Moth-Eaten, Slightly Elitist

The Moth is starting to annoy me.

For those of you not in the know, the Moth is a combination open mic, traveling community theatre, and podcast. It is a place where people tell interesting stories from their lives. Some of them are depressing, some of them are uplifting, and some of them are hilarious. Recently, however, I've the Moth has started to bother me. My enjoyment wanes with every listen. I think the time draws nigh that I will drop if from my blogroll and iPod.

Here's the thing: the Moth is secretly incredibly elitist.

Most Moth stories start the same, with some pithy story of life in the sticks, dealing with a workaday job. Moth storytellers talk about being flight attendants and drug addicts, hikers on ordinary hikes. Weird and wonderful and horrible things happen to them, and then comes the conclusion... where smooth-voiced Dan Kennedy (author of Rock On, an office power ballad, learn more at www.rockonthebook.com... sorry, I've heard that outro way too often) explains that so-and-so the all-night diner waitress is actually a film-making comedian with a book coming out in September.

Almost everyone on the Moth is secretly someone, telling the story of how once, a long, long time ago they used to be no one.

And that's not counting everyone who tells stories of working in fashion or publishing or journalism, straight up and from the beginning. I don't mind them as much. Honestly, I don't mind the stories of people who used to be nobody, either, but their stories cast the flaws in the Moth into sharper relief. As I wrote above, practically everyone on the Moth is a Someone - a rising star of some scene or another - with some brand new media product to shill. No one is nobody. No one is a waitress who's still a waitress, a flight attendant whose still a flight attendant, a drug dealer who's now doing his best to be a good dad.

That's not true.

Once in a while - once every few months or so - the Moth will deign to allow once of the participants of their community storytelling classes to tell a story on the stage. These are the people who are just people, without anything to sell, trying to get by and live their lives.

The thing that bugs me is that this situation - rising media starts telling stories and selling their newest creations is just fine - is in the context of an organization that claims... well, I'll let the Moth tell you what it is:

The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It is a celebration of both the raconteur, who breathes fire into true tales of ordinary life, and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. At the center of each performance is, of course, the story – and The Moth’s directors work with each storyteller to find, shape and present it.

From the Moth's About page.

You see, nowhere does it say that this is a place where media authors, comedians, TV personalities, and politicians will tell their stories. This is supposed to be a place where people - and by that, I assumed they meant all kinds of people - tell their stories.

So, ultimately, the dishonesty and quiet elitism is starting to annoy me. And the condescension of "special story hour with the little people" is starting to anger me. And the repetitive themes of rising stars telling the tales of their inglory days in the trenches are starting to bore me.

In other words, the Moth is on its way out for me. Where is it for you?

Balls

This? This is balls.

Seriously, it's been almost twenty days since I posted, and almost a year since the last time I wrote anything worth a damn. This is balls. Solid. Goat. Balls. Am I a writer or a wannabe, here?

Hint: the answer is that I'm a writer. I refuse to "wanna" anything.

Anyway, it's time to jump start this shit. Winter is over; this is spring. I have a personal trainer, a professional organizer, and two kinds of therapist. It's time to get things started, kick ass, and take names.

Starting tomorrow, this blog is a thing-a-day blog a la my friend Nathan's Mirrorshards. For the next year, or longer, I'm going to write something - a drabble at the least - every single day and post it. It may not be great, but it will be here. And you will read it.

And it will not be balls.

That is all, ladies and gentlemen. Watch this space for a 100 word burst of creativity, every single day. No balls about it.

Now THAT Was a NaNo Post

Sweet mother of lizards, that was a NaNo post. Was that even mildly coherent? Does it actually mean anything?

I'm tempted to take it down, but... nah. Let's just leave it there. It will stand as a testament of what NaNo does to a body.

For those of you who read it - and maybe even gleaned some meaning out of it? Maybe? - I offer sincere apologies. Hopefully you at least had a laugh.

Watch this space for a review of my latest literary conquest, The Curse of Chalion.

So Sick of Sad, Special Sorcerers

I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with me. No normal person should like alliteration this much.

In the world of things that I'm getting kind of sick of, I'm starting to develop a mad-on for, as the title says, sad, special, and oppressed magic users. They're a common - and, I will admit, sometimes incredibly well-written - trope. The most recent stand-out example is Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series, but the subgenre is full of a wealth of excellent and not-so excellent works.

