So, I've mentioned in the past that I've watched, or am watching, My Hero Academia, like most folks who are into Anime. And I'm all caught up on that as far as the Anime. I didn't start reading the manga and have been doing my best to avoid spoilers for the show in general. This is not to say I don't read manga for the shows I'm interested in. It just tends to be more of a "This hasn't updated in xyz time so go read the manga." Like Berserk. I watched the 90s anime and loved it, especially the bloopers they have. And so I went to read it and was more than a little pleased to see how long it was. But that was a problem, because I caught up and the fans weren't translating fast enough. First world problems, I know. But again, I read the manga generally when everything is done so I can see what was different. Now that stated, I started watching My Hero Academia: Vigilantes and I am struck by how unnecessary this is to the overall universe of MHA. There were questions answered that probably few people wanted to know the answer to. For instance, how did Stain lose his nose? Did you know he went psycho and cut it off? Yeah, he did. Which is so much cooler than losing it in a fight with a "false hero" and really cementing his entire life. But nope, he has one run-in with freaky fist grandpa and decides to mutilate himself. Cause reasons. Then you add in the entire drug that enhances quirks thing. Which we already saw in main continuity with the Overhaul arc. Sure it's All For One behind it, that's cool. And technically that arc is dealing with the power loss drug that he's developing. But the Trigger drug they're using seems to be a more potent version, and appears to be in a near infinite quantity that it doesn't make sense they'd be using the weaker US stuff unless they just have no money. So far, 2/3rds of the way through the first season and I'm not seeing any reason other than this guy was working under Kōhei Horikoshi. I don't fault the creator of Vigilantes. The same thing happened with Dragon Ball with Toyotarou where everything he's ever done has been in the Dragon Ball "universe." Broadly because some of it is his own but it's still more or less Dragon Ball. And just like in Dragon Ball, the apprentice isn't confident enough to stand on their own in a meaningful way. Now that said, Kohei has several other pieces of work but they've come back to the MHA world multiple times. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you just want to revisit familiar properties and make your own spin on it. I'm personally rewatching Person of Interest for like the 5th time. And I keep shaking my head at the forced love interaction between Mr. Reese and Carter and then Mr. Reese and the psychologist. You already had a perfectly good love interaction you could build on with Zoe. The other two feel forced, and rushed, and then ultimately dropped. As an author I look at that as a waste of the potential. Now I know because of TV not everyone can be there for everything, but sometimes adding something doesn't make it right for the story. And that's what MHA: Vigilantes feels like. That what is happening in this doesn't feel right for the story. The exposition episode about Rhode Island having the first licensed heroes. Cool I guess, but it wasn't a piece of trivia I wanted to know, or even cared about. I will say it's nice that it's not in Japan. In the 80s and sometimes in the 90s it felt like Japan never left its own shores in Anime/Manga. But overall, I feel robbed watching Vigilantes. And there's no real good reason why. Like, I was asking in the original if Deku was so fixated on being a hero without a quirk why didn't he work out? Why didn't he train? Why didn't he put in the time and effort to work both his mind AND his body? The answer is because he would have become Knuckleduster, and I guess they couldn't have had two of them. But also in the original there's the entire lecture they have about going off and fighting Stain, and how because they're not licensed heroes that it's wrong... somehow. I've had a blog post about how I can't be a hero/nice guy. Because seriously if I had a super power I'd be using them already to save/help people and if some dog-headed POS tells me that using my powers to save someone and the bad guy got hurt is wrong, that would immediately make me never want to get registered. I'd become Rorschach from Watchmen. Do I get it that you need laws and regulations to have order? Yes. Do I agree that I should get in trouble for doing the right thing? No. Which is why it's so weird that you can get sued for saving someone's life. But that's a potential blog for people who understand laws. I'm just saying as far as Vigilantes is concerned, I feel like we could have had way more chances to tell the story focusing on the hero work pitfalls and hurdles and deal with the fact that we see them struggling to live a life... oh wait. We do have that. It's called Marvel/DC Comics where our super heroes, pre-civil war, were just going about their day pretending they're normal people and then when danger hits it's spidey time! This blog post is probably doing an injustice to this creator, I applaud them for producing 6 different manga, although 2 are MHA and one could be seen as an adjacent one. And I applaud them for winning like 14 awards, again for MHA. I'm an unknown who's doing this so they're worlds above me creatively. So we can probably just blame the corporations who want to keep churning out safe and familiar properties. I think it was best said by Brodie in the Jay and Silent Bob reboot: "Studios have given up on new ideas entirely in favor of building multi-movie universes that breed brand-loyal customers from cradle to grave." So, maybe that's why I don't really like MHA: Vigilantes. I wasn't in favor of making an entire franchise with multiple but same spinoffs for this. But what do I know? I'm just some random dork on the internet. