TV Review: Gravity Falls

written by David Steffen

The feel of the show is at times something like Twin Peaks with a strange isolated town filled with strange people, and sometimes like the X-Files with Dipper as the Mulder character (though I wouldn’t say Mabel is really a Scully character). The show is funny, surprising, and really brings the sense of wonder that it’s harder to find as an adult. There is a wide variety of speculative elements, pretty much any known myth or SF element is fair game, and the show builds its own weird mythology around the character that becomes the main villain, which I thought was the best part of the series. There are plenty of in-jokes and humor at a level to keep adults entertained, but plenty to keep kids interested too, one of those rare cartoons that everyone can enjoy. I found the show very funny, a rare show that was literally laugh-out-loud funny for me when I more often just smile at jokes, and when the show decides to take a turn for the freaky (again, especially with the main villain), which it does now and then, it does freaky very well.

I was surprised when I heard that the show was concluding, because I enjoyed it so much that I hoped it would keep going. But it sounds like that had been what Alex Hirsch had intended from the beginning. He had an overall arc in mind and the show was done when the arc was finished. Which is cool in its own way, most episodes advance the main story in at least a small fashion, and it doesn’t shy from big revelations.

The show has a lot of well known voices in both starring roles and minor roles, including Kristen Schaal, Nick Offerman, J.K. Simmons, Linda Cardellini, Cecil Baldwin, and many others.

I cannot recommend this show enough for people of all ages. I am hoping that they’ll put all 40 episodes into a DVD box set to buy–I will happily buy that at the first opportunity.

Summer 2016 Anime First Impressions

written by Laurie Tom

There’s a lot of good stuff this summer, so much that I’m glad my plate is currently clean of other series because I may end up watching a bit more than usual.

91 Days

91 days

Why I Watched It: Original mafia TV series set in the Prohibition era? Sign me up. The story is to take place over 91 days during which the protagonist returns to his old stomping grounds to exact revenge for the murder of his family.

What I Thought: I hadn’t expected that Angelo was only a kid when his parents and brother are killed in a change of power in the mafia family his father belonged to, and he grows into a teenager under the new name Avilo Bruno to hide his real identity. Despite his age, Angelo is fairly hard bitten and we don’t see the entirety of his plan in the first episode, but it looks like his goal is to infiltrate the Vanetti Family, because it will easier to exact revenge when his target thinks he’s a trusted comrade. What we do get is some bootlegging, a violent encounter with the powerful Ocro Family, which leads into Angelo and his friend Corteo meeting up with Nero Vanetti, who was one of the men responsible for killing Angelo’s family.

Verdict: I’ll be watching! Though the setting looks more European than East Coast, the show strikes the period mood it goes for with its reserved color palette and brutal gang wars. Also worth mentioning is that Corteo is a PoC, which is rare for a mafia drama. Angelo probably isn’t a protagonist people are going to relate to, but the guy’s got guts, so he’ll probably be fun to watch.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Berserk

berserk

Why I Watched It: Berserk is not my normal cup of tea. I dislike grimdark fantasy in general, and the series is known to have a way with mentally and physically breaking its characters. But I got to know the protagonist, Guts, before I knew all that, while watching my brother play one of the Berserk video games, so I’m more inclined to give this a shot.

What I Thought: Though the anime is not starting at the beginning of the manga, I feel like the opening episode establishes all that really needs to be known about Guts before jumping in. He’s cursed, some bad mojo went down in his past, and it’s a really bad idea for anyone decent to hang around him because they’re probably going to get killed. The animation is a little janky with the obviously computer animated enemies versus the 2D appearing Guts, but considering the world itself doesn’t seem quite right, that’s probably okay. A group of bandits get eaten by forest demons before they even get close to getting revenge on Guts, so this is clearly a messed up place to be. Guts himself is a little ridiculous when it comes to combat ability, there’s even a narrator explaining how his sword is too big to realistically be considered a weapon, but the character’s no nonsense approach to everything he does sells it.

Verdict: If this was another season, I’d be watching, but there’s just too much this time around. Berserk has been one of the classics I’ve heard about for years, and this is not its first time being animated, but this is the first time this particular story arc has been.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

D. Gray-man Hallow

d.gray-man hallow

Why I Watched It: D. Gray-man was one of last long-running shounen series I watched, because I liked the characters and the macabre worldbuilding. If the bereaved want to bring a loved one back to life, it’s entirely possible, though the price is incredibly high. The resurrected become akuma, monsters devoted to the service of the malevolent Millennium Earl. The original series ran for 103 episodes in 2006-2008, but only half have made it to the US. In the wake of Hallow the second half has been licensed since Hallow continues the manga storyline from where the earlier series left off.

What I Thought: Can you catch up? Is it worth it? It’s possible to get a feel for how the story has progressed if one is familiar with the earlier licensed portion of the anime, but even with that grounding, it’s obvious that a lot of time has passed and some serious business has gone down. The exorcists of the Black Order look older, more battle worn, and protagonist Allen Walker is now host to the memories of someone who could be considered one of the bad guys. I wouldn’t recommend jumping in without at least some familiarity with the series, otherwise a lot of what happens in this first episode will have no weight, and there’s a lot that clearly does.

Verdict: I’m going to pass. Though I like seeing all the familiar faces again, it’s clear that I missed a huge turning point in the battle with the Earl which was probably the climax of the previous series. Now that I know the rest of the original has been licensed, I’ll wait for that to come out and watch Hallow afterwards.

Where to find stream: Funimation

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy – Future

danganronpa 3 future

Why I Watched It: This is the conclusion to the storyline started by the Danganronpa video games and not actually based on a game itself. Because of gameplay constraints (which players will understand) it would have been difficult to provide a proper send-off to the Danganronpa 1 cast without stretching believability. This anime is supposed to do that and conclude the Hope’s Peak Academy storyline.

