didn’t find were guns. The fact that there was a door was less comforting that guns would have been, but still it meant there was a way out. He tried pulling on the large, iron ring on the door’s face, but it did not open.

As he heard the other door at the top of the stairs crack and splinter, panic struck him. He pounded on the door and screamed, “Help! Please help me.”

Light flooded the room as the door in the safe opened from the other side. The girl from the truck stop poked her head out, an impish smile on her lips. Pushing one raven lock away from her eyes, she said, “About time you asked.”

She offered him her hand. John took it. She pulled him through, the wooden door and the safe door closing behind them.

+++

This originally was going to be something about a line or two long with the horror and action examples only, but I got a little carried away.

They promised me that I could cut off my arms by now.

Recently, a video game was announced that made my heart go pitter-pat: Cyberpunk 2077.

I don’t play a lot of video games. I don’t really have the time. The reason for my excitement wasn’t because it was a video game, though, but because it is being developed by the people who made the tabletop role playing game Cyberpunk and the follow up Cyberpunk 2020.

For the uninitiated, CP2020 was a game set in the near future where people got bionic implants as a fashion statement, the Soviet Union was still a threat, the world was run by corporations and cities were fortresses in a sea of diseased wasteland.

My kind of dystopia.

I spent a lot of time on that game, more studying it than playing it. I ran a few campaigns. Characters from that game eventually started to run into one of the first novella length stories I ever wrote, a work that one day I may have to revisit to see if it’s salvageable.

The problem with Cyberpunk, both the game and the genre, was that it hinged on technology always coming at us in double handfuls with little explanation, that every day would be like the dot com boom of the 90′s, except with some urban warfare and famine thrown in to make it more interesting. As we discovered that computers were just another disappointment and that we wouldn’t all be sitting with cables jacked into the back of our skulls to use Google, the veneer or an exciting, if dark, future began to wear thin.

The original release of the Cyberpunk RPG was set in 2013. We’re there now. I can’t go to the mall and get cyber-limbs. I don’t have to worry about about implants driving me crazy or cops in flying cars not wanting to help me because I can’t produce a corporate ID or sufficient credit card. The world is not as bad as they’d imagined, even if it’s dramatically more messed up in some other ways.

And we’re better for it.

Still, I’m kind of sad that I can’t get my arms replaced with chrome ones. And maybe a heads up display built into my corneas. That’d be neato.

Guest Poetry Spot

A dear friend of mine posted my stuff on her website. It’s two poems that I’ve not released anywhere else before. Check them out! Follow the link below:

Rose Reads: The Website of Lucinda Rose, Author

Mix CD Theory

I still make mix CD’s. I get that Spotify lists are kind of the thing now, but there’s something satisfying about actually burning the media onto a physical object and then having that in your hand. Also, I think it’s an unsung artform.

Well, not totally unsung. DJ’s, as a profession, started out basically doing this. It’s about not only playing good music together, but doing it in such a way as to not get monotonous. You can’t just blast an hour of loud Wagnerian noise and expect it to sound good from start to finish. There have to be highs and lows, quiet moments with the over the top aural assaults.

DJ’s eventually came to mix and remix the songs together enough and combined with their own additional beats and touches that DJ’ing became it’s own thing, but it’s roots are in just picking a good mix of music.

There are two people I credit with my love of this. One is a guy named Tucker. He used to give mix tapes (yep, actual cassettes) out as Christmas gifts. Given that this was at a time when making a mix didn’t just involve click, drag, press burn, this was a pretty thoughtful and spiffy thing to do.

So of course, I ripped the idea off whole cloth.

Second is a guy named Tim. For the brief time I was in college, one of my favorite and most memorable classes was Drawing 101. Tim was the TA and one day had us sit down and draw to music. We each had time to play one song for the others to draw to. I brought a stack of tapes and was dithering over what to play.

The guy before me played Rage Against the Machine. I countered with Sarah McLaughlin. I could have, however, countered with the Animaniacs soundtrack. I regret not doing so to this day.

My mix CD making has become less of a Christmas thing and more something that occurs when a critical mass of interesting music finds me and I can put 17 songs together (plus, maybe 4 or 5 audio clips from movies or something to add color). I give them names like “Does this Make Sense to You?”, “Confession” and “Suprisingly Upbeat”. They have themes and I make an effort to make them flow. I also try to keep them a mix of musical oddities, current hits and classic rarities so that I expose or remind people of music they might or may have liked.

Got any favorite mixes?

Peace,

MJStef

IFAQ: My favorite Doctor Who Episodes since Eccelston

As Doctor Who comes to it’s mid season close, I decided I should start something: My Infrequently Asked Questions.

