Lets Rip My Story Apart: What Happens Next

After careful consideration, I've created a list of Wants and Needs

I Need...
...Stronger driving narrative
...To finish each and every mystery in a given story
...To avoid plot holes (doesn't everyone?)
...To avoid wasting the time of the reader 

Let Rip My Story Apart: A Diagnostic

Summary of Dower Travels Edward (Spoilers if you know me in real life and actually have a chance of reading the whole thing): While delivering a package to a rich capital city, a mailman accidentally unleashes an unimaginably awful monster. He then time-travels with the Arch-Mage of the city. Time travel happens every so often. Eventually the entire universe is destroyed because of all of this time travel, but the characters are unharmed.

This is literally the most succinct way for me to summarize this 180-page story.

The problem with this story is that it doesn't seem obvious to me that any part of the story is particularly bad; it's that the story as a whole is disappointing and weak with flaws and cracks that meander all throughout the duration of the adventure. This means that the only way I'll ever be able to get anything done is if I knock the thing down to the ground and start again.

My first objection: The story isn't interesting, and it doesn't need to be told. If you think of fairytales or other famous bits of writing, usually there's a sort of seed to the story, the main grain of interest to the tale that is, by itself, pretty interesting. 

For instance, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. H.G. Wells's Time Machine. Frankenstein's monster. All of these stories have a story-seed so potent that movie studios seem to be perpetually re-making them. Sometimes they're modernized a bit, or they're in the proper period, and sometimes they're in outer space for no reason. Regardless of the additional trappings, the root of the story remains the same.

A scientist creates a monster who struggles with his own humanity.

A scientist finds a way to transform himself into what he thinks is a bolder version of himself, until this new version of himself is more powerful than his actual self.

The difference being that Dalaran floats and my city is on the ground.

You get the picture. My story (colloquially referred to as Travels) lacks an interesting seed. The reason for this was because it began as a writing exercise during a particularly boring part of a Digital Arts class, written originally as Warcraft fan-fiction (but only for the first four pages). I wanted to write about the ridiculous decadence of the city of Dalaran, a city with more magic than it knows what to do with. I emailed this story to myself to continue writing at home. Knowing the primary danger of fan-fiction (at least for me, personally) is that there is a very real danger that I won't always be interested in the game, I preemptively changed the universe to an original creation so it would last longer. After the initial description of world was written, I just kept going even though I probably should have stopped, satisfied with a bit of a job well done.

This kind of problem isn't unique to the written word. Recently there was a movie called Skyline that was directed by the brothers Strause. These guys were famous for making really good special effects in their commercials for Coca-Cola and Gatorade. Some movie executive thought it would be a great idea to hand these guys a hundred million dollars to make their own movie. What resulted was humiliating. You see, these guys were great special effects artists, but not necessarily great writers. I believe their creative process involved creating massive special effects sequences first, and later trying to write a plot that involved all of these things. Sounds like another movie I've seen.

Also during the writing, I had lots of other small hooks that I thought would be interesting in the story. One of them is that the main character has a sort of useless X-Men-like power that lets him “sense” money of any kind nearby. It was an interesting idea, but ultimately not enough to hang a whole story on. Another was that I had a man whose appearance would change based on the expectations of the person viewing him. That is, if they were expecting him to be an old man, that's how he would appear to them. I played it as a handicap, later exploiting it for his benefit. But still, this isn't Storytelling Gold.

Interestingly, I also had a few Inception-like chapters in which the characters had to enter the memory of the main character to recover a suppressed memory. I wrote it two years before the movie.

I think I got too hung up on the small details that I lost sight of the larger story. Here are my goals for this rewrite:

• Start with an interesting story-seed; make it strong enough to hang a story on

• Eliminate pointless plot threads and plot holes; consider shortening it into a short story

• In general, tighten up the graphics

I guess for this rewrite, I have to find a seed that could be a central root of the story. If I had to take a pick, I'd say that time travel was an overarching theme, or perhaps terrorism via sending monsters in the mail. I'm not trying to write a commentary on anything, and I don't have a particularly compelling Twilight Zone hook (which is typically how I come up with my other stories).

Without further ado, here's the first section I'm looking at.

The city of Malara had a certain ring to it. However, the name didn't. When Dower described it later, he would say that the city "seemed like someone had hooked it up to an electrical current," but would add that "the name Malara just wasn't very appealing; it sounds like Malaria." Of course, both were true; the name Malara did sound a little bit like malaria.

