Workshopping Writing

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Adam Randall
I’m getting towards the end of a three year Creative Writing course at Bath Spa University. I’ve had some classes where I’ve learnt things that are incredibly useful and I’ve had other classes that weren’t quite as handy, but it’s definitely been a highly valuable experience on the whole. One of my favourite things about taking this Creative Writing course, has been getting to have lots of other people read my writing and give me their own interpretations of it. So for today’s blog entry, I’ve decided to write down some of the more interesting responses to my work.

– “This is wonderfully absurdist!” said one teacher, about a story that was supposed to be fairly realistic.
– Lots of people thought two of my characters were gay. That was never my intention, but, since they all read it in, I decided to have one of them harbouring an unrequited crush on the other.
– One person recently thought I was making a distasteful joke about rape. That was a little upsetting, both because I’d hate for my work to appear that way and because it makes me sad to think that this person would imagine me making rape jokes.
– I have one character who is supposed to be particularly pathetic and obsessive; somebody thought I had based him on myself!
– Somebody suggested that every piece I write has an air of sexual tension to it. I didn’t intentionally include anything like that, so, I don’t know if it says more about me or them.
– I was told I should make the evil villain of a story turn out to be God. I decided not to heed this advice.
– One time a teacher thought the hero and the villain of a story were secretly the same person. This was a wonderful idea and, while it isn’t what I planned, I decided to have fun sneaking in some clues that pointed to that false conclusion. (Although, technically, this was just before I started the course).
– Finally, and this is the most unusual reading of a piece: after reading a story about a clown on a sinking ship, one of my friends was sure it was my coded way of telling them that I no longer valued my life and was feeling suicidal. While this certainly was not the case, I was touched by their concern!

I hope it was entertaining to read those pieces of feedback. I certainly enjoyed receiving them, but then again, it is my work, so I might be much more inclined to enjoy it than you. It’s a shame that I’ll have left in a couple of months, I’ve had so much fun for the past three years and I’ll miss it terribly when it’s over.

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Sex and Nudity

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Adam Randall
It’s interesting how, on

It’s interesting how, on a DVD case, sex and nudity will be grouped together in the section of things unsuitable for young children. In society’s eye, nudity is very much the same thing as sex, but, for me these are entirely different things. Nudity I am quite indifferent too, whereas sex can cause me a great deal of anxiety.

Why do people always link nudity with sex? Friends, both male and female, will happily get changed in front of me, and it makes no difference to me. It’s nothing more than extra parts of their bodies, how is there any sex in that at all? Two people, both female this time, curiously, have sent me photographs of themselves naked for me to tell them if they ‘look alright’ and to me it’s nothing. Although, I do have to say that I don’t like to be given the power to tell somebody whether their body looks alright because, of course it does, everyone’s body looks alright and it’s only the awful side of our society that would tell them otherwise and I’ve insisted I can tell them that without the photographs, but they send them all the same. Funnily enough, I’m extremely uncomfortable with being even slightly undressed around other people.

Sex, in my mind, is an entirely distinct concept. I don’t like to ever think about sex and it’s out of my mind almost all of the time. The very idea of it, especially the idea of myself ever being involved in that kind of thing, makes me extremely uncomfortable. I don’t like it when my friends tell me about their sex lives and, unless they have some kind of problem they’d like to talk about, it’s something I’d rather they didn’t bring up as, what’s the point? I don’t know, perhaps I have some kind of irrational fear of the subject (I’m not sure why I would though), but the point of this post is, that there’s nothing inherently sexual about the naked human body, and I think it’s a little silly that so many people always associate the two things in that way.

