I don't know how you read it, but this is how I meant it.
Knock the slag off, with air piston jacked hammers.
When I kicked this off, the intent was to put something down in writing that was blunt force enough to make me need to go further to explain it because I know I do paint myself into corners, at least I feel that I do, to add clarity to what I say. From that spark, the spark of shedding light, everything else developed.
Sitting on a crate opposite you
sitting on another,
printed in yellow block stencil
underneath, 98 mm high explosive x 75.
From that spark I imagined our meeting. What I said before about knocking off slag with jack hammers was a reference to work. From that reference, I immediately jumped into the warzone of language and how often times that is how I view my relationship with the world outside of me. It really is a, put it on whatever scale you want to, some kind of war and this blog is a bit of a foxhole and we are literally sitting on our mental ammunition boxes.
Underneath my ass 150 mm
aye pee
times 30. My feet dangling like our cigarette's
smoke mingling on a windless afternoon.
This verse is kind of a wink and a nod because I do avoid actually smoking as much as possible, but I vape pretty hard. The main thing about it though is that I am prone to large gauge action while most people are happy to work with suppressing fire. My actions are much more leaned toward "kill them all in one sweep of gun barrel barking." I can go accurate, but it is much more fun to swamp them in flames the way I have been. Hence, the large gauge ammo underneath my bum and the smaller gauge, but still deadly, ammunition box underneath the interpolated.
The front is 220 miles out
East as the crow flies.
We will have to refuel
over the mediterranean
and I am looking forward to seeing
how you do it.
This is where we bring in the mechs and how the mechs will get to the front lines, where the action is happening and a short reference to how we wage ware once we get there. This is a reference to the fact that what is about to happen is not new to either of us. We know exactly where it is and what needs to be done to get there. And also speaks to the fact that we have no problem with how the mission succeeds as long as it succeeds.
Our conversation has already broken down
into objectives and way points with a little
bet mixed in to the after action report.
This verse simply speakes to the fact that we've been there before. Our conversation does not need to be enumerated here, only indicated, hinted at, ellipsed. We've done it so many times that the only thing that needs to be done is counting up how many people, targets, installations, were destroyed by the time we succeeded.
It is unfair
to where we land and to whom we mount against,
because they are not in on the game.
Again, this verse is a reference to the previous verse, assuming we both got back home after the operation safe and sound
Us both waiting for the KA-CHUNK
of couplings leaving us in free fall
to where our bombardier's decided
we could do our best
against the populace.
This verse is a credit to the people who get us to the target zone and an acknowledgement that we do not neccessarily know who exactly it is we are going up against inside of our mechs, however. However we have full faith that they, the pilots and/or controllers of our evening will not drop us into a situation that our equipment and skills directly related to our equipment cannot handle well, if not outright destroy them.
A little cheers of coffee.
A little double check of flight suits.
Is the mic where it needs to be?
Trial fit the helmet again
after a quadruple check;
be sure the reticle is in line.
Double check my nail polish
before the glove comes on.
Smash shoulders and opposing tattoos,
before the top of the flight suit
is zipped on.
This is an inside joke to a close friend who helped me tattoo myself. It is part inside joke and part coffee joke. "the best way to start your day" when you are going over your manifest for the day. You know whatever it is that is required of your skills will take all of your skills and you have to be sure when the time comes to pull the trigger, that trigger cannot fail, take practice shots.
Finish the coffee, with pills in our mouths.
They will learn what we live for,
they will learn what is loud.
They will learn that you do need coffee and that you do live for challenges and that you do know what horrible drugs are and that you are not about it.
Our flights will be long. I'll sleep inside the mech
along the way. I don't know what happens to you
while we wait out the sandbox for play.
The thup thup thup thup thup thup
I can hear, because I never turn off
the audio input once I am strapped in.
We both understand how to get to the battlefield. I don't understand how you are so calm. I feel like you've been here before and I have not.
For me, it is a very long long long grin
to watch you work. Guilty.
You know I have not been there before but youare looking forward to my struggling.
