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Two Shows

I want to take a moment and talk about two anime/mangas that have taken up my interest. First is Kusuriya no Hitorigoto or The Apothecary Diaries. Set in some...era in China I'm assuming, a young girl named Maomao gets caught up in the incidents and crimes happening in the royal palace. Maomao is a captured servent girl who becomes the royal poison tester, a dangerous job that she takes to like a fish to water. In her previous job, she was the apprentice of a medicine man so her interests in poison and chemicals is a natural high for her. If you know anything about the typical royal palace, you know that it's filled with drama, death, and politics. Maomao has to navigate these incidents without drawing too much attention to herself. Her interest is in the medical aspects behind the poisoning. In fact, she's not only willing to be poisoned, she wants to study the effects. She's akin to a female Dr. House in her zest for life is in the disease, not the person afflicted. S...
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Gibbous and the Future that is unwritten

Lovecraft's work has been done to death and when that happens, parodies pop out of the media. It's amusing how something that once stoked fear and dread into people can be turned on it's head into a silly story. That's the case with Gibbous: A Cthulhu Adventure. I've talked about Buzz Kerwan's adventures in the parodied world of Lovecraft but something struck me in the latest chapter that I had to write about. Our protagonist Buzz meets a new character named Hope who invites him to reread the Necronomicon he's carrying around. Buzz has been hesitant ever since it gave his cat "Kitteh" the gift of gab but he indulges her prompt. The book is blank and new words are being written. Hope explains that the Necronomicon is a book that is never finished because the end hasn't come yet. I was struck by how interesting of a concept this was for the Lovecraftian Lore. Lovecraft hints at what's in the ancient tome besides a few passages. But for the bo...
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Lovecraft's Astronauts 2.

I finished listening to the other half of Quinn's podcast and it went as I expeted. The second half wasn't as interesting because it covered the comparisons between Lovecraft's work and Ridley's film. For the record, I think Prometheus is an ok film that was shoehorned into the Alien series. Quinn seems to share my sentiments about the picture and even enlightened me on a few aspects I didn't know or remembered about the film. The original idea was about space travellers looking for their god. The backlore of the film states that they've been looking at ancient pictures and cave paintings that seem to point to a place they've located in the stars. This also alligns with the fact that something happned 2000 years ago which is supposed to relate to the time of Jesus. So, if theory is to be believed, after slaying the savior the alien gods sent to us, we, in our hubris, are trying to find answers to our origin. Quinn pointed out the similarities to this genetic...
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Lovecraft's Astronauts.

Yesterday I was listening to Quinn's Ideas Podcast. It's a literary presentation of connections and ideas. I've been a fan of Quinn's work since his channel was originally called "Ideas of Fire and Ice." That title dried up the around when season seven of the Game of Thrones premiered. I can't blame him. The show and the books that Quinn had based his channel on were unsatisfactory or incomplete. The channel was rebranded to Quinn's Ideas and the creator went out seeking other scifi and fantasy books to scratch that itch. And it seems he's found it. Not only has Quinn become a resource for my own ideas, he's exposed me to books like Annihilation, that have opened new doors to me for entertainment and research. I recently dicovered his podcast and listened to Quinn and a friend discuss the connections between Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," and Ridley's Scott's "Prometheus." Quinn themed the discussion ...
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Talk with self

So, what do you want? Perfection. Other than that I'm not sure. I don't think I can give you that. I want you to tell me everything you want. You're not good enough to be Stephen King. If this was King, the writing would have flowed like water. If you were Harlan Ellison, your story would have been imaginative and heartbreaking. If you were Brandon Sanderson, you would have written it already. I can't write at their level yet and I won't unless you let me practice. What good is practice? We don't get better. I saw your Cain story, it wasn't perfect, therefore it was unworthy of being worked on. It's unfinished, not crap. Don't quote things to me.  What are you afraid of? Everything. Anxiety, judgement, embarrassment, nothing we work on comes out right, we don't know how to write. That's true, I do feel anxiety when I write. I wish I didn't. And yes, I'm afraid of embarrassing myself. I've made a fool of myself before. And I'll...
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Break

There's a lot I want to write about and things I want to do but I'm just not in the best state of mind right now. I need to let myself heal or let the medicine kick in before I can start writing again. I know that I'm giving up time but it's important that I fix myself or I'll spiral into a hole again. So, for now, I'm taking a small break from writing. I'll still try to post here but writing my Cain story is going to have to wait until I can do it without beating myself up. 
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Self Update

I don't feel like writing for Cain today so I'm working on the blog because I don't care what happens here. I wonder if I ever did care. It's just that it feels like I'm ripping something out of my soul whenever I try to write for real. It' doesn't feel as fun as this writing but it does feel more important. I put so much pressure on myself that I expect Stephen King quality when I'm still writing what feels like fanfiction.  So, this is a test to see if I can work on my "plan." There's this game that came out years ago called Pikmin. It's about an astronaut named Olimar who's the size of a penny who crashes on Earth. Being from another world, he knows nothing about our planet but finds a small creature that's willing to help him, a Pikmin. The game play tasks the player in collecting many of these creatures. Red for fire, yellow for electricity, and blue for water. Gather enough of them and you can use them to gather resources....
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