Passport Interview

Posted on April 15, 2017 by Adam Randall

I recently applied to get a passport for the first time, this involved having to attend an interview. This interview was held in Yeovil, a place fifty miles away from my home town of Corsham. Of course, I want that passport so I went down there to get it. Not only did it take a long time to get there on the bus and train, but once I arrived at the train station there was still a three mile walk to go. I found it strange that it was located in such an inconvenient location, but of course, I wasn’t going to ask any questions.

Once I had travelled all of that way (which was quite a long journey) I arrived at the building ready for the interview. The interview was then held over a video call. I couldn’t help but wonder why they couldn’t just do it over a video call from my home, saving me a lot of time and money. I wouldn’t want to complain too much, because it was nice to get a chance to visit Yeovil, but I am sure that other people in my situation would have been much less happy about it.

In terms of what was asked in the interview, the questions seemed very curious to me. I was asked about work routines and how I used to get to school. I was asked about bus trips and how long they take. I was asked about what I like to do in my free time and how often I go to the gym. There were some other questions, which I expected, about my family and dates of birth and so forth, but overall I have no idea what purpose my answers to these questions served because I don’t know how they’d confirm their accuracy.

The whole passport interview process was very weird. But I guess one bright side is the fact that all the staff were very pleasant people. I couldn’t fault them at all.

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

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Batman: The War Years by Roy Thomas

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Adam Randall

Not everybody will know this, but Batman has actually been around for a very long time indeed. The first Batman adventure was in 1939, which of course was also the year that the Second World War started out. Not that America was involved in it at that point. Batman: The War Years is a collection of Batman strips printed at the time and they show how Batman’s life was affected by the war and what he did in order to aid the home front.

The collection includes quite a large number of strips – some have Batman directly fighting against the Nazis, while others tend to focus on his struggles with spies and people who are disrupting war efforts for their own personal gains. What I quite like is that Batman is always spreading a message of cooperation and acceptance of other peoples – this was, of course, to contrast his worldview against the Nazis, but it’s refreshing to read in 2017 when prejudice and discrimination seem be on the rise as people forget the lessons from history.

The collection includes the very first Batman strip, which is quite an interesting thing to read. I was disappointed, however, that the very first appearance of Robin was not included. Some of these really fantastic, whereas others were just lighthearted “Batman fights wacky criminals” affairs. There were a very large number of strips in this collection, so I won’t go over all of them, but I shall mention a few of my favourites.

“The Strange Case of Professor Radium” doesn’t really tie much into the war (other than with the subject of nuclear experimentation) but it features a villain I found really interesting and particularly tragic. “The Two Futures” has Batman and Robin meeting with scholars who paint them two pictures of the future, one a very grim one where the Nazis have conquered America and Batman and Robin continue to try and fight them. This one is surprisingly dark considering the tone of the rest of them. “Atlantis Goes to War” is a really bizarre story about the Nazis teaming up with a forgotten race of people living at the bottom of the ocean in Atlantis (which Batman and Robin get caught up in) – I liked it for how strange it was. “The Year 3,000” is another weird one which shows what life is like in the year 3,000 where the legacies of Batman and Robin (and the Second World War) are not forgotten. Finally “Batman Goes to Washington” sees Batman trying to make it illegal for employers to discriminate against ex-convicts when hiring people after he realises that this is an issue. I love it in its simplicity.

As well as the comic strips themselves, there is also a selection of essays written by Roy Thomas, the man who chose the comics for inclusion. These offer an interesting historical context to the strips and help to make sense of any things which modern readers might not understand. You don’t really need to read them to enjoy the comics, but I recommend doing so because they’re not too long and are quite informative. There are also lots of comic covers which don’t tie into any stories, but which show Batman and Robin assisting troops and taking part in other patriotic activities. I found them amusing.

Overall, it’s a very interesting collection and anybody who is a fan of Batman is sure to appreciate this collection. The 1940s incarnation of Batman has a rather upbeat charm to him and its interesting to contrast this against the more brooding behaviour of modern day Batman. Some of the strips may lack the depth that you’d find in more recent comics, but I still think that it’s worth reading them and I had a nice time doing so.

Rating: 8/10

Buy it here.