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

You can thank Beetlejuice Dos for this blog entry. Because of the writing of this on June 15th, I had finally gotten around to seeing this on Netflix. At some point I’ll watch Wild Robot. But this movie struck me as oddly meh. And I’ll try to explain it but also point to a few other movies to highlight my point, hopefully. I do tend to ramble on. So one of the things that struck me as odd in this movie was the choice of music. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched the original but there were 2 stand out themes in the original, Day-O and Jump On The Line. But in this one they had a number of songs that I felt they were hoping would catch the stand out moment of Day-O. And the Macarthur Park song, or as I immediately recognized it as Weird Al’s Jurassic Park, was just a bloated mess. Here's the thing that I think the creators of the sequel lost sight of what Beetlejuice was. When it came out, there was nothing like that in the theaters. And the Day-O scene comes very literally out of left field and provides some energy to the second half of the movie. In the sequel they had the Macarthur park bit, they had a scene where the man himself is lip syncing to like Wonderwall or whatever and then they played Day-O for when Charles died. As if that’s not disrespectful enough, they killed him off camera, but to lower him into the ground while a chorus sings Day-O? I mean, I get it. The actor is a pedo and there’s no chance in hell he was coming back, but they could have just skipped it. A simple line of “Oh, Daddy went to the seashells and saw a new bird.” Implying that the husband was unfaithful but still calling back to the whole bird watching thing. But anyway, the big dance number in the sequel doesn’t do anything. At All. In fact, it had me after a minute wandering away to go do the dishes. And that’s the last thing you want in your entertainment. Like if it’s good, you’ll pause it. But there were a couple of times I walked away for five to ten minutes because it was just meh. And It wasn’t like I really missed anything. The B Man isn’t driving the story, Lydia is just a pale shadow of herself, the movie follows the child who might as well be the cartoon version of Lydia. So chunks of the movie were just padding. Now to pivot slightly. Matrix. Matrix when it came out was a breath of inspiration and awesomeness. Yeah, Dark City had just come out but between the two Dark City is, surprisingly, more grounded and easy to gloss over. There were no effects in that movie that turned the industry on its ear. But the Bullet Time scene where Neo’s dodging bullets? The wire kick from Trinity at the front of the movie? Those became a staple in a lot of stuff. So much that I recall distinctly in Shrek when Fiona does the Trinity Slow Mo Float Kick, I’m sure it has an official title or something. But other movies saw it and began to copy it. When the sequels for Matrix came out, they were coasting on fumes. I don’t think I’m the only fan who was, in hindsight, realizing that the other two were not as good as the original. And it certainly was pretty crap when they came back for the fourth movie. The fourth film basically wanted to undo everything that happened in the series when it didn’t need to do that. The Trilogy was perfectly fine as it was. It didn’t need a fourth. And I’m not saying that out of any hatred towards it. But it didn’t tread any new ground, not really. You know what you could have done? A side offshoot of the Matrix. The entire “the angst and self wounding” runs the Matrix now? Cool. We already pretty much knew that from Smith’s “a perfect matrix ruined entire crops. Humans want to be miserable.” Yeah, nothing new there. Jumping in and out of mini mirrors, ok that could be something. Doesn’t necessarily need to be in The Matrix. It could just be called Mirrorverse or something. But you know a series whose follow up movies didn’t suck? Lord Of The Rings. And that’s because the first three were filmed concurrently across multiple movies to keep the same energy and tightness. But you come back for The Hobbit and you can see that the executives were looking to grab cash and just wanted to slop it out there. Folks who know me, know I find Tolkien’s writing boring. But I’ve read The Hobbit and 3/4ths of the LoTR series, I always stop after the Battle of Gondor in Return of the King. And that’s ultimately what happens in