3d0f5348e68842f0a9f0ac1c7a451a9e

The Untouchables

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:00:00 GMT

The Untouchables: Power, Predators, and the Pattern Nobody Wants to Talk About

So I've been thinking about something that's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Good. If you're comfortable with this topic, something is wrong with you.

We live in a world where we like to pretend that the monsters are hiding in the bushes outside the playground. That they're the creepy stranger in the van. And sure, some of them are. But historically? The monsters wore crowns, sat on thrones, held titles, and were celebrated by the very societies they preyed upon. And the pattern hasn't changed nearly as much as we'd like to believe.

Let me take you on a little tour through history. Not the sanitized version you got in school, but the version where we actually look at what powerful people did when nobody could stop them.

The Ancient World: "It's Culture, Not Crime"

The Greeks had this lovely institution called pederasty. An older man, the erastes, would take on a younger boy, the eromenos, in what was dressed up as mentorship. It was considered a civic duty. A rite of passage. Educational. And it was baked into the culture of one of the civilizations we credit with giving us democracy and philosophy. Let that sit with you for a second. The same people who gave us Socrates and the concept of ethical reasoning also institutionalized the sexual grooming of adolescents and called it enlightenment. Go look up the Sacred Band of Thebes. A selection of soliders. Couples. Grouped by Age.

The Romans weren't much better. Emperor Tiberius, the second Emperor of Rome, retreated to Capri and, according to the historian Suetonius, engaged in horrific abuse of children. I referenced this in my last blog post about internet safety, and I wasn't joking. The dude had literal pools where children were made to... you know what, go read Suetonius yourself. I'm not your history teacher, and frankly I need to keep my lunch down.

But here's the thing that matters: nobody stopped him. He was the Emperor. Who was going to tell him no?

And guess what, there wasn't much leeway in the other's either. Plutarch accused the Persians of the same thing. The Byzantines had it. Feudal Japan had it. This wasn't one civilization's sin, it was a feature of power across the ancient world. Now this is not to say I frown upon the love of a man for a man or a woman for a woman. I am merely frowning upon the continued pederasty that seems to have arisen from our ancient roots as primates... anyway, what about we get a little more... Medieval?

The Medieval Period: God's Representatives on Earth

Let's talk about the Catholic Church, shall we? And before anyone starts clutching their rosary, I'm not attacking faith. I'm attacking an institution that has systematically protected predators for over a thousand years.

In 1049, a monk named Peter Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX about the widespread sexual abuse of boys and adolescents by priests and bishops. 1049. That's not a typo. Nearly a thousand years ago, someone was already screaming about this problem. And Pope Leo's response? He was willing to punish the worst offenders but minimized everything else. Sound familiar? It should, because it's the same playbook the Church has been running ever since.

Pope John XII, who reigned in the 960s, was accused by his contemporaries of turning the Papal palace into a brothel, ordaining children for favors, and committing incest. His papacy is considered one of the darkest periods in Church history. Pope Benedict IX, who took the throne around 1032 through bribery, was so spectacularly corrupt that the Romans literally drove him out of the city. He eventually sold the papacy to his own godfather because he wanted to get married. These were supposed to be God's representatives on Earth.

Then there's Gilles de Rais. A French nobleman, Marshal of France, companion-in-arms to Joan of Arc. A legitimate war hero. He was convicted and executed in 1440 for the rape and murder of over a hundred children, mostly boys between 7 and 15. For eight years, he operated with near impunity because he was wealthy and powerful, and the families of his victims were too poor and too afraid to challenge a nobleman. His servants were seen disposing of children's bodies at one of his castles in 1437, and it still took three more years before anyone with authority did anything about it.

That's what power buys you. Time. It buys you time to keep doing what you're doing while everyone around you looks the other way.

Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry: The Open Secret

Fast forward to the modern era, and the pattern is identical. Just swap castles for studio lots.

Roman Polanski pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977, then fled the country to avoid sentencing. He's been living comfortably in Europe ever since. And Hollywood? They gave him a standing ovation at the Oscars. In 2003. Let me repeat that. A man who admitted to assaulting a child received a standing ovation from an industry that claims to care about victims.

Victor Salva was convicted in 1988 for sexually abusing a child actor, videotaping the abuse, and possessing child pornography. He served his time, got out, and Disney released his movie Powder. Disney. The company whose entire brand is built on children's entertainment hired a convicted child predator to make a film. Because talent, apparently, trumps the safety of children.

Jimmy Savile in the UK is perhaps the most stomach-churning example of institutional protection. A beloved children's TV presenter and DJ who abused hundreds of victims over decades. The BBC, hospitals, charities... everyone around him either looked the other way or actively covered for him. It wasn't until after his death in 2011 that the full scope came out. The man was knighted. He had access to children's hospitals. He was untouchable because of his celebrity and his connections, and every institution he touched chose their reputation over the safety of children.

And then there’s Nickelodeon. You know, the channel we all grew up watching. All That, Drake & Josh, iCarly, The Amanda Show. If you watched the Investigation Discovery documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, you got a front row seat to what was happening behind the scenes of your childhood. Brian Peck, a dialogue coach on The Amanda Show, pleaded no contest to sexually abusing a child actor. That actor turned out to be Drake Bell, who came forward publicly in the documentary. Jason Michael Handy, a production assistant, was charged with lewd acts on a child under 14. Animator Ezel Channel was sentenced to over seven years for committing lewd acts on a 14-year-old boy. These weren’t random strangers who snuck onto the lot. These were employees. People who were hired, vetted, and given access to children as part of their job.

And the environment they operated in? Show creator Dan Schneider, once called “the Norman Lear of children’s television” by The New York Times, built an empire on kids’ TV. He’s since apologized for some of his behavior, including asking staff for massages and being volatile on set. Former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy wrote an entire memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, describing her experiences with an abusive figure widely reported to be Schneider. The documentary showed clips from his shows that, viewed through adult eyes, are deeply uncomfortable. Young Ariana Grande in sexually suggestive bits. Jamie Lynn Spears getting hit in the face with goo. Content that was written, approved, filmed, and broadcast by adults who knew exactly what they were putting child actors through. Schneider is currently suing the documentary’s producers for defamation, claiming it implied he was a sexual abuser. He denies that. But here’s what he hasn’t denied: multiple convicted predators worked on his shows, and Nickelodeon’s own investigation only addressed verbal abuse. The network’s statement? They “can’t corroborate or negate allegations from productions decades ago.” Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t. That’s a hell of a thing to say about the safety of children on your sets.

Gary Glitter. R. Kelly. Jerry Sandusky. The names pile up. And in every single case, there were people who knew. There were warnings. There were red flags the size of billboards. And in every single case, the response was to protect the institution, protect the brand, protect the money. The children were an acceptable loss.

The Catholic Church: A Thousand-Year Cover-Up

I need to circle back to the Church because the scale of it defies comprehension. In France alone, an independent commission found that approximately 216,000 children were abused by an estimated 3,000 clergy members since 1950. That's one country. In Australia, seven percent of Catholic priests were accused of abuse. Seven percent. The John Jay report in the US found that more than 4,000 priests were accused of abusing children between 1950 and 2002.

And the institutional response, for decades, was to reassign predator priests to new parishes. Fresh hunting grounds. A priest would get caught, and instead of turning him over to the police, the Church would move him to a new community where nobody knew what he'd done. They treated child abuse like a sin to be forgiven rather than a crime to be prosecuted. Pope John Paul II's initial response to the American abuse scandal was to talk about the "power of Christian conversion" for the perpetrators. Not the protection of victims. The conversion of the people who raped children.

Pope Benedict XVI, before he was Pope, was found by an independent investigation to have failed to act against abusive priests when he was archbishop of Munich. His response was to express "pain and shame" while his lawyers argued he wasn't directly to blame. The playbook never changes.

The Boy Scouts: Badges, Campfires, and Perversion Files

And because the Catholic Church can’t have all the fun, let’s talk about the Boy Scouts of America. Over 82,000 sexual abuse claims. More than 7,800 former leaders identified as having been involved in sexually abusing children over a 72-year span. Twelve thousand alleged victims documented in the BSA’s own records. And the kicker? The Boy Scouts kept internal files on known and suspected predators going back to the mid-20th century. They called them the “Perversion Files.” Not a joke. That was the actual name. They tracked these people, documented what they did, and instead of handing the files to police, they used them as an internal blacklist. Except the blacklist didn’t even work, because predators who were removed from one troop would show up in another.

The story of Richard Turley is a masterclass in institutional failure. A Canadian who abused children in California, Turley was caught, and the Boy Scouts of America’s response was to tell him to go back to Canada. They didn’t warn Scouts Canada. They didn’t call the police. They just... sent the predator home. In 1996, Turley was convicted of assaulting four more boys in Victoria, British Columbia, three of whom were Scouts. In Canada, the pattern continued. In Ottawa, a former Scouts Canada leader was sentenced in 1997 for abuse that spanned from 1979 to 1985. In Kitchener, Ontario, another former leader pleaded guilty to 27 counts in 2001. In Ireland, a 2020 report found that the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland and the Scout Association of Ireland protected at least 275 known or suspected predators over decades.

In 2020, the BSA filed for bankruptcy. Not because they were ashamed. Because they couldn’t afford the lawsuits anymore. A $2.46 billion settlement was reached. The largest sexual abuse settlement in American history. And as of late 2025, just over $164 million had actually been paid out to survivors. An organization that was supposed to teach kids about honor, duty, and service was keeping secret files on child rapists for a hundred years. If that doesn’t crystallize the thesis of this entire post, nothing will.

The Pattern

Here's what connects Emperor Tiberius in his villa on Capri to a priest being quietly transferred to a new parish in 2002 to a Hollywood producer whose behavior was an "open secret" for decades:

Power insulates predators. Every. Single. Time.

The more power someone has, whether it's political, religious, financial, or cultural, the longer they can operate. The more people will look the other way. The more institutions will choose self-preservation over the safety of the most vulnerable. It doesn't matter if it's a Roman emperor, a medieval pope, a French nobleman, a British TV personality, or an American film director. The mechanism is identical.

And we, as a society, keep acting surprised when it happens again. We keep treating each case as an isolated incident instead of recognizing it for what it is: a feature of how power operates when it's unchecked.

So What Do We Do?

I don't have a neat answer, and I'm suspicious of anyone who claims they do. But I know what doesn't work: trusting institutions to police themselves. The Catholic Church had a thousand years to get it right and didn't. Hollywood had decades and didn't. The BBC had decades and didn't. Penn State had years and didn't.

What I do know is that the single most important thing any of us can do is refuse to look the other way. Refuse to let celebrity or authority or wealth or talent be a shield. When someone tells you that a powerful person is hurting children, believe them. Because history has shown us, over and over and over again, that the accusations are almost always the tip of the iceberg.

I wrote in my Tenets of Incorrigibility that you should speak the truth even if it hurts. This is one of those truths. Power protects predators. It always has. And it will continue to do so until enough of us decide that no amount of talent, no amount of prestige, no amount of money, and no amount of spiritual authority is worth the safety of a single child.

And for the love of all that is holy, stop giving standing ovations to people who hurt kids. It's really not that high a bar.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

It takes a village to raise an idiot… wait

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:00:00 GMT

So, I’m old enough to remember the pre AOL days. The days before that horrible screech of dial-up modem. I remember trying to find stuff on the then blossoming interwebs. I also remember working at Electronics Boutique and selling Net Nanny and other products to adults to “protect their children from the horrors of the internet.” Never mind that those children already knew more about the computer than their parents did.

I grew up with a Nintendo Entertainment System, and I swear a 386… certainly a 486. Because my father worked in Military Intelligence. He could tell me more, but my security clearance hadn’t cleared yet. That joke was never not hilarious, to him. But the point is, I grew up between Sneakernet and now. And I recall all the security that pr0n sites had. The need for credit cards and the like and the pinky promise you were 18 years old.

And now the world has gotten less dangerous. Wait, let me check my notes. Oh, no it’s actually not. With Roblox hosting child predators, a certain drugged out soon to be trillionaire’s constant abuse of their chat bot making borderline child pr0n and now the age gate keeping for the children.

Won’t you think of the children? Please? Just think about them… while we write half assed laws that don’t actually do anything but piss off the customer base.

This blog is brought to you by Discord. For all the years I’ve been on the internet I’ve known the only person who could keep my data safe is myself. That’s why outside of government websites and things that linked to the government I had purposefully seeded misinformation into the digital profiles. No two profiles for my name are the same. This is intentional. I have next to no images of my physical self online. I’ve hated how I’ve looked since I was about… 10. It’s one of the reasons I have the fursona of a Fennic Fox Mimic Hybrid wearing a cowboy hat. I mean… if you saw what I wore through high school it wasn’t because I was ashamed of my fashion choices.

Flannel, doc martens, and cargo pants were a lifestyle choice. One I’m pretty sure my elder sister would kill me for if she had ever taken me to school. She was kind enough to buy me preppy kid clothing from Abercrombie and Aéropostale and the like.

But here’s the thing. Discord is basically saying “Trust us bro” with our data. Even though they just lost 70,000 government issued IDs. And they’re telling us that they’re basically training AI to recognize faces, oh and they’re feeding everything we do on Discord into the AI to determine if we are of a consenting age.

Now, I get it. I fully and 100% endorse the protection of the wee ones from folks like a certain sex trafficker in a position of power that shan’t be named… I am of course talking about our Lord and Savior… Emperor Tiberius. What? Go read about the dude’s retreats. Those Romans I tell you what man.

But the thing is, the internet cannot be safe AND anonymous. And I say this as someone who just ironically was saying how I purposefully seed bad information so that if data breaches happen it’s less impactful for me.

The safety of being a fly on the wall means that it’s hard to prosecute and apprehend bad actors. Roblox is going through some serious heat right now over all that. Now keep in mind, there is no easy fix to this. Like with the UK’s CCTVs on virtually every corner there are going to be people who be cry “my freedoms! Don’t step on snek!” and then flood the message boards to complain.

But as we saw with 9/11 in the US we were quick to start giving up our freedoms for what we perceived as safety. Now I’ve not done the research on this, but I’m pretty sure no one felt any more safe with TSA in our airports than without. But given a sufficient enough trigger point we’re happy to trade freedom for security.

It’s like a Pavlovian thing. The bottom tiers need to be met for the top stuff.

So, I know you’re wondering if I’ve thought about how to make this system “safe” for us. And you won’t like it. It’s every site, regardless of its age, regardless of its origin, regardless of its purpose, needs an ID, a Bank Account and a secondary authentication each and every time. I’m thinking you biometrically authenticate. A gallon of blood per site, that should do it.

Now you’re fooling yourself if you think that they don’t already have the information and can’t pull it up when they want.

There’s entire sites dedicated to scraping Facebook, Twitter and other sites and selling it. Your entire search history is cataloged and sold to the highest bidder. Your phone is listening and reporting to the corporations. Your driving data is recorded, in newer cars, by the GPS trackers in the car, and sold to insurance agencies.

Or… maybe we should take the chance and stop letting the village of idiots raise another idiot. See I recall when that “It takes a village to raise a child” came out. And that thinking needs to stop. Yes it’s nice to have help raising your child, but so far we’ve divested so much of the responsibility of raising our spawn to others that we cannot for the life of us figure out how to get them back.

Cause the thing is, when an idiot raises an idiot you get Idiocracy. And we’re on a fast track to that nightmare right now.

Look, I’m not saying the internet isn’t dangerous. It is. It’s always been dangerous, just like the real world has always been dangerous. But no amount of age gates, AI face scanners, or “trust us bro” corporate promises are going to replace a parent who actually sits down and teaches their kid how to navigate this stuff. We didn’t need Net Nanny in 1996 and we don’t need Discord’s AI babysitter in 2026. We need parents who give a damn. And until that happens, the village is just going to keep churning out idiots.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Healthcare, the Promise to Our Community, part 2.

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Part 2

So, a potentially charged topic here in America since there was a man who allegedly shot a malicious and disgusting serial murderer. I mean a healthcare CEO. Allegedly.

And they still held the meeting without said CEO and put in a call to get his position filled like halfway through the meeting. If you want to know what a corporation thinks of you as a human being, that's your answer right there. You're not even cold yet and they're updating the org chart.

If you read my last post, you know I'm currently navigating the delightful experience of finding a new endocrinologist while my insurance cosplays as actual coverage. But my personal frustrations are a symptom, not the disease. So let's talk about the disease.

This system wasn't actually in place back in World War II. See, when we were having our second go at destroying the European continent, companies were told, "No, you can't change the values on wages and salaries. In case you didn't notice, you unpatriotic cur, we're in a war." It totally was like that. FDR was channeling Teddy Roosevelt energy. So in order to attract workers, companies started throwing in benefits. Covering health insurance as part of the salary. Vacation days. Sweetening the pot by saying not only will we pay you five pittances a day, we'll cover your insurance too.

Fast forward eighty years and the system is so ingrained with the American workforce that no one can go without it. Your healthcare is chained to your employment, which means your employer has leverage over you that goes well beyond your paycheck. Quit your job? Lose your insurance. Get laid off? Good luck with COBRA, which costs roughly the same as a modest car, monthly, for the privilege of keeping coverage you were already paying into. Though I guess considering a “modest” car is sitting at 40K it’s actually cheaper again. But it certainly wasn’t for the year I was unemployed back in 2008, thanks housing bubble.

I recall some film guy named Michael Moore making a movie about this. Sicko came out in 2007. That was nineteen years ago. And the situation has gotten worse. Not stagnant. Worse. We now have companies using AI to automatically deny patients. We have so many hoops and leaps to get through to see a doctor that the process of getting healthcare has become its own part-time job. And I recall even as early as 2008 people were taking trips to Mexico or Canada to get their prescriptions filled. Normally the folks on Medicare. The retired ones. The people who spent their whole lives paying into a system that now tells them their pills cost more than their mortgage.

And speaking of pills, finding out that my heart medication is forty-five dollars at the Wally for a thirty day supply would make me go crazy... you know, if I wasn't already probably borderline. No one ever said writers maintain a firm grip on sanity. Have you seen our history of substance abuse? We're only one good book deal away from getting a dealer on speed dial.

Now, am I advocating for the chaos of the tax-based system that our European neighbors have? Not necessarily. Like many things in life, I see a problem and I want to paint it b... sorry, I see a problem and think we can start fixing it.

One of the biggest gripes people have is that prescription drugs are expensive. In most other countries the government can argue on behalf of the people. Last I checked there are 330 million people in America. If we could allow the government to start arguing for that buying power, we'd start getting some relief. But the principle applies to more than just prescriptions.

Insurance as a whole is "safe" because largely the numbers work out that the more people in the pool, the less danger there is of catastrophic payouts, and so the prices can stay mostly low. It's sort of the inverse of the Walmart Law. See, there are roughly 5,000 Walmart locations in the US alone, and police get called there three to four times as often as other retailers. Why? Because there are tons of them. The number skews because of the sheer volume of locations. They're not any more unsafe than your local Jack In The Box. So the more people in the insurance pool, the less you pay and the "safer" it is on the whole.

Only, as we're seeing in California and Florida, home insurance is pulling up stakes faster than a peregrine falcon diving. The housing market is getting brutalized by weather events and insurers are having to pay out. Le Gasp! What grew out of the market trying to attract workers has become a keep-all-the-money-for-themselves operation. Which has led to automated denials, hoops aplenty, and eventually the murder of a CEO. Allegedly.

There's a new trend emerging in our medical system, which is darkly humorous because it already happens in countries outside of America. Direct Provider Care Membership, or DPC. If you're not familiar, it's a subscription-based system where you pay your provider a monthly fee for access to them, usually within a day or two. But here's the thing: this is exactly the sort of thing Mexico does for the retired Americans living in the resorts. Roughly ten percent of the AAFP surveyed in 2023 admitted to being on DPC. And you can find these services in Belize, Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Canada.

Our healthcare system has become so terrible that our providers have given up on taking insurance and are moving to a subscription-based service. And I don't know if that's the ultimate expression of the capitalist way or if that's just the natural evolution of a broken system. Thanks Private Equity. You came for Toys R’ Us and now our healthcare!

Most of our insurance companies, and a lot of corporations in general, have moved to maximize profits and minimize costs. And one thing many have tried is subscriptions. Why have a single transaction once or twice a year when you can have twelve sixty-dollar payments? Twelve ninety-dollar payments?

Hell, even gym memberships have moved to a "lower cost" model by going from monthly to biweekly billing. It's not actually lower cost. See, you stop being billed sixty dollars a month, which works out to 720 dollars a year. Instead you get billed twenty-seven dollars every other week. So technically in a four-week period you're saving three bucks. Not huge. But when you do the math, you're actually being charged 1,404 dollars a year for that same gym membership. Twenty-seven dollars times fifty-two weeks divided by two... times two. See what they're doing?

The healthcare system, the insurance industry, and the subscription economy are all running the same play. Make the number look small. Make the billing frequent. Bury the real cost in complexity. And if someone gets sick, deny the claim and let the algorithm sort it out.

I don't have a clean answer for this. I wish I did. But I know the current system isn't it, and I know that nineteen years after someone made a whole movie about how broken it is, we're still here. Only now the CEOs are getting shot and the AI is doing the denying.

But you’re mad if you thought they’d let you go.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Healthcare, A Promise Broken Part 1

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Part 1

So last month, Janurary 2026, I was told that my endocrinologist was leaving the practice I've been going to for ten years. Ten years. That's a relationship longer than most marriages in Hollywood, and it ended with a form letter. Thanks for the memories. Good luck out there, soldier. Now picture Ron Swanson slinging his backpack onto his back and fleeing his work. That’s the vibe I got.

Now, for those who don't know, I've worked on the back end of healthcare for about twenty years. Most of my adult working life has been squandered creating interfaces to move results, orders, and patient demographics through electronic systems. Tracking down anomalies in billing on the inside of insurance companies. Setting up laboratories throughout the continental United States. I know how this system works. I've seen the guts of it. And I still can't make it work for me. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about American healthcare, I don't know what will.

Let me back up and explain why I even need an endocrinologist in the first place. Technically, I'm diabetic. I say technically because once the system has flagged you, you're ALWAYS a filthy disgusting diabetic. It's not a best of three situation. You don't get to appeal. You have one really bad day where you're like, "Stand aside Cookie Monster, that bakery and me have business." Which isn't exactly what happened, but it might as well have been. I drank a lot of the Zero Sugar Crystal Light stuff the day before I went to get my blood test done. And it spiked into the high range. One test. One bad day.

But here's the thing. For my entire adult life, when I was jet setting around the US, drinking entire bottles of Johnny Walker Blue at parties, eating pamcakes, and having sweets, I was always prediabetic. Always right on that borderline. And ever since that one diagnosis, repeated tests have put me right back at borderline prediabetic. Where I've been my whole life. But the flag doesn't care about context. The flag is permanent.

And that flag does a number on you. If I lose my insurance for whatever reason, and the Affordable Care Act drops the stipulation that insurers have to take people with preexisting conditions, I'm locked out. One bad blood test on one bad day, and the system has branded me for life. Welcome to American healthcare, where the points are made up but the consequences are very real.

But fear not, average US citizen tied to your job! You have healthcare! Or do you?

Well, as I discovered today, my insurance is woefully inadequate for the task of getting me what I need. I started calling practices from the list of in network providers for my insurance. Most of the ones listed as accepting "open patients" had never heard of those providers. So that was a fun few hours of my life I'll never get back. Nothing in network, at least not within spitting distance. Which is an accurate south western term for measurement, like crow flies. Technically my primary care isn't even in network, so I'm paying specialist rates for the privilege of having a doctor who knows my name. And the cherry on this particular sundae? I found out that medication I need for everyday life is about a third of the cost on GoodRX. A third. Which kinda makes you question why you're paying ninety bucks a paycheck for insurance, plus the High Deductible Savings Account, right? And hey, if you didn’t know this. Most insurances have 2 moops. In Network and Out of Network. Better hope you know which ambulance/hospital you’re going to so you can file the paperwork correctly and get that deducted from the right moop pool.

Last year I had to get my heart looked at. And I was told, "Congratulations, you've reached your MOOP!" That's Maximum Out of Pocket for those of you lucky enough to not know that acronym. Great, I thought. At least I'm done bleeding money for the year. Then a week later they told me, oh no, you didn't actually reach it, it's actually this other number. Then another week later, congratulations, you reached it again! Only for the new year to roll around and they hit me with a "LULZ JK, you totally didn't, and you owe the hospital a surprise grand. CYA LATERZ."

I work in this industry. I build the systems. And I cannot tell you with any confidence what my actual out-of-pocket maximum is at any given time, because the insurance company apparently can't either.

To see my new PCP after my last one retired? That was a year wait. A neurologist for migraines I've had for thirty years, because it's a family problem? Six month wait. And these aren't exotic specialists. These are bread-and-butter medical needs. But sure, the system is working. It's fine. Everything is fine.

I need to find a new endocrinologist to handle meds that I don't technically need because I got flagged once on a diagnosis that was, frankly, bullshit. Because I'm an idiot who drank too much Crystal Light. And anyone who knows me knows I'm an absolute menace in the kitchen. I once mixed oatmeal with eggs because I thought that might be quick and easy for breakfast. Spoiler: it wasn't. So yeah, the idea that I was out there destroying bakeries is laughable.

But the system doesn't care about context. It doesn't care about repeated tests. It doesn't care that you work inside it and know exactly how broken it is. The flag is the flag, and the flag is forever.

I've got more to say about this. The systemic stuff. The history of how we got shackled to our employers for something as basic as not dying. But that's a longer rant, and this post is already long enough. Consider this the personal side. Next time, I'll zoom out.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

The Way of Kings – Final Thoughts

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Finish the Damn Book

So I finally did it. I finished The Way of Kings. All forty-five-ish hours of it between the Kindle and the audiobook during cardiac rehab drives and walks around my neighborhood. And you know what? The ending was actually pretty good.

For about two hours.

Two. Hours. Out of forty-five.

That's roughly 4% of the book that felt like it was actually going somewhere. The other 96%? Setup. Endless, grinding, "trust me bro, it'll pay off" setup. Which eh… wasn’t really a trust me bro. That’s like everyone being oh by season three it gets really good. Listen, if it’s not decent by episode 3, you have a problem. You know why video games are always so stellar at the beginning? Because people peter out at like the 50 to 60% mark. But I get it. It can’t ALL be a non holds barred action packed thrill ride for 95 of a 120 minute movie.

The Tower: When Things Finally Happened

Look, I'm not going to lie. When Sadeas betrays Dalinar at the Tower, abandoning him and his army to die on that plateau, I sat up straighter. Finally. FINALLY. Someone did something interesting. A villain emerged from the political muck and actually made a move. Sadeas, you magnificent bastard, where have you been this whole book? And his reasoning? He’d agreed to protect the kingdom. He’s not a bad guy, his idea of protecting the kingdom is just different than our soon to be Philosopher King Dalinar.

And Dalinar's response? Chef's kiss. The Blackthorn showing up and reminding everyone why he earned that name was genuinely satisfying. All those chapters of him being a brooding honor-bound philosopher finally cashed out into something visceral. Watching him carve through Parshendi while his army rallied behind him? That's the content I signed up for. Sure we saw him save Sadeas a bit ago, but this one. This was the charge of the light brigade. This was a for Sparta moment.

But here's the thing... we could have gotten here sooner. We didn't need forty hours of bridge crews and library scenes and "I wonder what these visions mean" to earn this payoff. Some of us have cardiac rehab schedules to keep.

Kaladin Becomes He-Man

And then there's Kaladin. Our brooding bridge boy who I've been frustrated with for turning down perfectly good power armor finally does something cool. He goes full Air Jordan across that chasm, practically hanging in the air, and becomes a Radiant.

All that was missing was him grabbing the Sword of Grayskull and shouting "I HAVE THE POWER!" while lightning crackled behind him and Syl turned into a magical steed or something. It was so tropey, so perfectly Saturday morning cartoon, that I couldn't help but enjoy it despite myself.

I actually expected Kaladin when he ran up to check that Sadeas and his company was leaving to be like “I killed a mofo in shardplate once. And I didn’t have magic.” Crack his neck and be like “Time to reap the whirlwind.” But apparently I’m just a blood thirsty warmonger who would have launched myself at the guy without a second thought and driven his own dagger into his faceplace and Necromongered that. Keep what you kill right?

Did it make narrative sense after all his "I won't become like the lighteyes" angst? Eh. Kinda. The whole "protect instead of conquer" thing gives him an out, I suppose. But let's be honest, it's the fantasy equivalent of refusing a promotion for thirty chapters and then accepting it anyway when the plot demands you stop being stubborn.

The Soulcaster Twist

So Shallan and Jasnah can both Soulcast as their Radiant power. No magical artifact needed. They just... do it. With their minds. Or souls. Or whatever. And Shallan seeing the sprin of… art? They still haven’t told us what the squiggled head folks are. And I don’t know if I care. Finding out Sly was Honor Sprin is meh. Finding out that the ones who follow Shallan around are soulcaster sprin or whatever is probably going to be silly obvious in hindsight when they tell us what they are.

But you know what? That's actually kinda cool that they’re able to magic like that. I'll give Sanderson credit here. The whole "the soulcaster was fake/broken and Jasnah was doing it herself the whole time" thing retroactively makes some of the library scenes slightly less tedious. Slightly. Don't get too excited, Brandon.

It also means Shallan's entire heist plot was doomed from the start, which is either brilliant irony or a waste of my time depending on how generous I'm feeling. Today I'm feeling... moderately generous. Let's call it clever. But here’s a bit of stupidity. Shallan put the dots together when she realized that Jasnah soulcast the jam into something, destroying the antidote, and then the bread. We should have seen some stormlight leaking. And her needing the gems from Shallan’s soulcaster to keep changing blood, which isn’t organic so it’s cool and easy bro, constantly is a bit of a narrative oversight that I guess I can over look.

The Parshendi Are What Now?

Oh, and the Parshendi are the Voidbringers. Or connected to them. Or will become them. Whatever the twist is supposed to be. Holy Hoping Crabmen Sanderson!

Here's my confession: by the time this reveal dropped, I had stopped caring. I'd spent so many hours wondering about the mysterious crab people and their singing and their weird carapace armor that when the answer finally came, it landed with all the impact of a wet napkin. "They're the ancient evil." Cool. Sure. Add it to the pile of things I'm supposed to remember for book seven.

You know what would have made me care? If we'd spent more time with actual Parshendi characters instead of just fighting them and wondering about them from a distance. Give me a Parshendi POV. Let me understand their culture before you tell me they're secretly apocalyptic. But no, we get more Shallan drawing pictures and Kaladin brooding in the rain.

You gave us a chapter of a fisherman walking across a lake. You couldn’t put in 2 minutes on Shin? He’s literally with Kaladin so it’s like it’s adjcent to the story. He could have been like “Stars of my people! You’re wearing the dead! The evil evil dead of the voidbringers! My papas!” or you know… something.

God's Dead, By the Way

Oh right. The Allfather, or high father or whatever is dead. We don’t even get his name, not really. It’s sort of implied that he’s Honor. Cause that’s what the Way of Kings is and the Knight Radiant and all that. It’s about Honor. The god that's been sending Dalinar visions is a corpse, and his power is fractured, guess he’s never heard of the Jedi Holicorn Crystal, and there's this other god called Odium who's apparently the real threat, and...

You know what this reminds me of? When you're playing a JRPG and you beat the final boss only to discover there's ANOTHER final boss behind them. And then another. And you're forty hours in thinking "I just want to finish this game" and the game is like "LOL no, here's more mythology to absorb." Mizayki be praised! Look I get it. I have spent a lot of time watching Dark Souls and Elden Ring lore videos, but that was because it interested me. I don’t know if I can be bothered to find out about the other gods in the cosmere.

I'm sure this matters. I'm sure it'll be crucial in books two through ten or however many Sanderson is planning. But right now? Right now I'm just tired.

Dalinar's Big Brain Moves

So after all that, Dalinar gives up his shardblade. To Sadeas. The guy who just tried to kill him. Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.

Actually, I kind of respect it? In a "this is either 4D chess or complete insanity" kind of way. Trading your legendary weapon to the man who betrayed you in exchange for all the bridge crews, including Kaladin's boys? That's either the most honorable thing anyone's ever done or the dumbest. Possibly both. Probably both. But ultimately… ultimately. It’s stupid. You’re not making Sadeas stop throwing away bodies on these bridge runs with that wager. And he even asks Kaladin the price of the blade and the price of a life. Both are supposedly priceless.

But wait, there's more! Dalinar then proceeds to kick his nephew Elhokar's shit in, dude goes into his chamber and beats him within an inch of his life. And I fully expected him to just straight up snap his neck and sit on the throne and be like “Here lies your king, anyone else wish to object?” Instead after teaching him a lesson on what a warrior can do he makes himself Highprince of War. Takes over the whole military operation. And THEN gives his Shardplate to his son Renarin. So now Dalinar's walking around with no blade, no plate, just vibes and the sheer intimidation factor of being the Blackthorn. Oh and the massive fucking balls it takes to be Dalinar in a camp of people who are about to get their murder on.

You know what? I actually love this. Dalinar's out here playing the game without any of the cheat codes and still winning through pure "I will end you with my bare hands" energy. It's the fantasy equivalent of a retired gunslinger hanging up his revolvers and still being the most dangerous person in the room. Like when they came after Afro Samurai and he’d been “retired” but his reflexes and skills were so top notch that after who knows how many years he basically blinked and the guy was dead. That’s the energy that Dalinar is spitting out right now.

The Storm on the Horizon

And now Szeth, our favorite gravity-flipping assassin, has been sent to kill Dalinar. You remember Szeth, right? The guy who murdered the king in the prologue by hookshoting his way through an entire palace guard? The dude who's killed three shardbearers as a casual aside? Plus others on the command of the healer king. Who apparently has world domination plans, or at least likes the world all messed up and not united.

Yeah. That guy. Coming for Dalinar. Who just gave away his shardblade and his shardplate.

Part of me hopes book two opens with Szeth doing his whole "stormlight flip, pull gravity, lash lash lash, I have a shardblade" routine and Dalinar just standing there like, "Bitch, I'll take you without a blade. Come at me."

Because honestly? I'd believe it. The Blackthorn earned that energy.

The Hermit Crabs Update

Still not enough giant hermit crabs though. I demand more chulls in the sequel. The chasmfiends were cool during the fight scenes, I'll admit. Giant lobster kaiju battling dudes in power armor is exactly the kind of ridiculous I can get behind. But the everyday giant crabs pulling wagons? Those are my boys. Those are the real heroes of Roshar.

Speaking of which, my brother wants to run the Cosmere tabletop RPG. And you know what? I'm in. But I'm not playing some noble shardbearer or brooding soldier. No, I'm going to be a spren wrangler who rides a chull. Just some absolute nobody living their best life herding magical emotion sprites while mounted on a giant hermit crab. That's the Roshar content I've been craving. Forget the Knights Radiant, give me the Chull Herders of the Shattered Plains. That's the real story. Have an exhaustion spren hanging around all erory like giving off a “well, it could be worse,” vibe. Because in this world it could. You could end up a slave running a bridge for an asshole.

Now, about those RPG books... my brother dropped roughly $200 on the Cosmere RPG set. Had them for about two months. The gold lettering on the covers is already rubbing off. Two months. Two hundred dollars. Gold flaking away like it's some ancient tome that's been sitting in a crypt for centuries instead of on a bookshelf in an air-conditioned house.

Look, I get it. Fancy collector's editions are meant to be displayed, not manhandled. But these are game books. They're supposed to be used. Flipped through during sessions. Referenced when your spren wrangler needs to know if her chull can trample a Parshendi. If the gold lettering can't survive two months of existing, how's it going to survive actual play? Maybe Sanderson's publisher should take some notes from the Dungeons & Dragons folks, because my 3rd edition books from twenty-plus years ago still look better than these allegedly premium products. Which by the way. Full collection, still in good condition in my library. Still read occasionally.

But hey, at least we'll have pretty... slightly less pretty... okay, increasingly shabby books to reference while I live my best chull-herding life.

Final Verdict

Here's where I land on The Way of Kings: it's not a bad book. It might even be a good book for people who aren't me. But it's absolutely, definitively, not a book for someone who reads in small chunks, prefers sci-fi pacing, and wants their villains to show up before the 90% mark.

Sanderson can clearly write. The action sequences, when they finally happen, are genuinely exciting. The magic system, once you stop thinking about the physics, has some cool applications. And the worldbuilding is dense enough that I'm sure superfans have wikis dedicated to cataloging every spren type and Highprince genealogy.

But forty-five hours is a lot to ask for a setup book. And let's be honest, that's what this is. Setup. The real story, whatever it is, hasn't started yet. We're still in the prologue of a ten-book series, and I just spent a month of reading time getting through it.

Will I read Words of Radiance? Maybe. Eventually. When I've recovered from this one and my brother has sufficiently guilted me into it. Or maybe I'll just absorb the lore through osmosis during our tabletop sessions while my chull-riding spren wrangler avoids all the main plot nonsense entirely.

For now, I'm going back to sci-fi where the spaceships go fast and the villains have the decency to show up in act one.

Rating: It Gets Good Eventually/10

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Film Review – Transformer One Piece of Garbage

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:00:00 GMT

It’s been four whole blog posts without a film review… I was jonesing to review some. And somehow I got three in back to back order. The 2 Zootopia posts and this transformers one. It’s been a productive Thanksgiving.

The Nostalgia Problem

Now, I grew up on G1. I grew up on “Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost.” The goosebumps that break out when I hear Peter Cullen speak that. Even now in my forties. I admit it. I loved G1 for all its problems. But here’s the thing about being me. I know when the Nostalgia blinds me. I know because I still force myself to watch Starvengers and Gaiking and other Force Five monsters and boy, let me tell you. Without that nostalgia lenses those are arguably terrible cartoons to watch.

But just like Destro telling Serpentor that Cobra Commander is a World Class Buffoon there is something to be said about the things from the 80s. Now, I’m not saying all the new stuff is terrible. My brother was a big fan of the Beast Wars stuff. Not me, mostly cause I didn’t like the animation. He was a fan of Reboot too, which I enjoyed more because of the villains. Megabyte’s voice is just oh so sexy.

I read through all the old G1 comics, preferred the comics to the TV show to be honest, but I still have all the seasons of it, and the movie. I liked the movie enough I bought it in multiple places, mostly because I forgot I had it on another platform. Don’t judge me. Transformers are forever.

I liked transformers enough to make an Epic Rap Battle distrack between Coach Boomer from Sky High, Present Mic from My Hero Academia only to have Blaster and then Soundwave come in to end the fight. So I take my robots serious.

The Voice Problem

And one of the first problems with the series is the voices. Peter Cullin is still doing work. Frank Welker might be as well. And when you have Soundwave and you distort reverb and whatever to his voice it doesn’t matter who the voice is. But Chris Hemsworth as Optimus? No. Sorry. That’s Thor. At least Scar Jo did a little better in not making me think it was Black Widow as Elita-1. But every time that Optimus opened his mouth I was just thinking it was Thor. And picking Steve Buscemi for Starscream is a choice. Not one I would have made. I don’t know who I would have picked to be honest. You’re not going to get Chris Latta, as the man died in 1994. But you don’t have to keep the same voice.

The Pacing Problem

But my complaints aren’t necessarily with just the voice acting. There’s a lot to niggle over this. I think the biggest complaint is that this easily and really should have been two movies. It’s fun to see Megatron be born. It’s great they decided to reboot and give us yet another continuity for the birth of the transformers. But they should have made the finding out about what happened to the Primes be the cliff ender for the first movie.

Megatron and Prime have fundamentally different philosophies and the writers of this one basically make Prime just kinda meh or non-confrontational when Megatron, rightfully angry, decides it’s high time that the king’s head come off in a spectacular fashion before the populace. But they deflect away from that, you can’t build tension between these characters for reasons.

The Philosophy Problem

But that’s fundamentally everything that is different between the two of them. And having a fundamental fight about justice should be the core as to why Prime is willing to let the system do it’s thing. He’s got the evidence he’s going to present it and he’s going to let the people decide. And Megatron knows better, he knows that he’s too dangerous to live, that the courts are in his pocket. That Sentinel Prime is The Senate… dun dun dun!

Oh um… spoiler. Sentinel Prime is evil.

But here’s the part that really doesn’t make sense. We’ve seen time and time again in the movie that Prime has these idealistic ideas and it ends up hurting everyone but him. How can the dude have any respect in the system anymore? Megatron isn’t the villain here. He’s the hero we need to break the broken system. Prime is just that poor miner who if he dreams big enough, scratches enough energy scratchers or whatever passes for their lottery, he’ll get a transformation cog and become one of the rich bots. But it doesn’t work like that.

The Rushed Ending Problem

Instead we rush a fight where Megatron does his thing, pulls the Seekers… sorry The High Guard to him and then Prime is like “Get out, you’re not wanted.” And then basically credits roll.

Like, the hell it does.

You’re telling me you just wanted Sentinel Prime to stand for justice and when you kill him you just kick the offender out and not make him see justice?

I get it. Writing is hard, and more so when you’re not sure if you’re getting a sequel. But if you did it properly you wouldn’t have had to worry. Instead we have this rising action and then a quick sweep up that makes no sense. Those of us familiar with the lore know that Megatron waged war for so long that the planet basically ran out of energy and they had to go to other places looking for it. Which is how we get the Headmasters and in all the comic follow ups we get the various groups who had enough and started their own Transformers societies off of Cybertron.

The Cash Grab Problem

But this was never going to be a series. This wasn’t War For Cybertron or even Armada or any dozen other versions that have been soft reboots and the like over the years. This was Hasbro coming in and saying “Hey this is our continuity. Make a movie.” Cool, we can work with that. But you gotta, I don’t know, lead with it.

You can’t have bored-sounding actors who are playing your pivotal roles. You can’t have this building tension between friends you completely gloss over that you’ve been building this entire movie. You can’t have actions without consequences.

There’s a lot of setup and no follow through in this movie. And I think it’s because halfway through they realized they had no idea how or what to do and just wanted to finish it and get their money. Which is sad, cause now Hasbro is like “You can make movies of our stuff, we’re not ponying up any cash.” Which is sad, the new D&D movie is actually a really good movie. It’s a fun adventure and a great popcorn flick. So what went wrong here?

It’s a cash grab, plain and simple. They grabbed some big named actors playing voices hoping to get the star power to sell it. Thor, Black Widow, Don Draper, Morpheus, you have fucking Laurence Fishburne in an almost throw away point, Mr. Pink. The budget was estimated at 75 to 150 million. How much was in the voices alone? It earned 129 million, not terrible. But if a third of your profit went into the voices and then a third into the cgi and who knows how much into marketing… you can tell why Hasbro is like we’re done here.

What Could Have Been

Which is sad. Transformers has so much room to live and breath and this could have done it if it had been two movies or hell a limited series. 6 episodes could have done so much for this movie. Could it have saved it? Maybe. The writers in question did work for Marvel, Ant-Man and Wasp, Thor: Ragnarok and Thunderbolts, not all hits but not all tanks either, depending on your views of how that property is going, could have been good.

If Hasbro had given more direction than just print us money. As we saw with their entire D&D Beyond and Magic The Gathering stunt the corporate bigwigs were in charge and the production suffered.

The Shockwave Problem

But that’s just one humble transformers fan girl opinion. I’m certainly not giving this a terrible rating and telling you to avoid it even if it was free because of how they ruined my favorite character Shockwave. No, certainly not. I’m not jaded. I’m clarity of thought before rashness of action. It’s not like I thought the character was badass enough to adopt his very motto “Clarity of Thought Before Rashness of Action” into basically my own mantra. My own INTJ rallying cry. Having him being emotional and reactive is just not something the fan girl in me can tolerate.

Calm, cool collected dislike for a sub par movie that had the bones to be a good movie if it had cooked longer.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review – Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Film Review – Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition

If you haven't read Part 1 of this review covering the original Zootopia, go do that first. I'll wait. And don’t worry, no spoilers cause if you haven’t seen it yet, what’s wrong with you? Because we're about to dive into the sequel, and you need to understand why Chief Bogo might just be the most incompetent, or cunningly villainous, police chief in animated film history.

The World Gets Bigger

In Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition, and yes, just go watch Chinatown, you'll save yourself 40 bucks; seriously, 2 tickets and 2 waters was 40 bucks, we add in the secret reptiles hiding in the Marsh District with walruses, sea lions, a dolphin, and the discovery that there's a whole other continent that apparently the reptiles noped out to.

And uh... spoilers. At the end of the movie, we see a bird feather.

But if you were paying attention to the problems you might remember in Gazelle's song "Try Everything" about how "Birds fly." We had no indication in the first movie there were even birds outside of this one lyric which is kind of weird if there are no birds. Now the human audience doesn’t think twice about it, but in the world building scheme? It’s kind of big. Now this is probably because the folks who did Zootopia had absolutely no clue how big of a hit this would be. It would have been a quick-as-heck fix to just have an ostrich or a peacock or a dove in the background. Hell, a damn pigeon would have gone the distance to address that you have other things. The environment could then have been used to explain why there aren't reptiles. Outside of the jungle or desert zones they're not likely to just hang around. But we’re not here to talk about the animal population problem, which part 1 addresses. Seriously, it’s like a 40K hiveworld, only alive by the Emperor’s will.

Yet Another Twist Villain

Anyway… you know there's going to be a twist villain, it happened in the first movie, and if the first movie wasn't strong enough to stand on its own without a plot twist, you know this sequel is going to be the same, it's still so meh. Like, who cares who this plot twist of a villain is? Other than we get a "cool" shot, because I guess someone's a Kubrick fan, a shot-for-shot recreation of Jack Nicholson entering the hedge maze from The Shining. To quote Willie from The Simpsons, because I don't want to get sued.

The Case for Bogo as Villain

But here's where it gets interesting. Zootopia 2 continues to point toward Bogo being a villain, albeit an incredibly incompetent one. Because we get yet another twist villain. And we see that corruption runs deeper in the ZPD. Our villains are talking directly to the police UNDER Bogo and giving them orders. Now, no spoilers, it could be argued that this is because of what happens to our chief. But if you had set up a proper police hierarchy this could have been avoided. Seriously, where’s the commissioner or other police chief?

So what does this make of our water buffalo, or is he a cape buffalo, police chief? That he's only interested in maintaining the status quo. Which doesn't make him a great chief. We see no push from above, the mayor isn't in there busting his chops, we have no commissioner setting policy.

And I get it, Hopps and Wilde are pretty terrible cops. Unless you take into account they're movie cops. They "Aim for the Bushes" like in The Other Guys. They blow up buildings like in Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, they're basically the same movies. So they live up to the trope. They don't have Arnold's charm in Last Action Hero though, which is fine.

The Villain Bogo Could Be

Think about it. Think about what fun opportunities you could have if you opened up and made Bogo a villain across both films, even if he's just the henchman who gets lucky and gets away.

In the first film, Bellwether needs someone on the inside. Someone who can make cases disappear, who can assign a bunny rookie to this missing person case without proper resources, who can slow-walk investigations until the damage is done. Bogo fits that bill perfectly.

In the sequel, the corruption goes deeper. Villains are giving orders to cops under Bogo's command. Either Bogo is the most oblivious police chief in history, or he's letting it happen. The second option is more interesting. The second sets up a sort of HR situation like you see in Person of Interest, which if you’ve not watched it stop reading and go binge 5 seasons. You’ll thank me.

The paperwork, the bureaucracy, the system crushing down on all these mammals? It makes perfect sense if Bogo is so jaded and tired that he just wants to watch the world snuff itself out because they can't feed themselves. Because when you have 81 million bunnies in the suburbs, rodents breeding like... well, rodents... and a city that statistically should have thousands of missing persons cases but only ever seems to notice 14…

Maybe Bogo figured out a long time ago that this whole "predator and prey living in harmony" thing was a ticking time bomb. Maybe he's just waiting for the inevitable collapse. Maybe he's helping it along.

It might be time for just a bit more predation.

Final Thoughts

Zootopia 2 isn't a bad movie. It's just... more of the same. Another twist villain. More world-building that raises more questions than it answers. Like seriously where did that feather come from? Are you going to tell us the birds are in a flying city above us? Cause let’s not get into how the logic behind that is going to wreck the world. And a police chief who continues to be either incompetent or complicit.

Disney could have done something brave here. They could have made Bogo the long-game villain. The one who's been pulling strings across both films. The bureaucrat who decided that if Zootopia was going to collapse under its own unsustainable population, he might as well be the one controlling how it falls apart.

Instead, we got another sheep in wolf's clothing. Figuratively speaking. Now let’s be honest they could have gone in a different direction, of sorts, they could have used this movie building up a more sympathetic Nick. We saw Judy’s opening to her life, we could have seen Nick constantly trying to be a good guy but the system, maybe by folks like Bogo, who kept reminding him he’s a filthy predator. Hell the new mayor flat out calls him a criminal cop in like the first few minutes of the movie. Now we know that in real life it had to be at least five months Nick was in the Academy, cause it takes almost half a year to go through police academy in real life, but the movie says one week. So which are we dealing with? Letting anyone into the academy and out without the skills? Because our villain Bogo doesn’t care. Or that someone didn’t do their research?

So maybe. Just maybe they should be eating mice. At this point, the math says they might have to.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Film Review – Zootopia: The Zooing

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:00:00 GMT

So, I'm actually a little surprised I didn't make a Zootopia review when it came out. I watched that movie a lot and bought it pretty much instantly. Hell, I recall biking home to "Try Everything" many evenings. Looking back through my backlog of film reviews and not seeing one is probably a disservice. Probably because I was busy working on The Chronicles of Loth or something. Anyway, since Zootopia 2 came out today and I saw it for Thanksgiving, along with Transformers One, more on that garbage later, I figured it was time to remedy that oversight.

