Michael Offutt's Blog, page 43

The Expanse season 5 trailer reveals that they are following the story arc of Nemesis Games rather closely.

Last week, The Expanse season five trailer dropped. For fans of the books and in particular, Nemesis Games, there were some great one second glimpses of incredible events that take place in that story. If you haven't read Nemesis Games or you are behind on The Expanse and want to catch up, then this is your <<SPOILER WARNING>>
Nemesis Games is the book that starts a whole new story arc for The Expanse. Interwoven into season four, you got your introduction to the big bad villain, Marco Inaros, who also happens to be Naomi's ex. In Nemesis Games and I expect season five of The Expanse...Marco and his group of extremist followers wage war on Earth by sending asteroids covered in stealth paint to bombard the planet. Earth in the time of Nemesis Games has a population of 40 billion. If I remember correctly, after Marco's attacks there is only a population of 10 billion who manage to survive. Just think about that a moment, and you can imagine what season five is going to have in store for us.
The book describes cataclysmic tidal waves, earthquakes, starvation...you name it. The storyline pushes all of The Expanse crew to the limit. Amos actually gets trapped on Earth, because he goes there to take care of some personal business and to visit Peaches (Clarissa Mao) who is in a high-security prison there deep underground. It actually ends up being the only reason they survive.
Meanwhile, in space Naomi gets caught up in a reunion of sorts with Marco and she has to confront full-on that her ex is a mass-murdering psychopath and terrorist. The struggle she goes through just to survive this, much less to try and save her son from being sucked into Marco's world, is some riveting reading.
And then there's Avasarala. Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes are at the core of her story. She is going to be involved in so many scenes as the crisis just keeps amping up for Earth, and the leadership of the U.N. and all of Earth is in tatters. There are so many edge-of-the-seat "nail-biting" scenes involving Avasarala, I just hope they can do this thing justice (I have no doubt that I will be pleased, truthfully). To give Amazon credit, they created a spectacular season 4 on the alien planet of Ilus. Anyway, if you haven't watched the trailer yet, please check it out below.

With three months to go in 2020 the IWSG asks us what a working writer looks like.

Today being October 7th means that there are only 12 or so weeks left before the end of the year. Huzzah! As you can tell, I'm really looking forward to 2021, mostly because I want to leave the dumpster fire that is 2020 in the past. This has been a difficult year for too many reasons. However, I'm optimistic that it can only get better from here. And being the first Wednesday of the month, October 7th just also happens to be Insecure Writer's Support Group day. This is the day when all us writers out here get to express something about writing that we maybe feel insecure about, or to answer the monthly question that appears on the IWSG blog located HERE (consequently where you can also sign up).
The awesome co-hosts for the October 7 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, Beth Camp, Beverly Stowe McClure, and Gwen Gardner!

October 7 question - When you think of the term working writer, what does that look like to you? What do you think it is supposed to look like? Do you see yourself as a working writer or aspiring or hobbyist, and if latter two, what does that look like?

