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geek-patient-zero · 5 years

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Part 1, Chapter 1

Or: Big Detective

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes--die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.

“The Man in the Crowd”

Edgar Allen Poe

I’ve heard people say that beginning stories with quotes like this is pretentious, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered some for stories I’ve been thinking up. I’m partial to the “feel for your hatchet” quote from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for one of them. As for how this quote relates to the story, I guess it’s a good way to describe the Masquerade, or the World of Darkness in general, or as a fancy way of hinting to the audience about the nature of the story’s mysteries. Or it just sounds cool?

St. Louis—March 10, 1994

Missouri isn’t the place I’d expect a vampire story to be set, but I guess everywhere has its shadowy underworld.

Two years after the prologue, we’re introduced to the first of the main viewpoint characters. He realizes he’s being followed, thanks to “A sixth sense, the result of years of detective work...” He pretends to scratch his foot and casually scans the crowd.

It was late, nearly midnight, but in St. Louis’ ‘adult’ entertainment strip, things were just starting to happen.

Dozens of people crowded the sidewalk. Men and women, black and white, they were all part of the usual weekend crowd. Cheap whores in black leather outfits that exhibited all of their charms mixed with high-class hookers dressed in silks. In a tough economy, both were anxious for business. Teenagers and college students hunted for drugs, bargaining with street dealers for the best price. Red-faced drunks begged for quarters. Young kids, dressed in rags and violating the curfew, danced on street corners, looking to grow up fast.

A hellhole full of life, in other words.

Young and old, they shared one trait in common. None of them expressed the least bit of interest in the motionless figure of Dire McCann.

We get the full name of our first main POV character. It reminds me of when one of the Penny Arcade guys named their D&D character “Jim Darkmagic”, but without the self awareness.

Dire had been traveling around America for the past few months, so he doesn’t know who he could have pissed off enough recently to get someone to track him. He’s recently been working for Alexander Vargoss, “a rich and powerful industrialist”, and, unsurprisingly, a vampire.

McCann couldn’t believe that his missions for Vargoss had anything to do with his tail tonight. Nobody with any intelligence, even major crooks, hassled the secretive industrialist or interfered with his plans. Besides being incredibly wealthy, with connections in both the police department and the mayor’s office, Vargoss was also the most powerful vampires in St. Louis. In the argot of the Kindred, he was the Prince of the city. And, like the medieval princes of old, from whom the term had been taken (yeah, no shit), Vargoss ruled with an iron hand. Any Kindred or kine (human) foolish enough to cross him ended up dead. The permanent end of the Final Death.

The narrator tells us a little about McCann.

Mysteries annoyed McCann.

Then you’re in the wrong profession, buddy. Wrong franchise too, come to think of it.

Especially when they revolved around him. Though he possessed extraordinary patience, the detective never delayed the inevitable, As he repeatedly told acquaintances, he liked to face the devil straight up.

I’m now picturing McCann as one of those guys who force a catchphrase and annoy those acquaintances by trying to insert it into everything as the whole room groans.

“Beer shouldn’t be green, even when it’s St. Patrick’s Day. But I’ll try one anyway, cause as we all know... I like to face the devil straight up.”

Luckily for the other characters, he doesn’t actually use that phrase in the story.

Oftentimes, that policy lead to bloodshed. But McCann, though he deemed himself the quiet type, was no stranger to violence. When necessary, he was quite deadly.

It’s mentioned that McCann’s carrying a stack of letters and a small box, and goes on to explain McCann’s mail collecting habits; how he collects from an all-night delivery center because while it’s more expensive he at least doesn’t have to worry about clerks stealing anything valuable.

The certainty of being watched had not started until after he had retrieved his mail. That perplexed McCann. A stakeout meant a long-term commitment of time and resources. He wondered who was after him? And why? The detective meant to find out.

We’ve safely established that Dire McCann is one of those old hard boiled mystery novel style private eyes. One who occasionally does jobs for a vampire. Nowadays private detectives are usually portrayed as weird creeps who bug phones and peek in windows to take photos of cheating spouses, like paparazzi for normal folk. More realistic, sure, but not a portrayal that’d last long in this setting. They’d end up seeing much more than they should, and being weird creeps with a borderline illegal profession instead of quiet but deadly badasses with careful mail collecting habits, they’d be easily killed to uphold the Masquerade.

McCann decides to face the devil straight up and heads into a nearby alley that he’s familiar with, preparing a trap. As he goes through the alley, we’re told that McCann is a great big slab of meat of a man.

A big, broad-shouldered man, standing four inches over six feet and weighing near two-fifty, the investigator moved with astonishing swiftness.

Guess he’s called “Dire” because he’s to a normal dude what a dire wolf is to a normal wolf. Still a goofy name.

The alley is dark, no lights except for moonlight, and there’re rats and trash everywhere. Time for some social commentary.

McCann stifled a snort of disgust. So much for keeping the neighborhoods clean. The main streets looked fine, but out of sight, just beyond the bend, urban decay ruled. Decades of graft and corruption had taken their toll on basic city services. St. Louis was no different from every big city. The rich and famous received all the benefits of modern life, while the poor and middle class suffered with the crumbs. Things never really changed, McCann decided, his gaze searching the walls. At least not in his lifetime.

The story is peppered with bits like this. The World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, but sometimes it can get a little too real. You’ll see. Oh, and don’t think I missed that ominous last line about his lifetime. The narration insists that Dire McCann is human, though...

McCann hides in an alcove a dozen steps away from the twelve-foot high steel privacy fence the alley ends at, out of sight from anyone following him. From his topcoat (all the implied hard-boiledness of a trenchcoat but without looking like a hobo) he pulls out his gun. Vampires are hard to kill and most guns are useless against them, but since it takes time for them to heal enough force can immobilize them. That’s why the narration, somewhat over dramatically. reveals that McCann’s gun isn’t a .45 automatic or a .375 Magnum, but an Ingram MAC 10, whose bullets “could rip any normal man to shreds and smash a vampire flat.”

Eventually, the guy tailing McCann shows up.

Hugging the shadows, the newcomer was a short, stocky man in his mid-thirties, with swarthy, cruel features.

Swarthy, huh? As descriptions go, swarthy is like the evil twin of “olive-skinned”. Both are used by fantasy writers to describe people of color, but in a vague way that doesn’t tell you their actual ethnicity so sometimes they could just be white people with tans like the Dornishmen in A Song of Ice and Fire. While “olive-skinned” is generally a catch-all term, “swarthy” is more negative. Which is unfortunate since swarthy literally means “dark skinned”. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m accusing Robert Weinberg of being racist. I’ve heard people say that they thought swarthy meant something like “roguish”, like a thief or pirate or something. But I wouldn’t recommend using swarthy as a description when writing.

Also he’s called “swarthy” like five goddamn times.

The tail realizes he lost McCann and goes to examine the fence at the end of the alley, walking past McCann’s hiding spot in the process. Trap sprung, McCann steps out behind the tail MAC-10 aimed at him. After some back and forth (“Lose something, brother?” “McCann, right?”) McCann tries to ask who-

The detective never completed the sentence. The stranger’s right hand twisted unexpectedly. As if by magic, a thin cord flashed out from beneath the man’s arm and-wrapped whip like around the Ingram. McCann was caught completely by surprise. Before he could squeeze down on the trigger, the gun went flying from the detective’s hands.

Phhhhthahaha, that’s great! After all that build-up over how he uses a kickass MAC-10 instead of a Magnum like that pussy Dirty Harry, he’s immediately disarmed. By a guy who turns out to be a regular human, too.

Free of the threat of the submachine gun, the swarthy man attacked with a ferocity that had McCann reeling. A series of savage karate kicks to his chest sent the detective stumbling backwards. Steel-tipped boots felt like hammers striking McCann’s body. Growling deep in his throat, the assassin leapt into the air, aiming a sideways thrust for the detective’s head. Enough force propelled to crush McCann’s skull like an eggshell. But it never connected.

McCann grabs and twists the leg, breaking the assassin’s kneecap, then knocks him out with a wooden box. After a few minutes of searching, McCann finds his gun and the assassin’s rope.

A long thin strand of black fiberglass it was knotted in three places to crush to crush a man’s windpipe on impact. The weapon successfully melded melded modern technology with ancient sacrificial ritual.

Huh. Sounds like an interesting weapon for a guy who’ll turn out to be an unimportant throwaway assassin.

You ever heard of the inverse ninja law? How the more enemies the hero has to fight at once, the easier they are to defeat, while just one guy is a real threat? There’s a related trope that this scene reminded me of; the more unusual an opponent’s weapon is, the harder they are to defeat. A ninja wielding a katana is gonna be a chump, but the guy with the chain with a scythe at the end? Watch out for that guy. It would explain how the assassin could instantly disarm McCann like some sort of kung fu lord but go down in one move not long after he throws the rope away.

Course, that’s just tropey shit. The more practical reason the assassin lost was because he didn’t just shoot McCann after disarming him, instead resorting to riskier physical combat. But that’s why tropes like the inverse ninja law exist. They typically make the fight scenes more exciting and varied depending on context. It wouldn’t be much of a story if McCann lost his gun and then got shot in the head.

Still kind of funny how eccentric the guy’s weapon is and how much of a physical threat he briefly posed compared to how he’s about to be described. Reminds me of something I wrote during my teenage online role playing story days, where two of the protagonists fought some nameless generic guard and I made it weirdly dramatic and over the top.

McCann ties the assassin’s hands behind his back, with his own fiberglass rope to add insult to injury. He attempts to interrogate the assassin, who responds by demanding to be taken to the police and given a lawyer.

McCann smiled. “Funny thing about this part of town. Cops don’t come around here very often. They figure anyone crazy enough to wander about deserves what they get.” McCann rapped the muzzle of the gun against his prisoner’s undamaged knee. “You’re on your own, my friend. Back here, we’re isolated from view. Nobody can see or hear a thing. There’s no cops, no lawyers. Just you and me. And my gun.”

MAC-10 shots echoing out of an alley would get some attention, but the threat works. The assassin starts sweating and flickering his gaze between McCann and the gun.

Mentally, the detective shrugged in disgust. (Don’t ask me what a mental shrug is) He was wasting his time threatening this clown. It took a lot more than a veiled threat to worry a true professional. The swarthy man was cheap talent, hired merely as a diversion.

A cheap talent clown who was kicking your ass a few minutes ago, you smug meathead.

This bit highlights the problem with the previous fight scene. This assassin was shown just a few paragraphs ago to be an expert with an unusual weapon who could turn the tables on McCann even though the detective had snuck up on him and had a submachine gun aimed at him, and a good enough physical fighter to overpower McCann with karate kicks and nearly cave his head in, but now he’s presented as an incompetent and disposable pawn who whines about wanting a lawyer. The scene could have just had the assassin pull a gun on McCann, who quickly subdues him. It’d fit the assassin’s later description as unprofessional and amateur better. Instead, Weinberg tried to go for “cool’ but ended up with “silly”. So remember, writing something just because it’s cool is fine, but try to make it consistent with the rest of the story.

Now what was that about the assassin being “hired merely as a diversion?”

A decoy! The thought slammed through McCann as the sensation of being observed suddenly flared. Instead, the big detective flung himself flat on the ground in the darkness.

I like the needless qualifier that McCann is a big detective. There’s something cute about it.

The realization that this assassin was a decoy apparently triggered a sort of spider-sense. The moment McCann, who is large, dove to the ground, a second assassin opened fire at him from the corner of the alley. They missed McCann, despite his above-average size, but killed the first guy. McCann fires back, but the new assailant already fled.

“Strike quickly, then move. That was the operational procedure of a true professional. Never waste time on meaningless chatter or second tries. Mistakes like that were for amateurs like the dead man sprawled against the wall.

Oh what the hell is this? McCann was the one caught off guard by “meaningless chatter.” He was disarmed by the first assassin while he was talking to him. The guy was easily bamboozed by McCann’s “hide in an alcove and sneak up on him when he passes” trap, but McCann totally blew that advantage by talking so it doesn’t really count. The guy’s just blaming the poor dead man for his own screw ups. “A true professional wouldn’t have let himself get hammered in the chest by karate kicks, unlike this dead clown who totally got karate kicked and not me. Also wouldn’t have been disarmed by my, not his, weird rope thing that’s totally mine, not his.”

The big dick thinks “the real assassin” was gone.

A short, muffled gasp and a flash of white leather indicated that McCann jumped to the wrong conclusion. The detective shook his head in disbelief. The night held more surprises than he liked.

Three figures stepped into the moonlight.

We finally meet some goddamn vampires.

