Nanowrimo Start (Or Lack Thereof) and The Loose Threads Peeve

I hope that everyone had a good start to November, which started with All Saints Day or Dia de los Muertos for those who have Mexican roots or have seen The Book of Life. It’s Nanowrimo season, but I’m taking a long story break due to having worked on a ten thousand word short story for an anthology. I’ll be plotting out works this month and writing on themes, so that when winter break rolls around I can hit the ground running by writing.

Last year, in August,  I saw an article about the Rock A Fire Animatronics, a robot band that used to perform in Chuck E Cheese franchises but had moved on to perform as a solo act in Orlando. Then I confused the article with some posts I had seen on a place called “Freddy's Pizzeria”, and googled Five Nights at Freddy's. That was stupid.

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Five Nights At Freddy’s is a game that features a fictional pizzeria, though a lot of people have claimed that it reminds them of Chuck E. Cheese. It's also a horror game where you play a security guard trapped in a room, having to keep the doors closed against walking, haunted animatronics, but you probably know all this, since it’s become quite the online phenomenon. I made the mistake of watching the trailer at night, and reading up on the gameplay. I was scared of the dark for several months, up until I saw Markiplier playing the game and was able to laugh at his frustration.

Five Nights has since become a multi-game franchise that has sparked a rather controversial and excited fanbase, with the creator Scott Cawthon having released four in total plus a Halloween edition of the fourth game, and even some talk about it becoming a movie. Each succeeding game seemed to add a bit more to the story, making the animatronics seem more tragic than monstrous while showing the utmost cruelty and kindness of human beings. Then Game Four came out, which undid the satisfaction that the viewers got from the third game, and left us with a few ambiguous situations and even more unanswered questions, turning what had seemed like an ostensible “happy” ending into a tragic beginning.

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This past Fall 2015, Scott has revealed that he knows all the answers to the questions he has kept under wraps, that he plans to make no more games in that original storyline, and that his latest game will be a different story entirely. In addition, he showed a locked box that supposedly held the answers to the game, and told us he wasn’t going to open it. This felt like a huge middle finger to the fans, and to the people like me who weren’t diehard fans but were nonetheless lured in like innocent insects to a sticky mosquito trap.

A Five Nights at Freddy’s clone ended, or rather disappeared, in a similar fashion. Five Nights at Treasure Island took the same game mechanic setup and transplanted it to the Bahamas, at the abandoned Disney World resort “Treasure Island”, complete with haunted Mickey, Donald, and Goofy “suits” plus several unknown figures. After two demos, one of which merged several Disney Creepypastas, the game creator and his successors decided to pull the plug on the project. Five Nights at Treasure Island is on indefinite hiatus, with none of their questions answered either.

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Why do I find these actions frustrating? Because the games triggered in me a fear of the dark, but their story helped to alleviate it; I was able to focus on the backstory that fueled the tragedies that had occurred before and during the games. We got the Purple Man, a monstrous human whose true features we never saw, and we saw the fate that befell him when karma caught up to him. Then we see another heinous crime occur, without his involvement on screen, and the viewer becomes unsatisfied. We never see what happens to that perpetrator, and we can’t even place the event on a definitive timeline. Five Nights at Treasure Island is just as bad because while we may have some opinions on how Disney’s business executives skirt across lines and ethical boundaries, the supernatural mystery is quite alluring, more so that if you know that Treasure Island is real, albeit not haunted.

I would call these endings “cliffhangers” precisely because they leave the sensation of what the original cliffhanger, as Charles Dickens put it, must have felt like to the readers either listening to an epic saga, but at least cliffhangers are typically resolved. Instead we have loose threads to two different stories that provoke obsessions, with the creators deliberately withholding the answers. It’s one thing if the creators plan to create a huge reveal in the story, the way Alex Hirsch has done with multiple plotlines in his show Gravity Falls or J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter, but it’s quite another if he or she plans to never tell that tale. The reader deserves some common courtesy when the creator promises to add more to the story with each installment.

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If you’re going to write a story with multiple parts, with each succeeding part building on the previous one, you have to promise to answer most of the questions that you set out in a long work. Not answering these questions will lead to frustrated readers, and they will let you know if you missed a spot. Deliberately and openly withholding the stories will provoke anger from the fans, since they have devoted their time to reading. Speaking as a reader and a writer who has been on both sides of the equation, with stories that have made people ask questions and I’ve frustrated them by not answering them, I understand that answering the big questions is the important part. Writers and readers exchange words, and those words must have a current of common courtesy. I know that if I make that mistake, my lovely beta readers will let me know and express their frustration openly.

