Category Archives: Rambles and Rants

Building Character

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Well, I’ve been on such a roll with generic writing advice, it’s time for another post about it! Yes, this also means I don’t have anything else to talk about! How astute!

Derek has been experiencing the joys of labour unions and during his civil duties he’s bemoaned of how tiring and exhausting he finds them. I don’t really have anywhere to go from this statement other than I wanted to record for posterity the minute struggles with plague my reticent co-contributor. Now the Internet shall forever know your day to day struggles. Also, you’re getting destroyed by Adam in Terra Mystica. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed.

Of course, in my desperate attempt to perform the perfunctory requirements of social empathy, I encouraged Derek that his struggles build character. And, in literature, no truer statement can be made. I know this is pretty beginner advice but it’s remarkable how often this tiny detail crops up during the creation or editing phase of writing. We readers are malicious sorts. We expect, nay, demand stress and ill-will towards our most cherished characters. Imagine how dreadful The Lord of the Rings would have been if Frodo had decided to stay home and simply attend his garden with nary a trouble to shadow his door outside of a tobacco addled old man too easily shooed from the porch. I mean, Samwise waxes for five pages over rabbit stew, I really don’t think the audience would have the attention to outlast five hundred pages of rusty hoes and spreading manure.

No, it’s the mental and physical anguish which makes the story. It’s the building jealousy and paranoia towards his best friend–fueled by the dire whispers of the demented Smeagol–that keep us glued to the pages and turning each one. Conflict drives narrative. This is perhaps as basic a tenant one could get for writing. But not all conflict is created equal. An unruly garden certainly produces conflict. I’ve seen my sister attempt her green thumb during the summer. There’s lots of reticence to be overcome through dry weather, scavenging pests and determined plants who refuse to sprout in their optimal time. And yet, I’d wager that audiences would be grabbing for the story about a midget driven mad by a gold ring every time.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/d/duyster/cardplay.html

Card-Playing Soldiers by Willem Cornelisz Duyster (1625-1630).

I’ve spoken at length about how self-insertion into one’s own work can be ruinous and I think part of the problem stems from the selfish desire to portray oneself in as positive a light as possible. In this way, the Mary Sue character takes on ubermensch-esque proportions where everything about them is perfect and their only struggle is against a world which does not appreciate or actively undermines through immeasurable jealousy the simple hopes and aspirations of this perfected self. The problem is that literature is not a job interview and there is no prize for portraying yourself in as perfect a light as possible. In fact, it mostly drives people away with how ludicrous the narrative becomes.

And it’s because the trials the Mary Sue faces are so… impersonal. I don’t mean to say that their rivals are unknown to the character but that there’s so little actually involved of the protagonist in these tales. Truly, the best conflict strikes deep at our main character and plays upon the most buried and repressed aspects of our protagonist. It’s when conflict aligns to the core flaws of our heroes that stories carry the greatest weight. Literature studies are drowning in such examples. Hamlet isn’t about the usurping Claudius as it is about the ineffectual and maddeningly indecisive titular character. Albeit, this shift from pure plot to character is no doubt a product of a modern shift to the unconscious drives and aspects of our psyche (sorry, I’ll try to keep psychology out of these discussions as best I can).

Recently, I’ve been reading the Lies of Locke Lamora which I’ve been reluctant to comment on until I’ve finished. However, the one aspect that really stands out to me for the novel is how rather unmotivating the whole affair really is for the main character. The book follows the roguish Locke who is a master thief in a city of thieves. The tale mostly revolves around his major caper of conning a wealthy nobleman of his money over some fabricated brewery dispute. Things then happen. It’s been taking me forever to finish the book because I’m simply disinterested in the tale. I can’t get into it because Locke himself is so not into it. I’m halfway through the story and Locke’s coterie of rogues keep asking him why he doesn’t bother running from the trouble and, truly, the reasons Locke produces for remaining involved are as unconvincing to me as they are to the character himself. Locke is, essentially, flawless and the story has no pulls into his flaws. He isn’t driven by a self destructing avarice or pride that forces him to remain in continually disadvantageous positions out of a desperate need to satiate his ego’s needs. Instead, he lingers in the building conflict of the city… because… well, he simply has nothing better to do. It’s much like the whole reason he keeps at his crimes–it’s not for a want of money as the author went to great pains to detail how stupidly wealthy the character is. He’s there because if he weren’t, there would be no story. It’s as simple as that.

I’m bored because Locke’s bored. There’s an earnestness to the tale which strives so hard to intrigue through political maneuvers and wondrous site-seeing but it fails on the core aspect of tales: character. And character is, perhaps, the universal constant in the stories which hold our interests. Its what keeps workers at the water cooler, gossiping about their colleagues weekends. And if you keep an ear to people’s gossip, no one ever focuses in on the perfect, unassailable qualities of an individual. No, it’s those dirty, dark actions, attitudes or behaviours which keep us engaged. We want to see failure since it’s the only way that success is ever rewarding. In a sense, the only difference between comedy and tragedy is that when the protagonist falls on his sword in a comedy, he rolls over to simply reveal it for an embarrassing flesh wound.

Surviving the Spotlight

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Years ago, I wrote a brief piece on the cliché Mary Sue character that is epidemic in amateur writing and first stories. I touched briefly on my own perspective and philosophy concerning the Mary Sue and how I, ultimately, see it as a destructive component of an author’s work that detracts from all the constituent components in order to singularly highlight one, self-serving aspect. The Mary Sue was a problem because the Mary Sue made flat all her co-cast in order for her to shine.

Well, the other night, Derek–possessed by equal parts fever induced madness and frivolous need for a short respite from work–went poking around the recesses of the Internet in search of an old online game that both of us had once been participants. This was a play by email, homebrewed role-playing game that involved sending the owner and creator set moves for our characters to perform and then waiting the prerequisite time for those moves to complete before engaging in another activity. Hell, had the game master been savvy enough, he could have introduced a way to purchase “training boosts” and single handedly given rise to the free-to-play format that’s grabbed the modern video game industry in a choke hold. But that’s beside the point.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/a/arcimbol/4composi/7cook1.html

The Cook by Guiseppe Arcimboldo (1570).

The most interesting part of this game was a small contribution from the game master wherein he ran global events wherein anyone could participate and gain rewards while interacting with the other characters. Since this game was conducted in high school, favouritism and fanboyism were rampant in equal measure. However, the unexpected introduction of the game master’s shitty involvement was that it inevitably lead to the players splitting, interacting and forming their own factions within the game. In truth, the game master could have simply served as a neutral arbitrator and never once introduced a stupid narrative to the game and us players would have woven our own story complete with betrayal, heroism, mustache twirling villains and underdogs fighting against all odds. Some of the more… literally inclined also took to the forms to write far more words to explain “Learns Tri-Form” truly required.

Of course, I was one of those nerds but–thankfully–I was not alone. I remember a budding rivalry between myself and Dan as he squared off his fledgling army of soldiers in a Band of Brothers-esque tale of camaraderie as he took on the megalithic global corporation that was my character’s domain which had its sights on eliminating the super soldier threat from the face of the earth so that its super weapons would skyrocket in value and demand. Obviously, to demonstrate the power of my weapons I first had to go and murder a few upstart super soldiers which brought me into direct conflict with Derek and Rob’s characters who were trying to do… well, we never found out because I put them ten feet in the ground and had to listen to a week of Rob’s complaints about my traitorous ways. Course, if he’d just read my character introduction, he would have known better than to try and train in a remote monastery near my headquarters but, alas, literacy was not high on his priorities.

Okay, so where am I going with this? Well, Derek (for whatever impenetrable reason) wanted to see if there was an archive of our teenage foibles. What he found, instead, was a treasure trove of a very different sort.

As it turns out, the game lived on its creator’s mind as well who took it upon himself to start turning his game world into a series of novels of which I will leave Derek to reveal should he ever decide he wants to post on this site again. There was a tantalizing preview and suffice to say, Derek was eager to get a hold of a copy for himself. Alas, if only he showed this much enthusiasm for my writing.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/b/beaux/birds.html

Charles Sumner Bird and His Sister Edith Bird Bass by Cecilia Beaux (1907).

So what does this have to do with character creation? Well, the preview with which I was entreated had a rather entertaining meeting between the protagonist and… someone who seems important but was impossible to parse their exact role in the narrative from the short section. This section, once again, reminded me of the Mary Sue problem. The author seemed to struggle with the vexing problem of conveying threat and weight of this meeting with some supposedly intimidating character while also demonstrating just how awesome his main character was at the same time. Thus, we lengthy description of how the protagonist was both flippant and anxious, struck dumb by the sheer presence of his contemporary and immediately dismissing him and his work as irrelevant. It was a baffling series of contradictions that failed to either establish one character’s legitimate threat to the world or the character whilst simultaneously failing to make the protagonist any more likable, sympathetic or engaging in any manner.

