tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52687423422481991862024-03-19T19:18:18.280-03:00I Do Not Actually Own A MotorcycleA blog of creative musings and occasional rants from a writer who has never owned and never will own a motorcycle.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-44014072449827432842014-12-01T03:28:00.000-04:002014-12-01T03:41:44.164-04:00Top 10 Weird Note Document FilenamesIn honour of spending the entire afternoon getting stuck on scene blocking, which required the creation of yet another note document to sort out--and to continue the ongoing series here on <i>I Do Not Actually Own A Motorcycle </i>of cynical and sarcastic posts about writer's block--my Top 10 Weird Note Document Filenames!<br />
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<a name='more'></a>10. "Assimilation of Kal Drezzar 1-5.doc" The current novel project grew out of the previous one much like Borg implants grow out of organic flesh.<br />
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9. "Character List.doc" and "Character List and Explanation.doc" I have no idea which is the correct one.</div>
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8. "Elements of Ch131.doc" I have no idea what's in this one, either, but I'm pretty sure none of it made it into the book.</div>
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7. "Oh look, more notes on Galan.doc" He's a problematic character. This is not his only note document.</div>
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6. "The Immutable Laws (working document).doc" A compilation of unbreakable rules of my project's fictional world written in full bureaucratese in the voice of my world's deities, complete with footnotes outlining legal appeal processes.</div>
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5. "The Silent People--A Relationship.doc" Wherein I attempt to work out the purpose of the characters I just created.</div>
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4. "The Table of Comparative Symbolic Awesomeness.doc"</div>
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3. "Red is used in Ch44.doc" More of a kind of existential statement.</div>
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2. "The Don't Read This Yet Chronicles #5--The Long Lost Story of John Andrews' Boring Escapades In Reality.doc" For a long time I kept a series of notes with material about later parts of the story that I could come back to later. Good idea in theory. When I got to "later" I realized I had forgotten to write a major character into much of the book (he's now a minor character). This was my solution to that problem... which I left for later and promptly forgot about.</div>
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1. "Half of what was once Lore's song before we got tired of transcribing out the chorus and just cut the damn thing.doc" For reference.</div>
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For the record, this afternoon's note was entitled "Another Goddamn Party Note.doc"</div>
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I've really been working on this project for far too long.</div>
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(I do have a large number of functional, living documents that track the important things that haven't been revised out years ago, but those filenames are much less fun.)</div>
Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-27867353396938070922014-11-06T06:27:00.003-04:002014-11-06T06:28:43.363-04:00What To Do When....I was going to do a big, long NaNoWriMo post but instead I got stuck on a chapter and came out with this. I thought I'd share:<br />
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<i> 89I9tgf5rg tffffvt gfbvryfm ik n bvghn</i></div>
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That was the result of banging my head against my keyboard several times and represents the total sum creative output of about the last three days.<br />
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(I also wish to, apropos of nothing, commend Google for making the "Complain to Google" button so obvious and yet so natural within the post editor, as if I could simply complain to Google simply for something to do, or I could send this post to them as a metaphorical statement on the Blogger platform.)<br />
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This was mostly an exercise in getting my hands moving. Look! You can do it too!Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-72188325602749539312014-07-28T18:45:00.000-03:002014-07-28T18:45:18.007-03:00You'd Think We Might Learn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQlzrHPHgxsn1OfWz6DQy8qQwu1yYa3gwCETFDxXkeEuWrhcOoyuDmfHB5cEFzK7uLi9OcjzaZfD9r3-35VVLGi_dlqjjMCblBH_4EDxSRkhiiOf2PGhfEvyVmv48J3z7Tp8CxdzdHCFtc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-28+at+2.40.12+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQlzrHPHgxsn1OfWz6DQy8qQwu1yYa3gwCETFDxXkeEuWrhcOoyuDmfHB5cEFzK7uLi9OcjzaZfD9r3-35VVLGi_dlqjjMCblBH_4EDxSRkhiiOf2PGhfEvyVmv48J3z7Tp8CxdzdHCFtc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-07-28+at+2.40.12+PM.png" height="251" width="400" /></a></div>
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But we generally don't.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-29526811369689933462014-06-21T07:27:00.001-03:002014-08-04T13:01:19.134-03:00It's Not Perfect, and That's OKI just finished re-reading <i>The Fionavar Tapestry </i>trilogy<i> </i>this evening and, as with any book, the second read made me think about a lot of things. I always catch more of the little tricks, naturally. More importantly, my standards for authors are higher now, by virtue of my exposure to publishing and the "what it takes" of writing, than they were six or seven years ago when I first read it.<br />
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The important thing is how much it still worked. I still fundamentally enjoyed the book, I still nearly cried at the end and I still loved the writing and the slow build and release of tension, the battle construction, and so many other parts of the story and the style of its telling.<br />
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The difference being that this time I was able to read it with at least half a beady eye. While I was busy getting lost in the beautiful prose I was also noticing some things that would make me kick my own work with substantial force. Just little things: the fact that the while the opening scene is good it takes me a little longer than I'd like to actually believe the characters and the situation; some of the myths are kind of obviously dropped in the first book and are paced oddly so that it feels like they're set-ups, although they pay off very well later; the Arthurian stuff is cool once it gets going and gets more original but the first few scenes with it are taxing and overly weighty; parts of the book probably jump around a bit too much; little POV wonks jarred me; and on and on. Not big things. By all means, very little things, and almost always the sort of fault I forgave nearly immediately when reading. It didn't affect my enjoyment because I just kept going.<br />
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But although I was writing when I first read <i>Fionavar</i>, I was doing it mostly on instinct (it would have been my grade 12 year of high school) and so didn't always self-evaluate my own work quite as critically or, indeed, ruthlessly as I do now. The things that cause me to lose sleep in my writing now are similar to these wonks I found in <i>Fionavar</i>. They bother me a bit, because I want to do better, and always demand that of myself. It's a kind of self-loathing that leads to debilitating perfectionism, and if this re-read was anything to go by, it's a false standard, at least to an extent.<br />
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This is important in my current context specifically because I've always looked up to Kay as a writer ever since I attended a talk he was giving at Saint Mary's in Halifax, and <i>Fionavar </i>was a very seminal work in shaping my enjoyment of adult fantasy--it was one of the first genuinely adult fantasy books I got into, and perhaps as a result my current fantasy project owes some inspiration to it in tone and scale.<br />
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Obviously I strive for originality in everything I do, and by no means is this meant to imply that I'm somehow writing better than Kay did. In fact, I make all the above mistakes and then some, and they <i>are </i>problems. But although I'm candid about the need--and even pleasure--of revising thoroughly, being able to critically evaluate a work I love helps show me that these micro-level, highly-subjective debates over things like POV shifts, character development, pacing--they're important but they're not the end of the world, either. Any story is going to have its wonks, including mine.<br />
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To be able to read, to see the little wobbles that no doubt gave Kay fits as he wrote and revised, and then feel how much I can enjoy the story without worrying, is a learning experience about how I read as a reader versus how I now think as a writer who has at least some degree of experience. While reading for technique is important, I've always thought it crucial to re-read books I love to remember that feeling that a story should generate, and to learn that, for a reader, enjoyment comes in many forms, not all of the them technical. As writers--and most friends who do critique are also writers in one way or another--it's easy to focus on the minutiae, when the minutiae are only a part of the experience. Even favourite books can be dissected.<br />
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My takeaway is mostly that, say, when I'm worrying horribly over the exact tone of the lines in one of my sample chapters, maybe I need to just trust the characters a bit more. Trust myself to write what needs to be written. Trust the story to tell itself the best way. This is the sort of thing writers say all the time and it infuriates my friends in digital media because it's vague, but this conundrum is what it's for. Stories can go their own ways; the mechanics that make them work can be unpredictable. This sort of thinking is, I think, at the heart of my favourite (and only) rule: "Do what works."<br />
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Of course, a story that wants to really engross me in its pages must do a lot right. World has to be good. The writing needs to be consistent in style and voice. I've always tried to learn from Kay that way, and on re-reading I did pay close attention to the exact nature of his style, when he used more anachronistic constructions and when he used more contemporary idiom. The way he structured key story beats was interesting and useful in a long saga, and I've always envied the exact way he flips between POVs without anyone actually really caring. Truth be told, I'd probably do some of these things a little different, and be more lax on certain other quirks. That's where personal preference and situational context comes in, and is what (I like to think) makes me my own writer.<br />
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Doesn't mean I can't learn a lot from a good re-read, and the biggest learning might just be it's OK to let a story ebb and flow--it will still work, because after all, I couldn't stop reading in the end.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-77353015224654616782014-05-05T05:58:00.000-03:002014-08-01T00:35:13.606-03:00To Chapter 137 on the Occasion of Our Parting,If I hadn't been sane, I would have written to you a long time ago.<br />
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As it was, our correspondence got off to a slow start. I mean, I knew you were out there some time back around January when the road to what I like to think of as the End began. You'll tell me it's silly, I know. It is. There is no end.<br />
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We started okay, I thought. My early ideas about how you would fit into my life were pretty positive. You looked real good in spreadsheets filled with vague plot possibilities and we just went from there. I was looking forward to meeting, actually. I even started to like the sound of one thirty seven a little--it might be a mouthful, eh, but you can't deny it's got a ring.<br />
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One thirty seven. Yeah.<br />
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Our early chats were promising. A little give and take. Still in the land of documentation but I like to take relationships real slow. A bit like a nice garden stroll of the sort like Chapter 141 has and which I now realize I should have probably gone right to all along. But there you were, a nice step on the way, somewhere I could spend some time, build something, and see what would happen.<br />
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Out of the land of outlines we rushed last Monday with, let's face it, some pretty nice promise. I did a helluva build-up for you--battle, suspense, danger, magic and all the world in the balance. You were gonna be the intricate maze of meaning through the chaos, a metaphorical tunnel into the story's heart.<br />
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Boy, was that a disaster. As first times go, ouch.<br />
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Everyone deserves a second chance, right? And sometimes it just helps to keep the pen moving. Incidentally, that's what I'm doing right now. Thought it might be a good idea to write to you as a way of getting past our impasse. I set a time limit, though. Bad relationships can't continue forever. And I've already exceeded it. That's the way it's been. I'm sure you'll agree.<br />
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I thought it would be a good idea to move the secondary protagonist in. The secondary protagonist is a good sort, makes a lot of situations work like that morale officer at work who has no real skills but tells an awesome joke. Just way more likeable and actually kind of important for your main scene.<br />
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You and me had problems, but this character knew the way out. So let's follow her, I thought. I thought you thought so, too. But then we ended up lost in the maze instead of making sense of it and here we are.<br />
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Geez. I don't want to complain. I'm probably making a mountain out of a mound here. We can get through this. I have faith. But dammit, it's been five days now. Five whole days and we've only got five pages and I don't feel real good about any of them. I don't know if you do. I doubt it. We both know they're shit, right? Characters in the wrong places, metaphors that don't connect to anything--or worse, connect to something no one will remember from 348 pages ago; believability issues that are worse than my second-youngest-step-sister's. Nothing makes sense. And hey, I take some of the blame. I'm the one thought it would be a good idea to put them there.<br />
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But you could give me an assist. Make something click in my muddled head. Connect something in a way that a reader could understand, maybe?<br />
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I know, I know. You think it's too long already. Damn, there it is. I mean, yeah. 137 chapters, right? It's a mess. I know it's a mess. How am I supposed to fix it with you sitting there, blocking the path to Chapter 141, who I really do need to see, garden or not.<br />
