My Writing Output

Limping Along

“It may shock you to hear this, but just sitting down and writing can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a topic already in mind, especially-especially if you are not required to do it for grades or pay…”

I wrote that 2 years ago and since that time I have had significant changes to my life and my writing has completely changed in output and type since then.  I got a career in September 2017 working for my hometown’s city hall and that dominates my time.

While I do not consider my job especially difficult, once you get passed learning how to navigate the bureaucracy it is only a needlessly complicated series of checklists and meetings that could be emails.  However, the job is so time consuming and so lacks creative elements that I find myself unable to write for my own benefit.  Sure, there are exceptions and I have pressed myself to write at least one entry on this blog each month, but it is a side effect of such gainful employment that I do not have the creative spark while working there.

What I do have is a small but regular trickle of work that allows me to write in a professional environment.  It does not stretch my abilities, it is not mentally rewarding, but it is required and has consequences.  I have check what I am writing to make sure I am not breaking the law; while at the same time having no metric to follow; and having to interpret what I am told so as to tell it to other people.

Playing “telephone” via email is its own sort of writing exercise.

Not this Year

            Last year I didn’t bother to give an update on my goal of writing 1,000,000 words, nor did I give an update on my goal of writing a blog for everyday of the calendar year.  I have certainly tried to advance each and have made progress.  I only have 16 days of the year without an entry, and I have crossed the 750,000-word goal.

 

October and November, why are they my weakest months for output?

My writing has never been stronger (at least according to standardized testing, something everyone should question the validity of) as last October I retook the GRE and scored a 5, putting me in the 92 percentile on the writing portion of the exam.  I took the test in order to apply to Doctorate programs and am pleased with the results. (I will be writing more about my decision to do that and the results in the days/weeks to come.)  And let’s be clear, I don’t ever want to take the GRE again.  Two is two too many.

I have had plenty of ideas for what to write, and have a folder of “Draft Zeroes” with ideas for short stories or novels and have written out an outline for a book that is only a couple thousand words but represents something I haven’t done before, a plotted out story with a beginning, middle, and end.  There is even a rough set of chapter breaks along the way for all the shenanigans that I might want to slide in.

New ticks and quirks have emerged, with my tendency to use, “So, …” to start off paragraphs and sentences.  A reliance on evidence, citations, and stating my suppositions causing me to preface everything and then explain my point.  Trying to mix this up with the occasional, “It follows then…” or a “Taking that as a starting point…” could make my writing stronger, but that also makes it more verbose.  SO, I am unsure as to how to tackle that habit.

There are other issues I have that I have never been able to overcome.  My inability to name things is perhaps my biggest weakness when playing Dungeons and Dragons (which yes, I do credit as part of my writing.  While DnD is a game, there is tons of creative work that goes into it and issues from it, just look at the multitude of novels that surround the property).  Names are not my forte and the fact that I made two different recurring characters’ names, “Kevin” shows this sort of wekness.

I like plot and I like setting and I like dialogue, but ask me who is saying things, the name of where they are saying them, or what they call the events they are talking about… and I just don’t know what to say.  Often falling back on the blandest of proper nouns or portentous uninformative claptrap (like “Destiny” a game I dislike specifically because it does something I see as my biggest weakness).

Maybe you all see some other aspects of my writing that need improvement, be it a matter of style, content, or just that I have a number of typos in everything.  I have no editor.  I do my best… or as I mentioned at the start, I do what I can.

The Future

            My writing will continue to mutate.  I hardly ever do movie reviews anymore, not because I stopped watching and having opinions on movies, but because I did movie reviews originally in order to further an aspect of my writing.  And I see my abilities in movie reviewing as sort of complete.  Movies were something I could trust a certain number of people have seen and have tastes in, they have a language that can be understood, deconstructed, and evaluated based on a criteria of both personal taste and technical acumen.

            Essentially, movies are something I could pull apart in multiple ways and in doing so practice my ability to pull ideas apart.  I could teach myself to recognize foreshadowing, metaphor, and visual presentations of information.  I can look at a movie like “Hereditary” and see how the movie planted ideas in the mind of the audience and how well those ideas were capitalized later in the narrative.

            Being able to catch those turns and flourishes is something I think I have down well enough that I am just no longer all that interested in picking them out.  Sure, from time to time, and if I had the time and creative spark, I am sure I would have just written movie reviews for the sake of a creative outlet, but in my current state of not having the time or drive they just do not have that pull on me.

            Honestly, what I want to pull apart more than anything is the old opinions I have on this blog.  My personal world view has changed so much in the last 10 years that I feel the need to write the rebuttal to my younger self.  I feel like I did not become an adult till I was 27 and even then, I was not informed enough to hold a real substantive opinion.

