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Cur Chapter one ‘Who wants to live forever?’

Well would you look at that, is there anything sweeter than a first chapter?

It’s a really good feeling, a feeling I thought I’d lost but then came back stronger than ever and just completely reinvigorated me body and soul. I was kind of stewing after Diana, waiting for the next wave of creative euphoria to hit me and boy did it hit me. I was just kind of going through the motions filling quotas with Gage and 3 Ring, just fun distractions this is the meat, this is heart and soul fire this is what I was born for.

You can tell I don’t really give a shit about Gage an 3 Ring because I really don’t care what people think about them and I haven’t asked for reviews, whereas with this I want people to review the first chapter now goddamit haha. But I think it’s good to keep your pen moving, keep your stick on the ice even if you aren’t feeling it. Just to keep yourself in top form ready for the big game haha. Analogy salad.

The greatest advice I could give another writer if I were asked to do so is just to keep writing, keep practising and keep doing what you love until that one day lightning strikes. Because as long as you are doing what you love it will.

But if you’re not it wont.

Ok so quickly I’m not going to rag on the witcher today, there was actually a decent fight scene in blood of elves, it lasted like two pages but it was ok, then straight back to talking and Ciri taking a bath. I will do an amazon review when I finish it, just for my own sanity, just to get all the salt out of me head haha.

Ok now back to the important shit, so this chapter is basically a character hook so I can unload a lot of backstory in the huge next chapter which still isn’t finished haha (sorry). But the second chapter is really cool and ends in a couple of really awesome fight scenes some of the best I’ve ever written. I kind of glossed over the big battles as exposition because I mean shit, how do you write big battles as compelling? Is that even possible? I mean to me as someone who was a fighter, a fight is more than just swords clanging it’s about personalities clashing ans when you just have these waves of faceless people smashing against eachother it just seems like a sex scene with two blow up dolls, there’s no fun for me there. It was a videogame I’d feel totally different but its not so :P.

I took a lot of inspiration from The Witcher which I suspect takes a lot of inspiration from the Berserk series which I absolutely adore, it’s probably the only fantasy series I follow religiously. A lot of my inspiration especially later on in the book and somewhat for Cur as a character comes from that.

Ok so enough waffling (now I’m hungry) this chapter is going live on inkitt today gonna get writing a blurb and a teaser for it after I transfer from coffee to green tea (he says as he spills coffee all over himself, fuck my life. It was just a flesh wound.

Yeah then I’m gonna try and get some first chapter reviews and get my buddies at work to read it and tell me it’s better than the witcher all they’re all fired haha.

Still proofreading chapter two which is a bit overlong and a bit of a mess and wrestling with some plot changes I made later on that I’m ironing out.

But other than it’s full steam ahead and check out that dank cover art I found haha.

If you want to read it in a mobile format without all my waffling head on over to inkitt right here.

Cur: Blood and Soil

 

–

The fire pit popped and cracked in the center of the round house. The farmers gathered close with their mead and whiskey to wait as the bard Coirpre tuned his lute. Breathing in and out deeply as he plucked each string in turn. Sitting with his back to the daub wall, where finger marks could be seen in the crudely layered earthen clay.

The ridges of the branch frame sticking out in places like the ribs of a starved horse. A facsimile of the Leinster cote of arms; that of the golden harp hung above the hearth.

A mouse ran along the beams as the wind howled outside. The cold seeping through the thatching making a terrible ghostly whistling noise and disturbing the fire.

 

The bard doffed his grouse feathered cap and smiled as he rested the lute in his lap and started to play.

 

“This poem, I have affectionately dubbed; ‘Bres the bastard’” The poet smiled glancing around the room for a covered smile but found naught but dead silence.

 

“What?!” A woman cawed at once.

 

A man in green tunic leapt from his stool “We feed you and give you a bed and you insult our king?!”

 

“Good people, it’s merely satire; you wouldn’t criticize my work before even hearing it would you?

 

“That you may die roarin like Doran’s arse we would aye!” A broad bearded man said.

 

“Please there’s no need for this, another ballad perchance, I have many”.

 

“Many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose” The bearded man spat.

 

“What’s a ‘bastard’, grandfather?” A little girl asked as she bounced on the old man’s knee twiddling her braided hair tween her finger and thumb.

 

The old grey haired man in the grey woolen cloak looked down at her and sighed “Well it’s a man ere not knowing who his father be.”

 

The little girl scrunched up her freckled face “How could he not know that?”

 

“Well ya see-“ The old man turned his long grey face to the banging shutters. Then glanced over and the small crowd gathered around the poet shouting and heckling and pulling at him.

 

“Grandfather, can you tell me the story of the other king instead?” She said swinging her blond plaited hair about her bonny face unable to keep still.

 

“Child, I’ve told you that story so many times you should be able to recite it by rote”

 

“And I could that” The little girl pouted and preened.

 

“Well go on with yourself then”

 

“I will” The little girl put her hands on her hips and tipped her head back putting her finger to her lips. “Mmm well there once was these men”

 

“Were they just men were they?” Her grandfather jested.

 

“There once were these people, mmm and they were called the Nemedians, and this was their land and they called it, erm… Inish Alga, which means; ‘the noble isle.’”

 

“Yes”

 

“But then they got sick and there was a big wave and legends say these mean monsters called the Fomori came and chased them all away. But… they didn’t all go to the same place.”

 

“No, where did they go child?”

 

“Half went north to the cities of knowledge.” The little girl’s voice droned a little as if she were reading the names. ”Falias, Gorias, Murias and…. erm…. Finias!” He caught her breathe and swallowed. “-To be with the gods and most importantly the mother god Danu. She bathed them in light and knowledge and shared with them her blood and they became the children of Danu. The Tuatha De Danann, which is you and me” She smiled.

 

Her grandfather nodded “Go on child”.

 

“The other Nemedians weren’t as lucky. They went south and were slaved and treated very badly by the dwellers of that land for hundreds of years. Those mean people made them carry huge sacks of dirt on their back from morning until night. Made to eat the worst food and live in the most horrible conditions.

 

But like the winter makes the tree bark gnarled and like iron; the children of Nemed became savage by nature. As soon as a male child was born he was thrown in a pit with hungry dogs and if the boy child didn’t kill the dogs with his bare hands, it would surely kill him.

 

Soon they became so strong growing to the size of giants they broke free of their slave masters and slaughtered them. Carrying sacks of dirt on their backs twice the size of them all the way through the desert and across the sea to the land they knew as their home Inish Alga.

 

They called themselves ‘The Firbolg’ the people of the bag after the earth that shaped this land.

 

The earth they took from that harsh realm transformed this land from craggy cliffs to a rich farmland. For a long time they cultivating the land endlessly warring amongst themselves for control of the island.

 

“Then what happened” Her grandfather smirked.

 

“Then we came” She chirped. “Although grateful to Danu for sheltering them, the Tuatha de’ never felt truly at home and longed to return to the island they left so many years ago. With the knowledge and magic given to them by Danu they set out to return to their ancestral homeland.

 

But when they got to the shore in their great flying ships the Firbolg were not happy to see them. The Tuatha pleaded that they might have only a fifth of the island to call home but the cruel king Eoichid the Prideful rejected them as he only knew war. The Firbolg didn’t know how to share the land. They didn’t know how to live in tune with nature like the Tuatha de’, seeking only to bend it to their will.

 

The Tuatha pleaded for peace with their long lost brothers but the Firbolg denied them time and time again and before long war was their only option.

 

The Tuatha were not afraid of war, they had mastered the magic of the gods and were skilled warriors. But the Firbolg were a formidable foe and they outnumbered the Tuatha ten to one. Each Firbolg almost double the size of any Tuatha de’.

 

Still they met on the field of battle and the Firbolg even with their superior numbers and even with their size and strength could not beat the Tuatha de Danann.

 

The high king Eoichid angered by this challenged Nuada king of the Tuatha to a duel to decide the fate of the isle. Knowing that he could kill Nuada with one blow. Nuada accepted and with one vicious blow Eoichid cut Nuada’s shield in half and took his arm at the root. But Nuada with the last of his strength bested the wicked high king.

 

Without their leader all the Firbolg knew was to fight and they would fight without end until they were all wiped out. In Nuada’s mercy he offered them a province all of their own so they might live. As a reward for their bravery and martial valor. They accepted and retreated to Connacht, never to be seen again. Some say a plague took them or they fled under the hills but Connacht is a strange and haunted place to this day where no Tuatha de’ dare tread.

 

King Nuada in his victory renamed the isle Inish Vale ‘The island of Destiny’ after the stone they brought with them from Finias. But Nuada could not be king because a king must be perfect and without his arm he was not fit to rule. So the crown fell to Bres the bas- the Bres the Beautiful and everyone lived happily ever after.”

 

The old man smiled and clapped his young prodigy “Well done lass, well done.”

 

She smiled and tussled her hair to take a small bow.

 

Then there was the sharp sound of fist thumping a table rife with malice.

 

“Liar” A scarred voice said.

 

“I beg your pardon?” The old man rose defiantly from his bench to scan the round house.

 

All the men were at one side of the round house pommeling and kicking the poet. The women too crowded round to geer and throw pieces of mead wet bread and cabbage at him as he lay on the sodden earthen floor in the fetal position. One of the wenches taken to wearing his grouse feather cap in jest.

 

The only other figure was a stooped cripple dressed like a druid with a long dark hood and cloak.

 

“Identify yourself stranger, who is it that calls this innocent girl a liar?”

 

“I do” A cold gravelly voice said.

 

The figure sat alone unmoving on a small round table to himself, almost unnoticeable in the darkness of the round house until now. For that was his wish.

 

The old man stood and drew a slim short sword pointing the tip down.

 

“The crows curse on you! You will stand; show me the face of the man who would call!”

 

The man didn’t move from his seat.

 

The old man angered by his silence took to his side and slammed his hand flat on the table in front of the stranger.

 

“Briseadh agus brú ar do chnámha! You will rise and give me your name cur!”

 

“Cur will do” The man said, his voice sending a chill down the spine of the old man.

