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| Where most of my effort was put towards |
Well, we did it. 2023 is just about over. We somehow got through another year. It's a bit hard to believe, because 2023 felt rather long to me.
Though the blog was surprisingly active this year, it didn't actually take up a lot of my time. As mentioned above, most of my focus was on both my successful Kickstarter campaign which tied into releasing four books to readers, as well as fulfilling reward tiers. I am proud to say now that as 2023 wraps up, every backer has been fulfilled and the campaign has been completed. I also sent out quite a lot of books, which was nice. If you missed it, you can still get the eBook versions of the Gemini Man series on amazon, as well as a physical omnibus version of all four in one package. Writer Ben Espen even wrote an excellent review of the third book recently that you can check out here. He plans on covering all four eventually, but they are all worth reading.
Speaking of the Gemini Man series, I should remind readers that Book 4 will no longer be $0.99 when January rolls around. Its price will return to matching the other books in the series. So you better jump on it now!
But there are other things to discuss.
What I wanted to do today was look back at the previous year and see if any of my hopes or predictions came true. Unlike some of the previous years, however, I wanted to look at the scene more generally. Going point by point would not only be boring but very repetitive. So let's go back to January and see my very first post of the year and give it the once over. What ended up coming true, and what ended up never happening?
Well, right off the bat I can say that our Cannon Cruisers podcast did not end like I predicted, but it is still ending . . . kind of.
You see, since 2017, we've done Cannon Cruisers almost weekly on a pretty tight schedule. For over half a decade we recorded 300 episodes and covered about as many movies, both Cannon Films and not, but also mostly centered on that specific time period when they were around. In my opinion, we successfully captured and analyzed an entire era unlike any other in the film world. Once we finish our final run this month, the fifth episode of five is due out this New Years Eve, we will then continue into January and February with our big blowout final episodes as we finally hit episode 300 between our Cannon and Non-Cannon episodes. Then the original series will come to an end.
The reason for this is that being mainly about Cannon Films, we've more or less run out of movies to cover on a consistent basis. At the same time, there are other types of similar films we want to go over, so after our 300th episode, we will combine our two subseries and episode counts into one and start over with episode 1 instead of episode 301. This way we can cover just about anything we want to and take the series at a more leisurely pace. That said, we will still focus more on older films and probably still from around the same era. Neither of us really watches much that is new anymore, so our interests won't stray too afield of what we are doing now. Regardless, Cannon Cruisers is ending, but it also isn't. Please enjoy our last batch of normal episodes coming soon. They're all already recorded and in the queue.
As far as writing, I'm sure everyone reading this knows that what I publish is rarely ever my most recent writings. This year I wrote a good bit of stories, some of which will hopefully be published in 2024. If not, then hopefully sooner than later. In fact, as I'm writing this, last night I lost my internet for about an hour and spent the time writing a short story. When I finished, the internet returned. Needless to say, I've got quite a lot of material still left to publish.
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| Six of my books in Pocket Paperback format! |
One of the big things coming in 2024 is going to be Cirsova publishing my next book, Star Wanderers. This is a collection of stories, some of which you might have read, but most definitely not all. You'll learn more about it as the year goes on. I'm really proud of this one. I think these are some of the best stories I've written so far.
Speaking of Cirsova, I also have another story coming in issue #20 of the magazine. It is called "Mirage Carousal", and is a wild one. This will be my second appearance in the magazine, which is very exciting to me. I also have other stories ready to submit to other publications, but nothing is open for submissions right now so they will have to wait.
Since January is usually incredibly slow, that is when I tend to spend the time writing a project that I wouldn't have the opportunity to in the busier times of the year. I have just the sort of project in mind ready to so. Once that one is done, it is time to finally move on into my next proper series. It's been a while, and I really want to get to it. Problem is, the muse is telling me other things must be done first. I can't just ignore that.
For those who don't know, before Silver Empire went under and handed me back Gemini Man, I had already began the work on my next series. I had even written the first book. However, after putting out the entire previous project via crowdfunding, I am now a year older and wiser and now have solidified more things about it that I was unsure about before. The vision for the series is clear, and I am excited to finally get to it.