Given the circumstances, I am loathe to denounce the story as being a true Mary Sue–I have not read it and to outright condemn it on such a short preview would be unjust. However, it did make me pause and consider my own work as these circumstances always do. Once again, I feel as though I don’t stumble into that very common pitfall but I did recall my sister’s concerns that she was ill-equipped to avoid such widespread mistakes in her own writing. So, what method do I employ to ensure that my characters are not flat and self-serving?

Truly, I feel my interest and experience in both theatre and psychology were some of the best preparatory measures I could take. Theatre you learn to remove yourself from your stage persona. I was taught techniques to search within my own experiences for some common ground which I shared with the character I was portraying and, from there, extrapolate new mannerisms, thoughts and reactions. Psychology further boosted this method as I was educated on the way people think and the various differences in cognitive biases and perceptions which shape the different reactions people will have to the same stimuli. Ultimately, I developed an interest in how people think and this interest naturally leads to characters that are less enslaved by the narrative requirements of the story and are capable of exerting more engaging, developed and well-rounded behaviours.

In short, all the characters I write are characters which are intrinsically interesting to me as an author. I never put a character in to solely serve a narrative purpose–whether that would be to make my character look more courageous, more clever or more fit than his compatriots. In fact, I tend to focus on ensemble pieces which lets me explore many different personalities. Lots of my conflict arises not from story needed elements but by the clash of strong personalities with goals at odds to their fellows. I never have that one character who I obviously adore above all others and lavish more attention and heroism upon. All the creations in my stories are my children and I do my damnedest to not play favourites.

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Joking Couple by Hans van Aachen (1552-1615).

Which isn’t to say that I don’t like some characters more than others. To say otherwise would be a lie. In my first novel–of the main cast–I was most fond of the wealthy but infinitely bored Theodosius and Isabella. Theo’s antics were always more enjoyable to write than the plodding and melancholic self-turmoil of Jarret. And the selfishness of Theo and Isabella was perhaps the greatest when the two were together–each seeing in the other a worthy competitor for their own whimsical obsessions but both woefully blind to how irrelevant their petty desires truly were. And, by the end, Theodosius faded into the background as he slowly began to realize that the story wasn’t truly about him. There was an almost humbling moment when at last he confronted just how unnecessary he was to the troubles surrounding him right before he bowed off the stage.

But how was I capable of avoiding making Theo the star of the story and everyone else a shade there to colour the background of his adventures? I think one of the best tools a beginning author can do is force themselves to write sections or chapters from their other characters. I did this a lot with my early work and most of this writing was either irrelevant to the story or ultimately cut altogether. However, I always enjoyed these exercises. It brought the characters to life in my mind so that, even when I wasn’t writing from a pseudo-omniscient perspective right outside their head, I knew how they’d react when the principle characters interacted with them. When you read interviews with authors, many will often comment on how they get surprised by the actions of their characters–seemingly behaving in ways they had not anticipated and taking the story in new avenues it was never meant to explore. I think this is only possible when you make your characters truly alive and able to free themselves from the puppet strings you–as the author–invariably hold over them. When you stop picturing scenes as “this is the moment the villain is going to threaten my hero and raise the stakes” and start thinking “Padma isn’t going to tell Ed anything and only entertains this interview because she’s required by law and she’s going to make certain that the erstwhile detective knows that” then you’ll start having curious conversations about classic patriotic paintings instead of dead bodies. Conversations become duels instead of set pieces with your participants giving and taking in ways neither you and, consequently, your readers will ever anticipate.

And when you give time for all your characters to shine then your work feels so much more alive. More than anything, I think that’s what theatre taught me. No production is truly a singular work and it’s important to let every actor have his time to shine in the limelight.

7cook1So, if you’re a starting writer and are worried that your main character is too “you” and that the rest of your world is flat then do this. Open a new document, take your latest character introduced and write the scene you just wrote from their perspective. Why did they say those things to your character? What are they thinking about? What do they think of this character in front of them? Are they engaged with this moment? Do they have other characters in their life that are more pressing to them? Do a quick short where they are the star and the world revolves around them. Figure out what makes them tick. Figure out what motivates them. Figure out if, maybe, they they don’t truly think what you thought they did about your main character.

Then go back and see if maybe, just maybe, they would say things differently now that they have a new perspective on your character.

Worst Writing Suggestion Ever

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It’s rant day! How excited are you? I can only assume “very.”

Today, I’m going to weigh in on something in which I actually have some qualifications and expertise. While normally I’m just shooting off my opinion, as half or full-baked as it may be, this time I’m going to address a common writing saying. Everyone’s heard it, even if no one really knows who first coined it. It’s the sort of writing advice which would paralyze beginners and be brought up to defend questionable output or design instead of offering any help in furthering or improving its craft.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/serov/index.html

Portrait of Princess Yusupova by Valentin Serov (1902).

I am, of course, talking about “Write what you know.”

It seems so simple and innocuous on the surface. Clearly, if you write what you know then you’ll produce detailed and accurate events and characters. We’ve all experienced writing on a topic clearly well beyond the author’s grasp. Anyone with any background in the sciences needs to have a very good sense of humour whenever a movie or television show covers something remotely scientific. Computers fare no better and Hollywood’s vision of hacking is as quaint as it is inaccurate. Thus, if ignorant writing produces inauthentic material, clearly knowledgeable writing produces the opposite.

And this line of thinking is a trap. Writing isn’t some vaguely masked autobiographical account. Writers are not constrained by their own backgrounds and upbringings. Would this be the case, the entire literary field would be near obliterated. Speculative fiction would not exist. Even more offensive is when this adage is trotted out to defend discriminatory products. I’ve probably seen this tired saying more often in discourses questioning the lack of diversity in a piece of fiction than in any other circumstance. The argument, as it goes, is generally raised as a way to silence critics. “Clearly the author must have a male protagonist because he is a male himself. He doesn’t know what it is like to be a woman. If we want more female protagonists then we need more female writers.” This line, of course, extends to just about any minority or individual who would raise questions against the status quo.

I think it’s most telling that you hardly ever see writers themselves say this. And understandably so–if I were to hear an author echo this sentiment then I would consider it a self-confession of their own inability to perform the basic requirements of their craft and to out themselves as the sub-par and talentless hack that they must surely be. It’s an illogical and downright offensive kind of argument. It belittles the efforts of people in the field and, truly, insults the intelligence of its readership. Only a moments consideration reveals this nonsense for the extreme absurdity that it is. I mean, can we truly imagine a world where artists were constrained in such a binding manner. All works would be mono-gendered. One couldn’t write about a parent without actually having a child themselves. Every character would be employed in the same business and pretty much every book would be covering the anguishes of the writer and the turmoils of writer’s block. Clearly, I will never know what it is like to be a mother so I must surely be unable to write a mother at all in my stories. I’ve never had a twin, so that option is off the docket. And you can forget about having any character who doesn’t have a father that’s an alcoholic.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/serov/index.html

Two Boys by Valentin Serov (1899).

Clearly, this isn’t the intention of the defence but no matter how hard you try to scale it back it never, ever makes a lick of sense. Why should I not be allowed to write about Judaism or have a character who’s a Tibetan in my story because I’ve not been one? The stalwart defenders of this position would have you believe that the core experience of people from other backgrounds is wholly intrinsic to those experiences. It is, in essence, that being Asian is the entirety of one’s being and something impossible and inscrutable to those who are not one. Surely, a white person can not know all the struggles and minutia of the difficulties of a black person in growing up under a system of institutionalized racism and thus it is a topic which they can never weigh in on.  It’s the worst possible argument because it almost sounds like it’s reasonable despite being completely idiotic. The argument supports the insidious idea that there is a “standard” or “normal” experience and that all minorities are exempt from it and majorities are likewise locked into it. Being white isn’t particularly fundamental to the vast majority of western characters since that is just the natural way of life. It’s once you change the colour of their skin or what-have-you that now suddenly they are some mythical “other” whose voice can only, truly, be captured by one who has walked this unique path.

Yes, I’ve mostly seen the “write what you” cliché when it crops up in minority discussions. And, just as I prefaced this rant, it’s ludicrous when you take a moment to consider it in its entirety. We’re not looking for stories solely filled with carbon copy men who have all had the exact same upbringing. If my experiences as a son can allow me to infer what it was like for my mother to raise me and draw that as inspiration for a character, then surely I can apply my experiences as a white person and infer the differences and challenges which someone of a different skin colour would experience. Ultimately, this is the work of an author. In fact, self-insertion is considered probably the worst form of writing that one can do. The Mary-Sue is a derided concept for a reason. And the fact I must write a rant upon this subject is almost depressing. There’s as long a history as it is proud of authors writing well beyond what they could possibly know. There’s George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales… I mean I could go on and on and it’s patently ridiculous to think that anyone would consider stories from a perspective not your own as unachievable.

Let’s face it, it’s an excuse and nothing more. It’s held up as some sort of codified artistic creed to forgive the fact that there is a lot of lazy writing floating throughout time. If an author truly felt that they could not cover an experience beyond their own because they so feared creating an offensive stereotype, then how are we to be assured that what they are writing now isn’t riddled with clichéd stereotypes?

