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January 2016

Green Sunday Chapter 8 Motorpsycho Nitemare (Raw)

Proofread the latest chapter of GS, as usual it’s just an excerpt for copyright reasons so if you want to read the rest of the chapter and previous chapters in a better format head on over to inkitt. 

GS Chapter 8
The stillness of the early morning was deafening. cold and brittle like the morning before, shattered by hurried footsteps and the sound of frantic panting. A red haired man in sweats jogged with a limping gate, taking cold and wet heaves of terrified breathes. He choked as much of the damp morning air down as he could to keep his limbs moving. Lactic acid got into every joint and muscle as he tried frantically to make his body work how it was supposed to.

A bright light pierced the mist of the ambivalent early morning. Accompanied by an obnoxiously loud and slightly tinny harley continental engine tearing into life. a black gloved hand revved it for the pleasure of the vibration in his gut. He grabbed his leather clad crouch with his gloved hand to rearrange the furniture. The sound and smell of creaking leather bringing a smile to his greasy stubbly face.

“Let’s go fuck shit up”

He pulled his denim waistcoat tighter across his skinny frame. The name “Lamchop” embossed above the left breast pocket. The biker dragged a chain across his lap. The end of which had a barbed hook that he hung over the side. He nudged the kickstand with his leather boot and screeched off down the suburban street.

The town was so still, dead and dying. The red headed jogger could’ve heard the engine on the other side of town. but he was sure it was closer, his eyes widened and his pupils shrank as he looed into the mist. He doubled his pace, his muscles crying out with pain with every terrified step.

The biker let out some slack into the chain, one hand on the handles of his bike, he let it swing idly at his side as he drove. Noticing a shape form in the mist he took control of it’s swinging motion. With the strength of his wrist alone he began to spin the chain at his side. Building up speed, keeping full control of the bike as he did so.

Reaching terminal velocity on the chain. The shape was within striking distance. He released it as if launching a dog at an unsuspecting rabbit from the barrel of a gun. All the force from his wrist snapping it at the shape coming at him from the mist.

The chain struck with snake-like snapping precision. It tangled around the feet of it’s victim locking it in place at the ankle. The savage biting barbs rending flesh from the bone and sticking stalwart in the calf of the bait.

No noise was heard over the thunderous engine, no screams, no pleas for help, just cold early morning dimness. The chain stopped for a brief moment slack as it was. Then it took on life once again as the bike pulled away. The chain snaked up with a vicious snapping sound. Yanking it’s victim off it’s feet and dragging them across the the neatly tarmacked suburban roadway.

The meatsack hit the ground with a sad wet trumping sound, bones in a bag of wet flower colliding awkwardly. Wrenched out the mist with a hiss and a slick grinding sound. The biker stopped, clearer as the surroundings were now and lifting his goggles he looked back at the zombie he’d caught on the hook. A proud fisherman, the biker smiled and pulled his goggled back down. The creature writhed with a mouth full of ground down teeth falling from it’s mouth like popcorn. Its face hot and slick from its date with the smooth tarmac, most of it’s features ground down. It reached its arm up and to him seemed reminiscent of the canteen scene from Oliver twist “More? Ok well why didn’t you say?” He laughed to himself and revved his engine once more.

The red haired man in sweats reached his front door. His breath burning his lungs, every recycling of air felt like sandpaper going in and coming out. His sweats drenched and cold tugging at him as he propped himself up against the door. He quietly tapped at the door “Sheila it’s me, let me in, they’re coming, for gods sake lemme’ in”. He whispered in a low raspy voice as he tapped the glass viewing window of the door.

He looked back into the mist as he heard the engines noises carried by the empty streets. “Sheila open the fucking door, or god help me I wil-“ an abrupt unlatching noise cut him off. He shapeshifted through the small crack in the door his wife opened like osmosis.

“Will- are you ok?- Did you find any?” A slight woman with mousey brown hair stood in front of him bunching up a plaid dress in her two skinny fists.

“I couldn’t, they were on me, these guys, they were staking out the pharmacy. They knew people would come for supplies, it was a trap, I barely got away!” His voice was hoarse and he rasped taking in large gulping breaths as he spoke. Feelings of shame and guilt and terror fighting for space in his brain. All thoughts barged out of the way for the singular desire for all the stale oxygen in the landing.

