C.A. Lang's Blog, page 4

Bodybuilding Product Packaging and Ad Copy Funtime:FUBAR by Fusion Bodybuilding

I’ve written about this before but I think it’s still got some life in it. Some of the best creative writing comes from the people at bodybuilding supplement companies. I think this is an elite group of writers. And I want in.

Sarcasm? NO!

Seriously.

Okay so I just got some FUBAR from Fusion Bodybuilding. I’ll get into the actual product later, but in this case the best part about it is the writing on the packaging. There are so many things. From the bright orange colour of the label and pills right to the actual product, it’s exciting and hilarious.

Where to start? Directions: see “dosing schedule.” Uhuh. Whatever. What does the “dosing schedule” say? “Every Workout”–all in this doctor-y kind of pseudopharmaceutical little table. I love this shit. But we’re just getting started. We are given “The Science Behind Fubar” as well: it shows a “Hoffman Reflex Scale” that measures–according to these guys–”spinal excitability.” Bam. What a gem. There might be some reference to this term buried in a scholarly article about reflexes and so on, but nevertheless it took some badass writing chops to utilize it.

The two graphs it provides seem to point to experiments done with electrical stimulation on one axis and M-wave as the dependent variable. The main difference between them is the slope of the line on the FUBAR experiment. And to them, a change in the slope of this line literally means you get an “energy” increase of . . . . 812 percent.

Part of the business is using gigantic numbers. And I love how they pull it off. If you actually look at the graph though, (assuming this experiment actually happened), the effect isn’t incredibly huge–a modest increase in the m-wave output for the same amount of current applied. I’m not sure how much of a difference peaking output at 20mA instead of 35mA would make in the gym, but the creative use of slope here is the most amusing aspect. And as for “spinal excitability?” Who knows.  But based on the slope of that line, they deduce that this is “the strongest pre-workout complex on the market.”

Just like you can’t lift without lying to yourself and reapeatedly telling yourself how fucking strong you are (no, seriously, that’s what you have to do . . . it makes a huge difference), so you can’t sell to bodybuilders without pointing out what you wish were true in the most glib manner possible.

The funny thing about the mental game of weight lifting is that it may start out as a potential lie, but you eventually make it true. Does it work for sales as well? Hmmm.

“Note: Fusion Bodybuilding supplements are the strongest formulas available. Fubar is no different and outperforms all other pre-workout supplements. “

It sounds like a registered scientician or pharmist wrote that. It must be true. Or maybe the government made them put that on there because it was just too much! Maybe people were getting hurt because they didn’t know this!

Also it comes with the standard warning that you really should never exceed the recommended dosage, because man, that would be dangerous! That’s the usual boilerplate for these supplements, and I’m glad these guys slipped it in nicely. But I think I could come up with better ways to both scare/sell/encourage people to take more than the label says. It’s these little things that make the trade of writing this copy so interesting.

So what about the product itself?

Okay for serious now . . . not that I wasn’t being serious before. I sincerely enjoy reading this stuff and being hired to be the one to write it would be a dream job. Hey bodybuilding guys, you could totally use a scientifically literate fitness junkie who is also an author to write your stuff. Think about it.

Yes, it all comes down to caffeine. That’s mostly it. It’s the one thing that does exactly what the claim says. Normally I just use plain caffeine pills before workouts . . . within reason. Of course you have to cycle off for a few weeks every so often for it to continue working. For all you biology majors:

No matter what pill it comes in, caffeine always does the same thing.

FUBAR is real caffeine (100mg) along with “natural” sources of caffeine in the form of a couple extracts–green tea and yerba mate. With this also comes 100mg of N-Acetyl Tyrosine and a little standardized cacao. The N-Acetyl tyrosine is interesting, since I’ve never used that form of it before.

So standard supplement-land dogma says that plain caffeine is bad because it causes the dreaded “spike,” and we know that everything pointy is to be avoided. Only evenly-released/digested/whatever is good, right? So these “natural” caffeine sources apparently release differently. And I think I can tell.

