B. Lloyd Reese's Blog, page 3

The Most Exclusive Website on the Internet

Recently read about the most exclusive website on the internet. The website that let's 1 person in at a time, and only for 60 seconds. Once you're in, you can post a short message, and by the time you realize that, your time is almost up. Once you have a message in, a cat video plays and you can read other posts. Upon logging out after 60 seconds, you can still read some of the posts.

At any rate, I got in for the second time yesterday, and this is what I saw.

The Terminator Timeline Explained

Who doesn’t love Terminator?
For years, T1 and T2 were all there was. But even so, we were left with “did they stop Judgment Day”? I certainly hoped so due the alternate ending that showed a future not overrun by machines. The normal ending I believe left it open to interpretation.
But in the end, the viewer was left to decide.
And I had always hoped that the events of T2 had wiped out Skynet before it was created.
Then I read the book T2:  Infiltrator. That was an excellent story, but for some reason I never read the other two, though I would like to. I had also read one paperback novel that was under the T2 banner and found it to be just OK. I bought one of the others in that second series, but probably never read it.
At any rate, T3 came out not long after this. I went to see it in the theater and I felt it was mostly a rehash of T2. It also flattened my hopes that Judgment Day had been averted. I did like, though, that the Terminatrix sort of maybe seemed inspired by the villain in the T2:  Infiltrator. I was disappointed though that Skynet was basically an internet worm and not like some actual thing or AI that was developed.
Terminator 4 came out. I did like it, overall. It was a good action movie and I had always been curious to see the war in the future. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see Skynet…which I guess is software, but the software needs hardware somewhere, right? I was also disappointed that we didn’t get to see the time machine. It’s a shame that it never became the trilogy it should have, and it’s even more shameful that Christian Bale was not returning for Terminator:  Genisys. But I felt that way about Edward Furlong for T3. I mean, really, what else was he doing?
Genisys held zero interest for me. A T-800 Schwarzenegger model goes back to protect Sarah Connor as a girl. No thanks. Thanks for destroying what passed for continuity in this series. But then I saw the second trailer, which basically spoiled the biggest twist the movie had to offer. And now I’m actually excited to see it. Go figure. Even Avengers 2 didn’t get me excited to see it. No, I haven’t seen it yet.
Anyways. Why am I writing all this? Besides to draw some hits to my blog and hopefully get you to buy and/or review my book?(Free on Kindle 7/2 and 7/3 of 2015 in this timeline only!)
Because I love time travel. It’s such a fun literary device to use. And one that always only confuses things.
I’m here to try to puzzle out the time travel in Terminator.
OK, first, you have Terminator 1. This one’s easy, thanks to the time I spent playing Soul Reaver, which I don’t recommend anybody do.
There is no “Timeline Zero”. No timeline when Skynet developed naturally. No timeline where John had a different father than Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn, you da bomb yo!). Terminator one is the result of an infinity loop. Skynet is made and John is made because things from the future ended up in 1984. They always did. Skynet could not go back to change the past, though it tried. All it did was ensure its own birth. Same too for John Connor. He sent Kyle Reese back to save his mom from Skynet. He had no choice.
In so doing we see that in Terminator, there was no free will by two different sentient beings. Skynet mistakenly thought it could prevent its future defeat at John’s hands by going back and killing him before birth. But at the point it sent the terminator back, it had already lost. It was immutable.
John too had no choice. He probably made an impulse decision or one made by years of being fed the line that he was mankind’s savior and sent his dad/friend back in time to save his mom. He had no choice but to do so.
So terminator 1, the travelers from the future changed nothing, despite their best efforts. The couldn’t. They had always gone back. Every action that they undertook was what had happened in 1984. All both parties did was to ensure their own survival.
Lucky for Skynet.
Pausing for a moment. If we take T1 at face value, Skynet and the humans only sent back the one party on each side. However. As Skynet was being defeated and sending one terminator back in time, it perhaps had the option to send back several. So, it could have sent 1 to 1984, another to 1994ish and so one. Where that gets tricky though is would they all be in the same timeline? I would say yes, given the rules of T1. Anything sent back had always been sent back. So Skynet could send back 100 terminators and it would have made no difference. Because John Connor could just send back another 100 human/terminators to offset that. In an offscreen moment, probably in the movie novelization, that’s what he did with the T800 that he sent back for T2.
But T2 is where it also starts to get murky.
The problem we have with T2 is that we have at least 2 possibilities of what happened. 1) If we continue with the rules of time travel from T1, namely “History abhors a paradox” then everything they do in T2 to prevent judgment day is for naught. Sure, John and Sarah live, but judgment day isn’t far off, and none of their actions have stopped it. That would make everything cut and dry, and if you only like those 2 movies, you can forget the rest. And really if you just take those 2 movies, it can be a closed infinity loop. Or if you prefer, you can take the “good future” ending and say they did change judgment day.
That is the simplest way to take it.
Option 2) though, and unfortunately this seems to be what happened, mainly because of T3. Option 2 is that the rules of time travel were changed. Really, this boils down to making unnecessary sequels to make more money.
In universe though, for some unexplained reason, the rules of time travel work differently going into T3 than they did in the previous 2 movies. Really, T3 should have just been a movie about the future war, but instead it was another failed attempt to change the future. Had it been about the future war, you could have kept your infinite loop.
T3 shows us that Judgment Day in 1997 never happened and we are led to believe that this is because of the events in T2. But if T1 is an infinite loop, every incursion into the past ought to be as well. But what was it that changed the rules? In the Soul Reaver games, the past could only be changed at critical points, with the Soul Reaver and even then it was not guaranteed. And even when it was changed, the “river of time” pushed back to try to resume its original course. In the Terminator series, there is no such “rule breaker.”
So basically T3 really should not exist.
Except for the fact that the T2:  Infiltrator novel (and 2 subsequent books I guess) do offer an attempt to explain the paradoxes. Skynet (if it was this novel) remembers conflicting histories simultaneously. So those novels perhaps offer us an out of sorts.
While I only read book 1 of 3, it explains that time is like a river analogy. More or less. That no matter what changes are made, time prefers to stay its course. That’s why T1 was fairly cut and dry. Perhaps what Infiltrator is suggesting is that T1 everything was fine, though time became somewhat malleable due to the temporal distortion. But the second incursion of T2 gave the already “vibrating” or unstable timeline another jolt, and thus the river of time flowed a little further off course which resulted in T3 and the delayed Judgment Day. Even so, Judgment Day still occurred. So some events are changed, but the overall course is not. Whether or not Infiltrator’s 2 sequels corroborate my theory and tie into T3 remains for me to see, but I suppose it’s possible.
I don’t know how or if the other T2 tie-in books contribute to this or if the T3 and 4 tie-in books add anything, but Infiltrator’s storyline does connect some dots and actually deals with the deeper issues of the implications of time travel. I shall have to go read them. I also don’t know how the Sarah Connor Chronicles tie in either, but I would like to know.
This unstable timeline continues silently through T4 (Salvation), which in reality is a victim of studio politics and money, but in universe you can say there’s no time travel to occur and hasn’t occurred in years, so the reverberating timeline settles down. But the timeline has changed enough to give us Terminator:  Genisys.
Which looks like a mess. But I am excited to see how it all plays out, because, each instance of time travel seems to create a more extreme reaction in the timeline. I may have to do a revised blog after reading the novels and seeing Genisys.
Enjoy!