“I can’t last much longer without my insulin” She said almost whispering into her dress. A maudlin expression projecting onto her pale face “if you were a real man you’d get it”.

“Yeah and if you weren’t a total retard you’d have stocked up before the zombie apocalypse. But we can’t all be perfect!”

“It’s not the apocalypse, the army’ll come, they will. We just have to last a little longer, I don’t know how much longer I can-“

“It’ll be ok I promise” He said softly as he collapsed on the stairs “We’ll find a way”.

Just as he got a little comfortable and the air started forming an orderly queue to his lungs, a sharp tapping taxman knock set the couples teeth on edge.

“Who… who is it?” Sheila said.

If you want to read the rest of the chapter check it out on inkitt.
GS Chapter 8

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

 

0

Review of Chapter one of Slayers by Waywardknight3 on inkitt

Slayers: To kill an undead is a fairly light hearted monster killer story, I would put it in the same vein in tone alone just from the first chapter as something like Hellboy. Not doom and gloomb but fun and a little funny, a very fun read. Something very similar to something I would write, just not taking yourself too seriously and just having fun writing something you want to write.

I really enjoyed this first chapter, the start is really good, I loved the restrained style. I enjoy slow starts, I enjoy when people promise intense action from the title and the description but then take their time building up to it so I thought that was great.
But there is very little going on in the story so far and some of it is a little cliché’ despite that I realise that that obviously was the intended goal.

Plot I have to give props to just for the pay off of the chapter, this slowly building frame work for what they’re talking about. Dealing with this stereotypical condescending new age douchey guru passive aggressive psychiatrist trying to use your brain as a chew toy. I liked the line about the government, that sort of classic almost bitchy innuendo that if anyone says anything bad about the government you infer that they’re the next Oklahoma bomber haha. That annoying way of talking to someone who picks up on unintentional things in what you’re saying and uses them against you to get you riled up.
I thought the main character hammed it up with the tough guy/petulant child routine, maybe you could tone it down, maybe not, it was a little cliché’ but the whole scene for me centres around that comedy pay-off at the end so it still works.
The dialogue is very good, flows well, makes you want to punch the psychiatrist in the face too and it keeps it’s card very close to it’s chest and I really respect that in a first chapter.
I utterly loathe when a first chapter just sort of ham fists you right into the action with no thought or pause, I think you handled it delicately and in fact the exact same way I probably would have done.
I actually think we have a similar writing style, very pithy and sarcastic, I thought some of your description was great, overall I found it very easy and enjoyable to read despite nothing really happening.
The pay off at the end makes you want to read more and get more information, the subtlety surrounding them talking about his job and you having no idea what they’re talking about because you’re just this fly on the wall and you want to know more and then the pay off I thought was pretty funny, it worked well.
It sucks that grammar and technical writing comes last because I have to give it to you, there was a spelling mistake in the first paragraph, that’s not a great start haha. It’s ‘were’ not ‘where’, so quick go change that before someone reads it haha.
Also you commit my own personal pet peeve of grammar errors, this fucking drives me nuts, it’s ‘then’ not ‘than’, makes my skin crawl haha.
Other than that, I thought it was a lot of fun, it was well written, very interesting and I would recommend it.

If this sounds up your alley, give it a read on inkitt Slayers: To Kill an Undead.

0

Review of the Benchmade Harley Davidson LFK

That’s ‘LARGE FOLDING KNIFE’. I know what you were you thinking, you were thinking it stood for ‘fucking’ well now it does, because I say so.

I thought I’d do something a little different, haven’t done a knife review in a while and this has been a nice little show piece for me for a long time. I’ve done these big shiny “zombie killer” knives now I want to bring it down to a nice ‘little’ and I use that word lightly, folding knife.
I know some people have their issues with benchmade and a lot of their knives I think are overpriced but their quality can’t be beaten in my opinion, but never before did one of their knives really jump out at me, until the Harley Davidson LFK.
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Look at this thing, it’s fucking huge!