It’s true, it’s not as much of a manic episode with this stuff. I didn’t get the feeling I normally get from my caffeine pills. I’m just not sure whether or not this is good or bad–I was only doing shoulders and arms, and not my big lifts. Despite the tyrosine, I don’t have the same wired sensation.

It was a good workout and I’ll have to play around with when exactly I take it and maybe trying 2 of them. Did I TRAIN INSANE? Not so much this time, but given the cost of this compared to the ultimate pre-workout upper Ripped Freak, it could be a viable alternative. I definitely prefer this to pre-workout drink mixes loaded with 20 billion things that don’t matter. There are very few things proven to get you jacked up enough to notice a difference, and adding anything else is just stupid. So I like this.

I think they could have ditched the cacao for some cayenne, but that’s just me. I haven’t seen much about theobromine.

If this were an actual review and anyone cared what I thought: I’d give it 3.5 bean-shaped cats out of a possible 5 bean-shaped-cats. I think it has potential.

Anyway. Please go lift something now.

The thing about dieselpunk is . . . the diesel.

I know my writing doesn’t have the usual Dick Tracy-ish trappings the genre is getting known for. Nevertheless, I’m definitely into such trappings–specifically the cars.

It’s funny to look at the technology we use now. The efficiency of the internal combustion engine is really, REALLY low, and it’s a little puzzling why we’re still dependent on them. And not a lot has changed since the 1930s. Oh yes, call your jointly-manufactured generic engine whatever you want, auto companies–you’re not fooling me.

For example, I still can’t understand why gas mileage is still so low, even though a 1970s carbureted Honda CVCC could have achieved, with sidedraught carbs, efficiency equal or greater than that of some absurd, Rube Goldbergish “hybrid” cars.

This generic automotive soup that the market has become is a far cry from what was going on in the 1920s and 1930s. While I have a special feeling for the big inline engines of the day, I can understand–sort of–why the only one you can find in any vehicle a normal person would buy is in the Chevrolet Colorado, and even then it’s still not that big.

1940s Oldsmobile Straight-8

Straight engines are a lot smoother and fun to drive than the twin-bank engines we’re used to now. And some of these 1930s designs are far more sophisticated than the average person would assume, since those were the “olden days” and we think the internet has made us so much smater than people were back then. Car people probably know all this and should probably just  . . . skip this post and read my book or something. But again, in an age where your computer is old before you even get it to your house, it’s interesting that there are some cases where what we have now isn’t necessarily that much of a leap.

On the other hand, a straight eight-cylinder engine’s awesomeness comes at a cost. They’re easier to break because they’re so long and awesome. But I would think any good automotive engineer should be able to balance it properly so it doesn’t twist itself apart?

Maybe it came down to cost, as it always does. And the fact that the less expensive engines we make now do the trick just fine. They’re just harder to appreciate for what they are, because they’re kind of boring. Again, that silly idea of mine that modernism’s greatest feature was this sophisticated, almost artistic approach to industry. This is why I write dieselpunk.

Interesting note–the British R101 airship used a big straight diesel engine . Why is it interesting? Because I struggled with the airship idea when I wrote Blightcross. Writing them seemed like bandwagon-jumping. Also, I really dislike being on the water, and I feel like the slow, boring movements of an airship would remind me of being on the water. Aircraft–fine. I used to fly gliders all the time before I became old and scared of everything.  And by all the time, I mean while I did the Air Cadet thing as a kid. And by old and scared of everything, I actually mean “turned into a skid at 16 and figured that smoking cigarettes was better than joining the military.”