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

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Renewed Creative Energy

Posted on April 11, 2017 by Adam Randall

Over the last few days, I’ve found that I have had quite a renewed level of creative energy. This is excellent because it means that I have been able to advance my fiction writing projects, which I’ve honestly been making rather slow progress on lately. I notice the irony of talking about a renewed creative energy when I didn’t actually update my blog yesterday (when I should have) but I was up quite late writing something else and I decided that it wouldn’t be too much of a big deal to hold off the blog update until today. It certainly wasn’t that I’d forgotten or that I didn’t have any ideas.

I’ve been thinking about what may have caused this boost in creative energy and I think I have the answer. I work as a freelancer and I write 6,000 words of web content every day, but recently I’ve taken a temporary break. I think the fact that I’ve gotten used to writing every day, means that I have residual energy left over to do writing for personal projects. As I go through the work day, I find myself thinking that I wish I could be working on personal projects. Now that I have that time, I do work on personal projects. It’s pretty good.

If I end up being a freelance writer long term (rather than looking for a contracted position) then doing this every so often will be a nice way to ensure that I am still able to push forward with my personal, more creative endeavours too. I think a lot of creative people struggle to find the source of their creative energy and to identify the best times to work, so I am pleased that I am starting to get an idea of my own capabilities.

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Misgendering in Dreams

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Adam Randall

I like to think about the patterns that recur in my dreams. Most of my dreams are just about me spending time with my friends, usually at their house, but sometimes out in restaurants and out in the city. It’s nice to enjoy a social event when you go to bed, even if it’s not quite real. Sometimes I wake up from a lovely experience and can’t wait to do something similar in reality.

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was the fact that sometimes I dream about my friends being a different sex or gender than they are in reality. Sometimes female friends are male and male friends are female. In my dreams it’s not a case of “Wow, this person has changed gender” rather, I don’t notice any change and neither does anybody else. Only once I have woken up, do I realise the discrepancies with reality.

I wonder why I dream that my friends have been gender swapped? If dreams are always a reflection of the way that we think of things and so forth, what might this reflect about me? Well, I suppose it could be because gender plays a relatively minor role in the way that I think about people and therefore when my brain is throwing together an image of my friends, any gender will do. Not to imply, of course, that I am not respectful of people’s gender identity, just that I dream about sharing company with friends and gender is not a factor in my enjoyment of this activity. That’s the best I can come up with.

I don’t really know anything about dreams or the psychological implications of them. A quick internet search didn’t really bring up anything about friends changing genders in dreams, so perhaps it’s not very common. Indeed, perhaps it’s a complete coincidence that I’ve had it happen a few times, but I still find it rather interesting. What are some strange patterns in your dreams?

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

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3D Sonic the Hedgehog

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Adam Randall

There were several classic games rereleased on the Nintendo 3DS with added polish and 3D visual effects. These were mostly NES games, but Sega got involved too and since Sonic the Hedgehog is probably the most well known game that Sega has ever made, it’s no surprise that they chose to give it the 3D rerelease treatment and so 3D Sonic the Hedgehog was born.

If you’ve read my review of the original game (and it’s linked in the above paragraph, if you are interested) you’ll know that I didn’t actually like it very much. With this in mind, you might find it strange that I would then buy another version of it. Well, my reason for doing so is that a good friend of mine had recommended it very highly, claiming it was one of the best ways to play and then, some time afterwards, I saw that it was on sale and very cheap. I thought I may as well.

So I downloaded 3D Sonic the Hedgehog, I started playing and I loved it. The controls felt much more tight this time. Everything that had frustrated me when I played the original didn’t seem so bad this time around. When I played the original I began to question why it was regarded as a classic and thought that nostalgia must be one of the largest factors. When I played this version, I could easily see it as a classic.

So I did some research. I assumed that there must have been some significant changes to the game’s engine and physics. It must have been tweaked to be brought up to the standards of modern games, I thought. It turns out that it’s pretty much the same as the original. There are essentially only three additions: Sonic can do spin dashes now (which makes certain parts a bit easier), effects have been added so that you can play the whole game in 3D and save states have been added so you can save and reload at any point.

I was amazed by that, because playing it was a completely different experience to playing the original, even though, really, it should have been the same experience. Could it just have been because I was playing on the Nintendo 3DS which is one of my favourite consoles? Maybe it was because, by this point in my life, I had a lot more experience of playing classic Sonic games. I don’t know. There were probably a wide range of things effecting my enjoyment, including the fact that I played the original during a much worse period of my life.

