Prologue – Perilous Men

These are no longer the days of perilous men.

Think about it. Look around you. Look at your house, your job, your significant other. Any minute, any second they could be taken from you, these creature comforts that make your life soft and complacent, that drive you in the same rhythm day after day. Would you fight for them? Would you give them up for something that mattered more? Or would you take the safe way out?

In 1877, thousands of men walked off the line in the great railroad strikes. They raised torches, burned buildings, destroyed locomotives, made their voices heard. Dozens died–and when they died, their deaths meant something. What will your death mean? Will you go down fighting for something that matters to you, or will you rot away in a nursing home somewhere, waiting for someone to change your diaper, mourning the lost years when you could have done something, anything?

I’ll tell you the choice I made. I chose to look the other way, chose to keep my mouth shut. And here I am, shitting my pants and waiting for Nurse Clara to sponge my ass dry and swap out my Depends. I can barely see this goddamned laptop, the cataracts are so bad. I should have died years ago. I think I wish I had, but I can’t die. If I die, everything’s forgotten.

And some things I can’t stand to forget.

I wish I stood for something. Once, I did. We all did. There were four of us, then. When there were only three, we asked each other what the hell it was all for.

I’ll tell you what it was for. It was for glory. For honor. It was for the magic that comes when you stand for something, when you truly think you can make a difference–because sometimes you do. It’s a risk, it’s a gamble, and we’re not a gambling society anymore. We’re all about the safety nets, the savings accounts, the padded walls that cushion the impact of life.

But sometimes you gamble, and you come up gold. We were gold, I tell you. We were gold.

This is the story of four boys who walked the wire. We thought to be perilous men. Maybe we were never a danger to anything but ourselves.

But for a while, we were beautiful.

——————————————

Not really sure what this is, where it’s going, or if it’ll go anywhere at all. Believe it or not, it popped into my head while I was watching the new Star Trek movie and thinking about how the message of the original show affected not just one generation, but every generation that followed. How it struck a chord with man’s need to explore, to adventure, to experience the unknown – to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

And somehow that led to thinking of how most people don’t do extraordinary things anymore, wouldn’t even dream of it–because extraordinary things would jeopardize the promotion, the mortgage, the steady paycheck. And suddenly I’m seeing four gangly older boys in long, patched peacoats, scarves swaying, kicking up snow as they walk down a narrow street and rattle two-by-fours against rusted tin trash cans. And thinking, “These are no longer the days of perilous men.”

Hybrid.

This crackfic shouldn’t be so fun to write. I almost wish it was one of my “serious” projects; if only they all came this easily. Then again I often think if it’s easy, I’m doing something wrong. Part of the fun is the work; writing is one of those things where I enjoy the struggle. I enjoy driving myself batshit, glaring at things, stomping around muttering under my breath and cursing like a sailor, ranting and railing and chasing Hikaru into the office with my frothing until I finally rip an answer to my problem out of my skull (along with a few clumps of hair). Writing can be damned hard, but it’s the effort that makes it so satisfying.

But it’s also satisfying to relax, take a break, and write some sheerly stupid crackfic. I don’t need my brain for this; while I work on this, my brain cells are off recharging. It’s like Gatorade for the grey matter; crackfic even comes with electrolytes. A friend’s read it and said it’s not as fluffy-silly as I think it is, though. It’s taken on a darker overtone: post-apocalyptic sci-fi with a touch of fey magic and a little Shinto animism. It actually reminds me a little of Spirited Away, though the environments are totally different. Maybe Spirited Away meets Bladerunner meets David the Gnome meets the Kowloon Walled City.

Insert some random line here about four things meeting to becoming a crossroads, juncture, etc. Who cares. It’s crack. It’s pixie stix snorted up the nose until you’re dizzy and singing “Jingle Bells” in some obscure Pushtu dialect. I love it.

I may post excerpts here. Not sure.

Pondering entering ABNA next year. I really don’t know. There were some bad snafus on Amazon’s part this year, only escalated by Amazon personnel handling it very poorly. Many people ended up disgruntled, disenchanted, and insulted. Part of me says I should shun the contest on principle. Part of me can’t help but wonder if I’d have a better chance this year, as now rather than one $25,000 prize/contract there are two $15,000 prizes/contracts: one in Adult fiction, one in Young Adult. Part of me wonders when I started having Principles (note the oh-so-illustrious capital P).

We’ll see. I’ll think about it. Still holding off on a lot of decisions, waiting for certain things. I should know by the end of the year what I want to do, and how I plan to do it.

Christmas is coming soon. I’m not really all that down with the jingle, but y’know, I wouldn’t say no to a pet Spock wrapped up in a nice little bow.

