How to Succeed with Failure (in Writing)

Most stories are built on conflict. It doesn't have to be violence - that is to say physical conflict - it can also be logical conflict; psychological conflict, or social conflict. Maybe it's the cute girl the guy wants to impress; maybe it's the evil monster the hero wants to kill; maybe it's a killer the detective wants to find. But, in simple terms, stories often start with a problem, and end with a solution. Not always, but often. It's one of the things I truly love about Horror - it's one of the few genres where the main characters can fail miserably, and the audience can still leave feeling satisfied.
However, stories often aren't just about one problem. The guy wants to impress the cute girl, but she's rich and he's poor; he's been cursed to look like a beast & she has a husband. The hero wants to kill the evil monster, but he isn't strong enough; the monster lives far away & the monster commands an evil army. The detective wants to find the killer, but the murder weapon is missing; the room was locked when the crime happened and everyone else just thinks it was a suicide.
These myriad problems are put in the way, and the main character has to solve them, one by one, before moving forward.

So far, so standard, if you're a writer yourself none of this is new. But, here's the rub. The main character has to solve these problems to continue the story. If they don't, the plot can't move forward. And if you're not careful, this can lead to a sense of inevitability.
Problem? Solution; Problem? Solution; Problem? Solution...
It can feel like going through the motions.After all, if your main character fails, then the story stops progressing. I mean, if you're threatening to kill the main character, but I'm only halfway through a book, I know my main character can't die since I've got a whole lot more pages left.
The best example of this is in action movies, where the hero is slaughtering his way through a bunch of bad guys. If he loses, then he dies, the story ends. So, he can't lose. But, it doesn't even need to be death. In a murder mystery, one MUST find the missing clues, and one MUST interpret them correctly, otherwise they can't solve the case - there's no other choice, because if you fail to find a necessary clue, then necessarily you can't solve the case. Or, if something comes between two lovers that drives them apart, we know they MUST get over it before the story ends, because romance stories thrive on happy endings - failing to overcome that conflict makes the whole story fail.
So, your character can't really fail... but, when your character comes across problem after problem, and manages to solve it no matter how difficult, this becomes a problem known as Plot Armour.
No matter how devastating the problem, no matter how many times the Earth needs to be saved from Doom, the Hero wins, because they have to. As soon as the audience realizes this, the story loses all tension. We know he can't lose, so watching them win isn't entertaining, it becomes a foregone conclusion. It's one of the most frustrating parts of formulaic stories - having the same story structure every time means the conflict stops feeling like conflict.

This idea is best illustrated by One-Punch Man, a webcomic, turned manga, turned anime. I highly recommend it, as it's quite funny, but the point of the story is simple. Saitama is a superhero, called One-Punch Man, and he is the strongest superhero in the world, so powerful that he can win any fight, with just one punch (hence the name). For this reason, he's also one of the most boring superheroes in the world, because he can't lose any fight.
Thankfully, neither the webcomic nor media based on it are action stories, they're comedies and character pieces, exploring the character and those around him as he struggles with a sense of ennui, feeling empty despite being literally the best in the world and how other characters react to an unfathomably unstoppable hero. See, by being unable to fail, the physical conflict stops being a conflict - so, the story is instead about social and psychological conflict.

Now, your hero probably isn't able to win fights with a single punch, but if you're not careful, it can feel like it. If you're a newer writer especially, you may think that if your hero keeps winning, but you don't want them to lose, then the solution must be to make the challenges more difficult. Escalate: If last time, the bad guy threatened his family, next time his whole town should be in danger. If last time, she killed a tribe of monsters, next time she should fight a whole army. Did your hero save the world? Well, next time, save the galaxy.
The problem is... this actually makes the conflict less impactful, not more, because no matter how much they struggle, they HAVE to win, since you've stacked the deck in such a way that failure is impossible to read (or, in some cases, write). It's what I call the Shan Paradox - by continually escalating the stakes, you inversely lessen the tension, because the more the stakes, the more impossible it becomes to lose, since that kind of devastation is impossible to overcome.

So, what's the solution? Well, the answer to that, I think, is obvious... you need failure.

I think the best way to explain this is with Pen & Paper RPGs (Role-Playing Games). You've probably heard of Dungeons & Dragons, but there are many more and better RPGs, but whether you have or not, the important thing you need to know is that when playing a Pen & Paper RPG every player gets to be a main character (except for the Game Master, who gets to be everyone else). In an RPG, your character can die, which holds a lot of weight because both the GM and the Player wants the game to keep going. The GM either spent a lot of time creating the campaign story (or money and time setting up a purchased module) and the Player usually spends a fair amount of time creating their character and writing up their character sheet, so  both of them are invested and neither of them explicitly want the characters to lose. But, believe it or not, loss and death is an important part of the game. See, if the player knows they can't fail, they lose interest in the challenge - this is a game after all, and games are challenges defined by having both a Win state, and a Lose state.
Because none of the players want the characters to die, most Pen & Paper RPGs are played with dice (or coins, or cards, or timers), so there's a random element that can strike when you least expect it, and prevents either the GM or the players from making the game too easy. Failure is a looming threat. Oddly enough, whilst nobody wants to fail, failure is the critical element of the game that drives it forward. The fact that you might Lose is what makes it so much more satisfying when you Win.
But, not every dice roll is the final roll of life and death... in fact, games would be frustrating if you randomly and suddenly lost the game every few rolls. You roll the dice for any challenge in the game, whether that be combat, investigation, travel, coersion, romance, stealth, athletics or magic - and remember that's challenge, not action, it would be ridiculous if you had to roll a dice for every step to make sure you don't trip... but my point is, it means that in order for your character to die, and completely lose the game, you'd have to either make a bad decision, or engage in an encounter where you might not succeed; then you have to fail several times during that challenge's process, enough to weaken your character's chances; then finally, most games even have death-saving throws, meaning you'd need one final bad luck roll to actually kill your character. And hell, even if your character does die, some games (and some GMs) offer the player the option to create a new character, or use a backup character to continue the campaign. This is still a hell of a loss, because they lose that character and that character's experience (sometimes in more ways than one, if the game's mechanics use experience points). Some games are harder than others, but very rarely do they randomly kill players for no reason.
But, what happens if your character fails a smaller moment? Say, lockpicking, that's a useful skill. Say your character wants to get into a locked house, and there's a plot-critical element inside the building, but they fail their lockpicking check - roll a 1 or something. What happens now? Does the story end?
Of course not. The player now needs to find another way in. They could try another door, but that's just the same challenge again. They could instead try investigating the surrounding area, to see if there's a hidden key somewhere, or they might have to find the owner of the property and see if they can pickpocket the key from them. They could perhaps attempt to climb the building to see if they can get in through the chimney, or a large window, or a vent, but if none of that's available, they might simply have to just break and enter, bash the door down or break a window, even though that may alert people nearby, and will definitely come to the owner's attention when they get back. There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say - but more importantly than having multiple solutions, there's also multiple failures for every problem. If the character attempts to pick the lock, and fails, they may simply need to try something else, or they could break their lockpick tools, meaning they'll need to find more. If they break a window and jump through, they may hurt themselves, but more importantly, they may have the police after them, or worse - if this is a secret/criminal building they're breaking into, they may have a hitman or criminal gang chasing after them. All of these add potential conflict to the role-playing game, which makes the adventure more exciting
This is just one example, but the point is, the failure doesn't have to stop the story dead, you don't have to accept a failure, and more importantly failure can actually make a story more interesting. If you talk to an experienced RPG player or GM, they will often have great "war stories" of some of their most fun gaming moments, and I guarantee that their best stories won't be about all the times they got perfect dice rolls... no, they're often tje stories about how they had to come up with something new, clever or silly after they failed, or about how a situation got completely out of control because they didn't solve a problem correctly.

This all is great information for writing linear stories. Even though a linear story isn't a game, that potential for failure is a necessary tension for most stories. Obviously, not everything is a challenge, and you probably shouldn't have your character always fail (unless you're writing a slapstick comedy), but you can have them work their way towards success and fail along the way sometimes. Hell, that would be a fun writing challenge... write a story as though it were a one-player RPG, and rolling a die or flipping a coin every time they attempt a difficult challenge, to see if (and how well) they succeed or fail. That's not necessary for writing a story, but my point is you can, and should, let your hero fail along the path of their adventure.
You might think it makes a hero more of a badass to get out of a fight without a scratch; solve a mystery without getting anything wrong or fix a problem without any negative consequences (and depending on what you're writing that can work), but readers tend to be more invested in a hero they can empathize with. Since we often struggle in our own lives, if your hero struggles it means the reader can feel their pain along with them, and feel their success along with them as well.
Consider, for a moment, Action. You might think losing a fight means death, but not neccesarily. Not every fight is a fight to the death, what if you don't lose your life, but lose an arm instead? Or a foot? Or, what if they get cut across the throat, and from then on, have a scratchy, hoarse or otherwise damaged voice due to an injured larynx, or vocal chords? Disability isn't the cultural stigma it once was, and even if it is in the period, setting or world of your story, if anything it can make your story more interesting. Prosthetics are amazing, eye-patches look cool and scars often mean that your character is wearing a part of their backstory on their skin, it's not something you have to avoid.
This is actually a big problem I had when I was a younger writer. I didn't see the point of combat at all, because I knew the character had to win, and I didn't want them to get hurt - and I didn't realize until later that it was that last part, a desire for them not to get hurt, that was actually holding me back. Nobody plans to fail, we might have contingency plans, but rarely is our initial plan "I'll do this, it will fail, then I'll try something else", and if you're not used to writing, then adding failure into your plot can feel forced. But you don't even necessarily have to force it, it can happen naturally...