On that note, I am going to resume my storytelling break and return to detailing themes for the month, and story plotting. For those doing Nanowrimo, good luck and I hope that you meet your 50,000 word goal!

Halloween: Looking Back

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope that you've picked out your costume, and that you've had fun. This year, sad to say, is the first year my family didn't go trick-or-treating. It was more of a tradition than an actual candy grab, but I was hoping that we would get a chance to celebrate. In any case I got to wear my costume to a Toastmasters seminar, and show it off my Other Mother button eye mask. 

To commemorate the loss of tradition, and to move forward, I'm pasting an essay I wrote in 2008 for college applications, with the prompt "The Road". Enjoy seeing my writing from seven years ago:

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Halloween dominates other holidays with its spooky atmosphere; aside from the cute ghoul, people want scary thrills that allow them to sleep safely at night with mountains of candy pushing against the cupboard doors. 

 On my street, each October evening captures that same spooky atmosphere. As my mother and I walk, sometimes with a flashlight, we see orange streetlamps dot the concrete, illuminating a feral cat or the occasional pedestrian, ourselves exempted. The fence that protects a half-constructed house creaks in the cool breeze. Only a few days ago as I was biking, a cat shot out black as an opal towards the canal, right under a full moon. I don’t believe in superstitions, as I’ve had fairly good luck for the past few days. 

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Yet this street, thrilling and safe as it appears, can only be reached by one practical means: a car. No bike paths line the front lawns, let alone the roads outside of my neighborhood. Since few cars clutter the road, not many find this a problem. I love to drive to school during the autumn because the sun dawns, allowing light to shed on the green mangrove bushes and brightly painted houses. Many have personal gardeners tending the impatiens and begonias and whatever vine they can grow on a doorway. In one front yard they replaced a monstrous hedge with a turquoise leafy fence that partially hides a trampoline.

Sometimes I wonder why the neighbors only appear for the annual block party, and perhaps the neighborhood meeting. Some move in, and quickly try to sell us their house. My mother laughed at one offer; before the metal fences barred us, we had explored the home in question while it slowly converted from a dirt mound to a wondrous mansion.  

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Our road and its neighbors don’t know what to make of us. We never socialize, except with a lovely lady who brings us avocados, never try to show off our house because then it would be a parlor, not a home, and we never plan to move. Yet we have privacy and security thanks to our road, two elements that most neighborhoods lack. I can bike without fear under a full moon in the evening.

Sleeping Upside Down: A Few Thoughts

Last night I was trying out a new app, one that would track my sleeping habits. For it to work, however, I had to keep my phone next to my head on the mattress so that it could pick up the sleeping cycle; this is a problem since I'm a restless sleeper, and everything tosses and turns on the bed. In addition, the app recommended that the phone be charged. The nearest outlet to my bed is nowhere near the headboard and instead closer to the footboard. Thus I moved my pillow to the bed's other end, wedged my phone in a place where it wouldn't get lost.

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To try something new like an app terrified me. I worried about what would happen if it failed, what my disappointment would be. At the same time, I wanted to see if it could help with my issues of getting to bed and tracking my sleep health, especially with three terms to go. I want to be as energetic as possible each day.

I learned several things: one is that the part of a mattress that your tiny legs don't reach end up being quite stiff; second is that it takes a while to adjust to the new space, although it's not that far away from your headboard in terms of feet, and that it can mess up your waking up time; third is that apparently reversing the arrangement of your pillows is called "sleeping upside down," according to my beta reader, and some people place the pillow under their feet. By trying out a new device, I had exited my comfort zone in more ways than one.

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The literary character Pippi Longstocking sleeps "upside down," with her feet on the pillow and her head resting on her mattress in her Swedish villa. Pippi turns many other things upside down, including notions about what was right and proper for girls and kids her age, and knowing her absent father wasn't dead. As a kid I thought that she always bit off more than she could chew, but as an adult I can appreciate her courage and refusal to accept adults' perspectives on her life. Although some of the values she preaches wouldn't carry nowadays, such as claiming her father became king of an island in the South Pacific over the natives -- values that jar with the campaign to acknowledge conquerors like Christopher Columbus brought harm and genocide with them-- she was braver than I was, and still is.

Tonight I'm going to try again, this time moving my pillow back to its original spot and not plugging in my phone this time since I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. Comfort zones are one thing, but I like that space at the headboard, where the mattress knows me and I know it. I certainly have a new perspective on things, but I think that perspective will do for now. Sleep well, everyone!

