Monthly Blog - March 2024

 

March has been pretty quiet. Nephew and his parents have been staying, and that’s been fun. His birthday was at the end of last month and we celebrated it a few days later. Man, that kid loves cake. He was shovelling fistfuls of the stuff into his mouth and eating every crumb he could see. He’s also become obsessed with drawing, and he can now sort-of draw a car. And if he’s not drawing cars, he’s forcing me to draw cars so he can colour them. He’s also gotten really into sharks, especially shark-shaped cars. And, as usual, he wants to spend as much time as possible outside, wading through the mud and picking up sticks.

In terms of writing, I’ve been getting a lot done. It’s been so refreshing to have so many ideas and work on so many things, even if at times it’s overwhelming and I don’t know which to work on or prioritise. Also the new Stardew Valley update got me back into the game so I’m having another phase of doing nothing but playing Stardew Valley constantly. I wonder if I’ll 100% it this time, or if I’ll stop playing for a few days then never come back to that particular save because I’ve forgotten what I was doing. 

I’ll talk more about my writing at the end. 

April’s already been more eventful, but I’ll get to that in the April blog.

What I watched

Aliens Do Exist – a play by Micky Scott

It’s about a girl with undiagnosed autism, who copes by imagining she is an alien sent to earth as part of an experiment to blend in with and study human society. I actually had a similar experience as a child: the world of my fantasy novel, Lashauria, was the alien/fantasy world where I was “really” from, and I was sent to earth for my own protection due to a prophecy foretelling how I would fight the Big Bad that was definitely not based on a teacher I hated. Even as I got older, I still spent a lot of time in my own head, imagining myself as part of friend groups of whatever I was into at the time (mostly anime). Also the Lashauria story has gotten a lot less cliche and self-insert. And I got rid of any mentions of a prophecy.

Anyway, the play. The acting was great, and the main character’s one friend reminded me so much of Francis’s brother. Mum cried during the entire thing. 

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

I watched this a few times with my nephew. The animation is beautiful, the characters are likeable enough, but I hate the writing. It’s just a bunch of inspirational facebook quotes with little substance, and I don’t really feel the characters love and care for each other as much as we’re meant to believe. The boy and the mole, sure, but the fox has very few moments where he’s bonding with the others. And the horse just turns up and goes with them and seems to skip any actual bonding. That being said, when the horse revealed that he could fly, but didn’t because it “made the other horses jealous”, I burst out laughing. It just came out of nowhere, and sounds like the kind of thing a parent or grandparent would lie to a kid about. 

I also watched the new Thomas All Engines Go cartoon and I hate it. Why are there child trains and adult trains? The adult trains look so massive and off-scale and creepy. They really freak me out (it’s the same problem I have with Hey Duggie).

The lessons are fine, and pretty standard. There was even one I’d never actually seen in a kids show before: there was some big race going on and Diesel was being a little shit supporting the bad guy trains. During the race, Percy and Nia go find somewhere to watch it, and Diesel asks if it’s okay for him to come along even though he’s supporting the other team. Percy and Nia say it’s perfectly fine, and he’s allowed to support another team. I really liked that, especially since kids usually have a favourite football team (even if they don’t like football, there’s usually a family team they support by default) and it’s nice to encourage healthy competition for things that aren’t life-or-death. I also like that there are more girl trains than there were when I was little.

I don’t like how any of the characters are adapted, though. It just feels like any subtlety or personality the book or old TV characters had have been warped to fit generic character tropes. 

Reading the books made me hate the TV show even more. The whole appeal of Thomas is how grounded it is, and realistic. Or, as realistic as books about sentient trains could be. The personalities of the engines revolve around what jobs they like and the stories were about what trouble they get up to while doing their train jobs, like Thomas not wanting to wear a snow plow, or trucks being troublesome. They weren’t bouncing about the tracks in a cartoony style with all these exaggerated movements. That’s why stop motion worked for the original TV show.