It was very much as if the city had a charge, except it wasn't electrical. Although the city did have a rather robust electricity wiring system; it was used to power everything that wasn't powered by magic, which wasn't much. The hum that Dower described was caused by the throbbing magical pollution that hung over the city like fog. In fact, there were some places in the city that the magic had actually caused fog. It was dense, hot, and it sometimes smelled like strawberries and ozone combined in some kind of revolting, magical fruit salad. The mages couldn't be bothered to deal with the fog for most everyone in the city was too busy being selfish to care. Fortunately, the city was built on the coast, so the fog usually washed out to sea.

Yep. This was once composed entirely inside a gmail message. Hopefully you can tell the kind of whimsical tone I was going for with the narrative; a blatant imitation of Terry's Pratchett's Discworld writing style. That is, the way the story is told is usually more interesting than the story itself. Sorry mister Pratchett, but it's true. This brings me to my next concern with the story, which you'll get to learn about on Independence Day.

Upcoming Series: Lets Rip My Story Apart

A few years ago, I finished writing my second-ever novel, and the first-ever one I was proud of. It's a confusing book about characters doing seemingly-entertaining things in a seemingly-entertaining universe. Upon re-reading it recently, I realized several things, the first of which was that the story itself was quite bad. The second was that it badly needs to be re-tooled, re-written or scrapped completely.

Here's where things get fun for you, gentle reader; I'm going to be taking Steven King's advice from On Writing. I'm going to murder my darlings, (meaning my story), and I'm going to do it in public, neighbors be damned! This Friday I'll be posting the first bit, and hopefully I can stick with it this time. It'll be a learning experience for everyone! 

To avoid accidentally getting the book stolen and published (as if) from this blog, I'm going to be editing select "problematic" segments, completely out of order. That way the thief will actually have to put some effort into their theft.

Breezy Writing (Originally written in April, 2009)

A Black Hole

The ship was being pulled toward the black hole, completely unable to save itself. The crew, naturally, was in quite a panic. Captain Marcus, who was usually quite cool-headed, wasn't himself; of course, if your ship was about to plummet into a black hole and then be compressed into singularity, you'd be worried too. No one had ever gone through and lived, or so the science books claimed. Captain Marcus didn't have much use for that kind of knowledge, as he thought of it as defeatist rubbish.

Flint, the ship's sole remaining mechanic, was the least panicked of those on board. Although he knew all of the science behind black holes, and then some, he felt a sudden lightness. This was, in all likelihood, due to the drugs he had taken moments before, washed down with the strongest liquor aboard the ship, which Flint had brewed himself. It also might have been gasoline.

There was a sound like whales mating, which of course would have been much more frightening, as the ship entered the tear in space. The metal and rivets groaned their complaint, a loud, jarring, scraping roar that became upsetting after only a moment.

"It just figures," Flint thought, his drug-addled mind momentarily pulling him back to the real world, "I just bought that new boat."

The rest of the crew were experiencing similar thoughts, although none of theirs involved boats, and only a few of them were affected by drugs and liquor. The groaning of the ship increased in volume, bringing with it bone-rattling vibration, which served to make what remained of the crew's lives somewhat more uncomfortable, except for Flint, who found it soothing to his head, which had begun to hurt.

It didn't take long for the ship to make it through. In fact, the crew was rather surprised to find that they were not only still alive, but the ship seemed to be in one piece. The view screens didn't seem to work, but there was a single window that Captain Marcus had had installed because he "didn't trust the technology very much."

Through the window, which everyone had promptly crowded around, they could see the space on the other side of space, which turned out to be white. As regular space is black as night, of course inverted space is white. It was much like being in a Microsoft Word document, or a blank sheet of canvas. The stars shone like black rubies in the white expanse of space.

"Of course," said Flint to the gathered crew, "there's probably air our here as well, since our space has none."

Strangely, the crew found that to be a rather logical conclusion, and before anyone could stop him, Ensign Privy had flung open the bay door and stepped out into space. He had failed to realize that, since our space has no gravity, negative space would, and he fell until he hit a planet, some three-hundred million miles away. The fall wouldn't kill him but the starvation would. The people on the planet were very much like the people on ours, except they didn't care about saving their planet, and they respected one another. So actually, it wasn't anything like our planet.

