#oneaday Day 454: The Black Crochan

I mentioned a while back that I'd started reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the series of novels that the Disney movie The Black Cauldron was loosely based on — and which, in turn, the Sierra adventure game The Black Cauldron (my first encounter with the series) was even more loosely based on.

The other night, I finished reading the second book in the series. Much like the best-known book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is the second one (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), so too, it seems, is the case for The Chronicles of Prydain. Because the second book in the series is the one called The Black Cauldron. But if you're only familiar with the Disney movie or the Sierra game, it's around here that things diverge a bit more wildly.

Y'see, in the Disney movie, the Big Bad of the piece was the Horned King. And he was terrifying. He was terrifying in the 160×200 chunky pixel graphics of the Sierra game and, while I haven't watched the Disney movie yet (though I did acquire it on DVD recently) I am given to understand that he is even more frightening in fully animated form.

But in the actual books — spoiler, I guess, though I'm not apologising for it, given that we're talking about a series from the mid-1960s — The Horned King is offed rather unceremoniously at the end of the first book, The Book of Three, and this is well before protagonist Taran and his buddies have come anywhere even vaguely close to the Black Cauldron itself. As the name suggests, it's not until the second book, The Black Cauldron, that Taran and company set off on a quest to deal with the infernal thing once and for all, and the whole situation is resolved rather differently to how things happen in the movie — and in the game, which is different again.

To be clear, I don't mind these differences at all. If anything, it makes experiencing The Black Cauldron in all its different forms all the more worthwhile. It makes sense for the movie to have a more self-contained story with fewer characters — and for the game to be even more limited in scope. The book has no such constraints, meanwhile, and as such there's a much stronger feeling of "fantasy epic" to the whole thing.

Thus far I've found the whole thing to strike an excellent balance between readability and not treating the reader like a moron. Lloyd Alexander respects the intelligence of his readers, but he doesn't overwhelm them with difficult prose, over-elaborate descriptions or pretentious language. Instead, we get a clear story with some well-crafted characters and some genuine stakes to the action.

I particularly want to highlight his character work. While many of the characters in the series are relatively simplistic — Taran in particular is clearly intended for the young male reader to project himself onto — there are some definite standouts. As mentioned in my previous piece on The Book of Three, I am thoroughly enamoured with the Princess Eilonwy, who takes her place alongside Ce'Nedra from David Eddings' The Belgariad/Malloreon and Lady Mandragorina from Douglas Hill's Talents series as one of my favourite spunky, sassy princesses. She might even be my favourite to date. The girl's got bite, but she also knows when to switch it off and be supportive. Since she and Taran are clearly going to end up together, I'll preemptively say that he's a lucky man.

Anyway, I'm yet to start the third volume of the series — I'll likely kick that off once we're on holiday — but I've been really enjoying it so far. Looking forward to reading the rest, for sure — and, as I've previously said, very sorry and frustrated with myself that I've never read it prior to today!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 430: Poisonous fantasy

So I picked up Blade of the Poisoner last night, as offensive as the Kindle version's cover is to me, and started to read it. As predicted, it is pleasantly easy to read, and the fact that each chapter is less than five minutes "long" at the speed I read means that I suspect I'm probably going to power right through this in short order. As noted yesterday, though, that's no bad thing; sometimes it's nice just to read something that stimulates the imagination a bit without challenging the more "technical" parts of your brain too much.

I'm actually surprised how much of Blade of the Poisoner I'm remembering — and I don't necessarily mean the details of the story, I mean certain little turns of phrase that have, for one reason or another, stuck in my mind for many years, even without having touched this book for probably several decades at this point. There were a few in the first chapter alone: protagonist Jarral's hesitant question "Can we go and … look at the village?" after his village has been burned to the ground by the evil Prince Mephtik, and the description of the character Archer falling to the ground, "sudden blood staining her brown curls" after being lamped over the head with the butt of a crossbow. Neither of these are particularly remarkable pieces of writing, but they are, for some reason, apparently lodged in my long-term memory, and I'm sure they won't be the only ones.

Thinking about it, despite a longstanding interest in and appreciation for the genre, one thing I don't think I've ever really tried my hand at writing myself is straight-up fantasy. I've done sci-fi, I've done "real world with fantastical elements", I've done "gritty realism", but one thing I don't think I've ever done is create-your-own-world-with-its-own-rules fantasy. And, dipping into Blade of the Poisoner for the first time in a long while last night, I feel like that's something which might be fun. I'm still yet to do anything with my "Scratch Pad" creative writing site that I've set up, largely because I haven't really been struck with any sort of "inspiration" just yet. But I think this might be it: it might be time for me to have a go at fantasy, and see what happens.

Fantasy is interesting because it has a whole different set of considerations to other types of writing. By its very nature, you don't have to follow the "rules" of reality, but you are then faced with the challenge of ensuring your world is internally consistent. How does magic work, if it is present at all? What species call that world home, and how are you going to ensure none of them accidentally end up as thinly veiled racial stereotypes? What social structures are in place? How do you strike a balance between giving the baddies threatening-sounding names and ensuring they don't end up sounding like medical terminology? Is there any connection between that world and ours? Is that world an "alternate Earth", or is it a completely different planet, perhaps with its own rules?

