Memories are the most wonderful things and the most painful, the most horrid, the hardest and our only link to our own, personal past. Our feelings on the matters of what occured to our younger selves do not change, or, if for some reason they do, it is rarely for the better. When any of us take the time to write down what happened to us, we gain, in great or small respects, a kind of immortality, and the emotions we try to impart to the page fill us and overflow. Elie Weisel's story of survival in Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald and subsequent memoir must have been, therefore, the greatest battle of his life to that point beyond the camps themselves. The memories that surfaced once again, the hatreds, fears and pain must have been unimaginable. When reading any text analytically, though, it falls to the text to inform the message. What we don't think about is the actual process of writing. The title of Night calls not only the darkness of the period, but also, perhaps, the deeper darkness of reliving it with the clarity of hindsight.

The first problem he faced was writing about his childhood. In his twenties at the time of writing, the years with his family still together, still happy, religious and relatively without fear of war. Weisel at age twelve, on the precipice of adolescence, trying with all his might to learn what it is to be a Jewish man, rather than Jewish boy, before the time is right. The innocence inherent in such a boy, with the naivete that comes with so few years could not imagine the horrors fate preordained him to endure. What was it like for Weisel to think back to those days, talking with his father, mother, sisters and friends, his mentor Moishe the Beadle? Having seen his mother and sisters carted off to be gassed, known that the death babies burned without remorse from anyone, watched his father slowly waste away, seen the death of his very faith, what did Weisel feel writing those sections. Were their tears? Was there anger? Somehow, I don't think either took place. I think the truth is far worse.

The way I understand it, his time in the camps completely obliterated such emotional reactions from Weisel. His tears dried up, the anger reduced to apathy and the hatred now simply a fact of everyday life. Despite this, there was, I am positive, pain. However, it is not the pain that the rest of us understand, we who have not seen horror on that scale or of that magnitude. The pain is buried in a deep blackness, like the depths of space with no more stars, and it howls weakly, echoing infinitely nonetheless.

What of the camps, though? They still stand, slowly decaying, but standing as an ostensibly eternal reminder of the past? How does Weisel think of them? Is the anger truly devolved merely into apathy, or has it had time to fester and mature into something of greater worth, something to be harnessed? I think the memoir itself is a testament to that, but there is very little anger in Night itself. It is a very matter of fact memoir, devoid of almost any emotion. When the emotion does come to the surface, it is numbed, dull. But that is the text. What was Weisel thinking, feeling, knowing as he wrote the multiple manuscripts of his time in the camps? 

When he finished Night, what did he do? Did he break down, even after all the numbing? Was there a sigh? A need for another? Was there an uplifting or just a further weight on the mind? Did the darkness recede, grow deeper, or stay the same? When his book became the second seminal Holocaust memoir, did the pain return?

I cannot, nor perhaps should I, know.

John Schutt

Raised as an American, watching American movies, I find this movie a little hard to like on the standards that are set for similar, American films. However, watching it did not make me want to get up and leave. I truly wanted to know how things would turn out for both characters (regardless of the fact that we never really find out). Putting aside the snobby, action-headed American viewer and putting on my analytical hat, I'd have to say that this movie is a great work of fiction, as a book fitted for the screen. ( Continued )

And that, as they say, is that.
John Schutt

My off hand knowledge of France in WWII has a lot to do with the Normandy landing and the troubles in the hedgerows and the bocage country. I know the Allies faltered as their intel on the size of the hedgerows was faulty, how the Germans took advantage of this lack of preparedness and struck hard, forcing the Allies into a bloody battle for every foot. This is, of course, the history of the British and the U.S. and the Germans, on French soil only. What of the French themselves, beyond what is stated in the syllabus? Of this, I cannot say much more. The military history presented to me by American media about American war is, unfortunately, the extent of my garnered knowledge.( Continued... )

....

There's blog one, over-eloquent and raw. It was fun to write.
John Schutt

Hey, all. This will be a short post, since I'm going to be using this blog for schoolwork, specifically a French WWII class and a publication class. I'll try to keep up with RPG updates, but they should be slim (like they haven't already been).

As for Valneeth, I haven't touched it in a while, though I really want to . Too much life stuff gets in the way and I need to decide how I'm going to structure things.

Goal is still GenCon 2010, so we'll see.

That, as they say, is that.

  So the supermodule I wrote about last time is in the can. I looked at the concept and realized it was crap and the ideas were basically cookie cutter stuff that stroked my ego and my geek fetishes in gaming (not sexual at all, I swear. Serious). But I posted a little something about it here:Paizo's Site and here:Sinister Adventures: Nick Logue's Gaming Company.. The document itself can be found through google docs on here: Rupture of the Tower of Valneeth.

This thing is, as the last, to be done with the PFRPG, however it is much smaller. Around 50,000 words is the current plan. Also unlike the last one, I fully intend to finish this damnable thing in the next year if it kills me. I'll hire editors, top scale artists and God knows what else before this thing is done, but by GenCon 2010, I expect to have a manuscript ready for editing or, if I'm really lucky, layout!

And that, as they say, is that.

Mm-hmm, again there's a big delay between posts. I don't like it, but I hope it gets better soon. Somehow I doubt it, but we'll see. I'm doing more writing nowadays, I think, so things could look up here in the future. More after the cut.

( More )

Well, it's been way too long, I think. Jeez. Still, life hasn't been bad. School and grades aren't fun, but the the freelancing really picked up not long after my last, too long ago post.
( More )

Yep, I've been officially published. I'm blazing a trail into infinity, or at least cracking a door into a larger world. I've got a couple other things going at the same time, and I hope they'll be published too. Regardless, it's a great feeling, one I've not felt before.

( About... )

John Steven R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Well, I hate to say it, but I haven't written one iota of new Ilvanix information since last Saturday, and I'm not really happy about that. I want to get the thing written by the end of next year, but at this pace, I'll be lucky to get half that.

( Rant Mode On )
Overall, the week's been alright. Grades are fine and I've been thinking about these things, so it's not a total loss.

I'll post more when there's more to say.
--John S. R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Well, I made the leap. I decided that I'm making my own campaign setting, a place called Ilvanix. I don't know who it's going to be for, where it's going or if I'll ever even finish the damnable thing. But I've started it, and for the foreseeable future, it'll be something I plan to work on.

And lucky you, my 1.35 readers (maybe), I plan on sharing my design choices with you. I'll be posting them here intermittently with other stuff I find funny or useless, so here goes.
( Design of the Overworld )

It's going to be a wild ride, and I hope that anyone who reads this gets some sort of cool stuff out of it. I'll post more when I have more to say, but right now, I'm going to go write that thing!

--John S. R. Schutt
Freelance/Setting Writer

Well, sort of. I don't have an official deadline, nor will I have one I don't think. But I now have an impetus to actually do something rather than sit and play video games (which I love, don't get me wrong).

On comes the rant!

It's been some time since my last post, mostly because I haven't had any impetus to do so. But for some reason, now I do.

So let's begin the rant.

I've been writing for many years now, but it is only recently that I've entered the RPG freelancing industry. Now, this may be of little interest to anyone, but if I'm to make a name for myself (and some cash monies), then I have to get the word out.