Movie Review: Doom (2005)

There's an old joke that says the best parts of a movie are usually shown in the trailer. This isn't true here, because most of the parts you see in the trailer weren't good.

Lets get it out of the way; this movie is bad. This movie is a cash-in; a “didn't-need-to-be-made” movie. The writing, acting, set design and nearly everything else is mediocre and bland. But what were you expecting? It's based on a 1993 video game of the same name, and video game movies are almost always bad! But bad movies need love too, which is why I'm watching it. I also watched the Mummy 3 around the same time, so I might do a review on that later.

As always, if you plan on seeing this movie (for whatever reason) I'm gonna spoil just about everything. The movie is five years old at this point, so it's not exactly fresh news.

Prepare to be amazed

The movie begins with a fairly original take on the Universal Studios logo; instead of Earth it's Mars, which might very well be the most original part of the movie. The plot begins with a hallway full of scientists running in terror from an Unseen Terror. We meet the head scientist named Doctor Carmack (named after the co-founder of id Software, John Carmack) who is apparently eaten by the monster. Cut to a roomful of what Hollywood imagines U.S. Marines to act like. They're all boring character archetypes, from the typical Black stereotypes, to the token religious guy who wears a cross, carries a Bible and quotes that handful of Bible verses that the general public will recognize. Their names are even horribly standard things like Sarge, Reaper and “The Kid.” Look at the top billed actors and their character names. LOOK AT THEM.

"Mars looks surprisingly similar to a featureless cement bunker!"

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," says the religious character, not bothering to finish the rest of the verse.

"Hey, I know that!" says a random audience member, "that's from the Bible! Why's that guy carving a cross into his arm? Christians ARE crazy!"

This merry band of marines are only moments away from what they call “R&R time” which is an excuse for this perverted character to wear a flowery shirt and for another man to play the chunkiest game system since the Sega Nomad. This is strange, because this is supposed to be something like 45 years in the future.

He supplies 90% of the R rating! What a delightful character!

Cool technology -- for 1985

Before long, the marines are sent to something called the Ark, an ancient underground portal from Earth to Mars built by ancient humans (or something, they don't go into much more detail). I'll pause to say this: In the movie there were a few seemingly-interesting science fiction ideas like the aforementioned Ark and later on, a nano-wall. Strangely, I got the feeling that these ideas were probably stolen in large part from other, better science fiction books and movies. Nothing else in the movie is original, and so I suspect plagiarism. 

You need the Green keycard

Basically the Ark is a convenient tool to cut down on the three (or is it five?) month trip it would actually take someone on Earth to get to Mars. Upon arrival at Mars, the marines discover that everything is... fine. Scientists and families are going about their lives, business as usual, with no apparent threat to be found! Hmm. That changes soon enough, though.

This is the "Ark" transport. It's like Galaxy Quest, except you barf once you're there.

Quickly, people start getting killed in surprisingly boring ways, including that nano-wall I mentioned. I guess I can explain it now; it's a wall that can turn transparent to let people pass through. While this initially sounds like a cool idea, I realize that there are several flaws with this design, including one that occurs during the movie:

1: What's so bad about a regular door?

2: What happens if the power dies and your door/wall won't close or open completely? (Seen in the movie)

3: Why add this door if your special effects budget can't produce a very good effect?

4: What's so bad about a regular door?!

The answer to all of these is this: 

So you can make your rubber monster get trapped in the wall.

That's right: This entire technology was developed so it could produce some cheap thrills in this one scene. It's used in a later scene, apparently unable to seal completely and letting monsters get at the main characters. I hope my tax dollars didn't pay for that!

Here's the wall when it's in "door" mode

Anyway, eventually they discover that it's not really demons breaking through, like it was in the games. Rather, it's a virus that the scientists made that will turn you into a monster or a super-human based on how good of a person you are. Nevermind the fact that they completely disregard the lore of the game (Hell breaking through on Mars); nevermind the fact that many people have wildly varying definitions of what it means to be a "good person;" instead, lets focus on why exactly scientists would have a need of such a virus. In the movie, it's explained that there's some kind of archaeological dig site on mars that has turned up "neanderthal skeletons" (even the evolutionists are scratching their head on that one), who happen to have 24 chromosomes instead of the usual 23. 

