Discussion – SSSSSSNAKES

When I write, I make everyone speak in proper English and infer from the words that they use as well as vocal descriptions if they have an accent. I don’t like writing a lot of “v’s” instead of “f’s” or “th’s” instead of “s’s” because, like right now, my spellchecker hates it and has that little angry red squiggle of death.

Just because I don’t like it, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like reading it. In fact, I love it. I love being able to read one line and have the character’s voice, accent and pronunciation just appear in my head, like magic.

I think that the difference between those who write phonetically and those who do not is control. Books are wonderful in that even highly detailed descriptions will be imagined differently by many people. I love having an item or character or area described to me and then asking someone else how they imagined it. Many times, they’re very different. I hate stories where a very detailed account of an area is given and a plot point hinges on a door placement or proximity. It takes away from the story for me, if I must imagine where a character is in relation to something else. Even the best writers in the world lose me when they get into this metaphysical nonsense, although that might be my fault more than theirs.

Writers have the right to control their readers, of course. Many times, they are leading their readers by the hand and showing off their work to them, like an eager parent showing off baby photos. That’s understandable, but books are meant to be enjoyed, not admired. You can love a book for its story, how it makes you feel and the characters, not because the chapter placement is symmetrical or that it starts and ends in the same scene. There’s a reason that Tarantino is such a good director – he mixes awesome storytelling with these neat different cinematic quirks. Yes, he might have stolen them from other films, but still.

On the topic of control, I enjoy how George RR Martin uses maps and areas within his books. Although there is a map at the front of his book and although I know the land of Westeros pretty well (thank you, HBO), I never feel trapped or pressurised to know the map back to front. Every time an area is brought up as being strategically sound, it is explained for us laymen. I like it.

Discussion – RED DEAD WESTERNS

I mentioned before that I started reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. In it, Steven Erikson mentions that when he tried to get it sold as a film script before it became a book series, he was told that the fantasy genre was as dead as westerns. I would have agreed with him, had the most recent westerns I’d seen not being absolutely awesome. 3:10 to Yuma. Django Unchained. The Good, The Bad and The Weird. All excellent.

There have not been a lot of western-themed games. Here is a list compiled by Wikipedia. I have only played about three of them. The best of them was, of course, Red Dead Redemption.

I don’t like the idea that genres have time limits, that they become old and die. Romantic comedies have been about for centuries, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Failure to Launch, and the Greeks knew of no other drama other than tragedies. In a way, Westerns, like Zombie Films or Found Footage, are just another genre under the huge umbrellas of Horror, Thriller, Mystery or Noir.

So what about the genres that time forgot?

Musical: Only a few years ago, the market was saturated with musical games. Rock Band. Guitar Hero. Dance Dance Revolution. The only problem is that these games were essentially simple rhythm mini-games that had been stretched to fill an entire disc. What about a return to these, but make the mini-game element a part of a larger game? An RPG battler where turn-based attacks are based on your ability to knock out a short riff? You and your friends navigate a world and work together to solve puzzles, defeat enemies and save kingdoms using instruments?

Animation: Although all games are technically animation, it’s been a while since a true cel-shaded, cartoony game has been released, the most notable being South Park: The Stick of Truth.

Documentary/biopics: I have only really played one of these: Eternal Sonata, which deals with the final moments of Frederic Chopin’s life as he drifts in and out of consciousness and his fever dream that he lives in. It was good. Assassin’s Creed does this, kind of. We meet historical figures in supposedly real events. Why not have more of this?

 

Discussion – QUEER

I love discussing the politics of homosexuality, because I find it so interesting. Although I feel that those who despise homosexuality and homosexuals are repugnant, I am always interested to hear their reasons. A lot of them are because of religion, which is one thing, but some are a lot more interesting.