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/serov/index.html

Portrait of Princes Orlova by Valentin Serov (1911).

The true adage which a writer should hold is not “Write what you know” but “Know what you write.”

If you’re going to create a character that steps outside your own experience, you don’t throw up your hands and claim it’s an impossibility. You do that far worse word–research. If I want to explore the hardships of a minority living a life of oppression, I should investigate what that life would be like. I should read up about institutionalized discrimination. I should interview or find interviews with said people. We live in the Information Age–for crying out loud–getting a deeper understanding of experiences beyond our own has never been easier.

But more than that, an author should be aware of what their work is communicating. I know everyone’s probably tired of me ragging on Name of the Wind but like I said in my original piece, I don’t believe that Rothfuss is a misogynist. He simply fell into the trap of not being aware exactly the context of his words. I believe he didn’t include a well developed female character–not because he doesn’t believe that women can’t be equal or powerful–but simply because he didn’t think of it at all. He probably also failed to recognize that every single one of his female characters served singularly sexual needs for other male characters. He likely got trapped in his own perspective and wrote a little too much about what he knows.

So, when going over your words and considering the characters and situations you’ve created, it’s imperative that as a responsible writer you come at it with just as critical an eye as critic. You’re not being judged solely on your apparent knowledge of magic, science, social organization or espionage but on the prevalent themes and motifs you cover as well as how your work fits into the paradigm of your times. If you don’t know what you’re truly writing, then you are the writer that needs to hone your craft. And the first step is probably to start learning some of that stuff that you don’t know.

The Whore of Babylon

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While on my travels, I happened to take the entirety of Firefly with me to while away those long hours on planes, trains and automobiles. Ostensibly, Kait and I would watch together and have something to discuss during our eight our explorations of Canada’s back roads but Kait thought it would be more entertaining to get sick and spend her time unconscious or vomiting.

However, I can’t really write a blog post on digestive discomfort… or can I?

Accessed from http://cdn2.nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Firefly.jpg?874fb4

Firefly and all its component parts are belong to Fox and Mutant Enemy Productions in their respective capacities.

I digress. Coming off my month of positivity, I knew I was going to immediately fall into my hyper-critical, cranky and condemning nature. I can not help it–learning from failure is so much easier than from successes. There’s also far more to discuss with things that don’t work than those that do. However, during my month of positivity I mentioned a number of things that I enjoyed. One of those was the aforementioned cancelled television show Firefly from the eponymous Josh Whedon of Avengers fame. And though I like Firefly, that does not make it immune to flaws and critique. Reliving those handful of episodes reminded me of all the wonder and frustration of the series. It was entertaining but it also had its share of issues.

And I’m going to take about one of the biggest ones.

Firefly is interesting as it serves as a retro-futuristic setting much in the enjoyable vein as Fallout. It creates a universe set well beyond our time and far beyond our galaxy but instead of the fantastical dressings of similar setups like Star Wars, Firefly goes to great pains to be both familiar and immediately understandable. It is more a fusion of genres, smashing elements of science fiction and space operas with a traditional cowboy western. It’s a fascinating mix of old and new. Individuals stomp around in combat boots, duster coats and bowler hats while firing bullet-less firearms or playing holographic pool. Taking this unfamiliar smattering of familiar elements to a greater extreme, Firefly also blends western and eastern influences into a peculiar hodge-podge where kanji and Cantonese decorates the sets just as much as horses and saddles.

It’s fun, interesting and somewhat weird. Anytime the audience begins to settle into its separate genre conventions, the show will rapidly upend expectations with its almost incongruent components. Cattle wrangling will be followed by high adrenaline space battles. Hi-tech robbery will shift into frontier firefights upon horseback. It follows its own madness that is so easy to settle in and lose oneself amongst. There is a lot of world building going on in both the show’s fore and background and as a universe it would serve as an excellent example of many elements we discuss on this blog.

Unfortunately, not all of it is seamless. Some elements seem too jarring and break the excellent mix of psychic experimentation and civil fighting. Two of the largest are its subjects of preachers, sin and sex. There is no denying the influence or importance of preachers on the wild frontier but the use of Firefly’s analog leaves much to be desired. The main character to represent this aspect of life-Shepard Book-is rather contradictory and underused in the thirteen episodes. Most of his personal plot even eschews his religious aspect and hints at the dark past which haunts him for the short series. It’s a convenient way to avoid the implications of his role in the galactic society but it leaves lingering questions of what faith appears like in this distant stretch of the cosmos. Ostensibly he is little more than a standard Christian missionary but given its far futuristic setting it is not unreasonable to assume that the face of the pious has changed during times even more bizarre than our own modern technological advances. Consequently, Book’s spiritual discussions rarely say anything of worth nor reveal much on spirituality in the Firefly universe. And outside of the pilot episode, there is no real indication that anyone else is particularly pious as nearly all religious iconography has vanished in this envisioning of what is to come.

Sorry, that’s a lie. Nearly all Christian iconography has vanished. There is tons of religious symbology in Firefly but it is almost solely devoted to Buddhist representations. While Shepard Book is called the “Soul of Serenity” in the crew commentary there is another member of the crew who is just as devout even if she follows a different set of teachings.

And she is perhaps the worst character in the show.

Inara Serra is a Companion and the one character of the show who has no right being on the spaceship Serenity. Which is unfortunate because Morena Baccarin is absolutely lovely and I would totally watch a show that was just about her. The big problem of Inara, however, was that the writers clearly had no god damn idea what to do with her.

Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra.

Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra.

She was a whore. And she did whoring.

But Inara Serra serves as the best example of the advice “show – don’t tell.” From her introduction, we are graced with a woman of elegance and refinement. And the moment immediately following her stepping down the ragged steps of Serenity’s cargo hold the captain-Malcolm Reynolds-introduces her as a joke and a space prostitute. The audience is never shown her as anything else.

Which is concerning given the amount of dialogue devoted to the contrary. As I mentioned, Inara is a Companion which, supposedly, is a position in society that carries much power and sway. Her justification for being on the ship is that she “opens doors otherwise close to the crew.” Given that Mal and his band of misfits are either fringe members of society, fugitives or outlaws, the implication is that Inara represents the upper crust of refinement and social gravitas in the Firefly universe. But why or how she opens these doors is never explained. She is consistently and repeatedly shown as just a space prostitute. No more infuriating is this than in the episodes which are actually devoted to her: Shindig and Heart of Gold. The first is easily the worst episode in the entire series (in my humble opinion) and the second is also quite bad. Shindig was written to obvious explain this inherent separation between Inara and the crew of Serenity and explain exactly what she does. The episode goes to great lengths to talk about “two different worlds” and for the characters of Inara and Mal to struggle with entering each others.

And in Shindig, Inara is called out as a whore at least twice in her polite society to which she reacts with shock and surprise. Which is hilariously confusing because whenever anyone talks about her profession, that’s exactly how they treat her. Heart of Gold, on the other hand, is an episode specifically about a brothel unaffiliated with Companions… except it’s run by an ex-Companion and the crew is brought in on the request of the only Companion the series shows. Once again, Inara is intimately connected with prostitution through association and connection with the Madame. The series consistently shows Inara as a whore while constantly trying to argue she is not.

Which is a shame since the concept of Companions, ostensibly, is meant to represent a completely alien concept to the viewers. To say she is just a whore is to undermine the clear efforts the producers and designers of the show went to in order to suggest otherwise. Companions belong to a guild which requires years of service and devotion in order to obtain their credentials. Their lives are steeped in mysticism and spirituality. When Inara spends her time with a client, nearly every director goes to great pains to frame her service as an emotional and psychological session than just some cheap, throw-away sex. And there is the ever persistent insistence that Companions are not that which Mal continues to jape with perhaps The Train Job being the sole moment where we see Inara spring Mal and his first mate Zoe from constable custody with nothing but a ragtag story and a flash of her credentials. Inara is called the “Heart of Serenity” and her few scenes with Shepard Book suggests quite heavily that Book plays at being a priest but Inara actually serves in that spiritual propensity. He condemns and quotes scripture while she tends to the mending of personal crises and questions of faith. Book is represented as an officer than anything else–patrolling for breaches of scriptural law and morality while Inara serves more as a teacher and healer for the existential needs of her companions.

Fuck you copyright, now no one wins! This picture is mine so nobody can use it because we live in a stupid world.

Geisha are entertainers and hostesses. Their connection to sex is a western construct misconstrued from the American occupation of World War II. Photo credit: me.

Inara is best described as a space geisha with a heavy emphasis on her spiritual training. Unfortunately, Firefly falls into the western trap of misrepresenting the idea of geisha as being nothing more than upscale prostitutes which is far from the truth of the seemingly source of inspiration for the Companions. Consequently, this lack of understanding spirals grossly out of control to that Inara and her sex services are the sole point of representation and discussion with all other functions dismissed and ignored.

