A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 52

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Hey, everybody.  Today’s blog is a little bit different.  I had a couple of my Twitter / Facebook followers throw out some suggested opening sentences to see what kind of story I could write from it.  I had three pretty good suggestions and incorporated them all into this very short piece of fiction.  I don’t know if it’s good or not, but I enjoyed writing it.  So give it a read, if you’re so inclined.

 

“Quick,” the writer said, “someone give me an opening sentence and I’ll see what kind of story I can write in about an hour–it’s all I have left.”

My day had started off like crap when my old lady’s cat slapped me in the face wanting to be fed.  I have nothing against cats.  I rather like them, in general, but this cat was the kind that gave the entire species a bad name.  Obnoxious, demanding, unpleasant.  Fluffy, sure, but not friendly.  Not even in a self-serving way that most pets had of playing cute when they wanted something from you.

But this cat . . . this cat made it a habit to slap and glare and demand what he wanted, and he didn’t give a damn that you were technically in charge.  Because you weren’t.  He was.  He knew it.  My girlfriend knew it.  And I damn well knew it too.  So I’d gotten out of bed early, fed the damn thing, and then tried to parlay the act of reluctant kindness into some morning sex.

It hadn’t panned out, and the day had only been getting worse from there.

Now I was standing in the morgue, with a dead writer, trying to get my head together.

The writer’s name was John Bombeck.  And John was dead.  His body had died several days prior.  It wasn’t something that makes the papers, but sometimes, dead people didn’t stay dead, and when a person refuses to pass on, the city called me.  I was like a medium.  Except I didn’t see ghosts.  I saw corpses talking, which was a lot less special than it seemed because there was no trick to it.  Other than not freaking the hell out because you’re listening to a dead man.

Not freaking out was my primary talent.  Figuring out how to get the dead guy to lay down and shut up was my secondary skill.

John sat in the special room next to the morgue where they kept the not-quite-dead guys.  It was chilly to keep the rot away because, talking or not, he was still decaying flesh.  He was given a desk, a chair, and an old laptop.  And he stared at the screen, blank and unforgiving.  Someone had killed poor John.  Shot him in the back.  It had looked like a mugging gone wrong, but the case was still open.

“John, what do you need?” I asked.

“I need an opening sentence,” he replied.  “I need inspiration.”

“You need to go back in the drawer and pass on.”  It was a bit insensitive, but when you’d dealt with the undead as long as I had, you learned they were usually too preoccupied to worry about being offended.  In John’s case, it was clear he was obsessed with writing something.

“What are you writing, John?”

He averted his filmy eyes from the screen.  “Nothing.  I’m writing nothing.”

“And why is that?”

He pushed away from the table.  “Because I’m a hack.  Because I can’t write worth a damn.  Because I’ll never write a story worth anything, and now that I’m dead, I won’t ever have the chance.”

“You’re not in the ground yet, John.”  I liked to repeat their names.  It seemed to keep them focused and reminded me that they were still human.  Or close enough.

“I only have an hour,” he said.  “That’s not enough time.”

This was a new one.  I’d yet to come across an undead with a time limit.

“Why the rush?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

I pushed a chair closer, sat beside him.  He had that musky smell of slight rot.  One of the nice things about the undead was that, though they rotted, they also kept pretty well.  You wouldn’t mistake John for a living man, but you also wouldn’t be treated to the full blown odor of a dead man.

“Try me, John.”

He frowned at me with gray lips.  “Do you write?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Not since I got out of school.  Even then, I blew off quite a few essays.  And before you ask, no, I’m not creative.  Never done any of that stuff.  So what do we got here?  A case of writer’s block?”

He laughed.  “Never had a problem with that.”

“What’s different now?” I asked.

“The difference now is that I’m dead, and this is going to be the last thing I write.  It’s going to be the thing that everyone looks at and says, that’s it.  That’s his most profound insight.”

“Lot of pressure,” I said.  “But why the time limit?”

John shrugged.  His shoulders made a crackling sound.  “Because if I can’t do it in an hour, how can I ever do it?  I had a lifetime to figure this out, and it wasn’t enough.  How much longer do I get?”

“John, I’ve dealt with a lot of people with your condition.  I’ve helped them all.  Do you want to know how?”

“Yes,” he answered sincerely.  The undead were always looking for help, and I think deep down, they all knew it.

“We live this life.  We die.  And we hope that it all works out, that it makes some kind of sense.  When it doesn’t, we get sad.  Or mad.  Or frustrated.  We want to believe there’s a purpose.  Barring that, we want to believe that we matter, that our lives are worth something.  Most of us die never really sure of that, and some of those folks come back.  Folks like you.