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Banned Books Week: The Awkward Questions

"But who is wurs shod, than the shoemakers wyfe, With shops full of newe shapen shoes all hir lyfe?"
[1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs i. xi. E1V]"

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Before I turned thirteen, I thought that book censorship happened to other kids in other places, and that it wouldn't be tolerated in this day and age-- the early 2000s. Harry Potter book burnings seemed absurd, to think that witchcraft in this day and age posed a threat, not to mention anonymous callers harassing Judy Blume for writing a middle grade book about the existence of God and how a preteen could choose a religion.

My family is highly educated, and I inherited my brother's taste in books, from Harry Potter to Artemis Fowl to Ender's Game.He in fact had to push books on me because as a kid I didn't realize that books could be fun. I was a reluctant reader, until I discovered the joy that Redwall and Harry Potter brought, and more so when I learned that you could take multiple computer tests on the books that you read in school. It seemed all fun when I won an award for reading the most books in the school, and for discovering the power of Bruce Coville when it came to unicorns and dragons.

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Then I hit middle school, and discovered Harry Potter fanfiction without ratings, Neil Gaiman through Sandman trade paperbacks, and adult renditions of fairy tales. The latter anthologies that made me do double takes at the violence, and some interpretations of the fairy tales that I read with bright illustrations. Some of the phrases that evaded me made me doubt that such acts existed, that it could not possibly be what I was asking.

I asked my sister an awkward question while we were uniform shopping. She explained to me the answer, with some patience, and told me to not ask so loudly. I expressed some disgust when she told me the definition of the term, and later on she and my brother started to screen the books I read, not allowing me to read volume 6 of Sandman due to the graphic violence portrayed during the French Revolution. My mother freaked when I mentioned some ridiculous notions about Wonder Woman that psychologist Frederick Wertham had made about a female superhero that has a lot of female sidekicks, and confiscated my Internet privileges. This confiscation felt very insulting and violated the education that I had learned about censorship.

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A painful transition over several years followed, where I started to believe that certain books can spark dangerous and unhealthy ideas, and that dark fiction inspired terrible thoughts to high school students under a lot of stress. I stopped reading fanfiction because Fanfiction.net at the time downloaded a lot of viruses to the family desktop I was using, and the actual Harry Potter books coming out nullified my need for more wizard lore. In time, I asked about more mundane things like how to survive high school and broken friendships. My reading diverged into more traditional fantasy and science fiction, from Isaac Asimov to Scott Westerfeld, and to this day I find it hard to read traditional romance novels or gore fests, unless Shakespeare or Stephen King write the gore or Meg Cabot writes the romance.

As an adult, I now understand the position in which I put my sister. Having to answer a young teenager's awkward questions in a public place or in a conservative household makes for an unpleasant experience. Often censored books make people ask questions, and too many questions makes one reluctant to confront them, especially when the answer seems to absurd to be believed. As a kid I had no filter, so I was curious about everything.

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With that said, questioning the world and its fictional representations allows our minds to grow. Harry Potter's detractors in the 1990s claim that the book promotes witchcraft, completely missing the point that despite the wizards and witches having magic to solve the energy crisis and problems of our world, and they cannot overcome the human errors of prejudice and tolerance for cruelty. Parent Melanie MacDonald calling a young adult novel "smut" for addressing the serious issues of bullying among girls shows a lack of perception that such issues occur, often under an unwilling public's nose.

Education starts in the home, and I imagine biases and handling awkwardness comes into play when trying to nurture a child's mind. While my family screened the books I read, they didn't impose that screening on other children or parents, or by complaining to libraries. They knew their comfort zone, and mine, but comfort zones vary with each family. For that I am grateful, and I am grateful for having the ability to question my world, and its absurdities.

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Weekend Trip to Disney

Hi all! I’m back from a two-day trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando. We drove out Friday afternoon and arrived in Miami yesterday evening. The two days in between were quite adventurous.  

We haven’t been to Disney World since 2011, when we stayed in Bay Lake Tower and learned how Disney is accommodating to special allergies and dietary needs for my younger brother. This was going to be fun, short, and sweet. And it all was. On top of that, I smuggled in my Hiccup doll for comfort from the packing stress and the road, and to indulge in the subversive nature of bringing a Dreamworks character to a Disney franchise.  

Hiccup enjoyed himself, I can tell you that. So did we. So much has changed in Disney over the past five years. A few rides, like Snow White’s Scary Adventures, have vanished and been replaced by a Princess Fairytale Hall where you can meet and greet the ladies of Disney. We didn’t go on the new Snow White ride, Mine Train, because the waiting times were between 40 and 60 minutes, but it certainly looked interesting. Fare thee well, Snow White; I wished I had ridden you more often before your 2012 closure. 