I guess it just highlights how subjective our opinions of video games (and, indeed, all art) must be. Is my original review now invalid? No, I don’t think. It captures my thoughts and experiences of playing that game at that point in time, just as this review captures my thoughts and experiences at another point in time. The appreciation of all art is subjective and we can only ever explain our own impressions of something and even these impressions will change over time.

Rating: 8.9/10 (but, really, it could be any score at all.)

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

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Never Missing Social Events

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Adam Randall

One rule I’ve adopted as I’ve gotten older is that I will never say no to a social event. I remember, about ten years ago now, I did turn down a lot of social events. Looking back, I think that was a mistake as I realise I have missed out on shared experiences with friends who I no longer get the opportunity to see.

Today, unless I am already meeting somebody else at the same time, I will always say yes when invited to do things with friends. I usually do at least three social events a week and I love it. I feel like the more social events you say yes to, the more social events you get invited to, because you form stronger bonds with people and become known as reliable.

It was in late 2014 that I decided to adopt this rule and this was at a point in my life where my social interactions were at their lowest point. Since I’ve started always saying yes, my social life has increased significantly and it allows me to experience things I’d have otherwise declined. Coincidentally, it’s a little similar the premise of the book/film Yes Man – just with a dash of logic and reason added in.

I know it’s a simple idea, but I think it’s good to push yourself and to try new things. Making yourself leave your comfort zones just means that your comfort zones eventually start to expand.

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Differently Sized Bodies of Work

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Adam Randall

Two things that I like a lot are Doctor Who and the Mother video game series. Beyond these, there are very many other things, but I wanted to focus on these two for a comparison. With Doctor Who the TV series started in 1963 and in the many decades that followed, there have been countless episodes, books, audio dramas, comics and more created. I may consume a lot of Doctor Who media, but it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have consumed it all. Mother on the other hand, is just three video games (with the characters making cameos in other things occasionally.) I have played them all.

One the one hand, I’m sad that there’ll never be more Mother for me to play; on the other, I’m sad that I’ll never get to enjoy every Doctor Who story. It’s hard for me to decide what the ideal size is for a body of work. There’s something about a fictional universe made up of very many stories that appeals to me a lot. On the other hand, having just a small number of pieces of the highest quality also helps a fictional universe to have a high level of integrity. I’m sure some people would call it quality over quantity, but a body of work made up of very many things could still have a lot of top notch stuff, even if some bad stuff gets in too.

I flip flop on what I prefer. I know that by making all of my own writing interconnected, I am definitely leaning on the side of a very large body of work, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily think that’s best. I really like knowing everything there is to know about something and that’s easier to do with a smaller body of work, but then I also like to regularly enjoy new things and with a larger body of work I can enjoy the same thing in new ways over and over. It’s interesting to contrast and compare the two approaches.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Adam Randall

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth book in the J. K. Rowling’s excellent series of fantasy novels. The previous book was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I felt that that had been my favourite in the series, the stakes were really high and there was so much tension throughout. I wondered whether things could continue to get more intense this time and was really excited to read it.

What I found was that this book takes quite a change of pace. There’s not much of an ongoing event in the school this time, but instead we get an insight into the backstory of Voldemort. This was very interesting because I always felt that Voldemort had been a bit of a generic “evil lord of darkness” archetype before this. It does a good job of developing the world as a whole, I think.

Harry also spends a lot more time with Dumbledore in this book too, which means he appears much more in this book than he did in any of the previous ones. I was delighted by this because I love Dumbledore. He’s such a kind and whimsical man and every page in which he featured is a delight to read. I am so grateful for the fact that he plays a more significant role this time. His character is a real treasure and the kind of person that I wish I knew in real life, while simultaneously being a great role model. I’m sure I’ve spoken about how great he is before, but it especially shines through this time.

Other characters, such as Malfoy and Snape, also get a little more development in this book. I feel like the whole wizarding world is very interesting and so I am very pleased to learn more details about any aspect of it. It felt very much like taking a step back from the rising tensions in order to fill in a few gaps in the narrative and make things a little clearer. Perhaps a bit of a breather was needed after the intensity of Order of the Phoenix and just before the next book, which is the finale.