Before I continue, let me explain exactly what I'm talking about.

A lot of modern fantasy takes an approach to magic that mirrors the X-Men. Magic is (usually) an inborn trait, something that either can't  be repressed forever or can't be repressed without serious consequences for the mage. Mages are not a ruling class - rather, they are a hated minority. Their magical powers are only enough to help them survive, sometimes, with effort and great sacrifice.

I have a problem with this scenario. If you have a world where people periodically arise with special powers, I can't think of any reason that they would not ascend to roles of leadership. I mean, a lot of people hate fat-cat bankers born with silver spoons in their mouth, but these folks have been unseated in precious few parts of the world. Power (and talent, skill, and luck) may attract envy and animosity, but it also tends to attract more power. The best stories (The Twelve Houses again, is a good example of this) provide a good explanation: magic has limitations that its enemies know how to exploit, magicians have nemeses with their own, less objectionable power, ancient magician-kings were overthrown (which explains why they are so hated and no one will work for them), or whatever. A lot of the rank-and-file of this trope, however, never bothers with a justification.

Beyond that problem, though, I'm getting a little sick of it.

Perhaps it's over-exposure. This trope seems to have become very popular in fantasy since I was first exposed to it. Perhaps, though, it's something else. I wonder if I haven't grown out of it. As an adolescent, I was very caught up in being special. I worried that I wasn't special enough. I wanted to be assured of my uniqueness and value. I felt that the people who didn't recognize how wonderful I was were either right - which would have been terrible - or wrong, in which case they were oppressing me.

As an adult, I've realized that I don't really care about being special anymore. I'm content to be pretty average in a lot of ways. I have a purpose in life - several, in fact - and I'm happy to be used by them. I don't need to stand out in the eyes of any but the people who know me and appreciate what I bring to them and the world. Perhaps that's why the shine has worn off the story of the magic few.

Finally - and this is probably also part of my growing up - I think that there's something distressing elitist about the myth of the magic few. Let's look at this critically. Imagine that you actually lived in this world: there are a class of people, chosen at random, with magic powers. They can burn you alive with a gesture, invade your memories by looking at you hard, or bend your mind with a glance. There's nothing you can do to stop these people from taking what you own, coercing your obedience, engineering your humiliation, or ending your life. Remember that these people weren't chosen by a higher power with your best interests at heart. They aren't the best, the kindest, or the wisest. Some of them are great people and some of them are jerks. Their power is inherent, so there's nothing you can do to join them, ever.

You can't stop them, you can't compare to them, you can't join them, they don't deserve what they have, and they could be anyone.

Scary? Depressing? Both? Remind you too much of the real world?

Yeah, me too.

I feel that the story of the oppressed sorcerer is founded in the assumption that you are one of the special ones. But special has to equal rare, or it wouldn't be special anymore. Assume that you're a farmer caught in arcane crossfire, watching her home burn; assume that you're a merchant who just gave away goods worth a year of overhead thanks to a magician's charm; assume that you're a twelve year old girl who just caught a magician's eye - the equation changes. You start to think that maybe there needs to be some way to control these people. Maybe you even think that if the best solution you can think of is to put them in the ground, then maybe it's ok. Maybe it's the least of all available evils.

Now, all of this isn't to say that I don't ever want to read this kind of story again. What I'm looking for is a story that takes a more nuanced approach. I want the story to have a is well-built setting, of course, one that answers all the questions I raised above, but I also want it to provide multiple points of view on the problem of magic. Let's have the usual rag-tag band of heroic magicians and their hangers-on, but let's also have mage-hunters with legitimate grievances, people who have suffered at the hands of the "special few." Let's have a resolution that amounts to more than "the magic people should be free to do whatever they want, but don't worry - all the magic people who have been main characters are great."

When you find it, let me know.

The Subtle, Sinister Side of Sexism in Speculative Stories

Six S's sequentially! Seventy supplemental... uh... points!

First of all, have a fascinating article about sexual dimorphism in the world of WoW from Wired.

Also, check out this picture from the oft-hillarious, sometimes disturbing, and rarely safe for work Boobs Don't Work That Way:

Arguing about the portrayal of men and women in fantasy (especially on the internet) is something of a hobby of mine. In fact, I've gotten a little sick of discussing this, so I'm writing this post in part so whenever this comes up I can simply post a link and say "see this - this is what I think."

