writing

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol.5 – SAVE the World Championship

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

My first late edition. Most of this was written enough to release it on Wednesday, but I was struggling to find the words to express my feelings about Undertale‘s 10th Anniversary without sharing too much or getting wordy, but still making it feel personal. I don’t think I nailed exactly how I feel, but I did the best I could.

Games – Undertale 10th Anniversary

This year is Undertale’s 10th Anniversary, Toby Fox has been celebrating it with Fangamer in their first of a couple of streams with some unique things inserted into the game that have the fandom going wild and putting every detail under a microscope. I haven’t had time to watch the whole stream, but I have taken in a lot of what Toby Fox has had to say about it. I usually write most of these on the weekend or at least have a lot written in my head before I login to my WordPress account, but I’ve been struggling to articulate what this game means to me without going insane with the word count here. 2018 was a rough year for my family and me after a house fire destroyed our home and nearly all our personal possessions, but my community of friends, both online and offline, had my back and were kind enough to raise money so I could get back some of what I lost, including a Nintendo Switch. The kindness of people and that Nintendo Switch, which I still own, got me through what was one of the lowest points of my life. The games that I bought and played that year mean a lot to me, and Undertale was one of those games.

The only information I knew about the game was not to kill the monsters if I wanted to see the full story, and I didn’t listen. I can still picture myself sitting on the floor because I didn’t own a chair, my back against my mattress, and the rented bed frame the homeowner’s insurance got for us in the rental home we were going to be in for a year while the house had to be rebuilt. I had killed Toriel because I didn’t realize I could spare the bosses, too, and I felt so awful about it when Flowey the Flower reminded me I could actually reset the game, so I did, and then didn’t play the game for another three months. I don’t remember which song, but it was hearing a song from near the endgame that got me back into it, and then it blew my mind when Flowey called me out for resetting the game after killing Toriel so much. I stayed up all night in bed, doing the entire pacifist run to ungodly hours. Something about the situation I was in, the friends and family that supported me, and that finale of the pacifist run that just opened the floodgates when I played it. I’ve never teared up at really sad moments in stories. It’s those moments of triumph, overcoming overwhelming odds, when hope returns, that really gets me emotional, like when Gandalf arrives with the Rohirrim at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. That moment at the end of the game still gets to me. Just hearing “Hopes and Dreams” to “SAVE the World” to “His Theme” brings me back to the moments lying in bed thinking of everything I’ve been through from November 2017 to November 2018. The game will always be very special to me for that. It is a game about our connections to other people, and connections were very important to me in that year. Happy 10th Anniversary, Undertale.

Wrestling – Post- AEW All Out ‘25

Here is the thing about AEW pay-per-views, I haven’t watched one without my friends since Revolution 2020 and since then there have been maybe four of them that have been bad vibes, AEW All Out 2020 due to Matt Hardy getting concussed and them continuing the match, Double or Nothing 2022 because CM Punk winning the world title felt like the worst call you could make, World’s End 2023 because it might have been the only AEW PPV I would call boring, and World’s End 2024 because Adam Copeland was the least exciting return to take on the Death Riders after a weird fourway main event that made everyone in it look dumb as hell. All Out 2025 started out weird with Christian and Copeland vs. FTR in what I would describe as a main event of WWE Raw in 2019. In other words, this match fucking sucked, and I am so ready for Copeland to retire. I’ll sacrifice Christian retiring to not get more of this bullshit. I don’t care if he’s retiring or their history, I don’t want to see references to John Cena, Defender, and Best Friend to Sex Trafficking Vince McMahon on an AEW show, get the fuck outta here. The entire layout of this match screamed WWE-produced, and I was not here for it. It was not a great start for the show, but luckily, it was the worst match on the show. Even the Hurt Syndicate, which I do not give a fuck about, nor do I want to see MVP wrestle, gave us something better by at least losing to Ricochet’s new faction, The Demand.