(Click here for the second Finger Puppet Show of the week.)

a DVD case, sex and nudity will be grouped together in the section of things unsuitable for young children. In society’s eye, nudity is very much the same thing as sex, but, for me these are entirely different things. Nudity I am quite indifferent too, whereas sex can cause me a great deal of anxiety.
Why do people always link nudity with sex? Friends, both male and female, will happily get changed in front of me, and it makes no difference to me. It’s nothing more than extra parts of their bodies, how is there any sex in that at all? Two people, both female this time, curiously, have sent me photographs of themselves naked for me to tell them if they ‘look alright’ and to me it’s nothing. Although, I do have to say that I don’t like to be given the power to tell somebody whether their body looks alright because, of course it does, everyone’s body looks alright and it’s only the awful side of our society that would tell them otherwise and I’ve insisted I can tell them that without the photographs, but they send them all the same. Funnily enough, I’m extremely uncomfortable with being even slightly undressed around other people.
Sex, in my mind, is an entirely distinct concept. I don’t like to ever think about sex and it’s out of my mind almost all of the time. The very idea of it, especially the idea of myself ever being involved in that kind of thing, makes me extremely uncomfortable. I don’t like it when my friends tell me about their sex lives and, unless they have some kind of problem they’d like to talk about, it’s something I’d rather they didn’t bring up as, what’s the point? I don’t know, perhaps I have some kind of irrational fear of the subject (I’m not sure why I would though), but the point of this post is, that there’s nothing inherently sexual about the naked human body, and I think it’s a little silly that so many people always associate the two things in that way.

(Click here for the second Finger Puppet Show of the week.)

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Enoguh

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Adam Randall
I was chatting with my friend Dalfino on Facebook today and, at one point in the conversation he inadvertently wrote ‘enoguh’ rather than the word ‘enough’. A simple mistake, I thought, and one not likely to cause any confusion. Dalfino, on the other hand, thought this was an enormous error on his part and that the whole thing was rather extraordinary. ‘Enoguh’, he thought, was a completely different word than ‘enough’. I wonder if on average, a person would see things from my perspective, or from Dalfino’s? Anyway, you might be wondering why it is that I’m telling you all this. Well, after this happened Dalfino told me that I should make a blog post about the word ‘enoguh’ I told him I probably wouldn’t be able to write anything interesting, but he told me I’d find a way to make it interesting. Since I hadn’t written my blog post for the day, and I do like to keep my readers happy, this has been a blog post on ‘enoguh’ and while it may not be my best, I’m sure it has at least some value to it. It’s nice to record small moments from life, after all. I don’t know if this short anecdote has been particularly interesting, but I suppose it is rather interesting to consider the fact that ‘enoguh’, when said out loud, does sound an awful lot like ‘an ogre’.

(Don’t miss this week’s first Finger Puppet Show!)
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Boyfriend

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Adam Randall

Back in 2008, I rather unexpectedly found myself with a boyfriend, which was odd. I was happily browsing the internet and chatting to my old friend Sarah Kryworuczka on MSN and on that particular day, we weren’t talking about anything especially exciting until she told me that she was having trouble with an old friend of her’s who she told me was being both annoying and somewhat sexually perverted and so she persuaded me to join the conversation.

A new chat box was opened and in it, I was chatting with both Sarah and her friend.

“Are you a girl?” he asked. I don’t want to insult his intelligence, but my screen name was ‘Adam’ and my display picture was me, so, that question did seem slightly dim-witted.

“Yes, I am,” I decided to say.

“Then how come your name is ‘Adam’?” he asked.

“It’s a nickname,” said Sarah. “She got it because she kisses like a man.” Okay, well, she didn’t actually say ‘kisses’ she said something a little more explicit which I don’t wish to repeat!

“Oh right,” he said, falling for the lies.

On Sarah’s suggestion I changed my display picture from a picture of me to a picture of one of my other female friends. For a while he asked general questions about what we did at school and things like that and it all seemed a bit of harmless fun.

“Tell him you’re in love with him,” said Sarah in our one on one conversation, eventually.

I was very hesitant to do this, at first, but I was eventually persuaded to do so.

“I love you, will you go out with me?” I wrote eventually.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, regretting it more with each key I pressed.

“Then sure! You are FIT!” he said.

Sarah found this particularly hilarious.

A message from him popped up in a one on one conversation. “You sure you’re OK with a long distance relationship?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I replied, wondering how far Sarah was expecting me to go with this charade.