many cases of sequels. They try to recapture the lightning in a bottle and very rarely do. You know the most egregious examples of sequelitis? Pick a horror franchise. And it’s particularly bad in horror movies. They’re generally lower budget and schlocky as hell so you’re not expecting much and then you get Howling 2. A movie so bad legendary actor Sir Christopher Lee apologized to Joe Dante. You must have really screwed up to get James Bond/Gandalf to apologize for being in your movie. Then you get Jason Goes To Hell, or much as I love it, Jason X. Why does this happen? Because the studio wants to keep banging out movie after movie and drain the well. And when it’s done, they look to reboot the franchise. Not realizing that most of us just want new fresh content. Not necessarily something to blow our socks off, but something that makes us remember what happened and talk about it over and over again. The Slow Mo Bullet Dodge, the Day-O scene, The Tears in the Rain scene. The only reason I could tell you what’s going on in the B sequel is because I just watched it. Nothing about that movie makes me want to buy it and watch again. I’ve got most of the Ghostbuster movies, somehow I got the 3rd one for free, and I have yet to go back and watch the ones with the stranger kids. I’ve rewatched Ghost Busters 1 probably a dozen times. Hell, Tremors 1 and 2 are essentially comfort foods. I watched 3 through 6, I think there’s 6, and I just can’t be bothered to go upstairs to pick up the DVD pack with tremors 3 and 4, but I digitally bought 1 and 2. It’s probably partially cause I’m old. But it’s partially because the sequels just don’t grip you as much as that first hit. But speaking of old, one of the many things that goes against sequels is that fact that the cast is never going to be that same person as the original. If they take any break, then they lose that mind set, they go on to other projects or a new director comes along and the magic of your first is gone. So what have we learned in this wandering diatribe of a blog post? Just don’t do sequels and expect them to be as good as the first. Incorrigibly yours, J. E. Flint

When you're Evil... or how to ruin your writing I don’t make it much of a secret that I enjoy a good villain, but that’s just it. A good villain, be it the right hand man of the main baddie or the main baddie itself. A well written villain can chew up the dialogue of a scene without complaint from me. But more and more I notice that the villain just isn’t really all that villainous. I’m reminded of the exchange between Megamind and Titan “Oh, you’re a villain, alright. Just not a Super one!” to which Titan asked what was the difference and Megamind ever the king of drama waits a beat and then pops off with “Presentation!” And in a manner of speaking he’s right. Part of the reason people remember the heroes are the villains they conquer. If I mention Flash or Batman you’re going to name probably Captain Boomerang or Joker. Maybe Mirror Master or Bane, dependent on your love for villains. Say Spidey you think of Doc Ock, Green Goblin, maybe even Kingpin. You certainly think Venom and maybe even Carnage. Are you thinking The Walrus or Stilts Man? It's the same in Anime. You mention Full Metal Alchemist and everyone begins drooling at Fuhrer King Bradley, which I’m going to be honest took me a while to realize Bradley’s first name is King. I had mistakenly assumed it was a translation issue when I kept hearing Fuhrer King Bradely, assuming they were adding in the king after Fuhrer. Nope it’s his name. And why is Bradley so good? Partly the voice work, partly the fact that he goes from an amicable leader type to a cold blooded killer without hesitation. How he’s smoothly condescending and often in charge. Having finished watching My Hero Academia the fourth movie and being reminded how All For One is sort of an after effect of the villain made me think of this post. In most cases when you write your villain there should be something that motivating him. Like in the case of Strahd, he’s searching for the woman he coveted. Soth is propelled by his arrogance. Thrawn is smoothly tactical driven by his need to protect the universe. Your best villain is a villain who doesn’t seem themselves as villains. Like Thrawn. He’s doing evil things and all in order to protect The Chiss and the greater universe at large against a larger threat. It’s the same sort of thing in Fable III, only your brother is kind of weak. You can’t JUST have a character who doesn’t believe their villain, who doesn’t believe they are acting in the wrong. They must have the will and the strength to act on it. They also must be likable. No one is going to like a temper tantrum throwing baby. Look back at some of the qualifications for a villain 1. Clear, understandable motivation that makes sense within their worldview 2. Genuine belief that what they're doing is necessary or right 3. Moral complexity that occasionally makes readers question if they're entirely wrong 4. Competence and intelligence that creates genuine obstacles 5. Agency in driving the plot forward rather than just reacting 6. Charisma or magnetism that explains why others