Watching, zone cleared against spear chuckers
who happened to have come into
a fushionable pile
and needed reckoning before
something terrible happened,
you break out a "grenade"
two tons strong and willing to-\
-/Christ, where is the pin?
A mixture of edge of tommorrow and starship troopers the book. In Starship Troopers the book they had miniature nukes. Miniature nukes could clear an entire area as long as they got clear. In edge of tomorrow the whole deal was differremt.
Mech against mech. Dust to dust.
Die another day.
Why can you not understand I do
feel the same?
This is myself, dropped onto this planet trying to stop you and yrtying to fighht you hardcore because what I would like to do is save everyone but I cannot. What I would also like to do is kill everyone but I can also cannot. I'm good with figthing you though. I am good with where you RE COMING FROM.
Fire the shell in my mechanized palm
to fire it just that strong
and knock it four miles out
to change the time of day from moonlit to
high noon in a fire ball that could eat city blocks,
but she's in the air. Fair. But "what the f@#$?"
Apologies, but I turned the palm and the gun built in to accelerate it against the what? The elbow cannon that went off and blew the palm muzzle off to an odd degree shot it off toward the dark horrizon and it lit up like noon day.
Overkill......... underneath your left foot,
underneath your left pedal inside your cockpit and
underneath you left foot outside your cockpit
you are grinding human flesh into a paste. And now is
the fucking time.
Do you remember being small? I do.
You don't get conscripted by chance.
Hearing him over the comm, realizing that the action he just did with the arm of his mech just required him to smush some people with the foot of his mech....
You find detonators. You stumble upon detonators.
Land mines Mines. I've never met a land mine like you.
Me on the ground amongst the flattened human beings trying to offer encouragement to my friend (the other pilot) while shaking my head at the damage he did without thinking about the power at his fingertips.
I will know how to move forward
regardless ,after you.
Everyone talks big. Yack, yack, yak yak yak, waaaan.
Him trying to make another move and myself watching, back in my own mech while our communicators crackle and guns go boom.
Cruiser. Angry. There was someone else here. I will find them, sonavubitch. Fail. My fault. Reset.
Reset.
Reset.
Reset.
Me trying to wipe my memory and undo the entire operation in my head. Each reset a muzzle flash.
Clutch in. Match revs. Time to the light. Gas pedal. Clutch out.
Release brake.
Gas pedal down.
Slowly.
Burnout.
Me, over the comm link trying to coach him and failing, instead focusing on what I can do. The work.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label middle of the road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle of the road. Show all posts
10/30/11
Every Day I'm Shoveling
First of all, why is "every day" not one word by now? Or the various "every" constructions? If we as a people can come to accept "bling" as a word with real meaning, how can we not accept words with real meanings that don't lose those meaning with the space dropped out? A space between words is a fence between neighbors and fences are necessary. I'm not saying take out all the spaces and make every sentence a word, though that would be awesome. You could say what you wanted to say whenever you wanted to say it in like ten words or less every time. But instead of an organized neighborhood of streets and cross walks when you looked at a page you'd see a mosh pit. Every time you spoke to someone it would basically be you sharing your personal rave and trying to combine parties when they spoke back and that would just be... ...awesome. Also awesomely unintelligible. For a generation or two. Ultimately though it would probably make our children smarter, or at least allow them to think differently. It would change politics. It would make it pretty much impossible for foreigners to assimilate and then you really would need to learn other languages because that guy that only speaks Spanish or only speaks Cantonese would not be able to talk to you at all in broken English because the language would be so agglutinated and dense that it would be impossible for anything but an uncreased brain to grasp it with ease and build into it.
Second of all: why can't I sit in a park with a shovel after the sun goes down? That is just unfair. I walk halfway across town because I saw an awesome shovel out for trash and I forgot to go back and get it until the evening and besides my hands were full at the time. I walk halfway across town, granted I live in a pretty small town and get this nice, heavy handled, spade shovel that would be absolutely perfect for some yard work I'll have to do later and on the way home I cut through the local park and it's a pretty nice night out and the hills are all dotted with little Saturday evening fires of people in doors so I sit for a moment on a bench with my new sweet ass shovel, staring up and letting my mind wander over who those people might be and just enjoying the weather cold enough to drizzle the air with the smell of fireplaces. I've never had a fireplace of my own. I like to imagine what it's like. I saw a duraflame log once, one of those fake wood things for people who don't like to burn real wood I guess. Or maybe for people who like fire places, but don't want to do the things that having a fireplace requires you to do. That really is the story of modern America. I want things, but I don't want to do the things having those things will require me to do.