What I Thought: I was a little concerned by how large the cast is jumping in, but it’s aided by the fact there are a number of returning characters who survived the first killing game. People who have only watched the first anime and not played Danganronpa 2 are guaranteed to be lost though, as the second game was never animated and the two minute recap doesn’t even begin to cover what happened, but fans of both games can comfortably jump in. Oddly enough, two of the characters who ought to be returning, Byakuya and Toko, are nowhere to be seen, but hopefully they’ll have cameos later. The first episode is well paced, getting Makoto Naegi accused of treason for his actions in Danganronpa 2 as well as bringing back series villain Monokuma, who starts things off with a bang. Nothing like a murder to begin the next killing game!

Verdict: I’ll be watching. Danganronpa has a reputation for being dark with a black sense of humor, and it’s all there. Even the opening credits are fairly messed up, depicting the potentially gruesome deaths for each cast member, so the audience has no idea who will survive (though I think Makoto will make it). The writer for the Danganronpa games laid out the story for the anime-only conclusion so this is as canon as it gets.

Where to find stream: Funimation

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy – Despair

danganronpa 3 despair

Why I Watched It: Though it’s airing in the same season, Despair is a separate show with its own opening/ending credits sequence from Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy – Future. This is a prequel to Danganronpa 2 and follows the story of the DR2 cast leading up the start of the game.

What I Thought: Being animated at the same time as the Future arc there is some crossover with the new characters, which I’m fine with since it’s helping to implant them in my memories, but unlike Future which begins and remains dark, the Despair arc’s first episode is mostly comedic and focuses on getting to know the students of Class 77 rather than any sort of plot. Given what’s to come (the arc is named Despair for a reason), I’m pretty sure that’s intentional since the mood is all downhill from here. Though it’s not possible to be spoiled from the first episode, if the story goes all or even most of the way to the start of Danganronpa 2 it will spoil one of the end game twists for anyone who hasn’t played it.

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching, but mostly because I’ll already be watching Future. Since this is a prequel I already know where they’re going to end up, it’s more of a question of how they get there and whether or not I want to watch something that’s likely to be a horrible downer. It’s worth noting that in Japan the Future arc airs before Despair and it’s possible Despair will spoil things in the former even though they take place in different time periods.

Where to find stream: Funimation

Orange

orange

Why I Watched It: I liked the premise, that a high school girl receives a mysterious letter from herself ten years in the future, telling her that a new student is coming to her school and that she should watch him. The manga has been on my periphery for a while, so I’m looking forward to seeing what people like about it so much.

What I Thought: This series is likely to become a tearjerker due to the kicker at the end of the first episode when sixteen year old Naho Takamiya gets to the end of the letter she receives from her future self. Though there are a couple scenes in the future, most of the story takes place in the past with teenage Naho gradually reading through the letter and parsing the things her future self tells herself to do (or not do) in order to avoid her biggest regrets. Meanwhile, Naho and her friends adopt the transfer student, Kakeru, surprisingly fast, but it gets everyone introduced quickly and none of them feel like stock characters. The sequence of the six of them screwing around in the park was a lot of fun. Though there is a science fiction premise in the existence of the letter, the story itself plays more like a high school drama.

Verdict: I’ll be watching! The ending definitely sets up the stakes and will make the days to come more meaningful to Naho, but I wonder if things could potentially backfire from what her future self intended.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

ReLIFE

relife

Why I Watched It: I love the manga, where unemployed 27-year-old Arata Kaizaki takes part in an experiment to relive a year of life as a high schooler and see if he can come out of the experience with the skills necessary to fix his life as an adult (primarily, getting a full time job). The manga is great at juxtaposing the physically teenage Arata’s behavior with his chronological age as he has the perspective from having been an adult for several years, while also being completely terrible at schoolwork because he’s forgotten everything.

What I Thought: I think I laughed harder at the manga, but it translated surprisingly well to the screen considering it’s mostly a series of short scenes about Arata getting into awkward situations. This time there’s a bonus for those with some understanding of spoken Japanese since fish-out-of-water Arata speaks like an adult among strangers rather than a student among classmates. While the premise is similar to Orange along the lines of re-doing high school for fewer regrets, this is more of a comedic take with golden moments like Arata unwittingly bringing cigarettes to class without thinking about why that would be a bad idea.

Verdict: I’d like to watch, but given how crowded this season is, I’m not sure. I would highly recommend it for those who haven’t already read the manga, but the humor doesn’t seem to be quite as effective a second time around so it’s a little lower on my priority list. The episodes for this one are being posted extremely quickly rather than the usual once a week schedule, so there will likely be a full season’s worth by the time this article is posted.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

Sweetness and Lightning

sweetness and lightning

Why I Watched It: Slice of life isn’t entirely my thing, but I figured I’d give it a shot since this series involves a single dad raising a young daughter, and having been raised by a single dad this piques my curiosity. Interestingly, the original manga ran in a magazine for young adult men.

What I Thought: It’s definitely sweet, as Tsumugi is adorable and unusually compliant for a kindergartner. Her father Kohei is also extremely patient for a recent widower. Their family life at the start of the story feels a little too romanticized for being only six months after their loss, but that said, Kohei’s struggle to properly care, and especially cook, for his daughter rings true. We see him pass on hanging out with coworkers after work because he needs to go home to her, and him picking up prepackaged meals because he can’t cook. There’s no doubt he cares about her, but he’s not really prepared to be a single father. The only beat that feels off is the introduction of one of his students who looks to become a regular character, because I have trouble with a high school girl hanging out with her teacher outside of school.

Verdict: I’ll probably pass on account of this not being my thing, but it’s delightful to see a series squarely aimed at adults and what it’s like being a single dad of a very young child.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.

Negotiating Short Story Contracts

written by David Steffen

The purpose of this article is to talk in more detail about short story contracts. This is a topic that seems to be rarely covered in most writer’s forums that I’ve seen, where most of the focus is on the writing side and rarely on the business side. Yet, there are tons of bad contracts out there and it’s very important to avoid the bad ones or at least understand exactly what you’re agreeing to and understand what you can do.

