Michael Offutt's Blog, page 34

I'm bloody excited that AMC is producing a Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice scheduled to air in 2022.

I found out this weekend that AMC is ordering an Interview with the Vampire show. Or, more appropriately, a "Vampire Chronicles" show made after the books: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned. I read these books many years ago, and I felt that the movie adaptations were actually quite terrible despite having cast the best looking men to be found in the world at the time to fill the titular roles of Armand, Louis, and Lestat. Also, Kirsten Dunst was good in the role of Claudia.

Interview, which was the book that started it all for Anne Rice, was lightning in a bottle. It is a legitimate classic of gothic/horror and dark fantasy. The other books serve to build on the mythology that she started with Interview, and I love that she traced the vampires, their power, and their lineage back to a primal source that had its beginnings in ancient Egypt (you see this in Lestat and in Queen of the Damned). A series is going to have a lot of time to explore this kind of mythology, and we will get to spend time with fascinating characters like Marius, who were crucial to the entire storyline but hardly touched upon at all within the context of the now old films.

I wouldn't want them to explore too much beyond Queen of the Damned. My reasons for this is that I think Rice ended up hitting the hard boundaries of her own imagination. Unlike a lot of modern fantasy and horror writers, she doesn't seem to have much of a capacity for synthesizing new concepts. For a long time, she was a genre unto herself. But now, fantasy and horror tropes are everywhere and the Vampire Chronicles are just one franchise among many.

Rice also had this thing about weird and uncomfortable types of love. Sometimes it seemed to work in the novels, but then there were obvious times when it just came across as creepy. I guess we shall see, because the first episodes are scheduled to appear in 2022. Anyway, color me bloody excited.

People with the same political affiliation do not see eye-to-eye and have different definitions for 'benevolent' and 'heaven.'

I had a fascinating talk with a liberal man of 25 who is on the autistic spectrum this week. I started off the conversation by saying, "My version of heaven is Star Trek. I just love that universe, the diversity, the danger, the excitement, and all of humanity working toward a common goal."

He responded with this comment: "My vision of heaven involves benevolent aliens that make Star Trek people look like a bunch of primitives. Just one example: Titanships, i.e., city-sized space ships. Some of them would carry planet buster bombs."

I could have let it go, but anyone that knows me knows that I can't resist these kinds of conversations. So I took a bite, and I said, "But are they benevolent? If so, why do 'benevolent' aliens need planet buster bombs?"

He quickly responded, "Not all of the titanships belong to the benevolent aliens. They also had to learn pretty quickly how to defend themselves from foreign threats."

Well, now I was committed. I said, "So the planet buster bombs are strictly defense only? Do they try diplomacy at all with the malevolent Titanships? And are the malevolent Titanships homogenous in their authority? Or are there some benevolent aliens mixed in with the malevolent ones who are forced to toe the line? And regarding those benevolent ones (if they exist), do they get punished for being enslaved by the malevolent aliens? In other words, are the benevolent aliens guilty of killing some benevolent peoples who (through no fault of their own) are forced to go along with the malevolent aliens?

Then he said (evasively), "The benevolent aliens would just as soon not look at a planet buster bomb, but the rest of that universe is not so kind. The planet buster bombs were not invented by them, and they would not want to use something so destructive unless they had to repel a god machine."

So I asked him, "Are they homogenous in thought? Or do they have differences of opinion between themselves? Do the people who live on their planets have free will to do whatever they want without fear of any reprisal? Or do they live in fear of the powerful supposedly benevolent aliens?"

He replied, "The benevolent aliens are powerful and indeed very difficult to challenge but they mostly guide planets within their influence like a much bigger sibling. They do not have differing thoughts, but the thought of fighting amongst themselves never crossed their minds before they discovered how savage the universe could be and even after that, the benevolent aliens were appalled at the thought of fighting one another over anything. They are also silicon-based plants."

I asked, "So what if people don't want guidance from these benevolent plant aliens? Are they free to tell them to leave?"

