No. Apocalypse now!

Wow, it’s been a whole week since my last post.  I’m definitely slipping.  In my defence, my silence on here has been due to desperately trying to finish the restructure and edits of my novel, Matter of Time, before Christmas.  At the same time (naturally) the day job has become pretty crazy – thanks to local Government cuts there are no longer ‘quiet times’ that allow us to catch up and of course it’s Christmas next week!  Yay!  So I’ve been arguing with online companies who send me the wrong orders...

Anyway, as I sit here trying to decide which time and day to book to finally see The Hobbit, it dawned on me that the world is supposed to end tomorrow.  It’s all everyone can talk about.  It’s in the news, one of the natural/discovery channels has a whole week of apocalyptic programming and the saying at work right now is ‘see you next year unless the world ends.’

I posted about this right at the beginning of 2012 and noticed that the date 12 months ago for the impending end of the world was December 23^rd (potentially while I’m sat in the cinema).  My scepticism is poking at me (don’t worry, I’ll see a doctor if it continues).

In all truthfulness I am actually a teeny bit worried.  I don’t want the world to end.  I really don’t.  December has been an awesome month, so much good stuff has happened and the icing on the Decembery cake will be Christmas.  I’m so excited and apprehensive about 2013 that if it doesn’t happen I will burst (which shouldn’t matter as we’d all be dead anyway).

I live in the South West of England and, if you don’t already know, we have suffered from crippling floods these past few months.  The worst flooding in hundred years or similar.  After a brief dry spell, yesterday saw more torrential rain and flooding in parts of Cornwall (not near me but I did get wet).  I’ve woken this morning to more rain.  Visions of the movie 2012 keep popping into my head, the stories of Noah’s Ark play over and over.  During the recent flooding residents exclaimed on the news that this felt like judgement day.  So now not only is our weather getting worse, possibly a sign of impending doom, but the Terminator should be appearing anytime now.

So, in an effort to calm myself and my overworked paranoia, I did a little search...

It may please you to know that an earlier Mayan calendar has been discovered, as reported back in May 2012.  This calendar is older than the one being used to predict the end of the world tomorrow.  In fact it suggests that the world will continue for octillions (yes, I didn’t know that word existed either) of years.

So we can all breathe a sigh of relief!   

I can continue working on my novel in the hope that it will be published next year.  I can carry on working hard in the day job in the knowledge that it will all pay off next year (it already has – I was promoted at the beginning of this month!).

That’s not to say that I’m not still worried.  It’s still raining a lot and it’s not that I don’t trust the Mayans but I’ve never met them.  The world could still end.  And if it does, I will never get to see The Hobbit...

Read about the new Mayan calendar discover here.

A Thursday thought

Oscar

I was thinking about The Walking Dead this morning.  As you do.

I was thinking about Axel, probably for the first time.  Axel and Oscar are the two last surviving inmates from the prison that Rick’s group is inhabiting.  I was replaying the last episode in my head where Axel is creepily chatting up young Beth.  Carol interrupts him and ends up reassuring him that she isn’t a lesbian (I think I would have personally played along rather than invite unwanted attention from him).  Then I wondered how he would feel when he found out the only other surviving inmate, Oscar, had died during the rescue of Maggie and Glen.

T-Dog - we hardly knew ye

The brain is a strange organ, it can make strange connections.  For some reason I went from Axel becoming the last prison inmate to the fact that Oscar was black.  I then counted the number of main black characters in The Walking Dead.   There’s:

• Jacqui who died in season 1, choosing to die in an explosion rather than continue as a post apocalyptic survivor,
• T-Dog who died a heroic death in season 3 without any character development whatsoever,
• Oscar who died a hero, rescuing two people he hardly knew, in season 3,
• and Michonne.

 Huh.

Tyreese

Of course, two new black characters were introduced in the same episode that we lost Oscar.  Tyreese.  Another staple character from the comic books.  And of course his promising, out spoken sister.