I find this infuriating because I enjoy science fiction and fantasy for its fantastical parts. It allows us to conceive, portray and explore ideas and peoples unhinged by the connotations and restrictions of modern times. It’s the speculation of speculative fiction which I believe draws the audience and thus Inara and the Companions should have been a major source of interest and intrigue. What would a highly influential guild of women courtesans mean for a society and its integration into the wider world? Why do these whores supposedly wield such power and how can this influence the way we see modern sex workers and sex itself?

According to Firefly, nothing and thus it is the series greatest misstep. But it need not be that way. As always, criticism without constructive feedback is useless. I have thought about Inara and the Companions and feel that, ultimately, the issue with the character rests on that early episode. Shindig was an unmitigated disaster which, had it been written better, probably could have taken Inara and elevated her to be the most complex and intriguing character on the ship instead of solely existing for cheap sexual tension and the butt of sex jokes.

And how you would do that is completely rewrite the character of Atherton Wing. Atherton is the man who hires Inara for the titled party. He first appears when Inara is browsing through a list of clients–as a Companion always chooses her clients instead of the other way around–and in the middle of her listening to an incredibly awkward proposition from some wide-eyed youth, Atherton bursts on Inara’s screen with a smile and grace. The two laugh and banter, making mention of how long its been since their last exchange and how he would be delighted if Inara would accompany him to the biggest party on the planet. Inara accepts with nary a hesitation.

The next time we see Atherton, he’s grossly belittling her to little more than a sex toy and angrily announcing that he paid for Inara’s service and she is little more than a servant and nothing else. This keeps in line with Inara the Whore but it is wholly inappropriate for Inara the Companion as well as the friendliness which Atherton first expressed when he propositioned her.

No, instead, Atherton should have been nothing but accommodating and gracious. He should have played the perfect “host.” When proposing that Inara give up her galactic trotting days and become his personal Companion, he should have made the focus specifically on what he could offer her and how he could meet her standards. His wealth, connections and prestige should have been presented as though they were an offering that made him worthy of her and not the other way around.

Oddly enough, "Half of the men wish you were on their arm but all of them wish you were in their bed" isn't really the best way to woe a woman. Who knew?

Oddly enough, “Half of the men wish you were on their arm but all of them wish you were in their bed” isn’t really the best way to woe a woman. Who knew?

For, I feel, the Companions should have served an integral part of the Firefly universe. They should have been “ambassadors” as Mal blithely teases in the pilot episode. They should have been the arbitrators of social standings. They should have been the neutral parties trained for years in reclusion in the many ways and protocols of the wide collection of planets in the core and rim. They more than the Alliance represent a unifying force amongst the disparate peoples. The smile of a Companion should bring fortune upon a person. Her dismissal would mean near social ruin. They should be dignitaries of class. For, they are trained to read and judge people, searching for those of pure spirit and to tend to their needs. Sex is but a minute portion of their work-a distinction that should be lost on all the plebeians who lack the refinement of higher society. The moment Inara stepped into the Shindig, she shouldn’t have been the one going around greeting the guests, it should have been the guests tripping over themselves in order to greet Inara.

The Companions, after all, choose their clients and those clients should be scrambling to make a good impression in order for the opportunity be on her arm at the next shindig.

This complete inversion of the power dynamic between woman and man, especially in the case of modern times in relation to client and service worker, would say far more about gender, sex and sexuality in the Firefly universe than any persistence demonstrated in the thirteen episodes which aired. This confounding relationship would also make an easy conflict to show how Malcolm Reynolds truly does not belong in that “world.” When he blithely asks Inara for a dance, his presumptuousness should have been met with gasps of shock from the attendants. When the issue of a duel between Mal and Atherton was raised, it should not have been Mal defending the honour of Inara but Atherton Wing. The series argues, numerous times, how inappropriate it is to refer to a Companion as merely a common “whore” and this episode should have demonstrated just that. Mal should have used this tactless jab at her profession and it should have been the very social casus belli Atherton needed in order to wrangle the captain into a sword duel he was wholly incapable of performing.

Gina Torres has nothing to do with this rant. She's just awesome and I wanted to put her in.

Gina Torres has nothing to do with this rant. She’s just awesome and I wanted to put her in.

Instead, the show was cheap. It was cheap in its portrayal of sex workers who are reduced to being nothing but cheap thrills despite their union and insistence to the contrary. It was cheap in its portrayal of its villains, going for blatant misogyny in order to instill antipathy towards Atherton instead of relying on his cunning and ability to manipulate Mal’s brashness and ignorance in order to create a favourable circumstance for him to remove a potential rival for Inara’s affections. But more than anything else, it was cheap towards Inara herself reducing a character focused on spiritual needs and guidance to just being a good lay for 100 credits.

Wish for a Night

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Long time, no post–amirite?

My apologies. Two weeks ago I went to visit Derek for the celebration of our nation’s birthday and he cruelly kept me from my posting duties. Then, as I was departing back to responsibility and proper work ethic, I was gifted a delightful cold as a departing present. So I spent much of last week unconscious upon the couch bemoaning the suffering of existence and life. I also produced lots of mucus. I have no idea what people did with that stuff before the invention of disposable tissues.

However, that won’t dissuade me any further. I have returned from the land of the half dead and weary to insure that I put some scribbling upon the site. Last I concluded was with a short endorsement for the very aged Thieves’ World anthologies. I realized that there may, perhaps, be a persistent negative edge to this blog. It is not my desire to fill the Interwebs with my criticism and pessimism. Thusly, I have decided I’m going to do nothing but a month’s worth of posts covering things that I actually like.

Today, I want to discuss one such topic that I am wholly ill-equipped to cover: music.

Accessed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightwish#mediaviewer/File:Imaginaerum_teaser.jpg

Imaginaerum poster art for power metal band Nightwish. Taken from wikipedia and possibly belonging to Solar Films.

I must confess, my knowledge and understanding of music is about as shallow as it can possibly get. I don’t know much musical theory. I know the basic components of songs and the handful of information bestowed upon me during my two years of musical classes in middle school which predominantly were composed of wailing futile on instruments that were very much not saxophones or drums. Of all the entertainment mediums, I always feel the least equipped to speak on music. I suppose, in a sense, that gives me the closest experience to those that interact solely on popular media: they are driven near entirely on their personal tastes with nary a consideration for the history or theory which directs and shapes the art.

My ability to discuss music is further hampered by the fact that I was born on the wrong continent. I have turned on a radio and what blares from the speakers holds very little interest to me.  I can’t stand pop music which sounds so empty and soulless to my ears. Things like Brittany Spears, Lady Gaga and the girl with the whipped cream bra that shoots long streams of the desert in her music video all blur together both in sound and presentation. I loathe rap–it’s like someone took poetry and forced it to only concern an equally manufactured sense of toughened authenticity by elevating the worst of urban crime and discrimination. It also sounds the same and horrendous to my unrefined ears.

I won’t even touch country.

Alas, those three genres are the kings of North America and woe be to the counter-culture individual who finds their ears incapable of processing their noise into pleasurable sensations. However, I have discovered that the rest of the world does not languish beneath this vice-grip of the record moguls interested solely in regurgitating the same message and experience at infinitum. Other countries rebel against the oppression of the established elites. Other countries revel in the untamed anarchy of a style which refuses to be tamed and pacified.

Other countries still enjoy metal.

Accessed from http://www.motnueq.com/medias/images/nightwish1.jpg

Tarja and company from the band Nightwish. Not my image.

Europe and, to a lesser extent, Japan have their metal scenes which bear the torch of the 1970s subgenre which broke from the ruling Rock in the United Kingdom and United States. Here were the familiar sounds for a kid raised on Metallica and System of a Down (though, I think that’s technically Rock – I didn’t care as a kid). Actually, if I were to be honest and drop all this pretension of a downtrodden music genre, I can see some issues with the culture of metal on par with those of the prevailing genres today. There’s no denying the large emphasis on masculinity, aggression and machoism. I simply don’t have an issue with their general portrayal and, simply put, it’s fun to rock out to some head pounding beats.

Which brings me to my current tastes. Needless to say, while I still hold a fond part of my heart for the entertainment of my childhood and adolescence, my preference in music has become refined. In particular, the development of power metal is near the perfect amalgamation of sounds which I adore. They’re emotionally powerful, typically focusing on choruses which you can understand and covering theatrical fantasy subject matter. Sonata Arctica has songs about werewolves. Coheed and Cambria (though they’re more a mish-mash of various influences still have heavy metal components) releases concept albums covering a science fiction storyline set across planets connected by energy beams known as the Keywork (I think, I have no idea what’s going on with it). Dragonforce sings a lot about dragons. And Powerwolf… well… they also sing about werewolves.

Out of all of them, however, there is one band which I like the most. The range and variety of their soundscape is matched by none. And no other band really hits the symphonic components of the genre like they do.

I am, of course, talking about Nightwish.