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I feel like we're talking past each other creatively. I'm doing my thing and you're doing my thing and we're just not lining up any more, if we ever did. And I know, that's sad. I really think that. I didn't mean to do this to you, and I regret it. Sincerely. Like I said--five days. (Yeah there was a trip to Seattle in the middle of it, but that was business, booked for a month, and I can't let you completely ruin my life, yeah?) But here's the thing: as irrelevant as you think I am, I'm the one in control here. See all those 136-odd other chapters (some of them have wandered off, I lost count awhile ago, but bear with me)? Those are mine. See this plot? Mine. Characters are mine. I dreamed them. I let you change them in certain ways, but not every way. This is my story, your theatre, so to speak.<br />
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We both started this journey a long time ago, eh One Thirty Seven? I know. For me it's been three years. For you it's been a lot longer. Fantasy is like that. Ideas and imaginations and all that.<br />
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Time's come. Here's a door. Why don't you show yourself the way out?<br />
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Sincerely,<br />
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A PlaywrightDylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-5801695875662606002013-11-24T08:42:00.000-04:002013-11-24T08:42:22.798-04:00A Virtuous MorningI write at night.<br />
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Over the years reading often inane posts about writing practice on the lovely Internet, I've noticed fewer people extol the virtues of writing at night. I know lots of people do it simply from talking to other writers face to face (something we ought to do more of), but the column inches are devoted to the idyllic, quiet, writerly morning.<br />
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So here I find myself, by way of some extremely convoluted circumstances involving a script and a lot design documentation, awake at 4 a.m. in the morning. Perfect writing hours!<br />
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The usual line would be that there is perfect quiet. There are no distractions. We can sit before the bustle of the day and create. All of this is undoubtedly true. It is, indeed, even in metro Vancouver, quiet at four in the morning.<br />
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I have been up at four in the morning before--many times--because I'm usually a late night, late rising kind of writer. The other kind. The altogether more common kind who perhaps doesn't write moving literary fiction about cloudy sunrises. (I do have cloudy sunsets. Lots of those.)<br />
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And I find myself, in the quiet, wondering why I am unable to do anything more than a blog post (take that, blog guilt!) in the midst of this idyllic writing <em>espace</em>.<br />
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The answer has to do with alcohol.<br />
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Now, I don't drink, but pretend for a moment that there was a party last night and everyone who's anyone was there. Many things get said and thought and often not remembered, and then everyone goes deeply to sleep and (barely) wakes up for work the next morning. The party is not a quiet experience, nor is it very given to composition.<br />
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But for me--and I'm going to be very audacious here and speak for all the night-owl writers--that "party time" between, say, 8:30 p.m. and 3 a.m. is the ideal hour for writing. Which is why I never go to any parties. That and the not drinking.<br />
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Part of it is that, because everyone else is at the parties, that time actually becomes pretty quiet and uninterrupted. But it's actually about sleep.<br />
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Sitting here, writing this and thinking about putting on a pot of tea, I know I will have to get up and go to a meeting in several hours. Fine--plenty of uninterrupted idyllic sunrise morning time. But no chance to sleep it off.<br />
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Assume, then, as I think many of us in the know can, that writing brings a kind of drunkenness of its own. A fascination with the stupider details of one's own thoughts. Occasionally loud and unmitigated noises. A hangover of the "Oh God did I really do that last night?" variety. Creation is not a virtuous process. Good villains are quite at odds with still sunrises. I suppose if one is writing morality tales, then mornings might work. For stories of the night, some life is necessary.<br />
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There is something refreshing this morning about the world replenishing itself, being reborn. I am not, however, in the process of replenishing the world. The idyllic mornings, at least in my experience, are a myth. Though I'm sure it's true for some, my process involves a lot of loud music and occasionally ill-advised dancing. A lot of yelling across rooms and gesticulating wildly. <br />
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Separation, I think we can all agree, is essential.<br />
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For the same reason I don't show up to work drunk, I don't show up to work after writing. I mean, can you imagine the conversations about double-meaning and wordplay? About the correct balance of '80s rock played over the composition of a given chapter?<br />
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So here I am in the morning, with nothing to do but sit in the quiet and wonder where all the fun has gone. I missed the party last night, and the sunrise is never a good thing.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-79698519649156523772013-10-09T05:43:00.000-03:002013-10-09T05:43:06.181-03:00"The Dead Walk!" + Top 10!I do not anoint a worst-ever movie lightly. It always seems hyperbolic. I have a new champion, at least until I see something worse.<br />
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I had been avoiding watching <em>Resident Evil </em>since it's massive swing in popularity when I was in grade four. But one thing leads to another grad school assignment and I've ended up seeing it.<br />
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They do say you need to know what not to do.<br />
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I will keep the critique brief, because I don't think there's much point in reviewing a movie that came out over ten years ago and there's no point in analyzing something so unbelievably bad. Like zombie viruses themselves, bad writing can infect.<br />
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Let's open on a positive, shall we? The film used gunk music extremely effectively.<br />
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Suffice it to say that my favourite (and I use the term loosely) character--the Red Queen computer system--undergoes the sort of character shift 2/3s of the way through the movie that would make absurdist Lewis Carroll proud. If there was any motivation or reason for it whatsoever beyond needing a more violent ending, it might have worked.<br />
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The ending is one, long, fifteen minute sequel hook for <em>Resident Evil: Apocalypse </em>and it is very, very obviously constructed solely for this purpose. If I'm assigned to watch that film, too, I will do myself the favour of taking deathly ill for a week to get out of the assignment. The first movie ends with the protagonist cocking a shotgun so as to save the writer having to think up a transition to the next film.<br />
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The screenwriter's (who is also the director and whose IMDb profile opens by explaining how he got a movie banned in England; he's also responsible for the absolutely abominable <em>The Three Musketeers </em>that came out in 2011, featuring zeppelins) favourite line, the literary marvel "When we get out of here, I think I'm gonna get laid," is so adored it is used <em>twice</em>: once in one of the more predictable moments of the movie and once for effect in the credits sequence.<br />
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The film compares badly to <em>Atlanta Nights</em>, the mock novel written purely to be bad. I broke down laughing at the end.<br />
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This movie cost $33 million to make and I'm sure the pre-pubescent male audience seeking illicit mildly pornographic wish fulfillment enjoy it to this day.<br />
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Save yourself the trouble.<br />
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But since I was required to watch it for class, and since it is--apparently--a frightening movie, I've taken the liberty of providing a Top 10 just in case anyone is scared after watching it.<br />
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And now it's time for Top 10!!!!!!! The Top 10 ways to relieve the terrible fright after watching <em>Resident Evil</em>.<br />
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10. Listen to "We Built This City" by '80s phenomenon Jefferson Starship. For extra effect, watch the video:<br />
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9. If the previous step fails, first increase your speaker volume, then try something by Whitesnake instead. We suggest this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gin-l4LDdXQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gin-l4LDdXQ</a><br />
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8. Enjoy Terry Gilliam's analysis of Evil in <em>Time Bandits</em>.<br />
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7. Having freed yourself of mind control, indulge in classical literature. We suggest Genesis 2.<br />
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6. If that doesn't work, try Canadian literary fiction.<br />
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5. Read Raymond Chandler's rant about Hollywood writing. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/11/writers-in-hollywood/306454/">http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/11/writers-in-hollywood/306454/</a> Realize that it was written in 1945 and still applies today.<br />
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4. Read something and actually realize how scary a good writer can be.<br />
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3. Yes, we know that wasn't actually scary at all. Neither was <em>Resident Evil</em>. But I know which one I enjoyed more. Proper storytelling can, in fact, be entertaining, so to that end, acquire yourself a novel by the late Iain Banks and realize how frightening original imagination can be.<br />
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2. Pick up a phone and give Ghostbusters a call. There aren't any ghosts in <em>Resident Evil</em>, but we're pretty sure Bill Murray could have improved the movie.<br />
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1. Watch a proper horror film by either Alfred Hitchcock for real fright or Guillermo del Toro for things that can be done to the mind.<br />
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And that's Top 10!Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-22122825963130291802013-09-12T03:08:00.001-03:002013-11-28T03:27:15.809-04:00Warning: May Cause Drowsiness and IrritabilityI've followed Toronto FC since 2007 when Danny Dichio banged in the team's first goal. It was the first game of pro soccer I'd ever watched voluntarily on TV. I was hooked.<br />
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The losing, like the goal, has been curiously addictive. Nothing made sense about the team now and it sure doesn't today, after another hopeless draw, at the end of a hopeless season, sans most of the management and playing staff that started said season. (Remember Hogan Ephraim? Hallucinogenic, I tell you.)<br />
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Toronto FC has developed into a very strong sedative, and it really is unique amongst drugs because it used to be a stimulant--I'd sit on the edge of my seat waiting for Collin Samuel (who?) to score a goal, and fall back off the high when he missed from six yards out.<br />
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But starting last year, under Paul Mariner, I started falling asleep. It wasn't even voluntary. I wouldn't be particularly tired, but the effects are strong and often immediate. I've had antihistamines that didn't work as quickly as Toronto FC under Mariner.<br />
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The initial perk of the drug was something to identify with. Something Canadian that was original and vibrant. Like a long-term relationship with any narcotic, TFC's boon wore off long ago, and now it just causes a feeling of low-level irritability before and after use.<br />
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Under Ryan Nelsen, especially since Kevin Payne was fired last week, the threshold has been crossed. The realization had that comes with any drug: it isn't helping; it never has and never will. I'm addicted, and it's killing me, my life and my psyche.<br />
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In several years you can expect to see me wandering through parks raving about surrealist fiction and midfield talent in Thailand.<br />
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Until then it'll just be the usual slow descent into regret and violence.<br />
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Use this product with care.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-32821648944818687762013-09-02T19:17:00.002-03:002014-03-10T04:01:25.827-03:00Farewell To Nova ScotiaWhen I was in my early years of high school I was, sadly, already a nostalgic sop. I thought to myself, probably on some sort of emotional high, that I would be very sad to ever leave beautiful Nova Scotia.<br />
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How times change.<br />
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I don't want to say that I'm not sad, in a way. On August 21st, I crossed Nova Scotia's border at the lovely-if-exceptionally-breezy Tantramar Marshes and this time I won't be back for awhile. In fact, I'm writing this in Vancouver, B.C. where I'm beginning a year of intensive grad school. After that, who knows?<br />
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Well, the hope is for a job. In exactly what is unclear, though if you asked me right now I'd say I'm pretty keen on videogame writing, to which this blog is a (partial) testament. Simon Fraser University's Centre for Digital Media is about more than games, though, and things will change a lot. I readily invite anybody reading this (hello!) to change with me.<br />
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A lot of things in Halifax changed, too, as things do over time. When I first moved into the city in the fall of 2007, it seemed much larger. When I left, it seemed smaller. Other Haligonians will know what I mean.<br />
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I met a lot of lovely people, including and especially in Halifax's small but proud soccer community. Having more or less grown up on Henry St. in the the old Dalhousie English department, I'll be sad not to walk down the pretty but extremely uneven sidewalk again. I'll miss staggering into room 312 of Dalhousie's SUB, finding the <em>Gazette</em> by the scent of pizza and fellowship.<br />
