Hello folks! It’s finally time once again for the Weekend Wrap-Up, in which I blather on at length about whatever I’ve been writing, reading, and doing. This is the first time I’ve done this in more than a month, so it’s not really a “weekly” wrap up, but fuck it. I am an adult, and I will eat ice cream before dinner and post my weekly updates monthly and there’s no one that can stop me!

Anyway, let’s get to it, shall we?

What I’ve Been Writing

When I previously posted that my outline for “Gosling Gardens” was finished, I was apparently lying since over the next several days I revised and expanded my outline even further, reaching just over 3000 words. That said, with all of those character and story beats so clearly laid out, I was able to draft basically the entire story in one sitting.

I’d intended to write and revise the story over the course of a week to give the story time to breath and give myself distance from the actual draft, but the last week of March was just a tornado of white-hot sewage, hurling muck on everything and sucking up anything in its path. So instead, I wrote the draft entirely the day it was due and then revised it a couple hours later and hoped that was good enough. I did get the story submitted just under the wire, so thankfully, it is at least completed and submitted.

In spite of the final drafting and revising being under such tight conditions, I’m actually pretty proud of the story. The outlining method of writing a Wikipedia-esque summary meant I already knew every beat and motivation that needed to happen and in what order, so I was able to focus more of my attention on the voice and prose. I did make a few tweaks as I drafted, merging a few things together or slightly altering the order in which events occurred, but the outline saved me literally days and weeks in the drafting phase. All of the angst that usually goes into draft and agonizing over the plot and prose simultaneously was gone, and I could draft with a relatively clear head.

The first few weeks after that story was completed were busy. First it was my birthday, then there was more work stuff, then it was my anniversary, and then I was tired from that and the work stuff. I did attempt to brainstorm a few ideas based on some open reading periods at a few venues, writing out some quick paragraph pitches to myself, but nothing was quite clicking with me. Then, I read a fringe Star Wars fan theory called “Bigger Luke.” The most popular version of this doofy theory is that there are two canonical Lukes — regular Luke, or Luke Prime, and Bigger Luke, who is roughly 3 inches larger. For some reason, it I got weirdly creeped out by this. And then I got my story idea.

I’m currently brainstorming/outlining, but I like what I’ve come up with so far. I don’t know if it’ll turn out to be anything in the end, but it’s nice to be working again after a couple weeks off. That said, I wish this idea had come to me soon as I’m now in the latter half of the month, and it looks like it’ll be another frantic crunch toward deadline. Hopefully this summary outline process helps speed the process along like before. I’ll keep you all posted.

What I’ve Been Reading

I had every intention of starting The Light Brigade when I picked it up a few weeks back. But since my life has been eaten by a swirling, other-dimensional monster targeting my delicious, delicious free time chunks, I haven’t yet, sadly.

Thankfully, the Amazon Kindle app makes it super convenient to pop open a book and read something in the spare moments when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store or on your break or lying in bed at 3 AM because you’ve woken up from yet another nightmare and can’t fall back asleep.

As I mentioned a month or so back, I picked up Tade Thompson’s Rosewater based on Alasdair Stuart’s recommendation. Since I picked it up on Kindle, I’ve been able to dip into that relatively easily and frequently. I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s not like anything I’ve ever really read before, and I’m fascinated with the voice it’s written in.

Additionally, I started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World and it is exactly my flavor of horror and I’m in love with it. That is all. It’s just fantastic.

What I’ve Been Watching

We just recently watched 2 movie in the theater. The Curse of La Llorona and Little. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from La Llorona, which looked pretty generic, but I was pretty hyped about Little. I love the cast, and the trailers made it look very funny.

La Llorona was crushingly dull. They managed to take a Mexican folktale and cast a white lady so that any cultural meaning the core conflict might have had has been stripped away. THIS is one of the reasons that whitewashing casting is so infuriating. It’s not just that people of color are criminally underrepresented (although that’s true — they are), but that when you take stories from other cultures and substitute in white people to amble about, it saps the inherent tension away. The same problem plagues the Death Note remake from a few years back — any of the cultural aspects of the story, setting, character development, or motivation is stripped away and you’re left with nothing but a flaccid excuse to periodically shoehorn in jump scares.

Also, on a broader note, these exorcist-type movies make God look weak as shit. In every one of these movies, they establish that crosses can ward off evil, and in every one, there’s a scene where the scary evil monster rushes forward and slaps the cross out of the priest’s hand like a mom slapping the penny out of a particularly hungry looking toddler. Or they’ll be in the middle of praying to God to ward off the demon…only for said monster to haul off and backhand them like it’s nothing.

These movies seem to have forgotten that while The Exorcist did have a few reversals where Pazuzu had the upper hand against the priests, sometimes seeming to flout the religious iconography, this was for short bursts and clearly hurt him to do so. It was also very clear that the religious symbols and prayers hurt him. That’s why they were doing them. Or, for an example of the opposite, when Christian symbols stopped protecting Father Callahan in ‘Salem’s Lot, it’s because he had lost faith in God (or at least, it had weakened too much to defend him properly). Instead, recent exorcism movies have the exorcisms staged like fight scenes — just have the demon flip the priest over their shoulder and through a window like they’re Captain America and Iron Man fighting in Civil War. Sure. Why not? What threat does God pose to them?

Anyway, I kept hoping it would get better, or at least display some cool style or visual effects, but it didn’t. Go watch Billie Eilish’s music video for “bury a friend,” which was directed by the same guy, to see a far better display of what he can do with horror. It’s a great video, and a great song.

As for Little? Oy. One of the first jokes in the movie was at the expense of trans people — Regina Hall sees a mother walking her child in the hallway. The child is dressed in a sweater vest, school blazer, and dress pants. They have long hair, but it’s not cut in an obviously gendered way, looking more like a mullet than anything. When she pops off to the mother about her son, the mother responds that her child is a girl. Regina Hall then shouts, “Oh, he’s transitioning!” and continues misgendering the child, insisting on using he/him pronouns in spite of what the mother said.

The point of the scene is to establish that Regina Hall’s character Jordan is a bad person. But we’ve already been shown that. It is made abundantly clear through a thousand other examples. What was the punchline of the joke supposed to be here? That trans people exist? In fact, most of the jokes in this movie were surprisingly mean spirited, which was odd for a film with the central message that bullying is bad.

But wait! Did the anti-trans jokes not fill your quota for mean spiritedness? What about the boss actually physically assaulting two employees? What if she ran up and violently rapped her knuckles on one woman’s had before flinging another woman out of the room in her rolling chair? What about jokes at the expense of a child’s speech impediment? Are you laughing yet??

On top of those issues, the pacing is sluggish. I was surprised by how few jokes there were — it seemed like most of the run time was actually spent with characters expositing, which is weird in a comedy. Unfortunately, all the good jokes were in the trailer, but even those were harmed by the pacing. While they were edited quick and punchy in the trailer, in the movie they were dragged out, watering down the punchline and weakening the effectiveness of the joke.

But…I really wanted to like it. Marsai Martin’s performance is great. And there’s a cute sequence where Issa Rae’s character and young Jordan get drunk and get into a karaoke battle that’s pretty great. But otherwise…it was very much not what I’d hoped.

What I’ve Been Doing

Work has been keeping me extremely busy, so I haven’t been up to much, but I wrote about most of what I’ve been up to recently in other posts — first it was my birthday, and then my anniversary. I also managed to get my taxes done on time, which is always nice. I haven’t actually played a game of D&D this month, but that’ll change this week. And I’m still behind one more campaign diary, so that’ll be going up soon as well.

Sadly, there’s been no news yet on the new apartment. They said they’d let us know as soon as a vacancy was open, but that could take a few months. In the meantime, we’re making up plans for how we want to decorate in the new place. The living room will movie themed, with an emphasis on horror movies. The office will probably be a hodge podge of whatever random crap I like because why shouldn’t the office reflect my cluttered junkyard of a brain?

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And that’s the wrap up for this week. How has your week been? Done anything your proud of and want to share? Watched or read anything you want to chat about? Comment below! Or, if you’d prefer, you can drop me an email or hit me up on Twitter. I’d love to hear from y’all.

‘Til next time!