The Daily Davis

A short story I wrote based on a prompt for NPR, I was originally going to send this in, but never got around to it. There’s always another writing challenge out there somewhere, so no harm.

…

My plan was simple. First, I would enter the cafe with a newspaper. Then I would get my coffee and loiter, like this was a regular thing for me. I don’t know why I cared so much. I guess I still don’t. Deep down, I wanted to prove I was a normal person. Normal people went to cafes, right?

I crept to the coffee-shop, wary to not seem too eager. I blew that when I pushed the door, rather than pulled. The loud rattling of the door in its frame turned all eyes to me, both inside and out of the shop. I flushed, realized my mistake, and then pulled with more force than I needed to. I was off to a good start.

There was a line to the counter and a small stage where a guitarist was getting ready to play that soft kind of music that I call background noise. The red tables stood out against the brown and green tones throughout the shop, like mushrooms on a forest floor. Even with all the attempts at atmosphere through color and music, I felt nothing for it. It felt all too artificial, like my presence.

At the end of the line, I gave myself a proper amount of distance from the person in front of me. My foot tried to tap while I was waiting, but I willed it into submission. I didn’t want to seem annoyed or impatient to others. In my head I rattled off what I was going to order.

“Sir, may I take your order?”

I nearly bolted to the counter and apologized. I was terrified some customers behind me were shooting dirty glares for wasting their time.

“No problem. How can I help you?”

I froze.

“I’d like a coffee, please.”

“Sure, what style?”

My eyes moved up to the menu and I glanced around at all the items, names I couldn’t understand and numbers in columns that grew in amount from left to right. I felt my eyes rattle in my head.

“Uh. Large black, please.”

I didn’t even like black coffee.

I paid my three dollars and sat glumly at one of the red eye-sores. I saw one of the big, comfortable chairs with the leather and padding, but I stayed away. I didn’t want to look like I was struggling to get out of it later.

My paper was open to a section I wasn’t really paying attention to; I was more interested in staring at a wall. I heard my name come from the counter and rose to get my drink. I didn’t realize my feet had been wrapped around one of the legs until I went stumbling across the floor, dragging the chair with me. The loud scraping caught everyone’s attention as my fingertips brushed the floor. I felt tears well up in my eyes as I untangled myself from my betrayer. I shuffled to the counter and grabbed my drink silently, terrified of being mocked. I sought sanctuary with the turn-coat chair.

I brought my paper cup to my lips, hesitant. I didn’t know what was worse: the taste, or the searing spears that had assaulted my tongue. I fought a yelp and swallowed my sip. I felt the hot dirt-water scald my throat and the gazes scald my skin.

I left the paper at the table for someone who would actually read it, and dumped my coffee in the trashcan as I made my way out. Maybe this was wasteful, but the bigger waste was my being there. I decided to go back to where I was comfortable.

Friends of mine should remember at some point of time a discussion with me where I sing the praises of Seikai, or, as it is better known in America as Crest of the Stars or Banner of the Stars. I first experienced Crest of the Stars back when TechTV was still TechTV. The channel had an anime block, and though I was out of my anime-phase of adolescence, something about Crest of the Stars really hooked me. For those who haven’t experienced the anime, manga, or novels, I will summarize the basic idea, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars (series I and II) follow Jinto Lynn, a young count whose world is taken over by the space-dwelling race of the Abh. When Jinto was a young boy, his father, Rock Lynn, under threat of invasion, handed over their world, Martine, to the Abh in exchange for a position within Abh society. Young Jinto is sent off to school to learn the ways of Abh nobility and the story of Crest of the Stars picks up as he meets the young Abh princess, Lafiel as they are about to travel to military school for Jinto’s further training.

However, in the midst of their travels, Lafiel and Jinto (along with the Abh ship Gothlauth, aka Gosroth) find themselves at the very beginnings of a war between the Abh Empire and the Four Nations Alliance of humankind—an anti-Abh alliance of the democratic nations of the United Mankind, the Federation of Hania, the Republic of Greater Alcont, and the People’s Sovereign Union of Planets.

That covers the first series, which the author of the original novels, Hiroyuki Morioka, did not consider the primary story.