On a more personal note:

A few months ago I ran into my ex-boyfriend from a very long time ago; I first met him during what was basically my second childhood, when I escaped the restrictions of family’s censure to go a little wild with the wannabe-goth image and pranced around flaunting my long hair and black nail polish and all those other things that are just too much of a pain to bother with now. I wanted to be dark, I wanted to be dangerous, I wanted to be badass, and I apparently enjoyed taking three hours to get dressed. So did he, so we fit each other. We fueled each others’ youthful daydreams, and for a while, all was good.

Naturally we broke up, things being the way they are. The inconstancy of youth and the impermanence of relationships based on mental retardation, etc. So when we ran into each other again, it was a bit of a surprise. A pleasant one; it was nice to know he was all right. In the many years since the demise of our relationship, I’ve outgrown the kind of overdramatic idiocy we used to indulge in. I no longer need to slink around trying to look dark, I no longer care who thinks I’m a beautiful boy or not, and I’ve had enough boyfriends confess their “true vampiric nature” to me that I’ve seriously pondered staking them just to get them to shut up. I don’t find it edgy to make everything about sex anymore; I find it dull, immature, tedious, and a bit crass. I’m still an idiot, but I’m not that kind of idiot anymore. I’ve matured – at least, I hope. I assumed my ex had, as well…that with adulthood, he’d grown past childish fancies to achieve stability and adult graces while retaining his creativity.

I was wrong. I’m not going to bash him by detailing how I was wrong; suffice to say Dramatic Things Happened that led to a nasty, shocking realization:

He’s no different than he was 8-9 years ago.

He’s still the Rebel Without a Clue, who thinks it makes him cool to not be able to hold down a retail job because of his authority issues. He’s the Eric Cartman who flips the middle finger when asked to bag groceries. He thinks he’s badass because he can’t keep friends; they “just don’t get him” (or why he’s sitting at McDonald’s filing his fingernails to points and talking about his dark hungers – the desperate desire for hot, juicy meat, the need to stalk his terrified prey: the McGriddle). He constantly talks about how dark and twisted he is, with a kind of pride that borders on desperate grasping because he doesn’t have anything else. Even while trying to talk big…he jumps to obey his current boyfriend and do the housework with an almost slavish obedience, because without the current boyfriend he’d be out on the street. You go, Lestat. Scrub that bathtub. Make sure you get in the corners of the grout; vampires hate mildew.

When I look at him I ask myself, “What happened? How can he still live in this altered version of reality and think it’s in any way viable? Why hasn’t he grown up? Was he dropped on his head as a baby? Or last week?”

And right now you may be asking yourself: Why the hell am I blathering about this on my writing blog?

Before you answer anything to do with LSD, it’s mainly because I can’t help but see the differences in us now – both of us in our late twenties, me a pragmatic, cynical writer who’s vaguely flailing around in the adult end of the pool, him a stifled man-child splashing in the kiddie pool with vampire bats stencil-painted onto his rubber floaties. It’s like the Lewis Black of the literary world meeting Gary Oldman’s rendition of Dracula cast as an unemployed mid-twenties loser. I shiver a little when I look at him and think, if not for the fact that I started writing, that could’ve been me. Well…maybe not. He and I are entirely different personalities, and even back then I found him a little ludicrous.

Who am I kidding, anyone who stretches their sibilants to sound like a snake is a frickin’ idiot.

But the point is…I channeled all my daydreams into stories. I separated them from myself, consigned them to fiction, and grew up while still having an outlet for all the silly, fantastical things I used to wish for as a boy. I think in some ways the time I spent with the ex helped to shape me as a writer, because he gave me an outlet to explore my creativity. But it was just that: an outlet and an exploration, not the foundation for a way of life that would end up ultimately crippling me because I believed my own fantasies.

I think a key thing to learn as a writer is how to separate your fantasies from reality – not just so you don’t end up a stunted man-child, but so you can edit yourself, improve your craft, and avoid a vacation in the psych ward. If you’re too in love with the fantasies you’ve written, if you want too much for them to be real, then you won’t be able to stand being as brutal as you need to be to shape those fantasies from self-fulfilling drek into a story with real plot and purpose. It’s sort of the same as being able to separate your fantasies from real life to shape yourself into a mature adult with goals, responsibilities, and common sense. Self-editing doesn’t just apply to writing; it applies to life, and to learning appropriate behavior in a society that requires some form of cooperation for it – and you – to survive. Individualism is one thing, something to be encouraged and applauded…but blatant immaturity, also known as “special snowflake syndrome,” is just stupid.

Eh. This is just meandering without much point or purpose, and no real end goal in mind. I’ve spilled my troubled thoughts, and now I’m off to find a good movie, curl up, and relax. To sum up:

Don’t be a damned Mary Sue. Not in your stories, and not in your life.

“You’ve got a rainbow in your mouth! Open it for the world!”