Now that I have degrees, work experience, and have just had to stand by while the world around me became various flavors of strange or hostile, I am a changed man and having the young me’s writing out there informing other people’s opinions of who I am now… it is misleading to them.

SO, it is likely that this blog will have a few dozen entries where I look back on who I was and how I thought at the time and just take myself to task.  Hopefully, I am not just so how much better I am now, but the act of doing this makes me better still.  Maybe I can even show other people why I felt the way I did at the time, why I changed, and why the change is for the better.  Help them change for the better too.

For Those Reading This

            I cannot emphasize enough how important writing is to who I am.  How important it is to my growth as a person.  I cannot recommend it enough to everyone out there.

            Find something you care about and write about it.  Don’t just write for yourself either.  You have to put it out there.  Even if no one reads it.  Even if those who do call you a talentless asshole.  All of that is part of it.

            Writing something that no one but you will read is masturbatory and does not help you grow, and it does not temper your skills.  You have to have some standard that exists outside yourself that you are trying to meet and surpass, even if it is the imagined judgment of potential readers.

            Write.

            Please.

            Trust me, it is worth it.

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

A Blog For All Time, End of Year 1

            Last year at this time I decided on the nebulous goal of making sure I had a blog entry for every date on the calendar.  That way when my Facebook feed came around to stroke my ego via the “Memories” feature I would always have a sample of my own writing to crack out and post up.

            At this point I typically don’t repost my older stuff, as my old writing is mostly shit.  I apparently had a long-term relationship with run on sentences, and cheated on those with incomplete sentences.  Sometimes, when I write while drinking I go back to those relationships.

            What I am saying is, my old stuff is exactly what it was supposed to be, the junk I had to get out of my system to reach my current level of proficiency.  Almost like that was my stated goal when starting this blog and all subsequent writing projects I have done.  My spelling still hasn’t improved, but that I can blame on technology.

            Having something for everyday of the year is maybe not the best reason for why to write, but when you are trying to bang out a ton of words as an exercise in and of itself, you need motivation (any old excuse) to put fingers to keyboard.  Often that motivation amounts to “a day on the calendar must be made orange”.  I don’t know why I chose orange.

            Let’s take a look at the old calendar.

            Big empty spaces in October and December; somewhat empty spaces for March, July, and November; and just too many little holes all over the rest of the place.  No real rhyme or reason for this scatter shot.  Just several years of random activity layered on top of one another.

            Now let’s look at the new one.

 

I also switched from using the paint can to just drawing orange boxes over the day, allowing for a much cleaner fill.

            I feel I have made good progress on my goal.  Aside from months that were previously so empty that filling them would have required a plan of attack, I still turned a lot of the temporal map orange.

            117 open spaces has been reduced to 30.  Just 30.  I know few people reading this have a lot of writing experience and maybe if you do that sounds like just another year of your life, but for me that amount of writing is legendary.  Now that I have a full-time job there is no way I will ever have the time necessary to put down that many words in a year ever again.

            How did I do this?  I think the clearest thing I can point to is Dungeons and Dragons.  I have written about it more this year than any other year of my life, and if you were to mash all of the blogs I wrote together they would easily be the length of a book.  I have played around in Dungeons and Dragons since I was 15 but this was the first time I really hammered out entry after entry and put those entries out for people to read and absorb.

            For others to read, absorb, and criticize.

            I hope a few of them think I did well.

            Earlier this year I wrote my 400th blog on this site, on the 6^th anniversary of starting this blog.  This entry today is my 500^th blog.

            On the 26^th of April in 2013 I set a goal of writing 1,000,000 words.  As of right now, I am closing in on 600,000. 
            Between this day last year and now I wrote 216,302 words.  That is madness.

            One year ago today, I set out to fill my calendar.  While I have let numerous days pass by without getting an entry (1 of which because I thought a Hurricane was going to destroy my home town, luckily it did not), having an entry for everyday of the year is too easy a goal now.  I am too close to finishing it.

            I have to think of something else.

            I am just going to have to keep writing.

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons, "Writing is a Skill"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 31- The Challenge

            Why do I bother with these 30-day challenges?  A few years back I set out to write 1,000,000 words to follow the adage, “The first million words are practice”.  I hoped to improve my writing thru practice.  More importantly it could not just be practice that only I would read or would only appeal to my own whims, you do not improve by writing something down and letting it mold in the basement, unless you are Emily Dickinson.