The show felt all uphill from there for me. The return of Eddie Kingston, Mark Briscoe getting a victory over MJF, and Riho having a great showing against Mercedes, showing some ego against the TBS Champion, that I greatly enjoyed so much that I’d love for them to run it back. The three-way match between Okada, Takeshita, and Mascara Dorada, if not for the main event, might have been my match of the night. I hope we get Takeshita vs. Dorada, Okada vs. Dorada, and of course, Takeshita vs. Okada sooner than later. Jon Moxley vs. Darby Allin’s Coffin Match was the kind of violence I desired after the high-octane match for the Unified Title, but I was pretty surprised to see Darby lose his first coffin match in AEW. I’ve been championing how great Kris Statlander is since she joined AEW in late 2019, and I was hooting and hollering when she did Chuck Taylor’s seatbelt pin to win the AEW Women’s World Championship against Toni Storm, Jamie Hayter, and Thekla. I recalled at that moment when Wheeler Yuta pinned Chuck Taylor with that same pin while Orange Cassidy was on commentary and Orange just saying, with sadness in his voice, “Chuck taught him that pin.” Speaking of Orange Cassidy, it was greatly hinted at that his return would be this Wednesday in a segment during the show, which added to the hype for me. Finally, the ladder match for the tag titles was insane, terrifying, and awesome. AEW could have pulled the trigger on giving Jetspeed the belts, or return them to the Young Bucks, but I was glad we’re continuing with Brodido, who were equally insane, terrifying, and awesome in this match.

Finally, the main event. I’ll never get tired of seeing Hangman Adam Page being the top babyface, the guy, the man, the world champ, and backing it up in one of my favorite matches of the year against TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher. I had no doubt going into it that Hangman was going to win, but the match gave me just that small amount of doubt that made this even more exciting. Kyle Fletcher is definitely going to be World Champion sooner than later, probably via beating Will Ospreay two years from now, but the chemistry between Fletcher and Hangman was top-notch. The poetry of Fletcher not getting the Tiger Driver ‘98 off, but Hangman Page being able to do Swerve’s Big Pressure was chef’s kiss. This is on my list of matches I am going to rewatch from this year, the first chance I get.

Books – Summer Reading Slump

It’s officially autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, and I’m hoping my summer reading slump isn’t turning into a Fall one. Something about this year has been making it difficult to sit down and lose myself in reading like usual. I’m not reading any slower,r but carving out less time to read than I usually do. It honestly feels like a reflection of current events. I want to read more. I’m not enjoying reading any less. Hopefully, now that summer is over, I will get back into the reading swing.

I realized in the writing of this that I’m not taking my own advice. People who find out I read a lot of books often ask me how, and I often give the advice I first read in Stephen King’s book On Writing, you have to choose to. If you want to read a lot of books, you have to make the time in whatever part of the day you can, waiting in line, on the toilet, right before bed, right when you wake up, while eating breakfast, etc. Writing is this way, too. You can’t just wait for the perfect time or wait to be inspired you have to take the time by force and use it.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 1 – Noodles, Knights, and NJPW

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I’m not going to give a long explanation yet to what this is or why I’m writing, because before I know it, I’ll have a thousand words, and that’ll be this entire post before I get to the point of the thing. To sum it up, I want to write about what I like in a shorter format than my book reviews on Geeklyinc.com or on No Page Unturned. I love books, I love video games, and I love wrestling, hence Book, Games, Wrestling. I hear the Aesop Rock song Food, Clothes, Medicine when I say it, but here we go before I get off track again.

Book – Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

My review will be up soon enough, but I have to say, my reading habits this summer have been such a mess. My To-Be-Read pile has grown too tall this summer, yet my reading habits have been subpar. Fall and Winter are such better reading seasons for me as someone who doesn’t do well in the heat.

Automatic Noodle, though, has been a book I’ve been thinking about since I first heard about it. The premise is essentially set in an unidentified future, where robots want to, for once, serve good food to their patrons and are given an opportunity, out of sheer luck, to open their own noodle shop. It’s labelled as cozy, but there is definitely a cloud of desperation hanging over most of the plot, both from the bots, the humans, and the overall world that is in the vibe of a dystopian future run by megacorporations that we seem to be getting a lot of, gee, wonder why? The feeling of dread and oppression is not what I would call cozy, but I’d still recommend it regardless.

I mean, just because it’s marketed as cozy but doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting read. The oppression of sentient robots is a subject I’m sure will be explored more as technology advances and more rights get taken away in the United States and beyond. I will admit I’m holding back for my review, pretty sure, but I really enjoy how Newitz makes each of the bots distinct.

