Diabolical Plots – Page 59 – From Inspiration to Ink…

BOOK REVIEW: Wayward by Blake Crouch

written by David Steffen

Wayward is a… I guess I’d call it a mystery SF thriller… the second of a trilogy written by Blake Crouch and published in 2013 by Thomas & Mercer.

If you follow reviews on this site regularly, and this one seems familiar, that’s because I’ve already posted a TV review of Wayward Pines Season 1 which is based on Blake Crouch’s trilogy of books and covers a similar set of events as the trilogy of books. And I recently posted a review of Pines, the first book in the trilogy. The first book relied a lot on big mysteries for a lot of its appeal and revealed many of those mysteries at the end. I can’t talk about book 2 without talking about those mysteries, so if you want to be surprised go read the first book.

To give a quick recap of the first book, Secret Service agent Ethan Burke and his partner travel to Wayward Pines, Idaho to investigate the disappearance of two Secret Service agents. They get in a car accident in town and Ethan wakes up in the hospital, and something is very wrong about the little town. There are all kinds of bizarre rules, such as no one is allowed to talk about their past, and everything about the town seems set on forcing its residents to stay–the only road that’s supposed to lead out of town just loops back into it. Ethan fights hard against the town and becomes the target of a fete–where the sheriff of the town leads the citizens of the town to find and kill someone who has broken the rules. Ethan survives the fete and because of his resourcefulness he is let in on the secret of the town. David Pilcher, the secret leader of the town, has had a decades-long project that started when he discovered that the human genome was becoming corrupted and the human species was quickly changing into something else entirely. When no one believed his research, he set out on a project to preserve as much of humanity as possible, gathering people he could trust to act as his staff and collecting others against their will. His research perfected the technology of cryogenic sleep and he put all of these people (including Ethan) into cryosleep. 1800 years later he and his staff woke up to find that his prediction had come true–the world as far as they could explore had been overrun by the evolutionary descendents of humanity–which they dubbed aberrations (or abbies for short)–vicious human predators. They set out to rebuild Wayward Pines, protected by sheer cliffs and a high voltage fence and then woke up people to populate the town. During his first attempt to populate the town he tried telling people the truth, but suicide rates quickly rose, and he salvaged what he could by starting over again (putting people in cryosleep erased their memory since the last sleep). David Pilcher names Ethan Burke as his new sheriff to help enforce the rules of the town and keep people safe both from the abbies outside the wall and to keep the growing discontent among the townspeople from exploding into revolution.

Phew, sorry, long back story, but most of that’s important to understanding the basic plot of this book.

Near the start of the story Ethan Burke discovers a corpse of a woman who has apparently been murdered, and Pilcher assigns him the task of investigating. Although the violent fetes are a part of life in Wayward Pines, unsanctioned murders are rare, due in large part to the constant surveillance of the residents. The murdered woman was one of Pilcher’s employees working in the mountain to oversee the surveillance and discipline of the town, and she had been venturing into town in the guise of a townsperson to root out the secrets of a group of residents who have found ways to dodge the surveillance. Meanwhile, Ethan has been reunited with his wife and son–when he first came to Wayward Pines 2000 years before he came there before her, and she was taken by Pilcher more than a year later. But, skip forward 2000 years, and she and their son was woken from cryo more than 5 years before him so she has already settled into living in the town by the time he arrivs.

Although the setting and protagonist the same, this book has a decidedly different feel from the first book, Pines. The first book feels more like weird fiction because of the unexplained oddities of the little town and the constant attempts of the protagonist to pick at the edges of the strangeness. By the start of this book Ethan has a much clearer idea of what’s going on and has been drawn into the conspiracy himself, so rather than being in the position of rebellious loner he is a family man in a position of precarious power whose job is both to protect and oppress the people of the town. He hasn’t lost his rebellious nature, but he is in a very difficult position.

The mystery of the murder made a good centerpiece for the book, (and was a surprise to me even though I’d seen season one of the TV show because of changes in the adaptation), and Ethan’s interactions with Pilcher are a constant source of new information to understand the situation this little town is really in.

The most interesting new addition to me that differentiated this book from the first one is to see more deeply into the point of view of the staff that live in the mountain surveilling the town. While the people in the town yearn only to get out of the town, the people in the mountain yearn to get into it–to live under the open sky and be able to live a comparatively carefree life and just forgetting all the strangeness around them. That was an interesting dichotomy to read about, and one that was largely absent from the TV show.

The book is interesting throughout, and manages to avoid the Book Two Slump of many series. Although it depends on knowledge from the first book and leads directly into the events of the third book, it has an arc that stands on its own that starts with the major change of Ethan being promoted to sheriff and ending with major events that lead into the third book’s story.

BOOK REVIEW: Pines by Blake Crouch

written by David Steffen

Pines is a… I guess I’d call it a mystery fantasy/SF thriller… the first of a trilogy written franchise tie-in novel written by Blake Crouch and published in 2012 by Thomas & Mercer.

The story begins as U.S. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke travels to Wayward Pines, Idaho to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents who were last heard from as they approached the mysterious little town. After a car accident en route, Ethan wakes up in the Wayward Pines hospital, unable to contact anyone and unable to leave. In many ways it seems like a stereotypical small town, but there are big warning signs that something is not right in this little town–the strange things that people say, the strict rules the town keeps about not talking about your past and not asking questions. He wants nothing more than to escape the small town and get back home to his wife and son, but every route out of town is blocked–the main road only loops back into town again. He finds one of the agents he was looking for (whom he had had an affair with in the past), but she seems to aged more than she should have. Everything is a mystery in this mysterious, ominous, little town.

