Solipsist Syndrome

So late night, a few days ago I sent Will another pitch, (first one linked to here), which was semi-based on me thinking about the above show and then my own sketches of weird shit like Monktupuses and the aptly named “Angry Love Monster”.

Late night pitch idea. Artist suffer delusions making them believe the things they've drawn are real...but maybe they are.

He cranked out a nice introduction with some cool things, and a world I’d love to see revisited. It’s up here.

Speaking of @fragmad he’s going to comprise these flash fiction/#600words pitches in to a print on demand book with any luck, which I shall be spending some monies on. Read through the rest of his stuff and see what you think.

“The clock was broken, so no one knew what time it was”

This is my story for the Fanpop Writer’s Group, based on the above prompt. Let me know what you think.

Broken Time

The clock was broken, so no one knew what time it was.

We coughed and spluttered still, that clock hadn't worked since the second time we reconstructed the thing. We all made sure to incorporate William's little syncing batteries in to our watches though.

I wonder what had gone wrong this time around. Time for the usual check up. I was in charge of that for his this mission.

"Will?" I asked, getting to my feet. "Yeah, I'm here...whatever *cough*" I pulled my device from my pocket and checked him off, as well as myself. "Juliet?"

Nothing. "Juliet?" Will shouted out too. "JULIET?"

Nothing.

"JULI-"

"Yeah, I'm here, shut up."

I felt a strange wrenching in my stomach and disposed of my stomach contents from my mouth. That happened often with this, I remember Will yammering on about temporal displacement or something along those lines.

We met up by the machine, as we usually did. I asked Will what had gone wrong, and he muttered something about me inputting the wrong trajectory details. Which, I may have done, his algorithms and things are sometimes hard to track and remember. Juliet set about on maintenance to fix it.

We were within the machine’s cloak, so no-one could see what we were doing. I recalled a close call back when Maya was still around when the cloak had been disabled by a fault and I had a lot of explaining to do.

Juliet emerged a moment later with her little machine that fixed the bigger one and informed us it was now working just fine. Will was the only one who didn’t always carry a little device on him, he somehow kept it all in his head.

With the absence of Maya, I’d taken lead of the “team”, so prepared for my second ever “leadership” speech ever.

“Right guys. We’re currently in…" I glanced at my watch “1950. Everyone has their vital information?”

They both nodded. We had information stored within our heads or devices in order to know who was prime minister, king or other certain important things of the time we were in.

“This is where Maya travelled to in the old machine, we’ve beaten her here, so should see her appear moments later to save her from dying within this timeline.”

“But won’t-“ Juliet spoke up.

“Yes, Juliet I know. The whole paradox thing. We wouldn’t have come back if she hadn’t been killed, so we wouldn’t have come here to save her, thus causing a paradox. I know. I know", but we have to hope it works.”

As I walked to the road to await Maya’s known arrival, I saw a brilliant flash of light, and another machine that looked far superior to ours arrived close by. Two men in identical blue outfits grabbed Will and Juliet, and I gave chase. One withdrew a weapon, and fired it at me. It’s odd shaped bullet sailed by me, and hit in to the chest of a woman behind me.

“…Maya?”

I turned to see her there, as she slumped to the ground. Juliet and Will shouted out, as the blue men’s machine went off where it came from. I knew this would happen, but it still shocked me.

I quickly withdrew the antidote needle from my jacket, and injected Maya as I had practiced, and her eyes sprung open.

“Maya, no time to explain. Take my hand, we have to save those two.”

Maya got up, staggering and we clambered back in to the machine and I set the controls for February 20th 2070. This is what I had known was coming and had been practicing for for many years. We’d save the whole team, and take him down.

I breathed in and then pressed the button as we began our descent in to madness.

More than half the year gone, the rest yet to come

So last month I did an “It’s June” post, to signify what was contained within my month, so now we’ll have an “It’s July” one, only with a less spontaneous title. Let’s see what I know July has in store.

More Reviews
I’ve been really enjoying writing my reviews for this blog, and do want to branch out in to movies, books and more things to review.

Writing

I like creative writing, almost as much as the next subject on the list and have put up one example and had a guest post on the subject so far but plan to keep doing more. I write whenever the mood takes me, or am given a good prompt.

D&D

Fine blog readers, I admit it. Ever since I started reading Darths & Droids (a Star Wars/D&D comic) and chatting to @austenw & @DurgisFlak who have been running games in the real world and on forums, I’ve been thinking about “rolling the dice” again, especially with 4th edition being out.

So I’ve picked up and read all through the Player’s Handbook, and will soon buy the Monster Manual, DM’s Guide and a campaign. It may be the geekiest thing that I do, but I don’t care.

If you know me personally, and want to get in on the first game, contact me. It won’t be until August though to give me time to read rules, do tests and so on.

Drawing

Okay, maybe you do not know, but I have a DeviantArt page where any stuff that I’ve drawn gets scanned in. I can see that my drawing has improved from the poor scraps that I did a year or so ago, but I’m still not quite happy with it yet. I’ll get there though.

