Heretical Review: Uncanny X-Men 01

I'm wondering if I ought to ration my posts - at this rate I'm going to burn myself out before I even have a fanbase. One a week plus Telfords sounds good, but sometimes one just reads too many awesome things. I've not been too consistent with reviews and the goals of this blog, and that isn't going to change any time soon as we move into the realms of the comic.

Quick background: The X-Men are cooler than you, and they just had a mighty (if not wonderfully penned) schism that split mutantkind into two factions – Wolverine and the Baby Squad, and Cyclops and the Extinction Team. One of those subgroup names is for real. Wolverine and the X-Men 01 didn't exactly raise eyebrows. It was par, I read it, will read on.

Uncanny X-Men 01 is, yes, a reboot and (yes) DC comics have been abusing that particular concept recently, with crappy writing, massive boobies, and a total lack of respect for their current fans. BUT, this is Marvel. Uncanny has only a modicum of boobage, wonderful dialogue, and I don't think the fans could have asked for much more. The coolest of the cool, all in one place. Wolverine used to be cool, but then he sold out and joined like 50 teams and comic series, so not that upset to see him leave.

Cool guys don't look at Celestials

More than anything, writer Kieron Gillen show he understands his audience when he uses lines like “The dial's gone past 11! We need a new dial! I Repeat! We need a new dial!” We see heavy hitters let loose, give in to their inner demons, and lose limbs. One wonders how he can continue when he's already delivered the perfect comic for the modern geek.

Gillen has been given a blockbuster cast to work with, and he's already navigated them superbly into their new place in the politics of the Marvel U. While dealing with the narrative of a potentially planet-wide threat he has already established the status quo of the entire Utopian island population, worked-in the complex relationships, revealing rivalries to new readers in simple and artful exchanges. The man is simply a master of the economy of words. All this and a villain who I haven't even mentioned; such is the extraordinary pace.

If you read a comic for the story, and I think most of us do, I always say that the best art is art that you don't notice. If something about it draws your attention, beyond its employ as an illustrator of words, its detracting from the plot. Happily, Carlos Pacheco's clean, consistent, and refined character designs do not disappoint. I have stopped to go back and look at the art, now reflecting that it has flawlessly fulfilled my only criterion. A compliment to Gillen's efficient style, Pacheco mixes up posture and angled eyebrows magnificently to tell us what Gillen's words are too valuable for.

All in all a fabulous read, and any further conclusion will just tread all over the rest of what I've written. The X-Men are way cooler than you.

Wounded on the eve of NaNoWriMo

Today marks the start of the most important month in any amateur (and some professional) writer’s year. November is the Nanowrimo – National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a novel of around 50,000 words in just thirty days, targeting (if you’re sensible) 2000 words a day, because you know there’ll be days when you fail utterly.

I’ve not tried it before, so I’ve spent the last weekend learning about how it all works and fleshing out one of the myriad ideas I’ve been piling high for just such an occasion. Turns out, I should have got into it earlier in October as a lot of people start prepping well before I have. Thousands of people do it worldwide, enough to organise related gatherings in major and minor towns and cities – including Reading. Unfortunately because of when I signed up I had a mere 40 minutes notice of our first meeting, so did not attend. People also sign up to raise money for writers’ causes, getting people to sponsor them and pledge money online. I was tempted by this, but honestly can’t be sure that I’m going to be able to pull off 50,000 words, so thought I’d see what I can do this year before suggesting that people give me money for my efforts next year.

Not bad really, but its's the principle of the thing!

Unfortunately I'm already behind schedule before I've even written a word... Last night I was dragged out of Sakura in Reading for reasons I am as yet unaware. Two bouncers grabbed me and forced me out. I didn't even realise they were bouncers until after I'd cut my right elbow, bruised my left arm and shouted “What the fuck!” loudly several times. I went back to Sakura today to start the ball rolling on identifying the bouncers involved, watching the CCTV, and finding out if I should take the matter further. It went reasonably well, with a little headway made thanks to my sister's lawyer boyfriend, who was not not nearly as shaky as I was.

I get a phone call tomorrow and we'll see how things go from there. Now, on to writing... Megan!

Telfords - Episode 02!

Karl was not about to back down. The soup stack in front of him created the perfect defence, not like the cereal stack he'd taken cover behind during the earlier shoot-out. That had come down right on top of him – a key Frosties box had been shot out from the base by well-placed foam torpedoes. He'd been hit in the leg by a smaller bullet as he ran to the next aisle, but that was only one point. He was still ahead, on account of that butt-shot he'd landed on Theresa. “Hehe,” he sniggered.