I quizzed a number of people who do not like homosexuality, and these were the reasons:

1. Religious reasons.
2. They find it “disgusting” or “wrong”.
3. It is “against nature”.

Now, the interesting thing about this is that all of the arguments are against the act of homosexuality, not the homosexuals themselves (although there were a fair few people who hated the idea of either stereotypical “queens” or “dykes”). A lot of people didn’t like the idea of homosexual sex, which is understandable as the first time I heard of a new type of sex (oral, anal, BSDM) I was a bit confused about it too, wondering how anyone would find it pleasurable. I can understand that someone might continue to find that disgusting, especially if they were unable to empathise with someone else.

I’m not going to get into religion. I have a lot of respect for it. A lot of people think that it’s the worst thing to happen to humanity (and they are very vocal about it) but I think that it helps a lot of people. Sure, it may do a lot of wrong too (lack of contraception and the spread of AIDS in Africa, for example) but people are helped because of the faith. That said, it can spread a lot of ignorance too.

The main crux of this is ignorance. Ignorance begats ignorance, after all, and a lot of people who grow up being told and preached one thing find that they go the opposite way when they get into the big bad world, free of the protective and inhibiting bubble. We only need to look so far as Prussian Blue and anyone who that cunt Fred Phelps threw out.

I am not here to say I am any less ignorant than anyone else, but I am here to point out ignorance within fictional characters’ and their homosexuality.

Think of your favourite TV show. Now think of a character in it that is gay. Okay, good. Now, is their homosexuality either:

1. A part of their character that is as unexciting and normal as every other character’s heterosexuality or,
2. A defining characteristic that is played for laughs or to create tension?

Tenner says it’s 2, even if you don’t think that much about it.

EXAMPLE TIME.

One of my favourite shows is The Sopranos. Vito Spatafore, in the later seasons, is revealed to be gay. Not only does he go into hiding for it, but other characters look down on Tony and his crew just because one of the members was gay. Even though The Sopranos is attempting to be realistic as possible and not making fun of homosexuals at all (Tony even goes so far as to state to Melfi that he is okay with homosexuality) this entire arc is what defines Vito’s character.

Modern Family, although a brilliant TV show, is not too ashamed of using Cam, Mitchell and their other gay friends as jokes, often hamming them up and turning them into fashion-obsessed, limp wristed lisps. Jesse Tyler Fergeson, who plays Mitchell, is actually gay and clearly okay with the jokes made at the expense of his lifestyle, but homosexuality is a defining characteristic of his character.

I’ve been watching Nurse Jackie recently and I’ve been pleased that Thor‘s sexuality is rarely even mentioned, as was Isaak‘s in Dexter. In the books of A Song of Ice and Fire, homosexuality is just one of those things, accepted and only looked down upon by the most backward of characters (the TV show, of course, screws that up royally).

I am guilty of creating characters whose sexuality defines them. That’s my fault, and I’ve been trying my hardest to get out of that funk. Until then, I can only hope to be as good a writer as those who I have praised above.

Discussion – PAINKILLER AND THE SHORT GAME

I recently republished a review of a game I first played almost a decade ago named Painkiller. Since then, I have had a bit of a think about the length of games and how we enjoy them.

Every summer, I sit down with my big stack of games, shown here:

Remember this?

And I look through them and I say, “Okay, I’m going to complete these games and then start on something new.”

It never happens. What happens is I play a game for a few hours, go shopping, come back and play a different game instead. Every summer I want to complete an RPG and every summer I don’t. This summer, I hope to be different, simply because I’m not going to get any of the new generation of games consoles, and so there will come a point when I just will stop buying new games and will go back to complete FFXIII or something.

The reason I bring this up is this: I love long games and long books and long TV Series, but I only love them after they’ve finished. There’s a trope for this (apologies again to anyone who has never been to TV Tropes) called Archive Binge. I love just sitting down with a series of books or games and know that once I finish the last page, that’s it. I’m done.

Because of this, I also love just having a game that lasts a short period of time, or a TV miniseries or a trilogy of books. I like knowing that it will be complete. Obviously there is sadness at the end, and I might not be totally satisfied, but at least I don’t have to wait or stress over something that is not coming.