 

Without cause the stranger moved like water. Without thought or pause he pinned the old man’s hand to the table with a wide oddly shaped javelin head crudely fashioned into a sword or cleaver. The head of the javelin having a rounded point like a shovel which curved into two hooking spikes. Which then recurved inward on each side creating a harsh biting cutting edge like snakes fang.

 

The blade rounded shovel point was so wide it cut right through the old man’s hand and into the table. Cutting off all his fingers above the knuckle and the tip of his thumb. His white blood poured over the ash table and over the bench and on the floor.

 

The old man staggered back wordlessly clutching his bloody hand under his armpit. The sound of his light sword dropping on the floor draw the attention of the hecklers.

 

“What’s going on here?” The man in the green tunic said.

 

The old man swallowed and tried not to vomit or pass out “Call the chieftain” He huffed.

 

“What’s this?” The man said confusedly, then he saw the blood and drew a wide broadsword in one hand.

 

“What did he do?” The stranger in the cloak asked pointing at the crowd around the poet, kicking and jeering at him.

 

The man in the green tunic tightened his jaw and flared his nostrils looking back for a moment and then back at the stranger.

 

“He insulted our kings, what of it”

 

The stranger uncovered his long sinewy arm it bulged with a vicious vile intense hatred. He squeezed his fist and the room became hot with the beating of his blood. “Give me your kings!” He said in his low gravelly scarred voice. “-Let me squeeze them in my hand!”

 

“He’s mad”

 

The old man vomited and passed out, his granddaughter loudly sobbing over him as she tried to rouse him. “Grandfather!” She cried.

 

“Here” The man in the green tunic barked at the men crowded around the poet.

 

The men craned their necks trying to see by the light of the fire pit what he was jabbering about.

 

The stooped stranger stood to his full height then, a full two feet above every man in the round house.

 

With the same hand he took his hood down and a tuathan wench turning at the wrong moment bobbed her eyes at him and let out a horrifying shriek.

 

He was completely bald, his head and eyebrows cleanly shaven. One side of his face covered in strange markings that looked like scars but seemed all too deliberate and esoteric.

 

But the thing they noticed most of all was his ears.

 

They were rounded.

 

“He’s- he’s a human!”

 

“I thought they were all dead!”

 

“You missed one” The man raised an ominous smirk.

 

The little girl lunged at the stranger with the short sword and thrust it into his gut. Half blinded by her tears she didn’t miss her mark burying the blade up to the hilt.

 

He looked down at the girl and smiled and smacked his lips kissing at her mockingly.

 

She shook letting go of the sword and stumbling backwards.

 

He laughed maniacally and pulled it out covered in his hot red blood and tossed it on the ground at the onlooker’s feet.

 

“Red”

 

“Is he a monster?“

 

“Firbolg!”

 

“Dear Deugh!”

 

“Vampire!”

 

“He should be dead!”

 

The man in the green tunic swallowed his cold feeling of dread as he watched the stab wound close by itself. The elven young lad flung himself as if dragged by the tip of his sword at the giant.

 

Cur turned faster than his size would deem possible and corked his blade from table and found it a new home in the lad’s soft skull. His face cleaved open by the wide spiked tip. His white blood and brain matter showering his kinfolk.

 

And the women wailed so.

 

The blade still buried in the lad’s face he tossed the lad like an empty sack of grain and tore his cloak from his shoulders. The man was large even for a human and was built of sinew and limestone and held together by bile and hatred. His chest heaved and his shoulders hawed but only one arm held a sword. The other was gone. Replaced only by more of the hideous scarification.

 

“He’s a cripple – all at once!” The crowd turned from the battered poet who lay bruised and bloodied and covered in piss.

 

The stranger laughed and let his tongue roll out of his mouth lapping at the air madly like a dog or a viper hungry for their blood.

 

One lurched out of the stolid pack raising a sword above his head. The odd shaped chopper swung under him fast and light and delivered a deep gaping hungry dull chop across his gut. The sound it made like an oar cutting through a wave sent shivers through the hecklers and tossed their bellies. The elf doubled over heaving, a ghastly wheezing sound coming out of his side.

 

The woman in the grouse feather cap lunged at him with a pitchfork pinning the Firbolg against the daub wall, he smiled at her with blood in his teeth. Cur snapped the haft with one powerful strike and with another he split her down the middle.

 

The other peasants dropped everything they had and ran at the sight of her bisected body.

 

“What is this?”

 

“Halt!”

 

Cur turned to the entrance and saw two heavily armored dwarves with long pikes and iron shields ready to greet him. He pulled the pitch fork head out of his guts and dropped it.

 

“You’ll come with us now!” They ordered.

 

The Firbolg threw his javelin head sword into a table. He stooped with a mocking grin and put out his one hand for them to shackle.

 

“Did I do something wrong?”

 

The one that shackled him walked him out in front of the round house; the other went inside to retrieve his strange weapon. Admiring it quizzically.

 

They walked him through the tiny village. Consisting of a smattering of stone and clay round houses surrounded by a thatched branch fence next to the Dobber river. The large round hut was communal and the smaller ones were where the families lived. The biggest round house at the fair side of the fence was where the chieftain of Tallaght lived and held court.

 

Around the village the trees and hills were a deep emerald and sparkled with dew as the sun on occasion broke through the dense grey clouds. The wind and the rain a constant steady and gentle metronome.

 

Cur smirked at a woman feeding pigs knee deep in shit. She looked up at him with abstract horror in her face. They walked him on towards the large round house, his wicked mad laughter carrying over the trees as he went.

–

0

3 Ring Samurai Chapter 4 ‘Take the sword Part 1’

Good morrow fine folk, it is I your humble bard..

And that’s enough of that. Ok so updates; I fucking did it and it turned out pretty damn great. I wasn’t really intending to do my standard 2k a day word count challenge thing but I was just so fucking eager I start an hour earlier than I usually do and spent like the next four or five hours just bounding around this fictional world I was creating like a dog with a ball it it’s mouth. And before I knew it I’d written way too much and that’s pretty much how it went for the last four days but it did work out to a nice neat round a bout 8k.

So that right now shapes up to about a chapter and a half because I got a little carried away and the flashback chapter is like a short story in itself so I may have to break it down a little bit but it turned out really cool and it has one of the best (and shortest) fight scenes I’ve ever written, just the level of gravity and intensity really swept me away and I hope that goes the same for anyone reading it. If people have a tenth of the fun and excitement I got from just writing it then I’m on to a winner.

I almost couldn’t wait to get up this morning and write about and go over, this is the first time I’ve been this excited about proofreading and putting something on inkitt.

I think the first chapter is great, I had my baby mama go over it and she made me rethink the whole chapter and I’m so glad she did because I love the changes I made to it. I think the chapter really nails the character hook, she even compared him to Alucard from Hellsing, which was a character I wasn’t even thinking of but it was music to my ears. Although I hate that anime (Not so much hate it, I just found it underwhelming), Alucard is the only reason its worth watching.

Well anyway wanna keep this terse so I can actually do the proofreading I just mentioned so just want to mention inkitt a bit and then get on to some Blood and Elves hate which I find more and more of the more I read it.

I dunno, it’s weird ‘The One that Came Back’ is really popular on inkitt, it’s nearly surpassing Green Sunday which has been on way longer and I spammed the living hell out of and everytime I go on inkitt someone has added it to a list or saved it but I get new reads constantly when I never spam it at all and I literally give it away for free now haha. So that’s cool, I mean what are the odds that that is the first book I get legit published haha, that would be great but also suck since I wrote it in literally thirty days and lots of it is me just transcribing a documentary haha. 

Ok so I realise why the witcher Blood of Elves sucks so much and it does suck, it was a meme at first, when I was like halfway through but I’m near the end now and I swear this book is like 95% really boring conversations about nothing. It’s literally just conversation after conversation and any action or interesting thing that happens in like a page or two then the conversation will just be the rest of the chapter and then it’ll cut away to another completely different conversation in another part of the world and it may or may not be related. That’s the whole book. And the chapters are stupidly fucking long, it’s a three hundred plus page long book and it has eight chapters, so you just have these bloated chapters full of pointless dialogue most of which could be shortened to a sentence at most. And what’s more is the chapters don’t really need to be that bloated, the chapter breaks seem arbitrary since there are constant cutaways without transition to other conversations entirely. It almost seems like chapters are there just as a formality.

So anyway, why it sucks. It sucks sort of for the same reason The last wish fell short. The last wish is just a series of short stories not connected except that they involve Geralt, that’s it. But it’s a series of fun and action packed short stories that are interesting and varied and have lots of subtle nods. 

The problem with Blood of Elves is it’s not a novel, it’s a short story or two short stories that have been stretched out to be the length of a novel and packed with filler conversation and political commentary. That’s literally all it is. Because the main plot begins at the start to try and hook us then it’s filler city for the next hundred odd pages then there’s a smidgeon of action in the middle then the story is sort of coming back around at the end. Some people say the filler is like character fill but I don’t think so, the characters still seem really generic, I don’t feel like I know anymore about Geralt or Ciri and all I learnt about Triss is she can’t drink potions, maybe she’s lactose intolerant haha.

And it occurred to me last night that I gloss over romances in my stories because they don’t interest me. But I sort of pay some lip service to them but I make a point that it is lip service.

In this book he’s in love with a woman he literally forced to love him with magic genie powers and now they’re apart in this book but their epic romance is sort of just hinted at. So essentially *insert epic romance here*, it just struck me as really lazy having like a time jump to say they had a really great romance but now they’re avoiding eachother like the plague. 

Anyway really didn’t meet my goal of being quick and concise but I will have the first chapter of Cur: Blood and Soil (working title) up on inkitt by the end of the week probably sooner. I really can’t wait to hear people’s opinion on it, although I probably wont source reviews on inkitt until I have more done, I’ll just poll the poles at work haha. My biggest fan is a polish guy I work with who got me into the witcher and now I hate it haha.

Ok must do actual work now gah!

See you…

 

–

“Morning Ethel, hows tricks?” Deputy Pete said, a cheeky grin painted on his wooden boyish face.

“Aint run tricks in here for years, ever since that damn circus came, snatched up all the good whores from here to the crater” Ethel stated.

“It’s just an expression-“ He smiled awkwardly taking stock of the bar with a quick side eye glance. He got a weird feeling all of a sudden but couldn’t explain it, like he walked into an animal cage and found it empty. Like something was looking at him deciding which part to pull off and eat first.