“You’re here, John, because you have unfinished business.  We all leave this life an untidy mess.  Most of us aren’t bothered enough to come back and try to straighten it out.  But some do.  Everyone has a different reason.  But in the end, it’s the same reason.  It’s because you want it to matter.”

I reached out, put my hand on his gray, mouldering hand.  “You don’t have to be profound.  Profound is something found in greeting cards and made-for-TV-movies.  You just have to say what you’re here to say.”

A look of peace came over him then.  I’d seen it before with the undead.  It was that moment where everything snapped into clarity.  Maybe it was the acceptance of their own death.  Maybe it was some hidden truth the living could never be part of.  Either way, he pushed his chair to the computer, typed out a couple of sentences, and then quietly, peacefully, expired.

While the coroner took away the body, I glanced at the screen.

John Bombeck lived.

I hit the save button, closed the laptop.

Different

I love that you would never confuse one A. Lee Martinez book for another.  They have certain similarities, shared themes, but in terms of pure plot description, you would never mistake any of my books for another.  This is not just the advantage of not writing a series.  It’s something that happened, quite by accident.

I have nothing against series, and I fault no writer for creating one.  There’s a lot of advantages to a series.  Series allow writers to tell more involved stories with characters the audience can come to know and love.  And I have little doubt it’s easier to build an audience with a series, which might seem like a superficial reason for creating a series, but hey, a writer has to eat, right?

But the pitfall of writing a recurring universe is, no matter how hard you try, eventually you’re going to be repeating yourself.  I remember when I bought a book, the latest in a long-running series, for a friend.  She read the back of the book and said she was pretty sure she’d already read it.  She hadn’t (the book had literally come out the week before).  But jut reading the plot summary on the back made it hard to tell this.  It had the same hero.  The same unresolved love interest.  The same type of villain.  The same city.  The same recurring side characters.  The bits of it that were different didn’t particularly stand out in the description of the book.

That doesn’t mean the actual story was cookie cutter.  Execution is everything, in the end.  And even if the story was 95 percent the same, that 5 percent that was different could have made all the difference in the world.  Also, people don’t always want different.  People, more often than they admit or possibly even realize, like the same.

Don’t mistake my point here.  I am not saying I am more creative or a better writer than anyone.  I’m only saying that, in the broad strokes, you aren’t going to make the above mistake with an A. Lee Martinez novel.  Perhaps it’s only on a superficial level.  Perhaps not.  Either way, it’s true.

But I’d like to believe it isn’t superficial.  I’d like to believe it makes me a stronger writer.  I can’t resort to my singular bag of tricks, my particular default solution.  Oh, it’s not uncommon for my stories to have a slime monster in them.  Or a giant cosmic clash at the end.  But the resolution is still different.  Mack Megaton, the powerful war robot, punches out his troubles in a way that Nessy, the tiny kobold housekeeper, cannot.  And while In the Company of Ogres and Chasing the Moon might be about superpowerful god-like entities and the problems they cause, the resolution of those problems are different enough that I feel they aren’t the same story.  Or, at least, if you’ve read one, you aren’t going to necessarily going to guess the end of the other.

I could be wrong, but it still feels good to even think it’s possible.

I like this about my stories.  And while I’m certain I’m not the only writer out there that this is true about, it is at least something that separates me from the pack, and while I’d happily throw that away if someone was willing to pay me a few hundred thousand dollars to sell out, until that happens, I’ll take what I can get.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Valued

I really enjoy the Skylanders video game.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a game with a gimmick.  By using a device called a “Portal of Power” you can summon characters into the game via little plastic figures.  The figures have a memory too, so if you level up that character and then take it to another person’s house, you have all the powers and abilities unlocked.  Skylanders is a video game that asks you to buy figures to unlock all its features.  You don’t need to buy all the figures to play the game, but this is obviously the intent.  As a fan, I have all the figs except the legendary and dark figs, because those are just recolored versions of the standard characters and I’m not interested in those.

A common complaint about the concept of Skylanders is that they’re asking you to pay a few hundred dollars for a video game.  It’s hard to refute that claim.  But I enjoy the game so much, find it has such great personality, and is just the right level of casual challenge to keep me coming back to it, that I don’t feel cheated.

Why is that?  What is it about human nature that makes us feel cheated sometime and satisfied the next?  And why is it we so often disagree?

In my own profession, I create stories.  I’m good at it, sure, but it’s not like I have an exclusive superpower that only enables me to do it.  I am not one of a handful of gifted folks who can tell stories.  There are literally millions of professional storytellers if you consider all the formats available.  So what makes my stories valuable?  Why are people willing to pay me to write them?

