3 Green Fish

I’ve been told many times that I needed to see Heroes, that it was pretty much a show made for me. Since I was finishing up my last year of college when I first heard about it, I never got a chance to see the show until the first season came out on DVD. It’s a strange hybrid of superhero comics and realism, a tights-free exploration of what might actually happen if people developed abilities beyond those of mortal men.

If you like comic books at all, you’ll enjoy this show. Unfortunately, the first season gets off to a slow start, and I didn’t really feel grabbed by it until a few episodes in. I can’t tell you exactly where that shift happened, and part of it might have simply been the price of getting all the storylines going simultaneously, but by the last couple discs I found myself desperate to know what was going to happen next. Like many comic books, the “science” behind the show has to be taken with a grain of salt—a large grain of salt.

While there is humor sprinkled throughout, this is very much a drama. Tension abounds as characters meet and separate, a shadowy secretive organization tries to control everything, and the plot builds towards major confrontations near the end of the season. A bomb is going to blow up New York, and then there’s the matter of the superhuman psycho drilling open people’s heads to harvest their powers. There’s a lot going on, but it all manages to come together towards the end.

Heroes, Season 1 is available on DVD. Amazon link. (Season 2 is currently airing on NBC)

President Bush’s latest attempt to dismantle the English language practically screamed for a LOLing. So I obliged.

You can see the other two on Flickr.

So, I’ve had a bad week, and I’ve been frustrated and unhappy with the process and where this story is going and all that sort of thing. Now I’ve stepped back a bit and read a good book and a half, and I think I’m in a better mood to tackle this thing again. Since my last post I’ve added about four and a half pages, much of it with great frustration. So basically, I’m alternating between stuff I really like and stuff I think is absolutely horrible. What fun!

This chapter is all about procreation. No, really. For some reason it wanted that to be its theme, and I’m trying out a sort of essay-like frame in the narrative. Given that the content is all about relationships, it seemed appropriate. Also, it means I get to work with a new character, which is a nice change.

I added a little over a page and a half today, most of it funeral stuff. It’s strange, because just knowing that this is the comedy section of the book changes the way I write things slightly — I find that I’ve adopted a slightly different style, and it’s not entirely intentional. There are certain quirks to my writing that only show up in certain circumstances, such as this section of the book.

You wouldn’t be able to tell it from the second half of this sentence, but the funny part isn’t the priest talking about how the dead guy’s death is really quite a good thing. Oh, Father Geldric, will you ever learn?

So, I’ve been struggling a bit with my work here, and honestly, when it gets difficult it stops being very much fun. So, today I did things differently to make things more fun — I jumped ahead to Part 2, and wrote the first half a page, skipping over about a chapter and a half of unwritten stuff at the end of part 1, and the rest of the revision. Then I went back and did a little rewriting on one scene to make it from Bandolor’s perspective.

The nice thing about skipping to part 2 is that it’s kind of the comedy section of the book. In a way it’s the interlude between all the bad stuff that happens in part 1 and the gathering disaster of part 3, and getting away from the action of part 1 makes it easier to adopt a more tongue-in-cheek voice.

No excerpt today, as I don’t have anything for you that isn’t full of spoilers (I’ve gotta have a few surprises). I’ll have an excerpt again soon, I promise!

So, I made progress today. Actually finished the last of the major changes to my first draft, I think, and I’m considering skipping through almost all of the remainder to start churning out more. If I just add a little description to one section and change around one more conversation, I think it might all be okay from here on out, since I fixed most of the parts that I wanted to change for the moment, and it’s more or less set to continue on from here.

Mostly I worked on changing around a key scene between Adrianna and Bandolor. It fits better and is more plausible, but it might still need work in the future. At least this way my continuity isn’t screwed up, and I can head back to the current action with a basic understanding of what happens earlier. The really exciting news is that I should soon be able to start part 2 (finally!) which I hope will be more humorous than part 1. That would be fun.