What’s the point of a short story contract?

The point of a contract in many situations is to provide grounds for either side to use in the case of a legal dispute. The amount of money involved in a short story purchase is generally not a huge sum. Even at professional rates for a longish short story, you’re probably talking a few hundred dollars for the transaction unless you’re getting up into novella wordcounts or the publisher has an extraordinary pay rate. The sum is generally low enough that, if there were a dispute between author and publisher, disputing it through the legal system would make the dispute a money-loser for both sides.

But a contract is still worthwhile, because it should clearly spell out what both parties can reasonably expect from the other over the course of this transaction. It can be used as a reference to point to if you feel the publisher is not living up to their side of the deal, and which the publisher/editor can point to if they feel likewise about your behavior. And you don’t just want to consider what will happen in this transaction but what may happen with future transactions with other publishing involving this story or other stories.

I have from time to time had stories accepted by editors who insist on having no contract, and they tend to tout this as a huge benefit, paraphrased to: “We’re all friends here! We don’t need contracts! We won’t sue you, we promise!” While protection from lawsuit is handy, that’s not really the main point. I want to know what to expect and I want to know what is expected of me, and if I don’t have a contract, I don’t have that–you can exchange expectations in an email but the formal language of a contract is meant to remove ambiguity. You can be friends with editors, but when it comes to dealing with the actual transaction, it’s best treated in a professional and businesslike manner by both sides. Just as you don’t need formal training to be a writer, you don’t need formal training to be an editor–a lot of editors are running their publications in their spare time and treat it more as a hobby than a profession–which isn’t to say they don’t publish great work, but some of them want to avoid anything that feels like a real business. I have sold stories to places like this before, and generally things have turned out well, but a lack of contract still makes me wary because I have been bitten by lack of contract or badly worded contracts more than once.

What should I expect in a contract?

Okay, so contracts are important and all that–but what do you do when you get a contract? The goods news is that that short story contracts are straightforward compared to most other contracts–there are a few clauses you should expect, and some types of wording that you should avoid. Most magazines publish their payment terms and some other details in their guidelines–so you usually don’t have to negotiate unless the contract includes an unexpected questionable clause.

1. Don’t sell copyright.

Just don’t. Run away. You won’t be able to ever resell it. It’s not your story anymore if you sign. Most markets won’t ask for this, but some will. The exception to this is if you take work-for-hire writing stories within an established world–for instance, if you are hired to write Halo tie-ins or Star Wars tie-ins. In those cases, you are writing in a world that someone else owns, so selling the copyright for the story can make sense (but the pay should also be better).

2. The basics.

Language describing the parties and the story in the transaction by name.

3.Payment Details.

The dollar value, the medium (PayPal or cheque etc), and expectation of when you will be paid (i.e. as soon as you sign the contract, at the time of publication, 30 days after publication, etc) Obviously the payment value should match what you’ve been told in the guidelines ahead of time. The expected timing is important because it gives you a reasonable idea of when you can pester the publisher if you haven’t been paid yet. And some publishers, even ones that you respect, may occasionally miss a step. If they publish your story, they owe you that money. Do not feel bashful about following up if you haven’t been paid when you should’ve been–that’s one of those cases where the contract is very helpful to point at when you’re asking for what’s due to you.

4. Editing Permissions.

Explanation of what the editor is allowed to change about your story. Many say something along the lines of that the editor can make minor formatting changes to fit the style of the publication–I don’t have a problem with that. Others may say that the editor can make small punctuation type changes, I usually don’t worry about those too much. But I have had a few that say that the editor can change whatever they want. I am very wary of this, because I’ve been bitten by that clause before–where the final three paragraphs were left off the story with no consideration given to how that changed the effect of the story. I don’t intend to sign another contract with such a clause.

5. Publication Media.

An exact description of the publication mediums that the story will be published in. Such as a print magazine only, or online only, or online and a podcast, etc. Be very wary of language that is all-inclusive, like “any and all electronic mediums”. A publisher should know exactly what they are publishing in. If you later want to reprint the story somewhere else, the exact details of what the previous publisher is allowed to do becomes very important. Imagine you sell to a print magazine the right to publish in all mediums, and the next publisher wants first audio rights. You can’t ethically or legally sell to the second publisher without querying the first publisher now… and the first publisher may not be obligated to respond.

6. Language.

I have seen contracts that specified all languages, which would effectively block me from reselling it in translated fashion to a German publication (for instance). There are international translation markets for science fiction. I have not pursued any of them, but they are there and I want to keep that option open.

7. Exclusivity Period.

This is the period of time after publication when you’re expected to not allow the story to be published elsewhere. Some magazines require no exclusivity period–so you could theoretically publish it somewhere else the next day (though I usually give at least 3 months as a courtesy to editors). Six months or a year is pretty common. Be wary if they ask for too long an exclusivity period–I’d look askance at anything above a year for short fiction.

8. Publication Duration.

Period of time when the publisher is allowed to publish the work. This will vary a lot depending on the medium.

9. A drop-dead date.

The contract should spell out a time period after which, if the publisher hasn’t exercised their publishing rights, you get all your rights back anyway. This is usually on the scale of a year or so. If the publisher has paid you by this date, you should be able to keep the money with no further obligation. This is one that’s most often omitted from contracts, look for it.

10. Company Closure Provision.

This is similar to a drop-dead date in that it specifies when you can get your rights back–but in this case it’s meant to immediately release your story to you if the magazine officially shuts down. As long as there’s some kind of drop-dead date, this one isn’t necessary, but it’s a nice thing to have.

11. Miscellaneous.

Read every sentence very closely (it helps that most short story contracts are pretty brief). Watch for too-broad language. Watch for anything that would make you nervous if taken exactly as it’s written. One example of this that I’ve seen is a too-broad demand for the author to participate in promotion–of course an author should want to spread the word about the book but there’s a difference between “something an author ought to do” and “something an author needs to be contractually obligated to do”. The writer has already done the work by writing, and presumably they want to get back to the business of writing some more, so at some point you have to consider when other demanded obligations become unreasonable.