He said, "Yes, but if the people in question are destroying themselves, then the benevolent aliens may step in anyway to prevent the destruction."

Then I said, "So...these benevolent aliens are servants? They clean up the mess that people make?"

He replied, "It's more of a parent/child relationship I suppose. They want the universe's creatures to prosper and so they nurture them where possible, but they would not clean up the Earth like that. Humanity would have to deal with cleaning up its own planet, but it would be given the tools to make that vastly easier."

And I said, "Okay, but what if they were given the tools and the people said, 'Fuck off. I don't wanna. I wanna play video games!"

He replied, "They also silently observe until a planet with multicellular life reaches a suitable level of technology after which they make a greeting and if it is met peacefully, that civilization is slowly brought into the fold."

To which I said, "So they spy on planets without permission, and then they engage in colonialization, which is what you are talking about. Saving the savages from themselves?"

He said, "If the civilization says no, they say 'but you have to' and find a way to convince them to be reasonable to their world. They inform them of the horrible things out there, and how it would benefit them to accept protection."

And then I said, "So a dictatorship then? You aren't given a choice, so that is authoritarian. And then the fear-mongering is just a protection racket engaged in by tyrannical plants."

He was getting frustrated with me at this point, and he said, "For example, humanity is sort of destroying their world right now, so if they fell under the benevolent aliens's gaze, they may step in to improve things. I could also argue that humanity has lost the privilege of governing themselves currently."

I said, "Wow, that is a dictatorship. Should I call you 'the Fuhrer'?"

He wrote, "Work would be optional, and all possible basic needs would be covered, but if someone wanted to do work they would be compensated appropriately and be able to buy various luxuries. They would definitely be kind aliens who guide with a gentle touch."

"Gentle touch?" I said, "Unless they needed to use planet-busting bombs."

He replied, "I meant to say that they don't want anything to do with the planet buster bombs. That was one example of advanced weaponry."

Then I said, "It doesn't make sense. Anything that is benevolent has no need for weapons. And your aliens would eventually start to be worshiped as gods. Then there would be state religion. And if that was stamped out, then you are talking about controlling a person's beliefs on a fundamental level. And the threat from beyond that requires a need to protect against sounds horrible. It sounds like something similar to Warhammer 40k, a grim dark future, filled with monsters who are consumed with violence and evil. In that world, war is constant."

He replied, "Their need for weapons is retaliatory. They would never use them otherwise."

And then my friend Jed, who is a lawyer, jumped into our conversation. He said, "So...not every crime deserves the death penalty. Such capital regimes are quickly twisted to favor the corrupt. One way to examine all this is to ask if it really is a utopia like you claim? Even in Star Trek, not everyone is happy despite it being a post-scarcity society. Additionally, with humanity a lot is put upon our ability to adapt and change over time. If an alien species came in and stuck us all in a 'good place' a good number of people would still revolt. Also, how would you measure harm? Would the system punish someone who had to push an old lady into traffic to save a baby? And if the option was to go back to space, would they be like the aliens from 'The World's End,' where they tear everything down on the way out?"

He replied, "The silicon plants would probably be too vested in Earth at that point to leave. And then they would explain the ramifications of what would happen if they did."

So then I said, "You are describing an authoritarian dystopia. This is your heaven? If that is the case, then you can count me out. We have very different definitions of what heaven looks like, what 'good' is, and what 'benevolent' means. We are quite simply, not even speaking the same language."

The conversation continued on for some time, but you get the gist of it in what I've placed above. Now, the reason I indicated that the friend was liberal way up above, is to show you how people who share the same political affiliation, do not see eye to eye. I describe myself as liberal as well, and this dude with the plant aliens and myself are so far apart by word definitions, and (for that matter) what each envisions as a heaven that it surprised...nay...even shocked me. I'm rather thankful that I don't live in the universe that he dreams lovingly about (and he says he does love the idea of it). 

This week I learned of a childhood friend passing and I kind of miss him.