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There were also challenges as things shrunk. I spent a lot of time on the trip out to Vancouver thinking about my tiny town of Musquodoboit and how small it is, how powerful it can be, and how I am yet another young, creative person leaving it. I am one of the last of my young, creative friends to leave it. I held on for as long as possible, and in the end perhaps it should have been cleaner. One day I will return and see it--in the mean-time I can only imagine. All I know about it for certain is that it has inspired me for 23 years, and will continue to do so.<br />
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Whenever we first close the new door, we leave some problems behind--the ones too complicated or too deep to address quickly or on our own. As soon as we open our eyes, more problems confront us in different situations. There are opportunities on both sides of the door, and so the decision ought not, I think, to be seen as an abandonment or departure, and simply as a sort of 7000-kilometre changing of lanes. (Which is, incidentally, very difficult to do in Vancouver.)<br />
<br />
To all those who have left and whom I have left: goodbye, and good luck. We'll face the same problems on opposite coasts, and some day we'll switch again. I look forward to passing you on the way by. I'll wave.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-71719985682521407132013-09-02T18:58:00.001-03:002013-09-02T18:59:31.668-03:00Why I Don't Shop at Wal-Mart: A Story About God-Game Economic NarrativeI've always wanted to do a post on god-game narrative because it's such a fascinatingly depressing kind of realism. Sure, god-games are all about creating your own imaginary civilization or country. They do present a fun way to experiment with, in some cases, quasi-realistic economies.<br />
<br />
I'm not an economics major--I'm an English and journalism grad. If I knew more about economics maybe I would believe economists like Kevin O'Leary when they say "greed is good." But probably not, because greed is not good. It doesn't take an economist to follow the consumerist line of thinking through to where it should lead. God-games have simply accelerated and simplified the process.<br />
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It has been said that greed drives everything in society (I wouldn't argue that) and in so doing, all the wealth the greedy people make trickles down to the average working person. Consumerism keeps North America going.<br />
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But I don't shop at Wal-Mart.<br />
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<strong>The Beginning: Building the Empire</strong><br />
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Imagine, then, a new country, God-game style. Here you are, controlling your dashingly handsome avatar striding in pioneering fashion across an open tract of green land. The vista is really quite beautiful: mountains, lakes, loads and loads of trees, arable land, every kind of natural resource you will need to build your own country.<br />
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And <em>you</em> are in control.<br />
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It's really a pretty beautiful country because god-games are made for PCs usually and graphics are good enough these days to make some good old-fashioned Mother Nature eye candy. I like mountains. So do a few in every country, we hopeless Romantics.<br />
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You probably think we're all idealists, tree-huggers, opposed to entrepreneurialism and all that. But that's not why I don't shop at Wal-Mart.<br />
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To spite me, you decide to start a company call All-Mart, where anyone can buy anything for the cheapest cost humanly possible. You build the first one in the nicest place in your country, and a good little city pops up as your people settle down. All this going to god-game mechanics? Good.<br />
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Pretty soon some foreign visitors come buy and introduce themselves as your neighbours. Your people are pretty taken with them, and thanks to their jobs at All-Mart that pay them a salary, they can buy wood from your country's trees to build houses and they can buy local food, or even some of that exotic food the foreigners dropped off. There will be sushi for all! (I have a bit of a thing for sushi--thanks!)<br />
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You're in control here, remember, so shopping at All-Mart is the <em>best consumer experience ever!</em> They said that in their shopper-submitted reviews posted at All-Mart. But remember, All-Mart still has to make a profit, especially because the outlet you opened in a neighbouring country isn't doing too well and your first store is going to have to make up the slack.<br />
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Your All-Mart never paid its workers much because, really, they don't do much but hawk all the stuff, and since you can buy everything at All-Mart and only at All-Mart, they aren't really needed. Since other outlets are in trouble (damn those foreign tax regulations!) you cut wages some more. Hey, it'll trickle down, and All-Mart's cheap anyway. Your people can get all they need for low prices, so they don't need to be wealthy relative to other countries' people.<br />
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There are, conveniently, even a couple of nifty quotes included in the <em>Civilization </em>series of games, one of which I'm going to borrow: Henry Ford said that, "There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods <span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">possible at the lowest price possible, paying the highest wage possible" (<a href="http://www.strategicbusinessteam.com/famous-small-business-quotes/henry-fords-quotes-famous-business-and-leadership-quotes-from-an-automobile-billionaire-industrialist-and-one-of-the-richest-men-ever-in-history/" target="_blank">source,</a> which also includes a number of other quotes about industrialism).</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">So why doesn't this work? Why isn't the consumer the ultimate path to wealth? Think of this:</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
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<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong>Balance</strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Most God-games I've played make a single fairly sweeping abstraction about resources, reducing the wide variety of goods and costs in reality down to broad strokes: food, materials, and finances. Money buys wood, which can be traded for food, or bought, or sold for more money. It's a reduction, but it's based in reality.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">The key thing is that all three are necessary to run an economy. That's not hard to figure out. When your country has a dry year and crops die, Governor U. R. Player has to step in and stump up the change from the treasury to buy some more from your friendly neighbours.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">But remember, you also built that All-Mart. Your country hails the consumer who spends what money he has to buy stuff, the profits of which all roll back into your government's treasury--assuming, of course, that you've set up a strong, enforceable tax system so that the guy who own All-Mart for you pays back all of what's made to the government, minus essential expenses and a living wage.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Of course, that rarely happens, because "greed is good." A living wage for your workers isn't the same thing <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100398096" target="_blank">Phil Mickelson thinks a living wage is</a>. Mickelson was whining about having to pay for other people's disabilities and social security--because he has no need of that himself. He's stinking rich. And good on him, the greedy guy.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Let's be nice and assume that Ethical You has been making sure All-Mart pays fair price for all the resources they pulled out of your country's land in order to build their goods and services empire. Even if you imposed Phil's dreaded 60% taxe rate, 40% of the money still ends up as profit (less the small wages paid). 40% of the value of each small part of your country is now private wealth.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">To make matters worse for you, resources are getting more and more scarce in YourLand, and the prices are going up. All-Mart might need a little helping hand from your government treasury in tough times, or they'll be leaving town along with your people's jobs and most of your resources, not to mention 40% of your country's tangible value, because some other greedy country will take them. But other countries are in tough, too, and have to raise prices on basic exports to survive. God-games make this especially the case when one state is buying all the resources--it's essentially inflation. Worse, those greedy other-skin-tone bastards <em>know </em>you have to buy wood from them because All-Mart sold all of yours cheap cheap cheap and all you've got left are stumps and an angry <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lorax" target="_blank">Lorax</a>.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">This could become a problem, you might be beginning to see. The more people buy from All-Mart, the more of your state treasury trickles away in profit margins because, remember, greed is good. It would be nice if the workers could buy some nicer stuff to help keep the artisans afloat, but they can't afford anything but All-Mart. The oligarchs and Phil could buy something, but they already own everything (including, quite possibly, you--you do run this place, and they likely got to you through lobbying long<em> </em>ago) and they like to keep themselves to themselves. They might buy a nice car every now and again, which is <em>great </em>news for the guy down in the car shop, but only a fraction of that money goes back into your treasury through taxes on profits, investments, and goods and services (<a href="http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/goods-and-services-tax-overview-history" target="_blank">the dreaded GST--Goods and Services Tax</a>).</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Those consumers you've created do not like being taxed. Not at all--it reduces what little they can buy, which in turn reduces how much money comes back to your government. <em>Uh-oh</em>.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">By now your government's bank account is shrinking bad, and that incredibly annoying <em>Sim City 4</em> financial advisor is hollering around the place like bloody murder is happening in the accounts office. Which is probably is, because now the only way for you to make enough money to keep the lights on for everyone, not to mention pay your inevitable war debts to either the greedy other-skin-tone bastards you went to war with or the greeedy other-skin-tone bastards who financed the weapons for your war, is to raise taxes on the general citizenry--<em>and probably on the rich, too, including poor Phil.</em></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><em></em></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">If you don't, the banks, who have been safeguarding your money and resources all along in that nice little indicator bar at the top of your screen, will send you a nice "empty" message full of legal mumbojumbo and credit card offers that make no sense at all. You've been telling us you can't sell nothing for nothing all along. Pity you don't have any trees left. (The Lorax has an appointment at 1:30, by the way.)</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
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<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong>Anarchy!</strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">It's not really your fault, is it? I mean, damn, here I am using a second-person writing voice to incriminate you--damn journalists! God-games solve this problem with a very simple wave of the digital hand: resources are infinite.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">I've never played a god-game where there wasn't pretty much limitless oil in the ground, a nice convenient coal mine right nearby that never runs out (and usually doesn't kill your trees), and a gold mine that is basically a license to print money. Trust me, when this all goes under, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/29/041129ta_talk_surowiecki" target="_blank">you're gonna want a lot of gold handy</a>. Those bloody barbarians understand it when it glitters. Fools.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Sometimes game designers with a sense of economic realism throw a curve-ball and make a resource finite--trees in <em>Empire Earth </em>could be cut down... eventually. Sure, there are thousands more behind. Canada's still mostly trees, isn't it? I mean, cut them down? Might not look as nice, but we need to build more stuff for All-Mart to sell so enough money trickles through to the government. Pretty soon, all the trees will be gone. Real countries have very finite resources.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">In a game if you screw this up as badly as this fictional U.R. Player has done here, there's no real consequence. Game over, but try again from scratch tomorrow and start a new country with a brand new Lorax, no doubt. Screw up again, if need be, until you learn the damn game.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