Their leader was a tall, aristocratic man with a face that appeared to be carved from weathered stone. He wore a black tuxedo with a ruffled white shirt, a red bow tie, and a matching red cummerband. To McCann, it was a costume right out of a wedding. Or a funeral. The detective, though, knew better than to speak his thoughts. No one dared insult Alexander Vargoss, Ventrue Clan elder. And the vampire Prince of St. Louis.

Gotta say, despite him being a Ventrue, I can respect the man for not being above walk down a filthy rat infested alley wearing a fancy wedding outfit just to dramatically reveal himself to the big oaf he occasionally employs.

A step behind him stood two nearly identical platinum blondes. White leather jumpsuits clung to their voluptuous figures like second skins. High cheekbones, pitch black eyes, and wide sensuous lips gave them a predatory look.

Well yeah, it’s a 90′s dark fantasy novel. Of course they’re hot.

McCann had encountered them before. They were Fawn and Flavia, Vargoss’s twin bodyguards. Silent and deadly, they never spoke. Or acted without direct command of their Ventrue employer. Assamite assassins, the twins enjoyed their notorious nicknames as the Dark Angels of the Kindred.

A name like ~*~The Dark Angels~*~ seems quaint nowadays, but again, 90′s fantasy novel. But hey, maybe they were named by a Toreador.

Fawn’s holding the corpse of the second assassin, a “horrified expression frozen on his face.” She has blood on her upper lip like an old “Got Milk” ad.

With a flick of her long tongue, she wiped it clean. Then, mischievously, the vampire smiled seductively at McCann.

The detective shuddered. Though she looked to be in her early twenties, McCann knew the girl and her sister were actually hundreds of years old. Oftentimes, the pair mocked him with suggestive gestures. They enjoyed pretending that passion still stirred within their perfect forms. But McCann wasn’t fooled. Along with food and drink, vampires no longer craved sex. For them, hot blood was the ultimate high. Carnal pleasures meant little to them. However, McCann had heard tales of Kindred who had taken human lovers in a desperate attempt to regain some of their lost humanity. The notion made his flesh crawl.

Way to be judgmental, investigatore grande.

There aren’t any actual sex scenes in this book, but trust me, the subject of undead sex will come up again.

Vargoss gives one of those humble little “we were just in the neighborhood” explanations. Specifically, they were on their way to McCann’s office to be haughty little undeads to their human freelance employee in a proper setting when they saw him enter the alley followed by “two lowlife scum”. They figured McCann wouldn’t want their help, so they stayed hidden.

“However, when your adversary chose to flee rather than fight, I demanded he stop.” Vargoss shook his head in mock despair. “The fool chose instead to pull his weapon on me. Fawn, of course, reacted.”

McCann loots the bodies, finding some money and a billfold he’ll examine later. There’s a paragraph giving us another glimpse at how cruel the world (of darkness) is, telling us that the assassins will be mistaken for vagrants and that since there’s fifty unexplained deaths in St. Louis every month, two dead bums won’t be mentioned in the newspaper. McCann says that Vargoss could’ve warned him before the second assassin started shooting.

“Nonsense,” said the Prince, smiling. “I had absolute confidence in your ability to deal with the situation. Circumstances proved that my trust was not misplaced.”

“That first fight, however, there I overestimated you. A shorter man with a rope was taking you to school for a while. No, don’t pull the stoic grumpy private eye act and deny what happened. We all saw it.”

“And if you were wrong?”

“There are other humans, McCann,” said the Prince. “Never forget that. I find you vastly entertaining. And quite useful despite your mortal limitations. I would mourn your passing. But you are not indispensable. There will always be others to take your place. In five hundred years, you will be no more than a pleasant memory. I will still remain.”

Vampires are to other monsters what elves are to other fantasy races: smug little shits. It’s why more people fantasize about banging werewolves and fish people these days. But Vargoss is talking down to McCann of all people here, so I’ll let it side.

“What a cheerful sentiment,” said the detective. He picked his words very carefully. Vargoss appreciated his honesty and his sarcasm—within limits. No vampire in St. Louis mocked the Prince of the city. Much less a human, no matter how entertaining. McCann tiptoed on a tightrope where undead horrors feared to tread.

“Ah, McCann. What a scamp he is with his silly first name and his sarcastic barbs. But not too sarcastic. He knows I can make him defecate in his hands and throw it at other people like the big ape he is.”

“I cannot afford the luxury of emotions,” declared Vargoss, almost wistfully. “We Kindred are an ambitious race. It is part of our heritage. More than a few of my loyal subjects believe that they should rule this city, not I. Too many of my nights are spent squelching their ill-conceived plots.”

I’m imagining Vargoss being voiced by David Warner here. You know, the guy who voiced Ra’s al Ghul in Batman: The Animated Series, The Lobe in Freakazoid, and that one crappy villain from Gargoyles.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” said McCann.

“Shakespeare understood the politics of power,” said Vargoss. “He should have been one of us.”

As long as he wouldn’t be made a Toreador, ‘cause then he’d spend his eternal life writing just the shittiest plays and sonnets imaginable. Also, careful there, Mr. Weinberg. Remember than Edgar Allen Poe is your dead poet waifu. You don’t want to make him jealous.

Vargoss has had enough witty back and forth and commands McCann to come to his club around midnight. He has a guest from overseas with news of “extremely disturbing events” from the former Soviet Union and for whatever reason he wants some human detective’s opinion on it.

“I’ll be there”, said the detective . “At midnight.”

“Because as we all know-”

“McCann, no-”

“I like to face the devil straight up.”

“Damn you, Dire McCann... Who’s even the devil in this context? What’s going on overseas? Me?”

Vargoss and the ~*~Dark Angels~*~ leave. As the chapter ends, McCann is standing alone in the alley with the two corpses.

Holding in his hands a small box and a stack of letters, several with foreign postmarks. And an enigmatic smile on his face.

#vampire the masquerade #vtm #vtmb #world of darkness #vampire: the masquerade #blood war

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televinita · 6 years

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Library Triage

Speaking of my incompetence, I managed to accidentally check out an avalanche of super-awesome-looking/hotly anticipated books with fairly restrictive deadlines toward the beginning of a 10-day hell period at work where I had no time to start them. I am almost out of it now, but they are basically all due by or before the end of June and my brain is spinning out trying to fathom how I am going to organize my reading schedule without rushing and ruining the books for myself, SO, time for project Talk It Out Concretely!

(or. you know. even more ramblingly than usual)

Starting with an achievement: Last night I finally had time to finish Fanny Fran Davis’ Everything Must Go, an absolutely delightful romp which was on its final renewal and only a week away from being due. Prior to that I was working on it in 15-minute breaks at work and 1+ minute stoplights on the commute to work. (seriously. thumbs up to its format.)

SO, HIGH ON THAT:

1. A & L Do Summer - Jan Blazanin: This is a book that Goodreads has been recommending to me for 5 years. I always thought it looked cute, but maybe not substantial, so I kept putting it off because it required an ILL request. But next week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “books to read by the beach,” and I saw this on my recs list again and went, “You know what? This is exactly that kind of book. This is exactly the right time of year to finally read it. I want juvenile cuteness that lets me vicariously be 15 (17 apparently?) again with months of freedom ahead to enjoy in a rural Midwest setting.” I’m struggling with whether to read this or the next book first, but I think this one will go quicker. Due 7/2, like the next two.

[edit: I waited until the day before it was due, for some reason, but it was everything I wanted it to be!]

2. Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard. Another book GR has been recommending to me for 5 years, another one that needed an ILL request. I figured I’d send away for them both together because of sort of similar themes in girl-bonding and rural locales, though this looks much more serious. It’s always caught my eye; there’s just something about the "young high schooler latches onto/idolizes Cool Senior High Schooler" concept that appeals to me -- oh, and only JUST NOW did I realize it's by the same author as my beloved Wanderlove! Definitely loving it now. Definitely.

[edit: accurate]

3. Heart-Shaped Hack - Tracey Garvis-Graves: After rereading The Island for the first time in 6 years and remembering how much I loved that romance/had anticipated more work from her, I saw this and immediately went, “I could cast Waige in this.” I am coming to the conclusion that this is untrue, because Mr. Hacker is turning out to be way too cocky for any character I’ve ever liked, but if I re-calibrate my expectations for what is actually being offered, I still feel like I will love this. And if that’s the case...there is a sequel. (which unfortunately would have to come rather far down on this list)

[edit: really should have waited for the sequel in hand! I think it will be better; this was good but rather more, uh, adult-romance-y than I expected so I’d like to at least see them in a higher stakes plot]

4. Going Geek - Charlotte Huang: technically due first, on 6/23 and it’s an ILL so getting it back is tough. BUT I am less interested in it than any of the 3 above, so if I don’t through at least 2 of them first, I’ll let this one go with no remorse. I only requested it because it seemed similar to Life in Outer Space, but that one was wholly satisfying on its own. This does look like a solid YA novel, but it doesn’t have a special hook, and I am up to my ears in Hook Books.

[edit: I made time! Glad I did; it was better than I expected it to be]

5. The Broken Girls - Simone St. James: Not a specific craving right now, but I have been on a wait list since it was released and mentally waiting since November because I love a good thriller with a mystery from the past & an abandoned building -- and then I forgot to suspend my hold and it came in before I was ready. Also due 6/23, and still hotly requested. I am probably gonna lose my shot to read this on time and have to wait another 4-6 weeks, but at least it’s in my home system.

[edit: I made time! Barely took me 10 pages to get addicted; SO WORTH IT.]

6. Learning to Stay - Erin Celello: This popped when I was looking for novels with brain-damaged spouses. I was looking for Waige-related reasons, and with the veteran angle this isn’t going to work for them, but its premise is irresistible to me and I have a suspicion who it’s perfect for: Barbie/Julia (with begrudging thanks for season 3 of Under the Dome for actively showing me what it could look like). Not due until July 8 and will probably delay it until after #7, actually, because I’m having trouble focusing on other ships right now, even ones I adore.

[edit: well done, though I couldn’t keep my characters straight because there was an annoying lot to match up with my original pick, so I kept unintentionally running everything twice.]

7. Shine Shine Shine - Lydia Netzer: All right, full disclosure -- this one is my final, brightest and best attempt to find Walter/Paige (complete with a Ralph!) in a novel. I am setting myself up to fail, in part because the premise includes the idea that the central female character is kind of off in her own way. But like. How else* was I supposed to react to “genius engineer husband whose wife has 'taught him to feel -- helped him translate his intelligence for numbers into a language of emotion‘ + autistic son”???

(*alternate option for how else: I’ve got Happy in my back pocket: As children, the temperamental Sunny and the neglected savant Maxon found an unlikely friendship no one else could understand. Even the ironic name fits!)

This one just got here and I’ll pick it up in a few days. It’s a home system request, but we only have one copy and I already had to wrestle it away from someone who kept it 2 days overdue* so we might tussle again. (*you might be asking yourself why I did that, given the state of this post. I don’t know either. I was in a feverish delirium of reading desire by that point and every book I found online looked more imperative to get immediately than the last, but I was stuck waiting for all of them).

[edit: it was beautiful and I have so many favorite quotes and I cried a lot and it was worth it even if only one character lined up well; the pair won my heart on their own merit.]

8. 45 Pounds (More or Less) - K.A. Barson: a cute YA novel about an overweight girl trying (or at least being pestered by her mother) to lose weight. I’ve been saving it for motivation for when I actually attempt to exercise / not eat like crap this summer. This, like the remaining books, has essentially no due date since no one is likely to request them out from under me even once I return them.

[edit: tossed back unread for the time being. too many shiny new things appeared.]

9. Voracious: a hungry reader cooks her way through great books - Cara Nicoletti: this is either going to help the above plan or hurt it, but it’s such a great premise, especially as someone who once considered starting a side blog devoted to highlighting passages in books that describe great meals. I am not actually sure if I will finish it at all. But I’d like to try.

[edit: see above.]

10. Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading: this book was mentioned in a review for one of the lesser-known books in it; I forget which one, but it intrigued me because there are TONS of titles in here that aren’t usually mentioned in online lists like this, and I love when people talk about books I have actually loved instead of pretending that Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower are the best examples of universal YA literature we can find.