Game – Hollow Knight – Team Cherry

Silksong is real and will be out as of this post in a little over a week. I’ve done everything but the Godmaster DLC on the Switch edition of Hollow Knight because by the time it was out, I was already finished with Hollow Knight, at over 100%. Plus, in 2018, on the Nintendo Switch, I remember being kind of insane, as well as my life at the time being kind of insane. When I bought a Steam Deck last August, Hollow Knight was one of the first games I bought during the next Steam sale because, quite honestly, though it had been six years since I played it, I still felt it was one of the greatest games of all time or at least one of my greatest games of all time.

Now that Silksong is coming out, I felt it was time to play it on PC/Steam Deck. It was like riding a bike again to be honest, and I was aiming to get that achievement of beating the game at 100% under 20 hours. I got very close at about 20 hours and 23 minutes, so annoyingly close. I do not remember there being achievements on the Switch edition; it probably had in-game quests as the equivalent, but it’s not quite the same. Take or leave achievements, I do often find them fun, even if Steam achievements feel lesser than other platforms. I’ve left just enough time between Hollow Knight playthroughs that the challenge remains thrilling, yet not so much that the backtracking feels tedious, while retaining enough memory to avoid repetition. I’ve already beaten it, and once I did, I thought to myself, “Oh shit, it’s still not September 4th.” I started a new file, intending to hopefully get that achievement this time, and also to leave Zote to die, the ungrateful little shit that he is.

Wrestling – AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025

The build to Forbidden Door was messy, it’s always messy, and to be quite honest, even with the mess I still do find it fun. However, a lot of MJF’s creative ideas I do not find fun, and it felt like, with the stipulations he had forced Hangman to agree to under the pretense that he was going to light Mark Briscoe on fire, that I’m being forced to watch Triple H from the early and mid 2000s reborn. In 2023, I was annoyed with MJF, but in 2025, I’m just tired of it. His promos to all his opponents feel the same; his nicknames for his opponents are all terrible, not in a fun way, but in a way that makes me want to look at my Steam Deck and continue playing Hollow Knight. It just feels all the same. But Josh, you might ask, isn’t that just what heels do? Well, I’m not sick of what Kyle Fletcher and the Don Callis family are doing, nor since All In am I sick of what Jon Moxley and the Death Riders are doing. Ricochet with the Gates of Agony is quite interesting, and Christian Cage, who often has the same edgelord shtick as MJF, quite frankly does it better because he’ll do enough to at least give me the illusion of changing it up. Except for Christian, the difference between a lot of those heels and MJF is that they actually wrestle quite frequently. Maybe if MJF took up so much TV time wrestling as well as promos and segments I might feel different but as of right now, I’m quite tired of MJF.

This isn’t about MJF, though; it’s about Forbidden Door, and despite Max’s terribly convoluted idea for a finish, yes, I am one hundred percent sure it was his idea because it reminded me of the era of WWE I know he loves. Hangman’s world title defense against him, I thought, was excellent before that. It’s how I felt about the pay-per-view overall, quite good overall. Hiromu Takahashi looked great against Kyle Fletcher. Toni Storm defeated Athena in what I thought was a very good match, but I thought they might be holding back for a future rematch. I took a break during the beginning of the tag title match and came back just in time to see some mysterious masked men drive the Hurt Syndicate back to the airport before Bandido could even get the pin on whichever member of FTR was pinned (I think Dax? Don’t correct me, I do not care.). Bozilla, Persephone, and Alex Windsor all showed out for the four-way against Mercedes Mone for the TBS Title, impressing me with ideas I don’t think I’ve seen in four-ways before, and it felt like Mercedes made sure to make them all look good in defeat. Swerve versus Okada might have bee my match of the night. Say what you want about Okada’s efforts I felt he really put his all or at the very least 90% into his defense of the Unified Title against Swerve. The main event lights-out cage match, was both fun and intense, and if this is the last we see from Ospreay and Swerve in a while, it was a great showing by both of them.

Was it my favorite Forbidden Door? No. Was it the best Forbidden Door? I don’t think so either but I felt happy watching it, and when it was over, I was more curious about what was going to happen next rather than worried about the direction AEW was going.

Writing A Novel Vs. Writing A D&D Campaign.

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / 1 Comment

I’ve set a deadline for myself. By the time I turn 31 on April 23rd my novel will be finished. I am talking final draft, not the first draft, as I only have five chapters to finish editing.

