"I write because that is what I do."
My house is filled with books all the way to the roof
No matter where I turn and look I always find another book
Books about everything some in piles and some unseen
Hidden underneath general clutter it doesn’t pay to be a writer
Lost in thought while I ponder how to end this poem of wonder
Always writing always reading even while I’m fast a-sleeping
Time to go and raid the cupboard for I forgot to fast my hunger
Okay, so there is something that I don’t try and do as a writer, to other writers, and that is change what they have written. Now I am not the best editor, not story edits, but grammar. Granted I am a firm believer that grammar is over-rated, just look at Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss, most of their words were made by them. Really I believe that readers are smarter than what some people may think, and they can figure out what an author means by context, especially since readers will for the most part ignore grammar as they read and get into a story.
But story edits are different, and forcing an author to change what he has written, even in an effort to help seems very invasive in a lot of ways.
Just a thought blurp.
But since this has become my website home away from home, for any readers convenience, here is list of my books on amazon kindle.
The Jewel Princess and the Shadow Lord
Currently also working on a comic with a couple of others, which will be launching at Anime Detour in Minnesota, which will be pretty fun.
So I should probably explain, what all these post are, and what this website is, is my back up website; my current one is in the process of moving. Have all the data from it, but yeah just decided to save some of the golden nuggets from the past year.
So I have been thinking about this for a while, it’s very easy to trust someone, especially when it comes to say my writing. I am a fantastic writer, but not so much with the grammar.
Mainly cause I believe that it’s not that important, the human ability to grasp ideas despite how a paragraph is structured is more impressive than that.
However it is easier if the grammar is there, which is why I seek help editing my books.
Because I could go through them multiple times and still not be able to catch tiny grammar mistakes, due to the fact that I read for ideas, and can filter out bad grammar.
Heck I can read upside down, and with my eyes shut if I wanted to.
That is a reference to a children’s book by the by.
The thing though is that I have to trust whoever I ask to edit my story, I have no choice, and it’s easier to trust than not to trust.
And I can’t push for them to get it done. Just like I can’t push any artist that I ask for a book cover. Especially if I want them to remain my friend.
But it is hard to wait, and trust, and not push them to get it done as fast as I want them to.
And it’s very hard when your trust is broken. It makes you start to question, should you rely on their input, should you rely on their help.
It’s not a very good position to be placed in. But like I mentioned earlier, it’s easier to trust than not trust.
And without cooperation are species would still be tiny monkey like creatures in the trees.
Now, what I mean about that, is that Conservatism at it’s core revolves around fear. The fear of loss of power, wealth, influence, morality. The fear of change. That is why most people who identify as conservative are when viewed through a historical sense are on the wrong side. Example when black children were not allowed to enter a all white school. Fear makes us do bad to dangerously bad things, and it’s infected the Republican party completely, which is why a fascist like Trump is leading. He plays on that fear, and maybe it’s the fear of how fast the world is changing.
Technology has become faster, and information is everywhere, and everyone has an opinion; and by that, everyone interprets history, laws with their own biased.
Granted this is has my own biased as well.
But we are aware of it. I am not the first to comment on it. But the world is changing, and there is a strong desire to ignore it, and travel backwards in time.
We can’t, change will happen.
We can’t stop it, we can only adapt to it.
I am not saying conservatism is wrong, but, it is time to acknowledge that it too needs to change. Fear and anger, which are the same emotion, lead to negative things. It’s what allows us to perform atrocities. Fear and anger are also easier, which makes those that allow these emotions to control them, cowards.
To be brave, you need to fight the emotions within, which is hard. Doing the right thing, understanding others, it is hard, which makes it the braver route. You need courage to pull yourself back and try to understand.
Now liberalism can led to arrogance and the lack of understanding, it can. But at it’s core is the desire to make the world a better place. And change for change sake is not always the right thing either.
So the sum up and make this post smallish, really it comes down to balancing the two. Between fear and desire. However the current Republican party, shouldn’t be supported, because they’ve gone completely into fear, they’ve embraced it.
Which will allow them to support a government like Nazi Germany with Trump as the new Führer.
So recently I have gotten one of my friends into the whole Avatar the Last Airbender story; and currently we are on Legend of Korra season 4. So I have grown from the last time and re-watching it, I realized a couple of things, which like many I had a problem with, but now watching it again I don’t know if I do anymore. Now yes season two, is still hard to watch, but it’s from the point of view of a parental figure. Which I realized I watched it from the first time.
Korra was never allowed to rebel, the first rebellious act that she did was leaving the south pole and moving to Republic City.
Korra was rewarded for that as well, there were no consequences, and yes she did face Amon and loose her bending, but Aang gave it back to her. And yeah we know that it was wrapped up because they did not know if there were going to be any more seasons after that, and the start of season two feels like a reboot and a rehash, because it kind of is.
But lets look at Aang’s children, and what they say, in some ways he was a bad father, and look again at the end of the season one.
Aang fixes her problem, gives her back her bending, in a way not allowing her to grow from it. I could see Aang doing that, fixing his children’s problems. Putting the end of season one and two together you realize he shouldn’t have done that, but in reality, he is not the only parent to do something like this.
He in a way is an over protective father.
Season two Korra becomes more aggressive and just more of a teenager, again she never had to deal with consequences or was allowed rebel. So she starts to push, and then two of her father figures, who she trusts completely, are reveled to be lying to her, you can understand the explosive anger that happens.