Heck, there’s no reason people can’t tell their own stories for free.  Those stories might not be as good as the ones I create, but it doesn’t change the fact that, aside from a certain level of skill, anyone can make up a story.  Yet I am one of those folks who earns money doing so.  I don’t say that it’s a mystery out of some misguided attempt at humility, but as an honest question.

What’s especially interesting is that, for a long time, a great deal of the value of stories, be it in book, movie, play, etc., was in production.  Even if we can tell stories to each other, we can’t mount plays or film movies.  A reader used to pay for the book itself, the creation of a physical object, not just the story.  And it was understood that writing the story was fairly simple in comparison to the work involved in making a book.

Perhaps this is why I excuse Skylanders.  I really like the figures, and am happy to own them.  I wouldn’t buy them without the game, but I also enjoy them outside of the game.

As we move toward e-books, I often wonder what the future holds for novelology.  I’m not against e-books and self-publishing, but as it has become easier and easier for regular people to get their books published by these routes, I’ve noticed a shift in the perceptions of what makes one a writer.  The simplest definition (and one I enjoy) is that writers write.  But there used to be something unique about being a published writer.  Now, it’s something anyone can do, if they have the money / time and are so inclined.  That’s not a bad thing, but it does muddy the waters to some degree.

Perception of value is strange and ethereal.  I’m assuming if you’re reading this you’ve bought at least one of my books.  Maybe more.  Or maybe you’re just thinking about it.  The only reason this blog exists is because I am lucky enough to earn a living writing and so, by virtue of a random universe, am deemed interesting enough to warrant having a blog.

But I am not interesting.  I haven’t scaled any mountains, explored any deserts, discovered any fantastic scientific breakthroughs.  I’m not a celebrity in any true sense, and I’m a guy who spends his time writing space squid stories and playing video games.  Yet when I write some random thoughts on the collective consciousness that is the internet, I can be reasonably assured someone is reading it and glad to be doing so.  What makes these thoughts valuable enough that someone doesn’t view this time as wasted?

Granted, we waste a lot of time in our lives, so it’s not as if we can (or should) act as if every moment is precious.  Many of them are, but then there’s those hours you waste going to the bathroom, sleeping, doing drudge work, and other unsatisfying stuff.  Yet even that can seem rewarding and valuable occasionally.

I’m reminded of The Sims games.  One of the reasons I think those games are so successful is that they’re like real life, but with clear cut, obvious rewards.  In real life, if I slightly bigger TV, it might make me happy.  Or it must just be a bigger TV.  But in The Sims, if you pay more for your TV it will provide more fun and satisfaction for your sim.  No gray area.  No confusion.

In comparison, real life is all gray area, and satisfaction and value are difficult to suss out.  We so often don’t know why we value something and why we don’t.  We just take it for granted that we like some things enough to pay the price, and we accept that this is an individual decision.  All I know is that in the next Skylanders game, I get to play as a giant suit of armor with a flying eyeball for a head, and that is definitely an experience I’m willing to pay for.

But I never forget that what I do isn’t special.  It’s not something magical.  It’s something anyone can do.  Perhaps not with as much skill and wit, but to a lot of folks, skill and wit are overrated.  To those who find what I do valuable enough to pay me to do it, I can only say thanks.  There’s a lot of cool stuff out there, and I’m just happy you find my stories of space squids and moon monsters to be worth your time and money.

Although, I think we all can agree, the world is a better place with more stories of space squids.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

 

Quagmire

For the longest time, I’ve hated the concept of “Camp”.  I didn’t exactly know why, but it always struck me as dismissive and condescending.  It’s the suggestion that something stinks, but I’ll like it because it stinks and this somehow insulates me from criticism.  It’s the notion that I like something that others deem dumb, and I apologize for it in advance.  This was the definition of Camp that most often came up, and it always annoyed the hell out of me.

It annoys me because it is so often misapplied.  For example, the classic Batman TV show starring Adam West is often labeled as Campy.  As far as I can tell, this is because it has a sense of humor, has a lot of goofiness, and isn’t the grimdark version of superheroics we’ve come to expect.  But to suggest that it’s a bad show, that it was badly written or directed or acted, is nonsense to me.  I would argue (and often have) that the Batman TV show was one of the sharpest shows ever to be on television.  Yes, it’s crazy.  It’s silly.  It’s strange.  But it is aware it is all these things, and it works within this framework to tell fun stories, create fun characters, and create compelling, if goofy, stories.

It’s often overlooked that the Riddler (one of my favorite Batman’s villain) was revitalized by Frank Gorshin’s brilliant performance.  Or that so many classic Batman characters were given new life by Batman.   In this way, it is just as important and influential as the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series. But that’s beside the point.

