Problem Attic. Insert witty tagline here.

A Fictional Story

(This is, shall we say, a “teaser” of my attempt to answer one of Gus’s suggestions box offerings.)

Egads sighed as the door blew open, gusting his paperwork across the floor.

“Farout Mann, you are a pain in the butt.” he said. “Are you going to close that thing?”

Farout grinned sheepishly and closed the door, cutting off the minor inflow of dead leaves and snow. He took off his gloves and ear-flapped fur hat, and began unwinding his scarf.

“They’re a bit restless today—I nearly got bitten a couple of times.” he said.

“It’ll be the weather” said Egads. “It shouldn’t be snowing this early.”

“That’s probably it. Still, I might go check on them again a bit later.” Farout hung his scarf on the hook with his gloves and hat and crouched to gather Egads’s paperwork. His knees creaked, and he groaned.

“Why couldn’t we have been sent to a species that stands upright or something? My knees can’t take too much more of this crouching nonsense.”

Egads snorted. “The crouching is nothing. What gets me is having imaginary fleas continually picked out of my hair. I mean, I get this close to turning around and hitting them.”

“Something I imagine you’re quite careful not to do, after last time?”

Egads looked down at Farout. He lazily stretched out a boot, and gave Farout a shove that sent him (and the paperwork) sprawling across the floor. “Shut up, Mann.”

(This is the first in my Suggestions Box series.)

Today I’ll be answering a question from Stan, who wrote:

Why are the Street Fighter Alpha movies so disappointing?

Stan, here’s your answer.

Why are the Street Fighter Alpha movies so disappointing?

Firstly: let’s face it, a film will always struggle to imitate the narrative perfection and sublime characterisation that fish-and-chip shop arcade machines offer. I mean, that scene where that guy beats that other guy to a pulp and then does his victory move — that’s humanity, that’s triumph over adversity, there. Sure, it’s portrayed in pixels the size of your thumb, with about 3 different colours to choose from, but I’ve always said that constraints breed genius. The graphical limitations, in my humble opinion, simply served as a catalyst—an inspiration, if you will—to the writers and the voice actors, whose lack of recognition in the sphere of the arts is, quite simply, a crime of gross negligence.

So, to answer your question, Stan, you were bound to be disappointed. Your mistake lies not in expecting a beautiful, emotive experience from the film adaptations—by any other standards, the films are a meeting point of the divine and the human. No, your mistake lies in the fact that beside the perfection—the sublime transcendence—of the games, any work of art would pale. I sincerely believe that Michelangelo himself would have wept had he beheld the Custom Combo system, and Chuck Norris is reported to have based his character in Walker, Texas Ranger on the character of Akuma (the game version of course; the movie characterisation was shallow in comparison). Of course the films were disappointing; one cannot better perfection.

… this is a music review.

Well, it did make me want to listen to the song.

I fall asleep, but even as my head sinks into the pillow I find myself in a field. It is a grey evening, but there is just enough light that I can make out the outlines of hedges around the boundary.

I’ve come here for some reason, I think, but I don’t know what the reason is. Then, there it is—what I’m looking for is here. But what am I looking for? I couldn’t say, yet somehow I know it’s here. I look around, looking for something, anything that looks familiar, meaningful. Nothing. I look down at my feet. No clue there either. Why am I here?

I decide I might as well start walking; there’s nothing happening here. My feet start moving, and I can feel the damp begin to seep through as my feet kick the early dew from the grass. Here and there I can see bare patches, or areas where the grass is a little shorter, a little thinner—a little less wet—and my journey meanders through these patches as I waver between keeping my feet dry and making a straight line in the direction I’ve chosen.

I think I’m making some progress; the hedge I’m heading towards seems visibly closer. But dreams only last so long, and reality slowly fades in. I half-wake long enough to roll over and begin searching for another dream.

She came out of the mist, a spectre floating between the ghosts of apple trees as she walked towards me. The trees stayed shrouded in mist, but she became more solid, more real with every step she took, until she was standing in front of me, no longer a spirit but a creature of flesh and blood, so real, so now I couldn’t breath for fear of breaking the moment.

Of course, I had to breathe, and, as gently as I tried to exhale, it seemed a gale of rushing air and noise, shattering the impossible stillness of the moment. She smiled, a small rueful smile, as though she understood, and suddenly it didn’t matter. We stood for a moment, then turned and walked off as the sun sent its first tentative beams through the mist. Another day began.