Vintage Links 004: Heroine’s Journey, Mortal Kombat, Re-Setting After A Bad Day, & Professional Discomfort

The Vintage Links series is an attempt to clear 600+ bookmarked links I compiled over a period of six years, mostly coinciding with the period in which I worked for Queensland Writers Centre. It involves a lot of stuff I flagged because it would be useful at work, in my own process, or just plain useful.

Every week I gather together four of the best links I came across while clearing out the bookmarks folder on my browser, presenting a grab-bag of interesting stuff. I’m going full Marie Kondo on those fuckers: everything is checked, thanked, and either deleted or properly filed so I don’t have to deal with it again. If you want to see more, you can see the prior instalments using the Vintage Links tag

An Oral Hisotry of the Mortal Combat Movie (Aaron Couch for Hollywood Reporter, 2015)

Read it at Hollywood Reporter

I have a soft spot for video game adaptations. They’re very rarely great works of cenema, but will often be servicable and entertaining (Tekken, DOA, Resident Evil), bizarre to the point of abserdity (Double Dragon, Super Mario Brothers), or a cinematic car crash of ubelievable proportions (Streetfighter). Back in 2014, Aaron Couch did a bunch of interviews with folks involved in one of the first adaptations to reach that servicable and entertaining milestone—Paul Anderson’s Mortal Combat adaptation from 1995. 

This breakdown of the film’s production process is a fascinating look behind the scenes, casitng light on the challenges that impact on the final product of a film and the decisions being made in the moment.  It also gives you a glimpse of an alternate universe where Cameron Diaz played Sonja Blade in the film, and a whole new world of appreciation for the work ethic and glory that is Robin Shou:

Anderson: Robin would rate the fights. They would be a one, a two or a three. That would refer to how many ribs he bruised when he did the fight. The Reptile fight was a three-rib fight, so he really felt like he’d delivered for me.

The Heroines Journey: Learning to Work (Theodora Goss, 2015)

Read it over at TheodoraGoss.com

I’m a huge fan of Theodora Goss as a fiction writer. The Rapid Advance of Sorrow is one of those short-stories I come back to again and again, trying to plumb the depths of how it works and figure out all the little things that elevate it into something special.

Her blog is just as good as her fiction: often engrossing and open about process, full of deep thought about the topics she chooses to tackle. Back in 2015 she did a run where she looked at archetypal female stories,, and the ways the heroes journey as envisioned by Joseph Campbell makes for a poor fit when applied to female protagonists.

I’d flagged this post as a reminder ot read the entire series, but it’s also a remarkably useful examoination of a particular sotry beat. 

How to Recover From An Unproductive Day Like It Never Happened (LifeHacker, 2015)

Read it over at LifeHacker

Possibly one of the most useful articles I’ve ever come across on Lifehacker, and the kind of content that keeps it on my RSS feed when the firehouse of data they send my way starts to feel overwhelming.

I’m generally pretty good with managing my day when the idea of managing and being on top of things is something that I’m focusing in. I’ve got a productivity system that works for me, and when it’s running hot I get a shitton of things done on a daily basis. But I also have a tendency towards anxiety and fixed-mindset thinking, which means a bad day can quickly blossom into a bad week once I lock onto the idea that everything’s going a bit shit right now.

This article was the first place that suggested setting up a series of post-bad-day habits designed to get you back into a productive mindset, and that’s an incredibly useful idea.

Kelly Sue DeConnick on Discomfort (Vimeo, 2015)

Watch the video at Vimeo

One of the joys of clearing my Vintage Links file is occasionally finding something I’ve filed away and forgotten about that’s absolutely startling and great. This video, from comic book writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, absolutely belongs in that category.

It’s a speech about writing, and in particular about writing things that make people uncomfortable (whether that person is yourself or your audience). It’s also a speech about being read, as evidenced by this particular bit of insight.

…it is a weird thing to have something that you have had a hand in creating become a tattoo phenomenon, but my ego stays in check because as proud as I am of this book, and as much as it means to me, I know that what Dan Curtis Johnson said is right. You don’t get that tattoo to celebrate something in the book, you get that tattoo because the book celebrates something in you…

If you pay close attention there’s little bits of practical craft advice in there, among the broader talk about intent and goals, and the entire thing is well worth 20 minutes of your time.