Game of Thrones has introduced us to the possibility that despite our hatred of one side or the other, it is possible to come to a realization of how that side came to be.
Case in point. Jaime Lannister. He’s smarmy. Arrogant. But he did kill the original king. It earned him mockery in the form of the “Kingslayer” nickname, though no one cared enough to not participate in the subsequent takeover of the kingdom. He saved the day, but the people he saved it for hate him. Its tough not to be jaded.
So my hunch is things will become less clear than light vs. dark sides of the Force. Each side will have their own reasoning for fighting. Naturally, we get behind Han and Chewie et. al, but we’ll get why the bad guys do what they do, how they were driven to it.
And while I’d be very surprised if JJ Abrams breaks our hearts and turns Luke Skywalker into a villain, a climate in which audiences seek out motivations as to why villains do what they do does make a Skywalker villain more possible than ever.
I hope it doesn’t happen. I’d be very surprised.
Also, it is entirely possible this film will be just three hours of Jar Jar Binks reading a dictionary.
My previous post aside, here is where my mind is at the moment:
SEASON ONE OF POP CULTURE MYSTERIES – A series of posted stories on popculturemysteries.com in which Jake Dashing, a private investigator who fell asleep for sixty years, adjusts to modern life. Begrudgingly, he’ll search for answers to BQB’s pop culture questions and share mysteries from his past and present.
By the end of Season One, Jake’s past will catch up to him in the form of an “item” or “items” he acquired during a mission he went on in World War II in which he <WAIT FOR IT> punched Adolf Hitler in the face.
Someone wants that item/items. A bad someone. And he’ll be willing to wreak havoc on Jake’s new modern life and the people he cares about to get it.
And that someone does not like that Jake has been talking online about how he punched Hitler in the face, even if BQB’s blogs only have 3.5 readers.
That’s 3.5 too many for this bad guy.
THAT LEADS INTO…
OPERATION FUHRERPUNSCHEN – the first novel I hope to publish set in Jake’s world, detailing how he, you guessed it, punched Adolf Hitler in the face and acquired the item/items so desired by the bad guy in season one.
BOOKSHELF BATTLE CROSSOVER – Yup. If you’re into it, you’ll have to read both blogs. The “bad someone” will infuriate Jake to the point where top secrets be damned and he contracts with Bookshelf Q. Battler to publish Operation Fuhrerpunschen.
There is significant backlash. Bookshelf Q. Battler, for helping Jake disclose details of the top secret punch Hitler in the face mission, is taken from his beloved BQB Headquarters and thrown into an undisclosed, clandestine government “black site.”
Video Game Rack Fighter will then take the blog over as host for the foreseeable future after that, saddened that her nerdy man is gone but willing to do her part to keep his dream of entertaining 3.5 readers alive.
BOOKSHELF Q. BATTLER NOVEL – At first I thought BQB’s escapes were only something for the blog, but I thought of an idea that is funny enough (with just the right amount of adventure) that it might be worth a full fledged novel.
Long story short, a worldwide crisis occurs…THAT ONLY A NERD CAN SOLVE. BQB is given the chance to win back his freedom…IF HE SAVES THE WORLD!
UNDISCLOSED OTHER NOVEL – BQB might spend a long ass time in that black site, giving me enough time to write a novel that has nothing to do with BQB or Jake. Did I say I’ll write it? I mean that Video Game Rack Fighter will find a novel that BQB wrote and self-publish it for him…I can only assume because doing so will keep the Mighty Potentate at bay.
The Mighty Potentate won’t be pleased the Chosen One is missing, after all.
THE FUTURE, FUTURE: Notice I haven’t said when any of the above will happen because who the heck knows when I’ll be able to get to all or any of it? A year? Couple of years? I don’t know. As fast as possible without sacrificing quality or giving myself a stroke basically.
But, if you all dig it and the numbers are there to justify carrying on, I foresee:
MORE JAKE NOVELS: Two more after the Hitler punching mission in which Jake a) has an adventure in Hong Kong and b) has an adventure in Cuba before going back to America. And if you like it, there will be more cases from his past and even some more novel worthy adventures in his present.
MORE BQB NOVELS – If I can think of more BQB novel worthy nonsense. That I’m not sure of. But possibly. They will likely require a character to sit the adventure out and host the blog with the claim that BQB can’t blog right now as he is on an adventure. Maybe the Yeti can take over.
MORE INDEPENDENT NOVELS – That have nothing to do with this nonsense. VGRF keeps finding them in BQB’s sock drawer or something. Who knows?
DESIGN – The books will be written in such a way that you won’t have had to read the blogs to enjoy them. If you enjoy the books, hopefully you’ll dig deeper into the blogs.
And allow me to sell you more stuff so I can get pizzaid. I didn’t say that. I’m in this for the art.
ANYWAY… I’ve just laid out a possible game plan for the future, what say you, 3.5 readers? Are you in for this ride or does it all sound incredibly dumb and I should just go pound sand?
I fully intended to write and self-publish a book this year.
Originally, the one post a day challenge was never meant to be anything more than “at least say hello” once a day to attract more followers.