At this point in my personal story arc, I see myself as a hobbyist. This means that I pay all of my bills through my main job, which is working for the State of Utah. And this in turn affords me the ability to craft stories or to make books and write things that are essentially for an audience of me and anyone who is like me (it's frightening, but there are quite a few people out there who are like yours truly). So it's not entirely a miniscule market. However, there aren't enough people who are like me to ever make a living from as I'm into a few niche and unique things (like nearly everyone else). And there's nothing wrong with that.
My writing journey has taught me a lot about myself, about what I like, what I dislike, and it has been a great vehicle through which I discovered who I was as a person. It definitely taught me to respect the writing process, and it taught me how difficult an endeavor it is to actually finish a story. Knowing exactly what I wanted from life (and who I was as a person) enabled me to set healthy boundaries with folks both in my family and in my friendship circle. Saying things like, "You know, I'm going to say no to that," has pissed off family and friends. I had to learn that this isn't on me. I'm not responsible for how other people feel when I reject them with a boundary. But, it was the start of healthy conversations in which I wished them well on what they wanted to do, but that I had my own things I wanted to do too that are more important. In other words, I absolutely was not going to people please so that I could get their approval. There are powerful narcissists in my family, and putting a stop to the people-pleasing was and continues to be challenging. However, it makes my life better, and the air is sweeter to breathe.
You might ask: how exactly did writing help you overcome people pleasing? Well, it has to do with finding your audience. Some authors will write to try and please an audience. I decided a while ago that I was no longer going to do that. Instead, I was going to be happy about writing things for people like me, and I wasn't going to care if others (who are not in that audience) hated and did not support my work. If you think about it, the whole concept of a review is to people please. If you get a bad review, it means that you did not please a person, and the entirety of the bad review, is them admonishing you for not catering to what they like. I'm so done with that, so I don't care if I get bad reviews.
Writing a book is kind of like living in a house. Most people like the neighborhoods with the HOA's that have the manicured front lawns and the houses that all have the tree out front in the same place and where none of the houses look all that different from the next. That's okay. I'm just the person whose house in this fictional scenario is painted navy blue and white, has too many flowers in the front lawn, who doesn't spray for insects, and who grows tons of vegetables and has drip lines everywhere. I'm that house that sticks out like a sore thumb. Where the walls inside are painted yellow and white or blue and white, and where appliances look like Easter eggs because they are bright and colorful. I'm the house that people accuse of bringing down their home values because its weird and eclectic. But that's okay, you just need to set healthy boundaries and tell people, "If you don't like it...move along. You can find people who are more like you. I don't need to conform to your standards."
So now I'll answer the question: what does a working writer look like to you? A working writer is someone who has to work to support themselves so they can afford to write what they want to write. It doesn't matter if they are a hobbyist or incredibly serious. In both situations, the audience they sell to is not yet (or maybe never will be) large enough to support them. And with the rising cost of living, especially in the United States, I don't see how writing will ever be enough to support anyone unless you can sell enough books to make six figures a year. It just costs too dang much to live (and to retire) in this country. A lot of that is (of course) housing. I know the middle class houses around here (in SLC) cost around half a million for a third acre plot. How does anyone make enough to afford a 30-year mortgage for half a million? Answer: they don't, and they end up renting for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, to quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I got to say about that."

In watching the Boys on Amazon Prime I keep thinking that all this stuff is way too real.

The second season of The Boys is almost over, having aired its seventh episode this last week. This season, the storyline of The Boys added a new character called "Stormfront," whose name is taken right from a website touting white supremacy. Wikipedia writes:

"Stormfront" is a white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denialist, and neo-Nazi internet forum, and the Web's first major racial hate site. In addition to its promotion of Holocaust denial, "Stormfront" has increasingly become active in the propagation of Islamophobia."

In the show, the character of Stormfront is a sociopath whose end goal is to usher in an age of supremacy for white superheroes (called "supes" in the series). This character uses social media to drum up fear about non-Whites invading America (and "un-American" is clearly code for being "non-White"). 

The seventh episode opens by following a man who becomes radicalized by consuming Stormfront's sub-textual and racist rhetoric about how Americans are under attack and in danger from outsiders. His whole worldview changes over just a few minutes of compressed time, until these internalized hatreds all boil over when he blows away a non-White convenience store clerk because he thought that the guy might be a super terrorist (and therefore bulletproof) and he was hellbent on exposing this. Note that this was a clerk he'd visited a countless number of times, and who always treated him with respect. But he became the enemy and "bam," was murdered by this newly-minted "domestic terrorist," who had taken it upon himself to defend America. What's even more cartoonish is that the shooter seemed to experience real remorse once he realizes he just murdered someone. In the real world, shooters don't seem to have any remorse over the things they have done. Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

But let's take a moment and think about this whole scenario I've outlined above. What does this sound like to you? If you are thinking of organizers like Unite the Right and individuals like Kyle Rittenhouse, then you're in the same camp as me.