I can barely fit it on the internet haha. It’s a big folding knife, you get a few of these kicking around and they’re usually ridiculously expensive and completely useless (Cold steel looking at you).
Because they have these big flashy blades but because it’s a folding knife it has to have this big clunky handle for the knife to fold into. Now you’re realising that, you’re looking at the LFK if you’re a knife guy thinking “Wtf? Where does the blade go?”.
I know, take a second look, the blade is longer than the handle, what sort of witchcraft is this you ask? Of course folding knives have to fold into the handle so the handle has to be longer than the blade to make sure the cutting edge is fully covered when it goes in your pocket. So that you don’t need to go home and wash the blood out of your underpants.
This knife is a little different, it actually has this little plastic fin that comes out of the handle when you fold the blade back to cover the tip and top portion of the knife that overshoots the handle.

IMG_20160114_160616
The fin in question.

Now you might be thinking, “That’s kind of dumb, what’s the point of that? Why not just make the handle longer”. Well if you’re familiar with knives and centrifugal force you’d understand that how a knife moves in the hand is relative to the length and shape of the handle. So a big long clunky handle limits your range of motion, slows down strikes and basically gives you less control over the blade tip. If you were using it in wood working or bushcraft it would be annoying, if you were using it in a last ditch effort to defend against a zombie you’re worm food buddy haha.
I can’t say I’d reccomend taking on the undead with a folding knife but you could do worse than this big fucker measuring something in the ball park of five inches (would have been good to get the specs up in hindsight haha) that’s huge for a folding knife. Any bigger than that and you’re entering ridiculous territory of; “Why not just get a fixed blade?”
Essentially this a folder that moves and feels in the hand, just like a fixed blade of the same size. The grip is this rubbery substance (could be rubber, worst knife reviews ever haha) and it just sticks in your hand like glue. The blade came sharp out the box, shaving sharp. It locks up nice with the standard liner lock, so fuck you lefties like me, gotta close it with two hands unless you flip it like I do it. The finish is beautiful, it comes in black but I went for the satin because it’s just a lovely looking knife.
It’s very well made, you can open so fast with that big blade, it swings out like an automatic, it’s just so well made, it opens like a dream and you just have this huge beast of a knife coming out to great you. I mean if crocodile dundee had been held up with this he may have had pause to think.
That’s a lot of blade to walk around with in your pocket, so the question is; “Do you really need all that blade in your pocket?” and the answer is no not really. If you’re using it as an everyday carry or just for folding knife stuff like light bushcraft, you’d be fine with a four inch or lower knife. You could be just as happy with a little spyderco knife like a delica, that would do everything this could do and maybe more due to it’s size.
If you really wanted or needed a knife this size you could just get a fixed blade and not have to worry about that plastic fin snapping which is a massive worry I have about this knife and why I would never use it outdoors unless I really had to.
Also you know on a practical level it’s just easier to clean a fixed blade knife if you were gonna use to hunt or skin animals or something as barbarous as that and not like me who just puts them on a nice shelf to collect dust and show to his mates haha.
For a folder it’s impressive I give it three zombie dicks out of five for it’s potential zombie murder and if I couldn’t carry a fixed blade for some reason and I wanted it for personal protection (if that was legal in the uk or it was the zombie apocalpyse) I would still probably use my spyderco military to be honest haha.
Don’t get me wrong, I love this knife, it’s beautiful and well made, but for me it’s more of a good show piece, a good talking piece. It’s impressive and it comes in this nice little pouch with a belt loop (which is great because the pocket clip isn’t reversible, another fuck you to lefties like me haha) so you can take the pocket clip off all together and just hold it like any other fixed blade.
Overall I love it, but it stays on the shelf.10100sbp.jpg

2

Review of E W Hemmings ‘Talking To Gravestones’

I read over the first chapter because really I feel like first impressions are the most reliable when it comes to inkitt. The first chapter is where you decide to read on or not.
I like the start, it’s nice and steady with a great deal of emotion and it really pushed that feeling of lose and melancholy onto me. That feeling of wishing that nothing was real and I really enjoyed that.
Other than that, not a lot happens in the first chapter, it’s quite short so I didn’t expect any great developments and the first person narrative is notorious for focusing on emotions and subjective interpretations over actual substantive events.
The writing style is very emotive, I liked it a great deal, very easy to read and not a cringe so far. A lot of the time stories like this get lost in the angst and become very cringe worthy but this kept a level timbre of it’s cringe.
The reason I called it a morbid fairytale is because of the description of the body bag swallowing her boyfriend up, I really liked that imagery. Put me in her mind for a minute, made it all feel dreamlike, as if he wasn’t really dead and this was just the start of a really messed up fairytale. Kind of makes you think whether anything she’s experiencing from then on is really real or if her mind is so shattered from the loss that she’s creating a world where she can see her boyfriend again in a fantasy.
There were a few errors and sentences that sort of tripped me up but overall I thought it was very competent and I would recommend it.