That note still isn’t interesting. So what about the engine? Well, according to wikipedia, which is of course totally reliable, the engine they used maxed out at just over 400kW at a dizzying, thrilling, 900rpm. This definitely is relevant to something–

My novel is fantasy. Not many fantasy readers are also going to pick apart the mechanics of the machines in the book. They are too busy looking for historical inaccuracies and stuff about swords and . . . mead. But I still made the decisions for that world on purpose. It’s hard to gauge just how much technology/power to give the society you’re writing. On one hand, I wanted industrial fantasy. On the other, I wasn’t ready to push them into a full-blown 1930s situation. So the solution was to literally make this dieselpunk. They only have diesel engines, and mostly because they lacked a lot of the electrical knowledge that would make ignition work for a gasoline engine. Why did they lack the electrical knowledge that we had 100 years ago? Because they had magic and were too lazy to work it out, and science isn’t exactly their first choice in dealing with things. Why understand electrons when the vihs is almost the same thing?

But that has other effects. The “flying boats” are pretty slow, and that’s because you can’t rev a diesel engine like you can a gas one. This is why there are no speedy hot-rod airplanes (yet, anyway) and fighters. See, that random 400kw @ 900rpm comment is making more sense now, right?

On a side note, I’m finding it a bit funny that I chose airplanes over airships due to airships reminding me too much of being on the water, since I called them flying boats. Derrrrrrrr.

Doing that left me with more interesting possibilities, since the reader can’t just be all like, “pffft why didn’t they just call in a bunch of fighter planes and be done with it?”

The engine that makes me think all of this is the Offenhauser.

Fred Offenhauser developed this 4-cylinder, twin-cam engine in the mid 1930s. This is a badass motherfucker. Any diptard who thinks American automotive muscle must be a pushrod big block needs to look at this thing. Without turbocharging, they got 450hp out of a 4-litre engine. The sheer length of time this engine dominated racing is what’s so remarkable. It won races up until 1978, when Ford (of all people . . . just sayin’) made a better one.

This was a unique design that also inspired the GM Quad-4. To me, the Quad-4 hasn’t gotten nearly the respect it deserves–no competitor made anything close to it. V-Tech guys tend to hate it, and it’s no wonder why–it was a badass, powerful twin-cam 4-cylinder that competed with six-cylinder engines, and even some eights. And it was entirely domestic. Douchebag just hates it when his twitchy Honda loses a street race to a teen mom in a Cavalier.

The Quad-4 marked the end of an era in domestic cars, I think. It’s appropriate that the era of building these unique engines came to an end with an Offenhauser-inspired one. After the final Cavaliers switched to the “Ecotec” (really? way to suck the testosterone out of an affordable, fun car), everything that’s not a truck engine seems to have gone to this generic globally-produced idea, which to me just makes all the engines the same salad of cheap parts dressed with recall notices. Also a victim of early-2000s hesitation by domestic auto makers–the Northstar. Even more impressive, and a shame they ditched it.

So the impact on everyday cars of high-modernist American racing engines ended, in a way, with the Sunfire and Cavalier–which are now looked upon as the first choice for low-rent skids and teenaged girls. Next time you see a couple of toothless gits smoking dope in their multi-coloured Cavalier at a stoplight, try to appreciate the history of that sad skid-mobile.

 

Difference Engine

 

 

Just thought this was cool: a Difference Engine made entirely of Meccano parts!

 

Franklin: You’re a pessimist. Ivanova: I’m Russian, doctor. We understand these things.

 

I stumbled across this quote the other day from . . . well, if you don’t know where it’s from then I’m not going to get into it . . . anyway, I also had done one of those personality tests based on the Five Factor Model.

You would think that based on the results, I’d never want to discuss in public personality test results. But for some reason I’m not shy about it. Of all things to not be shy about–I hate talking about my writing to people but I’ll gladly discuss an unflattering judgment of my personality traits.

I haven’t taken any courses in this field, so I can’t say much about my opinions. But the quote from the title of this post kind of sums up how I view parts of it.

The IPIP-NEO report gave me a low score on extraversion. On one hand I wouldn’t dispute that, but on the other I don’t think it’s totally accurate. Yes, when honest with the questions, in an ideal world where I had my way every single time, that’s how it is. But doesn’t the fact that I’m actually a flexible person who can fake extraversion when needed and still genuinely have a decent time mean anything?

