I have been emphatically grateful for all of the readers I've received over the last ten years. I've been writing for this blog nonstop for now three hundred posts. For as long as I've been writing,you would think that number much higher, and rightly so, but seeing just how much I've grown as a writer since the first post,to now, it is like a child that awoke, growing into a man, and placing both skill, and personal secrets into each-and-every post I've written. You sense the passion I have, especially when it came to editorials. I've prepared a great deal for this post, and it is a big deal. Three-hundred posts is a milestone, a major one for me, because I never thought I'd be posting that much, even with all the Videogame news, and all the books I've reviewed, growing this blog from explaining how to write, to actually writing my short stories.
Each short story, even those posted before the introduction of Short Story Weekly have been both good, bad, and dramatically rushed at times. Still, they are posts I'm mostly proud to have published, and stories I was happy to produce. This model allowed me to take risks, and doing so sllowed me to discover a great deal about myself. I expanded how I write, and have other stories that have surfaced from long ago that I've been able to rework, and distribute here. I still have to publish Infinity and null, but it's sometimes the short pies that are most hardest to part with, and hyping something doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be worth the hype. Still, stories are meant to be shared, writing is meant to be read, criticized, and discussed.
I've written a great deal on media. All types of media from television to music. Network shows to politics. I've done a great deal to include upcoming technology,minlcuding things that've both succeeded and failed. I discussed the iPhone during announcment, and the Phantom, which was ahead of its time, but failed miserably on the grounds that a full-on downloadable game console was just not wanted at that time. The point being is I wrote a great deal over the years on all sorts of things, many of which were controversial, some of which were against the masses, and I stood by my choices. At the Malacast Editorial, I may not always be right, but I stand by the opinions I put forward, I do not flip-flop. If I hated Xbox ten years ago for the same issues that plagued the system then, and plague it now, I have t changed my view on it, because I use my senses to tell that it is still garbage, and overrated with terrible first-party software. However it makes a strong stride forward, I acknowledge its improvements.
For years I've done things my way, because I knew I was never going to side with a majority, I didn't want to fit any set parameters, I wanted to always supersede them, and for most of my readers,mi think they can disagree,mbut respect me as such. So this is the 300th post, not just a milestone, but clinically-speaking, a fresh start, everything after is crucial to the shape of the site. What do I do? What do I write? After three hundred posts, an estimation of thousands of pages, what is there to discuss? I ask this more philosophically than literally, because there is always a discussion. Then I realized, it's just another post, and should be respected as such, but this extremely long introduction makes me question just what I'm supposed to follow up with an actual post.
So below, I present the three-hundreth post of the Malacast Editorial. Ten years, eleven in June, and it feels like only yesterday I started writing these blog posts as a side project to avoiding my class work in high school. I can't believe how much I've stayed the same since then,becaue the changes seem very, very little, just the music has gotten better. It also reminds me of the last project I ever did for high school, it was writing an entire school newspaper, literally twenty-plus pages/sections all by myself over the course of several days. Essentially that was the reason I even started this project, and it has grown to outshine even what I orignally expected it to be. That newspaper was graded well, and the Malacast Editorial essentially came from out that ideal, and from the ten-year anniversary post, I went into detail on how I came to create this blog, but that project was the quintessential reason, along with my uncle's suggestion of starting a blog to get my writing out there, to do create this experience from scratch.
So without further adieu, I give you the three-hundreth post, and thank you for all the support over the years:
I have three major obessesions in life: writing, if that wasn't apparent, reading, which has me always seeking out another book to read, although with print dying, I'm not so sure I appreciate the alternate option of reading on e-Readers. The last is video games. I love ten concept behind video games. Being someone who is essentially labeled as "slower" and somewhat I cohesive with problem-solving, I've learned a great deal of speeding up my brain, by these virtual realities that have consequences when you don't necessarily get it right the first time. The whole of my life is summed up with a yearning to grow, and appropriately strengthen all of my faults, especially those major sections of the brain that were seen as nothing more but faulty hardware since birth. Writing is a passion, and it's abundantly clear that writing is my expressive tool, allowing myself to expose the very core of my being, and not lay atop my setbacks like a crutch, but more to expand my own horizons, even if it is just a millimeter above my best.
As a gamer, I tend to care greatly about the dialogue, the actual storytelling of a game, not because it's the backbone of the content, but becaue it's what makes me finish the software. If I don't find the story appealing, or it's not nearly as engaging as other stories, then I'm apt to leave it be, or well it off, and thwt takes away from the artwork, but more importantly: makes me cautious from buying another game from thwt developer/producer/writer etc. next time around. I love video games, becaue they are engaging,mand although these games have been threatened by multiplayer for years, the single-player option has always interested me more, because there is something important about giving a damn about characters, about software that moves you, makes you feel control of a character's destiny, but it's crucial to the survival of an IP. So of these three obsessions, I've created the Malacast Editorial.