“I’ll come and visit all the time,” he assured me.

This is when I realised I had to put a stop to this. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and I knew that he knew where Sarah lived and she wasn’t too far away from me! Was he going to come and find me?

“I’m awfully sorry, but, the more I think about it, the more I don’t think this can work. I’m sorry to have gotten your hopes up.” I wrote quickly.

I then quickly blocked and deleted him. Thankfully, I never heard from him again, but I can’t help but feel a little guilty when I think back to him!

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In the Age of Information, Ignorance is a Choice

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Adam Randall
Before I even get started, I want to say right away that the title of this post is not something I agree with. A little while ago I saw that phrase posted as one of those ‘inspirational’ photos you see on Facebook and I was quite surprised to see it getting a lot of support. I think the phrase sums my main problem with the internet community quite nicely.
    First, I had better explain why it is that I disagree with that phrase. While information is a lot more readily available these days thanks to the internet, not everybody is aware just how useful it is, or where exactly to look for specific information. Furthermore, all people learn in different ways. For some, it might be possible to just read information on the internet and then to just know it, but that is quite simply not the way that everybody’s mind works. To expect everybody to have been able to teach themselves about various subjects via the internet. Furthermore, time is another crucial element: many people work very demanding jobs and for only a small amount of money and I can’t imagine they’re going to want to spend their free time doing something as taxing as teaching themselves.  And then of course there are also countries where the internet is heavily censored or people don’t have much access to it anyway. I know this argument may also have been aimed at people who are ignorant of other people, rather than unlearned people, but even so, if people believe incorrect misconceptions, the media is to blame for perpetrating them and those holding the false beliefs need to be educated rather than ridiculed.
    Now that brings me to me somewhat sad conclusion about the internet: while it me be a very lovely and useful tool, it has created a small culture of people who seem to hold nothing higher than intelligence. People are always being so incredibly pedantic and correcting the typos and grammatical errors of others just to show that they know the correct way of writings things and putting others down for not knowing the facts about things. You only have to look to ‘humour’ sites to see hundreds of pictures of somebody having written a Facebook status or a Twitter Tweet that is factually incorrect, followed by the horrible ‘kill yourself’ man. I can’t help but sadly wonder what a nice place the internet could be if politeness and kindness were held in the same high regard as sarcasm and intelligence.

(This week’s second Finger Puppet Show.)

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Optimism

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Adam Randall

I’m quite an optimistic person. I think it’s always best to look on the bright side and I don’t usually find it especially hard to do so. Without meaning to sound at all arrogant or boastful, I might go as far as to say that this is a good ‘quality’ of mine, in that it helps me to help other people cheer up a little when they’re feeling sad.

Just yesterday, however, I was speaking to a friend of mine and they said to me “Adam, one day you won’t be able to see the bright side of things and then you’re whole view of life will crumble and you’ll have a nervous breakdown” which I thought was a rather sad prediction for my future. But I have to wonder, is it really possible to be too optimistic? Since that was said, I’ve been wondering about it a lot. As I’ve said before, aside from the odd dip, I can quite earnestly say that I am happy all of the time. But, do we really live in a world where it’s not possible for that kind of happiness to last? Why must I be heading towards a terrible downfall? Perhaps I really am so naive that I can’t see that, or perhaps my friend has a sadly damaged view of the world, I don’t know. Perhaps the fact that I’m questioning this shows that I’m not ‘too’ optimistic after all because, if I were, I’d not doubt this for a second!

But this brings me to some other concerns people have had about me. An awful lot of people are concerned that I am prone to be taken advantage of by others. These often come along with people’s concerns that I am ‘too afraid’ to say no when somebody asks something of me, but this make me think that people don’t quite understand the way my mind works. I like to always say yes when somebody asks me to do something, it makes me feel good about myself, whereas it seems that people perceive me as reluctantly going along with whatever people say due to inability, or fear, of saying no. I especially like doing nice things for people I don’t like. Well, I say people, but there’s only one person that I dislike, so I bought him a bag of cookies. With other good deeds you can question your intentions “I did a good thing, but then again I like this person and I want them to like me too, is it really a good deed, or a selfish one?” but then, when I do something for somebody I don’t like, I don’t have that question. Although, on the other hand I do feel bad about disliking this person for no real reason other than that I find him incredibly annoying in every sense.

