The Mad Redwood

I think that title sort of speaks for itself, in a way, but not as much as I think it should. It’s a perfectly serviceable title and does exactly what it should as a title — I’ve written about that kind of thing before. “Grand Theft Hamlet” captures your attention immediately and gets you to wonder: what on earth is this about? That’s because of a juxtaposition between two things: Grand Theft Auto, a rather violent video game series that often satirises modern American society/culture, and Hamlet, a Shakespeare play featuring murders within a royal family and various existential questions like “why do we keep living?” In short: it’s a big contrast between what seems to be a low-brow thing and a high-brow thing. Grand Theft Hamlet seeks to unite that gap.

Aha, you probably thought that this post is about KPop Demon Hunters, didn’t you? That would be due to the title, wouldn’t it? Because the title mentioned KPop Demon Hunters? Well, you’re in for a surprise: it’s just about titling practices. But wait, come back!

A CCG is a ‘collectible card game,’ defined on Wikipedia as “a type of card game that mixes strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards.” They’re also called TCGs, or ‘trading card games,’ because there’s no set deck of cards like you’d get in a classic card game like poker or something. You collect your own cards, and then you use them to build your own decks, to play matches with other players. Hence, two players can battle with completely different cards — victory is declared via the mechanics that those cards represent (and tell the player about). Rules and mechanics, of course, vary based on the game, but you’ll probably recognise the names some of the famous ones: Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and even Pokémon has its own TCG. But never mind all those good ones: I’ve gotten into Shadowverse instead.

Is that title strictly accurate? I think it might be, but why is that the case? What are the ingredients to a ‘manly’ movie? The Magnificent Seven may hold some answers. It’s a modern Western movie with an impressive cast, and all the Westerny tropes you can shake a stick at. I’ll admit that I haven’t seen the original film it’s based on, or the TV series from the 1990s, or the much-older Kurosawa samurai film they’re all remakes of — I’m only going to be talking about the 2016 film. But I’m sure that the vibe is the same: a group of very different men join forces to repel a great evil. And what a great evil it is. I think that’s the first factor to consider.

Most horror franchises have death quotas, at least in the slasher genre; some people get killed, and that’s just the convention. The Jurassic Park series isn’t a slasher franchise, but it seems to operate by similar principles. It’s a science fiction action series about dinosaurs (of course), the hubris of humanity, corporate greed, and (sometimes) family, but people always die. So if your movie must have some human deaths in it, how do you pick who dies? The obvious answer is that it always depends, and it depends on what the movie is about. Every movie has its themes, and depending on the themes and the characters that might represent different sides of those themes, you’d probably make your choices accordingly.

For the few who don’t know, Among Us is a social deduction game that was released in 2018, gaining popularity first on the popular streaming platform Twitch in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, and then later on the phones and computers of approximately everyone in the world. Its ‘social deduction’ basically goes like this: all players play Crewmates aboard a spaceship with the objective of doing tasks and repairs, but there’s always at least one Impostor among them (hence the name) who just wants to kill all the regular Crewmates. The Impostor(s) must carry out their grim work without being discovered by the others, because everyone has the power to call a vote in order to expel someone out of the spaceship. Thus, the Impostor(s) must pretend to be Crewmates, and therein lies the ‘social deduction’: the Crewmates must figure out who the Impostor(s) is/are before it’s too late.

Holdfast: Nations at War is a multiplayer shooting game in which you play soldiers during either the Napoleonic Era or the First World War. You play soldiers of different roles, from frontline infantryman to combat medic to cavalryman to bagpiper (because that was indeed an important role during the Napoleonic Era, yes). Holdfast is most famous for its voice-chat features, with which players roleplay soldiers of the era. You may not find this in every round you play, but there are indeed player captains who strategise, order troops into lines, and tell them when and where to fire full volleys of gunshot — and the timing is important, because it takes what feels like 7 hours to reload every shot of your old-timey musket. And there are those who are bagpipers or fifers, standing by the firing line, tootling away to give their friends boosts, shouting about how great their side is in order to boost real-life morale.  

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.