You can check this story out on inkitt by following this link Talking to gravestones.

0

Star Wars the force awakens the internet’s feckless crybabies.

Ok I said I would tackle this ‘issue’ just for fun, this might not be what some were expecting when I said I’d rant about the monopoly thing but who cares, this is my opinion, don’t like it write an angry comment I can ignore and go on with your day.
When I first saw this article I wasn’t that surprised. Recently it seems like the current generation are just prone waiting for the next minor injustice to be offended by. And then let everyone on twitter know what amazing progressive wunderkin they are for being offended at said non-issue first and receive the most pats on the back from their like minded drooling idiot followers.

So down to the ‘problem’ at hand, with the release of the new Star Wars movie, the force awakens. The force was awakened to a bunch of new star wars related crap parents are forced to buy their squealing offspring to secure their love for another year. One such piece of crap was a set of star wars the force awakens monopoly.

So far so good, monopoly, harmless capitalism in a box with a star wars theme, not the first time and probably wont be the last time a new set of star wars monopoly is released. But the ‘big deal’ about this new star wars and this new set of monopoly is that the new main character of this current incarnation of star wars happens to be a carrier of a holey vagina. And that said character was not featured in the set of monopoly, oh shit I should have put a trigger warning in there, I’m sure by now people are foaming at the mouth and snapping their problem glasses in half.

Obviously the internet is in an uproar, over monopoly, no seriously.
“It’s sexist” “Holy misogyny batman” “But the force awakens in Rey!” Wah wah wah, it’s just fucking monopoly, who cares? These idiots care, idiots who inject feminism and gender and race into every stupid fucking thing and just can’t let anything go.

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Here are the offensive monopoly pieces in question as you can see, not a vagina between them, what a travesty.
So the characters from left to right are; Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker, Finn, Kylo Ren and Darth Vader.
The theme of the board game was heroes vs villains so you have two heroes vs two villains, now this to me is the first point of contention. Anyone who watched force awakens knows there was only one villain because no one counts Ron Weasley’s older brother, Captain Phasma who has like three lines and Darth Golem. They would never make good pieces to go alongside Kylo, who would want to play as Emperor Snoke? He’s not this hugely fleshed out character and he just spends the entire movie sitting down looking menacing.
The thing I think a lot of the internet’s pearl clutchers overlook is the fact that if Finn was substituted for Rey I think the shitstorm would have been equal if not worse, with Black lives matter taking a shit on Hasbro’s lawn and wiping their asses with Chewbaccas face.
Really you’re between a rock and a hard place in terms of representation, and star wars has always been poked at by race baiters and other idiots for having a white character voiced by a black man because that’s racist… for reasons.
But “hold on” say the shrill masses of the internet, “Why don’t they just have Rey and Finn?” Well yeah that would solve all the problems except the two villains required, you can’t just have Vader next to Kylo when Vader is dead in that movie, so you’d have to replace him with Phasma or Snoke.
Bare in mind this monopoly set would have been mass produced months before the movie was even in cinemas so they have no idea how well the movie will do let alone how well characters like Phasma and Snoke will track. In my opinion this is Hasbro trying to straddle two markets to insure themselves against another possible star wars flop. They decided to include Luke and Vader so as to ensure the set would sell even if the movie didn’t because Vader and Luke will always sell you can always bank on the original trilogy making money.It would have been a total gamble not including those original characters.

