The Mad Redwood

Ballerina is a 2025 action movie set in the John Wick universe, following the story of a new assassin/bodyguard called Eve Macarro. It’s set either: 1. during the events of John Wick 3: Parabellum and John Wick 4, or 2. during the third movie itself (sources online are unclear, and even having watched Ballerina, I’m still not sure either). Regardless, Ballerina contains all the things that you’d expect from a John Wick movie — innovative (and bloody) action sequences, captivating set design, and various themes of revenge, loyalty, fate, choice, and consequences. As a standalone story, it has an opportunity to be like the first John Wick film, which tied up nicely, at least in theme. Unfortunately, it’s a little messy. Spoilers ahead.

Warm Bodies is a horrible name for a movie that isn’t some form of smut (and is quite horrible even if it were some form of smut). It’s also a 2013 zombie movie that’s supposed to be an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, except Romeo is a zombie and Juliet isn’t, and Romeo eats Paris’ brains. Are you on board yet? I sure was — I’ve been on board with this premise for years, but I’m only getting to it now. The main reason I was interested is that it is a romance story between a zombie and a human, and I wondered if such a story could be pulled off at all. Vampires are usually the fictional beings where passion persists in death; the zombie, instead, represents death in its relentlessness. Warm Bodies presents a monumental challenge for a romance writer, implications of necrophilia and necrophagy and cannibalism aside. So let’s start at the beginning.

If I’m honest, I don’t know where “what’s in a name” comes from. It’s either some American ‘50s sitcom or Shakespeare, I’m sure. I could look it up, but I figured it’d be funnier if I just floundered around and speculated; whether that pays off or not, I’ll leave to you. Anyway, this week’s post is about writing fiction — how do you name a character? I’d suggest that there are two stages to this process, though they both can get fairly involved and tricky. And neither is as clearly defined as I’d like.

Miller’s Girl is many things. It’s a movie that I learnt about through a YouTube ad, and which came out in cinemas in early 2024. It stars Jenna Ortega, a.k.a. Wednesday from Wednesday, and Martin Freeman, a.k.a. Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. They play an eighteen-year-old high-school senior improbably named Cairo Sweet, and a middle-aged creative writing teacher named Jonathan Miller. Just to be clear, Freeman plays the teacher and Ortega plays the student.

Look — no matter how you look at it, it’s hard to explain the musical Cats, even without addressing the 2019 movie version. Enough has been written about that version already, and I don’t feel that I should bash it without having seen it, even if it is bad. The version I want to talk about instead is the 1998 movie, which I have seen. Certainly, this is the first time where I think I should summarise the topic of the week in its entirety before attempting to say anything about it. I’ll have to give it a shot, so just bear with me. You’re going to have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit.

I’m comparing Rainbow Six: Siege and Fragpunk lore today, because I recently got into Siege X, since it’s free. This may seem to be an unfair comparison. Siege X has existed for a decade under the regular Siege name, and boasts a rich cast of characters as well as the original Tom Clancy books as source material. Meanwhile, Fragpunk is a brand-new game with brand-new lore. As such, I’m only going to be comparing the presentation of lore, so that both sides get an even shake — except both choose the least interesting way to present lore in a video game, that being large chunks of text.

The Apothecary Diaries is a manga series that is adapted from a light novel series, and which now has an anime adaptation of its own (which has just gotten its second season). There are three manga adaptations: the main one, a reinterpretation known as “Maomao’s Notes,” and another spinoff manga featuring a side character’s perspective. I hadn’t heard of any of these until a few days ago (as of writing), but decided to check the main manga out upon a friend’s recommendation. It was described to me like this: it’s the story of a young girl named Maomao who’s forced into a food-testing job in the inner courts of an ancient-China-adjacent fictional nation, who applies her expertise in medicine, herbs, and poisons to surviving court life. Also, there’s a prominent romance subplot with a beautiful eunuch.

Yes, that’s the title of the game. Already you can sense the vibe this game is trying to run with: it’s weird! It’s charming! It’s quirky! And it’s fun! It doesn’t want to take itself too seriously, ‘cos it’s chill like that! But what is it? I think it’s best described as “mostly-multiplayer Guitar Hero but with minigames, puzzles, and gimmicks.” I don’t like the word ‘gimmicks’ there, but I think it’s appropriate.

‘RPG’ stands for ‘rocket-propelled grenade.’ Wikipedia defines an RPG as a “shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon that launches rockets equipped with a shaped-charge explosive warhead.” A ‘shaped-charge’ is an explosive ‘charge’ shaped such that the destructive energy is focused in a particular desired way. In the RPG’s case, the goal is to penetrate thick metal armour, most likely on a tank (or a similar armoured vehicle). You’ll probably be familiar with the most famous RPG launcher: the RPG-7, which was originally designed by the USSR in the 1960s, but is still used today due to its simplicity, effectiveness, and hardiness. Oh, but as a side note, ‘RPG’ also stands for ‘role-playing game’ in video game terms.

Lost in Translation is sad. I don’t know what else to say, so that’s all for this week.

When writing fiction, characters are always tricky. Even in non-fiction, characters are tricky if you’re going for a creative angle on a real person. Much has been said about writing characters that are more than one-dimensional, ie. having layers and motivations. Creating such layers and motivations means that those layers and motivations will bleed into the plot of a story, and that’s crucial for a reader’s or audience’s engagement with said plot. Even if that plot is very engaging, you want equally engaging characters to go along with it.

Bangkok Dog is a martial arts film. Martial arts films are not known for their writing. They’re known — good ones, anyway — for tightly-choreographed action scenes that are shot in dynamic, interesting ways. You’ve got the John Wick franchise with its wide shots to show off the performers’ talent, putting all the incredible technique and prowess on full display. You’ve got the Ip Man franchise, for that classic Hong-Kong-martial-arts-film-feel with a modern twist, with decades of experience behind each film. Franchises aside, Jackie Chan is known for insane high-spectacle stunts in most, if not all, of his martial arts films.