Anyway, I'm sitting there and a car comes rolling up real slow and I don't look back to see who it is. I know it's a car. I know that pebble crunch anywhere. I also know people don't like it when I make sudden moves, and besides I have nothing to hide. I'm just a dude with a shovel. I keep listening to this car rolling closer and then, in the background of my mind because I'm still thinking about the hillsides and the gorgeous night, but my head is also running through all of the sound clips of tires and pebbles and speed equations, I realize the tires are doing police cruiser and/or drive by speed and/or jump out and stuff in the backseat kidnapping speed. So I stand up and I figure one of those three things will happen and sure enough the flashlights come on and the questions start in and why the hell do you have to shine that shit directly in my eye sockets anyway. I have a shovel. I'm not running anywhere with a damned shovel. Or at least not far anyway. So now I know. It is officially not okay with society to just be a dude in a park with a shovel between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM.
I haven't really been eating. Not my fault though. I have been eating. Because I'm pretty sure I give off this pheromone when I don't eat. I'm kind of obsessed with how I smell. I try to match it with what I've been doing and putting into my body. Not farts. Those are totally easy. I'm pretty sure you can tell how someone's body functions based solely on how their ears smell. Well maybe not solely. And you probably have to lick them like licking a nine volt battery to see if it works to get the full suite of diagnostic information available through smells. What am I talking about? I get lost in theory sometimes. So I have been eating some. Enough to keep things going, but little more. Mainly because my sink doesn't work and I don't want to have to slog all my dishes down six flights of steps to the sink that does work. Naturally the answer to that problem is: don't do anything that requires the use of dishes. So I've been skipping a bunch of meals. I don't really miss them. I do miss them in that it makes it a lot easier to stay awake. Staying awake has become a full time job again. Partly because of the lack of intake and hypermile-ing my body, but also because dreaming has been so incredible I can't help but want to be there constantly. It's becoming less of a second life and more of a single joined seamless in phase existence. You know people that complain about how they "already did that" in a dream and then like have to go to work again? That used to happen to me. Long ago. Now it never happens.
Of course I feel completely unrested because I am basically alive and in phased consciousness for twenty hours a day, but the people I've met and things I do... it's been ridiculous. Also pointless to tell you about it in those terms because you weren't there. Definitely a "dude I saw this movie and it was awesome, you should have been there, but let me continue to talk about the movie in terms of superlative adjectives because if I frame it in enough paper thin hammered gold you will totally be inspired by the blank space inside the frame containing the picture only I can see."
So the dish thing I learned from my dog, Jack, rest his angry, fun loving, visitor hating, best friend for life, little Shelty bones. We would go on weekend road trips and he didn't want to poop in the house so he would basically not eat or drink, though we always left him plenty of food and water, until we got back. Maybe it was equal parts "if I don't eat then I won't have to poo" and vigil for me. "That's giving an animal too much credit," shut your face. I can't give that old bastard enough credit. He was the man. Seriously. Except for his fear of thunder and lightning and his rage toward fireworks he and I were basically two of a kind and alternated top dog roles depending on the situation, but we were basically 1 and 1A. Learned that little trick of no input equals no output, body wise, from him. More bravery per pound than most people who are not also Marines. Probably more stupidity per pound, but we were, again 1 and 1A on that front too. If you are a cat person I don't hate you, but you have no idea what you're missing.
