Tag Archives: amwriting

Villain Week Finale – Liches and Other Undead

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The struggle of saving Liches and the Undead for the final day was really painful, but worth it in the end. Why? Because there was, believe it or not, an actual order to this week. The posts began with tyrannical, evil leaders, a sub-type of villain characterized by a constant craving for more power, and it ends with Liches and the Undead. Like Old Gods and Invading Species, Liches and Undead don’t necessarily want power. Their motives aren’t always known. More often than not, however, these three types of villains (well, it’s more a guaranteed thing with the Old Gods and the Liches) are all about destruction. Invading Species may show up and eradicate any resistance before continuing with their plans. They may be doing so to pave the path for world domination, or they could be setting up for planetary destruction. The Old Gods could very well have deeper motivations that aren’t always made clear through their actions, but the ultimate goal usually seems destruction and the further-spreading of madness.

Liches, however, and their Undead legions are delightful in that their endgame typically revolves around one guiding principle: the eradication of all life. Unlike Invading Species and Old God counterparts with the same goal, the Undead have one added trick that helps make them such a formidable agent of chaos: the more death they cause, the greater their own numbers become. The Undead, however, are notorious for not being the easiest creatures to keep indisposed. There’s necromancy for raising new undead creatures (or bringing back the fallen ones), viruses and plagues that lead to undeath, and so on and so on. Whether created by magic or malady, once the Undead show up they are guaranteed to keep on keeping on until they are stopped at the source. Not all Undead are subservient to a higher power, such as Liches, as evidenced by The Walking Dead and George Romero’s (Whatever) of the Dead.  Continue reading →

Friday Villains – Old and Forgotten Gods

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The biggest, nastiest possible invading forces are those with roots in creation and destruction of life are Old and/or Forgotten Gods. These big, nasty beasties rear their ugly heads (and tentacles and many-fanged maws) in all manner of entertainment media, and they are generally not showing up to make life better.

Old and Forgotten Gods aren’t always quite the same (ignoring the ever-present tentacles in most cases), but they all seem to share the same capacity for inducing madness and serious unrest wherever their presence is felt. Whether it’s their mere existence or a gradual, quiet whispering of dark horrors, any who are unlucky enough to be sensitive to these beings’ existence seem to end up going completely bonkers. In some cases, this could be a form of mind control. In others, it’s simply the effect of gazing into the unknown and realizing there’s some pretty horrifying shit out there.  Continue reading →

The Thursday Villain – The Invading Species

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So nefarious, even its post invaded a day for other villains! In reality, this post was pushed back a day in favor of mourning the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett. If my heart doesn’t seem like it’s in this post (or the subsequent one that was meant for today), there’s the reason why. Alternatively, I feel like if Sir Terry could push through his Embuggerance and continue writing, it would be downright insulting to falter from just being sad. Easily an over-simplification of things, but I need some motivation to help kick me into not being a lump.

Invading species-types of villains are fun, if only because there’s so much variety to them. There’s aliens, sure, but there are also demons, monsters from other dimensions, hyper-evolved diseases, giant bugs (or arachnids), and so on and so on. Even humans qualify, as it’s not always about invading, and subsequently wrecking, Earth. Regardless of the location, the invading species usually has goals of domination and eradication in mind, though enslaving the native population also seems to work at times. It really depends where said invaders fall on a certain spectrum involving homicidal rage and sadism. Continue reading →

The Wednesday Villain – The Power-Hungry Subordinate

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Praise Odin it’s Wednesday and the worst of the week is probably over with. Probably. Shit, I certainly hope it’s over with at this point. Also, I realize that all of the types of villains I’ve featured so far are power-hungry. That shouldn’t be particularly surprising. This post feels even more ridiculous since the writing process involved in it has now spanned the entire day and I’m still only on the introduction. Bonus points because I at least managed to start organizing my living room, and I trimmed my beard for the first time without completely shitting it up. Please don’t judge me too harshly for that last bit, as this is my first real attempt at not being perpetually baby-faced. Right. So, moving on.

