Stepping Out Onto The Stage Are...


I have a tendency to not give enough credit to the guys, and I'm going to change that with this additional post for today. Without further ado, I give you the first four cast members of The Legendary Of Xarn.



Questions With Answers

Q: When do you plan to continue The Butterfly Dragon and A Lady's Prerogative storylines?


A: I recently came close to giving up on those two titles, but I've decided instead to take a step back while I work on Xarn. I will eventually go back to finishing The Two Dragons with extensive edits to the existing material and a concerted effort, especially with regard to the Martial Arts to get the story back on track to its intended plot arc.

A Lady's Prerogative will likely see some significant changes as well, though I will definitely be finishing SAPCHoP And The Lost Sanata, within a month or two. I will be reorganizing the material and eventually I'll take a shot at writing Singularity again. In a sense, I'm already (re)writing it with The Two Dragons, although I'm writing it in what artists would call the negative space. You're getting the aftermath, without the details as to what occurred in the actual story itself such as with Shaela's pursuit of Mianmor Selembrosi and Zheng Ni Wong and Bryce Maxwell's falling out with MindSpice. Singularity and The Two Dragons are intricately tied together and very significant in today's (February 2023) world. That will become apparent in later chapters of the Two Dragons. The same environmental focus will permeate the plot of Singularity, though there's a strong connection to the same nemesis in The Two Dragons.


Q: Does Legendary Of Xarn take place in the same universe as The Butterfly Dragon and A Lady's Prerogative?


A: Read it and if you recognize any signs of that, you'll be the first to know, keeping in mind when Ai Yuanlin Ying and Alicia Westin grew up and when this story takes place. There's a disparity between the two times. The Sanctum however is almost timeless, as the home of their Midspace Fortress is situated outside of temporal causality. Therefore, it theoretically could be connected regardless of time disparity.


Q: Will Diversity Be Prominent In Legendary Of Xarn?


A: I've always kept diversity a priority, though not at the cost of the story being told. For instance, when I write elements connected to Asian history in The Butterfly Dragon, I don't simply rewrite the characters with their closest Western representation despite my being a product of Western civilization and European/Indigenous heritage. I use characters that are the actual cultures, and that's a very important element of story telling and maintaining the credibility of the plot. 

Technically in those parts of that history, there isn't much diversity as it is regional and fairly early within the development of those cultures. Within those regions there's cultural dialects that have a whole history behind them that lead to politics, allegiances and sometimes conflict (The Three Kingdoms era in both Imperial China and Gojoseon aka Korea), but ultimately as far as the whole story goes, its connected to the present through Ai Yuanlin Ying, who lives in the modern, diverse city of Toronto, Ontario in Canada that is not unlike many other multi-cultural urban centers around the world. The modern characters represent a diverse cast, but I won't be bullied into any effort to change their ethnicity to suit a politically correct agenda.

The Butterfly Dragon is Mandarin Chinese. The Dragon Butterfly is Japanese. The Eclipse is French Canadian/Ukrainian. Katya and Victor Piotr are Russian, keeping in mind that I wrote their characters long before the current conflict in Europe. Alicia Westin and Bryce Maxwell are Canadian and from European colonial families. Kori Jonglyu is South Korean. Askuwheteau is Indigenous, with ancestors from the Sioux and Cree Nations. Linda Delmore is from the United States Of America. Ms. Hu Van is Vietnamese and was a stern sympathizer with North Vietnam, who reluctantly had life altering ties to the South during the war. Zheng Ni Wong is Mandarin Chinese. Shaela Sheowellyn is British as is Nelony Ardbloem and Barris Windsor. Mila Rendebelle is Japanese/Austrian. Mishima Sato is Japanese, and darned cantankerous too, I might add. Athandra Rithyani is from India. I could go on, and end up covering just about every region in the world because somewhere in one of my stories, I'll likely have a character from that region and I do my best to reflect attitudes and culture in that regard. Is that diverse enough? 

I Brian Joseph Johns am Welsh/Spanish/French/Sioux and Cree Nation, though my indigenous line is more than 5 generations removed and I'm not a blood centric fellow and never have been, not to mention I'd never exploit that heritage for financial support. Besides, being blood centric would mean burdening my own love interest who is an Asian woman, and I wouldn't want that for the world. I respect my heritage and ancestry. Its a big part of who I am but not the only part of who I am, and I'd never allow it to be a vehicle used by other people to make weight for the lives of people I care about. Especially my own love interest.

Much the same in A Lady's Prerogative II: Wounded Aerth, I don't change anything about the fact that the Wytch Hunters are literally a representation whose recipe includes urban renewal, ignorance, xenophobia (directed towards the Indigenous), zealousness towards anyone that isn't part of the accepted regional religious philosophy, though they mostly breed and prey upon this growing sentiment amongst the people of the West View colony to profit for themselves. It essentially turns into the means by which one group of people take away the land, belongings and heirlooms of another. This has happened many times throughout history though its face changes every time it rears its ugly head. Just read or watch Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront. Unfortunately every time it does, it just turns into another game of who is the Wytch Hunter and who is the Hunted? The reality of that often ends up obscured through social and political maneuvering some people call the dance.

It's the dance of life. Sometimes the whistleblowers are written into history as the Wytch Hunters, as with the better "dead than red" communist trials that called to the stand numerous Hollywood directors during the red scare, which was likely an attack against unionized labour, which back in that time was speculated to be run by the mob.

