Kali Wallace | Tor.com
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Kali Wallace

Fiction and Excerpts [1]
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Fiction and Excerpts [1]

Last Train to Jubilee Bay

, || After the sickness and quarantine almost destroyed the city, the traders arrived creeping out from the sea to live off the memories of those people left behind; getting them addicted to the serum these strange creatures manufacture in return. But now it's been more than five days since they have come for their daily visit. And Lucy is determined to find out why.

K-pop Videos Hold the Key to Better, Weirder Storytelling, and Here Is My Proof

I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity lately: Where it comes from, how it works, why the most unexpected things can spark the most exciting flights of imagination, all of this interests me. It must interest others as well; cliché as it is, people really do ask writers and artists all the time where they get their ideas. Some creative types might have better answers, but my typical reply is something like, “Ah, well, everywhere?”

I like to picture imagination like a dragon gathering a horde of strange and shiny ideas, and creativity is best nourished by an open-minded willingness to take in and contemplate what our big, strange world has to offer. This can include overheard snippets of conversation, works of art in different media, vague old memories, bad television, historical events, true crime documentaries, staring at a pond in the forest, the creepy things my friends’ son says about the imaginary friend who lives in their heating vents…

K-pop music videos.

And real life, I guess, sometimes.

But mostly K-pop music videos.

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I Am a Mature and Responsible Adult Who Will Attach Rockets to Anything Just to See What Happens

Since its release in May, I have played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a normal number of hours.

Playing Tears of the Kingdom is pretty much the same experience as playing Breath of the Wild, and I mean that in the best possible way. Don’t worry: I still don’t know how to use shields; at this point I’m never going to learn. I love TotK’s addition of new regions, new powers, new monsters, and new ways to totally and completely fail at engineering rational and efficient solutions to problems. Most of all I love how playing feels like rambling aimlessly around a familiar, magical landscape, only this time I sometimes have to stop and build an off-road Jeep for a traveling folk band.

I don’t know what other people wanted from TotK, because I don’t really keep up with gaming news or chatter, but it is exactly what I wanted. I’m too poor for therapy, so I have to settle for self-care in the form of the intense satisfaction I get from strapping rockets to Koroks and watching them fly, or exiting a conversation by ascending directly through the ceiling without warning, or killing a Lynel using a weapon diabolically constructed from the bones of another Lynel.

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Unreliable Narrators, Unrealized Stories, and the Unexpected Perils of Hate-Reading

I’m not much of a hate-reader. Life is short, time is precious, and I am lazy. But there are exceptions. There are times when I get caught up in a story that I vehemently dislike, but I keep reading because how can I hate it properly if I don’t read the entire thing? How will I be able to text my friends increasingly angry updates if I stop? Don’t we all sometimes crave the cathartic pleasure of a good long rant?

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What Breath of the Wild Can Teach Us About Storytelling (and Life)

I was ready to fight Calamity Ganon. I had my Master Sword. I had the power of all four Divine Beasts and their ghostly masters on my side. I had a full inventory of restorative homecooked meals. This was the beginning of the end. It was now or never.

So I stopped, paused the game, and went on the internet to look up how to use my shield.

I’d made it through the entire game—probably some hundred hours of playtime—without ever using a shield after a few early skill-acquisition trials. Not on purpose, mind you. I occasionally thought it would be very nice to be able to block enemy blows in battle. I just couldn’t ever remember which button to push. I did a lot of desperate sword-smashing and running away instead.

I am so bad at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And you know what? It’s great.

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Allow Me To Make a Gentle Plea For More Space Horror

Sometimes, for no particular reason, I think about the chair.

I’m talking about the chair in Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons. The one that haunts the story throughout its reverse narrative, culminating in a horrifying reveal about the main character, the personal demons he’s been running from, and the lengths people will go to inflict pain upon others.

It’s far from the most horrifying thing in a Culture novel; it’s not even the most horrifying thing in that Culture novel. (Isn’t that the one with the cannibal cult island?) But in a book and a series where civilizations clash for millennia and tens of millions of people are regularly wiped out as plots points, it’s this very personal, small-scale horror that really sticks with me.