I recently got (and completed, three hours later) Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. Although I wanted more, I was pleased with what I had. It was a short game that did exactly what it said on the tin. It was like a complete demo, if you will. I can’t wait for MGSV: The Phantom Pain now. Although I dislike how video games have been becoming more focussed on micro-transactions and pay-to-win, I have liked how I paid money to play a better demo. I hope that more games feature this – a prologue to the game that works as a standalone game. A lot of demos are simply not good enough at selling the game. This one was.

And it was short.

Discussion – OZ IS THE NEW BREAK

I have mentioned before that I’m a glutton for punishment. I like watching shows where the characters are in constant danger, probably because it means that I don’t warm to them as much as I would characters who live their lives in a level of comfort.

Let’s take the three big prison dramas – Oz, Orange is the New Black and Prison Break. In these shows, the characters are in constant danger, either from other characters within the prison or from prison guards or those without. I end up liking the characters, but know that, in the background, they might well die very quickly and brutally.

This causes quite a different relationship. I end up feeling that every action is futile, another step in the unending and inevitable march towards death. I end up resenting the characters. I wish that their death happens soon.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love characters and am saddened by their deaths and any actions that cause them pain. Quite the opposite. I consider Beecher to be one of the greatest characters on TV.

Just look at that beard. Source.

Under the orders of two of my good friends and at least one fellow blogger, I have started reading Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen. According to my Kindle, I am 6% of the way through the first book. I was told it was a slog and I was not lied to. I’m just wondering if I want to start caring for characters with such awesome names as Whiskeyjack or begin to learn the expansive and exciting lore if they’re just going to end up dead in the big war.

I don’t want an answer, by the way, I abhor spoilers, I’m just wondering aloud.

Discussion – NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE WRITERS

My favourite writer is Bret Easton Ellis. My favourite book is American Psycho. I have read all of his books – an achievement that he shares only with JK Rowling, as far as I’m aware – and I think they’re tip-top. I can’t really find another writer quite like him, but close is Irvine Welsh.

Welsh is most famous for Trainspotting, the story of drug addicts living in Leith, a small town that is technically part of Edinburgh. I have been working my way through his pieces and have just finished Skagboys, his prequel to Trainspotting.

In it, I was in awe at the sex scenes. Sex is one of those things that is either ignored, (“they had sex.”) or filled with euphemisms (“he broke her maidenhead with his manhood.”). Skagboys, however, is not shy about the main characters talking about their bits and bobs being abused by other characters. It’s almost impressive. I don’t want to repeat it here because it will take too long, but there’s a fair bit of talk about “gamming” and “shooting muck”.

Sex is one of those things. I think that’s fair to say. Authors want to give a decent idea of how the characters feel but sex is so different for everyone that it’s really quite difficult to make people understand. I remember reading a book by Mr. Ellis, I believe it was Glamorama, that describes an orgy where the main character, a male, romps with another male and a female. Because I am not gay, I had a difficulty imagining the scenes where he was being sodomised. I shrugged and moved on.

Later, though, in a different book, it was a rough sex scene from a female perspective. I was quite uncomfortable reading it, even though the sex was consensual. In this instance, was I supposed to read it and feel like the character? Or understand what the character felt? Or was my discomfort acceptable? Was I (dare I say it) a prude?

I don’t know.

Either way, I have difficulty writing pieces with sex. I guess that, with my experience, sex is something that exists in retrospect. Kind of like when you ride a roller-coaster, you’re not thinking, “huh, did I leave the toilet seat up?” you’re thinking, “HOLY FUCK I’M ON A ROLLER COASTER.”

So, in a way, any sex scenes should just be written like this:

She leans into me. “I want you,” she whispers in my ear. “Now.”

I take her hand and lead her to the bed. She slips out of her wet clothes and I remove my shirt. She holds me close and we kiss. I can feel her shiver as I SEX and I pull on my trousers. I look back at her on the bed.

“You were the best,” I say.

She sighs contentedly.

Ha.

Discussion – MY ARMOUR IS IMPENETRABLE

I went to see an author sometime last autumn. His name was Brent Weeks and is most famously known for his Night Angel Trilogy. At the time, he was signing his newest book, The Blinding Knife, the second in his Lightbringer series.