(What’s most likely going to happen is I’m going to read 3 chapters and then wig out about how many I haven’t read and put it back until I have, so I can enjoy the comparisons in our reactions instead of being unduly influenced, but... )

11. Sixteen: short stories by outstanding writers for young adults: Absolutely lowest priority, probably will never get to it, but if I had no other reading responsibilities right now? I would be reading it now. I spotted this when I went to pick up the above, and I don’t even usually like short stories, but this is a compilation of outstanding writers for young adults IN THE 1980S. And there is a very specific style to young adult books from the 1980s that sometimes, I just absolutely crave. Let me give you more of its description: Stories dealing with teenage concerns, written especially for this collection by well-known authors of young adult novels such as the Mazers [that would be Harry and Norma Fox], M.E. Kerr, Robert Cormier, Bette Greene, and Richard Peck. Biographical sketches for each author are included, as well as follow-up activities for the reader. Me, gesticulating wildly at basically all these names: I KNOW THEM! (as authors, I mean. Once upon a time the library’s teen section was full of their work and I devoured it as voraciously as the newer stuff)

[edit: it was short, so I read it and am glad I did.]

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AND AS PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED: THERE ARE STILL MORE I WANT, but I can’t think about them right now.

#reading triage #library checkouts #aw crap I just realized I forgot another two I actually have checked out #but I have been checking them out since April and still haven't gotten to them so IDK if I will bother

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mermaidsirennikita · 7 years

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September 2017 Book Roundup

Undoubtedly, I read two standout books this September: Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust, a sometimes-macabre retelling of Snow White (with a feminist spin) and Mari Lu’s Warcross, the story of a girl, a tech mogul, and a virtual reality game that can make or break your future. On to October--I’m going to try to read as much spooky stuff as possible.

This Is Not The End by Chandler Baker. 3/5. In the near future, a substance called “lifeblood” has made it possible for people to be resurrected even years after death, revitalized and fully healed. Laws restrict how many “resurrections” people are allowed and when they can resurrect someone--you can only resurrect one person, and you can only perform the resurrection on your eighteenth birthday. Following a terrible car accident, Lake has lost her best friend Penny and her beloved boyfriend Will. Not only is she--mere weeks from her eighteenth birthday--torn between which to resurrect; she also has already promised her resurrection to another person. This was a very quick read for me, and I found it compelling and at times moving. So many different issues are tackled--are resurrections ethical? Should people be held to promises they made--and in Lake’s case were pressured into--years ago? Hell, Baker even goes after the ethical arguments surrounding assisted suicide and the disabled. The problem is that while I understood the logic of why only one resurrection is allowed per person (population control) I couldn’t understand why someone could only have a resurrection done on their eighteenth birthday. Sure, I see why only legal adults can request resurrections, but why is the request time such a short window? More concerning was the fact that there is a romance in this. Yes, a romance between Lake--a girl who just lost the boyfriend who’d been her best friend before they dated, a guy she fantasized about marrying someday--and some other guy... weeks after said boyfriend died. I can understand having sex with someone while grieving, but this felt more like we were supposed to see Lake beginning to fall for someone else. I’m not saying that can’t happen, but it distracted from Lake’s story and the themes surrounding it.

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney C. Stevens. 2/5. Billie is a preacher’s daughter in a small Kentucky town. She and her best friends--collectively known as the Hexagon--have been tightly-knit for years. But everything changes when Billie finds that Janie Lee and Woods, two of those friends, have feelings for each other. And Billie might just have feelings for both of them. “Dress Codes” is about figuring out gender and sexuality in a John Hughes sort of lens. Stevens does have a really distinct voice, and some turns of phrase were beautiful--while others were, in my opinion, a bit overwrought. A bit too forced. Billie and her friends just didn’t think or speak in a way that seemed recognizable to me as teenager-y. And while I was touched by the story, in a sense--it was also quite boring. I wish I’d loved this, but I just didn’t. I think many people would, it’s just not my cup of tea.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust. 5/5. This retelling of Snow White takes on the dual perspectives of Nina, the “wicked stepmother” and Lynet, the cossetted princess. Nina’s side of the story takes place from past to present, telling the story of a girl with a heart of glass--assured by her father, the alchemist that replaced Nina’s rotting heart to save her life, that she is incapable of love and being loved. Lynet is her stepdaughter, the spitting image of her mother, protected by her father, and made of literal snow. Fate has pitted these two women against one another, despite their love for each other. Time will tell if they will fulfill their destinies. Pitched as a feminist fairy tale retelling, this book will disappoint you if you’re looking for knife-wielding assassins and monologues about how women are meant to rule. I love that it didn’t have any of that. This story is made of subtler stuff, its beautiful, sad prose focusing on the relationship between Nina and Lynet, and how they’ve not only been forced into roles they don’t want to play by men--they’ve been turned into the antagonists in each other’s stories... by men. Poetic and beautiful and not without a dash of romance--one of them featuring wlw at that--this is a must-read if you love gently dark fairy tales that will hurt your heart. (Even if it’s made of glass.)

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart. 2/5. I’ll be honest, I skimmed this for the most part. As someone who hasn’t seen or read The Talented Mr. Ripley, I’m told that this is basically a gender-flipped version of that, following teen criminal Jule... or is she??? The thing is that this is a story told in reverse-chronological order, and even though I figured out the twist very early on, how we got there was so confusing that I didn’t even want to figure it out.

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh. 4/5. In the near future, beautiful women who’ve died young are cryogenically frozen and temporarily “awoken” for five minute sessions for men who want to talk to them--typically, men who can afford the $9,000/5 minutes fee that comes with these “dates”. If chosen to be the brides of these men, these “bridecicles” are revived permanently--making them desperate to do whatever they can to be chosen. This story focuses on three people: Mira, a bridecicle who’s been frozen for decades and longs for her lover, Jeanette; Rob, a young man who falls in love with bridecicle Winter after accidentally killing her; and Veronika, a dating coach who can’t seem to find love in this connected world. This is a sad, occasionally funny story about the perils of a world in which we’re so connected through technology that actual human technology is difficult to find. It’s not super unique in that respect, but the bridecicle concept is both fascinating and grotesque. I couldn’t put it down. With that being said, the romances in the book were a bit lackluster for me, and I at times wasn’t sure about how Veronika’s perspective connected into things. Still a really good, thought-provoking read.

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. 2/5. Thanks to a service called Death-Cast, everyone is given 24 hours (or so) notice on the day of their death. Teenagers Mateo and Rufus have just found out that they are going to die, and though strangers, meet up through and app called Last Friend and decide to live out their last day together. Just... I don’t think Adam Silvera and I are going to be friends, y’all. First off, this world is pretty much ours aside from the weird death service, and there was really no explanation as to why everyone just took this service at face value. Sorry, I really feel like we’d fight that. Also, Rufus’s dialogue in particular was cringe as fuck. It was so uneven--he’d use slang and I got the impression that Silvera was going for “impoverished gang kid talk” with him but then he’d have a whole paragraph of dialogue in a manner totally inconsistent with “I’m in mad love with this dude” or whatever. And there were so many other points of view when Rufus and Mateo’s were the only ones that really mattered. Like, points for diversity, but nah on everything else.

Warcross by Marie Lu. 5/5. Hacker and bounty hunter Emika Chen is, like everyone else on Earth, a fan of the virtual reality game Warcross. As poor as she is, she hacks into the game--and in a desperate moment, steals an item that would fetch the money she needs on resale, using a glitch to do so. This catches the attention of Hideo Tanaka, Warcross’s billionaire creator, who flies her to Tokyo and offers her a job (that pays 10 mill, by the way): she needs to enter the Warcross Tournament--a major event--as a player and secretly act as his bounty hunter, searching for the unknown--and dangerous--Zero, a mystery to even Hideo. So this is hard to describe but damn is it good. Emi is a character who has an unlikely resume but it actually seems plausible in the context of her life and her world. Same goes for Hideo, who is probably one of my favorite characters to come out of YA this year. The stakes build as the novel does--and as Emi grows close to Hideo, which, like, obviously she was but fuckyeahI’mintoit. It’s super fast-paced, entertaining YA and I honestly enjoyed it more than Lu’s Young Elites series, which I loved in the beginning but was ultimately disappointed in. So. Hoping the rest of the series lives up to this book!

One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake. 4/5. The second in what is now a four-book series, One Dark Throne continues the story of triplet queens Mirabella, Katharine, and Arsinoe. Where Mirabella was once the clear frontrunner to be the next crowned queen, recent events have revealed that it could be anyone’s game--though the fact remains that the winner must kill her sisters. Arsinoe hides her true gift from almost everyone, pretending to be a naturalist still; Mirabella deals with having her world rocked, and questions her relationships with her sisters; and Katharine, called the “Undead Queen” grows increasingly unstable--and powerful--after her near-death experience. I can’t say that One Dark Throne was quite as compelling as Three Dark Crowns, as it was a very talky book. Furthermore, Mirabella, one of my favorites of the first book, was a shadow of her former self. Arsinoe is clearly poised as the protagonist of the sisters, but... I don’t dislike her, but I don’t find her compelling either, and I don’t care much for her friends Jules and Joseph either. They’re so typically good. Katharine is worth reading the whole book for--you never know if she’s mad or aware of some truth nobody else has caught onto. Furthermore, she has the best romance in the book--taking the form of her fraught relationship with Pietyr, a boy she loves and hates. While I still love the concept and the world and Katharine and all the poisoners really, and this was a good book, I think everyone else needs to get on my girl’s level.

There Is Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins. 3/5. New to the tiny town of Osborne, Nebraska--and hiding from a dark past--Makani lives with her grandmother, is trying to ingratiate herself her new friends, and pines for school outsider Ollie. Then kids start getting murdered, in shocking ways. As Makani struggles to avoid being next, she grows increasingly afraid of her secret being revealed. This book has been compared to Scream, and while there’s sex and blood, Scream it is not. I mean, it’s basically one of Perkins’s romance with some murder thrown in, and it disappointed me because I wanted so badly to be impressed with the genre shift. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but like... just that. It wasn’t the genre. Shit--I thought that at least the mystery of the killer would be good, but it wasn’t. It kind of shocked me to read the author’s note about Perkins spending six years researching this and workshopping the book, and--not to be mean, but while it was entertaining, that effort did not show.

The Merciless by Danielle Vega. 1/5. Girl goes to new school. Girl makes new friends. New friends suggest performing an exorcism on another friend. And so on. I thought this would be fun gore, and while it was gory, it was... not good. So bad, really. The book was incredibly basic and boring, and took the least interesting turn regarding the exorcism possible. I hated it.

#books #book recs

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graftonway · 7 years

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we shall fight

It’s been hours since the movie ended and I’ve taken the train home and listened to music and washed up and eaten grapes and scrolled through tumblr and still all I hear is this:

tickticktickticktickticktickticktick

You hear it throughout the film. It stays with you, seeping into your brain until you’re conditioned to it, until everything ticks and continues to, until you’re hyper-aware of rhythm and even phone notifications blinking, your typing, remind you of it. A friend described it perfectly as taking a long breath and not being able to breathe while holding it. The feeling that’s dropped to the bottom of my stomach hasn’t left yet; I’m still waiting for something to happen. I don’t even know what, but it’s stifling, tense, overwhelming. And that is all of Dunkirk in a nutshell.

This isn’t, strictly speaking, a war movie. Frankly I’m not even sure it’s a movie. It seems to be - or at least pretend towards being - everything: horror, thriller, documentary, symphony, cinematography, emotion, art. Much like the way it spans all three branches of the armed forces (land, sea, air), it tries to be everything at once. Perhaps in the hands of a lesser director this would have ended a disaster, but - and forgive me if I’m being crass with this comparison - Nolan, like Dynamo, plucks salvation from what could have been absolute catastrophe.

The first thing that you take away from Dunkirk is the sheer scale. Of course, as a history student, I’ve seen the photos of the beaches before, long unyielding lines that stretch as far as there is beach. Nolan does it slightly differently. Instead of one snaking, scattered queue there are multiple short ones, cinematic as anything and yet still overwhelming in number. It makes for a great introduction to the film, sets the stage for what’s to come. The aesthetic beauty that war sometimes begets versus the horrific reality it encompasses. The constant push and pull between the patience of the body of waiting men, never heard once to complain, and lack of time that’s played out again and again. Tiny, moving human parts and the weight of the unmentioned German war machine.

Nolan’s movies are always clever, though here the cleverness isn’t as immediately obvious as something like Inception. It’s a layer that you peel back and revel in as you watch. It’s something that builds up, in all its scattered parts and broken pieces, pieces that you collect and store until they come together and make sense. Take the premise of time here, for instance. Words on screen that are always meant to provide context do the opposite here: ‘the mole / one week’, ‘the sea / one day’, ‘the air / one hour’ make no sense to the viewer as they settle in. But all it takes is for one shot - Cillian Murphy’s face in the dark on a boat, straight after his appearance in the bright sunshine on a different vessel - to realise what it means: the action is all taking place in a different time scale. And that moment hits you like a punch in the gut, even though it’s the most simple of revelations. A perfectly positioned callback. Without even knowing why you begin to watch the film differently, all because of the buildup that explodes with one miniscule yet incredibly powerful detail.