The Scale Problem

Here's a bit of scale for those who might not be in the know. Zootopia is supposed to be six times bigger than San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6. Population and area wise, we have no good clue about San Fransokyo's exact numbers. But assuming it's based on the dimensions of San Francisco, which is more or less what Big Hero 6's movie was based on, we're looking at roughly 47 square miles with a population of about 815,000 people.

Now Zootopia, take it with a grain of salt, population wise is probably much more massive since we have the tiny critters. Six times 47 square miles gives us roughly 282 square miles. That's about the size of New York City or Chicago land mass wise. And that's just the city proper. Which, is going to cause problems when you look at the numbers we have below.

Bunnyburrow, as Judy is leaving, has 81,435,816 rabbits. We're not privy to how much space Bunnyburrow takes up, but we can assume it's not a small land mass set aside for this. And we're told that the city follows a 10 to 1 population distribution. So for every 10 prey animals, there is one predator.

Only, that's not exactly true. Because in the animal kingdom there are no true herbivores, everything, if it's hungry enough, will eat meat. Remember the video of the cow eating that snake? Or how about hippos that take a bite out of stuff just because? You telling the most prolific killer in Africa it can't? Go on, I'll wait.

Without predation, this is a world that is ultimately doomed to fail. Now enough of the scale problem... because we have oh so many more problems to point out.

The Horror of Stats

Zootopia's pivotal story hinges on a city of, assuming using the math from Big Hero 6, roughly 6 million mammals. But in actuality we're probably looking at 15 to 25 million, remember the suburb of Bunnyburrow has 81 million on its own. And you're telling me rats, lemmings, mice, and other small rodents aren't breeding prolifically? Yeah... not happening.

But anyway, the plot hinges on the missing persons of 14 mammals. You're telling me in a city that's at almost the population of New York City (8,478,072 pop), or the population of Los Angeles (3,878,704), Chicago (2,721,308) AND Houston (2,390,125) merged, we have 14 missing animals and that's a crisis? NYC has roughly 13,000 missing persons cases reported a year. Some get found, sure. Some wind up in morgues, but not all of them are found.

We see where this is going, right? Welcome to a new type of Disney flick. No Bambi's mom being shot in the field, no Simba's dad being pushed from a cliff by Scar. No, we have the horror of stats. Zootopia crushes itself under the numbers.

The Night Howler Problem

The story is plucky bunny has to prove she's got the right stuff. We get her history and see how she overcomes giant odds, which, keep in mind, we have fucking mice in this movie at like centimeters in height, while we also have damn elephants. Elephants that weigh in at roughly 12,000 pounds. You realize how much damage these things can do? A savage elephant in Little Rodentia isn't just a threat, it's an extinction-level event for that district.

Officer Jumbo gets hit by the night howler, a plant that Judy's parents and her fox bully Gideon recognized immediately. And Mayor Lionheart, with an entire fucking hospital system at his disposal, couldn't figure it out. A drug that so fundamentally changes the person hit with the poison they never seem to recover, even though Judy's folks say that the affected person came around eventually. Yeah, welcome to the 40K hive world.

Is Bogo the Real Villain?

Now... we have 14 mammals that our Mayor is finding, because remember, it's the mayor's aide Bellwether who's causing this, rounding up and locking these predators up to try and cure them. So it's possible she's feeding tips. But setting aside that, the Lionheart has his own security forces operating in the city. He's got mercs. Kidnapping citizens before the ZPD ever gets wind of some of these. Which implies that either this police force is grossly incompetent, or that Chief Bogo is our secret villain.

I know, I know... WHAT? Two twist villains? But how? Why?

I mean, seriously consider this. Bellwether is the mastermind who acts sweet and innocent but wants all predators to pay, because I guess they stole her cookies or something. But Bogo runs the ENTIRE ZPD. We see no commissioner, we see no other districts. So we have to assume this guy, in a city of 8 to 15 million, is handling all of this.

Now, I'm not saying Bogo is a good villain, he's something of an idiot. Because if he was any good, with what would in theory be about 13,000 missing persons cases annually, these 14 mammals would be lost in the shuffle. Boom, Zootopia 1 becomes a boring-ass movie about Judy Hopps trying and failing to be impressive in a city with so much minor and petty crime it makes Sandford in Hot Fuzz seem normal.

But think about it. Think about what fun opportunities you could have if you opened up and made Bogo a villain, even if he's just the henchman who gets lucky and gets away.

The paperwork, the system crushing down on all these mammals? It makes perfect sense if Bogo is so jaded and tired that he just wants to watch the world snuff itself out because they can't feed themselves. Because when you have 81 million bunnies in the suburb alone, it might be time for just a bit more predation.

So, should they be eating mice?

Part 2 coming soon, where we dive into Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition and see if Bogo's villainy continues...

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

The Way of Kings – Second Update

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:00:00 GMT

When Fantasy Feels Like Homework

So I'm back, still trudging through The Way of Kings. I've made it to Part 4, which means I've survived all the library shenanigans with Shallan and more of Kaladin's bridge-running adventures. According to my Kindle, I've got about 12 hours left. I've also picked up the audiobook so I can listen on my drives to and from cardiac rehab, which means I'm getting hit with this story from multiple angles now. Lucky me. But now I know how someone pronounces these names.

The "You Caught Something Others Missed" Problem

Apparently I'm some kind of savant because my brother informed me that I caught something most readers don't notice until the third book. Jasnah's ward, Shallan, the girl who steals the soulcaster, has a shardblade. When she's being chased by the symbol heads, she starts counting her heartbeats, which we've seen the other shardblade bearers do. Ten heartbeats to summon the weapon.

My brother seemed impressed. I was mostly just like... okay? Cool, I guess?

Same thing with figuring out that Kaladin's slurping up stormlight to heal himself. Apparently that's supposed to be some big revelation but come on. We already saw the assassin doing his hookshot routine by sucking the light from lanterns. It's not exactly quantum physics to connect those dots. Sure he's not lash, hop, lash, hop, gravitying his way through battle but is it a stretch to use magical storm juice to heal yourself?

And you know what? That right there highlights one of my biggest issues with this book. When you only read a chapter or two a day, these "clever" setups that are supposed to pay off hundreds of pages later just... don't land. Maybe Sanderson's books are better consumed in those massive page-turning marathon sessions where you're devouring 200 pages at a time and the foreshadowing is still fresh in your brain. But when you're reading at a normal human pace? It feels less like brilliant setup and more like homework you forgot you were assigned.

The Shardblade Scarcity Problem (That Isn't Actually Scarce)

Can we talk about how shardblades are supposed to be these incredibly rare artifacts that can destabilize entire economies if they're bought or sold? Because the math isn't mathing here.

Dalinar, our badass who's going mad with visions, finally gives us actual numbers. Maybe 60 shardblades total? Twenty in his kingdom, twenty in the opposing kingdom, and the rest scattered throughout all the other kingdoms in dribs and drabs that might equal what the first two have combined.

But wait. In Dalinar's fever dream vision memory thing when the Radiants give up their oaths, there are 200 shardblades and shardplates just... laying around. And they mention there are other orders, so if every order has 200 blades that's 2,000 shardbearers with plate and sword. Where are they? Did our rock monsters eat them? Is that why the soulcasters can turn the very rocks into food? Because the Kaiju ate magic armor and blades and can now become food for the nations? And please note this is sarcasm bout the kaiju eating the shards. And our boy Szeth, the king-killing assassin, casually fights, and kills, three shardblade bearers as an aside. Just a little throwaway. We have no idea what kingdom or whatever these three blades belong to and what power dynamic it might be shifting. Stay tuned for book 10! When we find out that they were part of this one worthless kingdom named in passing.

So which is it? Are these things rare or not?

Because from where I'm sitting, this is like the difference between a Google Pixel and an iPhone. Sure, technically one costs more than the other, but they're only "rare" to people who don't have money. If there are potentially 2,000 of them at one point and now there are 60, where did the other 1,940 go? Did someone lose them between couch cushions? Are they sitting in some warehouse waiting to be rediscovered by a plucky adventurer?

The worldbuilding here is trying to have it both ways. These weapons are supposed to be SO rare and SO valuable that possessing one instantly elevates your social status and military power. But also they're common enough that random assassins are collecting them like Pokemon cards. And I'm not going to be surprised to find out there's some whole established black market economy around selling them or something. Point is, 2,000 mythical weapons that change the tide of battle and you've found 60? The hell happened to them?

Where's My Grand Admiral?

I keep asking myself why I'm struggling with this book, and I think I've figured it out. Where's this book's Thrawn? Where's my tactical genius who's three steps ahead of everyone, making calculated moves that matter? Where's the villain who makes me want to keep reading just to see what brilliant bastardry he pulls next?

Instead I've got... what? A bunch of people running bridges. A girl stealing a magical artifact via the world's most convoluted heist that mostly involves her reading books and being awkward. And Dalinar having visions that tell him to unite people or whatever. At least the HBO Game of Thrones had sex to keep the audience hooked. I've got the windspren... windsprenning with Kaladin.

Look, I get it. I'm a sci-fi girl trying to force myself through high fantasy. It's like asking someone who loves horror movies to sit through a three-hour period drama. Sure, it might be technically well-crafted, but it's just not scratching that itch.

And here's the thing, Sanderson has written 30+ books. He's planning to spread this particular story across seven or eight books, whatever the full Stormlight Archive is supposed to be. I'm 30-ish hours into book one and I'm STILL waiting for a villain to emerge. Sure, we've got hints. There's Odium mentioned in Kaladin's highstorm fever dream, shhh we're not supposed to know he's the god who like got kicked off the planet by the other gods or something. There's political maneuvering happening in the background. But there's no Grand Admiral Thrawn. There's no Darth Vader choking out incompetent officers. There's just... slow-burn worldbuilding. And about five people who are bastards but they're not interesting bastards.

Maybe I need to compare this to A Song of Ice and Fire to see if all epic fantasy moves at this glacial pace. Because at least in the Heir to the Empire Trilogy, the Thrawn books, there's clear rising action throughout each book. Stakes build. Tension escalates. Things HAPPEN. Hell, Tolkien gave us clear-cut bad guys. Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman. I guess technically Gollum. We KNEW who we were rooting against. We also knew the stakes.

Here? I'm still hoping something will happen soon.

Kaladin's Stupid Decision

Speaking of not making sense, Kaladin. Our brooding bridge boy who I actually liked as a character, throws down like an absolute boss and earns himself a shardblade and shardplate. The GM, sorry, Sanderson, literally hands him the best loot in the game.

And he turns it down.

He. Turns. It. Down.

Are you kidding me? You know what happens when the GM gives you a reward and you're like "nah, I'm good"? Your found family dies. Your remaining squad gets executed in front of you. You get exactly what you deserve for being an uppity player who thinks he's too good for the treasure drop.

I've mentioned before that I'm not a nice person. This is one of those moments where I'm actively rooting against the protagonist because he's making choices that are narratively frustrating. Sure, sure, it's "in character" for his whole "I won't become like the lighteyes" thing. But you know what's also in character? Survival. Taking the tools you need to protect the people you care about. And his entire reason for joining the army was to protect baby bro, which he failed. You know what could have made saving baby bro easier? Fucking power armor.

Instead, we get this martyr complex that's supposed to be noble but just reads as self-destructive to me. And not the interesting kind of self-destructive either. Just the annoying kind.

The Lightsaber Problem

Now when it comes to the fandom I've discovered something, and let me tell you this fun little aside. I was out at breakfast with my writing buddy, we meet up regularly to work on our respective literary projects and generally nerd out, and I'm describing how shardblades work. I call them lightsabers because that's essentially what they are, and there's this dude two tables over who looks like he's ready to Sweet Chin Music me for the comparison. He actually came over to educate me on the entire cosmere and the inner workings on the great Sanderson. He was ready to sit down and spend the rest of the day educating me. Luckily his wife had other plans. Great woman, she’s a real hero.

But here's the thing. They ARE basically lightsabers with extra steps. You summon them from hammerspace, they cut through anything, and they have this weird quirk where they kill people without leaving horrific wounds, if you don't count the blackened skin and burned-out eyes, which I absolutely do count.

And that's stupid.

These things are assassination weapons, not battlefield tools. You want to take out a high-value target quietly? Great, use a shardblade. But in the middle of a pitched battle with armies clashing? You know who would love these weapons? Warhammer 40K Orks. Tyranids. Anyone who just wants to wade through bodies without worrying about their sword getting stuck in someone's ribcage. The Orks and Tyranids want biomass, you know what makes great biomass? Bodies that are pretty much pristine because a lightsaber just vorped away their soul or whatever, leaving fresh tasty meat behind to be consumed.

The entire concept doesn't make tactical sense. If I'm writing a battle scene and I give someone a weapon that phases through armor but kills the person inside, I'm writing an assassin's tool, not a warrior's weapon. But Sanderson treats these like they're meant for glorious battlefield combat, and I just... can't. Now that power armor? That could do some serious damage, and we see that it can take a Kaiju alright, but not a spear to the face. So pro tip, avoid sharp pointy objects. It's a fair everyday life lesson anyway.

The Poisoning That Makes No Sense

Then there's Jasnah getting poisoned. I joked with my brother that it would be totally in her character to poison herself just to prove some convoluted point about trust or whatever. Turns out it was actually some guy, Kabsal, I think his name was, who poisoned her via her ward.

With bread.

And the jam was the antidote.

First off, antidotes don't work instantly. You're talking about chemical neutralization, not some magical cure-all that kicks in the second it hits your tongue. Chemistry doesn't work that way. Biology doesn't work that way. Even in a fantasy setting, you need some internal logic.

Second, and more importantly, what's step two of this plan? You kill the daughter of the queen, presumably while stealing her soulcaster, and then what? They hunted the assassin who killed the king across half the continent. You think they're not going to hunt you to the ends of the earth for murdering Jasnah Kholin?

It's the kind of half-baked villain plan that only works if you don't think about it for more than thirty seconds. And I've been thinking about it for way longer than that because I'm reading this book at the pace of molasses in winter.

The Highstorm Madness

Here's something that's been bugging me more and more as I listen/read. These highstorms that sweep through the continent with the force of a Category 15 hurricane, and yes, I know that's not a real category, but Sanderson seems to think hurricanes can just scale infinitely, happen ALL. THE. TIME.

I don't know if they're supposedly once-in-a-lifetime devastating storms... but it seems almost daily? Weekly? The timeline is fuzzy but they happen often enough that everyone's built their entire civilization around them. And nobody's thought, "Hey, maybe we should do something about the apocalyptic weather patterns that dominate our entire existence?"

Nobody's tried to terraform? Industrialize? Build better infrastructure? Develop technology that might, I don't know, STOP the storms or at least predict them better? Sure we have these guys who can predict the storms, but they keep telling us it's not an exact science. But you know what is an exact science? Science. To paraphrase Mark Watney in The Martian, "You science the shit out of it." It's not like it destroys livelihood, or things.

Instead everyone's just like, "Yep, that's a highstorm alright" and goes about their business hiding in stone buildings until Hurricane Katrina on steroids passes through and strips the land bare. Or in fucking wooden wagons pulled by our beloved crab guys. Seriously, where's my book about the crabs?

Maybe these highstorms are causing the madness, you guys. Maybe Dalinar's visions aren't divine inspiration, they're just what happens when your brain gets rattled by megastorms every few days for your entire life. Fantasy CTE. It's what ends football players' and wrestlers' careers, why not badass warriors in power armor?

Kaladin's got this figured out, right? Right?

The Reading Experience Problem

Here's the thing I keep coming back to. Maybe The Way of Kings is brilliant if you're the kind of reader who can dedicate entire weekends to devouring 500-page chunks. Maybe all these setups and payoffs work perfectly when they're compressed into a shorter timeframe in your brain.

But reading/listening in daily hour-and-a-half sessions? It feels interminable. The pacing drags. The revelations that are supposed to be shocking feel telegraphed. The tactical decisions that are supposed to be clever feel stupid.

I'm not saying Sanderson is a bad writer. He's clearly doing something right if my brother has read basically everything the man's ever written. I'm just saying that his style and my reading habits are fundamentally incompatible.

Or maybe I'm just a grumpy sci-fi nerd who misses having characters like Miles Vorkosigan or Ender Wiggin, people who think their way through problems with actual intelligence rather than just... running at them with magical power armor.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

I've got 12 hours left on the Kindle, minus however many hours I'm racking up in the car between cardiac rehab sessions. I'm going to finish this book because I'm not a quitter, not mentioning Malazan Book of the Fallen and how I tapped out after a chapter, and also because my brother will never let me hear the end of it if I don't. But I can already tell you that I'm probably not going to rush out and grab Words of Radiance.

Maybe that makes me a bad fantasy reader. Maybe I'm just too stuck in my sci-fi ways to appreciate what Sanderson's doing here. Or maybe, just maybe, some books are better suited for certain reading styles and I'm forcing myself through something that was never meant to be consumed the way I consume it.

Either way, I'll let you know if the ending changes my mind. Though given that I already know Kaladin's an idiot who turned down legendary loot, I'm not holding my breath.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

An Incorrigible Year in Review - 2025

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:44:51 GMT

Ending the year on a high note

The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

Educational Punching Bags

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT

A number of years ago I came across a rather clever chap, a man named Professor Elemental. I think like most, it was his fighting trousers that caught my attention. I'm something of a fan. He has a charming wit to his burns. And so, to parrot the good Professor: It seems someone has been biting me.

If you're not familiar, I've been on the bookface for years now, mostly because a collection of acquaintances and friends refuse to modernize and get onto Discord like civilized individuals. I've collectively made friends with some of these folks through work and then added them to this social media juggernaut back in the day. I don't add folks now. I've made use of all the social medias a time or three: Facebook, MySpace, Grindr... Wait, not that one, I meant Tumblr, and of course Twitter. I have posted a singular video on TikTok about flies meeting together for an impossible mission. And YouTube, I have a good amount of my public idiocy I should probably take off YouTube.

The Setup: Babylon vs. Mesopotamia

So imagine my surprise when one of my friends starts making claims about certain things, and I, like the good little worshiper of Allfather Odin, decide to wade into the discussion seeking clarification that eventually became a full-on discourse. I thought we reached a mutual understanding. Now imagine my surprise when today I decided to make what I thought would be a humorous comment to their statement about the political/economic impacts of Japan vs. China and how apparently it relates to a certain Middle Eastern engagement. For discretion and to avoid the censorship of the moderators, I am of course talking about Babylon vs. Mesopotamia. It's truly the fight for all ages.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me, I'm a bit of a rogue in many ways, scholar in others. My education, though started by the American public school system, was not completed by it. Education is never finished. I'm pretty sure Allfather Odin would get very cross indeed with me if I should decide enough is enough. If I were to decide that I had achieved absolute knowledge, or more importantly, had I decided not to share that knowledge. But one shouldn't be arrogant or condescending when sharing information, that doesn't help anyone. And I've been told by multiple people that I can teach things, that I know, very well and make it understandable. Which if you know your subject matter means you should be able to teach it.

Now I can see how this might come across to the uninformed, I really do. A white person, though I am a minority by virtue of being in the LGBT field, and some nefarious folks have co-opted Viking paganism for their asinine beliefs. But what's largely funny is that this individual, a number of years ago, was bemoaning the fact that they couldn't get any help with their minority outreach/community group. I didn't think anything about it because I thought, like most people in the 2016 to 2020 era, that they were simply trying to keep their heads above water. Everyone who wasn't a 1% was, and the struggle isn't a reason to be seen as weak. It should be applauded that you are working and trying and fighting the system. Do you give everything? No. As Jesus said, it is more impactful if you are poor to give what you can than for the rich to give a pittance. It means more when you are struggling. To sum it up, it builds character. I imagine, most of us have an over abundance of character at this point.

The Claim: China Has Never Had Wars

So in this particular case, this individual is making the base claim that China has no military presence anywhere and has had no wars. Clearly, I'm no expert on global politics. I'm just a fledgling author who spends too much time at 2 in the morning learning how to rewire a diesel submarine or learning the syntax of a dead language to ensure three lines of dialogue are correct. I certainly don't know anything about their Road and Belt policy, which is the soft power of coming in and offering economic assistance and road building in exchange for things for China. And if that shouldn't work, they'll roll in the tanks like they did in a certain conflict in 2020. And let's not digress into the artificial islands that they create in the surrounding sea, a sea that they claim despite the international courts saying it's not theirs. Or how they bully and potentially sink fishermen in "their sea."

I think people forget how much research a writer does for their work. Why, in The Hunt for Red October, it was famously delayed because the author was "publishing" classified information. Only it wasn't actually classified, it was stuff that Mr. Clancy had read and put together. Adding pieces from technical docs here, from conversations he'd heard there. So if you're open to it, you will learn a thing or two.

The Flex: Credentials as Weapons

But weirdly, this person decided as some sort of flex to Yugioh trap card me by whipping out their significant other's educational experience, which, bravo. Higher education is always to be applauded. Which was weird. We weren't talking about education. I had simply said I wasn't as educated on it, because I'm not. I really don't know a lot about the politics of what's going on on the Asian side of the world. Just like I'm not particularly schooled in Middle Eastern politics, or in Europe, or in South America. I get the surface-level stuff. I read Ground News, I read the BBC, and more importantly, I have friends on most continents: England, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Canada, and South Africa. Is that all the countries? No, but I feel it's enough to be like "Raul, Â¿cÃ³mo estÃ¡?" "Hiroshi, how's things in Hokkaido?" "Wie geht's, Maria?" and if you're wondering why Hiroshi doesn't get Kanji, it's cause I can't actually read that very well.

If I didn't care about the world in general, I wouldn't have been trying to self-teach myself Spanish, French, Japanese, or Hindi. Granted, I bit off more than I can chew, I sometimes do that, but that happens. The point is, I'm having this argument where someone is coming at me with astrology and indigenous feelings, claiming they can "show you through accounting and astrology" how geopolitics works, and I'm trying to understand, to have this discourse, to complete a part of my education.

The Breaking Point

And it got to me. The tone. The sheer arrogance of their superiority. I try, try very, very hard, to be humble. Am I? Probably about as well as any TV evangelist telling you that God thinks they're humble, and if you don't believe them, you should donate to their fund because their solid gold Humvee can't drive itself. But I like to think I try. But it triggered something in me. It made me write a fucking monolithic post ready to sink the Junk, which is an ancient Chinese ship, they're piloting while I'm over here on a nuclear aircraft carrier dropping smart bombs from the squad of F-35's that I carry around.

It should be noted that I can be prepared for a battle. After all, I wrote for myself a Rap Battle contest between Coach Boomer, Present Mic, Blaster and Soundwave. What were they going to offer when I was ready to go full scale into search to make a rap battle for minor characters?

I never liked people who have unearned smugness. I don't like people who demand your respect for unearned work. And so I decided and wrote a five-page dissertation, a masterclass thesis to take apart their statements. Based on the logic of "I'm just a country lawyer," to quote the Futurama chicken lawyer. And I remembered I had a no-drama policy. So I stepped back, and I wrote "May you be happy and be at peace", a Buddhist phrase that is basically a polite way of saying I'm out.

The Last Word They Had to Have

Not even five minutes later, the individual in question has the nerve to tell me to never post or comment on their feed because I don't do anything for them or their family. So like a standard nerd and a bit of a prick, I go to the comment, respond with the gif of Westley from The Princess Bride, "As you wish", and just like that, I blocked them and unfriended them. It made me realize that they are their own worst enemy in this case, and it's because of them that they can't get help for their minority cause. And I later realized that when I blocked them, they probably didn't see my Princess Bride burn. Truly, following the Princess Bride shenanigans, that is the sound of ultimate suffering.

Low Blows and Slop

But here's something that's a bit weird: they were trying to hit me below the belt, as if I can be injured by low blows. Please. Pigs love slop, and I'll play in the slop to my heart's fucking content. There is no mud that is too dense or vitriol that I shan't partake of and sling back. They asked what I did to combat the KKK. Which... okay. That's a weird thing to focus on. More so since both of us worked for a for-profit college, I'm not proud of it, and those were notoriously famous for preying on minorities. Was it that I didn't specifically go out of my way to find a Klan rally and go running through, guns a-blazin'? What that would have done, as a solo target, would have gotten my ass in the noose.

Was it implying I'm racist? Possibly that was their implication. They and their spouse are minorities, and as I said, I am too by the threadbare margins, and arguably one of the whitest white whiteys to ever white the light. But you know what isn't racist? That I have Black friends, and it's true. I'm in pretty constant meme-offs with at least one of them as we're constantly sending D&D and other stuff to one another. I have a number of them as work friends at work. I have Hispanic friends too. See, the thing is, when you start putting the label of "minority" on each and every one of them, then yeah, it kinda looks bad. But you know what I do when I think of my friends? I think of them as friends. And oh yeah, one or two of them might be Black, one or two of them might be Hispanic, Indian, Asian. I take it into account if we're going somewhere that they might get uncomfortable with, but I don't make it something that stands out about them. I know it influences their culture and that I cannot, as an outsider, ever know the specifics of that culture. But I can at least be understanding and seek to learn about it.

The Beautiful Irony

The beautiful irony of this whole situation? This person worked at Indiana Business College, one of those predatory for-profit institutions that specifically targeted minority communities, while lecturing me about what I do for marginalized people. They're married to an American, living in America, worked at an American institution that preyed on vulnerable students, but apparently Americans are "incapable of seeing past the land." They deployed their "American engineer mathematician Purdue grad spouse" like a credential weapon not once, but twice, as if a degree validates their claim that China has never had military conflicts. They hit me with "my bloodline ain't for you" when I tried to understand their perspective on indigenous knowledge, gatekeeping entire histories behind ethnic purity tests while demanding I provide my activism resume for dismantling the KKK.

And when I politely excused myself from the conversation? They had to get the last word, telling me to stop talking to them after I'd already said "be at peace." Couldn't let me exit gracefully. Had to make sure they got that final jab in about how my "vast information does nothing for Black Americans."

The Real Kicker

You know what the real kicker is? I genuinely wanted to learn from this person. I went into that conversation seeking understanding. But when someone comes at you claiming they can explain geopolitics through accounting and astrology, when they deny documented military actions because it doesn't fit their narrative, when they demand you prove your anti-racism credentials while working for an institution that actively harmed the communities they claim to protect... at some point you realize this isn't about education or discourse. It's about someone who needs to feel superior and will deploy every rhetorical weapon they have, credentials, ethnic gatekeeping, moral grandstanding, to maintain that feeling.

So I did what any self-respecting nerd does when confronted with unearned smugness: I wrote my five-page dissertation, saved it in my drafts, remembered that some people are determined to be their own worst enemy, and walked away. Because you know what? The Tenets of Incorrigibility include standing up for what you believe in, but they also include walking your own path. And my path doesn't include playing chess with pigeons.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Loving Our Pets Despite the Pain

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:49:45 GMT

And Why We Do It Again

Some years are harder than others. It's only natural. And in my life, I've been through surprisingly a lot of things.

Finished up a degree in Management of Information Systems, fancy title for "person who can run a call center" got my first real job out of college in 2007/8, and then in 2009, when I was looking to get my first house, we had the housing market collapse. Last one in. First one out.

I drove home in my brand new Jeep Wrangler, parked in the garage, and contemplated letting the car run.

Clearly I didn't, mostly because my dog at the time was freaking out that I was home at lunchtime. That was a bad day. And the year or so of just applying for job after job after job wasn't better. My unemployment ran out so quickly.

Fast forward to 2013. I left Indiana for ostensibly a brighter future on the East Coast, taking my Shar Pei and brother with me. The first year was hard. I struggled to support essentially three people. If you're not familiar with the Shar Pei, they are expensive. Maggie was allergic to damn near everything, so she needed special food. We had to avoid bees and wasps. She couldn't have more than a single shot at a time. Super expensive. She died rather suddenly in 2014 to liver cancer.

Then in 2016 I lost my job when the company I worked for restructured/got bought out. That started a great six months of trying to find a job, this time with the stress of a house. But I survived and got a job that was so stressful it legitimately almost put me into the hospital on a couple of occasions. A Prozac prescription, some therapy, and my new doggo later, I was at a better job.

Just in time for it to be bought up... And then that bought-up job was almost literally bought WHILE in the negotiation phase. Seriously. The ink was still drying when the company who bought my company was itself bought. And then COVID, and we were told to go work from home.

Great for doggies and the like everywhere. Not necessarily great for that svelte figure I maintained by eating out daily and driving in the car two hours a day.

But 2025 has been hard. Financially, politically, emotionally. All just shit.

I found out in November of 2024 that my faithful companion through COVID had developed cancer. January of 2025 we found out how bad. Unlike with Maggie, Dorian benefited from my hyper-vigilant, almost-always-home nature. We caught it, and while it was too much for surgery, it was treatable.

Meds every month totaling almost $150 before certain actions raised drug prices. Now that same med, with shipping, is $200. And still I maintained vigilance and watched. Discovering Cushing's in him. And watching his hip dysplasia start to act up.

I've had dogs my entire life. My German Shepherd mix from first grade until sophomore year of college basically passed because his hips got so bad he couldn't walk or relieve himself. I knew with Dorian as a Labrador mix he would probably have that same problem as well.

And then in July, I received the news that my health wasn't great. What I was chalking up to excessive heat and humidity was actually far worse. September we did a scan, and it was bad enough to warrant surgery for a closer look. That was essentially October.

Discovering in October that one of your arteries is 100% blocked and its nickname is "Widowmaker" is about as sobering an experience as you can get. Heart disease is on both sides of the family. It's mostly genetics that got me. Sure, American diets aren't great, but I was trying to improve by limiting sodium. And hey, cutting sugar and going to cardiac rehab three days a week to do essentially cardio has cut the pounds.

So imagine my surprise when shortly after my mother leaves, I get one of the worst migraines of my life. And hey, that American healthcare was really being top-notch by having people who absolutely didn't answer, neurologist, or the primary care saying "it's not our problem." A trip to urgent care lessened it but didn't fix it. A trip to pain management referred me for physical therapy. And hey, guess who has some twisted spinal discs? Did you guess me? You should have.

And then a trip to the vet showed the dog's blood pressure is through the roof, even on blood pressure medicine. I hadn't mentioned that he at some point over the year got a parasite, that his liver values were wonky, and that he started having nosebleeds that would put anime characters to shame.

Cancer has progressed.

So needless to say, as far as banner years go, my 2025 has been a bumper crop.

But here's the thing. As his journey comes to its end... as much as it hurts to lose the buddy I've had with me for eight-plus years... I know I'd do it all again.

I'll go into the kennel, the pound, the rescue, and I'll grab another dog. Because no matter how much pain comes with owning one, there's just something so decent and loving about having a pet.

Yeah, him waking me up in the middle of the night sucks. Or that he ate something on the walk and now he's sick. It doesn't matter. It's a pain that you willingly take on each time.

When I got him, I was his third forever home. It stuck. And I hope everyone who reads this gets to experience that joy of rescuing an animal and becoming their forever home.

And when I write this, he's still alive, sleeping on the footstool. And unlike others this won’t sit in the queue. I have no reason to let it languish, and I have no reason to even post it. Other than it’s raw and I know everyone can connect.

And I hope there is an afterlife where I can see each pet I've rescued or grown up with. Because it is too fucking cruel that while we are their entire life, their life is just a blip in ours.

Love you, Dorian. And thank you.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

The Corporate Grinder

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT

The Corporate Grind is Literally Killing Me (And Probably You Too)

Found out my ticker's messed up back in September. Heart problems. The kind that require cardiac rehab three times a week. Which means I now lose two hours a day minimum, twenty to thirty minutes in morning rush hour traffic to get there, an hour hooked up to a portable EKG while running and lifting weights, then the commute back. All so I can maybe not die before I'm fifty.

Guess what caused it? Take a wild fucking guess.

The same corporate grind that's been grinding all of us down since we were old enough to understand what a mortgage payment is. It takes to long to eat healthy, to eat clean. Factor in any bad genetics and you’re not going to have a good time. Say hello to a CAD Diag in your mid forties.

The Four-Day Work Week That Wasn't

For a brief, shining moment, I had a four-day work week. Four ten-hour days, Monday off. It was glorious. I could breathe. I could write. I could exist as something other than a productivity metric.

Then the boss's boss said no. Not because it didn't work, I was getting everything done just fine. But because "no one else in his department worked that schedule." Never mind that others could work that schedule if they wanted to make the switch. Nope. Back to five days because... reasons.

And here's where it gets beautifully absurd. When a holiday falls on Monday:

Someone Who Doesn't Really Do Anything But Meetings: "Well, Monday's a holiday so you have to work five days that week."

Me: "I'm already off on Monday. It's my day off. So I'll just work 30 hours. It'd be like taking off those other 8 hours like everyone else."

SWDRDABM: "That's not how the system works. We have to say you worked 40 hours in the pay system."

Me: "Does the system acknowledge that I'm there 4 days or 5? Or does it care that I'm getting 40 hours on the paycheck?"

SWDRDABM: "It only works if there's forty hours."

Me: "So you put in that day 10 hours. And I work 3 ten-hour days. Which, if my ability to do math is correct, is 40 hours. Which you can put into the pay system."

SWDRDABM: "That's not how it works."

Me: "It either works on 40 hours or 5 days. And I know we're all salary, so I'm willing to have this conversation with HR and Payroll."

Spoiler: That follow-up conversation never happened. No one would respond to follow-up emails.

The system doesn't care about logic. It cares about control.

The Treadmill That Speeds Up When You Run Faster

Back in the 2010s, I worked for a small company that built laboratory interfaces. I was project manager/developer/troubleshooter/tester/onsite coordinator for 30+ projects a month. The burnout was real and relentless. I remember going to Vegas for a client install and having to get up at 5 AM Eastern time just to keep working on other projects so I could meet expectations while I was onsite. No backup. No relief. Just grind.

I got smart. I adjusted my schedule so all my meetings were Monday/Wednesday, my actual work was Tuesday/Thursday, and Friday was free for whatever came up. I started getting ahead.

Then someone noticed my calendar was free on Tuesday/Thursday and started loading it up with meetings.

So I adjusted again. And again it happened.

The corporate wheel is always poised to run over someone. It doesn't matter how efficient you get, if you’re cutting corners, how many hours you pour in, how much of a Subject Matter Expert you are. The machine will find a way to demand more. And I don't know anyone, outside of fucks like Musk and Bezos who've never known real pressure, who doesn't understand the weight of mortgage payments, of putting food on the table, of keeping the lights on.

The Creative "Side Hustle" That's Killing What's Left

Now they tell us we need side hustles. Second jobs. Third jobs. Multiple income streams because one job doesn't cover it anymore, even though productivity has skyrocketed and CEO pay has gone up 1,460% since 1978 while worker pay has increased 18%. If you’re lucky.

So I write. Because I'm a writer, and writers write, right?

I spent the last year getting roughly 300,000 words down. Across multiple projects. I Am Not A Kobold!, Esper Fade: An Old Man's War, Esper Fade: Digital Ghosts and Other Anomalies, We Could Be Heroes... Maybe, Magical Mayhem, My Monstrous Life, Devilish Deal, Ballad of the Blade Queen, The Misadventures of Kiadan Slywyth, Beyond the Rifts... and that's just to name a few.

None of it's finished.

Because there's a vastly different energy between writing and editing. Writing can be relief, can be escape. Editing requires focus, requires energy, requires the mental bandwidth to see what's actually on the page versus what you think is there.

And I don't have that bandwidth anymore.

This week I cleaned up A Goddess's Gifts and threw it up on Itch.io. Felt good. Moved to Altered Realities, and the dread I had about rewriting scenes wasn't as bad as I thought. Felt emboldened. Moved to True Blue Alien.

Slammed headfirst into a brick wall. I wasn't prepared for how much rewrite that would require. And now it's sitting there, another project on the pile, another thing I don't have the energy to finish because I'm too busy keeping myself alive in the corporate grinder.

At least with a normal side hustle, DoorDash, Uber, whatever, you can see the cause and effect of your effort. You can see you're ruining your car for a pittance. With creative work? You're ruining your body and your mind and maybe, MAYBE, you'll see a paycheck years from now. And that's not even a certainty anymore.

We're All Too Tired to Think

Here's something I've noticed, and it scares me: I'm losing my attention span.

I used to watch 30+ minute YouTube videos. Long-form analysis, documentaries, deep dives into topics. Then it shifted to 10-minute videos. Now? YouTube Shorts of dogs being dogs. I won't apologize for watching dog videos, they're a small joy in a joyless grind, but if I'm noticing the decay in myself, there's a serious problem coming.

And it's not just attention span. The majority of Americans read at a 5th grade level. At best. Fifty-four percent read below 6th grade level. That's not because Americans are inherently stupid, it's because we're exhausted. We're nose to the grindstone from sunup to sundown. We don't have the mental energy left for complex thoughts, complex sentences, complex anything.

One of our little pleasures in life is those TikToks that make us chuckle for eight seconds. Or that slice of cheesecake, go ahead, take the one with the fudge, I won't judge. Most of the news is doom and gloom. Nobody has the time or energy for that.

I get it. I don't condone it, but I understand it. And I appreciate when you take a bit of time for yourself, because Allfather knows the system won't give it to you.

The Point

The corporate machine doesn't care if it kills you. It's designed to extract maximum value before you break, and then it'll replace you before your chair gets cold. Your health, your creativity, your relationships, your dreams, none of it matters to the quarterly earnings report.

So here's what I'm saying: Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. We're all running this rat race, and the only goal is to not be ground up in the grinder for as long as possible. There's no trophy for the most gold coins you collected or the most hoops you jumped through to get them.

If you see your fellow rat stumble or fall, help them back up. Encourage them. Because that's how we survive this. Together. Not by grinding ourselves into dust trying to prove we're worthy of basic dignity and a living wage.

The system is killing us. Let's at least make sure it doesn't kill our humanity too.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

When Science is Magic

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 17:00:00 GMT

When the character does something cool and impressive in the book or the anime or the movie this is referred to as the power system, or sometimes the magic system, of the setting. Brandon Sanderson is known for each of his books having a power system. For instance the Stormlight in Way of the Kings. Magical mana that, I’m still reading the book, causes storms so intense that it can strip the land bare apparently. But it can be used so subtly to provide lights to the general population, that it infuses the currency of the world. But it can be used to such an extent that it allows someone to turn a pile of stone into smoke or create quarries of marble out of what would appear to be nothing, or the more common use is apparently turning things from rubble into food.

Some are pretty straightforward, like in Dragon Ball Z where your power level dictates your strength, your durability and your speed. The claims of some characters to be fastest or strongest can be quickly blown away by the appropriately more powered character. And in this regard if a person is of sufficient power level above someone else they essentially receive little to no harm from the weaker person. Like when Perfect Cell was being smacked on by someone and just walking forward like an avalanche. The entire power level meant that they had become effectively immune to most standard attacks.

Every form of media has a power/magic system and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I really spent a lot of time making a system that I felt stood on its own. I called it the Esperion system, since the people who had this power were called Espers. My goal was to make it so it fit in each book I wrote. But the more I’ve worked on it the less logical it seems to have a single system for everything. So I’ve been working on other power/magic systems while I work on my YA Monster book. Which has its own unique power system.

But this got me to thinking about Full Metal Alchemist. I recall hearing that a lot of people consider it a great magic system because it’s not “magic.” And on the surface they’re right. It’s not “magic”. It’s “science”. Or at least they say it’s science. I’m sure I’m not the only idiot who’s had this thought. I’m just not brave, or suicidal enough, to go wading into the FMA subreddit to give my opinion. But the Alchemy they use is… magic! Dun dun dun!

It is, and I can prove it. We see that our brothers learn from books left around in their father’s study. So accessing and learning this system isn’t that hard. And we see dozens of state sponsored alchemists. But something funny happens when you look at all these alchemists. In theory the idea is that you have to use the laws of equivalent exchange to make things happen and that you can’t perform human transmutation. That bringing something to life that has died is impossible in this system. Cool, these are pretty fundamental rules we can work with.

Now something we see is that outside of a few exceptions everyone seems to do something with stone or the like. Armstrong uses his powers to summon pillars of rocks, make statues and turn rocks into drill bits. Another uses the earth to create chains and I think I recall seeing someone turn the earth into artillery and another into cannonballs. This kind of implies that the magic is limited by the imagination of the group. Even our titular characters aren’t really that creative. Using stone for hands, weapons, movement and the like. Only characters like Mustang, Kimbly and the ice alchemist guy are the ones who seem to have new ideas. And Kimbly can arguably be dismissed since he just seemed to make explosions from the rock. That sort of implies the others could do it as well.

In the case of Col. Mustang we see that he learned his Flame Alchemy from Hawk’s father and then that old bastard tattooed it to his daughter’s back and Roy destroyed it so no one else can learn it. Which implies you don’t want someone else to learn these secrets to your magic, so you destroy the recipe. But we’re told that alchemists hide their secrets in the meanings of their meanings, or something. Which is saying that if you knew the formulas you could learn and use the most broken and unhinged alchemy there appears to be. Mustang is using the very air molecules to create flame and explosions and that’s broken. But no one else seems to have a clue how to do it. Which is weird, if it’s a science then the process is repeatable by trial and error.

The same goes for Kimbly, for the ice alchemist and everyone else who has a unique spin on Alchemy. With enough review of their formula and an understanding Ed and Al could have been wiping out fireballs left and right. Major Armstrong could have converted his stone into explosive nitro packed projectiles. Ed shows us in an early episode that they have the chemical components to create a human. They have the bits and the bobs to say that this is what the human body is made up of. Yet they fail, and arguably they stop after one failed attempt. If this was real science they would have kept trying, maybe not with their own bodies, but they would have tried it. Try bringing back a squirrel or something. You can get the chemical components to that. Or maybe instead of just jars and tubs of the stuff that make up a human you go and get an actual corpse and use that. I mean, Frankenstein used bodies for a reason.

But no, where this shows you 100% that this is magic and not science is, spoiler, Truth. When Ed goes to see Truth at the end of the series to get his beloved brother back his bargaining chip is to give up his knowledge. His truth. And apparently Truth is a vindictive little shit because he’s like “That’s the right answer!” And then roll credits Al has a body, Ed’s lost his leg and I guess arm still… or something. I really didn’t care at that point. King Bradley was dead and he was the only reason to watch that series. Have I said I like villains? I feel like I have at some point.

But the point of this is, if Ed gives up his “knowledge” of “science” then he can just go back to the mortal world and learn it again. Science is repeatable. Science is teachable. Science can be learned if the pupil is willing. And unless he gave away all his knowledge of everything that transpired in their pursuit of getting their bodies back then he’d know how bad ass he was. And even if he did forget that in the bargain. You know who didn’t give up Ed and Al’s amazing exploits? Everyone else on the fucking planet. How many times is Ed going to walk by people praising him for how awesome of an alchemist he is without the shrimp being like “Maybe I should look into this alchemy thing.”

If Ed can learn it again, he knows he can’t do human transmutation, but they were awfully vague on what that entails. What if he was tired of being blond? Is that transmutation to change his hair color? What about skin color? Eye color? What about making an arm? A leg? Replacing a damaged bone? Warping your bones to be metal? Healing a cut? The vagueness of it means that it’s practically useless in healing applications. But then you cross the desert to Shin and you get Alkhistory. The thing Hohen Hime taught those people. And you can heal with this “science”. Uh oh… that’s human transmutation. Which is taboo. Looks like Truth is coming for you.

But Truth never seemed to go after Mei Ling for healing Dr. Marco. So you’re saying Truth only operates within the bounds of Father’s kingdom? Doesn’t seem like science to me if he’s some all powerful Science Being doing Science Stuff. It seems almost like it’s divine nature. And you could argue that it sort of is. Father’s blend is based on tectonic plates and that while Van Hohen Hime is based on the “chi” of the land. Whatever that is.

So Yeah, that power system in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood? Sorry not sorry… it’s Magic.

Always has been. And honestly, it would've been better if they'd just owned that from the start instead of dressing it up in pseudo-scientific gibberish about equivalent exchange. The system has potential, but it's built on a foundation of contradictions that anyone paying attention can spot. It's still entertaining as hell, King Bradley alone makes it worth watching, but let's stop pretending FMA cracked the code on "realistic" magic systems. It didn't. It just made magic look like chemistry homework.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Tales of Woe

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week I decided since I knew I was going to be down a lot of productivity, not to go into details, I’m going into surgery the middle of the week and they’re thinking it’s at least a week recovery. I already lost like 2 hours on monday at the doctor’s office, unrelated doctor visit, and today my brother is off so I knew I was going to lose several hours of productivity to several hours of youtube/anime watching and a trip to the wally world for shopping. To go back and reread some of my old fanfics I wrote for me… only to discover that they were gone!

Don’t judge me. My Ranma ½ Fan Fic where Ryoga shows up first and starts dating Akane is just as viable as anything you wrote. What do you mean it’s not? Well I like it and more importantly imaginary voice in my head, it’s only for me.

Over the years I’ve been writing stories, terribly. I started in 1993 in the fall with a story called Belgo The Wizard and then Lizard Hero and then another story that was somehow almost like Birdy the Mighty even though I’d never seen it and I set it based in Florida. It was an alien cop inhabiting a boys body and everything. It gave me a way to focus on my inability to say aloud that I was trans and what I wanted. But that was still how I got started. And I kept everything. My system was “genius” I thought.

See I create a folder for the project start writing and then when I restart or rephrase or majorly tweak it I rename the first file into whatever it was, chapter 1, into chapter 1.old and then “archive it” by putting it into a folder in that same folder. I would then keep on writing.

Well over the years I’ve had several hard drive crashes and my older works are gone. I used to reread them to remind myself how I’ve grown. How writing my fanfics and pr0n for myself actually improved my ability to write. I wrote a 700 page Greek tragedy about Circe tormenting and transforming Greek heroes for years and the various bad writing that entailed. Don’t judge me, I already know it’s cringe, but you gotta start somewhere.

There’s a certain amount of danger with digital media. Along with those hard drive crashes I lost tons of songs I’d ripped from cds, mostly, and from napster, kazaa and limewire. To combat that I started using the cloud when it became available. But as my music collection on google play/youtube will attest it’s not the same as it used to be and most of it has been converted into a weird gobbilty gook that works on my account but can’t work on others.

But here’s the problem with the cloud. If you save files and it gets updated, unless you’re using something that allows for versioned savings you’re going to overwrite the old stuff. Which is not a problem most of the time. But it is if you’re trying to figure out what the hell happened and you suddenly have a change in the direction/pacing of your story and you want to go back and check a version to see what was the change.

I don’t know about everyone, but when I’m working on personal projects, like my Ranma ½ Fan Fic The Misadventures of Akane Tendo… again imaginary voice it’s my choice. I’m sometimes gone for months at time from this project. In most of my work I always keep a sort of running catalog of ideas, pacings and the like churning on the back burner. Not everything is constantly boiling at the forefront of my mind. Some things need time to set and continue to simmer down until it’s just the flavorful bits. I assume that’s how cooking works, I’m more of a crockpot gal. Throw it all in and just come back eight hours later.

So when I came back to this work and found that two huge chunks were gone I was a bit annoyed but didn’t think anything about it. Until I couldn’t find the old documents anywhere in my library of crap. I’d already made peace with Belgo, Lizard Hero, the Birdy thing and Adventure’s Adventure having vanished. I was really sad about AA vanishing, because that damn novel gave me carpal tunnel as I tried to write it over the summer. Even if it was so bad that a publisher said it made them sick. “Due to Illness, we cannot publish this.” I also lament that rejection letter having vanished from my collection of past relics.

My dislike of physical media sometimes does me a disservice. Had I been keeping stuff on zip drives, floppies and thumbdrives I might still have them somewhere. Instead I kept them on my pcs and then eventually up to the Google Cloud.

The reason I bring this up is with the advent of AI and everyone questioning “did you do this? Is this your work?” the internet has become like some asinine math teacher who wants to show your work. And while in the literary world that’s probably more rare. I see a lot of folks on Reddit who relegate everything to AI if it has an EM Dash in it. I’m not a bright individual, I didn’t know what an EM Dash was until someone pointed it out. I don’t use dashes. Hell grammar and spelling are by far my two biggest weaknesses as a person, my third being modesty. It’s hard to be humble when you’re as mediocre as I.

I don’t really know where I was going with this, I guess just sad that somehow a personal project for myself had bits missing and or rewrites and I didn’t have the old documents to look back on and see why. I suppose I could write notes for myself, but that sounds practical. I could use this as a call to action to better myself, develop a system to avoid this. And I sort of have. I work off my laptop that auto backs up to my google drive, or off my pc to my google drive. It’s not a sure fire way to work on things though, as clearly, some things are still lost. Gone to the ether.

So, I guess to end this meandering. Back up your, Pr0n. Always.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

The Way of Kings - First Impression

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 16:00:00 GMT

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned a time or two that my brother really loves Brandon Sanderson and has read most if not all of the books the guy has written. I’ve had in my kindle library for a long time The Way of Kings and according to google that or Mistborn: The Final Empire are where you’re supposed to start when reading his stuff.

Now my brother has given minor spoilers as he’s read it and talked to me about it. Never like huge plot points but he’s mentioned minor things. Like how the magic works or how the interconnection works and maybe now and then talking about a character. Honestly most of it I’ve forgotten so it’s almost a fresh start to reading this.