I tend to write scenes by envisioning them in my mind, and describing it as thoroughly as possible to place readers in the scene, and I remember writing one story wherein a character had to attack an enemy in close-quarters, in their bedroom, with a cricket bat. As they raised the bat above their head, I realized that (in my room at least) I had a pendulous ceiling fan with a light on it, and if I swung a bat over my head it would hit the light, so I added "the bat narrowly missed the ceiling light as he swung". As I read what I'd just written, I thought to myself "Gee, it's lucky he missed that light, if he had it would have sucked, he'd have been covered with shards of glass, that sounds horrifying..."
Then I had an epiphany, dude, you're a horror writer, why would you want to avoid something horrifying? So, I rewrote the scene such that he smashed the ceiling light, the shattered glass falls on top of him and the whole scene became more impactful as the monster approached him, crunching shards of glass under its bleeding feet - it was awesome.
It changed the story, but for the better, success is boring, success is what we expect, so when something fails it can snap us to attention since now we - along with the character - are left wondering how the story can possibly go forward from here, or what more could possibly go wrong.

And it doesn't have to be physical damage, you don't have to marr or maim your character, you could just hurt their pride instead. A lot of comedies thrive on characters failing, so you can use failure for a comedic moment, but if you want something more dramatic you can go that route as well.
Consider, for a moment, Mystery. Yes, your character needs to interpret clues, but what if they follow a lead that's wrong, but only slightly wrong. Even people who aren't fond of mysteries are aware of the red herring, a clue that leads you down a bad path, this is actually a great example of failing in a story. You discover that there's blood at the crime scene, and one suspect has a cut on their hand! But... it turns out they filled in for the cook a day before the murder, and they're bad with knives, which is why they cut themselves and bled at the scene - dead end, it was just a red herring (a misleading non-clue) no help whatsoever.
But, a clue can still help the mystery, even if the detective gets it wrong. A detective might find bindings on the victim, and assume they were tied up by their killer, so they follow the clues, find out where it was purchased, and realize the ropes belonged to the victim's wife... who used them in their nightly roleplay. That clue might seem like a dead end, but what if the killer is some religious or righteous prude, who killed the victim because they saw their nightly activities as deviant? In this way, although their assumption lead to failure, their failure helped lead them to success... Not so much a red herring, as a fox-tail... you didn't catch the whole fox, but you got enough to lead you somewhere (I thought "fox-tail" worked, since apparently "red herring" was initially a fox-hunting term... don't blame me, I didn't come up with it).

Or, what if the failure is finding the clue in the first place. What if there are clues at the scene, but your detective can't find them, so decides to interrogate all the suspects instead. This can make the story more compelling as you get to hear the characters' alibis and personalities. And heck, if they don't find the clue, maybe the suspect who left it - the killer - might be brave enough to see if they can steal it before it gets discovered. This could lead to them acting suspicious in a different way, and/or leaving more and different clues in their wake. Your detective doesn't have to be a Sherlock Holmes type, who can solve any mystery (unless a pretty lady is involved). Your guy can make mistakes, especially if you're not writing detective fiction, but are instead having a smaller investigation or treasure-hunting plot in the midst of your broader adventure.

And hell, I can go on for hours talking about how you can use failure to add plot complications which improve your story, because honestly, failure can be a broad spectrum... hell, success can be a broad spectrum. Ever heard of a Pyrrhic Victory? You couldn win the battle, but ultimately lose the war.

The point is this... it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that stories are about watching someone win, again and again and again. But, that's not the case, at least it shouldn't be, and if you write a story like that without the necessary finesse it can alienate your audience. As I have said already, to win at everything and never fail is inhuman.
To err is human; we all lose sometimes... not only will we all eventually die, but we also sometimes get badly hurt, get it wrong or cause problems because of our mistakes. But, our story doesn't end every time we fail, we keep going, but we might have to change... to develop, or adapt, to a new paradigm caused by our failings. That's how we develop as people, and it's how stories develop into legends.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I hope that the next time that you fail, you have the strength to get back up and try again, or find a way to move past it.

A Dream Come True

Believe it or not, I do try to make these posts somewhat scary... or, at the very least, creepy. I don't know if I always succeed, but today, I want to set any attempt at horror aside for a moment. See, today I have an announcement that's not scary, but it does fit the Halloween Countdown theme of "dreams" because I want to talk about a dream of mine which has come true - one of my short stories is getting published, in an anthology!

I have had some drabbles published by Alban Lake, I posted stories online and I have some non-fiction work around the place. But, earlier this year I had one of my short stories accepted by a little publisher, Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing; and in association with Legion of Dorks, they're publishing:

Misspelled
Magic Gone Awry

Edited kindly and patiently by Kelly Ann Colby, it's a collection of mixed-fantasy short stories, wherein spells, prophecies, curses and hexes don't quite work out as hoped. Obviously, I'm proud of my own story, "Sight Unseen" by Matthew A.J. Anderson (that's me) - about a pair of young magic users who try an invisibility spell that doesn't work out like they'd planned. but I've read some of the other stories, and I don't think you'll be disappointed by this collection. there's "Hex Messages" by Stephanie Dare Adams - a fun tale about why powerful witches should be wary of what they drink at college parties; "Last Rite of the God Heist" by Gregory D. Little - about an inexperienced officer, performing a dangerous ritual for her society's imprisoned gods; "Be Like the Pigeon" by Matt Thompson - the story of a pair of wizarding brothers, cursed to speak only in poetic verse & many, many more fantasy stories to inspire, intrigue and enchant...

You can't buy the book yet as it's not yet out, but if this peaks your interest, I highly encourage you to check it out when it's launched. Part of the proceeds to this work goes towards Toys for Tots, so you're not just supporting smaller publishers and writers, but also giving to a children's charity.
But, if the book isn't out yet... why am I telling you about it today?

Well, because the book WILL be out, in just 20 DAYS from today. The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, November 9th at 8PM Central Time, as the publisher is in Texas. To celebrate, Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing has organized a public book launch to be streamed live on Twitch.tv, with as many of the contributing authors as possible (myself included). Like I said, it's organized by Central time, but as I'm not American, by my reckoning the book launches at:

Wednesday, November 10th (2021), 1:00PM AEDT
(click here, and this should show a converter for your local time)

I am still sorting out the specifics, but I believe if you head to Twitch.tv/CursedDragonShip at that date and time, you can join us for the launch.

- - -

Save the Date, Mark the Calendar & Set the Alarm - I am looking forward to this, and I hope you'll come join me, my fellow authors, the editors and possibly more people (I'm a featured author, not an organizer, so I'm still a little fuzzy on the details). Check out the Cursed Dragon Ship website for any updates.

Until Next Time, I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I hope you'll come join us if possible. I'm nervous, but excited, to see how this thing goes... and in the meantime, come back for as I continue my Halloween Countdown shenanigans, tomorrow.

UPDATE: book now available to buy at Misspelled – Magic Gone Awry – Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing

One Word at a Time.

Dyslexia
Knot a purse on our tier under stands me,
  Bee cores I have all weighs bean the sway,
Beak awes it’s not allot descent stew me,
  Gnome adder what though spear pull say,

Icon tall weighs say, what need stew beat old,
  Eye contour way seer wot is said,
So with our ten knee body to hear me,
  Their are sum time sigh wish shy was dead,

But in a whirl dove such con few sing ways,
  It twist sand it old dements,
And all though eye ham dis leg sick,
  I’m aching theme most cents.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Huh, does that feel like enough? It doesn't really feel like enough to me. Okay, I should explain. This is a poem that I wrote over ten years ago (I was still in highschool that's how long ago it was, jeez), and that's why it's much more dramatic (I'm much less likely to dip into the "character is suicidal, therefore deep" angle, these days). But, I am fond of it. It has a simple conceit - being illegible when read literally, but makes sense when read phonetically - and doesn't outstay its welcome (in case you're wondering, yes, this was inspired by Ode to My Spell Checker). 

The main problem with it is it's not the story I wanted to share. See, I've been doing this Halloween Countdown for a few years, and every single time, I enjoy the hell out of it. I love writing contextual posts for a scary concept, I love doing the research and learning new things, I love sharing fiction. But, sometimes, the deadline is too much.

On several occasions, I've had plans for this which I've had to abandon, because I ran out of time, and today is one of those occasions. I was writing a two-part story in the same universe as "Operation: White Christmas" and "The Ambrosial Glass" - I call that series the Lockburn Files, and I love writing it because I like the horror in it, and it's fun exploring more of The Kitchen. I started working on a story idea that I've had for literally years, a story exploring more of The Dishwasher, the department that cleans up the mess that the Kitchen sometimes leaves behind. However, I have so many new characters in that, and it introduces a whole new department, and would require a tonne of research. So, I put that on the backburner, and decided to focus on another story - this one simply about a long-distance transfer of some freight which is so dangerous that nobody's security level is high enough to know what they're traveling with. Lots of fun, a basic story, and something that could easily be a two-parter (because of the long distance).
However... I haven't finished it yet. I have to post it today, and it's not finished. It turns out that this one took more research than I had anticipated, and much more planning than I had, well, planned for. So, instead, you get this poem, and tomorrow, instead of part two to the story you're not getting, I'll put up another poem I wrote a while ago, but which I still think is worth reading.
At least I wrote a few more posts in advance this year, but I should really work on these much sooner... I've been saying that for years, and this year I managed to do that with almost half of them, but now it's catching up with me again.