It also doesn't stop there. After the guy's murder, Stormfront (the actual Nazi who is in a thinly-veiled disguise) condemns the shooting, adding that their (meaning her's and Homelander's) thoughts and prayers are with the shooting victim's family. It's said with enough casualness to show they understand how empty and meaningless those words are, but they also seem to be powerful and useful to project an aura of caring (which is difficult for a sociopath to do).

The Boys feels like a twisted mirror reflecting what I see as 2020 American reality. The hypocrisies uttered by the main characters are dwarfed by the enthusiasm of a crowd that applauds their every word. And despite having all the power in the world--there is a part during the second season when Homelander acknowledges fully to his pre-teen son that they are "gods"--they manage to convince normal, powerless people that they are the victims.

I'd say it's too much but...it isn't. It feels real. I won't ever understand how a person who knows they are untouchable and recognizes that they are, in fact, a god could ever play the victim. Or that anyone would actually buy the story that they are a victim. But I don't need to understand why this happens. All I need to know is that it does happen every single day. America's poor and helpless absolutely love to coddle its rich and powerful and continue to sacrifice to ensure that their priorities and goals are well satisfied.

It's just all too real, peeps.

Stargirl's first season was only the latest story arc featuring villains with all the good intentions.

The first season of Stargirl ended a couple months ago with villains that had good intentions. In the narrative of the story, we learned that the big bad who was called Icicle had a wife who died because of an illness brought on by a company dumping chemicals into the local water supply. Of course (capitalist dystopia), no one at the chemical company actually took responsibility for her death. This sent the villain on a quest to create a wonderful liberal utopia that could only happen if a lot of people died along the way.

Icicle was head of the Injustice Society of America, and they had a big bad evil plan. Members of the Injustice Society were Brainwave, Icicle, Tigress, Sportsmaster, and the Gambler. They killed people, even kids, with no regard...all to accomplish this: a progressive agenda that would shame even Bernie Sanders. You see, they wanted to combat global warming by forcing people to embrace solar and wind power. They were going to eliminate discrimination over race, religion, and sexual orientation. And they were going to provide universal healthcare. When I realized that this was what the Injustice Society stood for, I was like, what the hell? Those are good things, right? But the method by which they were going to accomplish these things was through brutality, violence, and mind control that would end up killing so many people...oh so many. It reminded me (a bit) of Thanos...

Which brings me to this point: we are getting some very interesting villains in our fictional stories these days. Villains that you can actually sympathize with because, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Where have we seen this before, other than with Thanos, who (as a reminder) killed off half the universe to restore the ecosystem of the universe? Here's the list I came up with.

1) Killmonger in Black Panther just wanted an end to racism and the effects of colonization.

2) Ozymandias in Watchmen wanted to prevent another World War from happening. He wanted to save billions by triggering genocide so that they would unite against a common enemy. You can't have world peace without breaking some eggs, right?

3) Magneto wanted a life of dignity free of discrimination for his kind. In order to accomplish this, he just needed to kill all the humans.

4) Darth Vader just wanted to save his family, starting with his wife. He was an incredibly powerful child shunned by the Jedi because they thought he might turn evil. 

5) Syndrome from the Incredibles wanted an egalitarian society where no one is superior than another. That's not so bad, right?

Do you have any you would add to this list?

The Dragonlance Chronicles would be a great movie if done right but that's a risk many people aren't willing to make.