Free Ebook!

On July 2 & 3rd, "Myrmidons" will be free on Kindle! If you don't have a kindle, no problem, download their free app for PC or your smartphone!

Please be sure to leave a review, good or bad and share this free read with your friends. Love it or hate it, let us know and why.

If you like it and want book 2 to come out, buy a hard copy from Createspace which will generate more royalties. The biggest obstacle to book 2 is that it's being written in my free time, which there is pretty much none of. That's not a sob story, just a fact. I'm not complainin', I'm just explainin'. While I wish I could give these books away for free, I can't. But if you want to support an independent artist, buy the stuff.

Until then, at least download it free and leave a review.

This may be the last chance to download it on Kindle, as I am contemplating removing it from the Kindle store while I attempt to find some other venue for distributions, electronic or otherwise. Stay tuned, and get it while it's hot!

Fun Stuff

Here's another bit of fan art, but it's unusual.

I have attempted to make a "Lego playset" version of the Highbridge neighborhood as depicted in the book "In the Shadows of Myrmidons" using Minecraft Pocket on my phone. It's quite pitiful, really.

My ultimate goal though is to have a reasonable facsimile of the Higbridge, Bronx neighborhood as depicted in the novel so people can play and explore the locations in the book. Once the neighborhood is put together, I'd even like to modify skins and such to reflect characters in the book and even branch out into stuff not seen, but added for game purposes.