First of all, I will the first, second, third, and last to admit that I appreciate fantasy chicks. The Chainmail Bikini has a place of honor in my heart, alongside the Naked Powerful Evil Queen (the Abigail loves to mock me about this one), Swords of Unusual Size, and Extremely Flash Magic.

That said, you need to watch what you're doing. Fill your story (or video game, or movie, or RPG book, or whatever) with half-naked women and you are sending an extremely powerful message: this work is intended to excite and titillate the men in the audience. Women who like women may glean some enjoyment if they can get past the discomfort of seeing their own gender blatantly and unfairly sexualized. Women (and men) who like men need not apply.

This is not a message that I intend to send with anything I create. It's also not a message I like to see in anything I consume.

"But Mark," I hear you say, "you just said that you're a fan of chainmail bikinis and wicked sorceress-queens lounging nakedly on thrones of skulls!" I hear you say it through the Internet. It's a new app I just bought, and it's awesome.

Ahem.

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with sexualized fiction. Mighty thews and heaving bosoms have been with us for as long as there has been writing; check out an accurate translation of the Song of Solomon if you don't believe me. The trick is to consider what message you are sending with your work. Are you excluding someone? Are you only giving eye-candy to a segment of your audience? If the answer is yes, you need to deal with it.

This is where the chart I posted at the start of this post comes in. It may be intended as a bit of tongue-in-cheek commentary, but I think it's actually useful as a guide for balanced titillation. What you need to do is this:

1. Decide where on the X-Axis your story is going to fall. Is your work Realistic? Heroically Idealized? Sexualized? A combination of the two (for example: largely Heroically Idealized but with a few sexy bits that slip over into Sexualized or largely Realistic but with a Heroically Idealized climax scene).
2. Keep yourself in that category for both male and female characters. Period.

I mean it with step two. That's where the magic happens. Balance between the depiction of the sexes is what sends the message "this work is for everyone to enjoy!" For every man covered in grime and sweat I want to see a woman who hasn't had a bath since she set out from Caer Amithar a fortnight ago. For every heaving bosom I want to see a mighty thew. For every levitating breast I want to see a buttock of a tautness that defies the durability of human flesh. And no fair skimping on the narration - you must describe everything with an equal degree of loving, sexy, titillating detail. If you aren't up for appealing to everyone in your audience, aim for the left side of the diagram and leave the sexy stuff to the professionals.

And by the way, you should probably take some of those examples with a grain of salt. I'm not into guys, so I'm not sure what actually qualifies as the equivalent of a heaving bosom or levitating breast. Do some research with your female-favoring friends of the male and female persuasion.

There is one more objection I hear a lot, usually from people who make more of their money in one or another artistic industry. "Mark," I hear them say (through the app), "the thing is, people who like to look at guys are used to this sort of thing and they'll buy our art anyway; people who like to look at girls (specifically, male people who like to look at girls) won't."

To this I say: grow the hell up.

Artists - quit being lazy wimps. You want to change the world with your work? Take a stand. The days of fantastic fiction being the purview of men and men alone are long gone - and good riddance to them. Don't hide behind the need to make money. I guarantee you that you can find a way to make a statement you can actually be proud of and also make a buck, if you try.

And all the girl-looking-at-male-people out there - guys, we can do better. I guarantee you that photons bouncing off words describing buff guys (or even - and I know this can be hard to believe - pictures) won't do you any harm. They don't cause eczema, hair loss, or cancer. Everybody else has had to look at what you like for centuries, and they're all fine. You'll live.

Before I go, I want to hear from you. Who does a good job of balancing appeal for those who like boys and those who like girls? What are some works of fantastic fiction that pass the Zeppelin Test?

War on BAUF

Hard to admit I fought the war on BAUF

My hands were tied and the phone was... BAUFed.

Ahem...

BAUF is an acronym of my own devising for a thing that I would like to see eradicated, or at the very least reduced: Business As Usual Fantasy. I'm sure you've heard me ranting about BAUF before, when it comes to fantasy species, and the prevalence of BAUF themes was my main criticism in a recent podcast novel review.

Now let us define our terms: what us BAUF?