I read the books after already seeing season 1 of the TV show, and so I knew pretty much what to expect but I was interested in where it differed and where it was the same. Pines stuck pretty close to the TV show, albeit covering only the first few episodes. There are some notable differences, probably just to compress the plot enough to fit it on TV, and the book had more of an emphasis on Ethan’s past torture at the hands of a terrorist. The main things that differed were supporting details like character appearances and character ages, and that sort of thing, which is always a little confusing but not terribly so.

I commented in the TV Review that some of the “weird little town” moments kind of reminded me of Twin Peaks but that the show did a reasonably good job with them and didn’t make it just a ripoff. I was interested to read in the introduction that Blake Crouch is a huge Twin Peaks fan and this trilogy was his attempt to write something that had some of the same feel to it, so I think it’s interesting that I picked up the reference.

Book 1 provides a pretty solid plot arc on its own, making it a reasonably good standalone book on its own. By the end of the book you find out clear explanations for most of the weirdness in the town but with enough questions left to leave plenty of remaining mystery, the immediate plot arc resolves in a satisfying and interesting way, and at the end of the book the situation changes drastically enough to serve as an excellent hook for reading the next book–many things are the same but big big things have changed so if you’re like me you’re immediately drawn by the question of “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?”

DP Fiction #20: “October’s Wedding of the Month” by Emma McDonald

When Percy and Astrid met they’d no idea that only a few short weeks later they’d be getting married.

“Percy really swept me off my feet” said Astrid. “I’d just stepped outside the pub for a quick smoke and suddenly this guy was bundling me into his car.”

“It was love at first sight,” Percy confirmed. “I saw her and I just had to have her.”

Despite their unconventional first meeting our October couple are obviously very much in love. Sitting in their home, admiring the various objects of cult paraphernalia, including an antique sacrificial dagger, it’s also obvious that this was never going to be a normal wedding.

“We never really discussed it, because the cult is so important to Percy that I just took it for granted that the wedding would be a dark ceremony honouring the Elder Gods.” Astrid says. “Also, as I spent the weeks building up to the wedding locked in a cellar most of the preparations had to be done by Percy and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking him to compromise his beliefs when he was having to put in so much effort to make the day perfect.”

“Astrid was incredibly supportive.” Percy gives her a quick hug. “She even agreed to convert to the cult of the Elder Gods, which was something I’d not dared hope for. I’d had a few previous engagements which I’d had to break off once the bride realised what the cult involved, but Astrid just went for it.”

“Killing the owl was difficult,” said Astrid. “But it made for a really memorable hen night. Percy’s mother helped mix the cocktail of laudanum, owl blood, and gin that’s part of the traditional cult initiation and I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards, but I woke up covered in feathers and children’s teeth so it must have been a good night.”

While Percy’s wedding suit was fairly traditional cult attire, including a mask made out of broken dreams, the couple wanted the wedding dress to be a bit more personal. Astrid’s confinement made fittings difficult, but the final gown was still something spectacular.

“I think everyone worries about the dress.” Confided Astrid. “I was definitely one of those girls who cut wedding dresses out of magazines and I’d always seen myself getting married in something big and white.” So the vintage lace dress was something of a departure. “Percy’s mother brought around a trunk of old dresses, including her own, which was a long Bohemian number from the seventies. Sadly we had to reconsider because of the blood stains, but we salvaged some of the lace from the sleeves and used it for my hairpiece.’

“The dress I eventually chose was a real one-off. We think it might have been made for a great aunt, but the pictures of the wedding it was worn at have all been defaced so it’s only a guess. I was worried that it might seem a bit ordinary, but the rotten seams and mildew stains helped lift it above what you’d find on the high street.”

Percy chose the venue in accordance with the rituals necessary for the cult ceremony he’d always dreamed off. “Several people commented on how isolated the chapel was. Although it did make things easier from the point of view of parking, and it was very convenient for the reception which we held on the beach. The most important thing about the venue for me was that it was in the same place that I’d been having premonitions about since I was a small child. Nightmarish visions can be tricky things to pinpoint, and it took me several years of investigation before I found the perfect venue. When I told my mother she laughed and said I should have just asked Uncle Norman, as it’s the very chapel he was baptised at. There’s a funny story attached to that, because shortly after he went mad and murdered his twin brother.”

“The family connection is very important to Percy,” Astrid interrupts. “He went to a lot of trouble to ensure that my family were present at the ceremony, even chloroforming my dad when he objected to being kidnapped. We want to have a big family in the future and by making the wedding so family-oriented. I hope we’ve started off on the right track for that.”

The wedding was officiated by Mordiggan, a deity chosen by Percy due to a longstanding family connection. “It did mean we had to advise the guests to close their eyes during the ceremony, as any sighting of him causes blindness. The photographer had a particularly difficult job, and sadly didn’t survive, but he did get some beautiful shots of the service.” Indeed one of these was our cover for this month. The ominous dark cloud that stands at the altar while Astrid and Percy exchange rings gives a real sense of atmosphere, and it’s hard to fault Percy for risking his guests’ eyesight when the end result is so impressive.

While the wedding ceremony was a small affair, the reception was even more select, something most couples would consider unusual. But for Percy and Astrid the process of culling the guests was a core part of their day.

“I think we were both a little wary of how our friends and family would perceive Astrid’s newfound religious zeal,” admitted Percy. “There was a lot of talk of brainwashing and some mentions of the police, although the local police force is very sympathetic to cult members and we’d paid the usual bribes.”