Lots of things to consider, and establishing a setting in this way can, at times, be a really fun part of writing. It is also an easy part to get very bogged down in, so one has to find a good balance between making notes on things that are important to the story you want to tell and the setting in which you want to convey that story, and not getting carried away writing what effectively amounts to a Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook. Of course, there's also a certain amount of value in fleshing out your setting to a ridiculous degree, because that can lay the foundations for future stories you might want to tell in that setting, but one shouldn't lose sight of one's main goal. As with any type of creative project, particularly if one hasn't indulged in such things for a while, it pays to start small and see where things go from there.

So yes. I am thinking. Hard. I can't promise if and when anything will appear over on the Scratch Pad, but I'll be sure to link it here when something does. And in the meantime, perhaps just a chapter or two more of Blade of the Poisoner, you know, as inspiration…

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#oneaday Day 419: I wanna write a story

It's been far too long since I actually did some proper, honest to goodness creative writing that isn't burbling stream of consciousness blog posts or video game analysis, and I have to admit, I've been feeling an increasing hunger to just write something recently.

But what? I don't really know. There are lots of possibilities in my head, ranging from simple slice-of-life affairs to ambitious sci-fi epics — plus, of course, the Dreamwalker story I've had in my head since a teen but never quite got around to figuring out how it would finish, particularly as it started life as a Klik 'n' Play game — and I think it would probably be fun to write a murder mystery, given how many of them I've been watching of late.

I am beset with the odd mind goblin*, though. I feel like I can't write a murder mystery because I can't think through a crime logically enough to make it convincing — although honestly, with some of the absolute nonsense they get up to on Death in Paradise, I feel like particularly elaborate, bafflingly complicated murders are perfectly fine in the genre.

I feel like I can't write slice-of-life because it would either be too boring, or too unconvincing, or come across too much like wish fulfilment — although, again, thinking about the slice-of-life anime and TV shows I've enjoyed over the years, none of those things are necessarily a problem.

I feel like I can't write sci-fi because I don't know enough science to make it convincing — although, again, if you lean hard on the science fantasy angle you don't necessarily have to worry about.

Mostly, my biggest mind goblin, though, is the big question: who would read it? And its closely related question, does that matter? No-one reads this fucking blog and I'm still tapping away every night, so surely if I'm taking some time on the semi-regular to write some fiction and I feel satisfied with what I've achieved, that should be enough, no?

I think that's probably the case. So I think I'm going to figure out what I might want to write, then set up a place where I can post it easily — likely another blog, separate from both this and MoeGamer. And then all I have to do is write, whenever I feel like it. And who knows? Maybe something will come of it in the long term.

^{*Mind goblin deez nuts? Yes, I got you good. Don't try and pretend like I didn't.}

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#oneaday Day 306: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

I finally got around to reading a novel my mother has been bugging me to read for ages now. It's by Gabrielle Zevin and is called Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which is one of those titles that looks more and more wrong the more times you type it out in succession. I didn't know much about the book going in other than that it was somehow related to video games, and I deliberately didn't read anything about it prior to starting it, so I had gone in with the (mistaken, as it turns out) assumption that it was going to be another Ready Player One sort of situation.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is rather different, though. While it does indeed draw inspiration from the world of video games, it is not a sci-fi novel, and the games are used more as a backdrop to what is going on rather than in-your-face references. The main story concerns two individuals who meet as children in a hospital: Sam Masur is a traumatised young man with a mangled foot after a car crash that killed his mother, while Sadie Green is an intelligent young woman who had initially been attending the hospital to visit her sister, who had leukaemia, but who subsequently managed to strike up a friendship with Sam.

The pair bond over video games, something which was clearly already important in both of their lives; Sam displays himself to be a skilled player of Super Mario Bros. when Sadie first encounters him, while Sadie has long exchanged in-jokes relating to The Oregon Trail with her sister. Sadie discovers that her interactions with Sam have caused him to speak for the first time in a very long while, and she is encouraged to see him regularly as part of the "community service" requirements for her bat mitzvah. Sam eventually discovers this — helped along by Sadie's rather jealous sister — and, understandably, begins to doubt Sadie's friendship, causing a rift between them that lasts for several years.

The pair meet again by chance several years later, when they are both nineteen years old and studying at institutions in Cambridge, Massachusetts — Sam at Harvard, Sadie at MIT. They once again bond over video games; Sadie introduces Sam to a video game she composed called Solution. Solution is an early example of an "art game"; it positions players in the role of someone working at a factory, but "completing" the game reveals that one was actually producing weapons for the Nazis in World War II. Players can alternatively complete the game by uncovering "the truth" about what they are actually up to earlier on.

Aside: real-life developer Brenda Romero believes that Solution is based a little too closely on her board game Train, which had a similar concept of going "surprise! You're a Nazi!" at its conclusion, but, as the name suggests, a different focus. I can see how she arrived at that conclusion — particularly as Zevin acknowledged the game's influence — but Sadie's Solution approaches the matter from a somewhat different angle, and Sadie, rather than Romero, being the creator is important to the story. So I think we can maybe let that slide for now.