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<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong>If the Game is Real</strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">In reality if you run out of money, it's over. Last time I played <em>Civilization </em>there was no going begging for debt relief and financial aid with nothing but a hat in my hands. And really, would you aspire for Your Great Country Brave And Free to be the god-game equivalent of a tiny, war-torn nation full of desert (which, by the way, you created when you burned and harvested all the resources--nice job!)?</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Yeah, you can trade for money in <em>Civilization</em>--but you lose autonomy when you do it. Without money to buy wood or food (to use the simplistic reduction) you have to give up land or more precious materials. The guys who made <em>Empire Earth</em> figured out a slightly less modern but much more accurate way to show this: it was called Vassalage, a nice concept from the Dark Ages (before it, really) where one tribal warlord succumbed to another in exchange for protection and/or retaining control of his little bit of turf.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">And hell, you're gonna need the protection soon. Because when you hike those taxes on the rich to save this mess, they'll pull your political support from under you at the same time as they lift-off with your All-Mart and all of your economic infrastructure, all in private hands. Now that upstart Workers' Movement Party, full of laid-off All-Mart schmucks, is looking a lot more threatening. And though they're already poor, you had to raise their taxes, too, just to get money to stave off the barbarians and keep you in shoe polish and golf clubs. Unfortunately, they know about your tee-time next weekend with Phil and are coming armed with pitchforks and torches. You might need to reschedule with Phil.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Of course, Phil's likely to have a good idea for a solution, as he's no doubt apt to do: With enough blood and machine guns you can get some egomaniacal, narcissistic oil baron to come to your rescue, swayed by sex or promises, or maybe just the chance to take whatever's left in your country for himself. Not that there's much to choose from in your corporatized concrete hole-in-the-ground.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Remember that arable, lovely, mountain-filled Romantic country? Now it's got no culture of its own. Everyone knows that, really, the greedy other-skin-toned bastards you were mocking earlier are telling your just what to do, and laughing while your enslaved, impoverished people do it. Gladiating is coming next week.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">The worst part of this is that your name is gone. All your sparkly advisors are either gone or have given up, going from screaming red bleeping boxes (ah, <em>Sim City 4...</em>) to sad, unemployed, depressed automatons, just like everyone else, left to shake their heads at your ineptitude. They know you didn't listen to them.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">And yeah, the Lorax wants to meet you again. He saw all this coming a long, long time ago. An economy is <em>not</em> a complicated system when you think about it in broader terms. When you play God, all the large numbers may as well be small; whether you have $12,000,000,000,000 trees or 12 doesn't change their relative worth.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
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<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><strong>Game Over: A Sad End</strong></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">I'm no economist. I'm a storyteller, so what you have here is a story gone all wrong. I'm sure there are a bunch of economic reasons my dystopia is wrong. The predicament is the same: if public wealth becomes private the public loses--eventually. Without some public, a country loses its own identity. Can it all start from a single All-Mart? Maybe not. Enough of them? Certainly. A whole economy based on consumers not workers? I'd count on it.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">I don't know that there is a solution--the Lorax never was a very positive guy. At this point it might be Game Over--though it was really game over back near the fifth paragraph of this story--right about where reality is, before I branched off into speculation, when I'd just read that Wal-Mart is expanding into groceries and that "<a href="http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/502872-analyst-walmart-s-grocery-plans-are-growing" target="_blank">consumers will benefit.</a>"</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Back in the fifth paragraph your society was already more tyrannical than your society was when you were still barbarians walking the Earth in those precious first few turns, looking for the best spot to settle. That was always my favourite part of a god-game--seeing the whole world undisturbed, a treasure of art and possibility, ready to be explored, imprinted, and imagined. You cut it down. Game over.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">When you built that first All-Mart (and to be fair I did--not you, but I just made off with the money, it was your government. It's <em>hardly </em>my fault, I'm just good and greedy, trying to make it in the world) you turned your nice reliable settlers into "consumers" who can buy things, but who won't pay taxes because they wants to buy more shit from All-Mart and stick it in their ever-expanding houses. You forgot about the "worker," the actual people in your country, who followed you--poor little gullible souls--and who wanted to spend their working lives trying to make something in your little corner of this imagined world. You gave them dead-end jobs turning all of their natural beauty into plastic crap.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">The "worker" is part of this thing called the "public"--they're the ones who burned you in effigy (and possibly literally later--damn barbarians) when you screwed up before. The public might <em>seem</em> like an imaginary concept, but if you think about it, it's pretty obvious what a "public" is. It's your country. They vote for you to lead it, or, if you're playing one of those wonderful dictatorial games, they're nice enough not to overthrow you. When they're valued parts of public society, not just a corporation, they make great art <em>just for the hell of it</em>, because they like to make your country--and theirs--better. They can do this because they have jobs, which allow them to eat. Some of them even have creative jobs, which allow them to produce <em>more </em>and <em>better</em> art in exchange for eating. Then other countries come and marvel at your old and beautiful culture--and spend a little spare money of their own while they're here. Everybody lives within their means, using what they need. The trick is that everybody has to live comfortably, but not grandly.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">That "public," that oh-so-wonderful group of people you passed off as arrogant, know-nothing reporter wannabes before, <em>is your country</em>. Without them, all you had was hillsides, and no All-Mart at all. Workers cost money when they get sick or old, but that's OK because you've been taxing Phil all along and he, along with everyone else who lives in your country, can afford it if they all get together. Even you're in on this. You have to be. Nobody gets extra shoe polish. Nobody gets brand name golf club endorsement deals.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">That's called "communism" in some circles. Some communist regimes have become totalitarian hellholes, of course, usually through other massive feats of stupidity, like assuming (like you and me did a while back when we lost sight of anything but economic concerns) that all the greedy other-skin-tone bastards don't deserve to live like we do, or possibly at all. Not when we need something badly enough. It might be worth remembering that, by the end, your country was pretty much a totalitarian hellhole, too.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">I'd like to believe there are ways around that fate--perhaps other countries could be more forgiving. But it's not good enough simply for the rich to give to the poor. Charity and sainthood are hollow if the problem persists through poor management of resources and finances. People are greedy, and consume too much, so ask "Why?" That's what the Lorax was asking for all along.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">Human beings are actually worth something because they make things that are--or are themselves--beautiful, tasty, loveable, breatheable, and generally liveable. That concept is called humanism. The concept that all a person is can be found in a small barcode--a consumer, money--is called greed.</span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"></span><br />
<span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0">I don't shop at Wal-Mart.</span>Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-26406997225387561332013-01-04T21:34:00.000-04:002013-07-25T19:34:54.245-03:00Realism and Red BaronThe first videogame I ever really played was <i>Red Baron</i>. I had the Windows95 version and it was one of the only real games we had at the time.<br />
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Being quite young, I didn't fully understand the concepts, much less the design, but it was fun to fly around and the aerial battles were, for a game of its time, pretty thrilling. I always loved flying tri-planes.<br />
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My father taught me just enough about the menu to get me into a game, and I picked up a little bit more on my own over time. The campaigns were great, but there was one part of the game I could never get the hang of.<br />
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Oh, the dreaded "Realism" menu.<br />
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My ten-year-old self had no idea what the word meant. A fair number of people I know would argue--perhaps correctly--that my 22-year-old self still doesn't know what the word means. It was some mythical concept that changed the whole game and made its story impossible. I stayed away from that menu altogether. Realism would make me crash repeatedly no matter what.<br />
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From a game design perspective, <i>Red Baron</i> was a really remarkable flight simulator for its time. Sure, the physics were bad, but true to an actual World War I experience, your engine could freeze at any moment and your guns would jam every time Manfred von Richtofen was bearing down on you. It was infuriatingly realistic.<br />
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The game was much more fun with reduced realism. Like many games it minimalized the luck and chance involved in surviving a war and made it about the player's skill instead, which helped create an "ace" persona for the player. The game used some smart implied story to emphasize the war environment beyond just gameplay: newspaper clippings, months in P.O.W. camps, mission briefs and some really superb photos created the experience.<br />
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In creating a player ace, <i>Red Baron</i> also revised history. The player could shoot down some of the greatest pilots in WWI. Taking those actions within the story of a brutal war created an ethical twinge as strong as the hopeless lack of control when one's carburetor froze mid-battle. The fantasy in <i>Red Baron</i> created depth beyond a single, unlucky event. In making a player's actions mean something, the story's contradiction of historical glory could be much more meaningful.<br />
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There are realistic works that are meaningful. A discrete use of detail to turn the audience's eyes inwards can raise evocative, self-reflexive questions. Sometimes exact detail can show banality or hopelessness perfectly. Writers, of books or games, owe themselves imagination, too. The banal detail is often much more powerful when the scope of a story has already been stretched to its limits or when the world is one we as readers do not fully understand.<br />
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We do not live inside ourselves. I loved the possibility of <i>Red Baron</i>. I loved the situation it created using revisionist history grounded in actual events. In a way, the game had the perfect balance of realism and fantasy: enough potential to grab and entertain, empowering the player until it made the realities that much more potent.<br />
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In some ways, the survivors of war bear the most guilt. <i>Red Baron</i> revised history so that with enough ability, a player would survive WWI. That is hardly realistic. Most people who fought in WWI did not survive. They also aren't able to look back on it and learn from it. A player who died on his second mission every game didn't ever play long enough to get a sense of the simulated war experience.<br />
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The experience doesn't have to be real in order for people to learn.<br />
<br />
After all, I flew tri-planes and always felt slightly guilty about shooting down enemy Germans, precisely because it was pointless within the game. And that was real.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-88182653380622867742012-12-06T13:20:00.001-04:002012-12-06T13:21:31.953-04:00Mimicry and the Derivative: Read More, And Ignore<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It has been said that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery. I really hope that's true, because this
week I've wasted at least two hours holding my head in my hands
agonizing about originality.</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the past I've conquered this by
reminding myself not to be overly religious about originality. Some
people are, and that works for them. The comedy troupe Picnicface,
for instance, spend a lot of time working for original content. In
comedy, it's important to stand out.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In speculative fiction, which is what I
spend most of my time agonizing about, originality tends to take a
different form. A lot of readers <a href="http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/">criticize
medieval European fantasy</a> for being essentially a rip-off of <i>The
Lord of the Rings</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. That's fair,
but it means originality for a popular fantasy novelist is often
found within the plot or the characterization, rather than world
dynamics. There may be bilgy orcs and fair elves, but perhaps they
fight over gender politics and peace treaties?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
often find it difficult to read those kind of haphazard reimaginings,
mostly because the originality is achieved by injecting very
contemporary, often very subjective politics into already-established
fantasy archetypes.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Let's
pull away from novels, though. My current bout of angst (which is
also conveniently leading to my first proper post here in a month or
so) concerns mimicry in game design.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
taught myself to write by reading </span><i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> again and again and
again. In high-school I was a fixture atop a particular ledge in a
particular hallway, always reading the same book. I began writing
seriously about the same time and initially I drew a lot of my style
from Adams intelligent colloquialism. Problematically—and perhaps
fortunately—I was telling a story of hopeless existential genocide,
which forced my voice and style to grow.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I've
now written so many mind-numbing articles for J-School, the </span><i>Gazette
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">or this blog that I've developed
a more unique tone, I think. But when it comes to games, I'm a rank
amateur. I dabble, I experiment. And now that I'm old and educated
enough to notice, I get very worked up over my inability to be
original in composing game concepts.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I need
to stop doing this. (More, I need to stop doing this, then
procrastinating about not doing it and ending up here, blogging.)
Mimicry is how we learn to create. I feel strongly that it behooves
any inexperienced creator to consume not just widely, but to consume
quality (expressed in a better way than I can a couple of times in
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one">this
very valuable list</a>). We can all read, watch or play masterful
work and imbibe it, fusing one classic to another and, hopefully
creating something original.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The
only way to improve my game concept that will, in all likelihood,
play like a bad </span><i>Final Fantasy</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
knock-off, is to play more games, cultivate more ideas and try them.