Honestly, All Engines Go would be a perfectly fine show with perfectly fine characters, if it wasn’t trying to adapt Thomas the Tank Engine. The animation is actually quite nice, especially compared to other cartoons about trains (Chuggington looks like ass), it just doesn’t suit Thomas. And any of the OG trains that make it into AEG, like Gordon or Henry, barely have any screentime. Probably for the best, since their weird proportions freak me out, but the show loses out on so much charm by their absence. They’re just generic cartoon adults now, and even those roles are filled with new characters most of the time. For example, this one old Japanese train who trains Thomas and Kana for that race. He’s just a generic old Asian teacher stereotype with nothing original about him. It’s nice that the show includes trains from around the world now, but they’re being wasted on these tired, old archetypes. 

I think what really made me sad about All Engines Go is something W. Awdry wrote in his introduction to the compilation book of Thomas stories: that he’s been sent a lot of fan mail over the years, and his favourites are from men who worked on railways. They loved reading Thomas to their kids and grandkids specifically because they were so grounded and realistic and actually acted like trains.

Friday the 13th

I also watched the original Friday the 13th, because I’ve had an idea for a slasher horror set at a camp. I’d watched games like Until Dawn and the Quarry that are the products of decades of camp slasher horror, with references and characters or tropes that have turned into cliches. So, I thought I’d watch some more older ones. I gotta say, it wasn’t the best. I’m surprised that so many of the characters were killed off so quickly, before I even got to know them, but I suppose this isn’t the film for getting to know the characters. I’m very intrigued by the concept of “strip monopoly”, though. The acting was pretty goofy, but I liked the practical effects. It’s also very funny to me that people in the 80s dress like gay people nowadays.

What I Read 

Sunburn – James Felton

This was really interesting as someone who’s familiar with some of the worst of the Sun’s output over the years, but not all of it. Holy shit how is that thing still producing papers? Who is it for? Then again, you could say that about a lot of British papers. Anyway, I think the comedy blended in with the factual information a lot better than ‘52 Times Britain was a Bellend’, and a generally more interesting read.

William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney

This was a great collection to read in Spring; it’s like a breath of fresh air. I worry some of the poems’ meanings are lost on me due to certain words having different meanings and contexts nowadays, but I still liked the nature imagery. It was vivid enough that, at times, I could imagine myself in the Lake District, strolling amongst the woodlands and fields. Some of the poems could’ve been shorter, though. One was over 30 pages and completely killed my momentum while reading.

The Missing – Michael Rosen

This book follows author and poet Michael Rosen on his quest to uncover what happened to his relatives during the Holocaust. Many of his grandfather’s siblings, living in France and Poland, simply disappeared and the family refused to talk about them. He mostly focuses on his two great-uncles living in France, and eventually finds out when and where they were caught by the Nazis. Both uncles perished in Auschwitz.

It’s a good introduction to the Holocaust for children. It doesn’t sugarcoat things, but it’s easy to understand. As an adult, I felt a little talked-down to, but I understand I’m not the target audience. I do like how Rosen connects his family’s experiences to that of children nowadays who are refugees, and emphasises empathy to the reader and recommends other books to learn about the Holocaust and modern-day refugees. 

From Ace to Ze: The Little Book of LGBT Terms – Harriet Dyer

This was… fine. It was written in 2018 so not everything is entirely up-to-date (we do be revising our terms a lot, give us time cishets we’re just trying to figure out our language). Some of the words I wouldn’t quite describe the way the book does, but, again, the book’s 6 years old and we as a community are still kinda figuring out the details on a lot of newer microlabels and seeing what sticks.

Pirate Queen: The Legend of Grace O’Malley

Pretty fun interpretation of Grania O’Malley’s life. Not to keen on her being called Grace, since that’s the Anglicised version of her name. I liked this interpretation of the private conversation between Grania and Queen Elizabeth far more than ‘The Ghost of Grania O’Malley’ (I’m reviewing that in my 100 books of 2023 wrapup). The art style was great, I liked how much personality the characters had. 