Anyway, Solution made people in Sadie's game design class absolutely furious, as you might expect, but Sam sees something in it. And thus begins a rather tempestuous working relationship, as the pair decide to make games together — some of which are huge successes, and others of which are big fat flops.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about video games, but it's also about the creative spirit and the balance young professionals often have to find between truly expressing themselves and doing something that will actually make them some money. It's about the wild mood swings the creative temperament can bring, and about how different ideals can sometimes lead to seemingly irreconcilable differences — and how the truly strong friendships can weather those storms, even if it takes years to do so sometimes.

The games are used as a backdrop to the main story of the relationship between Sam, Sadie and the other people who are part of their lives, both personally and professionally. Author Gabrielle Zevin admits that there are a few anachronisms in terms of the games she mentions and the times at which people are playing or discussing them, but notes that this is all in service of the story. We are, after all, talking about a fictional world that refers to a variety of things that exist in the real world — ranging from the classic arcade game Donkey Kong to the gaming lifestyle website Kotaku — and couples them with events that never actually happened. In this sense, it's an "alternate history" novel of sorts, only this history is about video games rather than, say, Hitler never having been born.

It's an interesting approach. The novel's perspective jumps around in time and in terms of which character it is focusing on at any given time. Sometimes you're "in the moment" as the events of the past are occurring; at others, the narration presents Sam and/or Sadie being "interviewed" by a real-life site (such as Kotaku) about something that never actually happened in the real world, but which was an important occurrence in this alternate history. Aside from a few early hiccups where Zevin refers to "3.25 inch floppy disks" on more than one occasion (which made me wince slightly every time), the effect is mostly very convincing; it doesn't take long before you're swept along with this account of something that could have happened in this world, but which didn't.

The novel is not just about how video games have changed over time. It's also about how attempts to introduce progressive themes into games have, at times, met with uncomfortable challenges. The novel takes this to something of an extreme — more so than anything that has, to my knowledge, happened in the real world — but the point it makes is convincing. As far as I'm aware, no-one has gone and shot up a game company in the real world over the inclusion of gay and transgender characters in a video game, but the idea is depressingly plausible. From a broader perspective, the inclusion of a sequence in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow where one of the major characters is shot dead following such an encounter can be looked on as criticism of gun culture and violence in America, and how more often than not mass shootings are the result of a disaffected white dude who has snapped about something in his life or society.

Some of the most effective sequences in the book are where Zevin isn't afraid to get a bit weird. After the aforementioned shooting sequence, there's a peculiar second-person sequence presented as the reader occupying the role of the fatally shot character in the present tense as their life slips away. There's another sequence later where a depressed Sadie is playing a massively multiplayer online game, but it never actually mentions the character we're following is Sadie; everything is presented "in character" and "in world". Like the world of video game development, the literary techniques that Zevin uses throughout Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow never remain constant; they're always changing, developing, moving on, advancing.

It's also a novel about how women struggle to be taken seriously in what is still perceived to be a "boys' club", even with more and more evidence to the contrary that women have always been a part of gaming. Sadie continually struggles to be seen as the artist she is because Sam is better at the business aspect. Despite being depicted as somewhat awkward in the early hours of the book, he ends up becoming a confident "face of the company" when promoting their work, suggesting that there may be some sort of mental health issues in an autistic/ADHD-adjacent area at work with Sam's character; his behaviour is very consistent with hyperfixations and intense, deep passions for very specific things.

But Sadie struggles too, despite being less obviously "broken" than Sam is. She may not have suffered the traumatic, violent loss of a parent, she may not have physical mobility issues and she may come from a background of relative privilege, but there are times when she struggles. There are times when she finds herself swept up in an abusive relationship because she thinks its benefits outweigh its drawbacks. There are times she falls into an inconsolable depression, when even those closest to her cannot reach her. There are times when she simply doesn't know what to do, despite her intelligence. She suffers, too — perhaps even more than Sam does — and the story of her own trials are an important part of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

I'll refrain from spoiling too much more of the details of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, because I do recommend it, even if you're not "a gamer". Having the context of and an understanding of the video games referenced throughout is helpful, certainly, but this is not a story that is specifically about those video games. Instead, they're used to support the narrative and its approach to a fairly mundane but nonetheless impactful alternate history; the thrust of the story is, instead, about love, friendship, creativity, artistry and the range of challenges creative types (with varying degrees of mental health struggles) have faced over the course of the last 30-40 years or so.

So there we go. Now my mother can stop asking me if I've read it yet, because now I have!

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#oneaday Day 854: A Beginning

[Preface: Been thinking I should do some creative writing again, and I had an interesting idea the other day. I thought for the next few days I'd share some doodlings that I'd come up with.

The concept is that the complete "book" or whatever you want to call it will be a book of "beginnings and endings" — short stories/scenes/vignettes that mark either the beginning or the end of something. This could be a first meeting, the beginning of a new romance, the start of a new job… or the end of someone's life, a successfully-completed mission, someone saying goodbye to a past life. I haven't figured out quite how I want to structure the overall thing yet but I'm thinking all the stories will be set in the same "world" and "time", whatever that might end up being, and that characters from some stories will show up in others. Some "endings" will match up with the "beginnings", others will stand alone. They'll all be jumbled, though, so the reader will have to do a bit of mental dot-connecting to figure out the full picture.