That means it might play like a bad </span><i>Uncharted</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
rip-off for awhile. Eventually, with enough tinkering, it might be
something original, or at least as original as one can get. “<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools?from=Main.TropesAreNotBad">There's
nothing original under the sun,</a>” and a game like </span><i>Lord
of the Rings: The Third Age</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is
pretty much a bad </span><i>Final Fantasy </i><span style="font-style: normal;">knock-off
in LOTR IP, anyway.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Originality
is maybe the hardest thing to develop because just about any thing
can be considered derivative, as that most recent link argues quite
successfully. It takes confidence to play around within established
forms, averting and flipping ideas when one can, and that's hard to
do at 3:20 a.m. when chapter 32 or a dialogue tree is going very
badly.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The
only solution. Mimic away, don't worry about it, and let things come
freely. Now, back to that derivative game concept.</span></div>
Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-9064021078286643972012-11-24T23:18:00.000-04:002012-11-24T23:19:10.081-04:00I Just Fixed My First Ever DoorI've never been one to indulge in a lot of manly handiwork.<br />
<br />
But I am proud that I have just fixed a door.<br />
<br />
It was one of those folding-style ones that probably dates from sometime between 1943 and 1968. It didn't take a lot of effort, but I do feel abundantly practical--almost even useful, if not quite. In amongst a long month of not much, that is definitely something to think about.<br />
<br />
I promise this isn't simply filler content. Really. <a href="http://idonotactuallyownamotorcycle.blogspot.ca/2012/04/chai-tea.html" target="_blank">See the post on Chai tea.</a>Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-10229591469349507112012-10-01T02:48:00.000-03:002013-01-11T15:35:08.289-04:00Comments on CBC's Omar Khadr Stories Should Be Pre-ModeratedThe <em>CBC </em>has almost always allowed open comments on their online news site, cbc.ca.<br />
<br />
In most cases, this makes sense. Open comments sometimes bring out depressing elements of society content to hide behind anonymity, but as Canada's leading journalistic institution <em>CBC</em> has a mandate to allow open and free discussion on its comments page.<br />
<br />
The site occasionally closes comments, usually in stories about court cases, particularly when young offenders are involved. This decision makes a lot of ethical sense, but it also covers a media institution's liabilities. <br />
<br />
It's curious, then, that <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/30/khadr-repatriation-sunday.html" target="_blank">in the case of Omar Khadr</a>, the <em>CBC </em>has, for the most part, continued to allow open commenting. This is a mistake. The comment circus takes away from <em>CBC</em>'s reasonably solid journalism on the story, obscuring the facts and research with vitriol and hate.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Khadr is a divisive figure, and I won't use this space to provide an opinion on his situation. There are reasons to allow commentary on what amounts to a potentially pivotal decision in Canadian policy. Canadians do need a place to express their views.<br />
<br />
The views expressed on cbc.ca too often draw close to libel. The <em>CBC</em> should not endorse this kind of vitriolic and inaccurate commentary. By endorsing and publishing the comments, <em>CBC </em>could open itself to liability and accusations of ethical malpractice.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Wouldn't a charge of treason be more appropriate than murder? <br /> <br /> Why is this family allowed to stay in Canada?</em><br />
<em>--Posted by ifthen on "<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/30/khadr-repatriation-sunday.html" target="_blank">Khadr lawyer says government 'vilifying' his client</a>" at 1:26 p.m. Sept. 30, 2012.</em></blockquote>
This post is probably not strictly libellous, but it's still not helpful or accurate. Accusations of treason are dangerously close to libel for my tastes. If it meets <em>CBC</em>'s community standards then <em>CBC </em>should probably review its standards. The story is about Khadr. His family have, for the most part, not been charged. Suggesting they should be deported is offensive, and <em>CBC </em>should find it unethical.<br />
<br />
Libel is the act of writing anything that demeans another person publically. There are grey areas here, but generally alleging unproven criminal activity is a big no-no. Calling someone a terrorist or a war criminal is a very dangerous line to cross, even if there is a verdict from a military court. Canada has rather strict libel laws--even calling someone a crook can be libellous. Most journalistic sites are very careful about this sort of thing, both to cover themselves and to promote healthy, coherent debate.<br />
<br />
Commentary articles should make an argument based on factual information. Those articles are published as articles by cbc.ca, while reader comments are formatted differently. So there is less endorsement of reader comments. Presumably <em>CBC</em>'s media lawyers have carefully determined that they are reasonably safe.<br />
<br />
That doesn't make the practice ethical. Comments containing inaccurate or unverified information can easily confuse readers. Especially in a world with increasingly fewer gatekeepers, anything printed <em>could </em>be true. In my mind, a simple disclaimer isn't enough to absolve <em>CBC</em> of its ethical responsibility to ensure what is on its site is truth. If a comment is obviously false, or provides a fact that can't be verified, it should be rebutted with research or deleted.<br />
<br />
I have seen some comments removed by <em>CBC</em> moderators. There are still some that contravene <em>CBC</em>'s <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/aboutcbc/discover/submissions.html" target="_blank">own posting rules</a> to post in good taste and refrain from personal attacks.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>2. Be respectful and courteous, as if you were having a face-to-face discussion.</em><br />
<em>...</em><br />
<em>8. Any of Your Content that is offensive and likely to expose an individual or a group of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability is prohibited.</em><br />
<em>--<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/aboutcbc/discover/submissions.html" target="_blank">CBC Submissions Policy</a>, cbc.ca, July 2012.</em></blockquote>
The comments create a toxic online environment that scares off reasonable posters, meaning the commentary no longer even shows a reasonable guage of average public opinion. It's bad form in online commentary circles to allow ceaseless, unmoderated trolling and ill-thought out posts, especially on a sensitive issue. The allowance of vile comments on one controversial story tacitly allows it on all. Thus I've seen racist, sexist and all kinds of other garbage on cbc.ca.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="body" id="yui_3_4_1_6_1349068755748_64"><em>Yes.................and we're all "really happy" to have him back in Canada! Coud all those who supported his return please at this time make public your names in order that he may have a plece to go while he is being "reintegrated." Especially, those who took me to task for not supporting him and his return in comments made here on this site.</em></span><br />
<span class="body"><em>--Posted by liberal one on "<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/30/khadr-repatriation-sunday.html" target="_blank">Khadr lawyer says government 'vilifying' his client</a>" at 2:43 p.m., Sept. 30, 2012.</em></span></blockquote>
This comment isn't likely libellous but it's stupid and obvious trolling targeting other posters on the site with the bludgeon of one anonymous person's repeatedly-stated opinion.<br />
<br />
I was lucky enough to have <a href="http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html" target="_blank">an excellent blog post</a> shared with me and it was extremely useful in setting up a comment policy when I worked for the <em>Gazette</em>. <em>CBC</em> might do well to give it a read.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>When people are saying ruinously cruel things about each other, and you're the person who made it possible, it's 100% your fault. If you aren't willing to be a grown-up about that, then that's okay, but you're not ready to have a web business. Businesses that run cruise ships have to buy life preservers. Companies that sell alcohol have to keep it away from kids. And people who make communities on the web have to moderate them.</em><br />
<em>--"<a href="http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html" target="_blank">If You're Website's Full of Assholes, It's Your Fault,</a>" by Anil Dash on dashes.com, July 20, 2011.</em></blockquote>
Give that full article a deserved read. And look, the comments section is sane, well-moderated and contributes to a meaningful (and humourous) debate.<br />
<br />
<br />
<em>CBC </em>has always had a problem with this. With Khadr, it's not only unethical and potentially dangerous, it also creates a very poor image of Canadian community standards. We value free speech, but <em>CBC </em>is a forum. With the privilege of posting comes responsibility to moderate the conversation. A poster with an extreme point of view who wishes to espouse it again and again, condemning or praising where grounds do not exist to do so, should post on his or her own blog or website, or on a relevant news site. <em>CBC</em>'s general mandate means it must keep its content appropriate to the level of decorum expected of a public space--the Internet is considered, in most cases, public. That means names, or barring that, a small amount of control.<br />
<br />
Britain's <em>The Guardian</em> newspaper provides an interesting contrast. It also has a general mandate and some comments on its stories get a little out of hand. These are moderated quickly and consistently to limit unnecessary and unhelpful, unintelligible outrage. It also allows <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/30/iran-economy-verge-collapse-sanctions-israel" target="_blank">fewer comments</a> on hard news or <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/sep/30/black-players-john-terry-lord-triesman" target="_blank">contentious stories</a>--most of the contentious threads are on the syndicated blogs or opinion articles, where radically diverging opinions <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/sep/30/tottenham-manchester-united-jermain-defoe" target="_blank">are more welcome</a>. Even on less sensitive stories,<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/sep/03/oscar-pistorius-stride-length-oliveira" target="_blank"> otherwise libellous statements</a> are quickly deleted.<br />
<br />
<em>CBC</em> owes the public the same. It owes its readers a similar level of moderation, even if that costs some money to implement. It costs less than getting sued. Once the standard is set the workload goes down and the trolls go back to their dark holes, allowing the debate that comments allow to flourish.<br />
<br />
Then everyone is happy and Canada looks way better to everyone else in the world surfing the Internet.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, irrelevant comments about Khadr's situation will be deleted here. I pre-moderate comments on this site to ensure civility, as we agreed to do at the <em>Gazette</em>, and which is done at newspapers like <em>The Chronicle Herald</em>, as well.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-37422846424138098892012-09-15T00:52:00.000-03:002013-11-28T03:30:32.326-04:00Spinning the MiddleI'm writing this post at the end of the middle.<br />
<br />
Mostly, I'm waiting for 360-odd pages to print out, which involves a tedious amount of aligning, cartridging, configuring, and patience.<br />
<br />
But it will pay off--I'll be able to edit my work over the weekend.<br />
<br />
For the past nine months, I've been in the middle. I started in late January at the end of the beginning and here I am at the beginning of the end. The in-between has been a long, weary, trying adventure of getting from one abstract point in a project to another.<br />
<br />
(To continue this extended metaphor: I get <i>one measly page</i> into the printing job and the printer chokes on my paper and makes a big gristly mess in the spool. Reset, retry.)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
The project in question, a novel, has three parts or acts, as you will. So by necessity, there has to be a "middle" act.<br />
<br />
I've always found the middle of longer works to be the least interesting. Take <i>The Two Towers</i>, for instance, which I find to be my least favourite section of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. Sure, it's subjective, but I believe there's something inherently systemic about boring middle books, and it boils down to the process of writing them.<br />
<br />
I began the story in May 2011 in a fit of emotional angst and repression of the sort that can only give birth to a novel of this length. So I began to write it, transforming an old project into a new one and picking up from there.<br />
<br />
Chapter after chapter flew out from there. The story told itself. I free-wrote a lot of it, unsure exactly where the plot or web of the story would lead but eager to find out. Part One took pretty easy shape: a story about a theatre and the worlds within it made a lot of sense and developed nicely to what we'll call Plot Point #1 roughly 25 chapters in.<br />
<br />
Plot points are a fairly easy way of thinking about narrative arc used in screen and game-writing to create malleable, if perhaps slightly expected, plot developments. <i>Star Wars</i> is the easy example: Luke Skywalker's character development is a series of prescribed events that escalate the problem.<br />
<br />
Once, say, Luke leaves Tatooine, we hit the "middle" of <i>A New Hope</i>. Once the Death Stars does a firework, we hit the middle of the original trilogy.<br />
<br />
I'll opine here that the span with Luke on the Millennium Falcon learning Jedi tricks to his arrival at the rebel base is the most boring part of the film. I imagine it was also the hardest to write and act. It essentially links Luke's history to Luke's objective. All that really <i>happens</i> is Luke watches Obi-Wan get killed by Vader, and rescues Leia, neither of which is really strong enough to be a plot point on its own. <br />
<br />
This section forms a rising action to the rebel attack: the climax. It links. That's all it does, with entertaining scenes along the way. Plot Point #2 in <i>A New Hope</i> is probably the plan to attack the Death Star spelled out: it represents the height of the development before the climax. Everything between Point #1 and Point #2 is travel time.<br />
<br />
