A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 67

On Writing: Keep It Simple

The best advice I can give on writing:

Keep it simple.

You don't often hear this.  I don't know why.  Maybe because if people knew how easy it was to write a story, they'd stop paying professional novelologist to do it and just do it themselves.  Although perhaps easy is the wrong word because novelology isn't easy.  It's a lot of work.  It's just that people tend to think the easy part is hard and vice versa.

This is only my own personal experience.  I can't speak for every writer, but the hardest thing about writing is sitting down and actually making yourself do it.  This is why most people never actually become writers.  Most people don't have the indefinable quality to sit down and finish a story.  Not even a short story.  Much less a novel.  But it's not always their fault.  Sometimes, they're getting bad advice.

Writing a novel is difficult enough.  I know I wouldn't do it if I believed half of what I'd read about "How to write" books.  These guides come from a well-meaning place, but they tend to put a lot of pressure on writers.  They might ask for plot outlines, character studies, world building, thematic construction, character arcs, etc., etc.  These aren't always bad things to have in mind when writing a story, but as often as not, I find they get in the way of the creative process.

To begin with, they're usually so much boring prep work.  It's like arranging all your cleaning supplies on a shelf in the order you plan on using them, then measuring out how many rolls of paper towels you're going to need, how much time must be allocated for vacuuming, when would be the optimal time for dusting, and deciding on how long your lunch break should be.  You could waste hours preparing to do something when you could just be doing it instead.  And those hours of prep work give you the illusion that you actually accomplished something, when all you did was get ready to accomplish something.

The same thing happens to writers, especially aspiring writers.  They might be able to tell you everything about the history of their elaborate fantasy world.  Or they deep, pychological scars that drive their detective to deliver justice.  Or the reason their character always wears sandals and likes cats, except for tabby cats.  They might be able to detail the nuanced arc their protagonist undertakes to learn that life is worth living again and that tabby cats are okay.  They can give you all the elements that make a story.

They just can't give you the story.

Keeping it simple means forgoing the tedious arranging of elements, of doting loving detail on every single element of the story, and just getting the damn thing done.  You might make mistakes that way, but you'll make mistakes anyway, regardless of how much time and effort you put into quantifying how magical powers work in your universe or how many hours you spent studying handguns or flamingoes or the history of Napoleonic France.

Keeping it simple has more advantages than just allowing you to get your novel done.  It allows you one of the greatest assets a writer can have.  You can be the audience, sit in their seat, and watch the show unfold.  If you're eager to see what happens next, then how can your audience not be?  If you are just following an outline, screwing together plot points like rivets, you don't really know if that'll translate.  It very well might, but to me at least, that's a lot of work to put into something that could just as well be working against you.

I keep it simple.  I don't write intense backstories for characters if they don't need it.  (And so far, only one has needed it, and that didn't even come up in the book.)  I don't worry about a central theme at the beginning, except when it's so obvious that I didn't need to think about it at all.  And world building should be minimal.  Enough to make it look like I know what I'm doing without pulling it out of the air.

The advantage for me is that when I sit down to write a story, I just sit down and write.  I don't often know where I'm going, and I rarely, if ever, know how it will end.  This is what keeps me writing.  I want to know why endless waves of zombies are attacking the diner, why a hapless loser has been made immortal, and what would happen if we invited mythological gods into our homes and onto our sofas.  It's what compels me to write these stories because, until I do them, I'm not honestly sure either.

A good story is a complicated thing, an amalgamation of intriguing questions, characters, memorable moments, and so much more.  It's magic.  And maybe some folks can take all the ingredients of a great story and look at them before they're mixed together and know exactly what they're going to get.  But not me.  I throw them in the pot, stir liberally, add spices, strain out the unnecessary, and by the time it's done, from almost out of nowhere, a story is born.