More has come from the blog,,and it's been an amazing decade of writing. Sure,MIT started off like an undiscovered tool, unearthed and marveled about with incohearent excitement,mbut it has developed into one of the most addled things, still exciting, but no longer posting because it's "fucking awesome! I can embed pictures! Woo-hoo it's a mutha fucking jackal!" Yeah, I can say I is those sort of posts. Although I predicted that Godzilla would have to come back, something as iconic as that can never truly vanish into history. For better or worse, what was popular becomes popular again becaue the past never wants to let go, and the present always searches for a connection to the past.
The Malacast Editorial has been that idiom to a precise dictionary definition. Whether it be nostalgia brought upon by Backwards Comparability, post designed specifically for this Brave New World of Brave New World rewrites, but it's been crucial to the growth of our perspective. Personally, onlooking forward to new content, even if it's shit, but I'm intrigued to think that the dude ass hair of an elefphant's ass cheek is not the last saving grace of original thinking to this generation.
Humor has matured, and lessened a great deal of the fart jokes that once were synonymous with instant guff. This has benefitted my blog, and as I've said, few blogs reach this milestone,mand see growth. I've had seen growth, steady yes, but ever-constant, now that I post nearly thrice a week, it is quid pro quo, I get views,people read original content. Poor typos or not: I've developed a fanbase, and my overall writing has them disregard these mistakes, which are quite minimal if scanned thoroughly.
I think it's time to do this post justice, this is, of course the 300th post, and I refuse to let it be a shit-show of nostalgia and a self-congratulatory shit-show. No, this post is Post 1 of a "whole new world" for the Malacast Editorial. Dare-I-say it? Yes, I do: "a new, fantastic point-of-view."
Sometimes, I sit and wonder about things. Good, bad, all the chemicals in-between morality and disarray. For three hundred posts, I've written for this blog, not sure where it would end, or now long it would last. For years, I've grown, shown my difficulties, heralded my triumphs on the backs of magical golden literary unicorns. I'm about to self-publish my first book (if I hadn't already) in a couple of months I turn thirty, a lifetime milestone if any, not because of a new decade, but because it's a measurement of palpable honesty of self-critique: where do I see myself in five years sorts of questions are supposed to be answered. One is supposed to know there place in life, they're supposed to fade into the obscurity that is adulthood, yet still are given some leeway with acting a bit childish.
I've not many accomplishments, but three-hundred is one of those accomplishments. For years I've written for the Malacast Editorial, and I've gained readers from across oceans and ideologies. I'm certain most of the readers I've had have come for reviews, stayed for editorials, and read original short stories. I've had a Petri dish of trial and error, nostalgia over nostalgia on both this blog, and Backwards Comparability. Three-hundred though...yes, for many bloggers, that is not a serious milestone, and for some, that seems unascertainable, for some, it's a dream. This post had to be special, it had to be something I've not written before, and yet, it should have some distinguishable factors to the Malacast Editorial (excluding, hopefully, the terrible typos that have been an unhinged staple of discern on this blog for years.)
So what do I write about? Surely not writing, that topic is for for another day, another post. Something congrualtory? No, it's not celebratory in that sense, plenty of people have helped me get here, both in the writing scheme, and through much positive reinforcement. This post, it's special, there will never be another 300th post on the Malacasf Editorial. Yes, there could be three-hundred more, but that is to quite the same thing, is it?
For years, I've written about writing, video games, book reviews, and a mess of topics. Some I barely remember, and some I've pined over for so long. I've done myself justice by being honest, perhaps more often here than anywhere else. Yet, as a writer, I've never been able to ever be completely honest, and I find we have to shade a portion of ourselves from the world....we have to lie, even when the call for the truth is crashing us onto the rocks of history.
I've had many setbacks in life, not some sob story whining, but ones I've never quite seen as hindering consequences. Some days, I've been happy, some I'm not, but I survive to the next day. If there is a God, it had blessed me with a pitiful soul, making me, inadvertently, pitiless. I'm not saying I'm some monstrous sociopath, but I've learned a while back that crying over spilt milk only let's the bit left in the carton sour onto the kitchen floor. You have to pick it up, and drink what little you have salvaged, until you're able to buy another, and perhaps you don't cheap out, and get the damn gallon.