“Percy and I didn’t want anyone at the reception who wasn’t really celebrating with us.” Astrid takes over as Percy seems visibly upset by the idea of anyone doubting their affection for each other. “The ritual culling wasn’t something I’d ever heard of before, but it’s part of Percy’s religion and I thought it was a good way of symbolising our new life together.” For those who aren’t adherents, the ritual culling is a ceremony in which guests are pursued and slaughtered by beasts. A small number of guests survive, either by luck or prior knowledge, and these are then invited to the reception. “Percy choose to have the pursuit led by his father, who owns a pack of dire wolves. The slaughtered guests were then dismembered and their brains and hearts used to adorn the wedding cake.”

The cake was a custom-made four-tier chocolate cake from a local baker who specialises in catering for occult ceremonies, so were well aware of the need for discretion and dark ritual.

“Chocolate cake was the one thing I was adamant about,” said Astrid, “as I’m a huge chocoholic and I didn’t want to go without on my big day. The caterers covered it with ganache, but otherwise left it bare so it could be decorated with the spoils of the hunt. We had to offer a tier to Cthulthu, along with the remains of the dead guests, but otherwise it was sliced up and handed round. As is tradition, the blood of Percy’s family and mine had been mixed into the batter so the consuming of the cake really brought us closer together.”

“Sadly Astrid’s father was one of those who died during the culling, but we placed his heart on the very top of the cake so that we could both take a big bite and make sure he’s with us in the years to come.” Percy gives Astrid a hug as she wipes away a tear at the memory. “It’s a huge shame that so many of Astrid’s close family died on the day, but I like to think that they’d have been glad to know that their sacrifice helped ensure a happy future for us both.”

The reception was held on the beach as is traditional for cult weddings. The summoning of Cthulhu that formed the climax of the evening can only be done in an area next to tidal waters and while it might have been possible to hire a local pier Percy explained that he’d been reluctant to do so due to the likelihood of losing his deposit. “Cthulhu does tend to cause damage, and while there are some local venues which are sympathetic, most of them will charge for broken windows and bloodstains.

“Despite living only a short drive away Astrid had never before seen Cthulhu, so the reception was extra special as it meant I got to introduce her to the Elder God as my wife, as well as see the horror on her face that all new initiates experience.”

“It was really terrifying.” Astrid nods. “Percy had said a lot about how important it was to him that Cthulhu accepted me, and I think I’d just built it up in my mind to something which made it a lot scarier than it really was. There was all the stress of having just gotten married and then having had to run down a cliff while being chased by dire wolves and seeing this huge tentacled dragon-man-thing emerge from the sea was sort of the last straw.”

“She went a little mad, but luckily my mother had remembered the straitjacket and once Astrid had been restrained she calmed down a lot.”

“The laudanum helped.” Astrid giggles. “I felt so stupid once it was all over, but Percy didn’t mind at all.”

“I’d been to a few weddings where the bride really lost it. My cousin Irene cut off her husband’s fingers and ate them, so Astrid was pretty unfazed by comparison. I don’t think you can expect everyone to adapt to the Elder Gods in the same way, especially if they’ve not really been part of your upbringing.”

It seems a bit unfair to ask if Astrid has any concerns about that difference in upbringing now, especially when they make such a lovely couple, but her words on the subject are an inspiration to any young bride in a similar situation.

“Everything before the wedding was such a whirlwind that I didn’t really have time to sit down and think about what was happening, but since then I’ve been on a few retreats and had my mind eaten by Shogothath and that’s made a real difference. I guess my advice to any bride in a similar situation would be to not panic, and remember that you’re needed for breeding. If the Elder Gods are going to eat anyone it’ll be the groom.” With that Astrid smiles and turns to Percy and as they exchange a heartfelt kiss we bid them adieu.

Author’s Note: The story was inspired by a conversation at a friends wedding about the different types of wedding you could have and how a fancy wedding magazine might cover them. (The friend’s wedding was very nice and no one was sacrificed)

Emma McDonald has been writing for years, but this is her first piece to be accepted for publication. She usually writes regency era stories with a touch of magic and the occasional vampire – and generally uses this as an excuse to visit English Country Houses for research. Her website is at www.emmamcdonald.co.uk and she’s on twitter as @telute.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

Long List Anthology Vol 2 Kickstarter!

written by David Steffen

The Kickstarter has been launched for the Long List Anthology Volume 2!

Same premise as last year, to put together an anthology of works from the longer Hugo Award nomination list. This year, Galen Dara has been commissioned for original cover art–the art at the top of the post is not the final version, it is a color proof of the art, but the final version will be shared as soon as possible.

Check out the rewards, besides copies of the books there are critiques from Martin L. Shoemaker, Sunil Patel, Erica Satifka and myself.

Check out the Kickstarter page for additional information, but here’s the list of the stories that will be included if funding levels are reached.

Short Stories and Letters (base goal)

“Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight” by Aliette de Bodard
“Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar
“Pockets” by Amal El-Mohtar
“Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” by Megan Grey
“The Women You Didn’t See” by Nicola Griffith (a letter from Letters to Tiptree)
“Damage” by David D. Levine
“Neat Things” by Seanan McGuire (a letter from Letters To Tiptree)
“Today I Am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker
“Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon
“Wooden Feathers” by Ursula Vernon
“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong

Novelettes (stretch goal at $3900)

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear
“So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
“Another Word For World” by Ann Leckie
“Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg
“The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir
“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente
Up to 1 other

Novellas (stretch goal at $5000)

“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik
“The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps” by Kai Ashante Wilson

Anime Catch-Up Review: Knights of Sidonia

written by Laurie Tom

knightsofsidonia

Knights of Sidonia is one of the few anime series in recent years that was brought over to the US, but never simulcast. While I heard the series was good, it missed a lot of the seasonal round-ups because no one could watch it during its original airing.