Which is why I should never be a parent. Me and my kids will be the baddest family on the block. Partly because I would be way too fair to them. With my dog, he would bring me a sock for tug of war and being like three times his size, maybe four if I just ate a couple burritos, the only fair thing to do was meet him at his level. I figured his teeth were probably a lot stronger than mine, what with his eating bones from time to time (never understood that, but I do have a propensity for walking around with spoons in my mouth), maybe four or five times so naturally I used my teeth for tug of war. If I lost a couple, no big deal, so we got it on. "I'm a take you down to China town!" That's how we threw down. Gotta be fair. So instead of setting a curfew I would probably tell my kids they can stay out or stay up as late as they want, but they have to fight me for it and if I win then they have to go to bed when I say. I wouldn't kick the crap out of them. I never actually hit Jack. I would scuff 'em a little. More like lioness to cubs kind of stuff. Only minus the breast feeding. Do they even do that? Or do they come out of the womb craving a hearty meal of lightly chewed, but still fresh, Giraffe. Instead of telling my kids not to go set fires, I'll probably stop them at the door and say something like "make sure you bring fireplace matches so you don't have to stand too close to the accelerant, because I'm not driving up to the woods to put you out." Sure, I wouldn't let them blow themselves up. I'm not a monster. But I will make sure they know how to set a charge properly and it would be the best father/son or father/daughter tandem ever. We will be feared. Probably. Anyway. What I'm saying is every day I'm shoveling so don't cause any problems and there won't be any problems. I'm just a dude with a shovel out for a walk.
Trying to get back to writing fiction, but it's been a long and heady road full of potholes. I'm not dawdling as much as I am reflecting. I wrote a fairly long draft of a science fiction short called Scanlon, but I haven't back over it in almost eight days now. I'm trying though. I apologize. I will try harder. Life's too short not to try, so don't spend all of your time "doing".
///Deadelus - "Taking Wing"
Second of all: why can't I sit in a park with a shovel after the sun goes down? That is just unfair. I walk halfway across town because I saw an awesome shovel out for trash and I forgot to go back and get it until the evening and besides my hands were full at the time. I walk halfway across town, granted I live in a pretty small town and get this nice, heavy handled, spade shovel that would be absolutely perfect for some yard work I'll have to do later and on the way home I cut through the local park and it's a pretty nice night out and the hills are all dotted with little Saturday evening fires of people in doors so I sit for a moment on a bench with my new sweet ass shovel, staring up and letting my mind wander over who those people might be and just enjoying the weather cold enough to drizzle the air with the smell of fireplaces. I've never had a fireplace of my own. I like to imagine what it's like. I saw a duraflame log once, one of those fake wood things for people who don't like to burn real wood I guess. Or maybe for people who like fire places, but don't want to do the things that having a fireplace requires you to do. That really is the story of modern America. I want things, but I don't want to do the things having those things will require me to do.
Anyway, I'm sitting there and a car comes rolling up real slow and I don't look back to see who it is. I know it's a car. I know that pebble crunch anywhere. I also know people don't like it when I make sudden moves, and besides I have nothing to hide. I'm just a dude with a shovel. I keep listening to this car rolling closer and then, in the background of my mind because I'm still thinking about the hillsides and the gorgeous night, but my head is also running through all of the sound clips of tires and pebbles and speed equations, I realize the tires are doing police cruiser and/or drive by speed and/or jump out and stuff in the backseat kidnapping speed. So I stand up and I figure one of those three things will happen and sure enough the flashlights come on and the questions start in and why the hell do you have to shine that shit directly in my eye sockets anyway. I have a shovel. I'm not running anywhere with a damned shovel. Or at least not far anyway. So now I know. It is officially not okay with society to just be a dude in a park with a shovel between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM.
I haven't really been eating. Not my fault though. I have been eating. Because I'm pretty sure I give off this pheromone when I don't eat. I'm kind of obsessed with how I smell. I try to match it with what I've been doing and putting into my body. Not farts. Those are totally easy. I'm pretty sure you can tell how someone's body functions based solely on how their ears smell. Well maybe not solely. And you probably have to lick them like licking a nine volt battery to see if it works to get the full suite of diagnostic information available through smells. What am I talking about? I get lost in theory sometimes. So I have been eating some. Enough to keep things going, but little more. Mainly because my sink doesn't work and I don't want to have to slog all my dishes down six flights of steps to the sink that does work. Naturally the answer to that problem is: don't do anything that requires the use of dishes. So I've been skipping a bunch of meals. I don't really miss them. I do miss them in that it makes it a lot easier to stay awake. Staying awake has become a full time job again. Partly because of the lack of intake and hypermile-ing my body, but also because dreaming has been so incredible I can't help but want to be there constantly. It's becoming less of a second life and more of a single joined seamless in phase existence. You know people that complain about how they "already did that" in a dream and then like have to go to work again? That used to happen to me. Long ago. Now it never happens.