Think of a family vacation: you begin with initial excitement about the eventual destination, lots of fun for the older people in the exactitudes of planning, and so on. By the "middle," the rising action, you've had your first flat tire, family squabble, and horrendous dining-on-the-road experience. None of it will really ruin the fun of camping in the Laurentians Everyone will remember the massive rainstorm once there that flooded the tent. But the intervening bits get you there, like a good game of "Are We There Yet?" without a major problem (such as putting the book down, walking out of the theatre, or turning around).<br />
<br />
I finished Part One of my story in late November, and proceeded to give it a cursory edit. I was pretty happy to have it done and eager to move on, but I wanted things to be consistent first. I added a few chapters, cut a few others, and moved on in January.<br />
<br />
Immediately I felt like I was writing filler, spinning my wheels on a plot that had been vibrant but was trudging along now, sometimes quite literally. The direction was there, even--I had a goal in mind. But it took so long to get it there. Sure, the story probably needs a little tightening and maybe a couple of better scenes. But mostly, the problem is we're developing, and developing of any kind takes time--in this case nearly 40 chapters of it (!).<br />
<br />
In the "middle" of my project, one protagonist has to work out a contradiction of identity. Another has to find pieces of history scattered around. Neither of these is an unentertaining pursuit exactly and there are some good scenes, but you can feel the hollowness of even the best line or the heroic action. Inevitably, it has to build to something larger, namely, Part Three.<br />
<br />
That's not a bad feeling. Look at <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>. It opens with a bit of a nothing battle (Hoth) and then a fairly crucial if, frankly, boring plot point in Yoda's teaching of Luke. It's crucial to the story in resolving, philosophically, who and what Luke is. The movie ends with another key development in the direction of the saga: Han gets frozen. This sets up the third movie with a perfect hook (because we all know Han is coming back somehow) and sets up the climax of Luke's first fight with Vader. <i>Return of the Jedi </i>doesn't work without <i>Empire Strikes Back</i> being there.<br />
<br />
The middle part is entertaining enough. A good middle has its own arc, its own strands and narratives that rise and climax specifically within it (Han and Lando in <i>Empire</i>; a failing fortress in my project) to provide entertainment value. But as parts of the whole, they serve Part Three. It's difficult to have a story-defining battle in a middle section because at least one protagonist has to live. There has to be a greater villian, or there wouldn't be a Part Three, would there? The hero can't save the world just yet, nor can the grail be found two-thirds through.<br />
<br />
Tolkien does a decent job avoiding this in <i>The Two Towers</i> by making Saruman a strong villian in his own right and a villian quite distinct from Sauron himself. So readers gain something from the escalation in Rohan to Helm's Deep, and best of all there are layers beneath it to analyze and enjoy. But in the end, the Saruman episodes are still partially outside the main saga: they don't involve Frodo and Sam and the major quest at all.<br />
<br />
The process of composing a middle section, therefore, involves checking in again and again to make sure the link between parts is served. It's no good to simply create scenes of trudging from Point A to Point B, just as it's no good to entertain the reader in Part Two only to contradict Parts One and Three. Every event has to reach back to a previous hook and foreshadow a new one in the future.<br />
<br />
The practical effect of this process, I found, was a massive need for outlining. Leaving notes for myself was the only way I could keep the layers of meaning and plot consistent with what I'd already written. It meant that whenever I started to speed up into a new section with the same gusto I had for the first act, I had to slow down and tinker with everything to keep all the references and details consistent.<br />
<br />
I tried spinning wool once at an exhibition and was absolutely terrible at it. I would just start getting something recognizable when I'd have to pull everything straight and spin again. It felt like such a long, arduous process: spin, braid, reset; braid again, spin some more, and set again. It took hours and hours for me to make a very, very small strand of wool. But according to the woman watching me (while spinning her own wool so much more easily), I was doing the right thing. It just takes time and patience.<br />
<br />
Each strand of a story has to be woven together if we want it to hold anything. The strands that the free-writing of Part One--all those wonderful ways the story could go that it made the world feel almost limitless--don't quite work together. Spin too much and they'll become a nasty mess. The hand has to be light and very patient, indeed.<br />
<br />
Several of the chapters in my second part are garbled--the result of spinning too much wool through too quickly. At the slightest tug they come loose and have to be re-done.<br />
<br />
I tell myself that it will pay off in Part Three--after all, I always like <i>Return of the King </i>and <i>Return of the Jedi</i> most. The sense of completion and of strands finally coming together to form the whole of an ending is my favourite part both of reading and writing.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, the more threads of wool you have, the more spinning is required.<br />
<br />
With that thought, I'm giving up on fixing the printer and going to bed. I'll spin on here again some time soon. Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-2655956688829138352012-05-06T02:02:00.000-03:002012-09-30T01:33:42.473-03:00Revisions and Late '80s Pop BalladsI spent an entire academic year this past school term in an advanced fiction-writing course. It gave me all sorts of ideas for blog posts, some of which I will likely even get around to posting at some point.<br />
<br />
But for now, I'm going to leave those be. I don't want to derail what could otherwise be a useful evening by railing about the use or lack thereof of advanced writing workshops, nor the quality of "criticism" found within them.<br />
<br />
I simply want to meditate briefly on the value of, say, Michael Bolton, as an antidote to trying to incorporate revisions that are increasingly inane.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
To be clear about a couple of things: I like revising immensely, even my own material. It's great to see ways in which a story or article can be improved with tweaks and changes--and they can always be improved; even the worst suggestions have some use. I also always listen to music while I write. Always. I adjust it for mood, tone, volume and so on. The specifics belong in another post.<br />
<br />
When I revise, though, I find I need a particular kind of music and the kind of high-cheese love ballads so prevalent in 90s pop works well. It's not a genre I would often listen to while doing much of anything else. I've never listened to Bolton, Phil Collins or even the now-almost-corpse-like Backstreet Boys while writing. Wouldn't fly at all.<br />
<br />
It may be that the less-preferred kind of music allows a certain distance. If I listen to really emotionally-moving orchestral music very passively while I write (which I do), then more active listening to very different kinds of music can get me thinking outside the story I'm working on. Especially when I've been close to a specific set of characters or events for awhile, this can be valuable.<br />
<br />
In the case of this year's workshop revisions, the corny music had an added benefit: it shifted my focus off of the banal and badly-thought-out revision suggestions and onto something entirely else. In a sense, it distracted me. This helped me analyze each comment individually, accept some as experiments, and reject others. Everything seems to matter less when really super-sexy pop ballads are playing, and when I was less defensive I was better able to objectively evaluate what might work and what would not.<br />
<br />
I've had enough musical exposure to appreciate any kind of music. When I write I listen to anything from Broadway soundtracks to country to surrealist music. Revising, and I'm looking to be entertained, pulled away a little bit, so that the work forces me back in. I don't mean this as a critique of 90s pop ballads (I'm somewhat partial to Dan Hill ever since I saw him perform with Stuart McLean on <i>The Vinyl Cafe</i> live). They have a time and a place and a use for me.<br />
<br />
How else to deal with such gems as:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Chapter is aimless. Consider turning this into a lyrical essay,"</i></blockquote>
and:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Too much abstraction. People can't grasp what's going on. Use it
as sprinkles."</i></blockquote>
Sprinkles! Finishing off with:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Fiction is conventional and demands convention. This resists it."</i></blockquote>
Some of these might be semi-useful criticisms if argued and made with properly specific examples. Revising based on this, though, for a specific chapter in a long book, is not so easily done. It helps to sit back, close one's eyes, and listen to something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syvoQBKbsIg&feature=BFa&list=PLC1A17FF0D4E6F1EB">this</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVf940pO5ME">this</a>. (If you don't line cheesy music, don't click those links.) One starts to think about specific ways in which "too much abstraction" could actually be tackled in a productive way.<br />
<br />
Work-music doesn't always have to be perfect, or profound, or complex. It can just be nice to listen to. It serves a purpose, according to tastes.<br />
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Feel free to chime in with whatever works as "work-music" for you. But let's leave the "if you listen to X, you must like Y and write/look like/think like Z" judgments out of it.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-72294660699053976042012-04-15T22:50:00.000-03:002012-04-15T22:50:34.501-03:00Chai TeaApropos of nothing, I now quite like Chai tea.<br />
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I feel I need to blog about this. I'm on my second ever cup now and it's really quite good.<br />
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I had been sceptical of it. While I love the mysticism of it, I am at heart a British pragmatist. About three months ago I tried Earl Grey for the first time and the effect was really quite instantaneous. I converted quickly from Orange Pekoe. Chai took a little longer. I was tentative. It smelled good, but I messed the first cup last night up pretty badly and the aftertaste wasn't so good. The second cup tonight, though, seems to be an improvement.<br />
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Jury's still out on herbal. I'll have to try them eventually, just because. I don't drink coffee (see What Is This? for my usual line about that). There's something that fits my lifestyle about old-fashioned tea.<br />
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I keep a box of treasured Yorkshire tea in my cupboard, which I dip into on special occasions, difficult days, or particularly important writing nights. I still think that's my favourite, but a cup of Earl Grey--and now maybe Chai--does very well for a normal night.<br />
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Anyone else got any tea stories to tell? Are they better than this one? Good.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-24515881856692973412012-03-29T23:37:00.000-03:002012-03-29T23:37:08.596-03:00Firsts....Tonight I did something I have never done before: I helped organize a bar party.<br />
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I'm glad. It went very well, and I think those who came by the Grawood, Dalhousie's campus bar, for the final <em>Gazette</em> bash of the year enjoyed it, and this was the point.<br />
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Those who know me know I'm not the sort of guy who spends a great deal of time in bars. I write about them instead. I am the last person who would usually organize a party like this.<br />
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It's just one of the things that I realize have been firsts since I started at <em>The Dalhousie Gazette</em> four years ago. Tonight was my last real night as editor-in-chief of that paper. Our last paper comes out on stands tomorrow. It's been a lot of fun, and it hit me as I left the bar tonight how many firsts there have been in this job, and how grateful I am that they have been there.<br />
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I wouldn't usually do some of these things. I wouldn't usually experiment, but it always pays off when I do. It's experience, it's inspiration, and it's fun. So thanks to all who came out, and to Ben McDade and Paul Balite, who helped plan it with me.<br />
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I can honestly say I learned a lot tonight, and that's how a stint as editor-in-chief of the <em>Gazette</em> ought to end.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-45123621121723232762012-02-29T23:26:00.000-04:002012-02-29T23:26:39.668-04:00Top 10! Things Not to Do If One Wants to Post on a BlogThere are certain things that just have to bite the schedule sometimes. Like concert band rehearsal three weeks ago (I really was busy), like flossing one's teeth, like sleeping.<br />
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And maintaining the old personal blog started amongst much (much?) fanfare. I could offer a long and drawn out list of rational and reasonable excuses for not posting—no. I could humbly and graciously apologize (I humbly and graciously apologize for not posting—but, no). Or I could do what I meant to do five years ago at the very beginning of the Great Canadian Undergraduate Adventure (see also: sleep, lack thereof, papers, philosophy, journalism and Life). I could publish a Top 10 list publicly.<br />
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(Like anyone reads them on this blog beyond my mother and the <i>Gazette</i>'s sports editor—hi, Ian!)<br />
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Some context: I enjoy creating top 10 lists. They're not particularly original in formatting, but I'd like to think the content offers some sort of unique view on the world. Or it might make you laugh—a bit. Traditionally I did them on Thursdays, and emailed them to my mother. Since neither of these are true now and tradition is something I rarely follow at the best of times, here's Top 10! Now proudly on Wednesdays, or whenever I remember/get time to do it.<br />
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This week: The Top 10 Things to Avoid if You Want to Regularly Update a Blog!<br />
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10. Write for other blogs. The guilt about not posting then ends up multiplying into this raggedy, multi-formed beast-monster with seven wings and a drooling horse head that follows you through the corridors of your mind.<br />
