The Lego Movie and cinema magic

I'll likely re-examine both of the central themes of this brief post later on, but I'm trying to stick to a regular posting schedule again and this is a good summary so far. Also, there's a jump here, because of spoilers. You were warned.

Lady in the Street: The "Chasing Amy" Problem and Modern Relationships

The blood-spattered camp satire Red State is a gore-stained polemic that takes aim at just about everyone, but Kevin Smith's most enduring commentary is actually found a good fifteen years earlier, in his oddly poignant paean to geek love everywhere, Chasing Amy.

Tip of the Day #2

One mistake that a lot of players make when they start transitioning to the semi-pro and pro-level is to give in to the fish-out-of-water feeling that accompanies sitting down at a Grand Prix for the first time.  Whether Round Four comes along and you find yourself matched up against a future Hall of Famer, or whether the first hand you draw for the tournament is six lands and a five-drop, whatever the situation, you have to clear your mind and, calm down, and focus on what you need to do.

Execute your gameplan.  Of course, that means you have to have a gameplan, so if you don't, well, chalk that up to mistake number two.  It is absolutely amazing how few people can articulate what it is that their deck is supposed to do.  As an example, let's look at what happens when someone picks up Red Deck Wins for a PTQ.

They might have a short answer to the question about their gameplan, something like, "My goal is to deal 20 damage as fast as possible with creatures and burn spells."  Even that limited plan is better than nothing, but if you really want to be playing the deck as well as it can be played, you should be able to explain to your friends and teammates that your plan is to

                  1) Apply early pressure with a combination of one and two drop creatures.
                  2) Control the board using direct damage and by economically trading for value in combat.
                  3) Use more powerful cards to craft an end-game involving a flurry of direct damage, or a massive  
                      swing with powered up creatures.

If it sounds like common sense, it is, and this tip isn't meant for you, but you would be surprised by how often this minor detail gets overlooked.  Mike Flores has written several articles about pre-visualization and the importance of your gameplan, and it never hurts to review the foundations that the rest of your game is built on.

Ron "Squee" Jeremy the Barbarian

Grand Prix: Indianapolis Tournament Organizer Pastimes have found themselves in a bit of a bind over their recent promotion of BDSM Magic-gear.  Namely, at least five people were incredibly offended by the art on the playmats that were intended to be handed out at the GP.  Thanks to the diligent work of various eyes on Twitter, the mats are apparently headed for wherever they send the "We Won the Super Bowl" t-shirts made for the team that actually, cough, lost the game.

"You said, licking, right?  Right?!"

While I usually prefer hiding in the corner of the Twitterverse whenever someone starts talking about a subject that involves an issue where I am part of the unwanted majority, in this case, I'm fine with adding my own opinion to the largely ignorable conversation.

"On Writing: Part Two"

Ed. Note: We will continue to post the "On Writing" essays regularly.  These will appear Mon-Fri.  Stay tuned for another Magic: The Gathering article by Ben Snyder, and a previously unpublished short story by John Keyes.  Both should be up on Friday.  Thank you again for your patience.

                 It amazes me that in a world saturated to overflowing with light—the blinding brilliance of individuality, shining from your computer screen—everyone is still completely, almost manically, obsessed with darkness.  If you want to knock the television salesman back on his heels, talk up how much you know about the black levels on the flat-screen he is offering you.

                I’ve written a few stories that have happy endings, and even more that don’t have endings at all.  If they are rejected it almost never bothers me, but my consternation grows when the editor or agent or publisher decides to leave comments and tries to explain that my story “isn’t real,” that there is no depth, no catharsis, that the words are soaked in passé sentimentality that has been siphoned away from reality and is being kept bottled up somewhere with Ted Williams’ frozen head.

                Palahniuk wrote in an essay—or maybe it was a short story—that it isn’t possible to write about happiness in a meaningful way without “unpacking it.”  The demand is constant:  show the reader what it means to be happy.  By this logic a writer must ignore the fact that positive feelings of almost all kinds—those which are experienced viscerally, at the least—are so subjective as to have almost no objective relevance.  This is why it seems the world is focused on the shadows on the wall and not the sun coming in from outside the cave.

                I can write pain, loss, suffering, tragedy—take your pick from a Chinese take-out menu of human frailty and just about anyone can put together a decent twelve dollar meal.  Evidence can be found in the emo abattoir of MySpace or the constipated backlogs of putrescent puerile vomit that passes for modern poetry.

                “A smile crept over his face as the feeling washed through him like a warm whiskey haze.”

                “A grimace split his face as the feeling washed through him like the burn of a whiskey haze.”

                Neither sentence, admittedly, is particularly strong, but the illustration here is that the first sentence makes sense to you if, and only if, you drink single maltsand derive pleasure from the experience.  If you are an alcoholic, or your dad was, or you had a bad night with a bottle of Jack that may or may not have involved Ke$ha, you do not and cannot associate the first sentence with happiness.

                This is not merely a failure on the part of the writer, because the second sentence is clear and evocative to everyone despite being functionally identical as a sentence.  The reason that so many great stories go unheard is not because they are not well-told; it is because they all tell the same story.  It is as if Ezra Pound is reaching out from beyond the grave and throttling the publishing industry with his invective to “make it new,” only they all misunderstood and figured that he meant, “make it, but only if it is ridiculous or someone knows someone who knows someone who is willing to vouch for the artist.”

                Because even if you do enjoy reading depressing works because of their up-lifting catharsis—and I enjoy many depressing stories—the truth is that in the end reading them means that we are all just sitting in the darkness staring at thesame boring shadows.