Now, of course, the writers haven’t done this intentionally.  I’ve simply noticed something that is purely coincidental, I’m sure.  It’s not like every other character in the programme is caucasian.  There are plenty of ethnicities, a whole beautiful rainbow of skin colour.  But have you noticed that the only main characters developed with any true depth that aren’t caucasian are Glen and, potentially, Michonne?

Merle and T-Dog in season 1

This rose the ugly concept of racism in my head and the long standing argument of racism in casting.  Which took me neatly back to The Walking Dead and Merle Dixon.  This is something that has bothered me throughout season 3 so far, as I try and figure Merle out.  Since his introduction in season 1 he has been described as the racist, redneck brother of Daryl.  A description most apt considering the first time we met him he said some truly racist comments to T-Dog and then beat him to a pulp.

So I expected him to be similar in season 3.  Working as the Governor’s lieutenant, he is in charge of and surrounded by men of different ethnicities and he treats them no differently to his white colleagues (in that he lords it over them and kills them at whim). 

At first I put this down to the Governor.  The Governor has found a way of controlling Merle, I thought.  This is an example of just how scary the Governor is – Merle fears him.  This theory was knocked when Merle began lying to the Governor and going behind his back.

The fantastic Michonne

So perhaps Merle has been misjudged.  Maybe he isn’t racist, maybe he just has a foul mouth and enjoys being in charge?  Or he’s ignorant.  As I’ve said previously, he and Daryl are of the same blood.  Daryl was ignorantly racist in season 1 but is also open minded enough to accept people who are different if they prove themselves to be brave and  hard working enough to survive.  Surely Merle is the same, just older with those ignorant ways more deeply ingrained in his personality?

My mind then did a massive leap from The Walking Dead and racism and to my own writing.  I counted how many ethnicities I had in my two current novels.  None.  And I mean none.  No white skin, black skin or brown skin.  Not really.  I think I’ve only described one character as being tanned, suggesting a white skin that has been out in the sun too long, and that’s Bane in my Formerly-Silver novel.  To be honest, the skin colour of my other characters is utterly open to suggestion and I hope that any casting directors will take that into consideration when they make a multi-million earning franchise out of my novels (hint hint).

In the meantime, let's hope that Michonne and Tyreese are signs of change.  Let's hope that the writers decide to give these characters the development they deserve.  They nearly did it with T-Dog, there was potential there as he used Merle's antibiotics to treat a near fatal wound in season 2 and...oh...that was it...

Technicalities

Today I was following a woman out of the office.  Not on purpose, I hasten to add, we just happened to be going in the same direction.
She stopped in front of a closed door and stared at it blankly.  After a moment she began to look around.
I realised then that she had been expecting the door to open automatically.  Finding that it was not an automatic door, she began looking for the button which would electronically open it.

Now, ok, I admit that the majority of doors in the building are security doors.  You need your work pass to get through them, or you need to press a green button.  And ok, this particular door is usually left open but has now been closed because the receptionists were freezing to their seats.

Still, it doesn't take a genius to see the door handle.

In the end she found the accessible button and the door opened automatically for her.  By which point I'd caught up with her but I didn't have the heart to point out that all she'd had to do was pull.

This made me wonder about our reliance on technology.  On our smartphones, computers, laptops, televisions, tablets, e-readers... (yes I am hugging my laptop, kindle and television as I type this, not to mention our new WiiU).
I won't go into the headache that it my work computer at the moment, the three months of chasing our IT department to fix it and the last week in which IT have fixed it, broken it and then done a half arsed job re-fixing it and made me wish I'd never bothered.

Of course technology can be very useful.  Social networking means we can stay in touch with friends and family who live far away (and spy on those we don't want to talk to).  It also means we can market ourselves which is good for business owners and indie authors.

Laptops and computers have made writing a much more pleasureable experience.  My mind has developed to encompass my laptop.  I can no longer write using pen and paper, my mind just works too fast and the pen cannot keep up.  Whereas give me a keyboard and my fingers will fly.

Television, DVDs and our new beloved WiiU are also fairly necessary...well, we all need some downtime, don't we?  It's just about keeping a perspective.

