As we step out of 2021 into 2022, it's customary to reflect on the year that's gone by and make resolutions for the one to come. I'm not going to do any of that.
Author: Phil Dickens
Let’s Talk About Bad Sex (Writing)
A tongue-in-cheek look at how not to do sex in fiction. Excerpts used: Katerina by James Fey, Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami, Scoundrels by Major Victor Cornwall & Major Arthur St. John Trevelyan, and List of the Lost by Morrissey.
The Last of Us and Christmas with Cordyceps
Does the tradition of Christmas survive a world-ending event like the Cordyceps pandemic in The Last of Us? In this short video, I talk about how Ellie and Jackson keep Christmas, how Abby and Owen mark it, and what it might mean to a world where society has collapsed and survival through winter is no longer certain.
Post apocalyptic politics in The Last of Us Part 2
In this video, I talk about the way human nature is interpreted by The Last of Us, The Walking Dead and similar franchises, and how this doesn't stack up with reality. Cooperation and mutual aid is a key part of how we survive, not something forced upon us by social order, and the complete collapse of that spirit would threaten true extinction for our species. This is something that the Last of Us series could choose to lean more into in future instalments, offering true hope for humanity.
Eliminate Unnecessary Words
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LX8EuUPL5I The first rule of good writing is "eliminate unnecessary words," so let's talk about that using "the classics" as examples. “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”… Continue reading Eliminate Unnecessary Words
Philip Dickens 