might follow them I dare you to find a group of top tier villains who don’t check most of these items. And this is just a short list, I’m sure AI can come up with about half dozen more variations on this. So I guess I’m asking, how many punches on the punch card do some of your favorite villains have? I’ll take my personal favorite villain, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo, the one I hold most other villains up to. • Strategic brilliance and adaptability – Thrawn studies art to understand cultures and predict enemy tactics, demonstrating a unique form of intelligence that makes him consistently three steps ahead of the heroes. When I read it I thought it was a unique approach and some of it is very gimmicky. I don’t know if I could look at someone’s art collection and say oh yes based on this they’ll do xyz. The analyzation of the art is just an over simplification of his ability to look into the person and anticipate his and a good chunk of this is knowing that you want this ability and letting him metagame his way to a solution. Still cool when written correctly. • Calm, collected demeanor – Unlike Vader and his volatile anger or Palpatine’s simmering but directed rage or even Tarkin’s menacing chill, Thrawn is a composed presence which makes his calculated actions more chilling; he doesn't need emotional outbursts to be intimidating, and yet he does have them. When he grows more chilled and focused you can tell you’ve angered him. This in general is just a good trait to have for your villain, that cool level headed outlook. • Ethical complexity –Thrawn does his best to avoids unnecessary casualties and values efficiency over cruelty, like when he pulls back his troops because it would be a waste. But counter point this to where he doesn’t let the enemy escape if it doesn’t fit his plan. He’s very much about protecting his people to execute his plan, creating moments where readers/viewers question if his methods are actually more humane than some "heroes". • Loyalty to his people – His ultimate motivation is to protect the Chiss from greater threats in the Unknown Regions adds layers to his Imperial service, suggesting he's using the Empire as much as it's using him. While we never see what the threat is, we can guess who it is. But the fact he did everything he can for them shows that he’s a villain who is acting for what he believes is the greater good. So I ask you, which of your favorite villains can you make a bullet summary and back up as to why they’re cool and top tier? I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could redeem some villains but the Super Villains don’t need to be redeemed. They’re perfect the way they are. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So I finally got around to watching My Hero Academia The Movie You're Next. And boy... it's a movie. It's not a bad movie and it only mildly succumbs to Sequelitis, where in a sequel is never as good as it's original. Though I argue that there's at least three movies that are superior sequels to the original film. The Empire Strikes Back is a much better movie than A New Hope in most metrics. Terminator II is just a better movie than Terminator. And of course, Godzilla King of the Monsters is a better version than 2014's Godzilla. But it's not even really that it's a movie sequel that I have problems with. It's the fundamental nature of My Hero Academia in general. It suffers from some of the things in the marvel movies. Like in a marvel movie, you've established that you have multiple heroes running around. In Thunderbolts* or Captain America Brave New World, you should have had Rhodes A.K.A. War Machine helping. He actively works for the United States Government, Skrull or not, if Uncle Sam orders him somewhere he's duty bound by his oath to do it. MHA suffers from the problem in that Two Heroes is cannon, more or less, and takes place in the main continuity and outside of one character in the movie appearing in the series you could be forgiven for it not being considered cannon. However, the island adventure and world heroes are, to the best of my knowledge self contained and doing their own things, but they are cannon. So slot them in wherever and ignore the fact that they never get mentioned again. But the 4th one is taking place between upgraded Shigiraki's rebirth in season 6 and the UA Fight in Season 7. But here's the thing, in the series you've told us All For One is a criminal mastermind, a tactical genius, always plotting and moving pieces on a chessboard and manipulating things in the background. The dude has enough pull to tell the criminal underworld to go wild and start wrecking havoc. He's been around like 100 years doing his own thing. And his own thing is being the top dog. And he told Best Jeanist that his quirk was nothing special, it was the work that Jeanist put into it. So AFO only wants strong quirks. You're telling me, a dude so well connected that he could signal the world to go into riot mode doesn't know about Overhaul's power? He doesn't know about this Alchemy power? Perhaps he MIGHT decide to not take those quirks for himself because of criminal loyalty or something, and I could