Anyway. It might all be a bit ambitious or it might work well. We'll see. Here's the first mini-story/scene/whatever I've written, which is a Beginning.]

"Who are you?" said the girl.

She'd come across the boy completely by chance. He looked about the same age as her, with mousy-brown unkempt hair and some tatty-looking clothing that she guessed was a hand-me-down from a sibling.

He turned to face her slowly.

"Who are you?" he echoed back at her, his face curious; hesitant.

She frowned and looked him up and down. His face was dirty, but his eyes sparkled with life. She had already arbitrarily decided that she was going to like him very much, but she knew better than to declare something like this up front. People had to work for her friendship.

"I'm Laura," she said. "You still haven't told me who you are. And I asked you first."

He looked at her suspiciously and put down the stick he was holding.

"Sam," he said. "I'm Sam."

An awkward silence hung in the air for a few moments. Laura continued to gaze at Sam, sizing him up, analysing him. Sam, meanwhile, looked anywhere but at the pretty young girl in front of him, his gaze alighting by turns on a nearby log, an interesting-looking leaf on the floor or a pattern in the old oak tree's bark that looked a bit like a person if you squinted.

"What are you doing here, Sam?" said Laura eventually, satisfied that she had learned all she could with her eyes alone.

"I, err," said Sam, his cheeks flushing. He didn't like to tell people about his secret place, but since she was already here… "I like to come here sometimes," he said. "To be alone. Away from the grown-ups."

"Why do you want to be away from the grown-ups?" said Laura.

"Because they're mean," he said. "I don't like them."

"You don't like your parents?"

"No."

Silence fell once again. Laura had never known someone who didn't like their parents. There were times when she thought she didn't like them — usually times when she had gotten into trouble for something or other — but she'd learned pretty quickly that fluttering her pretty eyelashes, saying "sorry" in a meek voice and, occasionally, crying usually got her back into their good books.

"Why?" she said after a moment, deciding that the best approach would be the direct one. Sam said nothing in response for a moment and turned away from her. He picked up his stick, brushed away some leaves and started scratching marks into the dirty ground of the woods.

"Sam?" she said, craning her neck to look over his shoulder at what he might be scratching on the floor, but hesitating to come any closer. Still he said nothing. She stood in quiet contemplation for a moment, waiting for him to make the next move.

Finally, he turned around, the stick still in his hand. His eyes sparkled as he looked right at her, making eye contact for the first time. He looked sad.

"What is it?" she said. He said nothing, but simply gestured in the direction of the crude picture he'd scrawled on the forest floor with his stick. Looking back at him with an unspoken question hanging in the air, he nodded. She took a step forward to better see the markings.

Her eyes filled with tears, and all she wanted to do was hug him. She walked right up to him, looked into his sparkling, sad eyes and put her arms around him. His body, stiff and tense until now, softened as he relaxed into her embrace. He rested his head on her shoulder and put his own arms around her.

The pair of them wept.

#oneaday Day 724: Schoolyard Tales: Group Work

Mr Benson was a strong believer in cooperation and collaboration, particularly where his students were concerned. Every opportunity he had, he encouraged them to work together on projects and get to know each other a little better. At times this led to conflicts, especially in the more "lively" classes, as he termed them, but on the whole he felt it was a positive teaching strategy, and one which had seen him comfortably through several school inspections with a "Good" rating.

It was a new term, a new chance for the kids to group up and work together. 9F weren't the most cooperative class in the world, but most of them had seemed to accept the fact that English might be a relatively important subject, at least as far as qualifications were concerned.

He surveyed the classroom, the pupils gradually moving into their friendship groups to work on the first assignment he'd given them: to prepare a short interview-style presentation on a book they'd read recently. He always kept the first assignment of a new term relatively freeform and allowed the students to pick who they worked with. As time went on, he deliberately mixed them up and made them work with people they might not normally think to collaborate with. Sometimes this had disastrous consequences, but more often than not he found it had a positive impact on the interpersonal relationships in the classroom.

There was a wild card this time, though. He glanced at the new girl sitting in the corner and frowned at his register. Erin Adams, her name was, scruffily added in pen underneath the cleanly-printed class list he was already familiar with. He'd taught 9F when they were still 8F, and even the "tough" kids in the class gave him some grudging respect. This Adams girl, though, she was an unknown quantity — and judging by her reticence, she felt the same way about her peers.

"Erin," said Benson. "Having trouble finding a group?"

"Y-yes," she said meekly. "I'm new."

"Yes, I know," he said, smiling. "How about you go and work with Berri and Danielle?" He indicated a pair of smiling girls sitting in the corner, knowing full well that they were probably the friendliest of the whole bunch. "Berri? Danielle? You all right with that?"

The two girls nodded and beamed at him. Mr Benson was their favourite. They secretly both harboured a crush on him, but neither would dare admit it to the other, and certainly not to him.

Erin wandered over to the pair of girls and stood looking at them shyly, waiting for one of them to speak.

"Hey," said the blonde girl. "I'm Berri. You knew that already, probably. But I think this is the first time we've spoken."