            To improve as a writer (or for anyone to improve as a writer) it is important to be able to respond to prompts, produce lots of content in a short period of time, and be willing to put one’s work out into the world for people to scowl at.  I managed to write more than 34,000 words in July, that is not bad for a hobbyist.

            I also set a goal to have a blog entry for every calendar day, 30-day blog challenges provide me with an excuse to sew up a month that previously had a lot of days with no entries (October is now the one with the most holes) so that I can bang out material and have a blog entry to post for everyday of the year allowing me to psychically stroke myself with a repost each time Facebook says, “Here are your memories”.

            Filling in the calendar is a pointless goal, but one that encouraged me to keep blogging and keep driving toward my goal of a million words.

We didn't start the fire.

30 days of Dungeons and Dragons

            Why “Dungeons and Dragons”?  Because it is a hobby I have been doing for more than 15 years, I was already writing about it every week or so, and there actually aren’t too many writing prompts in the 30-day challenge format.  I was kind of shocked by that.  Once you get past the big ones of “Movies” and “Video Games” things get real niche.

            I had to heavily workshop my Disney Challenge which had too many asinine prompts, and even this blog challenge had a lot of “What?”  Who gives a shit about “Favorite Energy Type”?  And what value is there in discussing my “Favorite Non-Magic Item”?  Those are just meaningless.

            “I like Fire!”

            “I like Chairs!”

            “How about we do the best of both worlds?”

            “What an intriguing idea.  What do we do?”

            “We just have to light some chairs on fire!”

            “YEAH!”

This is the original list of blog prompts that contains a lot of what I would consider junk.
Nothing to be ashamed of, it is hard to come up with topics, especially 30 of them.
Below is the list of titles as they ultimately became.
My altered list is what I would recommend using if you plan to write your own blog series.

Some Context, Days 1-4

“How I Got Started”

“My Favorite Edition”

“My Favorite Setting”

“My Favorite Deity”

Favorite Character Stuff, Days 5-11

“My Favorite Fantasy Races”

“My Favorite Classes”

“My Favorite Player Character”

“My Favorite Group of Characters” (“Favorite Character You Haven’t Played”)

“My Worst Player Character”

“Some Ideas for Player Characters” (“A Character You Want to Play in the Future”)

“My Favorite NPC”

Favorite Monsters, Days 12-21

“My Favorite Aberrations”

“My Favorite Animals” (“Favorite Animals/Vermin”)

“My Favorite Fiends” (“Favorite Evil Outsiders”)

“Celestials” (“Favorite Good Outsider”)

“Best Evil Fantasy Races” (“Favorite Humanoids/Giants”)

“Dragons” (“Favorite Dragon”)

“Creatures of Nature” (“Favorite Fey/Elementals/Plants”)

“Legions of the Undead” (“Favorite Undead”)

“The Worst Monster”

“My Favorite Monster” (also has "Favorite Dice" as bonus sub entry)

Best Miscellaneous, Days 22-26

“Locations and Dungeons” (Favorite)

“Puzzles and Traps” (Favorite)

“Cursed Items” (Favorite)

“Magic Items and Technology” (“Favorite Magic Item”)

“Some Talk of Spells” (“Favorite Spell”)

Best Experiences, Days 27-30

“Best 3e Adventure” (“Favorite Adventure”)

“Craziest Game Session”

“Random Poetry Interlude” (was supposed to be “Best Experience as a Player”)

“Best Game Running Experience” (was supposed to be “Best Experience as a GM”)

Coming in the Future

            While I did manage to write out a number of topics on DnD and close out many of my thoughts this stuff, there is always more to talk about with this hobby.  Like I said, I was writing an almost weekly blog about Dungeons and Dragons before this 30-day thing, and will probably continue with that.  Along with writing about other topics, I actually have some other stuff in mind related to several horrible things happening in the world right now.

            If you liked my stuff, please follow me on social media so that you can occasionally step in and read my ramblings.  I hope this was entertaining and gives some insight into why I write.  Please try to further your own writing by putting yourself out there more.  People will be harsh (there is lots of poor writing on the internet and people like to put it down), but hopefully some of that harshness comes from a place that is constructive and hopeful, a place that wants to critique in hopes of improving people’s work and not just scaring off newbies.

            Go on and have fun.

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

6 Years of Blogger and 400 Entries

            This blog is both my 6^th year anniversary of writing on blogger, and my 400^th entry overall.  It took me a hell of a lot less time to get to 400 than it took to get from 200-300.  Or not. 

It’s all relative.