Today’s all about the Power-Hungry Subordinate. These are the bad guys waiting for the right time to make their move, stepping out of someone else’s shadow in hopes of casting a far greater one of their own. That’s not to say all villains classified as this type are working for other ne’er-do-wells, however. Some of the best-known Power-Hungry Subordinates find themselves trapped answering to a horribly cheerful, aggressively positive force of good. Such a dreadful fate. I wanted to try arguing these sneaky minions find themselves on a mission to overthrow a Tyrant, but I fear I might be venturing dangerously far into the realm of wishful thinking.

As with other types of villains, they can be pitiable. The Power-Hungry Subordinate seems to have a greater capacity for being sympathetic figures as they are typically in situations that have driven them to extremes, even if they do have broken moral compasses to begin with. I’ll get to that a bit more in one of the examples, though. Continue reading →

Celebration of Characters – The Tyrant

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On the first day of villainy, FictionalPenguin gave to thee…the Tyrant of boundless power and greed!

I’m so sorry. That was really the worst, just like the first kind of villain I’m focusing on: the Tyrant! Tyrannical leaders come in all ages, shapes, sizes, genders, and so on. They can start off as a democratically elected official with the best of intentions and the worst ways of handling said intentions, or they could always be a bad-to-the-bone, power-mad thug.

The Tyrant is almost always a control-freak. Every aspect of their dastardly plots, whether those plots are just to keep a kingdom under complete control or world domination, must be something they have total command over. Being able to manipulate every detail of their surroundings is key, to these characters, in maintaining their death-grip on power. Without that, they seem to have nothing and so such characters fall apart. Continue reading →

Music Mondays – Nightwish

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It certainly has been another Monday, in the sense that it was the start of a new work week and full of all sorts of god-awful stress! Boo. Hiss. However, that’s all the more reason to sit back, curl up under some covers perhaps, and listen to some good music. It is indeed time again for Music Mondays! As the title might have indicated, tonight’s post is about Nightwish.

This is one of those situations where I don’t remember exactly who got me listening to an artist, but I know that it was immediate love of the music. There’s an overwhelming air of theatricality present in every song, making it feel less like listening to one track or another than it is like listening to a story. A story with amazing musical accompaniment that makes for great listening on, say, extended road trips when Red Bull isn’t an option. Continue reading →

Heroes: Plot Devices with Moral Compasses

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A great villain is the source of tremendous conflict. They bring about havoc, sewing the seeds of destruction and chaos everywhere they go. Naturally, there exist such people who only desire to thwart such nefarious folks in their plotting and scheming. Such scoundrels range from the ignoble bound for redemption to nobles who must first fall from grace before finding their true purpose.

I’m talking about heroes in their many forms, and how they tend to ruin everything.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and though they may be little more than plot devices bolstered by a strong need to do good and right…I have to admit they are an essential part of storytelling. Without them, who would give help give villains better reasons to make use of their laser death rays? My disdain for the heroic aside, I must say that a good hero makes for a good story. That was painful to type, so I’ll just jump into some of the most beloved varieties of daring do-gooders before I start to really regret this post.

Continue reading →

Sunday, snowy Sunday

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While I’m normally one of the first people who make fun of everyone boo-hooing about the cold and snow of winter, especially since I live in Pennsylvania where this shit is so common and unsurprising, I have to say I’m pretty well finished with this snow-and-ice-and-misery business.

I took a nap halfway into that last sentence and forgot what the Hell I was typing. As I often say: in my defense, I shoveled the sidewalk and driveway, and I cleaned off the cars. That counts for something, probably.

Since my goals are more focused on adding to the page count of A Princess, A Lich, and Some Murders, I’ll make this quick-ish.

Works in Progress

A Princess, A Lich, and Some Murders – 70 pages/11 chapters; about 1/3 of the way complete, give or take

Cordelia’s (short story) – Complete! Working towards submitting it places.

Woman Seeks Vampire for Dinner and a Movie – Still just notes, but with more direction

The Repository of Lost Ideas – Notes, notes, and still more notes.

Interview with a Retired God – Still only a title, with the beginnings of an idea to go with it.

Works On Hold

The Devil Suggested I Do It (novel; working title)

Warpt Factor (the novel)

The Lodgers (novel)

…

On the plus side, there’s now a lot more in the Works in Progress section than in the On Hold section. That must count as some sort of progress, right? Right? Tonight’s Oscar night, however, so I need to make some more writing happen before then. Oscars night means it’s time to drink and live-tweet my disdain for Hollywood.

