Citation Needed

“There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today.” — Syrio Forel

I’m STILL angry that my favorite character never made it past episode one of Game of Thrones. I maintain, regardless of medium or genre, that if you don’t see the body, the character isn’t dead. So I think Syrio is still out there somewhere, and I’m just eternally miffed that we’ll never get to see him again.

Anyway! It’s funny how the most seemingly unrelated things can help a writer with their project. I try to keep myself open to receiving all manner of input in the hope that something will turn into content I can use. The only trouble with this is that if you’re like me and you have an overactive imagination, it can be very difficult to weed out what’s actually useful from what isn’t.

One of my mutant abilities is that I can turn any idea into SOMETHING. But because of that, every idea has potential. But does it have the RIGHT potential for the thing I’m working on? Aye, there’s the rub. Part of what’s taking this tv show idea so froggin’ long to develop is that I keep going down different paths, and it takes quite a while to decide that nope, this was the wrong way.

Tone is important, too. How do I want to write these characters? I know I don’t want them to be quippy like Joss Whedon always writes, nor do I want them to be super serious and gloomy. And I want people to like the main character enough to want to see what happens to him week to week, but which way to do that? What’s the fine balance between a traumatized personality and one that has a positive attitude? These are the Scylla and Charybdis waters that I’m currently navigating. I feel that soon everything will fall into place and the actual script writing can begin in earnest. Why do I feel this? No good got-damn reason at all.

The return of Comics Breakdown

If you haven’t seen me crow about it on Twitter, I’ve begun producing new content for Comics Breakdown. The latest episode of Unearthed, the feature in which I dissect and celebrate classic comics, features Marvel’s first Graphic Novel, “The Death of Captain Marvel”. It’s a really interesting story in that it raises a lot of questions about the mechanics of superheroes and the value of death itself in comics. I plan to go through all 20 of the Graphic Novels Marvel put out. Not all of them are great, but they’re all worth checking out. See “The Death of Captain Marvel, Part One” here.

What I’m reading

I’m about a quarter of the way through re-reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves”. The first time I read it I got through it in about a week. I tore through it. This time I’m finding it much more difficult to put up with the digressions that make up about a half of the thing. A lot of what Johnny Truant says is stream-of-consciousness drivel and it’s annoying me. But of course I’ll stick with it to get to the meat of the work.

I’m also enjoying these ~20 minute video edits of whole episodes of Campaign 3 of Critical Role. Each actual episode is about 4+ hours long, so there’s no way I’m going to get through those, but the digest versions are small enough to be entertaining, even I’m not necessarily properly apprehending the plot.

I interrupted my re-watch of Cowboy Bebop to start this series, and I interrupted my watch of One Piece to get to Cowboy Bebop. Do I have an attention deficit issue? Maybe. Maybe I’m just bored.

I need to get back to working on the next episode of Unearthed. It feels good to be producing again, even if few people are reading it. I’m like a content shark. I have to keep creating or I stop living, or something stupid. Thank you for reading this newsletter, and I’ll see you next week.

And now for your reality check: Dog of Wisdom