Citation Needed

WHAT IN THE HELL

Did the above image give you a fright? Did it make you uneasy? Me too. But I like these feelings. I like being confronted with discomfort and being made to feel weird. I think it’s good for the mind and soul to examine the boundaries of what we think is safe and emerge from the experience with new knowledge of one’s self.

It’s this philosophy that I want to bring to my tv show project, which has the working title “Fever Days”. It’s a show about magic, but magic as a product of pain and trauma. It’s nothing to do with saying mystical words or drawing sigils or waving a wand about. It’s about how the currency of change is pain. How nothing of worth is created without effort and struggle. It came about, as many things do, by the collision of two things:

I was tired of movies and shows like the Harry Potter franchise and Syfy’s “The Magicians”. I hate the idea of a school that teaches magic. That makes it formulaic and boring and vague. I wanted to dispel the notion that “anyone can do magic if you just believe!” because I hate that shit. Hollywood magic is always so easy. Virtually nothing is required of the magician, no real personal stakes. Magic is the science of change, but as stated above, real change is painful.

The second element of Fever Days comes from the time I was going through a rough patch, pondering all the bad decisions I’ve made, and wondering “What’s the point of pain?” In the physical body, pain tells us when something is wrong with the system, which allows us to address it. But anyone who has undergone chronic, recurring pain understands that there’s an emotional and spiritual component to pain. It’s a kind of energy that suffuses us. So I thought, what if pain is a fuel that you can use to effect change?

I started asking myself questions about the history of magic, how older medieval texts are full of it. But if you bring the subject up in our modern world, it’s a given that magic doesn’t exist. So what happened to change the world’s environment such that no one believes anymore?

Fever Days will examine the connection between pain and change, as produced by magic. It’s a show about how deep trauma affects the ability to operate in reality. It examines the dominance of White Imperial culture over the decades, and how that culture rose to power by the exploitation of non-White people. And finally, it’s about what magic is, where it’s been, and where it’s going.

I’m incredibly excited about this idea, as I don’t believe I’ve seen this particular approach before. What’s taking so long is a bit of analysis paralysis. In essence, I have so many ways to write this story that I keep jumping from track to track, unable to decide which is the best path to get the train to the station. So to conquer this I’ve been absorbing a lot of academia about the mystical arts and watching shows and movies that always seem to offer me another piece of the puzzle. It’s not the fastest way to work, but I’m on nobody’s schedule but my own.

WHAT I’M READING

Last night I was at my cousin’s place and we wanted to watch a movie together, so I looked at my ever-growing list. Unfortunately, my list is just full of names of things; I don’t write down what kinds of movies or shows they are. So I was having difficulty picking one because I wasn’t sure of the genre. But I chanced upon “Totally Killer”, recalled liking the trailer, so we watched it.

Friends, it’s exactly as fun as the trailer advertises. It’s got the horrible slasher scenes, of course, but all the surrounding material is really smart and fun. It posits a form of time travel that you don’t ordinarily see these moves attempt, and it pulls it off. The performances are solid, and it keeps you guessing, a la “Scream”. But maybe the element that stood out most to me was their approach to 80s references.

Aside from the obvious music of the decade and the fashions, what the script examines is seeing the 80s through the lens of the 2020s. For one thing, everyone smokes, which I’d managed to forget in the intervening years. For another thing, much hay is made of the fact that in the 80s people just came and went as they pleased, with very very little oversight. Our protagonist pretends to be a Canadian exchange student in order to ingratiate herself into a high school, but no questions are asked at all. This carries throughout the film.

And finally, our protagonist is constantly aghast at just how freewheeling everyone is compared with the ever-aware residents of the 21st century. They laugh at the idea that drunk driving is bad. A tv commentator remarks on how fascinating it is to see a man discuss his feelings. There’s a joke about how weak the weed is. It’s really fun and refreshing to see an actual different take on time travel movies. I highly recommend it.

And that’s it from me for this week. I need to get back to working on the new episode of Comics Breakdown: Unearthed, in which I examine older comics. I’m exited to get it going again after over a year of hiatus. I’ll include a link in next week’s Citation Needed to the new episode when it goes live, but in the meantime, you can look at past episodes here: Unearthed

Until next time, True Believers, here’s your reality check: William S. Burroughs and Kurt Cobain - The “Priest” They Called Him