In my opinion, the fantasy genre is plagued by a tendency to include fantasy elements for their own sake, rather than because they serve the story or contribute to the setting. It's the kind of logic that leads to elves somewhere in the world - it's a fantasy, after all - even if there are no elves or elvish works in the story itself. Worse, this is the kind of lack of thought that leads to the presence of elves even when the elves add nothing to the story.

For a relevant counter-example, check out science fiction. In science fiction, story elements are generally well-considered and weighed out, included because of what they add, not simply because it's science fiction. Space ships are usually only present in science fiction stories that need space ships - because the story takes place on an alien planet, or the social and economic effects of space travel help drive the plot, or whatever - and are absent from stories that don't. There are warlike cat-people-aliens in Larry Niven's Known Space - a seminal work of science fiction - but there aren't warlike cat-people-aliens in Carl Sagan's Contact. That's because Carl Sagan and Larry Niven both thought long and hard about what was needed to drive their stories and only included those elements that were needful.

Just to be clear, I've got nothing against orcs and dwarves, dragons and spellcasters, when they are necessary to the story. I've even gotten over my elf rage (mostly). I'm even writing a novel that includes elves as a major plot and setting piece. What I have a beef with is the practice of including these elements when they are totally extraneous. Business As Usual Fantasy. Fantasy elements that are included for no reason other than that they are expected.

So, I've explained what I mean by BAUF. But what, you ask, is the problem?

The problem with BAUF is that it's fat, pure and simple. Although I'm not always good at it - just ask everyone who critiqued The Dead of Tetra Manna in its earliest incarnations - I believe that slim and focused writing is a virtue in and of itself. Unnecessary and extraneous elements don't belong in a tightly written narrative. Readers shouldn't be distracted by stuff that doesn't need to be there. Everything you include takes attention away from everything else you include, so include as little as possible (without rendering your story completely sparse) and spend your narrative energy on what matters.

Let's keep it positive - I don't want to condemn specific works as BAUF here. Rather, let's take a little while to talk about a couple of works that are definitely not just Business As Usual.

• The Guild of the Cowry Catchers (and The Prophet of Panamindorah, which I have never spelled correctly the first attempt), both excellent podcast novels by Abigail Hilton. The world of Panamindorah (I got it right!) is completely free of BAUF, and quite compelling besides.
• N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is exactly what I'm talking about when I ask for tightly written fantasy that only includes what it needs and excludes what it doesn't. In addition to being a tightly-written novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms takes place in a truly unique setting that is lean, mean, and evocative.

I'd love to see more examples of BAUF-free fantasy in the comments.

Until next time, folks, remember: go not to the elves for council, for they will say both yes and "zeppelin!"

Frickin' elves.

Politics, Politics, and Politics

I'm currently engaged in a fascinating discussion of art, politics, and horror over here on the Pseudopod section of the Escape Artists forums. In case you didn't already know, I'm the erudite (and handsome!) ElectricPaladin.

The discussion gyrates madly around a recent Pseudopod story, Set Down This, by Lavie Tidhar. Set Down This is the testament of an ordinary person who finds that he has become obsessed with the brief encounter between two men, an unnamed American pilot who fires a missile at and kills a group of Iraqis, and one of those Iraqis. The horror comes from the narrator's inability to escape his obsession and the terrifying ease with which human lives can be erased by modern technology. The creepiness of the "hillarious military YouTube videos" culture - the narrator's brother is a part of this world, which is how the narrator was exposed to the video in the first place - is an added bit of surreal and disturbing.

In a lot of ways, Set Down This isn't a great story. It's kind of a non-story, in that nothing happens, characters do not develop, and the world does not change. It's more a reflection or a character study than a story. If you like that kind of thing, you'll probably just think Set Down This is pure brilliance; if you don't, you'll probably find it a little frustrating. The story is redeemed, however, by excellent craft and a truly disturbing exploration of the subject matter. I'm not a big fan of non-stories, and I found Set Down This striking and interesting.

Anyway, the discussion: what I find really disturbing about the discussion is that Set Down This is being called political.

Political!

What is political about pointing out that war is bad? How is it political to acknowledge that the people who die in war are people, not faceless foreign devils? Is it particularly leftist of me to feel sorry for the people who get blown up, maimed, mangled, and killed across the sea? Since when is it political to say that war has consequences for everyone from soldiers to civilians, from the families of those who are killed to those who just watch the deaths on YouTube?

