Attacked Again... So Allow Me To Explain
Once Upon A Time: Ferretina
I was employed there with numerous other people, most every one of them very talented in their field.
The production ran into many hurdles over the course of its life, and was never quite finished or released unfortunately.
Over the course of its life, I learned a great deal about the nature of production, management, planning and certainly creative ways to use technology to overcome obstacles within strict budgetary guidelines.
Most importantly though, I learned a great deal about the nature of people and myself.
I worked with a good friend during that time who was also my employer, a man by the name of John Marshall.
I also worked with a number of other people on the production including the one of the ex-big wigs from NBC, whose successes included landing the show CHiPs (Peter Andrews). Ironically, he happened to be connected to another friend of mine (Don Tiffany) who was a professional trumpeteer that played on the original recording of that show's theme song. Don unfortunately passed away five or six years ago and is surely missed.
I also worked with a talented artist friend named Bernard, who nearly single handedly did all of the storyboarding for the film by pencil and hand himself, with the help of other artists notable in Toronto and a few others from New York. Janice, a coworker and friend contributed a great deal to the gargantuan effort that went into finishing the story boards in time for delivery pending an investment deal. As many people who've worked spec work in film can attest to, you literally give everything you've got to get a project off the ground.
Shared Perseverance Is What Forms Bonds
During that process, you form bonds with people. At the time you form those bonds, they have no context in terms of whether you like or dislike the person depending upon the extremity of interaction you have with them. So really, what defines that which lasts the longest has to do with what actually happened at that time and the hardship you overcome to achieve goals especially with others by your side, but also the kind of pressure that you experience afterwards in relation to those people that comes from the outside, and most often from people who weren't even there and whom know little or nothing about it at all.
Breaking Bias
We live in world that currently thrives on breaking people, especially those dedicated to the pursuit of their efforts through thick and thin. People who thrive on breaking bias in any form, and reorchestrating it on the grounds of blood or domination along the lines of peer pressure, influence and even control.
For some people that sort of thing isn't just role play. There are people who literally attempt to control others, and the proof for doing as such is something they draw from altering a person's bias in their favour versus others with which a person has strong connections.
For instance, if someone were to take a harsh stance against their own family or friends, while seemingly favouring strangers, such ideologies that believe themselves to be controlling people would use that as evidence to support their claims.
After all, who would side with complete strangers more so than their own mother but someone who was under the control or at the very least, influence of those they were biasing?
That question seems to solidify a solid proof for such a claim, for if someone did bias strangers more so than their own family or friends, they'd certainly have to be under their control or influence. Wouldn't they?
Its An Inside Job
In this case we're dealing with bias and free will. The fact that a person acting of their own free will and conscience will choose a path according to their own goals versus their instinctual need to preserve something else, be it their own genetic line, or in some even rarer cases, the dedication of their heart to that ideal, versus people who idolize blood and lineage above all else.
For instance, a person who formed a bond of love with someone who is from a different culture that is deemed beyond or outside of the sphere of lineage or blood of those focused solely thereupon. If the bond of the heart is truly weaker than the bond of blood, then anyone who exhibits dedication that exceeds the bias of blood to another human being on the basis of love and heart, has essentially disproven those so dedicated to blood that they'd make this a competitive effort at all.
What means would the blood centric group have of overcoming such a person who is so dedicated that they'd even violate their bias of blood in favour of their heart?
Well, that's easy. Its an inside job on the part of those who favour blood over heart and love.
Obviously, if one's family are at risk of being the second in bias to a relative's bias of love of someone outside of their blood, then perhaps such relatives might conspire in such a way so as to overcome that bias by a plethora of deceitful and illusory means.
One simple such means that comes to mind is a polarity reversal. The claim that a person's expression is simply posed as the opposite of what they truly intend.
For instance, if I in being so dedicated to my own love interest biased her more so than my own family lineage, that my own family were forced to claim that what I was expressing was actually the exact opposite of the way I truly feel, that would simply negate my expression, along with anything else I'd claimed.
What if I had a relative that wasn't of my own blood? Like a step father (or mother) who spent a significant time and effort in their life raising me as if I were their own? At some point later in life, my step father and mother break up, and begin lives with different partners. Is my mother's new boyfriend my father now and I am forced to forget the entire investment in my life that my (step) father placed in me of twenty six years in favour of blood, who've done everything they can to break that idea down?