Grief is a strange thing. I learned that a childhood friend I had who I'd not spoken to in about twenty years died a few weeks ago. This set off in me a lot of feelings. There was nothing left unsaid between us, and we officially parted ways as friends about two decades ago. But the memories I had of the things we created together in the game of Dungeons & Dragons is strong. We created a world together. He was a great source of ideas, and I seemed to have the wherewithal to envision them in a greater setting (which he was incapable of doing). The games we made have touched others, brought new people into the game, and now there are other people out there running games based on the world that we created.

Our parting was the end result of severe neglect on his part of a friendship that I tried to keep alive. Whether he was disinterested, or simply a person whose world consisted of only those people he could walk to go and see within a reasonable time limit, I will never know. In the end, when it was me that decided our friendship was officially ended, I don't think it phased him at all. He'd grown so distant that he probably had the emotional attachment that a man might have to a fish that he pulls out of a creek. He was a man that prized comic books, powerful super heroes, and he was always deeply invested in the fictional world that spun in his head.

One of the things that I really liked about him was that he could see beyond the structured rules of a game to possibilities, and he was good at teaching that. We call this kind of thing in the Dungeons & Dragons game world by the name "homebrew." It implies a deep understanding of the rules to create your own mythologies that fit nicely within the framework of a set of rules published by the parent company of whatever edition D&D happens to be on in any given era.

Even without physical distance between us (read as thousands of miles) to atrophy a friendship, he and I parted ways ideologically a long time ago. From my point of view, this old childhood friend was a person that worshiped every word that the late Rush Limbaugh had, and he became a person who not only was conservative, but one who vehemently believed that liberals are awful people. Shrug. So yeah...there wasn't much that could possibly have kept us friends. And (as it were), we said our goodbyes to each other almost twenty years ago, and that was it.

But it doesn't mean that I didn't still think of him from time to time. Or wish that he could see what happened with the characters that we created together and how they live in the minds of new players and kids who really enjoy playing in the world of Wynwrayth (the D&D world that I created to house all of those old characters from yester year when we played on the couch in the living room of my parent's house in Idaho Falls).

That house no longer exists, and now he is dead. Time marches on, and no one cares really. His passing was hardly a blip in the Pullman, Washington obituaries. But even from Salt Lake City, I noticed it, because one night this week, I thought of my friend, Matthew, and googled his name to see what he was up to. And it turns out, he won't be up to anything ever again.

The Dark Knight in 2008 contained a scary prediction of how iPhones could be repurposed to spy on people. Now in 2021 it is a reality.

In Christopher Nolan's 2008 movie, The Dark Knight, which starred the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, there is a scene near the climax of the film in which Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) sees what Bruce Wayne (the Batman) has been doing with his sonar technology. He's enabled it to somehow link every mobile device in Gotham City to his central computer at Wayne enterprises, and then each device would emit a high frequency pulse that could produce a 3-D image of what was going on around that device (essentially spying on the entire city).

Lucius Fox is astounded by this, and he declares that it is too powerful for one man to be in charge of and that it is unethical, immoral, and dangerous. But the Joker was the kind of villain that the Batman desperately needed to catch. He was a psychopath, and extremely dangerous to society. So, the technology was deployed (and used) with the moral implications of this to be left for the audience to decide. But, the Batman, ever the superhero, ultimately gave Lucius Fox the control over the database, and the ability to destroy it so that it could never be used again. So people didn't need to dwell too long on the moral implications of spying upon citizens, and everything got wrapped up neatly in an ending that made The Dark Knight one of the best comic book movies of all time.

Fast forward to 2021.

Apple, the technology titan behind the iPhone, is rolling out new features aimed at combating Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on its platform, and the discussion around it reminds me of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Only in this case, Apple is probably going to be spying on a billion users worldwide. If you hadn't heard, the company is trying to pioneer a solution to a problem that confounds law enforcement, that being the existence of as much as 45 million photos and videos that constitute child sex abuse material that is circulating via online platforms.

Apple's new features use algorithmic scanning of users' devices and messages to search for CSAM. It's a very narrow use of the technology, and everyone who is not a criminal should be on board with this. However, critics foresee an opportunity for the company to repurpose the technology to search for different kinds of material other than CSAM. In other words, they are worried of widespread surveillance, and (quite frankly) being spied upon in their own homes.