I decided since I’d done so many film reviews that maybe I should sit down as an author and actually read something for a change. And so I am, I’m reading some of the book each night. About an hour and a half each night. And I’m slowly progressing. According to Kindle I have about 21 hours left. So at my pace I should be finished by October, give or take, if nothing pops up that destroys my evenings. As of writing this on 8/26/2025.

One of the things I’ve noticed, and I’m struggling with this, is I have a hard time tuning in for fantasy novels. I guess I’m just more geared towards the Sci-Fi stuff. Now that said of the characters I like Kaladin and in some parts Dalinar or whatever his name is. The Blackthorn. But otherwise there’s about 9 or 10 characters that have been introduced that I don’t personally feel any connection to and I get a little miffed that they show up. When I was talking to my brother about the crabber/fisher guy who lives in the lake he’s like “Yeah, he doesn’t come back.” And that stuff annoys me. Like if you have to have a random dude show up for a conversation then you should probably have figured out how to get an omniscient view point or put it in a character we’ve already met.

But as I was reading it, I noticed that in our first scene where we’re introducing Blackthorn’s soon to be dead brother, spoiler for a 15 year old book, that some of the Radiant folk were in the audience trying to blend in. And I realized pretty much instantly that Wit isn’t just your standard king’s fool or whatever. I suspect he’s going to be one of those original shardblade holders or a god or something because he just doesn’t sit right when I read him. I don’t recall where I was going with this, but there’s a few places in the story where I see a problem that Sanderson has that I have.

When he’s describing the Highstorms, they’re apparently supposed to be a category 10 or 15 hurricane sweeping through the lands. And I myself sometimes over estimate things, and by sometimes I mean often. A normal cat 5 hurricane is absolutely devastating. But having Kaladin be like “Oh yeah, I rode one out under an overhang.” Sorry, no. That’s not very plausible. And to have them ride it out in a wooden wagon is kind of laughable because again you’re talking about getting buffeted by winds that are 160mph. I don’t know about you but there’s very little that survives getting hit by a damn NASCAR at full speed. But that’s minor, it’s like ok someone either doesn’t understand the physics of it, or it’s played up. Considering that most of the characters are probably imperfect or shoddy narrators I would say it’s their understanding that taints this experience. But what do I know? I’m only like a quarter of the way through the book.

I like the various little sprites floating around in the setting but they’re a background item. I was very confused about the currency. Because it seems stupid to use this stuff. So if you’re not aware they take a gem, and put it in a glass bead. And depending on the gem is the value and how much mana it holds. The currency is used both for currency and magic… oh and for lighting houses and stuff. It just doesn’t make sense that you’d have this as your form of currency. These Highstorms will recharge gems that I guess have been infused and lost their magic. We see a guy throwing his stuff out into the rain so it’ll be replenished. But there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it, since as Kaladin points out that the chips, as they’re called, lose their luster and can still be used. It’s just the merchants don’t want it if it’s dull. And as we’re seeing with Kaladin either he or his spirit companion are sucking up the magical juice in the currency, burning through them fast. But as of yet we haven’t seen any real reason for Kaladin/Syl to slurp up the tasty mana.

My brother pointed out that it’s amazing I figured out that Kaladin is taking the magic and I pointed out in the scene where the king is soon to be dead, sorry about that spoiler again, that the assassin is sucking up the lanterns on the wall to do his flip flip kill routine. He’d apparently forgotten that. But I guess it makes sense that it’s been like 20 or so chapters since the assassin was hookshotting his way through the palace so maybe people are expected to forget that.

I will say, I’m also confused about the run bridges to a plateau and then shove them across instead of just building them out of stone and then setting up fortification. They have mo fos who earth bend houses, food bend food into being and guys who will wood bend stuff. Seriously, if you’re telling me you can fabricate fresh supplies with the magic, why are you not setting up more defensive formations closer to fighting. Like the big bad bug guys climb and jump well. But you know, there’s this thing called guards and they stand watch and look for bad guys to shoot with arrows and warn the army they’re under attack. And I get it, the big bad crabby guys can scuttle up the cliffs and have the hops that make his airness Michael Jordan jealous so you don’t want to necessarily let them surround you on the cliffs. But this screams of someone who never won a game of RISK or overwhelming might in Civilization. You can call me Sifu Turtle, plodding along that tech tree until you declare war then it’s Zerg Rush time. I don’t leave cities standing in Civ when it’s go time.

In regards to the bridges, it sort of makes sense when you realize it’s only this one guy who’s doing it this particular way and everyone else uses wheels. But when you consider how much effort and energy it takes to constantly raise and lower bridges it’s not worth it. Slave or not that’s a toll you don’t need to endlessly make. In medieval sieges they would clear cut the forest when they got to the engagement. Not have a group of 30 men running them from five towns back to get there. But hey, I’m not expecting Turtledove here.

And let’s talk about the power armor, sorry the Shardplate. The magical awesome exoskeleton that can take a hit from a whale sized monster and keep on trucking. Call it what you want. It’s power armor. It just doesn’t fly. It’s the RIFTS Glitterboy minus the BOOM GUN! that is on it’s shoulder. Instead they have shardblades which don’t kill flesh yet leaves it dead? Like uh… what? You’re telling me you have a blade that cuts through any material and vulcan nerve pinches a part of the body?

I think the thing I struggle with is that Sanderson is trying to tell this fantastical story and there’s just parts where I just cannot suspend disbelief and let the handwavium take over. I’ve heard time and time again that he creates intricate systems of magic and so far we’ve only seen the hookshot assassin hookshotting to kill the soon to be dead king, not sorry for that spoiler. And boy was that annoying for him to explain. Like, I didn’t need 5 paragraphs to learn that this guy’s ability is to basically anchor himself and make a new “down” or gravity point to where he falls to. Look, that took 15 words to describe. I didn’t need 5 paragraphs to convey that. Your reader isn’t normally stupid and as long as you’re not discussing thermodynamics and things like that they’ll pick it up. Show us don’t tell us.

So, I kinda lost my train of thought on what I was supposed to be impression on this. I guess it’s not bad, but man I am not a fantasy nerd. I guess just give me more of Kaladin giving out that main character side quest vibe over the “tactical stuff.” Hats off to Sanderson though, he’s writing and he’s doing what I want to do. So I can’t fault him for that, even if so far this book is more to just remind me why I like things like Have Spacesuit Will Travel, The Foundation Series and The Martian.

Oh and give me more hermit craps the size of trucks, please and thank you.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Film Review – The Fantabulousness Fantastic Four 2025

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:00:00 GMT

First steps, amiright?

I had contemplated taking the Superman approach to this, writing a pre blog with my predictions and the like, but I decided against it. And honestly that's probably for the best. I have problems with the movie, I mean I've yet to find a movie I can't find faults for. But really they're very minor, and that's good. But that said, a spoiler-free review of the Fantastic Four First Steps.

I'm going to come right out and say this right now. If you have only the time and money to see one superhero flick this summer, granted this will probably be released in like September but the thought counts, pick Superman. It's not that Fantastic Four is bad, in fact it's probably above average. Hell, the last one had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 9% and if that doesn't tell you everything about the state of the FF movies I don't know what does.

It's honestly because Superman is just a better movie for your time and popcorn munching pleasures. Don't deny it, you're looking forward to downing some overpriced buttery popcorn in the theater. The thing is, FF just didn't seal the deal for me, and it was for probably more personal reasons than anything else.

So, we're treated to a quick blow-by-blow introduction of the FF and how they got their powers and we're joining them in mid adventure. Thank goodness. The Exiles talked about the birth of the Fantastic Four as the birth of superheroes. And while it's not necessarily true, they are, for all pretense and purposes Marvel Royalty. There are very few story lines that they don't seem to find themselves in. Honestly, arguably one of the best villains in the Marvel universe IS Reed Richards from The Ultimate Universe.

But let's get into it. The Thing. Our ever-loving blue-eyed thing. Where was his gravelly voice, where was his accent? Was Microchip from Punisher Season 2 and Shaw's Partner from Person of Interest bad? No, and his voice grew on me as we went on. But it wasn't the voice I would have picked. Now, I did sort of ruin myself on Galactus, I was comparing his voice to Orson Welles as Unicron and then later John Colicos who was the voice of Apocalypse from X-men Animated Series. Come on, tell me you wouldn't have had a shiver if Galactus stood up and was like "I am as far beyond mutants as mutants are beyond you." Or some variation of it. Don't get me wrong, Galactus voice wise was a good choice, it would have been nice to have more of our boy in the movie.

Have I mentioned I like villains? I feel like I have.

But here's the thing. FF has a LARGE library of rogues to go against. None nearly as memorable as Galactus, Super Skrull and our man Doctor Victor Von Doom. They threw Mole Man under the bus, name checked the Red Ghost and then threw in a few others for good measure. So you could have taken time to give us what we wanted.

You know what I didn't pay for? A god damn screaming Sue Richards in a climax point. I'll be honest, I tuned out right there. I just stopped caring about what was happening in the movie, cause I frankly didn't care about Franklin Richards being born.

Here's a pop quiz… in a fight between Nathan Summers, the child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, the sole culmination of everything Mr. Sinister has worked to perfect vs Franklin Richards the first born of Marvel's First Family who wins? Is it a man who can stop the earth from spinning and keep all but a few people from flying off into space? Or the kid who literally conjure up a new dimension on a whim? It's Nath--- It's Frankie. It's always going to be Frankie. And Frankie can McGuffin his fingers away for his family to win.

And as an author I just stopped caring because you've literally introduced Deus Ex Machina to your story. Sure, they have to add Franklin Richards at some point, I guess, but why? Why the first movie that's booting up the series? If you guessed it's boring and might annoy the fans, well you got one right here.

The other thing, and this is an example of that Deus Ex I was just talking about. Is Sue Storm. Mrs "I knocked out the hulk" was bullying Galactus. Um… the guy who IS the power cosmic? The man who is a living sun? The man who can wave his fingers and giveth and taketh away powers? The man who is older than your entire damn universe? Yeah no. That's just lazy ass storytelling.

And that's ultimately why as a Marvel fangirl I'm telling you to go watch Superman. Yes, Superman is uncontested unless it's kryptonite or Darkseid or himself. But you're not having a mere mortal bullying the thing that in some stories has eaten celestials.

Yeah, one of the greatest story arcs in my opinion was Earth X. It explains why there are so many champions on Earth for it being an arguably backwater planet. And it's because the Celestials seeded earth and they needed people to protect the embryo from you know who. Galactus. So, you're talking about a guy who was scary, and powerful enough, to make celestials think twice.

Entire space campaigns are quick to point out that Galactus is doing something in this contest only because he was forced to be involved. He doesn't care about the annihilation wave or about Thanos doing his thing. Galactus has a table reservation, and he's going to get his appetizer. Even Galactus does not turn down the Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits.

And that's the other thing, Galactus most times isn't defeated by any real stretch of the imagination. He's put off from eating that cookie. He reached out to grab it and a bee stung him, and it actually smarted, and he was like, I can hold off. You didn't beat him, you smacked his hand, and he toddled away to wait until you weren't looking to come back for that cookie. And maybe this time he'll snag another for his trouble. Go ahead, smack his hand again.

Now, that's going to be an unpopular opinion that me saying Sue Storm bullying Galactus is stupid. I'll take that heat. But it doesn't change that the writing is bad. They were twisting themselves in knots to avoid the Ultimate Nullifier. So, they went from one McGuffin to another. And that doesn't make it better writing. Arguably that might make it worse. Now, Sue Storm IS a powerhouse. She's probably the most powerful member of the team. Sure, Johnny ain't no slouch at all and Reed's brainy, and in some cases can shape his brain to give him the ability to use Cerebro… Earth X was wild man. But Sue's force fields are very durable, and the only limitation is her imagination.

So, I guess I'm saying I don't like Sue. She basically made it, so I've watched the movie once and won't be coming back. There were several parts she was talking, and I was like "And skip." That's not the attitude you should have as an audience member. And it's not like the actress did anything wrong. She was everything that you'd expect from someone playing Sue Storm. Just, don't put damn labor in my superhero movie in the middle of an action sequence. An Action sequence that had our Silver Surfer been taking it seriously would have been point 2 seconds of fight.

It's amazing how everyone forgets like everyone in the comics have projectile attacks. One good old ZORT or KABLAMO and there is no more chase sequence. It's a scene where our heroes are slowly dying from lack of oxygen while these two gods are just walking by them with little interest.

Is it better than 9% on Rotten Tomatoes? Oh, most assuredly. Is it better than Thunderbolts*? No. No it's not. Honestly After Endgame I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies, outside of Spider-man No Way Home, more than once. They just didn't leave lasting impacts. Iron Man, and hell I've watched Thor Ragnarök probably a dozen times now.

And Sue, outside of literally pushing out a baby, providing Mr. Fantastic with a terrible idea, you should understand it as soon as he mentions it in the movie. I feel for the “smartest man” on the planet he didn’t think that plan through, she didn’t do jack shit in the movie. Hell Johnny Storm, her younger brother took like 4 words from Silver Surferette and translated 28 galactic records into a language, taught himself and become fluent in roughly three months. Mr. Fantastic said that everyone of the FF was a “scientist” um… really? Cause the only scientist type seemed to be him. Now Ultimate Sue Storm was a genius who was into Physics and then later Inner-Space Biology, whatever that is. But I mean, you made her useless. In the original 616 she was a damn spy for SHIELD, you couldn’t have thought of more than just making her the ultimate pusher?

This is a rare, after blog post edit update. I saw on a youtube short how Vanessa Kirby was so proud that she got into Quantum Physics. Ok... cool. Where in the hell does she Quantum some Physics in the movie? If it's in the extended cut then that's one thing. But if it's just her, the actor talking about it for the character, then boy oh boy was that a damn waste cause I'm wracking my brains for any science scene that was potent with her. She was doing more UN and Foundation/Charity stuff, which nothing bad. I'd want Sue as the face over Johnny and Reed anyway.

I know Feige is a big Marvel nerd, but I feel at this point since these characters have been around since the dawn of comic books, it's pretty easy to do research and figure out ways around this without having to shove a round peg into a square. The folks who are against superhero flicks will say that's because they aren't art and are trash. Look, I've watched a lot of art pieces that were poorly written, and they were trash. Looking at you Der Himmel über Berlin/Wings of Desire. Man did you ruin a horrible film theory class for me. Of course, what was I thinking taking a film theory class anyway in college?

I guess we should remember… no need to fear, they're here. Just call the four. And before anyone asks, yes. I have the Galactus popcorn bucket head. What am I? Some sort of hater of art?

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

The Sundered Realms

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 16:00:00 GMT

Or How King Kong Ain't Got Shit on Me

One of my favorite quotes from Training Day is when Alonzo Harris goes on his whole spiel at the end of the movie about what he's going to do to all the onlookers. But the unmitigated bravado to say "King Kong ain't got shit on me." That's a line that stuck with me. But to some point, it's true.

And I feel the exact same way currently. I'm never going to be Tolkien or George R. R. Martin; I'm just not built to be that type of writer. But you know what I have the capacity to do? Integrate and expand. For instance, some of you know about my old webcomic The Chronicles of Loth. A Dungeon and Dragons game that I turned into a webcomic, and when that was over, I moved on to writing novels. But I was never done with it. Not by a long shot. I had so much to do there.

But my fear was that I wasn't the writer for the job. Sure, a few fans were talking to me and encouraging me to keep going, and I was. In the background I'd thrown items into a crockpot and walked away to do other things, still letting it percolate and develop.

Building a Pantheon

But one of the biggest things that had gotten me was the Pantheon. In the webcomic we're introduced early to Zieki The Celestial Father who is head of his own Pantheon, specifically the moons and sun. But I knew I wanted more. So I set that in the back and worked on Altered Realities, which was originally just a Chronicles of Loth story, in that I introduced Lista, the elemental goddess of water. And of course a water goddess needs sisters and brothers... and then we had our elemental gods. But they were neutral folks.

And that led us to 32 other gods. I already knew I needed top tier elder deities to call the shots, and no way they weren't going to have subordinates... and yeah. So one Pantheon now had more or less been completed with the aim to be balanced. And then Zieki needed his own choir and we had some demons to combat against them and potentially make them have conflicts with all the gods. And then above them 13 more gods.

Well, yeah, I have 68 gods in such a state that only about 15 need to be finished fleshing out. Which will certainly happen.

The Scope of World-Building

I've already nailed down the majority of our 8,000 or so years of timeline. But recently I realized I couldn't call the Chronicles of Loth the whole show. I always was going to have more books in the world, and I've been working on those. Recently I've been working on some short stories for Brooke Amira which take place in and around what Loth and crew are doing. In fact, Brooke's final story is going to be in... spoilers... The War of the Kings. Which is going to be like... book 8? Cause the first three are Loth and her crew, then we're going to have a few books devoted to the children of heroes, then the War of the Kings, and then a few books after that.

But anyway, the name of the series will be The Sundered Realms. We'll have sub books like The Chronicles of Loth so you can see what it'll be. But it'll be like Star Wars or Star Trek where there are series inside of it. For instance, The Thrawn Trilogy or the Hand of Thrawn Duology. They're broadly listed in Star Wars, but if you mention Heir to the Empire Trilogy or Thrawn Trilogy, everyone knows what that is.

Word Count Bragging Rights

I was thinking about this off on one. This year I've written about 160,638 words, it's July 24th by the way, in various sci-fi works, but I haven't been counting the work I'm doing for world-building, like fully fleshing out some 65 gods, their domains and the timeline for this. So I'm capable of at least getting the words on page; whether or not it's any good will be the question. Folks would argue Brandon Sanderson is just slop/slocky writing and that he just pushes stuff out. I've not read any Sanderson so I can't really weigh in on his quality. If he's anything like David Eddings I'd probably like his writing, and my bro has read, I feel, damn near all his books. I'm not even counting my blog posts in my word counts.

So yeah, I'm saying King Kong ain't got shit on me. When I finally get around to writing more than the first chapter of The Chronicles, then I'll get going. By the way, that was started in 2013 and has been touched off and on since; the last update was just last month, where I was reworking the touch and feel of the Treori in their home kingdom.

Marathon vs. Sprint

Altered Realities took me about 10 years to write, but I had a lot of going back and forth and manipulating because I was dealing with altering reality as I worked on the story. I've learned from my mistakes and have started to do outlines and quick drafts to get the ideas out. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Not to say I can't sprint, I just don't seem to do it as much as I used to. A Goddess's Gifts was done mostly in a week. I was waking up at like 6 AM to pound away for 2 hours, had some breakfast, then more writing until noonish for lunch, then more writing until like 5 or 6 for dinner and then more writing until 8 or 9. The only breaks were for walking the dog and restroom/food. I was sprinting for that one. 50,000 words, give or take, in a week.

Now, whether it's worth reading or not, you be the judge of that. I'm just here trying to break my back patting myself on the back.

And knowing me, there's probably at least three more blog posts I'll write before this one ever sees the light of day. But hey, that's what happens when you've got 68 gods demanding attention.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Film Review – Superman: The James Gunning

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 16:00:00 GMT

And Krypto cause he's a good boy

So, I'm doing something a little different with this one. As I write this it's 09:08 on July 11th. And my brother wants to go see James Gunn's Superman. Normally I don't write the blog post before the movie, but this time I thought I'd do a sort of pre and post draft. Cause it's Superman, you can sort of get away with that.

And what I mean is that, largely, a Superman film or a Superman comic has certain action beats that you encounter. And arguably the biggest one is that Superman struggles for a bit with something and then just decides to get serious and the problem is solved. It's pretty standard, and I was talking to a coworker about this and he was talking about how much he liked Superman. And well, I don't. He's a boring character. Now that stated, there is something to be said about that power fantasy of just rising up and beating the snot out of a problem. Like when I play Elden Ring, I'm on playthrough like 10 on the PS5 now, I envision myself in that first playthrough as the scrub who has to "Git Gud." And then I beat the game and I'm "Gud" and then the 2nd time through with the same character I'm one of the end bosses strolling through the game taking in the sights. And by the 3rd iteration of beating the game I'm the full "I am the lord of all that is golden" or "I am the avatar of the frenzied flame." The unstoppable juggernaut. And there's some appeal to that.

But this is a James Gunn movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved Dawn of the Dead, Slither, and Guardians of the Galaxy, and his version of Suicide Squad was miles beyond the original with Will Smith. He's going to take some of the giants of D.C. and attempt to make the Justice League movie. And that's something DC has been wanting to do for a while.

And I don't think it's going to work. Oh, it'll be a blockbuster success. Superman movies pretty much, like Batman, sell tickets. And people like James Gunn's Guardians and his Suicide Squad. But the thing is Hawkgirl, Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific, and Metamorpho? You tell me which of those heroes has a sense of humor. I'll wait.

So Mr. Gunn is going to be taking mostly serious characters and throwing them into a situation where they need to work together and become buddy buddy. Most of us know Hawkgirl and Metamorpho from Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. And Hawkgirl had some zingers, mostly at The Flash's expense. But Flash was funny and set himself up. But what were any lines Metamorpho had? None that are really worth remembering, but that could be excused because JL/JLU had so many characters you couldn't give them all the spotlights they needed. They all don't get to be Question and Huntress or Black Canary and Green Arrow.

No, I suspect we're going to get a Bloodsport sort of thing. Where this one serious dude is stuck in the middle of a bunch of clowns. Superman is known as The Boy Scout by a lot of characters in the DC universe because he's always fighting for Truth and Justice and tries to redeem/see the good in others. Admirable traits and I can appreciate that. But you're telling me that Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner is going to be completely straight-laced without jokes? Naw. That's not happening.

So, my prediction is that Superman is going to be the straight man, just like Idris Elba, and we'll have someone playing opposite him as Peacemaker/John Cena. And the others will be quirky characters. Who those are? Couldn't tell you. I looked at the IMDB page at the cast, and I'm already bad at names of actors, and I didn't see anyone I really recognized. I recognize Wendell Pierce and Frank Grillo and Sean Gunn, he's in every Gunn movie it seems, oh and of course Alan Tudyk, I'd recognize that crotch shot anywhere. For those not in the know, reference the jokes to him on Andor/Rogue One.

But yeah, none of these guys are folks I really recognize. But when it came to Guardians I really only knew Dave Bautista, cause I used to watch wrestling. I knew the girl who played Gamora having seen her in various places but she wasn't a headliner, so to speak, and Chris Pratt was just the dude opposite Ron Swanson.

Anyway, time to wrap up the pre-movie thoughts... I feel like this is going to be a long blog post. And as it stands there are 3 other blog posts before this. So, it won't be out until like August 28th. And of course, the Fantastic Four is going to be coming out next and that's going to be even later. The joys of a backlog of blog posts.

As promised, part two of this. It is now 7:55 on July 11th, 2025, and I have seen Superman 2025. Saw it in a theater at 11 with maybe 6 other people. It certainly wasn't a packed house, which I like. I hate having to struggle to find seats, who doesn't, right?

Anyway, so the movie is, well, it's a superhero movie. If you're expecting flying fists and explosions and that sort of stuff, congrats, you'll give it a standing ovation like the two dudes in front of me did. For some reason. This isn't a bad movie, does it have problems? Yes. What movie doesn't? Some of them are, like in my case most likely, a matter of taste.

Hawkgirl screaming like a bird of prey got annoying the first second she did that. And I hope she's quietly forgotten in the next movie. Which is sad. I actually really loved Hawkgirl in JL and JLU, she was probably my favorite female character. But again, minor gripe. I also felt the theater volume was spinal tapped up to 11 for maximum reverberation.

Supergirl walking on for all of two seconds and then saying "Peace out, bitch." Yep, that's a square go fuck yourself right there. There is no profanity that I heard in the movie. And the explanation that she likes to go to other worlds with red suns and get trashed. Great, you're telling me she's the Kryptonian version of Lobo. And I'm sure it was supposed to be cutesy and quirky but that minute or so of dialogue and interaction just killed Supergirl 2026 or whatever for me.

And the general feel of the movie. It was Guardians of the Galaxy. Which nothing is wrong with that. Your cast of actors acted and largely did a good job. But there were a lot of moments where I could close my eyes and be like "Oh, that's Star Lord." That's generally not a good thing. But I will say in this particular case that James Gunn actually made Superman seem human. Like you can actually feel like he's a lived-in character. Normally he's just a dull brick used to solve problems by smashing things.

Superman saying "He's punk rock" was somewhat adorable. I'm not punk rock, but anyone who makes that claim should get an arched eyebrow and a look that speaks volumes. But, that's not a complaint in this particular case. It's some of the characteristics they decided to impart in this version of Clark Kent.

But I could go on about how Luthor, like most incarnations, just doesn't live up to the hype. It's really hard to compete with Clancy Brown's voice for Luthor. That Luthor felt menacing and like he had everything planned out. This one, if I were told he's Luthor just starting out, I could believe that. He didn't have most of the sophistication of the Luthor I love. But you could see him doing those Luthor things.

And I will say one last positive note about Superman 2025. There is something about that theme. I've never liked Superman, but I find myself occasionally listening to the Superman theme Christopher Reeve had. And I won't lie, I got a little teary eyed. And the kids raising the flag and pleading for Superman, that was probably the highlight of the movie. Not the fighting the raptors, not the fight against Planet Watch, not even the end when Clark is talking to Luthor about how he's as human as everyone else. Until Krypto came in and tried to kill the villain. But the entire Krypto thing, as a dog owner, could earn an entire rant.

So, I suppose, go see it. I've already been told by two of my friends regardless of my thoughts, they'll see it. And that's A-OK. Just because I have mixed feelings about the Guardians of Justice/The League of Galaxies doesn't mean others won't. Just maybe wear some earplugs and realize that this isn't a Superman movie. It's a James Gunn Film, for better or worse.

I feel like I've been doing a lot of movie things, maybe I should go read a book, you know, since I pretend to be an author.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

When Media Isn't Needed

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:00:00 GMT

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

Sequel... The Itis

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:00:00 GMT

Film Review – Unnecessary Sequels

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...

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:00:00 GMT

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

Film Review - My Hero Academia The Movie 4 You're Next

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:00:00 GMT

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

The Art of the Film Review: Why I Can't Help But Critique

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 16:00:00 GMT

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

Film Review – Thunderbolts*

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:45:00 GMT

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

Knocking Holes in Brick Walls

Wed, 21 May 2025 18:26:32 GMT

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

Isekai, the genre that refuses to die

Wed, 07 May 2025 14:04:02 GMT

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

Aphasia of the Mind: Why Words Replace Images for me

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:08:58 GMT

Aphasia of the Mind: When Words Replace Images
Or, Why My Brain Doesn’t Do "Visualization" (And How I Write Anyway)

"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

An Author's Future

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 13:59:19 GMT

An Author's Future

So, last night I was watching a video about one of my favorite horror movies. John Carpenter’s The Thing which is loosely based upon the short story Who Goes There? I’ve not read that story, it’s always been on my to-do list, and last night I found out there was a Kickstarter to get the notes and whatever that was Who Goes There by John W. Campbell turned into the whole novel Frozen Hell. But the author of the video pointed something out that made me decide not to invest in it.

And the current times and quick ability for authors to get their words out there, for good or ill, is making me realize. When I was originally thinking of this I had better, more witty ways to say this. But I’ve slept and so this is the post you get. Guess I should have struck while the iron was hot. Oh well.

So, John W. Campbell was racist, I say that because he’s deceased. But he’s not the only author who has tanked their product with views that the rest of the world doesn’t get along with. For instance, I love Altered Carbon. The idea and everything about it. But like J. K. Rawling he’s come out as Anti-Trans. And boy oh boy is Rawlings really wrecking her brand by continuing to keep yapping. Orson Scott Card nearly tanked Ender’s Games and had to go on numerous shows and say that he had little to do with the movie and maybe you should forget he’s horribly homophobic and give the brutal oppression of children in space a chance. Lovecraft is a pretty well known horrible individual, but it could be argued that was the time. What excuse do these current folks have?

The thing is, once you open your trap and start spewing shit, it sticks around. And I know my stuff doesn’t stink, but I’ve never said anything that I view that controversial. But then I’m a nobody and no one cares what I think. My thoughts on taxing billionaires out of existence, and healthcare for everyone and a future that’s better for everyone is only in content with those who are, generally, horrible people. I’ve seen plenty of people who feel bad about buying Rawling’s books in the past, or watching the movies, and then feeling bad when she keeps shooting off her mouth repeating TERF talking points and recently something about non binary. Frankly I don’t pay attention to the bigot because I have far more important things to focus on. But it’s meant that I won’t ever support anything she’s done. That revenue stream isn’t going to impact her big picture at all. But here’s the thing, if you bought it and liked it before the author became a whack job, that’s great. Keep enjoying the work, but think long and hard about continuing to support them.

I’m a huge fan of Persons of Interest, and I knew Jim Caviezel was right wing. I mean, he’s played Jesus in something more than once. And there is nothing wrong with being proud of your religion and acting on it. That’s why we have Battlefield Earth with John Travolta. But when I started to hear that he as an actor was rough with the dog, to the point where they had to cut scenes with him and Bear I was a bit disappointed, but chocked it up to him being maybe one of those guys who doesn’t really interact with animals much so he’s not as gentle as he could be. Then he started strumping for Trump and stating he’s the next messiah not to mention his love of QAnon. And well… I’d already bought all of the Persons of Interest and there was no point getting rid of a perfectly good series cause the dude was a fuckwit. But his latest movie Sound of Freedom, something I was actually interested in, gets a hard pass.

I live in a capitalist society. So there’s only two ways I can really protest something. Vote against it in the voting booth, or close my wallet. And that’s something I don’t think a lot of author’s realize. Is that when you start spouting stuff you should take a good hard look at what you stand for and if you’re ok with those people supporting you. I know if I published a novel and suddenly white supremacists or racists started using me as a talking point I’d not be comfortable with that. I know it sounds stupid when I say, “I have some black friends,” but it’s true. I have 2 good African American friends I still talk to. One would probably be my best man if I hadn’t transitioned. I grew up in a mostly white suburb, so my interactions with people of color was minor. But regardless I made friends with others outside my immediate circle and I’m glad for it. And in the case of my Hispanic friend, she’s an extravert, and being an introvert, she basically adopted me into her friend circle.

I guess I’m just trying to say, don’t be an asshole. Think before you speak, because you will be judged by others. And while I don’t want to be loved by everyone, I’m more than happy burning some bridges, I do want to at least be something of a role model. Someone that a young kid could pick up my books and say “I get this, I relate.” And when they go to do research on me find that the worst thing I did was litter or that I jaywalked. That I wasn’t advocating for ripping babies from their mothers arms to throw into a fire to power some infernal capitalist machine that made some sort of drink. Now, for those of you who don’t like litterbugs or jaywalkers, I profusely apologize for my inability to obey traffic signals and signs about staying off the grass.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Author Legacies: What Happens to Unfinished Stories?

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:07:28 GMT

Prolific Writers

My brother reads more than I do, which is rather humorous. He's an artist who has a nine-to-five job where he has to go somewhere to do physically demanding work. So on his breaks and on his lunch, he reads books on his phone. And an author he reads a lot is Brandon Sanderson. I have nothing against the guy, I haven't read it. But my brother mentioned that in COVID he had created four or five novels.

Sanderson is, by all rights, a prolific writer. Just a quick glance through his Wikipedia page shows he's got at least 18 novels. Not counting the work he did for Wheel of Time and others.

Publishing Beyond Death

And this brought up the topic of legacy of a writer. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had roomed with one of Stephen King's nephews or nieces, I don't recall which, and he said that King was so prolific that he had books locked in a vault not to be released until his death. Because he didn't think they were up to his current quality. So like Tupac, King will be releasing best sellers for years after his death.

In theory Sanderson has something similar. Apparently he has full outlines for his works that his chosen protégé can pick up and run with. Which is both fascinating and disturbing.

Outline Approaches

I outline a little, not a lot, because I tend to wing a lot of what I'm doing. I do world building and character backgrounds and soundtracks but I'm not sure someone could pick up my outline for say Tormented By A Goddess and get it across the finish line. It has the key beats but I feel like planning outlines too far out into the future you're likely to start straying from it when you finally get there.

If you're super detailed and specific you certainly make it easier for someone to come and pick up your work. But if it's just the barest of outlines, hitting the high points, you can lose something in the translation.

So it makes me wonder what Sanderson is doing. Does he script everything to be super tight and they can just be picked up and chunked out? Or has he just hit the high notes and he's hoping to get there while still alive?

Writing Longevity

The life expectancy of humans is supposed to be going up, and in theory, as long as your brain is still working you can write, or dictate, for a novel to be written. But I know in the case of the mockingbird author, Harper Lee, there are rumors they kept writing even with dementia.

But short of some sort of mental inability to, a writer can write well into their twilight years. And it's not uncommon for a son/daughter to continue the legacy. Take Dune for instance.

Famous Unfinished Works

So, if Sanderson dies unexpectedly we can still expect to see that his name or at least his ideas will continue for awhile. Now, the true question is… What about George R. R. Martin? What's his backup plans for his Game of Thrones series? He's been taking longer and longer to get his work finished so I wouldn't be surprised to see that he's going to have to pass the torch on to someone else.

As for me? Well I'm a nobody, so let's see if I ever get published instead of self-published before we start wondering who is going to take my silly ideas and run with them.

________________________________________

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Breaking Out of Genre Silos: Why Don't Authors Explore?

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:23:27 GMT

Breaking Out of Genre Silos: Why Don't Authors Explore?

The Indie Writing Circle

When I was in the indy's writer group of Indianapolis, meeting every Saturday at the main branch of the Indianapolis public library, it struck me as odd that the people in the group stayed in niche markets. Not calling out any names, I consider them friends, and I generally thought they were all good authors in their own regards. But it struck me as odd that they didn't seem to have a desire to try other genres.

Now, at the time I wasn't really any better. I kept throwing alien Sci-Fi stories. Mostly because when I was in college sharing work I was frequently told to "stay in my lane" when it came to writing certain things. For instance, I suck at poetry. I absolutely can't do them. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate a well-constructed Haiku or a stanza about radishes. But it always struck me as very odd that the people didn't want to share their genre.

The Multi-Genre Dream

I knew early on that I was going to write a horror novel, some romance, maybe a thriller or two. I didn't want to tie myself down to just one genre. Now in certain professional cases, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, they developed a nom de plume to hide their other works for a time. Rowling with Detective Novels and King with Bachman writing Bachman stories. I didn't like the idea of moving from pen name to pen name for a genre. But I knew also that certain genres were very demanding as to what went into them.

For instance some of them absolutely won't let you join their little club as long as you're a member at another writing club. I tried long ago to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America when I was working on The Chronicles of Loth webcomic. But because it was self reported and a webcomic that didn't count to join the club. I probably still can't join because my three novels combined have earned I think 500 dollars. Which isn't a lot.

The Specialization Problem

So why then, did so few of these starting authors stay out of other genres? Why is it that a mind or style gets so siloed that they only work on a particular type? Not that this is wrong. Tolkien was an absolutely fantastic fantasy author, if you like stories about tree leaves and walking. Asimov had great and fun stories, such as the I, Robot items.

I think it's because just like most things in life, the Jack of All Trades is dying. There isn't much call for a person to write a horror novel and then turn around and publish a mystery thriller. Anymore you're going to get a blend of the two, but it's going to be heavily featured in one area or the other. And so early on the writer thinks they must be true to a certain genre.

Freedom in Obscurity

But most of us aren't getting paid, not seriously paid, to write. So why shouldn't we have fun and write a story about throwing a love potion at a werewolf? Why shouldn't we write about the kids who are solving the mystery of where their neighbor went only to find out it's a straight up horror thing and they're now locked in a life and death battle with a set of mannequins that have come from the future?

The other thing, because the literary market is filled with somebodies hoping to be found that experimentation can potentially hurt your burgeoning career. Which is why folks like King wrote under the name Bachman. Because for a bit, it protects them and lets them hone the craft in multiple ways.

But no secret like that can be kept for long, at some point you find out that the detective novelist wrote a thrilling coming of age story about some poor English boy that sold millions and was made into a movie. Maybe it was intentionally spilled that they wrote detective novels, maybe some super sleuth put together that a particular turn of phrase seems very on the nose for another author. Or maybe it's as simple as the checks going to the same bank account.

The Market's Narrow Vision

So, my dear reader. Why aren't we letting authors flex their mental might? Why aren't we encouraging them to become the next Grisham AND George R. R. Martin? Because the market doesn't want an average author in multiple fields. They want a super author in their field, be it science fiction/fantasy, romance or detective novels.

As for myself, since I'm nobody I don't have anyone but the people who bought my book to disappoint. So, bear with me while I meander my way through the creative world.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

On the Appreciation of Tool Use: AI in Writing

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 15:04:58 GMT

On the Appreciation of Tool Use: AI in Writing

The Great AI Debate

I'm a no one, freely admitted. There is no reason to follow me or even listen to my words. But I will say that I have watched a very spirited debate in the reddit writing communities about the latest tool in our arsenal. That's right. I'm talking about AI.

There are folks who view this as akin to selling your soul to the devil for even daring to think about using this. And there are others who argue that it's not evil and is to be used and turned into a tool for your use.

I, gentle user, am of the opinion that why should a tool not be used when it's needed?

The False Arguments Against Tools

Some folks, myself included, write while listening to music. I can't tell you how often I've seen an article that has stated that if you need a playlist you're not serious about writing and not to waste anyone's time. I present you another argument.

"If you use an Agent to get published you're not serious about this." Absurd right? Anyone who knows the industry knows that if you don't have an agent you're not likely to get anywhere. Sure we have outliers like Stephenie Meyer who can submit an entire book and get luckily picked. Most of us aren't that lucky. The industry is generally against the independent.

The Value of Tools in Writing

So why would you throw a tool away? A good editor is 50+ dollars an hour and you have to tell them specifically what you want from them. Be it mechanics, be it plot, be it syntax. And the editor focuses on specific things and if you want them to look at something not in their wheelhouse then you're going to get charged for it or you're going to be out of luck.

My first novel didn't get an editor and it shows. A Goddess's Gifts and Altered Realities got editors and they're much better books for it. I still haven't broken even at the time of writing this for either of those works. Should I discard the editor as a tool?

Of course not.

AI as Another Writing Tool

AI in most of its applications is a godsend for us. Is it wrong to have it produce a 50,000 word youth novel? I believe so. Is it wrong to be an alpha reader? No. Is it wrong for it to help you with your grammar? No.

I was using Grammarly for several years for my writing; it's gotten noticeably crappier now that it's more AI dominated. AI will not replace your fundamentals. If you don't have creativity then it's going to be a pretty lackluster story.

How I Use AI

Anymore I use AI for help with plotting stuff out. I throw out a question to it, and because it's 2 or 3 in the morning and I know no sane person would be up to answer me, it can. I pay for it. And I know that in some cases I'm training the program for others. This isn't necessarily a problem.

I've tried a number of AI writing programs. My favorite is SudoWriter. More because I can throw all my stuff into an organized "folder" and it's there. It's essentially a backup for my Google Drive.

The Limitations of AI

AI from what I've seen is a thirsty creature, it loves to write smut. But it's not good at it. I like to think I know a thing or two about smut since I wrote two novels where that was pretty heavy in it.

That's probably because the people who are using it are writing fan fictions and self-insert stories. I tried using NovelAI to rewrite a Ranma 1/2 lemon I did from my youth. And let me tell you, it took a lot to keep it on task. It would forget within a paragraph that something had happened to Akane and have her show up in scenes that were between say Shampoo and Uchan.

The Bottom Line

AI isn't going to take your creative job if you don't let it. The people who are churning out AI stories to flood the market are the same type of people who rush a Direct to DVD movie of something that sounds similar to the movie you want to watch. For instance when Transformers came out I saw a ton of stuff for Transmorphers.

Just be smart about using the tool at hand. A hammer is a hammer. AI is a tool, it's not to the point that they are perfectly capable of mimicking human emotions.

At least that's what I should say as a human who is clearly writing this and not having a program do it for me.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Building Better Habits: A Random Blog Post for August

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:45:22 GMT

Building Better Habits: A Random Blog Post for August

The Blogging Struggle

I always make the excuse I'm bad at blogging and social media. It just requires me to be more consistent about it. I can set schedules on my phone to remind me that I should publish a blog every week. That's what I'm going to have to do.

I've been learning Spanish and Japanese with a refresher in German on Duolingo for the past 100 days, and it's become a healthy habit. They say it's 30 days to make something a habit, but my brain is not wired to work that way. I only do the Duolingo thing because it pops up on my phone at 7am every morning. I expect that at any time, I'm going to just swipe away the Duolingo thing and go about my day. There have been a few times where I've come close, but instead, I hit remind me later.

Learning for Learning's Sake

And what does that say if the only reason I started on a task to better myself, learning Spanish and Japanese, was to give my brain some much-needed learning? No one forced me; I recently added French into the mix, and I can't wait to upset multiple people with how bad my French, Spanish, and Japanese are.

It's not like I'm going to use them in my day-to-day life. I only know one person who speaks fluent Spanish, and we do not talk on a daily basis. I don't know anyone who speaks French. I took German in college and high school and just want a refresher. As for Japanese, I have a friend who's learning it with me, but we don't really speak Japanese to each other. Just silly stuff like "Nani?". You know, typical anime crap.

The Learning Habit

I like to learn, and that might be the only habit that's stuck in my childhood. From documentaries on serial killers, true crime, and lore drops on Warhammer 40k. I watch videos about finance and crypto markets. But none of that will really ever go into my writing; at least, I don't think it will.

Oh, and leveling up in video games. Just sitting there grinding Albinaurics in Palace Overlook in Elden Ring for an hour or two while I talk to friends on Discord. It's not like I need to kill those frog people things... and they're only dropping like 6,000 runes. I just do it. I certainly didn't need to be level 333 to beat Elden Ring for the third time, but I was. I was 111 for the Ranni achievement and 222 for the Frenzied Flame achievement, and I only did the normal one because that was all that stopped me from playing a game.

Redirecting Habits to Writing

I could have put that time into Editing, a task I don't like. It's way more fun to write. But again, that's a habit I have to get into. So, the habits I've got to improve on are Social Media engagement, Blogging, and Editing.

In some of those, I have tools to help. For social media, I use Buffer to post to the vast majority of my feeds with a single click. It makes it so much easier to go to one site, write it up, and then push a button to schedule them all.

For Editing, I primarily use Grammarly to catch mistakes. I've been working on my latest of many novels, I Am Not a Kobold, and editing them chapter by chapter after I finish the next chapter. For instance, I just finished chapter 9, and I have been going back through chapters 1 through 5 so far. Reviewing what's going on, expanding in areas, clarifying in others.

There are tons of AI tools I could be using to help with my grammar, I'm sure. Gods know there's tons of AI for writing. I've tried more than a few of them, and they all have certain flaws in them. I only use Grammarly to avoid the 50 dollars an hour for a professional. I'm not made of money. I wish I was, but I have a nine-to-five job to pay for my house, and that takes precedence.

The Stream of Consciousness

I don't really know what this blog post was supposed to be. It just goes to show I'm not a professional writer who can look at a blank page and say, "This is my blog." I originally was going to talk about Elden Ring and its lore, but then I was like, I can talk about mental help. So, just expect weird blog posts until I have an idea of what is going on. It's like the Livejournal era all over again.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review: Age of Ultron - A Fangirl's Perspective - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:22:05 GMT

Setting Expectations

Like a lot of people I went to see Age of Ultron opening weekend. I'm not going to be blasting the film, but I will put out there point blank that one of the best movies I've ever seen was Iron Man and I only gave it four out of five stars. I'm a notoriously harsh critic, just ask my friends. And this post is probably not going to earn me any cred with most people because I'm going to bash icons in it, and I won't give away spoilers while doing so.

The Villain Problem

First off, from a fangirl perspective Ultron was the wrong choice to have for a 2nd movie villain. I wish that in the marvel movies they'd sat down and planned and made better use of their villains. A few devious lines of dialogue some nearly off camera shots of Kang the Conqueror would have been a true treat for those fans who know about the avengers and set us up for Avengers 3.

Now that said Ultron is a big villain in the Avengers continuity and has been fought multiple times. The image I'm using for this is part of the Annihilation Conquest, it's a cool picture. But he's certainly not the baddest villain they could be fighting. On an aside I'm honestly going to be disappointed when Thanos gets taken apart by the Guardians of the Galaxy, which I have issues with the portrayal of those characters in the movie to begin with. I honestly don't know who I would have picked for a follow up villain and I'm glad it wasn't Loki. I don't want them going back to the well too often with him.

Ultron's Character Misstep

The reason I don't believe Ultron should have been the second villain is simple, build up. He comes out of left field in this and just sorta acts like a wrecking ball with a snarky attitude. I instantly began to dislike Ultron in the movie when he started to be jokey. You pull me out of the movie when a character who is normally pretty straight laced becomes a jokester.

What has happened to Hollywood where the smooth sophisticated villain is now seen as being unworthy of their time? My only complaint about Daredevil is Kingpin and how he stutters through his lines and generally acts like he doesn't want to be there. Just my opinion but the only thing the Kingpin teaches me as he is now is dude has an impressive temper and he's somewhat capable of planning.

Ultron who should be this force to be reckoned with comes off as half cocked and perhaps a little bit insane. Which kudos for making him seem insane, insanity is a very hard thing to hit for bad guys. You either get lame attempts like Heath Ledger's Joker, deal with it he was a terrible Joker and only got vaulted into super stardom because he died, or you get jokes like when Gollum had his heart to heart.

Plot Predictability

All in all the movie isn't terrible. It's perhaps pretty tight, except that it suffers from the fact that because Marvel has announced which sequels are coming out you know whose not dying. Oh no they killed someone within five minutes of the movie and over the top foreshadowed that someone's going to die, but it's not that person!, that it's sort of laughable.

RDJ and Evans are coming back for respective movies, Thor's going to have a new movie. The only characters not mentioned in having direct movies are Widow, Hawkeye and Hulk. And thank god we're not getting another hulk movie. It's the friggin' Hulk. He's a boring character with little to no character growth nine times out of ten. Let him sit on the back of the bus like he did in this movie and lets give more time to… I don't… the guy who was playing Galaga. In my heart I'm calling that guy Eric O'Grady for he shall always be an irredeemable ant-man to me.

So why should we care that Ultron's going to destroy everything we've built in the previous movies? Good question, I can't answer that because I know even before going to the movie that Ultron is going to be defeated. I don't have to give you spoilers. If you're paying attention to the marvel release schedule you already know Ultron is a stop gap. The best you can hope for is that he's a good villain.

Style Over Substance?

And AoU doesn't really let most people down on that. His styling is cool, his voice is awesome but for me he's not as menacing as he could be. He's like Cobra Commander. You know he's trying, but you're just not expecting much out of him. I mean he is a world class buffoon, Destro told me so and how do you argue with a man whose face is metal?

Without giving any spoilers away the Age of Ultron is a good popcorn movie, and for the casual marvel fan it's good. But for the fangirl in me it's not quite there yet. Now don't get me wrong. I loved Loki in the first Avengers. But Loki has always been a character about mischief and I expect a certain amount of levity. Whedon's terrible on the whole for story development, but credit where credit is due, man is great at snappy one liners. I could be wrong, it's been known to happen. But I keep expecting the Marvel Cinematic Universe to unravel.

The Comic Book Movie Challenge

Comic books can make great movies but they have to be done just right. And I suspect we're about to watch DC try this and flop because they're not approaching it as what you need to do to make these series work. Same with Sony and spider-man. When you've got a comic book you have to walk that fine balancing line of movie and comic book story.

For instance everyone was clamoring for Venom in the 3rd spider-man movie. Less is more. Dropout Sandman, tease the black Venom suit. Make James Franco, so good, into the movie villain. Have him use the power of media, his money and his supervillain go get'em attitude to really put the screws to Petey. Pete kills Harry in his new emo suit and then in the 4th movie… and only then when this new black suited spider-man has gone too far do you reveal that Pete's no longer in control. You make the entire fourth movie about Venom.

Final Verdict

Now back to AoU. It's a good movie, you should see it. But it's only a good movie. It's not great its story doesn't really do anything but move from point A to point B. Heck there's a number of fights I couldn't watch because it was just left right left right drop the mike, of course that could have been because I had some idiot teens trying and failing to MST3k the movie, and it's off to the next scene.

On the whole I don't believe you'll be disappointed. As for me, I'll probably see it again if my friends ask to go see it again but I won't go out of my way to rewatch it. So at best it's a solid 3. At worst it's a 2.5 out of five.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Maestro, Music Please: Writing with a Soundtrack

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:20:32 GMT

Setting the Mood

A good writer can tug at your heart strings, can make you laugh, grow angry at actions or even dread what's coming up in that character's future. But not me. I'm not very connected to my emotions. So I use playlists to get me into a general mind set for certain writing. Which is why if you go to my YouTube or Spotify profile you'll see playlists like Brooke Amira which is several hundred angry metal songs, or Rose Dandy-Ba who is mostly techno.

The Professional Debate

The idea of relying on music to get you in a mood is seen as a bad thing by professional writers. That you're not serious about your craft. And there's probably some truth to that. But I counter. With the advent of powerful super computers that fit in my pocket or purse, the fact there's always an internet connection and headphones. Unless you're one of those jerks blasting music without headphones in a public place. And if you're one of those people we look at you and we judge. We've got our eye on you, mister.