I've lost myself so many times before, that writing stories of fantasy, people who've never existed is almost more natural thanwriting about myself...I'm certain many writers feel this way, even those who are asked to write about themselves on a college essay probably sweat bullets over who they are, self-defined by papermate ink or Microsoft Word for the sages of time to reflect upon for eternity. What jokes! Writing about yourself is like molding air, even if you've trapped it in a capacious mold, there is still too much left out, floating about as invisible as whatever farce you've developed about who "you" are.
I'm not sure who I am, and I'd love to tell you, I'd love to give you the exclusive, but Malacast Agent, who I really am, it's difficult to tell. I've not lost myself like a seer of misery: no wife and child murdered, or orphaned like Oliver, nothing of the sort. I've had a relatively safe childhood, sometimes too safe for my own good, missing out on personal experiences, but I was adored and loved, and I say that with zero spite, but luck. I'm insanely sane, so-much-so that although I'm altruistic and eccentric, I'm quite level-headed. I'm not black and white on everything, but absolute truths are just that: absolute. Man will never cheat Desth or taxes, and true love is only for the classics, they don't apply to reality, that doesn't mean what little institutions we feel aren't worth feeling, life is too dark as it is....but that darkness shouldn't be ignored either.
So I've had a great upbringing for a single mother, but haven't we all? Or substitute mother for single father, either way, most of us have experienced that, and it will be interesting when that is the norm, and doesn't become a deciding factor in the upbringing process. I count myself lucky, even if times were taxing, if not challenging. One thing I've leaned,mthwt writing about myself is a trial, and one of the toughest accountings, because my life was full of both heartache and splendor, but it's difficult to truly know me without hearing the entire story.
I was born in Staten Island New York, "the forgotten borough" as it's been nicknamed. I was raised Catholic, went to private school for the first five years of my education career: I went to what was known as a Children's Workshop in-place of pre-school, and although I did do a stint in P.S. 13 for Kindergarten, I spent grades 1-4 in Catholic school. I was a difficult student, not necessarily the best, nor the brightest of my classes, I was always tested extra, and scorned harder. Whenever I describe to friends that I went to a private Catholic school as a child, it's always met with queries of nuns and rulers smashing fingers as a disciplinary tactic. It wasn't that bad, the real difference was that religion was taught as a subject, the joke is that the bible itself was scare sly used in the classroom,malthough there was a Tuesday Mass every couple of weeks that would delve into the Bible more directly, but everything was cohesive, and the class work was far more challenging than the rigid standards of public school.
I was a hardcore Catholic, although I was taught about other religions, it was adamantly apparent that there was only zone God, a part of what is known as a Holy a trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Ghost if it suits your fancy) I was rather obsessed (unhealthily, you might add) with the Passion, from oratios at church, to the Stations of the Cross in their vivid stained glass imagery. Even the giant crucifix at the front of the church was amazingly detailed,with blood flowing from the palms and feet, although now we know that the nails had to have been through the wrists to support the weight,mand the cross was more a T shape rather than a t shape. To me, the concept of crucifying someone so they died of suffocation was so terrifying to me: being killed by literarily the burden of one's own weight, and then having to pull yourself up to breathe, having the nails rip and tear deeper into wrists, not neglecting the pain of having one's feet tacked as well, and ripping with every attempt to gasp for breath.
It was one of the saddest stories I've ever heard, but fascinating that a man became a beast of burden for the entire world, and such suffering cleansed the sins of all humanity. I'd like to add that before you think I'm going to acclimate this entire post as some religious amalgamation, I assure you my point will be made, and quite suddenly: I took the Passion to be the symbolic explanation of man having to suffer for the goods of heaven, but as I became older, grew more inclined to question all variables, that the bounty was fit more for the devil and his kin.
I became an atheist when I was about thirteen, I tried to maintain my faith, it wasn't some teenage angst, misplaced guilt quitting, I legitmate lay tried my best to believe that all those stories, all those ideas fed to me as a child were real, but I still respected the teachings of laws and abiding to rigorous cultural beliefs, so I never disrespected anyone for their religious beliefs, because I woulda later come to have my own.
If you've read the three-part novella I posted over a year ago entitled: Satanism with a Side of Kimchi, you'd discover quite a bit more about my current religious standings. Being an atheistic Satanist means I do to believe in God, the Devil, or Bob, but I sure do like me a good ritual. I don't sacrifice goats, or cats (I'm a cat afficianado myself, having two of them.) but I believe in magic, not the Penn and Teller version, despite my adoration for Penn Jillette, but I do discuss in detail Greater Magic, and the much more apt to everyday life: Lesser Magic.