But then I got into it. Bookshelf Q. Battler was born. His supporting cast was born. Holy crap, there was even a spin off in “Pop Culture Mysteries.”
As the year comes to an end, I’ve gained roughly a thousand new blog followers, over 5000 additional Twitter followers, 800 Google Plus followers, etc.
That’s all great, though few of them actually make the leap to come over and check what’s happening on the blog.
So as rich as BQB’s world has grown, it dawns on me that had I taken the bit of time I used every day to write a blog post and focused it onto a novel, I’d of been able to get a novel published this year.
There’s the rub. There are many who say that getting that book out onto Amazon will do more for you than blogging. Amazon has more power than your blog, after all.
But then there’s another rub. There’s two rubs. Until this becomes a money making endeavor, I’d rather let BQB take all the credit. But that means building up the BQB brand. Giving our nerdy hero a backstory, friends, enemies, building his world, Jake’s world, and letting them cross over on the blogs now and again.
I worry that people don’t like to read fiction on blogs. But my hope is that maybe enough of you will grow to like BQB and Jake enough to want to read their adventures in a book format, whenever I get around to writing and publishing one.
Meanwhile, when that book comes out, I hope people who like it will be interested enough to check out the stuff on my blogs.
QUESTION: Stick with the fictional blogs tying into books idea or scrap it and just focus on writing and publishing 1-2 books a year, with little to no more blogging as that cuts too much into book writing time. My free time is very limited so whatever I do, it needs to count.
An aging boxer and his young protege, the son of his former friend/rival….
TRAVEL TO RUSSIA TO BEAT THE EVER LOVING SHIT OUT OF THAT DIRTY ROTTEN SOVIET COMMIE IVAN DRAGO AS PAYBACK FOR KILLING APOLLO IN ROCKY IV! USA! USA! USA!
OK. So that wasn’t the plot. But it really should have been. Totally would have been had I written it. Maybe that’s why Sly never takes my calls.
Bookshelf Q. Battler here with a review of Creed.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
When it comes to the seventh installment of a film series chronicling the lives of people who beat the crap out of each other, “good writing” is a phrase you’d think would not come to mind.
You’d be wrong. Stallone has done it again.
When Rocky Balboa came out in 2006, I thought Stallone was scraping the bottom of the barrel then. But then I watched it. Rocky’s challenge in that film wasn’t to win, it was just to stay alive as an old timer in the ring for one last go around.
In that movie, he delivered a speech to his son that sums up the whole series, i.e. “life will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.”
Rocky’s always been about trying. Yoda said “Do or do not, there is no try.” Rocky said, “Try.” Shut up Yoda.
Anyway, move forward nine years, I thought Stallone was REALLY reaching by putting out yet another film but low and behold, he’s done it again.
THE SETUP: Adonis Johnson aka Adonis Creed is the illegitimate son of famous boxing legend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers, who you might also remember as the only tough guy in Predator who didn’t go on to become a state governor).
He grew up in two separate worlds. After his mother’s death, he ended up on the streets, scrapping with the other boys and landing himself in juvenile detention.
Enter Apollo’s wife, Mary Anne (played by Phylicia Rashad – Mrs. Huxtable in a movie!) who out of the kindness of her heart, adopts Adonis, even though he’s the product of her late husband’s extramarital hi jinx.
But you can’t dump on Apollo too much for not being there for Adonis. Fans of the series know that in Rocky IV, Apollo died at the hands of that roid raging commie Ivan Drago, but Goddamnit, he died for America. He died so Rocky could challenge Drago to a rematch and win in the name of capitalism. Suck it, Soviets.
That was the last movie I remember Brigitte Nielsen being hot in, come to think of it.
Anyway, Adonis then moves on to the good life with Mary Anne, who lives in a mansion because unlike that dumbass Rocky, she didn’t let a degenerate moron like Pauly manage her family’s finances. God you suck, Pauly.
All this leads to Adonis being very confused. He wants to step out of the shadow of a famous father he never knew. He wants to prove himself. Be his own man. He avoids using Creed’s name.
He wants to be a boxer but no one will train him…because he doesn’t HAVE to be a boxer. Boxing, as various people tell him, is a sport for people who don’t have any other shot at the good life. Adonis has a wealthy benefactor mother. He doesn’t need to get his face punched for a living.
Or does he? Financially, he doesn’t. Mentally, he does. He wants glory and thus he journeys to Philly and pesters elderly Rocky to become his Mickey..err, manager.
But it’s not easy to make it as a Creed. Whatever success Adonis finds, people attribute it to a father he never knew. And there are people who want to take advantage of his famous last name. All the while, there are people who accuse him of coming from privilege which he views as unfair. Mary Anne may have saved him, but he never lost the hunger of a kid growing up on the streets.
There’s even a subplot in which Adonis falls in love with a female musician with progressive hearing loss…i.e. she’s trying to become a famous singer before she can’t hear herself sing anymore. Stop! Stop! I can’t handle all this sadness!
It was great. It really was. Stallone has gone to the well twice now in a series that by all rights, jumped the shark in Rocky 5 (the one where Rocky has a street fight with ‘Tommy Gunn.'” Boo! Worst Rocky ever!