He swallowed but kept smiling as he tried to be as inconspicuous as possible sizing up the strangers in the bar. So far there were only two he could see, they were sat at a booth in the corner, the same one the clown was sitting in the day before but they weren’t clowns. Nevertheless they looked strange, the one facing his way was around thirty with dark receding hair and a grotesque scar on his neck that made the skin look pale and flabby. The one with his back turned was a giant with arms as thick as barrels, he was pretty hard to miss.

There were more in the back standing around the pool table. They were playing pool but there was something off about it. Their movements looked practised and robotic like they were playing pool in a stage play. Like no one was really interested in winning. Three guys, one a short jittery guy with spikey hair and beady eyes. A thin guy who was all angles with long hair tied back, and a tall guy with broad shoulders with his back turned.

“Ethel-I-err”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing- I just gotta check something.” Pete said not looking at her.

He hitched up his gun belt, took a deep breath and approached the two sitting at the booth. He walked slow and deliberately but neither of the stranger decided to notice him. Or his heavy footfalls on the loose wooden floor.

He cleared his throat and put on his best shit eating grin. “Anything I can help you folks with?” His feet betrayed him with the sound of boot leather tensing.

The one with the scar turned his eyes slowly up to look at the deputy, one of them was milky and probably blind. He cut a weird grin that made him look like a shark. It was the kind of face someone might make if they’d never seen their face in a mirror.

“No officer” he said in a soft mocking tone with a gravelly voice.

The large man let out a grunt or a groan and Pete tried not to stare at him.

“You folks staying long, it’s just we don’t get too many strangers out here.”

“We’re not strangers” the strange man smiled again.

“Is that right?” The deputy tensed his jaw and swallowed. “You mind telling me what your business is here?”

“Just passing through” He said.

“Just passing through” Pete nodded, tapping his feet nervously.

“Is that a crime officer?”

“No-“

“You wanna ask me how I got these scars?” he smirked.

“Uh”

“Cooking fried chicken” he laughed “That hot oil does get everywhere.” He grinned at the deputy.

“Is that right- you folks wouldn’t be carrying any weapons would you?” He let his hand fall onto his holster.

“Me? Not a one sir.” He said.

Pete took a look at the large man who didn’t say anything. Hulking arms framed a large gut and barrel chest with a small head on top.

“Does he look like he needs a weapon?” The man smiled again and let out a breathy laugh. “I’m just foolin’ around, he’s harmless, got the mind of a child- wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He smirked.

“I used to pull the wings off flies when I was a child” The deputy said.

“Is that right? – well I’ll bare that mind.”

“You do that” He said. “You folks have a nice day.” He stood there for a moment trying to think of something else to say tapping his gun belt. After a moment he turned and gave Ethel a worried look trying to signal with his head as he walked out of the saloon.

He walked out into the street looking back still feeling those predator eyes on him. A cold shiver like a knife playfully dragged down his back. His fingers drumming on the wooden handle of his colt. Trying to shake the feeling that it really wouldn’t do any good.

The deputy walked at a quick clip to get back to the sheriff’s station. He entered quickly looking at his gun rack silently thinking.

“H-hey you said you’d get me outta here! A strained nasally whining voice said.

Deputy Pete turned to the source of the noise absent mindedly, it was Bull with his head still stuck in the door of the jail cell.

“Oh right, I was going to see if Ethel had any butter or cooking grease or something- slipped my mind, sorry about that” He smiled sadly.

“S-Sorry?” Bull whined incredulous with his shiny bowling ball head unable to turn and look at him.

The rest of his crew were awake but in varying states of disrepair, battered and bruised all crushed up one side of the cell. As far as they could get away from the clown who lay on his back on the floor looking up at the ceiling fan spinning.

“Well good morning!” Deputy Pete said to the clown. He opened the cell slowly edging around Bully as he was dragged around by it having his head stuck in it.

“N-not so fast!”

“I’m being as gentle as I can be”. He said still looking at the clown “Hey you, you’re released, you can go, preferably as far away from here as possible.”

The clown got to his feet and walked towards the deputy. “The sword”.

“Oh that’s right-“ He stepped out of his way letting him step around Bull before shutting and locking the cell again. Everyone else inside seemed to breathe a sigh of relief seeing the clown go.

“Here take the damn thing” The deputy said letting a little of his nerves show as he took the sword out from under his desk and tossed it on the counter top.

Pookie readjusted his pants and slid the sword into his string belt. “Who took a crap in your cornflakes?”

“You did, you took a crap in my cornflakes- and what in the hell are cornflakes anyway?” The deputy snapped. He breathed out through his nose pressing his lips together “Your buddies showed up.”

“Well why don’t you just shoot’em” Pookie smiled.

“I’d love to but they haven’t done anything yet and I don’t wanna give’em the chance, that’s why you’re getting your clown ass outta town right now!”

“Wasn’t I promised a plate of beans?”

“That was yesterday, this is today.”

“I don’t even know where I’m going, I need a map, supplies a real bed for the night would be good.”

“I can throw you back in the cell if you want, tell your buddies to come right here.”

“NO!” the other men in the cell shouted in unison.

The deputy stopped to look out of the window. “You got any tickets?”

Pookie’s stomach growled.

“I’ll take that as a no- but none of that is my problem and if you’re not outta town by sundown I’ll run you out myself strapped to a mule.”

Pookie nodded and walked out of the jail into the morning sun, struck then realising he had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do. This world was entirely alien to him.

“Hey mister” A high pitched voice said.

Pookie turned shielding his eyes. A tall kid with milk bottle top glasses hopped off the bench outside of the jail licking an icecream cone.

The kid came up to him smiling his freckled face, he had light blonde hair pushed forward on his head. And he was wearing a set of coveralls with an anime robot over the breast pocket. Despite his voice and age he was just a little shorter than Pookie although he couldn’t seem to stand up straight. A chronic sloucher who nevertheless carried himself with an optimistic child-like bounce in his step.

“You’re from the circus right?” The boy gestured with the icecream cone.

“…”

“Wooooww! I know you, what’s your name? Pokey? Banjo? Poopy?”

“Pookie”

“Yeah that’s right, Pookie- I’m like your biggest fan, the name’s Donny.” The boy smirked holding out his hand for Pookie to stare at. “-I watch all your shows when you come to town. I watched the one where you did the thing and you were like …- ya know” He started miming sword strikes with his icecream “And they were like bleurgh, ow my guts haha!” Donny smiled miming being disembowled and catching drips from his melting icecream. “My mom tries to stop me from going but I’ve got my own money” He winked.

“That’s great” Pookie said as he continued to walk on.

“Hey wait, I heard what the deputy said, you need tickets right?”

“Yep”

“What if I brought you breakfast at the saloon- and you can tell me all your cool stories?” He screeched in an unbroken line of dialogue gasping for breath between each word. “Like like like- you could tell me your cool backstory.” He said chasing after the clown trying not to drop his quickly melting icecream.. “Like maybe your whole family was killed by mutant wolves but one of the wolves raised you as their own and then you joined the circus. Or like your parents were from a rival tribe and clowns killed them but one of them couldn’t bring themselves to kill you. So raised you as their own living with the shame to one day have to reveal it in an emotional confrontation.” He paused thinking “Wait that’s pretty much the same story- I guess I’m not a good writer but I bet the real story is much cooler.” Taking a bite out of his icecream and in his excitement instantly regretting it “Brainfreeze!”

Pookie turned.

“So you’ll tell me?”

Pookie’s stomach growled even louder “Sure”

“Awesome!” The kid screamed chasing after the strange clown.

~

Pookie entered the saloon for the second time but this time the air was very different.

“Oh it’s you again- didn’t Pete lock you up?” Ethel said.

“No that was a different clown with a sword.”

“Oh” Ethel gaped.

“Morning Ethel!” The kid chirped excitedly wafting his icream around before letting a malformed blob of it fall onto the saloon floor. “My you’re looking lovely today”

“Err thanks”

“Can we get two plates of the house special for me and my new pal?”

“Sure thing kid”

The old bint disappeared into the back and Donny excitedly lead Pookie to a booth just to the left of the one he sat at when he first got there.

The kid was practically dragging the clown as he tried to get his bearings in this new ecosystem he’d stumbled into. He looked over in the back where the old men were still dozing and attempting to play some card game. The pool players replaced by the cardboard cutouts of generic pool players laughing and hitting balls at seemingly random intervals.

Excitedly the kid ushered Pookie into his seat which was facing out towards the bar and the exit adjacent to it.

Pookie was a little annoyed by the kids youthful exuberance but he promised to fill his belly so he could hardly protest too harshly. Then as if out of nowhere Pookie felt a sudden crushing feeling, the air in the room getting ten times heavier almost soupy. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising up as if someone or something was sharpening their fangs waiting to pounce. More than that, straining to stop itself from doing exactly that. Every ounce of willpower holding it back from running its necessary course and ripping him apart.

Then there was a sinking feeling and an odd warmth at his back, a cloud moved out of the way of the sun and it cast a huge shadow over his table. A giant humanoid shape.

There was an itching scratching sound and a distinct whispering.

“…not yet… patience”

A low rumbling groan.

The old woman came back with their food and it looked like that might be the cause of the distress. The smell from the kitchen causing some form of mild epilepsy. The kid looked happy enough with whatever it was, possibly roadkill or the road itself. Pookie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked almost like a plate full of yellow congealed earwax. Some hitherto unknown animal species roasted beyond all recognition lying next to it.

Pookie ate with long teeth but only a few bites in there came a hideous snapping sound that he hoped wasn’t anything vital in his intestinal lining. A scraping screeching noise followed, a cold chill swept through as a huge shadow fell like a curtain over the table.

Pookie turned his head leaning over his food to see a giant figure standing over him with a broken table leg in his hand and a cracked penguin mask on his face.

The giant swung with an intense speed and ferocity aiming to pin and obliterate his head against the table.

Pookie leaned back and let the blow annihilate the table leaving only splinters. Acting on instinct alone he pulled the draw string on his scabbard making that odd winding kazoo noise. The blade launched the handle of his sword past the giant’s face. The eyes in the pommel lit up letting out that tinny cringey laugh as the bottom of the blade sliced the side of the penguins neck open.