So, in a way, it's ironic that this is a poem about someone who struggles to communicate, to put their words together, because that's literally where I am at the moment - I have so much I want to do, but I ultimately can't, because I'm struggling to write everything I want to write before time is up. Now, don't worry, I won't just throw my story in the trash - I will see if I can salvage it for either a later post. I don't think I'll wait until next Halloween Countdown. I've been dreaming up what the theme should be for next year, and I don't think the story suits it very well...

Anyway, I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I'm sorry that I couldn't post as many stories as I had planned, but I'll do my best to post more in the future. Until Next Time, I'm going to finish off the last few posts and get ready for Halloween Itself!

The Puzzle of Jigsaw

I believe that any Idea could be made into a great Story. Not just "kind of good", and not just "technically a story, by some definitions", but something truly great, which can excite, intrigue or amaze.
For some stories, this is easier than others, as some ideas have a great deal more potential than others, and for others it would require a very talented writer to make it work.

I am saying all of this right at the beginning because I want to say that I don't think that the concept of writing yet another Saw movie was necessarily going to suck. I do believe that it is a "bad idea", in the sense that there is a lot of risk involved, especially in a series which has already come to a slow, painful conclusion.
But, as much as I never wanted another Saw movie, the reason I inevitably watched Jigsaw (I mean, the other reason, not just "so I could blog about it"), is because I felt like, if it was done right, they could reboot the series to recapture the style and intrigue of Saw, whilst telling a great story.

So, the idea behind Jigsaw could be have been a great movie. However, one of the reasons I know this for a fact is because the best way to turn it into a great movie already exists, and that movie is called Saw II.

Several people, locked in a building both owned and engineered by a famous serial killer, with personalized traps for each player, with specific rules of play and the promise of freedom for those who successfully complete their game, whilst the police in the adjacent storyline are piecing together evidence and trying to find out where the game is taking place - all the while not realizing that the actual killer is toying with them - and in the end, the twist is that the killer wasn't working alone.

Yeah . . . that's Saw II, and that's also the exact storyline of Jigsaw. The traps are different, because . . . "duh", a staple of this series is having new and different traps each time. Otherwise, this is that same idea but done much, much worse. And maybe you disagree that Saw II is "a great movie", but it's definitely a greater movie than Jigsaw.

But, the reason it sucked isn't just because the idea is unoriginal - a lot of ideas are unoriginal. Making a sandwich is not an original idea, that doesn't mean that you can't make an amazing sandwich.
It ruins this movie because using the exact same idea in the same movie series gets old much faster. In fact, that twist I talked about has already been done three times before. This is the fourth time they've used that "twist", in a movie that is now eight movies long, half of them now have had the exact same twist ending.

The second major reason why this sucked is because rather than rebooting this series, and trying to recapture the greatness of the first few films, instead this movie just picked up right where it left off, warts and all.
So, instead of writing great characters, and basing traps off of the ironic way in which the trap is going to test them, it just creates random traps for random people that will hurt or kill them in the most spectacular way possible. So, yes, this is yet more torture porn, without any of the psychological aspects previously explored in the first few movies. But, rather than create believable people with believable flaws, we have yet more "Acceptable Targets" for our killer to eviscerate.

But, this film added a third aspect which totally destroyed the fun for me, and that aspect is science-fiction. A major flaw in the Saw franchise is the foresight of the Jigsaw killer, because in several of the movies he creates traps with multiple stages, as well as complex mind-games, many of which rely upon the killer knowing the outcome of the trap beforehand. This is present in several of the movies, and this one as well, but in this one it's even worse - one of the later traps relies on there being only two people left to take part in it - which means that he had to know for a fact that right people would survive twice, in order for the trap to work. So, we know that the killer must be psychic, that's the only explanation.
But, that aside, several of the new traps in this series work by magic. The film doesn't say that it's magic, but some traps would be impossible otherwise. In several of the traps, the only way to free yourself is by doing as you're told - spilling your blood, or stabbing yourself. However, once the characters cut themselves, their locks magically come undone. They don't "find a key", "activate a mechanism", the locks just snap open, because the plot needed them to.
In one scene, a character needs to reach between some incredibly sharp wires to retrieve something, but when he attempts to use a long stick to do so, the trap is triggered and snaps it in half. Yet, when he reaches in with his hand, it doesn't trigger, and he retrieves it safely.
And worst of all . . . and it always annoys me when films do this. The filmmakers seem to have forgotten that medical laser beams don't exist, sure, we have technology which suggests that it may be possible in the future, maybe a few decades down the track, but as it stands it's currently impossible. The same thing happened for the creators of Now You See Me, when they somehow "forgot" that hyper-realistic, three-dimensional holograms don't exist. And the film doesn't even need it. Remember how I mentioned that scene, where a character nearly gets his hand cut by sharp wires? You could recreate the effect with the laser cutters just by using the super-sharp wires from that trap.
Oh, and did I mention that some of the traps are inescapable? Because, yes, more of the traps are inescapable, making them completely pointless as any kind of "test". So much of this film could have been better with some minor tweaks . . .

And this film kept on doing that. It had some ideas that were really cool, but then rendered them lame by the way that it was executed. Usually, the people who are in these traps are chosen because they are "wasting their life" in some way; in earlier Saw movies, people were chosen for things like: cheating on their wife; drug addiction; lying; self-harm; insurance fraud; self-destruction due to grief; obsession with work & kidnapping.
This film begins by hinting at the concept that, maybe, this is still the case. One person was a thief, one person was a dishonest businessman, one was a drunk . . . but throughout the film, we learn that every single person is a killer - by directly or indirectly leading to the death of an innocent person. That's NOT good storytelling!
As well as this, there was a trap which I actually thought was kind of interesting. These films have frozen, burned, cut, drowned, melted, crushed & eviscerated people before, but I think that this was the first one threatening to bury someone alive. Sure, the mechanism for escape is contrived and not well done, but at least it was new . . . but, this film ruins it by stopping half-way through the trap to throw knives at them. WHY?! You finally came up with an original idea, something I hadn't seen before, and you stop so that you can go back to throwing sharp things?
Oh, and the part of this film that bothered me the most - even though it wasn't the worst thing, it was present through the whole movie - everything was too clean. The first trap has shiny, metal walls. The sharp wire trap I mentioned before looked like it had been polished. The scene where the characters are being buried alive, had them being buried by clean, pure, fresh-looking grain. Even the set-piece trap of the film, the trap that they were clearly the most proud of - the spiralizer - looked like it had been painted.
Have none of the set designers or prop masters in this industry ever heard of "ambience"? Personally, I thought that part of the reason why the Jigsaw killer liked setting his traps in dingy factories, run-down houses and dark rooms is because he saw these tests as punishments, he wanted to bring them to the darkest, lowest point in their life, so that they could return to the world and see how bright it is. But, either way, the reality is that these films are set in grimy, dark, broken and run-down places is because these are horror movies, and places like that evoke an atmosphere of isolation, sickness, crime, danger and mystery. When you sweep the floors, polish the set and turn up the lights, your movie doesn't feel like a Saw movie.
And that's why this film fails so miserably. Yes, it has some of the minor thematic elements like the Billy puppet, the tapes, the traps, the twist . . . but, this feels like the cheap knock-off that it is. I mean, I say "cheap", even though the budget was bigger than the first two Saw movies combined (and remember, those were the best of the series), but that's because I'm talking more about what it's worth, not what it cost.

But, I'm not just here to be negative. After all, I don't think this film is as bad as the last Saw movie. I think this is about the same level as "Saw V" - not the worst, but still not good enough to recommend others see it.
So, rather than continue complaining and deconstructing the film, I'm going to do something constructive. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I honestly believe that you can turn any idea into a great movie - yes, even the idea of "let's continue the Saw franchise". So, let's keep the same title, same basic idea of people scared that Jigsaw is still alive & I'll even keep the characters similar, and borrow some of the ideas, just for fun. So, here is . . .

THE AWN'S STORY OUTLINE FOR A BETTER JIGSAW MOVIE

So, here is how I would do my movie. One of the aspects that this film brought up is the idea of "Jigsaw Worship Sites". So, what if we start the film with someone trapped in a dark room, tied to a chair in someone's garage. He starts screaming, the light comes on, and and in front of them is a man wearing a black hood with red highlights (Saw's usual get-up). The person then plays the tape, in Jigsaw's voice, and it says the usual spiel "I'd like the play a game. you are a terrible person, because you slept with my wife. You have two minutes to admit the truth, or you will burn."
Then as the trapped man protests, the guy in the hood pours gasoline on him.
After less than a minute of this, the police burst in, and arrest the guy, releasing his victim. As they drag him away, he screams "I am Jigsaw! This is Game Over for you!" nonsense like that.

Then we can go title screen, or whatever. Then we go to the police as they interview this guy, he basically makes it clear that he's a whackjob. Meanwhile, in the observation room, our main police character people are talking about how despite the fact that he killed so many people and resulted in one of the greatest manhunts for the police department, ever since John Kramer died, there have been a number of attempted copycat killers like the new guy here. We can reference stuff like, people who worship school shooters and other realworld drama, and how five or so people have died now, because of these copy-cats.

We flick back to the interview, and we learn that the tape he used had John Kramer's voice on it. The copycat admits that he downloaded it from a worship site, it's basically a "text-to-speech" program that reads out any text in John Kramer's voice. The police check out this website, we can do some character development, then they see a link to someone saying "real jigsaw murder" or something, and they they discover a video livestream of what looks like a standing coffin in a small, empty pool, and then we can get to our traps.