The Dragonlance Chronicles, i.e., Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Winter Night, and Spring Dawning would make an excellent television series. I've been re-reading them as of late, and this is my professional opinion. It also seems to be shared by Joe Manganiello, which I should have suspected, but never realized. Admittedly, this picture embedded below is already three years old (from Joe's twitter account). However, that isn't to say that it won't happen. It's just that people are talking about it, and talk can take years as we've seen from other intellectual properties. I would (of course) love to see three movies come out with the kind of attention to detail that lavished The Lord of the Rings and most of a Game of Thrones. Krynn (the world of Dragonlance) is richly detailed, does a lot of really good things with Dungeons & Dragons's intellectual property (which honestly can be a bit goofy at times), and has surprisingly deep characters. It's a true epic. Every character is crucial to the plot as a whole, and everything seems to be carefully constructed with a clear finale in mind. It goes without saying that someone of Joe Manganiello's influence might be able to actually make this thing happen. However, there are interesting roadblocks that Tracy Hickman has written about in terms of what he calls, "The Original Bad Deal."
Here's the gist: Tracy and Laura Hickman and Margaret Weiss had to sign away any rights or copyrights to their Dragonlance creations in order to get the opportunity to create Dragonlance (keep in mind that this was 1981 and publishers had a lot more power than they do today). So, as far as the Dragonlance Intellectual Property goes, it belongs with a company that is very risk averse (Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro). They seem to have decided that the risk of damaging their intellectual property by making them into a film that tanks is worth less money to them than simply leaving them as books. Shrug. So it may never happen.
It is an interesting lesson though, right? The intersection of art and making money/profit is a fascinating one. If only every studio could afford to take a risk. Imagine the possibilities of all the great and probably terrible shows we could have. It would definitely make things more entertaining.

You can always count on a few people to ruin everything for the rest of us.

 

It occurs to me that we live in a kind of science-fiction dystopia. Elections and politics aside, a very small group of people can and do frequently bring ruin to the lives of all the rest of us. Why is this allowed to happen? Because our society is enormous, and there are a ton of people on this planet. Because of this sheer fact, it is impossible not to be affected by the things that a few bad apples do. Case in point:

1) Hackers. Hackers go after everything from regular email to banks to smart devices like thermostats and coffee makers. They lock up your pc with ransomware and steal your information. The result that we all pay for comes in the form of sky-high security with two-factor authentication, facial recognition, passwords a mile long that need to be changed once a month, security questions, secondary emails that passwords can be sent to, registrations within your smart phone so that text security messages can be sent there, and the list goes on and on. Have you seen an old person try to use a device once they've forgotten a password to access something? Have you ever been confronted by an iPad that bricked itself, because too many wrong password guesses were entered? Welcome to the realities of the 21st century. In my own life, I keep track of my aging father's monthly expenses for his nursing home. When his bank that handles his money upgraded to a new website with enhanced security, it literally took me one hour from start to finish to get access to his account to verify that everything was okay.

2) Covid 19 and masks. Probably 90% of people I know wear masks. Then there's the 10% that yell, "Don't tread on me!" and "It's against the Constitution" and blah blah blah. So what is the price that all of us pay for this? Well, our passports are worthless now, 200,000 people have died from this disease, and we can't stop the numbers from growing. It's impossible, and our country is in meltdown. Okay then...seems pretty obvious that a few bad apples have spoiled everything for everyone.

3) Comfort animals on airplanes. It used to be a lot simpler to be able to bring your dog onto the plane. Now, you've got to jump through a ton of hoops because a few people decided they would bring their ducks, their snakes, their rats, and whatever else that they decided was a thing that lowered their anxiety. So what used to be easy is now hard for those with legitimate disabilities to be able to qualify for in order to fly a plane.

4) Renting. I'm old enough to remember when you didn't have to sign a lease for an apartment. People just trusted you to take care of their property, and you know what? The people that moved into that place actually did take care of the property. Signing a lease, paying for first and last month's rent, and requiring deposits all came about because somebody somewhere got screwed by another person, and to try and prevent that, other landlords started putting in safeguards. Now, new people will have to sign their life away in triplicate and have their credit checked and have references just to find a "temporary" and "grotesquely expensive" place to live.

5) Children playing outside. I'm also old enough to remember when kids could play outside safely, and when parents wouldn't panic that their child was out in a park unsupervised. A few kids nationwide met with terrible ends, and it scared the crap out of folks everywhere. Look...I know that's unfortunate and sad and awful. But the backlash has been helicopter parenting, and I don't think children have actually been (statistically) any safer because family can suck just as badly as the random dangerous stranger.

6) Prenuptial Agreements. This didn't used to be a thing, except for the very rich. But now, no one trusts anyone because of a few horrific divorces. I literally have friends who (when getting married) have insisted that their fiancé sign one of these things. That's so romantic, don't you think? It's just another example of how a few bad apples spoiled the bunch.

