A letter to J.K Rowling

Dear Ms. Rowling.

                 Let me start off by giving you the upmost praise for your work on the Harry Potter series of novels. Each book was as magical and fantastic as the last; and I fully respect your decision to leave the Deathly Hollows as the last Harry Potter book. With that said I find it very difficult to fathom how such an amazing brand like Harry Potter can produce such awful video games. It is NOT a good thing to have the best games in your repertoire be LEGO adaptations of the novels. Each "blockbuster" game is based off its movie counterpart, and we all know how much "work" is put into movie licensed games. Pottermore on the other hand is an amazing interactive reading experience but it's not a video game. 

                  Maybe you have yet to see the great potential of games to deliver very unique and immersive experiences that can only help to enrich the lore and the magic of the Harry Potter universe. 

                 If you're tired of your beloved franchise's video games being "half-assed," I'm ready to take over and take Harry Potter video games in the right direction. I have a great love for the original seven books, and I would not tarnish their mythos in any way; I would simply work to enrich it. For example: one of my ideas is to have a game entitled "Hogwarts."The player would play as a male or female character of their choosing and experience the years before the events of the first book. 

Contact me at francoromualdez@gmail.com if you want to get to work already.

Franco Romualdez

Disclaimer: The contents of this letter are all really my ideas on the state of the Harry Potter video games. However, this was not really sent to JK Rowling (obviously).

We are

 We are not statistics we are people. We are not cattle to be herded. 

We are not machines, we can be overworked. We are human and we are meant to live.

Mainstream

Go to college. Get a Job. Forget your dreams. Don't try so hard.
Lose your Soul. Lose your Mind. You're not one of a kind.

What you love can't be your life. How can we be so blind?

Be mainstream; a programed machine.

Programed from birth to be alive but not to live.

Always thought to become part of the hive.

ALONE

Alone

Alone on the side of the road, withered, grey and old

Unable to fathom the reason why, thinking of the days I when had a purpose

Trying to resist the rains of the coming storm, with no remains of my early life

Fighting the urge to wither away, like a rock battered by a wave

Unable the breath, like something that has no soul

Hanging on the edge of the earth, hoping I will be allowed to come back home

But my hope is false, because I know my fate has already been decided

Like all the others I was used! Then thrown away when I was no longer useful

Those who once adored me have now left me to rot! Now I am just garbage!

Alone on the side of the road, withered, grey and old

I do not understand why I couldn’t see it, the true nature of man

They love and they love… and then they hate! Hate!

Now I see that man is evil, they disregard anything that is no longer of use!

Alone on the side of the road, withered, grey and old

A grizzled old Couch without a home

"The Outsiders" book review

Problems, whether it seems like it, or not -- everyone has them. Have you ever stopped and thought if all your worries may be someone else’s vision of the good life? You may be worrying over things like: “How do I get this girl to notice me? Will I be able to get into a good college? Will my parents be able to buy me that car I asked for?” And while you’re troubling yourself over all that, there will always be someone out there who’ll have problems like: “How do I get people to stop bullying me? Will I have something to eat today? Will Mom finally notice the bruises and tell Dad to stop beating me?” Those are the problems of more people than you think; they very well could be the problems of the people you hate the most. S.E Hilton’s The Outsiders explores among its many messages the existence of plights and misfortunes beyond our own. This book is essential reading to all adolescents because puberty is an emotionally difficult time for every teen; no matter whom you are. This book can help teens understand how they are not alone, and how their problems are not as grave as they seem.

The Outsiders was written in 1965 while S.E Hilton was still in high school. She was inspired to write The Outsiders when she witnessed one of her close friends getting beaten up by “nice” kids who didn’t like the fact that he was a greaser (a term S.E Hilton uses in The Outsiders as a symbol for the poverty stricken, and troubled youths of the 60’s). The Outsiders was first published in 1967 during the height of the greaser phenomena. The term greaser originated during the 50’s as a term for street gangs and hoods; it is made clear in the novel though that the The Outsiders’ main character Ponyboy and his group are not a hood, but just a group of friends who grew up on the wrong side of town.