But in all seriousness, with the advent of technology, most people are always on their phone or laptop in the coffee shop, on campus, in the library. And they most likely have earbuds or headphones. Wearing headphones is generally the universal sign of go away I'm busy. So with this miracle of science, why wouldn't I be listening to music?

Different Brains, Different Methods

Now, my brother and I have a difference of how our brains work. And we've talked about this, he can listen to podcasts and keep drawing. I can't. If I hear people talking I want to pay attention to them. But music, I can just turn that on and it's drowning out noise. He can't do that while he's working on his art.

Music as a Writing Tool

Am I any less serious about my craft when I listen to music? I'd argue no. Am I using my music for a crutch? Eh, maybe. I do like to list the playlist I was using to write the novel. But in the case of Brooke Amira's Unfinished Tales and Esper Fade: An Old Man's War those play lists, OMW is over 200 songs of various types that I felt applied to the setting and the character in general.

I remember reading Adam Warren's run on The Dirty Pair listening to The Mortal Kombat soundtrack and Juke Joint Jezebel just spoke to me while reading it. And I want some fan to read a novel and they're listening to it with their favorite album and they're just like "Pulp Fiction" works great with this. Only don't, cause I don't know if I could ever match Misirlou's energy. Don't do that to me, I'm only a rookie author.

Emotional Translation

Will my using certain music make me a great writer to try and recapture or push a sob story to someone who's reading it? No. Probably not, but at least I know what the scene is supposed to be while I'm listening to Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. And then when I get to the editing process I can tell the editor, I can remind myself, something to say "Oh yeah, this is supposed to be a sad part" and adjust accordingly.

Knowing my strengths allows me to write something, which isn't necessarily bad. But the more I write, the more I think about the emotions and trying to connect them to what I was thinking.

The pain of the INTJ, trying to understand the emotions and describe them. But, hey, gotta start somewhere right?

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Nerd Cred... deduction? - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:15:41 GMT

So in my first post I mentioned some of my Nerd Cred. It’s time to subtract some of that for some people, and freak out some others.

I’m talking about Japanimation. See before a lot of the kids started touting their Anime cred I recall watching StarVengers (Getter Robo G), Grendizer (UFO Robot Goldrake), Gaiking (Daiku Maru Gaiking), Voltron, Mazinger and Danguard Ace for starters. I watched the StarVengers and Gaiking so often I had those “movies” memorized. On the German army base I grew up on in the 80’s a lot of those were recorded for me. So along with G.I. Joe and Transformers I had a large and healthy love for Japanese Super Robots. The music was awesome, the hair was 70’s and the clothing was too. Let’s not talk about early american dubbing of Japanese cartoons. It was terrible.

But I loved it. I also grew to love the Dragon Power Hour when I got to Arizona. Every saturday at 6AM cartoons would start. It would be led off with Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Warrior. After that it was Thundercats, Spider-man and other american cartoons. But the Japanese Anime held my attention the most.

It grew so bad that when I moved to Indiana I began my quest for new anime. The only shows that were on TV early in the morning, this was before Toonami would show up on Cartoon Network, was Samurai Pizza Cats and Sailor Moon. And I’m to understand that Sailor Jupiter had the most talent. It was a joke that American cartoons would never make. Not even Rocky and Bullwinkle or The Muppets were so… terrible(?) in their attempts to hide things with rewording of the dialogue. There were a number of things wrong with watching Sailor Moon. But the truth of the matter was in Indiana there was not much to go on.

I remember scouring through video stores and finding End of Summer, Ranma ½. And then I stumbled across a channel that was mostly scrambled but not complete. It played anime on Saturday Nights. And as they said it wasn’t your kids anime… though If you ever watched End of Summer you knew that wasn’t an anime for kids. But this channel played all The Dirty Pair movies, Golgo 13: The Professional, Crying Freeman, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Wicked City and Vampire Hunter D. This was the beginning of the best era of Anime in my opinion. Sure the Giant Super Robots were awesome… but those were for kids. Here was cartoons that did things that you didn’t see in other cartoons. Killing, sex, drugs and humour. It was a weird time.

Shortly after this time Toonami came out on Cartoon Network and we were treated to more Sailor Moon, some Thundercats, Gundum Wing, Dragon Ball Z and a few other things in the line up. It was alright but it was repetitive. I kept at least hoping they’d get to the part of Sailor Moon where the actual lesbians showed up. Changing the Villains gender never bothered me but I really wanted to see how they dealt with Uranus and Neptune’s relationship. Ultimately America was not ready for this and most if not all those shows were cut from Warner Brothers. I’d already moved on to finding any and all Manga I could. Which in highschool pre-internet it was an accomplishment to get Nausica, One Pound Gospel, Ranma ½, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Mermaid Saga and 3×3 eyes. I didn’t have many Anime or Manga for a long time because it was hard for me to get my hands on new stuff.

Then the internet was made accessible to me and I began to collect and watch far more Animes. I won’t list them all because frankly the list was well into the hundreds before Toonami started flooding the market with crap. It’s not all crap, but there’s just so much that’s made in Japan and exported over here it’s hard to to keep track. Now when you talk to people about Anime they cringe or shudder. Assuming you’re only talking about the slew of easy to find items. There’s a lot of crap in anime. But I would say 99% of american TV is crap. To me when you talk about the TV we have to watch it just makes me shake my head. People assume incorrectly that you either don’t like depth of story, they’re wrong go watch Akira some time, or into it for the gravity defying human bodies, same can be said for super heroes.

No, there are good gems out there even now. The fact most of them came out in the 80s and 90s, in my opinion, doesn’t have anything to do with it. It just meant that what you got over here was quality content at that point. You were more worried about bringing back the stuff that would sell. Now the key is to over-saturate and hope that multiple products will sell. It’s quantity over quality.

So let’s see if I can help get more people in touch with good anime. Here’s my list of top 10 anime. I’ll let you the readers figure out why these out of so many thousands of animes are my top 10.

1. Revolutionary Girl Utena 2. Armitage the III Poly Matrix 3. Akira 4. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 5. Berserk 6. Project Lily Cat 7. Appleseed (Original series) 8. Robot Carnival 9. Captain Harlock 10. Cowboy Bebop

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Cthulhu Fhtagn: Pop Culture's Strangest Icon

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:14:27 GMT

The Unexpected Icon

I've never understood the appeal of the masses had with Cthulhu. I really don't see how he became such a popular icon for nerds and horror types. I fell into reading H.P. Lovecraft by sheer accident. I picked up the Robert E Howard Conan novels and backed my way into H.P. Lovecraft that way.

Ancient Terrors of the Deep

The thought of an ancient, powerful sleeping monsters in the depth has been around for centuries like the Kraken, Leviathan, The Bloop or cuttlefish. Supposedly scientists known more about what's going on in space than what's happening in our own oceans. Personally I think we know the same amount on both sea and space. NOAA says 95% of the sea is unexplored. And frankly we only have theories and conjectures on space. Which is important to note when dealing with Cthulhu.

Cosmic Horror and Incomprehension

H.P. Lovecraft says that Cthulhu is a priest for dark gods (Great Old Ones) who are from a time and place outside our comprehension. Which in a horror story is always a nice creepy element. The unknown is what scares people. And there's a lot to be scared of under the sea. The problem with Cthulhu is that his very presence will drive people insane. And there's only so much insanity that you can read before you have to just shrug your shoulders and move on.

Lovecraft's Complex Legacy

Don't get me wrong, I like reading H.P. Lovecraft and a few of the stories really did send a shiver down my spine. The language is hard to read, for me at times because of its blatant racism, but sadly that was the time. And that aside it's best to ignore it. But the work of fiction is large and it's loved by people and it keeps growing.

Personally I'm more of a fan of Dagon and when I've traveled I've come across places where I get that "outsider vibe" as soon as you step in. Of course that could just be because of who I am and I always feel like I'm an outsider.

The Sleeping Threat

So anyway, Cthulhu sits beneath the waves in a continent that may or may not be the city of Atlantis since it's located in the pole of inaccessibility it's hard to tell. And it's not like there would be any cause for anyone to go looking for anything in that location, except for being a fan, so when Cthulhu does rise from his slumber he'll wreck havoc on Coney Island. So problem solved right? Just keep Coney Island around until you can get him struck by lighting.

Or just make sure never to raise Cthulhu from his sleep. I'm still not sure why Cthulhu has become pop culture icon that he is. I really don't understand how things get popular. But this is one instance where I'm not terribly upset to see one of my favorite authors getting credit for his creation… Even if he happens to have died almost 80 years ago at this point.

Urban Fantasy Origins

Just keep telling the story over and over, adding in new features and new ideas. I personally believe that The Call of Cthulhu is one of the major influences into the Urban Fantasy genre. Since it's dealing with "modern" times and the supernatural. True it has a horror element and is told in a deliberately spooky manner but the idea of Urban Fantasy is a fantasy novel that is set in an urban setting and just because it's now almost 100 years after the roaring 20's when Lovecraft's books took place it is still very much an urban setting.

The Unknown Still Exists

And there's a lot of unexplained items out there. And you don't have to be a skeptic about it but you don't have to be a hard core believer that we've not found everything on our planet. We discover new species all the time.

Whose to say that the bloop wasn't Cthulhu? And I for one Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn when I Cthulhu.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Transformative Fiction: Stories of Change and Identity

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:12:54 GMT

Defining the Genre

So what is Transformative Fiction really? It's a self-coined term really, it's not to be confused with Transformative Works. What I classify Transformative Fiction as would be anything that would have a body modification introduced to a character in your story and it becomes one of the central themes that is used to move the story forward, while it doesn't have to be the primary focus of the story. If it is to qualify it should be very heavy in the story elements.

Notable Examples

My personal favorite examples are listed below:

Short Time

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Attack of the 50-foot Woman

Doctor Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

Death Becomes Her

Star Trek: Insurrection

That's just a few examples of Transformative Fiction that I picked out. There are others like Ranma ½ but I didn't select that one simply because in that anime even though Ranma wishes to change permanently back into a man, most of the series doesn't actually focus on his search for a cure. It is instead merely used as a gag and the occasional story plot hook. The character always returns to status quo.

What Makes True Transformative Fiction

The examples I picked above are the core focus of the story. Take the excellent story Short Time that was mentioned above. In this book a scientist is exposed to a process that reduces organic material. The rest of the book is her slowly shrinking and trying to halt the process. I cannot tell you how many times I've read and reread this story. It has become a personal favorite for me. I read it at least once a week. I enjoy the story and the characters and the aspects of the changes being applied to the character.

Now there are many examples of Transformative Fiction elements in stories. When a character's bust is improved or a character is altered to be taller or smaller, or in the case of the Hulk, the subject is transformed into a monster. I struggle to classify Hulk as Transformative Fiction because even though Bruce Banner/Jennifer Walters are indeed transformed into beings of great power they never seem to focus on the repercussions or the mental adjustments that would come along with these changes. Banner for instance just whines about the change and then begins to solve the problem. Being that the primary purpose, like Ranma ½, of the story is so little nerdlings everywhere can pretend to be like puny Banner; there will never be a solution to the hulk problem and therefore it's not what I would consider a true transformative work.

My Personal Connection

I've always been fascinated with transformation. Two of my favorite movies growing up were The Flight of Dragons and The Last Unicorn. And I will admit that while I am a big fan of the Ranma ½ series but it doesn't tick all the boxes.

Now that said there are a large number of Transformative Fiction Anime out there. Ones about the characters growing younger, growing older, changing sex and the like. But nine times out of ten the story is just going to be about sexual intercourse. I look at Transformative Fiction as a means to tell the story about something that changes your body and while it can be about sex, it shouldn't primarily focus on that.

Though I do break my own rule for that in The Goddess's Gifts, but that started off as a commission for an individual who wanted something very specific and I gave it to him as he asked and you the reader are receiving it indirectly. But I still lived up to my definition of transformative fiction.

Looking Forward

But anyway, as I like Transformative Fiction ideas I tend to have a lot of them. And I'm not ashamed of writing what I like. It's my only hope that other people will like it. Some of it will have sexual content, consenting adults do stuff in the real world why not in the story, some of it will not. It just depends on the story that I'm going to write.

Some like The Servant of the Gods will have elements but it won't be the primary focus of the story. As an author I feel you should write things you like, and still try to make them commercially acceptable if at all possible. And that's what I'm going to do.

And I'll let everyone know. I will write often on Transgender Transformative Fiction. Anyone who knows me knows that a large number of my friends are LBGT and I know a few brave individuals who have gone through with sexual reassignment. Very rarely do they get positive role models in stories. I aim to fix that, or at least take a stab at it.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

That Asshole Gamer: My Journey Through MMO History

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:11:04 GMT

The EverQuest Beginning

So like many people who grew up in the 80's I grew up playing video games. A lot of good times were had in Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and countless other role playing games from the 80's and 90's. Then I made a mistake in high school. I got accepted into the Beta for Everquest. I learned the fine art of Player Killing in Blackburrow. My actions eventually got me kicked off the PVP servers to the Carebear servers where I rerolled my Dark Elven Cleric Amir Kalfoxx into Amilya Kalfoxx, the first Dark Elven cleric of my server. And there started what some of my friends called my massive "trolling" campaign against MMO's everywhere.

See after I realized that PVP players don't like to lose I moved on. I started focusing on the story of my characters. Which at the time was Amilya Kalfoxx, Dark Elven Cleric of Hatred. My hate would heal the whole world. A phrase I used frequently as I did the unthinkable. I solo'd. As a cleric in NeverQuest. From open launch until The Legacy of Ykesha.

It took me forever to level high up doing mostly solo. Oh sure I could be found frequently in the company of other players, normally charging them to act as the team healer. I would frequently join a guild long enough to team up with others to do Raids. And boy the excitement I had staring at the ground for hours watching people's life bars because internet connections and computers couldn't handle all the magical effects at the time. I learned how much fun that was sitting staring at the ground for hours drinking mountain dew and eating pop corn. So much fun I swore I would never get my own planar gear cause it was so annoying to do so.

City of Heroes and Character Evolution

I made a lot of friends in my EQ days. Some I still associate with. Others gone. But that's neither here nor there. From there I moved on to City of Heroes. I stepped up my game of "trolling" by inventing Sogan Kaiser. A scrapper who specialized in Spider-man type dialogue while in combat.

See I had figured out how to Macro things by this point so I would hit an attack and quickly hit a keyboard command to input a paragraph of text. Hit another attack and continue. I also become highly proficient at in character smack talk to the NPC villains, firing quips between my attacks. Such to the point where Sogan made an enemy of much of the Sentai Squad on my server.

It was a jerk thing to do, I will admit. But I'm incorrigible so I don't feel bad about it. See in Japan Sentai means Team. But these guys all looked like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. But often I would compare them to the encounters that Sogan had with his friends who were rangers with mighty morphing powers. Needless to say they never appreciated it. But that was Sogan and his backstory and a few of the members thought it was funny and would congratulate me on my in character performance. Which I wouldn't break. The Macro smack talk became a stable from that point on.

World of Warcraft and Faction Limitations

For a time I moved to World of Warcraft and started the Amilya Kalfoxx line all over again. Amilya Kalfoxx the noble paladin, who was sworn to protect the Kalfoxx name against the evil elves. See It was stupid, and still is stupid of Blizzard to enforce the inability to switch sides and be the same race. I hate the Night Elves and Gnomes and would love nothing more than to be a human and on the side that could freely kill gnomes and "elves". When I played EQ Gnomes earned a special place in my heart for how stupidly annoying they were in PVP. And I hate the design of the Night "Elf". I was told by several Blizzard GM's that my character couldn't switch sides because it was story reasons.

It's not like anywhere in the history of war have we ever had someone switch sides. And it's not like you can't learn another language. They even disprove this in their own game. If you go to Booty Bay, and then later cities that were both Horde and Alliance the NPCs, regardless of race, can speak your language and work hand and hand with one another. The only characters who cannot speak two languages are Orcs and Humans. The Story is touted as being very deep as to why you can't learn languages. Which is basically saying that WoW races are mentally incapable of learning new languages. Which means that for the sake of all they should be eliminated.

But anyway, Amilya Kalfoxx progressed onward through her quest to smite the evil elves who weren't yet introduced. And along the way I grew more proficient in the art of not breaking character.

MMO Evolution and Storytelling Limitations

I moved on to EverQuest 2 and was thrilled that they allowed Dark Elves to switch from evil to good or a wood elf to switch from good to evil. It was a thrilling, if a little lame, quest that basically made you betray your starting city. I did so happily with Amilya Kalfoxx the Shadowknight turned Paladin. I hoped for the programming for NPC's to sneer and jeer the now noble dark elf. Sadly the programming was incapable and I went back to WoW. This was about the time of the Burning Crusade.

With the introduction of the Burning Crusade Amilya's familia line now had the evil elves to fight. Kiadan of house Kinka, and her three sisters. I leveled the heck out of those alts until they were the same level as Amilya. And then began the epic battle… that I couldn't do anything with because they were my alts. So I took it offline and began constructing a story about the fight. Amilya, a human, had aged and managed to kill Farilis, Mistal and Ayrios. Leaving Kiadan, the oldest sister, alive in the wilderness. I am looking forward to when I finally get around to finishing that story.

I then moved on to Star Wars The Old Republic. Creating a family divided by the empi… I mean the sith and the republic. And reacted to the stories in the game as only family members would do. Shasti, the youngest sister out to make a name for herself gets her ship stolen. What does she do? She tells her older brother whose a Solider for the Galactic Republic and then she fires off a message to her bounty hunter sister. Only to be told that because we are in a society that is so divided and we all speak the same basic language we can't communicate.

I naturally informed a GM of this gross oversight into the role playing asspect of a Massive Multiple Player Role Playing Game. The GM told me in polite ways that I was crazy and that I should play the game. Which I told him, sincerely, that I was playing the game and that no where in their media did it mention that you wouldn't be able to talk to family members.

The Grind Problem

So, I'm that asshole who came into your PVP world, saw how stupid and repetitive the game was. Knocked over the building of legos you were using to construct your world and tried to have fun on my own. You raid so you can get better equipment so you can raid to get better equipment. You do pvp so you can kill more people by getting better gear to pvp. You farm 10 items for this npc then run north and find another 10 things to give to another NPC and then you pick 30 flowers.

Those are not games. Those are a monetary time sink. I have a value that my time is worth. My company that pays me to do HL7 interfaces says I am worth XYZ Quatloos an hour. So if I pay these games $15.00 a month and I spend any time in them I am costing my time which is costing me monetary compenstation. These games are now so reptitive that there is no point to play them. When I talked to people in WoW when I came back for a bit they talked about how often they had to sit and grind their dailies. Not to call anyone out but I talked to a guy who I play Table Top RPGs with once a month and he said he used to spend about 2 hours a day doing his daily maintenance and grind. that's a total of 14 hours a week, and total of 56 hours a month just working. Over and over again to make sure you can raid to get more stuff to raid.

Games shouldn't be a chore. They should be fun.

The Destiny Problem

This post was brought about by the new Destiny expansion. The achievement hunters talked about it and frankly it baffles my mind now as an adult to have to spend so much time doing the same repetitive actions again and not get something tangible for my time. A prime example of spending to much time on reptitive tasks. For those who didn't want to click the link it's a guy whose played the same raid so many times he can now solo it.

Now I do love replaying games now and then. I replay Dragon Force often. Even though you learn the trick to combat really early on to be come nigh unstoppable, it's my favorite "tactics" games. I love Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics but my go to game is Dragon Force when I want to replay a fantasy tactics game.

But I don't spend 50 hours a month doing it either. I would spend 50 hours a month if I could roleplaying on a server. But frequently no one is there to do that. They just want to collect 10 more flowers and return to the quest giver so they can get another quest to collect 15 wool.

Incorrigibly Yours,

J.E. Flint

The Heresy Book Challenge - Part 1 - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:09:46 GMT

My brother has challenged me to read the book series Malazan Book of the Fallen. See he knows I like to read books. He knows that I purchased a kindle so that I could slow down my reading speed to make books last me more than a few days. Well he’s been talking about this books series for better part of a few years now.

Allow me to preface this, he doesn’t know why he’s reading these books. He’s been reading them, bought and read all the stuff, then moved onto the expanded/side stories, which is another 6 books. He describes these books as being a few thousand pages and each one has 24 chapters. So this sounds like it would be a serious undertaking. And I’m only reading these because he’s challenging me to do so.

He’s given me some backstory for this story. All heresy, I’ve only got a bit of actual knowledge on this book series. Hell I guessed it was GURPS before he told me it was. That is not a good sign, in fact this is the sign of an amateur writer. How can I say that when I’m not a multi-national best selling author? Because I understand that a story should be run tightly and not require so many books. Robert Jordan died in his series, and it still didn’t end. When will authors learn we don’t want mega epic volumes?

If you tell me there’s about 90,000 characters and they’re dying all the time in it and the writer can’t keep perspective and has to switch to progress the story and it also needs ten books to tell the story it makes me think the guy doesn’t know how to write. There are very few reasons you need a thousand pages and ten books to tell a story. And I suspect the reason is because the author likes to hear his own voice. And another thing I’ve noticed about GMs is that they try to stay faithful to their campaign that, and let’s be honest, they are the only ones who care about it. If your campaign setting was truly cool you would have written a story about it first and not subjected everyone to an celebratory wank at your campaign notes.

So, here’s what I know about the series, based on listening to my brother. It sounds like it’s heavily influenced by Greek Mythology because there’s a lot of Gods in this series and they drop like flies. Meaning they’re only “Gods” because… reasons. The books take breaks between characters switching back and forth between them as the author gets bored of writing about one particular set of characters or realizes he needs to tell us how awesome/terrible a particular set piece is and can’t help but expand on this for a few thousand pages. His characters aren’t terribly interesting because you don’t get to spend much time with them before a person dies, or was dropped out of the campaign cause it was probably incredibly boring. Oh and because he needs explosions and stuff there’s guys who make TNT for some reasons… and then there’s the stereotypical land of the east.

So, I’m going to read this series because my brother challenged me, then I’m going to see if my opinions have changed about it. They probably won’t but they might. I’m not an inflexible jerk. I can be swayed, but it’s hard.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

On Ism's - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:08:30 GMT

This is another one of my pet peeves. For the most part I’m a pretty laid back sort of incorrigible jerk. As long as you’re not annoying me with your various ism I don’t care. And I mean this as creationism, atheism, Catholicism, pokeism, feminism, smurfism or dogism.

It’s not because I’m sexist, racist, agnostic, religious or a smurfist in the slightest. I believe that your opinions should only be shared on the matter if it’s going to directly impact your personal relationship with others. See I loosely label myself as a citizen of the world and on the grand scheme of things most of what people are bitching, rightly calling it that, is meaningless.

See people get so caught up in their sphere that they can’t possibly see how conceited they’ve become. They’re mired in their own opinions and don’t seek to hear new ones. I may not like like hearing how people believe that Brainy Smurf doesn’t hold the smurf village together with his presence, obviously he does, but I’m willing to listen to your opinion provided you are able to logically and factually substantiate your claims.

That’s the hard part. People refuse to do the necessary research to come to their proper conclusion. I’m not saying that if someone researches everything I research they’ll come to my conclusion. That’s impossible because our habit and upbringings are always going to be different. But so often a statement is made on one side and instead of fully researching this statement from a neutral viewpoint they find a quick statement that refuits the claim, supports it or they just ignore it.

That’s half the battle though. Research is the easy part. Most of us have learned to read, and with a little bit of deductive logic can remove the parts that are fluff and lies. It’s learning to phrase the statement of fact in a manner that is not condescending, superior, inflammatory or argumentative.

I had some fellow gamers who got into a stupid argument. It was about religion. One was profoundly against the thought that any superior creature could create beings. So hot in the face was she over how stupid the other two people were that she refused to listen to anything the others were saying, shaking her head before they even finished a word. After she left those two, intent to prove that their religion was sacred tried to affirm to me that it existed, they used much the same approach that the other woman had used. For my part I simply shrugged and said it wasn’t my place to decide. In neither case did the two parties, not that they were arguing to persuade me, stop to think did I care one micron about this argument. As far as I was concerned they were both childish in their reasoning as soon as they started to get red in the face.

I was Christian when I was younger, but by the time middleschool had come around, and after reading so many texts of history, decided there could not possibly be a god. Then after many years of steadfast atheism I came to my novel thinking that there might be a supreme creator of some sort but that this creator was responsible for all religions at once and had left us until we could figure a means of reaching them. Fueled with this thought I embarked on my worship of knowledge. Loosely I proclaim myself an Odinist, in that I worship a Viking deity of Knowledge, but I’m into the worship of logical facts.

In a factual argument there is no place for emotions. Clarity of thought before rashness of action. When people argue now they do so from the heart, seldom using the finest tool that was ever developed. The one that frequently gets on my nerve is the sexist argument. Because no where can people decide on a set of rules that both sexes should be treated by. When a person commits violence against another, regardless of sex, the punishment should be the same. If someone does work then they should be paid upon the merit and qualification of their skills. Not because one has dangly bits and the other has inverted bits. The same goes for “race”. I don’t understand how, on a world where there is but one ruling species we can bicker about variations in our hue. To my eye we are all organisms that, for the most part, have much in common in our physicality and therefore are the same.

Until someone presents me with a factual reason to care about the arguments for an ism, then I choose not to care about your thoughts and would kindly like it if you stop wasting your time and mine.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Responsibilities and Maturity - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:07:23 GMT

As an adult everyone is faced with responsibilities to themselves, their work and their social network. When one conflicts with the other you have to adjust your responsibilities and let people know that your priorities have shifted. That’s what part of being an adult is about.

I recently went to volunteer at Shalom Farms. Even though I knew it wasn’t going to be all that fun. 90 degrees in Virginia, on a Saturday in May. But I gave my word that I was going to help out, and I took on that responsibility to myself to go to this farm and provide assistance to people who are trying to support the community by giving quality food to low income families, emergency relief and homeless shelters. I didn’t do it because I wanted to get good feelings or because people were pressuring me into it. I did it because it’s my responsibility as a human to provide assistance where I can.

If a person approaches me and asks for a hamburger I will purchase a meal for that individual. I am a person who oft times does not have to worry about where my next meal is or worrying to pay bills. I have a job where I work 50 hours a week and it affords me a domicile and the bills of adulthood that go with it. It’s my responsibility to work at a job, complete the job that I was contracted/hired to do and then use that money to continue existing. In my free time I write and attempt to interact with my social network.

When something comes up, I inform the people it impacts. It’s part of being a team. I learned it from 6 years of playing soccer. I had a position and people depended upon me to fill that position. If I’m not there then that’s a hole that needs to be filled and duties that need to be preformed by someone else. It’s only fair and right to not load your responsibilities onto other people.

My brother works at a job where the people do not have the same ideas of responsibilities. They call in or quit at the drop of a hat because the job my brother works at is a day laborer at a grocery store. He, like myself, takes his responsibilities seriously and always shows up and gives what he can. His coworkers are not as dedicated. It’s a maturity and time management thing. If you’re not mature enough to be able to discuss what’s going on around you and mature enough to know what needs to be done first then you’ll never start to develop time management which allows you to exceed at jobs and interpersonal relationships.

While working at Shalom Farm there was another group there, looking to get us to volunteer our time and experience in life to less fortunate kids. The idea, and it’s a truly brilliant one, is to take adults who have a job, bills and lives and let them teach an hour long class five times over the course of a year and follow those kids from K-12. Reinforcing the lessons that are taught. The lessons this group focuses on is financial management. Teaching kids financial responsibilities at an early age and making them more likely to give back to others.

Frankly though, being an adult sucks. I hate the responsibilities that come with it. But no one can stay childish forever. Someday they’ll have to put on their big boy/girl pants and step into the world and adult. And no one wants to adult, trust me.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review - Jurassic World - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:06:10 GMT

So like many of you I’ve seen Jurassic World. Saw it early this morning and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. And like my Age of Ultron review this is going to be mostly spoiler free. Simply because I don’t want to ruin this for anyone but I still want to talk about parts of the movie that stuck out for me. I have a number of friends who when I tell them I’ve not seen a movie and don’t want spoilers they proceed to give me a blow by blow of the movie. Thanks Jerks. I’m not that friend. If you’ve not seen the movie I won’t give away key parts, because that’s just rude and while I am incorrigible I’m not a rude person.

So all said and done, this movie is a popcorn flick. You go in buy your $9 worth of concessions with the inflated ticket price, watch some lackluster trailers and then settle in for a two hour and four minute movie. And there are parts of the movie that truly do make you feel as if you are living through every agonizing minute of the film. Namely most of the early parts with the two boys. Even after watching it I honestly can’t tell you the names of any character but the computer operator. Larry. Because I’ll always remember the name Larry Sizemore. Though this character isn’t nearly that memorable.

So the basic premise of this movie is pretty much the exact same as the last three, with a slight twist. Imperious Rex is a genetic hybrid, but you know this from the trailers, and so not only is it the same as the last three Jurassic Park movies, it’s now a monster/frankenstien movie how man shouldn’t play god, only that’s the over all theme from the first movie, which is pretty much the same movie theme in this one.

For the most part, to me, it felt like I’d already seen this movie. Which I had. I watched Jurassic Park the night before, it was either that or the 3rd one cause I’m a sucker for Dr. Grant. Now that said CGI wise this one doesn’t hold a candle to the practical effects of the first movie. I much prefer practical effects to CGI because they look more realistic.

I mean all in all I sat through the two hour run time and only had a problem with the movie getting rolling. Once it swings out of the gate it does its job. But to me, it seemed like they had to reestablish that it’s been twenty years and they had to remind everyone of it.

I want to know why the country of Costa Rica hasn’t obliterated those islands, I want to know why in a world like Jurassic World why they don’t have Captain America’s and the other types of breakthroughs genetic engineering is capable of. I want to know, why they felt that shooting a 50 caliber weapon at a dino didn’t do a damn thing. That link, that link is a guy shooting a 50 cailber round into a bowling ball. I can assure you that bowling ball is certainly denser and tougher than the hide of a precambrian lifeform, or whenever Indominus Rex was supposed to be “around”. And yes above I spelled it incorrectly because it’s a silly name for a silly monster.

As in most movies that has any sort of miltary/hardware presence with army, the army is useless. There are no multiple attack chopters, no one has a clue on how to fight as a group and most of all, no one has any sense of tactics. In the movie they tell us a lot of effort was put into the creation of the silly gyro ball. So you’re telling me in a world where they have these creations they don’t have Sonic Guns, portable rail guns or a laser to deliver a lethal injection? This is why I can’t take these movies serious. I’ll admit, a high powered weapon hitting Godzilla is likely to just annoy it.

Indominus Rex if it went up against the real US Military, on even it’s worst day, is dead. A tank, an attack helicopter, heck just enough assault rifle rounds would take it down. In that last case you’d loose a few marines/grunts but a few lives against the potential thousands that are eventually caused throughout the course of the movie are a good trade off. Army personnel, sad as it is, sign off to protect people like myself. They are brave people who, mostly, selflessly put themselves before the others so I have the freedom to praise them. And it’s not because I’m an army brat either.

So all in all, go into Jurrasic World, turn off your brain. Veg for the two hours. Watch StarLord do some stuff on a motorcycle and with some raptors and then realize how ham fisted the movie tries to remind you of the first movie. And Spoiler, in my take, Chris Pratt is the kid Doctor Grant terrorizes in the first movie. Bringing it full cirlce.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Video Game Hall of Fame - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:04:58 GMT

So as an avid videogame player naturally I’m jazzed to hear about the inductees to the Video Game Hall of Fame. Actually I’m such a fan of videogames that while I’m typing this blog I’m listening to an SPC of Angel’s Fear from Secret of Mana, the opening theme.

I routinely whistle the opening theme to Wild Arms. That theme song is one of the top ten songs in my video game library list. I also whistle the fat/big chocobo theme from final fantasy IV. One of my favorite artists is Hyadain who makes video game remixes. And of course O.C. Remixes. So naturally I pay attention to video game news. I ignore non news like gamer gate because a person brought up a valid point and people over reacted. Things need to change in video games, I have many complaints with the industry and how the business model is moving, but that’s neither here nor there.

So the inductees are Doom, Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and World of Warcraft. Some of the picks I wouldn’t have gone with. World of Warcraft as it wasn’t the first MMO but it certainly changed the entire market of how MMO’s were created and how they’re marketed. And surprisingly it seems to be chugging along though everyone is going Free-To-Play. Or more really Pay-To-Win.

But I played the heck out of Tetris when I was young. It was my favorite puzzle game for a long time and one of the first games I beat. I also used to play Super Mario bros. but I never beat it, that was something my brother and sister could do. I’m terrible at platformers. You never want me on your team for a platformer game. You want me for games where it’s strategy, patience or puzzles. I’m going to be a dependable turtle player for you. It’s why I’ve hated the Link series after The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, cause it went 3D and I had to start working on my spatial awareness. I’m not clumsy or anything, just not coordinated in video games apparently. I also didn’t do very well in Pac-Man and I never played Doom but I was infamous in Conquer’s Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark. I was nigh unstoppable in Perfect Dark among friends, such to the extent we enacted a “High Noon” rule that limited “us” to only six shooters and knives. I was still pretty good. But I let those skills drop and now I’m that noob people pwn when I get a wild hair up my butt to play FPS’s.

Being that I’m a video gamer naturally a large portion of my friends are so I was talking to some friends about this and I would love to see their list of honorable mentions and who voted on these. Considering the criteria I’m surprised E.T. wasn’t on this list because it almost killed console gaming. Space Invaders, as my friend tells me, made Arcade Games into a cultural phenom. Spoilers, though I know a lot, I wasn’t around for the heyday of arcade gaming. Arcades were starting to stall out when I started playing them. See Sierra Vista’s pizza parlor, Peter Piper Pizza, only had select games and that was like 87 or so, so they weren’t pong or space invaders. So I missed the arcade buzz. I didn’t miss the console buzz.

I’m surprised to be honest that Zelda isn’t in the first round. It is a very iconic series. I would expect it to be in round 2, with hopefully Metroid and Sonic. And of course my fingers will be crossed for Dragon Quest. Any video game that can cripple an entire nation when a game is released should fit the requirements.

At least that’s my thoughts on the matter. We’ll revisit the topic see if I’m write for some of my round two picks.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review – Irredeemable Ant-Man - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:03:38 GMT

It’s time for another, mostly spoiler free, film review. This time of the new Marvel movie Ant-Man. Like a lot of comic book fans I was a little shocked they did a movie about a wife beater and an unmitigated jerk. In the Marvel Universe Hank Pym creates Ultron, learns how to shrink by studying his wife Janet. So needless to say this was right up the Marvel alley. Since it makes more sense cannonly that Tony Stark, inventor of the AI Jarvis would make Ultron. And I’m fine with that.

So what did that leave us with? An Older Hank Pym and the younger Scott Lang, and the guy they got to play Hank Pym is a perfect asshole. But they’ll never match up to Eric O’Grady and how awesome he is. That’s my kind of Ant-Man. A character who had his priorities straight.

But anyway, I went to watch Ant-Man with my brother and some friends and we naturally got to talking about the “science” behind shrinking the distance between atoms. Cracked did a good job of talking about the problems with shrinking. There’s the thermo to take into effect since as you get smaller you’re not going to have the mass to stay warm and you’re appetite/metabolism would be off the scale, and then in theory his oxygen content would be in serious problems because you have to shrink the oxygen molecule for him to breath it in his reduced capacity. But the idea is that when Ant-Man, like the Atom, he maintains his weight, just in an incredibly small/dense package. So there’s a few problems with that. In the movie there are times he’s being moved around by water or air currents and that shouldn’t happen. Then there’s the scenes where he’s throwing pieces of the train. He wouldn’t have the leverage to really do much with that simply because his arm length is now greatly diminished and the object is so super hugely bulky. They give the super hero Tactile Telekinesis to accomplish this feat. It’s why Superman can stop a plane from falling from the sky. If he stopped it should only save the area directly over him as the momentum takes the rest of the object.

But the thing I realized after we left the movie, there’s a scene (mini spoiler) where they’re walking around with a tank on a keychain. My brother and my friends were like “It would always maintain it’s weight and it would be the heaviest bullet in the world.” Unless it used Transformers Technology. See in Transformers Soundwave, much as I dislike Soundwave he’s the perfect example. He’s something like 30+ feet tall. The heights of the transformers are subject to debate on their height, but either way. A solid metal construct at Soundwave’s height would be ridiculously heavy/bulky. Michael Bay realized this and didn’t want to deal with the mass/weight issue. So the Transformers in his movies are all relavitely the size of whatever they transform into. In the movie’s version that Soundwave is a satelight and should in theory be Omega Supereme sized. But in the Comic and the G1 series Soundwave at whatever ridiculously huge size he is shrinks to a cassette player. In the comics they explained that the Transformers shunt their mass into another dimension. Pym has discovered how to create Dragon Ball capsule tech which in any sci-fi setting is the greatest technology anyone could hope to achieve.

So instead of sharing that technology with the world and developing a means to feed the worlds population without an issue Hank Pym keeps it all to himself. Certainly it makes sense that he’d be afraid of someone coming along and assassinating you at ant size but in a world with Tony Stark why wouldn’t you already be afraid of mini drones or nano-tech?

So Hank Pym is arguably the best scientist in the Marvel Universe at this point because he’s found a means of making space travel possible and colonization to the rest of the universe. Because the biggest problem with space flight is that it takes so much fuel to get anywhere. But if everything was shrunk to ant size then the amount of fuel needed is negligible. Or you simply shrink fuel until it’s needed and then expand it and keep going.

Hank Pym, you are the greatest scientist in the Marvel Universe. And I salute you sir. Go prove to the world your greatness.

Incorrigibly your,

J. E. Flint

Film Review – Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:01:56 GMT

So like a lot of folks I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z and was excited to hear about Frieza being reborn being made into a movie, even though I thought Perfect Cell was a better villain, his american voice actor sounded suave. Now granted there’s a lot of things that are wrong with Dragon Ball. If I wanted to I could make an entire post about them, but I’m not going to. But while DBZ has it’s problems it has proven to be a very successful franchise and spawning multiple clones, some better than others.

So naturally there’s a certain amount of anticipation to the Frieza Reborn movie. I’ll be honest, in preparation for this DBZ movie I went through and rewatched all of the DBZ movies, I have no one but myself to blame for that, and came to the conclusion that what I wanted to watch was a much longer fight sequence. I wasn’t watching DBZ for the plot, because let’s be honest DBZ’s plot is basically just to move from one fight to a shouting match to a fight. Almost all of the movies are like watching a Superman cartoon. Goku/Superman gets beat up until they decide to fight back. When they fight back they win. There is no doubt in my mind that Goku/Gohan/Trunks/Goten will win, and that they’ll do something to remind us that Vegeta is proud and hates to be humiliated.

So spoiler free review, just as with the other movies I do. This movie, like the entire DBZ series suffers from bloat. In the trailer there’s a scene where Gohan is fighting a million baddies along with Piccolo, Tien Shinhan and Krillan, not my first choice but ok he’s a fan favorite and, Master Roshi? I don’t even bat an eye at Jaco, whom I have no clue who he is, instead of more obvious choices.

So the main cast of the DBZ crew at this point numbers a lot. So they explain in the movie why Goten and Trunks aren’t there in their fusion form fighting, but they have no good reason not to have Android 18, who states to Krillin she’s more powerful than him, Yamcha, Videl or Majin Buu. What sort of emergency does Frieza nescitate if you can bring an old man like Roshi into the fight with all these warriors who surely outclass him. Granted Roshi is unkillable via anything but trauma, I wouldn’t go out of my way to go to a place where a stray glance might kill me.

So obviously they don’t feel this must be a very notable fight if they can’t get even a weakling like Yamcha or Videl. We already know that Vegeta at 18,000 power level can destroy planets. I can guess the Frieza forces are probably in the 1,000’s as well and should be handled by people who top out at more than 140.

And let’s not forget that Frieza floors Gohan with a single punch. And then is mircuously healed by the insta cure that is the Senzu Bean. It’s stated that not killing a saiyan is a terrible idea as they will literally come back stronger. So As tough as Gohan was prior to fighting Frieza, he should be able to hang with the main baddie at least a little longer and become even stronger when he’s beaten down again, but that’s not how this story goes.

I will say I’m very disappointed as a fan of this series for how they ended the movie. I would have made use of the fact, again no real spoilers, that Frieza see’s the miracle power of the Senzu Bean. Remember he see’s Dende healing on Planet Namek so it’s not a stretch for him to jump to that that healing might be useful for himself too. Even earlier in the movie Whis admits he has a limited mastery over time & space. So obviously there should be a reason to strike fear into our hearts by giving Frieza that Senzu Bean, but nope. It’s used for the express purpose of healing Goku.

So, while I’d like to recommend watching the new DBZ movie I wouldn’t subject you to that. And I won’t touch on the fact it looks like the fight scenes were rendered in the DBZ video games. Battle of Gods had some horrible CGI fight scenes but this is even more unforgivable. Honestly, watching the CGI punches impact doesn’t have the same weight as the animated ones.

Akira Toriyama came back to make another movie, but I kind of wish he hadn’t. Don’t get me wrong. I’m really really really waiting for DBZ Xenoverse to go on sale so I can try it on my X-box one.

But at least the trailers showed a new Ghost in The Shell, hopefully it’ll be more interesting than Ghost In the Shell: Arise.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Modern Day Gladiators - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:59:42 GMT

So, here’s going to be a post that’s sure to make me be lowered in some people’s eyes. And to those people I say that I’m apathetic to you anyway. See I feel, and you’ll have to argue long and hard to make me see this the other way, but athletes are over paid wastes of space.

I live in Richmond Virginia and we don’t have a football team. Yet we eagerly host the Washington Redskins to come and train in our town for two whole weeks. And as far as helping to generate revenue it does. Because we have a bunch of mouth breathers coming down town and giving all the fast food places extra money. Some of you who watch sports might be intelligent, frankly I don’t really care, because on the whole sports is a massive waste of money compared to other things.

Now, I like sports. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed soccer growing up, or as I liked to call it Football. See I learned how to play football in Germany so for me it’s football and American football is grab ass with big fat guys. I also played Tennis and Racket Ball and I was on the swim team for about a week, I quit so I could work on my career of clove smoking. Don’t worry I’ve seen the folly of smoking cloves and graduated to alcohol like all writers.

As a team building exercise or as just an excuse to blow off steam a sport is a great way to do it. But the instant we start paying these people more than a few thousand dollars is when I draw the line. If you took just an average salary of those slackers in the MLB and gave that to scientists, teachers, police officers, firefighters and social workers you’d start to see an improvement in the world.

What do they need those ridiculous salaries for anyway? A lot of them make even more off of endorsements. That should be their goal. Get paid 30,000 a year entry, maybe 45,000 if you’re really good and then work up till you get paid 60 or 80 grand a year. If you have to have multiple houses or 19 cars or whatever else these idiots blow their money on, I know that when they buy they’re building up the economy but so could a thousand other people with their month. And then they work hard to be seen on the field doing their dribbling. Get the endorsements they deserve and then their salary drops down to 10 to 15K. Why? Because they’re making revenue from “tips” so why shouldn’t we treat them like wait staff?

Oh, it’s not far. They work hard to get where they are. True, they’ve spent years honing their craft. I’m not taking that away from them but until they start proving they’re nothing more than glorified gladiators I’m not going to give them any more respect than I give anyone else. People who are curing diseases and progressing society should be the people idolized. The teacher who works on shit pay to grade everyone’s paper or prepare a class for the next level of life should earn more. And I’m not touching on how dismal American education is.

America has for years now, ever since I was a tot in grade school, idolized stupidity. The entire culture has been inacting a dumbing down for awhile. I caught it when I was in middle school. It’s to the point where whenever I mention this, besides the foam flying from my mouth and the crazed look I get in my eye, that people think I need to be locked up for being “unamerican”.

I mean I get irate about a lot of things. There’s a reason I picked Incorrigible for my title. I just don’t understand how anyone who can grow up and be like “Oh boy! Let me go out and earn half a million dollars for two weeks of work.” If I have a son or daughter and they said “I wanna be like Mike!” I think I’d ground them on princpal. Or at least give them a stern talking to and tell them they can’t have desert. I’m not a parent yet and will hurdle that bridge when I get to it.

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m clinically insane. I just want to make the point that in the grand scheme of things Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth and Andre Agassi. I mean I like the WWE and I was shocked to hear how much Triple H made. Seriously I didn’t think the cerebral assassin would be worth millions. And I love Space Jam.

It just ticks me off that culture of all sorts is second to people with well chiseled abs and greased up skin.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Fantasy - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:56:15 GMT

Fantasy is an old genre, and honestly it’s one of the main branches of non fiction writing in my opinion. There are plenty of good and bad examples of it as well. It relies on Magic, Supernatural phenomena, imaginary worlds, magical creatures and the like to populate the genre. Not all times, but most times, it’s set in a medieval type of world. It’s given birth to a host of sub genres.

Some examples of Fantasy everyone knows 1) Lord of the Rings 2) A Game of Thrones 3) Harry Potter (Urban Fantasy) 4) Wheel of Time 5) The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe 6) Conan the Barbarian

The thing with Fantasy stories are they’re pretty dull for the most part. Tolkien is basically the grandfather of all modern fantasy stories now. So everyone indirectly intimates his story telling. Not that anything is wrong with that. There’s so much fantasy out there you could shake a stick at it and only get a quarter shake before hitting something. On the whole there’s only two items on that list I would read with some regularity. And that’s Conan and then LoTR. And honestly LoTR is one of those books once you’ve read it you really don’t need to read it again unless you love the book.

Don’t get me wrong. Fellowship was the first real book I learned to read back in the fourth grade. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to read, I just had more important things to do than improve my reading level beyond first or second. So LoTR will always have a special place in my heart. But Return of the King was the first novel I set down at the halfway point. It’s just dull. That’s my problem with fantasy in general. The writing is dull and formulaic.

I love David Eddings fantasy novels but even I will admit they’re pretty cliche. Are they good books? I suppose that depends on how you define a good book. There was no point where I put it down disgusted like GoT, and at no point did I get bored to tears like I did with Wheel of Time and LoTR. So by those standards Eddings produces good fantasy novels.

The one saving grace for me is that Fantasy novels have dragons. And as I’ve said previously I’ve a thing for dragons. I still love the conversation a fan had with me on my fur affinity account on the Chronicles of Loth. Early in we setup that dragons had become extinct. The citing that I used was that when humans, elves, dwarves and other races get fed up and decide to kill things they’ll kill them. See this made the fan made because apparently an entire planet of people against a few hundred dragons is a one sided fight. I maintained that the dragons, via the fighting and the massive amounts of dead bodies, brought the world to the point of extinction. They were powerful creatures in my fantasy universe and honestly shouldn’t have been around for the story to have any meeting.

I play a lot of D&D and it sickens and annoys me that most people approach the game as simple minded video games. And most times to them a dragon is just an obstacle instead of a chapter boss or world level villain. The point was hit home when I was in a game and one of the players, after nearly dying from a Dragon fight, complained he hadn’t leveled yet and needed just a bit more xp. So the GM threw another dragon at us. Me being sensible tried to run and was almost killed. Our GM had a habit of just knocking us out instead of out right killing us. He learned from this mistake and let a single dragon decimate the party. Sadly I was one of the first killed because I brought a bow to a dragon fight. Everyone else had to try and reach the dragon with their melee weapons. Me I was an archer so I just started plucking away at the dragon and become target number 2 after the spell caster. Such is life.

Another thing you’ll often see, and for this I’m glad GoT doesn’t follow, is that heroes never die and that characters are immortal. I got so sick of the elves in tolkien, and partly why I made them the villains in The Chronicles of Loth. You couldn’t turn around without falling over some important elf who had been around since the creation of time. Elves were so great, so cool, so awesome. It sickened me. I wanted to give GoT a chance because it didn’t have elves and the cast died often.

My approach to fantasy is slightly different. I want to make a compelling story but no one is immortal and no one is all powerful. And most importantly is that everyone dies. When I design a book it doesn’t matter the setting they die from old age, from poison or from rocks falling. Kiadan Slywyth is the only character who will live forever in my world and she gets a worse fate for it. So Loth has a finite limit to her life. Her son has a finite limit to his life and Clreg has a finite life. No one in my fantasy world will live forever. But unlike GoT I’m not killing people every chapter because I can’t control the amount of characters I have. I don’t see the point of having a big cast of characters.

So stay tuned for my run on Fantasy, I’ve gotta lot of books to work on.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Take my Celebrities, no please, I insist - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:54:16 GMT

I’ve been waffling on if I should even dedicate a post to this or not. Frankly I hate celebrities and the fascination people seem to have with Rock Stars, TV Starlets and Drug Addled Never Weres. The idea of being famous just to be famous is alien to me. But then I’m not obnoxiously rich, nor do I want to be, so I can’t understand only planning for the party with other people who have more money than common sense.

Now to be far there are celebrities that use their power, influence and money improve the world around them. But the amount of money some of these people earn is sick. Millions of dollars for only a few months of work sometimes. RDJ earned 75 Million in 2014 and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson earned 52 Million that same year. I like RDJ and have a lot of respect for him and The Rock but what do you seriously need that much money for?

The basic needs of any person are Food, Safety and then Procreation. That’s the bottom level of the pyramid of needs. We have other things on there like Self Esteem and Self Actualization. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t strive to earn the most money you can. I’m just saying as a person I don’t know or understand how you could want/need that much. For me my needs are meant earning a paltry sum. I need enough to pay my bills and I’m good. I only long for more money so I don’t need to pay bills. I can normally avoid excessive bills by proper money management. There have been times in the past where I’ve had to ask others for money, and it’s met with mixed results.