Of course, any mention of Nightwish inevitably draws the question, “Tarja or Anette?” To this, I can merely shrug my shoulders and ask in the immortal words of the Old El Paso spokesgirl, “Why not both?” Course, now that Anette has left, I guess we’re going to have to start drawing lines amongst the fanbase into thirds. However, there is no denying that both have their place and each singer represents an almost completely different sound for the band. Tarja was the first and her almost operatic voice was equally commanding whether she was striking out the typical metal sounds of Wishmaster, a cover of Phantom of the Opera (even though that’s technically a musical) or even the eerie Finnish folklore songs of the Lappi ballad.

And though Anette doesn’t have nearly the power of Tarja, there’s something entrancing by her softer vocals. Contrast Lappi with The Islander and there’s just something that clicks with her rendition of the more folkish acoustics. Her wispy and childlike range fit Imaginaerum perfectly. I wasn’t a fan of the album at first but it would not have had the proper whimsy had Tarja been heading it. And she can hold her own with the standard metal fare like Bye, Bye Beautiful and Amaranth with the latter one of my favourites from the band.

The songs themselves cover a huge swathe of topics, too. The earliest albums cover the genre’s typical fantasy fare as demonstrated by Elvenpath and Wanderlust. But as the years have progressed, so have the subjects. Over the Hills and Far Away is about civil war. The Poet and the Pendulum seems to cover composing and being an artist. Bye Bye Beautiful is unapologetically about the split between Nightwish and Tarja.

Accessed from http://www.loadedradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/nightwish.jpg

Anette and company from Nightwish. Once again, not my image.

And the best part of all this is the music is still metal. However, it sheds the standard preconceptions that metal has to be all about screaming and noise. I find the symphonic elements heighten the emotional punch of the scores but it also softens the overall effect so that even my sister will unfailing start bobbing her head and whistling to the beats.

So, yeah, if you haven’t heard Nightwish this is my endorsement. It’s impossible to say where someone should begin given their wide breadth of sound. So I’ll just end off with a short list of what I think are the band’s most popular and leave it to you, discerning reader, to try them at your own wish… or peril.

Storytime (Imaginaerum) – their single from their latest album

Nemo (Once) – Kait recommended this one so it must have widespread appeal

The Islander (Dark Passion Play) – And now for something completely different

Wish I Had An Angel (Once) – The song that got me first hooked on the band

The Phantom of the Opera (Century Child)  – Everyone loves cover songs

Ghost Love Score (Once) – I can’t make a list without including one of their ten minute songs

Why I Hate Qunari – Racism and Fantasy

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E3 is happening and I’m… disinterested.

E3 banner accessed from http://whachow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/e3.jpg

E3 imagery and whatnot does not belong to me.

For those not aware, E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo) is a yearly conference that covers the developments from the biggest studios in the video gaming industry. It’s a trade’s fair meant to announce and build interest in upcoming products from the major players (Ubisoft, Microsoft, EA, Sony and Nintendo). As a young, modern individual, I naturally have an interest in video games as they’re becoming one of the largest mediums of entertainment. Unfortunately, my interest lies in PC (personal computer) gaming whereas this conference mostly focuses around the home entertainment consoles. All I have to look forward to is the glimpse of the multiplatform releases which will inevitably arrive to the PC space some three to six months after they’re console launch.

So, while others are pumped for the exposition, I really can not get into all the hype. That said, I tried and turned on the stream for a few minutes to see how the conference is going. In prior years they had been really embarrassing for the members of the more enthusiast portion of the hobby with a greater focus on gimmick and generic titles that often involved presenters dancing or waving foolishly on stage as they tried to peddle the next motion sensor device as the hottest new thing. So, in one way, this E3 seems to be off to a better start. With the recent release of a new generation of consoles the focus is back to announcing and promoting games. The major studios have taken a more traditional, trailer focussed approach too which is a step above the antics of yesteryear.

What does this have to do with my title? That’s a good question as I’ve three paragraphs in and haven’t touched anything writing or speculative fiction related. So here’s the bridge!

One of the first trailers shown during EA’s presentation was for the upcoming Dragon Age 3 by BioWare. I’m a little surprised my colleague has not written about Dragon Age as he is the one to have played its most recent release. I used to be a great fan of BioWare when I was younger. They produced the nostalgia inducing, widely acclaimed Baldur’s  Gate Trilogy which stands, if I may be so bold, as the single most influential western role-playing game in the entire industry.

Image accessed from http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Inquisition

Dragon Age Inquisition, outside of representing BioWare’s disdain for orderly naming in their titles, belongs to EA and Bioware and not me.

Sadly, their output after that has been lackluster at best. Part of that may have been a problem of coming out the gate too strong. Inevitably, all their newest work is going to get compared to that magnum opus and draw up short. Part of its problem, I think, is that BioWare was working with a proprietary intellectual property. Baldur’s Gate was set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. This world has had years and years of development and re-iteration by the time the company picked it up. It had a lengthy history which the writers could tap into and the different regions they set the story across were pre-created with interesting and connected cultures. The process of world building is a long and involved one and when they adopted the world for their first games, all they had to focus on was the narrative they wished to tell and the components of creating a video game.

Of course, the downside with licencing is that you have to pay the owner a sizable fee. It’s reasonable any successful studio would want to create their own free of the constraints of licencing and adhering to established works. It gives them the freedom to develop their own world filled with its own peoples and histories and stories.

The downside is they have to make all this.

And the downside of that is we get racism.

I have come to loathe fantasy and its handling of races. I complained about this before when I felt that most writers essentially are rehashing the work Tolkien did with his re-envisioning of mythological creatures into a cohesive and internally consistent world. He established the repetitive trope of dwarves being incurable alcoholics obsessed with mining wealth and loathing elves. Elves, likewise, have morphed in the collective unconsciousness to become these tall, elegant and beautiful peoples with pointy ears and a dying culture. Orcs are a shorthand for middle easterners.

Sten belongs to Bioware and image was accessed from http://www.polishtheconsole.com/tag/sten/

Sten as he appears in Dragon Age: Origins. He is a member of the Qunari who are both a race, religion and culture all in one!

And that’s, unfortunately, become the issue. So often when I see fantasy races in fiction it’s as a cultural shorthand for a real life peoples. It creates a rather uncomfortable situation especially given the rampant racism that erupts in these stories because now these peoples are actual different races. I feel there’s an issue when you conflate real cultures with fantastical peoples as it almost dehumanizes or “others” these cultures from which you borrow.

For example, Dragon Age features the Qunari instead of your standard orc. When we were first introduced to them in Dragon Age: Origins, the only member you met was a man named Sten. He was, by all appearances, a human with darker skin and lighter hair. I welcomed this as the shorthand for culture=race, I feel, has a tendency to draw upon and highlight differences between peoples rather than commonalities. Sten carried the appearance as being the same as the player (assuming a non-dwarf or elf background) with the biggest difference in his personality and beliefs being the cultural heritage of his distant upbringing.

Accessed from http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Qunari

Qunari concept art re-envisioning them for Dragon Age 2 so they’re clearly not human.

Dragon Age 2, however, made sure to clarify that this was not the case. Sten and the Qunari were shunted into the fantastical race segregation giving this air that culture and beliefs are tied to some bizarre genetic composition. We see this with the other races – all dwarves and elves essentially struggle beneath the expectations of their physical appearance intimately connecting behaviour and potential with one’s birthright. Of course, given this expectation from the audience one would imagine that fantasy would be a ripe area to undermine racist beliefs and tendencies. However, invariably, the narratives reinforce the core separation of racial thinking even if they attempt to express that racist behaviour is bad at the same time. Which is, of course, reasonable given the world’s creation in that these two entities are separate along racial lines.

So fantasy basically writes a creator into a corner. They have, biologically speaking, separate races but these races invariably take the cultural shorthands and iconographies of real life peoples. Even if the author attempts to argue that discrimination based along these lines they’ve created themselves is bad it does not ignore the problem that they’ve fallen into the trapped thinking these people fundamentally are different. Course, there are ways around this. For one, Dungeons and Dragons breaks down the different races into even more variable culture groups disassociating the race with any real world analogy. In the Forgotten Realms alone we have the High Elves, Moon Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves and just about any other permutation you could require. And though the difference between the factions is often represented physically with their bodily attributes (like the black skin of a Dark Elf or the golden skin of a High Elf) the biggest separation is their cultural and philosophical heritage. Furthermore, you generally do not have a genetic incompatibility with these different groups thus reinforcing their differences are not tied to inherent characteristics.

Unfortunately for new worlds like Dragon Age, they do not have the development to portray this distinction. There are only one group of humans, elves, dwarves and qunari which leads one to assume their differences are tied to genetic inheritance as it is to cultural education.

Sten updated to appear in the sequel's design for his race. Personally, I feel it detracts from his story and the character in general. Mod can be found at: http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/3803/?

Sten updated to appear in the sequel’s design for his race. Personally, I feel it detracts from his story and the character in general. Mod can be found at: http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/3803/?

The long and the short of it is I hate the Qunari’s stupid horns. I’d rather fantasy focus on creating unique peoples and beliefs without taking the lazy shortcut of highlighting people’s differences through physical characteristics. Take humanity in its entirety and there is a staggering breath of variety amongst our own race – we don’t need to put funny horns or ears on their heads in order to experience it.