What if I don’t like the contract?

1. Ask other authors.

Considering asking someone with experience with short story contracts about the language.

2. Query the editor about it.

Ask for a change, explain why you think the change is important. If you know other people who got contracts from them around the same time, consider discussing with them your concerns and if more than one person pushes back at the same time that sends a stronger message.

3. Consider the editor’s response.

They might write up a one-off contract just for you. They might consider changing the contract they send to everybody. They might say they’re not going to change. I’ve seen all of these reactions. Most big professional editors will probably already have a reasonable boilerplate. New editors/markets are more likely to be wildcards with unfriendly wording–but these new editors may also not realize that there’s bad wording and may be very willing to change it.

4. If they give you a new contract and you’re satisfied.

Sign it and celebrate!

5. If they don’t want to revise,

I’d at least try to get a layman’s explanation of what they meant by the problematic language (though keep in mind that if that doesn’t match what the contract says the contract with your signatures on it is going to hold more water than an email exchange)

6. If you still don’t like the contract

Consider very carefully what you want to do. You can sign it anyway. You can say no. What feels right? How prestigious is the market? How generous is the pay? If you sign the contract anyway, just be aware of the risk you’re taking, such as the risk of a story being legally tied up indefinitely if there’s no drop-dead date, and make it a calculated risk that you walk into with your eyes open. If an editor takes a hard stance on a clause that you don’t want to budge on (like no-drop-dead-date or selling copyright) then maybe that’s not a person you want to enter a professional relationship with.

Can I break contract?

So, you sign a contract with a one-year exclusivity. It gets published, gets rave reviews. Ellen Datlow drops you a line and asks to publish it in a Best of the Year anthology. Now what?

Anything in a contract can be waived if both sides agree to it. So, just consider whether your publisher would benefit from whatever you’re suggesting. If they wouldn’t, then maybe you should forget about it. If they would, then you’ve got a sales pitch to do. Best Of anthologies, especially ones by well known editors like Ellen Datlow, are a common case where contract exceptions are made (and often even are explicitly allowed in the body of the contract). Getting a story in there gets a lot of recognition for the original publication’s editor.

There might be other things that you could convince an editor to agree to as well. Maybe you have an idea to cross-promote a publication by publishing it on a podcast–that can be beneficial too. Just ask.

Anime Catch-Up Review: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

written by Laurie Tom

I didn’t watch Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches during its initial run in Spring 2015 because I saw the title and key art, and it looked like a harem show to me. One guy, seven witches. It’s not my personal fantasy.

But that’s not what Yamada-kun is about at all.

Ryu Yamada is a high school delinquent, known for getting into fights, coming to school late, leaving early, and failing in class. That changes one day when he literally falls onto honor student Urara Shiraishi, who holds the highest grades in their class. After waking up he discovers they’ve switched bodies, and she’s actually run off and gone back to class in his body so she doesn’t miss lecture.

Though they’re two students who otherwise wouldn’t give each other the time of day, Shiraishi and Yamada quickly figure out what happened, and that they switch bodies when they kiss. They decide to take advantage of that with Shiraishi taking tests in Yamada’s place and Yamada (as Shiraishi) getting her out of her shell so she has a social life.

The fun explodes as more people figure out their secret and tests are performed to figure out the full extent of the body swapping ability, and yes, it can be daisy-chained, with Yamada switching to whoever he kisses regardless of whose body he is currently in, and switching his new host to the body he was formerly occupying (which can be a third party entirely). The voice actors and animators have a great time with this, and it’s generally pretty easy to figure out who is currently in whose body based on their performance.

Because the kiss to body swap works on anyone, this also means that there is a lot of kissing across gender lines and crazy scenes where Yamada is demanding someone kiss him because he needs to control them for some reason. Though Yamada himself appears to be straight, he (eventually) doesn’t have an issue with kissing guys if he thinks the situation demands it.

When other witches are introduced, it becomes apparent that each of them have different powers that are activated by kissing.

The result is that Yamada-kun tends to have more kissing per episode than most anime have their entire run.

There is plot in Yamada-kun besides the wacky hijinks, but it only comes out in the second half of the show as the primary cast tries to identify all seven witches that exist at their school. There is a reason that each of the witches have the specific powers they do, and it’s tied to the various insecurities that teenagers have while in high school.

Helping the witches is ultimately what the series is about, but likely not what Yamada-kun will be remembered for.

Mostly I enjoyed it for the egregious abuse of kissing-activated magic powers in an otherwise mundane setting where getting one’s first kiss is considered a big deal. I also really like Yamada and Shiraishi as leads.

The pair of them are refreshing as love interests, because they’re pretty comfortable kissing each other right off the bat. They’ve seen each other’s junk while in each other’s bodies (the show gets that out of the way in the first episode) and after the initial reveal they don’t worry about it anymore. Shiraishi’s forwardness is also a nice change from the typical female lead in anime, as she’s the one who typically initiates the kiss.

Though the manga is still running, Yamada-kun the anime completes an entire story arc that could easily be considered the end of the series if no future episodes are ever animated. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes a little romance alongside some magical hijinks.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: entirely self-contained story arc, voice actors and animators do a fantastic job of letting the audience know who is currently in whose body, all that kissing!

Minuses: Tamaki’s introduction comes out of nowhere for a significant character, occasionally feels a little rushed to get all seven witches in, a few minor details won’t make sense if you look at them too hard

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.

Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, andCrossed Genres.

Welcome to Night Vale: Ghost Stories (Live Show)

written by David Steffen

Welcome to Night Vale is most well known for their podcast (written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor), formatted as a small town radio show set in a sleepy little horror town ala Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft. The podcast is nearing its 4th anniversary and 2015 saw the release of a related novel of the same title from Harper Collins.