My old definition of Camp was this sort of dismissive apologetic tone, but my new definition of Camp is a little more meta.  (Much as I hate to use the term.)

Campy is the term people use when they like something but can’t easily categorize it.  It’s a superhero show that wants to write about law and order while starring a weirdo in a batsuit versus a guy dressed like King Tut.  It’s a movie like Cabin in the Woods that is somehow a deconstruction and reconstruction of the horror genre while not really being a horror film in itself but more of a fantasy with horror elements.  It’s Sin City, too absurd to be classic noir but certainly tangentially related.

Like all labels, Camp can often mean this, though not always.  Definitions define, but they are also random and arbitrary.  There is genuine Camp, weird things being weird for their own sake.  Though usually I classify such things as Kitsch, not Camp.  But that’s arguing over shadows.  Kitsch and Camp are often related.  Still, I think of Kitsch as goofy for its own sake.  Parody is often Kitschy.  Though even this isn’t always true.

I feel myself sinking in a linguistic quagmire here, so let’s get back on track.

Sometimes, my stories have been classified as Camp, and I usually found the term insulting.  But now I see it as the inevitable result of genre confusion that can sometimes happen.  I’m not saying I’m a groundbreaker, but I am saying when I write stories about a robotic detective in a retro sci fi setting or about a space squid supervillain who rules the world that it can be a bit difficult to pin down the genre.  Are they deconstructions?  Reconstructions?  Silly little adventure stories?  Philosophical explorations of what it’s like to be human?  Am I just writing absurdist fiction with no other purpose or am I attempting to see life from different angles?

The answer, if I may be so bold, is all of these and more.  I say this not in ode to my own brilliance.  Brilliance is another silly little label.  I know I’m a good novelologist.  I leave the label, kudos, and insults to the rest of the world to figure out beyond that.

But I will say that I often straddle genre.  I often break little unbroken rules.  I’ll write a story about a robot who doesn’t have Pinocchio syndrome.  I’ll have my vampire and werewolf be regular Joes.  I’ll make gods that don’t explore complicated issues of faith and religion, but power and responsibility.  And I’ll pick the housekeeper with common sense to save the day in one story, and the badass supergenius alien in the next.  What I do, it isn’t the most amazing stuff you’re going to read.  I’m certain there are thousands of other writers do a better job of pushing boundaries and challenging perceptions.  But I’ve carved out my niche, and I think I’m pretty damn good at it.

So maybe it is Camp.  If Camp is believing that genre is a suggestion, not a requirement.  If Camp is about using the absurd to explore the absurdity of life.  If Camp is acknowledging fiction as a reflection of life is just as a mess of contradictions.  If that’s your definition of Camp, I embrace it gladly.

But, hey, if you like my books because you use the “Stupid stuff” definition of Camp, I’m not complaining.  Just happy to have you aboard.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

A Blog Post to Tolerate

I try not to judge a person for what they believe.  Instead, I believe people should be defined by their actions.  This is why, while I’m not pro-religion, I’m not anti-religion.  Because if someone wants to believe that the divine is looking down on them, and it makes them feel better about their life, why should I care?  Some people, for instance, don’t believe robots are awesome.  Those people are wrong, but I allow them to be wrong so long as they allow me to enjoy awesome robots.

With the recent protests in Libya and the Middle East, some of it related to religious unrest, I was struck by how often we spend time worrying about thoughts, not actions.  There are certainly Islamic extremists willing to do a lot of crazy, destructive stuff.  But to say Islam is the source of this is to ignore the number of Muslims who aren’t so crazy.

Maybe it’s because I’m not a religious person, but I have a hard time siding with one religion over another in terms of believability.  And I also have a hard time with any philosophy (religious or secular) that claims to have tapped into some sacred truth that only its believers have access to.  I hope that doesn’t offend any religious folks out there.  I’m not saying that you’re wrong.  I’m just saying I don’t believe it.  But as a reasonable human being, I also admit that just because I don’t believe something doesn’t mean it’s not true.

So, in the interest of clarity, I will say that I don’t believe any philosophy of any kind has ever really nailed down the essential nature of the human experience.  The history of the world, everything from religion, philosophy, science, etc., is one big mistaken assumption after another.  Every fifty years, we all look like idiots, and while I’d like to believe we live in a time when humans finally got it right, I’d also like to believe that one day my brain will be implanted in a dinobot body.  This is unlikely.

Each of us experiences our own private universe, and I could no more experience your life than you mine.  And if you say you have an intimate connection with the cosmos via Jesus, Mohammad, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Mighty Robot King, I can’t argue with you on the basis of facts.  There are no facts to be had.  Only experience that can never truly be shared.

