Gift for AnarchicQ by *Madame-Dei on deviantART
A little gift art from Madame-Dei for promoting her commission sale. You should get one!
I learned something about myself today.
I was complaining to a friend that I’m having a temporary bout of writer’s block*. I am 99 words away from hitting the 61,000 word mark and I was stuck. So I said to him “writer’s block again!”
Then he asked me a strange question: “ever picture it as a monster?”
So of course, that made me inadvertently picture writer’s block.
It’s like a DVD skipping because of dust. There’s a scene, then it stops, pauses, then replays the last few seconds before stopping again. Then it skips ahead to the next scene. But there are holes.
And I stare at the skipping DVD as if willing it to continue. Then I realize that it’s not skipping due to dust, but that the DVD player is out of power and it needs to be recharged. So I go, or do, or think about something else. This recharges me, and the writer’s block corrects itself. Eventually I’m once again inspired or the story itself is good and ready to progress. Until then I have to be patient.
*There’s a school of thought that states “there’s no such thing as writer’s block”. I don’t want to discuss whether or not Writer’s Block exists. I don’t care to debate the point. I’m stuck, accept it.
Here we are, once again I’ve decided to sign up for the Absolute Write blog chain. This month’s topic is “Dead bunnies”.
At first I thought I’d write a small ficlet set in the world of Elven Lacryment about Issues complaining about how all they’ve been eating is rabbit. Rabbit skewers, rabbit stew, rabbit steaks…
But then I thought I’d do something a bit more personal. Something to help you all get to know me, Q.
Thus, I decided on a new way to approach this topic. So without further ado, I present to you…
My Top Five Favourite Dead Bunnies!
Number 5)
Frank
I’ll be honest, Frank is the only thing I really remember from Donnie Darko. That having been said, he had a great design and twisted juuuuust right. He obviously left a lasting impression on me as he did with all the other troubled goth kids who thought Donnie Darko was an epic peice of existentialism.
Number 4)
Landstriders from The Dark Crystal.
I guess technically this is cheating because landstriders aren’t rabbits but they’re just so cool and creative. They’re friendly and dedicated fighters and yes, one dies. One screams and dies. Little 7 year old me will forever have that burned into my memory.
Number 3)
Robbie the Rabbit from the Silent Hill series.
While Pyramid Head quick became an icon for Silent Hill as a whole, Robbie first made his debut in Silent Hill 3, as the Mickey Mouse-y mascot of Lakeside Amusement Park. We first found him lying around slaughtered, he was just atmosphere. But soon he showed up in extra things, other SH games, and even DDR and merchandise. He’s even been spotted in the upcoming Silent Hill sequel movie!
Robbie has that perfect juxtaposition of cute and creepy that I love. It’s so easy to do “Creepy kids thing” wrong but the makers of SH3 did it so, so right.
Number 2)
The Dead Bunny from DooM
12 Year Old Me: “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!” You must understand that this was back when I was still sensitive to animal cruelty in video games. And even then the only animals we had to hurt in serious, non-cartoony violence were dogs, which always made me sad. The final shot in the original DooM was several punches to my gut and possibly watering eyes.
Number 1)
The Maxx
All of you who know me knew this was coming as soon as you read the title. This is kind of hard to explain without getting into spoiler territory. The Maxx is a super-hero who fights evil. He believes that under the mask he is a bunny rabbit.
The Maxx was a cartoon that made me realize that animation could be intelligent, that comics were more than capes and powers, that anime wasn’t the be-all and end-all of ‘brain-screw’ animation. The character of Maxx himself is the sort of protector I think everyone needs. Driven, moral, caring and not squeamish. Also, he’ll help you pack your belongings when you’re moving to a new home!
So there we are, my top 5 dead bunnies. Now, hop along down the chain and read everyone else’s Dead Bunny Blogs.
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to this month’s post)
KatieJ – http://www.crystalwindchimes.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
kiwiviktor81 – http://storygenerator.net (link to this month’s post)
Nissie – http://www.paperheroes.net (link to this month’s post)
SuzanneSeese – http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
pyrosama – http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
dclary – http://www.davidwclary.com/ (link to this month’s post)
randi.lee – http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com (link to this month’s post)
Turndog-Millionaire – http://turndog-millionaire.com/ (link to this month’s post)
julzperri – http://www.fishandfrivolity.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Penelope – http://poet-slash-writer.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
AFord – http://af12.webs.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Araenvo – http://plottypus.blogspot.com/ (link to this month’s post)
writingismypassion – http://charityfaye.blogspot.com (link to this month’s post)
magicmint – http://www.loneswing.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Anarchicq – http://anarchicq.com/ YOU ARE HERE
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Joliedupre – http://www.preciousmonsters.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Tomspy77 – http://thomaswillamspychalski.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Whisky – http://nopart2.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
Bogna – http://bemaslanka.wordpress.com/ (link to this month’s post)
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It took me 13 months to read this book and for the longest time Goodreads shamefully displayed that I was 94% finished with it. I didn’t want to finish it because I know myself and I knew as soon as I finished this book I’d want to devour the second and third book. Well, they’re both out now and I got my hands on the second book last week.
Never before have I ever wanted so badly for a book to be turned into a movie.
I really enjoyed The Strain. It was creepy and atmospheric and debuted just at the right time. Vampire lore has been reduced to sparkling tween pro-marriage rhetoric or celluloid comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some vampire comedy. SUCK (That’s “SUCK” not “Vampires Suck”) is one of my favourite movies, and it would be even if Alice Cooper wasn’t in it (Case in point, I’m not looking forward to Dark Shadows, despite the fact that Alice Cooper is in it…). The only recent thing we had to shelter us from Twilight was Let The Right One In. Or this.
This isn’t a subversion of vampire lore, it’s merely another type of vampire and vampire story, and it’s great. Del Toro’s vampires are gruesome, inhuman monsters and takes away anything from their once human hosts that makes them relate-able. He strips them of their cleanliness, their voice, and even makes a blatant point to take away any and all romanticism or sex appeal by reducing any sex organs to doll anatomy.
Some reviews criticize this book for having too much of a “Hollywood ending”, but I feel that’s alright. It’s completely a “popcorn movie” type of book, a horror action/adventure, and that’s fine. It is what it is. It might not be high-brow but it’s not stupid or pandering, and it’s very engaging.
My one issue is that, while he’s a visionary, I think it’s unfortunate that Del Toro’s name is all over this thing. It had two writers, the other being Chuck Hogan. He wrote the book “Prince of Thieves” the book that the Afflek movie “The Town” was based upon. He’s no slouch so let’s just give him a nod.
All in all this was a great book and a solid start to what I hope will be a great, horrifying trilogy.
View all my reviews
So today I spent the day tweaking Do Not Tamper With…. I added pages for my finished manuscripts and my works in progress. I removed the wordcount gauges and added them to the individual pages. The links to the pages are on the right. This speeds up loading time.
I removed some things from the sidebar and re-arranged some stuff. I added Facebook and Twitter buttons on top of every post as well as small Pintrest and G+ buttons on the bottom.
I added a good cacheing plug in so hopefully that will also make the site go faster.
I’m also going to give the commission page a massive overhaul.