Even Edward Snowden chimed in on this by tweeting: "No matter how well-intentioned, @Apple is rolling out mass surveillance to the entire world with this. Make no mistake: if they can scan for kiddie porn today, they can scan for anything tomorrow. They turned a trillion dollars of devices into iNarcs--*without asking.*"

He also added:

"Apple says to "protect children," they're updating every iPhone to continuously compare your photos and cloud storage against a secret backlist. If it finds a hit, they call the cops. iOS will also tell your parents if you view a nude in iMessage."

It's weird to think that The Dark Knight in 2008 predicted that this kind of thing might actually happen, and that it could be misused because it is powerful. I wonder where all of this is going to end.

As for me? I plan to upgrade my iPhone with the new model this fall. It's four years old, and I like Apple products. However, I'm increasingly aware of the fact that my devices are spying upon me. I guess that I just don't care enough to do anything about it. I'm like that guy that keeps eating sugary things even though the doctors tell me it will give me diabetes. What can I say to excuse myself? I like chocolate chip cookies. Someday, I may get a knock on my door by a policeman who says, "You are under arrest." I say, "What for?" He replies, "Your device has alerted us that you support the wrong thing."  And then no one ever hears from me again.

Ugly people should be paid monetary reparations from the government treasury for the amount of trauma and abuse they endure in a lifetime.

This is going to be a controversial topic. Additionally, I know it has zero chance of gaining any ground with people, because it will be dismissed as ridiculous. But, I honestly believe that ugly people should be paid reparations for the amount of punishment they endure in their lives from a society that values beauty.

As a society, beauty is a privilege that is flaunted time and time again, whether it is on social media or access to partners or benefits I can't even think of at the time of this writing. And everybody knows it, yet no one wants to talk about it. We have reached a point in our society where nothing seems to be off the table. There are talks among lawmakers to pay reparations to the ancestors of slaves (a thing I strongly support). We are talking about income inequality in a huge way, and vilifying billionaires like they rightly deserve (I raise a glass to you Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for calling billionaires amoral).

We talk about racial inequality. We talk about gender inequality. We talk about residential inequality. We talk about global inequality. Well, in this post, I want to talk about beauty inequality.

Beautiful people get all kinds of benefits that ugly people do not. It is a fact that being pretty is a privilege, and we refuse to acknowledge it. The world throws at the feet of pretty people 1) popularity, 2) higher grades in school, 3) more positive work reviews, 4) lighter sentences in court, and 4) career advancement. Rare doors to unheard of opportunities get flung open for pretty people. Beautiful people are perceived as smarter, healthier, and more competent when this is patently and scientifically not true. For example: do you honestly think Kim Kardashian would be as successful as she was if she had been born ugly?

With the rise of social media and the internet, the contrast between how pretty people and ugly people get treated can even be shocking. There are even new terms that have crept into the zeitgeist that describe the phenomenon of being found unattractive: "swipe left." If you are unfamiliar with this term, on the online dating app called Tinder, "swiping left" indicates that you were found unattractive by someone, so they moved their finger to the left across an image of you on a touchscreen.

Ugly people are bullied constantly. Trump called Rosie O'Donnell a fat loser and a complete and total disaster. I know you may say that Trump is not indicative of the average American, but I'd fight you on this. Millions of people in this country love this guy, because he's just like them. My own co-worker who is fifty and consistently hits on young attractive women (he's very liberal) admits that he is "shallow and vain," and that he will live a life alone. I think that kind of honesty is healthy. He treats beautiful people with more respect and with more kindness. That is just a fact of life, AND ALL OF US KNOW IT. If you are sitting out there shaking your head at where I'm going with this, you are part of the problem.

Life is harder for ugly people, plain and simple.