I could probably go on, but my whole point is that it sucks when we allow a few people who do very bad things completely derail and/or change the way we live. I also don't have any answers as to how you do otherwise. It's simply an observation and a commentary. I suppose my personal philosophy is that a few bad people do indeed ruin life for everyone else. So knowing this fact of life...we should always proceed with the assumption that we are going to get screwed collectively by a few bad people doing bad things, and just try as hard as we can to minimize the damage on our end. Seems reasonable, right?

Welcome to dystopia.

Look at this dragon and feel dragon fear for the first time.

Dungeons & Dragons, which is a tabletop roleplaying game that I play, makes miniatures to enhance the tabletop experience. I collect said miniatures. That being said, they have now officially licensed a unique "miniature" for a red dragon that is so enormous, it is being called a statue. I thought for a moment that this was just a collector's item. But I soon learned that this unique statue is (in fact) to scale and meant to be used in the tabletop game, should players really need a challenge. I thought to myself, why is it so large? It is several times larger than even the largest dragon present within the lore of the game. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. Keep in mind, that the minis in the foreground are the size of a quarter. The red dragon in back is technically the largest dragon characters shouldever face in the game of D&D. The character closest to the camera in blueis about the size of a quarter. This is supposed to be the biggest dragon, thebiggest threat. But as you can see, it isn't. Interesting right?
So what is going on with the enormous red dragon that is in the above picture, with the silhouette of a 6-foot tall man standing behind it for comparison? Well, it turns out that Dungeons & Dragons has an in-game explanation. The dragon's name is Klauth, and he's so old that he technically should have died of old age (which is usually not a thing that long-lived dragons need to worry about). Being supremely evil, Klauth has resisted death by using black magic on red dragon eggs (he's a cannibal, go figure), and this magic combined with eating his own kind has not only extended his life, but allowed him to swell to sizes previously not encountered by anyone in the realms in which he dwells.
Anyway, this dragon is something I can pre-order now, and I'm strongly considering it. For one it's just an epic piece that I could display in my house. Additionally, it would awe just about anyone that was playing in one of my games if I slapped that thing down on the table and declared, "This is what you see on the mountaintop." That alone might be worth the reactions. There's a few more pics of it below, and please note that it does light up, so I think it has batteries.

Examining J.K. Rowling's views is a good way to understand how to live in a world filled with hatred.

Since Sony had a splashy PlayStation 5 showcase event, and a long rumored video game called Hogwart's Legacy debuted, I decided that I wanted to take a look at the author that has made the most money from writing that the world has ever seen, i.e., J.K. Rowling. Specifically, I wanted to catalogue her transgender hatred/mental meltdown for myself regarding trans people, just so I could wrap my head around her nutso stance a bit (and maybe establish a timeline). And it honestly seems appropriate since Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and the United States is about to become Gilead from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. So why not look at hatred? It doth seem to be everywhere these days. If you want to take this journey with me, well just read on, friend. Aren't you the lucky one :)?

First off, Rowling positioned herself as a progressive on representation. Okay, then. Do as I say, not as I do, right? For the record, this is not a new thing. There are lots of people who want to establish themselves as progressive so that they can cash in on the liberal money making machine and appease Hollywood types. Honestly, maybe the worst thing about the modern world is that we overshare and over "know" to much about people.

Back in 2007, the original Harry Potter universe ended with Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore absolutely had no signs of being gay in the books. Then she retconned her way to this by announcing that Dumbledore was gay. I guess that is sort of inclusive, right? I honestly don't know what to make of that, and still don't. Okay then.

In 2016, Rowling published The History of Magic in North America by stereotyping Native Americans by associating them with a history of animal and plant magic. I guess Europeans were the only ones smart enough to make wands. It seems kind of shallow to me. Later she writes that wizards who came to America fleeing the authorities ran into the "friendly native" stereotype. That's nice. And then she appropriated the whole skin walker thing so that she could make villains, not really being respectful of Native American beliefs and traditions regarding these things. 

In 2019, Rowling supported Maya Forstater, whose contract position at the Centre for Global Development was not renewed after she used offensive and hateful language against transgender people on social media.