Never mind the fact that living like a 1-out-of-100 extravert would be unhealthy, and being a health-conscious person, faking extroversion for the sake of my own wellbeing is definitely not a problem. Then there’s the problem of how that affects one’s career. It’s definitely harder for introverts. I think a mature introvert who wanted to get anywhere would just accept that it’s the way it is, get over it, and adapt unless they found work where the hiring managers weren’t assessing your personality. And I don’t know of many who don’t.

This comes back to Commander Ivanova. JMS really understood the thing that I have tried to explain to people without any success. Maybe it’s easier for people to understand when it’s explained through fiction.

It’s not a weird form of elitism/ethnic hubris, or an excuse to be a buzzkill. I think when I’ve tried to explain it, people have gotten that vibe.

Throughout B5, JMS consistently explored the way historical conditions have always shaped the Russian psyche. The thing that makes this so interesting–the way JMS wrote about Earth in general–is that in contrast to most science fiction at the time, Earth wasn’t some happy unified racially generic planet. It was still just as divided, despite the world-government trope SF loves to invoke. 

This isn’t something that some elitist cranky half-Russian dieselpunk writer and the creator of B5 made up. Marxist writers (dirty word but deal with it–this isn’t about politics) have studied Russian historical conditions and identified the same problems arising no matter what the circumstances–whether it’s under a Tzar, dictator, or sketchy democracy. Our “rural backwardness” will never go away; we will always be haunted by the same subconscious repetitions. Socialism didn’t fail because socialism is inherently impossible. I’m sure it is somewhere. But it just didn’t work with the way Russians are. Because we are a certain way.

Look at Russia now. It’s not some democratic capitalist paradise. It’s a little better in some ways, worse in others, but the fundamental way they operate is still the same. And I think the way JMS explores this reality in the 23rd century is so fascinating.

What does this have to do with a personality test?

I don’t mean to say that nonexistent extraversion is a cultural thing; I don’t want to paint everyone with the same label. The test results were a lot more complicated than that and I won’t get into the specifics, but to me they outline a lot of cultural traits that aren’t necessarily personality defects, like an English person would view them. Psychoanalysis and philosophy easily outline why this is, and why you can’t just dump everyone into an “inclusive” nation and expect them all to fully assimilate, even when they actively try to. You can fake it to get along in the world (and sometimes you have to!), but deep inside, it’s still there. You can’t erase thousands of years of traits growing out of consistent historical conditions.

These are adaptations to a certain environment. Even when my own ancestors left the country, they repeated here a lot of the same conditions they left. In particular, what the English midset sees as mistrust of others, low agreeableness, and pessimism are really just tools for dealing with reality. They may not win popularity contests, but the pensive, wary, down-to-earth temperament does, I think, allow us to better cope with the harsher aspects of life. There’s a certain ironic distance–and this is something severely lacking in postmodernism–that allows us to put our head down and get shit done without complaining or expecting too much. And in a world where precious-snowflake syndrome (thanks to English writers like Emerson) rules, being able to do that is pretty valuable.

Ah, identity. My most favourite Canadian literary trope to vamp on.

Anachronism is tricky–The Great Gatsby

 

 

I know anachronism is a fact of life  in dieselpunk and steampunk. But outside that context? I struggle with it. Even within those genres, sometimes it can be jarring.

I’m thinking about this at the moment because I saw The Great Gatsby a few days ago. Overall it was a great movie, but it definitely didn’t feel as “historical” as it could have. And that’s fine–obviously the feel of the movie was intentional and not the result of sloppiness, as is the case in hack novels. Of course any time I mention this, more than a few people have told me that I’m being silly–that particular director does it often. It’s a thing. Didn’t you see such and such?

That’s all correct. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument . . .

In steampunk, anachronism is an integral part of the story’s architecture. The whole reason it works is because authors have figured out how to make what really was, to us, a dry and dull period interesting again. Don’t believe me? Try reading Victorian literature. It’s good, just like literature from any age, but don’t try to tell me it’s paced the way we like it or makes a whole lot of sense to us culturally.