"And I'm Danielle," said the girl with auburn hair. "You might have known that already, too. You're Erin, right?"

"Yes," said Erin. "I'm, err, new."

Berri giggled.

"Well, no shit. C'mon, this class may act tough but they're easy enough to ignore. Let's get started."

Benson sat down at his desk and began to mark books as the murmuring of conversation began to take hold of the class. Over the course of ten minutes, the murmuring had crescendoed to chattering, and the volume was gradually increasing bit by bit. He knew perfectly well that a goodly proportion of the group weren't listening, so he pulled out his favourite trick.

"All right!" he bellowed, slamming a hardback dictionary down on the desk as hard as he could. His Internet-connected computer in the corner of the room had made physical dictionaries almost obsolete, but he kept the bulky volume around specifically to bang on the desk when he needed to restore order. "And stop."

The chattering gradually subsided, a few disgruntled-looking boys in the corner continuing to whisper for a few seconds longer than anyone else. Benson frowned at them, but said nothing, and they too fell silent.

"I want to just check you're all getting on all right," he said. "And to do that, you're going to tell me what your group is going to talk about."

Benson methodically questioned each group in the room on what they were covering. He weeded out those who were slacking and made a mental note to have a quiet word with them once discussion started once more, and publicly praised those who had taken on ambitious books.

When he came round to Erin, Danielle and Berri's group, he actually applauded when Erin claimed to have read Pride and Prejudice.

"I watched the TV series," admitted Erin. "And I thought it might be fun to read it. You know how people always say that books are always better than films, right? I wanted to see if it was true with a TV series."

"Loser," muttered a boy in the corner. Darren Jackson, Benson's least favourite student. He tried very hard not to have favourites — and, for that matter, least favourites — but when a child was as obnoxious as Darren was, it was difficult not to dislike him. Benson knew there were extenuating circumstances — a broken home life, some possibly-spurious medical condition, a brother in prison — but he didn't felt that excused poor behaviour.

"Darren," said Benson coolly. "What you have done there is made a choice. You have made a choice to be rude and unpleasant to someone we should be making feel welcome. You can wait behind after class, if you please."

Darren tutted, but didn't argue further. He'd learned long ago that Benson was impossible to argue against. Benson only raised his voice when he was banging his dictionary on the table, and even then only to get the students' attention. He certainly never did it in anger.

Erin looked around at everyone who was staring at her after what she had said, and Darren's outburst. She blushed and sat down again.

"Wow," said Berri. "You're smart. Don't mind Darren, he's a dick."

"Yeah," said Danielle. "Stick with us and you'll be fine."

"All right," said Erin absently, but she wasn't really listening. Her hands were shaking and she felt more nervous than she had ever been in her life. She'd spoken up, and someone had ridiculed her. It was going to take a while to recover from this one.

#oneaday Day 723: The Escapist

Escapism is cool, and an important and valid method of keeping yourself sane.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There's the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they're just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there's the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it's partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer's done their job properly if you can hear the characters' voices, see the places they're in, picture the things they're doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book's cover) — but that doesn't make it any less valid.

There's the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn't have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There's the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There's the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like "friends" by the time you're through.

And there's the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn't even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it's only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don't have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

#oneaday Day 722: Schoolyard Tales: First Day

[Explanatory Note: I feel like writing some fiction again, but not sure I want to commit to a full month of nothing but an improvised story at this time. Instead, I am officially inaugurating the Schoolyard Tales series, in which I will attempt to create some recurring characters and provide them with a series of self-contained stories for them to feature in. This may or may not spin out into something bigger over time — I haven't decided yet.]

[Second Explanatory Note: I am English, and as such all the Schoolyard Tales will be set in an English school. This means any mention of "football" refers to soccer, people will use words like "wanker" and no-one has any idea what a "Glee Club" is.]

It was the first day after the holidays — a time for renewal, a time for changes. Today marked the day that some moved on to the next stage of their lives, while others began the part of their journey that would eventually lead to adulthood, and others still were stuck in the middle — drifters, wondering what their role in life was, where they'd end up and whether or not there was any point to it all.

It was 8 a.m., and the bus stop on St George's Road had by now picked up a small collection of kids. The atmosphere was muted. The only sound was the distant sound of traffic, the wind rustling the nearby trees, and the tinny rasp of a mobile phone speakers playing "Power" by Kanye West, its appreciative audience of two halfheartedly dancing and occasionally attempting to sing along, while the remainder of the bus stop's population occasionally gave disgruntled glares in their direction.

Erin Adams adjusted her tie, tightening the knot slightly and pulling it up to the collar of her blouse. She knew that most girls her age tended to wear their ties very short, tucking the longer narrow end into their blouses, but she preferred to be neat and tidy. It was a trait she'd picked up from her mother, who was a compulsive cleaner. The Adams house was always free of dust and looked immaculate — all apart from Erin's room, of course, after an incident with a diary and the subsequent screaming match had taught Mrs Adams that interfering with her daughter's personal space would be a very bad idea.