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9. Enrol in journalism school. Many J-Schoolers do have blogs, and after three to five years the guilt will eventually overwhelm most students who end up needing one for the ever-evolving and extremely sexy-sounding “online CV.” The irony of this is that the time commitment required for journalism school renders reliably posting coherent thoughts to a blog almost impossible.<br />
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8. Begin or even think about beginning a novel. The truth of it is that while you get <i>loads</i> of brilliant blog post ideas while writing, they all resolve around complex meta-fictional literary techniques and really should never be hared publicly. I'm a fan of keeping my writing time private. And it also eats that precious time like you wouldn't believe, at least if you're serious about it. Actually, if you're writing fiction but aren't very serious about it a blog is probably perfect for you. <br />
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7. Own a TV. Although a really believe that television is becoming and has become a background medium (a future blog post topic—which I got while writing), it can be really distracting, especially if you get worked up about political scandals or bizarre refereeing decisions in sporting events.<br />
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6. Live with anyone else. The truth, at least as I see it, is that it is vastly preferable to talk to someone else than to the internet. This is often forgotten these days, but shouldn't be. Besides, there is nothing worse than trying to have a nice dinner-time conversation about blog postings.<br />
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5. Run for editorial positions on any campus paper, or for that matter, any volunteer organization. The amount of coordinating via email is astounding. The exhaustion even more so. Exciting personal projects like blogs, ground-up video game stories, and procrastination get utterly sidetracked by trivial responsibilities like putting a paper out, and paying staff.<br />
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4. Sleep. This is generally a good way to do just about nothing as a young adult because one's body demands just about a tonne of it. I could sleep most of the day if I wasn't concerned about things like my health and all the stuff that's already overdue.<br />
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3. Worry about procrastination. Actual guilt over procrastination leads to doing the things you are procrastinating about. An interesting philosophical paradox occurs when procrastinating about blogging, which is basically a way of procrastinating about doing other things. So how do you procrastinate about procrastinating? It's impossible, but when you are feeling guilty about not posting, logic doesn't matter any more. <br />
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2. Relax. Even if you do, as I do, take a certain amount of pleasure and gratification in writing to an audience (of none), coming up with blog posts and then editing them to within an inch of their lives because this process was hammered into you in first year J-School , the thrill of posting will never make up for the sapping, draining, energy-sucking drudgery of actually getting the post up, again, thank-you journalism training.<br />
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1. Think about how badly one needs the aforementioned online CV. Such thinking does not lead to actually creating such a page--it leads to long, dark, depressed evenings lying on a bed staring at the ceiling and wondering if one will ever be successful as a freelance creative professional. Such questions solve nothing and get nothing done. So get working on something else and stop reading this post now—you need a portfolio, go make one.<br />
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And that just about wraps it up for another top 10. Sometimes they are funnier than this. Sometmes they are not. It's up to you what you think.<br />
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In theory, since I'm now in my self-constructed authoring workshop with a tutorial in self-promotion (cough, cough), I will be able to post more frequently. But we've all said that before.<br />
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Happy blogging!Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-10992096400997836932012-01-02T12:44:00.000-04:002012-01-02T12:44:47.374-04:00The End of the WorldIs coming!<br />
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It's been overcast and rainy for about a week now, so I fully expect the Apocalypse by next Saturday.<br />
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It's really too bad I didn't get around to posting more before now, isn't it?Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-72627607344024408852011-09-10T00:17:00.001-03:002013-11-28T03:42:50.086-04:00Rant: Writing Clever JournalismToday I learned how to write clever.<br />
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I learned that alliteration is cool and makes you look like a leader in light language. I learned that putting any metaphor--any metaphor at ALL!--into writing makes you Stephen Hawking (smart!--see what we're doing here. Nifty, eh? I thought so, too). <br />
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Simple language can be beautiful, and I've heard many examples of this over the course of going on five years in J-School. There's also nothing I hate more than reading some cooked-up, purple-prosed, overwritten piece of artistic drivel, whether it happens to be fiction or non-fiction.<br />
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Nor do I want to seem like I'm discouraging metaphor and writing techniques like alliteration in journalism. The CP Styleguide could certainly use the odd little flourish, and too often news writing is devoid of personality. Writing with feelings gives it back.<br />
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What I take issue with, in the discussion of trying to <i>write</i>, is that there is a lot more to this craft than throwing a metaphor in or trying a little bit of mood. I'm by no means a great writer, but I know I'd cringe if I ever threw anything into any piece of writing, non-fiction or fiction, without reason or reflection. There is a craft here.<br />
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My general impression--and it is no more than general--is that too many people try to write, often quickly, and forget that a certain conservatism and selection is, in fact, a very good thing. At least, I suppose, they're using metaphor. There is more there, though. Do people who try to use metaphors know the difference between a symbol, an image, and a metaphor? I hope so, because if not, they get mis-used.<br />
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The opening of a news story is probably <i>not </i>a great place for metaphor or symbolism. It's too literary when you need to get news high in a story. You want to capture your reader/listener, but you don't want to mislead him or her, either. And metaphor, by its very nature, misleads. It presents one thing and means another. There must be a vehicle and a tenor. And you probably won't know the ground in the first graf of a news story.<br />
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Misusing metaphors gives all of them a bad name, so to speak. It means even fewer people actually know how to employ one. And using them is addictive--heaven only knows it's addictive--and overuse is very, very easy. That said, it might be interesting to try and read a newscast in verse, or stream of consciousness. <br />
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The wonderful combination of these two pursuits--and the people who get this balance <i>exactly</i> right--are the narrative non-fiction writers. Travel and magazine writers (at least the good ones) and those journalists who specialize deeply or who approach every story with patience and discipline (Stephen Brunt comes to mind) are the ones who seem to have enough craft and poise to sit back and <i>think</i>. It takes time to pick your spot and write well, to search and destroy, and to revise properly. Most news writing does not allow much time. <br />
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I don't want to come across as pretentiously suggesting that news writers are incapable of these things. They are, and I firmly believe anyone thoughtful can write well with enough practice. One can't assume, however, that complex narrative elements can just be thrown around at random. They take planning and they take care. As the saying goes, you have to learn the rules before you can break them.<br />
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So next time you think about using a meaty metaphor (alliteration and imagery in one phrase! Wow!), think whether you need it. Think about the effect it has. If you don't have the time or practise to think like that, do everyone who enjoys good prose a favour and stick to the simple language. It works, that's why we use it.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-3964865491315119522011-08-14T23:51:00.000-03:002012-09-30T01:35:33.389-03:00The WeatherOh, how easy it is to hate the weather. <br />
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8 hours in the sun refereeing, burning to a crisp despite high-powered sunscreen. Followed by a hot drive home and a nap in the evening humidity. Now I'm sitting in my room trying to write while ignoring the sweat. Ugh. Fan on setting two. Anything higher will blow the paper on my incredibly disorganized desk around. And that would be bad.<br />
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Who am I to complain? There's nothing like (or quite as quintessentially Canadian, really) as complaining about the summer heat after having spent all winter complaining about the cold. In February I'll be able to write a post about how cold and wet everything is and longing for soccer season. But right now, I'm just overheated and longing for hockey season (I noticed the first symptoms of Red Wings withdrawal when the free agent window opened--though for the record I like the Ian White signing quite a bit).<br />
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Part of the problem is I'm stuck halfway through a long and plot-contrived chapter pertaining to fire and smoke imagery. So I have to keep coming up with imagery for warmth and heat. I've always been one of those people who tends to feel what I'm reading/writing--so if I'm doing a desert, I head downstairs for a water bottle. Which is beginning to seem like a real good idea right now.<br />
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In fact, it's time I got back to trying to get through these trials of fire, so to speak. And making them make sense plot-wise. And I think I'm heading down for a cold drink. And turning the fan up to setting three, messy desk be damned.<br />
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(And having just written my first ever weather "article", that was way, way, way too easy. Now I know why journalists are always doing it. To any Gazette writers thinking weather stories are cool--think again.)Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-65373212136124976102011-08-01T01:16:00.001-03:002011-08-01T01:18:33.323-03:00Summer 2011: "Just Smile and Wave"Says all I really need to say about my summer.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/yOvmRSYeSJY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
I don't particularly like the movie, to be honest, but after a long day at the office, a rough game, a horrid night of writing, or another guilt trip about the frequency of my posting on various blogs, there's nothing like it.<br />
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I invite you to share in the fun, relax on an imaginary faraway beach, smile, and wave.<br />
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I'll re-post this whenever it feels appropriate.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-23683870020834685542011-08-01T01:06:00.000-03:002014-08-14T23:12:27.044-03:00How To Make Bad Writing Good Writing in a Good Way (Or: A Rant About the Editing Process)Rant time. I did mention there might be a few of those. And while we're on awkward openings, I'm falling into the habit of sub-titling my posts. I shall valiantly attempt to stop this from happening as soon as possible. <br />
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But it does segue nicely (<a href="http://idonotactuallyownamotorcycle.blogspot.com/2010/11/journalists-email.html">uh oh</a>) into a topic that's been bouncing around my head only slightly longer than guilt about not posting more frequently:<br />
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It's kind of fun--and it can make you sound <em>way</em> more intelligent than you actually are--to talk at length about the editing process like it's some kind of magic bullet. Like you can go from jot notes to polished product with a five (try 250) step plan. Partly it's been banging around in my head because I've spent a large part of my summer in the vicinty of another writer going through this process and all its assorted deadline angst, and partly it was motivated by a question posed to me about what to do with a really bad piece of writing.<br />
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Now, I should point out by way of disclaimer that I am pretty well one of the least-qualified people to actually give advice about mentorship. I'm an unpublished amateur author, 21, and just generally inexperienced. But whether my advice was at all helpful or not isn't the point. It keeps happening, so I have to deal with it. It got me thinking about editing.<br />
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I like editing immensely. It kind of makes me want to die a slow and painful death sometimes, and it makes me more fully appreciate the Vogon sensibility, but it is productive. And there's something mildly entertaining about finding out everything you wrote in chapters 3-7 contradicts a key plot element in chapter 19. It is, in a word, valuable.<br />
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I was taught the editing process very thoroughly in grade eleven--something I am incredibly grateful for, since it helped develop my masochistic appreciation for it. For 25 high school students, it had to be pretty basic: write down the mistakes you find on a sheet. Keep the sheet. That, though, led to analysis and reflection and eventually, changes for the better. And that's all you can ask for.<br />
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The point I am eventually free-writing (another nice, intellectual term for "ramble") my way to is a question: is the editing process absolute? Can it, say, take something terrible and make it good? <br />