In the case of this movie though, it’s superfluous, and they made no attempt whatsoever to hide this fact and make it work. They forgot the Crisco. They didn’t warm the forceps. It kicks you out of the story and into MTV land. And I don’t quite see what the point of it was.

I’m talking about the soundtrack and pop culture references.

I guess it allows a generation that doesn’t read books, let alone old ones, to appreciate a classic story. But would it have hurt its popularity to have done a more artful treatment of the book? I don’t think so. It already was slaughtered by Iron Man 3. Maybe it’ll do better in 20 years when some jackass decides to make yet another version, but some bizarre contemporary one with .  . . flying cars and fucked-up slang. And instead of booze being such a big deal, it’ll be bath salts.

Given that, I guess we’re lucky that they didn’t shit all over it by making a contemporary version.

Besides all that though, this did make a pretty fun diesel movie. It looked right and the acting worked extremely well. As mean as it sounds, an actor like Tobey Maguire is perfect to portray what is essentially a cipher for the benefit of the reader . . . or convenience of the writer. And the good thing is that even with the ridiculous, jarring anachronisms, the point of the book survived.

So anachronisms–how do they really work now? I think, unless they’re mistakes or just bad writing, they have to be a deliberate, cynical postmodern manoeuvre. If you’re going to do it, make sure it’s a full-on postmodern wink-wink-nudge-nudge sledgehammer to bring down that fourth wall. It’s like jazz–a bad note can sound good if you do it with enough authority and the right amount of repetition. I think it’s easier for a critical person like me to get over such an obviously dumb artistic decision than it would be if they’d tried to make their nods to today’s audience more subtle.

The other way to deal with them is to just avoid reality altogether and write dieselpunk. Even better if you write secondary world dieselpunk. I can’t even explain how fun it was to write Blightcross and how much fun (in theory, if I ever get time to write) the already-outlined sequel will be.

 

On an unrelated movie note, I also just saw I Love You, Man. Yes, I hadn’t seen it. Anyway, it’s a little sobering and pretty funny to watch yet another Paul Rudd character who is basically a slightly wussier version of myself. Derp.

You can bet your ass that when I got home I picked up my guitar and played Limelight.

 

 

Shining – One One One

 

I just listened to Norwegian avant-garde metal band Shining’s new album and I think it’s worth plugging. These guys need more exposure.

Check out the video for I Won’t Forget:

 

What I love about this band is that it’s basically the band I’ve always wanted to create but couldn’t. These guys are schooled jazz musicians who play death metal. Jorgen Munkeby fucking throws down the guitar in the middle of songs and does saxophone solos.

There is nothing more awesome than this. Unless for some reason you don’t like jazz or death metal. Derr. . . .

 

 

Colder than really cold.

 

I wonder if anyone remembers Demolition Man, and how awesome that movie was. I don’t really remember much of it, except that every restaurant was Taco Bell and someone brought out a kickass Oldsmodile 442, but I don’t think there really was that much to remember. Except that it was awesome.

Then you had the video game–not the regular Sega or SNES one, but one of the awkward CD-based versions that was filled with jittery cutscenes. I had the 3DO version. By the way, the 3DO was fucking awesome. No system will ever compare to its awesomeness. Where else could you get random washed-up stars appearing in shitty video game cutscenes? Like Kirk Cameron in The Horde. Ah yes, that masterpiece of Tripp Hawkins . . . nobody could have a name like that and not be as sketchy as I recall that dude being at the time. For some reason. There was a thing, right? A controversy about the guy?

Yeah. Demolition Man. I started thinking about the movie because over the weekend I was at Sparkling Hill and took the opportunity to try the only cryo-treatment of its kind on this continent. Besides the fact that being there meant I have the best girlfriend in the universe, it was insane. It’s actually colder than what froze Sylvester Stallone’s character in the cryo-prison. The temperature we experienced doesn’t even exist naturally on this planet.