Of course I feel completely unrested because I am basically alive and in phased consciousness for twenty hours a day, but the people I've met and things I do... it's been ridiculous. Also pointless to tell you about it in those terms because you weren't there. Definitely a "dude I saw this movie and it was awesome, you should have been there, but let me continue to talk about the movie in terms of superlative adjectives because if I frame it in enough paper thin hammered gold you will totally be inspired by the blank space inside the frame containing the picture only I can see."
So the dish thing I learned from my dog, Jack, rest his angry, fun loving, visitor hating, best friend for life, little Shelty bones. We would go on weekend road trips and he didn't want to poop in the house so he would basically not eat or drink, though we always left him plenty of food and water, until we got back. Maybe it was equal parts "if I don't eat then I won't have to poo" and vigil for me. "That's giving an animal too much credit," shut your face. I can't give that old bastard enough credit. He was the man. Seriously. Except for his fear of thunder and lightning and his rage toward fireworks he and I were basically two of a kind and alternated top dog roles depending on the situation, but we were basically 1 and 1A. Learned that little trick of no input equals no output, body wise, from him. More bravery per pound than most people who are not also Marines. Probably more stupidity per pound, but we were, again 1 and 1A on that front too. If you are a cat person I don't hate you, but you have no idea what you're missing.
Which is why I should never be a parent. Me and my kids will be the baddest family on the block. Partly because I would be way too fair to them. With my dog, he would bring me a sock for tug of war and being like three times his size, maybe four if I just ate a couple burritos, the only fair thing to do was meet him at his level. I figured his teeth were probably a lot stronger than mine, what with his eating bones from time to time (never understood that, but I do have a propensity for walking around with spoons in my mouth), maybe four or five times so naturally I used my teeth for tug of war. If I lost a couple, no big deal, so we got it on. "I'm a take you down to China town!" That's how we threw down. Gotta be fair. So instead of setting a curfew I would probably tell my kids they can stay out or stay up as late as they want, but they have to fight me for it and if I win then they have to go to bed when I say. I wouldn't kick the crap out of them. I never actually hit Jack. I would scuff 'em a little. More like lioness to cubs kind of stuff. Only minus the breast feeding. Do they even do that? Or do they come out of the womb craving a hearty meal of lightly chewed, but still fresh, Giraffe. Instead of telling my kids not to go set fires, I'll probably stop them at the door and say something like "make sure you bring fireplace matches so you don't have to stand too close to the accelerant, because I'm not driving up to the woods to put you out." Sure, I wouldn't let them blow themselves up. I'm not a monster. But I will make sure they know how to set a charge properly and it would be the best father/son or father/daughter tandem ever. We will be feared. Probably. Anyway. What I'm saying is every day I'm shoveling so don't cause any problems and there won't be any problems. I'm just a dude with a shovel out for a walk.
Trying to get back to writing fiction, but it's been a long and heady road full of potholes. I'm not dawdling as much as I am reflecting. I wrote a fairly long draft of a science fiction short called Scanlon, but I haven't back over it in almost eight days now. I'm trying though. I apologize. I will try harder. Life's too short not to try, so don't spend all of your time "doing".
///Deadelus - "Taking Wing"
6/14/11
Skyline, Story Telling and How It's Put
Been watching movies. Just saw Skyline and I didn't not like it. As far as alien invasion films go it's nice to see the aliens win sometimes because, honestly, a star faring species would in all likelihood own man kind pretty hard. There were a couple of things that stood out though as I started fast forwarding to the end to see where it was all going.