Maybe you are one of those writers who benefits from prep work.  Good for you.  More power to you.  But if you're not (and I think most writers aren't) it's all right to work in a different way.  It's already to take it easy, keep it simple, and just write to see what happens.  It's what I do, and so far, it's worked just fine by me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Monster Gods and The Terran Condition

One of the reasons I chafe under the "comic fantasy writer" label is that it usually comes with a sense of dismissiveness, a "good for what it is" qualification.  I hate complaining about this because I'm lucky to get paid to do this at all, and complaining about some people not liking your books because they're "fun, fluff" is like complaining that people are nice to you because you're attractive.  It might not be your preferred reason, but the end result is the same.

This is why I'm working on my mind-control top hat.  If it gets people to like me, I'm not above a little superscience.  And if it's good enough for The Ringmaster & the Circus of Crime, it's good enough for me.

But until I get that hat to work, I'm stuck trying to get people to like me the old fashioned way.  By writing good novels and being generally delightful.  It's not easy.  I may not always feel like being delightful, but I still persevere.  Because that's me.  That's how I roll.

But this isn't about me, delightful as I may be.  This is about my books.  If you think they're just goofy little stories that bring you a few hours of joy, I'm not going to complain about it.  But I will say that I think I have more to offer than that.

Maybe it's just the way I look at the world, but I think we all share the same joys, the same pains, the same fears, and the same questions about the universe.  I believe that, when you peel away all the layers of crap the world and society throws on us, underneath it all, we aren't very different at all.  

I'll admit I don't write novels steeped in symbolism and metaphor.  I'm not terribly poetic (though I do have my moments), but it doesn't take poetry to speak about the Terran condition.  Most of my stories involve tentacle monsters or slime beasts or things of that nature with a dash of armchair metaphysics that help to keep the plot moving.

It doesn't mean I have nothing to say.

One of the reasons I tend to dislike "literary" fiction is that it tends to throw itself in your face.  It grabs you by the shoulders and says, "This is important!"  It might very well be, but I find the lessons in life aren't only to be found in stories about the Holocaust or meandering tales where an author composes detailed treatises of how the ocean is like hope.  A story with humor, told well, with maybe a raccoon god or zombie cow, can say something about Terran nature.  Plus, it can be awesome.

I harp on this every so often, so I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record.  But just because I don't feel the need to sacrifice characters to the gods of literary seriousness or create extraordinarily complicated plots that doesn't mean I don't care about what I'm writing.  Or that I don't believe it has some social value.  I'm not just talking about a few hours of distraction from this muddled confusion we call life either.  (Although I can't really complain if that was all I managed to do since that's a worthy goal in itself in this world.)  No, I think you can find something relatable in my novels.  Something that just might help you think of the world in a different way.

Maybe that's just the way I think.  I believe enlightenment can be found in just about anything.  Wisdom is discovered in the strangest places, and I'm not suggesting there's something special about my books.  I think when we're in the right mindset, anything can help us on our personal journeys.

I learned a lot about love from Wall-E.  I love zen, and Kung Fu Panda helped me to love it even more.  And I don't know if anyone but me even remembers the animated The American Rabbit movie, but there's a moment at the end, too complex to get into, that shaped my personal philosophy since I first saw it.  (So if anyone out there happened to work on that obscure little film, know that it touched my life in a very real and personal way.)

That's me.  I'll admit my personal philosophy has been shaped as much by cartoons and comic books as anything else, and while some might find that absurd, they're confusing the medium with the message.  And they're not even really giving the medium a fair shake.

At the end of the day, all our media, our stories, our movies, our books, our politics, our religions, our philosophies are by Terrans, for Terrans.  We're all wrestling with the same questions, and it's impossible not to write those questions into most stories.  It just can't be done.  Everything speaks to somebody, somewhere.  And I'd like to think…no scratch that.  I know that somewhere out there, someone has found something worthwhile in something I've written.  Something profound that I can only hope has made their life more interesting, thoughtful, and, hopefully, beautiful.