see that too IF AFO had shown us the audience something other than crushing those before him to be the demon lord and amassing power. He's like Sauron, he wants to be King of the Mountain and he doesn't share power. AFO is even using Shigriaki for that end, he has no desire to really see the kid succeed him. He wants to supplant him and take over his younger and healthy body. But ask yourself, if you heard rumors about a guy who can take people apart and put them back together, healing others. Why isn't that power in his possession? Even if all he did was bring OH into the fold offering him the very thing he wanted, a distribution network and brand recognition? We've seen he can make copies of the power, so there's no reason he can't just duplicate the power and keep a lesser version of himself or ask Overhaul to fix him. And finding out about Erie and her ability to rewind time on a person? Again, that would be a marvelous gift to his scientist doctor for experimentation. I get it, writing is tough. It really is. You can't just slot in a brilliant bad guy and not have him doing something. He's the Big Bad Evil of the campaign. You set him up that way. So him to not gain power for himself is foolish. Even more so when in the series we see OH loses his powers because he loses his hands. The quirks no good to him right now, make the deal to take the quirk and fix his hands and give him back the copy. How likely is OH going to know that his quirk is now a copy? It didn't really seem like there's a limit or indicator of it when AFO copied his own quirk and gave Shigiraki his original quirk. And that's sort of the problem with the 4th movie. You have AFO sitting in a cave twiddling his thumbs while Shigiraki is healing up. You could literally have him react out and be like, "Let's chat." In actuality, what would have happened is that AFO would have strolled up to these villains and made them offers they couldn't refuse. More so if the villains don't know how AFO's powers work. Don't get me wrong, it's cool to see the fights and all, but it's not how you've written your character. If you're going to write a villain to be a villain, he's gotta villain. When I was writing Ian Chanter for Altered Realities, there was only one goal I had. Don't make Ian a weak villain. I like me a good villain, and there's varying levels of villains that need to be addressed. But Ian was smart and capable. He was a thinking villain, and he made sure that things worked out in his favor and knew when to cut and run. Aite in A Goddess's Gifts was a crafty, though overly cocky villain. It's hard not to be cocky when you're a goddess. But she was scheming for thousands of years for her plans. Plans that you wouldn't think a Chaos God would be doing. The entire idea is that they chaos and reap its benefits. But do you realize how much planning one has to do to make chaos work without just random handwavium to get you the expected outcomes? So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're going to give us a mastermind you better damn well make sure he's living up to his capabilities and you ensure the story is written around what he's doing. Which this movie really doesn't have. This movie has a guy who aspires to be All Might, and he talks a pretty good game but that's all it is. A game. He is absolutely not a good villain. He had three henchmen I would have made sure never left my side and instead he flat out kills one of those henchmen. Spoiler in a world where everyone has super powers the guy who turns that off? Yeah, you keep his ass close to you so you can turn off other people's powers. I swear, writing is hard, but sometimes being an INTJ watching movies is harder. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

Let's be real, critiquing films is basically a nerd's sacred duty. Not everyone can do it, and certainly not everyone can do it well. And by "well," I mean with the kind of surgical precision that comes from consuming more media than most people have hot dinners.” Luckily I eat a lot of cold cuts. I've always been that person who can't just watch a movie. Oh no. I dissect it like I'm performing an autopsy on narrative structure. Was the world-building coherent? Did the magic system make sense? Pro tip: Most don't. Looking at you, Harry Potter. Did the protagonist's motivations feel genuine, or were they just another cardboard cutout designed to move plot points around? Take sci-fi films, my first love. I'm not interested in pretty explosions or lens flares. I want to know if the technological premise holds up to even the most basic scientific scrutiny. Philip K. Dick didn't just throw random tech into his stories he made you believe. When I review a film, that's my benchmark. Can you make me believe? And honestly it’s hard for that to happen. My reviews aren’t some sanitized, press-release-friendly pablum. They'll be honest. Brutally so. If a film deserves evisceration, I'll bring the surgical tools. If it's brilliant, I'll explain precisely why. No punches pulled, no sacred cows left standing. And yes, I'm fully aware that my opinions might ruffle some feathers. Good. That's what the Tenets of Incorrigibility are all