We are 13 hours and counting away from when those mad fools at Tor actually give me control of their Instagram feed despite the fact that I still think MySpace is pretty fetch.
I’ll be in conversation with celebrated sci-fi author Max Gladstone, we will be going live at 7 pm and it will be an absolute car-crash.
The link is here and I would love to see as many of you lovely folks there as can make it.
Publication date is looming like a big loom and you can now get an exclusive first peak at When the Sparrow Falls HERE!
Hello peeps, if you happen to be on the internet at April 28th I’ll be taking over the Tor Books Instagram Account with fellow sci-fi author, the Nebula Award winning Max Gladstone (uh, the “fellow” part is us both being science fiction authors, not having Nebulas). Join us on Debuts After Dark where we’ll be talking about writing and science fiction and…I dunno…smooth jazz.
The link is here and I would love to see as many of you lovely folks there as can make it.
From Tor:
“Join Neil Sharpson, author of When the Sparrow Falls, and Max Gladstone, author of Empress of Forever, as they take over the Tor Books Instagram account LIVE for Debuts After Dark! Who knows what shenanigans they’ll get up to…”
Yup.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
I know I haven’t been posting a lot this year.
I hear your concerns and they are valid.
Here’s what’s been happening. As you almost certainly know (because I have not been subtle), my first book is coming out at the end of June. What you may not know is that my second novel was actually originally due to be submitted to the publisher THIS month. Now, they very kindly agreed to give me an extension what with the once-in-a-generation global pandemic. Here in Ireland creches and schools have only recently re-opened so I’m only catching up on writing now.
Basically, I’m racing a June deadline with a good chunk of the book still be written. Coupled with that, I’ll be doing a lot of guest posts and interviews and whatnot to promote When the Sparrow Falls. So for the time being, the monthly update schedule will have to remain. (Man, remember when I used to post reviews weekly? Seriously, that happened, I went back and checked).
BUT.
Once the second book has been handed in and Sparrow has taken flight, I’ll be diving headfirst back into the blog. Because dammit, I really want to. I miss talking with you guys, I miss writing about animation, I miss the whole Mouse scene, daddio.
We will be doing Raya. We will be doing Wandavision. We will be doing Disney series galore. We will be doing X-Men and Bolts versus Bats and all the promised reviews. I’m also planning on doing posts that aren’t reviews necessarily; like the Rabbit Rhapsody/Cat Concerto controversy, why The Book Job is the best latter season Simpsons episode and why the “You lose, good day sir!” scene in Willy Wonka is perfection. I miss doing stuff like that. Like I miss doing lots of stuff lately.
But you know what? This week I told the job that I’ve been working in for thirteen years that I was going on a four year career break to finally pursue my dream of becoming a full time writer.
Infection numbers are going down, vaccination numbers are going up.
And for the first time in a long time, the future is starting to look real bright.
Hopefully, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me around here before too long.
Thanks for being so understanding.
Mouse.
Oh, and next month I’ll be doing a little event called: FUCK IT I’M DOING ALL THE ANIMÉ
I have a load of random episodes from different animé series to review so fuck it, let’s put that Crunchy Roll account to good use.
Okay, so back when…
No wait, y’know what, we need to go back in time if I’m going to tell this story right.
Further than that.
Further…
Little more…
Perfect. Okay so.
It’s my third year in college and I’ve started going out with this dynamite gal who will, unbeknownst to her, one day be known as “Spouse of Mouse” to a bunch of randos on the internet. Now we’re at that awkward early stage of the relationship where we’re starting to realise that we can’t just keep kissing constantly and we should probably figure out if we have any actual…y’know…common interests.
So I pull my calloused lips off her and says to her, I says “what are you into?”
And she says “Oh…y’know. Comics. Movies. Animé. That kinda stuff.”
Now, believe it or not, but at this early point in the Earth’s history where the molten surface was still hardening, I had not yet seen that much animé. I mean, Pokémon and Speed Racer, sure, but none of the really big name shows or movies. So I go into a video rental shop, avoiding debris from the recently formed Moon that rained down on the hellish surface of the Earth like so much fiery marble, and I go into the animé section and I see a DVD for a movie called Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth. I had heard the name before, but I knew nothing about it and figured “hey, if it’s so famous that even a total noob like me has heard of it, it must be a great entry point to this exciting world of animé! This will be a great way to bond with my new girlfriend who I hope to one day marry and make a supporting character in a weirdly detailed animation review blog/ongoing comedy series!”
So we sit down to watch this movie together, and around ten minutes in she turns around, takes my arm in a vicelike grip and stares straight into my eyes with a gimlet gaze.
“I’m sorry” she said. “I don’t like animé. I just wanted you to think I was cool. Can we please watch something else?!“
And we turned off the movie and watched Family Guy instead. Because, Christ help us, we were young and in love and knew no better.
So that was my first introduction to Evangelion and honestly, I could scarcely have picked a worse one. I know now that Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth is one half clip show with the first 26 episodes of the TV series edited into a single 70 minute cut almost perfect in its incomprehensibility for a newcomer, and the other half the first twenty minutes of what would become The End of Evangelion that was due to be released several months later.
And they did this because…because…
Honestly, maybe spite? Like, just another thing to fuck with people trying to make sense of what often seems like a deliberately opaque franchise? Pity anybody trying to make sense of Evangelion, and that’s before they even have to tackle the plot.
There’s the original 26 episode animé series which ended with a finalé so despised that Gainax received death threats.
There’s Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth which is basically the world’s most inscrutable “previously on Buffy” and which also has two alternate versions: Evangelion: Death(True) and Evangelion: Death(True)2 (and Tigger too!)
And then you have The End of Evangelion, which I will be tackling in this very post, which aims to be the true ending of the TV series.
Then there’s the Rebuild series, an entirely new ongoing four movie cycle re-telling the events of the original show and The End of Evangelion which aims to give ANOTHER ending to this rigmarole (sure, why not?).
Oh and there’s the manga (different continuity), the ANIMA light novel series (ditto) the PS2 game, the parody series, the audio dramas, the commemorative plates and on and on it goes. This thing is a beast.
But okay, here goes, I will now attempt to describe what the hell Neon Genesis Evangelion actually is.
unshavedmouse 