It's not because of some amazing confidence in my own writing.  It's just logical.  I'm human.  My readers are human (most probably).  And that gives us a lot in common.  So from one befuddled human to another, I wish you the best of luck.  And if you happen to find something worthwhile in my books, let's not act as if it's surprising.  Because it happens.  Sometimes even in stories about giant monster gods who want to eat the moon.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Gamma World, a RPG review

This is a brief history of my role-playing experience.  You can skip a few paragraphs to get to the beginning of the review, marked in bold.

I was never a big role-playing game player.  I dabbled a bit here and there, but I always had a hell of a time getting a reliable group.  It isn't such a bad thing though as my RPG failures eventually led to my table top gaming passion.  It was after a D&D group fell apart that the remnants and I started playing Magic: The Gathering & Robo Rally.  And now, here I am:  A. Lee Martinez, world-famous novelologist and game-playing guru.

I was never much of a D&D player.  It always seemed too rules intensive to me, too controlling with a real lack of meaningful choices in character design.  And it always bugged me that wizards couldn't pick up swords.  I'm not expecting them to slay a dragon with the thing, but you should be able to pick it up and swing the damn thing.  Although I was usually just a dwarf warrior because, push comes to shove, I'd rather just chop the bad guy with an ax than try to micromanage my spell catalogue.

It didn't help too that I had plenty of bad experience with role-players in general.  All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the fun.  One guy who thinks it's funny to kill every peasant he comes across.  One weirdo dude who wants to make a female character and then tries to seduce the other guys in the party.  One dumbass who finds potty humor and / or lack of teamwork amusing.

I did have some good times role-playing, but it wasn't ever with D&D.

I liked Vampire in theory, but I could never get enough players.  And I wasn't gothy enough.  I'd much rather stalk the night as an anti-hero vampire than deal with politics and angst.  I enjoyed the concept of Werewolf a whole hell of a lot.  The combination of magic and bloodthirsty werewolves was hard to resist.  But, again, no players.  Mage was a game of tremendous promise, but nobody I knew was interested.

FUN FACTS: I actually wrote 100 pages of a novel based on the World of Darkness.  I guess it was technically fan fiction, but I really did think it was great.  Unfortunately, after reading a few of the published White Wolf novels, I realized that I wasn't the target audience.  Again, not gothy enough.

FUN FACT #2: My favorite Mage character was a mad scientist named Dr. Spectre, Man of Science!  He was a Doc Savage knockoff, and he was awesome.  Shame he never got a chance to see some action.

The game I probably played most reliably was Deadlands, the Weird West RPG.  The system was a bit clunky, but cowboys versus monsters is a pretty sweet setting.  After Deadlands, the gameI loved the most (and continue to love) is Feng Shui aka Shadowfist.  The game was built on Honk Kong action flick rules, and had a terrific, fun setting of kung fu killers and mutant demons from the future.  The thing I loved about Feng Shui was that, unlike most RPGs, you started the game as a badass.  You were a killer, a powerhouse, a whirlwind of death and destruction.  It also had a great, simple system and was one of the easiest RPGs to play or run I've ever run across.  Just absolute pure fun.

And now, the review:

It's probably been about 15 years since I picked up a RPG.  So no one was as surprised as I was when I decided, on the spur of the moment, to pick up the Gamma World RPG.  From what I've read, Gamma World is a direct adaptation of the D&D,4th edition rules.  I am not familiar with those rules at all, though I know a bit about the controversy.  The new D&D is more of a sophisticated boardgame with some RPG elements.  And I can see why some might be annoyed by this.  When I role-played, I never liked using maps and figures.  It takes your attention and puts it on the board, makes everything seem technical and dull.  It seems to me, just based on this, that D&D is halfway between a board game and a RPG, and falls short on each.

But what about Gamma World?  Is it a good game?  Is it worth buying?