Now, in order to favor the war, do you have to pretend that it's a good thing? Do you have to imagine that the people who die don't exist, or that they aren't people? Is it now impossible for us to acknowledge that we sometimes do things that are bad in pursuit of a greater good?

I'm not in favor of the war in Iraq, but that's neither here nor there. I'm definitely a leftist - in fact, I'm kind of a Communist - but that's also neither here nor there. Do the people who favor this war really believe that admitting that war is bad is a leftist political statement?

Because that scares the crap out of me.

More to the point, the story is being criticized by a forumite who complains that he comes to Pseudopod to be "entertained."

I'd argue that the power of literature - especially fantastic literature - is it's ability to simultaneously entertain and do so much more. When you read, watch, and/or listen to a story you are entertained and transported. You live another life and learn how to emphasize with someone completely different. This expands you, enhances you, and has the power to change the world.

... I feel better now.

Anyway, if you want to join in the discussion, I'd be glad to have you. Otherwise, stay tuned. Up next, an intro to the craze that's sweeping the internet, Echo Bazaar, and then a guest post by the brilliant brain behind The Guild of the Cowry Catchers and The Prophet of Panamindorah (I can never seem to spell that right on the first try), Abigail Hilton.

Live Long and What Now?

There are crazies, and there are crazies, and there are people even I'm moved to mock and shun. VHEMT goes beyond that last category and enters the world of movements I find myself actually despising. Seriously. Get this:

"VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It's a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We're not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

We don't carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing.

Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth's ecology.

As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us.

Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom.

When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Nature's “experiments” have done throughout the eons.

It's going to take all of us going."

Let's start with VHEMT's "arguments," which boil down to a list of varyingly clever straw men, which they predictably line up and knock down. Then let's carry on to their failure to engage with the logical conclusions of their philosophy: why not kill people, support disease and murder, if you despite humanity and want it to cease? Why propose humanitarian action and when the continued existence and comfort of humanity is counter to your goals? If there's anything I frown on more than depressingly nihilistic, rhetoric-poor, spinelessly genocidal whackjobs, it's halfassed depressingly nihilistic, rhetoric-poor, spinelessly genocidal whackjobs. Come on, people! I've seen more enthusiastic and better-argued evil in poorly written pulp novels. I know you can do better!

This brings me to my final point. What do we do with things who disturb and frighten us? We make art about it!

Creative prompt: you know the conventions of modern/urban fantasy. Take a good long look at these VHEMT folks, maybe even peruse their website (linked above) and tell me what they're really about.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Don't worry, the Abigail and I are fine. No, I'm breaking up with iCafe, the free wireless equipped internet cafe where I once spent my days fruitlessly searching for work, writing, and sending out short stories. I've been forced to retreat to the somewhat less snazzy Happy Doughnut across the street. When there's money in my bank account again, I'll probably go back to my first love, Tart to Tart.

I understand that the proprietors of coffee shops need to make a living, and they do that by selling coffee and sandwiches, not providing a roof and walls for my unemployed self. For fuck's sake, though I'm not costing them any appreciable money by sitting there. My computer doesn't draw that much power, my use of the internet doesn't take up that much bandwith, and my ass doesn't take up that much space. They can afford to be generous. The pricks.

More importantly, this sends me a clear message about what the shop's priorities are. They don't want to be a gathering place for the community, they want to make a buck. When I've got money, they're happy to welcome me, but when I strapped for cash, they toss me out. Well, that's fine, that's their prerogative, but it's a poor way to do business. When I do have money again, I'll take my business somewhere that has never ceased to be welcoming, like Starbucks or Tart to Tart.

I'll call this the aggravating cap to an aggravating week. Hopefully the weekend will be better.

• • •

• Have you ever been kicked out of a coffee shop you were happily writing in by greedy, short-sighted shit-for-brains?
• I know this is mostly my rough week and lack of sleep talking, but is it wrong for me to wish really, really hard for iCafe to burn down?
• Even if I also wish that no one is hurt in the conflaguration?
  

Scientists Killed My Puppy

Yesterday, as I rode back from my teaching on the Peninsula, I listened to more PodCastle, as I am still blessed with a huge backlog of episodes. Listening ot PodCastle is almost always a good experience. I enjoy more than 90% of what PodCastle puts out, and the rare story I don't like is usually more of a "meh" than a "blech."

