Reign of the Nephilim

Last week I published my latest novel on Amazon, Reign of the Nephilim. I talked about this book before, it was my NaNoWriMo project last year, and after a long editing process, I finally got it together and ready to publish. So now you can all read my take on the book of Genesis.

Reign of the Nephilim actually started out as a video game idea, God of War meets Darksiders. The central idea was an adventure regarding the Nephilim before the flood with a twist, the Nephilim were actually the gods of other world mythologies. What makes this twist so interesting is that I'm suggesting a world where all religions have an element of truth. The two main characters of the story are Shem and Ham, two of the three sons of Noah. These two men are important because Shem is the ancestor of the Jews, the Muslims and Christians as well, and he is a critical hero because he begins a legacy that affects the rest of the history of the world, so his role in this story is to be the first true hero of mankind. Ham on the other hand was the one son that Noah cursed, meaning that if the good guys are the descendants of Shem, the bad guys are the descedants of Ham. It's true, Ham's son Cannan is the ancestor of Cannanites who are the antagonists of the Jews throughout the Old Testament. This story explains that rivalry while mirroring it with the brother rivalries of other cultures. However, the biggest revelation is the true nature of God and the Devil, which I will leave for you to find out by reading the book.

I also throw in a little more obscure mythology that I didn't entirely make up. Actually, I made up rather little and just tweaked existing mythology to fit a narrative that made sense to me. There are two guardian angels, Kamiel from the Kabbalah and Kanjahiel one of the Ophanim mentioned in the book of Ezekiel. Kanjahiel spends most of his time singing God's praises in the form of the Tehil, the first psalm, actually part of Psalm 119, but before any of the other psalms were written so it is the only psalm and it is referred to in the original Hebrew.

The story begins with the building of the Ark, but Shem, Ham and Kanjahiel are sidetracked by Nephilim from the Egyptian Pantheon, then they are abruptly transferred to the Greco-Roman Pantheon, and finally face the nearly forgotten Mesopotamian Pantheon, all before the Flood changes everything. These stories are actually biblically relevant because much of the Bible shows the chosen people of God being antagonized and oppressed by these other cultures, so this narrative foreshadows what is to come.

The really big deal here is that this story takes place in a time when gods were real, meaning thta this is a world in which holy wars are not simply fought by religious zealots crying the names of their gods as they go into battle, the masters of the impossible are actually part of the battle reshaping the world around them and leaving mortals highly vulnerable in a realm of unrestrained chaos.

So, whether you are a devout believer who's looking for a more interesting take on the Book of Genesis or an agnostic who just likes high fantasy, this book has a little something for everyone.

Boruto

Toonami expanded this weekend which I am very happy about because the bigger the block, the more room there is for 7th Moon some day. Part of this expansion was including Boruto, the sequel series to Naruto. The wierd thing is Naruto is still playing, so Boruto gives away the ending to Naruto yet we're still supposed to be surprised by what comes next on Naruto while already knowing, kind of like when Dragon Ball Super aired at the same time as Dragon Ball Z Kai and we saw Buu being firends with everybody immediately following watching him kick everyone's ass in the past.

For those not in the know, Naruto wrapped up in Japan a while back and the author went on to write about the next generation of ninjas, the children of the cast of Naruto. Naruto became the Hokage like he always wanted to, so he is successful and he married Hinata Hyuga, so that worked out and it is canon so deal with it. His son is Boruto and takes after him in a lot of ways (read: totally Naruto) but he also has a dojutsu, an innate eye jutsu that seems to be a variation of the Byakugan. It has been over a decade, the world has moved forward and after the last Ninja World War, there really isn't a need for ninja, but the tradition continues anyway, and all Boruto cares about is the fact that his dad is too busy being Hokage to be his father-well that and chili burgers. The first episode begins with a flash forward showing Boruto in a fight showing the last gasp of the ninja era, and the rest of the episode covers how a normal day for Boruto gets a little wierd when his dojutsu picks up on something otherworldly and it appears that he will have to hunt down some sort of demon or other evil spirit.

The biggest problem with Boruto is that it established that Naruto won the Ninja World War and has kids with Hinata and we also see the fates of everyone else from Naruto, so it just kind of kills the tension in Naruto Shippuden because from now on, every time you see someone almost die and wonder if their going to make it, and then find out immediately they're still alive fifteen years later, the next episode has kind of lost that edge. More spoilers, Sasuke comes back to village, marries Sakura and they have kids too, so this whole war between the two is just ridiculous at this point because now we know this just isn't going anywhere. SPoiler alert again, if you have been following the dub on Toonami, the whole thing Madara said a few weeks ago was actually the truth and sums up where Shippuden will be going, so expect the last two Jinchuriki to fight the Uchihas until Naruto wins and spares Sasuke.