Except that the last few chapters are incredibly intense. In fact, the last few chapters are downright traumatic. Oh my goodness. I couldn’t believe what happened. I was shocked, stunned. I was staring into space thinking about what happened. Trying to come to terms with it, trying to accept it. It’s not like I haven’t read any books with shocking content before, but nothing has ever affected me quite as much as this did. Even thinking back to it now, I feel bit weird. I’m obviously not going to spoil it for you but, please, brace yourself. As a writer, I can only hope that one day I am able to create something which produces such an emotional response in somebody. Gosh.

Overall I may slightly prefer the previous book, but this was still pretty great.

Rating: 9.4/10

Buy it here.

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

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#IStandWithPlaytonic

Posted on March 28, 2017 by Adam Randall

There’s recently been some drama in the video game community and specifically within my circles and in regards to things I am interested in. So I decided that I should weigh in on it. Basically people are angry because video game developer Playtonic removed some audio samples from YouTuber JonTron from their upcoming game Yooka-Laylee because he has recently made some political comments which they have deemed offensive (and they are.)

First, let me be clear that I have no bias. I love JonTron’s video content and think that he is very talented. I love Playtonic because they are made up of many talented people and I think Yooka-Laylee looks amazing. I am not more likely to take either side in a dispute. But the fact is, what JonTron said was very racist. It wasn’t just an “offensive opinion” it was actual, harmful prejudice. And what did he say? Well, a lot of misinformed things, actually, but most disappointing of all was that he said that certain races were more disposed towards committing crimes due to their genetics. This is white supremacism. He is saying that white people are naturally more ‘moral’ than other races. This is the kind of logic people use for taking human rights away from others.

I appreciate that JonTron is likely speaking from a point of complete ignorance, that he may well be a nice person in real life and that these perspectives might be completely detached from the way in which he interacts with people in his life, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is saying that millions of people are inferior due to their race. (And I am, of course, giving him the benefit of the doubt a lot here too.)

JonTron’s words could very easily cause people of other races to feel very upset because he is dehumanising them. What he has said could also encourage others with extreme perspectives to be more open about their thoughts and could potentially cause them to do things which are more directly harmful to others. It adds to a much bigger problem and legitimises hatred. It makes complete sense that Playtonic would not want to be professionally associated with him as a result of this.

To be honest, I was quite proud of Playtonic for taking a stand. People who are against them are saying that they are taking a political stance, when really they are distancing themselves from JonTron who chose to be political, so they’re doing the opposite of taking a political stance. People say that it’s disrespectful to their backers who would have supported the game they’re working on because JonTron was due to be in it, but I struggle to imagine that anybody wanted to buy the game because of a few grunting noises made by JonTron. His contribution would have only ever been a minor (but pleasant) addition.

Personally, I don’t even think it’s a complicated issue. JonTron has expressed extreme white supremacist views and of course there are going to be consequences. He is not being punished for having an opinion, he is being ‘punished’ (not that he’s really lost anything, as it was not a paid role) due to the fact that he shared harmful and regressive misinformation. Which is why I stand with Playtonic.

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Ideas Behind Stories

Posted on March 25, 2017 by Adam Randall

I think my favourite pieces of fiction are based on clever ideas. This is especially true of short stories. Tonight I was reading a Batman comic from the 1940s, it was about the year 3000. In it, aliens from Saturn invaded the Earth which, after hundreds of years of peace, was not prepared for warfare. One man finds old records of Batman and is inspired to become a new Batman. He then leads a revolution against the aliens as Batman. That’s a cool idea. Stories need a cool idea.

I like it when stories play around with clever topics. For me, it’s ideas like these which are most likely to get me writing. I’ve created several different characters and when I come up with an idea or concept which I think it quite interesting, I then choose which character would be the best one to explore it with. If you’re struggling with writer’s block, this method could help you to come up with some new ideas.

What you might like to do is try reading up on philosophy, science or religion. Expose yourself to concepts or ideas which you find exciting. Once you’ve found something which particularly tickles you, take it and apply it to a very different context – this can help you look at these concepts from different perspectives which could lead to interesting storylines. I find that theories on many subjects often provide me with good story inspiration. Perhaps they can provide you with the very same thing?

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

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