That’s why I care so much less about what someone believes and so much more about how they behave.  I don’t have to believe what you believe.  Nor do I ask you to try to believe what I do.  Instead, I only ask that you treat me with respect and tolerance.  If that’s too much, then I only ask that you ignore me.

The times I grow intolerant of philosophies is when they begin to step on the rights of others, specifically the rights of non-believers.  We are all allowed to impose whatever strange values and rules we want on ourselves.  But to push those onto others is overstepping.  And being offended by something doesn’t give one the right to respond violently.

The only reason I ever get angry about religion is because religion is one area where this sort of activity occurs most regularly.  No one kills another person over which Star Trek captain is better.  Nobody riots because Tron: Legacy was an awful movie.  It is mostly in religion that these things happen, and while it’s easy for one religion to sit in judgment of another, to do so is to overlook one’s own awful history.

Okay, politics can sometimes do this too.

And it makes sense because religion and politics are about something.  There’s certainly more at stake when it comes to perception.  Fans of Transformers might feel betrayed and enraged by Michael Bay’s films, but in the end, they’re just movies.  If people started believing Optimus Prime was real and that his depiction was sacrilege, they’d no doubt start rioting too.  Because it’s not about the medium.  It’s about people and perception.

The problem isn’t that people often take things too far.  The problem is that they don’t do so consistently.  I would certainly be against Islam if every Muslim was out for blood at the slightest offense.  I have seen Christians that chill me to the bone with their hatred and rage, but I also have met plenty of nice Christians.  So it’s not as if we can look at a philosophy and say, this is always bad.  If we could, it’d be a lot easier.

We are all on this planet, experiencing this life, and it is unfortunate that so many of us cannot (or will not) respect the life and experiences of others.  Instead, we assume that we are, somehow, experiencing THE LIFE and everyone else is doing it wrong.  Tolerance isn’t found in accepting people’s differences.  It’s in acknowledging our own limitations and the limitations of our short lives.  It’s in understanding that, at the end of the day, we are probably all wrong about everything but as long as we keep trying, maybe it’ll work out in the end.

That’s my personal philosophy.  Yours is probably different.

And, hey, as long as you aren’t trying to burn down my house, we’re cool.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Haters

Blogs are weird.  I don’t know what I find weirder about them.  That people write them.  Or that there is, right now, a generation growing up who won’t find them weird at all.  To them, the notion of broadcasting your thoughts across the internet where anyone can (and hopefully will) read them will be perfectly normal.  I don’t know if it will be a good thing or a bad thing.  Probably both, because that’s how humans work.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this post, I’m going to go ahead and plug Transformers: Fall of Cyberton.  It’s basically three games: a single player campaign, a multiplayer versus mode, and a cooperative four against the horde mode.  Each game is pretty damn fun, and I am enjoying the hell out of it.  I even bought the DLC Dinobot skins to use in multiplayer, and while it might sound silly to pay money for a completely superficial addition, there is something very awesome about being a robotic T-rex who shoots cannon shells out of his mouth and stomps across the battlefield.

If this does not excite you, I have a hard time believing you’re a fan of mine.  But maybe you like my books despite the mutant dinosaurs and killer moon monsters.  I certainly won’t complain if that’s true.

Onto the real topic of this blog.

Haters gonna hate.

I used to find that phrase absurd and confusing.  I wasn’t quite sure what a hater was, but, I figured, by definition, they must hate things.  Then I started looking around on the internet, and it suddenly became crystal clear.  There are people, loads of them, who are full of nothing but rage, bile, and critcism.  And the internet is where they live to express themselves.

You only need to read the comments section on any average Youtube video or play an online game for an hour or two.  Inevitably, someone will emerge who seems to want nothing more than to be angry and share that anger with the world.  I’m not talking about legitimate rage, sincere criticism.  Not every negative comment on Amazon.com is the result of someone just wanting to be a jerk.  Not every criticism of our politicians is automatically a biased attack.  There are plenty of reasons to voice negative opinions and thoughts, and just because a comment isn’t full of glowing positivity, it doesn’t make it worthless or the product of mere rage.

I recently posted a few vague political posts and got a lot of feedback, both negative and positive.  None of it was what I would consider uncalled for.  None of it was just there to be nasty.

But haters are out there, and while I haven’t experienced many on this site (in fact, I’ve only ever rejected one non-spam comment and even that was less about criticism and more about missing the point of the original post), those folks are out there in surprising numbers.

They’re the folks who feel the need to pepper their online chat with profanity.  They love to call others stupid.  They love to bring everyone down.

If there’s an amateur Youtube video, they’ll be there to point out that it doesn’t look like a million dollar movie.

If you’re playing an online MMO, they’re the ones who are sure to tell you how much you suck.