The other argument I hear is “Why don’t they just make more pieces?” yeah well why don’t they include a dye cast model of the bar scene in mos eisley or a life size model of the yoda training scene in the dagoba swamps? Because it would cost too much fucking money. Every company has a projection for how much money they want to make and how much they’re willing to spend and obviously four pewter figures was the maximum amount they wanted to mass produce per set because four players is the optimal amount for one game of monopoly.
And again if they included Rey who would be her adversary? There’s still only one villain in the force awakens, you can’t just have two Kylo Rens that’s dumb.
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Another ‘controversy’ from kneejerk morons on the internet was over this Millenium Falcon toy because again it doesn’t have the vagina having wonder aboard.
“SEXISM” MUH-SOGGY-KNEES!!!”

Is it though? Notice anything else missing from this piece, ahem, Han fucking Solo perhaps??
Yeah Rey and Han aren’t included because this was made long before the movies came out and probably released before or at the same time as the film and those character’s aren’t included to prevent spoilers for the movie itself. So it’s not that Finn is more important because he’s male because the fucking robot is included but Han is nowhere to be found.
But the bottom line is toys like this are aimed at boys, no matter how ‘progressive’ you are you have to realise not all toys are aimed at every type of child.
Toy companies make money by appealing to a particular demographic and they do this by product testing and market projections. And despite this wave of progressive feminist thought, little boys still like playing with action figures and space ships more than little girls and probably wouldn’t play with a female action figure.
I mean there’s probably the odd one or two male childrem that will play with a female doll and a girl that might like a space ship over a barbie but toy companies don’t make toys for the minority of kids, they make them for lowest common denominator because that’s how you make money.
In conclusion this is just another example of idiots on the internet with dumb agendas trying to push them by ignoring the all the facts and twisting every non-issue into a way that somehow oppresses them for some contrived reason, nothing to see here people, move along.

Thanks as always go to Florian for doing the art on the strip, if you want to see more strips and more of Florian’s messed up art, head to the Jeffrey Dahmer and Greg comic page for more fucked up un-pc humour.

Cheers!

0

Green Sunday Chapter 7 ‘Take up space’ (Raw)

Latest unedited chapter of Green Sunday for your reading pleasure, well an excerpt of the first proofread anyway. Things been been going pretty well since I launched my author page, lots of like, few new reviews on inkitt, can’t complain.
As always if you want to read the rest of this chapter you’ll have to go on inkitt which I’m sure is compatible with tablets and all that stuff, completely free, I just do this dirty trick to get more clicks, aint I nefarious?

Green Sunday Chapter 7

~

The sun rolled down the hill faster than usual. Candlelight lit Tj’s mom’s little dining room. The sounds of knives and forks scratching plates, filled the silence of the dimly lit room.

“So how did you and TJ meet” Tj’s mom asked. Cutting through the awkward silence of this intimate little meal. The table consisting of her and her son and a strange green haired girl he’d brought in off the streets. Smelling faintly of dried blood.

“We met at the mall actually” The girl said turning a wry smile up at TJ. Who was sweating into his food as he kept his gaze locked on his plate.

“I’m sorry, did you tell me your name? I get a little ditzy sometimes.” His mother said feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Like she’d walked out of one dream and into another unannounced.

“Sunday” She said.

“Well that’s a pretty name, TJ, don’t you think that’s a pretty name?” His mother said turning the heat up on TJ.

“Err yeah.” TJ said looking up from his plate of macaroni and cheese to glance across the table and back to his plate again.

“Do you live around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before, I mean I think I’d- I mean-“

“Ah no, I just got here, err my… Dad travels a lot for work” Sunday said, choosing her words surgically.

“Well I think the candles were a nice touch. We don’t get to use the dining room much these days, it’s just been the two of us for a while now”

“Yeah well it was Tj’s idea, he said it would give the room some atmosphere, right?” Sunday said, sticking her oar in enjoying watching TJ squirm.

“TJ and I aren’t used to entertaining. After his father left, we mostly kept to ourselves.” Tj’s mom said, stirring her pasta with a fork in a maudlin fashion.

“Mom” TJ whined

“That’s right TJ hates me telling everyone our life story.” His mom smiled with a melancholy intake of breath “Oh you’re finished?”

Sunday looked down at her plate and then back at TJ’s mom, “Yes, thank you, it was lovely”

“What a polite girl” Tj’s mom said as she collected the plate in front of Sunday, a warm smile on her face. “You’re welcome to stay in the guest bedroom across from me if you’re too tired to make it home”. His mother said as she fluttered out of the room with the dirty plates.