The Outsidershas received a majority of positive reviews throughout its time. The Chicago Tribune quoted that the novel was “Taut with tension, and filled with drama.” One reviewer, only known by the username ‘Isknightsr1’ in www.librarything.com stated in her review that she read the novel fifteen times while she was in high school. She loved the book’s message that we humans need to understand that we have more in common with our peers than we think.

The novel begins with Ponyboy getting jumped by the Socs (a term used in the book for the high class social elite) while walking home from the movies. He gets ruffed up but is saved by his brothers and friends before the bullies could do any serious damage. He is shocked enough though, to recall the experience of his best friend Johnny who nearly got killed by the Socs a few months earlier. The boys go see a drive in movie with their friends a weekend after the incident and during the movie Ponyboy meets a Soc girl that helps him realize that not all the Socs are bad. The boy’s fortunes take a turn for the worst when later that night they are ambushed by the same Socs who beat Johnny. In their drunken rage they nearly drown Ponyboy in a park fountain when Johnny stabs one of the assailants in the back with his switchblade. This is the event that sets the tone for the rest of the novel.  

Ponyboy and Johnny and then forced to go into hiding; with their friend Dallas’ help they end up lying low in a abandoned church within the outskirts of town. They stay there for five days until Dallas pays them a visit. After affirming their safety the boys go have lunch in town; it is during their lunch that Johnny decides he wants to return home and confess to the killing. This comes as a shock to the other boys and they soon decide to make the trip back to town. On their way back to the abandoned church to collect their belongings they find it in flames; they quickly come to the realization that they started the fire when they left a lit cigarette in the church before heading out to lunch. After the boys begin to hear the cries of children from inside the burning church Ponyboy and Johnny quickly rushed to save them without hesitation. This scene is a pivotal point in the novel because during the act of saving the children Johnny sustains a fatal blow from being crushed by the church’s collapsing roof that he later dies from. When they get back to their town Ponyboy speaks to the best friend of the Soc that Johnny killed. It is in this conversation with the Soc (Randy) that Ponyboy hears the troubled story of Bob (the Soc that Johnny killed); How Bob was a kind and sweet boy when he was sober but was always driven to drink and to do destructive things because of everyone’s inability to say “No” to him. The fact that Bob’s parents or peers never disciplined him drove him to his path of self-devastation. It is after hearing this that Ponyboy realizes that the rich Socs had problems too.

The realism of The Outsiders shocked many people during its time. S.E Hilton herself explains that the novel’s graphic images and compelling drama are not simply there to boost sales. S.E Hilton quotes: “One of my reasons for writing The Outsiders was that I wanted something realistic to be written about teenagers. At that time realistic teenage fiction did not exist.” S.E Hilton’s point can also apply in our modern times. Where books like Twilight and Harry Potter fly off the shelves; I am not saying these books are bad but I can say without a doubt that these books are not realistic interpretations of present day teenage life and never will be. The moral of The Outsiders is as relevant to our contemporary society as it was in the past; because not matter how our technology evolves teenagers shall always be teenagers, problems and conflict shall forever be present in our lives, and social factions will never really disappear. Reading The Outsiders can help troubled youths across humanity because of not only its timeless morals, but also because it is a great read.

The Outsiders is truly an immortal classic that I hope will never go out of publication. Its characters and plot are unmatched in contemporary teenage literature, and its message will under no circumstances lose its importance.  My review may seem overly positive but you are free to pick up and read a copy of S.E Hilton’s The Outsiders to decide for yourself.