So I just wanted to write this so that people who know me could, hopefully, develop a better understanding of my motivations and so that people who don’t know me can learn a little more. I think I should also say, that I hope this entry doesn’t make it sound like I am annoyed at people presenting their concern about these things to me. I think it’s nice to know that somebody’s concerned about me, as it’s a good sign that they care. I just don’t think these concerns are grounded and, therefore, have written this entry as a form of reassurance.

(Today’s Finger Puppet Show.)

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Trusty Water Fire Extinguisher

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Adam Randall
In the summer of 2009, my friend Dalfino invited me to come to a party that was to be held in the middle of a forest in the Corsham Wilderness. Since I really love going there by myself, I thought it would probably be quite nice to attend a party there. It turned out to be one of the more unusual social events that I’ve attended over the years.
    When I arrived, it was very dark and the only real light source was a small camp fire that’d been made earlier. I had come with Dalfino and also my friend Christian, but, at one point a person who I’d never seen before took me aside. It seemed that, for whatever reason, this nice young man wanted to show me his pubic hair. It’s odd because, it’s not something I was especially keen to see and, since he’d never met me before, I can’t image he was especially keen for me to see it either! But I suppose trying to understand the intentions of a stranger, especially a drunken one, may be a little futile.
    Anyway, the event went on and not that much else happened, until somebody decided that it might be fun to splash alcohol on themselves and then step into the camp fire so that their body was quickly covered in flames. Now, before I continue with the story (and, I dare say that the title gives away the ending anyway) I think this might be a good place to say that I’ve always been rather horrified by the idea of somebody being consumed by fire. I’m not quite sure why, but from time to time I’ll have a nightmare where somebody is walking along while their entire body is burning, it just seems horrible. As you can imagine, I was more than a little concerned when I saw that this unusual fear of mine was quickly becoming a reality.
    Thankfully, this was yet another situation where carrying a water bottle with me turned out to be a huge benefit. I rushed over to him and a strong squirt to his front and a strong squirt to his back later he was extinguished.
    “Cheers, mate,” he said.
    I smiled at him and that was that.

(I wrote a few small things for The Hidden Tower, David Tubb’s blog. Click here to read them.)

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Posters

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Adam Randall
Until very recently, I had no posters up in my room and now I have four.  Today I’m going to show you them all.

Picture

This first, as I’m sure you can tell, is the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Very often I pop to a friend’s house and the pair of us will watch Doctor Who (among other things) together, and one time I have a very pleasant surprise when he gave me this poster.

Picture

This second one is a poster of the Green Man of Pagan religion. I’m not a Pagan, but, one time I saw that my uncle had a very nice poster of the Green Man up on the wall and I told him that I thought it looked very nice. The next time I saw him, he very kindly had another one just for me which he’d even taken the time to laminate and add sticky pads to!

Picture

Here we have my Donkey Kong Country Returns poster. This was a Christmas present from my internet friend Rhino Water. It was a very good choice too, since Donkey Kong Country is one of my favourite video game series! I remember once he asked me online if I had any posters, at the time I just thought it was a random question, but now I know!

Picture

Finally, I have a nice picture of the Walton family up on my bedroom door. I actually got this ages ago as a Christmas present from my Mum, but, until recently it was just propped up on a bookshelf. Since all the other posters were up I decided to put this one up as well… And very nice it is too!
(Here is today’s Finger Puppet Show!)
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Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Adam Randall

PictureSadly, a large number of games in the Fire Emblem series have only been made available in Japan, including the very first one. This game is a remake of the first game (which was originally on the Famicom) for the DS. However, due to the fact that the original version is rather hard to come across, I won’t be reviewing this as if it were a remake as I don’t imagine I’ll play the original. (EDIT: I was wrong, here’s my review.)