Therefore, I will go on to write the second book and then return to the first for appropriate rewrites. Luckily enough, the changes do not really affect the first book very much, just the rest going forward. Like Gemini Man, this series will also be four books long. Unlike Gemini Man, however, it is being planned that way from the beginning.
If all goes according to plan, Book One of this new series should hopefully be ready before the end of 2024. As long as nothing else goes wrong, that is! I can't say I expected to have to put out an entire series over the course of 2023, after all.
Now, returning to my first post from 2023, there were some premonitions made that are quite interesting reading them over again today. Let's go over them right now.
"The mainstream's obsession with reboots and subversive relaunches has more or less run out of gas. Trying to pretend the newest Ferngully remake is going to have any sort of cultural impact today when it didn't over a decade ago is a cope to the fact that the old era is already over. The wider culture has moved past that era, even if those in charge want to continue to pretend it hasn't. We are in the position to build something new, and a lot of us are doing just that, but the overall energy is shifting. I can't say if it'll be this year, if 2023 is finally going to be the year it starts, but I feel like we are on the cusp of something really breaking out big to shake up the status quo. A lot of things were put to bed in 2022, the 25th anniversary of Cultural Ground Zero, and new avenues are opening up ahead of us. There is an excitement building, pointing us in new directions."
Boy, was this right on the money. The Ferngully remake made money, yes, but it had, again, absolutely no cultural impact and disappeared as quickly as it came. In video games, the same thing happened with the newest Bethesda game. You will have a cadre of consumers and paid shills try to rile up discussion and insist the newest corpo slop is actually Great and Important, but every single time it falls to the wayside and is forgotten within a month.
Thankfully it seems that most people realized what the Geek Culture Consumer Crowd hasn't, and that's that this stuff is ultimately empty.
2023 was also the year Hollywood utterly collapsed. No new hits, no cultural shakeups, and no trends. Just bomb after tired bomb. That's not even putting into account the strike itself that was never really resolved, just put off like everyone said it would be. Next year they will have even less as a result of this.
It turns out that my prediction was right--25 years after Cultural Ground Zero appears to be the limit we can sustain ourselves on the fumes. The old spell no longer enchants, and the so-called rubes see how the trick is played.
And they don't like it.
However, there has been signs of positive change recently.
"For too long we've put up with and excused blandness and emptiness because wanting more is considered novelty or childish, but that has never been true no matter how much it has been asserted or pushed in the media that has long since turned against us. It isn't silly to want a chain restaurant to look good because it's a corporate product, everything should look its best, especially when customers are involved. Why should you put up with less just because a corporation made it? That is silly. We should want to live in a society where trying to be good needs several qualifiers and asterisks beside them, not one that excuses decay."
It is much the same with stores like Walmart which used the turbulent times as an excuse to push forth automatic cashes . . . which is now backfiring on them years later.
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| What happened in 3 years that turned them around so fast? |
Needless to say, this change was more of a hope than an expectation, but it appears as though the customers themselves have realized this, too. People aren't as dumb as the nihilists think they are, even if they can't always express their displeasure. Sometimes certain people just happen to notice shifts before they happen.
That is pretty much the case here. This is a change that was more necessary than you might think, even amid a culture that worships dead corporations from yesteryear.
As I went on here:
"I suppose I should expand on the above example. You've probably seen more than a few jokes centered around how anyone thinking that chain restaurants like Pizza Hut or McDonalds should look good are silly or something, but that misses the point of the complaint. Why shouldn't they look their best? Why shouldn't everything? The fact is that if things can be better than they are, then they should be better. Why should you, why should anyone, be trained into wanting less? Why should you be made to expect less because it is easier for a corporation to not bother? It isn't about the things themselves, but about the lack of any ambition at all."
I have to admit I didn't think there would be any turnaround on this one for years. Thankfully, however, my estimation was wrong. More people have noticed this decline than you'd think.
If you're on social media then you might have seen the following news making the rounds recently. Believe it or not, this is a bigger deal than you might believe, because this is the first time any of these companies have even attempted an about-face on a bad decision.
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| The archive is here |
Can't say anyone would have expected this a year ago when I wrote my post. It really did feel like this sort of simple thing was gone forever.