about. Speaking truth, even if it stings. Be yourself with as little compromise as possible, right? Plus, let's be frank - after spending a decade of world building for stories that make actual sense, watching most Hollywood productions feels like intellectual torture. Someone's got to call out the nonsense. And while I’m not on the levels of Nerd Explains or Filmento, I at least have my own brand of getting the job done. So buckle up, film world. The Incorrigible Author is coming for your narratives… next time I can afford 40 dollars worth of movie tickets, popcorn and soda. That maybe their saving grace, waiting for me to watch it on digital release when the film is 5.99 instead of in the movie theaters. Maybe I should call those reviews Video Rentals… Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So it's been a while since I've done a spoiler-free review of a movie. These days, I really only see superhero movies in theaters. Mostly because you know exactly what you're getting when you drop forty bucks on tickets, popcorn, and soda. It's not really that expensive, but it's certainly not a cheap evening anymore. Between the theater and dinner, it's almost become a luxury. Don't get me wrong, I like other movies. I do. But my brother and I have become choosey. I'm not even sure I'm going to see James Gunn's Superman - it's really hard for me to give a crap about The Man of Steel. Anyway, Thunderbolts! First off, this was a much better movie than Captain America: Brave New Frontier. I have to sort of agree with Filmento when he compares it to Captain America: Winter Soldier. There are a lot of beat-for-beat similarities that make it feel familiar, but Thunderbolts almost felt like a breath of fresh air. I'm not a huge Thunderbolts comic fan - always been an X-person, so I tended to focus on those franchises. But I knew enough to be curious. And I wasn't disappointed by the lineup: US Soldier Walker, Task Mistress (and I refuse to think of that poor character as Task Master), Knock-off Widow Sister, Phantom Girl, and Bob. Because no story is complete without a Bob. Oh, and Bucky the Winter Soldier is here. Soviet Red Guardian too. Marvel/Disney was really hoping you took the time to watch the Captain America and Hawkeye shows to provide some background. I remember having that problem with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - they expected me to have watched all the Clone Wars content between Episodes II and III. Thankfully, this time most characters were already introduced in prior movies, with Walker being the only real newcomer. Plot-wise? Pretty forgettable. Evil woman does evil things with evil people, decides to clean/cover up those evil acts by killing more evil people. Spoiler: that goes wrong, and boom - you've created your nemesis group. It's a tried and true method. And then there's Bob. Oh, comic book nerds, you know what I'm talking about. In the comics, Bob AKA The Sentry, The Golden Guardian of Goodness, with the power of one million exploding suns, which one Sun exploding is 10 to the 44th power Joules you can do the rest of the math, is arguably the strongest Marvel character who isn't The One Above All. We're talking telepathy on Jean Gray's Phoenix level, strength that... well, let's just say comics are complicated. Did you do the math yet? Cause if you got 10 to the power of 50 Joules your googlefu is strong. This is a character who can survive vacuum, reentry, probably move at lightspeed. So here you have a bunch of no-name "heroes" and Bucky going about their day, then suddenly they've got to contend with Bob's alter ego: The Void. Now that's a villain concept. Someone who does the exact opposite of the hero - save a life, Void takes it. Save a plane, Void crashes one. In this case, The Void makes you relive your worst memories, which... yeah, that sucks. It was nice to see these would-be heroes do some heroic actions by attacking the problem at its source - Bob's mental issues. Not to make light of trauma and PTSD, but in this case, that's all they could do. I mean, in the comics, Sentry has ripped gods in half. So what are three discount super soldiers, a girl with "unstable molecules," and a former Black Widow going to do? All in all, this is a return to the tried-and-true Marvel formula. Put some folks with problems together, crack some jokes, crack some heads, call it a day. And I think that's why it worked better than the new Cap movie. The writers understood these characters were outclassed, so they had to think of a way to resolve things without a literal punch-out ending. I'd give it three and a half out of five. I'm sure others would disagree, but it's enough that if prices were a bit lower, I'd go see it in theaters again. It's been a while since I've wanted to watch a movie a second time. And I think that's about as good a review as you can expect for a popcorn flick. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