            For instance, this is the first time I have acknowledged the anniversary of me starting this blog.  Every other instance of March 1^st is empty.  But the 100’s I have acknowledged each time.  So, I judge myself more by output rather than the duration of time I have been at this.  Is this many entries a lot for a blog?  Is it for a blog that is 6 years old?  I don’t know.

            I don’t even know if this blog serves as anything other than a practice ground for my own attempts to improve my writing.  I know on some level that you have to open yourself to scrutiny if you have any hope of improving.  Graded by a teacher, asking a friend to read your stuff, or submitting it to an editor.  If you just write for no one’s sake but your own, then it is unlikely you will ever improve in anyway other than indulging yourself.  And indulging yourself is not a marketable skill.

            Has my writing improved?  Maybe.  I would hope so.  This entry is hardly a stellar example of it.  Just a meandering self-reflective (and aggrandizing) non-work.  I mean, 300 was my review of “The Force Awakens”, that at least had something to read during all the back patting.  Maybe I could try to review “Rouge One”, but I hated it, and I just don’t want to.

            No poems or anything.  And I don’t really want to talk too much about my other blog goals (“Entry for every day on the calendar” or the “Writing 1,000,000 Words”) because I plan to talk about those near the end of April when I do the update for the “Writing 1,000,000 Words” project.  Though it is worth mentioning that both of those things started years after I started on Blogger, and Blogger wasn’t even my first blog, I wrote 100 entries in the “notes” section of Facebook and on Myspace of all places.

            Maybe I could mention the 30-day challenges I did?  And how I can’t find anymore online that aren’t complete shit.  Honestly I had to heavily modify the ones I did to make them work.  Why is it so difficult to find good writing prompts?

            And the novelette I wrote.  And the “Write a chapter every once in a while” story I started and almost immediately failed to keep going.  I have an unedited chapter for that thing, maybe I should put it out there, a multi-year jump between chapters should be a big deal.  I outlined the story, I just need to do it (story of my fiction writing life).

            I don’t know.  Whatever.  This is just “What’s on my Mind”.

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

A Blog for all Time

I am closing in on 350 blog entries and I think I should set some kind of new goal, have at least one blog entry for each day of the year (which is going to be difficult to complete because another February 29th won't be around till 2020). It seems like another good arbitrary goal to shoot for, though it will take a while to accomplish.

If I wanted to get started this December, I would need 24 entries for the month (it already has 8 covered).  I could start in November, but that would be a hassle, though I guess this entry counts.  First thing first is an inventory.

I downloaded a series of “Print it Yourself” free Calendars and blocked out all the days that already have an entry in them for each month with the powerful image manipulating software… MS Paint.  So they looked like this:

Marvel at my ability to use the fill tool!
(This is where I got most of the original month images... I think)

Having now looked over the things and making visual guides to help, I have determined October and December are at the bottom having the fewest days covered with 23 and 24 open spaces respectively.

January, by virtue of being the month in which I typically do lots of movie reviews, and August, the month that this year I did a 31-day blogging challenge, both of those are completely covered.

So now with my upcoming free time for the holidays I will attempt to do another blog challenge for December and conquer the “hole-y-est” month of my calendar.  Or I will fail, and… nothing really lost.

What prompted me to do this?  Honestly, it was Facebook now having that “Memories” feature that allows you to look back at all your old posts on each date.  I figured I should shoot to be able to repost a blog from every day in the year going forward.  Because I am an ego maniac sometimes. 

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

1,000,000 Words, Year 3

            Three years ago today I started a personal project to write 1,000,000 words.  This was inspired by the adage that, “the first 1,000,000 words is practice”.  Since that time I have logged movie reviews, half-finished novels, random bullshit, and lots of grad school assignments.  I have thru this time kept a log of how many I have written.  Starting at first with a goal of 500 words each day, under the reasoning that some professional authors write as much as 1,800 words each day.  That was optimistic in the extreme.

            I quickly fell behind and even as I banged out huge assignments at school and tried to write down something about more and more of the shows I watched less and less stuff interested me as targets and I personally felt less creative in a lot of ways.

            My first year doing this I logged 139,441 words.  This doesn’t include facebook statuses, tweets, or comments in forums (unless I later turn those into blog entries).  It is work that I either put out into the world to be evaluated via school and this blog, or it was work that I wanted to one day put out in a grander form to be evaluated.  This worked out to 382 words each day.  Close to the 400 words a day I have seen recommended by Neil Gaiman an author whose work I hold in great esteem.

            In the second year I kept up the pace for the most part.  134,511 words.  Much of which came from a single massive assignment to complete my first Master’s degree.  A lot more math was required at this point, with hours of time spent hammering out projections and breakdowns as part of a political evaluation for my degree.  Writing was less a priority and less a part of my day to day functions.  Overall this was a step down, but was still in the same range of 368 words each day.