It’s a Glandular Problem! Body Image and Writing

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As is sometimes the case, I will engage with my fellows over interesting topics of worldly happenings. Sometimes I learn something new. Sometimes I annoy Derek with questions about transgenderism. And sometimes my sister direct me to something I had already known but she was just discovering. Last week, this was fat apologists. I suppose I should preface this with the typical “trigger warnings.” This is an unnecessarily political tinged rant about body image and societal perceptions. If you have strong feelings on the matter, then great! So do I. I simply feel sorry for you if they do not align.

Source, my own damn picture. Awww yeeeeeah!

Dwarf on Turtle by Valerie Cioli 1560 and photo copyright of me!

I’ll just lay it out right now – modern western society is facing an epidemic of obesity. We’ve developed a culture obsessed with both extremes of harmful expectations for people’s appearances. A 2014 study found that two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese(1).  That is, simply put, ludicrous. Because I often work best with benchmarks, there are 212 million people in America alone who are overweight or obese. That’s almost six time the entire population of Canada. This is an issue. Near every class on health, nutrition and psychology state this. It is not something I would consider up for debate given my background in science and the need for studies and statistics to demonstrate one’s point. There are no benefits to being obese and a long laundry list of detriments that make any other position for a rational person impossible to hold. It is near impossible to live in western society and not know someone who is overweight or obese. If you’re in North America, you know these people.

Now, this isn’t to say that there are some issues with these classifications. But, for the vast majority of people, these issues are not really worth noting. Technically, I am overweight according to the BMI. So our measurements aren’t perfect. My sister is overweight and she’s one of the most active people I know. The standardization of a scale will inevitably create some wonky results given the natural variance in our society. Now, my sister’s lifelong struggles has given me quite a bit of first hand experience people face with body images. I am sympathetic to their plight and I recognize a lot of the difficulties they have to face.

I am, by no means, condoning the idea that “fat shaming” is anything but unhelpful. The general idea is that by ridiculing and making fat people feel bad about themselves will somehow promote and encourage them to lose weight. This does not hold up to any scientific scrutiny. It would be like ridiculing schizophrenics and making fun of them for being crazy without actually offering them some suitable help (if we’re going the route of unhelpful comparisons). Encouragement, support and education demonstrate far more effective results than shaming. So, I will agree with the sentiment that insulting fat people because they’re fat is not the way to encourage improvement.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/b/baldung/1/06_1adam.html

Our conception of beauty is not a static thing. Larger physiques were considered more attractive like in this Adam and Eve by Hans Baldung Grien (1531).

But, you’ll notice I’m focused on getting healthier. I am not a fat apologist and the blog my sister directed to my attention was one such thing. Here was a “social justice warrior” railing against the prevalence of thin privilege within our literary media. Heroes are, near universally, young and athletic or thin. Fat people are often characters of ridicule or villains. This blog went on a bit of a tirade about the injustice of it all and how they, as a fat person, are more than just a lot of extra pounds. Of course, this tirade reached humorous proportions when, near they end, they started claiming pride in their size and turning into the same cognitive gymnastics that people perform in order to justify their problems instead of taking the harder approach of trying to address them.

Now, there is a thing to be said for falling into standard literary cliches. It is an overtired trope that the jolly fat sidekick be used as comedic relief. I have no issue with authors putting more effort into their character building than automatically making their main lead a muscle bound marine if the story doesn’t call for it. Granted, the vast majority of fantasy is, inevitably, going to feature thin or athletic protagonists. How can it not? I suppose you could feature a fantastical world where obese people are capable of physical feats impossible in the real world due to their lack of fitness. As someone with a focus on creating fictional worlds, however, I feel this breach of verisimilitude and ignoring basic common sense is going to put a lot of strain on your audience’s suspension of disbelief. When writing stories about daring knights and wild sword fights, is anyone really going to expect an overweight hero capable of holding their own?

All rights of 300 and Gerard Butler's CGI abs belong to their respective owners. Accessed from: http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/29026.gif

I could be wrong but I don’t think the Ancient Greeks possessed airbrushing.

Of course, bodies come in many shapes and sizes. One can be strong and healthy and still have a wide variety of appearances. In fact, I’d maintain that if you were shooting for historical accuracy, it’s quite unlikely you’d have well defined muscular individuals. Classic warriors would likely be closer to Andre the Giant than Gerard Butler’s King Leonidas since, last I checked, there aren’t a lot of medieval weight lifting clubs.

Picture retrieved from wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Andre_in_the_late_%2780s.jpg

Well, ok, maybe they wouldn’t have giantism but you get the general idea.

I, personally, would welcome a wider representation in our fictional characters. Body shape can and does make just as effective a characteristic for an individual as any other property. I’ve posted my Bannock short story and the antagonist, Nikolai, is fat. However, this isn’t presented as a negative but as a sign of his success for he inhabits a frontier world where most people are too poor to maintain a healthy diet. His ability to have survived long enough to a point where he can indulge in a more sedentary lifestyle is a testament to his ruthlessness and strength than a point of shame.

Likewise, another antagonist is a rather lean and muscular man met later on in the story. His fitnesses stems from a philosophical approach where mind and body are meant to be tuned and focused in order to bring prosperity to oneself. Care of the body represents the care of one’s soul so having him both able and capable of maintaining a fit form is likewise a sign of power and control. I have two wildly different shaped antagonists but both these lend a sense of strength and control to their character. Likewise, the overabundance of thinness in my protagonist cast is a reflection of the difficult lifestyle they led and a sign of the trials they face – not an aspect meant to be celebrated and held up as ideal.

However, I want to end on one very particular point and that is refuting the typical fat apologist stance of denying the importance of health. Though I was unable to find Kait’s original blog, I did come across thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com in my research. Specifically, I want to address their arguments over health and the denial of the obesity epidemic. No words but their own, I feel, best highlight the ridiculousness these people take:

“Let me make it completely clear from the outset that I do not believe ‘health,’ however defined, is a reasonable measure to determine whether or not someone deserves respect, civil rights, and fair treatment. If you have a problem with how health markets apportion your premiums or where your taxes go, then by all means, rage against the system. But do not think for a minute your assholish behavior towards people you imagine use more than their ‘fair share’ is justified.”

Ok, fair enough. I’ve already addressed that shaming a person does not actually help them get better. There are more supportive ways to encourage someone to become healthier and treating people with respect regardless of their station in life is always admirable. People should lose respect due to their actions and beliefs. Which, coincidentally, is what happens next!

“In fact, I’ll go further and state that in my opinion the modern conception of ‘health’ is bullshit. It’s an ever-changing, largely arbitrary definition that seems to serve a single purpose: to blame modern ills on so-called ‘unhealthy’ people then define so-called ‘unhealthy’ people as unpopular social ‘deviants’ like fat people, poor people, and the disabled. The philosophy of vaunting the modern notion of ‘health’ to some kind of societal/moral imperative is called healthism.”

Wow, I’m sure this individual has a lot of research and knowledge on the subject of health, nutrition and medicine to back up their opinion that the modern conception is bullshit. Oh wait, no, they don’t and they’re basically now just making up a bunch of nonsense in order to feel better about themselves. I understand how difficult it can be for people to lose weight. As I mentioned, my sister has struggled with it all her life. For the vast majority of us, it is impossible to actually reach the idealized bodies presented by the media. There’s really two ways you can approach this truth: either you strive for achieving health in what is reasonable for your own body or you can bury your head in the sand and come up with bullshit arguments for why health is bad you don’t need to do anything about it. In case it might have not been clear enough, health is a thing and we should strive to be healthy for a number of reasons: it reduces risk for serious diseases, lengthens your lifespan, puts less strain on those closest to you and makes you feel better being the chief amongst them.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

Hendrickje Stoffels Bathing by Rembrandt van Rijn (1654).

“Perhaps there are those of you who ask: What about when someone’s so fat it’s medically unhealthy, shouldn’t you tell them to lose weight, out of friendly/familial concern? – Hell no. Why would your friends be a better witness to your experience than you are? If they are, then don’t you have bigger presumed problems than your weight? Why would they know what’s healthy for you, better than you do? Again, if they do, don’t you have bigger presumed problems than your weight? How in the world could you possibly avoid hearing, in our current cultural climate, that fat people should ‘lose weight for their health’? Treat people with respect. Don’t infantilize or condescend to them. This is Adult Interaction 101, here.”

Can you imagine what would be someone’s reaction if we changed obesity to some other health problem. Let’s pretend you are friends or family to someone with a drug problem. Basically, this individual is arguing you shouldn’t strive for them to seek help because you can’t “possibly” know what’s good for them. Except, there’s reams and reams of research this individual has blindly dismissed because they simply don’t want to believe in it. I’m sorry, when science disagrees with you and all you have to back up your position is a really flawed argument on… I don’t even know what… then I think it’s pretty clear when someone has ceased engaging in rational discourse and is not looking for empathy but excuses. That’s my grief with fat apologists. We have a very real, definable and measurable problem but because it’s too difficult to address, acknowledge and change we’re going to try and promote lies and misinformation so we can ignore and dismiss a real issue with very serious consequences. All so we can feel fleeting joy over an issue which ultimately affects the afflicted more than anyone else. It’s in unhealthy people’s best interest to get healthy but these people would rather work against their own self interest because it’s seemingly easier to create a false issue like thin privilege than actually improve.