The Coffin Trap
A coffin-shaped box, with wide slats so that the person inside can see out, and light gets through. Inside stands a woman with grey hair, not too old, but not young. Her left hand is bent up so that it's near her face, and held in place on the side of the "coffin" with three screws through the palm - each one held in place with a washer. Around her neck is a mechanized "lobotomy collar" (it is designed to slowly stab a skewer under her chin and up through her brain). As well, there is a tape recorder, hanging on a screw near her face, and a screw driver hangs on a chain above her, poking through the slats.
When she awakens, the tape explains that the woman, Carla, is homeless and a thief. [dialogue: "You have been living in a box, but tonight you might just die in one."]. When she grabs the screwdriver, it will pull the chain, opening the hopper and slowly burying the box with dirt.

The Tractor Trap
A man is tied by thick ropes to the seat of a heavily modified tractor, which has the seat turned and raised so that he is facing the large wheels, which have nails and staples all over them. There is also a noose around his neck on a very long rope, that loops down and ties to wind around the axel. He, like the other person has a special collar around his neck, the "crusher collar" (essentially, a sort of vice, with clamps either side of his jaw, designed to slowly close together, and crush his head). In the seat cushion, between his legs, a kitchen knife has been stabbed He awakens to the sound of the tractor when it suddenly starts up, and a loud speaker attached to the wall tells him his fate. The character, Mitch, is a mechanic who sold a bike with faulty brakes, [dialogue: "You will need to cut yourself free before you reach the end of your rope. But, I'm afraid this vehicle doesn't have any brakes either . . ."]. He is forced to use his feet to stop the spinning wheels, and then cut the rope.

The Drink Trap
A man awakens in a room with several smashed beer and wine bottles all over the ground, he has nothing but a thin t-shirt and shorts on, and his hands secured behind him with handcuffs, and on the floor near him is a tape recorder. He, also, has a collar on, the "knife collar" (A collar with several knives sitting up like teeth around the edge. They are designed to bend downwards over time, to stab into the neck). On one side of the room, at eye-level there is a tap, pouring dirty water into a sink at foot-level. On the other side of the room is a very thick, clear glass pipe, at least a metre tall, secured to the wall with thick, metal brackets - in this pipe is a key attached to a ping-pong ball.
When he finally plays the tape, Ryan is told that because he is an alcoholic, he needs to walk over the broken bottles to retrieve the key from the bottom of the glass [dialogue: "Will you be able to fill the glass with liquid, before the room fills with your blood?"] Ryan will be forced to use his mouth to hold the water. The first time he tries it, he should spit the water out, and gag, to show that it does taste gross.

The Smoke Trap
In this room, there is simply a woman lying on the floor, with a cast-iron fireplace burning away, and the pipe leaking smoke throughout the room; the room has one locked door, with a 6-figure combination lock. She also has a collar, the "noose collar" (this one is essentially a steel-wire noose, which is designed to slowly tighten over time). As well as the noose, a tape recorder hangs on a chain around her neck. Anna awakens, coughing, due to the smoke. Her tape says that she suffocated her child, and so now she must suffer through choking smoke in order to escape. It explains that the code to unlock the door is written on the walls (it is in relatively small writing), and she must find them and enter the numbers before she chokes on the smoke.
She at first tries to stop the chimney, and burns herself as a result.

The Finger Locks
Once these people all break free of their traps, they leave them and enter a long corridor. It simply has four doors along one side, where they enter the room from their respective traps, one table on one side which has a hammer, a chisel (and maybe some other sharp tools) all chained to the table, as well as one tape recorder. There is a door marked exit, which is very heavily reinforced, and locked with an electronic lock.
On the free, long wall, there are four devices. Basically clear boxes, so that they can see inside. Each is designed with four holes, each close together and wide enough to fit one finger of one hand. but some of the finger-holes aren't long enough to fit an entire finger, and at the end of each finger-hole is a button.
The tape explains that each one of them is wearing a collar, which is slowly killing them, but there are keys to remove them on the other side of the door. Since they have all been so selfish in their lives, they must work together to collectively sacrifice something in order to leave the room. So, they simply need to activate each finger-lock, by reaching their hands into the box, through the holes, and pressing the buttons, but they will need to remove portions of their fingers, in order to fit each lock, using the tools on the table [dialogue: "Like any lock, you will need a key that fits. Which is why I have given you the tools to create your own."].

I might also steal that Shotgun trap, since that was kind of clever. Since, in my head, the killer will be upset because, the way they escape the finger traps is that all but one of the people involved will cut off their fingers - in several gutwrenching scenes of people measuring the shape of their hand, and putting the chisel against their finger . . . then raising the hammer - but the final person will decide they're not going to cut off their fingers, after seeing how painful it was. So, the others . . . do it for them. This upsets the new Jigsaw, so they decide to force them into another trap.

Also, in the background, we will have the police tracing the signal, and trying to hunt down this place where the livestream is taking place. But, my thinking is - to hell with the reveal in the show. I want the Jigsaw Killer to be a female, this time. The last time he had a girl helper, she was killed off for being too emotional. That's total bull. So, have a mature woman who is a fan of his because her father was in one of Jigsaw's traps, and that changed her life.
I haven't planned out the full scope of this because, well, this is just for fun. You could easily throw in more references to copy-cat killers, and the like. But, the idea is basically the horror that Jigsaw isn't a person, but an idea - the idea of inflicting traumatic growth upon people who are wasting their lives. So, the cops aren't battling a person, but an idea. Kinda like V for Vendetta . . . actually that movie had him torture someone in order to force them to learn something too, so yeah, a lot like that movie. Also, this is kind of reminiscent towards Untraceable as well.
The thing is, I haven't got a big plan for the ending, however if you want to go full on twisty-twisty woo, and play around with the timeline, you could make the girl - the one who decides to carry out these new traps - Corbett Denlon. Don't worry, I didn't know that name either until I looked it up, but that's the name of the girl whose father, Jeff, was the main character in Saw III; she was captured by Jigsaw for the purposes of that trap, and later rescued by the police. What if her experiences then, lead to her deciding to continue the legacy, in the name of both Jigsaw and her parents? Does that sound like a cool idea? I think so.
But, this is just for the sake of continuity fun-times . . . not necessary at all, but could be a fun continuity nod for geeks, like myself, and it's a fun, little twist. Oh, and the most important part of all - no lasers!


Anyway, that's how I would have written Jigsaw . . . if I had to. Or, alternatively, if someone paid me a lot of money to. If you think it's good, bad, crazy or something in between, feel free to comment below.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to take a break from the Saw franchise for a while. Because at this point, watching these movies is starting to really hurt.

Stuck Out Like a Saw Movie

For the most part, I am a fan of the Saw movies. This shouldn’t be surprising, as worldwide it is the highest-grossing horror franchise. Not to mention, I like to promote Australian artists, and both James Wan (the director) and Leigh Whannell (the writer, and initial actor), the people who started this franchise, and created the first movie, are Australian filmmakers.
However, I have said that I prefer psychological horror to physical torture and pain, so it probably seems weird that I like a series whose defining feature is “torture porn”. Well, that’s what I want to talk about today . . .
This series began with a short film in 2003, which was called “Saw” until they were hired by Twisted Pictures to create a full-length movie based on the concept which they also called "Saw", so they renamed the short Saw 0.5.
Then in 2004, they released Saw, a low-budget horror film about the victims of a twisted serial killer. What makes this film so good, to me, is the writing. Wan & Whannell based the themes and style off their own fears and nightmares. They had a few gore effects, some props, and a small number of shooting locations. But, dialogue is cheap, so this film focussed on characters, mystery and twists. The characters themselves were flawed, but realistic. Best of all, I love the way they characterized the killer.

The villain, the serial killer, justifies his crimes to himself by placing people in elaborate, deadly traps which they technically can survive, albeit after some medical treatment and permanent scars. So, he doesn't think of himself as a killer, but rather a kind of teacher. He sees this torment as having a positive influence, as he believes that people value their life more, “cherish” their life, if they witness firsthand their own fragile mortality.

As a writer, I adore this kind of character. Jigsaw is the villain, he's a sick and cruel monster, but he sees himself as the hero. He even has his own twisted sense of morality, based around giving everyone a chance, forgiveness and proactivity.
I like it because, although twisted, it's realistic. Most people think they are good, or doing the right thing - or the best they can, even bad people - it makes sense that the Jigsaw killer would find some way to justify his actions.
As well, although his methods are cruel, he isn't exactly “wrong”. Some people who have gone through a traumatic experience, say afterwards that they feel “lucky”, and that their life has greater meaning to them. It's not just hearsay, it's a phenomenon known as “Post-traumatic Growth”, and the Jigsaw Killer is essentially trying to induce post-traumatic growth in his victims.
It is a contrivance for the sake of the plot, but it's a clever contrivance since Jigsaw tends to select victims who he feels aren't living their life to the fullest, or living an honest life. This means that every character that is a victim of Jigsaw has to come with a flaw pre-baked into their backstory just to appear in the movie.
As well, some of the traps were designed to be somewhat “ironic”. Two men who were never supposed to meet are forced into a room together; A man who cut his wrists is forced to crawl through sharp razor wire; a man who faked an illness must find an antidote locked in a safe, by finding the right combination, despite several fake combinations written on the walls.
It meant that, as well as being cruel and gruesome, which is a big part of the horror, there was also a kind of sick “punishment” going on, making people reflect on exactly what lead them to their trap.