I follow the cutest and most attractive gay couple on Instagram, which actually led me over to their Only Fans porn site. This couple is unbelievably beautiful while at the same time being (I think) of just average intelligence. They use their phones to film themselves having sex (they have monetized their relationship), and the rest of the time, they use the money that flows in (from viewers watching them have sex) to buy fabulous vacations all around the world, to donate to charities, to buy things for each other, and to live a life free of the burdens of education and real work. As far as I can tell, they are around the age of nineteen, they have the equivalent of whatever a high school education is in Scotland, and they make $20,000 per hour whenever they decide to do a thing in front of their iPhone. If they want a trip to Rome in the most fabulous hotels, they take some requests via Only Fans, film it, and bam! It is paid for in an hour.

I don't think they are even old enough to drink legally in the United States, but they drive around in a $100,000 Range Rover made by the same company that owns Jaguar, they have a beautiful home, and they have every luxury an ambiguous tween could hope for, including a following that is around a million people who really like seeing them naked. The reason? They are beautiful. An ugly couple or person could not take advantage of any of these opportunities. That door is (quite simply) closed. Ugly people have to go to years of school to get paid shitty wages by people who undervalue their contributions constantly. Meanwhile, they get to watch their beautiful peers go sailing through every life hurdle which may be just difficult enough to cause them to lose empathy for anyone else who is not them by convincing themselves that they got there "through hard work and determination." This (of course) is complete bullshit.

The point of this post isn't to disparage couples who call themselves "adult performers" and who make huge amounts of cash by doing something that comes natural to them. Nor is it to point out that people like Scarlett Johannson and Timothée Chalamet should not be paid millions just because they look really good. The point is to open a conversation about beauty inequality, and to get people to start talking about it openly. Beauty is something that you either have or you don't. I'd say nearly 90% of it relies on good genes and luck. Maybe 10% is within a person's control. And this world really sucks for the people who don't have it. Ugly people get excluded from social gatherings, get treated like crap, spit upon, derided, bullied, and then gaslighted by (usually beautiful people) that the world is actually fair and that they just need to try harder.

So here's my solution (and I'm being serious): ugly people should be paid reparations of $2,000 a month for being ugly, and the money should come from the government. Imagine how much easier life would be. Someone knocks on your door, you answer, "Hello, I'm from the government bureau in charge of rating beauty, and it has come to our attention that you are (in fact) very ugly. People swipe left on you all the time, you live a life alone, you can't find clothes that fit you, and you are turned down for promotions and despite your education, you are underemployed because no one wants to be around you. We are sorry that this has happened to you, so here is $2,000 a month for the rest of your life. Perhaps you can use it to get therapy? It is possible for some really ugly people to live meaningful lives that aren't filled with despair. We hope that is possible for you. Also, because you are ugly, I'm not interested in being your friend. But you should have expected that. Again...the $2,000 payment is to apologize for all of us out here that feel sorry for you. Good day."

I will enjoy reading your thoughts (if you have any) in the comments below.

The best book about the writing craft I've ever read was written by Stephen King.

August has finally arrived, and with it is the first Wednesday of the month. That means it is time to participate in the Insecure Writer's Support Group blogfest, which you can sign-up for by going to this link. I'm old enough this month to remember when all of this got started with Mr. Alex J. Cavanaugh (science fiction author), and his really good idea to get all of us to participate in this kind of thing on a monthly basis. However, if you are new and have questions, here's what the IWSG is all about:

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

The twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

Every month, the IWSG announces a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

Here is the Wednesday, August 4th question: What is your favorite writing craft book? Think of a book that every time you read it you learn something or you are inspired to write or try the new technique. And why?

I suppose (for me) this would be Stephen King's novel, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. The thing is full of good advice, like this little tidbit:

"The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness, but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story....Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction."

By the way, this advice is also good for aspiring DM's who want to run a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game for people of all ages. Want another tidbit? Here you go:

"Once I start work on a project, I don't stop and I don't slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don't write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind--they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale's narrative cutting edge starts to rust, and I begin to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers, that is the smooch of death."