Sometimes the Wytch Hunters are the rebels, those who defied the mandatory vaccination requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic putting countless others at risk by their negligence in getting a needle to curb the spread of the (proven) deadly disease. There's two sides to every story and either side sees themselves as the hero and the other as the villain. The dance is simply social maneuvering to make the other side seem more the monster than the side you're on. In the end it all comes down to your own conscience and the freedom thereof, and how that affects the right to life and freedom of others.

Diversity will be a part of The Legendary Of Xarn, but not in the sense that I will backup any socially competitive manipulation that goes against my own grain, especially with regard to what I am writing or to any attacks or attempted theft of my own identity of Brian Joseph Johns, or my own cultural identity. I will accept the activities of any cult that uses colour symbolism to steal another person's identity and replace it with someone else's by the same method or any other method. This is a big problem in modern day society and that's the truth as sure as gravity.


Q: Will You Be Writing Any Other Books Stories In The Future That Include A New World/Characters?

A: See the answer to the next question.


Q: What's In The Future For Shhhh! Digital Media?

A: I'm attempting to make the move into multimedia story telling, but it has been a slow process because I can't invest the kind of time and money I'd like to into building that media, so its been a slow process, but extensive progress has been made and will be made into the future. Eventually the fruits of that effort will be released and hopefully I can cookie cutter the pipeline for the production of such media enough so that I can produce it as swiftly as I do books, preferably faster. The current pipeline is that I write a story or book, then I look at all the ways I can rework it into another medium. Audio books. Interactive media such as video games. Traditional media such as movies. Who knows where I'll be with that in another ten years. I have to get this project lined up with the compass first.

Keep in mind that I had other content planned that was surreptitiously cut off as a result of Facebook denying me access to my own Facebook account. I was going to post an interview I wrote with a good friend of mine, the writer and brainchild of the band The Cardboard Brains but alas as a result of my access to Facebook being denied, I was cut off from him and many others in my life. Its funny how some social media outlets seem to be helping the effort surrounding identity theft, by cutting off the real owner from their online account so that others can imposter them. Again, this seems to be a growing problem. I have enough ideas to keep me going for many, many lifetimes so that isn't a problem. Its getting the stuff produced in a timely manner.


So that's it for my question and answer period.

...And Finally


Yesterday, I thanked the female YouTube content producers to which I'm subscribed because quite honestly, they really keep me going in a lot of ways through the thick and thin of life challenges and are a great part of the inspiration that keeps my flame going, but I should have also thanked the numerous men out there to whom I'm subscribed who produce great content on YouTube that is just as inspiring, though in different ways, its appealing to a different part of the cerebellum. Thank you to the philosophers and story tellers out there on YouTube, as much so as the artists, coders, developers, beauticians, massage artists and scientists.


Be mindful of what's going on in the world without getting caught up in the dance I spoke about earlier. We're really going to need to move forward with regard to some issues, and its going to take effort from each of us to do so. I think that the briefing from the United Nations really hit the mark in that regard. Support the causes that you see promulgating the necessary progress and try to do something, however meek, each day to improve the future for those who have yet to live it. 

Its easy enough to get caught up in our own day to day living in such a way that we forget the bigger picture and just how trivial in terms of scale our day to day issues can be. Some people make it a game of trying to push you in that direction, but don't let them and don't be hard on yourself if you do. Consider that they're just trying to heap the best of you onto someone else's plate, who likely protects them for doing so.

When you're harassed and abused, your body and psyche naturally kicks into self-preservation mode, which can make you seem somewhat self centered to others, especially if they're not aware of what's happening to you in that regard. So the best thing to do is to withstand it the best you can, keep your focus on your compass and persevere but if you fail, don't bring yourself down. Try to maintain a balance for the sake of your conscience as feeling self reproach is one of the ways that manipulative people attempt to puppeteer others.

If you feel that it makes you appear to be inept or selfish, then imagine how the people who harass and abuse you appear to everyone else? They'll eventually be held responsible for their actions, but be mindful of yours, because that's the only person whose actions that you're responsible for. So make those actions count in a good way that's conducive to others and yourself. The kind of people who steal identities, creative content or intellectual property or harass and torment other people will eventually answer for their actions and very possibly legally at some point sooner than they think. Be responsible for your actions and make them count in a good way.


Have a good night and thank you to my loyal supporters. 

Sincerely so. I mean, hate isn't love and love isn't hate as certainly as there's gravity, and there is, despite the fact that there isn't a palpable theory capable of describing gravity in Quantum Physics. Quantum Physics certainly isn't a myth, nor is gravity.


Disclaimer

Finally, I'm not Chuck. I'm not Bob, though there are some people with that name I admire (three altogether that I can think of off hand). I don't play guitar, but its certainly an expressive instrument, second only to the Violin, Erhu and Shakuhachi, which are second only to the human singing voice which would be the most expressive musical instrument of all. If I was a singer, I'd be an Opera singer, but alas I am but a humble piano player.


About Pyramid Schemes...

I am not a member of any pyramid scheme that would take all of my effort and give it to the credit of someone else, while replacing my identity with that of someone else to cover up the identity theft. As I stated, I'm not a member of any colour symbolism powered identity or creative and intellectual property theft cult. If that's what blue means to you, then that's not my blue at all and never will be. Get the hell out, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. I can think of a lot better symbols for the colour blue than that one.






This content was written on https://www.shhhhdigital.com by Brian Joseph Johns. The content residing on Shhhh! Digital Media was originally published in 2012 under my first Poetry And Fiction blog whose archive is accessible here.