Today I fought Murphy, and while I guess I won in the end, he certainly ate up most of my waking hours. So I got started late and didn’t write much. It’s been a rough road lately — technology keeps on needing attention. Argh.

So yeah. I added half a page and now it’s time to call it a night. Unless I try to get the network printer working tomorrow, I should have a better day anon.

The first two Resident Evil films were some of the best movies based on video games, if not the best. The reason they worked so well, in my opinion, was simply the premise: the gigantic Umbrella Corporation creates a super-virus that animates the dead. Take the usual zombie issues, add in some nice action and you’ve got yourself a decent action flick. Resident Evil: Extinction jumps forward in time; the T-virus has spread across the globe, the undead are everywhere, Umbrella corporation continues its activities in underground bases, and those people who survive do so by remaining ever on the move.

Yes, it’s post-apocalyptic. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but it was a bold step that panned out well for the most part. On the one hand, the film predominantly lacks the claustrophobic environments of its predecessors, but on the other hand, the spread of the T-virus across the United States would have been extremely difficult to portray well with a coherent plot. Instead of trying for that expansive of a story, Extinction focuses on one particular band of survivors, and on Umbrella’s wayward experiment in superhuman ability, Alice (played once again by Milla Jovovich), who kicks undead butt any chance she gets.

I don’t think this film is quite as strong as the last two, but it’s still fun, and Jovovich alone can keep an action movie going at high speeds. The big monster that rears its (extremely) ugly head by the end isn’t quite up to the par of the Licker in the first movie and Nemesis in Apocalypse. Also, the science has gotten even more dubious (just how exactly does the T-virus wipe out all life?), but all in all, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the movie. You can’t go wrong with a huge flock of killer crows all cawing in anticipation of pecking out some eyeballs.

Resident Evil: Extinction, staring Milla Jovovich. Directed by Russell Mulcahy. In theaters as of September 21st, 2007.

I actually added 3 pages two days ago, but my internet connection cut out before I was done. Then I spent most of yesterday trying to get the internet working again (you all can thank me for that later*), and that didn’t exactly put me in the mood to write. As you can probably imagine, it also made it difficult to do things like post stuff online.

Today, though, I added another 3.5 pages. Thus, since my last novel watch, I have added 6.5 pages of fresh, brand new content! Woo!

It helps that I’ve been working on an exciting part of the story. There’s a little action, which is always good, and I was able to introduce a minor villain earlier, so that’s good too. I definitely think shifting things around like this was a good idea, and as much as I’ve lost time to slow revision, it’s definitely been the way to go. Hopefully I’m back on track to work regularly now (and hopefully the internets won’t get clogged again).

Today’s excerpt is in honor of Cristie. ‘Cause of the fish. It’s also the last thing I wrote tonight, so don’t be surprised if you see problems with grammar. Or spelling. Or coherence. Yeah.

One group of men tended a frame with a dozen long heavy rods, on which hung pairs of herring. In each pair, the head of one was actually threaded through the gill and mouth of its counterpart, forming an inverted V-shape to hang on the rod. Adrianna found herself staring at the rods of herring more than anything—they looked like mutant fish with a second head growing out of their mouths, and a second body bursting out of their sides.

(*Yes, I know I didn’t fix the internet. Yeesh.)

Do you ever have deja vu about some project you’re working on, where you think “I’ve done this exact thing before, completed it and finished it”? Because I had that earlier, working on this revision when I got to that point where I was starting to add new stuff. It’s kind of a weird feeling, and maybe it’s just a reminder of the other times that I’ve revised the opening to something and then gone on to continue it.

Today I rewrote a big scene and started adding my major new addition to the plot of part 1. After that’s finished, I may just skim through revising the remainder of part 1 to move on to better stuff. I really want to introduce Ellia and get that whole subplot moving.

In other news, my “weekends” are getting shorter, but it would be nice if I could get them down to two days…