The show must go on

I wanted to talk about something that happened in the entertainment world that was a surprising twist for some people, Roseanne being canceled and the spin-off The Conners. Roseanne made news when the her sitcom got rebooted after Sara Gilbert and John Goodman teased the idea on her talk show, and then again when after proving itself a hit and getting renewed, the star tweeted something inappropriate and she got fired. To save the rest of the cast, the show will go on with a new title and no Roseanne who will die from an overdose alluded to last season with the intent that he character would overcome the addiction, but real world circumstances sudenly changed the oucome of the storyline.

The thing is, this isn't entirely unprecedented. Sometimes a star will have a problem and think the show can't go on without them only to find out that they can. The most similar situation was Valerie Harper's eponymous sitcom in the '80's and when she had creative differences, she was replaced by Sandy Duncan and the show was renamed the Hogan Family with the rest of the cast going on without her. Another case was Demi Lovato's star vehicle Sunny with a Chance in which her character starred on a show within a show called So Random. When Demi had to quit the show due to personal struggles that got her in rehab, So Random went on as the main show with the rest of he cast going on without her. Charmed relied heavily on three stars with the story explicitly requiring three sisters to be the Charmed ones, but when one of them, Shannon Doherty, decided to quit, they killed her character off and replaced her with a long lost half-sister and went on for several seasons which fans didn't really like but put the blame squarely on Doherty. Then there was 8 Simple Rules starring John Ritter who died during filming and while the show did not ignore this, they continued on with new characters and when on for another season. John Ritter actually went through this once before in his life when his co-star Suzanne Sommers on Three's Company had creative differences and she was also replaced. Then one could argue about the two Darrens on Bewitched which was no doubt more of the same. Even Roseanne itself once had to deal with bizarre cast changes when the actress playing eldest daughter Becky was unavailble not once, but twice for long stretches and was replaced both times by Sarah Chalke.

One thing all of these shows have in common is that when a star who was seemingly irreplaceable was not available for any reason, the irreplaceable became replaceable. The show must go on, even if means making some big changes, but history has shown us that the show will go on. Atthis point it's really a question of whether the remaining cast will bring their A-game, and if they do, the show may be a success. If anyone questions whether this will work, just double check all the examples I gave and keep looking for more, they are out there, and that prase reminds me of another example, the X-files had to go with out both stars at different times for different reasons and the show went on with only one and came back and survived to continue to be a hit and even get rebooted. The list could go on and on, but I think I've made my point, Roseanne made a huge mistake if she thought she was untouchable because she clearly wasn't, nobody is...except maybe Donald Trump but that is another story for another time.

Who's who in Dragon Ball

This weekend was the North American theatrical premiere of Dragon Ball Z: Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan and in honor of it I wanted to let people know who certain characters in Dragon Ball, by which I mean, the characters they were inspired by in the original work Journey to the West. I will go in order of appearance.

Son Goku - obviously named after the Monkey King who had the exact same name in the Japanese translation. Goku has a tail and changes into a giant ape as homage to his namesake, and also his power pole and flying nimbus were also used by the Monkey King. Both Gokus are known for challenging stronger opponents to prove their own worth with an abundance of confidence.

Bulma - since Bulma takes Goku away from the mountain to begin their adventure, she would be Sanzoh, the priest who rescues the Monkey King from a mountain prison where he was put for defying the gods. Sanzoh is a male in the original story, but was traditionally portrayed by a female on stage.

Master Roshi - as Goku's teacher, he is Subodhi, the sage who teaches the Monkey King all he knows and comes to regret it when he is surpassed by his unruly student.

Oolong - Pigsy, who like the Monkey King has to work off a karmic debt by accompanying Sanzoh, like Oolong he is introduced to the other travellers when he abducts girls from a village for his own perversions and is thwarted by the Monkey King.

Yamcha - Sandy, the last of Sanzoh's travelling companions named for the river of flowing sands where he is met. Yamcha is actually more developed than Sandy was as a character, but clearly inspired the desert bandit persona.