If you share some thoughts about your life, they’ll let you know your life is meaningless and you’re a loser.

Haters is really the only word that fits.  People who simply live to be mad.  Certainly, we all have our bad days, our unpleasant moments.  But it takes a special kind of rage to bother posting a negative comment for its own sake.  This isn’t just someone walking by, firing off an unpleasant comment, and carrying on.  No, these are folks who sit down, type out their nasty messages, and do so with delightful enthusiasm.

We are all capable of being this person.  But it takes a lot of effort to post negativity on the internet when you could just as easily shut up.  And yelling at a random group of people on an MMO is akin to jumping into the middle of a bunch of people and berating them all simply for existing.  This is more than simple unpleasantness.  This is anger, aimed at no one and everyone.

It’s nothing new.  These people have always been with us.  But for me, their ability to be found anywhere on the internet shows just how prevalent they are.  It shows what happens when people of rage are given anonymity.  And it ain’t pretty.

There’s probably no way to fix this problem other than to encourage polite and thoughtful discourse.  But, of course, that’s the hater trap.  If you try to engage this sort of person in a civil discussion, it is bound to get ugly fast.  In short order, we can become haters ourselves.  That’s the insidious nature of this affliction.  Unreasonable people do not become more reasonable around reasonable people.  More often than not, the opposite is true.  So a hands off approach is often best.

But this leaves the ragers, the angered, the trolls free run of things.  With luck, they end up isolated and alone, drowning in their own venom.  It rarely works that way.  Instead, they’re more likely to drive away all interesting discussion in favor of personal attacks, declarations of superiority, and (my personal favorite) generic ethnic, sexual slurs.  It sucks, but damned if I can figure a way around it other than suggesting we should demand better of ourselves.

I’ve been playing League of Legends lately, and one of the things I love about the game is that it has a player based tribunal system that handles punishing reported players.  It’s not a perfect system, but if a player is too belligerent they can end up getting banned.  And it’s through the judgment of other players.  By creating a community, the hope is that haters will be kept in check.  It isn’t a perfect system, and I sincerely doubt any system can keep these things under control.  But they can keep them from raging to extremely excessive levels.

We should expect nothing less from each other.  And if you wouldn’t berate me and scream obscenities in my face in real life, you probably shouldn’t do it on the internet either.  Not that I expect any haters to understand this.  Because, as the saying goes, haters gonna hate.  It’s their nature.

It’s up to the rest of us to stop them.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

 

 

 

Transformed

While playing Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, I was struck by the realization that what started out as a line of toys became something more dynamic and dramatic than it really has any right to be.  I don’t know exactly when it happened or at what point a bunch of space robots locked in eternal war changed into a legitimate exploration of war, sacrifice, obsession, heroism, and villainy.  It didn’t happen overnight.  It took years.  Hundreds of comics.  Dozens of TV series.  A few movies.  But, somehow, it happened.

I’ve always loved the Transformers because, hey, robots that turn into jets, cars, dinosaurs, etc., what’s not to love?  I will say that, for me, the Transformers were my gateway to storytelling.  I loved playing with the toys, and I would craft my own elaborate tales of adventure.  Fanfiction really is nothing new.  Kids have been doing it forever.  And with the aid of established characters, I was able to explore what made story and character work.

That was the beauty of Transformers, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Rainbow Brite, and so on.  I grew up with a generation of toys built for storytelling.  It wasn’t anything new, but it was so easy with the Transformers, who came with their own backstory, established personalities, sources of conflict, and fantastic premise.  They were helped immensely by tremendous marketing.  Every Transformer and G.I. Joe came with their own card.  Cutting them out and saving them was just part of the fun.  And if you wanted to know if Shockwave was stronger than Grimlock, you only had to check their power ratings.  Yes, Transformers was my gateway to story continuity.  And if you needed to know how the other Decepticons felt about Soundwave (short answer: his aloof nature creeps them out) or who Optimus Prime could always count on to watch his back (Ironhide), you only had to check.

Here’s the thing though:  All of this was in the service of a line of toys.  Everything was about convincing kids to buy toys, dolls, spaceships, what-have-you.  It’s easy to be cynical about that, and not without good reason.  Some parents feared that their kids would be reduced to mindless consumers, and while I think those fears ended up being exaggerated, it’s hard to not sometimes see my generation as particularly obsessed with its own childhood joys, sometimes to an almost pathological degree.

It always annoys me whenever I hear someone bemoan their “childhood being desecrated.”  It would almost be amusing if it weren’t so absurd and insensitive.  Just because Michael Bay made some bad Transformers movies, he didn’t “rape” anyone’s childhood.  Nor did he take some sacred piece of art and pervert it.  He just made some bad movies.  His real crime isn’t in perverting a line of toys.  It was in not treating it like the line of toys it was.  Instead of giving us robot on robot action, he elected to focus on a few people and the army and everything but the Transformers.  Which is pretty stupid because, everyone who has ever been a fan of Transformers would tell you, people are incidental.

