December 2009 – Nicolas Demers

Purple Mountain Majesties

Sometimes things have a way of working out. Not for the “best” (this isn’t Candide, after all) but for the pretty good.

My flight home from Ottawa was supposed to take place Sunday night, connecting in Calgary. Nothing too special, I’d done it before. Except, what with the Christmas Day terrorist attempt, all airlines were in complete and utter chaos. I was warned that my flight to Calgary would be 2 hours late, so I could (a) stay in Ottawa and fly in the morning, or (b) … hey, there’s another flight going through Toronto, leaving right now.

That’s when the fun began. Long story short, my original flight was canceled, I was put on another flight (also to Toronto) which left a little later. Not a problem, I should still make it in plenty of time. Except I ended up leaving Ottawa over three hours late. Everybody on board missed their connecting flight, and had to be put up in a hotel.

I reached the Westin Bristol Place at about 11:30PM, one of over a hundred cranky fliers. Over two hours later, I was checked into my really quite awesome room. Too bad I had to get up in three hours to catch my rescheduled flight.

And that’s where you could say things worked out. Because my flight from Toronto was pretty smooth. Checkin was easy, security seemed a little more alert but not that paranoid. It even left on time! How about that! Even better: apparently to avoid the jet stream, our plane took a southerly route, heading straight across the Great Lakes as far as South Dakota, then angling up more or less in a straight line to Vancouver. That meant I got to see some scenery I’d never seen before, except in photos and that gay cowboy movie. Too bad there was too much cloud cover for most of the flight except over Montana and part of South Dakota.

Enjoy the rest!

What I Used To Write

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find!

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find! The treasure trove includes:

Some printouts of my finished short stories, written around 1994, plus 2/3 of the final version of my first novel (finished 1992). Plus the maps that went with the novel. Can’t have a cool fantasy novel without maps, dontchaknow.
Notes and drafts for two more short stories, which I finished but don’t have the final versions of anymore; reams of notes on poems and various half-finished projects; all written 1994–1995
A dream journal I kept up for a few months in ’94. A self-hypnosis journal around the same time
Drafts of my Web site (first online in September 1995). Including notes of me learning HTML, and printouts of some of the pages.
Notes about my evolving spirituality—not beliefs, because at that time I was sliding into agnosticism, but playing around with symbols, rituals and made-up mythology.
Various odds and ends: a couple pages of quotes I really liked; episode guides to Star Trek: TNG and Space: 1999 for some reason; notes on an unsent letter to Phil Farrand, with feedback on nits he missed and criticism of his occasional heterosexist attitude; a map for an AD&D campaign I briefly DM’d sometime in the mid-80’s. The overall plotline, IIRC, was “inspired” (by which I mean, “ripped off”) from Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; maps and world-building notes for another AD&D campaign, a couple of years later, that I never got to play in.

I’m throwing most of it away. The story notes, the poetry? Gone. The dream and self-hypnosis journals? Outta here. The novel? Recycled (no, I don’t have a soft copy). The Web site drafts? Like you really need to ask.

Let’s be honest here, aside from the very temporary nostalgia value, I’ve got no reason to reread any of this stuff. It’s coming at me from long ago and far away, and is pretty well irrelevant. There’s nothing useful this motley assortment of words can give me. I haven’t written fiction or poetry in over ten years, and have no particular desire to pick it up again. I haven’t played D&D since the early ’90’s, and likewise don’t miss it. And if the journal isn’t helping me remember any of these dreams from 15 years ago, what good is it?

And, with all due respect to my younger self: my prose and poetry was mostly crap. I mean, there’s a reason why I never tried to publish any of it, with one exception. The novel was mediocre clichéd sword-and-sorcery fantasy, the shorts were a little better but mostly written for myself as creativity exercises, and the poems… okay, some of them weren’t bad. I put a few up on my site for a while, back in the day. But still, nothing to write home about, and I took them down when I began blogging more regularly.

The self-hypnosis stuff… yeah. I was trying so hard to deal with my many issues, and figure out where my life was going, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. I was so used to living inside my own head anyway, so this seemed like a good idea. In hindsight, it proved mostly just a lot of mental masturbation. I say “mostly” because I did get a couple of useful insights and actions out of it. I guess it was a bit like cognitive therapy, except without a trained professional.