It’s this same kind of buildup that squeezes itself into the music. The movie lurches between sound from the get go - the quiet of walking down the street to the startling pops of gunfire, the brief moment before the torpedo hits to the jarring explosion. War sets in here without a single line of expository dialogue, the way it can weigh down other films (the “war is hell, boys” trope that even Hacksaw Ridge was guilty of). Instead all we get is the constant, jarring soundtrack, so loud and in your face that you are drawn into all of the violence and spectacular chaos (something that the multiple timelines also lend themselves to). This builds and builds until it ends, abruptly, twice: firstly, when the Little Ships come into view, and secondly, on the train that Tommy and Alex crumple into. The suddenness of the way it ends is as jarring as any explosion or loud dramatic orchestral note, all the more sharp for its absence. We get sweeping, nostalgic strings over the view of the flotilla, and pure silence (combined with the same sweeping music later) when Tommy falls into the seat.

Which is why so much weight comes to rest upon just these two scenes - the ships and the ending - and why I want to talk about those in particular. It will come as no surprise that they’re the two I cried at; as a kid I read about the Dunkirk spirit and the Churchill speech, and they both have special meaning for me. Add to that me just being a complete and utter sap for nostalgia, sentiment, painfully obvious emotional manipulation.

There’s enough emotional impact in the story of the Little Ships themselves that any film could pull it off with suitable heroic payoff, but it’s just done so very well here. The ticking of the pressure cooker and the fear of death instantly vanishes, replaced by the heartwarming, exceedingly British orchestra. For there is some measure of nationalism (I hesitate to say propaganda, but) with this, as with all war movies; it’s an unavoidable trope, yet one handled so well here. It’s muted - the only flag is the one in the small corner of a larger blue flag, blurred in the background of Mr. Dawson’s boat. Bolton (a place name in and of itself) calls out to some of them, asking where they’re from. And in the end the boats go by an approximation of Dover. But the real focus is on the humanity of the people who came to save the troops. No dialogues or stars in these scenes: just civilians, just ‘home’. Some reviews were critical about the lack of character names and the like, but I think that was done intentionally for this reason, to demonstrate how humanity is about being and not knowing. With the lack of the tickticktick in the background Dunkirk’s first message is, ironically, hammered through: in a movie so packed with tension, it isn’t actually the tension that’s important, but how we escape it. Only later do you get introduced to some of the characters’ personal lives - Dawson is so determined because his son died - but that doesn’t matter, because the heroism is already there. If the movie is a breath you’ve been holding then the Little Ships are the moment you breathe out.

Character development is hardly present in the movie, which makes it all the more impressive that we still manage to feel for and care for every single one of them; I think this is one of the greatest achievements of the film, in that Nolan somehow gets to the heart of war and the rawest of our emotions. Too many war movies get bogged down in character development, the false belief that you need to know the character in order to feel for them shifting the focus away from showing actual war itself. But Nolan understands this, and makes the choice not to identify his characters. The three Mole soldiers look the same; the French soldier’s real name is never given; and Tommy’s name is a generic epithet for all British soldiers. They have no personal characteristics at all. And yet, when Gibson is drowning inside the boat, your heart seizes; you want him, desperately, to get out. Here Dunkirk takes on the shape of the great war novels, like the nameless French soldier in All Quiet On The Western Front. This is the horror of war - that everyone dies - and the real way to experience it is being frightened of death itself, not just fleshed-out characters you have come to feel for dying.

In fact there’s barely any dialogue in the movie, either, except for necessary communication; Bolton is the most heavy-handed in exposition, but otherwise words are limited to observations about the tide, speculation on target practice, explanation for locking the door. Which is why everything that isn’t technical carries so much weight. Collins’s breezy ‘afternoon’ regardless of his near-death experience might be played for laughs but it’s also a conscious remarking on the stereotypical British spirit. One that struck me deeply is Peter’s ‘he’s fine’ to the Shivering Soldier (or something to that effect) - in just one phrase the dilemma of shell shock, the question of blame, and the soldier’s innocence are perfectly captured. But my favourite, of course, as someone weaned on Churchill, is the speech.

As a twelve, thirteen year old I memorised that speech, word for word, all the way till the end. I’ve listened to it many times. And I can’t even begin to explain how emotional I got when Tommy began to read it out and all the cuts from each time period began to intersect with each other. If ever the movie was disparate (and I don’t think it was, and I don’t agree with people who did) it came together at the end, each thread drawn together by possibly the most iconic, recognisable historical device. The sense of unity, of destiny, of a swelling, growing belief in the job left. The two last images of the film - the burning spitfire and Tommy’s face - cleave so perfectly into each other; I don’t think I’ve felt that kind of breathtaking momentousness from an ending for a very, very long time. Farrier gets captured but he’s also arguably the biggest hero of the film, saving countless numbers of people on the beach that hour. He ends up captured and his plane ends up burning, but the Germans didn’t burn it - he did, and in doing so it becomes a symbol of defiance in the face of defeat. We are always reminded that this is a defeat. But that doesn’t signal futility and devastation.

One of the reasons I say that this isn’t a war movie is because the enemy is never really there. Besides the last scene, where Farrier is captured, you don’t see any German soldiers (and even those are blurred out). That gives you the impression that this isn’t about triumph, in any way, but about survival, as the old man in the end so neatly put it. All we did was survive. That’s enough. Many horrors of war are depicted here. Drowning in the locked hull of a torpedoed ship, waiting patiently on a packed bridge for Messerschmits to strafe you. Violence, while not graphic, is never shied away from. Tension and impending doom is built masterfully, whether through Collins’ helplessness watching Farrier or Bolton closing his eyes to wait for death. But while you get the feeling that it is inescapable, you never get the feeling that it is insurmountable, and that is what Dunkirk is about, really. My major qualm with the movie before I watched it was how they were going to turn it into a triumphant, gun-waving kind of thing when it was a defeat. But it’s not about defeating the Germans, because as Churchill said wars are not won by evacuation. Not even about the end of a battle given the continuous references to what is yet to come. It’s about what matters most to us, what the ‘Dunkirk’ used in modern British parlance now refers to: human spirit and endeavor. Battling on.

Dunkirk is probably not the greatest war movie I’ve ever watched (although that is a topic for another time). It has, of course, its problems. I’m not sure how much credence the lack of poc claim has as I haven’t had the time to go look it up yet, but other tiny things niggle here and there. Yet one of the major criticisms I’ve heard about this movie is that it’s too intense and action focused and, of all things, I think that that’s the least concerned anyone should be about it. You can’t capture all of war in a single movie. You can barely capture certain experiences. If other movies are allowed to develop other aspects, like character and the mundanity of war, why shouldn’t Dunkirk be allowed to dig deep into the terrifying tension and uncertainty that is so fundamentally a part of it (being shelled while in foxholes is another example that comes to mind)? There is emotion in intensity, and humanity is found everywhere. Even in the most painful, most terrible of times.

There’s a trope in Waiting For Godot about the weary, fallible hero, the human struggling to create meaning and stay alive in the most downtrodden noble sense. It’s a trope I’ve always thought applies to the way the British view themselves and certainly something that applies here, weary soldiers and civilians alike picking themselves up with the haunted promise in Tommy’s face. Youthful and yet tattered, dark and hollow yet with a measure of steel that lends backbone to that famous line: we shall go on to the end.

#dunkirk #dunkirk movie #christopher nolan #film analysis #i could go on about the cinematography more probably i need to watch it again #god the sound #cinematografix

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[MF] The Uncanny Canopy

Source: https://athousandwrittenthoughts.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/the-uncanny-canopy/

I used to live on the west end of a relatively new estate during the early years of my childhood. Before I begin discussing these series of events, let me say for the record that I had been subject to intense psychological screening throughout adolescence, and aside from mild depression and anxiety, I received a clean bill of health. If a psychotic break nor collective delusion cannot explain what me and friends went through in what would otherwise be described as a rudimentary upbringing in English suburbia, then not all is as it seems in this world. What was meant as a harmless exploration into the novel and exciting put me through a experience like no other and turned my perception of the world on its head. My story begins shortly after I was old enough to play on the streets with my brother, but never truly took root until the later stages of my primary education, so I will start where appropriate to help you understand how this all came to be.

Me and my older brother used to play with some of the kids who lived on the same street--or "close"--as us, and their friends from neighbouring closes would join in every once in a while. We would often play games on the tarmac, or play cricket and football on the greenery near our houses. It was mostly harmless, although games would often go too far sometimes. The quest for entertainment frequently devolved into accidentally pelting footballs at the doors of residents, knocking on doors and running away in the vein of knock-knock-Granny, and one incident even led to intervention from the school superiors and having appropriate sanctions exacted as a result. When we weren't loitering, someone would end up going home early upset due to an argument, and we would hold grudges against each other for a few days until the idea of playing an imaginary game of "army" later on in the week would signal that tensions had been relieved.

On a scale of a silver spoon in the mouth to a hard-knock life, we were firmly planted in the middle. British youth at its purest.

My story takes me beyond the cul-de-sac and into remnants of nature that served as a reminder of our estate before its construction. At the end of our street was a narrow path that was surrounded by two small "fields"--or patches of greenery; anything looked like a field at that age. The path branched towards the left and right after a short stroll along it: the left took you to the outskirts of the estate, and the right took you along another path to the estate park, where families took their children to play on the swings. Going towards the outskirts of the estate and entering the estate park were the established lines set forth by parents, and we never crossed those lest we face groundings and other punishments such as having the PlayStation taken away. Stay where I can see you was a rule-of-thumb imposed by parents.

In hindsight, it was probably the desire to disregard parental advice that instigated the events of my tale.

Playing a hide-and-seek tag hybrid was a favourite during childhood. We would have a designated amount of time to run and hide, and this would often lead us to hiding in the hedges--or "bushes", as we called them as children--dotted along the edges of the fields we used to play on. These privet-leaved bushes acted as excellent camouflage for hiding, and their density prevented sunlight from entering the bushes and were the go-to place to hide in. The darkness and the abundance of imagination at that age allowed for some fantastic adventurers beyond hide-and-seek, with one afternoon having us occupied with a friend who had been watching Planet of the Apes. We used his inspiration to collect fallen branches to build "platforms" higher up within the trees, using them as observatory platforms for the oncoming apes that were set to assail us. We would also find the biggest sticks we could from the bushes to prepare for battle and do imaginary battles with them on the ground.

The best game in the bushes involved simple exploration. Most of these bushes never stretched great lengths across the fields, but the navigation between branches created the illusion of length. We would go on journeys in dim light with only streaks of rays creeping in through the leaves above and around us. Pretending that we would end up somewhere else when we reached the light in the distance was imagination fuel. We never did, obviously, but that was more than enough stimulus and the best way of exploring a world beyond our own without delving into fiction.

We frequented the bushes so often that we unfortunately bled the desire of curiosity dry and there were no nooks nor crannies left to explore. Not even the imagination of the same ilk of Planets of the Apes could satisfy that need. That was until we decided that the boundaries set by parents were putting a cap on our fun, and ignored them in favour of exploring the bushes at the perimeter of the estate park. Adventure outplayed authority. One afternoon myself, my brother, and the youngest of the neighbours--let's call him Jake, and he happened to be in my year group at school, towards the younger end of the pack--took it upon ourselves to explore the world beyond where we were allowed. We had one area in mind, though, which you of course know to be the park bushes.

The bush we were interested in could be accessed by walking along the small, right-hand side field we played our games on, and crossing over the width of a path that led to another neighbouring close. Beyond this narrow path were two bushes. The left one was mostly bereft of foliage and no bigger than the ones we played with in the past, but the right one was as privet-rich as the others and significantly lengthier. There was a break in between these two bushes that if you followed it all the way through, you would see the park. Stepping briefly out onto the field allowed us to see where the relative bushes ended, but this simply wasn't enough for us. It was not where this bush seemed to end: it was where this bush ended from within. There were new worlds to explore and new garrisons of apes to defend ourselves from.

Walking into the break of the bushes showed the way. Within, we took a right into our preferred bush's entrance. This was immediately different to the ones we had previously explored: there seemed to be little natural light entering it, only through streaks between the planks of wood at the right side that separated the bush from the gardens of those on its opposite. There also seemed to be no end to the bush gazing at it from the entrance, even though you could see where the bush led to via the adjacent field. We knew there was an end, but why were we not reassured by this fact? What if we went deeper within, and we lost sight of both the entrance and the exit? What if the stranger danger principles adults had been teaching us was well-steeped in reality? What if something were to happen to any of us...one way or another?