On the first day, we went to Epcot, which remained mostly the same as it was in 2011. Spaceship Earth is still the most soothing ride, and my mom’s favorite experience was going on Soarin’. The large globe is soothing to see at night, though the walking between rides and Via Napoli wore us out. I actually fell asleep on my brother after we boarded the Monorail back to our hotel room.

 

On Saturday and Sunday, we went to the Magic Kingdom. The park is decorated in full for Halloween, even with a month to go before Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. It certainly gives a delicious air to the fall atmosphere. The people dancing around trolleys and singing about hayrides also helped.

The new ride that I loved the most was The Little Mermaid ride. I saw a 3D blueprint of the ride on my Little Mermaid DVD, and was excited to get a chance to go on it. The animatronics were very sophisticated, with the audio matched closely to the lip synching, and there was an extended sequence depicting “Under the Sea” with Sebastian the crab conducting.

With that said, they do cut out the Lovecraftian climax towards the end where Ursula gets angry and takes over the oceans, but I figured that’s a small allowance to make in favor of an actual Little Mermaid dark ride. This took twenty years into the making. The queue was also entertaining, with an animatronic Scuttle providing commentary and a sea-like backdrop.

We also went on Splash and Thunder Mountain; I was terrified of going on the rides as a kid, when we used to go to Disney more often, but I managed to swallow my fear and go on the drops. After all the stress of the past three years, an amusement park ride that relies on our fear of falling felt like a walk in the park. Plus, I can make up for the times as a kid that I freaked out and refused to get on, requiring my mom to wait with me outside the ride.

 On the second day, I took Hiccup with me to the Magic Kingdom. He got a glimpse of Cinderella’s castle, which is undergoing renovations. I found it wicked to sneak in my favorite Dreamworks character into the Happiest Place on Earth (fanfiction material). He sat with me on Space Mountain, and no one noticed. It was hard to take a photo of him in the dark, but I managed. Space Mountain was pure darkness, so I was relieved to have a comforting character with me.

We also went on the Carousel of Progress (which will remain a classic), Small World (ditto), and the Haunted Mansion. I love the ghost host outfits that the cast members wear and asked where I could get one. A cast member told me that the nearby shops sold a t-shirt, but I want to go for the full Victorian dress. I also got flashbacks when a frightened child said he didn’t want to go on; I was the same way about Pirates of the Caribbean. Jay and Mom remember that, and how I would always say, “NO yo-ho!” On the bright side, the ride was as fun as I remember, with a few updates; Leota’s head does more floating, I actually saw the Black Widow bride, and the tombstones were hilarious as always.

Overall it was a fun trip. I enjoyed myself, as did the family. Hiccup also got a chance to see my childhood and enter a place forbidden to him; the security guard that checked my bag didn’t even recognize him. I got to be a proper kid again, with some cynicism about progress and yet less adult worries on hand. In the Magic Kingdom, you can shut most of the real world out, and get lost in the atmosphere.

 

Taking Back a Tainted Legacy: Why She Walks in Shadows is important

Hi all! Wow, it's been quite a summer with school starting this week, getting doctor's checkups, and awaiting a potential tropical storm that hit the Caribbean this morning.

So, a bit of big news: the anthology She Walks in Shadows is coming out in October, but pre-sales have hit the 200 mark for orders and has received positive press. In addition, Expanded Horizons accepted my short story "The Castle's Women," and I will post the link when it's online.

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Recently The Mary Sue did a short article on the She Walks in Shadows anthology, commending Silvia Moreno-Garcia's goals for taking on such a project. Some of the comments, however, were concerned about the fact that Lovecraft was a notorious racist in addition to being a misogynist, completely missing the point that She Walks in Shadows specifically asked for stories from POC authors as well as female authors. Garcia had to step into the comment thread to explain this fact,

Then some people took Garcia to task for creating a woman's only anthology, and she blogged an FAQ info-post discussing the issue, as well as her refusal to apologize for being a "little bitch" in response to one angry email. Garcia handled the insult with grace, and explained that she wanted to create a space to showcase the "girls that play with squids," to paraphrase what she writes. I was rather insulted on Garcia's behalf that someone would take the time to insult her for adding creative democracy to the mythos, and I could not understand why people would want to cling to their idea that a space for female fantasy and horror writers wasn't needed.