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My Favorite Niche Horror Genre: Creepy Stories About F*cked Up Films That F*ck People Up

I’ll be honest: it’s going to take me a long time to watch all of Archive 81.

As I have previously discussed, I am a tremendous scaredy-cat when it comes to filmed media. This is a problem, because I want to watch Archive 81, as it sits squarely in the center of one of my favorite subgenres of horror.

I’m not talking about cult stories—at least not this time. I’m talking about stories about evil, haunted, mysterious, or just plain fucked-up filmed media. Stories in which a film of some sort is an active component in the mystery, thrill, or horror, in which the fictional filmed media in question—whether it’s a dusty old reel of unknown origin or a scratchy home movie or a viral video—has an effect on the characters and the narrative that stretches into the realm of the terrifying, unsettling, or weird.

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I Have Decided That Being Bad at Breath of the Wild Means I Am Good at Life*

* I am not actually good at life.

I was ready to fight Calamity Ganon. I had my Master Sword. I had the power of all four Divine Beasts and their ghostly masters on my side. I had a full inventory of restorative homecooked meals. This was the beginning of the end. It was now or never.

So I stopped, paused the game, and went on the internet to look up how to use my shield.

I’d made it through the entire game—probably some hundred hours of playtime—without ever using a shield after a few early skill-acquisition trials. Not on purpose, mind you. I occasionally thought it would be very nice to be able to block enemy blows in battle. I just couldn’t ever remember which button to push. I did a lot of desperate sword-smashing and running away instead.

I am so bad at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And you know what? It’s great.

Read More »

How I Learned to Give in to Anime

Once upon a time, when I was a child, I had dinner at a friend’s house. I don’t remember the friend. All I remember is that their parents served up something they called goulash, but was in reality a distressing mixture of greasy noodles, watery sloppy joe mix and, perhaps, a can of stewed tomatoes. It was disgusting. I hated it. It wasn’t like I was a picky eater or a pint-sized gourmand! We ate very cheap and unfancy foods in my family. This particular meal was especially terrible.

Although I didn’t know it at the time—this is important—it bore no resemblance whatsoever to actual goulash. There was no paprika anywhere near that meal. Not even the wispiest ghost of old Hungary had ever haunted its presence.

But for many years, I heard the word goulash, remembered that meal, and knew, without a doubt, that all goulash was terrible. I was well into adulthood before I saw a recipe for proper goulash and thought, “Huh. Maybe those people were just appallingly shitty cooks.

The point is: I have a history of this sort of behavior, and it explains why I didn’t start watching anime until I was in my forties.

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The Books We Read as Children Always Change Us — Let’s Embrace It

What a time it is to be a children’s book author in the United States.

A lot of people are talking about children’s books these days. Not, unfortunately, about how children’s literature is absolutely booming with creativity, diversity, boldness, and ideas—which it is—but instead because book banning is once again en vogue in the worst parts of society, for all the worst reasons. It’s neither difficult nor particularly interesting to discern what’s motivating proponents of book banning: the political power derived from stoking moral outrage, the chance to bully and threaten anybody they don’t like while pretending it’s about protecting children, and the fear that their children might read something that will make them think, “Wow, my parents are astonishingly bigoted and have very bad ideas about many things.”

Read More »

The Best Niche Genre? Creepy Books About F*cked Up Films That F*ck People Up

I’ll be honest: it’s going to take me a long time to watch all of Archive 81.

As I have previously discussed, I am a tremendous scaredy-cat when it comes to filmed media. This is a problem, because I want to watch Archive 81, as it sits squarely in the center of one of my favorite subgenres of horror.

I’m not talking about cult stories—at least not this time. I’m talking about stories about evil, haunted, mysterious, or just plain fucked-up filmed media. Stories in which a film of some sort is an active component in the mystery, thrill, or horror, in which the fictional filmed media in question—whether it’s a dusty old reel of unknown origin or a scratchy home movie or a viral video—has an effect on the characters and the narrative that stretches into the realm of the terrifying, unsettling, or weird.

Read More »

From Now on I’m Taking All of My Storytelling Lessons From This Wild Epic About Love, Loyalty, and Necromancy

It’s a bit strange, I think, how little writing advice is about feelings. There is abundant writing advice about everything else—from saving the cat to killing our darlings, to never/always using “said,” writing what we know, info-dumping and more—but not a whole lot specifically focused on the fundamental question that faces every writer when we sit down to write: How do we make people care?