It was this reticence that stopped us going far into the bush on that day.

We hung around the first ten to fifteen metres or so of the bush. It was novel, sure, but ultimately unsatisfying. The fear of the unknown and our safety unfortunately outweighed the desire to explore further. Jake would be climbing the tree branches to see if he could see the outside world from the top, whereas me and my brother would navigate through tight spots to gather fallen branches as a means of creating a small "den". We left when the activity became as exciting as any other expedition in the bushes, and played some football on the greenery until late afternoon, where we would not be allowed outside for the rest of the evening because of tea time.

The game of football subsided an hour or so before tea time, and the three of us sat outside on Jake's lawn house to look at a few toys he brought out from his room. Whilst engrossed in that, I kept thinking about the bush earlier. What was stopping us from going in deeper? My curiosity grew again and I started to think about whether the fear was justified. Who would really be hiding in a bush? It was still bright outside. I mean, it was in the middle of Spring. The sun would not be setting until later, and it was strong as it was at noon. It boiled down to the fact that I was adamant on returning.

They were too scared. But I couldn't be.

The other two were distracted in Jake's house for a while. I walked towards the bush again and thought about it all. Imagine how cool I would be if I told the others that I made it to the end of the bush when they couldn't, and I wouldn't be telling a lie! Each step was one of excitement. A minute or so had passed before I made it to the break and reached the entrance of the bush.

I remembered it again. The absence of natural light apart from that coming in through the withered fence that shielded the adjacent properties, the never-ending trees emitting privet-leaves, and the crunching of twigs underneath my feet that counted each step deeper into the foliage. I began walking into near-darkness, holding onto the towering trunks to keep my feet firmly on ground, frequently looking back to see how far the light from the entrance had moved away from me. It was not long before I surpassed the previous effort. Everything was fine when you thought of this as an adventure, which was the point.

Until my mind began to wander.

I was completely alone in here. A wave of dread washed over my body from head to toe. What the hell was I thinking, coming here all by myself? Perhaps it was naivete: I got caught into thinking that I had it figured out and could have bragging rights on making it to the end. How could I, though? I was the biggest chicken out of my group of friends.

This didn't stop me.

All it did was slow my pacing, and I gripped the tree branches more firmly as I looked into the distance still seeing no end to this bush. I was not exactly turning back and giving up. What made me eventually bolt out of the bush, however, was something that made me surmise that I wasn't alone in here.

At first I thought I was mistaking it for an oddly-shaped tree and this was my prevailing theory for a long time afterwards, but I thought I saw something deeper within that day. It was an indiscriminate thing that was a dark shade of brown all over, and had a certain presence that did not register in my mind as inanimate. I could not see if it had eyes--or even a face--but I felt that it was watching me. There was no indication as to whether it was human, beast, or anything similar, but I felt like it had sensed me, and felt like it was now going to harm me. It had this feeling of "why did you come here" mixed with the pleasure that it was going to hurt me. My mind filled in the rest as I cried out and scarpered back towards the break. I imagined this presence following me as I ran with the thought of it catching me, fuelling me to run faster. The crunches of twigs underneath my feet masked any other noise, so I could not tell if it was hurtling towards me, and I simply lacked the courage to turn around and make whatever was there real. Never had rays of light been more of a relief in my life as I embraced it running out, realising that nothing could hurt me in broad daylight. When I reached the field and slowed my pace, I looked behind me and saw that nothing had came out of the bush with me. Perhaps it was a stranger and he did not want to be seen. Or perhaps nothing was there at all...which was also what I theorised for a long time.

My brother and Jake saw me as I ran back to the cul-de-sac. I told them about the bush we went in earlier and how I saw something within. My mind had it pinned as a person, but I upstaged the tale to its being a monster to pique their interest. They laughed and refused to believe me, but they were not able to tell me why they were afraid of going deeper into the bush earlier. Their best excuse was that it was "just scary", not being able to say what was scary about it other than the darkness. It's not the darkness: it's what's in it.

Days passed and they still refused to go into the bush. Since my brother and friends always expressed disinterest in exploring the bushes from that point on and I sure as hell wasn't going in on my own again, we eventually forgot about exploring the bushes and created more games of our own in the area we knew. Deep down I was still curious as to what lay deeper within the bush, but thoughts became less frequent as make-believe was substituted out.

--------

I moved house at the age of around eight or nine to the other end of the same estate. This meant that I never really met up with friends from the neighbourhood as much nor played in the close, although I did make some new friends at school to spend time with. We used to call ourselves "the gang", although we were far from a gang: it was simply a fancy way of referring to our group of friends. There were three of us: Dan, Tom, and of course myself. We used to meet up outside school from time to time. These friends were generally well-behaved and never got me into trouble. My parents took to them more kindly and suggested that I stayed away from Jake as a substitute for these newer friends.

One meeting outside school revived my interest in the bush.

I took Tom and Dan to the same estate park one day--now off the reins of parents--and we played a game of football and sat on the swings afterwards, happening to face the direction of the bush that instilled a sense of wonder during my childhood. We spoke for a little while about it and I told them how I always wanted to explore those bushes as a child, but was always too scared to do so. I never mentioned what I saw inside that one day, only that the darkness of the bush made me fear for what. I told them how we used to play make-believe and how similar it was to the imaginary games we played at breaktime during school, and how the bushes enhanced the realism.

What if we went back in, I thought.

There were now gaps in the bush from above where trees had fallen, so darkness seemed not an issue. I was a fair bit older and had more of a sense as to what was real and fiction, even if there was a suspension of disbelief during make-believe on the off. I thought how I could persuade them to get on board. There was safety in numbers, and perhaps having other people there could assuage the fears I once held and conclude that what I saw that day really was a tree.

"Now that was not pretty".

Those words exited Dan's mouth before I could even articulate my desire of exploring the bushes again. He was staring bug-eyed towards the gap in the middle of the bushes, looking as if he had witnessed a murder. Without saying a word, me and Tom averted our gazes towards the bush. I did not know what I was looking for, and at that stage I did not know if I wanted to know what I was looking for. However, I had to know what he saw, because it could vindicate what I experienced a few years ago. Was this something I wanted vindicated?

The image I had in my mind was that something in the bush was bleeding or falling apart, and that something in the bush happened for this something to be maimed in this way. The creak of the swings ceased. Dan leaped over the park's wooden barriers, and invited us to follow him into the bushes to see what was over there. Dan always saw himself as a leader, and we followed in his footsteps and used his courage in this moment as reassurance that things were going to be fine. What child who was so clued up stranger-danger was going to walk head on into a death trap? Dan somehow conveyed safety in his stead.

We walked into the gap that exposed the innards of the bush. This put me further into the bush than I had ever been, but I never truly felt deep inside because of the new entrance behind me. Looking in the direction towards the break showed no light, and looking deeper into the bush to the left showed no sign of exit. We could see where the bush led from the outside--into a few more connecting hedges--but not from the inside. Just what was going on in here?

The three of us stood a few feet apart from one another, looking in all directions. What did Dan see? He never spoke a word about what he saw. I used my personal guesses as anchors for things to look out for, but saw nothing. Dan looked towards the direction of where the break was, and paused for a moment.

Nothing.

Myself and Tom followed suit. We did not say anything to one another. We watched. And waited.

Nothing.

No words were spoken by anyone for a moment. The bushes were quiet apart from an intermittent rustle of leaves from the wind and the snapping of branches underneath our feet.

"Run!"

My heart jolted. Dan was the first to sprint headfirst out of the bushes after bellowing this. That same sense of toe-to-head dread kicked in before I could even process Tom's leaving the bush in suit. Dan and Tom did not stop running, and neither did I once I managed to shift my fear-stricken legs. We ran out of the park, beyond any sight of bushes, and towards the shops. He never told us what he saw, and to be honest I never knew whether it was because he was too afraid to tell us or whether he did not know what he saw.

"I've seen something like this before". I piped up about my experience in that bush.

Dan did not seem relieved that he was not alone. He immediately retorted that what he saw seemed different as to what I saw. In fact, Dan hastily said that he did not see anything. He mentioned that he felt that something was there. This feeling was overwhelming, and felt that something was there, sensing him, and willing harm upon him. I never knew whether his experience in the bush matched what he saw with us on the swings, either. Or whether the intrusive thought of someone falling apart matched the reality.

The rest of the day was spent in avoidance of any sort of greenery. We wandered the estate talking about other things in an attempt to take our minds off of what we experienced. Apart from one or two conversations at school, none of us really mentioned the bush again. I became susceptible to the idea that Dan was playing an elaborate game to entertain us.

--------

The day everything became real was when I decided to go back into the bushes without Tom, Dan, Jake, or my brother, again.

The decision to do so was by accident and impulse. There were no further plans for me to go back into the bushes, and by that age I was reaching the end of my primary school run and was a stone throw's distance from entering adolescence. I had free volition to go where I pleased throughout the estate, and decided to go on a bike ride around to kill an hour's worth of time during a spring Saturday afternoon to pave the way for evening television; the pinnacle of the weekend as a child. The route was made up as I went along it, but was invented to fulfil the goal of cycling for longer than I had ever done in the past. It took me through streets and fields I had only seen from a distance, and of course, through the estate park.

I scoped the bush in my line of sight as I nonchalantly cycled through the park. It instantly took me back to those times during childhood. It was like my mind was calling me to go on over and visit it once again. I cycled across the greenery towards it and approached an entrance to the bush that I never saw during previous visits. This was its end. I could have entered the bush this way and saw what it looked like from within; however, there was a part of me that wanted to walk through the bush from start to beginning to let sleeping dogs lie, even if I thought of Dan as a daydreamer. The final chapter to the tale that was my early childhood, if you will. Thus I cycled over to the opposite entrance, dismounted my bike, and walked with it through the all-too-familiar break, leading to the entrance of the bush. My entrance to the bush. I balanced my bike against a tree at the bush's opening, took a few steps inside, and it all came back.

Everything was like it was during childhood, sans the fear. As I walked into the bush, I thought about what myself and Dan saw on those two separate occasions. Again, I reasoned that I had an over-active imagination at that age, and maybe so did Dan, and was having us on to entertain us. I had now been walking a minute into the bushes and felt no fear nor discomfort. It was dark, sure, but light came in from the gaps in the fence and I felt a new kind of solitude. I looked ahead into the distance and saw only more trees and leaves; no sign of that exit I only looked at a few moments ago from the other side. There were no brown-hued shadows, and it made me think that my mind was playing tricks on me during my previous visits. The only thought that occupied my mind was whether someone was going to steal my bike.

Footstep after footstep took me deeper within.

Turning my back towards the break I had entered from emitted light no longer. I was probably halfway into the bush now, and I could neither see entrance nor exit. This was further than I had ever reached as a child, and about the same part of the bush myself, Dan, and Tom stood in quite some time ago. If what Dan saw was earlier on in the bush, I had now passed it and braved whatever troubled us on those peculiar days. I was over the hump, and now I simply had to make it to the exit so I could walk back around the outside of the bush and retrieve my bike.

The bush was more densely populated with trees as I entered its second half, and it forced me to hug the fence spanning the right-hand side of the bush. Few sources of light were coming in from the gaps in the fences now because it appeared that people living in the gardens had stationed their garden sheds against the fence, so I relied on the gaps in the trees above to pave my way. I also had to navigate through thorns and watch where I placed my hands and feet to avoid getting splinters on the wood and branches. Clutching the planks with the tips of my fingers, I took it step-by-step, and slowly but surely found myself making it through the most difficult part of the bush so far. A final stretch of this tightly-packed route forced me to crawl on my hands and knees for a few moments, which took me out into the open once again and finally to my feet. I grasped the branches for stability once again, and moved my head upright. Confusion ensued.

There was still no sign of the exit.

I turned my head back on the route I had taken, and looked around the trees that I had been crouching and crawling between for quite some time. It was quite a trek in of itself, and I was unsure as to why it had not led me to the exit. Perhaps there was no light coming in from the exit because it was connected to another bush--which it was, to be fair--and I was close to the end already. Just a minute's worth of walking to go and I would be there, I thought. Baby steps.

Another minute had passed. Still no sign of the exit.

I was more angry than confused at this point. I felt deceived, like my effort of walking towards the exit had not been recognised. As my footsteps became heavier, slamming into the ground with frustration, I began to notice a few other things. Fewer specks of light were coming in from the fence to the right. In fact, I forgot that there was a fence there at all in the past minute or so, because trees were sprouting in front of it, seemingly covering every square inch. And where was the light coming in from the field side? Standing still and observing my surroundings to the left, I saw only more trees like the ones I had been holding on to. How deep had I gone into this bush? Did I go too far, and I had not noticed? I walked towards the left to see if I could exit the bush via a gap like the one Dan had found, but I only found more trees. Tree trunks as far as the eye could see. There was light shining on those trees, but only from above. The treetops were the only things paving the route around me, and they seemed to span forever. In all directions.