Ultimately there is a fascination with celebrities because they’re paid so much, but beyond that there’s also the above average privileges that much money buys you. Such as the slap in the face that John Mellencamp’s son is experiencing. For those of you who didn’t read the link Mellencamp’s son was charged with felony battery. IE he put his hands on another individual with intent to do something other than a fist bump, handshake or a hug And now he’s only serving a pittance of time in county jail because of his medical conditions. I’ve had anxiety attacks, and would probably have anxiety attacks in jail if I was locked up. You know why? Because that’s part of being human. Why does he get special treatment?

There’s a website dedicated to all the felony convictions that Celebrities have gotten that comparatively would put people like you and I away for long stretches. There’s at least two accounts of murder on that page. That is why I believe everyone has an obsession with celebrities. It’s the preferential treatment of being rich and famous that people want. They could care less who it is or why. I think the birth of grumpy cat and grumpy dog are a clear sign we don’t care who we elevate above us only that we must have someone to look up to.

Now, I’d be far less pissed at these people if the money they donated was circulated around and given to charities to help everyone. I don’t want them to be poor, much. I just want them to take their generous salary and provide it to worthy causes. Causes that better the entire planet.

I hate to sound preachy, and I’m also a little ashamed of using this quote but it fits. With great power, comes great responsibility.

If all of these individuals pooled their resources we could make a serious dent in world hunger, homelessness, disease cures and protecting the environment. You’ll notice there that all those things help everyone. As fellow humans, unless they’re secretly lizard people then I forgive you for not caring you cold hearted jerks, they should care about their fellow humans. Now I know some people have their favorite select charities, and charities do a lot of good around the world, but when I look at how much RDJ made I can’t help but think about how many people could have been saved with the millions of dollars into disease research. The hospitals could run practically for free if that money were put where it’s actually needed.

And that really applies to anyone who earns such a absurdly high wage. But honestly it only seems a few of us care that this pool of resources could be better put to use than buying a solid gold plated plane or your 5th million dollar mansion.

So please, take my celebrities. I don’t need or want them as long as they continue to put themselves above the rest of us.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Get ready, Set! - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:52:46 GMT

I’ve had a lot of conversations over the years with a lot of people about general setting and world building. To me they’re the same thing and I’m so used to world building that to me it’s not that difficult. It might also be because I’m a dungeon master and feel that prepared worlds are for lazy people. My brother and I are similar in that regard. When you start coming up with a story you just naturally world build. And sometimes it’s the little tweaks you throw in to the world that make all the difference to the observant reader.

When I start creating a story I start with the specifics. How close to Earth am I dealing with here? What time period is this being placed in? Is this story aiming for a specific audience? Once I have that it’s pretty easy to start world building for me. Give me a few minutes and I’ll start spinning a world with origin stories and evolution and things like that in a short time.

It’s why I was mad at other GMs and Writers when they take the established cannon and set their story into it. Now, that said there is writer short hand of setting things in the Star Wars universe. Because you only need to say “evil” by pointing at The Empire. Which I’d like to point out was the duly and democratically elected government and the rebellion were terrorists. But I mostly say that because Lucas didn’t really pay attention to his own source material and so we have this huge disconnect from the settings of the prequels and the original trilogy.

But that’s the one advantage of stealing/using another persons setting. Cause you can just say Sith and everyone will shake their fist, harrumph and gnash their teeth about how evil, vile and deadly the Sith are. But I maintain that you can create your own Sith if you spend just the proper time doing it.

In the Chronicles of Loth the Lizard Tribes are seen as being evil monsters that will consume and devour children and other evil bed time stories, thanks to a bit of bardic story telling and an unstoppable army. The Elves are seen as being aloof bastards, cause I hate elves, because while everyone else was dying they had more than abundant food but were locked in an internal struggle for power which made them seem aloof to everyone. Then the Elven Kingdom and the Lizard Tribes stage a bloody war across the continent that makes up the Chronicles of Loth setting and now you only have two sets of “evil” baddies in the world. I explained that with a paragraph. It took 3 Star Wars books/movies to explain how evil the Sith are. Not saying it’s bad or wrong. Honestly I’ll be probably doing something very similar in the Chronicles of Loth just because I can provide more detail that fleshes out the world by explaining the Cold War USA/Russia relationship that each country exemplifies.

In my A Goddess’s Gifts it was actually Star Wars a little. I started working on A Servant of the Gods first before accepting the commission that would be A Goddess’s Gifts. With the help of the commissioner I setup more information about the world and expanded it. I like how it turned out and I’m glad the individual behind the idea was receptive to me using that story to tell how Aite is introduced in A Servant of the Gods. The original idea was a pretty generic Urban Fantasy if I must be honest. It basically centered around me wanting to try and change the perception everyone has of Hades and his role in the Greek Pantheon. But that could simply be the villain in me. It wasn’t until A Goddess’s Gifts was being worked on that the world in general was fleshed out and the rules for magic were created.

True Blue Alien was me addressing conspiracy theorist ideas in the natural world for a humorous sake. Seen in TBA as being beneficial for the main character the organizations make come backs in Earth From An Alien View Point and we get to see an alien clashing with these organizations in a more active role. I liked the idea of basically taking the same two groups and putting vastly different experiences behind it. The setting though was always centered around the modern day earth and the government cover ups and conspiracy theories that you see dotting our pop culture.

Settings also make and break some people. My good friend Duane Finley didn’t like/couldn’t appreciate the Cyber Punk world that was Transmetropolitan and I don’t fault him for that. I personally can’t stand the generic Tolkien fantasy. I prefer my fantasy to be more Final Fantasy IV or Final Fantasy VI. Give me airships and guns and machines alongside the magic and I’m a happy camper. Sure I’ll suffer through your fantasy setting but you’re already at a disadvantage.

For me adding in Magic just doesn’t make sense. But describe said magic as Psychic Powers or Super Powers and I’m down and understand that. I don’t know why, I’m just weird.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Educational Credit - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:47:09 GMT

So when I first started I made a few posts about my Nerd Credit because I didn’t really have writing credit. What with being a new writer and everything. But I do have some educational cred. It’s just not much to brag about. See when I graduated from high school I originally wanted to go to Reed College because David Eddings went to that school. But I’ll be a smidge honest going to Oregon for a private school my grades were just not up to snuff to earn scholarships and pay for out of state tuition. I applied but I never heard back from them, or if I did I don’t recall it. I also tried applying to Franklin College because they had a very good Liberal Arts degree, I believe I was accepted but I believe I was told I’d have to go to church often was what quashed that idea. At the time I was still an Atheist and that seemed to be hypocritical. I won’t talk about my religious experiences or my personal belief that’s now what you’re hear for. So being that I spent my high school years in Indiana I could have applied to Butler or Ball State or IU or Purdue. Ultimately I started college at IUPUI because I wasn’t sure really where to go.

In hindsight things probably would have been vastly different for my career had I stuck it out and been an English teacher like I had first plan. It would have also been vastly different had I tried to apply myself in high school. I’ve always sort of had a policy of stay in the middle of the pack so I’m not singled out and made to work on projects that don’t interest me. I’m not tooting my own horn, but I’m fairly intelligent and know how to work hard. I have problem spots. Like Math. I’m terrible at math, and though I have a passion/interest in science math always holds me back.

But at IUPUI I was a Liberal Arts major going for two minors. One in History and the other in Creative Writing. And I did well in those classes. Earning a solid B average, after my first semester dropped me onto the Dean’s List for being so dismissal. That first year was pretty bad I wasn’t ready for college but you were supposed to go to college and that’s what I did. Midway through my sophomore year I switched and started working on a computer programming degree. It was a New Media degree and I was going to make Video Games. Unfortunately this was at the point where I joined the workforce to pay for my college so I had a third shift job working in a server room. I felt so bad for my Japanese teacher because I really did want to learn Japanese but after a long night’s shift in the server room and the heat of the classroom I was not meant to learn Japanese in that manner.

I tried to keep at that but it didn’t really pan out. So I switched back to Liberal Arts. I also had a huge beef with the NM department only allowing students to pick Japanese for their language class. I thought a programming class or heck any foreign language course would be okay but it was Japanese or nothing at the time. I continued through Liberal Arts for a while before I quit that to go join the workforce full time.

I spent a year working at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. One year of that was enough to make me realize how stupid I was for not completing my bachelor’s degree. So I left, continued working full time as a contractor and went to Indiana Institute of Technology. I did their accelerated Bachelors in Management of Information Systems. I like to describe it as the IT equivalent of Liberal Arts. I got a smattering of useful skills but not enough to make me truly good at one task. The thing I’ve always been good at, mostly for writing, is research.

So I continued being an IT contractor during the worst recession America had in a long time. It was not a sweat time. I got laid off from the one company I thought I would be at for a bit, but budget concerns. I had left my job as a Day Manager at a local gym to become a professional IT guy. I tried applying for jobs but it never really happened. So I spent a year working on True Blue Alien. I should have spent longer, in hindsight, but I later got a job at a Laboratory Information System company and from there I learned HL7. Which was mostly self taught. There was no manual on how to do HL7 at that company but the staff was amazing and had tons of useful knowledge. It was enough to get me my current job where I’m learning SQL, C# and Javascript.

So while I don’t have Literary or Writer cred yet, I have educational credit. My bachelor is in Computer Science technically and I’m always debating going back to get a Masters of Fine Art. Though from the articles I’m reading it doesn’t really appear to help you get your foot in the world of authors. It’s just a fancy piece of paper that could help.

So what I’m saying, and it’s a tenant I believe firmly in. Work hard, get your bachelor’s degree. The system is pretty rigged to keep a vast majority of people out of college. But I still believe it is one of the best decisions I ever made.

But what do I know? To quote my friend “Do I like like a person who knows stuff?”

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Oh for Research sake - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:42:09 GMT

A lot of people I talk to seem flabbergasted by the amount of research I do for my writing and my Google/Bing search history is eclectic to say the least. Yes, I use Bing on my my pc to search because I need to look things up anyway and I don’t mind having extra Amazon Bucks for binging it or whatever the hip cats are saying these days. I also use bing on my phone to read my news so I can get points on my mobile device… anyway.

Since I don’t watch much TV I make up for it with constantly searching the internet for interesting ideas or broadening my horizon for future knowledge. Like for A Goddess’s Gifts I literally spent hours reading and reading erotica to get the general tone and flow for the book. Due to various reasons I’ve never really be that interested in sex. I know it’s weird topic for me too. But be that as it may I was writing a story for someone, who while he didn’t specifically want sex in the book, it was sort of an applied thing and to me a loving couple would have it. So that needed to be researched and reviewed.

There’s nothing seriously more awkward than research at times. When you’re at the early stages of it and you don’t really know what to research and so you start with something lame like cost of living in San Diego and how much an accountant would make in the same city and then from their you’re researching art terms and things like that. A Goddess’s Gifts isn’t that good an example.

A Servant of the Gods is a better example of that. I don’t live in New York City so I had to do research. And I originally wanted to set it in 1980’s NYC, mostly because that soundtrack had a Salt’N’Peppa song. Yes that’s from Stay Tuned, yes that was an awesome movie, yes I’m a fan. How did you know? But because it had that song I thought it would be cool for Nick and his Girlfriend to be fans. As I found out while Salt’N’Peppa played in NYC in the 80s no one has any information on how much ticket costs were and I couldn’t find out who else was on that particular tour. So I scrapped that idea and went with Kayne West concert instead. I was a little annoyed but I suppose since it wasn’t important to the story it didn’t matter. It was just part of the tone of the book. But still getting enough money for that concert was a big driving part of the first chapter for Nick.

But modern day stuff is actually pretty easy. For future stuff it’s not all that simple. There’s a lot of reading you have to do to make sure the items mess. And then there’s things like applying to much information when you’ve not been providing it in earlier parts of the books. In Farscape they use the slingshot and I used something very similiar in True Blue Alien. Actually spending a lot of time reading up on gravity planes so it wouldn’t sound far fetched. I think it was okay but others have commented that it could have been better.

And fantasy stories have a completely different problem when it comes to research. There are tons of books dedicated to the fantasy life. So it’s just finding which ones are the best for what you need. In The Chronicles of Loth I’ve spent some time doing some SCA events. Needless to say I didn’t spend much time doing that. It was super awkward for me and those folks aren’t interested in flights of fantasy, at least the kingdom of the Middle wasn’t they might have changed now. But I helped to setup a few renaissance fairs and got to cosplay as a peasant so it was pretty fun and I learned how little I liked the commoner life.

But CoL had a different thing that needed to be researched. Racism/Specisim and that actually made me sick. But in the world the Treori and the Elves are despised and I needed to do some research into that. I didn’t delve to deeply in that though.

So if you want to be a writer here’s a few simple rules to follow.

Don’t Skip it

It’s going to help give your story more oomph

Research any questions you have

Knowing as much as possible will help you write more

Let research make your story better

The more you know the better you are at telling your story

But, don’t let research ruin your story

Don’t let the research change your story into a source paper.

At least those are the rules I live by when I research. And what do I know? I’m not a professional.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Social Media - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:39:55 GMT

With the advent of the internet it’s easy to stay connected to everyone in your world. Provided of course you’re not one of the millions of people that your friend or loved one has on social media. I keep a very small list of people on my personal Facebook page. Some 70 individuals that I follow and pay attention to outside my immediate social group of friends and family. And I know looking at some of my friends on facebook I’m a drop in the bucket to the people they follow.

So to me having to use Social Media to launch my books and become famous is agonizing. I don’t post as often as some my friends, and by post I mean retweet/reblog/retumbl whatever they think is cool and interesting. Sometimes they post new things but the people who are most active on my social media sites are just reblogging whatever their political views are spouted by another person.

The thing that’s really going to get me is when on my Facebook page I’ll have people constantly talking and asking me things there. I want to give everyone the response they deserve but I know at some point in the future I will either not have the time or energy. It’s why I’m not allowing comments on most of my posts. Because between a 40+ hour work week, blogging, research and writing I really don’t have time.

And to me it seems like Social Media is very much a thing where you’re either on board and doing it or you’re just playing at it. Me, up until recently, have been playing at Social Media. I’m using buffer to connect me to 2 facebook pages, 1 twitter and 1 google+ page. I also use a wordpress plugin to cross post my blogs to my tumblr. In the case of Tumblr I only have the 1 tumblr account, the same goes for my pintrest and my deviantart page that I use for my photos I take for inspiration, I also have my furaffinity account. But in the case of twitter I have my own personal twitter which I don’t use but don’t want to get rid of the name. I also have my own personal facebook page, which I won’t link since I actually use it, my own google+ page that was used mostly for a D&D gaming group anyway, a reddit account I don’t do much with and a Steam and Xbox Live account. I use Xbox live a lot but I don’t play as many games as I used to.

So it’s not like I’m new to the entire social media universe. It’s just I never really use it effectively. I’ve been splintered and a lot of writers are in that same book. They never know really where to post nor do they realize how much work goes into building the fan base and maintaining it. I’ve been working on building a fan base through The Chronicles of Loth for five years. But I also have fans for my other writings on other sites. Being that they’re adult in nature I won’t link them. But needless to say I’ve been doing stuff for a number of years on the interwebs.

I love to interact with fans and I keep all the messages they provide. Which is why I have so many ways to be contacted. My goal is to establish a presence online and have a community spring up around my works, and get input into upcoming projects.

So if you want to watch me on other channels feel free to do so. Tell your friends, your family and your dog, your hamster or your gradeschool teacher. I’m not picky who watches me. Even if most of the people who follow me probably won’t interact beyond the first view and the occasionally like. That’s enough for me.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. FLint

Expanded Universes - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:38:58 GMT

So a few years ago we were forced to endure as many movies as possible from source material that didn’t require it to be broken into multiple films. Now of that list I saw 1 Hunger Game, 3 hobbits and that was it. I didn’t need to see the other movies to know they were crap. A trailer preview told me that. I only saw Hunger Games to compare it to the much more awesome Battle Royale. Unlike The Raid: Redemption and Judge Dredd that can’t be really compared against one another because they’re both so awesome. Now you can’t help but compare anything to how terrible Hunger Games is. Is that unpopular? Of course it is, is that going to stop me from having taste? Not at all. Is it going to stop people from hating my opinion that is backed up what I deem as good and not others? Nope.

And don’t get me started about having to experience the hobbit merged with the Silmarillion. When David Eddings did that with the Rivan Codex I wanted to find him and give him and his wife a stern talking to. I never flat out accused his wife of making Eddings books worse, but they certainly seemed to lose my interest much quicker. So why do writers feel the need to keep building and building to their worlds? For some of us it’s because we liked the world and want to keep playing around with it. For others they’re terrified of losing the money they get by having that world closed off to them.

Not me. I’m not afraid of losing money, I’d have to be making any to be worried about losing any. I’d have killed Jean Grey and kept her dead. I mean I love her dark phoenix persona. I love a sexy red head as much as I love a fuzzy blue acrobatic german but if the story is much stronger with the red head dead, well. I’m going with story. It might be one of the few times I agree with Chris Claremont, I certainly don’t agree with how the new excailbur and exiles merged.

When you’re given the task of writing a story, a country, a world or a universe you have to fill it with stuff. The more stuff you can fill it in the better. A great look at series with tons of stuff in them are Star Wars, it’s been a few weeks since I mentioned Star Wars in a post, and Star Trek. The differences being that those two series had a large body of fan work, that’s basically what they were, that got green lit and put into the universe. And each time you added something to the universe you added more stuff. Giving you more and more fluff. That is, until Disney bought Star Wars and said the only cannons are what we say are cannon. I can’t blame Disney for wanting to basically say “This is our stuff” and declaring everything else as mute. But the fan in me will never accept that Boba Fett is an unmodified clone. I think that takes away from the writings that the people love. It certainly means Grand Admiral Thrawn is not going to be put onto the big screen like I hoped.

To me what always made me love star wars, even if Babylon 5 was the better written series, was that there were a large amount of fans who were spending hours and hours just giving us additional material to fill an entire galaxy of stuff. To me, if I were ever in that position, I would want the final say as to what is cannon or what is just fan fiction. I’d have turned most of the New Jedi Order into fan fic. As a writer I would find it incredibly flattering someone went out of their way to write fiction about my worlds. It means that I’ve done something to endear myself to that fan. Hopefully not in the Misery way though, cause I just don’t like you that way and we should totally be best friends no matter what.

But that’s not what Hollywood is looking at. They’re looking at each of these as a chance to take money to the bank. And despite how much I disliked the 3 hobbit movies, they did just that. They made the company money and that’s all they care about. They’re sitting in the Bond Lairs, stroking their cat while they contemplate which breed of shark to mount plasma ejectors to. Seriously, who would put lasers on a shark underwater? And in their free time deciding which movie will likely make them money. I don’t remember which movie it was that did it first, either harry potter or twilight, but when they split that book into two parts there was an executive that received a big bonus, because now they could just split any movie/book into multiples and make more money. So instead of having to fill your story with stuff they could just split stuff in half and get more stuff. It was a brilliant plan.

Personally I like the idea that you cram as much stuff into your world as you possibly can, at least with a little help from the fans, and make Hollywood mad. Of course I’m already trying my best to make Hollywood mad. I’m putting several series into the same universes but they only have a few connecting strings between them, or do they? I am a huge fan of Multiverse and time travel and things like that and I’ll leave it up to the fans as to what’s connected and what isn’t.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. flint

Magic Does Stuff - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:33:54 GMT

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The above quote is from one Arthur C Clarke who wrote a number of good science fiction books. So why in my blog post about magic am I quoting Arthur C Clarke? Because to me magic doesn’t make sense. I’ve read enough fantasy novels and watched enough movies and read enough comics to just be confused when the magic has been defined in a set way suddenly changes. I have this quibble with a shrink ray that suddenly causes a mental adjustment to accept the size change to the person as well, but that’s simply just bad writing in my opinion.

My brother likes to point out that if you leave the rules vague you won’t get into trouble. Which is probably true for most people. But for me the rules have to be established. I already have enough time with fantasy because it’s in the past and I want to look to the future. So when the rules of your MacGuffin, and lets be honest that’s how magic really is in most settings, suddenly change you just piss me off as a reader. Some writers are skilled enough to make a subtle tweak to the rules mid play and you won’t notice it. Others just can’t be bothered.

This was a big hang up for me when it came time to write Urban Fantasy, and might be a big problem when I sit down to flesh out The Chronicles of Loth. In A Goddess’s Gifts I introduced two simple rules for magic. That magic is fed by imagination and determination and that every person has a finite amount they can use before drawing on the world pool. There are three artifacts that are in use in the story and there are a number of witches. Not to give spoilers away but one of the witches rips open holes through the world to port from New York City to San Diego, and I have another character who does something similar but different. But A Goddess’s Gifts, though it has a heavy element of magic and Greek Gods is actually rather light on magic.

The Chronicles of Loth and Altered Realities is actually very heavy in magic. Altered Realities essentially is an example of what a mage is capable of with enough will power and preparation. In the case of the that spell it had one simple limitation. No mental transformations. Which meant that, being that the majority of the story is the just dealing with the after affects of one powerful transmutation spell it made it interesting for me. I don’t want to give away spoilers but I figured out a means of using the butterfly effect, transmutation and time travel into one brilliant, in my humble opinion, story.

Because really Magic is all about bending reality to your will. In the supernatural series Gabriel, who let’s face it being an angel is probably highly magical, has the juice to alter reality to his every whim. Castiel, played by the cute and ever funny Misha Collins, sends the Winchesters back in time to do something with a phoenix.

In Lord of the Rings we never really get to see it used in the movies, it’s assumed that Gandalf who claims to be a wizard has magic but an argument could be made that he’s actually just using psionics. The duel with The White Wizard was just practical Psychokinesis, setting his staff on fire was just pyrokinesis and the bit with The King of Rohan was just telepathy. Which basically tells us that Lord of the Rings is actually in the Star Wars universe and all wizards are Jedi of some manner. Now we know why Gandalf was confident the Balrog wouldn’t pass, no one messes with a Jedi Master, son.

I never read Wheel of Time because I found the first chapter to boring, so the magic could be perfect in that series. Same with Game of Thrones, what books I read didn’t display any real magic in them. But David Edding’s in the Belgariad series describes it more as psychic powers and in the Elenium series it’s asking gods for favors. And Dragonlance the only real rule we had was based upon the color of the moon they worshipped, or something like that. But they could easily cast other spells somehow.

Basically Magic is used as a MacGuffin and that as a writer annoys me. I want magic to have clearly defined rules I can wrap my head around. Hence why I started this post off with a Science Fiction great. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I choose to believe that magic that is used in these worlds is like Thundarr’s.

It only works if a comet passes between the earth and the moon.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Monsters - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:32:53 GMT

Most horror novels and movies are about Monsters. On the whole I would say these are the mediocre ones. But there are some examples that really stand out in the horror genre. I won’t get into that here and now, this month is all about horrorible posts. I’m also not sorry for the horrible pun.

So the reason most horror stories are about Monsters is because it’s easier to hate something that is clearly different from you in physicality and mentality. But because these are the common enemies it’s often easy to dismiss them or over use them. Like Vampires get over used all the time to the point where they stopped being scary long before I was born, I’d say by about 100 years. Zombies are getting over played now too.

So let’s analyze what makes a good monster movie before my upcoming posts this month.

So the ten things I would say you need to make a good monster movie are as follows.

1. Originality

2. Innovation

3. Joy of Creation

4. Clarity of Story

5. A Well Told Story

6. Effects

7. Respect For The Audience

8. Believable Characters & Environments

9. Leaving Some Things Unexplained

10. Emotional

1) This one should be self explanatory. No one wants to keep watching the same boring horror movie all over again. I’m a fan of Friday the 13th but I think everyone can agree there’s only so much that can be done prior to the subject matter being exhausted.

2) Along with Originality Innovation is something you don’t really see that often in horror movies. They just keep going back to the same thing. When they made zombies run it was a novel idea that helped breath a bit of fresh air into the zombie genre. But it was ultimately only a puff.

3) There is no better movie than knowing one was made by fans of their work. If the creator and the actor are having fun then the movie is going to show that and it’s going to be fun to watch. Mostly there are still times when pure joy does not a good movie make. Just because you like the movie/genre doesn’t mean you should neglect the others on this list.

4) Clarity of the story is imperative in movies in general but more so for a psychological horror or thriller. These stories need to have a story that is complex yet catches you and tells the story well. There are little things you can leave foreshadowed or as subtle clues but there should not be a moment when the audience gets lost and can’t come back. If you’ve done that then you’re telling the story incorrectly.

5) A well told story needs to focus on just that. The Story. It should move forward and at no point feel as if it’s moving you from one slasher scene to the next. It needs to tell the story distinctly and works closely with clarity. Without a clear story the actual story, good or bad, won’t make any sense. I’m looking at you Prometheus. A lot of movies now a days are taking for granted that a lot of people watch the directors cuts and the extended/deleted scenes. Those scenes are to enhance the story not fill in the gaps.

6) Effects are so important in movies. Tremors had excellent practical effects that while not perfect still don’t look terrible if watched 20+ years later. You can look at some of these movies, noticably the 3d movies, and just cringe. The movies should work to live as long as possible without dating them and worst of all there shouldn’t be a point when the special effects or practical effects pulls you out of the movie. The practical effects in Tremors was good.

7) So often anymore movies don’t really respect the audience and this can make or break a movie. If you treat us like we’re stupid we’re going to react by calling the movie stupid. If you tell a story that’s to intellectual you’re going to miss the point. Like the story you have to engage and build your audience up. They have to want to see this movie as much as the others. Subsequent sequels like Friday the 13th or Wishmaster have a way of making the movies cheaper and less interesting to all parties. Jeepers Creepers, a personal favorite of mine, should have stopped at 1, I still watched the sequel but it didn’t hold a candle to the first one. And Tremors was perfect with 2 movies. We didn’t need Ass blasters.

8) So often someone who is supposed to be the smart character or the tough character or whatever their stereotypical archtype is does something out of character to advance the plot. Prometheus, looking at you again, when the scientists are all candidates for the Darwin Awards. This just makes us, the audience, realize how stupid a movie we’re watching when an doctor or scientist sticks their face into a monster’s face without even a bit of prior investigation as to the alien’s abilities. Make me believe they’re supposed to be smart and not cannon fodder please.

9) There is nothing worse in a horror movie when you have to explain why something is the way it is when you don’t need it. Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a great example of this. Where we’re told that there’s something mentally wrong with Michael Meyers. Rob Zombie is a huge fan of horror movies so I’m not 100% sure what he was thinking when he decided to do this. House of 1,000 Corpses was a pretty good movie until the sequel.

10) Emotional, the most important part of the horror movie. So often now we only get jump scares. There is no true scares in movies anymore because no one wants to make an R Rated flick. Studios are so worried about the movie not making enough money that they turn the film into a PG-13 and so half of the scare is gone. One of my favorite movies to date is still The Mist and not just because I loved the ending. It’s a good all around horror movie.

So those are my criteria for a good horror movie. I won’t offer any advice to correct/fix the movies because frankly it wouldn’t happen and because until I actually write a horror novel I’m just a novice looking in and shouting at what I think is wrong.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Vampires - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:31:11 GMT

I decided to start my October/Halloween post series on Vampires. Mostly because I have a lot of beefs with Vampires. And I think frankly they’re well deserved. Even before Twilight Vampires were a joke monster. I’m not going to apologize for hating what Vampires have become because to me they were never scary.

My first real experience with a vampire of any sort was with Dracula and it was a pretty decent flick. Did it scare me? At the tender age of 12 I was already made of sterner stuff. Heck I’d already watched pretty much all of the Friday the 13th Franchise with the exception VIII, because even at 12 I knew that looked silly. I read the actual Dracula novel and I wasn’t anymore impressed than I was with the film.

My next foray into the world of Vampires was Vampire Hunter D with Count Magnus Lee. And the start of when I noticed how whiny vampires are. Oh boo hoo! I’m virtually immortal and all I have to do with my life is whatever I want to do! And it didn’t get any better when I was introduced to Interview with a Vampire and how they all bemoan their existence.

So far there is only two vampires that have my respect. Count Strahd von Zarovich from Ravenloft, which I’ll be honest he’s a Dracula knock off. But unlike most vampires he realizes that he’s immortal and he does things and doesn’t bemoan his perpetual existence. And the other is Deacon Frost from the Blade Movie. I have a begrudging respect for The Lost Boys but I still find those vampires to be no more threatening than a pack of wolves.

The simple truth is before my literary friend James L. Wilber started writing his Cosplay Fantasy of vampires, there might of been some Twilight Vile in his opening salvo for that book, that vampires were to be scared. Now all I’ve seen from vampires are that they’re romantic sexual deviants or just simply as boring set pieces that moved and talked. Now that said, he swore how vampires were scary under Anne Rice, and maybe they were. But after comparing sucking blood to having sex and then sucking on a preteen you’re never going to convince me that your books are worthwhile to read.

Heck in Blade III they even joke about the sexual gratification of vampirism. Now James was taking a more novel approach by telling a vampire story from the role of the familiar in a modern world. I would have read it, but it wouldn’t have been in my top 20 books. But when he was submitting it to the indy writing group it, like most things he produces, was good.

Almost everyone I know or knew growing up was fascinated with vampires and their sexual aura. Thank God Supernatural loves to poke fun at vampires, my favorite being the movie monsters shapeshifter.

So, the question to ask. Why dedicate a blog post to this? Because I’m planning on writing a vampire novel. A singular novel. And I’m also going to try and make it scary. Nothing I’ve seen in any literary or film version of a vampire seems scary. The closest ones I would argue to being scary is simply the 30 Days of Night kind. As they’re basically a wild beast attack and not really vampires. But that’s no more scary to me than if I was set upon by a pack of wild dogs. Which would be terrifying for the length of the encounter, but I don’t know if I’d honestly think about it ever again until the conditions were right.

So, happy October folks. Stick around and I’ll insult some other monsters this month.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Zombies - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:30:11 GMT

There have been a lot of zombies movies over the years: some are good, some are terrible, some are mediocre.

Zombies really are getting to be overplayed. Even the greatest zombie of them all can’t save the genre. And don’t argue that Jason Voorhees isn’t a zombie. He’s been dead the majority of his franchise and just keeps coming back. A zombie that can regenerate is a terrifying concept, you know if a zombie could actually exist.

There’s a number of websites out there dedicated to zombies and why they’re scary. Personally I think the only reason they were scary for a bit, a smidgen of their existence if you will, is based upon an idea in the book “The Serpent and the Rainbow”. The core concept in this book is that a person is drugged into a stupor like state and forced to work and work and work. There’s some arguments about the validity of the book but that’s not what I’m going to get into. The idea I’m talking about is why a zombie is scary.

The very real fear of a loved one rising from the dead is touched upon in every culture and each culture has its own ways to deal with ghosts and restless spirits. But the recently returned body of a loved one is another matter. There are very few reasons to really fear a zombie past the initial meeting. A zombie, physically, just isn’t any more terrifying than a human. They certainly wouldn’t stick around for very long. The sun is not kind to dead flesh. Just drive along the road and see what happens to animal carcasses. And the winter isn’t much better as it crystallizes and shatters flesh. So really the scariest thing is that initial encounter, which by all rights should be the scariest part of most movie monster attacks.

So that’s the dead ones, but what about the chemically induced zombies? The manic rage that you see in 28 days later is certainly terrifying in that humans are capable of a surprising brutality. They don’t have to be coked out to do that though. I’m always scared of my fellow humans. Those guys are crazy.

Its the horde of flesh, either living or rotting, coming at you. Unrelenting, never tiring, never satisfied. They will keep coming and coming because in a Zombie movie they can’t be stopped. That’s the fear for most people. The never ending portion of it. A zombie movie is designed to simply wear down the people with constant threat. Though as seen in the Walking Dead we need to put up with the zombies so we can see the tense situations between the cast members. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Walking Dead, but I grow tired of having the same plot points over and over again in the series. How many times do they have to have someone think “Zombies are just people and aren’t dangerous” before you just start killing those idiots when they open their mouths?

So in the world of zombies the fear is you have a monster who does not sleep, only consumes flesh to consume flesh apparently, and is always ever present to get you. But really none of that is any scarier than real life if you think about it. The world is filled with monsters, many of which do not have clear signs they’re monsters until they’ve struck, and they’re always around you, ready to strike when you least suspect it.

Zombies are just our way of saying we fear the worst in ourselves, in my opinion, and we couldn’t just make thousands of hours of people being terrible because then we’d feel even more jaded about people. So we turn them into zombies so we can draw parallels between capitalistic fortitude and the military industrial complex or whatever other handy little message you want to throw into your movie to try and spice it up.

Let’s all agree that zombies aren’t scary, but are still worth watching if the movie is entertaining.

Now… To quote Bruce Campbell “Klaatu Barada Nikto.”

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Ghosts - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:29:05 GMT

Part of Halloween has always been reserved for the undead. And it’s oldest tradition is that Samhain marked the end of the festival and the start of the dark half, somehow that became a ghost in its own right. A lot of countries celebrated All Hollow’s Eve by visiting the graves of their loved ones and praying there, offering them meals and gifts. But spirits and the dead have always been some way associated with Halloween and to horror flicks. Ghosts are an important part of the Halloween spirit and have made their way into the culture of every country, they’re used to scare children and adults.

Everyone knows the term Ghost, it’s pop culture at this point and is in films, books and cartoons. Either as a benevolent dead child or a gory visage into death. Saying ghost conjures up images of people wearing a sheet with eyes cut out moaning/saying boo or people who look a little more like zombies. Either way you’ve an image of them and they are very much a part of Halloween. Scooby Doo and a few other shows had recurring ghosts or spirits, if you will, but the majority of the time they are associated with Halloween and everything that goes with it. The limitations of ghosts depends on the classification for ghosts. The most famous being the Poltergeist, and boy are there a lot of these. The violent spirit that hurls things around the area they haunt and cause wanton destruction.

And they’re good class of character to throw into a supernatural horror story, if done right. Nothing is more scary than an unkillable individual who you can see, hear and talk to but cannot touch, but they can in turn injure you. And until I started watching supernatural I had not seen anyone handle ghosts other than solving the task that kept them tethered to the mortal coil. Which makes them a good villain/hero because they have to complete the last action. Ghosts, if used right, are compelling because everyone naturally has had a loved one pass and the thought of their loved one not passing on is often distressing. So that often goes a long way to giving them a sympathy vibe in any story. You naturally feel sorry for the person who is dead and cannot move forward.

How do you ease it’s suffering? Do you help it complete that last task it couldn’t in life? Do you reunite it with it’s family? Do you ignore it and leave it trapped there for all eternity until it finally goes insane and snaps? Human minds are fragile things and being doomed to live in a limited area until the sun burns out high over head is a terrifying prospect. Eventually they would go crazy. Seeking to kill those around them, not out of a desire to do harm, but simply because they’ve gone insane from years of solitude and anguish/anger.

I don’t feel Ghosts get enough credit in the modern media that they should. Everyone wants to be a emopire so they can moodly proclaim that they’ve not sparkled in the sunlight in xyz years and that they enjoy the taste of little girls. Not me. Those weepy mother fuckers should be staked and forced to listen to their whining until they can’t stand it anymore and they want to end their own lives.

Oh, but we won’t let them. Will we? Not if we want the perfect ghost… a Ghopire… think of it. The perfect undead, incorporeal, whiny and maybe if we’re lucky… scary.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Lycanthrop - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:28:03 GMT

Over the years and in a great many places there has been talks about people who go crazy during a full moon. So much so that it has become a part of our vocabulary. To call someone a lunatic implies that they are affected by the moon. Granted the moon has a lot of sway on the tides of the earth so perhaps there is some justification because of that.

The legends of werewolves, werecats and weretigers for just a few have been with us for many years. Most cultures have a legend or story of an individual or group of people who donned the skin and became an animal or would change into an animal during the full moon. So it's a prevalent enough myth with enough similarities. There a sites dedicated to it and movies.

Men who could slip into the ranks of the beast world and hunt and kill freely would be a terrifying thought. The native american's use the term Skinwalker and they were the basis for Angela in my True Blue Alien universe. A woman who killed someone and took their skin. My version wasn't as bad as it could be, but I read the nature behind skin walkers and knew that they were much scarier than the em-pires everyone is obsessed with.

I say that because I am an animal fan. I'm more likely to help out a stray dog than I am a human. That's going to be my downfall. I'm going to help out a dog and it turns out it was a serial killer in man's best friend guise. Dogs are for the most part considered man's best friend and they spent thousands of years becoming our trusted companions. To have a person who could turn into one and masquerade as one would seriously throw people for a loop. Kill the person and then pretend to be a dog and escape. It wouldn't matter what finger prints you left, provided you hadn't been caught before, they would just confuse the cops. The dog would just have to get away before animal control showed up. Be let into the backyard and then quietly slip away when no one is looking.

Werewolves are apex predators. Faster than a human, not necessarily stronger, but would have a taste for blood and a thrill for the hunt. But compared against a vampire whose only active during the night a werewolf could be stalking his victim day and night trying to find the perfect place to kill them.

And the infection of the bite, something I think is a tad silly, means that the thrill of the hunt can continue for a long time. That's actually a quest in Skyrim. And a werewolf isn't likely to sit around and wait for something to happen. Where a vampire is going to whine and obsess with whatever they whine about for centuries. A werewolf, still being mortal, albeit harder to kill, wouldn't wait for someone to take a swing at them. They'd either be moving constantly or they'd stake out a territory and defend it like any other animal.

It's the animalistic nature that everyone focuses on when they talk about werewolves. Which is something no one could mistake for in a vampire or a ghost. And maybe being able to shift into the other form would unleash a person's rage after awhile.

I personally didn't think so. I think if you have a weak will you would succumb to the baser instincts that all animals have. I don't act on my base instinct to murder people so I think I probably wouldn't give into my animal side. Of course it's not like I have the ability to turn into a weretiger, or a weregator, and hunt and kill. Honestly I don't think I'd really kill humans given the chance. Mostly because sheer numbers would wear me down. There's only so many places you can hide and there's only so long before you start making mistakes.

So while it would be fun to be an animal and go hunting, I'll wait until I've got a pack of like minded individuals. Safety in numbers as they say, but what would I know about that?

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Demons - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:24:33 GMT

No month long series on “scary” or Halloween themed posts should be bereft of demons, devils, daemons and the other foul spawn that is in the metaphysical planes of our existence. The blackness that stares backs from the deepest part of a person’s soul doesn’t need a construct to make you do something bad. Humans are an inheriantly flawed creation, part of being human is to error and have to fix your mistakes.

But since the dawn of story telling there have been dark forces arranged against the “forces of light”. It’s there in the Bible, the Quran or the Vedas. They’re all mentioned which means a part of the human psyche fears this thing that lurks in the dark. Which is something we’ve always known. That humans fear the unknown. And there is nothing more unknown than what could be hiding in the darkness.

But think for a moment. What if it were real? A creature of immense power, driven by a purpose to simply commit evil. No rhyme or reason to it. Just an all encompassing desire to do harm, kill, rape and generally make you cower under the covers in the supposed safety of your home. A creature whose only delight is the misfortune or suffering of others. Something that cannot be appealed to because it has nothing to appeal to. Enough ancient people were always writing stories about monsters and demons that something must have inspired them. The initial legend that has exploded into everything that we fear now.

The demons that have always interested me are the ones who are willing to bargain with you for your soul. The Jinn are known to barter with a person for their soul. Giving them what they desire. Originally known for being evil creatures, supposedly in other realms where the Jinn hail from there are good versions. There’s always a good version isn’t there?

So what’s evil about giving you your hearts desire? Depends on whose looking at it, even without twisting the wish to inflict some painful/powerful lesson. How happy would you be if someone came along and gave you everything you wanted? Me, I’d be ecstatic for a bit. It’s what I’ve always wanted, what would be the downside of that? I’ve literally thought for hours about that. Given three wishes and told to go wild. I know my first wish would turn me into a super villain. It wouldn’t be on purpose, but I’d certainly grant myself some super ability and well, if I’m the only super I know how long my inability to be responsible would arise. But shortly after giving myself what I most want, I would realize it’s all empty. My wish came with no personal sacrifice whatsoever. No struggle. How is that not the greatest evil? To get what you want without working for it. I don’t meant that to sound rhetorical. But on a certain level all humans want to earn what they’re doing and at some point you’re going to be bitter about your wish.

So is reason there are cautionary tales of the demons/devils/djinn that can grant your wishes are marked as evil because they really are evil? Or is it because even without backfiring, a human will turn it to ash in their own mouth? Literally turning the gift of good into evil. What’s more evil? To succeed without trying or to have it turn back and bite you on the ass later?

It’s a philosophical debate for the ages about what these theoretical creatures are capable of. Of course whose to say they’re theoretical? What do I know? Like the man said, I tried to sell my soul last night but funny he didn’t even bite.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Witches, Warlocks and the Seasons who love them - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:23:24 GMT

Witches and devils and ghouls and ghosts seem to go hand in hand with this time of year. A very real fear that was put into the hearts of ye olden folks. But believe it or not, our ancestors were a cowardly and superstitiously lot. Who often burned women, and some men, at the stake for practicing “witchcraft.” And what constituted as a witch?

Women who were crone-like, women with snaggly teeth and sunken cheeks, owned a cat, or you know someone’s grandma after a few decades of hard work. Since hard work was what was likely to come from living in old days. And let’s not forget the dark pact they made with the Devil, or as it’s come to be commonly known Deal with the Devil. Not all of them can have him make a house call.

So you were danged for growing old, you were danged for loving cats. I mean that’s already weird to me as a dog person, but I can’t fault the love of owning a small furred animal who is basically a miniature jerk all the time.

And haven forbid if you were to sling a curse at someone back then. Heck, I’d be burned twenty or fifty times over at the stake for lobbing curses at people via x-box live. It’s more fun when the curse is biblical in nature. Anyone can call another gamer an asshole. It takes class to curse them to a fiery doom reserved for your enemies.

But that’s what happens when you’re a large mass of uneducated people. It’s just like all the stories of the evils of dungeon and dragons. Given enough of a spin anything can be horrible, though as pointed out above a lot of those aren’t occult in nature. My level 25 necromancer says it’s okay, and I always listen to her.

But in traditional literature a witch is a woman who wishes to do evil, enlists supernatural powers/entities to help her do her bidding and makes your life living hell. And in the olden days people in the community were looking for anything that would save them from the horrors of the unknown. So it’s easy to pin it on Granny Smith and her cat loving ways. Does she know about herbs, because it’s not like there are doctors really, that can cure mild things? Burn her! Does she curse under her breath or speak in tongues, because tourette syndrome hadn’t been discovered yet? Stone her! Did she have croocked wraggly teeth, because basic dental health hadn’t been invented yet, that freak you out when she talks? Drown her!

I have a love of medieval torture devices. My parents said it was an unhealthy love at that tender age of my life. Though to be honest is any love of medieval torture devices at any age a good love to have? Even at the tender age of twelve I was a woman obbessed with knowledge. Mostly because I wanted to ensure that if I was sent back in time I wouldn’t be tricked by primitive screw heads. And the Salem Witch Trials was both fascinating and terrifying. Much like the Spanish Inquisition. The fact that for the littlest thing people would be killed, and the manners in which they did it.

It was this thinking that I took into Earth From An Alien View Point, name to be determined/shortened, because of Beowulf. The immortal swordsperson. Alive from the first viking invasion to modern days the character would have to be careful not to be seen as a practitioner of magic. Though by all rights Beowulf was cursed until reunited with the Main Character and I thought that given the climate of the old world it would only make sense for Beowulf to think like a witch and avoid being burned at the stake and then having to spend countless hours digging out from the grave.

So obviously a good time was had by all.

incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Cryptozoology - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:20:42 GMT

There are things that are unexplained in this world. Some we’ve touched on, other’s that we haven’t. Crptyozoology is the study of things that go bump in the night. Only not really. It’s not an actual science it is considered a pseudoscience and there is no accreditation to it. Is there prestige to being a cryptozoologist? Probably. But just like claiming you watch Professional Wrestling most people will give you sideways glances if you admit this to them.

I’ve always enjoyed Cryptozoology. It appeals to my nature to find out more information about things. And who wouldn’t want to possibly discover a new race/creature? There’s large amounts of creatures that get discovered every year. Mostly in the inhospitable parts of the planet that are hard to reach. So the ideas behind cryptozoology aren’t, on the surface, that unusual. It’s possible there are mutant sandworms out there just ready to be found by you!

I grew up reading about the chupacabra because I grew up in Arizona, and along with Killer Bees, coyotes, javelinas people would talk about monsters that killed live stock. And it was often said it was the chupacabra. How accurate that is is up to scientists. So far no one has found proof that these exists, and there are a lot of stories that it exists. But that’s the same with The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. So when it comes to Cryptologist people simply choose what applies.

The interesting thing about some of these are the legends that surround the creatures that are out there. Take the example of the Mothman. Normally when this creature is seen it heralds an upcoming disaster. But how much of that is just coincidence and how much is circumstances? Not all the bridges in America are in good condition. In face most of America’s bridges are in bad shape. So it’s probably more likely that it’s a set of circumstances. But then you get things like The Flatwoods Monster, with some similarities to the mothman.

Speaking personally having driven through West Virginia. It is a rural state with a lot of mountains and forest. The idea that something non human could live there is interesting but unlikely. As with bears coming into homes or rooting through people’s garbage in New York the more humans encroach into an animals natural habit the more likely we would see more and more of these creatures. Half the reason we can find new creatures yearly is because they’re in places most people don’t go. Most. Some are sometimes found in unusual places.

So the idea that they’re out there is far fetched. Though that said I’ve seen somethings that are a bit harder to explain at the time. I was on my front porch one night a few years back in the fall and I saw white lights rising in the sky, slowly and surely and moving to the right. At first I wasn’t sure what they were and stared at them. Later after thinking about it and the way they moved I realized those were probably sky laterns. Or possibly a light I saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

It’s hard to say, but most times it can be explained logically. But that’s not the point, really, of cryptozoology. It is people who have a theory on a creature that exists and they try their best to make facts work for them. And it’s an interesting exercise in creativity. The paranoid out there believe there are all sorts of cover ups and that there is more stuff lurking just beneath the waters. Waiting to get us.

And what if that were true? And they only made us seem crazy so no one would buy what we’re selling…

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

NANOWRIMO - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:19:44 GMT

So for a lot of amateur writers, in my opinion, NANOWRIMO is the only time they get any writing done. The idea behind NANOWRIMO is that you take the month of November and write a novel. That sounds like a pretty straightforward goal right?

Sit down at the computer, pump out 50,000 words in a month. Don’t take time to think about it. Just write. Getting about 1,667 words done a day. Sounds easy right? It can actually be a lot harder to do than you think. You can’t just put down 1,667 words. They have to be marginally coherent and follow a symbolism of a plot. But still since the event got started in July of 1999 it’s gone strong.

I know a lot of writers who the only time they really seem to write is November. And to be far I tend to get a lot of writing done in November as well. Mostly because I tend to take off the week of thanksgiving and just start writing. I already know I can pump out a coherent story in a week. The majority of A Goddess’s Gifts in a week. 45,000 words in a single week. Though to be fair I wrote that in September… but semantics. But that was a week where I woke up, grabbed some meager breakfast, popped open the laptop and just wrote with only distractions for research, eat and then more writing. I barely slept and that’s the way I liked it. Something that most people won’t do during NANOWRIMO, they’ll pound it out hard for a bit but only the dedicated will keep going at it. Only a few will take the break to research something and not get distracted by the internet.

I don’t frequently participate in NANOWRIMO because to me it seems like everyone is writing a book this month and I’m not the type to pick when I have the most inspiration to write something. The point of this month is to write. And not for the countless other things that happen in November. Just like this is also beard month apparently.

It’s not because I don’t think NANOWRIMO is cool. I encourage everyone to go out and write the story they’re meant to. Be it a collection of short stories, poems or an actual novel. I just wish people would keep that passion through out the year. I mean, I seriously hate blogging but I keep at it because well, I started this gosh darnit and I’m going to finish it.

The truth of the matter is that it’s much easier to talk about the novel you’re going to write. It’s really hard to go through the editing process. Writing the story, to me, is easier. I’ll spit out a million lines of text before I have the urge to edit. I’m more or less finished with my third book, Altered Realities. But I have to go through and do a massive rewrite of the story. And A Goddess’s Gifts was finished and it took almost 4 months to edit it. A professional author is going to be working on another story while that is getting the edit for an editor. But truth be known, a good author edits as he goes.

I often make fun of my friend James Wilber and his writing process because it sounds so slow. But he is a great writer. I’m not saying that to butter him up. He’s the type of writer I can’t be. I’ll power through a few dozen pages and then stop to sip some soda or water or something and reread what I wrote and then delete it and rewrite it. James he’ll stop and think about everything he writes to make sure that it gives the message and connotations that he wants it to have. Personally I think he spends to much time and effort on grammar and sentence structure. He says I’m the type of writer who will always need an editor. Frankly is that a bad thing? It allows me to work on my strength and allows someone who is, in theory, impartial to come along and tell me to cut things.

I wrote A True Blue Alien and I relied on the writing group I was a member of at the time to tell me what went wrong. After a bit they stopped telling me about my grammatical errors because they were to numerous, and freely admitted, they were right. So as much as the editing process pains me there is nothing I like more than to sit down and crack open a story. My love of writing is such that I have to force myself to complete stories. I have 30 books I want to write. That’s not including the 10 or 15 I’ve already got half finished. Where I ran out of steam at 150,000 words or more.