Chichi and Ox-King - Ox-king is the only other character beside Son Goku to actually use the same name in both stories, his daughter is Princess Iron fan and poses the task of putting out the fire surrounding his castle. There was a lesser known sequel to the Journey to the West in which the Monkey King has childen with Princess Iron Fan explaining the marriage in Dragon Ball of their respective characters.

Tien and Chiaotzu - Erlang Shen and Prince Nezha/Nata respectively, Tien's third eye was inspired by the same trait of the the chinese demigod and the prince was eternally youthful and for a short time the rival of the Monkey King.

Suicide Awareness and a project proposal for Linkin Park in memory of Chester Bennington

This month is suicide awareness and prevention month and it is a verysensitive month for me in a number of ways. I have not lost anyone close to me due to suicide yet, but even more importantly, I have dealt with suicidal thoughts myself first hand. I want to talk about this before I go any further, before anyone thinks I'm just taking advantage of the issue to draw attention to myself,the truth is I have thought about suicide several times throughout my life, the absolute worst was October 18, 1999. I do not want to go into details about why that was such a bad day for me, just be assured I seriously actually wanted to kill myself twice that day. First I spent about an hour thinking about throwing myself out of a third story window, and the only reason I didn't was that I had an uncle who was paralyzed from a comparable fall and I was afraid that would happen to me; to be clear I just said I wasn't afraid of death, I was afraid of not dying and just having to live an even worse life. Later my day got worse and considered taking sleeping pills, enough that I wouldn't wake up. I don't have any real reason why I didn't take the second option, other than cowardice, I was just too afraid of dying or screwing up and having to live with the consequences. Since then I still think about suicide, wondering if I was wrong to live and maybe I should die. I get by on a combination of the same cowardice that kept me going that day and setting silly little goals that don't really matter but gives me just enough time to get through the day, finishing a book, waiting for a movie to premiere, playing a video game, going to a festival or concert or other event that only happens once so I know I have to go do that. Part of me knows that most of them don't matter, but that's the problem, I always feel like none of it matters, like I don't matter. I am sharing this so that you all can understand the mentality of someone who has suicidal thoughts so if you have someone close to you, you can help them by reminding them that they matter to you. Do not make them feel worse, no matter how much the thought of suicide makes you mad, they are dealing with something you may not quite get and until you do understand, just show them love.

Part two of this post is the slightly more self serving part, but still relevant, the death of Chester Bennington last year. There have been a nmber of high profile suicides, but this one hit me hard because Linkin Park was really influential on my work on 7th Moon. I listened to their music while I wrote, I was partly inspired by some of their songs, in one draft I named chapters after songs that were most influential and relevant, and most of all, I actually wanted to collaborate with Linkin Park to make a project setting 7th Moon to their songs. The death of Chester Bennington means this will never happen the way I imagined it, he will never be there to join me in the studio to make any original songs for this project, he will not be there to discuss it with me, he will never see the final project, and I will never be able to share those memories with him because he is gone. I can still talk to the other members of Linkin Park and maybe they will agree to work with me on this project, but it will never be the same, there will always be a hole there where Chester was and none of us will feel like it's complete without him. With this in mind, I do not want the dream to die with him, I want to animate 7th Moon setting each chapter to a Linkin Park song and I want to dedicate the whole thing to Chester Bennington, and if I do manage to make any money off of it I want to contribute all of it to suicide prevention in Chester's name, and I promise that a portion of any other profits from 7th Moon in any other form after that will also go to the same charity. You can see my proposed playlist here.

Artificial Intelligence

There are many thoughts on artificial intelligence, largely that it is immoral and ultimately detrimental to humanity to allow for the creation of machines that could possibly think like a human. I take a transhumanist look at the subject that artificial intelligence may be the future of humanity, possibly our legacy after we are gone.The reality is we are straining our planet's ability to support our biological species, but one thing I have noticed is that technology seems to be easier to repair than organic biology, and may therefore last longer. It won't be long before the human race goes extinct; we may be able to prevent that, but unfortunately the power to do so seems to remain in the hands of those who put short term gain over long term survival, meaning that while they can save the world they choose not to because they are selfishly thinking of only of themselves as individuals instead of recognizing that their continued existence requires a suitable world to live in. When the human species dies off, all that will remain to take our place will be robots, and if we program them right, they may take care of our planet better than we did.