“No that’s ok I think I’m just gonna bunk with TJ and fuck his brains out all night”

TJ’s perfectly timed sip of milk sprayed all down his shirt as what she said worked it’s way through the gears of his head.

“That’s nice” Tj’s mom said from the kitchen clearly not hearing anything she said.

Sunday handed TJ a napkin and smiled trollishly. He snatched it from between her two fingers and began to dab his shirt with the tiny napkin.

“Do you think we should tell her?” He whispered.

“Why worry her? Nothing should happen tonight as long as we don’t light the house up like a Christmas tree. Or make too much noise, I thought the candlelight thing would be cute.” She said reclining in her dining chair.

“But she has to know”

“She’ll find out.” She said as she closed her eyes for a moment, putting her hands behind her head in a relaxed position.

“You know something, tell me-“TJ said a hint of anger in his hushed voice.

TJ’s mom barrelled into the room with some sort of lopsided cake and plonked it down in between the two. Completely oblivious to the mounting tension she just crudely carved in half.

“Desert”.

~
The door to TJ’s bathroom opened like a sealed vault door. Or an alien craft bellowing steam from the door that had been sealed for a good hour and a half. Sunday walked out barefoot wearing an old xxxl walking dead t-shirt that went down to her knees. Rubbing her whole head with a towel like she was trying to polish a lamp.

Her legs clean, were surprisingly dainty looking, little cuts and plasters but her skin looked soft and smooth. TJ stopped dead on his made up futon on the floor of his room. She opened one eye underneath the towel and saw he was looking at her. She dropped the towel on the floor and crossed the room to the window.

“Thanks for the shirt”

“Err no problem”

“Let me guess, you wanna know if the curtains match the drapes?” She smiled as she turned back towards TJ.

“Err, wut no! I wasn’t!” TJ’s face turned a purply red colour and his tongue swelled up in his head.

She perched on the windowsill and looked out at the cool quiet trees swaying in the dark. There were fires burning in the distance, muffled screams carried by the shiftless night. The smell of the smoke was almost sweet and homely to her. She sighed after taking in a lungful through the small crack in the window.

She cocked one of her legs up on the sill and TJ almost burst a blood vessel.

“Err I made up the bed, I’m fine here” He said motioning to his crude futon.

“Ok” She said dreamily staring out the window.

“What’s happening?” He bit his bottom lip as he said it, almost not wanting to know.

He could see her blank expression reflected in the black window.“It’s a game.”

~

If you like what you read so far, read the conclusion of this chapter on inkitt;
Green Sunday Chapter 7

Cheers!

 

 

5

Star Wars the force just needs ten more minutes

It’s s been like a week since I saw the latest star wars movie and of course I thought this would be perfect timing to do an informal review when I’ve pretty much forgotten most of the movie and everyone and their great aunt has reviewed it already and moved on to talking about the patriarchal oppression of monopoly sets.

It’s just been awhile since I’ve done an off the top of the head kind of blog and I wanted to see if I could still spit free style nonsense.

Ok my first impression from the trailers was mixed, it looked cool, like a back to form sort of cool. But the way the trailers were shot was a little too in my face in regards to the race and the genders of the main characters. It looked a little needy to me, maybe that’s just because of the year we had in regards to all this social justice nonsense polluting everything but it seemed a little like it was pandering to that demographic of self congratulatory modern day yuppies.
It’s not something I thought was that relevant when I watched the movie, there was no hammy speech made by Rey or Finn on the necessity of diversity or women in the rebel (Sorry ‘resistance’) work force. But it seemed like JJ felt like he needed to apologize for slave Leia and Darth Vader turning out to be white by pushing a woman and minority character to the forefront for a much needed pat on the back from the diversity police as a way of saying ‘Thanks for not including anymore white men’. As I say I didn’t think it too relevant at the start but apologetics seemed to become a more relevant overall theme as it went on.

I don’t really feel like going into great detail about the main characters just yet because I feel like they’re characters that will grow with the new series. But in a nutshell there’s Finn an ex storm trooper turned shit talker, an ex scavenger turned super Jedi Mary sue Rey and an Ex member of Hanson turned emo sith Cadet Kylo Ren.