There was movement among the freezers. Karl wasn't sure where he saw it, something had bobbed in his peripheral vision. He shifted his grip, tweaked his aim, and covered the entrance to aisle 12. A quick look over his shoulder. Kerry was still covering the rear of their aisle; they wouldn't be able to flank him, but they couldn't wait all morning. Management knew they didn't get much done, but they had to have something to show for a morning's work, and this stalemate wasn't getting them anywhere. Before nine in the morning, none of the seniors gave a damn, and after nine, only about half, so half of the staff worked. Karl, Kerry, Theresa, Dave and Imran decided which half on a day to day basis - with Nerf guns.

Karl saw movement again, right in his line of sight this time - above him! Someone was crawling almost flat across the top of the freezer, their angled Nerf gun waving slightly in the air. He'd have a perfect sniping point to take Kerry from behind and pin Karl down. Karl would have to leave cover to catch him by surprise, but Kerry had his back to him, so he couldn't warn her without giving them both away.

He checked his watch; it was getting on already. The doors were open, and customers were moving into the aisles. The hunched shoulders of the prone figure cast a shadow over the floor of aisle 12. He was almost above the frozen promotions, ready to take a shot. It was Imran, had to be. No one else would crawl through the dust and grime, the forgotten debris, and scattered bird droppings, dragging themselves on a paper thin sledge made from their own apron. Imran was dedicated to everything but work. He would strive harder than any of them to take home his pay cheque for minimum effort. The Nerf gun mornings were his idea. Fortunately for Karl that didn't mean that he was also a particularly good shot. Creative though, and that turned the tide regularly.

Karl worked on home and leisure, but he was in a grocery aisle – this was Imran's territory. Maybe he was better backing off and entrenching himself elsewhere, but there wasn't time for that. And who knew where Dave and Theresa were? Waiting in ambush, probably, covering the middle aisle that separated them.

Imran had stopped. He was ready. Karl cocked his rifle and poked the muzzle just over the top soup can. He'd have one chance to headshot Imran as the grocery assistant took aim. One chance to end it.

A shadow to his left! Karl cringed as he felt his finger tighten on the trigger, and the recoil as the foam bullet left the shaft. It skipped off the side of the freezer, his accuracy destroyed by the shock.

Behind him, Kerry spun, and fired off two rapid shots, both striking the shadow. A girl – Theresa – screamed in frustration and threw herself back into the adjacent aisle. Karl turned his attention back to the sniping Imran, but it was far too late. Cocky as ever, Imran had taken the time to stand, and fired one clean shot straight at Karl's nose.

As Karl fell backwards, his grip on his rifle abandoned, he heard the echo of Kerry's shout reverberate down the aisle. “Nooooo!” None of the soup toppled with him, thank god, even though he'd scrambled at it to stay up right. Now he lay there in the middle of the entrance to the aisle, a defeatist smile on his face, which was very rapidly wiped clean.

His view of Imran was blocked by a tall, imposing athlete of a man. Neat hair, neat suit, neat, cheap tie. Oh God, they'd all forgotten. D-Day. New management.

The man seized Karl by the shoulders and ripped him off the floor. Kerry had vanished, and Theresa was nowhere to be seen. All that left was Dave, who came out of aisle 11 moments later, escorted by Marty, carrying his confiscated Nerf rifle. Imran already felt the burning glare of the new manager on him, and was now thoroughly regretting his decision to stand atop the freezer.

The new suit seethed at him: “Get down, before I fire you and throw you under a car!”

It looked like a whole new world was about to open up for Karl and the rest of the Telfords store as they were marched towards the manager's office. The next few minutes would decide a lot of things for them; everything would change. Karl knew only one thing: he would fight it.

Next time on Telfords:

Karl and Jason meet... THE BOSS

Heretical Review: Contagion

I think a lot of people will be disappointed by this film, and I'll be disappointed in turn if they are, because it doesn't do what it could have done, and for that it should be praised.

Not as sensational as its tagline.

Present day Hong Kong and Gwyneth Paltrow is returning to the US after a business trip, leaving a viral trail as she touches glasses, pays by card, and opens doors. Every instance of contact is lingered on by the camera, giving you a vision of the inevitable. She is patient zero, and she's bringing the contagion home. Over the next hour and a half we watch the ripple effect caused by human interaction, social convention and genuinely felt inevitability.