Mr. Weeks (who is a lovely man) stated that he did not wish to read an excerpt from his new book (and ruin something for people who haven’t read it) or even read something from his older book (boring for fans of the series), so he read something from his third book in the series. Bear in mind that he had just published the second in the series. We were going to get an excerpt from a book that none of us had even read.

I won’t stretch it out as much as Mr. Weeks did, but, suffice to say, in this excerpt, two of the main characters were killed. Bing bong boom.

While we sat in shock, Mr. Weeks went on to state that he had been given negativity all his life – you can’t have a fat kid as a main character; you can’t write for a living; you can’t read a fake excerpt in front of a crowd and pretend it’s real. Yes, the excerpt was fake and the characters were not dead.

The fucking arse.

He went on to explain why he did that: he cited a study that had two groups who were given the exact same stories. One group had been given stories with a preface chapter that gave away the ending. It turns out that those spoiled stories were actually enjoyed more than those that were unspoiled.

He went on to explain that DVD box sets were the worst spoilers, often showing the entire cast of a TV show on the front, meaning you can easily find out who is dead or not, with some characters surviving the entire run of a show. He stated that this “star power” is often matched by something called character armour. I had not heard this term before.

Character armour protects characters from the elements. Bombs will go off, shootouts will ensue but character armour will protect everyone. He said that often sidekicks have no armour at all. He stated that even big authors who love to murder people have some character armour around their creations.

In my writing, I tend to have character armour too, but this made me reconsider it. Death is a way of life, after all.

Discussion – LOSING IT

Everyone remembers the death that shocked them the most. In fact, I can barely even name the movies or games or TV shows or books or comics that contain the most shocking deaths because that would spoil them. For the rest of this discussion, I’ll try and stay away from spoilers as much as possible but apologies if I don’t.

Why do writers feel the need to kill off characters? The reasons are countless. Actor leaving a show, character being written out for storyline reasons, publicity, emotional response. It’s always worst when it’s for publicity. Soap operas are renowned for this sort of nonsense and it makes me go bananas.

I love it when characters die. I’m a glutton for punishment and I love dramas that make me feel things but I need the death to have some sort of meaning. Let me try and give the next example without spoiling anything.

I read an awesome book recently. In it, the chapters were set up to lead to something spectacular and when the countdown led to a character death, I couldn’t get over it. It is a book that I wished I could reread without knowing the twist.

In this instance, the death had a meaning. The rest of the book revolved around the death. Characters dealt with it. People got on with it. Some people didn’t. The death was not in vain.

Then we have the finale of a famous TV show. In it, two characters, a brother and sister, have had their differences and the sister has just had an accident. In hospital, expecting to make a full recovery, she and her brother make peace. Off he goes to wrap things up, when he gets a phone call. The sister had a stroke. Dead as a doornail. He’s a bit upset, naturally, and leads to the final moments.

In this instance, death has no meaning. It is a plot device. It is convenient. The death could easily have been a minor character and the story would have remained the same.

In a game series that I love, a main character who has had his share of suffering throughout the series, finally bites it, sacrificing his life for the rest of the team.

In this instance, the death is gratuitous. It serves no purpose other than to show the horrors of war – something that is well established in the story already – and the characters do not react to the death at all (although this might be commentary on how, in war, death is constant and no time is given for grieving.

In the next blog post, I will discuss this further, but it’s worth thinking about now – will your characters die with meaning?

Discussion – KOREA AND OTHER EVIL EMPIRES

When you want a truly evil force in a piece of fiction, you don’t need to look far down history to find Hitler or Putin or Kim. Perhaps in time, we will begin to hate these people less for their discrimination and consider them heroes, as repulsive as that sounds.

If you consider it, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great are not spoken about with the vile contempt that one normally reserves for mass murderers. Indeed, even people like Pol Pot, who murdered between 1 and 3 million out of a country of 8 million, is not spoken about with the same vitriol as He Who Must Not Be Named (For Fear of Losing by Godwin’s Law).