On top of this, they also do live touring shows that tours both around the US and has gone to Europe, to Australia and New Zealand. The shows are in a similar radio-show format as the podcast, (with some differences that I’ll explain). The live shows are unique–they’re not just rehashes or previews of podcast episodes. After each live touring show is done they generally release recordings of that show.

I recently went to their “Ghost Stories” live show. It was my second Welcome to Night Vale live show that I attended. This show centers around a city-wide ghost story competition, wherein the “winner” is converted into a ghost by very practical means. Most of the main throughline of the show consists of the host Cecil telling his own entry to the competition in several parts, interspersed with the usual radio show features like Traffic and Weather (which is musical intermission) and Community Calendar, as well as guest stars telling their own ghost story entries. Cecil’s story was very interesting and revealed some character history that I don’t think the podcast has revealed at this point.

Last time I went to a live show was a little bit lukewarm on it simply because it had a very different feel from the podcast and I wasn’t expecting that difference. This time I found that having an idea what to expect made it easier to align my expectations and just enjoy myself. So, if you like the podcast and are considering going to the live show at some point, knowing the way the live shows are different might be helpful to you.

As with any live show, especially live comedy, the experience is enhanced by the crowd itself–a funny joke tends to feel funnier when you’re in a laughing crowd. So the live show is special in its own way for that reason.

Differences between the podcast and the live show:

Because the show may tour for quite a few months, its timing does not have a clear alignment with the podcast which is released twice every month. This generally means that the episode as a whole is going to be of the tangential variety, rather than tying into a main plotline on the podcast. Many of the podcast episodes are like this too, mind you, but the live show can’t be otherwise.
Because not all guest stars may be able to tour to all locations, the show can’t depend on any specific guest. For instance, Wil Wheaton, Dylan Marron, Retta, who all have guest roles at times may be at some but not all shows. This means that guest parts are going to tend to be very modular–they relate to the overall plot of the show, but the plot of the show can never depend on them. In the case of the Ghost Stories show this means they come on, tell a ghost story, banter a bit with Cecil, and then leave. Cecil Baldwin, (who plays Cecil Palmer the radio host and main narrator), is of course at all of the shows as the main speaker, and Meg Bashwiner (the voice of Proverb Lady and Deb the patch of sentient haze) also seems to be a steady actor in the live show, but I think all other guest spots are designed to be interchangeable.
The show starts with the musical guest opening with a series of songs, and the same guest returns for the Weather segment.

Anime Review: Schwarzesmarken

written by Laurie Tom

schwarzesmarken

Schwarzesmarken takes place in East Germany in an alternate 1983 where aliens have landed and are slowly taking over the planet in a torturous land battle. The aliens do not appear to be particularly intelligent, content to win battles through sheer numbers, but since they cannot be reasoned with, humans have no choice but to fight.

Though the aliens can be slain with conventional weapons, mecha are particularly useful for taking out the living alien artillery, and the 666th squadron, nicknamed Schwarzesmarken, is East Germany’s best unit.

Though the series did not immediately grab me, the opening episode had enough potential that I decided to come back, and it grew on me more than I thought it would.

First of all, the show had several things working against it. 1) It’s a prequel to Muv-luv Alternative, which is a series I’ve passed on watching because it’s based on a visual novel with dating elements aimed at heterosexual men. 2) It has a predominantly female cast, which in anime doesn’t necessary mean they’re looking to expand the female audience as much as to provide fanservice. 3) I was afraid it would end up being a harem anime where the “luckless” male protagonist would end up with the affections of multiple women.

Fortunately, it’s not as bad as that. Even though it is a prequel, it’s watchable on its own with the understanding that the aliens will not be defeated by the end of the show. The female cast is varied enough that members of the main 666th squadron don’t get mistaken for each other (and there are women in incidental roles outside the squadron, including a middle aged woman in charge of a military base). The outfits are fanservicey, but there are few butt shots, outside of when one sleazebag male commander is around (presumably his POV) and he’s not in every episode.

But best of all, main character Theodor is a complicated protagonist. He might not have much luck, but he’s not hapless. As a teenager Theodor and his family tried to flee East Germany only to be captured by the Stasi, who were historically among the most effective secret police forces in existence.

His family’s capture, murder, and the fact he sold them out during his own torture, weighs on him. Though he’s now a soldier for East Germany and scarcely believes in the party line, he’s afraid of taking any steps towards freedom because he knows what that costs. The way to survive is to keep one’s head low and just do the job.

That begins to change with the arrival of Katia Waldheim, a defector from West Germany with an idealistic hope that both Germanys can work together again. Furthermore, Theodor learns that Irisdina Bernhard, his commanding officer, is not the Stasi informant that he thought she was, and in fact is willing to work against them.

Though this is a mecha anime, a lot of time is spent on political maneuvering between different parties and even within the 666th squadron. Aliens are the outside threat, but they are not the only one, and possibly not even the most dangerous one. What’s guaranteed though is that every episode will have a mecha battle, and the marvelous thing is that each of the battles feels like it earns its place in the story. The battles are never filler.

That said, there are some questionable decisions made throughout the series considering that East Germany’s very existence is at stake. (Poland isn’t a country anymore, it’s fallen to the aliens.) Cynics might feel unsurprised that when the country needs unity the most is when it’s least able to come together, but considering how remorseless the aliens are, I can’t help wondering if the human antagonists really think it’s worth winning a battle if they lose the war.

The body count is on the high side and the show doesn’t shirk from showing violent deaths, though most are concentrated towards the beginning and the end. There is some censorship of the graphically worst death (to an alien), but bullet and shrapnel wounds remain visible and people end up bleeding a lot.

One thing I do want to mention though, because it’s a trope I usually try to avoid, is that Schwarzesmarken seems to have this weird little sister attraction going on, both with Theodor’s younger (not blood-related) sister and another character who explicitly reminds him of his little sister. Theodor himself doesn’t seem to be interested in that train, but the writers have no problem putting him on board, and in the case of his adoptive sister, saying that the situation gets messy is an understatement.