I don't know, but I think it has promise.  Let's start with the setting.  Gamma World is a truly unique game in that instead of playing elves and dwarves, fighters and clerics, everyone plays a mutant.  There's some contrived explanation of multiple realities collapsing into a single world.  It's really just an excuse to have mutants and monsters of any conceivable type interacting.  Heck, you can even use D&D creatures in the setting.  But why would you?  Who would want to fight a beholder when you can fight a mutant badger with a rifle or a giant, flying worm that can turn invisible?

Anything goes in Gamma World and nowhere is that more evident than in the character creation rules.  There are 20 possible origins for player characters, and everyone gets two.  The game recommends picking randomly, which is fine, but I don't see anything wrong with choosing your origin.  I've never really understood random character generation as it can saddle a player with a character they don't like and what good is that?

Gamma World has some basis for random character creation though.  In a world where anything is possible, it can be fun to stretch your imagination and play a telekinetic plant or a swarm of time-displacing hornets or a robotic felinoid.  Yes, these are entirely possible results of the creation system, and if that doesn't thrill you, I don't know what else to say.

ASIDE:  I get that a lot of "serious" RPers will turn their nose up at this absurdity, but isn't all fantasy absurd?  Is a telepathic yeti any less believable than a wizard who can shoot fireballs or a warrior with a magic sword?  Maybe that's just me though, as I love the idea of being able to play a humanoid bird with the power to manipulate gravity.

An interesting part of the game is the use of card decks that allow the players to access random mutations and technology.  In such an unstable reality, mutants can spontaneously develop and lose strange powers at the drop of a hat.  So in addition to your hawkoid's ability to fly, you might also discover the ability to teleport or grow armor for a few hours.  None of these powers are very stable, and they don't stick around for long.  Some might find that annoying, but again, I love this idea.  It keeps you guessing and is perfectly suited for the setting. 

There are even rules for creating your own custom deck for your character and this can be fun as it's easy to create a solid theme.  You can create a deck of psychic power cards for your telepathic character or a deck of bug-like mutations for your mutant roach.  There's a great variety of mutation cards and all are clearly worded and easy to understand.

There are also a deck of Omega Tech cards that represent cutting edge technology salvaged in the ruins.  These devices are completely unreliable, and that fits with the theme just fine.  Players can create custom decks for these too, representing pieces of technology in their possession that are powerful, but unpredictable.  And it's a neat way of allowing characters to stumble across tech without having to consult tables and random roll charts.  Heck, there's nothing stopping the GM from sticking a piece of Omega Tech on a group of random monsters to make them more challenging.

Random boosters of cards are available, and I'm sure these could add some fun.  But you don't need them.  The Gamma World box comes with plenty.  So it's a cool gimmick that doesn't require extra investment.

Some might dislike the random card system, but there's nothing saying they have to be random.  It's a flexible system that works well and is easily adaptable to players' needs.  And that's true of the entire game.

 Aside from the character creation and a healthy selection of monsters to choose from, the book is a little light in the setting department.  I don't know if that's a negative though as Gamma World is such a flexible setting that players should have no problem coming up with adventures.  Want to live out The Seven Samurai but with hordes of cyborg dinosaurs on the attack?  No problem.  Like the idea of exploring an abandon robot factory in search of astounding technology?  Easy to do.  Road warriors?  Peacekeepers?  Marauding no-goodniks?  The rule system is easy to adapt, and even if you don't use the monsters in the game, you can always invent your own pretty easily.

I don't know if I'll ever actually have a Gamma World RPG session.  It doesn't seem likely.  But as a gonzo game full of possibilities, you could do a lot worse.  I could easily see playing the game with or without a map, depending on your preference.  And I can see it being a blast with the right group, players who are interested in just sitting down, creating some characters, and seeing where adventure takes them.

As a board game, I actually see a lot of potential here as well.  I'm considering creating index cards with various origins and dealing them out to players to create their characters and allowing those characters to duke it out.  Or you could even just have battles between monsters if so inclined.