The Walking Dead mid-season finale

**SPOILER ALERT** **LONG BLOG POST ALERT*

Friday evening saw the mid season finale of The Walking Dead season 3.  Season 1 was powerful, short and sharp.  Season 2 was long, with all of the action saved up purely for the final episode.  Season 3 needed to be good, it needed to be the perfect mixture of character development and action.  Just like season 1.

So far, so good.

Now, during my season 2 finale review, I got myself a bit overwhelmed by everything.  Season 3 is proving to be far greater than 2, so I’m going to be very careful not to fall into the same trap.  Instead of covering the whole of the first half of season 3, I will focus on the key elements.

First, a little background.   

Rick and his group, including a heavily pregnant Lori, find and take the prison. 

At the same time, Andrea and Michonne stumble across the Governor and a much missed Merle Dixon who take them to Woodbury, a town with a wall built around it and run by the Governor.

Back in the prison, Lori gives birth and we lose some characters that have been with us since the very beginning.

Michonne doesn’t trust the Governor (because she’s smart) and she leaves the town.  Merle is sent after her to finish her.  She fights back, as Michonne does, and goes into the ‘red zone’.  Merle decides she’s dead already and returns, telling the Governor that he’s killed her.

On his way back to the town (one has to assume), he comes across Glen and Maggie who are doing a supply run for baby formula.  He attacks and takes them back to Woodbury.  Michonne witnesses all of this and takes the formula to the prison.

Meanwhile, Andrea demonstrates her wonderful taste in men by sleeping with the Governor.

Michonne tells Rick about Maggie and Glen and a small party leaves for Woodbury to get their people back.  The mid-season finale finishes with Glen and Maggie being rescued and Michonne and the Governor having a show down, with the Governor coming worse off.

Lori’s death

The most memorable death in The Walking Dead so far is one without any zombie in sight.  Ok, so zombies attack which means that Lori, Carl and Maggie get separated from the group and have to hide.  Naturally this is when Lori goes into labour.

I’ve already written about Lori’s death because it did truly move me.  After two and half seasons of being sick and tired of Lori, finally her character did something that made me feel for her.

Lori’s death scene was the best bit of Lori.   She handed over the matriarch torch to Maggie, she said her final farewell to her son and she gave her life so that her child would live.  Her beautiful, tearful death had a knock on effect on a number of characters.  Carl became a man, being the only one available to put his mother down, Maggie was forced to step up by being the one to remove the baby from Lori’s body and, of course, Rick...

Rick

Strangely while Lori was dying, I didn’t even think of Rick.  All of my thoughts were on Carl and what losing his mother and having to put a bullet through her head would do to him.  At the end of the episode when Rick finds out, I was shocked that he didn’t even go near his son.  All I wanted was for him to put an arm around his boy.

It makes sense that Rick would lose it so violently.  He had just lost his wife and didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.  More than that, theirs was not a healthy relationship.  That baby probably isn’t even his, his wife cheated on him with his best friend, told him to kill his best friend and then shunned him when he did the deed out of self defence.  She admitted to being a bad wife but they had still not resolved their issues by the time Lori died and that would have played heavily on Rick’s conscience.

The episode where Rick loses his mind is, similar to the episode of Lori’s death, done beautifully.  Andrew Lincoln plays Rick flawlessly, dishevelled and with painfully, heart breaking mad eyes. 

His loss was extreme.  Not even looking at his poor son, he picks up an axe and storms through the prison splitting the skulls of Walkers until he finds the remains of his wife and the zombie that has feasted on her.  Then the phone rings.

In the comic books, Rick sees visions of his wife after her passing.  It is unclear whether this will happen in the television series but this phone call may have been the beginning of it.  Allowing the viewer a false sense of hope, we watch as Rick begins to unravel and lose his mind.

Strangely, by the next episode he seems to have ravelled it back up again.  Enough to speak to his son, hold his new daughter, retake leadership, deal with Michonne and go to Glen and Maggie’s rescue.  Maybe he just needs to keep busy...