In 2020, Rowling penned a huge essay about her reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues, and it's long, and a lot of it doesn't make sense to me. You can read it HERE. She espouses debunked lies about the existence of transgender people and supports fellow bigots who she claims have been "canceled" for their beliefs. Okay, then.

Now (present) she's released a book under the pen name Robert Galbraith that perpetuates the stereotype that transwomen are men disguising themselves to prey on cisgender women.

Oh well, I (for one) believe that most of the people in this world are terrible. So I'm particularly suited to not be bothered by a person's art despite the fact that the person who created it sucks. I also don't think that cancel culture really works, because (again) there are too many terrible people. We can't get people to wear masks during a pandemic. Do we really think we can crush the bottom line of Chick-Fil-A? They're doing just fine. So is J.K. Rowling, with her billion dollar empire.

So I'll continue to appreciate the Harry Potter things. I'll still love David Eddings' Belgariad despite the fact that I know he and Leigh Eddings were child abusers, were sent to prison for a year because of it, and then went on to write some lovely novels that I think are amazing.

Will I still watch Woody Allen movies? Yup. Do I still think Gone With the Wind is a book worthy of a Pulitzer Prize? It sure is. Evil, evil, everywhere. Running from it or trying to cancel it is useless. I think learning to live with it is the best that we can do, like living with climate change. It's here and it's upon us and nobody cares. So living with it seems like the only option.

And thus I raise a glass to you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You are gone and now evil will take your place far an entire generation, and there's not a damn thing me or anyone else who thinks like me can do about it. Salut. My arms are too short to punch god. We will try to learn to live with all the evil that's coming down the pipe, and take the victories we can until they no longer matter (because at that point I'd imagine we'd be in Civil War). It's not a thing I want, but I can see it coming on the horizon. To twist a Chinese proverb just a little bit for all our benefit, I wish every single one of us lived in less interesting times.

I think Frank Herbert would be proud and excited by the Dennis Villeneuve adaptation of Dune.

Dennis Villeneuve makes good movies. Now, he's bringing Dune to life in a two-part movie adaptation, and I really love it. Dune is a seminal work that has influenced a hundred things that came after it, whether it be Star Wars, Warhammer 40,000, or Robotech. Many of the things that we like in our nerd niches owe a bow here and there to Dune. It even influenced some of my early writing. I remember drafting a novel in college and sharing pages with my critique group. One of them (who went by J.C.) was very critical because I used a Dune-like intro to each of my chapters explaining this or that before the actual text started. J.C. hated that. "It works for Dune, but it doesn't work here. Cut it out." And so I did.

I can't explain for others why Dune is so cool. On paper, the majority of it takes place on a desert planet with no features at all except for sand dunes and some big earth worms. But for me, I've always enjoyed desert adventures and desert things, similar to an early childhood fascination with ancient Egypt. And Dune as a work seems to strike all of those archeology Indiana Jones-esque buttons that make my imagination light on fire. Of course, added to the mix is a kind of magic, both in the form of the Spice Melange and with the orders of the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats, and characters like Doctor Yueh with his Suk training to make sure he is completely loyal (which obviously means that he must be the bad guy, right?) No one makes mention of a wall that is insurmountable in a story if they don't fully intend to make it tumble down at some point.

Another thing that really draws me into the story is being in Paul's head. Honestly, even though he's the Atreides heir and very educated, he knows next to nothing about how the universe works. He also has a relatively solid moral compass, and it's easy inhabiting his thoughts. It is because he knows nothing though that makes the book so good. You learn as he learns, you figure out things as he seems to be figuring them out whether it be the Gom Jabbar or seeing a sand worm for the first time or interacting with the space-faring guild or a Harkonnen. The fact that Herbert had these things in his head is pretty incredible, and he sets the table for his story extremely well by immersing us in political backstabbing theater of the highest order, and then providing us with a protagonist that is not only sympathetic, but has the ability to call upon superhuman powers due to his breeding.