I contemplated coming back the way I came, but it took me long enough to get this far in, and there was a pit in my stomach at the thought of whether I could even make it back. In fact, looking back only made me realise how unfamiliar the surroundings looked. Did I really come from that way? I remember very little of it. The layout looked different, but maybe it only looked different from the opposite direction? Only then did I realise that the only option was to keep moving forward, hoping that I would come out the other end. Perhaps my mind was being overactive again like it was when I was a child. I let the crunching of wood beneath my feet ground me and snap me out of the incessant rattle of my anxieties and move onwards. But it felt like for every step I took, the exit of the bush seemed further and further away.

The feeling of dread washed over my body once again.

I had not felt it in years, but it was unmistakeable. I began running through the bushes, reliving the terror I felt on that first encounter. The darkness and the claustrophobia of the trees became too much to bare, and I wanted out. I contorted my body through the trees during my flight, occasionally grazing them as I brushed by, and used every ounce of will and hope I had to make it to the exit. I was not even thinking about my bike at this time. A lost bike would be a mere sacrifice compared to the fear and helplessness I was experiencing at this place in time. Anything would have been a trivial expenditure if it meant seeing the blue sky again and resuming my exploration of the estate.

Look back.

A thought crossed--echoed across, rather--my mind as I pelted towards the thought of a light in the distance that I questioned the existence of. It was a thought that I heeded so heavily that it stopped me in my tracks, once again gripping the trees around me and brushing away hanging thorns. Putting my left foot significantly in front of my right, preparing myself to run once again, I slowly crooked my neck behind me, again experiencing that familiar feeling that something was sensing and watching me.

My gaze fixated on a shuffle in the distance behind me. It was that presence. It had a dark-brown hue, undiscernible features, but ultimately an ineffable sense that it knew something else with in here with it. I did not run, but briefly stood in trepidation to observe it. It stood at adult male height and was partly obscured by a tree trunk, and remained stationary when I froze in position and acknowledged its existence. I saw no eyes attached to it, but I knew we were making some equivalent of eye contact. Originally mistaking them from branches, my mouth became agape when I noticed a pair of antlers emerging from the figure.

You should not have come here.

A raspy voice in my mind harshly whispered those words to me as I ran as fast as I could, away from the presence. I heard the snapping of branches and twigs as I ran, but could not tell if it was caused by me or the thing from behind. A cold air gushing within the bush made the hairs on the back of neck my stand up, and there was sense of weight on the posterior regions of my body. The thing must only be a few feet behind me now. I drew breath after breath, summoning the will to keep on running, but the bushes kept on stretching in all directions, forever and ever. All signs of the fence to the right had gone, and the light from above began to dim as I sprinted into the unknown darkness. Suddenly I tripped over a fallen tree trunk, and my body fell limp. I closed my eyes during the fall as I thought about my mortality. Perhaps this was all a dream, and I would wake up before I was caught. I accepted my fate of being caught in this presence's grasp, and rejoiced in the fact that the adrenaline would shoot me upright in my bed and I would be safe at home, calling for my mother's comfort. I braced for impact on hitting the ground, imagined the velvet comfort of my pillow against my head, but the falling sensation continued.

I continued falling.

I dared not to open my eyes. My body flailed aimlessly in an attempt to catch the air; anything, as I was falling. The crackling of leaves and branches began to fade into the distance as I eventually hit dirt, now tumbling down and feeling every individual impact of my body from the surface bruise and strain me. The rolling of my body abruptly stopped with a period of more falling, and I finally hit terra firma with one resounding thud as all sound in the world began to fade away.

And all was quiet.

--------

I came to and felt the floor beneath me.

I remembered what had just happened. There was a presence chasing me and my life was in danger, so I jerked upright and looked around me in all directions to scope it out. All was silent and I could see no sign of any being that wished to harm me. There was no sign of it...or anything...anywhere.

This was when I also realised that I was somewhere I had never been before.

I was in some sort of forest. The sky was bright but grey, and trees were no longer as densely packed as they were, instead being farther and fewer between and larger in size. These trees looked like old oaks, completely devoid of leaves and much different from the privet spouting ones forming the bush, stretching further into the sky and seeming to have an impossible amount of branches stemming from each individual trunk. Each branch deviated several metres away from the trunk but never seemed to meet with the branches from other trees. The only evidence of these trees once bearing life was of rotten leaves spanning the dirt.

For a season that signified life, there seemed to be anything but.

Everything was silent apart from the occasional breeze rattling the canopy from above. There was no sound of birds, animals, children laughing, or any form of wildlife. It was peaceful: certainly different to the dread I felt in the bush. I sat down against a tree trunk and wondered where I was and what had happened. Looking into the distance gave me no indication as to where I was because it was only trees and leaves as far as the eye could see, and no sight of where to go if I was to go about leaving the forest, and where I would subsequently end up. How would I even go about getting home?

I thought about looking in the direction from which I fell, but I could not see any slopes that were big enough for me to have fell as I did. However, what I did notice in that period of introspection was a small break of trees in the distance, similar to the ones I saw upon entering the bush. Barren, withered oak trees were staggered on either side of the entrance, and seemed to be the entrance to the bush I was previously in. Perhaps this was my way back home. I hobbled over to the break in the distance and peered inside. No evidence of any slopes. It was not what I was expecting inside, either. Sure, the inside of the break looked like the bush I was just in, but the tree trunks were a mahogany colour instead of the usual sunken brown, and the leaves seemed a little discoloured, closer to a yellow than green. Something felt off about this bush. I accepted it in my mind as the way I came, but I felt an unease peering deeper within. It was like having a dream of your hometown, and in the dream recognising it as your hometown, but upon waking up realising the layout was off in some way, and you slap yourself for wondering why you did not notice it in the dreamstate.

The thought of being in this new, tranquil area beat the thought of going back into the bush and risking losing myself further. I backed away from the break and began strolling into the forest, slowed down only by the mild injuries I had sustained from the tumbling and landing. I figured if I became lost, I would simply head back in the direction from whence I came and try the alternate bush only if I became absolutely desperate. For now, anything was better than that bush.

On my way through the quiet wood, I thought about my friends and what they would have thought if they saw this, too. I knew what I saw as a child must have been the same as I was a saw barely a few moments ago, but is this what Dan saw? Would they have ended up here if went alone into the bushes? What would have happened if they got caught by the antlered presence? What was that presence? Was it protecting something that lay here? I thought about bringing them here if I could get out, but that was if I could get out in the first place. Nothing like this had ever happened before in my life, and I had no idea if I could return. It was an adventure I did not ask for.

Like with the bush, the forest never seemed to end. Apart from the incline and decline of the terrain every once in a while, the only things that entertained my vision were trees and decaying leaves. I tried calling to see if anyone else was around, and tried talking out loud to myself a few times to keep my mind sane, but all seemed helpless. Eventually I was beckoned by the sound of flowing water, and by tracking the origin of the noise, I made it to a stream. It stream ran from east to west relative to my position.

I decided to use it as my guide. Thinking back to geography lessons, I reasoned that the source of a river tends to be of a high elevation, so perhaps by heading to the source I could get a better vantage point and navigate my way out of the forest. I considered doing this with the trees earlier, but famously within my social circle I had never been apt at climbing trees and there seemed to be no possible way of scaling the trunks without serious risk of injury. So I decided upon another route. I looked to see if there was any change of elevation along the banks of stream. Looking right--or east, even if it was not actually east--showed a rise in terrain, and looking left--you guessed it, west--showed a dip in terrain. I headed easterly in the hope that it would give me a lead for learning more about this place.

The route ahead of me began to steepen. It remained silent in the forest as I asked myself why the forest was so quiet, although I ceased that line of thought as I formed an idea. The oak trees around me followed some sort of pattern during the ascent, almost paving the way forward for me. They were arranged in a straight line at a somewhat staggered distance from one another, taking me somewhere. As I climbed higher and higher, visibility decreased as I wondered how far I had climbed. It certainly was not that far, but I warmed to the idea that anything was possible in these parts and reasoned that if I wanted to go somewhere or have something happen, a change in environment was evidence of my doing something right.

There was a thick mist towards the summit. I coughed as I approached the precipice, wondering if this was even mist in the first place. The trees no longer paved the way and tapered away either side of me as the ground levelled out. In the mist I could make out large stones--wide and no taller than myself--dotted around one another forming an oval. And I saw it again, in what looked like the epicentre of the mist.

There was that brown shadow.

There were features I could not make out. Two antlers protruding from its head. A gaze felt by psychic link as opposed to physical eye contact. But this time came a sensation of its not resembling anything remotely human. It felt otherworldly. I became paralysed with fear and greeted the unrelenting sense of dread once again as the being began to shift in the distance. All remained silent.

The presence's movements were unusual. Its shoulders retracted backwards, and its lower body contorted in a multitude of directions as it made for my location. However, it seemed to travel at a speed inconsistent to the movement of its lower extremities, covering more ground than I expected and appearing larger in its approach. It was coming at me at some speed, and I felt the urge to run.

Don't run, though, I thought to myself. I needed to see what it was first.

I expected to see its true form as it emerged from the mist. However, it was still obfuscated by shrouds, apparently cloaked by something other than mist despite having nothing to coat it with. Homing in on me, segments of matter underneath its antlers began to part, and the stench of rot filled the air as I spotted several sharp appendages emerging from them. I retched as I fled, desperate to avoid a fate worse than anything I anticipated from the bush. Words echoed across the landscape once again.

You should not have come here.

Those bellowing words increased in volume as I heard its breath behind me during its close. It was speaking directly to me. Every gasp it took during its hunt resembled the ticking of a centipede mixed with the sound of one clearing phlegm from their throat. I heard my heartbeat pound in my ears as I ran downstream and then south, trying to rediscover where I came to. There were inclines, declines, oak trees that seemed familiar, piles of crumpled leaves, engulfed by the all-consuming mist that had now spread across the forest. My flight took me to a familiar light in the distance. It was the passageway birthed by the gaps in foliage...the entrance to the mahogany grove.

You should never have come here.

You will never leave.

As I ran back towards the break that led to the alternative bush, the ground beneath me begin to tremble. Roots sprouted out of the ground, and branches and leaves blossomed from these waving stumps. They towered over me and wrapped in all directions until I could no longer see the grey skies above the canopy. The remaining light that seeped in through the gaps of the newly-arrived branches around me shifted to a familiar yellow hue, fallen leaves began to sink into the ground being seemingly swallowed by the dirt, and the distant sound of children playing crept up. The hounding of the presence subsided as the whooshing of wind became inaudible, and by glancing over my shoulder the thing began to recede from my field of view, fading away as its antlers disappeared underneath the horizon. By arriving at the break, I spotted my bike still leaning against that tree I propped it against before entering the bush a short while ago, noticing that the area was bereft of both mahogany and oak with not a yellow leaf in sight.

I pushed my bike to the field next to the bush and collapsed onto my knees, finding myself laughing in a daze. The relief of being home was palpable and I felt a few tears roll down my face. The next thought that followed was to go home and embrace my family, but I wondered who would believe the story I had to tell. They would think that I was merely playing another game of make-believe. How have the police not investigated this place, either, and how has no one else encountered what I encountered? And indeed, that ended up being the case, but the hope of someone understanding me had not died completely. I still had my friends--both old and new--who had experienced unusual happenings in those hedges. They might believe me, and they might want to go and check things out for themselves.

Tomorrow would be a new day. I sat in my room planning on what to take for my next journey into the bush, and contacted my friends about what happened, and whether they would be happy to investigate. They were in disbelief, but wanted to come along to see me "make a fool of myself". Even Dan expressed this sentiment, as afraid as he was that day. As I look back, however, there was no greater foolishness than not heeding the advice of the presence of staying away.