At the same time, I’ve become the Dungeon Master for my D&D group. Writing and developing a D&D campaign, at least, I thought would be simple compared to writing a novel. I thought since worldbuilding is so much fun, that it would be a walk in a park. Oh ho, no. It is a very different beast entirely. I wouldn’t say it is more difficult but it is difficult because it is different.

Unless you plan a whole campaign before you start there are no second drafts i D&D. You write what you need and move on. Most of it is improvised anyway especially minor NPC (Non-Player Character) names like the merchant or regular at the tavern your players decide to get into a fight with.

With the characters in your novel, you have complete control over their actions, personalities, and decisions. In D&D, the players are the characters and you have little to no control over them unless you want to make a boring campaign. On the other hand, it takes a lot more pressure off you to write good protagonists. That’s up to the players.

The world of a novel, especially fantasy, can be more organic. The rules are looser. With D&D, there are so many rules. You have to keep track of them for your players, your NPC’s, and the monsters they fight.On the other hand, D&D is supposed to be fun. It doesn’t have to be this deep exploration of human nature. There are no inner

On the other hand, D&D is supposed to be fun. It doesn’t have to be this deep exploration of human nature. There are no inner monologues to worry about. A D&D campaign, in fact, can be a lot more vague since the Dungeon Master isn’t the sole storyteller. The players can and will change the story. This can be both frustrating and freeing.

With a novel, though, unless you are a published author, it’s all on you. You have to sit down and write your story first draft then second draft then third draft then final draft. A D&D campaign is vaguer. You have to take into account how long a session takes, everyone’s plans for the week, what level the characters are at, and where they may want to go.

If the main villain of your novel is in a certain building of course your protagonist is going to wind up confronting him. Not necessarily so in D&D. The players might decide to burn that building down, as we decided to do in my friend’s campaign, instead of confronting the main baddie of that particular storyline who had story beats for us to follow.

It’s much easier, at least for me, to communicate through writing then it is through speaking. Therefore, theater of the mind is much more difficult to work with. I don’t need extensive maps for my novel because I can convey a scene with as many words as I need but with D&D, if they’re going into a dungeon I am definitely going to need a map because there is a lot to remember.On the subject of dungeons, if my protagonist in a novel is in one I can glaze over

On the subject of dungeons, if my protagonist in a novel is in one I can glaze over certain room if they’re not important to the story. Not so with D&D. My player may end up exploring every room of a castle and I need some kind of description, however short, for all of them.

The antagonists has to be one of the most difficult parts. Well, really, anything that involves balancing the game versus telling a good story is what is so difficult. A villain can’t be so overpowered that it is an obvious party kill but he can’t be so underpowered that any threat he makes, plot-wise, goes unappreciated or unconcerned. Same goes for just about any encounter or plot element of your campaign.

However, a D&D is more accepting of aspects you try to eliminate from your writing when it comes to a novel. Your players are inhabiting archetypes, so giving their characters typical archetypal stories is fine. Tropes, cliches, and parody is welcomed rather then eliminated in later drafts.

Plus, though novels don’t have to do this either, a D&D campaign can be silly and less serious. If you tell a good story in your campaign, you get validation every session by the joy your players are having A novel takes much longer to get that validation.

A friend, fellow writer, and former Dungeon Master himself tells me being a DM will likely make me a better writer. I can see where that stems from but what I get out of it now is combining my love for storytelling and worldbuilding with friends who I love to be around.

Speculations for Joe Abercrombie’s next The First Law trilogy

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / 4 Comments

Author Joe Abercrombie tweeted this today:

Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy was one of the best fantasy series I have read in years. I ate it up nearly as quick as Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower or more recently Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards. It felt like reading The Lord of the Rings if Middle-Earth were as brutal of a world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Just like people you’ll love the main characters one minute and hate their guts another. I never saw the twists coming, and when dialog was spoken I thought afterwards of course they would say that. I left reading the books thinking I could write something like this because of the ease of the prose then jealous when I realized how wrong I am because these books were brilliantly written. It’s one of those series that leave you floored as a reader and a writer.

As always remember that there are spoilers ahead.

Last chance before spoilers.

Last chance before spoilers.