I'm not going to lie, the last week has been kind of hard for me to focus on writing. Sometimes that's the case, but this week has been really bad. I started off last week not really feeling my cyberpunk novel I'd been working on and moved to one of my young adult ideas that I had kicking in my head. And managed to get a bit done on that. And by a bit done, I mean only a mere 26,238 words. That was just two chapters. My cyberpunk novel and some of its side stories are sitting at 70,785 words. Not bad to get 100,000 words in roughly five months. I know I did a bunch of writing last year, but I don't recall everything I touched. I know for I Am Not a Kobold! I have over 11 chapters and 81,531 words. But right now, I'm working on the history of my Cyberpunk world. I'm 13 pages in and just a few words shy of 6,000 for the history of my Esper Fade universe from 1905 to 2200. I still have things to put into that, so I expect it to balloon to 30 pages. And who knows, I might include it in with my novels. It really depends on how that goes. When the Motivation Tank Runs Dry But anyway, the reason for being temperamental while writing is that sometimes no amount of motivation can get your butt in gear. I'd been watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, White Collar, Person of Interest, Burn Notice, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and it just wasn't helping. So I had to switch gears for a bit to work on something that was kicking around in the back of my head. And it worked, though Monday I didn't get anything done. But I'm slowly cooking this up, and we'll see how it goes. I'm certainly not going to envy my pocketbook when this stuff gets sent to an editor. Writing stuff is easy; editing it out and keeping the meaningful stuff is hard. I think I've mentioned it before that cutting away the fat from the meat of the story is difficult. Of course, in my cyberpunk novel, I have a character who is British, and he uses about ten words when he doesn't need to. Polite and unflappable, he's a chatterbox, and his particular speech is just chock-full of words that could probably be trimmed down. The Project-Switching Dilemma Switching gears mid-project can be a terrible idea for some. I'm certainly one of them, as I have a plethora of work unfinished. From Spring Break to Servant of the Gods to Adventures Adventures to The Chronicles of Loth, I do not suffer from lack of work to do. I've been trying to be better about working on just one or two projects at a time. Some folks use AI to help with the writer's block. And it's certainly an option as long as you remember that it's a tool and that the more you rely upon it, the weaker that muscle gets. Creativity, I've always felt, needed to be nourished and taught so that everyone could experience it. But you don't want to take shortcuts to your writing career. Says the writer who has no idea what she's going on about. Finding Your Own Tricks But in theory, if you have a good writing habit where you write a few hours a day, that'll help. The big thing to remember is that writing is a process. Nothing is coming out completely clean and without needs for revision. If it does, what are you doing with your life, and can you teach me to be that good? One of the best tricks I've found, and it sounds a little silly: Go back and reread the book that inspired you to try writing this. I make it a habit of at least once a year rereading some of my favorite works. It's probably silly, but I've reread the Thrawn Trilogy and The Avery Cates stories at least 10 times. When I'm in the mood for some fantasy, I go and pick up some of David Eddings' works. It helps, but like I said above, it might not work for you. It's best if you can find your own trick to get that stalled engine going again. Try talking it out with your dog or cat. Not your parrot, though. Those mouthy SOBs will give away the plot, and you can't have that, now can you? Maybe read it as a bedtime story to your reflection while you get ready for bed? Could it work? Maybe that's what we're attempting here. To break through that brick wall keeping you away from your delicious writing. The Numbers Game Whatever the method, keep at it. We'll get there in the end. We hope. There's always a million struggling writers for every one author you know. Don't look up the numbers; it's probably way more depressing than that. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

Anime while I was growing up was largely considered to be controversial and looked down upon. American audiences in the late 80s and early 90s didn't see the appeal of Anime, or as it was commonly referred to in my neck of the woods: Japanimation. Probably because most of what we were getting in America was heavily censored Sailor Moon where we couldn't have LGBT references or the violence. Cartoons in America sold products and so they were seen for the realm of children to buy sugary breakfast cereals or the newest toy from Hasbro. Never mind that in Japan they could do that as well as tell a story. Now granted, you weren't going to get Vampire Hunter D on the TV suggesting you try the D cereal. But the Japanese knew for a time that cartoons could grow up with them and could have multiple genres. And slowly those multiple genres came to encompass virtually everything. I wasn't really aware of the term Isekai for a number of years, even though I'd watched Fushigi Yuugi and El~Hazard, which