The Reclusive Genius

Hero

I don’t care what anyone thinks… He is just a man…

Part 1

Javier Hernandez was just a simple family man, he went to work, came home and played with his kids, and made love to his wife at night. Life was not glamorous but it was comfortable; Javier was able to support his family though his sari-sari store business and money was often the least of his concerns. Someone once told me that Javier had dreams of being a police officer but he was kicked out during his first year in the force because he did not approve of our “unique” methods of enforcing the law.

Something otherworldly must have happened on that rainy Thursday night. Our police reports say that Javier Hernandez (age twenty eight, married, father of two) came home that night to find his wife dead and his children missing; his whereabouts after then are unknown up until the point he is found unconscious outside our police station. How he got to the station remains a mystery. I first saw Javier just a few hours after he was found… he was all bloody and his cloths were drenched from the rain; he just kept staring at everything, it was as if he didn’t know what to focus on.

 “Why me?” were the only words that came out of his mouth, none of us understood what his problem was, if only we knew then about what happened to his family… maybe we could have helped him cope, but no one cared about Javier then. They sure as hell do now.

No one knows exactly how it happened, all we know is that a few days after we released him Javier Hernandez began to pop up all over the news. He was apparently on a self-proclaimed holy mission to eradicate crime in the Philippines; “not just crime but corruption as well” is what he was saying on TV as my fellow police officers began to laugh at the notion that a single guy would try to take down crime all by himself, I admit I might have even chuckled a bit… until we saw what he could do. Javier made sure the camera had a good long look at him and then he flew. He didn’t float like those fake magicians you see on television, he FLEW, and then he was gone. He was so fast no one saw in which direction he went, not that they cared… they were too busy being just as amazed and as frightened as everyone else was.

The days got longer and longer as we learned more and more about Javier’s powers; there was footage of him lifting a car, reports of him flying over Davao, people saying that he could heal the sick. It was unreal. No one knew exactly how a man could gain such extraordinary abilities, so it was no surprise when crazy people all over the place started saying that Javier’s powers were gifts from God, while others began calling him things like “alien” and “monster.”

Part 2

It’s been more than a year since that faithful Thursday night, here’s what I know: Javier Hernandez has superpowers, crime in the Philippines is at an all time low, and I would like to think that everyone single one of us is scared for our lives. Sure he CLAIMS to fight for justice, but what happens when there’s no more crime to fight? What happens when he inevitably takes a good long look at all of us… and decides he doesn’t like what he sees? Just last week he forced us to arrest a politician who was rumored to have stolen money from his province’s treasury, there was no proof that he was guilty just pure speculation, and it wasn’t the first time Javier forced us to arrest someone without evidence or due process. It has reached the point where Javier’s word is now considered law. Its not like we didn’t prevent crime; homicide, domestic violence, theft, if it was a serious crime we handled it just like any other police force in the world would. Is it really so bad to take a little bribe or two every once in a while for the little crimes? How else are we supposed to support ourselves in this country?  You think we can live with just our salaries? That’s funny.

I have this stupid idea, it kind of makes sense to me now; anything seems possible nowadays. Unlike most of my comrades I don’t just get my money from my under the hand police work, I actually have several deals with many shady individuals – individuals who pay me a lot of money to keep them under the force’s radar. I don’t often like spending my hard earned cash, but recent events have prompted me to take a different route. I’m pretty sure that under his super-powered exterior Javier Hernandez is still just a man, and like all men he can be broken.

Everything I would ever need in my newfound fight for the return of normality is now in my possession; I may have money but I’m not made of the stuff. I’m forced to take the Kevlar from the police armory, I trade in my car for a 400cc motorcycle that I plan to modify, and I buy a small abandoned underground parking lot which no one uses anymore.

Have I gone crazy? I just want things to go back to the way they were, the world was far from perfect but it was routine… it was normal. Now we have this ungodly figure that claims he wants to protect us, but I know the truth. I know that with all his power he still hasn’t found his kids, my theory is that Javier’s self-proclaimed quest for justice is only forced on by the search for his missing children; what if he find’s them dead? Who’s to say he won’t lose control and take out his frustration on the rest of the human race? Javier claims that he does not kill, that it’s his one and only rule… but all rules are meant to be broken.