Okay so it was only for 3 minutes. And it’s just long enough for your body to combat inflammation and do other weird things, but not long enough to actually lower your core temperature, so I wasn’t even shivering at the end. It starts off as a surprise, a kind of cold that’s so extreme that it’s hard to identify it as cold. Maybe that’s the point and how it works–whatever my body was doing to compensate, it turned those 3 minutes into a strange panic of extremely dry air, a feeling like I couldn’t breathe even though I was breathing harder than I have even in the most intense interval workout.  Maybe that change in respiration is why I didn’t really feel cold.

At the end of it, you’re on an adrenaline rush and it kept me going the rest of the day. I went in with some soreness left over from a squat-deadlift day 3 days before. It might have helped temporarily, but it’s been a long time and my legs are still sore. Granted, any therapy like that is going to take more than one treatment to do much. The other hitch to this treatment I could see, at least from an endurance athlete perspective (it’s pretty popular with triathletes and so on), is getting there soon enough after the workout to slow the damage.

The real benefit for most people is just that it’s just a bizarre, unique experience. Well worth it, no matter how terrified you are at the thought of being locked in a crazy meat freezer.

Besides that, now I understand writers’ retreats more than I did. The spa was such a great, quiet environment. Before my life became complicated and busy, I didn’t see the point of having to shut yourself away to write. Now when I struggle to finish one short story in six months, the idea of taking a week at a spa like Sparkling Hill just to finish some writing seems like heaven to me.

But not like . . . cabins and stuff. I couldn’t do the writer-cabin thing.

So I’m high maintenance. Meh.

 

 

The English Anti-School Kid.

 

People keep talking about this video . . .

It’s this British kid complaining about how all the adults are wrong because he doesn’t like taking exams, and the good old “when am I ever going to use pythagoras?” and the usual bullshit kids have been coming up with since the beginning of time when they suck at school.

I just find it so embarrassing. All the kid has done is claim that the same excuses students have been using since the invention of school as some big deal work of art or social commentary. So why does everyone care then? It’s the old “media is the message” problem, where the fact that this is involved with “social media” means it’s automatically a good idea, when it in fact is a dumb idea.

Oh yes, you can apparently put any dumb idea in front of a backdrop of dramatic muzak and a heart-wrenching video of a sad boy being scolded (just like everyone was at one point) and if it’s on youtube, people will automatically give that dumb idea legitimacy. I find it crazy how the kid wants us to “think for ourselves” (but all without having to do the hard work of gaining skils that thinking requires) and yet nobody in the comments section appears to be doing anything of the sort. If anyone were thinking for themselves, they’d be upset by this video.

The rant here is less about this kid, since he is, after all a child and isn’t responsible for the adult world taking such callowness as actual truth, and more about the social problems it exposes.

It exposes just how far the rift between reality and society has grown. People have no connection to where the things they need come from, how they got there, and what it takes to live like we do. If they did, they wouldn’t be giving children who say these things a record deal. We’d just tell them that grown-ups need to use triangles to solve industrial problems, and that learning about literature is important for understanding the world. Then we’d just tell them to go back to school and do well.

But no–since reality now exists, as this kid put it himself so accurately, “on instagram,” “on facebook,” and “on the street.”

So let me get this straight. If some white lame redneck like myself wants to, say, hire an architect or something and develop some land, all I have to do is learn the street language, find some crack to trade for an architect, and some genius street person who has never gone to school because he thought he was too much of an individual to put up with exams will magically be able to draft me a floor plan? All without ever being accredited by anyone who knows anything?

If we as a society seriously think that bullshit like instagram and facebook means anything more than entertainment, advertising, and some economic activity in the tech sector, then we’re in serious trouble.

By that same token, encouraging others to reject what adults tell them about school and exams and be satisfied with working at Starbucks while they pursue a rap career on facebook is an awesome way to ensure a good pool of cheap domestic labour. Which could be a good thing. But I think a society based in that kind of ignorance is doomed.

