You are probably wondering where I have been for the past week or so! Perhaps you noticed it when you looked outside your window and noticed that there were fewer stars in the sky! Or maybe you just remarked on how colors seemed less bright, food tasted like ash, that sort of thing. My presence has probably been pretty staunchly missed as of late!
Basically, there are two kinds of writers and they inhabit the same body. The first is the one you probably see when you notice me: charming, ruggedly handsome, flirtatious and possessed of a powerful, all-encompassing crockpot of hormones that sends people alight with fear and desire. This is a man that is available only during those times when I am required to be in public.
The rest of the time, I am the slovenly, slobbering creature behind his desk that you are currently reading. My eyes are quite bleary, I am not the best smelling and I am sporting a neckbeard that would make Patrick Stewart sigh deeply and wonder why he’s still alive to see this. This is because I am trying my absolutely damnedest to finish this book and this short story by New Year’s. It is very difficult, you see, and I am a very lazy man.
But I have returned briefly to share with you some fun links I have discovered because I am that kind of guy. The kind of guy who will walk out on you and then come back with a bouquet of webcomics and hate and tell you to take me back.
FIRST UP.
Maybe you have listened to the Functional Nerds podcast before? You might, if you are indeed a nerd who happens to function. But what you have not done yet is listen to me on it as I gas on about how much I love video games and what kind of a tremendous dork I am. You have not seen that. Also there is some Cherie Priest nerd on it, I guess?
This next link is a blog I’ve found to be pretty fun, if only having been introduced to one post. Jay Kristoff happened to summarize the depressing irony of mass marketing a movie based on defiance of exploitation pretty well. The rest of his blog is pretty lovely, too. You should probably check it out!
And finally, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a new webcomic I’ve wanted to talk about, but hanging out with the goons today showed me this webcomic here.
Derelict, by Ben Fleuter, is a really great webcomic about the apocalypse. Or the post-apocalypse, anyway.
I tend not to like post-apocalyptic stories in general. Mostly because I’m pretty burnt out on zombies and society seems to be having trouble conceiving of an end-of-all-things that does not revolve around the dead rising and us being saved by grim-faced, stoic white men who have relationship problems when the world is over.
Derelict, however, is one of a kind. Amazingly well-paced with a story that lets its atmosphere and style do the talking for it. It manages to capture everything we love about apocalyptic stories–the despair, the fleeting hope, the sheer desire to survive–without falling to its many cliches. I love it and you should, too.