Erin sighed to herself. She was the new girl. It was all right for the little kids standing over there, wide eyed and curious, apart from the one with his head stuck in his iPhone — how the hell did he afford that? — they got to all be new together. But to join a new school in Year 9, when all the cliques have already formed, everyone is already friends with one another and no-one knows quite what to make of a new face?

She wasn't relishing the prospect, but she knew it was an unavoidable one. Erin's father had fled the family some months previously, leaving Erin and her mother in a house they couldn't afford. Mrs Adams, who had always been rather strong-willed, spent a day of grieving for her failed marriage before waking up bright and early the next day to begin preparations for what she called "The Big Move".

She'd done her best to make it seem like an exciting adventure, and Erin appreciated her mother's efforts to remain upbeat. But Erin had always been something of a daddy's girl, and she missed her father very much. His departure had been sudden, unannounced, inexplicable. He'd made no attempt to reconnect with the family — he'd just packed his bags and gone, and neither Erin nor her mother knew where to find him. Erin knew that she should probably resent him for forcing her into the role of the new girl this late in her school career, but she was more confused than anything else.

She blinked and looked around. No-one seemed to have noticed her presence, or if they had, they didn't seem to care too much. Perhaps the school got a lot of new kids.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the bus. It was a battered-looking old double decker that had seen better days. She joined the line of figures trudging up to the now-open door and fumbled in her trouser pocket for her purse, which contained the bus pass she'd been given.

"Pass please," said the driver, a kindly-looking bald man with a salt-and-pepper goatee. Erin flashed her pass and he nodded, waving her through into the body of the bus.

She surveyed her surroundings. A few kids were scattered on the ground floor. There were a couple of tiny-looking Year 7s who looked as if they were friends from primary school, desperately sticking together in a hope they wouldn't have to talk to anyone they didn't know. There was a tough-looking kid sitting in the middle of the back seat, legs akimbo and arms resting on the backs of the seats around him. No-one was sitting anywhere near him. Erin made a mental note to give him a wide berth. Back-seat kids were generally trouble, in her experience.

She decided to ascend the stairs to the top deck. The bus gave a lurch as she was halfway up, and she nearly fell, but managed to grab hold of the handrail in time. The experience made her heart pound, and she realised that she was actually quite nervous about this whole experience. If a bus pulling away could feel like something frightening, then clearly she was on edge.

She emerged from the staircase on to the top deck, which was also sparsely populated. The number of kids catching this bus really didn't warrant a double-decker, but Erin guessed that the elderly-looking bus would probably have been retired long ago were it not for the school run.

She looked around. A blonde girl with long, immaculate-looking hair. A bespectacled nerdy type in a puffer jacket. A sour-faced boy in a baseball cap. And a couple of giggling boys looking at something concealed by their bags.

Erin walked through the juddering bus and selected a seat that was out of the way of everyone else. She gazed out of the window as the vehicle passed through the streets of the town she'd had just a few weeks to learn to call home. Past what passed for its high street — a tiny collection of local shops, a Co-Op and a Smiths. Past that new-looking estate with the nice, clean-looking houses. Past that really old church. And into the traffic leading through the school gates.

Erin heard the bus driver growl something downstairs and sound the horn. Evidently someone was getting in the way. It had always been the case at her old school, too — tons of kids were driven to school by their parents, and it made the traffic hell. Erin had been able to walk to her old school, so she always watched the congestion with some amusement. Now she was stuck in it, she could see why people got frustrated.

She heard the "hiss" of the doors opening downstairs, and the driver call out "Everybody off! Might as well get out here, 'cause we're not going anywhere and I ain't making you late!"

The kids on the bus got up and trudged miserably downstairs. Erin waited until they'd all passed before following them and getting off the bus.

This was it, then. Time to be The New Girl.

#oneaday, Day 184: Dark World

[The following is part dream I had, part daydream, part complete fiction and part external influences. You may make of it what you will. Up to and including a fetching hat.]

The fog was out of season, and even thicker than it would have been at the right time of year for it. And it was cold. Very cold. Colder than he remembered it being for a long time. He wasn't sure how long it had been cold and foggy, but it had certainly been for the whole day. And that seemed to mean that everyone was staying inside, since there was not a soul on the street.

He reached the shop and walked in. All was silent inside. The lights flickered slightly, and the buzzing of the fluorescent tubes suddenly seemed very loud. There was no-one here either; no sign of the usual student rabble laughing, joking and buying beer. No sign of the shop staff behind the counter. Nothing. Yet apart from this, the neatly-stacked shelves looked just as they always did. But there was something wrong, something sinister about the whole thing.

He walked over to the coffee machine, pulled out a cup and placed it under the nozzle before jamming his thumb onto the "large latté" button. The machine whirred, ground and made that curious sucking noise as the milk and coffee poured into the cup. It seemed very loud amidst the silence in the rest of the shop. Then it was quiet, and the cup was full. He pulled out one of the flimsy plastic lids from the dispensers and set it atop the cup.

He fumbled in his pocket for some loose change and left it on the counter. Just because there was no-one here was no reason to take advantage. He wasn't that sort of person.