Because it doesn’t happen automatically. It doesn’t appear naturally just because you get all the other elements right. We know that approach doesn’t work, because we’ve all read and watched things that seem complete and polished and skillful, but still leave us feeling absolutely nothing.

On the other hand, we’ve also all read and watched fiction that isn’t polished or perfect, but still manages to punch us right in the feelings. We all know stories that make it so very easy to list their abundant flaws or shortcomings, but still leave us with the impression that none of that matters, because wasn’t the experience brilliant anyway? I want to spend some time thinking about how to do that, because it comes from specific choices in the storytelling. Choices that are, I think, very much worth our attention.

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Exploring the Darker Side of Found Family

I love a good found family story. I know I’m not alone; it’s a popular and beloved trope for a reason. At this time of year in particular, when there is so much pressure to do family stuff, regardless of how one might feel about family, stories about families of choice can be especially appealing.

It doesn’t have to be about yearning or loss or escapism either. (I actually like my family just fine, even when my sisters wrongly and outrageously insist that their cats are cuter than my cats.) No matter what our individual circumstances are, there is rich emotional drama to be mined from stories about people who find and care for and keep each other regardless of how the whims of the universe threw them together. Comfort and support, trust and understanding, familiarity and fondness—these are the things a family of choice is made of, and spending time with them in fiction can be delightful.

But—there’s always a but—if you are like me, and there lives inside you still the child who spent more time giving your Barbies safety-scissor buzz-cuts and shoebox funerals than you ever spent making them play house, sometimes you look at those warm, squishy, soft, soothing scenarios with a wild glint in your eye, and you think, “Sure, okay, but what if it goes horribly wrong?”

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The Ones Who Can’t Walk Away: Another Perspective on Omelas

One of the things I love most about fiction is the way stories talk to each other. I don’t mean when one story is told in response to another, although I love that too, from the most intense scholarly research down to the silliest fanfic and memes. I’m talking about the internal conversation that happens inside our minds, when we experience one story in a way that makes us think about another, encourages us to reconsider our previous experiences, and reveals interpretations and possibilities we hadn’t thought of before.

Best of all is when that connection takes us by surprise. When two stories that don’t necessarily have any natural connection to each other show up in the shady dive bar of the mind, eye each other warily across the darkened room, and there’s a spark of recognition, a mutual eyebrow raise of, “Huh, I didn’t know you hung out here.”

Read More »

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Watch Anime

Once upon a time, when I was a child, I had dinner at a friend’s house. I don’t remember the friend. All I remember is that their parents served up something they called goulash, but was in reality a distressing mixture of greasy noodles, watery sloppy joe mix and, perhaps, a can of stewed tomatoes. It was disgusting. I hated it. It wasn’t like I was a picky eater or a pint-sized gourmand! We ate very cheap and unfancy foods in my family. This particular meal was especially terrible.

Although I didn’t know it at the time—this is important—it bore no resemblance whatsoever to actual goulash. There was no paprika anywhere near that meal. Not even the wispiest ghost of old Hungary had ever haunted its presence.

But for many years, I heard the word goulash, remembered that meal, and knew, without a doubt, that all goulash was terrible. I was well into adulthood before I saw a recipe for proper goulash and thought, “Huh. Maybe those people were just appallingly shitty cooks.

The point is: I have a history of this sort of behavior, and it explains why I didn’t start watching anime until I was in my forties.

Read More »

Why Do Meddling Teens Always Have to Save the World?

You’re an ordinary high school student exploring a strange magical palace with your friends. You find a garish throne room adorned with giant ass-shaped statues. And suddenly, to your surprise, you are doing battle with a massive green choad.

Literally. It’s a giant green dick. It’s named “Torn King of Desire.” You have to kill it using a combination of fire, lightning, whips, and knives. A talking cat with a slingshot helps you.

And it is very, very satisfying when you succeed. You’re ready to take on the world. This is victory.

No, it’s better than victory. This is justice.

…Okay. Let me back up a bit.

Read More »

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