Praiser? I Hardly Know Her!

I was watching this video with Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais about religion, thoroughly enjoying being a preached-to choir, when Mr Gervais made a comment about agnosticism in regards to mythical creatures, as well as the existence of multiple different organised religions*. This gave me pause as I thought about how I really felt, and I ended up coming to some conclusions that I'd like to share here.
 Maybe I'm wrong here, but this is how I generally interpret the word agnostic: "Since there's no way of gaining any evidence either way, and believing in it does no harm, it's just not worth discussing or debating. To each their own." The only thing I really feel this way about** is the idea of something spiritual existing somewhere in the universe that we couldn't ever really feasibly find out about, nor would it have anything to do with our little speck of dirt. Something I will always debate and argue against at every turn, however, is religion itself. Organised religions, I believe across the board, preach ideas of sacrality and worship that I feel ultimately result in nothing more valuable than violence and hate.
 I was thinking about that Aussie radio DJ prank call involving the royal family that ended up driving the woman involved to suicide. I couldn't understand how being taken in by a harmless prank could cause a person that much mental anguish, but then I had a thought: she let down the Queen. This is obviously just a theory and entirely speculation, but what if she was raised in an environment where everyone just revered the royal family and the ground they walk on? That isn't really a religious example, but it's the same idea, and I really feel strongly that conditioning people to hold something sacred (like a book, for example) or worship someone on a pedestal like they are somehow higher or more important than anyone else, on a basic human level, whether it be a god, the Queen, the Pope or Tom Hanks, is terribly counter-productive to humanity. People do terrible things in the name of their god.
 And of course, this all starts at a criminally young age, or else it would have no staying power in the mind. Parents indoctrinate their children (and that is what it is) into whatever faith happens to be popular in the household when they're too young to even understand what thinking for one's self is, and by the time they've become rational, critically thinking adults, some people just never stop to look back questioningly on something that simply has been in their entire lives.

*To kind of respond to what Ricky Gervais said about agnostics, it's really just the one thing I mentioned that I feel that way about, and I'm certainly not walking around saying "Well maybe some made-made religions could be true I don't know!" (If you could read that last sentence in that voice you use when you're telling a story and you want someone to sound stupid, that would be great.) And I don't believe in auras, psychics, ghosts, goblins or Santa Claus for two reasons. One: they, too, were invented by people, and two: we can and have scoured the Earth and found nothing substantial.

**I'm not agnostic about Heaven, but I do think the basic idea is harmless and even beneficial***. I have no doubt that the simple belief in being able to meet your deceased loved ones again is what gets a lot of people through some of the tougher times. But even that can get twisted into a tool for manipulation when you start subscribing to a holy text. "Don't do this or you won't go to Heaven, blow up this and be eternally rewarded," etc. Not good times.

***This is a thing I made up today about the idea of Heaven.

My Writing Process

As I've been going through the initial writing process for Since It's V Day, I found it interesting to note how monumentally helpful a simple thing like a text editing program can be. I can't imagine the headache involved in trying to organise scenes written on paper, after you've jotted them down in the order they came to you. So I thought I'd detail here how I go about writing a story and why the easy functionality of WordPad is a fucking godsend.
 Basically what it comes down to is the ability to get the basic plot events marked down with several blank lines inbetween so I can easly insert content in its chronological place as it's formulated. Using this method I can begin to fill out the document with more detailed plot points and scenes, small bits of dialogue, character moments, descriptions and notes. It also helps to easily signify where I still have gaps in the sequence of events that require filling in.
 Now rather than set time aside for dedicated writing sessions, I'll usually just go about my day and, as I said in my last post, when an idea is new and exciting, it tends to fill my mind at every silent moment. This makes it easier for ideas for scenes and such to come more naturally as I mull over the plot, and I can simply insert them into the document as I go.
 Once I feel like I've got enough material, I'll begin stitching the scenes together, figuring out how they'll flow into each other, etc. Then, once most of the events and dialogue are written out, I'll go back to the top and begin systematically figuring out how each sequence will break down into comic panels, and begin producing the pages as I go. This is also how I wrote Two Guys Walk Into the Internet....

Since It's V Day

Something incredible has happened. Something amazing that I never imagined would happen to me, or rather, I often imagined would never happen to me. I... have had an idea. Yes, an idea. Phenomenal. But, as I say, it was a kind of idea I never thought possible. Not an idea for a joke, but rather something... else.
 I woke up at about 9pm last night, and for whatever reason, just lied in bed for a while, letting my mind wander. The tapestry of a small story began to weave itself into existence without permission. I considered it carefully, molding and refining it, and before long I knew I had to get up and write it down. Being new and intriguing, it filled my mind at every silence, and so ideas begat ideas, the story began to grow, and my excitement mounted.
 I've now just spent all night and day typing notes, thinking about characters and designs, and sketching out storyboards for a climactic scene towards the end of the story. A purely dramatic story is, once again, something I never even dreamed of attempting in all my days, so this will be completely untested water for me. Maybe I'll suck at it and it'll be terrible. But I'm not gonna find out by thinking about it.
 I'm making this post to mark down in the history books the day this project was birthed and pre-production began. I'll be quite interested to see how many superhero reboots have happened by the time this thing is done. This is a story called Since It's V Day.