Something about better days ahead

Posted on by under One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Today was characterized by several moments that, without a doubt, could be considered seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel (although I must say the intermittent uncooperative nature of my laptop keyboard is not one of those moments). Typically, especially during weeks such as this, I am very suspicious of such days. Call it paranoia, pessimism, or whatever, but after a week like this one, I can’t help but assume that light is followed by a freight train.

Perhaps, I say in a show of cautious optimism, that may not be the case this time. I have the entire weekend off. That’s forty-eight hours of potential progress (or failures), and I’m about to carpe those diems so hard they’ll turn to diamonds.

I’m so sorry for that joke. Future generations will probably use that as the official definition of “awful”.

As part of my attempt at forcing positivity from the stinking shit-lump that I called this past week, I’m keeping my goals, plans, and so on for this weekend relatively fluid and open to change. This will hypothetically allow for less fear of, and feelings of, failure. Hooray for thinking ahead. A few new big ideas are also present in my brain-meats, but I’m saving those for later. I need to get through the remainder of this hundred days somehow, after all.

Goodnight, WordPress.

This weekend will feature less lazy posts. I (half-heartedly) promise.

Writing hangovers, and other tragedies

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I spent much of today with a strong understanding as to why some animals hibernate. I mean, sleep is pretty fantastic, even though there are plenty of things I could be doing instead of sleeping (like tweeting, obviously). What I’m trying to say is that I’m still very tired from my marathon-writing event to complete Cordelia’s, and so this post is going to be a bit of a mixed bag. There’s also some frustration regarding the lack of new ideas now that one of the short stories is written. Time and patience will hopefully fix that much, even if my patience is a bit iffy at best.

Writing Hangovers

It’s been a while since I’ve really felt a full-on writing hangover. Probably not since I finished working on Joshua Harkin and the Novel-Length Title around this time last year (it was actually in March, but close enough). My brain is semi-willing and eager to make writing happen, but it also wants about a month worth of naps. That being said, I’m still getting a lot of very kind, positive, and helpful feedback for A Princess, A Lich, and Some Murders that has me feeling very motivated. Friday is already set aside as an Authonomy and writing catch-up day, so hopefully that goes as planned.

Jon Stewart leaving The Daily Show

God damn it. This, coupled with the end of The Colbert Report, effectively prevents me from ever achieving my dream of being interviewed by Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert (I have delusions of grandeur, but even my delusions are smart enough to know I’ll never be interviewed by Stephen Colbert at his new show…whatever that thing’s called). More importantly, this marks the end of an era in fake-but-not-fake TV news. Jon Stewart helped bring something better to television, and though I’ve not always been the most dedicated viewer I will still miss his wit and wisdom on Comedy Central. That said, I am willing to keep it 100 on The Nightly Show, even if my opinions on major issues are only slightly less worthless than all of Fox News on its best days.

Book Addictions

It’s not exactly a secret that I buy books faster than I can read them. Christmas did me no favors there, as I received quite a few books as gifts. Naturally, my moratorium on buying new books ended almost as soon as it began (I have, however, been very good about not buying new video games; so sorry, Majora’s Mask remake). Today’s purchase is Yes Please by Amy Poehler. I considered getting Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman, but I’m sad to say I’ve never been as disinterested in a book by one of my favorite authors as I found myself with this particular title. Apologies to In Some Other World, Maybe, which is still a read-in-progress that I owe a proper review.

Red Velvet Oreos

I’m sorry, but these things are just awful. Bring back the non-trademarked crispy treat Oreos, please, and my inner (and outer) fat kid will forgive this failure.

Time Management

I am terrible at managing my time well. I’m prone to naps, distractions, more naps, more distractions, and so on. My workplace obligations extend well past when I leave the office for the day, so there are surprises here and there of the work-related variety (Worth mentioning: I welcome those surprises as challenges, and am happy enough to have a job that it’s not really an issue except in regards to eating time). Some days I spend too much time focused on writing and not enough on editing. Or too much time on social media and not enough on writing. The combinations of frustration seem to be endless.

…

What tragedies, minor or major, do you folks find yourself facing this week?