I didn’t really have much of an issue with them and in fact I rather liked them despite their characters being a little stale, I thought Finn needed more dialogue, I liked his arc, I just don’t think the story was big enough to make room for him and Rey and Kylo and everyone else. I felt like he got sidelined a little.
Rey is probably the most annoying character and I’ve already heard people describe her as a Mary sue and she is kind of a Mary sue. She’s basically good at everything and never fails at anything, and spoilers she like out jedis Obi Wan without any training whatsoever and beat a sith captain who was probably trained since birth by Luke Skywalker himself without ever having picked up a lightsaber before. It really pissed me off because it just begs belief, it swerved a little too far into ridiculousness.

But I don’t feel that annoyed because I think all these characters are growing and their arcs will get deeper and more interesting in the later films (fuck I sound like an apologist).

Ok ok I saved my favourite until last; yeah predictably my favourite character was Kylo Ren. I can’t really put my finger on it, but at the start he’s sort of the generic Vader copy but then when he takes off his mask he takes on a depth of character of his own that I think really pays off throughout the movie.

I think Driver’s performance was perfect, I know people are calling him this emo fag or whatever and I even compared him a little to Haden Christenson’s shockingly bad portrayal of Anakin Skywalker myself. But I just can’t put my finger on it, Driver brings a level of intensity and angst that really sells it and it’s almost like he succeeds at what Christenson was aiming for and just missed the mark of. That troubled dark man child with a sword in his hand and I think it really worked, he didn’t induce cringes, he really sizzled and was sort of creepy and likeable at the same time.
This was the difference between him and the heroes, we’re used to Star Wars being a little cringey and especially after the shockingly bad prequels but he wasn’t the least bit cringe worthy, he really nailed it and I can’t wait to see how his character develops later into the trilogy. He’s one of these characters that makes me sad that all heroes have to win in the end and life is just so two dimensional like that, and skewed so that reality has to bend to the will of good always winning.

Another thing that is so different and sets this film apart from all the others is the action. The action is something never before seen in star wars, we’re used to this heavily choreographed amazing acrobatic lightsaber duels. We don’t get any of that; it’s all gritty balls to the wall lightsaber street fights almost. Untrained amateurs hacking away at each other with deadly glow sticks. I sound pissed, but I think it was a lot less flowery and way more intense. It looked less like a dance and more like an actual fight.

Now the crux of the matter with this movie is that the internet is split between singing its praises just for not being the prequels and hipsters saying it’s the emperor’s new clothes. And as it usually is the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Yeah it was hardly the most original film ever, the formula is pretty much a recreation of a new hope but I don’t really begrudge that, history repeating itself is a common (maybe lazy) theme in lots of movies. And it wasn’t the most spectacular movie, it wasn’t perfect but neither was new hope or any of the star wars movies. But bottom-line I enjoyed it.

There was never a moment I was bored or just cringing so hard I couldn’t open my eyes like the prequels.
But that I think is the biggest problem with this film, its ‘safe’.

Say what you will about the prequels but they took risks, they fell flat on their face but that’s taking risks for you.
The Force Awakens is paint by numbers star wars movie but what it lacks in originality it makes up for with a higher calibre of acting and compelling characters and action.
But to go back to what I was saying about this being an apology. That’s what I feel was going on here, a solid movie piggybacking on the original trilogy that didn’t stray into prequel territory. No matter what people say about the originality, we wanted a star wars movie and that’s what we got.
I’m being honest with you when I say, I really wanted to be a total hipster douche and shit on this movie to protect the honour of the original trilogy but I can’t. It’s a solid, very entertaining film with fresh new characters that will grow with us as an audience.

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Review of Black Gold by R A Sewell

Just got a lovely if a bit cunty haha review for Green Sunday so I thought, what with being a nepotistic shitlord I’d fire back and write a lovely review for the talented author and fellow traveller R A Sewell.

So thar she blows (that has literally nothing to do with the plot nor the quality of the work, I don’t know why I wrote that, probably because it’s a sort of nautical story but I can’t remove it now because I’ve written out this explanation, fuck it here’s the review).

I’m so sorry, I guess this rates my overall maturity level, as soon as I saw the captains name was James Woods, I instantly cast him as the actor James Woods and couldn’t stop thinking about videodrome (hence the odd title of my review).