So, when the second movie started, and the major setpiece is a house full of criminals, all struggling to survive, I was intrigued.
Apparently this film was based on a prior script, called The Desperate, which was failing to find a studio as it was too similar to Saw. So, writer Leigh Whannell fixed the script to make it fit in the Saw franchise, and they filmed it. This film, like the last, had some traps designed for specific victims, like a pit full of hypodermic needles, designed to punish a drug dealer; a spy who is forced to cut into his eye to retrieve a key & a kidnapper who is trapped in a furnace and can only be let go by his victims.
It was a fun… but, this is where the trouble starts. Yes, Wan and Whannell did have a big idea on their hands, they wanted to explore the Saw Universe they had created. But, by turning “The Desperate” into a Saw movie, they created some issues. Some of the plot elements, especially the twist, relied on contrived preparations, and chance elements that would have been impossible to predict, and I feel like it was caused by them trying to end with a twist, but also whilst working with the plot machinations from the original script. But, it's okay, because although there were one or two contrivances, the story was still interesting and had a similar feel to the first one.

Then, we had the third film, Saw III and it was clear that the series was coming to an end. This was created by Wan and Whannell once again, but only as tribute to Gregg Hoffman, the Producer of Saw & Saw II. They had originally turned down the offer to work on the Saw franchise again, but Hoffman died shortly after the sequel was released, so they made it in dedication to him.
So, this film really was the swansong of the franchise. Not only was Jigsaw on his deathbed, but his supposed “killer apprentice” was under threat as well. Also, some of the traps had been changed to make them unsurvivable - a classroom trap had the escape door welded shut, and an angel trap was changed so that the key to escape couldn't fit in the padlock.
It was exciting, at first, that they were adding a new twist, but as a watcher it really bothered me. The whole idea of the traps is that you can escape them, so even if it was “part of the story”, by including traps you couldn't escape from, the film series really was turning into torture porn - bloody murder for bloody murder’s sake. But, I think that this film knew this, which is why doing so is portrayed as despicable by every single character.
Now, you may be saying, “But, Absurd Word Nerd, there are eight movies in this franchise.”
To which I would respond, “actually, there are only seven, the short film doesn't count.”
And so you may reply, “actually, I was referring  to ‘Jigsaw’, the twenty-seventeen film that continues the story.”
So, I would heartily respond, “that's a soft reboot, I don't think that really counts. Number seven is called the final chapter’, for goodness sake, I don't need to accept Jigsaw as canon.”
Therefore you might say, “whatever, look, this rhetorical device has been hijacked by your complaints about the new film. I just want to know how can you say this was the swansong when four more movies followed, and this film clearly hinted at a second killer apprentice!”
Okay, that is a fair point. But, the reason why is because this was the last time that, in my eyes, the series was unquestionably good. It had that same style as the first film, just with a higher budget. And, it was the last time that either Wan or Whannell took part in the franchise. Yes they added in elements hinting at more films down the line, probably because they either knew or were told that the films would carry on without them. But, little did they know that the films would just go downhill from there…

I like Saw IV, I freely admit that it's not perfect and there are many more issues with this film than with any previous. In particular, the traps are more contrived, as are the coincidences. Certain people in the film needed to behave in a certain way, or have certain skills in order for the whole setup to work, but the chances of that happening in real life are so slim that it's ridiculous. As well, some of the traps and tests were more contrived, such as a chair that scalps you, and a bed with arms which supposedly generated enough force to rip your limbs off.
But, this was still heavily a character piece all about both the methodologies of Jigsaw, and the mindset of the detectives chasing him down. It was a fun ride, and I still really enjoyed it, even though I could see the flaws. This new writer was actually doing a good job at recreating the series… or so I thought.

It was while watching Saw V, the one and only instalment of this franchise that I saw in theatres, that I started to feel like it was running out. I was excited for it, because the twist at the end of Saw IV had promised a new Jigsaw Killer, that's why I saw it in the cinemas. But, I left feeling kind of disappointed.
To begin with, the big “twist”, was pretty obvious. I assume I'm not alone in this, but when I watch a film like this I tend to wonder how I would attempt to solve the trap myself. So, because the twist was based around alternate solutions to the traps, it was pretty obvious how it would end since I'd already considered those solutions, especially given how each trap was constructed.
And there were more contrivances. Five people had to go through four traps, and although all five of them were at risk every time, exactly one person dies in each room, to make sure the story can continue. Maybe this was more obvious because this wasn't the first time the series had done something like this (Saw III liked killing off extra characters one-by-one as well), but the twist forces you to reconsider how everyone died, which brings these flaws front and centre.
This film also has  two more unsurvivable traps, a drowning cube, and a blade pendulum, and I won't waste time explaining, again, why that sucks.

Plus, this film in particular added a new element to the series which I despise… the victims of the traps were now not only incredibly keen to “play” these games - ready to cut, maim & murder with very little influence - but also, all of them became murderous arseholes. Several characters in Saw V put their fellow man in imminent danger, often nearly killing them, just to attempt to survive.
I'm writing this all in a new paragraph because this is a major aspect which made me hate the next two films in this series.
Consider this, for a moment: In the first film, it was about character and psychological horror. Two characters are locked in a room trying to find a way out, and each is given a saw that can cut through their feet. How do they respond? Both of them reject this option, as it is blatantly horrifying, and work together to try to escape; but more and more complicated things happen, as they learn more about their predicament and each other, and they are forced to make choices they wouldn't otherwise have made.
Now, consider the opening trap of Saw VI…
Two people are locked in a room, and given several sharp tools and a scale in the middle, and told that to survive they must cut off the most flesh from their own body, and drop it in the scales. How do they respond?
The fat guy says: “I'm not dying for you, bitch” and immediately starts cutting into his stomach.
This is bad writing. People don't act like this.
Okay, yes, maybe some people… I'd consider them sociopaths, but it's possible.
However, not only does almost EVERY character act like this from here on out (except the protagonist), but certain traps only work because of it.

Saw VI is infamously “the political one”. It is pretty obvious that this is meant to be a message movie, since the main character is the CEO of a health insurance provider. He is punished for the crime of being part of America's corrupt healthcare system, and is forced to see what it is like to decide who lives and who dies, face-to-face. The whole message is pretty on-the-nose, and when they include flashbacks showing Jigsaw reprimanding him for his actions, it starts to feel like a Very Special Episode.
But it's also very well acted, and although some of these traps felt a bit contrived, more about the spectacle than any kind of irony, I still enjoyed this story… for the most part.
What I didn't enjoy was the “Jigsaw Killer” framing story. I will try to be vague, so this isn't too spoilery, but as the cops close in on the new killer, and tension is rising as you wonder how he could possibly escape… he just kills the witnesses. Not in a clever way, or with a jigsaw trap, he just stabs them in the throat.
I'm sorry, but that just isn't Jigsaw. Jigsaw himself hated murder, he never saw himself as a killer and he despised murderers. And although this person isn't the same person as Jigsaw, the reason this bothers me is because it's boring. Killing people to get away with your crime is something you do when you've done something bad and you're about to get caught. Jigsaw never thought he was doing the wrong thing, which is why he never tried to stop the police from catching him, but rather he would trap them and try to teach them to think like he did. That was the whole premise of Saw IV after all. So, now everyone is a psycho killer. Great… I wonder what the last movie has in store.

In Australia, the movie was called Saw: The Final Chapter, although I usually just refer to it was Saw VII. But, when it was released, the film was called Saw 3D, and a lot of the film was shot in a way that put the gore front and centre, so that people could see it fly at them through their stereoscopic glasses. See, 3D glasses are really good at making things jump out of the screen at you, but one thing they can’t do is make the movie any better.
In my experience, 3D always makes movies worse, because if something jumps out at you too quickly, you won’t see it, so movies often linger on the biggest 3D effects to make sure you see how impressive the effect is. Also, if you move the camera too much, it can make the viewer feel sick This is really distracting because if, like me, you watch the two-dimensional versions of 3D movies, then the long, lingering shots of things flying towards the screen just feels awkward.
It doesn’t improve the plot, but I wish it had because this movie is really bad. One of the traps is not only inescapable, but it’s a dream sequence. Who wrote this movie? R.L. Stine?
Then, there was the garage trap, which is when I knew this movie had devolved into nothing more than torture porn. One person must rip his skin off in order to save himself and his three racist friends, and based on the way the trap is composed - so that the fates of four people are resting on one person’s ability to mutilate himself - it is obvious that this is going to end with blood. They’re racists, for goodness sake. Remember what I was talking about yesterday, with “Acceptable Targets”? It was obvious as soon as the word ‘racist’ was mentioned that these people were all going to die, horribly. But not only do they die, but when they do, the music flares as their bodies are crushed, splattered, ripped apart and thrown around. It is pretty blatantly just splattergore for its own sake.
The main story is about a small-time celebrity who is famous for having written a self-help book called "S.U.R.V.I.V.E. - My Story of Overcoming Jigsaw" all about how he survived a Jigsaw Killer trap, but it turns out that this is all a lie. He made up the whole story, to get money and fame. That alone would be an interesting story, but they wreck it by not focussing on that aspect for the majority of the traps. The main traps start by being based around the “three wise monkeys”: The “Speak No Evil” trap would stab you in the neck if you screamed whilst the main character tries to pull the key out of your throat. The “See No Evil” trap would stab you in the eyes unless the main character . . . lifted weights that also stabbed him in the side of his stomach? Look, just go with it. Then the “Hear No Evil” trap blinded you, and wrapped a noose around your neck, and you escape by listening to the main character guide you across. Huh . . . it seems like maybe they should have called this one “see no evil” and had the other one stab you in the ears, since this isn’t about “not hearing”, but whatever.
Then it abandons this entirely, forcing him to rip his wisdom teeth out with pliers, because we’ve given up on metaphors at this point. Sure, there is a “code” written on his teeth for the door, but they just dropped the “X No Evil” thing entirely. And finally, he has to recreate the trap he “claims” to have done in his stories, in order to save his wife, by piercing his chest with hooks, and winching himself up the chains, and of course that fails because of course it does, it’s about time this movie decided to accept physics.
But this isn’t the majority of the movie. We spend most of the movie with more framing story regarding the new Jigsaw killer as he taunts the police, and Jigsaw’s old wife as she tries and fails to act convincingly, and finally there is a big twist at the end that the original Jigsaw Killer . . . had an accomplice. Now, if you’re keeping track, this is the third time that they’ve used this exact same twist. To top it all off, the story ends with the accomplice locking the new guy in a room, then throwing a handsaw at the camera in slow-motion in a way that would have looked just as awkward, even if you added another dimension, and saying the iconic line of the movie: “Game Over”.