The typical first impression I expect people to have after a first watch-through of the anime is “Wow. That’s slow”. Admittedly, Crest of the Stars does indeed feel slow for a space opera. Action is minimal and comes between long stretches of dialogue and character development. The show is definitely a space-opera, but with a very hard sci-fi backbone. As an action-fan, I was a bit surprised how taken I was by a minimal action sci-fi epic. I hope that speaks for the quality of the non-action elements.

Well, since seeing the show, and reading about the original novels, I’ve had a desire to one day spearhead a live-action adaptation of the series. Ideally, I would wanted to write and direct a film adaptation. I find myself oten thinking about the challenges in adapting such a layered and complex universe to fill a film, and I’ve devised some solutions. My hope is that one day, I might be able to tackle this project.

I could speak endlessly on why I love the series so much, or about how excited I am about shipping the English-translation of the first 3 books in the series (the rest have yet to be translated),  but that may be a post for another time. I really want to see Crest of the Stars brought over theatrically for American audiences. I only wish I knew the best place to start.

Every once in a while, I like to post a work in progress image to show you guys snippets of the process as I move through my pages.

Panel from the comic that is not quite dead yet. Thought you might find this interesting.

Just a quick spoiler-free review I threw together, not a prompt, but it is some writing I did today. I’ll probably do a more detailed analysis of the movie later, that will contain spoilers, of course.

I admit I came into Shutter Island already banking on it being a great movie. Martin Scorsese is one of those living legends, responsible for some of the most amazing movies out there. Guaranteed strong performances by Leo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley only furthered my expectations. To my surprise, it was a fun movie that contained some rather major flaws. Despite these flaws, I was amused and find a lot of merit in the film. While this movie will never be considered one of those truly legendary films, I expect it to be one that I will watch again and again throughout the rest of my life. Rather than dwell on some of the problems I found with the movie, mostly in structure and story, I would like to focus on what impressed me so much.

The initial draw to the movie for me, aside from the track records of those involved, was the very pulpy nature of the trailers. I am a sucker for a genre picture, and even more so for those dark, gritty stories that feel like that pop out of a 20s dime magazine. I devour these like candy, and to have so many renowned people playing to my interests naturally had an undeniable draw. This trailers had everything that I never knew I wanted in a simple movie: an asylum, secret sinister experiments, beautiful shots, and the aspects of a period-piece. On these qualities, the film succeeded remarkably, and then some.

The asylum looks amazing. The fact it is located on it’s own island creates an incredible sense of unease the moment you see it appear through the fog within the first few moments of the story. The island itself becomes a character through it’s layout and weather, when certain elements reflect the underlying paranoia. The lighthouse, the hurricane, the rats, and the suicide rock all add to the growing paranoia of US. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio). When a set becomes a character, rather than a background, you know you have accomplished something, because then nearly every aspect of the film contributes to the overall point.

As far as the plot, while there are some issues, and the twist is fairly clear rather early on in the movie, it was still enjoyable. Much like one can enjoy a story they have seen before. The destination is not as important as the ride. The ride, in this case, is almost entirely the point of the film. There is only so much I can discuss concerning the plot, as I do not wish to spoil the film, but the narrative does fall apart as Teddy follows different threads. These shifts of focus make sense considering where the story is going, the structural decay of the story echoes the decay of a specific character’s sanity. But this ultimately disrupts the film at points, leading to an ending where the points are just addressed at once rather than resolving naturally. I do not want to use the term dues ex machina, but it feels quite a bit like that. Rather than emphasizing these connections, the film just comes out and says “by the way…”. I’d like to read the book to see if the shifting foci work like how I expect they would in a literary form.

Overall, the film is beautiful and touches up on some really cool things (secret Nazi-Communist mind-experiments, anyone?), but some issues with plot hamper things a bit. It’s definitely worth a watch, as you’ll recognize a lot of faces, amongst whom include Jackie Earl Haley and Max Von Sydow. The film brings in so much cool stuff together into one package. The only thing missing was a story that flowed well.

February 23, 2010

It’s time for you and Writer’s Block to part ways. Write a letter breaking up with Writer’s Block, starting out with, "Dear Writer’s Block, it’s not you, it’s me … ."