Bottom line:  I like Gamma World.  I like it a lot.  It's the kind of game I'd love to get together and role-play and it's been a while since I've seen that.  And in a world where most RPGs take themselves far too seriously, this is a refreshing change of pace.  The game is a solid toolbox for any players looking for something different, and with supplemental material on the way, it could develop into something pretty damn cool.

Recommended from this humble novelologist and former, very casual role-player.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Christopher Lee Vs. Bela Lugosi (and other strangeness)

I like to play this game where actors get to carry over their powers and abilities from multiple roles, to imagine a fantasy land where avatars of entertainers become embodiments of the cultural collective that spawned them.

In this realm, Hugh Jackman is an accomplished stage magician who excells at hunting vampires and has a healing factor and adamantium claws.

Christian Bale is a master of the gun kata with all the skills and capabilities of Batman.  Although, since Batman is his more popular role, he never actually uses the gun kata.  Also, he can fight Terminators and he's just a pinch psychotic (or maybe he just imagined that stuff).  He's also a skilled stage magician.

Edward Norton killed a pedophile priest, went to prison where he became a reformed racist until accidental exposure to a gamma bomb gave him the power to Hulk out!  Also, a skilled stage magician.

Angelina Jolie is a double-agent / supernatural assassin / mother of dragons.  (But not a stage magician)

Samuel L. Jackson is head of a spy agency that employs superheroes.  He's also pretty handy with a lightsaber.  And every plane he gets on . . . snakes!  And boy has he had it with them.

David Hasselhoff is also head of a spy agency.  The very same agency, in fact, as Samuel Jackson.  Obviously, one is a decoy, but we may never know which.  In his spare time, Hasselhoff drives from beach to beach in his indestructible talking car and offers his lifeguard services.  Also, he can fight vampires if he has to.  (How I miss thee, Baywatch Nights.)

Adam West is Batman.  And that's about it, but isn't that more than enough?  His batoosie puts Christian Bale to shame.

Elijah Wood is a fuzzy little guy who fights orcs when he isn't busy cannibalizing prostitutes or saving the world from high school aliens.

Arnold Schwartzennegar is a robot sent from the future who worships Crom.  He'll also kick the Devil's ass.  He can also get pregnant, which probably doesn't come in handy that often, but I suppose it can't hurt.

Anna Paquin has the ability to absorb people's powers, telepathy, and she's dating a vampire.

And on and on it goes.

The natural question is to ask who would win in a fight?  It's not an easy answer.  I suppose you could cheat and just say Billy Crudup because he played Dr. Manhattan and you can't get much more omnipotent than that.  Except for maybe George Burns and Morgan Freeman and all the other actors who have played God.  Although God isn't always the same in every story, and you have to figure some movie versions of the supreme being are more powerful than others.

Could the God from Time Bandits beat the God from Dogma?  In a three way cage match between David Warner, Alanis Morrissette, and Liam Neeson who would reign?  Okay, so Neeson has only played Zeus so far, but he was the big guy of his mythological film.  And he was also Darkman and Hannibal, so that's gotta be worth a few extra points.

If you threw all the James Bonds into a pit and had them fight it out, who would you bet on?  I'm a Timothy Dalton fan, myself, but you can't ignore Connery, who would benefit from his time as Robin Hood.  Also, by the rules of the game, he'd be immortal and that could be an unfair advantage.  Although Moore would probably have some kind of convenient laser watch or buzzsaw bowtie at his disposal.

What I'd like to see most would be every actor who has ever played Dracula in the arena.  Lugosi would be at a disadvantage, but he'd probably have an edge over George Hamilton.  But at least Hamilton would have access to Zorro's flair.  Then again, so would Antonio Banderas.  Although he was just a vampire, not THE vampire.  So he probably wouldn't be allowed into the rumble.  I'd have to give it to Christopher Lee though because, considering the number of times he played Drac, that has to add up to something.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee 

To the Point

I am not a fan of decompressed storytelling.  It's part of the reason I could never get into shows like Lost or 24.  The way these shows take a single story idea and stretch it out over a season just doesn't appeal to me.  It's not a judgment on the quality of these shows because, honestly, I didn't watch them and have no reason to suspect that they're bad.  Just not my bag.  It's the same reason I don't generally like long movies, and why I'm not much of a comic book fan anymore.