We have 46 chromosomes, guys. FORTY SIX. The only part of you that has 23 'somes are the cells used for reproduction. Thank YOU, biology! I guess they could have meant 24 PAIRS of chromosomes, which would equal 48 total, but that would just mean a person would have an extra toe or something. Hmm. 

Wait, WHAT?

Biology complaints: Complete.

Anyway, because of this amazing "synthetic chromosome," these ancient Martian people could live long, heal faster than Wolverine and were excellent at slalom and long-jumping. I might've made up that last part. Soon, the hero character (Eomer from Lord of the Rings or Bones from J.J. Abrams Star Trek) is exposed to the serum and turns into what is essentially an X-man, while the Rock starts to turn into one of those creatures. They fight, good wins, the end. Lets dissect some writing!

This expression represents my thoughts on this movie exactly

You can barely see the Rock because this movie is dark most of the time

This movie seems to have been made around one important feature: Lets say Carmack's name as much as possible. Which they do about twenty times during the movie. They even try to make Carmack more important than any crazy scientist has a right to be. He doesn't have "Doc Brown" importance. In fact, he doesn't even have "R2-D2" importance. All he does is send a transmission for help in the first scene, and later turns into a crazy monster and attacks people. It's like the film was written by someone who had never written anything before. IMDB informs me that it took two guys to write this!

Shame shame, I really DO know your name.

The character development for literally every character in the movie is non-existant. Apart from learning their ridiculous names, as a viewer, I didn't care when Duke gets pulled through a grate to his death, or when the Rock (Spoilers again!) shoots The Kid for insubordination. 

"Who are these people again?" I thought, yawning.

The plot itself follows the games well enough, I suppose. I mean, Doom isn't exactly known for its amazing story, but just because something is based on a boring license doesn't mean it has to be terrible. It's still rigidly formulaic. Marines sweep location for monster. Monster kills marines. One or two escape. Cue sequel? It worked well for Predator, Aliens, and countless other movies that followed this exact formula, but this movie didn't succeed in any way, and I'm pretty sure there's never gonna be a sequel. Oh yeah, and there's the first-person-shooter part, which is laughably ridiculous. 

A portion of the movie revolves around Eomer's relationship with his sister (pictured below). As far as I can tell, Karl Urban (the actor who plays Eomer) is a New Zealander while his "sister" in the film is from London. The only thing they have in common is that they're faking American accents in a crappy movie. Otherwise, the writers try feebly (and consequently, fail completely) to make the characters reconcile their differences (which aren't really shown to the audience to begin with) and make them grow as characters. It's strange, because that's the only "love" story you get in the movie. Frankly, the movie didn't NEED a leading man hanging out with his little sister for the whole movie. It's not as important as the killing.

"I'm really British, you foolish Yanks!"

Now, I played Doom 3 when it came out in 2004. It's not the best game in the world: lots of shooting, lots of zombies popping out of magic closets right behind you, et cetera. Weirdly, if they had taken the exact script from that game and filmed it, it would have been a better movie than this. My verdict:

The Good:

The actors did the best they could with what they were given

Cool references to the games (you see a yellow door, a green keycard, the BFG and famous monsters from the game)

The Universal Mars logo was neat

The Bad:

The Writing, cinematography, set design, plot, characterization, coloration, prop quality

Movie is so dark that you can hardly see most of the time

The characters have no common sense

Has surprisingly little to do with source material aside from the name

Mediocre special effects, rubber suits

1/5

Movie Review: Daybreakers

Perhaps the most prevalent and popular form of writing today is the kind we see in movies. While many people simply "hate books," nearly everybody watches movies. Since the rise of Netflix and Hulu, I for one find myself watching quite a few more movies than I used to, mostly because I can do it via Netflix Instant, which I love dearly.

The best way for a person to really digest a movie is to take it apart and think about it, and that's just what I intend to do. Today I'm examining Daybreakers, a movie from 2009 that earned an only-alright 67% from Rotten Tomatoes.



While it initially seems like the movie is trying to jump on the "vampires are awesome" bandwagon that so many others are trying to get on, this movie actually what one reviewer called "a non-sparkly vampire movie." In fact, it's so far removed from the romanticized vampires of today that it comes off more like a zombie movie or the old black-and-white Dracula films. Vampires aren't good, and this movie goes to great lengths to show that it's not something you should aspire to be.

"Is there any way that you could fry that bag of blood?"