With a name like 'Contagion' you could be forgiven for thinking that everything this film has to offer has been done before. The end of the world? An unstoppable, inescapable, horrific disease that spreads rapidly and kills painfully? Seen it before. You might expect it to have a lot in common with a zombie pandemic, with I Am Legend and Dead Island and you'd be wrong.

This is not a survivor tale, any more than it's about Americans sticking it to nature. It's not about humanity banding together in its darkest hour, it's not about sensationalising, or personalising, or rationalising tragedy.

A concept is taken, a 'what if', and it is examined – under a microscope. What if this happened, what if it really happened? Contagion tells that story, or stories to be precise. Because there is no one tale here, no one perspective. Many story-tellers will find the angle. Journalists are trained to do it, writers are born to do it. Take a concept, and tell it from a view point, from an angle that has meaning. Sometimes when you do this, you can lose sight of the big picture. Of course, that might be the idea. Titanic: take a grand event, and bore down to one story among thousands. Humanise it, sensationalise it. We can still find stories to spin out of that tragedy today, such as the initial premise of Downton Abbey – an heir lost at sea, and all the political and dynastic wranglings that then must follow.

Contagion is able to tell a weave of stories, from a panorama of angles, almost none of which crossover, and still maintain a coherent chronological narrative around a core theme – the contagion. In doing so it creates more of a docurama than it does a movie. This certainly isn't a Hollywood blockbuster. This isn't special effects and Michael Bay and George A Romero. It's entertainment, yes, but, for most of the film, that seems secondary. The pacing is more in tune with an Attenborough nature show. If you listen very carefully, you can almost hear him describing the trials and tribulations of the characters as they struggle to survive in an inhospitable habitat.

It brings to the fore every aspect of humanity when faced with mortality. Altruism is mixed in equal measure with opportunism, professionalism with paranoia, and loyalty with imperfection.

It resists the urge, repeatedly, to deteriorate into a B-movie horror-fest, tempering its drama and rooting itself thoroughly in a believable and recognisable reality. It deserves a lot of respect for keeping its path steady, and doing what a lot of films won't dare to do. Despite its tag line, it didn't pander to our innate fears. It was almost objective. Contagion: This is what happens. Live with it. Deal with it. It's not hopeless... It's just futile.

Telfords - Episode 01

It wasn't a new job, not really. Telfords stores were all the same, strained and hammered into unerring shapes so that head office planners could marvel at their uniformity and customer-satisfying, predictable layouts. When Jason Carper went through the front door of the St Michaels branch, it would be his first time as an ADM. He would see the sprawling mock market place with its uncharacteristically quiet fishmonger – Jason had always thought their fishmongers should be more classically vocal, calling all and sundry to check out their fresh-water wares. There would be the butchery, the bakery, the candle-stick makery, and the less aptly named produce section, overflowing with potatoes.

It was eight o'clock in the morning, and the store was already open, drawing in the elderly crowds, unsatisfied until their daily newspapers had been placed delicately into their baskets. Jason walked through this, straightening a Primark tie, one he hoped would pass for something more expensive.

There was a roller-cage still a quarter full of bundled papers, partially blocking the entrance and an assistant was still hurriedly snapping open the bundles and plonking them into place for the grey-haired punters. Probably not the boy's fault, Jason acknowledged. Couldn't help it if the papers had been delivered late.

He mumbled his apologies as he circled round the growing throng of paper-chasing customers and entered the market place through the automatic barriers. It was a little different from other stores, by necessity of design. He hadn't noticed it from the outside, but the store was actually incredibly long and narrow, rather than a more consistent rectangle. The market place apparently ran the length of it, with the produce laid out along the middle of the dauntingly long first aisle. The fishmongers, butchery, and candle-stick makery lined it on either side, along with the florist, the rug seller, rucksack vendor, electronics merchant, and phone unlocker. Telford had truly done a marvellous job, as ever, of replicating the classic British market place.

No one knew him yet, so he didn't embarrass himself by wishing them all a good morning, although from tomorrow he most certainly would. It was often conceded at training courses that management didn't do enough to make their staff feel valued, and Jason wouldn't be the one to continue that trend. In fact, he was determined to buck it with extreme prejudice.

The last rounds of fruit and veg were being unpacked – a bit behind schedule, but surely that was to be expected when the store was short an ADM to keep them on their toes? Nothing spectacularly wrong there.