Something was wrong. The lights were flickering more, and the buzzing was getting louder. Suddenly, they went off entirely, and the shop was plunged into darkness. Loud, metallic scraping sounds filled his ears and he didn't know what was happening. It shouldn't be dark; it was still light outside, despite the fog. He tripped and fell in the darkness, somehow managing to hold on to his coffee cup. The ground began to shake, and he fell again trying to get back on his feet. This time, he dropped the cup. The tremors became stronger and stronger; it felt like the ground was somehow shifting beneath him, changing, becoming… metallic?

A small light flicked on above the counter.

The floor was cold, and where there once were simple tiles was now covered in metallic grates, darkness beneath them.

He scrambled to his feet, not wanting to stay here any longer than necessary. Outside, the fog was gone, but it was dark now. There was little light by which to see, so he pulled out his phone and used the bright light from the screen to see his way. The street seemed to be covered with the same curious gratings, the soles of his shoes clanging on them as he walked.

In the distance, in the darkness, he could see his building. He needed to get there, to be home, to be safe, to be inside. He didn't like the feeling that this strange new environment was giving him. He quicked his pace to a light jog and headed towards the building, up the stairs to the front door. He punched in the door code and opened the door.

Inside, like outside, all was darkness. The small pool of light from his phone was just enough to see by, but it didn't make him feel any better. He opened the door leading into the corridor that held his apartment and stepped into the blackness. He walked forward down the corridor, stopping and turning where he thought his door should be, but there was nothing there, and the corridor continued into the darkness. He couldn't see the end of it.

He turned to face the corridor, stretching into the distance, took a deep breath, swallowed, and continued to walk down it. As he continued down the seemingly endless passageway, the only sound were his footsteps echoing on the metallic floor.

He wasn't sure how long he walked for, but he was starting to get out of breath after a while. That's when he heard the sounds. A mechanical sound of some sort, though he couldn't tell what. He walked towards it and it slowly, gradually, got louder.

A voice whispered in his ear and he gave a start, almost falling over with the shock. He didn't hear what the voice said, but it sounded familiar. Then the other ear, again, something said, not meant to be heard. The machinery growing louder and louder, the whispering voices growing more urgent. And now it felt like the corridor was sloping downwards. Just a little at first, but the further he went and the closer the sound became, the more it sloped and sloped until he thought he was going to slide down it and then—

The corridor came to an abrupt end along with the sounds, and he almost walked into his neighbour's door in the darkness. He turned to face his own apartment, drew out his key from his pocket and hesitantly slid it into the lock. Pushing open the door slowly, cautiously, he shone the light from his phone into the black hallway, a sense of dread gripping him from inside, tightening every organ in his body, making him feel coiled like a spring.

The light bounced off a metallic object that was sitting on the side in the hallway. He walked over to it to see what it was.

A cook's knife. Clean, shining in the light and sharp as a razor. He picked it up, not certain what he'd use it for. And he walked slowly towards the bedroom, figuring that if the world was going to do a passable impression of night-time, he might as well try and get some sleep.

The door creaked open as he pushed it, but suddenly he was wrenched through it, the wind knocked out of him as he fell to the ground, still gripping the knife in his hand, his phone skittering across the floor, face up, its light shining around the small room.

Then the sound. That terrible sound. Like a scream, but not of pain or terror. It sounded like rage. It was formidable and terrible, and it was somewhere in this room.

He looked up at the pool of light on the ceiling. That's when he saw it. Its skin glistening as the light reflected off it, it screamed again as it knew it had been spotted.

He gasped, and his breathing quickened. This was—

The thing let out a horrifying screech again and something glass shattered. A window? A mirror? He couldn't tell, because he couldn't see. But he knew what had to be done. Brandishing the knife in a shaking hand, he walked towards where he had seen it hanging and looked up again. A tendril, like a thick piece of rope, hung from the ceiling. He raised the knife over his head and brought it down in a smooth arc, slashing through the tendril and slicing it clean in two. The part which had been stuck to the ceiling fell to the ground with a wet slapping noise, and there was another terrible scream.

His head hurt. His vision, what little he could see, felt hazy. This was difficult. It wasn't as easy as he thought. But he had to—

The thing roared and lunged at him, but he staggered to one side at just the right moment, placing him right beneath another hanging tendril. Gritting his teeth and raising the knife, he cut through this one too. This time, images flashed across his eyes. Memories? He wasn't sure, because they were gone as soon as he could focus on them. And still it was there, howling in pain now, writhing, yet still trapped. It lunged again and pushed him to the floor, knocking the wind out of him and the knife clattering across the floor. He dove towards where he thought it fell, gasping to recover his breath, and fumbled around until he felt its handle. Unsteadily, he picked himself up and got to his feet. His head was hurting now, like a migraine but worse. Instead of flashing lights across his vision, there were images, but they were still too elusive to grasp hold of. He recognised them, loved them and feared them at the same time, and he knew that there was only one way to—

With a yell, he leapt at the thing, knife raised aloft and slashed through the fourth and final tendril. With an awful screech, it fell to the ground, helpless against what was to come.