Since this is a prequel I’ll note that the ending does not resolve the alien problem, but it otherwise comes together and all the plot threats as relevant to the characters involved are tied off.

Overall I think this is one of the better mecha series I’ve watched and if one is not immediately dissuaded by what may well be one of the world’s creepiest little sister characters, it’s worth checking out for the well scripted battles and the unusual setting.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: unusual period setting of communist 1980s East Germany, complicated worldview with few good answers, Theodor is an unusually damaged protagonist for anime making him a welcome change of pace

Minuses: spray-on bodysuits, even though the characters are mostly German they often behave in a culturally Japanese fashion, and what is with the little sister fetish?

Schwarzesmarken is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

DP Fiction #18: “Sustaining Memory” by Coral Moore

The Archivist held the three remaining beads in her left hand. Images flickered across her visual cortex: an unknown woman’s face, a sunset on a planet she couldn’t name, the dazzling color of a sea she no longer had the words to express. The beads felt cool and impersonal in her fingers, though what they contained was neither. She had only these few memories left and she no longer remembered if they were hers or someone else’s.

Around her, the machine chugged and whirred. The metal tubing that encased her pod vibrated. The glowing core rose in front of her, spinning slowly around its vertical axis.

She twirled the bead containing the seascape between her fingers and dove in. The memory was a moment in time. The wind caressed her face and the briny scent of the sea filled her head. A white-capped wave was held just off shore in the instant before breaking, never to fulfill its potential. She had the sense of someone waiting for her on that unknown shore. The name of the sea was gone, like everything else she had once known, converted into power for the machine she’d been wed to.

She surfaced from the hold of the memory with effort. That sea and that person no longer existed. The world her people had inhabited had been scoured clean, its atmosphere stripped away and everything on the surface incinerated. Nothing had survived; nothing but the machine, buried deep below the crust near the cold, dead heart of the planet. When her organic memory had been scrubbed, they’d left the fate of her world with her so she would not forget her purpose.

The grinding groan of the alert tone sounded, and without thinking she placed the seascape bead into the receptacle near her hand. The bead circled around the outer edge and spiraled downward into the depths of the machine. Bit by bit the memory of the sea faded from her mind, until only a pale representation of it remained, and then a moment later that too was gone. She was left only with the impression that something precious had been taken from her, with no idea what it was.

Two left: a sunset and a woman.

Only two memories before she was nothing but a soulless cog in the machine that would unmake everything her people had ever been in order to start again.

“Status?” she asked the heated air around her.

Something churned just beyond her field of vision. “Offline.” The voice that had been her only companion for generations was toneless and flat.

She swirled the two remaining beads in her hand. The number of beads she needed to awaken the machine was exact. She wondered why the designers of such a marvel would cut it so close or depend on her to do this critical job at all. If she’d ever known the answer to those questions, she no longer did.

If she stopped putting beads in before the machine awakened it would cannibalize the pod that sustained her in an attempt to get the necessary power. She wasn’t certain how many beads her body, such that it was, could replace. Once her systems started shutting down a cascading failure would follow.

When she held the memory of the sunset, deep pink and orange streaks surrounded her. She perched on a rocky cliff. A lush valley unfurled below her, absorbing the colors of the bright sky. Someone sat next to her, just out of sight. A sense of peace pervaded the place. She dwelled in the memory until the alarm tone woke her from her contemplation.

The comfort of the sunset was the only solace she could remember. While it was true that she would no longer remember that the memory had ever been her haven, she would miss something. A yawning void grew with each piece of her that was forgotten.

When the alert rang the second time she closed her eyes and dropped the bead in the machine. She concentrated on how the sunset made her feel, but even as she tried to hold it in her mind the colors faded.

“Mountain. Sunset. Peace.” She said the words over and over as a litany, but it made no difference. The memory slipped away like water through her fist, and all she was left with was the aching emptiness. She snapped her hand shut around the remaining bead.

The woman in the memory had short dark hair that stood on end in a gravity-defying display that balanced chaos and order perfectly. Her eyes brimmed with tears and angled downward. A curved scar marked her left cheek, but didn’t mar her loveliness one bit. Her lips were slightly parted. She was close enough that the heat from her breath warmed the Archivist’s face. The woman with no name had been captured in the moment before a farewell kiss. There was no other way to resolve the adoration and acceptance mingled in her expression. Something terrible had been about to happen and they had run out of ways to fight.

The Archivist had no idea if the love in the unknown woman’s gaze was intended for her. She didn’t care. The emotion existed, and it was hers. She drifted in the moment just before the kiss for as long as she dared, and finally surfaced from the memory much later, gasping for air.

The alert tone sounded.

She clutched the final bead. The woman’s face floated before her, diaphanous and lovely. One kiss was all she had left.

The alarm rang again, louder and in two long bursts.

“You can’t have her.” She locked her fist around the bead, hoping that would curb her reflex to feed it to the machine.

The energy generated by her pod would be enough to replace one bead—it had to be. She wouldn’t get to see the new world she’d given up everything for, but she would be able to keep this last piece of herself.

She lingered in the kiss until the sound blasted three times, knocking her forcefully from the memory.

The bead port was so near her hand, and her arm wanted to make the motion, but she concentrated on keeping her hand shut tight. She’d never gone this far, so she had no idea how long she had to wait until there was no taking back the decision. She worried her resolve would slip.

Around her the machine churned and whirred. Nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing but her fist and a sense of dread she couldn’t shake.

A high-pitched whistle shrieked and surprised her so that she nearly dropped the last bead.

The relative silence in the wake of the terrible sound was haunting. She had the sense of motion in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t turn to see what had moved. A grinding sound began soon after, and her pod vibrated.

There was an ominous clunk. Something slithered around the lower portion of her body, but she couldn’t see it within the metal and hoses that wrapped her. None of the memories she had left had prepared her for this. She managed not to panic, barely. The next breath she drew was labored.

A series of light chimes rang through the machine’s interior.