The story telling struck me as pretty flat. When the guy from Scrubs died I didn't really feel one way or the other about it. I know I was supposed to feel "aw no, the main character's best friend just got eaten and now he's all alone in the world with his pregnant girl friend who seems to get randomly upset about things people are supposed to be upset about when they're pregnant." However, all I could really think about was how he probably could have made it to safety had his friend not body checked him with a bro hug in a weird attempt to pull him to safety that would, had they been playing basketball, have been an offensive foul. Rescue fail. If someone is running from a giant brain eating semi-sentient mech warrior thingy you probably shouldn't run directly into their only path of egress, whatever your intention.
Ultimately, what it came down to, I decided, was that no one in the film had any real motive to do anything they did beyond the fact that they were supposed to. Which sounds like a reasonable reason to do anything at all, but in terms of telling a story it is the worst thing in the world. You could almost see the writer pulling the strings of the puppets and animating the actions and progressions by sheer harm of will. Not unacceptable, but noticeable. I think that is one of the chief challenges of story telling and writing. Making the strings invisible. Growing motives. Building back story and momentum so that actions are not knee jerk responses to chisels and hammers on a blank canvas.
It was an interesting film. The other thing that stood out pretty starkly by the film's close was that the aliens could have been replaced by just about anything. It could have been a movie about tornadoes. Or a tsunami. Or any natural disaster. Or any sort of invasion. Absent the plot device of them needing brains for whatever reason and you basically have an empty template of two dimensional good looking twenty and thirty somethings trying to survive a blank social upheaval. What sets something like Colossus: The Forbin Project or District 9 apart from Skyline is the construction and development of the nemesis and the invader as a character unto itself. If the voiced actors in Skyline are by and large two dimensional, the invaders are one dimensional and that sort of held it back, though the action was interesting. The film could probably have greatly benefited from thirty more minutes of plot development and enrichment of the hero's foil. If the deaths of the characters are to hold weight as lynch pins in the plot, their lives have to hold weight too and if their lives do not then the executioners must.
Which is what I strive to learn how to do. Craft that balance. And I do not believe I succeed often enough. And so I keep working at it, because it is important to me and the stories I want to tell. Too much of the action and dialog in the film was foreseeable from miles away and though interesting and visually entertaining, it was not much more than that. The other thing that sort of stung me a little bit was some of the final scenes. Why do the brains glow at all? Is that really the best way to extract brains from things? Why not harvest animals instead or in addition? Given the difficulty of the operation, why not find somewhere else less developed? If stars can be crossed, why inferior human stock at all? What about when the brain supply runs out, as it seems the brains burn out so quickly with the difficulty and energy required to procure them in the first place? And I think what really annoyed me was that with all of their technology and apparent ability to regenerate themselves, why were they not just synthesizing brain matter in massive orbital laboratories or something? In the end I was sort of hoping for a larger theme to solidify, but it never did and to end the review I think that is what sent me looking for why I felt a little off after watching it in the first place. Plus, I'm pretty sure if, say Donald Trump, wanted to harvest human brains, he could probably find a better way to do it then creating a giant pile and brute force searching each for brain matter. Just gotta put your mind to it.
Story telling isn't easy. It was an okay movie, but I wouldn't watch it twice. So that's part of why I work on writing so much. I want people to want to read my stories twice.
While I was wrapping this up I noticed the tag still on the blinds I put up recently. The warning tag about the cords. "young children can STRANGLE in cord and bead chain loops," it reads. And I thought, yeah they can, but if you wanted it to really hit home it should probably say "young children can be STRANGLED with." But then I thought about it some more. That's probably not what you should say. People are strange. People like suggestions. People sometimes take suggestions they shouldn't. People sometimes file law suits they shouldn't. How weird would it be to have someone murder their children because a dangling tag on a cord gave them the idea. How much stranger would it be to have the family members of the accused sue the company for giving the perpetrator the idea. I'm sure stranger and more ridiculous things have happened. Like movies where everyone does what they do because if they didn't there wouldn't be anything to show and tell. Silly times. A fine diversion.
///Five Deez - "Sexual for Elizabeth" sometimes the best stories are told in sounds that don't make words. It's all in how it's put.