But even then, it’s not the worst crime in cinema, and while I love giant shapeshifting robots from outer space as much as the next guy, it’s not that Bay corrupted them.  He just entirely missed the point.  To be fair, a lot of fans miss that point too.

Back to my original point, regardless of their origins, the Transformers somehow became characters in their own right.  Not only that, they somehow managed to transcend that origin.  Almost everyone knows of Optimus Prime, Megatron, and their endless conflict.  You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with even a passing knowledge of American pop culture who doesn’t have a vague idea of what a Decepticon or an Autobot are.

Fall of Cybertron takes full advantage of this familiarity.  If you’re a fan, you already know what to expect.  There can’t even be any surprises because the story of Cybertron is well established at this point.  And if you somehow managed to play the game without knowing it, the title kind of gives it away.

That’s the thing about storytelling though.  It isn’t usually the destination.  It’s the journey.  And Fall is all about that.  From Optimus Prime’s heroic defense of the Ark to Grimlock’s battle with hordes of Insecticons to Starscream’s (inevitable) rise and (also inevitable) fall, the game isn’t trying to redefine the Transformer universe.  It’s exactly what it should be:  a toy commercial.  But it’s a toy commercial with heart and soul.

The finale ends with Optimus and Megatron locked in deadly battle.  It’s not a spoiler to say so.  How else could it end?  And even knowing that neither can win, there is an epic struggle to the fight, an almost mythic clash.  In particular, I still got chills when Optimus realized, finally, that there can never be any reasoning with Megatron, that, in the words of the Autobot leader, “We can never coexist in the same universe.”

It is without shame that I credit the Transformers for my current career in novelology.  They taught me the value of characters, the virtue of adventure, the joy of unbridled fantasy.  They showed me that the origin of a story matters a hell of a lot less than than the execution and that, if you treat your characters with enough care, others will begin to see them as something worthwhile too.

Also, the Transformers taught me that the only thing cooler than a robot that changes into a car is one that changes into a dinosaur.

But, above even that simple, universal truth, they showed me that telling a story is as simple as grabbing a bunch of cool characters, adding a bit of conflict, and giving yourself permission to see where it goes.  For that, and for a hell of a lot more, I’m eternally grateful to the Autobots and Decepticons.  Their war might have ravaged Cybertron, but it kindled the creative spark in me.

So even if you don’t like Transformers, you can at least give them credit, in a roundabout way, for Emperor Mollusk, Earl the vampire, Duke the werewolf, Vom the Hungering, and (most obviously) Mack Megaton, robot P.I.  And if that hasn’t made the world a better place, I don’t know what has.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Reality Checked

We really are living in two realities in America. One of them must be completely wrong, but how do we deal with that? I’m trying not to pick sides, but one side believes our president is a secret Muslim, communist, fascist, dictator who wants to institute shiara law, take away their guns, and destroy democracy. The other side thinks Romney is a bit of a rich dude with all the pros / cons that come with that.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t reasons to vote for Romney.  Everyone gets their choice, and hey, I could give a damn who you vote for.  It’s your call.  But if you’re voting for Romney because you believe any of the above about Obama, you need to stop a moment and ask yourself is this really true?

I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes, but if the only reason you like Romney is because you fear the ridiculous boogeyman that Obama clearly isn’t, then I just don’t know what to say about that.

This isn’t about politics.  Politics are dull and boring and, at the end of the day, it all seems to work out the same regardless of who we vote for.  I believe in democracy.  I’m just not sure I believe it’s very good at getting results.  But what do I know?  I’m just one guy.

Still, it’s hard not to deride this nonsense.  And frankly, I’m no longer in the mood to tiptoe around it.  Bullshit is bullshit.  There’s no two ways about it.  And while I expect disagreement (when have we ever been a harmonious species?), I also expect a certain level of clarity.  You can live in a fantasy world all you like, but don’t expect me to not call you on it when it starts getting this delusional.

Just because you fear something, doesn’t mean it is something to be feared.  For so many, the Obama presidency is like some lurking monster.  It hasn’t actually done much, but it’s out there.  Just waiting.  Like a legendary beast that everyone’s heard about, but no one has seen.

And to my conservative friends, I respect your views.  I don’t have to agree with all of them.  But I won’t call you un-American for having them, and I expect the same courtesy in return.  And I expect mature adults to act mature, to voice their concerns fairly and honestly, and to never resort to scare tactics or outright falsehoods.