Part 3

Corrupt country.  Principled Man. Lost Family. Unknown force. Maharlika

Javier Hernandez started calling himself Maharlika, “I want to be a symbol of Honor and Justice,” he said. The name makes me sick, how could HE see himself as a champion for us normal people? I am ready now, months of planning and training has prepared me for this moment; I am now a human weapon, Javier’s worst nightmare. His powers are based on his ability to channel electrical energy on a subatomic level; my Kevlar armor is laced with rubber as to prevent the flow of electricity and its black-ops like structure allows me to be invisible to all forms radar. My motorcycle is armored just like myself and its speed and versatility will allow me to keep up with anything, even a flying man.

Javier now lives in Malacañang, Javier thinks that it was the overwhelming love of the people that put him there but I know that the President loves to keep him as his personal bodyguard. The man has no family, nothing to live for anymore but his self-indulgent plight. The public now call him names like “Hero” and “Saint,” he only intensified their idiocy by naming himself. It’s as if he knew that by calling himself Maharlika he would satisfy their misguided thirst for a “Superhero.”

I sneak in after midnight; getting in the presidential place is easy with my police level clearance and unique set of skills. I do not want to kill Javier; I just want to show him that he is still just a man, no better than me or any other human being. He is not special… if anything he is simply a misplaced chapter in the novel of humanity. I’m outside in his room now, I knew this day would come the moment I saw a man fly on television, I knew that the burden of reminding the world that marvels do no walk among us would fall on to me. I entered his room and the first thing I see is his face staring right at me.

 “Who are you?” he asked. I have played out this very moment in my head over and over and over again so many times… yet I am speechless. “You there… why do you want to hurt me?” he said. I remembered why I was there and the words “Because you are a taint on the earth” came out of my mouth effortlessly, as if I did not fear for my own life. “I can feel your presence but I cannot see you” he said, “My powers only allow me to see things that release electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere, but the energy you are releasing is clouded and therefore I can only feel your existence in its most basic form.” Interrupting him I shouted out “I did not come here to learn more about your powers Javier!” He fell silent for a moment… “That is not my name anymore, I am Maharlika.” I am angry now, “Just shut up! Do you have any idea what you’ve done!” He stands up reaches out his arm at me and… I am back in my studio apartment. It is only now that I realize that Javier Hernandez is no longer the broken widower I saw back at the police station a year ago, he is now something else entirely.

Part 4

Ten years since the incident. An estimated five hundred thousand lives saved by Maharlika. Philippines invited to be part of the G15.

 He’s the official adviser to the president now by the way, as if he couldn’t be even more of a boy scout. Its disgusting how the people let the same man stay in office for almost sixteen years simply because he has the approval and support of their “Hero.” Me? I’m still posing as a low-life police officer, not that I do much police work anymore; there is absolutely no crime in this country these days. This is the real world, and in the real world when someone with superpowers decides he wants to wage war on crime… crime doesn’t fight back. Every single criminal, convict, felon, and gangster either decided they would leave the country or try to live a law-abiding life – anything seemed like better decision than going up against Javier. Anything.

Over the last ten years I’ve tried to speak with Javier again but it always ends in the same way, I get close enough to shout something like “Wait!” or “Stop!” and then he zaps me back to my apartment, or to my underground “lair,” or to Rizal Park, and even once to a local high school. I gave up after the one hundred and thirtieth time… he zapped me back home then I took a look at myself in the mirror, and decided it was over. I gave up trying to reason with the man, there’s no more hope for him or for anyone else who thinks that he is a “hero.”  

 I’m getting old now, what once was the body of someone who thought they could take down Maharlika is now just a decaying vessel. I’m done trying to make Maharlika aware of his mortality… there is another way of making things right again.