At any rate, here are some locations from the novel, Minecraft-ized.


Ext. Alphacowomooga Sr. High

  Same, but in shadow and with monsters
   Interior Entryway of AlphaCowomooga. Display case. (not a perfect interpretation)


 The Not so abandoned swimming pool area


 Ext. Single Handed Sanwiches on the corner of Ogden and that other street.
 Int. Single Handed Sandwiches. Not quite I had envisioned, but close. I'd probably have a few more tables and partition walls here and there. I guess in reality, it's based on a restaurant I used to work at that had a similar set up. I think it's a Whitecastle now...



A loose interpretation of Top Jimmy's Love Lounge


  another Ext. shot of the school 




Enjoy!

Facebook Group

Please join the "Myrmidons of Hope" group on Facebook! Discuss the novel, share fan art and chat with the author!

Fan Art

This is long over due, but we have our first, well maybe second, piece of fan artwork by our cover artist, Mark! Obviously, his cover would be the first.

Here is how Mark envisioned Alphacowomooga!

Thanks Mark!









Also, if you would like to submit fan art, please find and join the "Myrmidons of Hope" Group on Facebook! You can also chat with other fans and sometimes me!

Feedback From a 7th Grader

Thanks to Nick for getting a hard copy of our book into the hands of someone in the target audience of "In the Shadows of Myrmidons", that being a young man in 7th grade. Now of course, older readers may like it as well.

Here's what he had to say: 

"WHEN'S THE NEXT ONE COMING OUT?!?!?!  THIS ONE WAS AWESOME!!!!"

It has since been loaned to a friend!

That made me very excited. Firstly, someone in the intended audience not only finished the 500+ pages, but he liked it!

At any rate, if you are a young person looking for a unique super hero story, check it out. You can download it on Kindle and use the free kindle app to read it on PC. It's free on Kindle Unlimited and will be free once Nick and I get book 2 done.

For those who want book 2, please buy book 1! Createspace gives us the most royalties, so buy it here. If you can't afford it, please support us by buying the Kindle Version, or waiting til it's free get it and leave a review. Reviews are good if you can't buy it.

For those of you who have received a free copy, or pirated it through a torrent, I love you, but please at least leave a review. I don't care about the money. Book 1 will be free on Kindle once book 2 is out. If I can do it.

I hope to get more blogging done here, but not sure what to go with yet.

IT'S HERE!!!

For those of you who are tactile oriented, the hard copy of "In the Shadows of Myrmidons" is now available!

You can buy it on CreateSpace here (we get more royalties at Createspace), or Amazon here. it is set at $19.99, partially because of the dimensions (about the size of a comic) and the width which is 560ish pages. I would recommend buying it only if you need a physical book, want to support the writing of more books, and/or are a huge fan. The Kindle is still at $2.99 and will remain so because I want the book to be as affordable as possible. When I was a teen, Star Wars books were about $4.99 and cheap and allowed me to buy and enjoy them, I would like my books to be priced fairly too.

Special thanks to Mark K. for the cover. It absolutely would have been impossible to bring out a hardcopy book without his help. It was invaluable. Thanks again Mark.

The text has been updated to reduce errors yet again, and some stuff was clarified or slightly changed. This will likely be the last time any changes are made unless we can get art for the insides. If you want that, pray for me to get awesome art skills or hassle this guy into doing some for us.

Lastly, if anyone has purchased the book, please leave reviews. Good, bad, ugly. Hundreds of books were downloaded for free, and there is only one review. Please leave one if you have downloaded. Be honest. If it you didn't finish it and it sucked, say so. If it was good, well, go to town.

Thanks!

Inspirations for In the Shadows of Myrmidons

Now I'm not a huge Stephen King fan, his ideas are cool at times, but his writing style just doesn't do much for me. I've read a few of his books, and tried to like a few others without success, it just didn't work out. That's no bash on him, it's just a fact, though I did enjoy his book, "On Writing".

Somewhere, I once had seen a list of novels King had read while he was writing certain novels of his own. I don't recall any of them, and couldn't tie his story to elements in anything he was writing, but I thought it was interesting that he read so avidly while still pounding his own stuff out. It was also cool to see what kinds of stuff a man like him read.