“Status,” she said.

The long pause that followed was made longer by the worry that she would go to her end never knowing if she’d doomed the project to failure.

“Online,” replied a voice she hadn’t heard before, more lifelike and feminine than the previous robotic one. “Resources have been reprioritized to support mission-critical utilities. Life support is offline.”

The note of sadness she detected had to be coming from her and not the machine. Her chest felt heavy. “Does it affect the chance of success?”

“By less than one one-thousandth of a percent. We are still well within operational parameters.”

“Good.” She sighed. “How long until the process starts?”

“I’ve already begun.”

“Oh, can you forecast completion yet?”

“No. Spinning up my systems will require a non-trivial amount of time. I won’t be able to calculate time to completion until I know how much has survived my hibernation and the loss of the atmosphere aboveground.”

“So I won’t know if it will work before I die.”

“It will work.”

“How do you know?”

“This project is my sole purpose for being, Archivist. I must believe it will succeed. The magnetic field will be restored, the atmosphere will be regenerated, and the planet will again support life.”

She smiled. Even that small movement drained her dwindling energy. “I think I would have liked you.”

“You would have.” Softness colored the voice again. Was it a trick of clever programming or her own sentimentality?

She laughed, surprised she remembered how. “That’s very presumptuous.”

“It’s a mathematical certainty. Your memories are cataloged and indexed in my database. Part of me is you.”

“I didn’t realize the memories would be retained.”

“The data contained in the beads was a byproduct of the energy transfer, but retaining them was deemed important by my programmers. They take up a very small portion of my total processing.”

“So we will carry on with you.”

“Yes. Nothing will be forgotten.”

The Archivist’s vision grew dim and her thoughts floated through a slow-moving haze. “That’s a relief.”

“Why did you initiate your shut down early?”

“I didn’t want to give up the last bead.”

“The memory held special value for you?”

“I don’t know for certain. It might not even be mine.” Secretly, she hoped the memory was hers. Maybe she’d somehow managed to organize the beads so that the ones that meant to most to her were last in the sequence before she’d forgotten.

“I may be able to tell you, if you would like to know.”

“It’s a goodbye kiss. The woman is leaving, or I am, and I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again. There’s a curved scar on her cheek, but that only makes her more beautiful to me. Her eyes are filled with love and loss, joy and regret. I want to tell her that I love her, but there’s no time. There’s only the hovering moment just before our lips touch.”

Another long pause, with only the sounds of the machine working around her to fill the growing darkness.

“Her name was Marley, and she loved you very much.”

The Archivist had trouble drawing her next breath. What remained of her chest ached. “I thought I would never know for sure if the kiss was mine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Marley was one of my main programmers. My neural pathways are based on her logic, her biology. That connection is why you were chosen to be the Archivist.”

Her eyes stung with the memory of tears. “Why did I agree to this?”

“You know why.”

She’d always known why. It was the only way to save some small remnant of her people, of the world they’d built. “In the end I couldn’t let her go.”

“She would have appreciated that, though I’m sorry we won’t have more time together.”

The last of her vision faded as her brain began to shut down. “I’m scared,” she whispered, hoping her voice was still loud enough to register.

“Would you like me to tell you a story?”

“Yes, please.”

“A small white ship surged and fell on the waves of a turquoise sea. Marley stood in the salt-scented breeze, her feet spread wide to absorb the rolling motion of the deck. Her wife waited on the distant shore, just a speck at this distance…”

The Archivist closed her hand around the bead, summoning the image of Marley with tears in her eyes. Somewhere Marley waited for her. She leaned into the kiss, and let go.

Author’s Note: Memories are such an integral part of our identities that I thought the idea of someone voluntarily giving up their memories one at a time for some grand purpose would be interesting to explore. While writing the story of the Archivist’s failing memory, the machine that would allow her world to sustain life again by eating her memories one at a time occurred to me and seemed to fit perfectly.

Coral Moore has always been the kind of girl who makes up stories. Fortunately, she never quite grew out of that. She writes because she loves to invent characters and the desire to find out what happens to her creations drives her tales. Prompted by a general interest in how life works, she studied biology. She enjoys conversations about genetics and microbiology as much as those about vampires and werewolves. Coral writes mainly speculative fiction and has a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Albertus Magnus College. She is a 2013 alum of the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop. She has been published by Dreamspinner Press, Evernight Publishing, and Vitality Magazine. She also received an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest for the fourth quarter of 2014. Currently she lives in the beautiful state of Washington with the love of her life and two canids.

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Hugo Novel Review (First Look): Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

written by David Steffen

Seveneves is a science fiction novel, written by Neal Stephenson, published in May 2015 by William Morrow, and was one of the novels nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel this year. The story begins with a bang as something inexplicable happens to the moon. Something punches a hole through it, fragmenting earth’s only natural satellite into seven fragments. No one knows how this could be possible, or what caused it to happen, but soon they realize that these aren’t the most important questions: the most important question is “How can humanity survive this?” The moon is going to break up into smaller and smaller fragments and start a catastrophic meteor shower in only about two years.

I’ve been reading material from the Hugo Packet as fast as I can, and I am up against the deadline as I’m reading this one. I’ve only made it about 40 pages into this 867-page book, so it is by any measure still very early in the book. We have met who I’m guessing to be the main characters: “Doc” Dubois Harris is the American astronomer who first predicts the catastrophic after-effects of the breaking of the moon, and is involved in trying to plan for survival plans thereafter. The other main characters are Ivy and Dinah, astronauts aboard the ISS, which will serve as the basis for preserving as much of earth culture in space as they can.

This is an interesting premise for a book but, despite the breaking of the moon happening on page one, it feels like it’s been off to a fairly slow start. At page 40 they’ve only just started coming to the conclusion that there are bigger consequences coming, after Doc had noted that earth life seemed to be generally unaffected. Presumably things will pick up pace from here, since there is a pretty short time limit on getting as many people and archives and resources either below ground or in orbit to avoid the death zone that the surface will be. I’m interested in seeing where this goes, and I hope it gets going at a faster pace soon, or at least give me some more reason to empathize with the characters. I think it’s an interesting premise, but so far there hasn’t really been anything that would make me feel compelled to buy the book to find out more.