One thing people may be quite pleased about is the fact that the hero of this game is Marth who, before this, had never appeared in a Fire Emblem game in the West, but was known about due to his inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Marth’s story is a sad one; he is the prince of Altea and at a young age the family’s castle is invaded and only he manages to get away while the rest of them are presumably murdered. He then goes far away, grows up and then gathers people together to reclaim his homeland. That’s a very basic outline of it anyway, there are so many areas where I could go into a lot more detail, but, I’ll let you discover them for yourself.

As with all Fire Emblem games, this is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements. The game is broken up into various grid-based levels where you have to use the characters you’ve met and recruited to defeat the enemies and capture their base (which is done by defeating a boss character). But you don’t just have generic units in any of these levels, you only have characters you’ve met throughout the story and if any of them happen to be killed they are then permanently dead. Since this game is both very long and very hard, you’re not likely to get to the end without quite a few people dying and you’ll feel awful every time it happens. Every character has their own back story and their own unique relationships with different members of the group as well as their own experience levels, abilities and stats. So, if you have a favourite, you can spend time making sure that they become very powerful. But be careful not to put all your eggs in one basket, if that one strong character is killed, you’ll then have a great difficulty with later battles!

As a nice little bonus, this game gives you the option to fight against other players either locally or over the internet. Online there is also a nice additional shop where rare items can be bought. However, the multiplayer is by no means a huge appeal of this game and you’re more likely to spend most of your time playing through the single player story mode.

This is a very dark game and is even rather depressing at times, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s very good. Between each stage you get to see these small kind of cutscenes which are usually dialogue based (no voice acting, though) and which do a lot to make the story much deeper and more compelling. The only real downside of this game is the fact that it is very hard at times. Either the difficulty will lead you to give up on the game, or it will lead you to try over and over until you finally get the huge satisfaction of having everybody survive through a level, which, a week ago seemed impossible to you.

Rating: 9.4/10

Buy it here.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

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Coward

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Adam Randall
While I was in secondary school one of the most constant things for me was my Maths classes. With every other subject, things changed nearly every year, but I had the exact same Maths class for Year 8, Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11. I was always rather fond of these lessons, partly because I always ended up sitting with friends, but also because I enjoyed solving Mathematical equations and problems. I wanted to continue studying this as an A Level but, sadly, I’d always been in Set 2 (which wasn’t the top class) so when I tried the first A Level lesson it was too much of a leap forward. But, I digress.
    The class was taught by a married couple and eventually the wife had to leave for a year due to pregnancy leaving the husband to take the classes by himself. It was during this time that some tension grew between he and I. This teacher was starting to go bald and so a friend of mine thought it would be quite funny to shout ‘baldy’ every time he turned around. As I’m sure you can guess, the teacher didn’t quite see the funny side of this. Funnily enough, this friend had a voice that sounded almost exactly the same as mine which lead to a fair number of pickles.
    One day, after a particularly loud ‘baldy’ the teacher had decided he’d had enough. He turned around, but his hands down on my table and said to the class, “This has to stop. Somebody in this room is a coward.”
    He slowly turned his head and gazed at me. It was clearly that he believed it had been me and was only waiting for the evidence.
    “Well, I’m not a coward, Sir,” I said to him.
    “I didn’t say that you were, Adam,” he replied. “But you are implicating yourself a little by denying it like that.”
    “It’s just the fact that you were staring right at me, made me think that you were calling me a coward.”
    “Alright, that’s enough,” he said. “Let’s get back on with the class.”
    Eventually my name was cleared when he did catch my friend. One time he shouted ‘baldy’ in the corridor ran in the opposite direction of the teacher and out through some doors only to then casually walk back in through them.
    “Who was that?” the teacher asked.
    “I don’t know,” he replied, “somebody just ran passed me on the stairs. Didn’t see who it was.”
    Even though it was a little mean, I found it absolutely hilarious that that worked. I guess it was at that point that his suspicions about me began to fade. This is just one of several fond memories of my Maths classes, sooner or later, I’ll write the rest.
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