The first episode I listened to was Dragon Hunt by Sarah Prineas, which I enjoyed reasonably well. It was a fun, clever little story that hinted at more stories to come (just the way I like it) and the reading was well done; it asn't brilliant, but not every story can or should be. Then, because my commute is an hour and a half in total, I listened to De La Tierra by Emma Bull.

Blech.

Incidentally, if you plan on reading or listening to De La Tierra and care about spoilers - much as it pains me to say this - now would be a good time to stop reading. Allow me to instead recommend this io9 article about real-life superheroes patrolling Cincinnati.

I'm as surprised as anyone. Normally, I love Emma Bull. War for the Oaks blew my mind and I can't wait to read Territory and Freedom and Necessity (with Stephen Brust, another author I have loved for a very long time). However, I really couldn't stand De La Tierra, and here's why:

The Parable of the Twins: An Absurdity
By Mark Simmons

Once upon a time, a pregnant woman was running through the woods. She was being pursued by something terrible, something huge and scaly and dripping and awful. Perhaps it was the Internal Revenue Service or the Employment Development Department. In any case, it was so awful that she had to keep running, even though she was extremely pregnant.

Finally, she could run no more. She hid in a hollow tree trunk and gave birth to a pair of beautiful twins. She named one of them Fantasy and the other Science Fiction, hid them in the leaves, and ran off. The IRS/EDD probably ate her or something, but at this point she stops being important to the story.

What is important is that her children were not raised together. Science Fiction was found by a couple of hikers and taken to safety and civilization. Fantasy was raised by wolves.

As a result of her rather measured upbringing, Science Fiction grew into a rather reasonable and likable woman. She is primarily a sociologist, though she likes to keep up to date with new developments in science, especially biology, medicine, and engineering. She's also fascinated by the idea of space flight and dreams of the alien races and strange interstellar phenomenon mankind will one day encounter. She has a pretty pragmatic view of science; some scientific developments will turn out for the best and some are probably a bad idea, but science can't be stopped. We'll have to take the good with the bad and hope that humanity can figure things out.

Fantasy probably would have grown up similarly, but when he was fifteen, his wolf parents were killed by scientists. Fantasy doesn't know why - perhaps it was part of a long-standing feud between scientists and wolves, perhaps it was merely an accident - but Fantasy has harbored a grudge ever since. He hates science and everything to do with it.

What can come of this? Only a tragedy of epic proportions. When Fantasy and Science fiction meet...

In case you haven't guessed, I am extremely frustrated with what I see as a bias against science and the modern world in fantasy. It's not that I'm terribly fond of science - I am reasonably fond of the phenomenon, but that isn't it - it's that it's so damned predictable. Whenever a fantasy story involves a clash between the modern and the ancient, the scientific and the magical, I can practically guarantee that science will be painted as villainous and magic as ideal. Sure, faeries kidnap children and replace them with horrible simulacrums, dragons will eat your village, and ancient curses will turn you into a wombat, but science... science will make your life predictable. Science will make it likely that you will live past fifty and be survived by all your children.

How horrible.

It is when this metaphor is extended to "the modern world" that it becomes most aggravating. First of all, again, I'm rather fond of the modern world. It might be fun to pretend various medievalesque motifs from time to time, but I'm glad that in my real life I have antibiotics, running water, and rights.

Secondly, "the modern world" almost invariably means "the white, Western modern world," and that's exactly the trap Emma Bull fell into in De La Tierra (you didn't think I was gonna pull this rant back to the topic, did you?).

De La Tierra tells the story of a young Latino in Los Angeles who has become a killer for a group of Standard European Fae (SEFs) - tall, willowy, impossibly beautiful WASPs - and his targets are Genius Loci fae from South and Central America. At the beginning of the story, our hero has style. It's a bleak cyberpunk (faepunk?) sort of style, a man full of magical implants that give him information, control his mood, and enable him to do battle with beings that are far out of his league. He's a reluctant warrior in a battle to protect Los Angeles from beings that want to suck out its natural magical resources, fighting monsters he doesn't understand, on behalf of beings he can't understand.