This kid doesn’t want an exam to define him. That’s understandable, because letting anything like that define you is dumb. But the error is in assuming that it’s the exam that’s deciding his fate. An exam is not something that just happens to you. It’s not herpes. You don’t let herpes decide your fate. Sure. An exam, however, is fully within your control. The only factor in the outcome is yourself. You either choose to put the rapping on hold and become good at the same math everyone has to learn, or you choose not to and run into trouble a decade later when you’re old enough to want to join the real world.

So the video got my hackles up because I actually had a math final exam this morning. I watched that nonsense this morning while drinking coffee and getting ready to do a final cram before heading to the exam. And part of the reason it’s so infuriating is because I was exactly the kind of person this kid is appealing to. Ten years later, I’m struggling to cover all the ground I lost because I was an independent-thinking slacker who would never listen to anyone. I wanted to play music, I wanted to write. I did both those things for most of my twenties. And they didn’t get me anywhere. I don’t want my future children to have to tell their friends that their dad is “on instagram” for a living. They’ll probably feel better if they get to tell their friends their dad is an engineer.

All that struggling, all that making up for the attitude I once shared with this kid, and suddenly I’m told that exams shouldn’t matter? Fakk off.

Shame on the adults passing this garbage off as both something new and something profound. It really isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with the education system. It’s just that nobody is giving their kids an F in work ethic anymore. God fobid anyone have to do something they don’t want to once in a while.

 

 

 

 

Flashbacks and other potentially annoying devices.

A standard new-writer conversation that repeats ad nauseam on writer’s forums is the flashback. Flashbacks are kind of like gonorrhea, and if you find yourself breaking out, at least do something to minimize it if you’re going to go around expecting strangers to stick their face in your manuscript.

I don’t know how well the analogy really fits, but it seems like often the right thing to do is compare things to gonorrhea, so I’ll stick with it.

Why am I going over this tired conversation? Because it seems no matter how much it’s said and by whom, it’s still pretty virulent. If all it took was reason to get rid of it, nobody would have done stupid things to manuscripts since Stephen King wrote On Writing.

Okay so the reason this came up is that once in a while, a person and their girl need to  deliberately choose the worst movie available and watch it at a creepy theatre. So, like any normal person would, we smuggled in some wine and had a go at The Host.

Now, I haven’t read the book. This isn’t a stab at the author. Enough people have done that and despite what it seems like, I’m not into trashing other people unless there’s a good reason to. All I am doing is using this film as a catalyst for discussion about gonorrhea.

So I doubt I have to tell anyone that I’m not a particularly animated person, and can pretty much contain any emotion and keep a straight face. I could not while watching most of this. We did have a hell of a time, and it was a lot of fun. So in that respect, The Host was well worth it. But only to two of the most sarcastic people ever created.

The problem with flashbacks is when they’re used to foist often unnecessary information on the reader. Duh. That’s repeated so often it’s painful to actually be writing it. But anyway. Sometimes it’s a lazy way of forcing us to remember plot coupons that might titillate us later on. In this movie, a regular pattern of flashbacks happened in the first quarter. Okay, ham-fisted, sure. But you eventually get used to it and consider it part of the story’s architecture. But as soon as the author shoe-horns that plot coupon they want you to have into your brain, they change the structure and abandon flashbacks altogether.

You could argue for pure pragmatism on this and say I’m overanalyzing. You’d be right. But even though simpler is better and solid writing is usually better than elaborate techniques, I think there’s a limit to how careless you can be with these tools for the sake of easily dealing with exposition.

I think Blightcross had a couple flashback-type things going on. But if I remember correctly, my approach there was to not write them as scenes but quick, invasive thoughts. Not only is it economical, but I think dealing with it that way puts you more in the character’s head in the present while still having to deal with the past. You’re getting what they’re dealing with right now while they’re being reminded about something in the past, instead of being immersed in that past. Does that make sense? That’s by no means the only or best way, but the point is that there are a LOT of ways to do what writers think they can only do using a flashback scene.