And then of course there is the Spice itself. This thing is as unknowable as The Force is for Star Wars, which is probably where Lucas got the idea to be honest. The Fremen have been around the Spice all of their lives, but they don't know everything that it can do. And layers just keep getting added to those who use the Spice in different ways. In some sense, it is this thing that the author could add a power to later on down the road if they so desired, just saying, "the Spice caused this unknown mutation and it resulted in this and voila...a new thing happened." It's a useful trick for anyone crafting a story, and it keeps the Miracle Exemptions that one requires a reader to absorb to a manageable level so as to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, I'm so looking forward to seeing this adaptation of Dune. This is a movie that I will risk going to theaters to see even if Covid is raging the countryside. If you are unfamiliar with the remake or haven't seen the trailer, I'm placing it below.

I'm enjoying my re-read of the Dragonlance Chronicles from the 1980's.

 

I'm re-reading the Dragonlance books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I usually don't go back and re-read things, but nostalgia for the past and seeking out things that provide comfort seem to be the norm during 2020. So why shouldn't I indulge just a little bit? Truthfully though, it has been about thirty or so years since I last read these books, so I'd forgotten just about everything except the biggest plot details and the names of one or two characters (at most). Additionally, I don't think I appreciated the work and creative talent that went into the Dragonlance storyline when I was a teen. But now that I'm much older, I see that they are (in fact) works of great brilliance.

If you don't know, the Dragonlance books are based on a tabletop roleplaying game called Dungeons & Dragons. Now D&D is an incredibly fun game, but it is also really goofy. I like to tell people that a session is kind of like participating in some really bad improv. D&D is a hodgepodge of all the fantasy tropes. It is a huge mixing bowl filled with everything from Oni to hobgoblins to wizards to dragons to gods and to minotaurs. It pulls from every culture indiscriminately, and in many cases, it is the granddaddy of the term "cultural appropriation." You can have ki-rin in the same game session as you have a pyramid based on ancient Egypt. You can have kung-fu in the same story as Gandalf and Sauron. The words "one of these things is not like the other" does not apply to Dungeons and Dragons. Yet, somehow, with all of these goofy potentials, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis pulled off something remarkable: a beautiful story in a world (Krynn) that essentially has all of these elements and somehow manages to take them seriously and give them respect. That is no small feat.

I half expected to hate these books on a re-read, and find them utterly unreadable. Instead, I'm marveling at how well the authors negotiate the different character classes and manage to integrate the monsters as well as pay homage to a lot of what makes the game of Dungeons and Dragons fun to play. It's all there, down to the spells that Raistlin Majere casts (taken from the Player's Handbook) and to the abilities that several of the characters in the story manifest. The clerics feel like D&D clerics and the equipment they use feels very much akin to how leveling feels like when I play this game. It's a fascinating thing, and yes, they manage to make it just as high fantasy and feel just as epic as anything that Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings.

Honestly, I'm enjoying this re-read quite a bit. In a post Game of Thrones world, I would love to see Dragonlance turned into a high quality movie. The story is definitely there, as are the characters. They are as well-developed as anything that was turned out by George R.R. Martin. I've heard that there are some legal issues to making this kind of thing a reality. However, if it happens in my lifetime, I will gladly give the ones that bring it to the movies a fistful of cash.

My one complaint is that there are no good hardcover editions of the individual Dragonlance books that I can purchase for my shelves. Of course there are electronic books, audiobooks, and special edition omnibuses (which I hate because they are so unwieldy). Omnibus editions really should be restricted to either electronic book or audiobook format. Who wants to try and balance a huge hardcover book in their hands? Not I. And I found some weird overpriced handmade editions on Etsy (how is that even legal?) I didn't buy one...it was just a curiosity and way too expensive.

Anyone else out there a fan of Dragonlance? Are you giving them a re-read or are you reading them for the first time? If it's been a while, but you have a favorite character, please let me know in the comments. I think my favorite character is Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I didn't use to like him, but in this re-read, I can see how brilliant the character is, and it's easily the funnest one, pulling the whole party into his adventures. Plus, the way he sees the world is just too special.