These are questions that, while no one has really asked, I feel the need to offer you, the reader, a chance to know the answers to.

So, here goes: My top Episodes (or two parters) of Doctor Who since Christopher Eccelston.

5. Dalek

This was the episode that I happened to catch a few moments of when I was flipping channels one night that made me decide, “Yep, I need to watch this.”

The deft way that the Doctor’s methods are drawn in parallel to those of his greatest and most hated enemy make for bracing, smart television. It has always been the character driven drama that has been the better part of the show and this episode, with Nine matching wits with an all but dead Dalek is a wonderful example of that.

The limited scope of the setting and the really bad future-gun that is obviously just some pieces of PVC painted black are the only downsides to this really amazing episode.

4. Human Nature/The Family of Blood

This episode gives us a great look at what the Doctor would be like minus the TARDIS and knowledge of the world. Also, when he reclaims his mantle at the end of part two, we get a better glimpse into just how different he is from the rest of us.

The character of the Doctor has always edged on demigod. The monologue about the “wrath of the Timelord” sums up how dangerous the Doctor is, why the character is never to be trifled with, in minimal and brilliant fashion. It also offers a wonderful contrast to how his would be human love interest cuts him down to size with a question and a look.

3. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

“You just killed someone I like, that is not a safe place to stand!”

Chills. Every time.

In addition to the fact it adds the incomparable Alex Kingston the cast, this episode is a truly scary, truly convoluted and truly thrilling ride. We see the Doctor as vulnerable, as compassionate and as being just straight up hard as stone. The fact that the character is left, along with the audience, with a deep sense that there are still depths to be explored within the man tops off this excellent story.

2. Blink

This is one of the most gripping hours of television I have ever watched, hands down. For not having much of the title character in the episode at all, it is still one of the best stories of the modern series. The introduction of a new and instantly iconic Doctor Who nemesis, the addition of “timey-wimey” to our vocabulary, the crisp use of time travel elements to make things happen… there’s just nothing bad about this episode.

Except that now, I don’t trust statues at all.

1. A Good Man Goes to War/Let’s Kill Hitler

More for the first half than the second, this is my favorite episode. Aside from the big reveal, there is so much in this episode that was worth the big buildup and hints from two series back. And so many quotable lines:

“Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many!”

“Would you like me to repeat the question?”

“We’re the Thin Fat Gay Married Anglican Marines. Why would we need names as well?”

“…I can produce magnificent quantities of lactic fluid. ”

Just so much to squee about.

The second half, while interesting and cute, didn’t quite measure up. That said, I think “A Good Man Goes to War” was a story that producer Steven Moffat had been wanting to do for a very long time and it shows.

On Geeks and Buttons

Later this week, I’m going to be going to DragonCon, a sci-fi and fantasy convention of impressive magnitude and broad scope. There will be stars of stage, page and screen; events and parties worth telling people about 10 years later; and there will be costumes. Oh, the costumes.

What I’ll miss, however, are the buttons.

I’ve been doing cons since I was 15, off and on. I’ve been to small and large ones. A staple I still see at some smaller ones, but almost never at the big ones and more, are the button mongers. Buttons were a predecessor for Twitter for geeks, little pithy sayings or pictures you could pin to your t-shirt to speak your fandom or your attitude or anything else you could fit onto something the size of the lid to a jelly jar.

I remember that buttons were once part of the geek uniform, so much so that occasionally you’d see someone wearing a jacket covered in so many it had become a sort of sassy armor plate; button-mail.

Now, this common sight has been replaced with t-shirts from Snorg and Woot, which is just as well, but not nearly as personal, I think. I used to have a few custom ones: “The Crow said ‘Don’t Look’”, “That which does not kill us comes back with bigger guns”, “Make a friend today, wear pettable underwear”, “Lowly Worker Peon Scum”.

That last one was inspired by a friend, who is now a monk, who used to manage a theater. I still have it.

Geekdom has become more and more mainstream, such that there aren’t that many people who haven’t heard of San-Diego Comicon or some other similar gathering, even if it isn’t in their city. With this normalization has come greater marketing opportunities. Social media has offered better opportunities for being clever; why pin it to your shirt so it can be seen by a few, when you can use it as a caption on a picture of a cat and have it seen by millions?

But still I liked those cheap ass badges of fanboy cred. I miss not being able to rely upon the presence of someone hawking them at every event. I respect those who have managed to hold onto their collection, usually elder fanboys and fangirls who you can hear coming down the hall, their favorite snippets of wit clattering against their vests and jackets.

You still see a few at Hot Topic. Like everything else, maybe someone will pick them up for sake of nostalgia. Either that, or someone will decide that perhaps Twitter isn’t the best way to advertise “Free Hugs: Kinky stuff, extra”.