The long and the short of it, though is that our hero discovers that his targets are really just fleeing ecological devestation in their homelands and hoping to set up shop in the United States. The problems the SEFs point to as evidence that there are too many invaders is actually the result of their own depredations and the lack of crunchy granola South American faeries. And after all, aren't the SEFs the real invaders? Once he recovers from losing his battle, our hero ditches it all - his style, his snark, his magic - and heads south to wander the wilderness of South and Central America, making offerings to the fae and teaching them how to avoid guys like him so their invasion can succeed.

This isn't even the biggest plot hole, just the most interesting. The biggest is that all it takes is a few insistent words on the part of his target to turn him around, and if that's all it was going to take, how has he been doing this job for years?

What bothers me is that the main character abandons everything he is to become everything he should be. The color of his skin and the language his grandma speaks tells us all we need to know about who he really is, what he really should be doing with his life. The modern world and its conveniences - the jazz bars he dreams of playing saxaphone in - is not his destiny. Being the slave of incomprehensible beings is his destiny. What is supposed to make this story anything but a twisted tragedy is that in the end he's the slave of the right incomprehensible beings.

Here we have it: magic and marginilized ethnicities vs. science and "the mainstream." Magic wins. Predictable, boring, and essentializing.

I know it hurt when those scientists killed your parents, Fantasy, but you've got to get over it.

A Public Service Announcement

I posted (an unedited version of) this to RPGnet, and I was far to impressed with my own cleverness to keep it to myself:

Elf Rage is a rare condition that afflicts less than ten percent of the fantasy community. It is rare, but a diagnosis can be life-changing. Those suffering from Elf Rage experience intense disgust at the mention of elves, enough to sour their experience of otherwise excellent games and novels. They even become aggravated at the appearance of elflike species - beings that aren't actually elves but in some significant way look or act like elves - in otherwise elf-free fiction. They frequently experience a wistful nostalgia for the early days of their fantasy experience "back when all I'd read was Conan and Tolkien" and elves were still fun, before the tragedy that is Elf Rage ruined everything

Science still isn't sure of the cause of Elf Rage. Some point to an air- or book-born pathogen or mutated gene. Others simply say that Elf Rage sufferers are "just different" or "need to chill out." However, some research indicates that the cause is demographic rather than biological. According to these scientists, elves actually are a tired, worn-out trope, fit only to be put out to pasture alongside similar themes, like gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and the concept of human/nonhuman crossbreeding. These scientists believe that Elf Rage may be the way of the future, that as time passes we will see more and more cases of Elf Rage until elves are finally excised from our fantasy.

Is this the case? Will Elf Rage rise until the elves are no more, or will it subside? Does a golden age of elfdom await on the far side of a barren winter, when Elf Rage finally fades and elves return? Or will Elf Rage consume the elves forever?

If you believe that you or someone you love suffers from Elf Rage, please visit your local science fiction and fantasy bookstore for an immediate diagnosis. The label "Elf Rage" may be frightening, but less frightening than the cost of living with undiagnosed Elf Rage.

This has been a public service announcement from ERAS, the Elf Rage Awareness Society.

First Ever Burning Zeppelin Rant: Raw Mary Sewage and Lazy, Lazy Writing

I just finished the last installment of a fantasy trilogy, and boy am I pissed. I'll try to avoid any blatant spoilers, but don't expect me to tread too carefully.

The books are Poison Study, Magic Study, and Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder. The premise of the first is fairly simple: Yelena a young woman in a fantasy world is sentenced to die for murder is given a choice, to die by hanging, or to gain a temporary reprieve as the food taster for her country's autocratic military dictator. She must survive threats from her past, an ambiguous relationship with her boss, the military dictator's chief spy, and living with the fact that every meal might well be her last. And there's a nifty plot where Yelena has been poisoned by her boss and needs to be given an antidote every morning or die in agony.

There's some good. The idea of a military dictatorship rising to replace a standard fantasy mage-king is a novel one, and the magic system is interesting, though I find Snyder's word-choices to be a little stilted. There's a slow, clever romance plot. The first book is definitely better than the latter two, and possibly worth reading all by itself. The series doesn't really sink into it's failings until Magic Study and Fire Study.

But when it does, oh boy, watch out!