I have to say ahead of time I have not read the First Law side books though I do know the big reveal of Red Country. Red Country, being the latest book in the First Law timeline takes place thirteen years after The Last Argument of Kings. So here is what I am speculating will occur in the next trilogy.

  • Sand dan Glokta and Jezal dan Luthar will no longer point-of-view characters. Jezal will make an appearance, maybe even just a mention but won’t have any prominent plot points. Glokta will be a prominent secondary character to one of the point-of-view characters.
  • There will be three or four new point-of view characters to replace the one we’re losing: Jezal, Glokta and Collem West.
  • I’m on the fence on whether Dogman will still be a point-of-view character.
  • Logen Ninefingers (still alive as revealed in Red Country) and Ferro Maljinn will be the only returning characters with a point-of-view.
  • What the Bloody Nine is will be fully revealed in Logen’s quest to confront Bayaz.
  • Bayaz manipulation of the North and the Union will begin to unravel but perhaps not fully free of the First of the Magi until the third First Law trilogy.
  • Ferro will have to deal with her madness if she is to accomplish her goals with the Gurkish.
  • The spirits that Logen can talk to will become more prominent again, and why he can do so will be revealed.
  • Perhaps Bayaz himself will have a point-of-view exploring his background with the other magi.
  • The Great Eastern Library will make an appearance
  • Maybe even one of the other magi not seen in the original trilogy will get a point-of-view to explore Bayazs background.
  • We will finally meet Khalul in person, perhaps through Ferro but like Bayaz his downfaill won’t come until the next First Law trilogy.
  • Tolomei will be released or break out from the House of the Maker
  • It is implied that Bayaz killed Juvens, we’ll find out why.
  • The other side will be explored more, perhaps be a main focus of the plot.
  • The mythology of Euz and his four sons, Kanedias, Juvens, Bedesh and Glustrod will be explored.
  • Logen Ninefingers will be actually dead by the end of this trilogy, having started what will be the downfall of Bayaz.
  • However, the Bloody Nine may not. With Logen dead the Bloody Nine may takeover to wreak havoc in the third trilogy.
  • Luthar may die before the end of the second trilogy.
  • There is no way there is only two laws by Euz. A third law will be revealed.
  • Cawneil, one of the magi, may be forced to give up her slothful ways in the Great Western Library, possibly even have a change of heart about being a cynic.
  • Zacharus may take a stand against Bayaz, and he will fall doing so possibly revealing Bayaz’s more sinister nature.

Obviously this is all based on having not read the three World of the First Law books, as I understand Bayaz makes an appearance in one of them.

There’s nothing like the feeling of discovering a new favorite book series and I hope Abercrombie will continue to do so with the next trilogy.

How Green Lantern Rebirth Changed My Twenties

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

Back in 2004, freshman year of Suffolk County Community College, I was in a hip-hop group with my three closest friends. Then in November of that year, they kicked me out and would not hang out with me anymore.

It was deeply upsetting at the time, and pretty traumatizing. In hindsight, if it had continued I probably would have quit eventually. I didn’t enjoy the recording process nor did I have any focus for editing or making beats. The part I enjoyed the most was the writing. I had notebooks full of songs that I never recorded or performed but still continued to write new ones. The other part I loved was performing, it was thrilling. The amount of adrenaline you get from performing on a stage even though they were in high school talent show and a music showcase of all the school’s bands the adrenaline you get from it was crazy.

So my bridges burned with my former friends making music, writing music (and writing in general), and listening to the same music I had before left a bad taste in my mouth. I asked myself who was I before music? Well, before I discovered music at fourteen I was deep into video games. I started playing my GameCube heavily. Then I retreated further back remember this little comic book shop my mom used to take me to where I bought Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and The Simpsons comics.

The comics I read as a kid, as far as superheroes were concerned, were weird. Superman had a weird mullet, Spider-Man was a clone and Green Lantern had gone insane and replaced by another Green Lantern. When I walked into that same comic book store I had as a kid not knowing what I’d find what I found was the second issue of a comic called Green Lantern Rebirth by Geoff Johns. I held up and asked the guy behind the counter what this it was.

“Oh, they’re bringing back Hal Jordan from the dead and making him Green Lantern again,” he said. He offered me a deal for the first and second issue together and told me comic books came out on Wednesdays. I would buy comics there regularly for the next six years.