This is one I fail at a lot. However, it doesn't bother me, because I'm comfortable with who I am and what my limitations are as a writer.
Stephen King is one of those legendary writers that manages to be (simultaneously) among the greatest writers who have ever lived while also not being good enough for an award like the Pulitzer or the Nobel. It's a weird eclectic mix of genius and ideas colliding with a reality that speculative fiction really doesn't get much respect. Nevertheless, the man knows what he's talking about, and if you're a successful writer (or just starting out), you should still listen to whatever he has to say.
Thank you for stopping by my blog.

The awesome co-hosts for the August 4 posting of the IWSG are PK Hrezo, Cathrina Constantine, PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, and Sandra Cox!

I'm taking a blogging break until the first Wednesday of August but until then let's contemplate the majesty of Denis Villeneuve's Dune adaptation.

This is the cover for the Dune roleplaying game. It's filled with some
really impressive art, and every page is covered in detail and color.
I'll post some art samples from it, or inspired by it, in a post when I
return from blogging in August.

The second trailer for Dune arrived online yesterday. It's about three minutes long, but I sure like what I saw although I do have a few questions. One of them is (namely) why Timothee Chalamet's Paul Atreides is dressed in golden armor like Iron Man in one scene in the trailer. I assume it is creative license, but I don't think it adds to the story. However, seeing as this is the first part of this movie saga (it has been split into two parts), and I haven't seen it...I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that it will still be amazing and blow my mind.

My next big reading project is to start over with the Dune novels, seeing as the universe has been greatly expanded by Herbert's son. I'm interested to see what other kinds of things have been written about. In my first go of the Dune books, I never made it past God Emperor of Dune. But, I'm now a more disciplined and advanced reader, and I think that I have a wider acceptance of what is entertaining. So I think I might make it through all of them and satisfy my curiosity regarding the whole story. I also (recently) participated in the Kickstarter for the Dune roleplaying game put out by a company called Modiphius (based in England I think). I've been slowly reading the book, which arrived a few weeks ago along with dice that you need to play the game colored the same as the spice Melange. I thought that was a nice touch.

I was a fan of David Lynch's Dune adaptation. And I thought that there would never be another movie. It's interesting that a person like Denis Villeneuve can come along and have enough influence that they just reboot an entire franchise with the best actors in Hollywood. I wonder how much money this thing is going to make, how successful it will be, and if there will be sequels in the works. The Herbert estate must be very happy.

I'm going to take a short blogging break, so this will be my last post until the first Wednesday of August (August 4th). Insecure Writer's Support group day always seems like a nice day to come back. It's kinda like the holiday that always comes around.

Lost Gods by Gerald Brom is a lavishly illustrated tale that manages to channel Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury in a hero's quest through Purgatory.

On Monday evening, I finished reading Lost Gods by Brom. Here's my synopsis of the book:

A young man descends into Purgatory on a quest for a key that will save his wife and unborn child from an evil demon named Lamia who has murdered hundreds of children.

Sounds interesting, right? It was, and I give it four stars out of five. Now here are the details:

The reading of this book reminded me a lot of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. To elaborate, I think that both writers have visceral and gritty prose, and both books take on worlds that are filled with chaos, where ancient/mythical gods interact with us common-folk in mysterious and aggressive ways. The way Brom's novel differs from Gaiman, is that the gods are all dead and on the verge of being forgotten, and the main character (named Chet) only interacts with them through the Purgatory in which they rule.

It also reminds me a lot of Ray Bradbury's writing in the sense that with Something Wicked This Way Comes you get spooks dressed up in a circus tent...only in this case, the circus tent is a political society run by gods (and their sycophants and enemies who range from goblins to fallen angels). With Brom's writing, you get spooks dressed up as lost souls wandering the cities of Purgatory trying to find some kind of meaning with the eternity that faces them. Fans of writer/illustrator Gerald Brom know that he loves shadowy and creepy stuff, and were he to be anyone's neighbor, I'd fully expect Halloween to be the holiday of the year.