So to my fellow writers who will be dipping their quill into the ink and turn their thoughts into physical manifestation. I’m pleased to be part of your tradition. Just do me the favor and don’t be like me. Finish what you start.

For my NANOWRIMO I won’t be writing a story. I frankly don’t have the time for it. More on that in December. This month will be filled with Writing Prompts. So please feel free to drop me an email and give out ideas you’d like to see a short story about. I’ll try and keep them shortish, no more than 5,000 words.If not, I’ll be using a handy tool on the site to give me writing prompts.

Either way, crack open the whiskey and start the fun

Incorrigibly Yours,

J. E. Flint

Writing Prompt 3 - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:16:18 GMT

This passage is an excerpt after the character has had a typical 80’s montage and the help of a kindly old man to help him fight.

Write a fight scene:

“Nick you don’t have to do this,” Amanda said as I stepped into the hastily arranged circle.

“No,” I said shaking my head. “I’m getting tired of Bruce’s shit. It’s time he was put in his place.”

“I’ll do what I can to keep Bruce’s buddies off of you,” Greg said. He extended his hand and I clasped it giving it one shake before turning and moving away.

Bruce arrived a few minutes later his friends flanking him. His grin faded as he looked at all the people standing around. “Afraid to fight me alone?” He asked.

“Nope, they’re just here to watch. Like your friends, right?”

Bruce waved his friends off and stepped closer to me. He didn’t wait for any signal before lashing out with his leg to kick me. I side stepped around him and blasted him in the kidney. Bruce toppled to the ground after that one punch and laid there for several seconds.

“Come on, I thought you wanted to fight. Man to sissy,” I taunted. I backed away a few paces. I didn’t want him to get the idea that he could trip me up and pummel me on the ground. Ground fighting was a death sentence when you were fighting a guy the size of Bruce. And even more so when you didn’t have a clue how to ground fight. I’d read enough books on the subject of legitimate street fighting that if you had no ground skills you were going to be sorry for being dragged to the dirt.

Bruce took time to stand up, he could obviously dish it out but taking it was another matter. When he was vertical and ready I moved forward throwing quick jabs to keep him off balance. They were just for show. I connected with a few to his ribs but he didn’t seem to notice that. He threw a clumsy punch at my face which I batted aside with my arm and pressed the attack. Bruce’s movements were slow after having trained with Carter.

I lashed out with a fist, struck my foot to his knee, my knuckles collided into his nose, and I blinked back the sweat in my eye. Suddenly I was being pulled off of the ground. The bloody form lying on the ground before me seemed pathetic. Beaten and humiliated. It had challenged the champ and ended up thrashed.

“Jesus dude,” Greg was shouting into my ear. “I think you taught Bruce a lesson.”

I blinked my eyes and relaxed into Greg’s arms for a second shaking off the haze before pushing him away. That bloody mass was Bruce? Looking at Bruce’s pulped face I could clearly hear Carter’s words. “It starts off nobly at first but you’ll still turn into a bully.”

I shrugged Greg’s arms off of my shoulder and moved to help Bruce to his feet. He shoved me away and rose on his own. I bit my lip and curled my hands into fists. I wished at that moment I could go back and undo what I had just done. The look he shot me from his only open eye made that pang recede in moments. His tough guy routine wouldn’t let him stop for a moment. He half stepped half staggered to his friends. There would be no way to avoid telling folks he’d been in a fight. And so many people would keep it honest that the bully had been bested.

Around me the group had taken a step back. The tension in the air hadn’t been there before. It felt alive and my chest constricted. I turned to look back at Amanda and Greg. Amanda was crying her mouth covered. I looked down at my fists covered in a mixture of Bruce’s blood and mine. I could see that a few of my knuckles were split open. A testament to how hard I’d been wailing on the man who’d been making my life a living hell. Did he deserve such a beating?

Writing Prompt 2 - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:15:16 GMT

When you’re a writer there’s going to be a part where you have to write an action scene. And the hardest/most rewarding part of writing is when you script out a fight and it doesn’t confuse people and creates some tension. In this case I wanted to do a quick fight between equally skilled opponents. I’m going to revisit this after the main character of this scene gains some skills.

Write a Fight Scene:

I’d just ducked around a couple walking when I sprawled flat onto my back. I’d been too late to see the baseball bat as it came out of the alley aimed at my stomach.

I sucked in a mouth of air as my stomach and lungs protested but used the momentum of the blow to roll backwards and back to my feet. Bruce stood over me his face split into a grin. “So how bout it, Faggot? Wanna play with my bat?”

“Get bent,” I said in between gasps. I knew I wasn’t going to like this encounter one bit. I relaxed my muscles like I’d been taught. I stepped into a Xi Shi stance, moving my rear foot to support my weight as my shoulders and arms came up into a ready position. “I’ve taken enough shit from you, Bruce,” I said stalling until I’d recovered my breath. “I don’t want to hurt you… or your buddies.” His buddies I hadn’t seen until they stepped out form the alley.

“Bring it on, sissy,” Bruce said. He took a step towards me and swung the bat at center mass. Grimacing I pivoted to the side moving away from his swing. As he moved past me I struck out with my first to the back of his neck. Before I had a chance to recover his buddies were on me. One charged and I managed to get a hold of his shirt and falling onto my back drove my leg up into his groin, flipping him over me.

The second friend seeing me on the ground changed his tacit and aimed a kick at my ribs. I had already started kipping up when the blow caught me in my lower back. I’d just barely managed to avoid being kicked in the rip but my kidneys protested the blow none the less. Standing up again I saw the odds were stacked against me. Bruce had more than his usual two friends. I counted six guys in front, plus Bruce and the guy I flipped over me. One of his friends came to close and I managed to hook a round house kick up to the neck and pull him to the ground. Neatly avoiding a steel chain swung over my head.

No honor in death, I thought. Releasing the guy from my grip I half jumped half lunged towards one of the guys in front of me. I caught him about the collar of his shirt and hauled down while pulling myself up with my legs outstretched. As I hurled over his back I caught one of the other guys with my leg making my dismount off kilter. “See ya losers,” I taunted as I sprinted away. Leaving my duffle bag behind as a small price to pay for walking away to fight another day. I continued sprinting and rounded the corner of the block. I hadn’t realized how close the others were behind me as I tried to slide around a bench without eating pavement. The pause cost me as I got tackled into a glass door.

I lay there for a moment my back screaming in pain and my front being pummeled by one of Bruce’s friends. I don’t know how long I laid there trying to protect my body from the blows. Suddenly the beating stopped and a pair of hands on my arms hauling me to my feet.

“Come on, Son,” the voice said. I stared through blurry eyes at New York’s finest.

“Afternoon, Officer,” I mumbled through thick lips. Looking back at the glass door I realized that the Watch the Throne Tour Amanda wanted to see would have to wait, I had a feeling I knew who would be paying for that stupid door.

Writing Prompt 1 - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:14:09 GMT

Writing Prompt: While in a dressing room, a threat is overheard.

Sarah stood in the back of the room behind the curtain that separated her meager changing area from her friend. The actual play wasn’t for another three weeks and they had been practicing, as per normal, far into the night. If they wanted to have the play perfect by the new year festival they would have a lot more practicing to do.

There had been all sorts of accidents that had been happening in the last week. Accidents that had been costly to much of the cast. Now it all made sense. Sarah knew why. She’d always suspected, but she hadn’t known. In a struggling theater like this one there was always talk about funding.

“You’re going to need to raise the ticket prices,” the voice said smoothly. “Our investment in your production is proving to be, costly.”

“I don’t know why!” Andrea said, her voice cracking. From fear Sarah was certain. “No one’s going to come with tickets as high as ours!”

“You’ll just have to be extra convincing,” a new voice joined in. Rougher than the first, a hint of cancerous gravel in his throat. “Agreed?”

“A-agreed,” Andrea said, her tone dipping.

“We’ll show ourselves out,” The first voice said.

There were two sets of booted foots and a creak as the old door opened and closed quietly on the two mysterious men’s exit. From behind the current Sarah could hear Andrea begin to quietly sob. There was another creak as the comparatively slim woman, Sarah corrected herself Andrea wasn’t even petite. She was waif thin. She’d been chosen for this role because she already looked like those coked out models from the 80’s. And Sarah, her understudy, had been dieting and exercising to try and get herself down to the anorexia levels that Andrea possessed naturally.

Sarah stood there for several moments. Her thoughts tumbling in her head. They were being extorted by the mob! Them! A little production studio from Reo. They were really just a bunch of students really. What money they made went into the overhead of feeding and moving them from city to city. Slowly she started to pull the curtain back. The door opened.

“Andrea! You ready?” a chipper voice called from the opening. “We’re supposed to meet the reporters in. You’re crying. You okay?”

“Nerves,” Andrea said, her voice was distorted and softer than before. The chair creaked again and two light booted feet hit the floor. “Come on, think Chad’s going to be there?”

“From channel 4?” the assistant producer laughed. “You gotta thing for blondes?”

“Maybe,” came the quiet response as the door closed.

Moving from behind the corner Sarah glanced around. What was she going to do? She had to talk to the police! They had to know someone was threatening them. Get actual protection for them!

Snatching up her purse she quickly pulled on her beat up chucks. She was halfway through lacing up her shoes when the door opened again and Andrea stood in the doorway. “Oh, what are you doing here?”

“Just grabbing my gear and heading out,” Sarah said. “Look, Andrea… I know.” Sarah looked up at her friend and frowned. Something was off with Andrea’s appearance. She’d just been crying.

“Know what?” The girl asked stepping closer to Sarah. An off kilter smile appearing on her face. “What do you know?” her voice taking on and edge.

“Everything, I’m going to the police now.” Sarah stood up, bumping into the petite woman and tumbling back. It felt like hitting a solid wall. “Ooph!”

“Careful,” Andrea said looming over the prone woman. “I wouldn’t want anything to accidentally happen to you.” She moved to kneel next to Sarah. “You have such pretty skin, Sandy.”

“It’s Sarah.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andrea said, her voice sounding deeper. “Not where you’re going, meat.”

Sarah watched in awe as Andrea began to shift and grow more massive before her. The skin cracking and bleeding as fur began to sprout in patches along her form.

The door crashed open from Sarah’s right but her expression was locked on whatever was happening to Andrea.

“Angela!” A course voice shouted.

The creature in front of Sarah hissed and lunged forward. In the blink of an eye Sarah was dangling from the ground, a strong vice like grip around her throat and one shoulder. “Graham,” the voice said behind Sarah. What had happened to Andrea? “So nice of you to join me.” There was a bright flash and then pain through Sarah’s body and then she was falling into blackness.

“Last victim, Angela,” the course voice said. “Last victim.”

Film Review – Star Wars: The Force Released - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:11:25 GMT

I believe I’ve mentioned once or twice being a fan of the Star Wars series. So it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that I had to see this opening weekend. I waited till Sunday to see it, but I still saw it opening weekend. And I’m going to give my spoiler free thoughts on the movie.

So the first thing I noticed and I’m glad for is that we have our Female Luke. And that the storm trooper wasn’t sweaty the entire movie. He glistens a lot, but it was really noticeable in the first few minutes of his screen time. We have our old favorites, and we have new favorites… I guess.

Frankly, I wanted a new cast with no tie ins to the old group. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fishers were adamant about how much they hated the movies, Kevin Smith even said there was a rider in her contract that you couldn’t mention Star Wars to Carrie Fishers. So I’m really really looking forward to whatever horrible things happen to these characters. I understand on any level hating something you’ve worked on. Robert E Howard created Conan and hated it. He wanted to be known for Cowboy Stories.

So as much as I would want to hate on them for being in this film I won’t. Because honestly this isn’t the film for old star wars fans. You’re lying to yourself if it is. And they picked a good director to do this film. The shots are cleaner, more energized than anything done but Lucas. Because Abrams is a different type of director, he’s a more action oriented director. And that’s evident because we start on an action note and even the final camera pan is filled with more energy than anything that Lucas gave us.

That said there were parts where as a Star Wars fan I was disappointed to see. Namely all the old nods that were from the first movie. But this is exactly the director’s style. He did this in Star Trek and I didn’t complain. Why? Because Star Trek has always been a boring and stuffy series about wishful thinking. A part of me wanted to see how they did a Space Opera instead. And now that I’ve seen it. It’s my hope the next movie will actually be something I’ll be interested to see. When he did the same tricks in Force Reawakens I was upset that he had to do that to tie it in for the older fans as “subtle” nods. Which were not subtle in the slightest they were being thrown at us with as much skill as a cannon blast.

I won’t lie that I often forgot that there was a new Star Wars movies. Because I knew it wasn’t going to be the Thrawn Series. Timothy Zahn reinvigorated my love of star wars with his Thrawn series and I always hoped that Lucas and the powers that be would feel the same. But Lucas had a tight grip over what became cannon. And a lot of it was pretty stupid ideas, but he’s the creator of the series so his say was final word.

So while the first movie is good. It’s long and there were points where I was checking my watch hoping that it was time to go. In the action sequences that didn’t happen, but in other parts it did and I would be upset with myself if it wasn’t the work of the author/director to make sure people were vested in the story.

I saw the prequels multiple times and I still maintain my problems with the prequels are because of the direct contradictions to the later works. When Lucas, and I always felt it was a when not an if, got around to redoing the first three movies to make them match the prequels then my problems would be fixed. Continuity errors bug me. But it’s not going to happen now. So we’ll have those glaring problems between the six movies.

Though I found a humorous way to explain why the prequels are so different. In a New Hope R2-D2 is shot by Vader’s Tie Fighter. When that happens it destroyed or blew apart chunks of his memory and so that’s why things seem so different between the two versions. Keep in mind Lucas was basically saying that R2 was the narrator of the stories because he was there for all of it. So why wouldn’t it make sense if the narrator suffered brain damage there would be differences? That’s just my fan theory and I’m sticking with it, and also giving Lucas an out if he wanted to take it. I’ll just accept a small token of his appreciation if this ever makes it back to him.

As a man who provided me with the inspiration to create my own stories and so many fond memories of reading Star Wars novels I can’t be mad at Lucas. He did what he felt was best.

So we’ll see how good the new trilogy will be. Until then I can fixit on how much I dislike the new R2. So go see the movie, you’ll be entertained enough to appreciate a new look at the star wars franchise.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Another Incorrigible Update - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:10:13 GMT

So if anyone is still paying attention… I’m back. As with most things in life hobbies take a back seat to real life matters and I’ve not really had any time to fix the problem with my website. But I sat down while my editor was working on Altered Realities, yeah it’s getting ready to be released hopefully soon.

I’ve learned a few things about this entire process. As much fun and enjoyment I had having my own store… it really did not work for various stupid reasons. And currently the process of creating a book is more than I will receive, currently, from selling the book. So I’ve decided to forgo earning as much profits via direct payment and I’m instead going with the tired and true method of Amazon and Smashwords. So please, if you see my books buy them they’re literally a dollar and A Goddess’s Gifts is 333 pages, which is about 90 times the length you get for the same book.

But anyway, enough with the stupid website. I have bigger news… and also why I was so keen to establish myself on my own site.

I’ve waffled a lot on this issue, and I mean a lot and I’ll be up front with others later. But for now I’m back and I’ll be posting sporadically until I find a decent pace again. It certainly won’t be twice a week since I really don’t have that much junk to spew.

Film Review – Deadpool - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:09:15 GMT

Sorry this is a little behind the times. But I did go see Deadpool opening weekend and it’s probably been long enough that people have seen most of the movie so I would be free to give spoilers if I really want to, I won’t.

As some people know I’m a pretty big Deadpool fan but probably not for the reasons that most people think of. I remember reading Deadpool when he was just annoying the guys in X-Force and he was just a throw away villain, to me, at the time. It wasn’t going to be until he got his own series that I started to care and compare him to The Mask. See, his fourth wall breaking ability reminded me of The Mask. I know he was originally supposed to be a rip off of Deathstroke but I just didn’t see it. With Deadpool’s tendency to be gabby and then later when he was insane it just seemed more like he was a Marvel homage to Dark Horse, and I’ve always been a fan of Dark Horse.

So I was happy and shocked when the Deadpool movie was anounced. And then even more shocked when Ryan Reynolds was picked for the role. Most Deadpool fants have known for awhile that Ryan was a big fan himself so it was with a certain amount of anticipation that we heard he was going to be our “hero”. And then it caught in development hell and wafted for a while. And then all those god awful X Films came out and then Ghost Rider… less said about that the better. And I’ll save my Daredevil comment for my soon to follow up Batman V Superman post… which most of you will probably wanna skip. It just seemed Fox didn’t know how to make movies, and it certainly didn’t seem like they improved on their licenses much.

But then the movie came out and I was shocked. One it was an R Rated flick. That’s almost unheard of these days. A movie that’s R rated is so hard to get by that made up MPAA association, go watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated you’ll love it. So I was naturally leery. But I kinda have a thing for Ryan and I’ve already admitted I was a fan of this comic book character. So I went to see it.

I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. In some cases because I can tell where all that extra money went, Colossus, so we got the continued running joke of leaving Deadpool’s weapons in the car. Now all of the people in the movie I didn’t care much about. Like Colossus’s side kick. Could have left her out I didn’t think she added anything to the movie. But I’ve been wrong in most people’s opinion’s before. I’m magnanimous enough to admit that they can be wrong about my opinion.

I was worried that this was going to be one of those things that once Fox got ahold of it they were going to just absolutely ruin. They didn’t. I would have liked Ryan himself making a funny joke about his time filming with Wesley Snipes, or him commenting about how he took out my favorite wrestler in a fight or something. Not to give that line to Weasel. Though I will say that the parts of Weasel and Al were spot on in my opinion and the jokes, might have been a bit cruder than normal, but worked well with this version of Deadpool.

The music though I think was perhaps the best fit for the movie. I know I was legitimately surprised to hear teamheadkick’s video game rap re-purposed for the movie. It was as weird as the Deadpool character I came to love reading about.

I wanted this to be a longer post but it’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie that I’ve forgotten a good chunk of my talking points I mentally wrote to myself. But either way if you’ve not seen this movie yet you should really get around to seeing it, which is about as high a recommendation as I can give a movie these days.

Film Review - Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:04:36 GMT

I’m not even going to ease into this post. This movie is terrible. Yep, I just told you this was a terrible movie. Oh sure it looks good and if that’s what you’re looking for in a movie then this movie is an A+. But I have a higher standard when it comes to what entertains me. And I’m not holding back on this turd so let’s get into this rant, cause that’s really what it is and I know it won’t win me any fans. But I’m sticking by my title of Incorrigible Author and if you don’t like it, well I don’t even known you.

First off the best actor based on this movie’s performance is Affleck. He did a good job making me like the character in Daredevil, who let’s be honest is only marginally more interesting than dirt. But what about Frank Miller? Fuck Frank. Seriously, he’s not that good a comic book writer. He’s not Alan Moore or Warren Ellis. I never read a Miller trade and was like “Wow… that’s great writing.”

See in the world of Superman Man of Steel, a movie I actually forgot had come out when I started watching Batman V Superman, Affleck sets up a convincing reason to hate superman. I’d hate superman after seeing him tear ass through downtown metropolis. So his baleism is very understandable. Though I cannot wait until an actor comes along and goes “I don’t have to sound like I have throat cancer? I can just use a voice modulator cause I’m a billionaire trying to fool people? Sold.”

So we enter into a world where Superman has killed General Zod, whose purpose for wanting to get rid of his super powers in the first movie is unbelievably stupid and people are OK with the billions of terrible things that come about after leveling a city battling another god. Look at how over the top we went with 9/11. You think a super powered walking talking extinction level event would go unchecked? Hell naw. America would be figuring out how to contain or neutralize that threat. If it could. And I know Russia, China and a dozen other countries who would be doing the exact same thing… oh wait… Warren Ellis wrote a comic about that very thing it’s called Supergod… oh and he also wrote Black Summer, basically a story where if Superman didn’t like the way we voted and made us do it again and the US didn’t take that lying down in that comic either.

But basically the only believable character in this movie is Batman… even if it’s the retarded as all hell Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns Batman. Zack Snyder is in love with Frank Miller, and a lot of other people are, I’ll forgive them for their short comings. At least it’s not Orson Scott Card.

The editing is a jumbled mess until it gets to an action sequence, familiar territory for Zack, and thank gods he has a specialty for action cause otherwise this movie wouldn’t rate the 1 and a half stars I think it deserves. The 1 star for Affleck’s solid performance, and the .5 star for Zack’s film work in the action sequence. I had little clue who any of the characters were and can’t remember any of their performances, which is sad because I think Henry Cavill is a pretty good actor all around and kinda of a cutey, I can understand why he wanted to do Solo in Man From U.N.C.L.E. and not be naked. As a person with body issues I would not want someone constantly seeing me at whatever body weight he was for Superman and being held to that, that’s just not healthy.

So going back to the characters… when I watched this movie I’d actually forgotten completely that Wonder Woman was in this movie until my brother leaned over and said something about Diana Prince during the time she didn’t have powers. When she showed up on camera I seriously thought it was going to be Catwoman or Talia Al Guhl, you know. People who would have business in those areas and would be excellent if teased early enough in the series. I watched the first teaser trailer and then basically tuned out on this film. I’ve been doing that lately since trailers give away all the good parts and I want to be surprised by the movie.

Now this is the first time I’ve felt that a movie suffered from too many heroes. Normally it’s to many villains. But they had to setup the Justice League, and thank the gods they left most of them to blips. I seriously expected in the final “climatic” battle for Aquaman to come to the rescue and kill doomsday, I’m also not sorry about spoilers for this turd as this movie’s already made a ton of money. I could just hear the Cinema Sin’s guy saying “Aquaman ex machina”.

Most of my hatred for this movie lands squarely on the shoulders of how terrible the actor is for Lex Luthor. Lex Luthor to most movie audiences is Gene Hackman and he’s a campy real estate villain but then I hate those live action superman movies and try not to think about him. I wanted to sit down the cast and introduce them to Lex Luthor, make them listen to Clancy Brown delivering his lines, to read the essential Lex Luthor comics to understand the character and then make them flog the actor, I’m not even mentioning his name, until he got it right.

Why is it that when a villain is introduced the villain has to be crazy, hackey or just plan not interesting? This felt like they were like they were coaching him to be more Heath Ledger. The guy’s dead, he wasn’t a good joker and we need to bury him, lock his crypt and then surround that with cement. Stop bringing back poor performances, sorry but he got an Oscar cause he died.

And I was going to let this actor get away with it… until I saw the movie because he’d said he was Lex Luthor’s son. That he was supposed be Alexander Luthor Jr. And not the guy who was a global threat. Lex Luthor is the Doom of the DC Universe and he should be treated with the respect. Cause honestly who the hell cares about Doomsday? It was a stupid idea to include in the thing that kills superman in your story. Sure it’s the biggest threat and will unite the powers… but you know who was capable of that in The World’s Finest, Lex Luthor and Joker. Hell even doing Public Enemies would have been a better way to unite them…

I saw this movie because I have a tradition, and I feel like this time I should have heeded my other tradition. My first tradition is “Watch every batman movie opening weekend.” That start when I was a kid and my dad took me to see Michael Keaton as batman opening weekend, then we saw Batman Returns opening weekend, and the next and then it was a tradition. I’m not a batman fan, I find him to unrelateable. He’s too good at everything, to smart, to well planned. Thank gods the comic batman isn’t the same as the movie batman. He’d be unwatchable if he was like he was in the comics. And my other tradition is to NEVER watch a live action Superman. I have said I don’t know how many times how little I like superman and I’m a bigger fan of Marvel than DC. In this case DC has the best animated movies. I like the origional Ultimate Avengers but on a whole DC has produced a lot of good animated movies and Marvel… well Marvel has it’s cinematic universe.

So moral of this story this movie outraged me enough that I contacted my editor and told him that the villain for my next book Altered Realties could not be a pussy and had to be as awesome as I saw him in my head. The editor agreed. Because seriously this lex sucked ass.

My recommendation, don’t watch this. Torrent the shit out of it, then write flaming diatribes like this and then forget about it… but at least we have Lego Batman… which I’ll apparently have to see opening weekend because of my Batman tradition. Hopefully it’s not disappointing.

Altered Realities - WIP - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:03:36 GMT

So when I published A Goddess’s Gifts I put up a poll to see what people wanted me to work on after Altered Realities. I’m happy to say that Altered Realities is currently in the first pass through by the editor, so I’ll be starting work on the Chronicles of Loth’s first book here shortly.

But I wanted to talk about Altered Realities first. I didn’t do much preamble or build up with A Goddess’s Gifts because it started off as a commission that eventually I thought was a good enough story that I wanted to share with the world. So I was kinda close lipped about the entire project.

But I’ve been sitting on Altered Realities since The Chronicles of Loth was a table top Dungeons and Dragons session. It came about out of a perceived conflict over Radiant and what two half dragons would do to get their own way. The original story isn’t all that good, but the idea was there enough to make me want to keep working on it.

So I updated it a bit, moved it from the fantasy setting to an urban fantasy setting. Updated it so it would have cars, cell phones and other technology. Entered it into a contest and got fifth place with it, in it’s rough and unfinished short story format. The reason it didn’t get 4th is because the judges couldn’t wrap their head around furries and urban fantasy. So… I shrugged and went back to the drawing board.

And by drawing board I mean I went from a paltry 30 pages to something that is closer to 500 pages of story. It for a long long time was a Chronicles of Loth off shoot. Keeping the same characters and most of the same backstories. Kinda of a what if comic. But the more I worked on it and the more I tinkered with it I felt like the story could be stronger away from the characters of Loth, Sevikira, Kinuko and Ralidant. So I renamed them but they were essentially still the same cast.

When I approached a test reader and asked him to read it he said it was good but he didn’t like furries. So I talked to others and asked them what they thought about the half dragon characters and universally they said that the furries were detracting from the story. So doing like any good author I threw a tantrum, drank some whiskey and then put the task down for awhile to stew in the ole gray matter.

What eventually came to be was Sera the Angel and Ebony the Tiefling. It’s still very much a story about one-up·man·ship and a struggle between two powerful characters. The story was still the same it was still the same story but now I had these new characters to work with.

The idea originally blossomed because of my love of time travel and all the complicated mess that comes up when someone travels through time for any reason. And as much as I loved that I didn’t want to make this a traditional time travel story. Like everything I do I wanted it to have my own personal touch. Sadly in my case Butterfly Effect came out prior to my genius story… but that’s essentially what I did. Only instead of trying to find memories Ebony is using a type of time travel to bring a specific version of Sera to her present and then alter that copy and send her back.

And I did a lot of rewrites as I tried to follow the natural progression of how the characters would act and how time would react to their changes and create an altered reality. And I’m pleased with how the story has turned out so far. I know it’s going to require a few more edits since I have specific ideas and I’m trying to keep the editor focusing on each of those tasks as we move forward so that over all the story is stronger.

So that’s what I’m currently working on, and I can’t wait to announce when that’s up on Amazon and Smashwords for the appallingly low price of .99.

So stay tuned, I’m going to provide more updates about the book as I go and maybe give some spoilers or other tid bits and facts. I don’t know I’m still playing it by ear. I’ve never had to drum up press for my own books before…

Incorrigible Exercise? - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:02:18 GMT

So I did something I’ve never done before. I ran a 10K. I didn’t run the whole 10K, maybe about half of it was jogged. But I’m pretty proud of myself to do something like that. I have runner friends who say that while they’re running their mind goes blank and they’re just in the moment.

Me, I was thinking the entire time. Probably because I’m not a runner. I’m all for lifting heavy and often. I’d much rather lift weights, squat my body weight 40 or 50 times and then move on to something else. So when I ran I had to keep telling myself to keep going for long stretches of periods. I haven’t had to do any sort of race since I was in highschool and I ran the mile for some silly fitness test. I think I did the mile in like 8 minutes. But that was when I 16 and I was young and filled with energy and youthful naivete about the use of running that mile was.

Now I’m an old and jaded writer who understands the importance of that run. It’s so you can look back at in your youth while you swish the tumbler of scotch you have in your hand and reminisce about how fast and young you used to be or something. I never really ever felt that young when I was a teenager.

But basically I’ve been going to a sports performance program for about 8 months now. But before that I was trying to exercise with a coworker for about three months prior. So all said and done I’ve been focusing on getting healthier now for a year. And it’s paid off slowly. I’ve lost probably in excess of 40lbs of weight. Most of that is from a change in the diet and the rest has been from slowly converting fat into muscle.

So when the chance to run this 10K came up I did what any sensible American would do. I signed up through my company and showed up early wearing the company logo… and because it was colder than it had any right to be. I don’t work out in the outdoors often, and by often I mean ever, so I had to improvise to fight the cold. I wore running shorts, work out shirt, pajama pants, KMFDM Hoodie, company shirt and badge number. I never said I was stylish. Topped off with a running band thingie, a beanie and gloves. The temp said it was 50 degrees, but there were gusts up to 40mph at times. And it felt alright layered like a turtle.

I’ve never run a race. When I do decide to go running outside I just normally decide I’m going to go xyz and then run that and then that’s it. I was not used to the amount of people in this event. In my wave, XB, there were supposedly 1500 of us. 1500. To me that’s insane that there were so many people in my wave… I started at the back and immediately hated my fellow participants. See I’ve never done this sorta thing before so I had no idea what sorta pace to set. So I put myself in the last wave of Walker/Joggers. I knew I wanted to jog some parts but I didn’t know how much and I didn’t want to be penalized by being to far forward and not being fast enough.

With that many people it was hard to work my way forward and my first idea was to jog the last half of the first mile. That didn’t happen. I spent more time playing centipede than I did moving forward. So I basically just stopped trying to jog my way through. That’s when I realized how long a mile really is. When I do walking on my lunch break I can normally get two miles in, but that’s because I’m pushing myself to get basically get a mile every 15 minutes, I don’t have a million assholes in front of me, and I’m generally thinking about plots or going over scenes in my mind.

So for basically the first two miles I was at the mercy of the crowd of walkers in front of me. Once I had my break I made it. Only to find people who were apparently trying to get in everyone’s zone while they walked. I’m talking about people who have mastered the art of swinging for the moon when there isn’t a need. A few of the walkers almost took me out with the windmilling but I managed to get through that.

My next problem came in the fact that I drink water like a fish. On a typical day I’m drinking upwards of 80+ ounces of water. Today for example I drank a stately 160 ounces. One of my meds makes me drink a lot of water, plus I don’t drink tea, soda or coffee while I’m at work so it’s basically water. So my ever present pieces of gum were not up to the task of fighting the wind and keeping my throat wet. And I almost slipped out when I came across the first water station, because people just throw that shit everywhere and one person literally dropped their cup right under my foot. The Gods were seeing how good my reflexes were apparently.

I didn’t hit any stride really until I got to mile 4. It was at that point that I was actually able to jog it out. And then that’s where the “fun” happened. Because I realized when I got to the end of the 10K I had to walk 1.5 miles back to my car… on top of the 1.5 miles I’d walked to get to the race in the first place. But I set myself to the task and just kept going.

As I crossed the finish line my iPod had a sense of humor and played Chic’s Le Freak, my cardio playlist is special, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the appropriate timing of it hitting right as I finished at 96:13. The expected time to end the race for my group was 100 to 110 minutes. I was actually up with the group that had started four minutes a head of my wave. Which made my goals seems awesome

Finish

Don’t finish in last place

Jog when I could

And it was something different… I’m not sure I’m hooked on running but it gave me new appreciation for one of my personal/physical goals. I want to run a triathlon. Which is 26 miles of running, some amount of swimming and biking. It sounded like a fun goal until I realized just how dedicated you have to be to run these things. And right now with my body composition I’m a long ways off from that. Frankly I’m too big to be a marathon runner. All of the marathon runners I know I could snap in half over my knee. They’re not squatting 300lbs of weight, they’re on the treadmills or on the pavement racking up miles after miles.

Frankly… give me swimming to running. Who doesn’t want a sexy swimmer body?

Film Review - Captain America Civil War - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 14:01:11 GMT

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m a Marvel fan girl and this movie was worth the wait in my humble opinion. From a movie stand point, and I’m not going to gush about this cause it’s Marvel, it’s way better than batman vs superman. Like most of my movie reviews it’s going to be spoiler free. Cause I want people to see this, but I want people to know what I thought, and I want to post some content.

So basically this movie did a few things right that a lot of other movies haven’t done. And them doing it right is wrong. See this is an all star cast of the Marvel Cinematic universe. We have everyone but Thor and Hulk, and the sooner we drop Hulk the better. But because it has so many people in it this isn’t really a “Captain America” movie. It’s an Avengers movie, and I complained in the first Avengers movie that Rhodes should have shown up when the national guard was mobilized, unless they said Rhodes was busy dropping a tank at a general’s doorstep or something. It should have been a all hands on deck moment.

And that’s really the problem with Marvel comics. You have to be insane to do anything in New York City. You have Spidey, Daredevil, Cloak & Dagger, Moon Knight, Defenders, New Warriors, X-men, Fantastic Four, power pack, Avengers, Heroes for Hire, Doc Strange and Deadpool. It’s a cluster of stepping all over themselves to fight crime. Metropolis for years was patrolled by one guy and he did a good job. Then they added in Steel and Super Girl… I think I don’t actually care about D.C. Comics.

So when something big happens you would have all these heroes crawling out of the woodwork’s to solve a problem. New York should be the safest city in the entire marvel universe. So when they assembled and had Black Panther, Spidey and the others I wasn’t surprised.

And let’s talk about how big it is that we got Spidey. Thank the gods Marvel can now start using this property again. Not because Sony was doing bad with it, but because they weren’t doing great with it either. I liked Tobey’s 1st and 3rd movie, mostly, and the 1st Garfield one but they didn’t blow me away like Iron Man. Which I gave a 4 out of 5. So now in theory we can start seeing more cross overs. Marvel already has the rights back for Ghost Rider, thank gods, and I’m pretty sure they have Daredevil and Elektra, which I could care less about Elektra, mostly cause of the Frank Miller taint. I really want them to get back Fantastic Four and the X-men. Mostly because I hate Fox studios. And the guy they got to be spidey. Great choice. He had the right energy and talkativeness to be Parker.

But a huge cast of characters in a movie would be a bad idea. But in certain cases it makes sense. You have to develop them as characters and flesh them out. If you throw a dozen people on screen without some development they’re just worthless characters, IE X3, and you could care less whose who.

I’m not a Black Panther fan, he just never really did anything for me in the comics, but I loved his suit in this movie. I’m kinda indifferent to the actor with Chris Evans and RDJ, they’re no Hemsworth but they’re not bad in their own way. Oh the timber of Boseman was good, and I liked him in Fringe and he’s not bad on the eyes either, but I don’t know he looked to stuffy. Probably cause he’s playing royalty. Where as Thor, Tony and Cap are all guys who could laugh and tell jokes and just hang out with. I honestly couldn’t think of anyone else to play Black Panther, mostly cause I just don’t know a lot of African actors.

There are parts in the movie that don’t make much sense, I won’t give spoilers away but I caught them and immediately was wondering if they were going to just gloss them over or address them in the bits they cut to shorten the film.

The one thing I really noticed in this film is how old RDJ and Chris Evans look. If that’s because they’re actually aging in real life/marvel universe, or because the stresses of being avengers has taken it’s toil. Personally in the cinematic universe I’d put it down to the toil of being heroes. If being the President of the US is tiring think about being a super hero and knowing how many lives you can and will save and how many you can’t save but will still try.

But yeah, you should go see this film. It’s good, and I’m really really debating adding another 4 star movie to my list of movies. I’ll probably go back again to see if just to see how good it is. Something I didn’t do with BvS… cause gods that was a turd.

Film Review - Suicide Squad - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:59:49 GMT

So lets get into this spoiler free review right away. I’m taking a stance in that so far 2 for 2 DC movies have failed to move me. And it’s not because I’m just a marvel fan girl. It’s because I just don’t like the DC cast that much. My brother was like “Let’s go see Suicide Squad” a movie I’d actually thought had already come and gone. My resolve was to watch this movie when it came to Netflix because I really didn’t want to pay for this.

But on a scale of 1 to Better than Batman V Superman it was Better than Batman V Superman. Not to say that’s hard. Punisher Warzone is a better quality movie than Batman V Superman. I’d be willing to go on a limb and say that Nick Fury: Agent of Shield is a better movie than Batman V Superman. What I’m saying is that BvS is shit. And this movie is a mediocre 2 out of 5 stars. Flat out the best part of this movie is the music. The soundtrack and score are the only things that I’ll remember from this movie.

The next that I’ll say is that of all the actors Will Smith is the best there, and compared to some of the roles I’ve seen him in he’s on the right track but he’s still not back on his A game. I’m thankful that the amount of screen time Jared Leto’s Heath Ledger impersonation is short, maybe only 25 to 30 minutes of the movie, I didn’t time it but it’s like a quarter of the movie. And it’s suffered through the entire time he’s on screen, for me. And I’m sure Alex Ross was incredibly happy that Jared and Margot got to pervert one of his iconic pieces of art. I wasn’t also a fan of this harley quinn. Nothing against Margot, I liked her in Wolf of Wall Street but personally I could have done without her. And don’t get me started on the completely useless Captain Boomerang. It was like “We need to show Flash somehow… how can we do that? Hey isn’t there a guy who throws boomerangs or something? Yeah! let’s do that!” Now I know in the comics Boomerang and Harley were in the S.S. but frankly this Boomer is just lame.

As far as the movie goes it’s a very long drawn out action movie. The bad guys that they’re being fought can’t really be seen clearly and the action is almost nauseatingly quick in certain places. And the amount of liberty that is taken with this plot is kinda silly. Like seriously how much freedom are you going to give to Deadshot? Oh, how about all of it? I understand based on Burn Notice’s episode where Tyler Brennen kidnaps Nate that he’s only got one shot but seriously the interpersonal “conflict” between Floyd and Flagg are just silly.

The only character I genuinely cared for was El Diablo, he’s the only character who’s trying to grow and change in the course of the movie. Deadshot is the same person he is at the beginning as he is at the end. Harley and Boomer don’t change, Killer Croc only changes cursorily because he wants BET. Which great he’s I guess african american in this world. Frankly couldn’t care less, Croc’s a batman villain and I never really cared much about him one way or the other. When you’ve got huge rogue galleries like Bats and Flash it’s hard to care about a fifth of them.

The villains of this movie are just CGI. Enchantress minor rhyming is kinda annoying, I found that annoying in Child of Light and I found it annoying in this movie, and she danced. For like no reasons whatsoever. And this is an example of an all powerful villain who isn’t using her powers to the best of her abilities. They literally show her teleporting around and going invisible and messing with people’s heads and all other deus ex machina stuff they needed her to do. That fight at the end of the movie should have lasted literally two seconds.

In Invincible there’s a joke about what the characters would do without space to knock out super tough baddies? Frankly if you can teleport and do the stuff this character is seen to do warping these guys to Toledo, Miami or the moon wouldn’t have been out of sync. But how do you defeat all powerful villains? You make them stupid. I’m sorry but I hate terrible villains. It’s my major beef with a lot of movies. And this movie is nothing but villains/anti-heroes and really they’re all just terrible or mediocre. There’s a few scenes where we get to see the characters show off and I’m just like “Uh huh, Ultimate Magento would take these jokers apart.” He was written to make people say “Oh shit…” And he did for a little bit. But like all comics it’s hard to take a villain serious for multiple episodes.

All in all I kept checking my watch and thinking when was this movie going to be done? I didn’t do that once with Captain America: Civil War or Ant Man or Avengers Age of Ultron or Deadpool. So it didn’t captivate me enough to make me lose track of my sense of time or make me suspend my disbelief all that much. I was tempted to walk out at the 1hr 5 mark. Halfway through the movie because it just didn’t grip me. I can only count a handful of movies that make me want to leave and ask for my money back. Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad and Wings of Desire. And I didn’t even pay for Wings of Desire. I wanted to start a crusade on that film and make the studio give everyone money back for it even existing. Needless to say Wings of Desire is my absolutely most hated movie ever.

So my advice, this movie isn’t piratable, you’re welcome to pirate it if you like. But I kind of wish my brother and I hadn’t wasted our money to see this in the theater and had instead waited until it hit Netflix, if it ever did.

Overwatch - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:58:16 GMT

Some people know that I play video games as a means to kill time and relieve stress. So my brother and I picked up Overwatch at the same time I started playing Pokemon Go. And I gotta say that I am having a ball playing Overwatch. Sadly I can’t link my stats because Master Overwatch can’t find me. Not sure why. I’ve been playing on both PC and X-box and it’s the same gamertag, I only use one gamertag. I play more on X-box than I do on PC, but my character of choice is Mercy. I’ve probably logged somewhere near 20 hours playing as just Mercy on the X-box one. My next favorite character is Tracer, though I suck with her and have since moved on to D.Va whom I am not a fan off personality wise and I’m a pretty decent Bastion. The other characters that got played, that was my brother playing on my account while he cooked dinner or I was working on a Friday and I was way under his level. I really only play a few characters.

But if you see me online and you’re playing with me on your team you can expect me to be Mercy and you can expect me to try and keep you alive as long as possible. Some days I can go through an entire match without dying a single time. Other times, when my teammates are absolutely terrible, I’ll die 10 or 20 times. I’ve always gravitated to a healer position in MMO’s. Mostly because I like to heal and provide support. It’s a tough job and if you’re doing your job right no one dies. If you’re doing your job wrong you’re going to be seeing failure after failure. I’ve gotten a number of plays of the day with Mercy where I’ve rezed the entire team. My favorite day was when I was in a continued fight with a Junkrat and he kept killing my team but missing me and I’d just rez them all and keep the objective from moving forward and then when the match was over I got a private message from that junk rat calling me a queen bitch. To me that means I’m doing my job correctly.

I died a lot in my early days of Mercy. I didn’t know where the exploding tire was coming from, didn’t know where the dragon was coming from or the justice from above. But I’ve gotten better. Now as a Mercy I make people chase me when I’m solo. And I’ll pull people out of formation all the time as Mercy to have them chase me down. Not like my team is generally trying to keep me alive.

I’ve noticed that in this MMO. No one really wants/trys to keep the healers alive in this. And I don’t care what team you’re on. If you’re a healer and I’m not getting a chance to be voted on you’re getting my vote because I know how hard it is to keep an entire team going when you’re a fragile healer that everyone is gunning for. In EQ, City of Heroes and even WoW tanks pulled agro off of the healer all the time, even in the PvP because they knew that the healer will keep the team around longer and you’ll have a better shot of winning.

I’m not the greatest Mercy player, by any stretch. I’ve seen a Mercy who ran circles around me on the other team and I’m always impressed by that. But I always get a little annoyed at players playing Ana who are trying to snipe against Hanzo or Windowmaker. Ana just doesn’t have the power to do that, so I hate having to heal Ana’s and they get lower priority than tanks or damage dealers but I’ll heal them. Most times though I can’t heal everyone and that’s kind of frustrating. Of course the real frustration is when a Genji or a Pharah is asking for healing and they’re deep behind enemy lines. I really want an emote that’s “Are you f’ kiddin’ me? Look at where you are.” I’ll heal you if you’re close to the main group but every time I go off looking for you I’ll die and then it’s five or six second where I’m not there to heal the group and I’ve seen a number of matches that come down to those last few seconds.

But on the whole the only day I hate playing is Saturday. As much as I like being a support character and helping people I just hate continued losing. I do. It’s annoying and I get frustrated. I understand the game is to be played for fun. But the competitiveness in me wants to win or at least get close. I hate being shut out because the team decided we needed 4 Ana’s and a genji. Like I said I play about four characters. Mercy, D.Va, Tracer and Bastion and generally I only play Bastion if I’m trying to keep the point moving.

I grew up playing soccer and I was the halfback position. So I ran up and down the field, I had lots of stamina when I was a sprightly lass, to provide assistance where I was needed. And my teams tended to do very well. Because we worked as a team. In X-box land no one is really working together cause they’re all in their own parties talking to their friends in other games. I know because I frequently talk to my friend in Indy while he’s online and I’m playing solo, which doesn’t happen often.

Now this could be different from competitive. I’ve not played that setting because I really don’t want to get into a team and have people constantly angry because I’m trying my best and they’re just stupid. I’ve seen some great players and I wish there was a way I could stick with them but 9/10 I see a great player I’ll playing one game maybe two with them and then I’ll be spending the rest of the night with that player kicking my butt. That’s the real pain of playing with people who you were just on the same team with. Because they learn how you think and they know how you play and then spend time picking you apart while your team just rushes mindlessly forward.

Still… I wish I had more friends who played the game.

Altered Realities - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:57:00 GMT

Altered Realities is finally nearing a release date. I don’t have an exact date because currently it’s been through the editor once and now it’s going through an alpha reader stage. I’ve never done an alpha reader stage so I have no idea what to really expect from the people I asked to review and give impressions on the book.

I’ve been working on Altered Realities for probably 10+ years. I started working on it 2 moves again, which would have put me in Carmel Indiana back before 2005, since we moved to Fishers Indiana in August of 2005. It originally started off as a 30 page short story. And it got 5th place in the contest it was entered in and the only reason it didn’t get forth is because at the time Urban Fantasy wasn’t as main stage as it is now. The plethora of vampires and other mythical monsters in modern day settings got bantered around a bit but now it seems almost everywhere. Sorry I had an elf use a Cell. I don’t know what I was thinking.

But anyway… the primary focus is what happens when you alter the past so you’re better now? Well that’s kinda what this book is about. I’m not going to be the first or last person to write this particular idea. It’s probably not even a really original idea to be honest. But it’s an idea that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. Time travel and how it’s going to mess with the timeline. And naturally if you’re outside the time stream you wouldn’t know what those changes you made would do to the timestream and how it affects you.

My entire life I’ve wanted to go back to when I was younger and sit down and have a frank and honest conversation with eight year old me, not that I’d probably pay much attention to eight year old me, and maybe talk to my parents as well. But when I think about the changes this would manifest in my life I can almost certainly say I wouldn’t have met my best friend in college… hell I probably wouldn’t have met my best friend in high school. I probably wouldn’t have been on the brain game team. The subtle nuances I would undergo with that conversation, not even giving out things like “Invest in google, apple, ebay or facebook.” I only care about money in that I need to pay my bills. I mean the friendships and relationships I would have had growing up. My friends in middle school and highschool would have been completely different and that would have shaped my career path. Would I have stayed the course and stayed a liberal arts major in college or would I have switched to something like being a doctor or a lawyer?

These relationships that impact our lives so deeply are what I wanted to explore in Altered Realities. Sera Vs. Ebony. A pair of women who had been each others rivals since the start of their lives. Building twenty years of competition and drive between them. One used the rivalry to define her life the other used it to enhance her life. Naturally when Ebony’s given a chance to make her rival pay she’s going to do it. But the changes it has, I wanted to write them all down and explore them see how they changed. And I sort of did. I have notes and notes with how reality changed to reflect the world around Ebony.

As an author I want to tell stories that are unique and my own. True Blue Alien deals with, poorly, how you’re to really love someone when your memories betray you. As I’m so often told like 50 first dates or Memnto. But it’s different. How do you know when you’re not you or when you’re different from others? Because your memories will tell you that. If you don’t have those memories every day, every encounter, is a chance to define yourself however you want. And how do you?

A Goddess’s Gifts was the prequel to A Servant of the God’s and it was where do you finally tell your lover no? As this was an erotic novel, rather tame in my opinion to what’s out there, I didn’t go the dark route with beatings, rapings and things like that. No it was far more innocent, sorta, where your partner keeps making decisions that impact your relationship and never talks to you. When do you say enough’s enough?

And my next novel, sorry to say, will not be the Chronicles of Loth. I want to write the novel, I do. But I’m not in the headspace to be my treori warrior. Now right now I’m in the headset for A Servant of the Gods and I might work on “A Childish Affair” at the same time. There’s some heavy decisions I’m making in my life right now and they’re naturally guiding and shaping my creativity as much as I want to be that writer who just sits her butt down at the pc and bangs out a million words on whatever work she’s working on I can’t be. I still very much have a muse who demands attention and regular care. I’ve been roleplaying and playing overwatch and reading novels but it’s getting to the point where I’ve gotta release the flood gate. And I’ve wanted to tell A Servant of the God’s for years as well. So it’s my hope that with each successive novel I’ll get better and better and then when it’s time for Mirlinth Loth to have her book I’ll have so much to write for that I won’t be able to stop the flood gates.

So stay tuned. I’ll let everyone know when my third book is out. Sorry for being so quiet lately. I’m not one to go blathering on unless I feel I have something to say. But I do want my fans to know I’m still here, still functioning,

incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Overwatch, A Rant - Reblog from Tumblr

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:55:56 GMT

Blizzard for the love of god please do something about the skill rating system! I want to get the Mercy Gold Staff, its the only reason I’m playing Comp and I just can’t do it with your skill rating system. For those of you who aren’t familiar with how OverWatch Comp works allow me to highlight what it doesn’t do.

Are you on Fire the majority of the match? Doesn’t matter Blizzard doesn’t look at that.

Are you getting Gold on a few stats? Doesn’t matter Blizzard doesn’t look at that.

Are your deaths to kill ratio good? Doesn’t matter Blizzard doesn’t look at that.

Do you and your team communicate well? Doesn’t matter Blizzard doesn’t look at that.

Did you get a really awesome Play of the Game? Doesn’t matter Blizzard doesn’t look at that.