We can all do better, folks.  And we should want to do better.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Can’t Fight the Future

People who believe voter fraud is happening are like people who think the only way they can lose is because everyone else is cheating.  It’s like that jerk who decides you must be hacking your Xbox because there’s no way you could possibly have defeated him.

Oh, and of course, there are the racists who would prefer if certain groups of people they didn’t like didn’t vote at all.  But let’s put those people aside for a moment.  Bigots are easy to see as stupid, but what about those folks, misguided as they may be, who actually think this is a problem.

Democracy is a mixed bag for everyone.  Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  Rarely are you ever really happy with the results either way.  We all have our voice, our vote, and we hope that it works out in the end.  There’s a lot of disappointment and struggle along the way, but with some luck, progress is made.  If not that, then at least we can rest assured we were heard and can look forward to the next election.

But lots of people are very sore losers, and that creates a problem.  Instead of realizing that you can’t win them all, that sometimes you are not going to be in charge, they begin to suspect the system is broken.  Like a child losing at a game, they suspect there is something wrong with the rules.

This is the specter of voter fraud in a nutshell.  (Well, that AND the bigot thing, but we aren’t going to talk about that because . . . eh, who has the energy anymore?)  Rather than accepting loss with grace, some folks will try to “fix” the system so that it “works”.  What that really means is that they try to rig the game, often without even realizing it.

I get where this comes from.  It’s not easy feeling marginalized.  And there are a bunch of folks who are starting to panic because it feels as if they are losing the power and privilege they’ve taken for granted.  The bad news for them is that they are.  This is nothing new.  It’s a cycle as old as time.  Things change.  The very definition of minority has changed (and continues to change) radically in America over the decades.  This isn’t a trick.  It isn’t unnatural.  It’s just how the world works.

Nobody broke the system to sneak a black President into the White House.  Yes, I know he’s half white, but the establishment created the “one drop” rule, so they can’t retract it now.  Nobody is out to destroy your religion just because other religions (or heaven forbid, no religion) are getting a place in the spotlight.  Nobody is out to destroy your family just because gay people think they should have the same legal rights as any other consenting adult should.

It’s bullshit.  And it’s time we called it bullshit.

Ultimately, the cycle is always the same, and misguided people will do their best to preserve “voter integrity”.  But what they’re trying to do is hold onto a place of privilege and power that they assume is meant for them and no one else.  They see nothing wrong with the system as long as it rewards them.  They’re self-centered and unimaginative, and they live in fear of a world that is different than the world they knew.  And they’ll do whatever they can to preserve the old one, even as it comes tumbling down around them.  They will lose.  They always do.  But they will fight kicking and screaming every step of the way.

So hang in there, folks.  The road to tomorrow might be bumpy, but it’s a one way trip.  And nobody can turn this car around.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Best(ish)

“It’s not his best book…”

That always strike me as a strange review.  By definition, there can be only one best book, and it is highly unlikely that every book I write will be better than the last.  I’ve published nine novels, and it’s safe to say that they don’t line up in some rigid and agreeable order.  It’s not like each book is 10 percent better than the last and so it will continue until I publish book number X, which will be my crowning achievement just before I die.

The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar film (probably my favorite movie ever), but it doesn’t mean that I don’t love Monsters Inc, Wall-E, or Brave.  Just because one jumps ahead in the pack, it doesn’t lessen the others any.

Being disappointed because something is not as awesome as it could be never made much sense to me.  I get disappointment.  Tron Legacy wasn’t nearly as cool or creative as the original film.  It didn’t need to be to satisfy me.  I just had to not be bland nostalgia masquerading as a movie.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it was, so I didn’t like it.  But if it had been “merely” good, I wouldn’t have complained.

I get the idea behind this type of criticism.  It’s saying that we like something, just not as much as we’d hoped.  But there’s a difference between Not Incredible and Disappointing.  It’s cool if you want to say you’re disappointed with something.  It’s just odd when that disappointment is because something wasn’t the best thing ever.

I hope to have many more books in my future, and I expect there will be a lot of disagreement over which one is exactly “The Best”.  Who knows?  Maybe there won’t be.  But even if the entire world agrees on one book as my magnum opus, I’d like to think they could appreciate my lesser works while they’re at it.

I wonder if Shakespeare had to deal with that.  “Romeo and Juliet is pretty good, but it’s no Macbeth.”  Beethoven probably was accused of phoning it in on his sixth symphony.  And I bet even someone, somewhere, told Dr. Seuss that Green Eggs and Ham was derivative.  If such geniuses had to experience those tribulations, I guess I’ll just have to put up with it too.

Such is my burden.  But I like to think I bear it well.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee