Looking back at my study books...

 So, I've been going through the process of getting myself an English Language and Literature degree with the Open University. Still got stuff to do (not the end of Academic year yet), but in the name of education, I needed to read through not one, not two, not three, but...FOURTEEN books. As a reader, on the one hand, that was great. But as someone who had to read Dickens during my Level 1 studies last year, I also know that some of these pieces were likely to be something I didn't enjoy and would be going on an out/charity shop pile. So I'm deciding to make use of them outside my education and post my opinions on these fourteen books I had to read through between October last and now.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: This was easy to assess. I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the greater academic insight given into this definitive piece of Gothic literature. I'd already read through the story via audiobook, so this was an easy yes in terms of keepers. I still think most people focus far too much on the sexual elements of the story, which if you actually read the darned book play third fiddle to other themes, but it's still interesting.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth: Our first dud destined for the out pile. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this book has fans and it's interesting to look at how it's written. But it's also a prime example of a culture I wasn't part of, and I don't mean it's Muslim Indian and Jamaican diasporas (the former actually resonated with me a lot because Batley, where I grew up, had a Muslim Indian community dating back to the Partition). I mean how White Teeth treats subjects like suicidal depression, marital relationships, Islamic radicalisation, and cultural pressure to conform. It treats them all...as jokes, ala lowbrow 90s comedies. Seriously, the opening chapter plays a suicide attempt as a joke. The 'wit' in this book either hasn't aged well, or was always in poor taste. Also the ending... Very Dickensian in the worst way.

Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition: I'd never encountered this poet's work, and it's not for the faint of heart. Even untangling it from the context of Plath's own struggles and tragic death which followed hard upon completing this collection, these poems aren't for the faint of heart. Self-doubt, dark pasts, familial strife, all feature as themes here. This edition also comes with Plath's reproduced type-written versions of the poems, complete with amendments to the rhyme and metre. I'm stull not sure whether I'm keeping this one, but it...has something. Just not something I'd dive into for comfort reading.

Colston Whitehead, The Colossus of New York: Another one I'd never heard of, and one I'm definitely keeping. This exploration of New York City, dated to around the same time as White Teeth, explores not from the POV of a travelogue, but more akin to a bird's eye view. As if the city itself is guiding you. And in this case, the wit of the writing has aged pretty well, and the context is deliberately ambiguous enough that you can see more than just one demographic enjoying this. This book doesn't self-isolate through being of its time, it makes itself timeless. A keeper for sure.

Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads: I'm gonna say it, Wordsworth is one of the most boring and uninspiring poets I've come across. There's only one of his poems in this absolute slog of a tome, 'Michael, A Pastoral Poem', that I think even vaguely enjoyable. The book as a whole is standard, droning, and if you know anything about real rural history insultingly patronising and romantic. And don't even get me started on Wordsworth's 'Introduction', which says with fifty words what could be said with ten. Coleridge's 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' is its one redeeming property, and I don't need to keep one book for one poem. Out pile.

Anne-Marie Fyfe. No Far Shore: Described by Fyfe herself as a book of 'lyric essays', this is a strange little thing and not one I expected to enjoy as much as I did. Baring one poem about a dog trapped in a harbour, I found everything enjoyable, engaging, and entertaining. There's a distinct quality to this book that's difficult to quantify beyond; it's good. Being someone who lives near the coast myself, it resonated with me strongly, and how Fyfe incorporated poetic elements into her prose was something else. Keeping this.

Patricia Grace, Potiki: A story I didn't know I needed in my life. I've had some mild contact with Maori culture through pop culture influence, but this in-depth piece of work from someone within the Pākehā (colonial white-Maori) population was truly eye-opening. There's a fine dance along the line between low fantasy and social history, immersing you into the culture. It also has a strong anti-colonial message, and ultimately a hopeful message. A keeper for sure.

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure: This doesn't need much space. It's just the notorious problem play in an academic edition with a massive introduction and footnotes galore. I enjoy Measure for Measure, and this book has good reference material for writing essays and similar, so keeping it.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Gravel Heart: Again not an author I'd encountered, and once again I was impressed. It's not a read I'll go back to in a hurry, because oh boy is it a hard read. If White Teeth is the over-optimistic and jokey view of the immigrant experience, Gravel Heart is a more realistic and occasionally cynical one. The main draw for me was its examination of a broken family, familial expectations and abuse, and the outsider finding something of value in a place they're othered in. Keeping it, but not re-reading for a while.

George Orwell, Essays: You can really tell a lot about Orwell as a person from this collection of his essays. From his anti-colonial stance to the complete lack of faith or belief in any kind of governance, to the remnants of Imperialism that colour how he sees and talks about non-English groups. Many of these essays are also quite funny to read through, and led me on a bit of a rabbit hold about his life. So, yeah, keeping.

Thomas More, Utopia: This book...is such a waste of space in my shelves. I didn't connect with it. I got it a bit more after having gone through the first half of the book, not just the second fictive half as most seem to. But still, it feels more like something for academia than pleasure reading. Interesting to see how the concept of 'utopia' emerged and how different it is for a Tudor man compared to today, but... Yeah, out pile.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret: A crown jewel of sensation fiction, and one of the best books from the Victorian period I've ever read. The writing is so good, sparkling even, and the story kept me hooked even when it strayed into the stereotypes of its day. Braddon has crafted one of the great anti-heroines, and her writing has aged magnificently compared to others of her day, or even most others that came decades later. Keeper. I also got her Aurora Floyd for good measure.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden: This is a good piece of writing, no question. A classic, indeed. And I'm keeping it. But... Some parts of how the story changes during its second half really don't sit well with me. I came to this after having watched in my youth the 1993 film version, and there's a shocking amount of context they add without actually changing the narrative. They also keep Mary Lennox as the focal character, while the book basically boots her into the chorus in favour of REAL PROTAGONIST COLIN NO FOR REAL HE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN THE BOOK FOR REAL WAIT COME BACK HE'S REALLY IMPORTANT. Can you tell I don't like this shift?

Isabel Allende, The Stories of Eva Luna: My very first exposure to South American literature, and also my first dip into what has been called 'fantasy realism'. And I couldn't have struck a better first time. Written in a Scheherazade-style narrative of loosely-connected short stories, this book hooked me hard and wouldn't let go. I was lost in its stories of love, connection, innocence, and the subtle magic of reality. A keeper for sure.

And that's it. Fourteen books, fourteen opinions, and only three definitively going on the out pile. Quite an achievement. Here's to reading for pleasure and for learning, and to not hating books after needing to study them.

Me, Gender, and I.

 

Provocative title? Yes, but it'll make sense when you read the rest of this. Also, yes, potential trigger warning for people dealing with issues of gender identity and associated discrimination.

I decided to write about this because recently, in a context where I was just sharing something fun, I believe I was on the receiving end of what I think was indirect transphobia. I referred to a character I'd created and was playing as in Baldur's Gate 3 as a trans man. And...well, suffice to say there were some gif-based comments that made 'feelings' felt. I felt happy and bouncy, enjoying playing as this character. And I got...Obama Raised Eyebrows and Bruce Willis Look of Horrified Disgust? I don't know whether it was the phrasing or the fact I just mentioned it, but this otherwise inclusive community that I shan't name here and I'd been on the edges of for fun showed a proportion had seemingly excluded the "T" in LGBTQIA+. I've left that community, never to return.

That interaction reminded me of a part of my youth that for a long time I thought was just silly. When I was under ten years old, I once thought I might become a ballet dancer. Of course with how I've grown I'm now too tall and the wrong build. But the dancers I saw, and the characters I enjoyed most in the media I consumed, made me think something; I can best sum it up with the sentence, "Maybe I'll become a woman at some point."

At that point, I didn't know anything about biological sex, presented gender, chosen gender, questions of sexuality and gender dysmorphia, or the whole thorny issue of transgender people's right to be who they were. I was brought up in an immediate and extended family with a lot of strong-willed women, most of my fictional role models were women, and my private life didn't have any solid gender binaries forced on me. My sister and I wore similar clothes, and the only people I'd ever seen wearing skirts were complete strangers.

This initial feeling was from the 1990s, when the infamous Section 23 was still in force in the UK. You know, THAT bit of media censorship. As I grew up, I became more settled into my biological and presented gender. I did see some bits of media that played into unpleasant tropes and stereotypes including the depraved lesbian and a trans character being treated as a punchline. But I didn't know about the prejudices, so they didn't connect with the "you must find this funny" part of my brain. In fact, in the latter case, I didn't find it funny. I found the rest of the movie funny, but not that bit, because I didn't understand why it was supposed to be funny. And when I did understand years later, I still didn't find it funny.

I've now come to fully accept myself for what I am; cis male, bisexual, and while I don't broadcast my sexuality I'm also not the type to be uncomfortable around those that do. If anyone's seen me being stiff, I'm like that around everyone I don't know. It's my shyness showing. But when I get to know something, at least in a 'we know each other by sight' situation, I just see everyone as people/ Straight or queer, anywhere on the spectrum, cis or trans or fluid or neutral, we're all just people. Anyone can be great, anyone can be mean, most are just average and normal.

I'm very fortunate in that I've had an upbringing that left me without internalised homophobia. I have near relations that are on the spectrum, I myself am on the spectrum, and I've made a circle of friends and colleagues who are either within that community or completely open-minded and chill. I'm glad of that, but I think that early internal fluidity about my gender was a seed for what would grow. I used to cringe at that early idea, but now I'm just content to remember when I thought changing my gender was as simple as shapeshifting in fantasy.

All this is relevant now as the LGBTQIA+ community are coming under attack from discriminatory laws, and the world is leaning more conservative in its governorship. Also the world is inured in another time of open and brutal war, where people want stability and are more liable to lash out at groups who are seen as out of the ordinary. Which is why need to remain obvious and push back against laws that seek to belittle and hide us. This applies across the world at the moment, including the UK. Just remember those times in your youth when you had silly ideas. They can be the gateway to a tolerant and inclusive view of the world. And they may help you walk away from a community where you suddenly seen a deeply unpleasant streak of discrimination.

My new video: An analysis of Cocoon

 

I've been intending to make this video since November last year, but other stuff (including a failed project I've written about recently) got in the way. Getting this together into what I believe is my most ambitious video project to date, I hope people will enjoy this analysis of Cocoon, a 2023 puzzle video game that incorporates elements from the abstract, cosmicism, and maybe even a touch of Lem.

In this video, I not only do a rough story rundown of this game -- which features no dialogue and no text and no voice over of any kind -- along with its thematic parallels and some developer titbits on the story. This is truly an analysis, but not one that goes into extremely over-exhaustive detail on why that rock is the shape it is. This isn't one of those. It's meant to entertain, and be digestible, as well as informative.

I hope you enjoy!

Video link

The Hard Truth: Failure Happens

 So....since last month, I've been doing a thing. It's a thing that I thought would be fun and enjoyable and entertaining and all the rest of it. Instead, it's becoming wearing and frustrating and eating up time I want to spend on other things. And it's doing something much worse: it's eating up my ability to actually enjoy what I'm doing.

I'd decided to do something along the lines of a commentated Mass Effect playthrough. Me as a writer, and a fan of the series despite its many issues. And I've reached the point where I'm recording stuff from Mass Effect 3. And now it's hitting me. My mood's been growing worse, my engagement with this project is growing worse, EVERYTHING about this is making me feel worse overall. And it's not just that I'm getting little engagement with this, it's that I'm getting NO engagement. And if I'm doing that, I might as well just enjoy it in private and do stuff I know is sound.

I already created a video for my Author Talks podcast on the series, and I'm not pretty sure I should've just stopped there. I did once do a runthrough for fun of different video games, "AER: Memories of Old" and "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy", but that was different. I had to read out dialogue, I was more engaged. This time, it's starting to feel like going through the motions. And looking back on episodes, I realise I wasn't actually SAYING anything worth saying. It wasn't very funny, it wasn't very engaging, I wasn't very emotionally invested, and there weren't that many bits and pieces that were actually talking about something. I was just tooting my own horn, which...is something I need to do as a writer. But not like that.

Not that this aborted project hasn't taught me things. It's given me more of an insight into putting videos together which will be a lot of help going forward. I've found out some stuff about sound editing that I need to do.

It feels completely demoralising on one front that this project which I've put about two months of my time and effort into is just...nothing. But on the other hand, I can now enjoy going through the rest of Mass Effect 3 as a game that I have fun with. I probably won't abandon this kind of thing entirely, but it won't be for this series. It'll be for something else that I can just...enjoy doing. And talk about properly. Because that's what I like doing with you, talking or writing about things. Encouraging some kind of dialogue within your mind. And this video series wasn't doing that.

Failure is hard, mostly because we both can be judged from outside, but also because we realise that we had the responsibility to a point of realising the project probably wouldn't work. That doesn't mean don't try new things. If I hadn't tried this out, I wouldn't have known that this isn't the format I'm fitted for. I enjoy piecing things together, creating analysis videos, not walkthroughs.

And if you enjoy analysis and walkthroughs, this is a video I'm still very glad I made. And I hope to be able to create something I'm equally proud of going forward. For now, it's time to chill, destress, reclaim Mass Effect as a guilty pleasure I actually enjoy rather than dread going back to, and refocus on the important things in my life. Stay safe, stay happy, and see you again in the future.

For the Love of Words...

 NOTE: Some of the topics discussed herein may be potentially triggering. Discretion advised.

I'm pretty sure there's a percentage of people reading that title who will think I'm going to do something high and mighty. In fact, I'm talking about words and terms that have now entered common parlance that were originally coined or popularised from humble origins in works of fiction, and the joy of finding out about their origins. There's a whole episode of the PBS Studios online show Otherwords dedicated to it. Titled "Popular Words Invented by Authors", the episode covers things like 'twitter', 'chortle' 'tween', 'robot' and 'nerd'. But something the episode doesn't touch on, for understandable reason, is 'gaslight'.

In modern self-help and psychological texts (not deeply scholastic but more popular texts), 'gaslighting' is defined as a phenomenon where one party manipulates another through questioning or undermining their perception of things, creating uncertainty in the self and dependence on the abuser. Because yes, this is a form of abuse, especially when practised consciously. The terms origin is interesting and of itself. The 1938 West End play Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton portrays a criminal husband's attempts to undermine his heiress wife's sanity. While in use in some for since the 1960s, it didn't enter popular speech until the 2010s. I'm sure you can see parallels between the husband's manipulation of reality and how so much of today's mainstream media tries to sell an idea not through persuasive argument, but through manipulation of the facts.

Of course this wasn't the first portrayal in fiction of what could be called 'gaslighting'. To take a well-known example, the entire premise of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the playwright seemingly taking the side of the abuser in this instance, which is one of many reasons why this play is today one of the most controversial and disliked of his corpus. I certainly find it borderline unwatchable today because I'm firmly on Katherine's side in this situation. When she says "and the sky changes even as your mind", I die a little inside. She has been psychologically broken by an abusive partner, and this is supposed to be a comedy. The only way this could possibly be palatable today is if it were an elaborate two-sided game they were playing, with both parties in on the joke. But even then, it's more than questionable.

On a less dour note, something I find amusing is the amount of video game terminology that has seeped into common parlance not as cringy inside jokes, but just as something that's there. 'Game Over' (famously adlibbed by Bill Paxton in Aliens) and 'Level Up' are the two obvious ones, but I'm sure there's other things that come to mind. Of course there is the reverse. 'Grind' may have a specific meaning in games, but the term and its combination of tedium and necessity goes all the way back to when people literally did the daily grind to get enough flour for bread each day. And that's not counting the terms that make reference to pieces of fiction, like the contrast in fictional perspectives terms as "Doylist" and "Watsonian".

This comes round to why I love language, even though it can be infuriating and I thought my ongoing degree studies on English language and literature might dent my appreciation of them. It's not unique to English, but since English is my primary language in both writing and speech, I sense it strongly there. This also extends beyond language specifically and into the speculative realms, for which this episode from Overly Sarcastic Productions is an excellent brief look at how actual technology can be either predicted or completely overlooked by fiction. Or, sadly, the fact that the term "Palantir" is being used in a real-life aplication.

Take joy in language during these trying times. It's helped before. Sometimes looking up the etymology for a term can be extremely engaging and distracting.

Plans: Author Talks S4

 I know, I know, it isn't this huge thing. But this podcast I create, edit publish on YouTube and Spotify is something that has become an interesting exercise as much as a way for me to potentially help publicise myself or vent things. The podcast has changed over time from a complete unscripted flood of words to scripted episodes with more obvious production values.

The thing is, I don't have this series planned out that far by any stretch. Last year's set of eight episodes were pretty ambitious, and I was doing them alongside other real-life stuff including production of 'The Angry House', university work, and real life concerns. This year, university work still takes priority, my own writing work may or may not change course or shift, and I'm definitely heading to BristolCon after a year's needed break.

So until then, I hope you enjoy this playlist that I put together for the podcast. If nothing else, you can see how I went from stumbling first steps to smooth presentation. Find within short story readings, work samples, and general ramblings on a number of topics.

YouTube Link

Spotify Link

Hindsight: It's weird.

So, recently, I've been thinking about three writers whose personalities and actions are more than reprehensible. Yet they're also important in either the development or the popularisation of certain genre aspects. I don't want to mention them by name, because I feel they get too much exposure as it is. Instead, I'll be using initials taken from their names. It won't fool everyone, but it'll be a way for me to discuss the work without giving undue exposure. It is also a chance for me to talk about something that clicked with me recently; the fact that, long before either I or the general public knew about these authors' undesirable traits, I didn't click fully with their work.

Let's start with N. N is a writer who has an intriguing imagination, and for a time was something of a darling in their genre. Now...things have changed, rightly so. But while I was recommended this writer's work for a long time, the few titles I tried just didn't resonate. The novel "N" just never resonated with me on a basic level. A different novel "AG" was similarly odd, in that everyone praised it but I just didn't like it. I also tried a collaborative novel this writer created with someone else, and again I didn't jibe. A different piece of fiction, C, was interesting to experience once but not something I wanted to return to. To be blunt, there was a background to the writing that felt off. I can't describe it any other way without being more explicit about who the writer is.

Now let's move on the next author, K. K created a very popular series that I admit was one of my early reads, something that got me into long-form stories. I experienced the first few through audiobooks with a narration that was incredible. Then I read the remaining parts of the series myself. I won't deny, it was a fun ride, and it's become apocalyptically popular. But the more I went on, the more I realised that early love for it was rooted more in the narrator's performance in the audiobook than the books themselves. Something about the writing just didn't resonate. Were they a factor in my early reading journey? Yes. Would I read K's work again? No, before I fully realised what kind of person K was, I had tried other pieces of fiction they had created, and it didn't resonate. It just seemed so...pedestrian. There wasn't a spark, a feeling of "this writing has depth".

Next and finally we reach L. L is something of a genre codifier for certain aspects of horror (yes, I'm partly spoiling here, but this one's also the oldest author and long dead). This writer had...issues. A lot of issues. Many of them extreme by the standards of their time, let alone ours. And before I knew about them, when I first encountered their writing in an abridged and somewhat sanitised form, I thought "Well I like the ideas, but this writer desperately needed a copyeditor because this prose is all over the place." As I got access to their uncensored work, and better understood where the otherwise compelling content came from, I realised that many of the aspects that are beloved are tied to that writer's now-unacceptable opinions and prejudices.

Now, because I've been comparatively oblique when talking about these writers, you may think I'm ashamed to have had them in my reading life. And that's not true. They were steps in my reading and writing journey for one reason or another, be it a style I didn't jibe with or a motivator to raise my reading ability after many long years of it being subpar due to my dyslexia.

With hindsight (title drop), I see that my instinctive initial feelings about all these writers was perhaps reflective of what they were like as people, and how they very much do not align with my beliefs. It's a strange kind of "I wondered why so-and-so didn't linger or click with me". I've had other similar reactions to certain actors, certain films, certain games. Just an instinctive repulsion. With hindsight, I can say to myself "oh yeah, so and so wasn't a nice person" or "yeah, that figures, the one who wrote this was horrible actually". But that leads to the dangerous habit of claiming foreknowledge or greater media literacy than you actually have.

This is just one person's tale of how, long before I or other people knew of the nasty deeds or opinions associated with these writers, I read their work. And on some deep level I couldn't then explain or understand, it didn't jibe.