Michael B. Jordan proves his acting chops. I’d like to see more from Tessa Thompson, who plays Adonis’ girlfriend.
I will say this. If its the last film in the Rocky series, its a worthy ending. If it isn’t, I have no clue where Rocky could go from here, though I really feel that my “Rocky and Adonis go to Russia to beat the shit out of elderly Ivan Drago” could be a worthy contender.
Have your people call my people, Sly. I’ll totally write that screenplay for you.
Deirdre Gould brought a new twist to the zombie apocalypse genre. “After the Cure” takes place, you guessed it, in a time “after the cure” for zombification is discovered.
How would society rebuild? How would recovered zombies (i.e. humans who became zombies and are now humans again) come to terms with what they did when they were zombies? Should they be forgiven? Can they forgive themselves?
Deirdre talks about her series, life in Maine (where prepping is more necessary than you’d think) and Hobbits!
My guest today is Deirdre Gould, who has strategically placed herself in Maine, where cold temperatures make the zombies run slower and remote isolation means zombifying viruses take longer to spread. Better yet, harsh storms make it so no one thinks Deirdre’s crazy for prepping.
In other words, she finds it to be a primo spot for writing the After the Cureseries, which chronicles a world in which “the December Plague” has turned humans into violent, bloodthirsty, cannibalistic monsters.
I just hope they don’t eat me. I taste awful.
Let me see if I can Deirdre on the space phone.
Q. Hello Deirdre. Are you a prepper and if so, I’ll ask the question I’ve posed to other prepper authors this month. Why? Are we all doomed or is it just a better safe…
I didn’t think the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was that good, but the trailer for the sequel looks like its going to make up for it.
Have you ever listened to the podcast, “Serial?” In the first season, the hose, Sarah Koenig, presented the case of Adnan Syed and illustrated that how it is possible for all the evidence to be laid out in a case and for people to still be unsure of whether or not a defendant is innocent or guilty.
Koenig has a knack for storytelling style journalism and keeps things lively and moving.
Produced by the creators of This American Life, Serial is back for a second season. This time the individual under scrutiny is Sgt. Bo Bergdahl.
You might remember he was a major news story last year. In 2009, he walked away from his post in Afghanistan and six soldiers died while looking for him.
Last year, he was returned to the US after a prisoner swap with the Taliban that led to four major terrorists in captivity going free.
This is a tough one. My blog is not political…at all. But I do enjoy good story telling and Sarah Koenig is a master at it. She definitely knows how to end every episode on a cliffhanger that keeps her audience coming back for more.
So here’s what I propose. If you’re listening to Serial, stop by here once a week and let’s chat about the latest episode, hash out the info and the evidence and try to figure out what’s going on.
Not gonna lie – I might pull the plug on this. My hope is you all won’t get too political. Were the wars in the Middle East right or wrong? I hate this politician or I like that politician or whatever…not really up for debate here.
The crux of this season seems to be around Bergdahl telling his story and admittedly, as of the end of the first episode, it sounds pretty lame.
Briefly summarized – he claims he ran away because he had to create a “DUSTWUN” or a missing soldier situation in which the top brass pays attention. He claims he had to do this because his unit was poorly managed and hoped this would get him an audience with someone with a high rank that could do something about his complaints about his unit.
I have to admit, that sounds like a pretty fishy story. “I was 23 and I was scared and so I made a dumb mistake and ran away. I’m very sorry for the six people who died looking for me.”
To me, that would be more sympathetic than, “I was afraid my poorly managed unit was going to lead to people getting killed….so I ran away….um, and got six people killed.”
Anyway, let’s be civil (NOT POLITICAL) and look at it from an academic approach. If you listened to this first episode, do you believe Bergdahl or do you think he’s full of a smelly substance?
I’ll say up front I believe he’s in the latter column. My fear is that this guy is basically trying to save himself by impugning the character of a unit that tried to save him when he went AWOL (six of whom died in the process.)
And I get it. I’ve never served in the military. Who am I to criticize anyone? But, like I said, I’d be sympathetic to “I was young and scared and made a mistake” but hearing him talk as though he is “Jason Bourne” strains credibility.
Cliffhanger for next week – um, it sounds like Sarah is going to call the Taliban on the phone to interview them. Who knew they were even listed in the phonebook?
NOTE: To reiterate, please refrain from the nastiness of politics. I’m not looking for comments to the effect of “I HATE REPUBLICANS!” or “I HATE DEMOCRATS!” and so on.
The podcast is interesting to me because, as she did in the first season with Syed, Sarah presents two sides of a case and leaves it up to the listener to make his/her own conclusions.
So in other words, we’re not talking about the politics of war – instead, we’re presented with a case. A soldier walked away from his unit, got 6 people killed during a search for him, his release led to four dangerous people being freed.
Is Bergdahl guilty? Yes or no and what about the evidence/interviews presented in the podcast make you think that way?
Those pages at the top of this blog, under that big nerd, how do I arrange them in the order I want them? Been trying to figure it out for a long time and am finally breaking down to ask.
Bookshelf Battle 