Of course one can be cynical about this, but remember what I said a year ago. Everyone knew how sterile and corporate things have been getting over the last few years. This has been a complaint for a long time and yet nothing about it had changed or even had an attempt at improvement. Aesthetics getting uglier, spiteful anti-corporate people gleefully welcoming the pro-corporate changes to own the chuds, prices only going up as quality went down, and the same miserable anti-social atmosphere in all of these establishments.
This isn't to say the above picture is a sign of victory, but it is a sign that there has been an attitude shift since I wrote the original above paragraph. Such a thing was unthinkable then. One can even read the original twitter thread to see that there is a lot more to this than originally thought. They aren't doing this test for no reason.
So what does this mean going forward? Maybe not much, but it does show that not only is the problem real--but more people know it exists than we were led to believe.
As I said a year ago:
"And it feels as if most people understand this by now. The bare minimum of effort is not only not respectful to yourself or others, but it's also boring. The biggest problem to come from Cultural Ground Zero was how everything melted into a pile of bland goo and no one appeared to care if they even noticed in the first place. You can look at photos from 2006 and then from 2018 and you won't find much different between them, even though you'll also never find anyone who thinks what was produced during that time being ideal either. Now, however? It's not enough anymore. People have decided they deserve more, even as those in charge decided they should have nothing instead. We are hitting a low, even as we are beginning to aim high."
Even in 2022, it was obvious that people were reaching their limit with this sort of unambitious laziness we've allowed to foster since the 1990s. Especially after about three years of a global pandemic and the disastrous fallout from said event, we are realizing we can't let the realization of how far things have crumbled get in our way forever. We can't lay down in bed depressed forever. We're eventually going to have to get up again.
As a reminder, Coronavirus started at the tail end of 2019, but it became a worldwide issue as early as January 2020. We are only now leaving 2023. This effectively means the '20s has been molded and shaped by the pandemic and the reaction to it. We've still yet to fully shake it off, and it seems like many want more than mere status quo from a few years ago to return. But at the same time, the '10s were awful, and everyone knows it. People want more than the sterile pit of dead ends that was the 2010s, and to get it we're going to have to start aiming higher again.
We're going to have to stop accepting the bare minimum in everything. Eventually there won't even be a bare minimum to accept--we'll just be accepting whatever is shoveled out to us. That's not going to lead to better things.
Thankfully, as noted above, there are signs that a better direction is being sought out. But is that going to be enough to pull us out of the post-pandemic rut?
As I went on:
"So what exactly will the legacy of the 2020s be? From what we've seen so far, it appears to be a transitional era between the death of modernity, Cultural Ground Zero, and the first step towards something grander to come later. We are on the precipice of change, but what that change will be is still up in the air. Where it'll all end up is anyone's guess, but those paying attention have seen attitudes shift, especially over the last three years, desiring more than the bare minimum and reaching out to higher places. Ambition is what they want to see again. I think we all do."
I still hold this to be true. Cultural Ground Zero is fading away with the death of modernity. It's going to take some time and some effort, but there are plenty of signs that where we were going is no longer the road we want to go down. The 2020s, in my mind, is an era of changing course. We can't sustain ourselves on our current trajectory, we all know that, so it is time to finally make the big decisions on where to head next.
That's pretty much what 2023 was composed of: a lot of boiling off and a slow change finally beginning to show itself on the fringes of western cultural as a whole. Does this mean 2024 will be more of the same, or will we backslide? All we can do is wait and hope, and build.
And that's where we'll leave this year in review off.
2023 was a weird time. I managed to release 5 books this year, far more than I expected to, and also am ready to start off next year with motivation to spare. I didn't slow down for 2023, so here's hoping I don't need to do so for 2024. I've got plenty of things yet to do. I'm also putting my books up in pocket paperback format over on Lulu. There's something for everyone!
There are also plenty of surprises ahead, so be sure to keep your head up. You never know just what might happen next.
Either way, I hope 2023 was fruitful for you and yours, and that the next year is even more so. We're finally entering an era of real change. Let us all turn this ship around together.
Because slowly and surely, it is beginning to do just that.
Two adventures of high action and creeping terror for only a dollar!
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