I would like to thank everybody who is about to display God’s Rainbow all month long for having the courage to show your passion for God. The Rainbow is God’s promise that he will never again drop a flood on us and kill all of us for the many deadly sins that we do on a daily basis. It’s his enduring promise that he loves every one of us. And the heart and passion you show in waving that Rainbow truly humbles me. God loves you and so do I.
I’ve been working on a story for a while. It is in the 1980s, so I’ve put together a nice list of 1980s music I like and have been immersing myself in it for weeks. It’s pretty fun. I’ve even be listening to it while writing, to deepen the immersion. Well… Yeah… It didn’t entirely work. Not saying it wasn’t fun or anything. But I have spent years putting together a list of songs that I write with. Songs that drive me and help to keep me focused.
I mean I like the story, but it wasn’t really DRIVING me. So last night I went to sleep and did not turn on my alarm. I woke up when I woke up, went to my computer, turned on my normal writing music, and went to work. Whelp. After several hours of pounding away at the keys, I had found the end of the story I was looking for and got up to stretch and relax and go do things not writing for an hour or so to clear my head. Now that I have the end written, I can go back through everything I wrote before it and see what stays and what goes. I’m thinking most will stay, but there are some words that will change as I now know exactly where to point to make the end hit just a little bit harder.
It’s amazing the ways we learn to write and the mechanisms we put in place to do it. I never needed them when I was younger. My mind was never out of focus for writing. I could always do it. Even when I didn’t want to. Now I have to focus on it. And I’ve found good ways to do it. I’m glad they are available to me. We have built an amazing world to live in, and I pray to God that we can give it to our children.
I recently managed to watch Andor Season 2. The really short review is that it is much like most other Disney Star Wars stories in that there are a lot of miserable people doing miserable things to each other in a miserable universe. That said, Andor Season 2 is actually a good series.
If you like gritty series, then Andor is for you. Like Season 1, each story is 3 episodes long, so the best way to watch it is three episodes in one setting which is basically watching a movie. Season 2 has twelve episodes, so it is four movies worth of content, and it is very good.
It is a bridge between Andor Season 1, leading up to footsteps before the Rogue One movie, and it includes many new characters as well as bringing in actors and characters that show up in Rogue One. It was actually really fun to see many of these returning friends get some time to shine in Andor before they show up in the movie. Eight years later. It makes their appearance in Rogue One better. Yes, they did change the actor for one character, but the new actor did an amazing job. I’m beyond impressed with how he did it.
I then watched Rogue One and it is very much like Andor. Both good and bad. But I never liked the end, and I finally understand why. Andor never quits. He’s the guy that never stops doing one more thing until the lights go out. Most of the deaths in Rogue One are well earned and I have to say they are well done. But Andor isn’t the kind of guy to walk out onto a beach and watch the end come. Win or lose, impossible shot or not, he’s going to keep fighting for a way out until the very end and maybe a bit longer. I now dislike that scene even more than I did when I first saw the movie. It is a beautiful scene. Cinematography at its best. Whoever made it look that good deserves praise. But it doesn’t fit the character. I want to see Andor fight. Who knows… maybe somehow, he’ll survive to fight again… It wouldn’t be the first time a Star Wars character did that… 
All writers have the good idea scene. This scene that is vivid in our mind that we want to write. One day. Some day. We love it. We wait for it. We want to show it to people. A while back, I got the chance to write one of them, and it was awesome. I loved it. It hit all the points I wanted.
And it was completely and utterly out of character for the character put into it. This is one problem with good idea scenes. They can be awesome. But if the character that goes into the scene doesn’t fit, the story will feel off. Wrong. Maybe just a note, but it can be felt.
I wrote the peaceful and amazing scene that I wanted to do and it was good. But the character I put into the scene is without an ounce of quit and the scene is a situation he can’t win. He’s not the guy to take the peaceful way out. He’s the guy who fights and claws and never stops trying to do one more thing before the lights go out. If he dies lying down, it will be a heart attack in his sleep. Even if the situation is hopeless. Especially when it is hopeless. He will never stop.
That attribute is what people look for or find or infuse in the kind of absolute studs that become our special forces soldiers in real life. The people that will never quit are the ones that will win or die trying. They are the people who volunteer to go into hell to save people or kill people or whatever the mission is. They are the ones who will always do one more thing before the lights go out.
I’m so glad my story wasn’t accepted. It allows me a do over. It gives me the chance to write that scene the way a guy who doesn’t know how to quit would do it. And you know what? I can’t wait to write that scene.
The history of Russia is not well known in Western histories. They first came together as a collection of Slavic tribes centered around Kiev who called themselves the Rus. They commanded most of Eastern Europe beyond Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary. The Mongolian horde crushed the Rus, drove them north, and forced them to pay tribute. Moscow rebelled in time to form the Russian Empire and they considered it their duty to retake all the lands they lost and to drive all the way back to Mongolia to make certain the Mongols didn’t do it to them again. They also drove west into what we now call Eastern Europe and fought a long series of wars with the European powers over the lands they wanted back. And maybe a little bit more to act as a buffer zone for their people.
The Russo-Ottoman Wars are also not well known in the West. Both the Russians and the Turks were rising powers when they met. Sometimes the Russians won. Sometimes the Turks. But as time went on, the Russians marched south through all the lands they lost. Some names from that time resound even in our own ears. Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. Kiev. Ukraine. Sevastopol. Crimea. The Russians spent literal centuries retaking their lost territories and more. They didn’t want anyone driving them from their lands. Again. And just as the Turks moved into a region they conquered, so did the Russians. And neither side was keen to let the other remain settled in a land they conquered. Forced conversions or executions were common on both sides. And as the Russians advanced most of the Turkish Muslim populations migrated back into modern day Turkey. Sometimes willingly. Sometimes to escape the executioners.
Both the terms mass migration and genocide describe the population movements along the shifting frontiers over the centuries, and neither the Russians, the Europeans, or the Turks were shy about implementing either. One might even call that entire mess we call Eastern Europe the result of weaponized mass migration.
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