Writing: I’m Weird [Edit]: Sanctuary Cancelled

Sanctuary cancelled:

Just after posting this, I learned that Sanctuary, which I had been covering on this blog for some time and was the only speculative fiction show on TV I still watched, has been cancelled.

This news isn’t terribly surprising, but it’s still quite disappointing. The already barren TV landscape just got a bit more bleak.

I may have more thoughts on this at a later date, but for now, on with our regularly scheduled blog.

I’m weird:

I’m a regular reader of fantasy author David Farland’s “Daily Kick in the Pants” writing newsletter. In a recent installment, he suggested that all writers likely suffer from some form of schizophrenia. Thinking about it, he may have a point.

Take my life, for example. One of my closest friends is a woman named Leha.

Leha is a small woman with brown hair and eyes. She’s friendly and charming, which serves her well in her job as an antique-dealer. She’s commitment-phobic and only interested in what’s new and exciting, so she has bad luck with relationships, but she doesn’t let that bother her. She has great common sense, which she ignores with a religious devotion. She was born in Three Gates, Eastenhold, and she does not exist.

Leha is entirely a figment of my imagination. I created her and her world about four years ago now — I forget exactly.

And yet despite the fact that she does not exist, Leha is easily one of the most influential people in my life. I’ve written two novels and several pieces of short fiction about her — I’m just finishing her latest tale now. Even when I’m not writing about her, she often invades my thoughts.

My obsession with her has at times grown so intense that I thought of her whenever I saw a short woman with brown hair, and among my close friends and family, “Leha short” is now an accepted and understood measurement of height.

When I discovered how powerful the character customization in Aion was, one of the first things I did was replicate Leha exactly as I imagined her.

Writing about Leha has helped me work out many of my own issues. Because I’m a sick bastard, I respond by putting her through every kind of hell I can come up with. But that makes for a better story. She’s an avid reader, so I think she’d appreciate that.

The point is that Leha really does feel like an old friend, despite the fact that she’s nothing but words on a page.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be an author, it’s weird. Really, disturbingly, frighteningly weird.

New article:

Another of my articles has gone up at WhatMMO: Best MMO Settings. I’ve always felt a good setting is crucial to any RPG, and to MMOs in particular. If you’re going to spend a lot of time in a virtual world, it had better be interesting.

Review: “Sanctuary for None, part two” (Season Finale) + New Writing

New writing:

Another of my articles has been posted at WhatMMO, 10 Common MMO Player Types. Which are you? Myself, I’d say I’m a Joe Average with a bit of the Talker, and occasionally the Helper if I’m in the right mood.

Review: “Sanctuary for None, part two”

Not surprisingly, the final episode of Sanctuary’s fourth season presents us with a doomsday scenario. SCIU, the government’s anti-Abnormal division, is planning the Abnormal Final Solution, a genocide that may not end even after the Abnormals are gone. Meanwhile, Caleb, leader of the Abnormal resistance, is planning to unleash a mutative agent so dastardly even Tesla thinks it’s crazy.

Only Helen Magnus and her increasingly fractured team can stop these twin disasters, and time is, of course, rapidly running out. And so us viewers are treated to an epic struggle the likes of which we haven’t seen from this show since the final confrontation with the Cabal at the end of the first season.

As this is is playing out, “Sanctuary for None” also hints at some vast scheme planned out by Magnus over her 113 year vacation following her trip back to the 19th century at the beginning of the season.

This is one area where I wasn’t impressed with this episode, as it is never clearly explained what this incredible master plan is. The final scene shows its culmination, but to be honest, I’m still not sure what we were shown. Maybe I’m just dense, but I didn’t quite get it. Surely all will be revealed in the next season (if there is one; more on that later), but it would have been nicer for them to just come right out and explain what was going on.

There are essentially two ways what we saw could be interpreted; one is incredibly awesome, and the other is very disappointing. But I don’t which is the truth, so I can’t really judge.

My other complaint is the complaint I always have: needs more Tesla.

Seriously, though, the few scenes he got in “Sanctuary for None” were excellent, even compared to his usual awesomeness, but there was the potential for a lot more. There’s a great little subplot of SCIU perverting his inventions into weapons of mass destruction, the news of which causes him to fly into a rage and illustrates that there actually is a good heart under all that arrogance and reckless brilliance. But sadly, this is not given anywhere near the attention it deserves.

But despite those issues, I would still rate this as easily one of the finest Sanctuary episodes to date. It had all the action and suspense we’d expect from a season finale, and then some. There are serious “Holy ****!” moments in “Sanctuary for None,” and those aren’t something we get a lot of in this series. It also has plenty of plot twists, and hell, even Kate displayed some believable emotion for once.

Overall rating: 9/10

Thus concludes the fourth season of Sanctuary. As to whether there will be a fifth, no one can say, but from what I hear, the outlook is not good. The ratings are nothing to be impressed with, and from what I’m told, the fourth season was only grudgingly given the green light — hence its shortened length.

Despite all its inconsistency and occasional mind-bending stupidity, I find the thought of no more Sanctuary surprisingly distressing. For all its stumbles, the last two seasons have had many more hits than misses.

Besides, there’s hardly anything on TV I enjoy anymore, especially in the sci-fi department. If Sanctuary bites the dust, I may have to swallow my pride and start watching Doctor Who or something.

The first three seasons of Sanctuary are available on my Amazon Affiliate. Buy the DVDs and support the show.