Then, I meet someone who is of a culture that is not welcomed into the blood centric part of my family based upon their culture (my love interest as you know is Chinese), so that part of my family decides that they're going to side with the "blood only" side of the fence and help others who are similarly inclined to break down the illusion of me having my own free will, on the grounds that me making such a claim of being dedicated and biased towards someone who is outside of the blood of their blood centric ideology is the result of my either claiming the exact opposite of what I intend, or that I am under the control and influence of someone else that is steering me in favour of breaking the bias of blood.
So my own bias is now part of a dynamic where a blood centric group of people compete against a group of people who believe in something more: far more powerful and binding than simply following a genetic program designed to make you favour those of your shared genes, hence lacking any kind of free will, hence making the dedication of the bias of love meaningless. Who but only the strongest of willed and dedicated people have the ability to overcome the bias of blood and their own genetic programming? Preserving what they believe to be right on the basis of their heart and conscience.
Hence, those who claim that my own bias is simply an expression of the opposite of my intent, are part of an inside job.
The How And Why Of It
If I am of my own free will in deciding my allegiances and bias, then that would also mean that I'm of my own free will in having created A Lady's Prerogative and The Butterfly Dragon. Ironically, both works of writing despite their needing time to mature through various drafts and edits over the years, really did have an secret impact everywhere and far beyond my own reach as a mostly impoverished writer who literally after leaving Ferretina found two decades of hardship impossible to describe. In the midst of that hardship, I had the most emotionally charged and dedicated relationship of my life with a Chinese woman, who for all intense purposes was a great inspiration for both the key characters in both books. She inspired directly both Mila, and Heylyn in terms of my own love affair with both of those characters.
Over the years of my having started writing those books (from 2010 by the way), there have been many people who've tried to take them from me. As if I writing them before an unseen audience that knew someone was writing them, and what was being written, but yet could not deem who was writing them.
Perhaps a true ghost writer whose identity could literally be transferred from person to person, like rewarding a dog with a biscuit treat when they were a good dog. Meanwhile, the real writer (me) would be given a different identity other than the truthful identity of being that writer.
From that point, both A Lady's Prerogative and The Butterfly Dragon started to become a very well hidden phenomenon in the underground up until 2015, when it exploded, all while remaining very well hidden beneath the surface. An underground phenomenon that despite its hidden popularity, I didn't earn a single penny from and as a matter of fact, that in building it, I spent thousands of dollars of my own money not to mention pouring my heart into both those books.
When something becomes a phenomenon like that, and people realize that there's something going on beneath the surface, they suddenly see dollar signs. Literally. Like cartoons. Their irises turn from round coloured globules into literal dollar signs, and they believe that if they can take it from the owner, that they'll be rich and famous. No kidding.
So a bunch of people band together, much like the blood centric ideology versus the love centric ideology, and they attempt to do everything they can to take it from the person who actually created it, by creating an alternate history and impression of those involved. Apparently the people who do this sort of thing actually plan it out far in advance and as their game gets bigger and bigger and more aggressive and involved, ever bigger players get into it as well.
I used to believe in the scruples of big business. When I wrote the character of Walton Norler, I wrote it about someone who literally believed they could transform the post evil corporate doctrine from whence the millennium emerged to build a trust and belief in business with conscience. A whole new mindset that would lead the new millennium into the future. That the entrepreneur with a vision wasn't a scam out to pilfer the hard earned money of the skilled trade and labour force of their investment money.
Torman was the other side of the fence. A guy who found that he could play loopholes in the way the market system and businesses worked, exploiting the naivety of most employees of startups in such a way that he and his band of goons could actually over a short period of time (six months), alter the value of a public offering so much that he could buy it at a deal, and then use the reverse strategy to build it into a goldmine six months later. A year in total. No conscience. No matter who you cheated. Just for the money.
In each of the books, I put specific things at the forefront that needed to be a part of where we were going. Keep in mind that when I started A Lady's Prerogative, that I was living in a homeless shelter, waiting for housing. So rewind to 2003, when I was working for a film production company and you can kind of get a glimpse of the road I've traveled and keep in mind, that substance abuse or any such issues weren't a part of that journey. I even quit smoking cigarettes during that time. So as much as that journey was a challenge, I actually progressed in many ways beyond my own limits and managed to survive in situations that are impossible to describe. I've risked my own life to save the life of a woman who was attacked by a man wielding a (five pound) metal pipe. My injuries from that attack were so bad that it took a day and a half for my arm to stop bleeding, but she's alright, no injuries. I slept outside in -35 Celsius weather for three weeks solid, and woke up every single day and went to work from 7 AM until 4 PM all the while doing that. In fact, during my journey, I only stopped working and started focusing on writing from 2010 onwards, and working on that, I've always spent at least forty hours a week.