            This last year has been less a step down and more of a ladder down.  I didn’t feel nearly as creative; most of my school work was doing basic learning in a foreign language or using mathematics, mapping, and design tools; and even the yearly movie reviews I typically do just to drive up my word count… I didn’t feel the drive to put them out there as most of the movies I saw last year fell into the very grey middle for me and hardly required comment (though there have so far been two exceptions).  I was and still kind of am mentally burnt out.  I only wrote 46,886 words in the last year.  A third of what I have done in the past.  128.5 words each day… Except that is wrong, it was only 128.1 because I have to include a leap day.  This is only the 5^th blog I have written in 2016 and it is April.

            Now that isn’t the whole story, I have been writing more in forums, discussion sections, and comments on various websites so that lets out a lot of ideas before they have fully developed.  Maybe those pasts are letting out too much creative energy and I should give up on that talkative aspect of my online self.  Maybe those posts are good enough to consider as real writing effort and I should start counting longer or more in depth posts toward my log.  I will probably compromise and start turning more of them into blogs, the one from yesterday is an example of that.

I have also stopped counting the fiction I write until it is finished, which means that a dozen chapters of a novel that will never get done, those thousands of words go nowhere.  I have also not been sharing or measuring stuff for when I write a setting for Dungeons and Dragons, which can translate to thousands of words.  Maybe I should start putting out lots of stuff related to my Dungeons and Dragons imaginings.  Perhaps my actual word count is not as bad as I think.

            It is not like the exercise is not doing its job.  My writing is much better than it was.  I rarely need a second draft, and aside from the numerous typos I feel that my thoughts are coming thru in clear waves to those who read my stuff.  Heck, before I started logging my word count I was blogging in the note section of my facebook in a deliberate effort just to hammer out more words for fear that I would be too glib for success in graduate school (some of those old entries are on here, upgraded a small amount, artifacts when I only wrote about comic book characters).

            Oh, for the halcyon days when a 1,345 word blog about Black Panther was the longest I had ever written.  Compare that to the 6 part epic I did on the Florida Legislature and the need for a new Parliamentary system to combat Gerrymandering.  Or if you want to stick to comics the 8 part series I did on just making up 3 different teams of DC superheroes to be Justice Leagues.

            What I am saying is, I have most definitely met goals of improving both the verbosity and virtue of my writing.  Though I am sure many of my Professors remain unimpressed.

            I do hope that in the future I get a job that requires regular writing as part of the job’s function.  I feel that prodding is important, and being paid for writing is the right sort of positive association that will keep me writing recreationally.  And maybe this next year I will be able to push myself to write something with enough substance that even if it is not great in volume it will be greater in quality.

            For now I will just have to keep writing.  And get thru this patch.

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If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Star Wars

            It is my 300^th entry on blogger and I am going to use this entry to talk about the biggest movie in the world “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.  It will be an early start to my annual reviews of movies from 2015, and maybe I will get some sympathetic traffic to here from people randomly googling these kinds of things.

            Since this is the kind of movie that is really big and you could go thru it scene by scene to talk about things I liked or didn’t care for I will do my usual thing of disjointedly asking questions, critiquing, and giving out compliments.  SPOILERS obviously, overall I thought the movie was a solid 8/10, with a hearty recommendation from me.

 

Remember, this whole franchise is built around coincidence and destiny.  And an awesome score.

            People like to point out that the plot is (in an outline) the exact same plot as “Star Wars: A New Hope”, but I would posit that it has a lot of points and scenes taken from all of the original trilogy, which is fine.  The original trilogy is 38 years old, taking that same story outline and presenting it with modern effects and dialogue, and using that basic story to kick off the new franchise is a good idea.  It is akin to saying, “This is what we are going to be doing from here on out, this is how we are going to do it.”

            However there is some grander subtext at work here too.  The main character is a scavenger who makes their living picking thru the remnants of the old franchise, and the main villain’s central personal crisis is whether he will live up to the classic iconic villain.  It is almost like the movie is picking thru the old franchise to find the best workable bits and is terrified of not living up to the legacy of the original films?  Am I reading too much into this?  Probably not, they draw attention to this all the time in the movie, I feel this was exactly what they intended.  There is a literal shrine to Darth Vader in the bad guy’s bed room.

