So far, I’ve mostly talked about the things I enjoy that other people have done. Even the Songs of the Week are other people’s music. Don’t worry, this won’t be my debut album. Instead, I’d like to start a semi-recurring sub-theme here on Exploration days: my creations. This will include looks at some of my artwork, my short- and long-form fiction writing, music video concepts, and even my movie scripts. On this first expedition into my creative side, we’re taking a look at my first “full-length” film script, Enniland.

I don’t have much training in formal script writing. I took Intro to Screenwriting while working on my Art degree. If I didn’t need to focus on my Art credits, I might have taken more screenwriting classes; I devoured the assignments for that class. For one assignment of a 12-page script (about 10-15 minutes of film), I actually wrote two: a gamer diving into a virtual reality to save a girl trapped by a secret government agency, and an older WWE-style wrestler having one last match and teaching one last lesson to his protege as he passes the torch. The class read both scripts (if you’re writing scripts, get them read. It helps so much), and the teacher said that the virtual reality story might sound good as a feature film. She didn’t know what she was getting me into. By the end of the semester, I had 70 pages. It’s increased to 80, and I’d like to get it at least to 90 one day.

I don’t think I can boil down all of 80 pages in this space, but I’ll give you my quick explanation. Jason, our protagonist, is thin and weak in the real world, but in Enniland, the virtual game, he is respected, powerful, and a little bored. One of his friends in the game catches the ire of a wizard named Penny; after a brief exchange of power and knowledge, Jason and Penny find a commonality. Both love to play the game, and both play at a level that few have attained. But just as Jason is getting to know her, Penny shares something terrible: she’s in danger in the real world, and she believes that Jason is the kind of person who won’t stop until she is safe.

But Jason isn’t cut out for real-world exploration, not anymore. He goes back to the game, and lucks into finding a secret connection point to a secret underground base full of robots. Jason connects to one of the robots and starts piloting it around, thinking he’s still in the game. That is, until he finds Penny strapped to a table covered in electrodes. Lucky Jason had stumbled upon a shadow team’s clandestine hit squad, disguised through a video game, using Penny as an unwilling pilot.

I don’t want to give away too much of the ending, mostly because the ending still needs some work. I will say that I use my favorite writing trope: the beginning and ending are mirrored in order to bring a full closure to the story.

I haven’t read through this in a while. It’s no Citizen Kane, but I’m still happy with it. And this all came from a little idea. I guess the moral of this story (and most of these creative ideas of mine) is that old Shia Labeouf line: “Don’t let your dreams be dreams.” Try stuff.

Today, I finished re-listening to the TV Crimes Podcast (come back to us one day, you glorious bastards), and needed a new distraction on my drive around town. I ended up on a Magnum P.I. re-watch podcast, and this gave me an idea. Re-watch podcasts are a thing, and I’m all about trying new things. I also like watching movies, and as the progenitor of the Liam Neeson Peril Meter, I kinda feel I owe it to the world to present my findings.

First things first: this is not the announcement of a podcast. I’m still working on technical things, like having a good enough microphone, and having the time to watch these movies with other people so we can have podcast banter. This is just an exploration of what the podcast could be, and what the LNPM is. Hopefully, the podcast will follow soon.

Second: a re-watch podcast is a podcast (internet talk radio-ish) where each episode of the podcast is a discussion of one episode in a show, or one movie in a chronology. For example, there are re-watch podcasts of Magnum P.I., every Star Trek series, and multiple different podcasts named Countdown to Infinity re-watching all the Marvel movies before Avengers: Infinity War.

Now that that’s out of the way, what the heck is the Liam Neeson Peril Meter, or the LNPM?

Liam Neeson is a prolific actor. His first credited role on IMDB is in the leading role of Pilgrim’s Progress, a classic Christian tale, in 1978. Up through the 80’s, he had a variety of roles, but in the 90’s, he found his true calling: action. Not the kind of action that Vin Diesel or Sylvester Stallone would be in; you won’t see Neeson in The Expendables 4. Liam Neeson excels in movies where violence feels like the last resort, even though violence is exactly where we’re headed. Some of his best roles aren’t in action movies (Schindler’s List, The Lego Movie), but he’s got the range for it.

Because of his many roles in dramatic action movies, I started to wonder: how much trouble does Liam Neeson get into in these movies? How does he handle this trouble? To that end, I devised the Liam Neeson Peril Meter to categorize, from 1 to 10, the amount of peril that Liam Neeson is in, per movie, taking into account how he handles that peril. For some examples: in Star Wars: Episode 1, Liam Neeson is in a fair amount of peril, but he handles it so well that I would probably rate it a 3 at most. In Taken, Neeson is in about as much peril, but guns his way through all of it, making the peril seem much greater, so probably a 7 or 8.

I have a Google Sheet of 71 films, guest appearances on TV shows, and one video game. If this podcast actually happens, I don’t know how many of those get watched, but I’m hoping for all of them.