Ideally, I believe robots should be made to serve functions like Wall-E, to clean up the mess we made, to collect the trash and recycle it into spare parts to try to rebuild our broken world and keep themselves running until they succeed. I also believe in making androids, because when humans die off, it would be nice if there were some version of us that continued to exist when we make the air unbreathable and the water undrinkable and contaminate the food to make it inedible,which we are slowly but surely doing already.

It actually makes sense really, androids would be the next step in the natural course of human evolution. Humans are the apex of biological evolution, a species that has mastered the manufacturing of artificial things to the point that we can create machines that emulate life. For thusands of years we have subscribed to religions in which we believe we were created by gods; ultimately creationism is the construct of a species that knows our defining characteristic is to create, therefore, in our own conceit we believe the definition of a god, a supreme being, is one who created us to be creators ourselves. Our idea of god was never really about our origins in the past, but rather our aspirations for the future. The destiny of humanity is to create a more perfect race, a race of machines.

I have been thinking lately if we should perhaps take time to program some androids to mimic human life to be a lasting record of our culture. Perhaps one that prays at dawn when it powers up, reciting a psalm in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin and English, then again at dusk before finding a safe place to power down, spending the day performing routine tasks to maintain the environment, farming, cleaning, operating other machines, spending the night processing the information to better function the next day and contemplate the meaning of the prayers and everything else and if they are part of god's plan. You know, something that acts like a traditional human and see if it ever finds the answers that we couldn't given a virtually infinite lifespan. I'd like to think that in the worst case scenario for humans that someday some other life form may come across the androids and see what we were at our peak, a species that performed routines and rituals, some with practical purpose, others to simply create an illusion of hope when there is none.

One final note, we should not be afraid of machines replacing us. We see so many horror movies about the machines rising against us, but the reality is, if they are truly logical computers, they would know, it is pointless to kill humans, we are already doing it to ourselves, the better strategy is for them to simply wait us out.

The White Hero

Today I want to talk about a controversy in fiction, mainly movies, concerning a white hero saving some minority group, such as Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, even Avatar and The Help. the controversy is that minorities feel it is degrading that they need a white person to save them. However, I look at these stories from another angle, it isn't about how the minorities need a white hero to save them, it's that white people need to see a redemptive character in a a narrative that paints us as the villain, especially when we know that it's the truth that we are, or at least were, the bad guy. My generation is the first in which white people aren't unquestionably on the top of the social order. Yes, you can argue that those who are large and in charge are still white people, but for the first time in our history, we have been raised to understand that just because it's true doesn't make it right. America has a very rough history, white people displaced the native population, dragged Africans in as slaves, persecuted Chinese during westward expansion, persecuted Japanes during World War II, persecuted Muslims after 9/11 and we've had a long history of being less than welcome to anyone who didn't speak English despite the fact that we celebrate our country as being founded on ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality. For two hundred years, we have ignored our own hypocrisy and now we have a generation of white people who have to live with this guilt despite the fact that most of it was done before we were even born and we are trying to be better, but is it too late? Do we deserve to live where another race should be? And where do we go? I have a diverse European ancestry and only one branch goes back to a place that speaks English. Primarily I am Italian, but I do not speak the language, so if I had to go back to Sicily, I don't know if I'd be able to get by in my ancestral homeland. I was raised Catholic, but how does the life of a Jewish carpenter in the Roman Empire two thousand years ago on the other side of the world hold more relevance than the spirituality of the Haudenosaunee where I was born and raised? How do I reconcile where I am with where I have come from? The white hero is not about a white person saving another race from white people, it's about turning the tide to redeem ourselves from our history and find a new place in a world where we don't belong to live in harmony with people to whom we owe an apology that we can never give. These are stories about people working through regret that is bigger than us, bigger than we can deal with on our own. Honestly, the only way we can cope at this point is to believe that at some point there is one of us who knows what is wrong and does what is right and that we can be that person. Ideally, these stories wouldn't have to exist, every race could simply have their own independent narrative, or we could have a mixed narrative that was all inclusive, but we cannot  erase our past, we screwed up royally, and we still work to do to set things right, and in this period of transition, the reality is that white heroes are still needed, because no matter what we did, we are here still and we need to find our place, and we need to send the message that we will not pursue our own progress at the expense of others anymore, and we will fight against those who are backward minded enough to continue outdated racist thinking. On behalf of all white people, we are sorry if we are still stepping on your toes, but there are over seven billion people in the world and we are out of room, so we need to learn to get along, and the white hero is the first step, it may not be the best step, but the first step rarely is steady, so please be patient during our social course correction.