I'm not, and never will be on that level of Stephen King, but this blog is for those who have read the novel (link) or wonder what inspired writers to do what they did. Nowadays especially, most of the original ideas are used up, so people (Tarantino, and also those in my generation especially) are often left doing "homages" or outright plagiarism of the cool stuff we liked. I hope that the stuff that ended up in Myrmidons is original enough not to be a ripoff, but gives credit to the greats that came before. I certainly did try to spin things a little differently than my predecessors, and made extra efforts not to totally be enslaved to the tropes.

So here's what inspired me. While I have read a lot, I did a lot less as I was writing a novel, therefore, most of what influenced me was from the visual medium. TV, Movies, and videogames that I watched during the process or long ago. Though to be fair, my personal writing style for novels was irredeemably influenced by the Star Wars novels. You'll note that in Myrmidons, it's got a touch of that style, the heroes are together, split up for a bit of adventure, reconnect and finish together. It's hopefully not too formulaic, and I certainly didn't do it on purpose. I just found it to be a fun way to read stories, have multiple storylines going, and keep a reader's interest when I read. It's probably why I find it hard to read many novels that don't have multiple storylines like that.

At any rate, here's some of the fictional stuff that influenced me at least. I hope it's not too much of a giveaway to the magic. Most of these are film. There's not too many spoilers, so here goes.

The gangs and overall tone of the story:

Kung Fu Hustle - of course inspired the creation and central threat of the Pink Shirt Gang. The Axe Gang was deadly, but at the same time kind of silly. They were a serious threat, and absurd. The whole movie bounced back and forth between the two. One minute, a dude get bit on the lips by a poisonous snake, the next, someone is dying at the hands of an assasin.

This, more than anything, I hope set the tone of the novel and the threat to our heroes. Snake and his friends deal with some serious stuff, but there's also some silly moments. So the tone of Kung Fu Hustle was the biggest influence, and the rest was the idea of in deadly, yet silly/dancing gang taking everyone else over.

On a side note, Stephen Chow's "Flirting Scholar" is also hilarious.

Last dragon - kind of the same sort of deal here. The tone influenced the Myrmidons novel. Our hero, Bruce Leroy, was facing a serious threat in the form of Sho Nuff, and Eddie Arcadian was a thug, but at the same time, the movie had plenty of funny moments.

Intentionally or not.

This movie also has a quasi modern, urban setting which wasn't so much an influence, but did help add flavor in the editing process and in adding a few references.

On a movie night, this film would make a good double feature with kung fu hustle.

West side story - in the original version of the story, Nick had a scene with Snake and friends having a smug-off with their antagonists which involved Shakespeare banter and singing and dancing gangs. Singing and dancing gangs were somehow a staple of the original version of Myrmidons. This to me of course brought West Side Story to my memory. Unfortunately. I did rewatch it, and I'm sure it influenced me somehow.

Feel free to analyze that one.

The Warriors - this movie is highly overrated, though still worth watching. It's bad enough that I'm surprised they never watched it on mst3k. But in spots its bad in a good way, and that's what saves it from riffing probably.

I watched it to be inspired and didn't get much out of it. My main take away was probably the idea of absurd gangs and that helped me think outside the box...I guess. Then again, Nick and I had always envisioned eccentric gangs. Maybe it just showed me that colorful gangs still can be a serious threat.

The Cross and The Switchblade / Run Baby Run - though there is a movie for Cross, I didn't watch it. Rather, I read the books. Not only are these two books, one of the greatest true life stories I've ever read, they helped me see the real side of gangs, and most importantly, the human side.

Though I wanted the gangs in Myrmidons to be serious, but still a little silly, I also wanted them to feel real and be human.

These two books here really show the bleak side of life in the gangs. Though Myrmidons doesn't do these books justice, I hope that they at least helped me touch the subject with some respect.

The superheroes:

Batman Begins - in high school when Nick and I wrote this stuff, realism wasn't a prime thought. For me, that changed with Batman Begins. Batman showed not so much the gritty side of superheroics, but rather what they might look like for real if someone started doing hero stuff.

Batman definitely inspired me to try adding a level of believability to Myrmidons, and that realism also, I hope, helps me put a new and unique spin on super hero tropes and clichés.

Because I'm Batman!

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - I wish I had rewatched this movie earlier. It's the best Batman movie out there. I'd say the main take aways were the super hero origin being told with a love story as well as the hero facing a present threat or two.