The spirituality stuff was more interesting, but even then (late ’95–early ’96) pretty much on the decline. I’d gone through my my kinda-Pagan phase and was sliding into agnosticism, then atheism. None of these made-up rituals and things were ever that useful—see “mental masturbation” above—and I eventually dropped them by late ’97 (after I started identifying as atheist, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

Still…

Still, in a more or less direct way, it’s all got me to where I am now. That first site evolved over many iterations, leading to this here blog, plus giving me the skills and confidence to branch out in the last year. Those fantasy stories got me used to putting words on paper or computer screen, which led to articles in student papers, and eventually this blog.

Doesn’t mean I need to spend much time navel-gazing, fun though it could be. It’s a brand new day, a brand new year, and I need to look forward, not backward. I’ll just take a few select pieces that have real sentimental value, and move on.

Game Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum

I’d heard the hype about this game, and eventually got to play the first few chapters at a friend’s place. I was so hooked that I decided to rent a disc and console so I could play it for myself. Everything about it is excellent, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. Everything.

That was absolutely awesome.

For one, the voice acting is first-rate: Batman, Joker and Harley Quinn are played by the same excellent actors as in the 90’s Batman animated series (oh, how I missed Mark Hamill’s demented giggles, and Arleen Sorkin cooing “Pudd’n”!). The other voices—Bane, Scarecrow, Riddler, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle—are also all great. Hell, even the generic batarang-fodder henchmen sell their lines pretty well.

The visuals are beautifully done, from the brooding asylum grounds, to the oppressive Victorian architecture, to the crumbling sewers, and every environment is full of little details that add to the gloomy Gothic atmosphere. Batman’s hi-tech armor and toys looked very nice too.

The game controls are quite complex, and there’s no tutorial as such. That’s okay, though: the game introduces elements gradually enough—moving, looking around, fighting, etc…—that before you know it you’ll be tossing out Twin Batarangs with the best of them. All you have to do is remember which button does what. As for the upgrade system, it’s pretty cool, but I didn’t find that it gave you a lot of room to customise: in the end you’ll have pretty much all available skills, it’s just a question of which to get first. (hint: “Inverted Takedown” is the shiznit.)

Replay value? I’ve only gone through the game one and a half times so I can’t say for sure, but I could probably play it a couple more times, if only to see what the “Hard” difficulty level is all about. Also, I could try out some of the more advanced fighting techniques, and see how much of the bonus material I could get my hands on. On my one complete playthrough I only discovered about half the trophies and unlockable extras, including just under half of Arkham’s Chronicles.

Which brings me to the story. On the surface, it’s pretty simple: Joker and Harley Quinn have taken control of the asylum, and Batman must save staff and other innocents, all the while figuring out the Clown Prince of Crime’s true intentions. It’s an engaging story, bringing together many characters from the Batman universe. The writers’ love for the mythos is evident in the little details, like the iconic clatter of pearls when Batman, hallucinating on Scarecrow’s fear gas, is forced to relive his parents’ murder. And Harley Quinn telling a captive Jim Gordon, “Mama spank!”. Plus, nods to sillier villains like Scarface and Calendar Man.

But there’s more. A lot of the extra world building was clearly inspired by the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean in 1989. It’s the kind of deliciously trippy mind-fuck only Morrison can deliver, delving deep into Lewis Carroll, Jung, Crowleyian magic and other esoteric themes, yet (at least to me) never crossing the line into random pseudo-profound mystical babble. In this story, Batman is presented as hardly more sane than the Joker and other inmates, and Arkham as a cursed house, fed and made strong by the constant flow of violently insane souls.

The “chronicles” hidden throughout the game are each short chapters in the journal of Amadeus Arkham, founder of the Asylum. From what I’ve seen (ie: the first half) it’s not too different from the original Morrison story—toned down, because this is an action-adventure game, and players don’t want to spend too much time hearing about Crowley and the Tarot and whatnot—but still pretty darn creepy and disturbing. And though they only show up in Scarecrow-induced hallucinations, the game does drop a few nice hints that Batman has, shall we say, issues.

I wish I’d found all of Arkham’s chronicles, though, because I want to see how this version of the story ends. Forget defeating the Joker, I want to know about the Asylum’s history!

So, to recap: fantastic game. It’s fun, challenging, full of atmosphere and details that show deep love for the Batman mythos. Definitely a keeper. And hey, they’re making a sequel!