The clown tried to hop out of his seat holding his sword only partially out of the scabbard in his off hand.

Penguin stumbled, holding onto his neck with his other hand to stop the bleeding. He lifted his enormous arm up for another strike coming down just as hard and fast as before almost as an unbroken chain of attacks.

Pookie swiftly ducked under his large arm and with his sword and sheath fully out of his belt he lifted the bottom end of the scabbard. Tilting the scabbard up allowing the gravity to empty his sword into his hand.

He took it and it laughed again as he jammed it into the Penguin’s chest. Not smoothly but with a ratcheting wrenching motion as he tried to lever the point through layers of muscle and sinew and bone. Going as deep as it possibly could.

The giant didn’t make a sound other than a low heavy breathing as it looked down at the sword sticking out of it’s chest. It dropped the chair leg on the ground with a hollow sound and took a step forward before wrapping both it’s hands around Pookie’s neck. Lifting him off of the ground.

Without his hand there the cut on his neck sprayed vital fluid on Pookie and all over the saloon floor but it didn’t seem to phase him as he kept applying more and more pressure to Pookie’s neck. His hands were so large it seemed like he might just pop Pookie’s head off like toothpaste cap.

Pookie could do nothing but wriggled like a frog pinned to a dissection table. His legs flailing and kicking as he tried to free himself, his hands occupied with trying feebly to remove the hands of the giant around his neck. In the futility of it he let go of the giants wrist and put both hands around the handle of his sword and started to try and wiggle it free.

The giant penguin let out an echoing moan and Pookie felt his grip slackening but still he couldn’t breathe and he was starting to see spots.

He wriggled it harder but it wouldn’t budge, it wasn’t coming out, at least not the way it came in.

Pookie started to wrench it and pull it like it was an awe on a rowing boat. And he was churning up really choppy water full of meat and bones cracking and shifting.

The penguin moaned louder and his grip slackened a little more but still Pookie couldn’t breathe. In his desperation he started to knee the handle and hammer the pommel with his heel driving the sword deeper into the wound. By the time the guard was all the way in his chest cavity was when the penguin finally moaned like an oxen and let Pookie flop to the floor. Coughing and gasping for breath.

Pookie put his legs under him as soon as he had a lungful. The Penguin stood like a statue, his chest heaving, that stupid clown face pommel sticking out of it.

The penguin swayed thoughtfully and put his hands out for the clown. But Pookie wasn’t about to let himself get wrung out like a dirty dish clothe again. He ducked, dipping under one of his arms and turning into a sweeping heel kick hitting the clown face pommel driving it further towards it’s target.

Penguin tilted and swept around with his other hand but he’d become slow, his movements were like he was swimming through molasses. Pookie ducked the swipe again delivered a tight donkey kick on the clown faced pommel driving it further still.

The tip was now protruding all the way out of the giant’s back. He heaved and wheezed like a dog who swallowed a squeaky chew toy. His head hanging low, a light coloured blood bubbling up from under his mask.

But Pookie wasn’t done. He stepped forward quickly sweeping his front leg and spinning in the air to deliver a powerful turning kick to the pommel. Striking it like a soccer ball and launching it all the way through the monster and out the other side. It’s final destination the mirror above the bar, it wobbled spattered blood and other such liquids in all directions as the mirror spiderwebbed on impact. That dumb clown face lighting up and laughing as it shook.

The giant groaned and stumbled and looked down at the hole in it’s chest.

Pookie stooped to peek through at the terrified Ethel who was cowering behind the bar.

“Peekaboo”. He waved through the sizeable cavity in the giant’s chest.

Ethel ducked under the counter.

Penguin fell slow and it almost looked like he was shattering under his own weight, the colossus of Rhodes made grotesque flesh. Falling piece by piece with heavy deliberate sounds like it was raining whole sides of beef for a moment. And then came the silence.

Pookie looked around, covered head to toe in blood. The old coots were continuing their card game under the table. Ethel was peaking up from the bar and the pool players were looking over. The larger one with the broad shoulders just chalking the end of the cue and blowing it over and over.

Pookie mounted the bar and ripped his sword out of the mirror completely shattering it and almost raining ethel in shards of broken glass.

Donny popped up as if from nowhere. “Holy crap that was awesome!” He looked down at Ethel over the bar “Don’t worry old gal, I’ll cover all the damages, I promise. He looked back at Pookie as he cleaned the blood and guts off his sword with a bar mat. “Are you ok? I mean it looked like he almost ripped your head off.”

“Just peachy” Pookie grinned.

He let out a sharp gasp and clung to his side falling off the bar quite spectacularly landing face first onto a bar stool, his sword clanging by his side.

“Holy crap!- Quick, help me get-im to a bed” Donny yelped.

The young lad helped the clown to his feet, and lead by the old woman he helped the dazed man up the ramshackle wood stairs of the saloon. The construction of which was almost that of a tree house, barely holding together with tape and happy thoughts. The walls a bare unvarnished wood patched with rusty sheet steel.

Ethel opened a door to one of the rooms, it was small with only enough room for the bed with a deeply sweat stained mattress. A single chair and a closet at the end of the bed. The floor was bare floorboards with a thin hide rug of some unidentifiable grey animal with six legs.

“Lay him down here”

“Yeah I know how a bed works” The kid smirked as he gradually lowered Pookie onto the mattress.

“This room aint free kid.”

Donny smiled “I’ll cover it.”

“You better” Ethel waddled over to the door “What are you doing all this for, he a friend of yours?”

“I’m his biggest fan” He smirked.

“Uh huh, I’ll be back with some linen and hot towels” She quipped as she waddled down the hall.

Despite her surliness Ethel did return with some sheets but no hot towels or happy ending was to be had at this time.

Donny had some food brought up to him but the clown slept most of the day away in a near comatose state as his body tried to repair itself.

As the sun went down patience started to wear thin. There was a tapping on the metallic roof of the saloon with steel toes. And at the window; a nervous rapping on the glass slipped into the background as a dull metronome. A claw scraped the glass and a hushed voice repeated over and over at a manic pace.

“I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I c-c-ccan’t wait!”

–

Like this? Wanna read more head on over to inkitt boiiii!

Take the sword part 1

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Gage Chapter 8 ‘Day of Lords’

Blah blah blah Redania, blah blah blah, temeria, blah blah blah nilfgard, blah blah blah ciri- oh shit this isn’t the Witcher, stuff actually happens in this.

Yeah I was telling my brother about the Witcher books and he was like “Wait- you’re telling me the books came before the games?” because he likes to read books that are made as companions to games and I started to think how fucking disappointed someone who liked the games would be if they read these books, then I realised ‘oh wait, that is me’. I played the game first and fell in love with the card game and now am thoroughly bored by the book.

I’m already two thirds of the way through it and the first two thirds build up to one fight with some elves where I think Geralt kills all of one of them and then it just cuts to him on a boat hunting a sea monster which involves shitloads of exposition for a fight that lasts like a page.

It’s like this books thinks monster hunting will cramp it’s style, it just needs to use monster hunting as a plot point to spring into more boring conversations about nilfgards trade policy and temerian embargo on goods, I wish I was kidding. This book is so far up it’s own arse worldbuilding it forgot to have a plot or interesting/likeable characters. I don’t care if the kaedweni economy is suffering, I want to see Geralt kill monsters, is that too much to ask in a book about a professional monster slayer?

It sets up all these characters to ultimately do nothing with them, it’s so tedious and the conversation go on so much longer than they have to, a sentence is never enough, the characters swap huge paragraphs of dialogue and it still doesn’t seem to progress.

Ok enough of that, I was just reading it this morning and I was really excited by the sea monster fight only for it to ultimately let me down, both the fight with the elves and the sea monster fight pale in comparison to what I came to expect from the first book. The fights in that were so well detailed, frenetic but gruesomely precise, that’s what really grabbed me about the first book. A good story(despite ripping off faerie tales left and right) and strong characters punctuated by visceral action.

Any so yeah I hope you liked my first attempt bardic poetry, only took me all fucking day for four poxy stanzas haha.

I just recently stumbled on a pivotal character I was missing so I decided to do some research on celtic bards and poetry styles and bash up a poem to make a tyrant kings face red. I didn’t want to cop out like the witcher and just have everyone react to the poem or describe it vaguely but not actually have a poem in it. Well looking it over now it just sort of describes what happens and then transitions as if it was all a song sung by Dandelion the bard but it was never introduced as such and it has no rhythm or timbre and none of it rhymes or sounds like a song. So it’s like straight up prose that someone just says ‘well that was a song guise’ at the end, but it wasn’t though.

I didn’t really think of it at the time but it was kind of lazy and I was tempted to do the same thing and just say “The bard did a bad poem, made the king mad” but I just thought it would be more authentic and more fun to actually write a fucking poem haha, I mean I’m a writer right? That’s what I do. And sometimes things present themselves, you have the easy way or the right way and at every turn I’ve taken the hard road and felt better for it.

So hopefully today I can finish the chapter breakdown and actually start this bad boy tomorrow, I’m so fucking nervous and excited. I can’t wait and I’m dreading getting out of bed haha. I must have played the first scene out in my head a million times and each time it gets better and better and I can feel it like I’m in the room but I know when I start I’m going to have to do more research as I go and choose a location because I haven’t mapped the story out yet in terms of it’s geography (always sucked at geography, and grammar). I have a map, I have the rough story outline so tomorrow I’ll start thinking about locations and scenery and stuff like that to set it and then keep and start it off right.

Ok so enough waffling, got a chapter breakdown to finish and a lawn to mow haha.

See you…

–

A crack of thunder shook the whole house to its foundation, the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. The yelping of inhuman creatures, their tongues clacking dry. Then another volt from the heavens and another and the scratching footsteps stopped. Only the creaking remained and a quiet mewling yelping noise and the sounds of heavy feet stomping down on the thin wooden boards.

The boys were frozen, scared stiff staring up at the ceiling their guns shaking in their hands. Then the footsteps started up again and the floor boards creaked again and the boys tensed up aiming their weapons at the boards.