Guest posts?

I keep pimping this out, to say that if people want to do guest blog posts all they need do is contact me, and it’ll go up on the site. Based on last month, I should get about 300 visits this month, which is nice.

Hopefully I manage to keep blogging too, though I thought it not worth mentioning. Oh look at that. Oh well.

What do I need to write? – By fragmad

This a guest blog post by fragmad/Ginja/Will. He runs about three blogs, but I prefer his short fiction blog, so I’ll link to that. It’s called Quick Tales.

I’ve known him for a while, and he writes some damn good stuff, so take a look and read some of it. Especially his Moon Station story, which starts here.

If you want to do a guest blog post, just e-mail it to me, at pkmntrainerj@gmail.com and it’ll go up. There’s some conditions if you want to do a review, but apart from that, it’s all fair game.

I spend a lot of time giving issues like this a lot of thought. It saves me from thinking about important and worthy subjects like getting a job, or finding a stable relationship, or the really important questions in life like what is good and evil? This kind of thinking is the shallow end of worthy subjects, but it's good stuff to nail down. I'm sure what I'm talking about can be taken across to other disciplines such as drawing, or anything remotely creative, but I'll stick to my own thing. That's putting words in readable order one and another that entertain other people.

Now I'm hesitant to say that I need anything as banal as inspiration in order to write anything. I don't need inspiration to cook a fucking fantastic meal, or even to get out of bed. Indeed I strongly suspect that anyone who claims they are waiting for inspiration in order to write anything really doesn't want to write anything. They just want to enjoy the mystery and the glamour (what?) of writing without putting the effort in.

Fuck them!

No what I need to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard (apart from food, shelter, support), is purpose. I have to be writing for a reason. Sure, that reason can be practice, it could be to convey a message, or just the sheer bloody entertainment of it. There has to be a reason though.

I feel like Will’s described when I draw too, there has to be a reason for it. Whether it's just to entertain myself, or because it's in my head aching to get out.

There is one reason that I will never again use to write something. I'm never going to write something to impress anyone. Especially if it means that they never see what you write because you are too shamed by the results. But that's me and my own damage.
I slowly came to the realisation that purpose was a central need for me when writing anything by reading a book on writing plays called 'The Art of Dramatic Writing'.

It's a good book, and if you want to know how to write a good play you can do no worse than reading that book. The first chapter was a small revelation for for me.

That first chapter poses that most successful plays have a premise. "True love conquerors even death," for Romeo and Juliet for example. And that these successful plays are always driving towards demonstrating that premise.

For me it really is no different. Everything I write, and to be honest everything I do with gusto has a purpose. I don't do things senselessly and at random despite appearances of often doing exactly that.

What's the point of this? Just sharing an idea.

Hope you liked fragmad’s post. If you want to do a post, then send me an e-mail and it’ll go up, and I’ll link to your blog/site.

“When I first met her, it hit me.”

This was my post for the Fanpop Writer's Group, which is a fiction piece based on the prompt above. I feel that my writing doesn’t get in to a good flow right away, but this only took me a few minutes. Hopefully you all like it. I also tried to not use any spoken word in this, and think it worked okay.

When I first met her, it hit me. The sudden realisation that I loved her. There and then, even before knowing her name or anything about her, I knew that I loved her. No-one else in the room seemed to matter, and people's voices were muffled background noise to me.

She walked over to me and started to nervously speak, but I grabbed her hand before she could and simply held it. A large gruff man sidled alongside her and said something I didn't hear.

I enquired as to what he had said, and he uttered a series of coarse and curse words against me and then strolled off with her, showing his ownership, as though something this precious could be possessed like a necklace.

I gave chase, and encountered them kissing in the icy wintered parking lot. Overcome with emotions of love, anger towards the gruff man and a small adrenaline rush, I swung my fist around at the guy who seemed a lot taller close up.

He crushed my hand in his much larger one as I let out a yelp of pain. I attempted to push my head in to his chest to knock him back, and though he stumbled slightly, it didn't have much effect.

As he shoved me back he laughed to himself, and spoke some words to the woman I loved. I saw a chance to run at him, and try to disrupt his balance and took it. Mid-run, I slipped on some ice, but continued to go, sliding in to the man with both of us heading for a larger patch of ice.

On reflection, I should have realised that the patch of ice was covering a lake. We both slid on, myself being flung further down and then scrambling to get out before it gave way.

The gruff man did not seem so lucky. The woman I loved was screaming and shouting his name, though I do not recall it. She exclaimed that he was unable to swim, as his large body sank beneath the splinters of ice.

I could only watch in horror as bubbles began to float to the surface, and then couldn't move as they ceased to come up any more.
I looked at the woman I loved from the other side of the lake, and she simply shook her head through tears. She may have been the woman I loved, but I had just killed the man that she loved.

I tried to shake away the tears too, and started to flee as others piled outside and the police sirens began. I've not stopped running since.