 

"I feel the pull of the light"

            Let’s talk about one of the things I really liked, Kylo Ren.  Kylo is the best villain in Star Wars.  He is powerful, he has a goal, you understand his motivation, you understand his inner conflict (say what you will about Darth Vader, if Luke did not say the words, “I feel the good in you” the audience would have seen ZERO evidence of Vader turning into a good guy), and he acts like someone who is powered by rage, fear, and pain.  My favorite scene with him is the final lightsaber fight in which he pounds on his wound to work himself into greater levels of frenzy, that is some brutal violent shit right there.

            His armor is cool, his lightsaber is cool, and he kills the most beloved character in the franchise.  The only thing missing from that scene is Han saying the words, “I love you” followed by Kylo saying, “I know” and then kicking Solo’s body in the blackness.  Also, have to love Chewbacca’s reaction, he has just seen his best friend murdered by (what I imagine) is his god son, he probably baby sat Kylo, had the family over for Life Day (HA!) and now he is trying to kill the kid.  That is some emotional baggage.

 

Boy was my character oversold in the marketing.

And now for something I didn’t like, anybody else think that the stormtrooper Captain Phasma was a huge waste? I can't help but think some script pages got lost or something got rewritten.  For instance, when that random stormtrooper has that electro-tonfa and fights Finn... Why not make that Phasma? It would make sense that she would call him traitor, it would even make sense that she would have that kind of unique weapon on her person (working with Kylo all day I imagine she mentally preps for the day he decides to hack her to pieces and so she keeps around a weapon that could block a lightsaber long enough for a retreat).

I also did not like how easily she is captured near the end. Han, Chewie, and Finn take her hostage and demand that she lower the shields... And she does. I kind of expected a marine captain to not just roll over and lower the defenses to the single most important military asset in the galaxy. It would have been cooler had she just said, "You're going to have to kill me." Then Finn doesn't (because he knows that would be brutal and accomplish nothing), and they keep her prisoner, then they find Rey, have her try to use the force on Phasma and then just have the Captain pull a Jabba and say, "I am not so weak minded." Then have her do something clever and escape down a garbage chute.

You might be saying, "Well, then how would they get the shields down?"  To which I reply, "Just have the plot move forward the same way with the group planting charges." Dropping the shields ultimately wasn’t enough, so why not just skip that scene all together?  Having them forced to use the charges to let the Resistance attack thru would be fine, it has the exact same impact on the narrative and echoes "Return of the Jedi" even more so.

With those two changes you take a character that barely has any lines and fights no one, and instead turn them into someone who is clever, tenacious, has unique armor, an anti-lightsaber weapon, and is resistant to the force. She becomes a cunning dangerous adversary that promises to be a recurring threat in future movies. As it stands she is literally thrown in the garbage.

She is apparently returning in the future but I can’t see why they should bother, she is already a joke.  Single biggest disappointment in the new movie.

Now a positive thing, Finn is now my favorite character in the franchise, more or less summed up by his first interaction with General Leia, as she tells him how brave he is for defecting from the first order.  Turning your back on the military dictatorship that is the only life you have ever known because you see the violence and suffering they are inflicting on the galaxy is brave, and without Jedi powers he fights Kylo Ren, a fight he cannot win.  He is also a great straight man to Poe and Han’s wise cracking, a position that is always underappreciated (honestly without the straight man most comedy just falls flat).

As for Rey, Poe, and BB-8?  I love them all.  Each is fun in their own way and they do not step on each other’s toes at all.  While Finn is my favorite, any one of the human characters could have been the hero in their own movie and would have worked great.  If these are the type of hero the new era promises then I happily await more entries.

 

Couldn't we have just had a fleet of Star Destroyers?

Now something I dislike, The Star Killer Base is the absolute worst kind of writing in a sequel.  Upping the stakes by increasing the destructive yield of bad guy’s weapons.  It is lazy.  WE HAVE AN EVEN BIGGER DEATH STAR.  Yawn.  The conflict and drama between the characters is what I am here to see, not just more planets getting torched.

If they had to have something like this, then it should not be in the first movie.  Hint at it.  Have rumors of a new Death Star being built and the Resistance not knowing where it is, have it show up in the 3rd movie as the big thing that dwarfs all other confrontations before it.  Showing the hologram of how the base is a 100 times larger than the Death Star comes off as comical in this movie, if it had been built up to it over multiple films it would have been terrifying.

The Star Killer Base is the thing I dislike the most about the movie and it does bring it down for me.

How is Harrison Ford still so devilishly handsome?
Unattainable standards for male attractiveness in films, I am being oppressed.