The footsteps got closer to the trapdoor now and it was suddenly flung open. The boys shook training their weapons on the opening as a shaft of light and dust billowed in. But no form came through the opening just the light and the dust and every nature sound that could fill a godlessly long minute.

Then something was tossed like a sack down the stairs and the trap door was closed up again with a slamming force plunging the boys back into darkness. The boys almost fell over themselves to see what it was and then it move a little and they thought to fire but it was too dark. Jameson lit the lamp again and it was some odd mass of something, dark mat hair.

Then the thing uncoiled and sprang away from the light like a huge rat and the boys shrunk away terrified.

“Ya killed ma paw and ma maw and all my brothers.” The voice was a vicious and guttural whisper like it was pushed passed the tusks of a boar. “Now imma kill you dead”.

The thing was fast and it leapt out of the shadows and swept a clawed hand at the lamp knocking it into the dirt plunging them back into the darkness.

The eyesight of the lug akin to a beasts made darkness little more than an obstacle to them, whats more their other senses were much keener than a humans.

“Jaysus” Shaun sputtered.

“Shhh” Clarke cautioned.

The cellar was black as pitch and quiet as a graveyard, then there was a scratching noise. The sound of tendons coiling and then it leapt out of the dark and attached itself to McDonald. He swung it around with his mighty arms and pinned it to the wall of the cellar with his forearm. And he went to work on it’s underbelly with the brass knuckles keeping it’s jaws away from his face. “Sunovabitch” He shouted.

The things arms and legs were pressed by McDonalds body. But his wriggling was vicious and he cut and clawed and pawed at McDonalds arms and legs biting into his flesh but Mcdonald held him there. “Would someone please shoot this bastard?”

“Sure” Clarke said as he pressed the barrel of his rifle under it’s chin and fired. The flash lit the floor of the cellar up for a brief second before plunging it into darkness again and filling it with the smell of gunpowder.

The boys gathered themselves and slowly and cautiously made their way to the trapdoor. After at least ten or twenty minutes of listening to the still silence upstairs. They finally decided they’d face whatever was up there waiting for them rather than be starved out.

Jameson was first, he tossed the trapdoor aside with one hand. He steadied himself against the floor aiming the schofield around the room and back at the entrance to the store but both were clear.

He climbed all the way out followed by the others who filled the room slowly and quietly. He quickly threw open the doors to the bed room and tossed the schofield around the corners finding nothing.

He came away from there as they stood in the kitchen “It’s clear” He whispered.

Shaun made a little whistling noise and pointed at the door into the store front. Clarke sidled along against the door jam and nudged the door open with the barrel of his rifle.

McDonald came in low with his revolver and angled himself around the door so he could see what was there.

“You can come on out on now” They heard a familiar voice boom in the store front. “They’re all dead.”

Jameson gripped his schofield tighter and bounced into the storefront and stopped dead. As he saw Gage standing there covered in blood and fur below the waist. Some scratches on his face and hands, teethmarks on his boots.

The bodies of the other three half-lugs lay strewn around the store like some macabre tableau. One bent over one of the racks with all his spine showing. Another collapsed in the corner turned on his side allowing his brains to tumble out. And the other cut clean in half below the waist and looked like it crawled aways before it died leaving a clawed bloody trail.

“Let’s go” He said.

The boys took whatever they could carry and brought it back to stash it at the whorehouse with plans to come back for the rest later. Once they found a place to put it all.

They eventually had to bury a lot of it to retrieve later, that way it couldn’t be found if any convoys came idly by.

The food they found wasn’t much but the old man had suggested that there was a town nearby. Where he most likely got the bulk of his food.

The boys went back to that outpost and burnt it to the ground with some lamp oil. They burnt all the bodies separately on a pire until there was no trace left of them. Any passing convoys would just see a burnt out building and think it was struck my lightning or a gang of luggers that had somehow discovered fire.

After some preparation and some advanced scouting by O’Shaughnesy and Clarke. Clarke spotting from the outside and O’Shaugnesy talking to some of the locals they learnt everything they needed to know about the town and more. The power and comms that was the first thing they’d strike, crippling the towns infrastructure was the first step to taking it.

If they could shut off the tubescope delivering those pleasing numbing theta waves. They had a chance of convincing the people or failing that using force. Gage had absolutely no qualms at this point about killing his own people or forcing them to save themselves.

He was more than aware that humans hadn’t the faintest idea what was best for them and had been subverted far beyond the means for rational discussion. If he had to he’d use terror and violence to save them from themselves and he’d kill those that refused to fight at his side to save the human race.

“You’re out of your mind Gage, you know that?” Doctor Westwood spat, his face drenched in sweat his voice cutting through thick silence of McClusky’s bar. “You’d replace tyranny with tyranny where there is none. In your vision you’d tear this world apart just to be rid of a race that bares you no ill will, do you not see that this is the product of a sick mind?” Westwood was shaking as he spoke “Come with me and you have a chance at having a normal life, we can help yo-“.

Gage fired at the tubescope hanging over the bar blowing it to smithereens.

Westwood froze in terror grabbing his ears. Then scuttling his fat hands for his pistol on the table holding it low looking at Gage with wide eyes “You’re out!” He said almost like he was asking permission.

He got cooler and calmer and smiled and said “Destroying those will do no good. There’s a hundred more where they came from even if they did what you claimed they do.” As he said it the power went out, the loud tubescopes and their megaphones outside shut off and the streets were silent. “Cute trick, but you can’t save this town from itself” He said reclaiming some of his confidence as he fingered his gun with his sweaty palm. “Not by yourself”

“I’m not by myself”

Westwood swallowed “You’re out, you fired three times now, I have you, you’re coming with me!”

“I’m not going with you” Gage said as he raised his gun to Westwood’s head.

“You think I’m stupid, you want me to kill you where you sit, is that it?” He sputtered, his vision narrowing and focusing on the three barrels of the gun pointed at him. And then he focused hard on it and noticed something strange in the middle of the three wide shotgun barrels.

“Not today.”

Westwood squinted as it caught the light and he shuddered at the realisation of what it was – another barrel.

 

–

Continued here

Day of Lords

 

 

 

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Diana After Dark Chapter 15 ‘The Build up’

Well here we are again, 

I’m gonna keep this brief because I woke up with a splitting eye strain headache and I’m so fucking close to finishing the chapter break down of the first of my fantasy books of which the title is fluxuating. I wanted to call them ‘Cur’ and the titular character as an homage to the character he’s based on, namely the Kurgan from highlander. 

But I was thinking because ‘the Kurgan’ isn’t actually his name, it’s his tribe and his name is never actually stated in the movie I might do a better homage just to call the book and the character by his dead tribe; ‘The Firbolg’. I’m just not so sure it has the same ring to it as the Kurgan.

It might just be me adding the extra meaning and when I write this, the name Firbolg will be steeped in meaning. I dunno, gonna have to think about it, test how it feels but right now it seems more organic than calling him ‘Cur’ since Cur was sort of the start of this project but it’s evolved so much from there I don’t see why the title should be immune from that evolution.

Also not a big fan of subtitles but I hate messy unconnected titles like the witcher, I can’t really decide. I might just call the first book ‘The Firbolg’ or ‘Firbolg – Blood and Soil’ or soil and blood, in reference to the meaning of their name and the legend of them bringing sacks of dirt over to ireland.

Still playing around with it, still storyboarding, still researching and I need to get back to it, planning to start this bad boy friday at the latest. Kinda feel like I should sacrifice a goat or something haha.

Am I worthy? Haha. I dunno, I guess I just have to get over that and get stuck in, if I doubt myself now I may never start and just get bogged down trying to make it perfect and never get anywhere.

See you…

–

Outside the air was hot, a tropical wind blowing a hair dryer in my face. Wendy’s caked make up melting like a wax mask off my face. Sirens in the distance creeping over the shoreline, a sudden feeling of impending brain fart looming.

What could I do except throw myself on the mercy of a barrage of police questions with only my cute girl routine to fall back on. ‘It wasn’t me Mr scary police man, it was the one armed man’. I don’t know what disgusted me more; the thought that I would actually have to resort to that or that it might actually work. Well good looks don’t last forever.

My number one priority right now was finding my aunt/sister and boyfriend and getting as far the hell away from here as possible. With Wendy more or less dealt with that only left her little commandment breaking brother, Denny. Although I struggled to think which if not all the commandments he’d broken, surely he didn’t honour his father nor his mother. Incest and drug taking were apparently just a given.

I thought it would be pretty slick to escape out of the back fire door since doubling back through the main hall might run me back into Wendy’s path. Considering she wasn’t buried under a tonne of chipboard, which seemed a likely resting place for the wicked witch of the west coast. Or even worse; an awkward conversation with my aunt/sister over a dead cop. Also I couldn’t pretend to hope Denny hadn’t heard the shots. Or for that matter seen the waves of startled human cattle stampeding into the parking lot and disappearing into the night.

It was a good bet that he thought he was well on his way to enacting some kind of bloody revenge on my hapless aunt/sister at home. For of course ruining what could have been a lovely evening for his demented sister and possible lover. Or option two he was waiting with his hand on a large knife or gun waiting for either me or his sister to come out. So they could then ship off to aspen in the middle of the night and blow Orange County a kiss from the slopes with new names and probably new noses.

This being in the front of my mind leaving through the rear exit was my best option. I opened the fire exit with a mechanical clunking noise followed by lots of banging and scraping and a distinct smell of week old garbage. The back of the lazer arcade was a tight and cluttered alley opening onto a strip mall behind the arcade. The sirens were getting louder, so if he was still there he’d have to be getting more nervous and trigger happy by the second.

I looked at down at myself, at the silly pink prom dress I was borrowing. What was it I was planning to do exactly? Teen movie him to death?

A grave scraping like death’s scythe in the dark around my feet sent icy shivers up my bare ankle. Followed by a bitter mocking chuckle from the dark back seat. I breathed out and reached down to pick up whatever the hell I’d almost tripped over. The moonlight lifting its lidded eyes a slant to shine down on this unholy implement. Ok it was just a pipe, some kind of gas pipe maybe, don’t ask me I’m not a plumber. All I knew is that it was heavy on one end with a gnarly looking gauge or something sticking out.

Clue it is.

Who did that make me? Miss Scarlett or Madame Peacock? Was there a pink clue character?