A lot of games and movies and TV shows of the modern age revolve around these countries being some sort of superpower that the good guy must destroy. For a short while, it was Saddam Hussein, then Bin Laden, and we would have stuck with them had they not been killed and we forced to see the innocent peoples of the countries they inhabited destroyed and killed. Korea is different, because we know nothing about it. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, who we understand has some lovely people who just happen to be born in a country with a despot, North Korea is some sort of black hole.

We don’t know what goes on in North Korea (unless you listen to Dennis Rodman) and it is often mentioned in fiction as being some sort of superpower. Indeed, it’s scary to imagine that they were firing missiles only a couple of years ago. Although, since the passing of Kim Jong-Il in 2011, Korea seems to have calmed down a bit, they still turn up, or at least pastiches of them do, in popular culture.

Consider Just Cause 2, which has our rugged hero Rico Rodriguez dropped into the fictional country of Panau in Maritime Southeast Asia, where the leader, Pandak “Baby” Panay is a total knobend. Baby has erected statues to himself and has dozens of military bases around the country. Oh, and he hates Americans. Oh yeah.

We don’t have to go far to imagine North Korea.

Team America: World Police has Kim Jong-Il as the main bad guy (although it explains that he is like that because of his ronr- ahem – lonliness).

In Crysis, they are alien-harvesting warlords.

Indeed, the jokes and references to North Korea could go on and on and on, however, I think for the purposes of this conversation, I should not that He Who Must Not Be Named (For Fear of Losing by Godwin’s Law) turns up in on of my favourite sci-fi books, Dune Messiah. There is a scene where our hero, Paul Atreides, speaks to Stilgar, a leader of the Fremen, and compares himself to various warlords of the modern age:

‘…What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data which the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.’

‘Ghenghis . . . Khan? Was he of the Sardaukar, m’Lord?’

‘Oh, long before that. He killed . . . perhaps four million.’

‘He must’ve had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or . . .’

‘He didn’t kill them himself, Stil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing–a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.’

‘Killed . . . by his legions?’ Stilgar asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Not very impressive statistics, m’Lord.’

(Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune)

Now, I know it’s sci-fi, but it’s interesting to see that, in 10,000 years, we might look back on evil and find it… unimpressive.

Chilling.

Discussion – JUST THE TIP

It may seem strange coming from a person who rates GTA and South Park amongst his favourite things in the world, but I’m not a big fan of toilet humour.

Don’t get me wrong, God, I love dick and fart jokes. For real. They are so good at times, but sometimes they can be a bit… too much. I haven’t yet understood at what point a joke about poop becomes repulsive, but I think it, like a lot of things, is relative.

Let’s use some examples, hmm?

GTA III is a game that does not use a lot of swear words. It’s funny saying that now, but it came out at a time where f-bombs weren’t that common in games. In fact, there were no instances of fucks or cunts until GTA: San Andreas, where every second word was an N-bomb. As such, a lot of the comedy is very subliminal and sarcastic, especially the radio stations. Then, at some point later on, a character named Miguel is being tortured and the following back-and-forth takes place…

Maria Latore: Do we tighten it some more now, or wait for it to go black and fall off?

Asuka Kasen: Give it a quick prod…

Maria Latore: Eeeeeyoooo! What is the gooey yellow stuff? Oh hi Babe.

(source: http://www.grandtheftwiki.com/S.A.M.)

That stuck by me because it was the most scatological joke in the game thusfar. I didn’t really like it.

Conversely, the game Conker’s Bad Fur Day is full of swear words, homosexual cogs, disgruntled grim reapers, a bit where you need to drink and then pee on things, a great and mighty poo and a section where you become a bat and drop guano on people. And yet, the only bit that makes me uncomfortable is the large-breasted sunflower that you need to help “pollinate”.

Huh. (Source)

Maybe it’s because the rest of the jokes are laddy jokes and then this one is sexual. Who knows?

Duke Nukem Forever, a game that I have never played, was famous for having a section at the start where you can pick up a poop and throw it about.

I still don’t really know why these conflicting topics irk me so. Maybe I’m being a prude or maybe I just want my comedy to be consistent.