Look these movies had been slowly sinking in quality ever since the first one. And, I mean really slowly, because although I still like the first few, I accept that they were getting progressively worse. In fact, if I were to review them, I would give the first movie maybe an 8 out of 10, then remove 0.5 for every progressive movie.

So, what ruined these movies? Well, it started out with a low budget, mild gore, a few twists and high-quality writing, and later it turned into a high-budget, splattergore, over-complicated story with low-quality writing. But the reason why, as far as I can tell, is because they kept switching directors and writers around, and when they ran out of ideas, they decided to rely on special effects and spectacle to draw in viewers, eventually scraping the bottom of the barrel and picking up a pair of 3D glasses.
This was a series that began with torture being used as a tool to tell a particular story about a deranged serial killer, which played on the minds of viewers by making us think about these horrific acts and wondering how far the characters would go to survive. It ended with torture being used as a way of spraying blood across the screen, smearing our eyes with gore to try to hide the fact that the writers didn’t know how to recapture the essence of the first few films.

For this reason, I have decided not to watch the Jigsaw reboot movie up until now. I have no interest in returning to a series that I have watched slowly die - somewhat ironically, like an old cancer patient. By the seventh film, it almost feels like they were torturing the story by forcing it to continue. But then, seven years after the fact, they’re going to try to revive it?
Sounds like a bad idea . . .

But, since this year my theme is “torture”, I figured that I might punish myself by watching the new movie, and seeing if it is anywhere near as bad as I think it will be. If it is, well, I’ll keep you posted.
I’m the Absurd Word, and until next time . . . I’m going to go watch a movie.

Your Muse sent you a Message . . .

Earlier this month, I was helping out with some gardening and as usual I left my mobile phone in my pocket. For some reason - probably due to the heat, my posture or both - my phone's screen cracked and the touchscreen stopped working right. I tried resetting it, but the screen went black. My phone . . . was dead.

R.I.P. Samsung Galaxy S5, 27/09/16 ― 08/12/17

But, I need a phone, so I went and bought a new one. It has some useful features, it has a bit more space and a faster CPU and it even comes with an app called Samsung Smart Switch, so I could move all of my old applications and data onto my new phone. However, when I first started using the phone, I did not know this, so I was just downloading new apps and games.

When I was looking for games for my phone, I wanted to get something new, since I had a bit more space on this phone, and in my search I found a collection of apps all with the same basic idea. They were databases for stories written in the style of an Instant Messenger program - in particular, Facebook Messenger, an app that many people have on their phone. This style intrigued me . . .
I don't "do" subscriptions, since it seems like a waste of money to me, but I accessed the free trial subscriptions for several of these apps, including Hooked, Tap, Cliffhanger & Seen so that I could see what the big deal was. Ultimately, it wasn't what I was expecting, but I figured it was perfect to write a blog post about. I'll get to the specifics of those apps in a moment, but first I want to talk about electronic literature in general.

When it comes to literature, fiction and writing, there are some amazing ways to read and to write. And, when you throw in the modern world with modern media and electronics, you get even more. For starters, I'm aware of some amazing ways that basic chat programs have been used in fiction.
To begin with, in the book John Dies at the End, there is a part of the story where, to show how powerful the big, bad monster is, the main characters read a transcript of a chat program with several people who are friends with one of the victims of the main story's conflict, and it just . . . I won't spoil it except to say that it does not exist in the Film of the Book, so even if you've seen the film, I still think you need to check out the original story for this one, it's rather well done.
Chat programs seem to lend themselves quite well to horror in fiction. I remember Noah Antwiler (aka 'Spoony') talking about Renraku Arcology: Shutdown, an RPG story setting that used in-world transcripts of chat programs for world-building, and because the characters involved were all top-shelf hackers it showed just how corrupt and dangerous the world was becoming.
I can also remember A Series of Poor Decisions, also known as "The Twitter Song", which used the "Newest First" layout from Twitter to inspire a song whose narrative was sung in reverse order. Unfortunately, the original video seems to be missing, so the only version I found online was on the Russian social media site VK.com, and the original CareWhatIThink Twitter profile still exists, but the song is worth checking out.
Speaking of Twitter, I have to mention a book I saw in my local bookstore called Twitterature. Written by Alexander Aciman & Emmett Rensin, this retells classic literature, through tweets, written from the viewpoint of the main character or other relevant characters. Of course it's very silly, since it tells stories like Beowulf, Dracula & Hamlet even though Twitter clearly didn't exist back then and uses a very crude vocabulary. Personally, I didn't like the way it was done, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
Also, one of my favourites is Digital: A Love Story. an indie visual novel where you play the main character and control the game through his computer. The story is told through e-mails with the love interest and by searching different websites. I haven't played in a while, but I found the story very enjoyable. Also, the game is available online, for free at the creator's website.

Different technologies have inspired all kinds of different stories and recently I've discovered one of the newest kind to join the gang, the aforementioned chat story.
Unfortunately, unlike "twitterature" or "electronic literature", chat stories don't have a cool name. Well, not yet . . .
Personally, I like the idea of calling them immemoirs. See, a memoir is a form of writing that memorializes experiences of the past from one person's perspective. Similarly, these chat stories tend to have one fixed perspective, but because it's fictional (therefore not written from memory) it's immemorial. Also, as these are written with chat programs and instant-messaging programs, also known as "I.M. programs" the title reflects how these are I.M.-memoirs. Well, I thought it was pretty clever. Unfortunately, it hasn't caught on yet, but maybe I can encourage others to utilize it.
In fact, let's make that our Word of the Day: 'IMMEMOIR'

Immemoir /i'memwah/ n. 1. A piece of fictitious writing which emulates the style of an instant messaging program, or SMS messages. 2. A work of fiction written within an instant messaging program. Also, Epistolary novel.

As a writer, I am intrigued by the potential of these immemoirs, but as a reader, so far, I've been left wanting. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be this excited about this style if I didn't see something in those originally stories that I found inspiring. However, there were niggling issues that prevented me from truly enjoying the original immemoirs that I've read.
I won't reveal the titles, since I don't want to name and shame a bunch of writers who are trying to find their feet in a new medium, but the first story I read had a plothole involving blood in a bathroom sink, and the second one had issues with formatting, since it had a character talking to two different people in two different phone conversations, despite both appearing on the same screen.
Most unfortunate of all is that some of the apps involved included some features which totally ruined the story. On several occasions, partway through an immemoir, I was given the option to choose between different responses in a story. I'm sure it makes it harder to write the story, especially if it diverged significantly, but from my perspective this ruined the story's immersion.
See, for me, part of the interest in these stories is the inherently voyeuristic nature of it. Most, if not all of us, write chats with our friends and family using instant-messenger programs, and so reading someone else's chat is both familiar and foreign. It's different enough that we're interested in knowing more, but similar enough that we can empathize with the people involved.
By changing the perspective and saying "oh, you're the one making the choices", it rips you out of that spectator role and puts you in the driver's seat, but with very limited control, only then to force you back into a spectator role.
Another major issue is when these stories ignored their own format for the sake of a plot point.
In one of the stories, the writer included an epilogue. But, since these stories are written in separate chat-lines, like in a messenger program, the way they moved time forward was to use a non-character "narrator" bubble to say:
<three weeks later>
And I actually stopped reading to check my own Facebook messages. Not just because it ruined the immersion, but to check the facebook chat template and see - yep, messages do in fact come with the occasional timestamp when there's a long gap between messages.
So, why break the story immersion for the writer to essentially slap me in the face with a wet fish with the words "TIME IS PASSING" tattooed on its scales?
I've seen other stories do this as well, where to show character actions, the writer just writes:
<*character sighs heavily and lowers the gun*>
It seems like such a waste?! Why bother writing in an IM style, if you're not going to exploit the style?!!

It was all very disappointing . . .
BUT, these issues are not inherent in immemoirs. In fact, these are just little issues, which could be easily avoided. Not to mention, there was one aspect of the immemoir that I found very impressive. It was used twice, for great effect, in two different horror immemoirs that I read, but my favourite was the story called "Where is She?"
In the story, on several occasions, the character took pictures on her phone, because . . . well, because, why not? People do that all the time, in real life. I see something hilarious, and say "You HAVE to see this weird doll I found", then snap a picture and share it in the middle of a chat.
And in a horror story, it was incredibly effective. Especially because, like in some IM programs, whenever a picture appeared, it started as a blank, white square that said "click to download image". Which meant, when a character says "there's something in the basement", then snaps a photo, if I want to know what they saw, I have to click the image to reveal it. It was very good at making me second-guess myself.

