Back to business... Eros update + teaser · 7:05pm May 2nd, 2022
The next entry of Eros is finally nearing completion, as I intend to finish the chapter draft tonight and submit it to prereaders. It contains the start of our favorite group’s viewing of Midway, and I did make sure to include some screen captures of the movie with it.
If you haven’t already seen the movie, I would watch it when you can. It’s worth it—I watched it remotely with AJ_Aficionado last week, who agreed it was very good. Though he was seeing it for the first time, I was watching it for maybe the fourth, and it really doesn’t seem to grow old. In fact, the more I watch it, the more I appreciate it, even though I can pick out a couple things wrong with it. The battles were a bit too abbreviated at times, and not enough emphasis was put on the near-miraculous confluence of events that materialized that day, allowing multiple SBD Dauntless dive bomber squadrons to strike down three Japanese carriers at once.
But I’ll let the movie show it to our griffie friends. In fact, I’ll even offer up a brief (but sanitized) teaser:
Gilda remained unimpressed after the first few minutes of the movie. “So far this movie is just a bunch of a dweeby talk,” she snarked as she sipped more whiskey-spiked cider from her bowl, sharing it with Tara. “I get it; there’s going to be a war. So start fighting already!”
“Just wait,” Marco replied easily as Giraldi’s eyes were fixed on the screen from above him and behind them, a cleaned-up Chris scooped the hot popcorn into bowls for them to eat. Fortrakt might have felt guilty about the mess and amount of laundry they’d be creating for the hotel staff, if the movie had not already so thoroughly grabbed his interest.
As Gilda said, the characters spoke the exotic pony tongue of Neighponese at times, which he didn’t understand, though the movie was polite enough to provide them equivalent Equish text in what Chris called ‘subtitles’. It enabled him to follow the conversations, even if he agreed with another remark from Gilda that it was at least slightly annoying having to watch, listen and read at the same time.
Fortunately, the two main characters switched back to Equish halfway through their talk, which went on for the first four minutes or so, leaving no doubt that the two nations and militaries they represented were on a collision course. But before he could inquire further as to what they were talking about—China? Fourteen-inch gun? And what’s so important about ‘oil’ that they need to import seventy percent of it?--the conversation ended and the scene shifted, jumping ahead several years. The word “MIDWAY” was splashed across the image in big red letters as the camera panned across what looked like an ocean surface to see…
Fortrakt gaped, his beak falling open as he saw a fleet of massive metal seaships cutting through the waves, far larger than anything else the Kingdom had in their airship navy. The one in front showed a nearly flat top with a single prominence located midship and to the side while the others further back sported what looked like utterly massive cannons that dwarfed those on their airships or siege engines.
“By the Ancestors…” Despite how comfortable he was, Fortrakt had to raise his head to stare at them, and so did Giraldi from where he lay atop Marco, even Gilda fell silent at the incredible sight, ordering Fortrakt to ‘move his crow-damned beak’ aside so she could see. “What is that?” he had to ask.
“The USS Enterprise. An aircraft carrier from eighty years ago,” Chris explained with a slightly smug grin as he placed a fresh bowl of popcorn beside him; the movie showing the flat area of the metal ship filled with lightly-dressed human males that appeared to be engaging in various forms of exercise. “To this day, they’re the pride of the U.S. Navy.”
“Aircraft?” Gilda repeated the odd word, her eyes riveted on the screen as the figures showed the immense scale of the seagoing ship as the camera seemingly panned backwards. “You mean like those ‘airplanes’ we saw in the other movies? And it ‘carries’ them? How?” she suddenly asked.
“Wait for it…” Marco instructed, and then suddenly the screen was filled with the image of what Fortrakt could only describe as a large metallic bird—some kind of flying machine painted gray but adorned with a stylized blue-and-white star on its side. And inside it were not one but two humans, with the one in front somehow controlling it!
“Crows above… and what is that?” he had to ask from his back, raising a talon to point while staring in awe of it.
“That, my young griffon friend, is a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber,” Chris answered easily but nonsensically. He spoke with an air that told Fortrakt it was a topic he knew and he enjoyed talking about as Marco froze the image just as the humans inside started talking. “Nicknamed ‘Slow But Deadly’ by its crews, it was one of the most famous warplanes of World War Two. Built as a dive bomber but also able to give a very good account of itself in air-to-air combat against faster and more agile opponents.”
Gilda screwed up her face. “They’re for air combat? But how? They’re so ungainly…” she protested. “They look really heavy and they’re completely rigid in build. How can they get off the ground? Or even change direction without being able to tilt their wings or lean their bodies?”
Fortrakt guessed that the front-mounted propellers had something to do with both, given they had similar ones on their airships, if back-mounted and much slower moving. But he kept silent as Giraldi spoke up next.
“I know not, but such a remarkable machine…” He sat up and leaned closer to the screen to see as the two humans talked—wait, were they going to try to land such an unlikely vehicle on the flat-topped ship? “I would never have imagined that humans had invented artificial ways to fly if not by airships!”
“Oh, we tried those for a while, but technology quickly outpaced them. As for how they’re controlled, look closely,” Chris instructed with a knowing glance at Marco, who had propped himself up on his elbows.
“There are control surfaces. That upright tail has a rudder like a ship that allows it to turn left or right. It can nose up or down with elevators on the small rear wings. And the big wings have what are called Ailerons which allow them to bank left or right. All of them can be manipulated at once by the pilot—the one in front—to go in any direction he wants. If he’s skilled enough, he can do just about anything you guys can in the air, except it’s much faster. And very heavily armed for the day.”
“Armed?” Fortrakt chorused along with Giraldi and Gilda. “How? I don’t see anything like a crossbow or airship cannon on them!”
“Then prepare to be educated in human firepower, my griffon friends,” Marco promised with a conspiratorial grin an enrapt Fortrakt could all but hear. “Just to give Goldberg and company the finger, we’re gonna show you all the stuff they said we couldn’t...”
Obviously, there’s plenty of M-rated stuff salted in this section in the full version, but I can’t include that in the blog. The chapter will launch once prereads are in and editing passes are complete, mostly likely by Thursday or so. And of course, there’ll be no mystery as to the mood music used. It’ll be the Midway soundtrack:
Sorry for the wait, folks, but I lost a week by writing half a failed entry I didn’t like and had to start over, like I said in a previous blog. This has been coming much more readily. Hopefully that’s a good sign. I’ll post one more blog before launch to give warning that it’s coming. Until then, take care.
I'm stunned Midway came out in 2019. It might be the last culturally significant product an American media company will ever produce. No imposed diversity. No wokeness. No cringe of any kind. Just an earnest attempt to recreate the events preceding and following Midway. Our only small issue with the movie was the inaccurately ascribed quote about "waking the sleeping giant" attributed to Yamamoto.
On a technical level, it was very impressive. The sets looked very nice and in a post-COVID world, I think it's fair to say we'll never witness cinematography this grand again. For a little over 2 hours, I felt like I was back in the '90s witnessing the golden age of Hollywood once more.
Can't recommend it enough. Go watch it.