Category: Existentialism

How HBO’s “True Blood” Should Have Ended

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Conspiracies, Creativity, Existentialism, Hollywood, Horrificus, Literarian, Paranormal6 Comments

BillSookieFor seven seasons, the HBO series “True Blood” – based on the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books – deviated almost unrecognizably away from the source material. Every character not killed off managed to pair up with someone, but similar to the final Harris novel that reportedly left fans unsatisfied, HBO botched a chance to one-up the author on the final outcome of Sookie and Bill.

Here’s three suggested treatments for a better ending; this is just off the top of my head, but I prefer number three.

***SPOILERS IF YOU STILL CARE!***

  1. Sookie and Bill die together in the graveyard: Unable to watch Bill’s suffering, Sookie offers herself to feed him before he dies, a willingly sacrificing to provide one last comfort before he pops; it ends with friends and family attending Sookie’s funeral revealing a headstone next to Bill’s family.
  2. Sookie begs Bill to make her into a vampire: Finally admitting to herself she would stay with him forever, Bill finally accepts Sarah’s cure before turning Sookie and burying themselves together. Sookie’s blood enables them both to survive the daylight and join in the Thanksgiving celebration: the premiere vampire couple of Bon Temps.
  3. Sookie makes Bill human again with a little help from Grampa: After hearing Bill’s thoughts, she suspects the faerie-mixed Hep-V cocktail she infected him with is turning him mortal but not fast enough to prevent his true death as a vampire. Sacrificing the last of her power and hoping it’s enough, faerie grandfather Niall secretly lends a hand to restore Bill to life. With Sookie no longer a faerie and Bill no longer a vampire, they live happily as mortals raising the family they always wanted and growing old together.

Pick one…they’re all better than what crawled out of the writer’s room.

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Highlights from Ancient City Con 2014

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, ExistentialismLeave a comment

Yes, I’m a bit of a shutterbug, so I made this video with highlights from the show…not everything, but a lot of what I saw passing our table and walking around the floor. I’m working on a different video with Ultimate Occult Showdown 2014 highlights, so watch for that coming out soon! Meanwhile…

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Good Guests Behaving Badly: Con Guest Commandments

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, ManagementLeave a comment

Convention HotelPopular Arts Conventions are great places for fans and artists to meet and interact over common interests: books, film, television, cosplay, web, or whatever. The fear, however, is that fans – abbreviated from the word “fanatics” – are the only source of irresponsibility and poor judgment. For those of us who at one time or another have stood on both sides of the convention table, there IS such a thing as a bad guest.

Fortunately, David Gerrold has nailed a comprehensive list of essential guidelines that guests new and old should probably abide by. With his kind permission, I have immortalized it not only for myself but for anyone in the industry.

The 15 Con Guest Commandments… (read more)

All of you know someone who might have benefited from such knowledge.

Don’t be that guest…ever. Or ever again.

Read and heed.

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Meet Me @AncientCityCon in Jacksonville, Florida on July 18th-20th!

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Cosplaying, Creativity, Existentialism, Literarian, RoleplayingLeave a comment

Gamers! Cosplayers! Cinephiles!

Lend me your ears…that’s disgusting; take those back this instant!

AncientCityCon2014After taking a year off to concentrate on my burdening…no, bludgeoning… wait, *burgeoning* writing career, I’m a guest at this year’s Ancient City Con at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront on July 18th-20th, 2014. I’ll be bringing a bunch of books: copies of The Matriarch and The Matriarch: Guardians. If you already have one or both, bring them by to get those dead-tree editions signed at no charge! There will be panels…oh yes, there WILL be panels…including an all-new edition of The Ultimate Occult Showdown with myself and Brett Link as your enforcers…whoops, I meant “hosts!”

C’mon down, get a hotel room right on the waterfront, and party with us for the eighth-annual Ancient City Con this mid-July. Seriously, there’s nothing else to do that weekend in Jacksonville…I promise. Would I lie? I mean, when it’s important?!

See ya there!

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Are Strong Female Characters in Supporting Roles Mostly Useless?

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Conspiracies, Creativity, Existentialism, Hollywood, Literarian3 Comments

MatrixTrinityA friend pointed an article my way called “We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome,” citing a concern that, while storytellers in film have come a long way in empowering female characters, those characters are often reduced to mere plot devices.

There is an essential truth to this: they ARE plot devices.

And the reason for this is just as true: secondary characters support the Protagonist’s story.

Before we crawl under the hood, understand that I am not advocating the treatment of Strong Female Characters in many works – the author of the article makes a fair point of this – but we’re not talking about Ripley from Aliens or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” because those are their stories. We are also not talking about “Women In Refrigerators,” a trope concerning violence against women in comics as a plot device to “hurt” Strong Male Characters.