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I'm inclined to believe that it can't. You can't take this blog post and make it into an academically-publishable essay. One thing can't become another entirely--thank the ineffable reader for that. Partly that's because editing is subjective and in its own way, creative, too. You can't take slop and make it gold (though there are a few philosophy professors who study alchemy who might be close to that than I), but you can help people.<br />
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There's a difference here, of course, between professional editors employed by publishing houses where a lot of money trades hands and people happening across someone's first few tries at creation. I'm writing this to those people. To the people who won't write the books on editing and won't read the ones that are written.<br />
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To edit well, and to really enjoy it, I think, you have to see the connections in whatever you're dealing with. Which means you have to appreciate the goal, the tone and the style of what you're working with. A writing workshop instructor I had who was <em>far</em> more qualified to discuss this than I am called this the "secret web of a story," a term which I think is absolutely brilliant, not only because a good piece of writing (fiction or not) should be a web of background details and information, but also because that web is inherently secret, both to the editor and the reader, and maybe to the author, too. In order to edit effectively, you have to know what is affected by everything else.<br />
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Take my summer of 2010, which involved working on a long-term project that was deemed to be too whingy, too negative and boring. Okay, fine, we all love reader feedback, don't we? But how to address this problem? The preferred solution of the (for lack of a better word) editors was to hack out the "depressing" bits and adjust the plot in the most convenient way possible. Sure, we had a story at the end, but it didn't make sense, didn't have a narrative arc, and was probably worse than what we'd started with (at least in my opinion). When you cut that web apart and glue its ends in different places, don't be surprised if you get a sticky, hairy ball that you can't ever seem to get entirely off your hands/clothing.<br />
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But if writers edited their own work, the world would be short of a lot of great writing, so there has to be a middle-ground here somewhere. That middle-ground has to involve both technical lingo from people who know stuff and are qualified (the narrative arc, for instance) and also the secret vision of the writer--a vision <em>no one else has</em>. That compromise is maybe just slightly easier to achieve than the resolution to the U.S. debt ceiling crisis. Throw in young writers such as myself and my peers who sometimes need a little help and it can get real difficult, even without the Tea Party and a lot of bankers.<br />
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So how to go about mentoring someone who needs a little work? Who needs help establishing that process? I learned a lot about that last year managing contributors for the sports section of the <a href="http://www.dalgazette.com/">Dalhousie Gazette</a>. The big thing I learned--and maybe the most important thing I could learn--was that everyone goes about it slightly differently. There is no right or wrong answer exactly. It's an exercise: a technical exercise and a creative exercise. Ignore one or the other and you're end result won't be good. Whingy or non-sensical, I guess. You get people who can really write but who can't focus (that's me, as you can probably tell from this blog), and you get people who need to take a step beyond the practical. It's your job as an editor/mentor to get them there. I believe everyone can. If you don't, I'd venture you need to find something else to do with your time. Everyone has a voice and everyone's is slightly different, and thus, valuable. When I try to help other writers like me, I do it because I want to hear more voices.<br />
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The catch is that you have to hear your own voice, too, and respect it. There's a lot of pride involved in editing from all parties. One of the clichés that gets thrown around a lot by people who have no idea what they're talking about is "don't be afraid to kill your babies." Babies referring to ideas, characters, plots, stories, events, grammatical free-wheelies, style over substance, etc. There's some truth to it, but it is, like much editing advice, a simple answer to a very complicated problem, and usually an answer spewed out by overconfident editors to writers who do not want to listen. Both of these parties are right about the problem and no resolution for the better is ever going to be reached by respecting the "babies" or the fact that they don't work in their current form. <br />
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We don't think in complete, polished sentences, so we have to work to create them. Throwing away every rough patch because it was a creative move that didn't come off would be a very bad idea. If every film has no risks, well, look around you. If every attacking play left too many holes in defense we'd never have any goals. You need time and trust.<br />
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I had the pleasure of working with a number of high-school writers during that aforementioned project and I learned very quickly to trust them. I trusted them as people, but I trusted their pride in their own work more. No-one wants to look bad. Every idea that comes out is made with good intent. Not all are good, but most have some kernel of usefulness, and can be nurtured. Nobody writes Michael Ondaatje's or Margaret Atwood's novels on first draft. <br />
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But even that little altruism at the end of my last paragraph is simplistic: nobody writes like Ondaatje or Atwood because they're unique. You have to trust people to find their own way, too, and become unique in their own right. I find there are a lot of people who try very hard to write like the big-league players and I've found these people the hardest to give feedback for in workshops and such. Not because they're writing is bad, but because it's really, really hard to find out what they're trying to do with their idea (again, fiction or article or whatever). Too often, people are too afraid to actually create their own web. They're too afraid to make their own idea or their own style. And they're often too afraid to share. That's a product of bad editing (and also a lack of self-confidence) and bad feedback. Tearing apart work by young or inexperienced writers--and I include myself solidly in that group--can do a lot of damage in a multitude of ways. The writers who worked with me through 2010 know all about that damage.<br />
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And that's the failing of easy, formulaic editing. We do <em>everyone</em> a disservice when we don't take time. I have plenty of experience in that as a staff editor at a student paper. Time is something nobody has and articles get a once-over and then go to print. The writer looks bad, the paper looks bad, and the editor looks bad. And everyone loses a little bit of confidence in themselves, and tries a little too hard next time. I've done that myself many times: you do a bad article on a tight deadline so next time you over-write your next one. Time isn't always available, of course, but sometimes even something as small as a re-read can reveal the intent behind what came off as whingy and depressing, but maybe wasn't intended to be.<br />
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Writing down a list of mistakes and things to correct is a great way to self-edit when you're confident of your own work, and when you know what's behind your story, linking it all together, making the meaning work, so to speak. But it's not a great way to mentor a writer. Finding some positives goes without saying--that's man-management--but you have to look a little deeper than that. You have try to grasp the style and let the creator grow into the work. Some things can be dealt with on fifth draft as opposed to first draft. Length is one of those things. Tone can be, too. And when you let the story grow through the process--i.e., you don't kill the babies, you let them mature into human beings; nobody likes infanticide--you get a better story and a clear and confident new voice. Hopefully.<br />
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Though harder in fiction, starting small is a good idea, too. Speaking for myself, I hate being forced to make a story into one specific medium before that decision can really be made. From the perspective of an essay or an article, it can come from the assignment and the expectations. Provide feedback. Provide goals for next time, things to do better. And most important, explain <em>why</em>. Technical stuff doesn't have to be learned by rote. You learn not to put weather in the lead by putting weather in the lead, then reading your story in the paper and realizing how unbelievably stupid it sounds as you slowly realize that eight other people have also written weather leads in this issue. When you find your own mistakes, it sinks in so much better than someone pointing them out to you--thus the beauty of the blank editing checklists I was given in grade eleven. There's something empowering--at least to me--about having a sheet with ten blank slots daring me to fill them. That somehow makes me want to go and find something. To be better. And whether the writer fills in two slots or 35, it's worth it.<br />
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There is no right way or wrong way to edit someone else's or your own work. A lot of it comes down to respect and trust--for the editor, for the writer, for yourself.<br />
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I really hope this "ramble" helped someone, because it took an hour away from the immensely pleasurable (and yet inherently frustrating) experience of getting well and truly stuck in the massive web of my current project that's still spinning out of my head every night. And there-in is the contradiction. Editing is like creating: pleasurable when it works and for its end product, but a massive struggle in the middle. <br />
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Keep trying and good luck. Remember to have fun along the way. There's nothing like reading something, whether it's a first-time writer or Margaret Atwood. Comments on your own experience with contradictions are welcome.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268742342248199186.post-7704591727240640762011-03-06T22:09:00.000-04:002012-09-30T01:37:54.741-03:00Innovation or Originality? What am I Talking About and In What Language?"'It is really, really hard to come up with solid game concepts and great characters,' said John Baez, co-founder of The Behemoth, an independent video game developer based in California."<br />
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That quotation is from a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/02/20/indie-games-originiality-sequels.html">CBC.ca</a> (yes, I'm a journalism student) feature by Peja Bulotovic entitled "Indie games counter sequel-driven market" and published on Feb. 22. That quotation is, in fact, the lead of the article, so right away, you know it has significance. And it does, for all the wrong--but just a few of the right--reasons.<br />
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It's the assumptions I struggle with when reading it. That it's "really, really hard" to come up with video game stories and characters. That's what's so wrong about it. Of course, it's right, too--there is nothing quite as agonizing as not having the right idea. But at least it's speaking the right language. That's a start.<br />
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Some context: I don't profess to be a video game industry expert or have any great experience in the digital community. I'm just an amateur writer with who thinks game narrative is a little more interesting than most people give it credit for. <br />
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It used to be the only article you could find on a mainstream media site about game creation was written in the language I like to refer to as corporatese. Not always a bad language, like all it has its time and place, but a language rather hopelessly focused on the latest <em>Halo</em> sales figures. <br />
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Looking at this article from that past perspective, it's refreshing. Looking at it as a creative writing student, it makes me want to take my head and drive it into my desk.<br />
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Character in this article turns into gameplay and the concept of originality is caught out by that wonderful corporatese term, 'innovation'. Which is a pity, since what we're talking about is a fundamental aspect of the creative process and the article really isn't able to access the processes of these creators, possibly because it's a technology article when it really wants to be an arts article.<br />
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And that's when my head picks up a little bit off my desk and regains hope. Because we are essentially discussing the value of something new. That's why character is so important--because character is relatable and it's new. They're the same thing.<br />
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The quotations from Jason and Matthew Doucette are straight out of an arts report. Words like "creative control" and discussions of personal taste! <br />
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It's a way of thinking as much as a way of speaking. It's somewhat invigorating to think that two groups of people--the observers and the creators--might actually begin to think the same way. <br />
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They're not there yet, there are still assumptions present in this article, but it's worth a read just to feel conflicted about it.<br />
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When these two sides eventually figure each other out, both legitimacy and expression increase. People care about the creative process, or I wouldn't be procrastinating about an assignment for a 100-person class on it right now. And people care about the gaming industry. There's a lot of shared concern there, and if the two sides can understand each other--can understand that the game developer's quest for a new gameplay system and the writer's quest for a new world or character are essentially the same thing--then the industry will access a lot of ideas and experience that have gone before in other media, and the creators will access a new medium to express in and to analyze. That's worth it.<br />
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The agonizing along the way, the articles that start to get it but then slip away, are part of the process. All one can do is keep finding characters to talk to. That's all journalists and creators do.Dylan Matthiashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11203812561831965407noreply@blogger.com1