It was a long walk through the market place to the centre aisle, and in retrospect, Jason was now starting to wonder if he shouldn't have started at the checkouts. He would have been more likely to find his contact there, the supervisor he'd been instructed to meet. He looked over his shoulder, but the flow of customers was against him now, an inexorable tide of basket-wielding early morning go-getters desperate for fresh milk and bananas.

He advanced with the rest of them, stepping free of the rush at the far end of the produce section, beside the 'Grab it while its Fab!' section. Fruit and veg on the verge of falling over a precipice into the state of being less than fabulous. And yes, it was missing an apostrophe: par for the course. And of course this wouldn't be his section, so while incorrect punctuation did poke the stickler inside him, he would pass over it without comment.

Next stop, the ambient section. Jason's new domain, land of booze, cereal, DVDs, and light bulbs. It was not to be quite yet, however.

“Jason? Jason Carper?”

There was a small, balding man standing behind him. Now, Jason had never thought of himself as especially tall, but the gremlin that had inexplicably been able to tap him on the shoulder made him feel like a giant. Jason had a perfect view of his bald spot and his pointy nose. The man was wavering expectantly beside him, wearing a department manager's shirt and tie, with Marty on his name badge.

Jason held out his hand. “Yes. Jason Carper.”

Marty shook it excitedly, for a moment even using both hands. “Oh, Jason, I'm thrilled that you're finally here! The store's been in a terrible state with only one deputy manager, and the staff just don't listen, and the warehouse is a mess, and the shelves are empty and just now I had to rescue Chris from the freezer-”

“Marty!” Jason pulled his hand free and gestured for him to calm down.

“I'm sorry Jason, it's just that no one listens to me!” He lowered his voice and signalled for Jason to lean in. “Only two men showed up from night crew last night,” he hissed. “The warehouse is full but the shelves are empty!”

Curiously enough, the customers didn't seem too interested in the exchange going on between the oranges and the fruit juice, but Jason strapped an arm around Marty's shoulder and whisked him away anyway.

“Marty, the place looks fine. Produce, the market place, the counters, all fine.”

“Oh well, yes, that's because Natalie manages all those, and the chilled sections. Ambient is in such a state.”

Jason stood tall, rallying his management skills for the coming moments. “Show me,” he commanded. Jason set off down the centre aisle in long, confident strides, as Marty scuttled along behind him.

“Just brace yourself, boss. You've not seen anything like this before!”

Next Time on Telford:

NERF GUN TURF WARS

(A work of fiction, any similarity to real people is purely coincidental.

Inspired by personal experience, and the suggestion of a particular ADM.)

A Defence

I need a project. Or, more precisely, I need to choose one of the ones I already have in preproduction. I've spent a lot of time catching up on my absorption of drama, contemporary and period, written and acted, all along telling myself that it serves a higher purpose: bolstering my own creative pool. I'm watching what I consider to be the best of the best, striving to avoid sullying my memory with even mediocre scripts and acting. Unless there is a prolific application of explosions – looking at you, Crysis 2.

I get something from each of these series that makes it in my eyes a paradigm. Whenever I let anyone know I watch one in particular, I'm usually replied to with a repulsed screwing up of the facial features:

Desperate Housewives is a masterclass in how to sculpt a solid episode with a rigid core and flamboyant affectations, rather than to piece together a haphazard twist in an overly complex narrative that can come tumbling down if one loose string is toyed with. It's too easy to pull strings in today's drama, as producers (I hesitate to say writers, because I don't believe we do the following) underestimate their audience and straighten out plots with a blow dryer rather than an iron to satisfy the bare minimum in viewers and hurry out television to protect their bottom line. Desperate Housewives takes a theme, lays out that theme at the beginning of each episode and concludes it at the end, cohesively and convincingly. Every narrative step it takes is within that theme, while simultaneously satisfying the larger story, leaning out of the theme to join hands with the next episode, but never straying. It teaches me how to break a story down into chapters, how to tell a contained narrative in each, with the same characters that I used in the last, while continuing a overarching plot, and not just adding arbitrary end points to help the pace.

I was worried that when I thought about this I'd come to the conclusion that, actually, I'm lying to myself and that all it does is act as a guilty pleasure, but it simply isn't true. Is it entertaining? Hell yes, or I wouldn't watch it. But I don't just derive entertainment from it, I derive education.