 Something I like, the returning original cast members.  While Luke is barely there at all he unquestionably looms over the whole film and looks the part as the hero who completed his journey to Jedi master.  The story in which is betrayed by the knights of Ren (how cool is it that there appears to be an entire clan of Dark Side Force users?) is legitimately sad, he was supposed to have been the guy to return order to the galaxy and he just couldn’t manage it.

Han, Chewie, and Leia are all great.  I did find it strange that in the 50 years they have been working together Han never fired Chewie’s crossbow, maybe they should have had Finn fire the crossbow, and since he is a storm trooper you could have him say something like, “This thing is so much more accurate than my old blaster” to joke about how Stormtroopers never hit anything.

C-3PO is used appropriately, he pops in to ruin the moment between Leia and Han (just like he did in “Empire”) is funny, offers up some exposition, and then steps back into the back ground.

Harrison did his best performance in a decade, fully embracing and saying goodbye to the best character he ever played.  Really, when it came to the old cast they did everything right, showing how they changed and where they went since the happy ending of Jedi, and using them as launch pads for the new cast.

General Hux, I actually think he is a pretty good character.  They do not directly compare him to anyone in the original trilogy, he gives one impassioned speech, and otherwise serves as the calculating counterpoint to Kylo Ren.

 Something I did not like, the politics.  I had to look up what was happening in the movie’s political conflict.  And while it makes sense after I look it up, the fact that it made no sense in the movie hurts the film overall.  It is not necessary I suppose as the movie moves very fast and is not about Space Politics (that should be left for Star Trek), but it is the motivation of General Hux, and General Leia, and the impetus of the story, so maybe making that a little clearer to the audience should be a priority.

One last thing I do like, everything else.  The music, the effects, the costumes, the action, and the pacing.  If Disney were to put out a statement talking about how happy they were with the film and how they want to continue to be the mainstay of pop culture, I would just nod and be happy.  Much like Marvel, Star Wars is a huge franchise that will reach millions and millions of people, this film promises that the franchise will be committed to fun, adventure, and good characters that kids and adults all over the world can watch and love and serve as a common cultural touchstone for all the right reasons.

While this movie is not perfect, it didn’t have to be, we have decades to explore an entire galaxy of adventures, and a company that wants to put the people who love that universe in charge of making things people love.  Hooray.

Score: 8/10

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200th Blogger and Some Dreams

            This is not only my 200th blog on here, but it is also the 1,000 day this blog has existed.  Which means I have produced a short bit of writing roughly every 5 days for nearly 3 years.  And I think that is pretty good considering how much else I write that ends up going nowhere.  It is strange to write this really, because I know it is not the trumpeting of an angel calling the heavens to war, it will never change anything, it is just my random thoughts and fantasies.

            This all on here isn't important really, but I know that I am a richer person for having written it.  Having exercised it from my brain and throw it out on to the internet for other people to read and care about.  Maybe think about.  I know that my review of "The Dark Knight Rises" or "Prometheus" will not change anyone, but I know my mind changed via writing them.

            Regardless I do feel a love for the stuff I have put out there it is in many ways me in various dosages and flavors, lot of them half finished or left behind on another hosting site.  I have no idea why I thought Facebook would be the ideal place for a blog considering its stellar work with keeping something as simple as notes clean and accessible.

            For this occasion I am going to write up a number of dreams I have had.  As I have done this sort of thing before it's not really new ground, but I have these and it makes sense that to encapsulate all of the rambling stream of consciousness complaining I have done on this blog, that a big round number should have... Rambling nonsense pulled straight from my subconscious.

First Dream:

            I was taking a summer class, and it was the week before finals.  After class the Professor asks to stay so we can talk.  This Prof was tossing me out of the class (this Professor does not exist and is an invention of my mind). I had a class the previous semester with this Professor and at no point had I missed a class, arrived late, and had always participated, so I tell the Professor how I am a good student and should not be cut from the course.

            After telling the Professor that, he dismisses me.  Saying, "I never cared for how you conducted yourself, Josh."  I ask why he had never given me a warning or previous talking to.  His response, "I don't really like confrontation, so I avoid it as long as possible. You should leave now."

            I told him that finishing this class was all I needed for my Masters degree.  He didn't care. I then left and looked out across a vast campus which was mostly empty space with towers on it.  The towers were stacks of real life buildings from the FSU campus, like they had been snapped onto each other, as if they were giant Lego blocks.

            I set off walking across the campus, looking for a way to get a degree with the credits I already had.

Second Dream:

            I am walking in an underground cavern and come to a massive stone door with a lock in the center of it.  The lock is surrounded by 3 crystals/gems.  They are arrange one at the 11 o'clock, one at the 9 o'clock, and the last at the seven o'clock.  The gems are green-blue and sparkling.