And it is that “choice” which is quite reasonable to shame.

1. Ogden C. L., Carroll, M. D., Kit, B.K., & Flegal K. M. (2014). Prevalence of childhood and adult obesity in the United States, 2011-2012. Journal of the American Medical Association, 311(8), 806-814.

Rules for Writing

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Grabbed from my favourite site for classic art: wga.hu

Paul Alexis Reading to Zola by Paul Cezanne (1869-1870).

I participate in online discussions and sometimes they end up touching upon subjects a little close to heart. The other week, I happened to be in a discourse over the representation of racial and sexual minorities in media and how the under representation of these people was a rather unfortunate habit which should be addressed. The usual suspects arrived to the argument – creatives merely write what they know and one shouldn’t demand otherwise; if minorities wished to see more representation then they should produce their own entertainment; stories featuring minorities don’t sell because the majority audience is unable to identify or sympathize with them etc…

I’m not going to address those arguments mostly because any sort of discussion on diversity in media is going to have those trotted out like some sick horse for a carnival’s grotesque show and if someone were truly interested in learning why those positions are weak, they wouldn’t need to look far for the counter points.

Instead, the discussion spurred a rather curious comment from a poster. This individual stated, with a remarkable amount of conviction, that everything presented to the audience about a character in a narrative must be there for a reason and that reason should reveal their desires and intentions. It is not an outlandish claim on its own and seems rather reasonable on first blush.

It is this statement which I wish to rant about today. Though the original discussion was not aimed squarely at writing, the argument presented was and, as such, I shall argue against it from a writing perspective and ignore other media forms and whether such a statement holds merit in them or not.

It’s a curious position since, whenever in an editorial role, I am constantly asking either myself or the author of the work what is the point for scenes and characters to the story. I do maintain that events, actions, characters and scenes should be added for a purpose. It must seem rather hypocritical that I’ll edit out scenes and dialogue because I feel it adds nothing while simultaneously writing long paragraphs on the Internet why someone who purportedly is expressing the same values is inherently wrong. However, outside of being a rather strong dictum, I feel this sort of rigid regulation of how art should be is rather insidious and dangerous.

Not that this individual is alone. Like I mentioned, I often wield this decree towards my own writing. Even Kurt Vonnegut, when publishing his eight rules for writing fiction, had something similar in his list which is produced below for this discussion and interest sake:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel that time is wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things – either reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet or innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open your window to make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the stories themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I don’t know about you but not only are these decent suggestions but right there, plain as day, is rule four supporting this anonymous individual’s bold stance. Granted, it has a bit more elegance as surely a writer as successful and proficient as Kurt Vonnegut would recognize that mere character alone does not create all works of good fiction.

So why my umbrage?

Well, the context of the debate is immensely important. I have written some articles before about modern feminism and diversity and it is my goal to try and adapt some of those philosophies in my own work. I need to stress that this debate started over the question about the viability of racial and sexual minorities in media. Ultimately, the statement expressing that all details given by an author must reveal character is, in essence, stating that “You must only use minority individuals as protagonists if your story is dealing with the issues a minority would face in that narrative.”

Basically, we must suffer Shia the Beef’s and Megan Vixen’s god awful performances in Transformers because the Transformers movies are not dealing with the hardships that African Americans or Jewish immigrants face in modern America. It is an argument which carries certain inherent biases. If you are to write any fiction not dealing with discrimination based on racial, sexual or gender difficulties then you must make your protagonist a white, heterosexual male. Otherwise, the argument purports, it is bad writing for you are presenting unneeded information.

Pacific Rim and all associated media is not owned by us and belongs to Warner Bros, del Toro and whoever else.

Raliegh and Mako’s head bump – platonic or romantic? You decide.

I want to stress again that this is not me twisting the posters words as this dialogue was occurring in a thread bemoaning the lack of diversity present in main protagonists across modern Western media. It is a discriminatory position since it puts forward that the characteristics which make these groups disadvantaged minorities must have deep bearing upon their identity. You can not, as the argument goes, make the lead brother of Pacific Rim gay “just because” since his sexuality must have some grander bearing on the story. Of course, his heterosexuality is, essentially, assumed thus it need not be justified in its expression. He can make some passing comment on pretty girls and not have that line considered “bad writing” since it is, essentially, the audience’s expected “default.”

I would counter that this is a very dangerous stance to take and thus, ultimately, I must disagree with Kurt Vonnegut’s fourth rule. I feel an author should be free to make their character hispanic, female, transgendered or whatever and not be weighed down by the challenges faced by any of these groups if the narrative does not call for it. Ultimately, our stories are expressions of ourselves and our experiences. The majority of them will feature humans or analogous individuals which explore the vast array of characteristics and lives that a diverse species will face. When writing a story about my characters, I am necessitated in choosing a gender for them – not because that gender weighs heavily upon that narrative but because humans have gender.

Of course, the immediate counter argument is that stating a person is female is revealing character and the proclamation in of itself satisfies Vonnegut’s requirement. In fact, this person probably intended to communicate just that with this response when I questioned his position about an off-handed comment on a character’s marriage status:

“I said it should affect their character, not that it should define them. If we run with marriage, then what does that mean? It means the main character made a commitment with someone else. Is that a happy marriage? Are they constantly arguing? If so, why? If not, to what extent is that person the most important part of our main character’s life? Maybe the marriage won’t change their decisions, but if they’re happily married it should at least weigh on their conscience if their decisions will impact the other person. If they’re not happily married, how does that impact the character’s decisions? Maybe it’ll make it easier for them to make decisions that put themselves in harms way… All I’m saying is that if we learn that a character is married, that should, in at least a small way, have a bearing on what happens or the nature of the character. That they have a dog, a specific type of car, where they live, what they eat for breakfast, where they work etc. If it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t tell us anything about the character, why is the author telling the reader?” ~ Anonymous Poster On Internet

And this is when, I feel, the argument really breaks down upon itself. Now we are no longer insuring our lines are revealing character or advancing action but bogging down the narrative with constant explanation for why every small detail is necessary for inclusion. Make mention of a character’s blonde hair – we will need some justification for how that blonde hair shaped this individual’s life or they must be identified later in the story by their hair. If you wish to make your character a woman but do not go into great length about the impact of her womanhood on her personality or pivot a key narrative scene on her gender, then you should not have included it in the first place. 

But as stated, we’re writing humans, so these characters need a gender and physical features. Most stories do not trip over these requirements so, unless this individual is arguing that essentially there is no well written stories, then some combination must be free of this restriction.

I don’t think it necessary to state what that combination inherently is.

I discussed this rather odious position with my co-contributors and Derek provided an expanded rule to Vonnegut’s fourth: Each sentence must do one of the following: reveal character, explain the world, advance action or reinforce tone.

I, personally, subscribe to a different approach. If I were to include this in my “Rules of Writing” it would be as such: Each sentence must be added for a reason. That’s it. Every line you write should be put to serve a purpose. What that purpose is, however, is entirely up to the author and it need not be inherently apparent for the reader. Perhaps you wish to make your lead in a sci-fi space opera transgendered for no other reason than you want to feature more transgendered individuals in fiction. Art is not a solitary experience but shared amongst the creator and consumer. This most peculiar of relationships is what inevitably determines what “works” and what “does not.” No list of simple rules will create a foolproof method for creation. No mandates from anonymous individuals can insure your writing is widely acclaimed.

And Kurt Vonnegut would agree. After creating his rules for good fiction writing, even he admitted that his great contemporaries had a habit of breaking many of his rules and that the best writers tend to do just that.

Such Anger Much Vitriol

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Today’s rant is going to be a special one. It’s a comment on Internet culture – as useful a topic as any to complain about for it will be as effective as shouting into a hurricane. But I am annoyed, dear reader, and what better place to post my annoyance but on this personal little chunk of cyberspace reserved just for my aggravation.

Accessed from knowyourmeme.com. The only positive quality of memes is the impossibility of copyrighting them.

I don’t know if this is the actual origin of the Doge meme though it’s certainly the most copied image of the damn dog.

For those between the ages of “dead” and “not old enough to be consumed with raising children” (which is could be shorted to between ‘dead’ and ‘dead’) you may have heard of the Doge meme. Perhaps this delightful bit of highbrow online couture has consciously slipped by your notice and if you are like Derek and I, without a finger on the staggered, sickly pulse of what passes for the world’s collective attention deficit users, then your introduction to Doge was likely through some obnoxious parroting by an unnamed party. ‘Such wow’ they blithely stammer as if the first signs of severe damage to Broca’s area was manifesting. ‘So edge’ flies across their mind in some self congratulatory half mockery of the mentally disabled.