 

The Governor

There were three things that die hard Walking Dead fans were looking forward to this season; the prison, Michonne and the Governor.  David Morrissey, taking the part of the Governor, did not disappoint.

The Governor is suave, sophisticated, often quiet with the kind of gentleness that an angry tiger bestows right before going for the kill.

His evil is hinted at throughout, building to a crescendo by the mid-season finale.  Although the real hint of what this man is capable of came in the penultimate episode.

When Glen and Maggie are held prisoners in Woodbury, Merle concentrates on his old chum Glen.  The Governor says that he will speak to Maggie.  Making Maggie stand before him, he takes off his gun holster and forces her to remove her top and bra.  He walks around the exposed Maggie, pushing her down onto the table.  I don’t think I could have hated him more than in that moment.

Of course, the best villains have a softer side.  They are human, after all.  The Governor’s weakness is his daughter, Penny.  In a gut wrenching moment in the finale, Michonne, while waiting for the Governor to return to his rooms, finds Penny trustled up in her cage.  Thinking the worse, Michonne frees the child only to discover that the girl is in fact a Walker.  The Governor stops her just before she puts Penny down.  To his horror, Penny is killed before the Governor’s eyes and he lunges at Michonne.  All of the pent up rage and grief of a father who has been unable to let go of his child and has just seen her ripped from him is aimed straight at Michonne.

He is a triumph of a character and he's only going to get better.

Merle Dixon

Both the Governor and Michonne survive their encounter.  Merle might not be so lucky.  Remember, he told the Governor that Michonne was dead?  And yet there she was, slicing a sword through the Governor’s zombie daughter’s head.  Not only that, but Daryl was left behind during Maggie and Glen’s escape.

Merle has been an interesting character throughout season 3.  We didn’t get to learn a lot about him in season 1, only that he’s a racist, narrow minded red neck with a military background and has spent time in the joint.

At first I didn’t understand why Merle, who fought for leadership in season 1, would take orders from someone like the Governor.  I put it down to fear, knowing that the Governor was possibly the best villain in The Walking Dead.  Or maybe it was about respect – the Governor trusted and respected Merle to do his dirty work.

As time went on, the viewer was allowed to see chinks in Merle’s submissiveness.  All Merle wants, it seems, is his brother back.  The arrival of Andrea gives him new hope which the Governor immediately dashes.  Merle then lies to the Governor about killing Michonne – maybe because he didn’t get his own way.

The writers, and Michael Rooker who plays Merle, cleverly gave the character layers which is more than I was expecting.  I still don’t know if Merle is a good or bad guy.  Maybe he’s the grey.

As the season went on, Merle seems to become more and more quietly frustrated, taking the brunt of this out on Glen, but never showing any weakness to the Governor.  It seems that Merle has more control and intelligence then at first made out.  And why not?  Him and Daryl are of the same blood.

The ending of the mid season finale was very clever.  I almost applauded the writers.  Who is the television fan favourite of The Walking Dead?  Daryl Dixon.  Who was the most talked about character for season 3?  Well, apart from the Governor and Michonne?  Merle Dixon.

What is the best way of making sure everyone tunes into the season return next year?   Putting the Dixon brothers in trouble.

We ended on an angry Governor, with his town around him, blaming the violence and deaths of some of their people on Merle Dixon.  And oh look, they caught one of the intruders.  None other than Merle’s baby brother.  What is to be done with them?

So Merle and Daryl come face to face for the first time in the entire Walking Dead programme.  No words are exchanged, only looks, as the towns people surround them chanting ‘Kill them!  Kill them!’

So there you have it.  A fantastic first half to an explosive season.  The writers seem to be coping with the huge cast by fully developing a selection of main characters and leaving the others to quietly get on with it.  Other than the obvious highlights (the Governor, Merle and Daryl Dixon, Lori’s death), one of the more surprising best bits for me was Glen and Maggie.  