I finally had the opportunity see it and decided to give it a shot, even though I heard that the second half doesn’t hold up to the first.

If you like hard science fiction in your anime though, the first half will entertain you plenty, as a lot of things that go unaccounted for in other series (like the fact a combat pilot in a cockpit needs some way of urinating without ruining his spacesuit) are called out and accounted for.

The sheer grittiness of the characters’ situation calls to mind similarities to 2013’s hit Attack on Titan. Once again we follow the last known bastion of human civilization, fighting a relentless enemy that cannot be communicated or reasoned with. Characters are introduced and wiped out, and tough decisions are made between the lives of a few or the survival of humanity.

For unknown reasons, the spaceship-sized aliens called gauna attacked and destroyed the Earth centuries ago, scattering what remained of humanity on hundreds on seed ships. As far as the crew of the Sidonia is aware, they are the only remaining ship and they have just 28 kabizashi spears, which are the only weapons capable of piercing and destroying the core of a gauna, preventing their regeneration.

Due to the devastation caused to Sidonia in its the last war with the gauna and the loss of food processing facilities, children born in the past hundred years have been genetically modified to photosynthesize and only eat normal food about once a week. In order to rebuild population numbers, there are also a number of clones and humanity now has a third gender, which eventually develops into male or female depending on the partner they choose.

Knights of Sidonia is animated almost entirely by computer. Though the character designs reflect the old hand-drawn anime style, it’s often possible to see how they look a little “off” due to being computer models, but using CG has its advantages. The Sidonia has been sailing for at least six hundred years, and the ship, the mecha, even the pilots’ suits have a scuffed, lived-in look that would have been hard to conventionally animate.

The story follows one particular pilot, Nagate Tanikaze, who has a history he (but not the audience) is largely unaware of. Though he starts out an oddity for his inability to photosynthesize, he turns out to be a fantastic pilot, largely because he’s trained in a simulator since childhood to use one particular model.

Nagate ends up having other advantages in his court, but at least in the first half of the show, it doesn’t feel like he’s a superhero so much as extremely competent. He might be a hero who comes out of nowhere, but there’s a foundation for it and winning battles is a team effort. By the second half it’s a little more wearing as Nagate is the one who gets all the mecha upgrades, and gets to do all the cool stuff, when one would think the Sidonia would spread the love around with their other pilots.

Since the show does not cover the full length of the manga, it ends on a major combat victory rather than a story arc, leaving the intentions of several characters unanswered. The second half of the show in particular feels like someone hit the fast forward to make sure the story hit that battle before ending.

It’s not that the plot feels rushed so much as details are glossed over and the fallout of certain actions don’t feel fully considered. Things that ought to be a major power shift just happen and everyone accepts it.

Knights of Sidonia is also oddly two-faced about its treatment of women. On the one hand there are no shortages of capable women, from the most senior combat pilot on Sidonia, to the ship’s subcommander (effectively their battle tactician), to the Sidonia captain herself. Uniforms are practical and nobody questions their skills or position on account of gender.

But there are several shots of female characters photosynthesizing (which requires nudity). They aren’t particularly male gazey since the shot may be in the distance or focus on their faces, but this never happens with the men. Also, just about every female or potentially female character in Tanikaze’s social circle seems to dig him in a potentially romantic manner.

If anyone’s emotions override their sensibilities in combat to the point they’re sobbing and not listening anymore, it’s always a female pilot, so while some women in the show kick major ass, there are times that feel like the writer needed someone to be emotionally broken up so he picked one of the women. There’s one early female pilot death that had me shaking my head because given her rank she should have been made of sterner stuff.

Unusually for anime, there is also a non-binary/third gender character, though the English subtitles don’t treat them particularly kindly. When Nagate has trouble figuring out their gender, Izana says people like them aren’t specifically male or female, instead taking on characteristics of the opposite gender when they choose a partner.

Unfortunately, the subtitles (and presumably the dub) default to referring to Izana as “she,” most likely because Izana sounds like and is played by a woman. The only character who specifically refers to Izana as a “he” is another woman, specifically because she doesn’t want Izana to become fond enough of Nagate to transition, but technically Izana isn’t either. This would have been less of a problem in Japanese since it’s not a gendered language and it’s very easy to talk about someone in the third person without revealing whether they’re a man, woman, or something else.

It feels like a terrible case of miscasting though, because Izana’s voice is so female that when I first saw them I didn’t realize the reason Nagate was staring was because he couldn’t figure out their gender. Izana has a slender build and stands the same height as the other female characters, with the primary difference being a flat chest, and that wasn’t enough to visually read as third gender. In retrospect the only way I might have known otherwise is that Izana’s cadet uniform is not the one worn by women.

Considering that there are many Japanese women who play convincing teenage boy roles in anime, it’s disappointing the casting director couldn’t have found one for Izana, which would have helped give the viewer the same impression as Nagate.