The catch is in a question: Have I put into practice what I've learnt? No. Not yet. I've not tried to write anything from the roots since I started watching it a year ago. All my projects are either scribbles that I'll probably never return to, or primed and ready to skyrocket, if I give them the time of day. So there's definitely potential. Styx, for instance, would benefit enormously from a structured approach. Treat the plot as the story I want to tell over a series. Chapter by chapter, episode by episode, build the tension, lay the foundations, explore concepts of Greek myth: treachery and betrayal, antitheses and companions, et al.

Maybe I should move onto structure next, justify the time I've invested in Desperate Housewives.

Heretical Review: Assassins Creed: Brotherhood

I wasn't sure if I should let myself calm down or not before I posted this review, because if I write this while this angry, my opinions will be slightly skewed. But fuck it, life isn't interesting without a bit of emotion.

Now, a week ago when I got Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, I was thinking, hmm, if it's worth thinking about much I might write a blog review of this. Turns out, it was so far down the other end of the spectrum that I can't gush out praise for it, but instead will vomit bucket-loads of vitriol, because ARGH*)(^&$%$%&^*&^&(^*^&!!!!” God damn this game. Okay, so it's no Dark Souls; that's genuinely hard. This is just irritating and, frankly, not rewarding enough to warrant the effort required to finish. A lot of people will point out that I'm a PC gamer and that I was probably playing with a keyboard, and you'd be right, I was. I refuse to play a game on PC with a controller, because (seeing as how the keyboard is the dominant interface on the PC) if you're going to port a game to one, you bloody well better make it work with a f*cking keyboard.

I was really looking forward to this after Assassins Creed 2, which I loved even though it didn't handle all that much better. It did the same clever trick of luring you in with the simple, flowing agility of Ezio before crowding your fun out with clunky new mechanics that, yes, add layers to the game, but then also proceed to smother you with them.

No amount of PC-rubbishing can explain away this or the piss-poor ending to Ezio's contribution to the plot. It's spoiler time people, but if you haven't played the game already you probably never will, so listen up.

The password was seventy two.

Not forty two, no, but still bloody English. In an alien temple. Buried under Rome. It was a mystery built up from the beginning of the game and then blurted out in some incomprehensible anticlimactic burble by the annoying British guy.

We came to that part very suddenly in the last hour because Ubisoft seemingly got bored of making the game and decided to accelerate you through a gloopy narrative mess that leaps from place to place, mission to mission, entirely robbing you of the sandbox experience that gives the game its freedom. Oh, and during this locked-out linear final hour of game play, I was STILL getting reports that new missions were available. Was I given the chance to abandon memory and try them? No, so I have no idea how Ezio's pointless flashbacks within flashbacks with a generic female character played out. Badly, I suspect/hope. I can't blame the creators for this, as it reeks of money-men pushing for a quick release.

You will notice that most of my complaints revolve around this section, all of them in fact, because the game is still built on a solid concept which it takes full advantage of, bringing back many well-known elements from both of the previous two games, and adds the new dynamic of the Brotherhood – your own trained assassins. Not to mention the multiplayer, which is exquisite. However, to quote Yahtzee (and yes I went to grab this directly from the Borderlands video on Zero Punc): “A great game must be able to stand up on single player alone”, so for the purposes of my venom I am going to conveniently ignore it.

By the time I'd finished with Ezio and returned to the real world with Desmond and co I was just waiting for the game to end and growing more and more frustrated as Desmond (apparently so inexperienced with his manic jumping abilities that he pays even less attention to the direction of the arrow keys than Ezio) leapt off walls at ridiculous tangents that were nowhere near where I was telling him to go. All this did was lengthen the game and draw out my rage.

In the end I didn't actually complete the Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. I got so angry that I calmly took the disk out of the drive, sensibly placed it in its case, and then tidily put it back on the shelf next to Dragon Age 2 and... and... – wait, I only own one other game that's disappointed me this much.

I resorted to Youtube, skipped past the final irritating jumpy bit and saw the ending. Now, there is a slight nag of regret here, because during the cut scene the last activity you get to have with the KEYBOARD is a command to press any key. Doing so stabs your love interest with the hidden blade. That was pretty sweet, and I do wish I'd got to mortally wound her myself. She had so better die though, as I've one-hit armoured walking tanks with this weapon, so if she can take it in the chest and keep going my face is going to bruise my palm.

Up to that point, all I wanted to do was stop playing and install Crysis 2, which arrived today. So toodleoo Ezio, its time I get on with what (proper) PCs were made to do – get raped by the Cry Engine.

Ahhhhhhhh...