Are you on a terrible team and you have 3 to 4 players dragging you down? Does matter Blizzard looks at that.

See the On Fire or Golds are an indication of how good you are as a player. As a Mercy player I normally get Gold, I do targeted healing, or Silver if Lucio is around because AoE Healing beats single point of contact. But I can and do routinely get 30 to 50% of the damage ratio when I’m alive or 30% kill assist. And this is the thing that really kills it. I started my season in Gold 2315. Gold’s not the best, certainly not the worst, but it’s middle of the road and probably where the majority of the people are. But I solo queue. And as a Mercy Main solo queuing has killed my score. I am not fighting to stay in 1900 range. I can play and play and play and I’m just not climbing. I cannot carry a team. I’m not that good with Mercy. I don’t think ANY Mercy player is good enough to carry a team of idiots.

The mechanic is “Oh, you’re losing let’s put you on other teams with other losers against other losers that way you’ll do better.” That mechanic isn’t working. Once you’re on a losing street you cannot seem to shake that, substantially, with Pick Up Groups. And this is frustrating me. Don’t damage my ranking because I have a reaper, a junk rat, a pharah, a mcree, Me the Mercy and a widow. That team isn’t going to soak damage and when they can’t soak damage they can’t fight. Or I’m on a team with winston, reinhardt, dva, zarria, semetra and Me the Mercy.

And I’m by and large not a good D.Va or Pharah player. I know that. But the causality is normally “Oh you’re in every single equation you’re the problem.” And I would accept that, if I wasn’t constantly dying or had a team I can effectively cover. I’m used to solo healing, I really am from hours of playing Mercy. I’ve got 31 hours as Mercy on the PC. 31 hours! On the X-box One I have 32 hours. That’s 63 hours of time on Mercy on two different platforms. Obviously I like the character I play her a lot. And don’t get me started on how if the account is linked I can’t have the unlocks for Mercy on both platforms. I can understand the pointless achievements. But seriously!

So I’m absolutely frustrated with OverWatch Comp and I wished I’d done the first season when the point totals were smaller. The fact I’m looking at 200 points after all my attempts to win and I still have 2800 points to go is so discouraging for me. Last season 300 points was all I needed to get a Gold Weapon. And it’s not even the fact that I’m constantly on losing teams. I just can’t score any points to make it look like I’m progressing. I’d be happy if the matches ended in a draw. You get a few points for that. But seriously nothing when you lose but a demotion to your skill ranking and it’s not even your fault!

I want to keep playing, I really do. But Blizzard you gotta do something so that those of us who aren’t DPS or soaking damage can continue to show how useful we are. Please figure out some way to make the support heroes worthwhile to play in comp. It really seems that if you don’t have a Lucio for AoE healing and a Mercy for Rez you’re not playing comp right. And if you don’t have 2 tanks you’re not playing comp right. The only thing that to me looks like it’s not needed on a team is DPS. If the other team is holding the point and the attacking team continually gets into overtime then that should be a factor like “Ok, these guys are equally skilled now lets look at this metric to see how to move them to the next group.”

I understand the idea is supposed to be team based. I do. But I don’t have friends who play this game with me. So I’ve gotta start doing PUGs to try and play the game competitively. Maybe set it up so there’s Solo Comp and Team Comp so that I don’t have to be on a PUG group with a team of 6. Something has to be done so that I don’t have to spend my free time, granted like I said 63 hours on Mercy, to eek out a few points.

Please Blizzard… you’re all about the PvP in WoW can you do something to make this feel like it’s truly competitive and not let’s keep kicking these guys when they’re down by grouping up the players who keep losing? How about you set it so that if you lose 10 matches in a row you’re win/lose ratio is suspended and you’re requeued with players who have been consistently winning and if you lose again you continue your downward spiral into obscurity.

And I’m pretty sure the Prefered Player thing has been fixed or because I’ve been losing so much thanks to my awful teams I can’t group up with my prefered players, IE the winning team, and experience the thrill of victory occasionally. I understand I can’t win every game. We can’t be like some well oiled machine that goes all the way. But I’m really tired of being the 1976 Buccaneers and that’s what if feels like.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Incorrigible Updates - More - Reblog from Tumblr

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:54:19 GMT

So first let me apologize for being pretty bad about this entire blogging thing. Like most people in the world I’m pretty busy with my 8 to 5 job and trying to fit in a time to work out and work on various progress. Altered Realities is currently being reviewed by the alpha readers and I’m hoping to hear back from them soon. My 2nd book A Goddess’s Gifts is now free on Amazon. You can get it here if you haven’t already.

I’ve also started a twitch stream for my video gaming and my writing. I basically only write for a bit on Sunday but I like to show I am working on stuff so. So if you want to see my twitch stream I’d recomend that you head over to Twitch.tv/jeflint

I know this isn’t really much of an update in all things considered. I’m working on stuff that aren’t writing related and it galls me that for what I want to do I have to split my focus in so many different areas. I play the video games and twitch stream for two important reasons. To give me a mental break from all the stress in my day to day life, as they were intended, and to practice talking/working on my voice.

I don’t really say much about my life, my personal physical life, but I’m working towards a goal I’ve wanted and dreamed of having for 23 years. Most of my life since by the end of this month I’ll be 36 years old. This is a goal and a dream I’ve had forever. Since I could learn to setup goals and work towards them. I’ve already proven I can write a novel or two, since I’m on my third and I’m working on my 4th novel. So I’ve achieved that. I’ve more or less got a stable career as a Systems Analyst for a medical software company. I’m slowly growing friends from my move from Indiana to Virginia.

And I’m really good as Mercy in overwatch. I’ve got at least 75% of my 100+ hours in that game wrapped up in that one character. It’s the small things.

The other thing I wanted to let everyone know I’m doing is I’m taking part in Extra Life. My personal Donation link is here. Normally in the past I’ve not been in a position to really play and donate. I always donate. I may be an angry person but I’m not a bitch. I really do care about children and wish the best for them and being that I’m a gamer this has ALWAYS appealed to me. So why wouldn’t I now that I’ve setup my system stream my support and try and gain a few bucks in the process? If you can PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE donate a few bucks, even a fiver, will help out the children. And if you don’t want to donate to my feed and the children’s hospital in Virginia then I highly encourage you to find someone in your area and donate to their feed for that hospital. I’ve set my personal goal at 500 dollars and it’s pretty high but I hope to reach it.

So stay tuned, I’m still around and I’m still doing things. I want my fans to be able to interact with me and I figured Twitch might be one of the best ways to do that. And not only that it gives me access to people who weren’t aware of what I was working on.

Oh and go vote if you’re able to. Please. I want you to vote for anyone but Trump, sadly Bernie was to honorable and laid down to Clinton, but it’s your choice. If you think Trump and Pence, much as I’ll hate you and not want to talk to you, better aligns to your beliefs then you gotta vote with your gut.

So yeah… Get my Free Book, Go to my Stream, Donate to Extra-Life and go Vote.

Incorrigibly Yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review - Dr. Strange - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:53:16 GMT

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m writing a review for Doctor Strange. I saw it opening weekend like quite a few people. And like always I am to give this a review with as few spoilers as possible as I share my thoughts on this movie. And as far as a movie goes I’ve got to say I’m still pleasantly surprised with Marvel. I expected this one to be a flop. Just like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-man. Now don’t get me wrong, I like those movies and I’m glad they make money and we can continue to get movies. I’m hopeful that the Black Panther movie will be good. I’m only mildly interested in Thor’s next movie. Mostly because it’s Thor and the second movie really didn’t do anything for me. But then neither did Iron Man 2 or Iron Man 3 if I had to be honest. So far I’ve liked all of Caps movies so it might just be the story structure and flow of the movies.

But then it’s not. See… without giving away a spoiler this is basically an Origin story. Only if you’re familiar with your marvel timeline… it’s not. See in Captain America Civil War Rhodes gets downed and that’s directly referenced in this movie. So we know it’s taking place some time around the time when Rhodey is in rehab or close to surgery date. So we have that firmly entranced in the movie. Only in Captain America, curse you cap, Winter Soldier the list of potential targets to be taken out is Dr. Strange. Now how can he be a problem for Hydra so far in the future? I’m not one to point out a flaw in the a big cinematic universe but that’s a pretty gaping hole that I’m betting Marvel didn’t think us fans would notice. And I caught that through on the first watching. And I’m not the most devout fan of Marvel comics. I’m a fan girl, don’t get me wrong, but there are certain characters I don’t care about. Jessica Jones for instance I only watched because David Tennat was the villain. I watched Luke Cage and liked that, I watched Dare Devil and enjoyed the second season more than the first. So I have my picks of heroes I want to see. Like I loved Deadpool so my taste is kinda iffy sometimes.

Now if you’ve seen this movie you’ll probably recognize it for basically being an Iron Man origin story and that’s I think is it’s problem. It’s a good movie and I give it 3 out of 5 stars. But the fact that Strange is something of a jokester is just making my head spin. We now have pretty much all the main characters having this sort of swarmy/sarcastic humour and for a lot of these characters it just doesn’t work. Thor isn’t known for his joking nature, sure he’s jovial but his jokes aren’t the snark of Tony Stark. But it seems like the screenwriters are being told to channel Tony Stark’s snark. And don’t get me started on how wishy washy the character it is. Tony, cause we can’t really get in his head in group ensemble cast, comes off as being flighty and indecisive changing his stances as often as a politician. If this is going to set him up to be the Secretary of State like he is in Marvels Disassembled then that’s great but I highly doubt we’re going this route.

So anyway back to Strange and the movie is pretty visually stunning. This is one of the few times I’m glad I cannot wear 3-D glasses over my own glasses. Because I have a feeling a lot of the scenes would have left me sick from the constant camera shift and the world environment changes you see in the trailer. Cause those fight scenes are pretty long and they are filled with a lot of shifting scenery. On the whole I think most of the characters work for each of the cast but I can’t for the life of me figure out what Cumberbatch dropped his English accent for Strange. I’ve always thought Strange would be a highly articulate and well spoke individual and for some reason in my head he was british. And I don’t say that because I like guys with accents, I do but only specific ones, and Cumberbatch needs to put some meat on his bones before I find him visually appealing. Give me Evans, Chadwick Boseman or Mike Colter and we’ll talk. But the thing with Dr. Strange is he’s so perfectly human in this. He is a phenomenal doctor, we’re told, and we see him struggle with his mortality in this movie and rise and overcome it. Unlike what we see with the other marvel heroes this character has actually grown by the end of the movie and it feels like a great accomplishment and I appreciate that. It never felt like that with Tony of Steve and even with Luke it just doesn’t really reverberate that these characters are growing and evolving.

Now granted this is simply because Doc Strange has to become the sorcerer supreme but his character did sort of do a 180 over the course of the flick so I’m excited to see where this goes.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Film Review – Rogue One - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:52:06 GMT

Good evening everyone! Just got back from seeing Rogue One and I gotta say, I’m excited to be doing this spoiler free review of this movie. Let’s jump into this head first and very minor spoiler in this review.

Everyone who knows me well knows how much of a sci-fi fan I am. My love of the future is untamed in my breast and I’m looking forward to all the joys of the future. Self Driving cars, cyborg bodies, robots, space ships. Give me it all. I want it. So naturally there’s a few movies I’m looking forward to this year. Rogue One has long been on my radar of movies I was going to see. The other is Passengers. And I can’t wait to see that one either. Though I might cringe a little on that one, but it looks promising.

So the first thing to note about this Star Wars feature is that it’s not really a Star Wars flick. Not in the standard way we’ve come to think of Star Wars movies and after watching this I can say without a doubt that this is not a typical Star Wars movie and that is a breath of fresh air to the series. We have no John Williams for our music, but we still have our grand sweeping epic orchestral music. There are subtle nods to what Mr. Williams has provided for us over the last few decades and you can hear it teased in a lot of the themes for this movie. Honestly I don’t feel the sweeping orchestral music was a good fit for this piece. Hear me out. This is essentially a spy movie set in the Star Wars movie and you kind of expect a certain type of music for your spy flick. Look at a Bond score and you’ll see kind of the same notes and patterns and they get carried into most spy flicks. Oh sure there are some very epic battle scenes in this. And here is where I will give away one minor spoiler. The man in the slick suede suit that’s black like tar needed more line. The last action scene could have, and SHOULD HAVE, been extended like another 5 to 10 minutes. I wouldn’t have cared at all because it was Darth Vader. I love the villains, more so because Vader is pretty much the typical Fallen Paladin and is supposed to be a full cycle of rising to the heavens and then crashing to hell. Its sad it didn’t really happen in the prequels but the original trilogy managed to make you invested in the Empire’s black fisted general.

The first few minutes of this movie are confusing and we do several scene shifts which to my knowledge really don’t serve much of a purpose other than to give us new names and locations in the Star Wars universe. It’s not like there aren’t billions of planets in the darn series. So a few more planets aren’t going to make an impact in my mind for Star Wars. Luckily they avoid Tatooine in this movie. I’m also very glad that this has the theme of Empire and it’s self contained. This is a very much one and done movie and that’s good. There are too many movies that are planning to have sequels and that has polluted our entertainment options.

So we have a bunch of new characters that honestly they’re a lot more compelling than what we saw in Force Awakens. I honestly don’t really care about Finn or Rei. Maybe because I’ve already seen that story before I’m less vested in Rei and Finn. But these characters are new, granted some of their motivations are a bit dodgy but they still on the whole feel a lot more compelling to be with. I liked our robot sidekick in this movie and I think it was nice to portray him differently than the typical protocol droid. His snark isn’t quite as bad as HK-47 from the Knights of the Old Republic but it was refreshing. I would never have a robot that was so subservient as C-3P0. If I’m blasting around the galaxy I want a willing companion to be by my side, not a slave. I’m not into that. Of course that sort of puts me on the side of IG-88A from the expanded universe and the wanting to ensure that Robots aren’t subservient, of course IG-88 and it’s siblings wanted to destroy all organic life, so they’re very much like Terminators and there’s only so much coexistence you can have with a creature who wants to utterly ruin your society.

Now as far as technology, just like all the other prequel movies, the tech is far too advanced when you consider that A New Hope is 18 years, give or take, after Revenge of the Sith. This could be fixed quickly by just republishing or making a remake of episode IV with updated tech. That was always what got me about the Knights of the Old Republic games. The tech was way beyond what we saw in the original trilogy. And this is an example of the technology we have to make things now. But even if you read the books you never really get a scale of the advancements in the Star Wars universe. From a tech stand point Star Wars is really very backwards. I’m a fan of Star Wars because of it’s Space Opera nature, but when it comes to tech I’m going to always side with Star Trek. You can see a real progression tech wise in Star Trek which is neat.

This movie very much wanted to be a war movie and a spy flick all in one and it did a pretty decent job of both. But in no way is this a Star Wars movie. It just doesn’t fit the format of the last 7 movies that have been produced. They’re going to be making a Han Solo movie and I wonder if it’s going to be more like Rogue One or if it’ll be more like the series we have going forward. I’ll admit I’m not a huge Solo fan. I never really cared for him. He wasn’t really all that interesting a character to me. Now how Fett and Solo crossed in the expanded universe was where I cared. I’m sure they’ll make a Fett movie and I’m actually dreading that. Because I don’t want to remember Fett as a clone from the 2nd movie. I really don’t. I hate the idea that they cloned Boba from Jango Fett. It was always a bit of a mystery of his origin and I liked that. It seems like no writer in Hollywood likes to leave a mystery. They have to have an Easter Egg or a reveal somewhere. I’m not going to be shocked to find out that the Mon Calmari in this movie, spoiler they have aliens on the rebellion side, is related to Admiral Ackbar. I’m just glad that the admiral that is in this movie is not Thrawn.

I would have cried, legitimately cried, if this bad guy was supposed to be Grand Admiral Thrawn. I, like so many star wars fans, felt that Heir to the Empire should have been the 7th Star Wars movie but luckily this is just some other Grand Admiral that they needed for the movie. And I’m OK with that. I’m OK that this is a one and done movie that ties up completely in the time allotted. I’m glad that we have a new cast to work with and I’m glad with the story. This was a very good popcorn flick and I highly recommend you go watch it when you get a chance. There’s no danger that people won’t see this. It’s Star Wars. The name Star Wars will bring people out in droves to see a movie. The theater I went to see it at was mostly empty, I went to see it in the middle of the day on Friday out in the boonies so there was no fear I wasn’t going to be able to see it. My only regret about this movie was that I didn’t see it in IMAX or 3D. This is one of the few movies I think would have looked awesome in either format, but because the theater isn’t IMAX and because they don’t make 3D goggles or 3D clip ones I don’t go see 3D movies. Maybe someday they’ll make something for those of us who wear glasses 24/7 but until then I’ll just lament the fact I don’t have 20/20 vision.

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review - Logan - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:50:55 GMT

I just got back from seeing this movie and I’ll try to give a mostly spoiler free review of the movie, but frankly like Batman Vs Superman yawn of bordeom I could really care less if I give spoilers. I know a bunch of folks are going to see this movie. It’s an X-Men title and maybe that’s why I’m a little upset with this title because more than any other Marvel studio films I’ve always been an X-Men fan girl.

So anyway, let’s start off by saying I’d actually forgotten about this movie that’s how largely unimportant this movie was on my scope of movies for 2017. I’ve never been a huge fan of Wolverine anyway because he’s just an unrelatiable character to me. He’s just a character who chews bubble gum and kick ass. I didn’t like Duke Nukem, I didn’t like 99% of the anti-heroes and the grunge heroes and the like. So I have very little to relate with to Wolverine. So the fact they’re basically doing a version of Old Man Logan store was novel more so since they had to drop out the hulk as teh baddy of the series cause he’s owned by Marvel proper and not owned by those hacks over at Fox.

So we have Wolverine who is going about his life as an old man, which I guess for him is like 3000 years old or something, no one knows who old Wolverine his and Captain Overexposure is beyond my scope of caring to be terribly honest. This is a long movie and it dragged on for me. There were no emotional moments, not even when shocking gasp of shocking gasps Patrick Stewart has a moment in the movie that was truly wasted on this film. This I suppose a movie about redemption for Wolverine but this is such a tired trope. “I’m to old and I’m only getting paid, and reluctantly I might remind you. And I’ll turn into an old softie at the end of the movie and come save everyone.” Spoiler of spoilers I’ve just given you the entire plot synopsis of Logan. I don’t normally care about tropes or stereotypes but gods can we please get something else? Like instead of money couldn’t it have been the cure for baldness or erectile dysfunction or something equally meaningless?

Now let’s introduce the awesome Stephen Merchant. Of the characters I wanted to see in this movie it wasn’t Logan or X-23. I could frankly care about the two dimensional characters that are these two. Let’s spend sometime with Caliban and see what makes him be him. Let’s spend time with Charles Xavier. Let’s spend time with the characters who have actual personalities. Oh but Logan has a personality someone will say. And I’ll respond that he has the same anti-hero personality that all anti-heroes have. Grumble, grunt and swear. Oh and swear we do, and show some nipple and then death. Lots of death. Oh and some dismemberment for good measure.

In the very first opening scene when Logan is fighting I’m just like “Yep, we’re gonna prove to you we need this to be an R film! Quick show some titty! Yeah… yeah… now say fuck!” And the director was like “It’s good!” No. No it wasn’t. I’m sorry if you think it’s good, I understand you have an opinion contrary to my own. I won’t hold it against you until it comes to pizza toppings. This is a movie that didn’t need to be pushed into an R flick. And I know the three little kids who started crying with Wolverine pushed his claws into the side of a guy’s head and we got to see the cgi blades pop out of the front thought so too.

But let me get to the thing I really hated about this movie. X-23. I saw the character and was like “Oh, ok we get to see Wolverine doing Leon the Professional.” And then I realized that it was X-23. Now I’m not a fan of Wolverine’s kids. X-23 and Dakon. They’re just another take on the same character and only reason X-23 is popular is because she’s a femme fatal. I like femme fatal’s and here’s a HUGE difference. When Scar Jo first transformed into Black Widow in Iron Man 2 it was nice. She jumped into the ring wiped out some jujitsu on happy and then back to work. She was very modest and in control of herself. She made me believe she was a super spy and when she went to town on the guards in Justin Hammer’s factory I found it believable. When X-23 goes to town on all the guards arrayed against her I’m not worried, I’m not even vested in it. You know why? Because it’s a child.

Keeping in mind that a mutant child could in theory be more powerful than a man she is NOT more powerful than 30 men with automatic rifles. And let’s not even talk about the idiotic “don’t kill her.” She’s Logan’s daughter, spoiler, so anything short of an adamantium bullet ain’t killing the bitch. Light her up. “You’re a monster!” You’ll say about me. And Jan says “Yeah, and? If you want her to be a bad ass combatant you have to make me believe there is any danger to her person.” Nope she just screams and wipes out her blades and goes to town on these people, showing us how awesome she is at hiding, and then never showing it again in the entire movie, and then killing people. Seriously. I am tough on movies and characters because I’m a writer and if I wrote that scene I’d be torn apart but because it’s in an X-Men movie it’s ok.

“But Hollywood can’t hit children?” Why the fuck not? If you’re going to have her kill people than a fucking backhanded slap by a robotic gauntlet merc is more than legitimate. I found X-23 the worst part of this movie and sadly this is Leon the Professional, only with a character who rightly doesn’t need anyone to protect her. I don’t care that Logan is supposed to bond with X-23. I have no emotional investment in these characters. I had investment in Caliban and I was happy and sad at the way he went out. Excluding the stuff that happened to Stewart I was just like, cool how long until the credits roll? I checked my phone three times to see the time and I can only count a few times I’ve been in a theater and done that. I can count on one hand the amount of movies I’ve wanted to walk out of.

So, as with all my reviews where I tear apart a movie I will acknowledge this is my opinion and that my opinion’s often differ from the masses. Thank the gods. If you just have to watch this movie I suggest you do it via redbox. See I didn’t recommend you torrent the shit out of this like BvS yawn of boredom. I’m saying that Hugh and Stewart should get their cut of the money, so go rent it for three bucks. Cause it’s certainly not worth more than that and if someone gave it to me I’d be looking to sell it or refund it as soon as I could.

Still this isn’t as bad as BvS yawn of boredom, but then how could it be?

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

An Incorrigible Update - Heavy this time - Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:49:29 GMT

So for two years now I’ve debated about coming clean and blogging about myself personally. This has been something that has weighed on my soul, if you will, for a long time. I recently outed myself on Quora when I started answering questions about Transgenders and I didn’t think twice about it. I’ve come out on facebook and to some of my family members via snail mail and I came out to a few of my coworkers but I’ve waffled off and on about posting it on my blog. This is supposed to be about writing… and my transition impacts my writing.

My birth name was Jason Everett Flint, it has now been changed to Janice Elizabeth Flint. Legally everything that was Jason is no more or will be gone soon, my SSN and my Driver’s License has already been changed. All that is left is my Birth Certificate and I already started that process, I’m just waiting to hear back on that one. It has been one of a scary journey for myself. How could it not be? For 34 years I was a guy, but on my 35th birthday I became the person I wanted to be. And it has been an emotional rollercoaster. A lot of firsts for me and I’m thankful that I’ve gotten a chance to have them, I’m just sorry it took so long for me to get to this point.

If someone were to have asked me where I saw my life when I was a teen, and they did, I always told them I’d be dead by 35. I wouldn’t live to see my 35th birthday. I was adamant on this, because I was so unhappy with myself. I had been unhappy with myself since I learned that there were differences between men and women. I found out in sex ed. They broke the boys into one group and the girls into another. I thought it was weird that I was left behind with the “boys”. They explained all the changes that would happen in a guy’s body and I that was when I realized that something was wrong with me. I couldn’t articulate it until I was 13, even if I could who was I going to tell? But as puberty hit I hated it, hated myself and the way my body was betraying me, I grew jealous of girls because they got to do the things I wanted to do. They got to wear the clothing I wanted to wear.

So I hid all that, tried to at least. And for awhile my writing was my only outlet and it worked for a few years. My first short stories were about a boy turning into a woman. There was no horror to having changed your gender, there was no chagrin. It was all acceptance for that character. There were confusion in the minds of the supporting cast but ultimately they’d accept the character regardless of gender, and the stories turned into books. The way my characters were treated was what I was hoping for. But growing up in a conservative military family made me paranoid. I heard the way my parents talked about homosexuals, and I didn’t want them to think I was broken. Not different. Broken. I didn’t want anyone to know because I never really felt safe, even with my family. I knew they were searching my room for material and to keep myself safe I invested in buying porn, even though I never really liked it. Luckily my writing was enough of a release for a few years. But I had to have more, I needed more. My older sister still lived with us and so did my mother and there were times I thought about trying on their clothes, jewelry and makeup but I was too scared to because my father was one who was heavy with the whip so to speak. Luckily this was about the time of the internet and I found acceptance being myself in chat rooms. I might have lied about some things, namely hair color and height, but in my heart that was who I was. My name was always Janus online. For the Roman God of Portals, Openings and Closings, Endings and Beginnings. Janus was my spirit name, if you will, and I would rise from my ashes like a phoenix someday.

I prayed and wished on every day, most minutes of the day, on every wishbone, every birthday cake, every x-mas, every shooting star that I would wake up in my proper body. I grew to hate birthday’s and holidays. Not because of my family but because of myself. Because I couldn’t have what I wanted. I was going to be forever denied my heart’s desire. I grew bitter on the inside. And then Everquest came out and I grew very close to a few of my guild mates. The three I thought I could trust I told. 2 of them stopped talking to me, I still don’t know if they’ve ever gotten over the betrayal. One… went so badly that I attempted to kill myself. It wasn’t going to be my last attempt either, sadly. I survived and convinced myself that I was wrong. I started to work out, I developed an interest in the Armed Forces, developed an intense desire to join the WWE and become an ideal that other men could look up to and say “That’s a real man.” Because that’s what guys did. I never really got there. I started playing roleplaying games again and I really have to thank and hate my best friend for introducing me to this. I was luckily enough to be allowed to play a female character, in my current body, with other guys. And there were other guys who played female characters with me! I wasn’t so mistaken, maybe I wasn’t that different than others.

Then I started to hate and resent my female characters, Mirlinth Loth, because she had something I would never have. She had a husband and a child, Starkdhar. I knew at that point I had a problem. I knew that if I was jealous of my fictional character that I needed to take a step back and just reevaluate my life. I’d told a few people that I was in the wrong body and I think more than anything they just humored me. Transgenders were not the main stream, we were people who were butts of jokes. But I continued on. Resigning myself that I was going to be miserable day in and day out. I’d long ago learned to hate sleep. In sleep I was my real self, not the facade I put up. Oh sure I looked happy and content but I wasn’t. I was a mental wreck. I don’t think anyone knew how much I was actually drinking to keep things together. I could polish off a bottle of Jack and look for the next bottle to keep going. I learned to play drunk well even though I was stone cold sober. I was to afraid of drinking with others, serious drinking, because I didn’t know if I could keep it together and if the dam burst would I be able to put the pieces together again, would I be able to keep my friendships.

I have always been something of a hot head, because guys had to have either anger or humor. You couldn’t cry or grieve. My dad actually was angry that I wasn’t distraught when we lost a dog when I was 15. I told him point blank to his face that Men didn’t cry. He just smirked at me. What was I supposed to say? He’d taught me by example. Verbal and emotional abuse had taught me that men had 2 emotions. Oh sure, I cried myself quietly to sleep each night, slept in only 2 or 3 hour chunks because I was afraid someone would come into my room and see me curled up in a fetal position. I was by all accounts a pathetic person.

And it kept getting worse and worse. There was a portion of myself that was always putting me down, even the stupidest little mistake would be a day of ripping myself apart. On the outside I had to be perfect, on the inside I was the biggest enemy I had. I couldn’t do anything right and I would admit that nothing I did would get better, even if I did magically get my wish to have my female body I was still a fuck up and unworthy of such a gift. These negative thoughts were always with me. I tried my best to keep upright but being that I didn’t put faith in others, I couldn’t trust others, I couldn’t lower myself down to their human standards because for years I’d been tearing myself down.

Finally I broke. It was about the time my dog Maggie died that the cracks started to really happen. There had been signs I think to everyone but those signs were all pointing to me being homosexual. I was getting to the point where I defined myself by those around me, because I was afraid to stare into the maw that was myself. And in June of 2015 that I’d had enough. I spent the entire night before crying for myself and what I had become and I hated it. Hated everything about it. I stood up, braced to give the last of fucks. I went into work and told my boss I wanted to transition. And we started the process. I found a therapist who has been incredibly helpful and on October 27th 2015 I started on Hormone Replace Therapy. One week later and I was feeling so much better. Now there wasn’t a cognitive dissonance in me. My brain and body were working in harmony and I loved it. Oh I still had bouts with depression, but as I came to fully understand them these bouts were actually just the dysphoria I had been feeling. I could put names to my demons.

I had long stopped standing to pee, I had for the majority of my life been unable to pee standing up and I would tense up and have to go into a stall and sit down, when I had to stand to pee I forced myself to pee as quickly as I could. That ended up giving me a hernia which was painful and I actually now physically have a much smaller bladder because they had to cut away a bit of it cause of all the years of pushing to pee standing up. Because I’d always felt like I didn’t belong in the men’s room and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I don’t ever really recall peeing in school to be honest, I know I must have but I can’t for the life of me remember when. Changing in the locker room with other guys was embarrassing because I had breasts, and I was pudgy but I was pudgy so I could have breasts. I hated watching movies and TV because seeing the women on screen would just remind me that I wasn’t ever going to look like that. All of these things were subtle indications of the dysphoria I had. I even jerked off multiple times a day, not because I love my penis, because I had heard the more you did that the smaller it got. Maybe it worked, I wasn’t the largest of guys and I didn’t want to be. When my two boyfriends commented on their dick size they turned to look at me and I just shrugged. Nothing about that conversation had been comfortable to me.

My entire life has been uncomfortable. But now that I’m finally myself I’m finding new problems. I have no female friends I can really hang with. The few I’ve hung out haven’t done much to make me like being with them. Either them constantly questioning my reasons, wondering why the hell I’d want to be one when it’s so much better to be a man or just flat out thinking I’m weird for wanting to be comfortable in my own skin. I tried dating twice, both times I had to force myself to even the most casual of intimate acts. Kissing, hugging or simply holding hands made my skin crawl because I wasn’t comfortable with myself and nothing I did fixed that. I used to keep people at arm’s distance because I didn’t want anyone close enough to touch me.

Now I don’t mind someone being in my space. I love wrapping myself in covers and I love the thought that someday I’ll have a significant other I can cuddle up to on the couch. I still get terrified or dysphoric about things. I’ll always be. I went to pee recently in public and fully expected someone to throw me into the street and tell me to piss there like an animal. I went into the girls room at the movie theater and was expecting to see an army of angry boyfriends and husbands who wanted to kill me for daring to be a normal human and pee. I worry about my make up choices and how well I really pass. But the thing that gives me the most moments of dysphoria is my voice. I have worked for 2 years on it and it’s ok, but when someone in a game is says something that makes me think they think I’m a guy I just can’t stop processing that and I shut down, I mute my mic and I start crying.

So how does all this influence my writing? Because without my being trans I would never have started writing. I would never have sought to express myself in a written format had my body been in alignment with my mind. Much of my life would have been changed forever had I had just an ounce of the courage I had 2 years ago to tell my parents I wanted to be a woman. My mom and brother are on speaking terms with me after I came out to them. My sister thinks I’m the lowest of the low. A coward who couldn’t even be a man. And that hurt.

Because of everyone in my family I had hoped my sister, my brave and fantastic sister, would have been happy to have a fellow sister. We would have talked and she would have forgiven me for the things I said when I was embarrassed by her taking me to hooters for my 21st birthday and making me realize how far from my wish I truly was. She would have given me makeup and hair tips and clothing tips, she has always been the one to buy me clothing and so I thought our relationship would continue. My sister has always had my respect but when we talked on the phone she threw the arguments you hear all the time. “You’re just a guy in drag, you’re never going to be a woman, think about what this does to us, what do I tell your nephew?” And I took it badly. I had a million arguments in my mind to counter her, but to hear them coming from her hurt. And I fired back in a hateful manner. I only contacted her because she was too mad to contact me.

I haven’t told my father. He’s on my linkedin profile so I’m sure he’s probably seen I’ve changed my name and posted a new profile pic but he doesn’t talk to me very often and I haven’t opened up that can of worms. One of my therapists thought I was doing this so I would be as far removed from my father as I could be. And I will admit that I was never going to have children because I didn’t want to end up like my dad. And when I learned that the HRT would make me sterile I was glad that the flint line would pass on to my brother. Let him be the one to worry about if we’re going to keep our family name going. Frankly I could care less.

But like I said it’s not all sunshine and roses. When I was getting ready to come out at work I started pushing for training for the other staff and they kept pushing back and finally when I gave them the date and schedule some of my surgeries, a bit of FFS and a boob job, that I was coming back as Janice. They fired me shortly after. They were looking for reasons to fire me and I gave them a reason by sharing information on how I used to be. It’s given me a lot of time to think and be angry and worried and relieved. See it’s hard for a trans to get a job, who wants to hire someone who is going to have multiple procedures to feel comfortable in their skin? Who is a legitimate hotbed for social issues right now? But now I’m starting a new job and I’m no longer the person I was. I am now the person I want to be, and I get to introduce myself as Janice.

Part of being a streamer was to get comfortable streaming and talking in my new voice for up to 8 hours a day. It’s hard for me to do that but I like to think I’m ok… as long as someone doesn’t just flat out call me sir. That always ruins my day. I’m still somewhat of an emotional eater so I gotta work on that, but that’s better than crying myself to sleep and potentially ruining my makeup. Eyeliner is kinda a pain to put on if I’m honest. Lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow is way easier to put on than eye liner.

I’m glad I finally decided to come out. I’m not doing this for attention or to sell books. I’m just being myself and I’ve always felt safest on the internet. If it means an uptick in my books great, I need all the money I can get for the future procedures, most of it is cosmetic and frankly that’s a huge problem since it can cost me up to 100 grand to do everything.

Film Review - Ghost In The Shell (Live Action) - A Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:45:03 GMT

Very rarely do I feel the need to clarify if a movie is Live Action or not, in this case I really do have to make the disclaimer that this mostly spoilers free review of Ghost in the Shell is for the Live Action Movie. So let’s get into it. Cause oh boy do I wanna! And it’s not the fan girl in me. Oh no, no no no no. It’s my um… yeah… it’s cause I’m a Shirow Masamune fan girl.

So if someone asked me what my top 5 anime movies would be it’d

Armitage the III Poly-Matrix

Dirty Pair: Project Eden

Akira

Ghost int he Shell

Robot Carnival

And if someone asked me what my top 5 anime series would be it’d be kind of similar because it’d be

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Ranma ½

Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Yu Yu Hakusho

Berserk

See I’ve got a lot of respect for the Ghost in the Shell series because in both cases it’s in my top five. So naturally I was going to go watch this movie. I could honestly care less about Scar Jo, she’s not a bad actor but I couldn’t really say who should have played the Major. And I did my best to avoid every preview that came out for this because I didn’t want to spoil it. Yes I’m a fan girl. I love Masamune if I’d have gone down further to top 10 Appleseed and Dominion Tank Police would have been in those lists. So my love for Masamune is almost as much as Miyazaki.

So the first thing I’ll say, spoiler free. Is it really seemed like this movie was like “American’s are too dumb to understand the complex existential crisis we’re going for.” See in the original movie the word Ghost gets used once maybe twice. It’s fucking dropped in the first 10 minutes of this movie. And it’s the most hokey line delivered. “You have a ghost…” Jesus, awright. Not gonna go for subtly in this I see. And that kinda set the pace for the entire movie. I did my best to divorce myself from GiTS and GiTS:SC but for me it’s impossible. See I wanted to be Major Kusanagi. Not because she’s gorgeous, but because she had her brain lifted from her body and put into another one. I have literally been dreaming of that since I saw this movie because it always felt like it’d solve my dilemma of being in the wrong body. So yes, to me it’s hard to divorce the source material. There’s a lot of theories floating around about the major’s gender and her sexuality. I always got the impression, from reading the books, she’s a girl. She mentions her period and things like that. And I’m sure Masamune would weigh in if we asked him, but a part of me doesn’t want to. So anyway this movie while named Ghost in the Shell and lifting pretty heavily from the first animated movie just isn’t really a GiTS Movie. Not saying it’s a bad movie. It’s visually very good and I honestly believe it caught the feel of what our future is going to look with augmented reality. I see this movie and I think it’s a great shadowrun movie. I’d put it right up there with Blade Runner for defining… oh wait… the anime did that already. See it’s one of the quintessential Cyberpunk animes and it helped to define the genre.

See there’s several key things that they kinda left out of Ghost in the Shell. Which, sadly, they have to cut out for the popcorn and soda crowd. Ghost in the Shell was originally asking us where the boundary between man and machine was and where do we make that distinction. The original cast are all cyborgs but Togusa and Aramaki. So you only really have 2 humans on cast. Nothing that Batou or Major do could be considered human. And there in lies the problem for these characters. Because they can do more than a human, are tougher and have a physical disconnect from their bodies it leaves them questioning their humanity. And it gets heavy int he anime. That major is pretty much a moody bitch in that movie. I much prefer the major in the comics and GiTS:SC but for the type of story it was trying to tell it makes sense and I accepted this. This movie didn’t have any of that elegance and it wanted to so desperately tell the same story while not telling the same story and that made it get lost in it’s own message.

I’d also like to address the “white washing” and boy… is it a serious white washing. Without giving away any spoilers. This is the case of a very clear case of White Washing. I made a post on my facebook feed about how I felt about white washing in anime. See a few years ago they got all up in arms about Leo wanting to do Tetsuo or Kaneda in the Akira Live Action. Well for me Kaneda is a Japanese dude with a Brooklyn accent cause that’s what the first dubs were. I was a bit miffed at the choice and so was the Internet and it got butt hurt and it was pulled. In this case the cast of Ghost in the Shell, despite their Japanese names, really didn’t look Asian to me. They were designed to be the types of characters who can slip into. And really that’s the way a lot of characters should be made. Unless clearly told that they are xyz race they should be interchangeable with any nationality. Now Rurouni Kenshin being clearly a Japanese samurai I’d be miffed if Tom Cruise played him. Some guy wants to play Yusake from Yu Yu Hakisho and I shrug cause he’s a little punk and really anyone could play that role. So in this case the part of Major being played by Scar Jo didn’t bother me. And I liked the choice they had for Bato, even if I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Togusa and Aramaki were both Japanese actors, or at least actors of Asian descent, and that made sense.

So as far as movies go, it’s not bad. I was, mostly entertained, by it. Not sure it was worth almost 30 dollars but I was seeing it for 2 primary reasons. To send a message to Masamune that I as a fan was supporting him and that 1 as a futurist am supporting the future of our cybernetic overlords.

Incorrigibly Yours,

J. E. Flint

Film Review - Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 - A Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:41:47 GMT

So it’s been a few days since I saw this movie, naturally because I’m a Marvel Fan Girl I saw this opening weekend. I waited until Sunday and there was still an almost packed theater in a part of town that’s well out of the way for a lot of people. So it’s done well for itself. Like most of my reviews I will try and stay spoiler free.

So I was not able to stay preview free this time around because everyone insisted on showing me the Groot stuff and I liked Groot in the first movie. I cried when Groot sacrificed himself for the team and laughed when he started to dance. But for me Rocket was the one with all the great lines in that first movie. Drax was ok, and trust me I like Bastista from WWE and honestly when you watch this movie you get a very Revenge of the Jedi feel. Baby Groot is supposed to be an Ewok. He is made to be cute and cuddly and sell toys to kids. Kids are meant to like him and he’s a lovable little character but I actually grew tired of him. The other thing I got tired off, and again the audience was aimed directly at children. Towards the end of the movie with Rocket and the ravageners I was like Jesus can we get this over with?

The other parts were good in my opinion Kurt Russell stole this movie. And not to give spoilers but as Ego the Living Planet I was honestly ecstatic because I was not expecting the living planet. I’ve always loved Ego. I loved in the exiles when he showed up and tried to convert the earth into another living planet. I don’t know why but a lot of the cosmic villains don’t get the due they deserve. Honestly the cosmic side of Marvel gets no real attention because what exactly do you do with those folks. That’s why they rebooted Guardians with the most current cast. And if baby Groot annoyed me Celestial Mantis made me want to hurt her. In the comics she’s a wise celestial diva but in this she was basically a naive child and that was annoying… but what really really annoyed me? Her eyes. It was like getting a look at one of those almost realistic robots and just getting the shudders.

The incluse of Sly as Dark Hawk or Star Hawk or ever was ok, and unless you really knew the comics you’d not know who he was or the after scene with him and a few of the ravangers. We got to see a lot of character development for our secondary characters, Drax and Rocket, but nothing really nothing new from Gamora or Starlord. They remained essentially the same which does not bode well for a third movie. Oh sure there was a bit of development between Gamora and her sister but on the whole you could have cut it out and it wouldn’t have done much for Gamora. It was more intricate again for a supporting cast member. Rocket I feel got the most deserved screen time. Sure he’s a dirty and angry furry but he had a bit of growth as a character that really none of the others got. Drax we got to see a bit of his thought process but really it doesn’t add a whole lot to the character and could have been cut safely if it wasn’t for the stuff with mantis.

And the music this time didn’t feel like it connected as well as the first time. A number of the last movies songs got stuck in my head, this time it wasn’t as catchy. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the songs but none of them were any that I had to download. I am however sorely tempted to download the disco guardians song they played in the credits. It just didn’t feel like it matched the tone of the movie like the first one did.

So all said and done it sounds like I’m giving a lot of negatives about the movie but those are the only things I could find that were wrong with it. Sure it was a bit goofier… a lot goofier than I would have liked but it didn’t annoy me that much. The music wasn’t as memorable but the characters that weren’t getting expanded were stable and that’s good. One of my biggest complaints of Tony Stark is in the Avengers you don’t get to see his thought process and he comes off like a spaz. More so in Winter Solider. You don’t get that with Starlord or Gamora or Drax or Rocket. You get that they’re put together pretty well. So that is a refreshing change, but that’s probably because of the dynamic of the group being started off as a group movie instead of trying to merge everyone into a movie where everyone was a main character like you get with the earth heroes.

All said and done I enjoyed the movie, I probably won’t see it multiple times in theaters like I did the first but all said and done they’re equally good movies and I’d give it a 3 out of 5 which if I recall is the same as the first one. So it kept it’s course and I think you’ll be happy with spending the money to see it. I’m certainly looking forward to having it in my DVD Collection.

Incorrigibly Yours,

J.E. Flint

An Incorrigible Update - Mental Disorders - A Reblog from Tumblr

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 13:39:40 GMT

This has been another post long in coming and even now I’m not sure if I should really talk about this. They say that it’s a pretty small percentage of the population that have mental disorders, for our purposes of this blog post it would be any aspect of a mental behavior or abnormality that is outside the norm of human expression. But based on a few articles I’ve read it’s more common than you’d expect it to be. And I’m one of the millions of individuals with my own slew of mental problems.

I’m not an expert on this. I can only speak as someone who has for years been emotionally, physically and verbally abused by others and myself. I’ve noticed ever since my transition from Male to Female that I’ve had problems cropping up that I thought long ago conquered. Such as my ailurophobia, long since been mostly in check it has come back with a vengeance. At it’s worst in high school I wouldn’t venture from my house or go far without someone nearby to buffer me from potentially seeing my phobia. Effectively turning a fear of a house pet known for roaming wild in neighborhoods into agoraphobia. When I was a guy I could just shove it deep down until I was in a safe place to just let it all out. It made it seem like I was a functioning adult, I never really was. Now that my old coping mechanisms are gone the world is scary and new. I’ve always been the type of individual to, as a guy, be easy to approach and talk to people because that’s what guys did. But now I can be myself and I’m terrified of meeting people and having a conversation with them.

I’ve spent so much of my life being abused one way or another that now that I surrendered the angry persona of a guy I just sometimes don’t know what to do. Sometimes it gets to the point where the only logical thing I can think of is killing myself. The number is far far far less than it used to be as a guy. As a man I thought about killing myself on a near constant basis. Now it’s only after I’m stuck in a negative thought cycle. Yesterday was one of those days. I went to bed the night before feeling kinda meh. Not horrible just not good. But at that point I got up at 4am from some night terror or something, I hardly ever know why I wake up with a beating heart and sweaty palms anymore, just that I do and it’s terrible. And stupid conversations like what are you wearing to work today Jan turn into slobberknockers of just emotional vile. One wrong/poorly worded sentence and my subconscious wakes up like a terrified giant and begins clubbing me down. And then every single terrible thing I’ve ever done, every bad thought, every misspoken word, every shout at me, every angry glare, every mistake it just… piles around me. And it gets to the point where I feel like I’m at the bottom of some deep pit screaming for it all to stop. I can barely keep myself from crying on those days. I can barely even think straight. And I guess my body demands that I try and break that cycle and so it spikes me in the head so badly I do lose vision in one eye. Just a sheer blinding white light that obscures everything.

And that was the place I found myself yesterday. With thoughts of “You’ll never pass” “Your voice is terrible” “You don’t know what you’re doing” “You killed your only friend” “You’re worthless” Over and over and over, just building up until there is nothing but these terrible and horrible thoughts in my head. As a guy there would be no outward sign I was having problems. I wasn’t supposed to show those kind of emotions. I was supposed to be the person others relied on, leaned on, called upon. I couldn’t have problems. And so I buried them until I was safely home where I could start drinking. Where I could be safe to be my miserable self. Day in and day out that was my life. Years of being told I wasn’t good enough became my mantra until I just didn’t trust myself. Developed a fear of success and would defeat myself from promotions or raises just because I didn’t want to be noticed. I perfected hiding in the crowd. My grades slipping until I was just a C+ student. Middle of the road.

I only have a few very close friends. I’ve only ever had a very small number of people I considered friends. I would call everyone a friend to make sure no one got mad at me. I tried to explain it to my mother once and she said that calling everyone a friend when they weren’t was silly and I should just call them what they were. So I stopped trying to explain stuff like that to her. Never once opened up to my father since he was the man of the house and he didn’t talk about his problems, he risked death to keep us from knowing how badly he’d injured himself working out. So that was my male role model. My female role models were either super bitchy or passive to the point of being a wall flower. But again that’s a product of the house I was brought up in. Did you know letting your child get a super painful sunburn, ie to the point where you can’t sleep and it hurts to move, is considered physical abuse? I didn’t know that until recently and that was frequently how I was exposed to the sun. For such long hours that I would burn. And there will be a few of you who say well use sunscreen. To be honest I didn’t learn about sunscreen until I was a teenager. My father didn’t use it, my mother didn’t go outside and my brother has my dads ability to tan instantly. So it wasn’t until my sister started to tan that I knew how and when to use sunscreen. By the time I was 16 and we’d gone on our last family vacation I knew how to use it and got only a little bit of a burn and that was on the tops of my feet.

My relationship with my father didn’t improve until I could drink with him. At that point I was one of the guys. So how would you express to your father that you want to be 1) A girl, 2) That you like guys, because you’re a girl, 3) You have a phobia that effects your ability to go outside 4) You’re afraid of making others angry at you

See, I have tried to make friends multiple times and when something happens, anything happens, I start thinking it’s me. And so I push hard to try and fix it. But it’s not my problem, most times, and my trying to fix it only makes it worse and now it is MY problem. Or I try and start friendships and things start looking up and then they just… stop talking to me or they basically say they’re doing it to be nice or something else that basically says I’m not worth their time. I tried that in a play by post RPG game. I was feeling good, jovial and hopeful. So I reached out to a bunch of people to start a conversation on how we could interact in a game we were in and I wasn’t just shot down. I was body slammed into a table and then lit on fire. So naturally it reminded me that reaching out to people didn’t go well. And trying to share things? Forget it. I’d rather run and hide then admit I’m the problem… and even discussing something like this, writing this, is making me feel as if I’m a huge burden on everyone and that I should be ignored. And when I reveal this to someone and they laugh or mock me about my problems? It just solidifies everything that I’ve been taught about sharing. I shared information at my last job and they fired it for me. I revealed my phobia to a guy and he mocked me for it.

So I don’t know how it feels for others but I know the crushing fear of anxiety where all I want to do is curl up in my snuggly warm comforters and just cry myself back to sleep. I know the fear of trying to cross any open space by yourself, I frequently wear sunglasses to hide the fact I’m not actually walking through open spaces with my eyes open, I know the feeling that nothing you ever do with ever be good enough. I know that at the end of the day I’m in a better place than I ever was. And I take a lot of medications to make it through the day. A lot if I’m going to be truthfully honest. But I’m getting the help, with friends and therapists, to combat many of my problems.

So for those times I say I’m ok, or the times I’m not, or I just don’t have the energy to be social. Just realize there are so many other folks out there like me that have problems and concerns and they fear talking about this with their loved ones. For those people give them the support they need. Don’t try to trivialize their suffering. None of this is fun in the slightest and there are many days I wish I didn’t feel broken, I’m told I’m not just bruised, but I know someday in the future I’ll be able to walk through a park by myself and not freak out. That I can go into a pet store and play with all the animals or go to a zoo. That I’ll be able to approach people again and not have a heart attack or that I can stand up in front of a group of coworkers and give a presentation.

So for those of us out there, please just be patient with us. We’re trying to get better and we’d appreciate it if you just provided us with the support we need.