Though I wish there was a legal free streaming option, I have to admit that Netflix made a good choice for their first exclusive anime license. The platform promotes binge-watching, and Knights of Sidonia ends on so many cliffhangers it’s definitely suited to the format.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: gritty space combat with a fair dose of realism, swift moving plot, several highly competent female characters

Minuses: inconclusive ending, later episodes make Nagate too much of the ace pilot everyone relies on, English translation’s handling of Izana is very clumsy

Knights of Sidonia is currently streaming at Netflix (subscription required) and is available both subtitled and dubbed. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for Blu-ray/DVD in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

Movie Review: What We Do in the Shadows

written by David Steffen

What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary horror comedy film which had a theatrical release in 2014. It was directed by Jemaine Clement (who you might know as half of New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Watit, who also both acted in the film. The film is structured as a documentary following four vampires who are flatmates in New Zealand, chronicling their everyday lives including flatmate disputes, their feeding habits, their human familiar, their night life, and avoiding vampire hunters.

Vlago, Vladislav, and Deacon are several centuries old and have maintained their human appearances, though the necessity to avoid sunlight has left them very behind the times. The fourth vampire Petyr, who is around 8000 years old, has become more monstrous in appearance and also monstrous in behavior compared to the other three.

I will pretty much see any movie featuring Jemaine Clement without knowing anything else about the movie, because he consistently brings great humor. In this movie he plays Vlad the Poker (because he likes to poke things). All of the casting (including Jemaine) were perfect in their roles, and I had to rewind the movie more than once because I was laughing too hard to catch all the lines–for instance, when the vampires attempt to go clubbing, but can’t get into clubs unless someone invites them in. Probably my favorite bits of the movie were the ones that involved Rhys Darby (who I also knew from the Flight of the Conchords HBO show) playing the alpha of a local pack of werewolves.

I highly recommend the movie. Great, funny stuff. Since it does involve vampires who have to feed on humans to survive, there are some dark parts but I thought they did a good job spinning even the dark moments toward humor.

Anime Movie Review: Digimon Adventure tri: Reunion

written by Laurie Tom

digimon tri reunion I did not grow up with Digimon in that I had just graduated college when it started airing, but it was one of the last series I watched as a Saturday morning cartoon. People who haven’t seen it tend to dismiss it as a Pokemon knock-off, for featuring young children with monster buddies, but it did something that Pokemon did not. It allowed its protagonists to mature and grow up.

Digimon had always maintained in-universe that no matter how old you were, even if you became an adult, your partner digimon would always be there for you. Intelligent and able to speak, partner digimon are a pint-sized buddy that can be temporarily supercharged to grow into more powerful versions of themselves. No matter how badly their human screws up (and some of them do), the digimon are loyal for life.

Digimon Adventure tri is the 15th anniversary project originally intended for spring of 2015 and was devised as a TV show until it was revamped as a six part movie series.

It is clearly a nostalgia vehicle for those who had grown up with Digimon, specifically the original Digimon Adventure and its sequel Digimon Adventure 02. The first teaser was addressed to all the Digidestined in the world, a name for the chosen children with digimon partners (and by proxy, the audience), and the opening song is a new rendition “Butterfly,” the opening theme from the first series.

Six years after their first adventure in the digital world, the oldest of the Digimon Adventure kids are now in high school with the younger ones in middle school. For the audience it’s been a much longer fifteen years, but it still feels like coming home.

Reunion glosses over most of the worldbuilding about how/why digimon exist in favor of catching up with the original cast and setting an ominous tone for what is about to happen. While parts of the movie are watchable as a newcomer, the mechanics of digimon evolution and their different forms is not addressed at all, making it unclear why some digimon change forms (even multiple times in the same battle) and others do not.

The movie knows it’s only the first of six, so it doesn’t rush itself, resulting in a pace a closer to a TV show, but without the storytelling beats expected in a half hour episode. This makes it strange that the streaming sites do divide the movie up into four TV length chunks. Episode breaks feel arbitrary as some episodes have action scenes and others don’t, and there isn’t necessarily a climax.

Most of the screen time is focused around Taichi, now in his second year of high school and being badgered by his teacher to think about what he wants to do for a career after graduation, but instead of looking to the future, he’s still caught up in his past.

The eight Digidestined are no longer as close as they used to be. Though most of the group goes to the same high school, getting together isn’t easy. Mimi now lives in America. Jo, the eldest, is consumed by studying for entrance exams for college. Taichi’s soccer game conflicts with performance day for Yamato’s band, which conflicts with the anniversary dinner for Koushiro’s parents. Takeru will go to the concert since he’s Yamato’s brother, and Sora can’t make up her mind whether to go to the concert or the game or attempt both.

Peaceful days are limited though, and the digital world collides once again with the real one when a rift opens and a Kuwagamon (a large pink beetle monster) emerges and begins wreaking havoc on the city.

With the assistance of a secret government agency that seems to have been put together in the years since the previous invasions, Taichi and the other Digidestined are reunited with their digimon partners to again fight monsters and save the lives of others.

But for Taichi, it’s surprisingly harder to go fight the bad guys now that he’s older and wiser. Reunion is unfortunately ham-handed about it, but it’s clear that watching his pet monster chase another digimon through a dense urban development and crashing into buildings everywhere isn’t giving him the same rush. He’s aware now that there could be people in those buildings. Someone could get hurt.

If you saw the trailers and wondered what happened to the new characters introduced in 02 or if they were retconned out, don’t worry. The first few minutes make it clear they’re still part of continuity. My feeling is their introductions are being held back for a later movie to avoid having twelve returning lead characters to catch up with at the same time.