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Lovecraft has a tainted legacy, because while the man had remarkable ideas regarding great evils we cannot comprehend, not to mention a massive generosity for his friends and fellow writers, he was a racist. I didn't discover him directly or the admiration that my favorite authors like Neil Gaiman seemed to apply to him, though I like what he inspired in other people, and how he could make seemingly ordinary objects like a color terrify his readers. No massive obsession occurred, or an instant passion from reading the man's words; in fact, I had to slug through them and labor through the stories.

Then I talked to a librarian on Friday, mentioning the anthology. We've known each other for years, sharing a mutual love of comics and fantasy. I mentioned the fuss going around the anthology, and admitting I don't like Lovecraft the person (more on that below). The librarian then remarked on how Lovecraft was a product of his times, and that Edgar Allan Poe, who I preferred, wasn't raised by three maiden aunts. He then said something interesting:

"I related a lot to Lovecraft growing up. He never really aged past the age of fifteen."

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At the time I couldn't wrap my head around the concept, especially since this year my anger about racial injustice has increased, but later I was able to ponder the matter. As someone who likes to read on author's lives, I like to see how other writers developed their methods, to see what worked for them and how they worked on their stories. The thought of Lovecraft creating a connection with his audience made sense, given that if he hadn't written words that made an impact, then he wouldn't have been considered the father of cosmic horror.

Cosmic horror, as it was explained to me, is about the horror of facing creatures and a universe larger than us, of seeing human beings as mere ants compared to the fathoms that our naked eyes can only witness. I misinterpreted this as my usual apprehension that comes when watching the stars and picturing how asteroids as large as mountains can crash into the ocean and cause catastrophic tidal waves. I had to do further research to understand that the concern involved encountering clever monsters as large as mountains that took over our minds and hearts. To be honest, the idea doesn't scare me because the idea of our sun blowing up or an asteroid crashing into the oceans seems more plausible than giant tentacles invading our minds.

 

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I gained more respect for cosmic horror after reading other takes on it. A Sherlock Holmes anthology had two stories featuring the Old Ones, and how they instilled horror in Watson during one tale, and inspired honor and duty in Sebastian Moran in another. The horror wasn't real to me before, but it became real. I was able to develop healthy respect, while wondering why the Old Ones had to be evil and conquering by default.

"The Opera Singer," which I wrote for She Walks in Shadows, was thus challenge because, though I have gained respect for the mythos, I do not like Lovecraft.  His prose is too dry for me, and the only story I liked-- "The Color out of Space"-- worked because the idea of a color on the spectrum that could kill people was enthralling. All of the "Old Ones" were demonic, and the title character in "The Dunwich Horror" never had a moment where we saw his perspective. Surely space squids existed on a spectrum of black and white, where they varied in what they wanted, and the Old Ones wanted more than to take over the minds of men and lure them into slavery. The story and novel exist as democracies, in that each character gets a chance to tell his, her, or its story; Lovecraft horror decreed that the Old Ones have to be evil because they desire to take over the minds of men, and that someone like Wilbur Whateley never got a chance to demonstrate different facets because his author wanted to assure the reader that Wilbur was evil and not properly human.

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With that in mind, the creature that does exist in "The Opera Singer" does not consider itself evil because it exists on a spectrum above petty humanity, as the title character grows old and slowly deprived of the world's luxuries, like basic kindness or nostalgic places. The woman who inspired my black  main character, I encountered her walking and pushing her own wheelchair, and she told me how she used to sing in opera and how now she couldn't go to her favorite practice room because of regulations. She stayed with me, up until the prompt for She Walks in Shadows went up and asked for tales.  I wrote the story to ponder on how people change before our eyes, but because we blink so many times we hardly notice since the changes are small and incremental.

Being able to tell these stories with the Lovecraft mythos is important, to expand on the characters previously deemed "monsters" and "horrors," whether or not they were cosmic horrors or black-faced,"apelike" stereotypes. We need to reclaim that space to show that we can move past Lovecraft's times and his issues, while adding more good to his legacy. Reclaiming does not mean that we oust his original prose, or threaten his fanbase; rather, we create a safe space that can coexist with previous canon.

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So yes, I may not play with galactic squids the way other authors do, but I enjoy being included in the fun. If someone thinks that a woman doesn't have the right to create her space, or to participate in one when the field is primarily dominated by a protective majority, then I will most likely listen to that someone out of politeness and participate anyway. The writing arena is a democracy in that we share our stories equally, with different voices and perspectives. When a past error remains in one historic piece, then the only thing to do is to write a tale to counter it.

The space doesn't have a limit. Neither does the human mind. Let's fill both with varying perspectives to change racist legacies.

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