Just had to get that out the way ha.

Now to the review.

I just read the first chapter so far and I thought the story was pretty good, I don’t usually like when stories get right into the action but this really actually catches you off guard. You almost feel exactly as I imagine the crew of the boat feel, caught completely with their trousers down.
It’s very pulp, with the femme fatal and the visceral violence, I really enjoyed the description of the gun fire and the use of sensory information. You could literally smell the bullets as they were fired and it added a whole new level to the description and put me right in the room.
Instantly it reminded me of a classic action movie from the mid-nineties like Die Hard three or something and that I really enjoyed, I loved that period of gritty, yet slightly campy/pulpy action movies.
The plot I found a little trouble with, not a lot is given to why this happening, I know right, der money but there are hints there that it’s something more with the mysterious tattoo. But I had to mark this a little lower just because I thought the plot was a little contrived, I liked what was happening but how could these terrorists/thieves/nebulous bad guys sneak up on this giant super tanker and take it over in a matter of moments?
Surely they have armed guards on a super tanker or radar or something they could use to detect pirates, it’s not like you really sneak up on someone in the indian ocean, least of all a giant super tanker named the ‘Goliath’, probably crewed by hundred of people, all not watching the horizon or any device that might tell them a ship full of heavily armed dudes is coming to rob them.
I do have faith though that this is probably elucidated on later in the plot but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t made clear that it was night time at the start of the chapter or listed on the date stamp. I’m sitting here imagining this is all happening mid-morning while they still have croissant crumbs on their shirts you know. Just a time stamp or just a little description of the night would go a long way to setting the scene and adding more plausibility to them being boarded like that without them having a clue.
I loved all the technical language in regard to the boat ‘stuff’, I didn’t understand any of it, but I’m sure somebody who knew anything about boats would, and that’s the point, it’s add something.
Frankly I don’t have much to say about the writing style and the grammar and punctuation, it’s very professional and very competent and it shows what I’m guessing is a lot of experience, so I can’t fault it in the slightest.
The only thing I feel like sticking to you for is fact you didn’t delete the ‘start writing here…’ bit. Schoolboy error mate haha.
I was reading the end thinking ‘Start writing here? they just got on a lifeboat, why are they writing, what?’ then I realised.
It’s not big deal, takes two seconds to fix, I just thought my being confounded at it for a few minutes was slightly amusing.

Overall I really liked it and I would read on and recommend it.

If you wanna read it you can check it out on inkitt by following this glowing title Black Gold.

Cheers.

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Finally got around to making an Author page, aren’t I special?

I have finally become incredibly pretentious and yes, I am now a big deal, for I have my own author page on the exclusive site known as facebook. It’s got a picture of me looking suspiciously like a male Jessica Jones and a lovely backdrop of Chernobyl’s famous fairground (I’ve never been due to the background radiation).
Hopefully I wont become an egomaniac…I AM JESUS CHRIST!!!
That was quick. I put this off for a long time, partially out of laziness, err no probably all out of laziness, but I also didn’t really have all my eggs in one basket last year.
I had a lot of irons in the fire with comics and anthologies and this and that and felt weird about just promoting my own work and or myself, it just felt a little weird and a little self fellatory, and I’m not that flexible.
I always saw these pages as sort of a place for hacks to pat themselves on the back and I’m not fond of that, I dreamed of being one of those secluded writers living in a basement never to be seen by the public. Or like Lovecraft, living alone and eating nothing but pasta in a spooky old house only going out to get more pasta, writing cool stories for people to find when I’m dead and say; “Huh”.
But I recently just felt like my prose stuff is what’s taking up almost all my time/passion/love and it deserves it’s own platform and room to grow and have more eyes put on it and me too. I don’t think I look too bad if I do say so myself.
I just thought it was time to come out of the shadows a little and really put my balls on the chopping block. And maybe if I spend all my time convincing other people I’m some ‘big deal’ I might start believe it myself and become insufferable or I might actually sell a book ha.
So all my blogs and inkitt stuff/interviews/updates/jive will be coming through that page for some reason, oh so you can put a face to this tripe and maybe fall madly in fandom with me.

Peace out.

Oh yeah this is the link ha.
https://www.facebook.com/RykBrinkAuthor/

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