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Bookshelf Briefs 12/5/19

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 17 | By Ryoko Fukuyama | Viz Media – I had thought this would be a race to the finish, but honestly it’s feeling more like a leisurely victory lap. The single is doing well, Nino is singing duets, Yuzu is finally getting through to his mother after literally taking her on a world tour, and the last of the beta couples finally get together. Oh yes, and Momo has written a new song, one that he really, really wants Nino to sing. The main pairing is still, I suspect, going to be Yuzu and Nino, but this is a nice final threat—after all, this is how the two of them bonded in childhood, as we see in a flashback. The next book is the final one, so however it goes, we’re near the end of the journey. I enjoyed this, though it was never as lights-out as some other shoujo titles. – Sean Gaffney

Blue Morning, Vol. 8 | By Shoko Hidaka | SuBLime – Blue Morning manages to be unique and complicated until the end. Hidaka-sensei does a good job of giving happy endings to side characters, like Akihito’s friend Soichiro, that feel earned rather than sappy, and which initially suggest that Katsuragi really will take Akihito’s offer to accompany him to England for two years of study. In the end, though, Katsuragi has too much that he wants to accomplish in Japan and stays behind. I love that, as much as these guys love each other, they each have aspirations (both personal and on a societal scale) that they cannot abandon. All of this independet effort leads up to an absolutely marvelous final page wherein, without any bits of clunky narration signposting the moment, Akihito and Katsuragi are finally walking side by side as equals. I have really enjoyed this series and see myself rereading it some day. – Michelle Smith

Farewell, My Dear Cramer, Vol. 4 | By Naoshi Arakawa | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Warabi Seinan’s girls’ soccer team has been working hard and has successfully made it to the finals of the Inter-High preliminaries for their prefecture. They’re up against the reigning champs, who had insufficient intel on just how good Warabi is these days. It’s an intense match, full of girls who passionately love soccer and their appreciation for “friends who really get each other.” This series really has improved a lot since its initial volume. It’s still a little strange that we were introduced to Suo and Soshizaki first, yet the majority of the story continues to focus on their teammate Onda, and it the action is still sometimes a bit hard to follow (it would probably be good if I could conclusively tell which team scored the cliffhanger goal), but it’s hooked me sufficiently enough now that I can heartily recommend it. – Michelle Smith

Hatsu*Haru, Vol. 9 | By Shizuki Fujisawa | Yen Press – Kagura and Tarou finally get their arc. Sadly, it’s easily the dullest part of this volume, and you sense that the author has written four pairs but really only cares about two and a half of them. (Sorry, Miki and Kiyo, you’re the half.) That said, the pairings that do get attention are well-crafted. Ayumi, desperate for a story now that the love lives have cooled down, runs a “hottest guy” poll. The prize is a hot springs trip. Kai, who has been struggling to be more affectionate (read: hugs) with an aloof Riko, decides that he’s going to go all out. But of course Takaya is hot too. And there’s upperclassmen as well, right? Who’s the winner? I won’t spoil, but it’s a very amusing choice, and works well for the plot. Good despite Kagura being boring. – Sean Gaffney

Kino’s Journey: The Beautiful World, Vol. 4 | By Iruka Shiomiya, based on the novels by Keiishi Sigsawa | Vertical Comics – Even when telling a story that has a happy, uplifting climax, the writers of Kino’s Journey just can’t help but do a last-minute twist of the knife. The story of a young women who is resolved to show her airplane can fly is such a story, making you punch the air in happiness until we get the crowd’s reaction to the whole thing, which is… not bad. Sort of the opposite, but unsettling. Also unsettling is a short story about a couple grooming their child for a war he doesn’t want to fight in, and a city that revels in the anti-war paintings of a man who lives outside the city… till they hear why he really paints them, and their reaction destroys him. Kino’s Journey wants you to hate war. It succeeds. – Sean Gaffney

Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn, Vol. 12 | By Shirow Masamune and Rikudou Koushi | Seven Seas – So we still don’t have Vlind’s full name—it seems to be VlindXX XXXX, but we do get a little more about her camera crew, who, like Vlind, are also very reminiscent of another series the artist used to draw back in the day. If they’re meant to be Hyatt and Elgala, then Elgala has shrunk quite a bit, though she still has her snark. Meanwhile, Hyatt has not only gained a lot of height but is also now married to Watanabe, if her last name is any indication. It also talks about her health having been bad and throwing up blood, so it’s not exactly being subtle. As for the rest of the manga, well, when I spend the entire review talking about the cameos on the first page, I think you can guess. – Sean Gaffney

Seven Little Sons of the Dragon: A Collection of Seven Stories | By Ryoko Kui | Yen Press – I enjoy Kui’s manga series Delicious in Dungeon immensely, so I was looking forward to reading more of the creator’s work a great deal. After finishing Seven Little Sons of the Dragon, I am convinced that I will sincerely love just about anything created by Kui. Collected in this volume are seven stories that, while unrelated, are all fantastic in nature. A couple explicitly feature dragons (as one would perhaps expect from the title) while the remaining feature mermaids, werewolves, local gods, living paintings, and a family with supernatural abilities. The stories range in tone as well, from the comedic to the dramatic (or some combination of the two), but I would describe them all as touching in their own way. Seven Little Sons of the Dragon is a delightful and highly satisfying collection of short manga showcasing some of Kui’s versatility as both an artist and a storyteller. – Ash Brown

Skip Beat!, Vol. 43 | By Yoshiki Nakamura | Viz Media – As suspected, Momo does NOT get the role opposite Kyoko. Fortunately, it’s because the director wants to use her in a different project. Kyoko is devastated, but has other things to worry about, like an attempt on her life. It happens so fast that I had to go back and reread to see how to got to the roof, but the whole scene is terrific. Meanwhile, the main issue with Kyoko and Ren is they’re simply not communicating well—they think that the other person knows what they mean, but it’s always at cross purposes. As a result, Ren’s in the doghouse again. But given that Skip Beat! looks like it might be trying to rival the length of Glass Mask, that’s not really a surprise. If you haven’t read the previous 42 volumes… well, don’t jump on now. But otherwise, absolutely get this. – Sean Gaffney

A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, Vol. 1 | By Makoto Hagino | VIZ Media – Konatsu Amano has just moved from Tokyo to a small seaside town and is on her way to her aunt’s house when she’s drawn to an open house at the high school she’ll be attending. The aquarium club has opened to the public, and while looking around, Konatsu meets kind Koyuki Honami, who happens to be the club’s only member. Pretty and with a reputation for being perfect, Koyuki is actually lonely, and Konatsu is able to relate to her (drawing parallels to a story from literature class along the way) and encourage her not to always pretend things are fine when they aren’t. This is a really low-key story so far, but I do really appreciate that each girl has her strengths and weaknesses and that they seem well suited to support each other. I look forward to seeing how things develop! – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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kristinsimmons · 5 years

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Statistical Certainty: Less is More

By ANISH KOKA MD

The day after NBC releases a story on a ‘ground-breaking’ observational study demonstrating caramel macchiatas reduce the risk of death, everyone expects physicians to be experts on the subject. The truth is that most of us hope John Mandrola has written a smart blog on the topic so we know intelligent things to tell patients and family members.

A minority of physicians actually read the original study, and of those who read the study, even fewer have any real idea of the statistical ingredients used to make the study. Imagine not knowing whether the sausage you just ate contained rat droppings. At least there is some hope the tongue may provide some objective measure of the horror within.

Data that emerges from statistical black boxes typically have no neutral arbiter of truth. The process is designed to reveal from complex data sets, that which cannot be readily seen. The crisis created is self-evident: With no objective way of recognizing reality, it is entirely possible and inevitable for illusions to proliferate.

This tension has always defined scientific progress over the centuries as new theories overturned old ones. The difference more recently is that modern scientific methodology believes it possible to trade in theories for certainty. The path to certainty was paved by the simple p value. No matter the question asked, how complex the data set was, observational or randomized, p values < .05 mean truth.

But even a poor student of epistemology recognizes that all may not be well in Denmark with regards to the pursuit of truth in this manner. Is a p value of .06 really something utterly different from a p value of .05? Are researchers bending to the pressures of academic advancement or financial inducements to consciously or unconsciously design trials that give us p values <.05?

The slow realization the system may not be working comes from efforts to replicate studies. Methodologist guru Brian Nosek convinced 270 of his psychology colleagues in 2015 to attempt to replicate 100 prior published trials. Only 36% of the studies gave the same result as the original. Imagine the consternation if an apple detaching from a tree only fell to the ground 36% of the time.

Why this is happening is a fascinating question that forms the subject of Nosek’s most recent published paper that focuses on the statistical black box data is fed into.

29 statistical teams aggregated via Twitter were given one complex dataset and tasked with finding out if football player skin tone had anything to do with referees awarding red cards. The goal was to put the statistical methods to the test. If you give the same question and data to 29 different teams, does the analysis result in the same answer?

In the forest plot summarizing the findings, the results of the 29 teams do not, at first glance, appear to be remarkably different. The majority of teams get the same qualitative answer by being on the ‘right’ side of the magical p of 0.05 threshold, though I imagine the vast number of consumers of medical evidence would be surprised to find that depending on the statistical model employed, the likelihood of the sky being blue is ~70%. More discriminating readers will ignore the artificial cliff dividing blue from not blue to point out the wide overlap in confidence intervals that suggest the same basic answer was arrived at with minimal beating around the bush.

But a review of the meticulous steps taken by the project managers of the study demonstrate the convergence of the results is somewhat of an engineered phenomenon. After collection of the data set and dissemination of the data to the statistical teams, the initial approaches the teams took were shared among the group. Each team then received feedback on their statistical approach and had the opportunity to adjust their analytic strategy. Feedback incorporated, the teams ran the data through their selected strategies, and the results produced were again shared among all the teams.

The idea of the various steps taken, of course, was not to purposefully fashion similar outputs for the trial, but to simulate a statistically rigorous peer review that I’m told is rare for most journals. Despite all the feedback, collaboration and discussion, 29 teams ended up using 21 unique combinations of co-variates. Apparently statisticians choosing analytic methods are more Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, less HAL. Sometimes the black pants go with that sequin top, other nights only the feather boa completes the outfit.

The findings were boring to most statisticians, but titillating to most clinicians. The statistical criticism is a little unfair. It is certainly true that the problem of analysis-contingent results isn’t completely novel. Simonsohn et. al. use the phrase p-hacking to describe unethical researchers throwing line after line into a dataset to find statistically significant associations.

Gelman and Lokens argue this is a simplistic frame that describes the minority of researchers. What they believe to be far more common and concerning are researchers embarking on projects with strong pre-existing biases consciously or unconsciously choosing analytic paths that end up confirming their biases. This problem has been attractively described as the garden of forking paths.

The current project fits into neither one of these buckets. The researchers had no incentive to get a statistically significant result because publishing wasn’t dependent on getting a p < .05. And this particular data set had a limited number of forking paths to traverse because the question asked of the data set was specific – red cards and skin tone. The teams couldn’t choose to look at the interaction of yellow cards and GDP of player home countries, for instance. And perhaps most importantly, the teams were not particularly motivated to arrive at an answer as confirmed by a survey completed at the start of the trial.

Implications of this study loom especially large for healthcare, where policy making has so far been the provenance of enlightened academics who believe a centrally managed well-functioning technocracy is the best way to manage the health needs of the nation.

The only problem is that the technocrats have so far excelled mostly at failing spectacularly. Public reporting of cardiovascular outcomes was supposed to penalize poor performers, and reward those that excelled. Instead, it resulted in risk aversion by physicians which meant fewer chances for the sickest patients who most needed help. The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) was supposed to focus the health system on preventable readmissions. The health system responded by decreasing readmissions at the expense of higher mortality.

One of the problems with most health policy research – highlighted in a recent NEJM perspective – is that it largely rests on analyses of observational data sets of questionable quality. What isn’t mentioned is that the conclusions made about policy can depend on who you ask.

This won’t surprise Andrew Gelman or Brian Nosek, but the health policy researchers responsible for devising the HRRP program publishes repeatedly in support of their stance that reduced admissions as a consequence of the program is not correlated with higher heart failure mortality, while cardiologists who take care of heart failure patients produce data that traces heart failure mortality to initiation of the HRRP program. Who to believe?

In their NEJM perspective, Bhatt, and Wadhera don’t mention this divide, but do call for better research that will migrate the health care landscape from “idea based policy” to “evidence based policy”. The solutions lie in natural randomized trials, and where the data sets won’t comply, use the $1 billion/year budget of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations (CMMI) to run mandatory policy RCTs in small groups before broad rollout of policy to the public. This perspective is as admirable as it is short sighted and devoid of context.

Randomized control trials are difficult to do in this space. But even if RCTs could be done, would it end debate? RCTs may account for covariates but, as discussed, this is just one source of variation when analyzing data. Last I checked, cardiologists with the benefit of thousands of patients worth of RCTs continue to argue about statins, fish oil, and coronary stents, and these areas are completely devoid of political considerations.