Also, stuff to do with plotholes, unnecessary interactivity and poorly-executed time-jumps, revealed with telling instead of showing - all of that is very easy to avoid, with a little care.

So, I am interested in writing an immemoir of my own. In fact, for Christmas, I want to put one on this blog. But, even more than that, I want you to write an immemoir, or some twitterature, or some other form of electronic epistolary novel.
I want to try it for myself, but I also want other people to try it for themselves. Getting the chance to read some really good electronic literature this christmas would be one heck of a gift.
And hey, since it is so close to Christmas, here is a gift from me to you.
If you're interested in writing an immemoir for your blog (or, you're just interested in playing around with the format), here is the format for my own instant-messenger story template:

MON AT 9:00 AM

He Message text

FRI AT 3:00 PM

She Reply text

This is the code that I used to create this: <table align="left" style="background: #eeeeee; border-radius: 5px 50px 50px 25px; display: inline-table; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 10px; text-align: left; width: 75%;"><caption style="color: grey; padding: 0px 0px 0px 100px;"> MON AT 9:00 AM </caption><tbody style="font-size: 15px;"> <tr><td><div style="color: black; text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: 17px;"><b>He</b></span></div> Message text </td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> <table align="right" style="background: #cccccc; border-radius: 50px 5px 25px 50px; display: inline-table; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 10px; text-align: left; width: 75%;"><caption style="color: grey; padding: 0px 100px 0px 0px;"> FRI AT 3:00 PM </caption> <tbody style="font-size: 15px;"> <tr><td><div style="color: black; text-align: right;"> <span style="font-size: 17px;"><b>She</b></span></div> Reply text </td></tr> </tbody></table> <br />

You can change the colours of the message bubbles rather easily, and even change the position or direction of the "sharp" corner on the chat bubble edges. You can write whatever you want within these tables, and they will adapt to fit your content. You can also include images, although I think you need to make sure their width is less then 500px . . .
Just be aware that I am not a perfect programmer, so if you type text underneath the bubbles (outside of the table elements), you will end up having the text wrap around the cracks of the table. I don't know how to fix that except with borderless, 100% width tables, to hide the text-wrapping, but if you know anything about html, maybe you can improve upon my efforts here. Just select the contents of the table, copy them, and paste (without formatting) into your own html, to play around with this for yourself, and write your very own immemoir on your blog!
Go crazy!

I found this format pretty inspiring, if you want to learn a bit more about it, you could check out some of those "Chat Story" apps I mentioned before, but much more than that, I recommend that you check out some of the free apps. Four that I have are TapTap, Scary Chat Stories, TapTale & Addicted. They have ads, but that's just so that you don't have to pay subscriptions, and these don't seem too glitchy, the stories seem alright . . . feel free to check out those links, if you have a compatible phone.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time - get typing, get tapping, and explore some of the ever-evolving ways that we tell stories.

Not So Familiar

Okay, full disclosure, this post probably has just about nothing at all to do with Ignorance. However, today is the 27th of October, and that means that Season Two of Stranger Things is available on Netflix.
If you have a Netflix account, and you are only learning about this now, I fully endorse the decision to read this blog post later, and go watch it right now. In fact, go for it: here's a link to the Stranger Things page of the Netflix Australia site. Even after this post for a while, years from now, if you haven't yet seen the show, I still highly recommend that you go and watch it.
However, if you do decide to hang around, I want to talk about this show, and how it manages to be something original, despite being very derivative.
And although I will be talking about the show, I do not plan on talking about the plot, so this should be free of spoilers. Nonetheless, if you already plan on watching this show regardless of what I have to say, please be aware that this will most certainly contain Minor Spoilers.

You see, what I find amazing about the show is how real and tense and compelling it is, despite those elements which should, by all rights, take you out of the story.
This story is set in 1983 before I was born, it has nostalgic elements from several movies I've not seen, the characters reference music, pop culture and comic books that I've never been a part of & the setting cery much evokes “Smalltown America”, which I've never been a part of. Despite all of this, I connect with these stories, wholeheartedly.
I think the praise for that entirely goes to the writers and the actors. Not only are these kids written like real people, who are fun and enthusiastic and excitable with juvenile stakes and believable emotion, but all of these young actors have perfect chemistry and ability, to translate the writing to the screen.

I haven't lived that life or in that era, but I believe that they have because of the effort that's gone into every detail, from culture, clothing, comic books and cars all the way to the technology, music and themes present in the show.
I could geek out about this show for hours, but the reason I'm talking about it for this blog is because, as a writer, what impresses me the most is how this show has managed to take inspiration from multiple sources, even paid homage directly to certain films via costuming or cinematography. Yet, Stranger Things is an entirely original beast.

This series is inspired by (and references) several 80's movies: ET: The Extra-terrestrial; Aliens; The Goonies; Jaws; Indiana Jones; Firestarter; Evil Dead; A Nightmare on Elm Street; Poltergeist; Stand by Me & It.
It also references a lot of 80's pop culture: X-men Comics; Stephen King; John Hughes Movies; Punk Rock music; Ham radios; Star Wars; Dungeons & Dragons; Synth music; Walkie-talkies & Project MKUltra.
There's even some modern inspirations, such as the anime Elfen Lied; the videogame The Last of Us; sci-fi film Under the Skin & thriller film Prisoners.

However, despite all of these influences on the story, themes and characters, it doesn't actually influence the plot. Except for Prisoners that is, that directly inspired the story that the Byers family goes through, but even that inspired the premise of the story. Otherwise, none of these nostalgic homages actually affect the plot. The plot (which I am being deliberately vague about, so as to avoid spoilers) does follow the adventure of some elementary school friends; the drama and horrors of a trio of high schoolers & the intrigue and mystery of a pair of adults. These stories interact, intersperse and intermingle until they all eventually integrate into one story conclusion by the end. Sure, there are aspects of this story that borrows concepts from other movies, but never plotlines, instead it creates its own narrative that takes all of these ideas, but irons them out into the one story with its own sequence of events.

The show is often called "nostalgic", and this is a fair descriptor, because of the 80s tropes and the music and the clothing, and references to all these movies, this does evoke that familiar feeling. However, because of the way this show was made, that familiar comfort is often deliberately altered and twisted into something completely different.

It's akin to if someone took fifteen very different houses, demolished down and recycled the parts into one much larger house of your own design. Sure, you can stop, and point at a brick over here, a tile down there or a gutter overhead and identify which house that piece came from, but if you walk into a room, there's no room from the demolished houses that singularly inspired it.

And perhaps that's the reason why I can enjoy this as much as I do despite not being fully invested in the nostalgia, media or culture of this era. Unlike some shows that use nostalgia and homage as a cheap trick, or to make referential jokes, this show isn't mired in lazy writing and doesn't waste the potential of its inspirations on pointless callbacks.
You don't need to know the original context of a reference, because it has an entirely new context, a Stranger Things context.

Anyway, for this reason (and many others that I've not mentioned due to the potential for spoilers) I am very excited for the new season, and I hope you are too. I wrote this post ahead of time, so I will probably have seen it by the time this post is published; but if you haven't, then I have to again recommend that you get started as soon as possible.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I know I often don't geek out like a fanboy, but I couldn't resist the chance to tell people to watch this show.

Hatecraft

There are many genres and subgenres of fiction that I love. Sci-fi Drama; Urban Fantasy; Action Thriller; Detective Noir; Weird Western; Gothic Romance . . .
But when it comes to Horror, my favourite subgenre has to be Cosmic Horror. I can’t help but feel like the conceit of the genre resonates with me. Because I am not a religious man, I don’t believe in purpose or meaning in life. I believe that meaning is not objective, only we can decide what we want to do with our life - and what we choose to do only has meaning because it matters to us.
Nature does not exist the way it does because it was designed or crafted, but because it evolved that way. Not through choice or desire, but because every other iteration crumbled and died. Good and Evil are irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things, because morality is just another human meaning - there’s nothing right or wrong about the weather, disease, animals or sex, these are just things that exist in this reality. I don’t believe this because I want to, or because I prefer it that way. I believe it because that’s how it is.

To me, this is a powerful and beautiful point of view. Because there is no greater meaning than our own - and even if there were, even if there is some inconceivable god, our inability to conceive it makes our meaning the only one we can know.
But Cosmic Horror represents the only logical conclusion to this point of view. That, objectively, everything is meaningless. From the perspective of the Cosmos, we don’t matter any more than the billions of asteroids floating aimlessly through space. The same atoms that composed the rose that you gave your beloved were once the atoms within a star, that churned in a stellar cauldron of unfathomable heat, until it exploded and collected onto the surface of a gravitational cluster that became our planet.
It wasn’t fate. It wasn’t destiny. It’s just “what happened”.
But more than that, we are just one planet in a vast, vast universe. We have sentience, but what does that mean for the universe? There are two possibilities: Either we are alone in the cosmos, or we are not. Each possibility is equally unsettling to comprehend.
Either we are the greatest minds that this universe has achieved, meaning that all wonder and curiosity at the expanses of the universe are just echoes in the existential emptiness. Or there is something beyond us, which is so unlike us that we could be mistaken for shadows or reflections by their inhuman eyes. Yes, we have meaning because we give ourselves meaning, but all of this matter and meaning is irrelevant to the universe. The cosmos is indifferent to our lives.