It's probably why I haven't written sequels yet and why my books tend to be short.  I might have a long story in me, but I haven't found it yet.  And the tendency of fantasy now is to write long novels with overarching plots means I don't read much of it either.  I'm more of a too-the-point kind of guy, and that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

There are exceptions, one or two long stories that I've enjoyed.  Justice League Unlimited: Season One is The Greatest Thing That Has Ever Been On Television.  Ever.  And a big part of that is the fact that it has an overarching plot executed masterfully.  The execution is what matters though.  The thing I love about JLU: S1 is that you don't really know it's an overarching story until near the middle of the season.  Until then, you mostly get to enjoy a few standalone episodes with a few recurring plot threads.  Even when the arc gets going, you still can enjoy nearly all of the episodes on their own.  Seeing how they connect adds a whole new level to the season, but even on an episode by episode basis, the show really fires on all cylinders.

I'll admit that maybe this is some failing on my part.  Maybe I'm just not "mature" or "patient" enough to wait around for the payoff.  But, hey, I'm an important guy.  I have a lot of stuff to do.

This Blog Entry is not "The Event"

I have not watched The Event.  Nor do I ever plan to.  I can't offer any criticism on the actual show, but I can say that its promo material is a perfect example of how NOT to intrigue your audience.

Here's just a general tip from a semi-famous novelologist.  You don't hook your audience by telling them they are going to be hooked.  You don't keep people interested by telling them something interesting is happening (or will happen possibly at some point in the future).  You don't tell people that, if they just stick with you long enough, they'll be rewarded at some point with a few measly plot points and maybe some character development.  Because nobody cares.  If you don't keep them interested with an interesting story told in interesting ways than you're just a gimmick, and people don't generally like gimmicks.  Especially uninspired gimmicks.

I was not a fan of Lost.  It's just not my thing to sit and ponder mysteries that I'll never get the answer to or that will inevitably lead to endings I probably won't find worthwhile.  But if you put that aside, Lost was a well-executed show.  While I might have considered it gimmicky, it wasn't written nor promoted like that.  The show was built on mysteries, on a cult-like devotion to unfolding questions leading to more questions leading to more questions.  But the show knew better than to lean on that to keep the viewer interested.  Instead, Lost was an adventure into the unknown, a thrilling fight for survival with characters that intrigued the audience.

The Event falls spectacularly short on this front.  Even as a mystery, it fails.  Though a mystery, Lost could be summarized easily.  Some people are stranded on an island.  Weird stuff happens.  It's an intriguing premise or at least an easily explained one.

But I defy someone to tell me what The Event is.  Heck, even the promos don't want to tell us.  This is not The Event.  That is not The Event.  Have you ever tried to explain a story to someone by telling them what it's not about?  Good luck on that.  The Event is about . . . something mysterious.  Terribly mysterious, in fact.  But a mystery is not a story.  Not by itself.

And then, even more annoying, the show continues to tell us how it will hook us.  "If you watch this episode, by the end, you'll be hooked!"

One of the things I've learned at my writer's group is that bad writers expect the audience to sit through a bunch of boring crap.  At the DFWWW, we read our work aloud.  We're allowed 15 minutes, but I find 10 works well.  If you read something aloud for 10 minutes and your audience is bored, then you're doing something wrong.  Good writers realize this.  Bad writers always wish they had another 5 minutes to get to the good parts.

