Cien años de soledad is one of my favorite books from the magic realism style he created. While I don’t think it’s apparent, my writing DNA has a considerable amount of Gabo in it. Que descanses en paz.
This week’s Tumblr extravaganza includes new media quotes, LoL cosplay, retro music posters, funny haikus, and Blade.
Here’s a part of Laurie Penny’s on The Feted Future of New Media ( via Kieron Gillen’s tumblr):
Those who have the power right now, in tech but also to some extent in media, see themselves as rejects, weirdos fighting for their place, and there are reasons for that. The emotional patterning laid down in puberty is hard to shake. If you got used to being excluded, being left out, having to fight to survive because you were smart or nerdy or different or all three, that’s a mentality that stays with you. That sort of trauma can be useful later in life – it gives you stamina, drive, a determination to carry your ideas through against the odds, a hunger to prove yourself, fierce dedication to your fellow oddballs and weirdoes, and I could go on. But it is still trauma, and it comes with baggage. Part of which is that long after you’ve stopped being an outsider and instead become a privileged pillar of the new establisment, not only do you fail to notice, but when someone points it out to you, you get angry – you get reaaaally, really frustrated – because being an “outsider” has always been a forming part of your identity, and being told there are people further out than you is hard to handle.
Check out this amazing cosplay of Lucien, a champion from League of Legends. I got excited about seeing a black champion in that game, even though I’m not a particular fan of playing as him. Still, Those guns, man…
This retro posterization of Outkast is part of a series made by the Ads Libitum tumblr. There is another one of Andre 3000 all Uncle Sam’d out, along with Kanye, Daft Punk, Nirvana, and more.
From writer Chuck Palahnuik’s latest essay on writing (from his own Tumblr site). Apparently you have to sign up to the mag that has the full one but this quote is good enough, I think:
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Whether you’re making music or films or painting pictures… play to the strengths of your medium.
One of the aspects of written narrative I appreciate most is the ambiguity that’s possible and sustainable before the true nature of a fictional situation is confirmed. Like the roadster in The Great Gatsby which is green or yellow, depending on the moment, I love to keep the details of a story in flux. One thing morphs into becoming another, sometimes even a third thing.
My classic example comes from the story “Guts.” Whatever is holding the narrator underwater, first it’s a snake, then a sea serpent, then it’s a prolapsed colon, finally it’s a “thick rope of veins and twisted guts.” This gradual evolution from the fantastic to the horribly real is something films have less success depicting. There are good examples. In A Portrait of Jennie Joseph Cotton gradually realizes his girlfriend is dead. A ghost. In Jacob’s Ladder Tim Robbins slowly comes to terms with the fact that he is, himself, dead. But too often the ambiguous thing must be made real in order to be filmed, and that robs it of the power of being debatable, undecidable. So often, once we see the monster, it’s no longer scary.
From Lev Grossman’s post titled ‘Small Batch Writing” (via http://kadrey.tumblr.com/):
I’m always on the lookout for little gaps like that in my schedule: anytime I can get a block of 10 minutes or more, I take it. I write in waiting rooms. I write in cars while other people are driving (this is very boring for them, but I do it anyway). I write while pasta is boiling.
Sometimes when I’m taking care of my kids they fall asleep, or lose consciousness for other reasons. The second they do I’m at my keyboard. Ninja writer strikes! Then I go back to changing diapers.
I mentioned the Kanye+Comics tumblog created by Chris Haley, artist for Let’s Be Friends Again, a while back. I said that I’d create some myself. Well, here are the ones I’ve made and are now up on the site along with other great mash-ups.
The first two came out like crap. I hadn’t used Photoshop in a while
Jesus Garay 