Michael Darvall
Bio
Quietly getting on with life and hopefully writing something worth reading occasionally.
Stories (35/0)
Salt and Vinegar
The kids were not at school, so it must have been the weekend. But we didn’t get ready to work the cattle, or check the waters, or fix the fences, but instead everyone all piled into one ute: The Boss, the Missus, and most of the kids in the cab, and me and Slick and Badger jumped in the back along with our mate, the Eldest Boy.
By Michael Darvallabout a year ago in Fiction
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 Darvallabout a year 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 Darvall2 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 Darvall2 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 Darvall2 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 Darvall2 years ago in Fiction