Hal Jordan (43)

I became entrenched in comic books and video games to fill the void listening to hip-hop and writing it had left. Comic books though reignited my love for reading that would spread to novels when my girlfriend at the time brought me to a Barnes & Noble. Before this I had only been to Border’s Book, and not in years. Last time I had been there it was not in good condition. This was two stories of book paradise, one with a graphic novel section that was lacking. Instead I picked up this beautiful leather bound copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams  I had seen at one of her friends house and The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

The more I read novels, the more I could see the weaknesses in comic book stories. Reading more novels led to more interest in literature. This led to me majoring in English which forced writing upon me. When I briefly dropped out in 2011 and into a deep depression it was writing that got me out of it and brought the love back I had for it back to the forefront of my brain.

All because I picked up Green Lantern Rebirth. 

GL-rebirth-cv

My Perfect Writing Room.

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I don’t know what the future really holds for me, with any career or a career in writing but if I own a home, a rather large apartment or am a success in anyway I have an image in my head for my writing room.

I’m terrible with dimensions but it would be fairly large, maybe the size of a master bedroom. Against a wall, really almost two walls would be a large L shaped desk. The corner would be where my desktop would go with a fairly large monitor on the second shelf and a custom PC built only for holding all things writing. Beneath it on the desk itself would be a standard mouse but a Das Keyboard brand mechanical keyboard. Directly to the right of it on the desk would be my laptop, the monitor would have a setting to switch from my desktop to my USB cord plugged in laptop. Above the laptop on the second shelf would be a scanner used for scanning documents such as my handwritten notes and research. In the small part of the L would be where I keep my notebooks on the second shelf and on the desk would be a cup full of my fountain pens. It basically be my handwritten writing section away from my computer.

The rest of the large desk would have open thesauruses, books on writing and generally research that I could turn to when I needed it. On the very end though would be a placemat stained with ink. This would be where I kept my inkwells and disposable gloves for refilling the ink in my fountain pens.

This part of the room would have a wooden floor beneath it for my chair to roll around on without hindrance. The chair would be the most costly part of the room, as it must be, in my perfect writing room, the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat on. It would have a high back and a thick cushion and when my back was sore and tired the chair would heat up like a heating pad to soothe my aches and pains.

There would be a brown leather couch for reading and napping. Next to it would be a nightstand piled high with books, knowing me, as well as a bluetooth speaker connected to a device that has my music. It would have to not be my phone otherwise I would be distracted real easily. Next to the bluetooth speaker would be a pair of headphones with a long cord and big cushions for my ear, it would be soundproof.

In the corner on the other side would be a coffee pot, a coffee grinder and a water cooler and a set of coasters, mugs and cups for me to use. Underneath would be a draw full of bags of coffee either ground or beans.

There’d be an air conditioner of course, because I hate the heat. Whether it was in a window or not I honestly don’t care as long as it keeps the room cold.

Underneath the refreshment table would be a mat for easy vacuuming because the rest of the room would have a soft carpet for laying on to think. I imagine there’d be a drawing table, especially if I’m doing fantasy for sketching out concepts, maps and rooms. I want to say I would have one of those hand vacs just in case but I know I use cleaning to sometimes procrastinate writing so that would be right out.

A bookcase of course, full of books on writing, history, and anything I would use for research besides thesauruses and notebooks which I would keep on the desk.

Would I need a file cabinet? Would I want to keep the business end of writing separate from the writing process itself? It might be a good idea, it might not.

If we’re getting ridiculous there would also be a punching bag with a set of gloves hanging off of it. Sometimes exercises jogs inspiration, or at least get the brain stimulated for thinking about a problem with writing and punching a bag has always been something I enjoyed as far as exercise goes.

The door would have a lock both on the inside and the outsidee and only I and maybe my spouse would have access to the room. There’d be a large overhead light, the kind that simulated sunlights for keeping me awake but there would also be a yellow lamp on the desk and near the couch for generating a certain mood when writing.

Next to the light switch would be a switch for one of those red lightbulbs outside of the room letting people know I was hard at work and not to be disturbed. Maybe my spouse and I would have walkie talkies for if she needed me for dinner or to help with something but otherwise there’d be no access to call me to talk to me.

That would be my perfect writing room but this is like putting the horse before the water. That’s the expression right? More important than having a perfect writing room is to write. So off to write I go.