Which movie do you think will rate the highest? The lowest? Does anyone else remember Sam Raimi’s early attempt at superheroes Darkman?

This is something I haven’t done before, but it’s not particularly exclusive to the Twin Cities. However, since it is a new experience for me, I figured I’d talk about it.

My brother has talked about donating plasma before. It’s spending money, or lunch money, or emergency funds. So last week, I went to a local plasma donation center and signed up.

For those who don’t know, plasma is the liquid part of your blood. It’s important for your circulation, but not as important as red blood cells. However, that same plasma can be used to create medication. Your body can stand to lose a little plasma every now and then, just like it can stand to lose a little blood now and then. But since the plasma isn’t as important to your circulation, you can lose more of it at a time. At most, you can give about a pint every visit, and you can donate twice a week.

If you want to get signed up, keep in mind that your first visit will take a while. Because they’re messing around with your fluids and your fluids are important for you as well as for their future use, it’s important that you are healthy going into the procedure. All added up, between signing up, safety information, a quick physical, screening (done every visit), and the actual procedure, it took almost 2 hours. I’ve been informed that it will take only a little over an hour on future visits.

The procedure itself isn’t painful. The worst part for me was that I had to be constantly squeezing my hand, in order to keep blood flowing. That’s not something I usually do, so my hand muscles were complaining. Other than that, they drew out a lot of my blood, spun out the plasma, added in saline, and pumped it all back in. No dizziness, no muscle weakness, nothing.

The first few visits at this particular clinic give a bonus, and once the bonus is over, the regular pay can get up to $300 per month. It’s not living money, but for 2.5 hours per week, it’s pretty good extra money.

I’m preemptively numbering this bit because I’m sure I’ll come back to it again.

My expensive hobby of choice is Magic: the Gathering. Most people have an expensive hobby, and usually just the one. Football games, concerts, cars, whisky, Warhammer 40k, Magic: the Gathering; all of these cost money to have fun, but it’s worth it. Recently, I’ve become more observant of every part of the card, and this has lead to a greater appreciation of the game.

In order to continue, I feel like a primer of Magic might be in order. If you want to learn how to play, this video is a silly, technically accurate summary, and this video is a shorter, more official version. If you don’t necessarily want to learn, that’s fine. Take a look at this example card here.

Each part of the card is important, but for when you play the game, some parts are more important. For example, the top-right corner is the cost, just like at the store. The more stuff is up there, the more resources is costs. The bottom-right corner is how big this card is once you have paid the cost to have it. These are both pretty important. Things that are not very important to gameplay include the artwork, the name (top-left), and the flavor text (the stuff in the lower box in italics). However, if all that mattered was the cost and size, why put the art and the name on the card? Just call it Flying Guy and knock off for lunch.

But the art matters. Each expansion to this game takes place in a defined world, with characters and stories. Some of those characters are larger than life, and their stories shape the world around them. Some of those characters are like this Suntail Hawk: just a part of the world, but how they interact with the world defines them both. A few years ago, Magic’s expansion was set in the gothic horror world of Innistrad for the second time, and the stories in the cards were excellent.

A few things about Innistrad. The world was designed to be Humans vs Bela Lugosi’s Greatest Hits. There’s vampires, werewolves, zombies, and ghosts, and the humans are beset on all sides. In order to denote the changing nature of werewolves through gameplay, as well as other important changes, Magic introduced double-faced cards. Instead of having the uniform card back like every card game has, some cards had two fronts. Through gameplay, these cards could turn over, transforming from one side to the other, but remaining the same creature.

The art for the werewolves had to show that it was the same entity from front to back, but that their transformation was affecting their world. For example, here’s Hinterland Logger. On her front, she’s a beefy human with some splintered logs. This makes sense; she’s a logger, after all. But if we look to her flavor text below the art, we see an anecdote about how she refused to buy axes. That’s odd. When she transforms to her other side, we see the secret to her logging: she’s a massive werewolf that rumbles through the trees. The flavor text now refers to the axes as “inferior”, and I’d believe her.

Two other strong werewolves: Breakneck Rider (both a pun about being a Neck Breaker as a werewolf, and you can see the horse he was riding dead on the ground) and Village Messenger (he has some bad news, and the news is he’s coming to get you).

On the second visit to Innistrad, there was a new threat. Gothic horror was being invaded by Lovecraftian horror. Tentacles and mind intrusion everywhere. It settled into the werewolves quite nicely. After all, they were prone to changing forms; what’s a few extra tentacles and body horror? Originally, the werewolves could turn back into humans, but these new werewolves, once possessed by tentacles, could not change back. Kessig Prowler is the best example of this. The flavor text tells the story in two sentences, and the art makes it very clear that something has gone wrong.

There’s so much more art and story to talk about. I’ve got a list as long as the video game to-do list. If anyone reads this, what’s your favorite Magic story-in-a-card? If you don’t play Magic, what are other places that have little contained stories like this?