The Beatrix Potter Treasury & Thomas the Tank Engine Complete Collection

The Beatrix Potter book was a gift from my nanna as a baby, and she’d written a note in the front that made me cry. I have a few of these collections of children’s stories, and the Beatrix Potter one was the only one whose stories I’d actually read before. I’ve finished that, and now I’m working on the Thomas books. After that it’s Winnie-the-Pooh.

They weren’t as magical as I remember them being, which is sadly the case with a lot of things I read as a child. ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ was perfectly fine, a classic. When I started ‘The Tale of Benjamin Bunny’, I actually preferred it, until Benjamin’s dad shows up. He might be the worst fictional parent I’ve ever come across. Not only does he whip Peter and Benjamin at the end of the story, but in a later book, he’s supposed to be babysitting his grandkids. Not only does he completely forget they exist, but he falls asleep while hanging out with a badger known for baby bunnies! And then the badger kidnaps the baby bunnies with the intention of eating them!! Then when his son and daughter-in-law are mad at him for it, he gets all sulky and refuses to tell them anything, even though it could help save his grandkids??? This man is the fucking worst. Other stories were a little boring, and probably not as “timeless” as they used to be. I like that the world isn’t fully explained, though: some characters live in houses, some in burrows or tree hollows. Sometimes the animals interact with people as equals, other times they’re being eaten by humans, or each other. I also like that Beatrix Potter inserts herself into some of the stories – it feels pretty whimsical.

I’ve been enjoying the Thomas the Tank Engine books a bit more. Each book is a collection of short stories, usually about the same engine or engines. 

I think a problem I have with both series, and old British kids books in general, is that there’s often an emphasis on punishment. I don’t mean consequences, because I understand you need stories to teach kids not to endanger themselves constantly. I mean punishment. The Tank Engine books especially. Trains fuck up and are punished for it all the time, the most famous example being from the first book: Henry refusing to come out of the tunnel because it’s raining, so he gets bricked in. Funny enough, the publisher who expressed interest in Awdry’s train stories made him write an extra story for the first book where Henry’s let out of the tunnel. That was the condition for being published, and fair enough. Apparently there are other, quite dark moments in these books that I’m curious to read. I like it when kids books aren’t afraid to be a bit fucked up.

Another thing I’d like to discuss in regards to Thomas the Tank Engine is how autistic these books feel. I’m not trying to diagnose W. Awdry with anything. Him writing nearly 50 books on trains really isn’t enough to diagnose anything. I just feel very seen by how he writes about writing these books: he delights in the mundane details of these engines. He writes about giving the trains their own numbers in one introduction like it’s all he’s been thinking of since his previous book. It feels like he finds trains interesting, and expects everyone else does too.

What I’m writing

I’ve made a lot of progress on my writing. I haven’t finished anything, but I’ve started and made headway on a lot of projects that I hope will come to fruition. If people like my poetry, I’ll continue adding weekly poems. I’ve also done some more editing of my novel, and hope to ramp that up until it’s finally done. 

Earlier this month I had an idea for a horror game, as mentioned before, that’s a slasher similar to Until Dawn or The Quarry. The main difference being that my game idea is set in Wales, and instead of camp counsellors, the main cast is young people who just so happen to be camping. I have a few ideas for mechanics and character paths, and the characters themselves, but it’s still in the very early stages of an idea. I’ve been working on it with Francis too. I also have a vague idea of what I want the artstyle to look like, but nothing too concrete. I know it’s not going to be hyper-realistic like the big games, and no dodgy motion capture.

The theatre company at the arts centre I clean at has been running a few writing projects where people can submit: a play commission and a short story anthology, so I’m writing something for both. The play has a deadline for May, and though I don’t need to have it all done yet, I still need an outline and a start written up. I’ve also made a start on the short story, a sci-fi one that I hope I can publish here too. 

I’ve also written a couple poems and organised them into collections that might one day become books. I’m also going to look out for some Queer magazines to send them to.

Hopefully, one day, I can write full time. I mean, I technically could now… what I mean, is I’d love to be financially independent with a career as a writer. Maybe one day…