“An Insurrection” is done, and only needs 220 words trimmed off (minimum, I’m sure more will come out in edits). It makes me snicker with glee, if only because look! I can play straight! Or at least write straight. Or something. There’s a lot of talk of…things. Yes. Things I wouldn’t normally talk or write about. Hush and let me bask in finishing my first short story in ten years! (Seriously, a novel is easier for me to write than a short story.)

I feel like celebrating by feeding someone to a pack of rabid squirrels. Possibly Comcast. Yes. Comcast, or some entity personifying Comcast, because they won’t let me schedule a service transfer to our new place. They swear there’s an active, paying customer there even though the place is vacant, and they won’t let us move service with that other account in good standing.

Bah.

On the plus side, we may be spending the weekend at the new place. No furniture, just an air mattress and a duffel of clothes. We’re going floor camping, because we’re hardy adventurers. It’ll be like building forts in the living room, only with a bitchin’ view of the city skyline and a freaked-out cat wondering what strange, empty hell-chamber full of alien scents we’ve dragged him to now. If Hikaru kicks me onto the floor in his sleep, I’m stealing the blankets.

I just remembered, I have an itchy scarf to finish crocheting.

And I still want a pet Spock. I’ll clean him, I promise.

Spock vs. Wolverine.

(Reposted from my LJ and edited for profanity and vulgarity.)

Star Trek: So. Effin’. AWESOME. There were a few things that spat in the face of canon, but it was executed well. The ending/explanation behind a central plot theme had a bit of deus ex machina and really felt like a gaping inconsistency, but it’s my only real complaint. The rest of the blatantly-defying-canon stuff was so entirely forgivable for the wonderful characterization, gripping action scenes, well-done dialogue & scripting, hilarious one-liners, and the fun game of “spot the canonical tribute” as they worked in SO many things that just make you go “squee!” in recognition. The opening scene made me cry; it was extremely powerful and well-done, although the rest of the movie did seem to lack impact in comparison just because they opened with something so strong. There were a couple of spots where the plot started to lose me just because it got so, “Oh, PLEASE, you’re kidding me,” too much glossed, too much rushed through…but it kept redeeming itself.

It’s definitely Star Trek for a new generation, though, designed to tell a story that will appeal to an audience that’s too new for the existing franchise. It reinvented itself with some details changed, and was as much Star Trek as it wasn’t Star Trek. Strict canon-lovers probably love it, hate it, decry it at every chance. I only have one thing to say.

Young Spock? Effin’ SEX.

Now. Wolverine.

Huge letdown. HUGE. The pacing was clunky, the scripting poorly done, the scenes badly timed, the CG godawful, and the physics of certain things so outlandish that you can’t accept it even in a comic book world, where disbelief suspends itself over the gorramn Tonga and waits for the inevitable long drop. There were fewer deviations from canon, but the crimes were more heinous; rather than feeling canon up in a back alley, this movie dragged it out into said alley and [you really don't want to know what was originally here; trust me].

The thing is, I don’t mind deviations from canon. I really don’t. What I mind is when they’re badly done. Star Trek deviated from canon terribly, but it was still a fun, enjoyable movie (albeit a “don’t think too hard about this or your head will explode from the logical fallacy” kind of movie). Wolverine deviated, but it didn’t make those deviations fun. They weren’t exciting, they weren’t interesting, they weren’t anything other than badly-performed attempts at being deep, angsty, profound, or all of the above. I like movies that make me think. I don’t like movies that obviously stage everything to try to force a moment of introspection, but just come off as false. Plus: plot holes, horrible inconsistencies, and far too many moments of “What the hell, why didn’t they/why isn’t there/where’s the mother effin’ ____________? This makes no sense/would never happen!”

The storytelling was just…so bad. Yes, the story was easy to follow, but you shouldn’t have to follow a good movie. A good movie catches you up and carries you along in a headlong rush, swept on the tide of every charged moment. This? This plodded along, leaving you to trudge in its wake, following behind only because there’s no other path to walk.

God, the dialogue was horrible, too. Wholly unbelievable, and there were so many instances of people saying unrealistic things only vaguely related to the topic at hand just to give someone a chance to fire off a pre-planned one-liner.

And Gambit. Oh, Remy…Taylor Kitsch did unspeakable things to you, and wasn’t even attractive while doing them. When I first saw you, I thought you were either Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, or that freak from Clockwork Orange. I didn’t think you were Gambit. I didn’t believe you were Gambit, and you destroyed one of my favorite characters. I didn’t care about him at all, and movies like this don’t work if you don’t care about any of the characters.

Overall, the execution was just entirely flawed for this kind of story and this genre; it smacked of a director who doesn’t know how to tell an action story with heart, and thus just bludgeons the audience with transparent attempts at shallow on-screen character development. If not for a lot of sweaty Hugh Jackman, wet Hugh Jackman, shirtless Hugh Jackman, and naked Hugh Jackman, I think Hikaru and I would have walked out.