On a final point on many of my personal play lists I have Mr. Mister’s Broken Wings on them. This song to me has always been about supporting others and making them whole again.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go see a man about a radioactive spider bite…

Incorrigibly yours,

Janice

Why I'm a Bad Person

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 16:15:24 GMT

Why I'm a Bad Person

So, as I posted on my personal/private Facebook page last night, this will be a rant. And I'd like to apologize for how bad I am at blogging. I usually only blog if I have something to talk about, sure, I could prattle on uselessly, but no one pays me for that. I am working on stuff, mostly The Chronicles of Loth stuff, but I'm storyboarding some other things with my friend Bunnyshade.

Anyway, onto the rant.

I've been watching The Orville by Seth McFarlen, and it's been enjoyable. Of course, I get annoyed at some aspects of the television show. Still, it wasn't until the birthday episode with Kelly and Bortus's birthday that I got annoyed at the show. Spoiler warnings, in case you haven't seen this episode in season two. I'm usually far behind on my pop culture and TV watching, yet somehow I stay more or less spoiler free on most things and try to make things spoiler-free for those who haven't seen it yet. This will not be one of those times.

In the show, Orville gets a message of "Is anyone out there?" a general message looking to make first contact, and the crew is happy and excited about it. It makes sense, as the pilot puts it, "they're explorers, and that's what they signed up for." Everyone on board is happy and excited because they get to meet up with a society that is taking its first steps toward galactic contact. They show up, talk to the government, and see a few things that make folks arch an eyebrow, but it doesn't ultimately make them pause or stop their communications. That is until the state dinner when Kelly mentions that she and Bortus have a birthday, which is an excellent gift for Kelly—conceded opinion much? But that's beside the point. The planetary government takes this news badly and effectively imprisons everyone in the landing party. Bortus and Kelly are thrown into a concentration camp, and the rest of the landing party is checked to ensure no more birthdays are upcoming and told to leave. Captain Mercer reports to his superiors that his first and second officers have been captured/kidnapped, and the Union is basically "Tough Titties, you can't interfere. And to get your butts back on active duty." Spoilers, the captain doesn't do that and thinks of a peaceful way to get his crew back. Showing that they're bigger people than I would be. And that's where I have a problem with this. They're supposedly a more advanced race of people who can look past little grievances to take the high road.

As mentioned several times in Star Trek and The Orville, they're not allowed to influence and interact with technologically inferior races. And this is brought up in the Orville show that their technology is hundreds of years more advanced than this planet. And another thing that's brought up is that generally, with the mind-bogglingly vastness of space, there aren't any closer vessels. Now, I like to think I'm a calm and rational person capable of seeing the bigger picture and treating others how I want to be treated. This SOB captured two of my crew, it could be a fucking janitor, and a mess hall attendant doesn't matter. They're under my protection as they're my crew. If I run it up the chain of command and I'm informed that no one is close enough to lend aid and I'm not supposed to touch it, I will look my boss right in the face and tell them to fuck off with that noise.

Let's step back here for a second and look at it from the planetary government's point of view. I've captured two aliens from a vastly superior, galactic-spanning civilization who have traveled I don't know how far, who have I don't know how many ships, with ships that could literally carpet bomb me into the stone age. And you're concerned that two of them are astrologically bad? No. You don't punch above your weight class unless you're damn sure you can bloody that heavy weight's nose and crawl away from it.

And you're telling me a civilization with shield technology is waltzing around without miniaturized shields? This show has already shown they can regrow an entire limb, nerves, and everything on a human. You're telling me they can't have a small watch with a neural transmitter that can activate a shield for such occasions? You're telling me, as the captain of this away team, you didn't look at the president of this inferior race and not immediately give them the galactic equivalent of a bloody nose? Captain Mercer stated to this ruler that less friendly alien societies could have shown up for the first contact. We've seen the aliens plan to drop a planet-wiping bomb on a colony world, so we know that tech is out there.

I wouldn't have hesitated to flip open my communicator and casually order a laser strike just outside of the presidential palace. If I were feeling really generous, I'd have targeted an unoccupied middle-of-nowhere land mass. But in this case, I side with Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarken in that fear should keep them in line. I talked with a good buddy about the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek tech. Star Wars tech is woefully underpowered compared to Star Trek technology. And yet, in the Thrawn books by Timothy Zahn, we've seen that an Imperial Star Destroy's turbo lasers were exact enough to follow a Tie Fighter zipping near the planet's surface, carving out swaths of land. So if a Star Destroy can do that, and keep in mind a turbolaser from Star Wars can't even at their best pierce the shielding of a runabout from the Star Trek universe, what in the hell makes me think that The Orville can't accurately disintegrate a tree from outer space to make the populace understand that their bargaining posture isn't even dubious? It's laughable.

In Star Trek and The Orville, both The Federation and The Union have taken the stance that they can let lesser, and I do mean this very literally, lifeforms dictate how they get to treat my crew. So they have taken a posture that says we'll take whatever you throw at us and not interfere because it's not our society. But that's a bullshit stance. They should look at this as a parent who needs to teach a child a lesson. Generally, if a child sticks their finger in an open light socket or on a hot stove, they learn not to do it again. So this is the same attitude that both organizations should have. You don't have to be malicious and slaughter people to make a point. But you don't have to fucking roll over and let them decide to tell you their policy.

I would never make it in The Federation or The Orville. Because I would have put that entire solar system into a quartine and placed buoys around it warning people not to go near and that if they ever got to the point where they could fly out of their solar system, they'd have to contend with their ships being instantly obliterated by the same buoys. I would have landed my security forces down on that planet, forcibly extracted my crew, and taken any of the folks who had been imprisoned with me. Would I have accidentally freed some dangerous criminals? Maybe. But I would have taught this society not to pick a fight with a literal sleeping giant. And to ensure my crew was with me, I would have played The Boss's message saying we're not to interfere to the entire staff. Finally, I would have given any of my crew who didn't feel like we should do this a chance to voice their opinions, have it noted and let them know they'll be transferred off the ship at their earliest and safest convenience. And now that I would no longer be a Union/Federation captain, I would have taken my ship to a society that's intelligent enough to know when enough is enough and respond.

Star Wars gets a lot of flack because The Empire is a fascist and evil organization. It's true. They're not the good guys. But they at least understood when enough was enough. Palpatine didn't have a problem grinding people under his boot heel when needed. But it's dangerous and naive of the Federation/Union to think they can always bargain from a place of absolute right/clarity. To think that everyone will be the bigger person is dangerous. To even believe that other societies will behave like them is just idiotic. They don't have to assume they're Hitler, but they can at least exercise caution. I like to treat people how I want to be treated, but you can't shit in my mouth and expect me to thank you for that. I shook your hands, and you punched me in the nose without provocation. You should know that all future dealings at that point aren't mutually friendly. They are now transactional, and as such, we can still be pleasant to one another but I will not trust you going forward. Our relationship now has me looking into what you're saying and doing for hidden meanings.

Sometimes, you really only learn with an object lesson. And that's why I can't be a Federation/Union captain. I'm not inclined to let someone walk over my people and me.

incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

On Fandoms

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:37:44 GMT

On Fandoms

I've always found it very odd how various fans interact with the content of their choice. You see memes about how Star Wars fans hate Star Wars fans, and that's oddly true. I don't see the same general bickering and one-upmanship that you see in Lord of the Rings or Star Trek. When I grew up in the 80s, we didn't have access to the internet, so the only people you could argue about whether Han shooting first was good or bad. But in the days of the internet, there are millions of assholes who want to shout out their opinion on why some Rodian should have shot Han first and have said smuggler shift their head just enough not to be killed.

I've been a fan of sci-fi in general for several years, and when I had a conversation with a self-proclaimed star wars nerd at work, I told him I'm a casual. Which he thought was funny because I mentioned one of my favorite characters in the series is Thrawn. He explained that you couldn't be a causal if you enjoy a book's character. But, of course, this was before I realized that Thrawn had been upgraded from literary goodness to being in Rebels. I was looking for new books to listen to, and I was without the Expanse at the time. So I thought he'd be able to give some suggestions on books in the Star Wars expanded universe.

The idea that I'm not a casual, even though I consume a lot of information from places like Geetsly and Eckhart's ladder , seems weird. I'm not the type of fan to rally against one specific actor. I have met Jake Llyod after the entire phantom menace debacle. I never thought he was particularly good or bad. He was just a child actor in a series I liked. He was no better or worse than the others on screen. Sure, I had critiques about how the tech seemed shiny and new in the prequels while the rest of the 70s look of the original trilogy looked dated. I had complaints about how whiny in general Hayden was in the second one, but it didn't stop me from watching other movies he was in. Again, it was his role, and he was doing his job.

I think this is the crux of the situation. The fans can't comprehend that someone is just doing their role. Like Game of Throne, fans hated Joffery, but in an interview, the actor was like, "That was my role. I had to be hated," and he went about his business. With the advent of the internet, everyone, good or ill, get's their voice thrown into the world where people can hear it. I had a fan attacking us on The Chronicles of Loth for how I killed dragons off. He couldn't accept that I had no use for living dragons in my world, and I didn't understand how fantasy worked by killing them off.

He didn't get the part where it fucked up the world for many years by killing dragons. What with plagues, famine, and general misery. His voice was valid in his own way. But he had no idea what my overall story was on or about. Yet, he felt entitled to shout it out to me. I've had other fans who have had long conversations with me and given me their theories. I had one who did dramatic readings of the comic, I guess as some sort of meta critique on how bad it was or something, but I had a fucking blast listening to it. I gave my permission and went about my days.

I might be one of the few creators who can look at my work and laugh at how stupid it was. I feel like if someone were protesting my books, I'd join in to see how that turned out. Kevin Smith did that with his movie Dogma and said he had come over-prepared for that. I feel I'd be the same. I'd be there like, "So and So is just a veiled attempt at putting the author in the book!" And have the other protestors stare at me like da hell?

So, can we agree that we all have things to hate about a particular intellectual property but try to understand where the creators are coming from?

incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

Managing Expectations

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:03:27 GMT

Managing Expectations

So, this was originally going to be a post about the lackluster quality of movies that had come out at the end of 2021 but after the last couple of days where I created a website and then accidentally deleted the entire thing the blog post has changed.

Like I've said in the past, I'm not a blogger. But I do like to think that I'm very capable of doing almost anything I set my mind to. And creating a webpage from complete scratch wasn't that hard it just proved that either in my hurry or in my arrogance, I'm going with both in this case, I created too many contracts and kept shifting the goal post on myself.

So when I finally finished my website and it looked pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself, to find out that it was on a contract that had been discontinued was annoying, to say the least. And I couldn't blame anyone for that mistake but myself. It still stings that I did all that work and then just as easily got rid of it.

I've often joked after watching my father destroy more than he fixed in our old Hoosier Homestead that I would get professionals to do things I can't. Things such as plumbing, HVAC, and in this case website development. I had one professional several years ago create my first IncorrigibleAuthor.com website but they ghosted me halfway through the process and so when I lost the first .com I decided next time I'd just do it myself.

And Squarespace made that easy enough to do, however, I was not a fan of the cost. So after a year, I decided to try a new place. And well, long story short. I've hired the web host company to create this new website 'cause I took this week off to work on my webpage, a one-day job I assumed, and then the rest to work on writing something.

I have plenty of stuff to write but I sort of lost my motivation after yesterday. And even sushi for lunch was not enough to cheer me up. So I bit the bullet and hired a professional, loaded up their website with all the art I've had commissioned and what I could salvage from the site-building. I was doing some of it in NotePad++ and so I have like 3 of those pages.

Now, I could rebuild it from the ground up. But it'll look meh at best. I like to think if I'm pay for this it's going to look far better than what I could have done. And they say, if you lie enough you start to believe it. Right?

Incorrigibly yours,

J. E. Flint

On Story Telling

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:00:55 GMT

On Story Telling

It feels weird for me to post on this because I only have 3 published works to date. But I write constantly and analyze published and digital media. Lately, in the DragonQuest Builders 2 subreddit, I’ve been exposing my views on this game’s story. I’m a massive fan of Dragon Quest in pretty much all its forms, so I was eventually going to play through this.

It’s not a huge secret several of us find that the Moonbrooke Chapter of the game as the worst portion because of how you are railroaded into what happens. Now, I admit. Writing is hard; like I said, I’ve only got 3 published works, and 2 of them are smutty. But even I know you shouldn’t railroad your player when you have better options.

So, the story is this. You’re building up an island of colorful characters, and the evil organization hates this and wants to wreck your island. They worship destruction for destruction’s sake. So, at one point, you and your best buddy, who has been traveling with you from almost literally the start of the game, get captured, escape, and then return to your island. You determine you need soldiers, for whatever reason, since by this point, you’ve escaped from monster jail and beaten 2 of the big baddies of the ultimate villain without these guys, and then go to this war-torn frozen hell that is Moonbrooke.

Now what should be mentioned at this point is that your character is the only one who can build. So it’s sort of a significant point in the story that your character can build walls, rooms, armor, traps, and what have you. So when you arrive at Moonbrooke, you are greeted by some people, one of which is the King. You set about helping them to win the war against the folks who were attacking your island. Now, your buddy loves to brawl and fight. He’s basically a barbarian or an orc. Good guy, but you don’t wanna get on the wrong end of his club. Your buddy also can’t create, it’s crucial for the story that he can’t, and he’s jealous of his friend. His zealous ways of fighting frighten the Moonbrooke soldiers and causes them to mistrust them.

As the story progresses, there is talk about a traitor in their midsts messing up the fortification and stuff. For reasons, your buddy is one of those that will be tested first. You don’t test yourself, which I think would be fair since you are testing your good buddy, and the purpose of this is to give the soldiers some peace of mind that he’s not a bad guy. Your buddy was with you when you got this magic item that will reveal proper forms; nothing reflects back in the mirror when you hold it up to him. So weird but not necessarily a sign he’s a traitor. But your buddy doesn’t like it, and frankly, I’d feel the same way. So you use the magic item on the general populace, kill the spies and then get going. Only, that’s not all. They want you to create a jail for a traitor that’s still not uncovered. Ok. Sure, you can do that. You’re a builder, and building a prison is as easy as a wall. So you get to it, make the dungeon, and then boom, they throw your buddy into the jail.

Full stop. You’ve thrown my buddy, who has been with me, through jail, through a fight with a giant monkey and a creature that can turn people into stone. You washed up on a beach after a shipwreck, and this guy was right there willing to travel with you and has been with you through a lot of misadventures. So this is how the story is written, that you throw your buddy in jail. And in the story, they don’t let you talk to him until you need him to face a giant. So now it looks like your buddy has been abounded by their friend.

This pissed me off enough that I almost put the game down. I went down and was turned away, talked to the King, and was told it was only temporary. But for some reason, you, the builder, don’t come to a screeching stop. Instead, go to sit down by your buddy and wait for them to pull their heads out of their asses. See, the story needs you to imprison your buddy Malaroth, so he’ll grow angry and lash out at things. He will feel betrayed and want to burn all his bridges in a fit of rage.

Do you know what’s better? Letting Malaroth burn the world down by his own accord. See, this is a chaotic battle, and we’ve already established that the enemy can shapeshift into ordinary people. Furthermore, we know later that Mal is being tortured in his mind and has to attack his buddies. So why not have that happen in Moonbrooke?

Let your good friend get captured by the enemy. In a battle, have it scripted that you get knocked out, and the soldiers choose to grab you and not Mal. They know Mal’s fearsome reputation and lust for battle, so they think he’ll hold out just a bit longer why the more fragile builder, the one who can build weapons to win the war, is hauled back to the med tent. In the meantime, Mal is swarmed and captured. The soldiers rush back to help Mal, but the army has retreated and taken with them the guy who inspires fear in both friend and foe. So, they decide to wait for the builder to recover. While the builder is healing, you now have Mal in a situation where you can start working on his mind.

Mal is captured, and then you start sending in monsters that are pretending to be his friends. Talking about how much they dislike him, trying to attack him. Make it evident that it’s people trying to break his mind. And while this is happening, the builder is desperately trying to build a plan to save their buddy. So by the time that Mal is freed by the actual builder, he will attack his allies. When he realizes that they’re real, he’ll be distraught, earlier we’ve seen he feels terrible for getting some troops who followed him killed. But, and here’s the critical part, the builder will forgive him. Your character is pretty good, and Mal will feel even more conflicted because he knows he wouldn’t forgive as quickly as his friend would. Now, you can have the real traitor rear his ugly head and strike out at Mal. Again, causing Mal to question who and what he knows. See, he’s being told by a voice in his head that he’s the master of destruction and that everything is an illusion.

Now, you don’t have to have Mal thrown in jail, and you’re working on the mental aspect that everything he sees is an illusion. From the builder’s point of view, you’re working towards ending this war and getting your buddy back. When Mal gets back to your island home, he’ll go off to contemplate what’s going on in his life. If the story has been written correctly, he’ll conclude that everything is just a dream, and he’s the only real thing. This causes him to turn into his ultimate form and start destroying the realm, which shows that he was right. It is an illusion to him. Until he sees his friend. He strikes his friend, and they’re ok. Hurt, but ok. And the builder gets up, with a look of determination in their eye, and says, “Remember when you said that if you went kooky, you wanted me to wallop you? Yeah, it’s that time.” And now you hit your buddy deep in the feels. Causing a split between his evil side and his good side. Builder and Good Mal fight against the evil side, showing that Mal can choose his reality.

And now that Mal has vanquished his demons, he can now, with the builder, construct his own world. Which is what happens in the game. The only thing you’ve done is remove your character seeming weak and unable to make a decision or pushed around. You’ve now given Mal his tremendous character growth of an arc. You’ve shown that he’s someone who will do the right thing, that he’ll stumble but that he can grow.

When I’ve outlined this on the subreddit, I’ve gotten several people asking me why this wasn’t the plot for the DQ Builders 2 game. And I have to say, cause I don’t work for Square/Enix. I’ve wanted to work with them since Final Fantasy 8’s horrible glaring “We forgot cause we used Espers.” You can’t have a plot-specific theme like that and not have it popping up through gameplay. If using this ability and later revealing it’s wiped the memories of their childhood, you have to show that happening subtly. Like Squall forgets names, forgets locations, little things. You can play it off as it is the character is forgetful. But then, as you go on, you start finding others who have forgotten little things, and you start wondering why. And then you reveal that the Espers eat your memories or whatever so you can have the big reveal that everyone knew each other since they were little squirts and forgot.

But this is an example of a logical conclusion. You ask yourself, you have this twist, how is that going to impact your story? You want to make XYZ angry so that he becomes evil. Why does he have to be mad and angry at his friends for supposed betrayal when it’s literally shown you’ll come back to rescue him. Why not have him mad at himself? Sickened with the things he did to people who thought they were friends but weren’t. Angry that the friends, because of the traitor, actually attacked him. Angry because he’s hurt his best friend? Is that not a better arc? To see this guy go from a happy-go-lucky berserk type character to one who questions everything he sees and feels.

In Final Fantasy 7, Sephiroth goes mad when he realizes that he’s probably a clone and that everything he knew was a lie. Why not have this happen with Mal? Is it because it’s following the second dragon quest video game? Why should that matter? We’ve already seen this as an alternate path. The path where Mal wasn’t killed by the heroes and retreated to create a world to heal up and come back to kill the heroes. You splitting evil from good doesn’t impact the outcome of the original game. DQ2 will still have the villains die, and they will continue on. When Mal splits from his evil side, he realizes he doesn’t need to keep all the darkness he had. He doesn’t have to be the lord of destruction anymore. He can be whatever he wants to be with his buddy and makes a world to reflect that.

Or is it more likely that the writer was not aware of how badly this would be taken? I think it’s the latter. The writer made the story, the editor or whomever just gave it a thumbs up, and the game was pushed into production. Now, my inclusion in the script would have probably dragged the game out another few hours, but isn’t that a good thing for a game developer? It means you’re getting the people vested in the game for longer. And based on the amount of hate seen on the DQBuilders 2 subreddit, it’s perhaps the weakest portion of the game. The part where everyone rushes through to get it done with, to put up with the soldiers and the spineless King who betrayed your friend and ultimately for exposing how shiftless and gutless the main character is. Because there is no option to be like, “I’m taking my friend and going home.” There is no logical conclusion here for how a regular character would have progressed.

If we had a morality system, we could forgive the builder for this, but always in the game, you are building and helping people. So it makes no sense that once your character realizes what that jail is being used for, they don’t stop and refuse to help further.

Just my two cents that the story wasn’t as well thought out and didn’t take logical conclusion to the paths that the story would expose as it’s played through. So, now given this lengthy explanation, you can see where I feel about how stories should naturally work to build and be logical.

Visualization of Dreams

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 14:54:41 GMT

Visualization of Dreams

I doubt I'll ever be a good blogger. I never know what to talk about on these things. And I feel hypocritical telling people my process, my thoughts, my practices. I'm a nobody in the literary world. Sure I have a few fans who ask me what's up and what I'm working on, but not one person I'm aware of is waiting with bated breath for my next piece of fiction. But that's what happens when you're the new kid on the block. You have to struggle to make a name for yourself. To prove to the masses you're someone you want to be listened to.

Will I ever be a mainstream author? Maybe, but I rather doubt it. I'm just a little too bizarre to be considered mainstream. But when it comes to indie stuff, I'm probably pretty tame. Oh, sure, I have some fun ideas, but I know when to compromise on the story. Like my story 'DigitalAcquisitionss,' for instance, I would want to half write, half make a comic book. But we're talking almost fifty pages of comic book art. Which entails inkers, pencilers, letterers, editors, and the whole nine yard. Instead of just writing a book, I'm working on a digital media project that would have a select audience. How many people will want to read a few chapters in a book then go to a comic book in that same book?

The formatting would be a hassle as well. No, something like that is much better as a film. While I'm not a huge fan of Inception, this is a movie that took place in their real world and a digital construct. Meaning it's easier to do. I learned my lesson after watching the Dune Documentary. If you've not seen it, I highly recommend watching it. It's a fascinating look at what we could have had. But it highlighted, to me, how sometimes you must compromise on your dreams to make the story as a whole. Now, the differences between my idea and the idea proposed in this movie aren't nearly so grand. I'm not looking to contact famous actors, artists, and musicians for a specific dream. Sure, I have visions of having individual voices for my characters, of absolute music control. Who doesn't?

But, having a vision and following it when it comes to mainstream success is vastly different. You have the Kubricks out there who have the chops for money to take a risk on. When we hear about a new director whose first film was an indie flick or a movie that only netted a tiny amount of money, everyone wonders if they can cut it. It's the same for writers. We, newbie writers, are often considered a risk. Would you rather have me? Or Stephen King? Most studios or publishers want the sure bet. But luckily, the process of self-publishing gets your name out there easier. You might never get mainstream success like the two guys who wrote The Expansion; you may never get an agent.

But then, why are you in this business? To entertain? To make money? Authors, unless you're big names, don't earn tons of money. In fact, for my three novels, I'm still officially in the red on them. Probably will be for a long time because I give away more than I sell. Marketing is another topic for another day, but you best believe it ties into your dreams of success.

So, like I said. I feel hypocritical as a nobody giving any advice. But here's where I do it. Work your butt off, but make sure to have fun in the process, aim for the stars but be realistic about the world you're getting into. Like winning the lottery, having the dream of being Bill Gates is fun, but you need to realize that you need planning and foresight to accomplish your goals.

I wish you the best of luck in your adventures.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

The Character Consultancy, a satisfying review.

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 14:52:00 GMT

The Character Consultancy, a satisfying review.

I thought I would do something a little different with this blog post. I wanted to give a review of a creative resource I've been using. It started off as a lark that I reached out to The Character Consultancy on FurAffinity. The first project was a character commission for Brooke Amira, who I based loosely on Amos Burton from The Expanse.

I knew vaguely that I wanted Brooke to be a tough, no-nonsense character with tragic parts in her past. Still, there was a sort of general "Not everyone who is broken can't be strong" sort of vibe I wanted. Naturally, some of the problems that I had dealt with Brooke's relationship building and the confusion/uncertainty of how her anti-social life would affect things. TCC was very complete on this, and we had several back and forth conversations about this. As this was the first time we worked together, I felt a lot more of a take than a given situation. Now it's pretty back and forth since we've worked together so often now. I prefer to listen to experts when I can, more so when I'm paying them. When something would pop up I wasn't sure about, I would say so, and we'd talk about it.

The above made working with TCC really easy, and Brooke's background profile was finished well before her reference sheet.

The process was to fill out a word document and then give it to her to review and process. TCC is working on an actual degree in psychology, so this was a psychological look at the character and the background. Officially she refers to herself as an advanced trainee therapist specializing in the form of psychology called Transactional Analysis. It provided a lot of fascinating insight into Brooke that I, as a writer, hadn't thought of. There's a lot of areas that I do research on when I'm writing, but I can't claim to have a degree in psychology. No matter how much I researched something, I'm just scratching the surface.

So there was a lot of back and forth with the TCC on Brooke, and throughout working on this one character, I decided to do it for my fursona, Rose Dandy-Ba. Rose started off in a Zootopia RPG, but I left to create my own furry universe called Pacific Shores. But Rose provided TCC a great template to work with. Rose has a lot of art, as you can see since she's all over the site, and has a very well-developed story.

The process was fun and exciting. I did another character, and another, and another, and another. I've done a few of these on my own that I've yet to pay for TCC to review, but she'll get to see them at some point. Make no mistake, this is a business relationship. But even though I've had several paid interactions with the TCC, she's always cordial and easy to get in touch with.

The process was so fun that I tried some of her other services. We're currently working on a species profile for my Earth From An Alien Viewpoint, along with those character backgrounds and a world setup based on my magic system. Each of these packages is a different price. I've never asked if she offers options on payment plans or the like. I'm not a typical fan who commissions things.

Now, the critical reason why I stick with The Character Consultancy. Besides it's fun, I'm looking at this as a long term investment for my writing. As an author, I know I'll always need an editor to look over my items. TCC isn't an editorial service, but she knows I plan to talk to my next book. No, what TCC offers is the outside viewpoint and an analytical approach to filling in your world gaps. She reads what you've put, and then she asks questions based on the information she has as a psychologist and what you've given her. In the case of Kiadan Slywyth, I had always had her having a tragic death. Still, through conversations on that character's background, we found a way for Kiadan to stay true to herself and to wrap up her life in a way that was dignified and plausible. Could an editor do this? Certainly, but most editors I know will charge 25 to 50 dollars an hour for this. Not to say I'm doing this to cheap out on an editor. I suspect Earth From An Alien Viewpoint will still cost me around 3k to have a professional editor go over it. No, she's helping me to connect dots that I hadn't thought of.

As an author, my head is in the source material. I know more than others about what's going on, and TCC gradually pulls this out of me. She has a question, and she asks what is pertinent to the exact task at hand. I've provided info dumps to her, and TCC will look at that and say, "Yeah, well interesting, out of scope." To me, everything is in scope cause it's my world. But she comes in with fresh eyes that haven't seen my work.

Speaking of seeing my work, if you join her Patreon, she'll review your work as well. Which I've had her do, and while it's just surface-level thoughts on the job, it's good to know because TCC is acting as a potential reader. You can never have enough opinions about your work.

So, critical things to look at The Character Consultancy for. They're easy to work with, they're I feel affordable, courtesy, and the conversations/questions you have will really drive, in my opinion, the development of your skill as a writer.

I don't want to say something so trivial as 4 out of 5 stars or anything like that. You can't really quantify TCC's work as such. It's a unique operation that has no comparison on the market right now. I feel that if you're looking at this individual and you have a serious mind to improve your capacity for creativity, then go ahead and take a shot. Like I said, I picked it up on a lark, and I've not been disappointed in any of the experiences I've had with her. I can assure you I'll be working with her in the future.

On Creativity

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 14:48:20 GMT

On Creativity

If you've checked the Upcoming Projects list, you'll see that there are more than a few outlines that I plan to work on in the coming months and years. I'm not going to lie or delude myself into thinking I'm a great writer. Only time can tell if that's going to be the case. My only concern, really, is telling the stories that seem interesting to me.

When it comes to being creative, some people swear up and down that it's not something you can learn. That you have to be born creative. I would argue that in the rare exception that everyone is born with that spark of creativity and that they instinctively know how to use it. Without it, we'd be mucking around in the mud. People are constantly processing information. They might not realize it, but they're taking in all sorts of sensory data and converting it into their minds. Turning that into useful things for our brains and our bodies to work with. And from there, they ask a question, what if the sky was orange? What if. 'What if' is the most basic form of creativity that any person can experience.

Take writers like Stephen King or Warren Ellis. They're taking in the world around them, processing this into raw creative feed, in my opinion, and then shaping that into their writing. King is well known for his work ethic, frequently putting in full eight-plus hour days even when he's on vacation. Ellis is rumored to head to his local pub, drink for a while, and then get an idea to write. King's method I like to call the little engine that could. He keeps plucking away at his keyboard until the dream he sees is more full-fledged. How much does he delete? Only he and his editor will know. Ellis is the more casual approach; if the rumors I've heard are accurate, I'm just some fangirl, so what do I know, where he seems to be struck with an idea, and then it just flows into him. But he's still taking in that information and asking why.

Most of us aspire to be recognized names in the field of Authors. To be King, Grisham, Clancy, and Sandersons. Some of us excel in analytical type of writing; others of us are fantastical. Tolkien is well known for his work and the amount he put into creating things. His would be a more analytical approach, in my opinion. Yes, it's a fantastical tale of wizards and a god who sang the world into place. Still, he also built mythologies for it and designed languages. He was every bit as thorough as a pilot in their preflight check.

I like to think I'm sort of a middle ground of this. I have built up a large universe for myself to work with. I take information in and apply my 'what if.' But then I have to look at my work and say, "Well, how does that work?" I can't have something unexplained in my works. Whether the reader knows that or not isn't of any concern to me. My most outstanding example of this is Magic. I have an actual failure to understand Magic in many fantasy books, which is why I so rarely read this genre. Magic has to make sense; the cause and effect of it must be logical. The Sanderson approach. If I write that xyz happens, even if the reader accepts that this is the gospel, I need to know what caused xyz to happen. This is why I've been spending a lot of time on the back end doing things. Altered Realities was a book that focused heavily on Magic and its consequences. It took me about ten years to write that. When the villains changed something, I needed to know the cause and effect of reality. In A Goddess's Gifts, the Magic was much more straightforward because, by that time, I had spent so much time developing the magic system that I didn't need to worry about what or how it worked. I knew it. And that came about from an understanding of the world I live in and the information I took in from other writers.

So, you're born with creativity. But do you work on improving it? How do you work on improving that? By applying it by asking questions. When you stop asking questions and wondering, that's when your creativity has died. Some develop it via panting, sculpting, writing, poems. There are many ways of acquiring your skills. I hope that I will continue to develop my creativity and ability to articulate it over my career. As you can probably tell by these blog posts, I tend to be a bit more of an off-the-cuff thinker when I haven't had time to polish the turd enough.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Science Fiction

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 14:46:46 GMT

Science Fiction

So why did I choose Science Fiction for the first book that I published? Well, it’s probably because it is my first love. The bright and shiny future with the promise of a better tomorrow, the dark dystopia where technology has wrought naught but destruction, or the simple introduction of a new fantastical universe to play in.

I grew up reading, once I learned how to read, as much as I could. Lord of the Rings, Tom Sawyer, Beowulf, The Prince, War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged, my teacher is an alien, The Belgarion series… it didn’t really matter what it was. I was going to read it. And skim it. It wasn’t until I read some of Verne that the thought occurred to me that these were the best things in the world. It shaped my desire to start reading more Sci-fi.

Even though the first books I really remember reading and understanding were The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, they were just boring… But more importantly, a world without toilets, running water, and disease did not seem very appealing to me, and so I turned to Jules Verne and H.G. Well, and those stories felt better. I didn’t really hit my Sci-Fi stride until Robert Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel. That was when I knew this was the category for me.

One of the stereotypes of being a Sci-Fi writer is that everyone assumes I watched Star Trek. I watched Star Wars first, but they never really resonated as this was “Sci-Fi.” I’ll freely confess I didn’t watch Star Trek until the Generations Movie, and I still think it’s boring and shouldn’t have made it past the first episode. And I didn’t watch TNG until well after experiencing Babylon 5. But my true love for Sci-Fi TV is Doctor Who. My first doctor was Tom Baker. The idea of time travel was fascinating to me even at an early age. I read the books, watched the TV series, and then saw that they brought back Doctor Who. I’m not a Whovian, and I’m a sci-fi enthusiast, which is good because Steven Muppet ruined it with Riversong. And Matt Smith didn’t help. He’s a cute kid, but after Tennant and his charms, Matt didn’t stack up, in my opinion. I’m sure given another chance, Matt Smith will be a fantastic actor, but he’ll always have Muppet’s taint on him.

Now I find it much harder to knock Sci-Fi stories than I do any other type, but I can and do find things wrong with them. Perhaps this is me being jaded towards them and all, but I like to think that they’re more interesting stories than standard fantasy trite. I’m very harsh on the stories I read and am equally hard on myself. A million ideas get tossed out because they’ll never be good enough.

Part of my approach to True Blue Alien and Earth From an Alien View Point is that humans have so many idiosyncrasies that make them complex, and they naturally expect other humans to be similar. It was this that I wanted to tackle in my first novels. Looking at Earth from the viewpoint of someone who is not familiar with it. And TBA gets to accomplish this under Anterograde Amnesia. It was not my attempt to make light of a serious mental condition. The loss of my memory scares the life right out of me, so please do not view TBA’s use of this literary tool as an attack on those who are unfortunately suffering from memory issues. In Earth from an Alien View Point, I lived up to the name and had a lot of fun working on that.

But those are more X-Files, Men In Black, and V than space opera Sci-Fi. But never fear, I’ve directed my attention to that as well. And I’ve not forgotten my love of Cyberpunk either… Who could forget the impact of Bladerunner, Screamers, or Scanner Darkly in the world of Sci-Fi? Pay homage to Philip K. Dick, for he was a font of inspiration for some of us.

I could ramble on all day about this… but I won’t bore anyone with that.

So instead, I’ll leave this post on another note.

Is it better to believe in ideas or see them come true?

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Additional Nerd Cred

183:897622536 (Janice Flint) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 14:03:54 GMT

Additional Nerd Cred

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that I was big into video games, tabletop gaming, comic books, anime, and Star Wars. I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan, but I’m certainly a bigger fan of Star Wars than Star Trek. Star Trek is boring, even if I do like Charles Xavier and David Xanatos, and Demona. Much of my complaints with Star Trek are because of the direction the creator wanted it to go. And thankful he passed the reigns on to smarter and more talented people. That’s not to say that Lucas is a better creator. He’s not. What he had was luck and a vision. And he allowed interpersonal conflicts. Roddenberry seemed to think that humans would become civilized and stop killing/hating one another sometime in the future. Apparently, he didn’t pay enough attention in history class cause humans have been killing each other for at least 4,000 years, or you know… the thousands of years of actual history.

Now I’m one of the few Star Wars fans that will admit that Episodes 1 through 3 were not made for me, and while they’re not very good movies story-wise, they’re not as terrible as everyone says. I know… I know. Even if we have the Binks Incident that created the clone army, it’s not that bad. Have you seen The Room? Let’s be frank here. The reason people don’t like those second three films is because the nostalgia factor of the first three was so awesome in their memory. I’ll be honest I really only like Empire, and that’s because it ended on a dark note. I pretty much skip Revenge of the Jedi because most of the movie is dull and emotionally barren, in my opinion.

My problems with the first three movies are they don’t follow the established canon of the “later” movies. If Lucas was to have control of Star Wars still and he told me he would reshoot 4 through 6 to fix continuity errors, I’d be happy with this, and I would also be happy if he said he’d reshoot 1 through 3 to fix continuity errors. If it were any other director, I’d be a little mad. But Lucas has shown over the years that he was constantly tweaking his works. Some say he did it for money, and others say it was introducing new kids to his product. Either way, he had a precedent for updating his works, and we, as fans, tolerated it.

Sure it hurt when Boba Fett got turned into a clone of Jango. Sure it was terrible having to watch this incarnation of Anakin Skywalker; if you read my posts about Age of Ultron, you can see where I’m going here. No problems whatsoever with baby Anakin, even if the dude’s a colossal jerk now. Given what we know about the later movies, I’m more willing to place blame on Emoovers shoulders than the kid. Anakin, as portrayed by Hayden, was terrible and whiny. I’ve seen worse acting but nothing in those two movies made me believe that this would be the dude dressed in a slick suede suit that’s black like tar. The books do a better job of convincing you of the struggle from light to dark for Anakin. Editing and poor delivery make you grimace. Someone should have flagged Hayden down and asked him where he went for his acting lessons and if he’d gotten a diploma or a certificate for a good job instead. Now, this is all the views of a gal who is outside the production and filming. I’m the guy who looks at the final version and goes, ‘Huh… what did I just watch?’ so my views are that as a person who can’t know what was going through the production staff and the actor’s heads.

That said, I stand by my decision. If Lucas ever got control of Star Wars again, he would have my seal of approval to recreate episodes four, five, and six. More than anything, I want continuity in my movies, and if he is saying that 1 through 3 is this and it breaks the continuity of 4 through 6, something has to be updated. I also feel the movie The People Vs. George Lucas didn’t give the man his chance to respond. It’s ok to hear from a bunch of whiny kids that thought that TK-421 wasn’t given the 25 minutes of fame he deserved. But a creator should always be given a chance to have a dialogue with his fans. Of course, after the last three movies, I kinda wonder what The People Vs. George Lucas would say now.

Incorrigibly yours,

J.E. Flint

Nerd Cred

websitebuilder@1and1.de — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 20:30:38 GMT

Nerd Cred

Much of the culture from when I was but a lass has changed as expected for twenty-plus years of the time change. Some for positive, and some just haven’t really changed, and in some ways, it’s actually gotten worse. When I was a kid, you didn’t talk about your nerd habits. It was assumed you were going to get bullied pretty hard if you admitted that in your free time, you recreated the Battle of the Bulge with legos in your bedroom during your free time. Now with shows like Big Bang, it’s “ok” to be a nerd. Unless you really sit down and analyze how much Big Bang pokes fun at being intelligent and anti-social. I’ll admit I’ve never watched it. I'm not too fond of it when someone tells me that something is funny or I should watch it. Laugh tracks annoy me.

So like a lot of Nerds, I had a few areas I considered to be my forte. Starting with Role Playing Video Games and Lego toys before moving into a modest obsession with Marvel’s Excalibur comic line. From there, it just spiraled into all Marvel comics, still mostly focused on the X-Men. I hear Wolverine is a metaphor for being gay. It’s OK, some fat guy told me. Which by the way, should you ever get a chance to work with Kevin Smith, you should take the chance, or at least pay him to talk in front of you for a few hours, and it’ll be worth your time.

I loved roleplaying games on my NES and SNES . In the console wars, I owned Nintendo , but in the aftermath, I was a SEGA fangirl. I often felt cheated because Dragon Quest didn’t release as quickly in America as it did in Japan. Square was an alright developer, and I enjoy Final Fantasy IV , Final Fantasy VI , and Chrono Trigger . But I will always be an Enix die-hard first and foremost.

Anyway, after playing through the terrible story that was Final Fantasy VIII , I realized that video games couldn’t hold the same thrill as other media forms. It was about this time that I really started getting into tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons . I had played AD&D before in middle school and a bit in high school, but it was the stuff kids play when they’re just getting into something. IE, I didn’t really fully understand it. I had the monster manuals, I love monster manuals, and started to read those. My tentative writing at this point was pretty terrible, but I started to take the ideas in the AD&D monster manuals and apply that knowledge to the monsters in my fantasy short stories. It didn’t really help my storytelling ability, but it got me to realize that writing and world-building were infinitely more fun than playing a terrible story made by someone else.

So I started to write up short sessions and dedicated myself to learning how to be a Game Master . I also took it upon myself when possible to educate others in my hobby, because what’s more fun than seeing a person who used to have blinders on open their eyes and see the world that their imagination can create. At least for me, there’s nothing funnier.

I still try and keep up with comic books, really just the Marvel movies minus the crap Faux puts out, though they’re owned by Disney now, so, huzzah? And I still play video games, but I’m not as heavy into either of those. When your primary genre of Video Games is Role Playing, and you’re American, you sorta have to suck it up and play the crap, and there’s a lot of that that comes out. Just because someone throws a stat system that can progress, they assume that’s a role-playing game. There’s more to RPGs than that. I’ve also been lucky in missing all the slop that’s dominated the airwaves for the past 10 to 20 years. I do miss out on good documentaries, sadly.

So I’m an incorrigible nerd when it comes to some things. Like all nerds, I have certain things that trigger me. I’m happy being a nerd, for the most part. But do I have the creds to be a nerd? Or am I simply a pseudo nerd? That’s up to you to decide. Either way, enjoy my books; there’s more to come. I mean, I could spend more time talking about my love of old-school Anime or Star Wars , but why turn this into a few thousand-word essays on things that piss me off?

Incorrigibly yours,
J.E. Flint

No Comment

websitebuilder@1and1.de — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 20:15:27 GMT

No Comment

I want to address this blog early on with this blog because I will be lite on the comments. I want to hear from my fans and interact with them, but I’ve learned a lot in the five years that I was running The Chronicles of Loth . And that was that one or three jerks could ruin it for everyone. This is not me attempting to censor you and stifle feedback. I welcome it, but I welcome constructive feedback. If someone tells me that they don’t believe that Alex should react to the Ganglefoot on page 31 in The Victorian House the way he did and provide a concise reason, I’ll listen to you.

An artist, be it digital or physical, literary or photography, famous or infamous, cannot grow without constructive criticism. If you need constructive criticism examples, I have found a site for you; check out this How To Criticize Constructively .

So I’m going to provide areas in which there will be a chance for critiques. Those will be on the books themselves or on projects I’m working on. But actual blog posts will not have comments often. I’ll have comments enabled when I review Nerd things like the upcoming Age of Ultron and Batmankompf vs. Goku to convince people I’m as human as you are and not an alien bent on world domination. I’m at my heart a person who loves discussion and debates. Still, I’ve learned that I can’t just let anyone have free reign on my stuff because when they don’t respect my Tenets of Incorrigibility, they’ll go off. They’ll create their own page, help advertise my stuff by promoting their site, and talk about how terrible whatever I’m working on is. It’s really a win-win situation for me.

So before problems arise, like a good programmer, I’m already trying to debug and sidestep potential problems. And it’s easier to limit the comments to prescribed areas than sitewide. I could take the hardline approach and say no to comments. Several massive and essential blogs do that.

I’m trying to be sensitive to the amount of time drafting comment responses would take. In all likelihood, if the comments are average and it’s 50 to 100 comments an entry, I could be eating up a few hours I would otherwise be devoted to researching or writing my books. The other thing I worry about is flame wars, I’m old school, and just a verbal sparring match that scares other people off. And lastly, it would cut into my creative time. Not that it wouldn’t be fun or a blast to respond to each fan, but let’s be honest. Much better writers than I don’t do that their time is money. It will also cut down tremendously on the people who stumble across or are like, “Oh hey! This is cool to check out my stuff…” or people there specifically to cause trouble. I could grab IPs and blacklist them, but that doesn’t seem like saving me time or effort.

So to finish up this meandering diatribe, there will be comments but in structured areas, and I hope you’re all ok with that. If not well, sorry.

Incorrigibly yours,
J.E. Flint

The Tenets of Incorrigibility

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:27:08 GMT

The Tenets of Incorrigibility

The name Incorrigible Author might not make sense at first, but please humor me.

These are the tenets of the Incorrigible Author, and in general, they are good Tenets to live everyday life by.

Tenet 1) Be yourself with as little compromise as possible.
Tenet 2) Speak the truth, even if it hurts.
Tenet 3) Education is the greatest gift; give freely.
Tenet 4) Stand up for what you believe in.
Tenet 5) Never back down from a challenge.
Tenet 6) Never settle for second place.
Tenet 7) Be polite; it only takes a second.
Tenet 8) Educate yourself at every opportunity.
Tenet 9) Walk your own path.
Tenet 10) Be true to yourself.

I've marched proudly for much of my life, and I’ve been quick to provide the advice I’ve collected and the views I have. I often don’t back down from speaking my mind in the bluntest method plausible, nor do I reel from a challenge. I hold people to the same high standards I hold for myself.

This means I’m frequently disappointed with the people who would assume, incorrectly, to be my peer. It is not that I am peerless, far from it. I don’t bother with such terms.

I am a person who is not easily swayed or influenced, willful, firmly fixed, and not easily changed. I can be swayed by a logical argument and have been known to admit the errors of my ways. There is no harm in admitting that you have made a mistake or using past experience to improve your position based upon what you’ve learned.
I believe in leading by example in all things and being dependable.

In flat words. I see myself as a role model for other people. And while I can be stubborn or assholish at times, there is nothing in my character that makes me feel bad about the path I walk. I want people to walk my path with me, even if it’s only to follow in my footsteps for a while before breaking away to pursue their own path.

This blog, website, and the stories that I will be sharing with the world are best accomplished in my own voice and without the constraints that would come with having an agent or a publisher demanding that I create more XYZ as opposed to ABC. This is not to say that I have given up on the dreams of being Scrooge McDuck rich like all professional authors, but I make no illusions that I was doing this for the money when I began. I am doing this to become a career, but I’ll be happy to cover my expenses and have enough scratch to set aside for retirement. I promise that if anyone ever becomes sensibly crazy and funds me to Karl Marx's level, I will happily give away anything more than I need.

I can’t promise that everyone will like my writing. If they did, I’m certain I would be fairly miserable. I hope that my writing is liked by enough people to be shared and compared against and ultimately a source of inspiration.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you enjoy the stories I will produce and the thoughts I will encourage.

Incorrigibly yours,
J. E. Flint

3d0f5348e68842f0a9f0ac1c7a451a9e

The Untouchables

The Untouchables: Power, Predators, and the Pattern Nobody Wants to Talk About

It takes a village to raise an idiot… wait

Healthcare, the Promise to Our Community, part 2.

Part 2

Healthcare, A Promise Broken Part 1

Part 1

The Way of Kings – Final Thoughts

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Finish the Damn Book

Film Review – Transformer One Piece of Garbage

Film Review – Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition

Film Review – Zootopia: The Zooing

The Way of Kings – Second Update

When Fantasy Feels Like Homework

An Incorrigible Year in Review - 2025

Ending the year on a high note

Educational Punching Bags

Loving Our Pets Despite the Pain

And Why We Do It Again

The Corporate Grinder

The Corporate Grind is Literally Killing Me (And Probably You Too)

When Science is Magic

Tales of Woe

The Way of Kings - First Impression

Film Review – The Fantabulousness Fantastic Four 2025

First steps, amiright?

The Sundered Realms

Or How King Kong Ain't Got Shit on Me

Film Review – Superman: The James Gunning

And Krypto cause he's a good boy

When Media Isn't Needed

Sequel... The Itis

Film Review – Unnecessary Sequels

When you're evil...

Film Review - My Hero Academia The Movie 4 You're Next

The Art of the Film Review: Why I Can't Help But Critique

Film Review – Thunderbolts*

Knocking Holes in Brick Walls

Isekai, the genre that refuses to die

Aphasia of the Mind: Why Words Replace Images for me

Aphasia of the Mind: When Words Replace Images Or, Why My Brain Doesn’t Do "Visualization" (And How I Write Anyway)

An Author's Future

An Author's Future

Author Legacies: What Happens to Unfinished Stories?

Breaking Out of Genre Silos: Why Don't Authors Explore?

Breaking Out of Genre Silos: Why Don't Authors Explore?

On the Appreciation of Tool Use: AI in Writing

On the Appreciation of Tool Use: AI in Writing

Building Better Habits: A Random Blog Post for August

Building Better Habits: A Random Blog Post for August

Film Review: Age of Ultron - A Fangirl's Perspective - Reblog from Tumblr

Maestro, Music Please: Writing with a Soundtrack

Nerd Cred... deduction? - Reblog from Tumblr

Cthulhu Fhtagn: Pop Culture's Strangest Icon

Transformative Fiction: Stories of Change and Identity

That Asshole Gamer: My Journey Through MMO History

The Heresy Book Challenge - Part 1 - Malazan Book of the Fallen - Reblog from Tumblr

On Ism's - Reblog from Tumblr

Responsibilities and Maturity - Reblog from Tumblr

Film Review - Jurassic World - Reblog from Tumblr

Video Game Hall of Fame - Reblog from Tumblr

Film Review – Irredeemable Ant-Man - Reblog from Tumblr

Film Review – Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' - Reblog from Tumblr

Modern Day Gladiators - Reblog from Tumblr

Fantasy - Reblog from Tumblr

Take my Celebrities, no please, I insist - Reblog from Tumblr

Get ready, Set! - Reblog from Tumblr

Educational Credit - Reblog from Tumblr

Oh for Research sake - Reblog from Tumblr

Social Media - Reblog from Tumblr

Expanded Universes - Reblog from Tumblr

Magic Does Stuff - Reblog from Tumblr

Monsters - Reblog from Tumblr

Vampires - Reblog from Tumblr

Zombies - Reblog from Tumblr

Ghosts - Reblog from Tumblr

Lycanthrop - Reblog from Tumblr

Demons - Reblog from Tumblr

Witches, Warlocks and the Seasons who love them - Reblog from Tumblr

Aphasia of the Mind: When Words Replace Images
Or, Why My Brain Doesn’t Do "Visualization" (And How I Write Anyway)