She is eighteen, but was never allowed to be a teenager, and is now expected to act like an adult. And yet the father figures in her life, lie to her, which is not very adult. So the first start of season 2, is her becoming a teenager, and for most people, and I was like this too, when you come off of season one, where she was more of an adult, it does feel like the character regressing.
But that’s the thing, she did, we saw a character, who had to be an adult, who had yet to develop the wisdom of an adult, from rebelling and through that learning about herself, which you do as a teenager.
So I would argue that season one and two, do fit together, just for an audience, and for me too when it came out, annoys us.
So it could have been handled better, but it’s not bad, and I don’t think saying season one and two should be viewed as separate entities is right.
Together they tell the story of a young adult, trying to become an adult, despite not being allowed to go through that transition period of a teenager.
This is a subject that is near to my heart.
And something that I loath quite a bit, I hate that this is still a thing. No one should feel that society will shun them because they go to therapy.
It is like shunning someone who goes to the doctor while their arm is hanging by a few pieces skin.
“I understand that you are currently bleeding, but buck up, you just have to believe that your arm will heal on it’s own.”
Especially among families.
Heaven forbid that the family look beyond the surface.
Because ignoring it, is like ignoring them bleeding to death, only really, really slowly.
It hurts, it’s like wearing a large piece of metal around your neck, slowly dragging you down.
In fact, and I have yet to see it, I know I should, but the movie Inside Out had a scene that perfectly captured depression. It was while I was at the movie rental place, which for those who do not know, are where you can go and physically rent movies. Sort of like Netflix.
But back to the scene in Inside Out;
It showed the perfect representation of the pit inside, the gaping abyss which swallows everything.
And that sort of pain does not heal on it’s own.
Which is why I hate it when it’s ignored, and people are made to feel ashamed because they suffer from depression.
Cause all it does is make them suffer alone.
And heaven forbid you actually open up and try and help them deal with it, or convince them to go get help.
Because that would mean opening yourself up to their suffering, and as a species we are not good at that.
But what I wanted to cover was how the “other” is a lie. Or not so much of a lie, but a lie that the human species has accepted. Granted there are quiet a few lies we tell our selves, but they all tie into the greater one, which is the universe has a ‘norm’. That society is the norm, more specifically, a person’s society, that any deviation from is it, is wrong. This however does not take into account, different societies, different religions, and different outlooks.
Now that would seem to indicated that there are ‘others’, however despite the differences, we as race, as a species share common traits.
We want, food, comfort, understanding. We want to cooperate, it is human nature to work together. In fact many of us react in horror when someone deviates from this, such as mass murderous. Or we try to fix this situations, when someone is alone, many of us want to include them. It allows us, weak fragile creatures, to survive against the things that would kill us.
The ‘Other’ then is our fear to the disruption of that unity. However we do not live in a bubble, despite the fact that we do, however it is a very large bubble(Planet Earth). We have to stop letting minor differences, skin color, religion, societies; dictate who the ‘other’ is.
It infects our societies down to our children. Bullies, which many are now expressing outrage against. Because we see it as wrong. Bullying is a form of turning a person into the ‘other’, because it singles out those that do not follow the ‘norm’, it creates the ‘other’.
What is the difference?
One child likes, say football, the other likes reading fantasy books. There is no difference, both are expressing a want, and enjoy what they enjoy. The only difference is what they like. Both children are expressing desire for an activity.
That is the truth, there is no ‘norm’, or what the ‘norm’ is, is human emotions. If all humans as a species have emotions, then everything else is just details.
The ‘other’ then would be someone who does not operate on human emotions. Which no one does, even those that appear to lack emotions, do have them, they just have something wrong which changes the signals to the brain.
So why does the ‘Other’ get used?
“Us or them.”
“They are the enemy because they are different.”
“They are no longer human because they are different.”
That is why, it is easier to kill another person when they are no longer human. All humans in some ways fear death, some more than others, evening killing, it damages a person the more they do it, but it could be argued that this is due to, well many things, but namely fear.
We see our death when we kill another.
However if that person is not human, not us, not ‘me’, then killing them is not wrong.
And that is the Lie, or that is why the ‘Other’ is a Lie.
Okay so I’m going to bring up a subject, that is very sensitive, and I will try to be as clinical about it as I can. Now as a writer and a feminist, I try to make stories that accurately depict real woman. Mainly cause to me at least that makes sense, woman are people, and they are independent people, they have hopes dreams and other such things, and treating them differently is ridiculous. Basically, woman are not objects, which confuses me when people seem to forget that. Now with that in mind, should writers include rape scenes in their work, and I would say yes. Rape is an awful thing, and it should be addressed. Now saying that though, if a writer adds it, it should never be window dressing. And by that it should never be treated lightly, it is a life altering event that can take years to get over, if a person even can get over it, it attacks the very center of the person. It breaks them down, shatters them, and it should be reflected in the character(s). Now that doesn’t mean that the character cannot rise above it, and this might be my opinion, but I believe no matter how hard the struggle, people can heal themselves, but if a writer adds that to his story, then it should be in the story, it shouldn’t be a foot note, it should be the everything. Also I writing from my perspective, which is why I am using ‘he’ for the writer, cause true talk, everyone can be a writer, gender really plays no part in this profession. Or at least shouldn’t, cause everyone should write, even if you don’t publish them. But I’m getting off track, mainly when it comes to story telling, nothing should be off limits, but everything you add to your story should be real, not just window dressing. Other examples, if you add racism, then add racism, the same with the struggle of being poor, these are sensitive issues for a reason, and they should always be treated as such. They are not window dressing, they are the real struggles of life, and when you add them to your story they should be that.
Matthew William Lindquist 