The Governor didn’t touch Maggie, not in an abusive sense.  Although what he did was still disgusting and unforgiveable.  She still didn’t give in.  She told him to just get on with it.  She was strong, a true matriarch.

And what about Glen in the room next door?  Merle beat him until he was swollen and bloody and when he still wouldn’t talk, Merle left him alone with a Walker.  That was when Glen came into his own.  His hands fastened to the arms of a chair, he fought and defeated the zombie, giving a scream of defiance as he did so.

Go Glen!

Unfortunately, Maggie spilled the beans of the prison when she was thrown in with Glen and a gun was put to her young lover’s head.  Oh, Maggie.

I urge everyone to watch The Walking Dead, whether you’re already a fan or not.  This season is definitely worth it.  We’re now left with the Governor knowing a group of survivors exists within the prison and that Michonne, his daughter’s murderer, is probably with them.

And what about Merle and Daryl Dixon?  We’ve finally seen them together (I’ve been waiting a long time to see their true brotherly relationship unfold).  Could their reunion be over far too quickly?

The Walking Dead is back on FX (soon to be FOX) in February 2013, at the same time as America (yay!).

Can you guess how I've been procrastinating?

Yesterday I was hit by a sudden bolt of inspiration.  An idea for a blog post that would have blown your socks off.  It was magnificent, it was spell binding, it was perfect.

And then I forgot what it was...

So instead I’ve decided to gather together little geeky snippets from across the internet for your enjoyment, interest and amusement.

Enjoy, and don’t forget, last episode of The Walking Dead before the season break tonight, FX, 10pm!

Star Trek

Let's start with the trailer for the Star Trek sequel, Into Darkness, shall we?  It's mouth wateringly good.

Helm's Deep...

This made me laugh.  Helm's Deep, LEGO stylee.

The Walking Dead

I know I just reminded you that the end of season episode is on tonight, but I feel I should also share that it won't be back on our screens until February.  February!  Boooooo!

New shows on BBC

But have no fear!  Because some favourites are coming back onto our screens in the New Year, including Pramface (hurrah!) and, wait for it, Being Human!  There are a few snippets in this BBC trailer..(sorry, it was embedded but it played automatically and kept scaring the life out of me!)

Ender's Game

I only found out about the science fiction novel, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, a week or so ago when I was researching great endings for novels.  So unfortunately I already know how it ends.  But that didn't make me any less inclined to read it.  So it's been added to my list of books that I want.
Then today I discovered it's being made into a film!
It's due for release in 2013 and stars Harrison Ford, and Abigail Breslin (Kick Ass) is in it too.  You may also recognise Asa Butterfield who will be playing Ender from Merlin, Ashes to Ashes, The Wolfman, Hugo, to name a few.

Here is the first picture that's been released;

The Hobbit

Christmas has really crept up on me this year, that and The Hobbit.  It's released on 13th December.  That's NEXT Thursday!  Boy did that come round quick.
And look who's going to be in the film when he's not in the book...




 However I foresee a problem with The Hobbit trilogy (other than the fact that it's another damn trilogy when the book is only ickle).  That the films are all in the wrong order.  Watching clips, it feels strange to see Gandalf the Grey again considering last time we saw him he was Gandalf the White.  Not to mention Saruman.  I'm still excited though!

The lost art of originality

When I was a teenager I was taught that 'the art of originality is hiding your source'.  But that seems to have gone out of the window these days.  In fact, it seems to have gone a step further - there is a distinct lack of originality.
Take Fifty Shades of Grey for example - Twilight with sex.
How about all of the remakes?  Total Recall, Robocop, to name two.
Well, now there's a new remake in town.  Jumanji!
Who would have thought...Here's the full story.



I get the wonderful feeling that 2013 is going to be a great year for films, starting with next Thursday.

Have a lovely weekend ya'll!
(Apologies for that ya'll, it was distinctively unBritish of me.  Just preparing myself for the lovely south of The Walking Dead mid season finale, of which I will be attempting to pen a review.  I have a feeling it will be a lot easier than the season two review but there I go saying too much).