            I am with a few other people and we are looking for something, an underground city that is possibly behind this giant stone door.  So we examine the lock.  The gems vanish and the door opens.

            We enter into an underground jungle, lit from the stone ceiling by a massive fissure that lets in a torrent of sunshine.  We see in the distance a steppe pyramid.  While walking there I stop along with a woman in my travel party, we are inspecting a flower/seed-pod that has a weird goo coming out of it that looks and tastes like marmalade.

Third Dream:

            My last and longest dream involved a very anime like plot.  It involves three siblings (two guys and a girl), myself, a friend of mine from my trip to Turkey (Jon P.), a tough girl, someone who I think was Bryan Cranston, an older tough woman, and a psychogenic super being (the words "psychogenic super being" were in my mind when I woke up, this is not me looking up some sort of term, that is what he was referred to in my dream, which I guess just means telekinetic).  All of us become freedom fighters in a world gone wrong.

            Most of the dream takes place on trains (awful trains, mostly just engines pulling flat beds with uncovered benches for passengers to sit on).  The world is dystopian as all the stops we go to on the way are incredibly run down and unkempt motels on the rail with very empty rooms, no staff, and no carpeting.  At one point we stop in an abandoned motel and sleep on old bare mattresses, weeds growing out of the floor, and no electric light for miles.

            An oppressive military regime in gold and red power armor (sort of like Iron Man, but more mecha like with wings) runs everything and is after the group, but each part of the group for different reasons.

            Initially the dream doesn't start with me but with the three siblings, who are running through the wilderness, trying to keep moving because they are being chased (more like they are wanted for some sort of crime, its not like there are dogs on them at that moment).  This is when they come to meet me, I am in the middle of nowhere also hiding from the government of this dream world.

            The three of us all continue running and eventually fin the railway and follow it down avoiding the regime and eventually meet the rest of the group.

            It is then that the group goes on a crime spree/freedom rebellion. 

            Ultimately we are caught and attacked by one of the winged gold power armor thugs and the psychogenic super being kills him by throwing it into the sky, filling the air with hot air balloons and confetti and ultimately flying up and kicking him around like some insane version of Superman would.  The rest of us just look on in amazement unable to help at all.

            Then we all flee down rail.

Poem, "Tiny Dreams"

            I unbuttoned the top of my head the other day, like a cloth bag my scalp was flopped open and my thoughts and dreams were left to float around the room, or walk, slither, or even scurry as they saw fit.  The first that really pulled my eye were the moths made out of prism glass and crystal, rather than casting shadows of themselves in the light of the talking candle sticks, they instead cast rainbows.

            There were spiders, their bodies were old rotary phone cradles and they dragged the receiver behind them like a tail, the stretchy cord getting pulled long then the receiver jumping up and hitting the spider in the butt, spitting out the same message, "Your call could not be completed as dialed."

            There is a monkey, there always seems to be.  This one is purple, but since I don't like defining people by their race I have decided that this is a monkey who happens to be purple, rather than a purple monkey.  then again I don't know any stereotypes assigned to either monkeys or the color purple, so I don't think either thing was hurt by the association.

            A lizard playing chess with a ball of light while a ware-wolf, that is to say a wolf that stores and sells various wares, sits and watches while eating canned tuna.  It is the only board game I see and that disappoints me, I find chess boring.

            There is a palm reader, who has a book made our of skin taken from the palms of dead people.  Not very useful for telling the future of those who died, maybe the answers are written in the back of the book so she can evaluate and then check her work.  Maybe it is a menu.

            Soon my head is empty and I have shrunk down so that I am now the size of a doll, the dreams I have let loose to wander and explore like a village of building blocks, toys, and sadly only that one board game, maybe the chess board flips over and there is Chinese checkers underneath, at least then someone else could play.  Since I shrank I have to find new cloths, and maybe a hat to hide the fact that the top of my head is gone.

            I find a mish mash of wardrobe, I manage to buy on credit most of what I need from a man made out of gold and am walking around dressed in a manner reserved for magicians who perform exclusively in space stations.  To put it another way, a lot of silver.  Makes me think that the gold man might have stolen the cloths.

            So for a while I wandered my dreams as they made themselves at home in my living room, climbing the couch and watching television, strangely not noticing that watching TV made them melt, probably some subconscious social commentary in there.  You might wonder how I wrote this shrunk, or how I managed to get back to my normal size, I didn't, I just found a tiny computer that hook into my wi-fi, though the tiny computer appeared to be made out of melon skin.  So here I am, tiny and living with my dreams.