Look, all we really care about is why the character is remembering something now and how it’s affecting them and how we think it’s fitting into the story. Very rarely have I noticed scenes accomplishing this better than, say, injecting an invasive thought into the character. And yes, what I did isn’t practical for most films, but in the end, there’s no reason to be using those flashback scenes. I didn’t feel any more connected to what was going on in this case.

The exception is of course the case of the parallel story. I actually like these a lot when people do it right. Think of basically every episode of Highlander. Even those were a little ham-fisted, but as long as you have an entire narrative that’s being played out alongside the main story, it can be interesting. It is not just for the sake of dealing with exposition, but literally integral to the engineering of the story. Or having it in reverse–the main story being one gigantic flashback framed by something important taking place in the future. But both of these hardly resemble the literary shrapnel that is the usual flashback.

Also in this film: a lot of internal monologue. This is such an important thing to get right, but in this case I was left, again, not believing it. It’s a tough thing to make work. I still struggle at it.

The trope itself deserves a post of its own later. Any attempt to do it in an interesting way deserves some props, even if it didn’t work out.

The one interesting potential in this movie was the romance situation between the host body, the symbiote, and their separate interests. Note how I said “potential,” since it wasn’t utilized the way it could have been. It was a little cutesy, especially the way the author basically used algebra to solve it: the distributive property used here easily allows everyone to be with whomever they want at the end and leave us with a sickening scene designed to satisfy youths wrapped up in the fidelity stage of psychosocial development.

Anyway, you always have to be on guard against your own laziness when you write. Or when you do anything, really.

 

Oddly enough, I thought the movie was done quite well. There’s only so much you can do with a script. The soundtrack was great and so was the photography. Even the acting wasn’t terrible, but as I said, the things the actors said almost caused us to make a scene.

 

 

 

 

 

Dieselpunk needs to be on the Aurora Shortlist.

Just another last-ditch reminder about the Aurora Awards, and how in order for Blightcross to be nominated, it needs votes from the public. If you liked the novel, check out the link. I know it looks like a pain when you read the process, but it’s not really, and a vote would mean a hell of a lot in my case. You have to either be a member or register to be one in order for the voting link to appear.

So there are eight days left to vote for the Aurora awards and I feel like I haven’t done squat to get in on it. It’s kind of upsetting on one hand, but I guess a person can only do so much, and I’ve been very good at committing to too many things at once lately. This problem is so extensive that I seriously looked for a drafting course to take over the summer to keep myself occupied before going into the civil engineering program in the fall . . . which would have been ridiculous and redundant given that you lean drafting in that program anyway.

I mean, I don’t need to be occupied any further. Why must I keep finding excess ways of doing so?

Anyway, I’m the completely wrong personality type to generate hype for myself. Or for anyone else. That’s probably a really shitty thing to write on the internet if I ever want an agent or other publisher to even think of dealing with me in the future. But I think it would be easier to deal with it and possibly work around it if I didn’t try to play that game and just was honest. I have good work to sell, and will put in a lot of work to sell it, but unless someone tells me exactly what to do in order to sell it, I’m sure as hell not going to magically turn into an extraverted marketing genius.

I had this problem with bands too. There’s just so much non-musical crap to deal with that I ended up having more fun just playing what I wanted in my house than I probably would if I’d gotten with a real band. I always looked up to guys like Jeff Beck–ones known for being reclusive but still somehow manage to be relevant. You don’t need hype when everyone knows you’re better than Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton put together.

I like to deal with individuals. Crowd/groupthink scares and baffles me and I guess that is where I fail as an artist who would like to sell a lot of stuff. I especially hate groupthink when you see it happen in larger arenas, like politics. For example, it makes no sense whatsoever to me that Justin Trudeau would be a good choice for the federal Liberal Party, but it’s been decided before they even vote for it. And all without any basis in reason whatsoever. No debate, no discussion, just hysteria.

Not to get into politics or anything.

Once again, check out the Aurora Awards. It would be awesome to get a dieselpunk novel on the nominee list, wouldn’t it?