Be warned; if you're planning on watching this, I'm telling you now that I'm gonna spoil pretty much everything.

This movie was written and directed by two Australian guys, Michael and Peter Spierig. As a result, the movie has (perhaps) a slightly different feel than regular American movies, though all of the actors are still speaking in American accents.

In case you decided not to watch the trailer at the top of this page, the story goes like this: In the future, the entire world has been transformed into vampires. As a result, humans are used exclusively for their blood; they're put into these (frankly disturbing) farms that collect their blood. Since vampires drink blood exclusively, it's reasonable to assume that the company that harvests the stuff is a little more important than, say, a beef jerky company. The movie follows Ethan Hawke's character Edward Dalton. Holy crap, he's a vampire named Edward. Oh, those crafty Spierig brothers! We also find out shortly after the movie starts that Edward doesn't like drinking human blood, which suggests that vampires can subsist on animal blood, but that's never fleshed out (no pun intended). Edward is a hemotologist, a scientist whose job involves squeezing every last ounce of blood from the blood farm. His other job is to find a suitable substitute for blood, because the vampires are quickly running out.

Sam Neil's next movie? Vampire dinosaurs.

By random happenstance, Edward has a car accident with what turns out to be a van full of humans. He helps them hide in his car so the police don't find them, and eventually gets tangled up with the human resistance.

He soon meets Willem Dafoe, whose character name isn't as interesting as the name Willem Dafoe. It turns out that Dafoe accidentally cured vampirism (because he himself used it have it) via a technique that boils down to vampires being full-on exposed to sunlight then getting dunked in water. Soon, Edward is ed-cured and tries to bring his cure back to the vampires. Many vampires die, but eventually the characters, now cured of their awful affliction, literally ride off into the sunset.
While the movie might be a transparent allegory about the need for alternative fuels in the developed world, I thought it was quite entertaining despite that fact.

It doesn't paint vampires in a good light, which is refreshing. Furthermore, it turns out that when vampires don't consume blood for several weeks, they begin to turn into awful bat-human creatures that look like the orcs from Lord of the Rings. This was an interesting twist, as it makes the vampires almost relatable (but still monstrous). At one point, the Love Interest Girl actually gives Edward some of her blood simply because she "wants him to stay focused." There's no convoluted love story here; while Edward does travel with Dafoe and Love Interest Girl for most of the movie, never once do they kiss or even touch one another. I was glad to see it, frankly. Not simply because of Twilight's supersaturation in the mainstream today, but because every single movie has a love story. In the case of this movie, there simply wasn't room for one.

Bella doesn't even OWN a crossbow.

Strangely, even though it didn't seem like there was much character development, I think there actually might have been some. Thinking back, I realize that by the end of the movie, I had something of an appreciation for the characters. I wasn't terribly attached to them, but I related to their struggle. After watching the atrocity that is the 1998 remake of Lost in Space, it was kind of nice to care about characters again.

The most interesting thing about the movie was how much thought the Spierig brothers put into the world of vampires. Everything, and I mean everything was considered. Simple things that I wouldn't even think of, like a camera-and-screen inside the car's sun visor. "Duh!" I said, "vampires can't see themselves in mirrors!"

Vehicles have "blackout visors" in every window for when vampires drive in the day, replaced by an array of monitors for each window. You might not be impressed with it, but I thought it was bloody brilliant.

All throughout the movie little ideas crop up that fit perfectly with the vampire theme. Swat teams have these strange welding-helmet-cyclops-masks that block sunlight. There's an underground sidewalk-subway for vampires to walk the city streets during the day! Everything is perfectly crafted to accomodate the vampire's world and it really aids in the suspension of disbelief.

It's hard to really examine the writing of a movie compared to that of a book. You can't see the prose or style in the same ways. It's easier to think of it in terms of how many times I had to stop and think, "wait, that's stupid." In the case of Daybreakers, I didn't ever point out some awful dialogue or nonsensical thing like, "zoom in and enhance." Stylistically the movie's writing succeeded. The characters weren't completely developed, but then again, they were written well enough for the purpose of the movie. This wasn't a J.J. Abrams character picture; this was more like a Twilight Zone. Just a strange set of circumstance and some characters to explore exactly how bizarre everything is. Then again, Twilight Zone usually had really strong characters.

Everybody has crossbows in the future!