Killing Off Wolverine is the Right Decision by Marvel.

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

The Death of Wolverine is an event comic currently running at Marvel by Charles Soule and Steven McNiven and I could not be happier the 5’3 Canadian is being killed off. He has become the most oversaturated and uninteresting comic character without any clear or consistent motivation for years now.

He is an Avenger. He is an X-Men. He is part of a black-ops team. He founded and teaches at a new school for mutants. He was possesed by a demon. He discovered his past. He lost his healing factor. He does what has to be done e.g. murder, cut, and dismember people including his own son but doesn’t want young mutants to be on the frontlines when the X-Men are needed. This is just the last ten years of stories for Wolverine so obviously death might be one of the few storylines left to explore with this character. The problem is, with a timeline that basically perpetually frozen so their characters don’t age all of this jumbling of progress and motivation has made Logan impossible for me to care about.

The other problem is that he’s in every book. In one book he’s lecturing Scott Summers about how teenagers aren’t soldiers, in another he’s telling Captain America that sometimes killing is the only solution, in another he’s drinking beers with Spider-Man playing the gruff stoic friend to Peter Park and then in another he’s killing people with his teenage clone X-23 with the rest of his black ops team. The character needs consistency and if they need to kill him off to do that then I am all for it.

There is no change in comics, just the illusion of change. Wolverine coming back from the dead isn’t an eventuality but an inevitability. Hopefully he is in a limited capacity, like say, in one solo ongoing and one team book. If he’s going to be in the Avengers, don’t put him in X-Force or the X-Men. If he’s in one ongoing where he’s trying to fight moon mutant don’t have another one where he’s underneath the Earth’s soil marrying a mole woman. When you put him in all these different books so close together acting differently than he does in all the other books he appears in you’re telling me that Wolverine doesn’t matter, the storyline doesn’t matter, and making me well aware of the illusion of change.

For people who don’t read comics it is much easier to like Wolverine. He is like the definition of power fantasy. He has sharp blades coming out of his hand, he heals from almost anything, has a clear purpose in life (finding out his past) while doing and saying whatever he wants because he’s not to be messed with. Imagine what it’s like to be around that guy all the time but everytime you hang out he contradicts himself. That is what it’s like to read Wolverine in comics.

So go ahead Marvel, kill him. Make X-23 the new Wolverine for a couple of years, explore what motivates her and then when you bring Wolverine back give him a motivation I can get behind instead of plopping him into a story to raise sales of an issue. It makes sense to me. One of the most interesting storylines to happen to Batman in the last couple of years was for Bruce to get lost in time while Dick Grayson took on the mantle. While you’re at it, kill off Deadpool too.

Never Going to Watch HBO’s The Leftovers.

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

In The Leftovers, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta and developed by Damon Lindelof (Lost, Prometheus) a mysterious, a event has occurred making 2% of the world’s population disappear. Both the Perrotta and Lindelof have said here and here have said it isn’t about the mystery but about how the characters react and change to it.

That’s well and good but it isn’t the kind of storytelling for me. I need both, character development and answers to the mystery. The whole point of even having a mystery in a story is to eventually answer it. What Lindelof loves doing instead is using the mystery in order to explore his pseudo philosophy about the meaning of life, a mystery that he cannot answer. I already have a story like that, we all do, it’s called life and I am not looking for the ambiguity of life in the stories I consume. The problem I have with his style of writing is either he doesn’t answer the question or the answers he provides are so anti-climactic (Lost & Prometheus) that I am left feeling like I wasted my time. The fear of their time being wasted, in my personal opinion, is why people hate spoilers. When you spoil a story for someone you’ve essentially taken the joy of discovery away from them thus watching, reading, listening to it is now a waste of time. With Lindelof everything I have watched by him makes me feel like I’ve wasted my time because his character development doesn’t connect with me, his protagonist often coming off unlikable, ineffectual and his answers are either not there or disappointing.

Modern mystery and thriller novels have the opposite problem. All the stories has is answers, answers I’ve usually figured out early into the book. Without the character development in their protagonist the journey to the answers I already guessed isn’t very interesting to me.

Plus, what I don’t understand is what does that character development even mean if there is no resolution or a poor one? What makes it matter? That’s not what interests Lindelof as a writer. So I am not interested in his writing and I am not going to waste my time with The Leftovers.