This will do nicely, the thing inside said not in so many words. It’s teeth bared behind its leathery wings sending a rush of blood through the tips of my fingers. Making me feel magnetized, electric, like I was sticking to the walls. Like I was Spiderman crawling unseen above everyone’s heads as I traced through the dark in my ridiculous pink dress- ruffles and all. Quietly, I worked my way along the side of the lazer arcade, back around to the front.

The alley leading onto the strip mall was cramped and smelled like old hamburger meat and was most likely filthy. But the darkness was kind to it and to me as well as I peeked around the side of the pastel coloured building at the now more or less vacant parking lot.

But for one stretch hummer.

The parking lot was pretty well lit but the moon had given me a few dark pools in which to wallow. There was a large billboard on wheels facing out towards the road and a few trucks dotted about. They probably belonged to the furniture store on the other side of the arcade.

With the pipe in hand I hiked up my skirt like lady Chatterley about to descend her carriage or walk over a puddle, skittering along the ground as low as possible. I came up behind the billboard and peeped out for a closer look.

There was no movement. Although the tinted glass and the inherent clash of the dark and the bright parking lot lights made it impossible to see inside. I smelled axel grease and looked down at my hands and dress to see that I was covered in it. Looking at the pipe, the obvious culprit making a silent yuck face and then slipping back into the dark mask.

My body was starting to feel loosely coiled, the feeling of letting go mashing against the rising tide of ultimate control. Dark powerful waves tossing tiny boats aside like they were in the bath tub of Cthulhu’s baby brother.

–

If you wanna read the rest, you know the drill.

The build up

 

 

 

 

 

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Gage Chapter 7 ‘Ceremony’

Well hello der,

Err, I never know how to start these things, all I really want to do is bitch about the witcher.

No I’ll do an intro, ok well I’ve done pretty much nothing except make googoo eyes at my babymama and think about celtic folklore in the shower. But on that front it’s great. I should feel shitty because nothing is on paper but I don’t for the major reason; the mushy stuff which I don’t want to talk about. To focus on the writing, I feel like this is a real awakening for me. 

I found myself pretty blackpilled after I finished Diana because I genuinely thought to myself that I would never write anything better than this and it stung a little because it’s pretty much a fanfic or an homage to Dexter, it is mine, but also not mine. When I write it I’m purposefully trying to recapture the feeling I had while reading Dexter because I just want more of that feeling and I probably wont ever be getting it again from the actual source.

But there’s something about this, I didn’t have it at first, but as I read the folklore and think about it and wrestle with it in my head I just get this really good feeling in my chest. And even if it doesn’t turn out better than Diana it will be the next step nomatter what. I told myself if Diana failed, if I couldn’t get an agent or any copies sold I might quit but this is what I was waiting for, this will restock the fires in my heart for writing, I can feel it.

Right now I’m in this gorgeous calm before the storm moment like I have this big juicy apple the size of my head in front of me and I’m deciding how to eat it, just nibbling at it from all sides waiting for the answer to present itself. I really can’t wait til friday, I think I’m just going to dive into the internet for names and sources and start digging and taking notes and start sculpting this story. For right now it’s enough to let it cook in my head. I can’t rush it, this one has to be perfect.

Ok so enough of this positive shit, time to rag on the witcher haha. I dunno I actually feel positive even ragging on it, I think my fantasy book will be ten times better in terms of story, I don’t know about the writing, these books as I’ve said are really well written which I keep mentioning because it surprises me having read so many bad fantasy books on inkitt haha.

Because as I’ve harped on about the first witcher book ‘the last wish’ has almost no story it’s a witcher cheesy clip show with no real narrative linking the random events then it just ends with Geralt and Yennefer fucking because he uses his magic Genie wish to make her love him, which makes literally no sense. I mean the magic date rape sure but  I don’t even get why he liked her and not the snow white chick who banged the seven dwarves, their relationship was pretty much the same but she was more interesting.

Anyway so I started reading the second book ‘Blood of Elves’ and it starts with Ciri escaping cintra written in a really teenage girl ‘omg’ way I find really annoying. Then there’s a bunch of guys discussing the battle then Dandelion is captured and tortured and saved by Yennefer then Triss goes to Kaher Morhen (I at least tried to spell it this time) and that’s it. I started meming when was about 30% in that I was halfway through a book about monster killers and they haven’t killed a single monster yet nor did it seem likely they would in the near future. But now I just went over the halfway point and the most eventful thing to happen was Triss had a vision quest and Ciri got her period.

I wish I was kidding. Yeah it’s well written and some of the characters are decent but this is fucking filler, this is like bad bleach filler but instead of going on a wacky adventure they just sit around and do nothing but whine and feel awkward. I dunno, it almost feels like I’m missing a book, like there must have been a big time jump from the first book because I get the feeling that the thing where Geralt has a relationship with Triss has already happened and Yennefer and Geralt have already split up sort of. Also Ciri wasn’t born in the first book and she’s old enough to be having periods in this one.

This is the book that brings in Vessemir and my boy Lambert and all the other witchers and surrounding characters… to do nothing. I’m halfway through the book and the only person to pick up a sword was a little girl. I’m sitting here reading this expecting to get this rip roaring swashbuckling witcher adventure like the first book but with a story and I’m stuck in this really well written fantasy snorefest where the most interesting thing to happen is a magic make up tutorial.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not giving it up, I’m told the series gets better and my polish friend told me the first two books were sort of a slog but I won’t skip them. I’ll just read them and moan about them til I get to the good ones haha.

Ok so enough whining about the witcher, on to do something productive like blow it out of the water haha.

See you…

–

After the fire died Gage took ash onto his fingers and marked each boy’s forehead in turn. To symbolize the ashes of the old world and the world that would rise from it.

He took the various guns he collected from the patrons of the whorehouse who no longer needed them and handed them out like the sacraments at a mass. The boys eyeing them with wondrous curiosity as they splayed out on a tray Gage found in back.

They each took a revolver and Gage made them all take an oath to the new world. A mighty bone shaking oath that shook them to their core and moved them in ways they never thought possible.

*Note to the reader, the oath spoke of is never mentioned in the following text nor referred to again. And any remant of it has several variations none of which can be said to be cannon.

They were the warriors of the new world who’s only purpose would be to save the future of the human race from alien control. They would be the first droplets in a mighty tide of revolution to wipe clean this land and then this earth.

They swore before god and on the words of the bible that they would lay their lives down in service of their people. And cut down any that would stand in their way.

They spent the next few days in the remote brothel fixing it up and making it livable. Converting it into something of a clubhouse. Although there only being four bedrooms would mean two of the boys had to bunk up. Which lead to incessant consternation and ribbing between them. Although most of the time Gage preferred not to use a bed and just sleep on the porch on the rocking chair with his gun on his lap.

The boys took the time, familiarised themselves with the guns long and short until they could say they were as adept as anyone could have been. Considering only government officials and cut throats would even handle such a thing. They got comfortable enough to use them without blowing their own toes off. Learning for instance to keep one chamber empty to rest the hammer on so as not to misfire down the back of their trousers.

A few days past, it was around sundown when Clarke rushed back to the brothel, his rifle tucked under his saddle so it wasn’t visible to any passersby. He was out hunting rabbits and had come back empty handed but was very excited none the less. The sun was coming down and the boys were inside rather hungry with nothing to eat but stale bread and crackers from the whorehouses stores. Clarke had proven himself calm and capable with the long gun, a steady shot and a good tracker, so he’d taken it upon himself to scout around for food.

He rushed into the whorehouse coughing and sputtering with youthful excitement. Although this was unusual for him, as he’d displayed himself to be an even tempered young lad who rarely spoke when it was uneccessary. And could even be considered taciturn and moody in some respects. But he was excited by something.

“I- found- something!” He exhalted.

“Not rabbits ey” O’Shaugnessy bellyached.

“Let him breathe lads” Jameson said as the other three crowded around him.

Gage listened pretending to be asleep on the porch with a hat pulled down over his face.

“What did ya find Billy?” Mcdonald asked.

“A- trading post- about five or six miles east of here” He sputtered trying to steady his breathing.

“They have anything worth trading fer, like rabbits?” O’Shaugnesy added.

“Would ya shut yer mouth Shaun and let the man speak” Jameson said.

“I dunno, I didn’t go inside, I just looked in the window, got all kinds of stuff, guns, ammo, food, coats and furs and the ugliest damn wife and kids I ever seen”. He smirked.

“How many?”

“A whole bunch, look like that fella we hung the other day cept uglier.”

“He’s human?”

“Oh yeah, as you and I, must’ve taken one of them things as his wife for some goddamn reason.”

Jameson and the other lads made a face of confused disgust at the thought of a human mating with a lug. Shocked to think it was even possible and encountering the demonic children such a coupling would create.

“So you didn’t talk to him at all, he didn’t see you?” Jameson asked.

“No, I was the only one doing the seeing.” Clarke smirked. “I overheard him bellyaching with some traveller said he was pissed at the Cyclon for some reason. Wished someone would take’em out. I couldn’t rightly understand what it was he was saying, the fella didn’t seem too interested hisself neither.”

McDonald who was the largest but most soft spoken of the group with whispy mousey brown hair trying to escape his head. And muton chops framing a rough potmarked scotch-irish mug scratched his chin. “Could be he knows if there’s a town nearby, mightn’t be a good place to start.”

Jameson breathed in a little puffing out his chest and stomping across the wood floor of the brothel out the saloon door.

“Morning” Gage said as he rose from his rocking chair letting his shotgun fall loose at his side. “We ride out first thing tomorrow.” He said low.

Jameson nodded and smiled trying to hold in his excitement.

“Yes sir” He said.

The next morning they got up at the crack of dawn all four of them but Gage was nowhere to be found. He left a note outside Jameson’s door telling him to take his horse and he’d meet them there.

Read the rest of the chapter over on inkitt.

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Diana After Dark Chapter 14 ‘Two Way Street’

Herro seniors and seniorittas (I don’t care if that’s spelled right).

It’s been a very eventful week and by eventful I mean I did pretty much nothing but I feel good about it.

