WAS1 Productions

Normally I don’t do think pieces, but this bug got caught in my head and I wanted to share it. It’s a view for diversity representation that I think could resonate to many nerdy white dudes.

I’ve been thinking of the complaints of the diversity of actors in recent reboots/sequels to traditional films which have some people’s undies in a twist. When you’re a white dude, especially a young one, you don’t even think about how all media reflects your experiences, so seeing lady ghost-busters or Furiosa in Mad Max can shake things up.

My formative years were spent in one of the whitest states in the nation, but I think I have a good metaphor to show why wider representation is important. I remember being into obscure and nerdy things in high school and how wonderful it was to find my tribe, people who were into Doctor Who and who liked the B-52s or Devo and who introduced me to punk rock. Even so, I think I was the only person I knew who liked Rush until I went to college. Having people who appreciate and don’t make fun of the things you like is important.

Now given how important it is to find peers who are into the same things and who celebrate them with you, imagine if you were queer or trans, a person of color, or even a girl who wanted to play in the boys sci-fi sandbox. Think of how lonely that would be and why seeing someone who looks like you in the things you enjoy would be very empowering.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written or posted anything here. I should really change that…

Make art, create, don’t just think about it, do it.

Don’t worry if it’s not good or if anyone will like it. Remember that both Death Bed and The Room were films that got made and shown in real theaters.

Granted the latter was a self-funded vanity project, but that doesn’t change the fact that making something is the key, even if it’s only ever seen or enjoyed by a select audience.

One of the perks of running an audio-fiction podcast is that I can pimp my own work on occasion.

Just in time for Halloween, is this flash-fiction mood piece I wrote last fall, The End of October.

I let my old webpage account expire. It had been years since I’d updated it and it had gotten a bit krufty. I kept on thinking I would re-tool the stories archives, but I never got around to it. I did publish an anthology of my general-interest work, New Technicolor Dreams but I have yet to get around to working on a similar collection for my adult/erotic work.

So here is a zip archive of all the stories from my old site, up to 2003. Note this archive contains both general-interest and adult work. Look at the index.html file for descriptions of the files.

If you enjoy these stories, please let me know, and also maybe consider a donation to AnthroDreams to help fund the podcast for audio fiction and perhaps other creative projects.

This was another story I wrote back in November. It’s still in its rough draft. I was hoping to get the time to polish it up, but life and work have continued to be extremely busy, and I haven’t had the time or focus to come back to it. So I decided I wanted to post this rough version, as even with the flaws I know are there, it’s still a nice piece of mood reading.

This is a very personal piece for me. It’s not that I have anywhere near the dark thoughts that the protagonist do, and it doesn’t relate directly to anything in my life. Instead it was the result of a stressful time. During the second half of November, my sister was in the hospital due to various complications from what should have been a routine surgery. She was in quite serious condition at times there, and things kept vacillating between good and bad news for a few days. It ended up being an emotional roller coaster and this story was a cathartic synthesis of that mix of emotions.

I’d remembered the song “Hope” by R.E.M. off their album “Up” in the late 1990s and how I’d emotionally connected with it. My mother had been in the hospital recovering from a surgery when I was first listening to the album. I remembered coming home from visiting her, and although she was recovering well the stanza about the medical procedure still struck a chord with me. That seemed much more relevant this time around.

The whole album struck me as beautifully sad, with songs about pain and loss, loneliness and regrets, but there were also some mournfully hopeful songs in there as well. I’d listened to “Hope” several times on the way home from visiting my sister on a good night. I also listened to some other songs on the album “The Apologist” and “Sad Professor” and then “Walk Unafraid” for one of the hopeful songs.

Listening to those songs was so emotional. It conjured up some of the feelings I remembered from listening to the album the first few times. It also tied in to all the stress and angst and worries I’d had over the past week. It was beautiful and moving and I knew I wanted to write a story to capture that mood. Slowly an idea started to gel for me. It’s a little silly, but I think I managed to pull it off as a mood piece and a bit of speculative fantasy. I also really liked the character and name that came to me this one.

I tried an experiment with this story as I wanted to reference all of the lyrics to “Hope,” so I broke it out stanza by stanza. I had the story flow around it, following the mood of the song somewhat, it wasn’t perfect, but I liked how it came out. It’s by no means a literal interpretation of the song, but I think it’s a nice emotional interpretation of it.

Hope and Alligators
by Will A. Sanborn, 11/27/12
Song lyrics quoted from “Hope” by R.E.M.

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