I won't discuss this any further for the same reasons listed above about Catholicism, but I've learned that deeply over the years I was insistent on writing. I believe I mentioned in my ten year post, that I began writing when I was able enough to pen ideas. Not having many friends, even from my peers, and more becaue I learned to keep to myself, I've written worlds, creating characters I could relate, and never in my wildest dreams ever relate to, I made time slip into creativity. I wrote my first book in fifth grade, with a friend of mine, who out of respect to his privacy, and his personal life. It was about an anthropormorphic cactus that went around eating people, and pretty much destroying everything in it's path. Think Godzilla, but more "Weird Al" Yankovich influences.
"Weird Al" was a big influence on me as a child, I must've listened to his album "Bad Hair Day" to the point that the last burned a hole in the CD. Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Bush, and most alternative/post alternative bands made up my music catalog. I had a very strong attraction to bands like Siouxsie and The Banshees , Gin Blossoms, Bare Naked Ladies, Smash Mouth, and Better Than Ezra. Crash Test Dummies, Toad the Wet Sprocket, with Sonic Youth, and Superchunk Society also grew on me at the time. Music is universal, we we use lime kindred languages communicating in a foreign land. If I say Harvey Danger, or Slayer in a particular setting, I'd get a look of approval, or disdain, but it is something people tie to their lives like milestones, or badges of survival.
Music influences me, as it should anyone that enjoys it, especially the thought-provoking music that keeps you coming back for that repetitive moment in time, as though recapturing the first time you've heard that song...it's a memory jog that pulls the heartstrings; proof more we do not control our emotions, they rule us with fists of clouded judgment. Music is a must when I write. Even now I'm listening to music from the television, some "oldies" from the 90's. That makes me feel so damn old! Ugh! Seriously! It takes me time to accept that twenty years ago was 1996.
I moved to a region of the New York State that is as rural as it is beautiful, and the people are like anywhere else: some good, some bad, but all of them wave when you drive by, or vice-versa. I wrote my first full-length book in the Catskills, entitled The Divine, )which I've recently released several chapters online, they will however, be down prior to the release of the book, and replaced with an interview/discussion of the book.) a fantasy/slipstream take on not knowing a damn thing about life, or what to do after the school years are done.
I remember when I first finished the book, knowing it would be a continuation, and have at leat one sequel. It's always amazing when I realized I've finished a novel, that it's at any particular time of day/night/morning. The first time finished writing the Divine, it was as though I've just came upon a treasure, and I did to know exactly what I was to do with it...the difference between finding Aztec Gold in a fortified ziggurat, and finishing a book is that you have to prove to others the value of your work, not like bouillon; have it taken at face value.
I literally wrote this book the last year of high-school, I was 19, turning 20, it's no secret I failed twice, but I took it as a regrettable situation, but I wasn't torqued over it, I take everything with a grain of salt: if you're a writer, you learn to take your lickings with a smile, and say, thank you, may I please have another. You need to really, really love torture of you're a writer, because people who haven't struggled along page-by-page with your work aren't going to have the same salivating hunger that you did for your manuscript. They'll read it, and probably snort, or shake their head with an emphatic "no". Trust me she I say this: a writer is going to hear no so often, it should be tattooed to the inside of their ear.
Lowering expectations is key, and I've done so whenever I get rejected, or even accepted for something I've written. Speaking of which: I first was published in the local newspapers, while in my eleventh grade year of high school. It was my first taste of deadline, and I've learned to blow away the expectations of what was ever expected of me, having work done right on time, if not early. I was used to writing ten pages of material in a matter of hours, and doing so with consistency, and patience. I was doing something called Teen Talk, a monthly article on teen activities. I was also writing several post for our dessert tend high-school newspaper, I would write one article for. Y college newspaper, where I was assigned an article idea, and I found it enjoyable, but it was lacking in the creativity market. I still will occasionally do a newspaper/magazine articles that's assigned from an editor, but the caveat of this is that the creativity is stifled for generic information. Not to sound unapproachable on the subject matter, there's nothing wrong with writing articles that essentially write themselves, but they lack an obvious majestic feeling that comes from say publication a science fiction story about a two-eyed, one-headed, bipedal monst known as man on the planet Urulaynx, but it's okay to write about the local vendor that saved a kitten from a tree every once-in-a-while as well.
Somewhere between high school and college, I created what you're reading now: the Malacast Editorial. At this point, I was struggling with so much anxiety, and later on depression from my own inadequacies (I have been suffering with nocturnal enuresis/and un/misdiagnosed(?) inconteince for over 99% of my life.) this, albeit public here, is not my first public admittance of this on-going problem, but it's become such a societal stigma, and I've found that I too am such an embodiment of social unrest and obscure calibration, that I've seen this as the least shocking thing I could state. I also blame my on/off bedwetting with the reason behind why I don't try to be intimate, why I've become more asexual over the years as well. Turning thirty and still having a problem that infants overcome, doesn't leave much in the way of intimacy.