This novel gives us pretty much everything you might expect from an urban fantasy perspective as well. You've got fallen angels and the mythology around that, references to Lucifer, smart and cunning demons, the River Styx, the River Lethe, souls toiling away just as hard in death as they did in life, and there's even killing...which took extra effort for me to suspend disbelief on because all of these people are already dead. The book never does provide a satisfying conclusion to the question: what happens if you die when you are already dead. About the only thing that it does answer is 1) nobody knows and 2) it's probably something akin to utter oblivion and nothingness. Most of the book is spent with Chet, who wanders the plain of Purgatory searching for his grandfather, amidst a landscape that is obviously underground and lit by this sun-like being called "Mother Eye." When it gets tired, the eye closes and plunges the world into a kind of night.

Lost Gods in its reading is not a happy tale. There are many parts of it that are outright horrifying. But one of the satisfying things about the book is to follow Chet Moran's journey into the underworld following his gruesome murder at the hands of his own grandmother (who eats him), and how his perception of what is good and what is evil changes with every encounter along the road. The other part of it that is pretty darn amazing are the visual encounters with the mythologicals...each god that Brom introduces us to is described in lavish detail, and all of them are important to the overall story of the book. In all of its pages, the author keeps that feeling of other-worldliness that is common in Twilight-Zone-esque stories. You always feel like you are one step removed from the real world, and that there is some horror lurking just at the edge of your vision that you would be better off not ever meeting or even understanding.

In finishing, it's the first book I've ever read where the author manages to make a character who commits a heinous murder into a hero worthy of Elysium, which is the book's equivalent of heaven. That was a mind twist that I didn't expect.

Here are some of the illustrations from the book; they are done by Brom himself. I think it's incredible when someone can both write and draw. 

Scientific research into toxic narcissism has discovered a link between aggression and this terrible personality disorder.

My friend Geneva sent me this link from Dr. Ramani Durvasula, and it's about the link between aggression and diagnosable and toxic narcissism. It confirmed (as she says in the video that it did for many others) a suspicion I had regarding those who exhibit the traits of this nasty personality disorder. Dr. Durvasula is an American clinical psychologist, professor of psychology, media expert, and author.

If you are interested in narcissism either because it affects you directly or you've come to understand that our nation is awash with those who have this personality disorder, I would recommend you watch this video. If anything, it gave me some coping strategies for people within my social circle who have dangerous levels of grandiose narcissism. Additionally, this information has equipped me with the ability to make healthy boundaries to make sure that these dangerous individuals are kept from influencing my life in even a small way.

One of my very religious and toxic narcissistic acquaintances got married last year, and I warned his future spouse but she didn't listen. Now a year later, she looks and behaves like a zombie, having aged probably ten years. I knew it was going to be this way, so I don't have any mercy. He had a job with some white collar criminals that went to prison for embezzling money from the government. As a general manager, his title was "President," and boy did she sop that up with a biscuit, buying jewelry, going on vacations, etc. What she didn't know was that he was up to his eyeballs in debt with buying new cars, and living in the basement apartment of his aunt for $300 a month (subsidized by family) was not a red flag because he had $100 bills on hand. 

Shortly after they got married, he got fired from his job, because he never went to work and stayed at home playing video games while telling people to do stuff by phone. They got sick of it. And he's been unemployed ever since, drawing down weekly unemployment checks, eating his Chick-Fil-A, voting for Trump, and looking for another job in his forties that will pay $150,000 a year. He wasn't happy when the unemployment stimulus ran out (Utah Republicans ended it). That was weird because...well...he votes Republican. But no one is biting, because what he really qualifies for is a job at Taco Bell. Debt collectors hound them, and while he stays home and plays video games, she has to work to pay everything. I think there's a weird irony that her wedding ring cost about $10,000, but it was purchased with a loan. And now she's paying down the loan. I think maybe she's too stupid to realize that she bought her own wedding ring. My prediction: he will never work again, because every job that doesn't pay $100.00 per hour is "beneath him." That spells trouble for her, a woman who dreamed of owning a home and living the good life. Meh. Don't ever marry a grandiose narcissist. The abuse will kill you.