The Oregon experiment, one of the largest, most rigorous RCTs of Medicaid expansion, hasn’t ended debate between conservatives and liberals on whether the nation should expand health coverage in this fashion. And nor should it. Both sides may want to stop pretending that the evidence will tell us anything definitively. Science can tell us the earth isn’t flat, it won’t tell us if we should expand Medicaid.

Evidence has its limits. Health care policy research for now remains the playground of motivated researchers who consciously, or unconsciously produce research confirming their biases. Indeed, the mistake that has powered a thousand ProPublica articles on conflict of interest isn’t that financial conflicts aren’t important, it’s that concentrating on only one bias is really dumb.

And Nosek’s team clearly demonstrates that even devoid of bias, a buffet of results are bound to be produced with something palatable for every ideology. The path forward suggested by some in the methodologist community involves crowd-sourcing all analysis where possible. While palate pleasing, this seems an inefficient, resource heavy enterprise that still leaves one with an uncertain answer.

I’d settle for less hubris on the part of researchers who would seem to think an answer lives in every data set. Of the 2,053 total players in Nosek’s football study, photographs were only available for 1500 players. No information was available on referee skin tone – a seemingly relevant piece of data when trying to assess racial bias.

Perhaps the best approach to certain research questions is to not try to answer them. There is no way to parse mortality in US hospitals on the basis of physician gender, but someone will surely try and, remarkably, feel confident enough to attach a number to the thousands of lived saved if there were no male physicians.

If the point of applying empiricism to the social sciences was to defeat ideology with a statistically powered truth machine, empiricism has fallen well short. Paradoxically, salvation of the research enterprise may lie in doing less research and in imbuing much of what’s published with the uncertainty it well deserves.

Anish Koka is a cardiologist in private practice in Philadelphia. He can be followed on Twitter @anish_koka. This post originally appeared here on The Accad & Koka Report.

Statistical Certainty: Less is More published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

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isaacscrawford · 5 years

Text

Statistical Certainty: Less is More

By ANISH KOKA MD

Why this is happening is a fascinating question that forms the subject of Nosek’s most recent published paper that focuses on the statistical black box data is fed into.

Anish Koka is a cardiologist in private practice in Philadelphia. He can be followed on Twitter @anish_koka. This post originally appeared here on The Accad & Koka Report.

Article source:The Health Care Blog

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the-meandering-manuscript · 7 years

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How to Write a Short Film: Part 1

Hello Everybody!

As I promised, I will be writing a series on writing and creating a short film. Film has been something that I’ve loved to dabble in all my life. I remember being ten years old and filming my first short film on an iPod Touch. It was called Psycho Santa, and we still like to wax poetic about the writing and filming process. I’m sure it wasn’t as good as we like to pretend it was, but it was really what got me started in filmmaking. Any writer can write a script. Actually, I take that back. Anyone can write a script, but I’ve found that a lot of writers have a problem translating their work to film because they forget film is a visual art. You have to be able to convey action and emotion in a visual way, rather than through words. It’ll be weird at first. I still end up writing stage directions that are way too long, but ultimately you have to let the camera and your actors tell the story. It’ll be difficult to hear people speaking your dialogue and seeing your film is always a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment, but it’s worth the process.

The first step of any project is planning. In this stage, working on your film won’t feel too different from any other writing project. Characterization, world building, and plotting make up the basics of writing a short film, just like they would writing a novel or short story.

Step 1: Brainstorming

I still brainstorm whether I have an idea or not. When writing my film, the only idea I had was this teenager who was obsessed with Percy Shelley and his death. Though that original idea didn’t really happen in the film (there was still a fair amount of Percy Shelley though), I used the idea of poetry as inspiration. If I don’t have an idea to build on, I’ll either make a playlist or a mood board to capture the emotion or feeling I’m going for. As you probably all know, Pinterest is fantastic for making mood boards and is great for discovering images. Usually, what I try to do is collect images that make me feel a certain way so I can come back to these when I’m filming as a guide to recreating that same feeling. Music is also extremely helpful when trying to capture a mood. Spotify has fantastic mood playlists that I sometimes use, or I’ll just make my own. After brainstorming, I continue on planning as usual. As you probably know by now, I love character interviews and worldbuilding questions to help flesh out my story. If you have some semblance of a plot, think of a key question that will guide your story- Can people be forgiven? Can you repeat the past? Is it possible to ever be satisfied? This question will not only help you build your story but will also help you develop themes as you progress.

Step 2: Scene Planning

Once again, this is similar to how you would plan out scenes for writing a novel. Once you have a rough idea of your plot (or even just a concept), it’s time to start planning. Figure out where breaks in your plot naturally occur, or if you’re not to that point yet, I’d suggest writing a paragraph or two about what happens in your film to get your creative juices flowing. My favorite way to outline anything is creating a scene list. I make a list of scenes in whatever project I’m working on and then describe what happens in them, so I can’t get stuck when I’m writing later on (But trust me, I always get stuck). My scene list for Turncoats looks something like this:

Benjamin, along with his company, encounters a group of Ephrean mercenaries, loyal to the Queen, and they are attacked. Benjamin is shot, and his horse carries him to a strange cabin in the woods. Benjamin wakes up to find that his wound has been cared for. It turns out that the cabin belongs to a girl his age, Hadiya, who greets him with a crossbow. She informs him that she would like to help the rebel army, but Benjamin declines, knowing that the General doesn’t enlist woman. He flees her house after the Ephrean mercenaries approach her door.

Hadiya answers the door, knowing that the Ephrean mercenaries are behind it. She is nervous because she is from the outskirts of the Jephra Desert and the Uka Forest, places that the Queen has deemed savage. She knows she looks different from the soldiers and they are bound to notice. The Ephrean mercenaries ask her if she has seen any rebel soldiers and she shakes her head, pretending she cannot speak the language of Olsany. They beat her, and leave her bleeding in her house on the floor.

That’s more than you have to do, though. For my short film, my scene list looked like this:

Reminiscent of the opening of The Trial. Louise and Percy throw rocks at Jo’s window. They barge into her room, wake her up and bring her to the treehouse. Setting: interior, Jo’s bedroom.

Your scene list can be as detailed as you want it to be. There is no right or wrong way to do this since it is just supposed to help you when writing. If you enjoy writing without an outline, a bare bones scene list may work better for you, since it allows you to be a little more creative in the actual writing process. If you’re a no-surprises kind of person, then a more detailed scene list will let you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

Step 3: Writing

Once you have an idea for your story and have finished your characterization and worldbuilding, it’s time to start writing, so put on your mood playlist from step one, look over your scene list, and get to work!

Opening Scene

Just like in writing, your opening scene is crucial. You need to catch your viewers’ attention or risk them not watching the rest of your film. Remember, it’s okay if your opening shot is of the mundane, but you must ensure that you find a way to make the mundane interesting. Nobody wants to watch a shot of your protagonist washing the dishes, but if the doorbell rings while their washing the dishes, then you’ve piqued your audience’s attention. Who’s at the door? They’ll keep watching to find out. However, you have to be careful to not reveal too much information in the first scene. You don’t want to confuse your viewers with too many characters or too much dialogue. Present enough information to interest your viewers and adequately set up your story, but nothing more. I’ve heard this rule described as the mini-skirt rule- Make sure it’s long enough to cover everything but short enough to keep it interesting- if that helps you remember it.

Setting

Describe your settings immaculately. Don’t say: She enters Bella’s bedroom. Try: She enters Bella’s bedroom, the walls a bright blue, adorned with concert posters. Directly in front of her, sits Bella on her bed, laying on a black and white polka-dotted quilt. To her left is a bookshelf crammed with every book imaginable, and to her right, a beat-up acoustic guitar is leaning against her wall. There is a desk next to her bookshelf with half-drawn sketches piled on top. Christmas lights snake their way around the room. Which description gave us more information about Bella? In the first, we learn that Bella has a bedroom. In the second, we can infer that Bella is an artsy teenager due to her bookshelf, guitar, sketches, and concert posters. Also, by describing your settings in detail in your script, you won’t have to scramble to dress your set or search for props when filming. You’ll know exactly what you need, which can save time later on.

Exposition

You’ve heard of show-don’t-tell, but this is especially important in film. Never use dialogue when an image would be more powerful. Don’t say have John tell us he’s a doctor. Show him in a lab coat. Let your viewers infer information through images. Film isn’t theater. It isn’t an art where dialogue has to convey exposition. Always use images for exposition, and use dialogue for exposition sparingly. This also applies to voice-over. Voice-over is commonly considered to be a lazy way to share information and they are sort of like the prologues of the film world. However, just like prologues, voice-overs can be successful, but I tend to stray away from them.

Describing Emotion

You don’t have paragraphs to explain your character’s feelings like you do when writing a novel. You have reactions. This is where writing stage directions can get a little tricky. What you shouldn’t say: Bella leaves her house, angry and sad over her argument with her mother. Try: Bella slams the door as she exits her house. Once again, you are letting your viewers infer that Bella is upset through her slamming the door. Actions are your number one tool to convey emotion in scriptwriting. By explaining in detail what a character is thinking or feeling you are not only creating something that is hard to translate to film, but also limiting your actor’s choices and insulting your viewer’s intelligence. When acting, it’s common to pick verbs to describe your character’s goals. For example,

Michael is standing with his hand on the doorknob. He is about to leave.

BELLA

You never loved me!

What is Bella’s goal in this situation? It could be a number of things, especially since there is no context to this piece of dialogue, but to me, I thought that her line could be a desperate attempt to get Michael to stay, or an attempt to get him to feel bad about leaving. Throw could be used to describe my first guess, as she is throwing information at him to make him stay, or tear could be used because she is trying to break him down through guilting him. This can be used in writing too as a reminder to use action to convey emotions and not stage direction or dialogue. Action verbs will keep your script from becoming dull with too much dialogue and also help you discover your character’s motivations.

Give Your Locations a Workout!

Have your characters interact with their settings and not just exist in them. Let’s go back to Bella’s bedroom. She’s having a conversation with her mom about how she doesn’t want to become a doctor while sitting on her bed. Okay, that’s fine. We get that she doesn’t want to become a doctor. Now, let’s have her idly picking her guitar while that same conversation happens. Now your viewers will get the impression that she doesn’t want a career in medicine because she wants a career in music. You never had to say she wanted a career in music, you just had to give her a guitar. Let’s change Bella’s action. Now she’s sitting at her desk drawing, having the same conversation with her mom. Now your viewers will infer that she wants to be an artist and not a doctor. This once again goes back to the golden rule of film-making, show-don’t-tell. Interactions with the setting can give exposition, change the tone of a scene, and most importantly, keep the scene from getting boring.

Pacing

Once you’ve finished writing all your scenes, go back and reread them. Are they starting at the best moment? Starting in-media-res has been a trend lately, but it helps keep the story moving, as you aren’t wasting time with unnecessary exposition and dialogue. Also, make sure the ending of your scenes will make the viewers want to continue watching. Think of the ending of each scene as a mini cliff-hanger. End on an interesting line of dialogue, image, or action to keep your viewers interested. One great thing about film is that pacing can be fixed in editing, and sometimes it’s easier to pace your film when you have finished scenes.

The Ending

I don’t like to wrap everything up in my endings, but that’s just me. If you’re the type of person who wants everything explained, then go for it! Remember your key question from Step 1? To make an impression on your viewers, you have to answer it here. You don’t have to give a straight answer, but you have to wrap up your story and themes through your question. There are plenty of stories that end ambiguously- the first one that comes to mind is The Great Gatsby. What exactly does “so we beat on” mean? If you’re writing an ambiguous ending, then you have to know what it means, but you shouldn’t share that information with your viewer. Let them figure it out for themselves; it makes for a more fulfilling experience. After all, the most fun I had reading The Great Gatsby was coming up with multiple meanings for that final page. Once you put your art into the world, whatever it meant to you no longer means anything. It is then interpreted through each one of your audience members, taking on a new meaning for each person who experiences it. Let your story’s meaning change. It’ll be more powerful that way.

My next post will be on pre-production, including location scouting, casting, and more! I hope that this series is helpful for anyone who is thinking about making their own short film. If you’ve ever made a short film or are thinking about writing one, let me know! Check on more on my wordpress blog: www.themeanderingmanuscript.wordpress.com

Thanks,

Katie

#how to #writing #the meandering manuscript #short film #series #original post

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kristinsimmons · 5 years

Text

Statistical Certainty: Less is More

By ANISH KOKA MD

Why this is happening is a fascinating question that forms the subject of Nosek’s most recent published paper that focuses on the statistical black box data is fed into.

Anish Koka is a cardiologist in private practice in Philadelphia. He can be followed on Twitter @anish_koka. This post originally appeared here on The Accad & Koka Report.

Statistical Certainty: Less is More published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

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