There is also a new girl, Meiko, who has a digimon partner, and by virtue of being new, she is probably the crux around which the new events are happening. I’m not sure how well her inclusion will work though, since as a character she has to match up against all the nostalgia value of the other eight. She still doesn’t quite fit in by the end of the first movie, though arguably it’s because there has barely been the screen time to get to know her and the revelation that she even has a partner is only towards the very end.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Reunion because with the exception of Taichi, it felt like visiting an old friend and finding out we still click, but I find this difficult to recommend as an entry point for new fans. There is too much to catch up on, which is too bad since I would have liked a more grown up Digimon series to introduce people to. For previous fans though, it plays like a Digimon Greatest Hits.

Digimon Adventure tri is currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll and Hulu.

GAME REVIEW: Journal

written by David Steffen

Journal is a dialog based narrative story game by Locked Door Puzzle released in 2014. The story follows a young girl who has discovered that the pages in her journal have gone blank and she sets out to try to find what happened to them. The game plays out as she talks to different characters in life, and asks them about the journal, and different interpersonal conflicts arise–her mother, her father, her classmates, teacher, priest. The game is a little bit of exploration as she walks around a larger area and finds new people to talk to with each level of the game, but mostly the game comes down to dialog choices. When her best friend accuses her of not being a good friend, does she apologize or deny it? When her teacher asks her if she cheated on a test does she own up to it or cover it up? Making the “right” choice doesn’t always produce a happy outcome–as with many things in life. As the game goes on she’s always kind of feeling her way around things that she doesn’t really want to remember.

2015-09-30_00001 I thought the idea for this game was interesting. I liked how it didn’t go the straightforward After School Special route where if you do the right thing then everything will turn out happy for you. I thought the art was nice enough, and the voice acting good. I picked up on the sense that the narrative was kind of feeling around the empty spaces where other events in her life would be revealed to be, which I thought was an interesting technique.

But I found the narrative frustrating. It seemed like at every turn I was being asked to resolve a situation that had been made by some poor choice the girl had made off-camera before the game started. In some cases the poor choice happened during the game narrative but in a way that I had no control over. I get what the game was going for, she is having a difficult time of it and her choices are not always the right ones and that’s just the way life is. But the way the game was structured I felt like I was playing the role of a friend who is always cleaning up after their friend’s poor decisions. I think it would’ve been more effective if I could’ve been somehow drawn into the poor decisions themselves, somehow. As it was, I felt like the character was going out of her way to mess things up and expecting me to clean it up for her, which I found frustrating more than entertaining.

Visuals
I thought the hand-drawn visuals were nice enough, but found the “twitchy” nature of the background annoying (that is, it looks like the background was drawn several times in similar but not identical drawings and then cycles through those drawings so the outline of many objects are constantly twitching.

Audio
Nice voice acting.

Challenge
Nil. The narrative progresses no matter what you choose and there’s not specific outcomes you’re aiming for.

Story
More story than anything else.

Session Time
Can save and quit at any time, which is handy.

Playability
Easy. The only thing I occaisonally had difficulty with is that it’s not always obvious with the way the screens are laid out how to move from one screen to another–I felt that could’ve been arranged a little more clearly. But other than that.

Replayability
Different dialog choices affect the outcome, so you could replay a few times trying for different outcomes to conversations.

Originality
Well, it didn’t remind me overmuch of other games I’ve played, at least.

Playtime
I think it took me about an hour to play through once in no particular rush.

Overall
Interesting idea, dialog choice based narrative game where you try to sort out your life in a difficult time, but one that I found frustrating because I always felt like I was cleaning up after someone else’s mess. $10 on Steam.

Anime Review: Ushio and Tora

written by Laurie Tom

ushio and tora When I first started watching anime I wasn’t too picky, because there wasn’t much available, so I watched a lot of genres that I wouldn’t anymore.

One of those early series was a direct to video supernatural action series called Ushio and Tora. It was fairly violent, but made tolerable by its endearing leads, the titular Ushio and Tora. Only ten episodes were animated, but the popular manga series eventually ran a whopping 33 volumes.

Fast-forward almost twenty years and in mid-2015 a new Ushio and Tora TV series was launched, spanning 39 episodes and covering the entire storyline. Despite being 20 years old, Ushio and Tora quite frankly doesn’t care and runs with with the same cheeky attitude (and wild hair!) that it did in the 90s.

At the start of the series, teenage Ushio discovers a hidden cellar in his dad’s monastery while being condemned to do his chores. However, once he opens the cellar he discovers a living demon pinned in the cellar by an enchanted spear. After an amusing conversation during which the demon promises to eat Ushio as soon as he frees him, Ushio shuts up the cellar door and plans to ask his dad about it later.

But things don’t stay that simple. Just by opening the door, Ushio released 500 years’ worth of demonic energy that has been building up and his home is suddenly attracting yokai of all kinds. The only way to drive them off (and save his classmates who came to visit) is to free the demon who promises he can take them out.

The demon does try to renege on his promise, but there’s a slight problem in that since Ushio pulled out the enchanted Beast Spear, he’s now the wielder of it, and the Beast Spear gives him the power to not only fend off the demon, but beat him back in line.

And this is the start of the frenemy partnership of Ushio and Tora (“Tora” being the name Ushio gives to the demon).

They make a fantastic duo, with Ushio being the constant optimist and Tora the pessimist. Ushio wears his heart on his sleeve and says he would gladly cry tears if it means someone else won’t have to. Tora can’t admit he cares about anyone but himself (though his actions say otherwise). One of the ongoing jokes is Tora promising to eat Ushio one day, and as time goes on, finding excuses not to do it (yet).