The series has a number of lesser problems that I don't want to go into right now. I find the pacing a little rushed. I think the language is stilted. Some of the dialog seems anachronistic - I don't want my fantasy novels to be full of thees and thous, but there's something to be said for the language just sounding right, and these books don't. What I want to talk about is a bad case of blatantly lazy writing and the presence of a clear Mary Sue.

I'll tackle these in reverse order. According to Wikipedia (ah, Wikipedia, what would I ever do without you?):

[a] Mary Sue... is a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot and is particularly characterized by overly idealized and clichéd mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors...

The term originally comes from the world of fan-fiction, but it has been co-opted by geeks across the world. Yelena is definitely, enthusiastically a Mary Sue. She's beautiful, talented, inspires love and loyalty in everyone she meets, and has access to a rare and unusual form of magic that at first seems morally ambiguous (necromancer) but later turns out to be completely innocuous (soul guide). Even animals love her!

In this series, the Mary Sue problem pales before (and is probably related to) a larger problem with blatantly lazy writing. Specifically, morally lazy writing. What do I mean by that?

In fiction, especially in fantastic fiction, there is a temptation to make the opposition very, very bad so that the heroes can be so very, very good. However, this is lazy. No one is purely good or bad. Everyone has reasons for doing what they do, and those reasons are never universally noble or despicable. Most people imagine that they are doing the right thing, no matter how horrible their actions. People who do terrible things in one area of their life aren't necessarily terrible in every arena; more importantly it's more interesting, from a narrative perspective, if they aren't. Finally and most importantly, people who are 'good' don't automatically hate people who are 'bad,' and they don't automatically love each other.

Not so in the world of Yelena, however.

In these books, everyone who opposes Yelena and her interests turns out to be an utterly despicable person with a taste for rape, domination, torture, rape, murder, and rape (note the repetition of 'rape'). With one exception, everyone who takes a disliking for Yelena turns out to be in league with the villains. And finally, all the villains are more or less in league with each other. Their agenda is nothing more than an increase in their personal power, and they are willing to murder, torture, brainwash, and rape (again) to get it.

It's not that I have anything against absolutes. Sometimes in fiction, especially in fantasy fiction, it's fun to have a villain you can really hate. Sometimes a fantasy story needs the black evil from beyond the walls of the world, a science fiction story needs an alien, and a conventional fiction needs a war, or a plague, or a faceless bureaucracy to wear the mask of wickedness. But when it's a real person that wears that narrative mask, I start to get a little twitchy. Real people are infinitely more complicated than that, and it's doing a disservice to humanity at large to characterize them so simplistically. More importantly, it's boring.

In defense of absolutes, take the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The ultimate villain of the piece is Sauron, a twisted being of near-total evil, and his tribes of degenerate, born-bad slaves. And yet, all is not peace and cooperation in the camp of the heroes. There are disagreements, arguments, and shades of gray. There are good people who do bad things and regret it. Even against a backdrop of the final battle against absolute evil, Tolkien manages to express more moral complexity than Snyder.

I like to think I live my convictions in what I write. In A Knight of the Land, the faction-defining characters are a broken shard of a god lodged inside the body of a dead woman, and three people trying to do what they think is best. The only trouble is that one of them is the leader of a tribe of nonhuman creatures struggling with a call to wipe out humanity for the sake of the land, the other is a human eco-warrior trying to balance the needs of the land with his human nature, and the last is a young king trying to ensure his people's safety. With the possible exception of the goddess-shard (who is really more sick than evil), none of them is clearly a villain. All of them are the heroes of their own stories.

The challenge of a writer is to continually think critically about what we are creating. Both Mary Sue characters and moral laziness come from the same, overly simplistic way of thinking. It's easy to get emotionally invested in someone who is perfect, we think, easy to like him. It's easy to hate someone who does horrible things, easy to hate her, to want to watch her fail. It's harder - but more rewarding - to write ambiguous heroes and villains who nonetheless capture the hearts of our audience.

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Question time! Don't forget, this is how I know you exist. Stand up and be heard. Speak up and be counted. Comment on my blog!

• Where have you encountered Mary Sue's, in your writing and in the writing of others?
• When you find yourself writing a character who seems too good to be true, what do you do about it?
• What is your take on moral complexity?
• Where have you found books that did a particularly good job of it, and where have you found books that did a particularly bad job?
• When have you written black and white or shades of gray in your work?