Up until 2019, I'd never taken a vacation in my life. Well, once in all honesty when I went horseback riding in Rocky Mountains with the woman who is the most direct inspiration for Alicia Westin. That's another story though.
So these books that I've written are very much a part of me and my person is ways the people trying to steal them would never understand.
When in April of 2012 I received my housing after eight years of homelessness, I first published A Lady's Prerogative I: The Yearning And The Learning, followed by the Butterfly Dragon I: Heroes Of Our Own in May of 2012.
Let's get back to Peter Andrews here for a moment. You see, when I make the claim that my own love interest is Mandarin Chinese, as it happens, there were people that knew Peter had worked for Ferretina, and those same people had also known that my friend Janice (who is Chinese) also worked for Ferretina.
Somewhere along the way, they concocted some sort of fabrication along the lines that Peter and Janice had hooked up (which I don't believe to be the case, but if it did, that's their business and not mine at all). When you have coworkers and friends, even when there are power struggles within (Peter and I had a few), you maintain a civil respect for one another and especially issues dealing with privacy and the private lives of those people. I completely support Janice's right to her life and privacy as an inspiring, intelligent and creative woman of immense character, so much so that regardless of whom she invites into her life, I'd protect her rights in any and every way I could, and I would certainly never spread rumours or lies about her or her interactions. There were none, and if there were, they were not my business. So for anyone to fabricate any such thing, about her, about Peter, about anyone in that production especially that violates the privacy of those involved, is completely and utterly disgusting to me.
Peter and I got along as much as was required, and there was a hidden power struggle between us, but regardless of that, we both have a serious respect for issues of privacy, especially where it involves coworkers.
So when I say that my own love interest is Chinese, I am not Peter in claiming any sort of association with Janice, and no such association occurred. She's a coworker from that time and a friend. I've never looked at her or objectified her in any sort of way that would compromise our professional association at that time or any other time.
My own love interest is a Chinese woman, though she is not Janice. Therefore, I am NOT being controlled or manipulated by Peter at all and never have been.
He was always very professional, and despite any sort of power struggle at the studio, he was always very civil, and I would not have anyone mistreating Janice, spreading rumours about her or any other of our female staff from that time. If the Director/Producer were alive today, he would certainly confirm that about my character and regard for my fellow employees, as would Don (Tiffany) and Dennis regardless of the intense commitment and stress all we had at that time in trying to see this through to its completion.
The Secret Wars
Long after situations like the ones I am trying to explain, our involvement in them becomes iconified in some way. Like we're the characters in some kind of stage performance set before an imaginary audience, with the writers, directors and and producers telling the story to an audience at a much later date. This becomes a part of a hidden mythos. A secret war or even as author Clive Barker once referred to it as: The Great And Secret Show. I love Clive's works, but I'm not a blood centric person. I live it all for the heart.
So lets take a step back in time. Its 2015, going on 2016 and I've completed the second draft of A Lady's Prerogative II: Wounded Aerth. The character "The Magistrate" was a part of the original first draft and an important part of Shaela Sheowellyn's character arc. It was the first time that the fiery red head had met someone who truly understood her. Someone with whom her compass found alignment in life. A very rare thing for any of us indeed. My point being that the Magistrate was an important aspect of the story and one I had developed from early on.
The hidden ally of Evan Edwards, and between the two of them and with Shaela's help, they managed to keep the colony from the brink of teetering over into the control of the Wytch hunters, who would have forced a regime change that would have used the Wytch hunt as the means to a genocide, eventually spreading and taking over the North America of the 1600s and likely having brought about the extinction of the indigenous peoples of the continent in favour of Lorr's plan to rule through the Norbids.
It was in all truth a secret war. A conflict that occurs within the midst of society that has the potential to determine its path and the eventual outcome for all. Even those not involved and those who remain unaware of any such thing.
Such hidden conflicts find their way into pop culture, within hidden icons who become symbols themselves, eventually in circumstances becoming the banner behind which groups of people rally themselves to overcome another group of people. In such cases, even specific people themselves can become such banners.