But these people always have a "couplesplain" way of talking down to us single folk who know what's up. My favorite from the horse's mouth is, "Marriage is tough and you really got to work hard to keep it together." Yeah...well...you shouldn't be working that hard only a year into it. That outdated saying also discounts personality disorders, which are a wrecking ball. I honestly feel like a relationship between two people who don't exhibit narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sociopathy (the dark triad) wouldn't be difficult at all. You just need to be able to spot the toxicity, have the courage to label it with very visible stickers for the world to see, and then attack it like cancer. A grandiose narcissist in the wrong place (like the oval office) did incredible damage in just four short years. I'm surprised we even have a democracy left after January 6th, 2021.

Anyway, this video from Dr. Ramani is eye opening. I hope you watch it, and then tell me of your own experiences with narcissistic assholes in your own life.

Loki was a baffling chaotic hot mess of a series that is a clarion call of things to come.

He Who Remains in the middle of his villainous monologue
Spoiler Alert: We are talking about Loki today. Proceed at your own peril.

Loki season 1 (there will be a season 2 according to the stinger embedded after the credits sequence of the season finale) ended by introducing us to a character called "He Who Remains." Played by Jonathan Majors from HBO's now canceled Lovecraft Country, he was a monologuing villain. However, his monologue wasn't boring, as he spoke to both Loki and Sylvie in the house at the end of time.

Who "He Who Remains" actually is...has yet to be revealed. But most sources who have read comic books say that this is Nathaniel Richards. They also say that Kang the Conqueror is one of many versions of Richards, which echoes a sentiment shared by He Who Remains when he referred to one of his variants as a "conqueror." This particular version of Kang was just a nerd who became a tyrant kind of accidentally. Not because he actually wanted to rule, but because he thought he knew what was best and had the means to achieve it.

As a villain, I found this character of He Who Remains to be affably evil with his pseudo arguments of, "What would you do in my place? All of your lives were necessary collateral damage...a sacrifice to keep the timeline pure. If you think you can do better, then you should and just take over." I also liked the line, "We're all villains here." It seemed appropriate given the circumstance that Sylvie and Loki had somehow managed to achieve the high ground of morality despite their storied history of death and destruction. The difference then seemed to be in the growth of the Loki character played by Hiddleston, who learnt to consider what if he is wrong and how that can affect others. This was unique, as Sylvie (to the very bitter end) was consumed by revenge for the wrongs that had been done to her.

In watching these six episodes of the first season, I've got to say that none of this went in the direction that I thought it would. Loki was singularly the most baffling of the Disney + series that include WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was also the most revealing into the MCU's future, by giving us a glimpse of all the time travel quackery that is going to consume the multiverse. I wonder how the writers are even going to keep track of all the timelines that are going to explode, and all the various iterations of the characters we know and how they will face the threat of Kang the Conqueror. I worry that it will become confusing in the same way that Dark on Netflix got really confusing and not at all enjoyable. I also wonder if Kang will fall short of the impressiveness of Thanos. I don't really know much about him, so I'm excited to learn. I definitely think that Marvel is trying to go in a different direction, and try out a completely polar opposite of Thanos by recognizing that you can't capture lightning in a bottle more than once.

And I had a parting thought I wanted to share sparked by the Loki mini-series. Maybe the common thread of the future movies is going to be the TVA (Time Variance Authority), and how everyone is going to try for a better version of the TVA. In other words, stopping Kangs from warring across multiverses seems necessary, but not if the cost is free will and the destruction of so many other lives. I also wonder if the timelines diverging means that there are now multiple instances of the TVA. Loki landed in a very different version--one with Kang's statues and no one remembering him. So what exactly does that mean if the TVA itself has been rewritten other than to send the basic message that nothing that has happened thus far in the Marvel Cinematic Universe accounts for anything. It seems like a weird place to go with these stories, but maybe a great reset is what they needed to break away from the comic book peak that they reached with the Infinity Gauntlet story.

Do any of you have any thoughts or considerations regarding the Loki mini-series?