Part 5

It is the year two thousand and thirty. I have just finished getting my double doctorate in biochemical engineering and quantum physics, wasn’t difficult. My motivation to humanize Maharlika drove me on, I figured that if I could not best him I would do try to do something a little less impossible; I would take away his powers. Its really very simple if you think about it, Javier’s powers are based on his ability to channel electricity, a normal human body can only generate between ten and one hundred millivolts depending on the situation but Javier’s body can generate over nine thousand volts.

 The amount of electricity in his body allows Javier to tap into the full functionality of his brain and it also enables him to exercise his muscles every single second, the end result is the “superhero” known as Maharlika.

With all the knowledge and government funding I’d ever need I began the construction of “The Device.” The fools at Malacañang thought that I was making a prototype for a machine that could convert the electromagnetic energy in earth’s atmosphere into energy that would be both usable and sustainable; the device is supposed to make The Philippines the world’s pioneer in clean energy.

 What The Device actually does though is it temporarily drains all the electrical energy from anything it’s used on; it actually makes small to medium size animals disappear completely, it can kill a normal man since the absence of electricity would cause one’s nervous system to stop working but I’m pretty sure it will only rob Maharlika of his powers and not his life. I’m no a fool… not anymore; I know that Javier has become too powerful for The Device to ever work on him, that is why in order to make him normal again I had to go back in time to when it all began.

Part 6

Constructing the device was the easy part. Building the time machine was a whole other story. I first came upon the notion of time travel during theoretical physics class at my university; my professor thought that I was foolish to be so interested in the subject matter “Time travel is an impossible possibility” he used to say but I knew different.

By constructing a machine that can deconstruct my atomic signature, combine my molecules with tachyon particles (the only particles that can travel though space time), and then re-construct me during any point in time that I desire I have effectively crated a time machine. The only problem with my time machine is that it only functioned in theory, because there was no way of testing it on anyone. It will only be used for the first and only time today… on myself.

Part 7

As I turn on the machine and set the date to that eventful Thursday night I am thinking about what I am about to do. I am about to become the first man to ever attempt time travel, I am about to learn how Javier Hernandez got his powers, I am about to return back to the time when the world was right… and I am about to die. You see the machine will rip me apart at a subatomic level, when I reconstruct in the past I will be alive again in some way but right now I am staring at the machine that will kill me, I am holding The Device with me in one hand and I am shaking the other. During the precious seconds between when the machine fires and I am struck by its killing wave I feel something that I haven’t felt in years -- peace. And then I’m gone.

Part 0

I reconstruct outside Javier Hernandez’s old house. I look inside. I see his wife and kids watching television together. My original plan was to wait for whoever killed his family to arrive, and wait for them to finish their deed, then I’d follow Javier all night to learn how he got his powers, and then I’d take them away. But I looked around and I saw the world that I’ve been angry about losing my whole life. Have I been so blind all these years? Has my intense fear of Maharlika led me to remember a world without him with such fondness as to not remember how sad, dirty, perverted and twisted it was? It was then that I finally realized… I am the one who turns Javier Hernandez into Maharlika. It is so obvious now… the Philippines needs Maharlika. I now know what I must do.

It all happens so fast. I walk in. ZAP! His wife is dead. ZAP! There goes his eldest son. ZAP! And the deed is done.

It is raining now. Javier returns home. I am outside waiting. Overcome by grief he runs at full speed to the highest point he can find. He’s going to try to kill himself. I go after him and I follow him to the top of the barangay church, the whole time he does not mind me; he is too miserable to care.  As he jumps I fire The Device at him. ZAP! I never calculated what would happen if it was used in the rain. The combination of the rain and The Device’s beam causes Javier’s electro magnetic energy to collapse on itself; he disappears for a brief moment then he reapers right at the foot of the church. He is unconscious now. I pick him up and take him to my old police station as I know now I must do.