He stood above it, looking down at this pitiful thing that could engender such fear, hatred and anger. There was only one thing left, and that would be it. That would be the end. That would be—

He knelt before it, glowering at it, eyes narrowed, teeth grinding. He looked at the knife in his hand, now stained with blood and ichor, and then back to the thing again. This would be the last—

He plunged the knife deep into it and the horrific noise that ensued made the ground shake. But he pulled out the knife and plunged it in again, the tremors becoming more and more forceful, the screech becoming more and more deafening. He could hear walls cracking, collapsing, falling around him. He hoped it would be enough time to—

With the final thrust of the knife, there was a blinding white light, a sense of sudden, incredible, release like every trace of tension leaving his body; and there was a sound, a sound like a rising wind, louder and louder and stronger and filling his ears with noise and sound and it was too much and—

Then sudden, awful, total silence. Nothingness. The white light enveloped everything. Made it impossible to see. But it was—

She stood by the door to the apartment, not sure whether or not to go in. She stared at that number on the door, the number which for so long had meant "home" but was now just another meaningless digit. She looked at the lock, and at the key in her hand.

The key slid smoothly into the lock and she pushed open the door. Inside, all was quiet. The lights were off, the curtains were open and there were no signs of life. She walked ahead into the bedroom. Bare. Nothing but a bed. No sheets, no pillows, nothing. Back into the corridor; nothing here. The closets: empty. The study: nothing to see.

Panicking now, her heart racing, she ran to the living room. Nothing here besides the table, the sofa and the chairs. The things that had always been here, but nothing that meant—

Then she saw it. A folded piece of paper on the table, sitting by itself, alone.

She took it, unfolded it, read it.

Then she stuffed it into her pocket, turned and fled.

#oneaday, Day 62: Freewriting #4 - I Can Barely Keep My Eyes Open

[It's 1:33am and I've inadvertently forgotten to go to bed just yet. And forgotten to blog. So here is some more musings from the innermost depths of my brain. Clock. Ten minutes. Write. Don't stop. You know the drill. If it's crap, I make no apologies for it whatsoever.]

The city streets were quiet. The occasional whoosh of a car in the distance notwithstanding, it looked like something terrible had happened leaving him the only sign of life in the world. His mind wandered back to that movie – 28 Days Later – and a shiver ran down his spine as he thought "what would I do if that really happened?"

Fortunately, the silence was shattered by a noisy drunk staggering down the street, shambling around a corner like one of the zombies in those films he liked so much. He started singing – an incoherent tune, born from some forgotten memory and sounding for all intents and purposes like a small creature being strangled and/or put through a mangle.

He was secretly annoyed that his silence had been broken by this imbecile staggering down the street with all the flair and panache of a dog turd. He enjoyed the night. He enjoyed the peace. He enjoyed the feeling of being alone, free from obligations, free from worries. Night-time was a pure time, when he could truly be alone with his thoughts and contemplate whatever he wanted.

Right now, he was contemplating nothing at all. He was simply enjoying the feeling of sitting on the roof of his building, feeling the cool night breeze blowing over his face and finding the sensations of the air moving around him rather relaxing. The drunk was staggering away now, and the song had stopped. Either he had forgotten the words, had forgotten what he was doing or, more likely, just got bored.

Then the silence was back. He looked up and down the street and once again, all was still. A slightly stronger breeze than before blew and caused the few trees and bushes there were in the area to rustle, swish-swish-swish. It was a sound he enjoyed, and brought back memories of his childhood, lying on his back in the summer sun, eyes closed, feeling the heat of the sun on his face and listening to the rustling of the trees while his peers played somewhere in the distance.

He always was a dreamer. He wasn't sure what he wanted to dream about, so he dreamed about anything he could think of. He dreamed of far-off places. He dreamed of things he could never do. He dreamed of things he probably could do but was too scared to. And he dreamed of where things might actually go in the near future.

No-one knew. He didn't know. No-one else was going to be able to tell him what the future held, not his friends, not his family, not his horoscope from the paper, not whatever Facebook app was spamming him with promises of what his lucky colour was this week. The only person who would be able to tell him what the future held would be him, once it had happened. And by then, it would be too late.

He lay back on the roof and closed his eyes like he did so many years ago. The concrete on the flat roof wasn't nearly as comfortable as the soft grass of the playing fields at home, but it did the job. With his eyes closed, the silence seemed even purer. Devoid of any visual distractions, his imagination began to wander – a fleeting image here, a passing fancy there. But none of them stuck. There was no clear path. It was a fog, a mist, threatening to swallow him if he would let it. But he wouldn't. He was strong. He knew that he could make it through all the uncertainty, the lies, the nonsense, and that somewhere on the other side of it all there would be something good waiting for him.

Exactly what form that "something good" would take was what he was most curious about. Would it be a person? A thing? Some money? Winning a prize? Appearing on television? Becoming famous?

He didn't really want some of those things, but they were things that people commonly referred to as being "good". A programme he had seen on the TV earlier that evening featured a series of teenage girls all proudly proclaiming that their life's ambition was to "be famous". For what, exactly, they were never exactly clear. When pushed, one or two of them came out with "well, modelling, innit?" but nothing more than that.

He didn't see himself in that position. But maybe there was something there waiting for him.

For now, though, it didn't matter. For now was the night, and it was closing in.

He closed his eyes tighter and let himself drift away slowly into the darkness, unafraid of where he might wake up.