Michael Darvall
Bio
Quietly getting on with life and hopefully writing something worth reading occasionally.
Achievements (1)
Stories (43)
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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. A new anime classic is born.
The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners series – a spin-off from the ARPG Cyberpunk 2077 – continues the evolution and elevation of the Cyberpunk genre into mainstream consciousness with an excellent anime production. It is commonly held that making a movie or series based on a video game is a fool’s errand because fans of the video game feel it’s not true to the source, while non-players are often excluded or repelled by the assumed knowledge required. This is where Edgerunners has the advantage; it is not a story based on a video game, but rather a story set in the same world as the video game and an expansion on the genre. As such it is accessible to both ARPG players and non-initiates alike. And for those with a longer memory, you'll recognize elements of the table top RPG as well.
By Michael Darvall3 years ago in Geeks
The Nebulous Cairns of Bega
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. My combat instructor says different. She says that, as their face shield shatters and their last breath explodes from their lungs, the moisture freezes into a cloud of pink ice droplets and it spatters across you, pattering on your suit with a sound like rain on a window. Their last scream.
By Michael Darvall3 years ago in Fiction
What on earth are they doing? I’m blowed if I know, but they call it Rugby Union.
It’s so cold your fingers are stinging, you’d say it was pouring with rain except it’s coming in horizontally so you can barely see, you’re covered in mud, exhausted from an hour of intense physical and mental effort and you still have 20 minutes to go, and after all the rough impacts from the last hour, even your bruises have bruises. No, it’s not the entry course for the army special forces, it’s a game of rugby union and you love it, or you will once you’re back in the club-house with a beer/rum in hand.
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Unbalanced
How I accidentally helped kids learn to get along
I am enraged by the self-serving, petty and spiteful opinions of those beneficiaries of privilege who belittle equity. It’s as if they fear that another person’s gain must correlate to their own loss. There must be a term to describe the utterly abhorrent evil they commit when, with false platitudes and twisted words, they would steal the very humanity from others, and in doing so, seek to exclude them from opportunity or even excommunicate them from society entirely. Because they’re “different”.
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Cleats
Bearing the Soul
“Never harm Yonja,” he said, “He’s bearing all a’ the dead souls that need it.” I remember my grandfather’s dark eyes and tanned, wrinkled face, laughing crow’s feet at his eyes. He was talking about the barn owl we’d seen, my older brother and I, up in the scrub in the back paddock. It was roosting in an old mugga ironbark. Grey and rugged the tree was, fissured with age and riddled with nesting hollows; it must have been a sapling when Shakespeare’s Macbeth first strut and fret his hour.
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Fiction
A Dilemma of Wives
It was eight years since Kabul fell to the Taliban. Back then his name was Alistair. He’d been in Afghanistan almost twenty years, working on construction projects. He’d thought about catching one of the evac planes back to Australia, but really, why bother? What was there back ‘home’ for him? Just a failed marriage and a daughter’s grave. Besides, Afghanistan had gotten under his skin; a hard country with hard people, but who found joy in small, transient pleasures.
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Fiction
The Path of a Man
The annoying red light on the dash board wouldn’t stop blinking. Carser tapped it hopefully a couple of times, then banged the dash with his fist; Lex had said the ship was old and some of the wiring needed replacing. The red light kept flashing, now accompanied by an unpleasant whine.
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Fiction
The Bitter Taste of Company
I met her in the little café hidden away down Serle’s Walk. She came in for a coffee and I was sitting there, at the table nearest the door, staring at the menu. I was going to order the apple pie, at least I thought I was, I mean it was a bit pricey maybe, but how could you go past it?
By Michael Darvall4 years ago in Fiction