Peter certainly did and through a character called the Magistrate, in a Star Wars based series many years later and many years after I initially wrote A Lady's Prerogative II: Wounded Aerth. In all irony, even the Magistrate character from that series looks suspiciously similar to the actual Peter that I knew and in all irony, the power struggle between us as well, though I'd be hard pressed to be called a Mandalorian.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the show (both seasons were completely awesome). However, when the people around you start to rally behind the banner of a fictitious character which they suddenly recognize as being the mirror of person from your real life, it can become very challenging to proceed in life towards the goal of progress and even self sufficiency. Especially when that goal includes creative properties that preceded the banners that arrived years after those of your own.
Worse, when such people actually attempt to take your own efforts from you and reward them to people that had nothing to do with your struggle or pain or suffering that you ventured through to achieve those expressions of experience.
I live a very meager and modest life despite the fact that I fight on the front lines of some things that matter very much to the future of the people for whom I'm fighting. Every step I take forward in that effort pits me against people rallied behind banners drawn from people who have resources far beyond my own. Like my own effort is just a heart felt struggle upon which to position careers for others while I struggle, spending my own money to keep this whole effort going. All the while people who rally behind these icons attempt to destroy my efforts and sink Shhhh! Digital Media.
I'm beginning to feel the aches and pains that come with age. Those that signal one's final cry that time has caught up and is collecting its toll for all the years of effort made without toll. All of the sudden, that midlife immortality is dwindling as my body is letting me know, we're near the end of this journey.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
But not long thereafter.
When you get to that point and see that those who continue on despite the lack of progress or comfort they gain from doing so, continue regardless, you start to understand what it truly is to have a compass in life and to be dedicated to principles that go far beyond personal gain.
We all need to survive, and it is never selfish to support one's self honestly and for that to be a priority.
However, when those who rally behind an icon make pursuit of their very story. Their soul. That is something beyond any excuse and completely a failure of principle and honour of any kind.
The Faustian concept of the soul is based upon the idea that all of our life's experiences. Our choices and actions as a result, despite what side of the axis they may lie, make up the entirety of our soul.
A hidden currency from which we can draw to buy and sell our dreams or for which we can charge the price of services we can offer.
If we see someone who has not yet known the good feeling arrived at by the course of a positive action. Perhaps benevolently to the benefit of another, we can relinquish the credit for out own deeds so that person may come to know the feeling, and be tempted to pursue such similar actions of their own.
On the other hand, we come across someone for whom the weight of their own choices is far too heavy, and we decide that we can help them to carry that weight long enough so they may find their way to achieving something that justifies it.
These aspects of our life are ours and to some, a currency that is ripe for theft or scam as well.
If a group of people suddenly dump their Faustian burdens onto a person, and that person drops them all, denying being a part of those life experiences and the people who dumped them onto that person then charge them a price for removing them, then isn't that a scam? Like a neighbour who dumps their trash into the backyard of another neighbour and then charges them a price to remove it. A scam.
What if someone writes books and draws upon their own real life experiences to fuel the mythos behind those stories, and another group of people come along and attempt to take them, and claim that the writer is stealing aspects of their life from them and then charge the writer a price? Another scam.
After years of remaining focused on furthering that which you're trying to achieve in your pursuits, it does catch up and some people become obsessed with trying to find scams through which to take it from you. Eventually, the people who find such malice seeping in to victimize them eventually choose not to feed it.
Its a difficult concept to get across and most likely won't understand it until they're set upon by such people who do this. They're collectivist. They operate in groups and completely lack any conscience. In fact, they don't even regard the people they victimize as being alive or conscious. Like narcissists who simply watch other people to see their own reflection as if what their victims do is somehow a reflection of the members of their cult.
If Norler eventually saw the same thing, and Alicia was gone from his life, even someone as sturdy and dedicated as him would eventually fall. Especially as the people around him disappeared, one by one, leaving him alone to fend against this malice until eventually there was nothing left.
As you all get older, this is your ultimate fate. You'll ever more become less familiar with the world, as the people you once knew disappear one by one until you are truly and ultimately alone.
We all get there sooner or later and when we do, the only aspect of life that binds us together with others is our dedication to those ideals for which struggled, though the struggle isn't the definition.
Its the definition that is the struggle.