For most people unfamiliar with the origins of this… activity, they will probably dismiss these utterances as some peculiar form of verbal Parkinson’s. It’s like the mind is rapidly hemorrhaging half composed thoughts into the thought-sphere of the wider world. Alas, the unfortunate truth is that people say this with sincerity and intention. They are referencing the Doge Meme. And it is such a stupid practice that it annoys me to no end.

Now, that may be an unfortunate confession to make, as a great driving force in the development of Internet culture is the cultivation of ‘trolling.’ This activity is devoted specifically to making the practitioner as obnoxious as possible. It’s how things like Rick-rolling have become a thing. However, what truly aggravates me about Doge is that it is not designed to be annoying – it is the ubiquitous blind replication of it that crawls beneath my skin. Every time I get a steam message from someone going “Such wow, many whatevers,” God kills a kitten. I know this is true, because I keep a box of the cute little creatures and squeeze the life from them as if they were a fuzzy, mewling stress ball.

There are two things that I hate about Doge. One is that it is stupid. It was never funny. Originating as some lame internal monologue tumblr captions overlaid pictures of Shiba Inu, I would consider it racist towards Japanese if I gave two shakes of a rat’s tail about tumblr activism. I don’t so the cheap joke at the broken English of Asian speakers doesn’t rile me up. The lazy joke itself is the problem. It’s not funny. It never was funny and mostly exists as part of that weird cultish worship of cute things that also predominates the Internet.

Second, the meme’s spread is so mindless as to be a virus. It shows up everywhere. Unlike Rick-rolling, perhaps its closest analogous entity, it isn’t meant to inconvenience or ‘troll’ the audience. It is a lazy reference to an obscure captioned image. It’s the white noise of someone’s verbal diarrhea as they make a brainless flatulence of popular culture as if the very act of reproducing the tripe is somehow forcing some ounce of wit into its lifeless husk. I’m tired of commentators spewing out in my Dota matches as if their mimicry were evidence of how ‘hip’ and ‘up to date’ they are. Which is an ironic goal since the damn meme has been flopping around for months – a staggering time for anything birth on the Internet – too pathetic to be truly prominent and too miserable to finally die and be forgotten.

What’s worse, unlike other memes were learning its origins can often add some quantifiable ounce of amusement from ‘being in on the joke,’ the Doge is too lame to even get better with the knowledge of what it’s truly about.

Maybe one day I’ll do a proper rant against/for actual memes in general. Suffice to say, the Doge meme is representative of all that’s wrong and apprehensible about those things. It’s sole existence is through the thoughtless japing of its existence as if blind adherence to what everyone else is doing will somehow grant its user some measure of popularity. It doesn’t. All it does is make you sound like an idiot.

Not A Superman Review

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Not my image. I took it from Nathan Marchand because I'm too lazy to make my own. Accessed from: http://www.nathanjsmarchand.com/?p=1356.

Just to make things clear.

This is not a Superman: Man of Steel review. For that, kindly see my sister’s post last week on sufficient thoughts about that production. I am not going to write today my feelings on the movie because, as I’ve mentioned, this is not a Superman review.

But just to be clear, I’m not reviewing Superman today.

That out of the way, Man of Steel was boring. Partly because of the reasons my sister mentioned and partly because I’m not a fan of comic book movies. Woe befall me for this is clearly not my generation to dislike comic book entertainment. We’re inundated with the material. There’s a practical deluge of comic bookiness pouring from every orifice of society. Trilogies upon trilogies of the silly stuff cram our summer theatres.  Television is trying their own hand with the Avenger’s spin-off starring a remarkably unimportant member of the film. Arguably, we can thank comic books for Intelligence as well as it has quite a few tropes typically reserved for the graphic novel genre.

Oh, and let’s not forget the video games.

It may be a little incongruous for someone who writes fantasy and science fiction to dislike comic books. Even more bordering hypocrisy, I read quite a few when I was a child. I collected, almost religiously, the Power Pack series and I shudder to think how awful those stories are now that I’m much older and capable of actual taste. But, to be fair to my younger self, youths have terrible quality control and if there is ever a market for gluttonous devouring of the power fantasy, children would be that market.

I mean, to throw some psychology at the topic, the Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others as well as understand that people have different beliefs, intentions and desires from our own. It takes around four to five years of development for us to realize others can have thoughts that are wrong (see the pencils in a Smarties box experiment) and it can take up to seven years for children to understand points of view (see Piaget and the three mountains task). This gave rise to the egocentrism concept – a characterization of preoccupation with an individual world that regards the self’s opinions and views as being the most important and most valid. Though most theories of development basically stick with children and that’s it (the pedophiles), David Elkind found that adolescents exhibit many characteristics of egocentrism up to fifteen and sixteen years of age. This is evident in the obsessive pre-occupation with one’s own self-image and the idea that everyone else is as obsessed with that individual’s appearance and behaviour as the teenager is herself*. If you don’t trust Elkind, you can kind broach the topic of acne with any teenager and learn the trials, tribulations and world devastating effects a simple pimple can have on the poor adolescent.

Image from Man of Steel which obviously does not belong to me. I wouldn't make such a silly movie.

I’m fairly certain Superman’s true power is in maintaining an immaculate coif no matter how brutal a fight gets.

Given the pre-eminence of their own feelings and experiences, I’m willing to make the leap that children (youths to teens) are quite happy to read comic books which feature heroes of such astounding power, perfection and coif hairedness as to be little more than  caricatures  than actual characters so they can live vicariously through those experiences as if they were their own. They love the power fantasy because it makes them feel powerful. Given that youths typically have low self determination as they still live at home and beneath their parents rule, the idea of being able to fly around the world, fight aliens and be universally celebrated I propose would be highly appealing.

So, yes, I loved reading the Power Pack because it was about four siblings who inherited super powers from aliens and saved the world. As they were also children, it was far easier for me to imagine being a Power Pack member and enjoy their exploits in fighting the monster of the week. Course, as I grew older, wiser, more educated and mentally developed, these stories failed to grow with me. Comic books rarely exhibit complex characterization. Watch Man of Steel if you don’t believe me. The worst thing that happened to Clark Kent was that his adoptive father got sucked up in a tornado so that Old Yeller could live long enough to be quietly replaced by some other pooch later in the film when the director assumed everyone stopped caring about the mongrel.

That’s your standard fare for comic books. Few demonstrate as much complexity as The Watchmen. And rightfully so as I’m not convinced that a pre-pubescent should really be reading the Watchmen with its gratuitous violence and attempted rape. I mean, I suppose they could read that but they’re going to need some adult explanation to understand what’s going on, especially given the complexity of the situations involved (the attempted rape eventually developed into a relationship between the two characters… so… yeah…). But that was the point of The Watchmen, to add a level of realism and gravity to the otherwise fluffy and irrelevant comic book genre. When all your characters are paragons of virtue or wickedness, it’s really easy to run dry of novel or interesting plot lines. Of course, comic books aren’t really milling the literary genre for depth or profundity. Most of the time, the story arcs are the filler between splashy panels where your super powered heroes can punch various wickedness through walls and other obstructions.

You can see that clearly in the movies. Man of Steel was essentially two acts with the first mostly faffing about with Supes as he struggled to get through the modern economy holding a handful of unrelated jobs. The second half was just an all out brawl between Clark and his extended family when all that prior fancy camerawork was turned towards such thrilling moments involving Russel Crowe opening doors and a bunch of CGI buildings doing their best Tohoku 2011 shuffle. Things happened but never for any real purpose. Amy Adams presence was demanded at a bunch of locations presumably so we would have some perky bosom to see us through since Diane Lane’s getting a little worn for that duty.

Not mine. Belongs to Marvel and the like. I also wouldn't make a movie this silly. But I'd love to lay claim to Iron Man 3.

Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

But no greater example of this fluff over substance is there than The Avengers. Josh Whedon’s magnum opus, if box office sales are any measure, features a thrilling two and a half hours of computer generated laser showing with a total of zero minutes to any character development. This is made grossly apparently since every Marvel movie following The Avengers has had to cover the character development – from Tony Stark’s post-traumatic stress disorder in Iron Man 3 and Chris Hemsworth presumably having to pout for a good twenty or thirty seconds before beating up some snerfnerblerm.

Course, presumably, this is exactly what the audience wants. They want mindless explosions. They want joyless quips between boring, tired ubermenschen that have fifty years of existence with no character growth or change. They want to see the bad guys lose and the good guys win. I guess it’s fun to see the struggle of good and evil play over and over again since that’s about as much thematic depth as these flicks ever come close to exploring. I guess it’s entertaining to see what few interesting ideas the comics barely explore in their tangentic rambling on such topics like exclusion, discrimination and racism before having the heroes solve all their problems with a fist to the face reduced to even simpler terms to fit into chunk sized hour morsels.

I wouldn’t know, I find comic book movies boring.

*For those who care:  Elkind D (December 1967). “Egocentrism in adolescence”. Child Dev 38 (4): 1025–34. http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/newResources/cogdev/A2_AQB_cogDev_egocentrismTests.pdf