The violence is censored somewhat for the TV run, using shadows and discretionary shots that the original did not bother with, but it doesn’t detract since blood and gore isn’t as much of the point as the action and the buddy dynamics between the two leads. If the snark between them wasn’t so good this series wouldn’t have made it as far as it does, but even if the characters aren’t too deep, they’re entertaining to watch.

And that’s a good thing considering that the series starts off in a monster of the week fashion, which is unavoidable when following the manga. A fair bit of it is streamlined to fit the 39 episode run, but there are still a lot early one-off episodes that only later play a larger role as the series progresses. Because of this, Ushio and Tora is not particularly binge-able at the start, you can tell at the time the manga was created the artist was still trying to get his storytelling legs under him, but once the greater plot comes out it makes for fine viewing.

The source of all the woes in Ushio and Tora comes from Hakumen no Mono, a nine-tailed fox so powerful and malevolent that even other demons fear it. Hakumen has no redeeming qualities and is impossible to sympathize with, but it’s so damn freaky that even when it’s ranting about death and destruction it works. The audience isn’t meant to understand how such a creature is possible, it just is.

Veteran voice actress Megumi Hayashibara is unrecognizable as the voice of Hakumen no Mono, and initially her casting seems odd. Usually such a demon would be voiced with a deep bass, but Hayashibara gives us a scratchy and hissing Hakumen no Mono in a register where it’s not possible to guess a gender. And because it’s not the voice we expect, it feels wrong, just like it looks wrong.

A nine-tailed fox should be beautiful, but Hakumen is twisted, with eyes that are too big and a body that is too thin.

Between Hayashibara’s excellent performance and sparing visual use of Hakumen itself, the show does an excellent job of building up just how terrifying the fully unleashed Hakumen no Mono ought to be. I haven’t seen such a good build up of an earth-shattering, apocalypse level villain in a long time. Hakumen feels unstoppable, even though it’s imprisoned for the majority of the series.

Ushio and Tora isn’t going to win awards for its plot, but as a shounen action series it’s good fun, and since it’s based on a completed manga, it has no filler. Everything gets used eventually by the end. If you like shounen material, and don’t want to sit through 100+ episodes to get to the end (if the end is even there), Ushio and Tora is worth checking out.

Number of Episodes: 39

Pluses: entire storyline is animated and filler free, Ushio and Tora are entertaining and compelling leads, Hakumen no Mono is an incredibly good villain

Minuses: slow pacing at the start of the series, characters and plot aren’t particularly deep, filler removal creates the impression that everyone Ushio meets has to be involved in some way

Ushio and Tora is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

Guidelines for Short Fiction Guidelines

written by David Steffen

I read thousands of fiction guidelines of all genres every year as part of my work at The Submission Grinder, in order to distill those guidelines down into their basic components for market listings. After reading so many guidelines I wish that there were guidelines that editors had to follow when they’re writing their guidelines pages. Writers can be criticized for using tired cliches, but editors would do well to turn that critical eye on their own guidelines. Note that none of these are meant to single out any particular publisher or market, and don’t affect the availability of listings. But are, rather, general impressions I have after reading so so many guidelines.

GUIDELINE NECESSITIES

I wouldn’t have thought the listing out necessities would be a thing that needs doing, but I see important information omitted quite often.

Pay Rate

Most short fiction sales have a non-negotiable pay rate, and most short fiction markets post the rate right in their guidelines so authors can decide before they submit what level of pay they consider reasonable compensation. It can save both parties hassle in the long run because the authors should have already known the pay rate before the acceptance letters are sent out and that shouldn’t be a point of contention. If you don’t provide information about pay rate you give the impression that you don’t pay. If you really don’t pay, be upfront about it and just state clearly that you don’t pay. If you do pay you should state that clearly also.

Genre/Style/Subject of story

In the absence of genre information, you might simply mean that you want contemporary fiction aimed at a mainstream audience. You might, or you might not. An author might assume differently than you. Why not just say explicitly what kinds of things you’re interested in? Maybe you want only “literary” style, or maybe you want nothing of that style. If you don’t say something you can’t blame writers for submitting it. If there’s some subject material you want absolutely nothing to do with, whether it’s a heavily used trope like zombies or a real life thing like child abuse, just say so.

Word Count Range

Some guidelines say that submissions of any length are acceptable, others say that any short fiction is acceptable. But where does it become unreasonable for an author to submit? What is “short” fiction and what is “long” fiction? If you give at least a ballpark of the boundary you’re thinking of, then authors who read the guidelines can avoid sending something you know you won’t be able to use.

Reprint/Multiple/Simultaneous Submissions

Whether or not you take reprints (stories that have been published already), multiple submissions (more than one story submitted to you from same author at a time), or simultaneous submissions (same story submitted to you and another publisher at a time), just say so. The default guess for most savvy authors will be no on all three, but it’s not like guidelines words are rationed.

Timeframe for querying

Even if you intend to stay on top of submissions and reply to them in a timely manner, there may be circumstances where you get behind or an email gets eaten by the internet. So it’s important to state a time period after which an author can feel free to query about the status of a submission–long enough so that you are not constantly pestered about statuses but short enough that the author isn’t left hanging for a very long period of time (30, 60, or 90 days are common values).

Any peculiar specifics

Be sure to list any specific requirements peculiar to your process. Requirement for anonymity and any extra hurdles that requires, file formats, etc.