I know it is probably just an assumption on my part, but cosmic horror feels like a natural result of knowledge, science and nature. Although he saw it as a call-to-arms for humanitarianism and environmentalism, I feel as though Carl Sagan touched upon the core of cosmic horror, in his reflection upon the photograph of Earth from the Voyager 1 Space Probe, 6 billion kilometeres away - known as “Pale Blue Dot”. In particular, these words:

“ . . . Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere, to save us from ourselves . . .”

— Carl Sagan, speech at Cornell University, October 13, 1994

This is science. This is truth. This is cosmicism. It matters a lot, to me.

So, I cannot express to you how shocked I was when I first learned that Cosmic Horror, the genre that encapsulates my awe at the equally wonderful and terrifying size of this reality, was born of hatred.
I call it Cosmic Horror, but most people know this genre as Lovecraftian Horror. First concieved by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, this genre of weird fiction does indeed celebrate certain sciences, in particular chemistry and astronomy, as well as warn of the potential harms and fears of such a craft. It explores how the universe is indifferent and uncaring.
But, this genre was inspired not just by Lovecraft’s adoration of science, but also his fear and loathing of foreigners. Lovecraft was incredibly xenophobic, and this is not just supposition on my part. Lovecraft was infamously reclusive - both due to childhood sicknesses and introversion - and so as well as his fiction he was an amateur journalist and prolific correspondent. In these myriad writings, he detailed his inspirations and opinions, as well as his anglophilic, xenophobic, elitist, puritanical views; both in his self-published magazine The Conservative, as well as many other essays, letters and even poems. If you have a strong constitution, I have included a fraction of these below, and I have even emboldened some of what I considered to be the most egregious statements. Remember, every single one of these words came from Lovecraft himself . . .

“The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government.”

– ”In a Major Key,” from The Conservative Vol. I, No. 2, 1915.

“But I, thank the Gods, am an Aryan, & can rejoice in the glorious victory of T. Flavius Vespasianus, under whose legions the Jewish race & their capital were trodden out of national existence!”

– Personal Correspondence, August 10, 1915

“The mongrel natives, in whose blood the Malay strain predominates, are not and will never be racially capable of maintaining a civilised condition by themselves.”

– an article from United Amateur, 1916

“The most alarming tendency observable in this age is a growing disregard for the established forces of law and order. Whether or not stimulated by the noxious example of the almost subhuman Russian rabble, the less intelligent element throughout the world seems animated by a singular viciousness”.

– “Bolshevism”, from The Conservative Vol. V, 1919

“ . . . if racial amalgamation were to occur, the net level of American civilisation would perceptibly fall, as in such mongrel nations as Mexico–& several South American near-republics.”

– Personal Correspondence, January 18, 1919

“Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called “melting-pot” of races and traditions.”

– “Americanism”, from United Amateur, 1919

“Heaven knows enough harm has already been done by the admission of limitless hordes of the ignorant, superstitious, & biologically inferior scum of Southern Europe & Western Asia.”

– Personal Correspondence, Demember 13, 1925.

“It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with a servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry.”

– Personal Correspondence, January, 1931.

“The population [of New York City]  is a mongrel herd with repulsive Mongoloid Jews in the visible majority, and the coarse faces and bad manners eventually come to wear on one so unbearably that one feels like punching every god damn bastard in sight.”

– Personal Correspondence, November 19, 1931.

“When the alien element is strong or shrewd enough to menace the purity of the culture amidst which it parasitically lodges, it is time to do something.”

– Personal Correspondence, June 12, 1933

“Nothing but pain and disaster can come from the mingling of black and white, and the law ought to aid in checking this criminal folly. Granting the negro his full due, he is not the sort of material which can mix successfully into the fabric of a civilised Caucasian nation . . . Equally inferior–& perhaps even more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro. This race has other stigmata of primitiveness—such as great Neanderthaloid eyebrow-ridges. And it is likewise incapable of absorbing civilisation.”

– Personal Correspondence, July 30, 1933.

It is also believed that, due to his extreme conservative views, he would have been very much homophobic (but, as he was reportedly a virgin into his 30s, and according to his wife, never initiated sex, it is believed by some historians that he was not fond of sexuality of any kind, and perhaps considered it uncivilized or ungentlemanly).

But these racist views are not just a facet of his time and culture, he was critical of America, immigration, the failure to maintain a “colour-line” and modern culture. Although the man died over a decade before America’s Civil Rights Movement, he lived through the turbulent era after the abolition of slavery and the granting of equal voting rights for African-Americans; and he was not in favour of either.
For goodness sake - even though he never travelled further than 300 kilometres from his childhood home in Providence, Rhode Island - he felt the need to express his disgust at Australian Aboriginals. As I, myself, am an Australian, I found that assessment particularly stomach-churning.
Although it was most likely due to his Puritanical, reclusive upbringing, and some of the hardships he endured, Lovecraft was uncommonly and irredeemably hateful and openly prejudiced against minorities. Even for those races he admired or considered “cultured”, such as the Chinese, Ancient Rome and some Jews (but definitely not all), he was convinced that you could only achieve a peaceful culture by segregating the races.

So, his personal views, somewhat naturally, bled into and corrupted his writing. His most famous early tale Dagon, speaks of an ancient, barbaric race of aquatic humanoids that rise from the sea to steal human victims.
In his story The Transition of Juan Romero he describes the titular character as an “unkempt Mexican” whose main features are that he is “ignorant and dirty”.
In the serialized Herbert West–Reanimator, Lovecraft describes a black man as incredibly ugly, and a “loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs,”
The tale of The Dunwich Horror recounts the tale of half-breed monstrosities, whose racial characteristics are inherently antagonistic, noxious and violent.
And of course, The Shadow over Innsmouth is the story of a town whose inhabitants are all half-fishman/half-human hybrids, and the initial horror of a character learning that his lineage is also tainted with this corrupted bloodline.

But this is more than implicit racism as determined by critical analysis, but Lovecraft himself made explicit mention that his xenophobia, or “fear of strangers” informed his horror fiction. In the June 1937 issue of the Amateur Correspondent, in an article called “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”, Lovecraft had this to say:

“These stories frequently emphasise the element of horror because fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected, so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or “outsideness” without laying stress on the emotion of fear.”

So, Cosmic Horror and Xenophobia are undeniably intertwined. The heart and soul of Lovecraftian Horror is hatred and fear of “otherness”. It's troubling that something so meaningful to me is born of something just as abhorrent.
However, after some thought, I found myself coming to terms with this fact rather easily.

Firstly, Cosmic Horror is not inherently racist. Despite there being dozens, dozens and dozens more retellings and expansions of Lovecraftian Horror and the Cthulu Mythos, none of these successors have perpetuated the hate. In fact, despite being inspired by hate, the genre functions just as well - and, in my opinion, better - without it. Horror writers weren't inspired by his fear of foreign things, but rather this fear of monsters that weren't so much "evil" as "too powerful to notice us". Rather than fear of aliens as an allegory for fear of "inferior races", most of them focused on exploring the horrors of cultists, unknowable gods and creeping madness, many used as an allegory for losing your humanity. Or even, like me, they played on our existential dread of infinity and cosmic worthlessness.

Secondly, there is much more to Cosmic Horror than Lovecraft. See, what inspired me to write this post is my research for yesterday’s post, looking for bigoted Horror Movies. In my search for a xenophobic horror movie, I explored adaptations of Lovecraft’s work, but none of these movies were xenophobic. Some even took Cosmic Horror, and the “horrific outsider” trope to explore the views of minorities in regards to the majority - so rather than a local being confronted by invading immigrants, it becomes a discourse on the experience of the migrant or persecuted minority, surrounded by cruel neighbours - my favourite example is that of the film Cthulhu, (actually an adaptation of “The Shadow over Innsmouth”) which made the main character gay, entirely changing the focus of the story so as to explore the fear of being considered an outsider in your own community.

Thirdly, and to me most importantly, unlike Lovecraft, I do not judge something as inferior just because it was born of something alien to me. I am not prejudiced against ideas merely due to its parentage. I fully accept that Lovecraft was a racist - like I said, I accept things not because I want to, but because that's what they are. But, I also accept that his views were wrong. And whilst I will spend an entire blogpost explicitly calling out these racist remarks, and calling the man close-minded and bigoted for it (and, in fact, I think I just did), I aso accept that he was not famous during his lifetime, and considering how many of his family went mad and died within the walls of a madhouse, I think he suffered enough. Of course, we ought not forget his contribution, but I do not celebrate him as a person because his personhood is unworthy of celebration. I merely accept that he had a cool idea, and I thank him for it, despite the rotted garden bed of his mind from whence it grew.

In conclusion, this leads me into, perhaps, the most important aspect of ignorance that I think we need to all consider. Ignorance is dangerous and cruel, but it need not be so destructive. Even those whose views are disgusting and toxic are still capable of art and beauty, and perhaps even elucidating upon the subject of their ignorance.
Whilst I do not, and cannot, abide by the hatreds Lovecraft held - I can see that, perhaps, the reason he was so hateful was because he was so very, very scared. Like I said in my Foolery Pox blog post, fear is a weakness in our critical thinking which makes it easier to fall victim to dangerous ideas. But, even if someone is ignorant, if we take the time to listen to them, we may even find the opportunity both to teach and to learn with them.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I honestly believe that if you have an open mind, you can take something crafted by hatred, and with the right touch, craft it into something inspired by Love.