Yeah, well erm I didn’t do anything very constructive but the love life front magically out of nowhere seems to be wonderful again thankfully, like waking up from a bad dream almost. Or maybe it’s just a really good dream.

I watched Black Panther… and I fucking hated it haha. Well I was sort tossing between incredibly bored and just indifferent to it which translates to hate for me haha. If I don’t care about the story or characters and think the action is dull and uninspired with bad acting and storytelling and then think to myself; “Actually the early noughties fantastic 4 movies were pretty good” thats pretty bad to me haha. But I’ll probably do a more in depth review on it tomorrow.

As far as work is concerned (I mean real work not work work) I’ve been thinking about Cur the fantasy novel I’ve had on slow boil in my head and I think I finally cracked what I needed to get it off the ground in the old head oven, turn up the heat a little to a nice steady simmer haha. I was thinking about the witcher and the rich folklore it borrows from and I decided to go folklore shopping as you do and my babymama has always been a big fan of faeries and the fae and I thought that would be an interesting start.

So I started researching and I went through germanic and slavic folktales until I finally found my way to the celtic book of invasions and it just seemed to fit somehow. And on top of that it seemed fresh and good and it hasn’t been done before or at least done to death like the nordic and germanic folklore. 

I just started to look into it and it started to paint a picture in my head, to get back to the cooking analogy, it added a spice I was missing, it added a base to work from and it’s really coming together in my head and just thinking about it is really fun. Honestly pretty excited about it, I haven’t put much down on paper but it’s getting there in my head, momentum is building, I just need to keep working the steel a little.

Yeah a blacksmithing analogy is more manly than cooking, I should change to that haha. Can’t be bothered and go back and change my previous analogies, whatever.

Anyway I really like the way its going and I’m so glad that it’s stoking a fire in me just to stop me from rushing into another Diana book before it’s properly formed. The timing is  just too perfect and I’m really excited. Before I was a little hesitant because I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to take it in or have any real narrative, now I have too many ways to go and I’m loving it. I have my cool names, I have my cool location, I have my cool characters and I didn’t just pull it out of my ass.

It’s not going to be about faeries but it’s going to be about the world before faeries, it’s faeries the prequel with all the dark gritty stuff left in, culminating in the death of the gods and magic and the birth of faeries, which are this diminished forms of these old gods.

Anyway wasted enough time today, I need to do some spamming maybe and maybe some more proof reading I guess if I have time. Also I need to go over the Diana pitch another time for good measure and absorb more celtic folklore.

Gone back to the excerpt style just for a more bite size blog, so click the link to read the full devilishly delicious chapter on inkitt.

See you…

Two Way Street

~

Whatever the esoteric message of the photocopy meant I didn’t have enough time to make any sense of it. As a tight popping cracking noise of a microphone being tapped and tested and then a nasally voice filled the whole room.

“Folks, can I have your attention please.” Principle Maria Petro said. She stood looking over us from the balcony dressed a little like a character from the fifth element in a leopard print onesie? Cat suit? What are those called? Which actually fit with the neon space jungle theme. She was a short stodgy woman with a nest of badly dyed hair that looked a little like ramen noodles. She stood in what looked like a brightly lit star gate or arch, her hair done up as high as it would go. Thankfully it was high ceiling without any fans or low hanging lights. Her face a perfect mask of confidence and years of stored up aggression from dealing with the most spoiled kids on earth. All the make up in the world couldn’t cover up those frown lines. “Ahem Good evening everybody, I hope you’re all having a great time.” Paused for effect. Looking down at her subjects expecting an answer or maybe an uproarious applause. She cleared her throat and continued on without it. “It’s my pleasure to announce this year’s senior prom queen and king.”

I made my way back over to Paul, strategically elbowing people in their solar plexuses. Solar plexi? Swimming through the crowd, only spilling about half the contents of each cup on other people’s rented shoes. I handed him one. “Thanks”. He smiled for a moment and then stood bolt upright and his eyes got a little wider.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Err”.

“Don’t say shit” A coiled voice hissed.

“Wendy?”

“No it’s the fucking tooth fairy”

“What are you?” Paul asked looking over his shoulder keeping his neck stiff.

Wendy moved out his large shadow and poked him in the side with that deadly DG purse, her hand inside it. I imagined not clasped around her lip gloss. Her hair was coming undone, rogue strands now sticking in places to her patchy fake tan, running from the sweat. “Brodie stood me up” She said shooting me a glare like it was my fault. “They’re about to announce it now and the queen needs a king comprende?” She spat through her expensive bridgework. “So I’m just gonna borrow yours, you got a problem with that?”

“Err-“ I said eloquent and loquacious as ever.

“It’s ok, it’s cool.” Paul said as he tried his best not to look as stiff as Frankenstein’s monster with a hand up his ass.

“Walk” She said still looking at me.

He resisted the urge to raise his hands like a hostage and started to pad slowly towards the stage stairs.

There was no direct access to the stage. Wendy poked him through a set of stage doors and they disappeared hopefully to reappear on the other side of the star gate in one piece. But there was an awfully long pause and silence that followed.

“I’m happy to announce” Principle Pietro unsealed a sparkly envelope, very glamorous. She unsheathed a gold piece of card. “This years prom king and queen are-“ A sudden interruption, a dull pop and then another and then a shrill scream.

The room froze trying to recognise the sound.

Wendy burst out onto the stage the small pistol in her hand. A ruby red stream of blood flowing from a broken nose but no Paul to be seen.

“Gimme that!” she said as she snatched the studded prom queen tiara from Principle Pietro’s hand shoving her out of the way. She tried to pin it to her head with gun still in her hand. Once it was level she scanned the room of all the faces still frozen in stunned silence. Her existence now a morbid curiosity, a downward spiral, a car crash happening in slow motion and then she saw me looking up at her. The part of me that was really me wondering if Paul was still alive, the other part that was distinctly darker and couldn’t keep the smirk off my face. Here I was, a peasant in the crowd watching a debutante fall face first in the mud and I couldn’t stop the muscles in my face tensing into something like a smile.

“Fucking bitch this is all your fault!” She screamed and started firing wildly into the crowd I happened to be mingled in. The tiara drooping down and getting tangled in her hair as she cried.

Luckily at this range that little gun was about as deadly as a spud gun and there was just far too much confusion to hit anyone in particular. The crowd predictably woke from their frozen morbidity. Erupting into a flurry of fight or flight lizard brain comprehension. Stampeding towards the nearest exit. Climbing all over each other so as not to become the lucky recipient of a nine millimetre kiss blown from a killer queen.

My first instinct unlike that of a mere prey species was not to fight or to flight but to hide and wait and watch and see. I told myself I couldn’t leave without knowing what happened to Paul. He wouldn’t abandon me and I couldn’t let my mask slip off completely without at least trying to save it. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I just ran and melted into the maddening crowd of lurching farm animals and left him to bleed to death?

The exits were currently expurgating a constant stream of furious humanity. The true meaning of an ancient roman vomitorium now fully realized. Another fortuitous exit was marked out for me with a sign above the alcove that read “The glow zone”.

I broke from the herd and darted for the exit looking up to make sure she noticed I was distinct from the throng. She cursed in spanish and fired a warning shot over the bow of the balcony missing and chipping the horsehead ice sculptor, “Go Trojans”.

 

 

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Bright review (Medium level savagery)

Ok well while I try to stay active between working myself to death and recovering over the christmas period and getting ready for my trip I watched Bright on christmas day and it was alright.

Err ok well I wouldn’t even be writing this if I didn’t want to tear it apart and of course I do. I only really write about a movie if it does something so horrible it has to be recorded. Although we did watch Krampus after that and that was actually a great all round christmas movie. It looked great and was a lot of fun and had a hauntingly nice semi-happy ending. I thought it was the best movie I watched over christmas. For reference me and family, all we do over christmas is eat and drink starting as soon as we get up and watch movies christmassy or otherwise.

This year we watched Justice league (yawn), the snowman (we turned it off not even halfway through) Paddington 2 (through the magic of piracy) and Bright.

Now straight out of the gate I’m a semi-fan of Max Landis and David Ayer, that meaning I’ve enjoyed movies they’ve both done individually before. And I think I went over this in my suicide squad review, Ayer makes these tight tense little thrillers that really work and when he tries something big like with suicide squad it just gets away from him and blows up in his face.

But with Bright I thought because he wasn’t writing and directing it might be a little better, a little less scattered and since it wasn’t this huge cast of characters the narrative would have been less all over the place.

Honestly, I went into this movie ready to love it and right away I really did based on Will Smith alone really, he really carries this movie just by being Will Smith, I don’t know how else to put it. He’s just one of those guys who basically plays himself and that works and when he doesn’t a la suicide squad and after earth it kind of goes wrong.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, it’s basically lord of the rings two thousand years later. So it’s like a world where their creation myths are straight out of tolkien. So it’s modern day with faeries and elves and orcs and wizards. It’s basically end of watch meets the shire.

I honestly loved the premise, the characters were fun and funny, the action was great the world building was ok, there wasn’t really much of a story but what movie does these days?

Now for the criticism; first out the door, the racial narrative is kind of dumb honestly, I mean I like that it wasn’t too much in your face but orcs are black people I guess, but Will Smith is a black guy and there are hispanic gang members in it and centaurs that never show up and elves are basically your rich wasps/I dunno magic assassins I guess.

Other than that it’s handled ok, the problem really is with the world in general, it sets up this great big fantasy sandbox for them to play in but it doesn’t do anything with it really. You see a dragon flying over l.a and you never see it again. The whole movie is talking about the ‘dark lord’ and *spoilers* he never shows up, instead it reverts back to the standard buddy cop narrative of saving your partner from a burning building.

It just doesn’t really go anywhere or really take any risks. The reason end of watch and training day and harsh times are such gripping movies is because you realise the main character could and probably would die at the end or it could happen at any moment. But I never got that sense from this movie I knew exactly what was going to happen at the end. And if you didn’t well just fuck you haha. I mean it couldn’t be more obvious, an idiot M.Night Shymalan fan could have worked it out.

But I remember watching it and really enjoying it for the action and the one liners and Will Smith returning to his funny action stick, that was a lot of fun and I really liked the villains until I realised they were the only villains.