Although the movie is rated R mostly for violence and language, I can't help but feel like it might've worked as a PG-13. There were only a few F-words, but they didn't seem necessary; the characters were articulated and intelligent enough to get themselves across without needing to speak that way. After the insane-but-sensical rambling of Norman Osborne, hearing Dafoe swear seemed like an intellectual step down. Then again, I've never seen Boondock Saints, and I'm sure there's more Dafoe F-bombs in there than in Daybreakers.
When it comes to violence, though, I think the Spierig twins decided to please a certain subset of movie-goers, and that happens to be the "gorier the better" crowd. I've seen enough horror movies to know that people actually complain if there's not enough blood and guts. Weirdly, this movie didn't feel very much like a horror movie half the time. It was about Edward trying to redeem himself and humanity.

I should also mention that this movie had some of the sharpest, prettiest lighting I've ever seen in a movie. I'm not typically one to notice such things, but damn.

I guess I've reached the part where people usually give the movie a score or something. I wasn't planning on doing that, but I'll give it a shot.

The good:
Good, logical writing in regard to plot and pacing
Acceptable dialogue
Amazing attention to detail
Fantastic set lighting and general movie "look"

The bad:
Slightly tedious sub-story involving Edward's brother, a sort of human-catcher
Sam Neil's daughter's death (crispy vampire)
It seems kinda like humanity lost anyway, despite the happy ending

Overall: 4/5

All Of It

Hopefully this is the start of a new type of update I just invented. If I had a story idea (or even just a general thought) that I think is interesting, I'm gonna throw it up here (not to be confused with throw up) for my one remaining reader (myself) to read.

Today's idea comes from my biology textbook. Like all science textbooks I've had, it begins with the basic baby-step kind of information that I've come to expect. After making it through the not-so-subtle jabs at the other branches of science (usually Psychology, the scrawny kid brother of the other sciences), and the ferocious, belligerent sentiments on Creationism, I reached the bit that actually involved some science. A few pages later and it hit me that there's quite a bit of science in the world. This seems obvious, but I found it to be a rather novel idea. I know there's a lot of science because it seems like no matter how many classes one takes on science, biology, anatomy, chemistry, psychology, and the literally jillions of other sub-sub-sub-branches of sciences both big small, real and make-believe, there is always more science to learn. It's like trying to touch every drop of water in the ocean.

"This is it! The final science!"

Here's my idea: What if, one day, someone finished all science. Just think on it for a moment. What would a world look like where everyone knows everything about the natural world? Everything about quantum physics, theories about strings, black holes, worm loops, dilithium crystals and FTL drives?

We've never seen anything like this in movies or television (as far as I know). Even in those Star series (Wars, Trek, Gate and Battle), even the most advanced civilizations seem like they're working toward better technology. Nobody has reached the Third Tier of technology (I'm putting it in Starcraft terms) where there's nothing else to do except build armies and zerg the enemy's base.

Or those silly scientists could stop trying to create a Big
Bang and start building us this amazing bike!

Personally I don't believe it's possible for anyone to know everything there is to know about everything (except, you know, that one Guy). Frankly it would make for a boring existence. Scientists would hold cardboard signs in the street. Research institutes would have to turn into colleges ("gross," thought professor Xavier), and the large Hadron Collider would have to be sold for scrap parts or turned into a really amazing roller coaster.

The point is, the world as we know it wouldn't resemble this Science Complete world even a little. It would be a place of magic-like technology, endless energy supplies, super food and other inventions that heretofore are thought to be impossible.

Like faster-than-light drives or a portal gun. Like from Portal. I know it's bad grammar. I just want my darn portal gun.

Chances are that we humans would be mostly the same, though. To put it in modern terms, the internet is amazing; and we use it to send each other videos of cats farting. We'd probably use the portal gun to deliver food directly to our mouths. We'd be like those unitard-clad fatties from Wall-E.

Did I really just get all of this text from a wandering thought I had while reading about cellular reproduction? Maybe I should read my textbook more often.

Maybe we ALL should read our textbooks, fellow students. That's right, this blog was all a clever ruse to get kids to pay attention in school. Take THAT, Magic School Bus.

I'm Still Here, Chief

Although there hasn't been an update in a while, don't lose hope! I'm actually taking some of my own writing advice and reading (and writing). In the future, I might put up some of this content for your reading pleasure (or displeasure, if you hate fun).

Photograph unrelated, but still cool.

~William