Dear Writer’s Block, it’s not you, it’s me… I am so sorry for leading you on like I have. I was never interested in you as much as your prompts. I fell in love with them, and you were the unfortunate casualty of my pursuit. I used you to get closer to them, and I have been consumed by guilt over this. I felt like I needed to clear the air.

I don’t want to part on bad terms. You’ve been so supportive and well meaning, and I don’t want to lose that. We can still be great friends, and I want to be great friends. It’s just your prompts have given me more than you ever could. Your advice, while practical and well intentioned, doesn’t fire me up quite like your prompt’s ideas. Something about your prompts are just so… inspirational. You keep me moving forward like a good friend, but the prompts really get my motor running, so to speak.

Please don’t grow disheartened, I couldn’t bear losing your support. There will always be a place for you in my life, just not in the capacity you hoped for. I’m sorry.

Your friend,

David.

PS: Your prompts and I are hoping you’ll join us for a light lunch next week. Say around 12 on Tuesday?

While my comics have ground to a screeching halt due to the new semester, I have been working on them when I can. In addition, I’ve done a lot more writing.

I’m still hard at work on my Expedition Europa project, which I promised to showcase some information from. I still intend to, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I can verify that so far, much of the locomotion in Europan seas are based on tentacles of flagellate movement. Fun stuff.

In addition, in the off hours at work at the LRC I’ve taken to writing what I can. I am working on Dash scripts, as well as a few writing projects, one of which is a short story for an NPR contest. I am in the polishing stages at this point, and I am extremely pleased with what I have thus far. The other project is a journal where I respond to a prompt. I’ll likely post one of those tonight. The other project is me dabbling with one of my story concepts called “Worldwalker”. It’s going to take me a while, but I am going to press on. I’ll post a rough excerpt here. If anything, the roughness should illustrate that writing in a process, albeit a long, maddening one at times.

Aluia wasn’t used to waking up so early in the morning, much less being woken up by screams. At first she was only half aware of her surroundings, but the acrid smoke roused her. And the survival instincts kicked in. She leapt to her feet and dove for her armor that was resting at her side. In fluid, hurried motions she had managed to slide into her plate. She grabbed at her sword and shield, barreling out of her small tent into the settlement.

In seconds, rotting fingers were rubbing against her armored shoulder, clawing at the metal unsuccessfully. She spun, knocking the hands away; she then brought her shield in front of her. She had wandered right into a pair of ghouls. Thrusting her shield forward to create a buffer zone, and with enough room to swing, she dispatched the first of the pair, followed shortly with the second. She turned her attention to the chaos at hand, as ghouls were swarming the settlement, swarming into tents and bringing down the minor shelters. She saw survivors spread throughout, fending off the undead with great efficiency. It came with living in the area, she imagined. She immediately got to work, rushing shield-first into a trio of ghouls approaching a distracted pair of settlers.

A lot of personal pronouns in this excerpt, but I’ll fix those in time. At this stage in the project, my main concern is just getting a story down on paper. it’s not until the later stages where I make it sparkle, like so many vampires these days.

Anyway, the titular Sara of this post is one classy lady. My post wins by sheer volume, however. I refuse to let her outdo me and I am throwing down the gauntlet. Rawr.

Stay tuned for your regularly scheduled program.

I am in a biology class this semester, and we are required to do a final project. After much discussion with the instructor, and some preliminary research, I have decided to do a small website devoted to conceptual bioforms on Europa, which is the sixth moon of Jupiter, for those who are not aware.

I will be using real biology and will be attempting to create plausible life forms given some criteria.

My criteria: First, Europa has a warm-water ocean below the ice-surface. Second, Europa has a solid planetary core with geothermic activity. Third, life forms will be carbon-based. Lastly, these life forms must make sense, and must work within the environment in which they are placed.

I am not aware yet how complex Europan life will be, but I know that I will not be creating humanoid creatures. These are wild animals, as beautiful and diverse as those on Earth.

A panel I’ve been working on today. Mara looks so tough.

Comics are coming along well, hoping to post the next story in the coming months.