Because this whole time I’m watching these bad ass assassin elves tearing shit up like equilibrium or a pointy eared neo and I thought they were really cool but in the back of my mind I thought these were like enforcer villains building up to the dark lord…. who never shows up. So these villains were great as what I thought were just place holders, so I judged them as like mid level villains but then when I realised they were it and they were killed pretty easily I was like ‘Oh’.

It was just dissapointing, it builds up this great world and does all this forshadowing with Smith holding a sword and I was thinking, Will Smith is going to be sword fighting the dark lord by the end of this movie with a dragon and it’s going to be dope af but it just never happens , it just sort of fizzles out.

It has all this potentional it wasted. Basically I saw Ayer wanting to challenge himself but he didn’t rise to the challenge he just took his boiler plate movie template and added faerie tale shit. And all the time it lacks any tension because beat for beat it’s attempting to be a blockbuster and have sequels so I’m fully aware none of the main characters are allowed to die.

So all in all it was just this toothless mess of a fun movie.

After all that I would recommend this movie if you’re a Will Smith or Ayer fan and I probably will watch the sequel if and when it comes out to see if they can build on the world and actually have something interesting happen.

Seriously, why not just have the dark lord show up and kick their ass and escape. You get your ‘realistic’ ending and set it up for a sequel while having the pay off. The movie doesn’t even seem aware it blue balled us not having the dark lord show up in any form, it just ends like ‘Welp that was fun guys thanks for all that money’.

I heard there’s a sequel in the works but I don’t see why it should get one when we still haven’t gotten one for Dredd despite it holding a 78% on rotten tomatoes and this film only got a 30% but the audience seems to like it I guess, lord of the rings for people who wear their sunglasses on the back of their heads is pretty popular haha.

It’s kind of a silly tone deaf movie but it’s a fun ride, what more can you ask for these days honestly?

See you…

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Star Wars Rogue Y Tho?

Ok so evidently I wasn’t too hyped about this moving leaving it until now to actually watch and not spending any money to do so. And really my first thoughts are just; Why? Why does this exist?

Like seriously, I think this is the first time I’ve been watching a film and been like ‘Why am I watching this? Why would someone make this?’

The answer is obvious to anyone, it’s just money, but that makes me really sad.

The fact that this movie even exists is just so cynical and I can’t help watching it and thinking about how it feels like it was literally constructed in a board room. Even before I get down to the bare bones of why I didn’t like it, I just think it didn’t need to exist. The movie is soulless and aimless. It just exists for the sake of it. With it’s beniton advert cast with it’s token chinese person, gotta grab that chinese market there and it’s token evil white guys and cg Tarkin which was also needless.

I mean that should be your first red flag, if you need to revive not one but two people with tv voodoo you probably should just leave it alone. I know people made excuses for it but come on, it looked like crap. They could have just left him out of the movie or replaced him with a guy who just never turned around and it would have looked better than this videogame character/animated corpse. It was just wrong and anyone that says otherwise is just making excuses.

Honestly I went into this movie wanting to hate it, I really did, but any hate I could have had was overshadowed by my supreme indifference towards it. I can’t hate it because there’s nothing really substantive enough in it to hate, it’s sort of a nothing burger of a film, it’s not even really there. The characters that you’re supposed to like and care about *spoilers* and subsequently watch die are bland and uninteresting.

I couldn’t help comparing it to the magnificent seven trying to work out why that worked and this didn’t because in a way I felt it could be compared. Because you have this rag tag band of people drawn together and each person gets their own little bit where they do something brave and then die, like in magnificent seven (despite some living). But the thing about the magnificent seven is it uses it’s two hour plus screen time to build up these characters and make them distinct enough to care about them in varying degrees. I know I was more upset when Charles Bronson’s character died than I was when Red died despite the fact I liked Red but they both had their moments, their own little arcs and to see it close was meaningful and significant. It felt like a whole person died as apposed to a character or in this case a market, a buying demographic.

You don’t get that in this and what really pissed me off the most I have to say and it’s not the boring fights or the sort of stunted lame story but it’s the fact your biggest grossing actors in this case Forrest Whitaker and Mads Mikkelsen are literally in it for about two minutes collectively. And this is despite Whitaker being on the box art and promotional material.

This genuinely pissed me off because first off you see him for like a second younger when he finds, shit I was about call her Rey haha. Shows how distinctive and memorable she was as a character. Gin, he find gin and then he comes back years later with metal legs and looks like a total badass but does he get in a fight? Does he fuck, he literally gets vapourized by the death after like a minute of exposition. So that was my first red flag.

Actually no, my first red flag was why is Mads Mikkelsen in this film and why is he playing a mild mannered scientist and not some bad ass villain or sith? I mean you get one chance to use this actor, the guy who literally played hannibal and a bond villain and you use him to play some nothing character that gets killed off pointlessly and spends his like two minutes of screen time cooing over the daughter he spends all of like two seconds with.

What a waste of two great actors. You can never use either of them again now, they could have been awesome bounty hunters or assassins but no, now they’re just two dead boring guys unless they’re gonna make a prequel to this shitty movie, which I hope to christ they don’t.

That’s the main thing that really annoyed me. The casting choices just seemed to be token, just trying to find the biggest names they could get and casting them as anyone.

The other characters are ultimately forgettable even the guy who played ipman, he’s just a sort of boiled down version of any character from any kung fu movie really and he’s only there to try and make money on the chinese market. (Which they failed to do)

I didn’t care about their deaths and this is a long movie, so you had all this time to make me care about these characters and I still don’t. And this movie is actually longer than magnificent seven.

Ok onto the main character, of which her backstory fits into all of the two minutes before Forest whitaker is vapourized. So she’s the daughter of this science guy and then spends sometime off screen where she becomes the best of this guys soldiers at sixteen. Which says a lot about the rebel alliance, if their best soldier is a sixteen year old girl, you’ve got problems.

So instant Mary sue badass that everyone loves and respects and would die for check. There’s not much more I can say really, the movie is just sort of bleh, it’s cookie cutter and it was made in a board room not someone’s heart.

Gonna rant a little about the ending and the decline of hollywood and I’m out.

Right so one thing I’ve noticing about hollywood and it’s painfully obvious in this movie is the step away from moral story telling and romantic plot lines. Don’t get me wrong the romance in the prequels was cringey as fuck but to not have one in this movie was a little glaring, like why not? It’s a movie. I mean that sounds dumb, I mean just because there’s a hot guy and a hot girl in a movie doesn’t mean they should hook up. But I dunno it just made it sort of awkward at the end when they’re about to be obliterated by an orbital death lazer for them to have  a platonic hug. I was like, dude got friendzoned hard #Deathstarred.

I mean it was so odd my brother swears he remembers them kissing but they did not. It just strikes a queer note. That it would have been relatively easy to inject a moral or romantic plotline but it was purposefully left out. So this movie was more preoccupied with making a bad ass woman getting money from chinese people and signalling to fans of the original franchise than having a romance or making the female character human in anyway.

Now onto the signalling, a lot of memes I see and even my brother made a big deal about this and what we’re talking about is the end sequence when Darth Vader has a bit of a fight. I say he has a fight when it’s really just him murdering a bunch of dudes in a cool way. And yeah it was cool and I spent those brief seconds of that action thinking “Wouldn’t it be cool if the other two hours of this movie was like this?”. It was a nice little treat, like a cherry on top of a bland creampie full of empty calories.

That’s whats so bad about this movie, because it hints at the other films, you get to see the pigfaced guy from the bar scene before he gets his arm cut off and it has a little cameo from r2 and 3po and vader and tarkin but they’re not actually in the film. They don’t have an impact on the story, they’re just little extras, little titbits, window dressing, little reminders of the film you actually liked, which isn’t this.

It’s just so pathetically try hard, it’s like I’m watching a sad fan film. This is the movie equivalent of halloween harley quinn cosplayer. “Hey look at me, I’m that thing you like”. But there’s a difference between those films we liked and this film that takes the time to vaguely reference those films without having any of the memorable characters or action or story. “Hey remember those films you liked, I’m pointing at some of the characters that were in that, like me please!”

It’s just pathetic honestly. And I don’t know what’s sadder the fact the movie industry is cynical and greedy enough to roll the corpse of this franchise out into this boring nothing of a film or that audiences nevertheless pay money to watch it and will defend just because it vaguely reminds them of the films they liked but in a way that’s akin to the murderer of their grandmother wearing her skin and making you peanut butter sandwiches. It’s not your grandmother, it just looks like her sort of and that isn’t peanut butter.

I mean honestly, what next? Are they going to make a movie about c3po working on jabbas pleasure barge? Are we going to get a movie about guido shooting first? If this is the standard what can’t they make a movie about at this point?

I’d heard that these guys would be recurring as the knights of ren, this order of non-force using villains which would have been awesome. If the tone of the movie was to set up a band of villains for Rey and the gang to fight in the new movies that would have given the movie purpose and gravitas, but that seems unlikely.

It genuinely adds nothing to the star wars universe, it creates characters we don’t care about only to then kill them off with no overarching moral message or parable that makes the whole message hollow. The movie doesn’t need to exist. I mean I could understand if some of them recurred in the main arch but they all die, so what was the point? Oh right, money. I mean all my gripes with the force awakens it atleast adds new characters and plots lines to the franchise. I only really like one of them but at least it added something, this is just a completely pointless film that serves only to waylay you of your time and money in exchange for one decent Darth Vader scene.

Ok rant over haha.

 

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Review for “The Kings Game” by Remini UDA

It’s pretty interesting.

The start is well written, grabs your attention,, gets some set up and then goes straight into the plot very confidently. Got lots of Harry Potter, also weirdly got some John Carpenter vibes, maybe some anime sneaking in there. It’s a strong start but then the first chapter does get a little bogged down towards the end, lots and lots of talking and then it ends with talking. Don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with talking but to have such a strong start and then sort of trail off towards the end of the chapter is a bit of a let down. It would have been much better if it had built to some sort of crescendo. First chapters almost need to be complete stories in themselves. But other than that I have no real criticisms., it’s well written, confident voice comes through, the story seems solid, the world building isn’t cringeworthy at all which you get with a lot of fantasy type stories. I don’t see many massive grammar/spelling mistakes. All in all it’s pretty solid stuff.

The kings game

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