Diabolical Plots is now a SFWA Qualifying Market

written by David Steffen

Just the briefest of notes: fiction sales to Diabolical Plots now count as qualifications for writers toward joining the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America(SFWA). Very excited by this news!

This applies to all the past fiction accepted here, as well as the fiction for the current submission eindow open through the end of the month.

Hugo Graphic Story Review 2016

written by David Steffen

The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story covers graphic novels and comic book series (including web comics). Five graphic stories were on the final Hugo ballot, but Sandman: Overture (written by Neil Gaiman with art by J.H. Williams III) appeared to be only a partial of the book in the Hugo Packet, so I haven’t reviewed that here.

1. Erin Dies Alone written by Grey Carter, art by Cory Rydell (dyingalone.net)

“Erin Dies Alone is an ongoing comic strip about isolation, mental illness and videogames. It’s a lot more cheerful than that description makes it sound.” — that is the description on the webcomic for Erin Dies Alone. Erin lives alone, and in constant solitude, unemployed (I think?) and doing not much of anything but sitting around the house watching bad TV and smoking pot. In the first issue of the strip she contemplates a bottle of pills in her medicine cabinet but is interrupted by a visit from Rad her childhood imaginary friend, who digs out her old box of video games. Much of the comics take place in those video games, as Erin and Rad take the role of those characters in the game worlds.

This is an interesting one, and like the description said, more fun than it sounds. I found most of the humor a little flat, but it seems like my opinion is not a good gauge for judging the humor of geek comics because most of the time I understand the basis of the jokes but they don’t do much for me. A lot of the entries are just fun, usually not dipping too far into the dark side (though it is implicit in the setup of the comic). The games in the strip are based on real games, so gamers will likely enjoy the references and in-jokes more than anyone.

Since the nomination didn’t list a specific plotline or date range, I am guessing that it’s supposed to simply cover all of the episodes from its inception in mid-2015 to the end of 2015 with episode #75, which isn’t of any particular importance. I’m interested in seeing where the comic is going, and there have been some backstory and some character development, but so far not enough has changed for it to have much of an arc.

2. Full Frontal Nerdity by Aaron Williams (ffn.nodwick.com)

“Join four guys, usually around a gaming table, as they celebrate and dissect everything geekdom has to offer. From video games to movies to the latest version of D&D, Frank, Shawn, Lewis and Nelson find fault, find joy, and find that you really shouldn’t let Lewis roll for anything if a 1 spells disaster.”

It is what it says on the tin. Much of the series takes place around D&D gaming table exploring D&D adventures with amusing results (i.e. a battle against a god of puns), but also covers some movies and other other geek culture stuff. It’s fun, though as I mentioned in #1 I seem to be a poor gauge for judging geek humor because I usually see what the source of the humor is supposed to be without really feeling it, if that makes sense–I haven’t spent a lot of time playing tabletop games, so maybe that is part of the lack in this case.

Since the nomination didn’t list a specific plotline or date range, I’m guessing it’s supposed to cover whatever they published in 2015? Which begin at an arbitrary point and end at an arbitrary point, and make no effort to really be a “story” in any cohesive sense, so “Best Graphic Story” seems like a bit of a misnomer in this case.

3. Invisible Republic Vol 1 written by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman, art by Gabriel Hardman (Image Comics)

“Breaking Bad meets Blade Runner. Arthur McBride’s planetary regime has fallen. His story is over. That is until reporter Croger Babb discovers the journal of Arthur’s cousin, Maia. Inside is the violent, audacious hidden history of the legendary freedom fighter. Erased from the official record, Maia alone knows how dangerous her cousin really is… ”

This description sums it up well. The story is told in two different time periods. One through the eyes of Babb as he finds the journal and reads it, and tries to do something with the contents of the journal. The other one through the eyes of Maia, who is not a part of the official histories but saw many of the events of the rise of McBride’s regime firsthand.

The comic was well-drawn and the plot moves forward without slacking in both of the timelines. But, for me, I didn’t really get emotionally invested in either timeline. I felt empathy for Maia, but since we already know how the regime turned out I didn’t feel that her account really mattered in any substantive way. And in the future timeline, I didn’t really care about what Babb did with the journal either–he needs it as a way to make a living, because it’s a breaking story that’s actually new, but it wasn’t clear to me why the journal was actually important as anything other than a meal ticket, especially since the regime has already fallen (it might be different if McBride were still in power). To be fair, this is only volume 1, and the story has been ongoing since then.

4. The Divine written by Boaz Lavie, art by Asaf Hanuka and Tomer Hanuka (First Second)

Mark, an explosives expert, signs on to freelance job with his old Army buddy Jason in the (fictional) civil-war-torn southeastern Asian country of Quanlom. Mark is captured by a group of child-soldiers led by a pair of 9-year-old children with magical powers known as The Divine, bent on forcing a confrontation between an ancient dragon and modern technology.

This story has a gritty feel of accounts of real war that I’ve heard, and the story doesn’t pull any punches. The biggest issue I had with the story is… why in the world did Mark take the job? Mark’s wife is pregnant, and he lies to her about where he’s going to take a job from his borderline psychotic ex-military friend in a country where the U.S. isn’t supposed to have a military presence. I didn’t feel like the story justified that decision at all, and without that decision, the rest of the story wouldn’t happen (at least not from Mark’s point of view). The confrontation between magic and technology is a cool premise, but without some clearer character motivation, it falls apart for me. The Divine are closely based on actual leaders of a child army who were rumored to have mystal powers, to the point that their namesake’s images in the graphic story are recognizable in a photograph of the people. I don’t know how I feel about those two being turned into characters in a graphic story, even though they’re mentioned at the end as the inspiration.