This movie is epic, and so complex for "kids" fare. It's a masterpiece.

Unbreakable - mainly this movie was a realistic take on a superhero. That's what I got from it.

Buffy (movie and tv) - I guess it inspired me somehow...

Mainly in how it shows a high school student trying to live life, get through school and fight monsters. I'd advise against wasting too much time on it though...

The Incredibles - ah yes, The Incredibles. This film is also great, and the main take away here was that super heroics could be outlawed. And that some heroes would escape and lie low, still doing good.

Though to be fair, Nick had posed the idea of some sort of official authority presiding over super hero affairs as far back as 1997, suggesting that some sort of legislation had been in effect. We then toyed with the idea of rules and bylaws that super heroes were to follow. Initially this judicial authority was just a neutral bureaucracy chafing the heroes, things changed.

I took it a little bit further after influence from the next two entries

They Live - the idea that our perceptions could be clouded by, I guess, alien technology to blind us to their presence as they run the show among us, was quite terrifying. Not to mention that it makes the battle look that much more impossible.

In Myrmidons, somehow this has been done to all of humanity to erase the memories that superheroes had existed. Some nefarious villain had defeated the heroes, and effectively erased them.

I guess the connection to They Live is that the masses had been deceived.

Dark City - is another film that plays with memory, and how humanity has been messed with by sinister forces to forget the truth. In the movie, men in black (MIBs) alter the memories of each person, and the landscape to experiment how different people experience the same memories.

In Myrmidons, Mr. Suit seems to have a way to do this telepathically, but it's more tied in with the larger conspiracy, yet to be revealed.

A bigger influence on me than this was reading about UFO abductions as a kid, where false memories are said to abound, and men in black often appear. I'd say Dark City just showed me how those ideas could work in a fictional setting, and overall, I didn't take alot from it, or they live. Though together, with the Incredibles, a conspiracy storyline was born! The X-Files was probably another influence as well.

Boys From Brazil - speaking of conspiracies, this film is about one of the biggest conspiracies of our modern era. Namely, that the Nazis survived WWII (really, many did, but who knows if it was like this or not) and were plotting a rise to power in the future. Brazil had them trying to clone Hitler. While this film didn't directly inspire the Nazi conspiracy in the deep background of Myrmidons, it helped solidify it.

It only makes sense that if Nazi leaders and mad scientists still lived after the war, they'd be up to no good. This movie was a cool movie, and the idea of Nazis continuing in the background with weird genetic experiments was the main take away.

Weird Al's song "Midnight Star" also gives us one last clue how such a conspiracy ties into the story, for those few stalwart souls who make it to the end of Myrmidons.

And my friend, Mr. Lee said the only PC bad guys are robots, aliens and Nazis...

Mitchell (as seen on mst3k) - Mst3k has been a huge influence on my life, and you'll probably pick out more than a few references to MST3K throughout the novel. The most overt, of course would be Police Liaison Officer Mitchell.

I don't think I even need to explain it.
Earthbound - the videogame, Earthbound was also a huge influence on this novel. The masks worn by Los Tiburones were inspired by the Sharks from Earthbound. (Given that I am now an official supporter of the the Cronulla Sharks Rugby Team, this is especially fitting I guess).

I would also say that a number of other references are probably also made throughout Myrmidons, and if Myrmidons was a videogame, I'd want it to be like Earthbound.

Also, the Handsome Phils were going to be the Handsome Toms originally. The Handsome Toms are enemy puppets that appear in Earthbound, but somehow the name Phils jumped out at me, and I went with it.

Whew!

So there you have it.


 

The (I wish) Art of the Myrmidons Novel

One of the biggest inspirations for Nick and I to start writing this story and the rest, was the art of our friend and fellow student, Kevin. He used to (and still does) draw manga style, and we wanted him to draw us. So he did.
That drawing inspired us to create the characters that eventually became Snake, Frank, and Connerlee. As much as we like his art, he has been unable to help us with illustrations or a cover for the book. Mainly because he's busy doing some of his own projects.
So to help support his work, here is where you can find some of his drawings. If you want to see his illustrations in our book, bother him. Otherwise y'all will have to wait till I get better at drawing.
http://neoncrow.deviantart.com/
http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/American_Omiai/5018361/
http://powrightinthenostalgia.webcomic.ws/comics/first/
 He's also done some fan art for Castlevania, which sadly is not shown.