Every part should be the good part.  Every scene should help the audience want to move forward.  Telling a story isn't complicated or tricky.  What I do, on the surface, is easy.  Make some interesting characters.  Have something interesting happen to them.  Give them a problem to solve.  Then have them work on solving that problem.  The end.  That's it.  And maybe if you're writing "literature" (i.e. pretentious stuff that is intentionally written awkwardly to make it seem intelligent) then you can get away with breaking that rule.  But if you're writing "genre" (i.e. good stories with a plot that makes sense and offers a satisfying resolution) then you need to just build on the basics.

Who is going to tune into a show, week after week, with absolutely no idea what it's about?  Lost might have been confusing, intentionally so, but they were still given problems to solve and for the most part, they solved them.

Yet The Event is a show so vague, so mysterious that I don't know why I should give a damn.  It's intentionally confusing, but not in the "How Mysterious" way, but in the "I'm going to make this really hard to follow" way.  That's not good storytelling.  That's clumsy at best, cheating at worst.  And it seems to me there's no better way to annoy and / or anger your audience than to continually taunt them and telling them that they really, really need to watch your show for a long time before they'll be able to understand any of it.

Maybe that crap flew with Twin Peaks, but even that didn't last long.  Plus, Twin Peaks was at least unique for its time.  What's unique about The Event except that it's just another overlong mystery told in overlong fashion that takes forever to get anywhere and will inevitably implode from all the plot threads its trying to keep dangling.

I could be wrong.  Maybe The Event will be huge.  Maybe people will be willing to give it five or eight or eleven episodes to catch their attention.  But that seems awfully optimistic in a world with increasing choices of entertainment media.

I would like to plug No Ordinary Family.  The first episode showed promise, and unlike The Event a lot actually happened in it.  The family gets superpowers.  Characters are given moments to shine and develop personal relationships.  And they even managed to throw in a brief superfight between a superstrong character and a teleporting villain.  It was creative, fun, and everything Heroes should have been if it hadn't been so jaw-droppingly full of itself.  It's nice to see a show where superpowers aren't automatically assumed to be negative and where a family can have problems without getting absurdly angsty about it.  Thumbs up from this lowly novelologist.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

In Defense of the Internet

I'm pretty damned sick and tired of people claiming the internet / television / printing press / fill-in-the-blank is making us dumber.  It's a tired old tune, and it's time we stopped mistaking the end of the world as we knew it with THE end of the world.  It's time to grow up, accept change, and realize that every change comes with good and bad.

The anti-internet philosophy is nothing new.  It's been used over and over again, every time there's some radical shift in media.  When you get...

In Space, No One Can Hear You Shuffle (a Death Angel review)

Gang, I am beat.  Fencon was a wonderful event, and the weekend was a blast.  I always have a great time with this con, but this was especially great time.  Every panel I was on was great.  Everyone was enthusiastic and fun.  And if you didn't make it, you missed out.  I'd go into more detail, but I am just exhausted and it would probably come out very dry and dull.  So I'd much rather discuss a couple of cool games I came across recently.

As I'm sure you're well aware (being my fans and...

Life with Archie?

I haven't complained about comics much recently, have I?  Maybe it's because I'm just not buying many titles.  I love superhero stuff, and most superhero stuff this day and age ranges from dull to atrocious.  Honestly, maybe I've outgrown the genre.  Although I do really love Atomic Robo and while it's not technically a superhero comic, it's about a robot built by Tesla who fights Nazis, otherdimensional horrors, and evil dinosaur scientists, so that's pretty superheroey.

No, I don't think...

Comics, Terrorizing Dogs, & Immortality

Busy, busy, busy.  Still thought I should make some time to drop by and confirm that I'm still a part of the space/time continuum.  Hey, how's it going?  Hope you're doing good.

What's on my mind?  I don't know.  Why don't I just go ahead and throw a few things against the wall and see what sticks?

Bought a couple of comics today, both good.  After years of successful video games, Ratchet & Clank finally have a limited series.  The first issue is fairly standard stuff, but it captures the...