are arguably versions of Isekai because they get transported to a fantastical realm. But while we had those two, we had Slayers; we had Lodoss; we had Gundam, Ranma ½, and Fist of the North Star. But over time, the fields changed and Isekai began to flood into the market, so much so that it was pretty much excluded from contests for a while. And why is that? Because no one wants to work in an oppressive sweat shop day in and day out and just waste away into nothing. It's a very real escape many of us have had since time began, I'd imagine. Those times you wish you were born in another era? Or escaping into comics? Into books? That's a hard genre to fight for anyone. And by the time Toonami had started on Cartoon Network, America was now getting into anime and seeing that things like Cowboy Bebop were there to whet the appetite. But Isekai are literal escape fantasies where you are removed from the world that doesn't value and care about you and your smack dab in a world where you have the power to be a king or god. An unrivaled juggernaut as you stride through the lands. For me, that's boring. And yet, I found myself working on an Isekai. I have written 11 chapters for "I Am Not a Kobold!" In which a pair of college-aged students are walking home and are struck by truck-kun and pulled into a fantasy world where there are Orcs, Minotaur, Dwarves, Dragons, and other various fantasy races. I wrote it, much like The Chronicles of Loth, to be tongue-in-cheek humor. But I kept coming back to the fact that how do you really challenge Superman? And really, you don't challenge him physically, even kryptonite only works so well. You must challenge him via mental manipulation or by taking hostages or the like. So I built in some weaknesses in Kobold. Weaknesses that made sense to the story. And I found I was enjoying the challenge of telling the story without making Angel, my main character, absurdly and brokenly overpowered from the jump. The goal is that yes, she will be Ains Ooal Gown or One Punch Man strong by the end, but it's the journey. So it's less Isekai and more the hero's journey. I'm not sure when it'll be done and so I've not really been trumpeting about it. Altered Realities took me 10 years, rewrites and reviews and revisions. But that was solo without ever having a test audience to see it after that initial 30 page draft. I didn't hand it off to an editor until I was sure it was in a good place. Kobold I've had help along the way, but sometimes help isn't enough to get a task completed. I am not a typical writer, A Goddess's Gifts was a smut commission that I needed to have a story too. I focused and polished that story and created it. Arguably, I'm something of a weirdo, an indie artist looking to get that right brush stroke. It's my hope when I finish up Kobold I'll release it to the world and everyone will nod approvingly as they go about their day. That's all I need, a nodding approval from the masses. Or millions of dollars, you know, whichever helps my ego. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

"Picture a ball." Easy, right? For most people, a sphere, maybe a basketball or a baseball, pops into their mind. For me? The letters B-A-L-L scroll across my mental screen like a stubborn typo. I’ve mentioned this quirk to friends since high school, usually sandwiched between my other failings: a poor sense of smell, a zero-tolerance policy for stupidity, and this literal lack of vision. In the ’90s, people just blinked at me. "You don’t see images? At all?" Nope. My brain works in dictionaries, not galleries. The Creative Tax of a Word-Bound Brain This isn’t just a party trick—it’s a creative handicap. Without mental templates, I can’t "see" characters or worlds unless I stare directly at references. When my brother worked on The Chronicles of Loth, I spent a year secretly trying to draw. Result? Stick figures so bad they’d make a kindergarten teacher wince—and only if I was looking at an example. This is why my art commissions required dozen-piece collages for a single character. My fursona, Rose, needed 20 reference images (now lost, tragically). Felicia? Twenty-six. Her girlfriend Kit? Six. Every detail, hair, physique, clothing, had to be physically seen before my brain could grasp it. Blank Templates and Trashed Drafts No surprise, my early novel characters all looked identical. They started as generic mannequins until I painstakingly dressed them via Google searches and mood boards. Maybe it’s odd I became an author without "seeing" my stories. But it explains why I abandon half-finished drafts so easily—I just rename them .old and move on. (Reading them later is a special kind of masochism.) The Paradox of a Non-Visual Writer I fight hard not to mirror whatever I’m reading/watching, which is its own battle. Yet here’s the twist: words are my images. My "visualization" is dense description, tactile metaphors, the sound of a scene. Google fills the gaps, but the scaffolding is always language. So What’s the Point? Confession? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a footnote on process. Maybe it’s just another excuse to talk about myself. You decide. Incorrigibly yours, J. E. Flint