Warren Ellis
British author of comic books and graphic novels.
During this week, I've been leaving the house only once a day, to clear my lungs before returning to my death bed. So I've been getting a single snapshot of the weather each day. And it's no wonder I'm fucking dying. Yesterday, blazing heat, not a cloud in the sky, people moving in slow motion under the oppressive radiation. Today? Black skies, pissing down with rain, gales turning people's umbrellas inside out. It'll be snow tomorrow. Or hot hail.
Stopping off in the pub to recharge before heading into town to complete Phase Two Xmas Food Shopping. Phase Three is tomorrow, when we go to our butcher to pick up the goose, and stop off at the local beer specialist to get a case of heather ale and maybe some Samiclaus (sp), the superpowered Christmas beer that pours like treacle and paralyses the brain.
I have decided that I'm going to drink myself into a coma tonight. Join me?
Does the Emperor wear no clothes? Or are you simply imagining him naked?
I will accept death as an alternative to the pain of being awake, at this point.
"We're archaeologists. We'll dig you up and work it all out in a couple of years."
Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded. If all you want is plot, go and read a Tom Clancy novel.
I am, in fact, Internet Jesus. Hurrah.
Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it, if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure. But fuck it. Anything worth doing takes work. Some people do question if it's worth it, given that the industry makes no friends and takes no prisoners and is not kind to people without the chops or the commitment or a thick skin. You know what? I've got forty books out there that some people wear on their fucking skin, and I didn't manage that by arsing around on the internet all day. That's right. I managed it AS WELL AS arsing around on the internet all day. I have powers.
What I loved best about The West Wing is how the characters spoke. People would say, well, real people don't speak like that. And to this day I fail to understand why that matters.
Finding a take on a female character is always hard, because I never want to find myself writing a man with tits, you know?
We're deathly afraid of that stabbing word "pretentious," the word that students use to curse each other's ambition. It's a young person's word, a shortcut-to-thinking word. I'm a big fan of pretension. It means "an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment." It doesn't mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow. [6/1/09]
The reason I only use female moderators on [message] boards is that I find women are better socialised and much smarter (and usually more level-headed) about interaction and discourse. Also, their presence tends to make a statement about the openness and non-locker-room-stench of a place.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
Mother of twelve bastards!
"I'm the villain! I'm the only one here who knows the plot! If you kill me, this movie will never end!"
A million fucking message boards, email, Twitter, any number of free tools, being limited only by time and your imagination? If I’d had the internet in 1988 I WOULD OWN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY BY NOW AND WOULD PUT HUNDREDS OF YOU TO DEATH EACH DAY JUST FOR FUN AND IT WOULD BE THE LAW
You're about to discover the depth of strangeness and beauty the world holds.
Alan Moore once told me he works the nine-pic grid because it's cinematic. I told him I work the six-pic grid because it's television. I should think more on that sometime.
If I knew PHP, I'd have my own social network system by now. Consider yourselves lucky.