The article outlines eight questions writers should ask themselves about Strong Female Characters, everything from “(can she be) seamlessly replaced with a floor lamp with some useful information written on it” all the way to “deciding to have sex with/not have sex with/agreeing to date/deciding to break up with a male hero” pointlessness. The article contends that writers should rise to the occasion to create someone worthy of the name Strong Female Character, but these could all be reduced to a single, far simpler question: Can your Strong Female Character be seamlessly replaced by a Strong Male Character? If yes, all’s good; if not, why not?

Continue reading “Are Strong Female Characters in Supporting Roles Mostly Useless?” →

Artists Supporting Artists: Lessons From #AmericanIdol

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Creativity, ExistentialismLeave a comment

Season 13 of “American Idol” is over, and someone won.

And yet everyone won.

As a rule, I don’t watch competition shows; I’m pretty selective with my television watching altogether. People with superstar dreams (note: without a ‘Z’) flock to local competitions, putting their lives on hold for a few minutes of fame and perhaps to get noticed. Sometime it’s about the prize and sometimes it’s about the exposure, but at the heart of it all, these shows are still a competition: there will be one winner and the rest are losers.

My family watches the show, and one of their favorites this season was Caleb: all rocker with a throwback sound you’d have to look for on Pandora or maybe “Ozzy’s Boneyard” on SiriusXM. Caleb looked and sounded ready-made for superstardom; he looked like he was auditioning, not competing. I paid attention, drifting away from my writing desk to listen in when his turn at the microphone came up; if you’re a fan of classic rock, he’s hard to resist, belting out David Coverdale tunes like a secret lovechild. In spite of his incredible talent, he not only sought out the other contestants for support but genuinely supported them in return. Instead of a weekly shrinking group of flaring attitudes, they all became closer, and you could see it on the screen, often with Caleb at the center of it.

They were all competitors, yet they all supported one another.

Peeking in once in a while, there was a time many years ago when “Idol” interviewed their contestants and asked what they thought of one another, highlighting the drama in the competition (possibly even orchestrating much of it). Those days are long gone, and the show itself isn’t the ratings champion it once was… too bad. You hear so much in the media about how narcissistic and selfie-oriented today’s youth are, with no ambition and expecting their handouts, yet there on the stage were over a dozen young adults competing for a single prize and more than willing to help one another reach it – just because they could.

Should all artists be like this? Lessons learned.

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“Being Forced to Sit in the Backlist” – Hugh Howey #WritersLife

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Conspiracies, Creativity, Existentialism, LiterarianLeave a comment

There’s no reason for this way of thinking anymore. A writer is a writer; it’s hard work and takes dedication to the craft. Why can’t we all support one another and stop clinging to the labels that no longer apply?

Imagine selling two million books, having half a dozen of your novels hit the New York Times bestseller list, being inundated with thousands of fan emails every month, and then having someone call you an “aspiring writer.”

That’s what happened in New Orleans this weekend, when the planners of the RT Booklovers Convention decided to place self-published authors in a dinky room off to the side while the traditionally published authors sat at tables in the grand ballroom.

Authors like Liliana Hart, who is at the top of the game not just in the romance genre but in all of publishing, was labeled an “Aspiring Author.”

RT is a major bookselling convention, a place that publishers expect to sell boatloads of titles. The bookselling, I believe, is handled by Barnes & Noble, a company with a history of segregating self-published authors on their online bestseller lists and who has no incentive to promote authors they don’t stock. So the fault here is not with the authors in the other room; it’s with the organizers and the undoubted pressure they feel from monied interests.

Read the full article on Hugh Howey’s website.

Female Characters: Good for Television, Bad for Movies?

On By Kevin A. RansonIn Conspiracies, Creativity, Critiquery, Existentialism, Hollywood7 Comments

equalitynowThe casting for Star Wars VII is out, and besides everyone’s favorite former bikini-clad slave princess Carrie Fisher, there is only one new female character in anything resembling a major role… out of SEVEN. Throw in the original Boy’s Club cast of six and that’s two out THIRTEEN principles.

This shouldn’t be a big deal, right? There ARE women in Star Wars, just not many with relevant or speaking parts ON FILM. Oh, and the so-dubbed “expanded Star Wars universe” was declared null-and-void and not official movie canon, so apparently there ARE only two relevant women in the entire galaxy. Worse yet, those two are related and the younger one (SPOILER!) died after childbirth – because, you know, that’s what women do: have babies and die. Really?!

MovieVsTelevisionSay, isn’t this a J.J.Abrams production? What’s interesting is that his television programming (“Lost,” “Alias,” “Fringe”) have meaty roles for ladies and often many of them, but his film production credits (Star Trek, Cloverfield, Super 8, Mission Impossible) seems to only have room for a chosen few in an ensemble, often ONE. Playing devil’s advocate, maybe this is an informed choice: are relevant female characters too complex for most screenwriters to simply throw them up on-screen and present them believably in a film format?

Continue reading “Female Characters: Good for Television, Bad for Movies?” →