The story telling struck me as pretty flat. When the guy from Scrubs died I didn't really feel one way or the other about it. I know I was supposed to feel "aw no, the main character's best friend just got eaten and now he's all alone in the world with his pregnant girl friend who seems to get randomly upset about things people are supposed to be upset about when they're pregnant." However, all I could really think about was how he probably could have made it to safety had his friend not body checked him with a bro hug in a weird attempt to pull him to safety that would, had they been playing basketball, have been an offensive foul. Rescue fail. If someone is running from a giant brain eating semi-sentient mech warrior thingy you probably shouldn't run directly into their only path of egress, whatever your intention.
Ultimately, what it came down to, I decided, was that no one in the film had any real motive to do anything they did beyond the fact that they were supposed to. Which sounds like a reasonable reason to do anything at all, but in terms of telling a story it is the worst thing in the world. You could almost see the writer pulling the strings of the puppets and animating the actions and progressions by sheer harm of will. Not unacceptable, but noticeable. I think that is one of the chief challenges of story telling and writing. Making the strings invisible. Growing motives. Building back story and momentum so that actions are not knee jerk responses to chisels and hammers on a blank canvas.
It was an interesting film. The other thing that stood out pretty starkly by the film's close was that the aliens could have been replaced by just about anything. It could have been a movie about tornadoes. Or a tsunami. Or any natural disaster. Or any sort of invasion. Absent the plot device of them needing brains for whatever reason and you basically have an empty template of two dimensional good looking twenty and thirty somethings trying to survive a blank social upheaval. What sets something like Colossus: The Forbin Project or District 9 apart from Skyline is the construction and development of the nemesis and the invader as a character unto itself. If the voiced actors in Skyline are by and large two dimensional, the invaders are one dimensional and that sort of held it back, though the action was interesting. The film could probably have greatly benefited from thirty more minutes of plot development and enrichment of the hero's foil. If the deaths of the characters are to hold weight as lynch pins in the plot, their lives have to hold weight too and if their lives do not then the executioners must.
Which is what I strive to learn how to do. Craft that balance. And I do not believe I succeed often enough. And so I keep working at it, because it is important to me and the stories I want to tell. Too much of the action and dialog in the film was foreseeable from miles away and though interesting and visually entertaining, it was not much more than that. The other thing that sort of stung me a little bit was some of the final scenes. Why do the brains glow at all? Is that really the best way to extract brains from things? Why not harvest animals instead or in addition? Given the difficulty of the operation, why not find somewhere else less developed? If stars can be crossed, why inferior human stock at all? What about when the brain supply runs out, as it seems the brains burn out so quickly with the difficulty and energy required to procure them in the first place? And I think what really annoyed me was that with all of their technology and apparent ability to regenerate themselves, why were they not just synthesizing brain matter in massive orbital laboratories or something? In the end I was sort of hoping for a larger theme to solidify, but it never did and to end the review I think that is what sent me looking for why I felt a little off after watching it in the first place. Plus, I'm pretty sure if, say Donald Trump, wanted to harvest human brains, he could probably find a better way to do it then creating a giant pile and brute force searching each for brain matter. Just gotta put your mind to it.
Story telling isn't easy. It was an okay movie, but I wouldn't watch it twice. So that's part of why I work on writing so much. I want people to want to read my stories twice.
While I was wrapping this up I noticed the tag still on the blinds I put up recently. The warning tag about the cords. "young children can STRANGLE in cord and bead chain loops," it reads. And I thought, yeah they can, but if you wanted it to really hit home it should probably say "young children can be STRANGLED with." But then I thought about it some more. That's probably not what you should say. People are strange. People like suggestions. People sometimes take suggestions they shouldn't. People sometimes file law suits they shouldn't. How weird would it be to have someone murder their children because a dangling tag on a cord gave them the idea. How much stranger would it be to have the family members of the accused sue the company for giving the perpetrator the idea. I'm sure stranger and more ridiculous things have happened. Like movies where everyone does what they do because if they didn't there wouldn't be anything to show and tell. Silly times. A fine diversion.
///Five Deez - "Sexual for Elizabeth" sometimes the best stories are told in sounds that don't make words. It's all in how it's put.
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