Surprisingly, I've written once about nocturnal enuresis (still to this day seen as an anomoly that has little research given to it, because 99% of bedwetters "grow out of it", so 1% of bedwetters, such as myself are left as an even more isolated! and subjugated group of people, with really nothing but pills that rarely work, and operations that are far too costly, and labeled more cosmetic than medical.) and it wasn't a social stigma, but just something the main character did, and it wasn't a big deal, just a medical disorder, but not necessarily treated as such. I use certain things more as descriptors than ice breakers.
If I write about a curly-bearded one-eyed incompetent that listens to the Spin Doctors, they're descriptors, and if it interests you as a reader, that's fine, but my hook, line, and sinker, is that the same curly-bearded one-eyed incompetent is an immortal god walking around on earth, searching for his lost kitten, that is set to explode like an atom bomb to the universe. If I then make him pansexual, and have him set up in a relationship with Ursa Major in a giant anthropormorphic bear form, that adds another layer of obscure details to continue the interest to the overall storyline, or at least allows me a nice little chapter to throw in midway. A story really is a bunch of short stories surrounding the same characters, and one long, long conundrum that needs to be solved, or at least resolved partly before the curtain sets on the last scene of Act III.
The point is, writing allows us to explore the unbelievable, we suspend disbelief for fun, to love through the eyes of monads, gods, and talking cupcakes, and we do so for both imperative thought, but for an escape from the shitty circumstances life throws at us. Books influence who we are, and writing influences the world, an author's job is to send out a beacon to the world, and in response, great minds form to careers the societal standards of the present, and skyrocket them into the future with artistic inspiration. A writer has the burden of masquing the world in a subconscious blanket of hope, pacification, and allusions to ambiguous colors and scenes that break the heart, and illustrate memories in blossoming picturesque sequine tears. We invoke the sensitive soul, not out of aesthetics, but to see the world as greater than it truly is, so future generations will do their damnedest to make it so! Tattooing nostalgia on the mind of a world that never truly existed: it's not an escape of reality, it's an escape to finely tune reality. That is why I write...oh, and to make funny puns, and be rid of tired similes.
I wrote this blog because I wanted to write about things I liked, reviewing things I liked, and in many ways, it's a personal journal I've shared with the world, the Malacast Editorial may have some deep-rooted secrets of my past, but it also feeds a validity of things that are part of my past. It will fuel a great deal of what I take into the future, and allow me to post original short stories until, well, I don't want to anymore. Three hundred posts, it's rather interesting to think I've done so many, but in such a long, long time. I've truly enjoyed writing this blog, and I continually hope to do so for quite some time, but to segue into the finale of this post, as I've shared a great deal of myself in this post, it's time to end this post.
I've decided that all things come to an end not because they want to, but becaue they have to, they have to leave so something else better, more refreshing can come through. I've decided, and it was hard for me, being someone that is disgruntled by change, that the Malacast Editorial will come to an end. Staying true, and coming full-circle, I will end the blog after 666 posts, the symbolic number of the beast, of the Devil at the endtimes. Not for prophetic reasons, nor even to be funny, I just feel that will be a fair enough of posts, and only unless something catastrophic happens, the post number will be set at 666 posts. There will be a definitive end to the Malacast Editorial, but there's no precise time. It took me ten years to write 300 posts, and it could take equally as long to get to 600. Time will tell, and time is telling me with that, I will end this section of the Malacast Edtioral, leaving it to the digital dust of history, and tomorrow, will come back anew. The first two posts will be the review of E3 2016, and after that, who knows? Time's funny like that. Instead of giving you my usual statement of gratitude for reading the blog, I instead leave you with a note on the new direction of the midpoint of this blog:
Short Story Weekly will continue until November, NaNoWriMo has to take precedence first for me, but it will not likely return as it had last year. So I would like to state for the record, that October 31st, Halloween will be the last Short Story Weekly I write for The Malacast Editorial. I'm not sure this means it will be a Halloween story, but it will be the last one regardless. I have made a conscious choice to do this mainly because I ally want to publish short stories in other publications, and quite frankly doing a short story every week is stretching me thin for this medium. For now, I'll have one weekly, until October, and I will have a serial mystery story coming before the end of the month, so I have plenty of content to fill the weeks to come. So yeah, all good things, and yada yada.
Thanks for reading what I had to write, and hearing what I have to say, let's do it another 300 times, (and a couple more for good luck).
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