Easy to find guidelines

Some sites hide the submission guidelines like they’re some kind of dirty secret. Preferably a writer should be able to find a link to the guidelines page linked right from the home page of the site, marked with a name like “Submit” or “Guidelines” or “Contribute”.

THINGS TO AVOID

There are certain trends that I’ve noticed that may raise my eyebrow about whether a publication is writer-friendly. Think twice about putting these in your guidelines and be aware you are driving some writers away with them.

Contests that use first rights unpaid

If you have a contest, and you want people to vote on entries to decide which stories win, put it in a private section of the site. Otherwise you are using up the writer’s first publication rights for no benefit to them. If you insist on doing this, at least explain in your guidelines that the writer is giving up their most valuable product without certainty of compensation. Along similar lines, if you claim to be a paying contest, pay for every work that is published. The exceptions often take the form of saying that the winner will be paid and published, and that runners-up will be published with no mention of payment on the latter. If you insist on doing this, make it clear in your guidelines that writers are gambling their first publication rights with a chance of nothing in return.

“Pay” in anything that is not currency

You can’t pay for groceries with exposure. You can’t pay your mortgage with contributor copies. So don’t claim you are “paying” in these things. If you’re not paying, say so.

Saying that you can’t afford to pay writers, but also requiring first publication rights.

If you can’t afford to pay writers, it’s worth considering why those writers should give away the most valuable aspect of their story–first publication rights. Do you actually have a platform that will provide them more exposure than posting on their blog or self-pubbing on Amazon would offer?

“Send only work of great quality”

Writers can’t judge the quality of their own work accurately, so don’t ask them to. Often as a writer develops in skill their opinion of the quality of their own work will actually lower as they come to understand how far they have to go yet–probably in part due to Dunning-Kruger effect. Presumably this statement is put in guidelines in an attempt to decrease the volume and increase the quality of slush. But it doesn’t work and might, in fact, have the opposite effect. You’re an editor, do your job and handle the slushpile (either by yourself or with slushreaders)–if you don’t want to do that then perhaps you are in the wrong occupation.

Condescending language

Even if you don’t like romance, or you don’t like literary, or you don’t like science fiction, or you don’t like whatever else, there’s no need to talk down about it in your guidelines. Keep in mind that there are many writers who write in many different genres, and some might write well in both genres you prefer and those you don’t. Talking down about “genre fiction” is especially telling because “literary” is also a “genre”–everything fits into one or more genres, and speculative fiction can be literary in style.

Nitpicky formatting requirements

Guidelines often refer to “standard manuscript format”, but since there is no centralized source of standards, there are more than one “standard” you’ll see. Some will specify that you use a different font, different spacing, tell you to set Word to indent your paragraphs instead of pressing Tab. For a short story writer to make sales they have to continually send and resend their stories to different magazines. This takes time, but what would take way more time is rejiggering the manuscript every time it goes back out because different markets have different preferences. If you want something different, as long as you can read the story, any nitpicky formatting can wait until the acceptance is sent out, at which point there’s a clear motivation for making the effort. An obvious exception to this is when there is a clear and immediate need for an alteration, most notably the stripping of author name from a manuscript when dealing with anonymous slushpiles.

“We can’t pay yet, but we hope to pay someday”

This isn’t generally how the business works. If you treat your writers well, and you pay well for their fiction, and you show that you have good taste in your choices, and you can get the word out about your stories, then you will attract more writers and more experienced writers who have had the time to develop the skill you want to use. This will increase the overall quality of your slushpile and if you choose from that slushpile carefully you will end up with a much better result. If you don’t pay writers then you will only get submissions from writers who are willing to submit stories to you for no pay, which is a much smaller group that is going to exclude most of the best active writers. With lower quality work in the publication, you will have a harder time finding a paying reader base–it’s hard enough finding funds if the quality of the work is high, it’s nigh impossible if the quality is low. So “we can’t pay yet but we hope to someday” tends to hint that you don’t really have a good idea how to run this business, which combined with the lack of pay is not a great sign to someone thinking of submitting.

BONUS POINTS

The things following are things which are not expectations in the guidelines, but if you feel comfortable putting something like them in the guidelines they make your guidelines page especially useful and attractive to writers.

Sample contract

There can be a big gap between the general terms listed in guidelines and the specific terms listed in a contract simply because the former is conversational language and the latter is formally structured legalese. If you have an author-friendly contract template in hand, there should be no reason why you can’t share that publicly to help authors make an informed decision.

Diversity Statement

If you want to increase the diversity of the authors and stories in your slushpile, it can help to ask for this in your guidelines–especially reaching out to demographics that have historically been excluded for either the author identity or the content of a story–gender, race, sexuality, culture, religion, neural profile, etc.

“Don’t self-reject. If in doubt, submit.”

Statements like this are particularly welcoming to writers, because there can be a tendency for writers to self-reject out of doubt because they think they don’t write the kind of stories you buy. Writers are inaccurate judges of their own work–encourage them to let you do your job.

A bulleted list of important points

A writer new to your publication should read the whole guidelines page before submitting, but a quick bulleted list makes it both more likely that newbies will catch the important points and that veterans will refresh their memory before submitting again.

A brief list of exemplary famous authors

If you say you want stories that bring to mind Phillip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, or Douglas Adams, these all give useful information to a writer about what kind of aspects of fiction you value most to help them decide what to send to you first. If you truly want everything in every style, leave this list out. And keep the list short–if you have too many authors on it, then trying to distill a meaning from that list becomes impossible.