Joshua Unruh's Blog, page 6

Color Blind & Cock Sure

Back in May I read a blog post by John Scalzi called Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. It was short, to the point, and it rang true to me. Being a straight, white male doesn't mean I get it all handed to me on a platter, but it does mean things are just easier. Add in the fact that I'm a straight, white, middle class male and, honestly, there's a part of me that feels like I'm barely playing at all.

Now I have had some very difficult years in my adult life. The Senior Partner and I were not well off when we first married. Our parents are wonderful people who helped us out when we needed it and we are eternally grateful because we might not have made it otherwise. But 50% of our parents are playing on the lowest difficulty setting also and grew up in times when it was even lower in many ways. That didn't make those times less difficult, but it did make them less difficult to get through.

I hope that makes any sense.

Anyway, I read that post, agreed with it, then it sorta faded into my background thoughts. Then, over the weekend, Courtney linked to another article, Fear of a Black President. It's by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I've read and enjoyed before. It forced me over the edge to finally read his autobiography. The main thing this article did was make me think things I hadn't thought before. It made me think things I hadn't had the occasion to think before. Mostly because I'm white.

I would never consider myself a racist. My best friend in the world is Korean and I maintain relationships with many colors and creeds. I barely even think of them in terms of their color. But there are a host of things I don't have to even think about just because I'm white. I don't have to think about what it would be like to see so few people who look like me representing me in entertainment. Or, worse, in government. I don't have to worry about voting laws restricting me. I don't have to worry about whether or not people will buy a "white author." It never occurred to me that I might be somebody's "white friend."

In short, I don't have to worry about the world stacking itself against me.

So the fact that I don't have to think about race actually sorta makes me racist. It's not a racism I chose, it's certainly a more attractive racism than the one that ends with dirty names or burnt crosses. But nevertheless, here I am...racist.

That was brought home to me by another white friend of mine I linked the article to. He basically said reading it made him bored. He said that skin pigment is such a monumentally stupid thing for people to hate about other people that he couldn't be bothered to get excited about it.

Now, I don't want to be too hard on this friend. It's very difficult to care about every damn thing all the time. If I tried, I could convince myself that this pretty great life I have is somehow a pretty terrible one, all doom and gloom and world ending. But this attitude opened my eyes to my own inherent racism.

White Americans are the only people in the whole damn nation who can choose to not care about racism. For everybody else, it's a daily life requirement. But me? I can just opt out.

Now that's bad enough, but then I ran into another article that showed me how even good intentions can go horribly awry in these kinds of areas. Rap's Long History of 'Conscious' Condescension to Women is obviously more concerned with sexism than racism (although since we're talking about hip hop, that line can get very blurry). But the point of that article is Lupe Fiasco, an artist I enjoy and who puts his thoughts and beliefs about the world on the line in his music, thoughts and beliefs I can generally count as similar to my own, failed women miserably while trying to help them. And he did it by wildly misunderstanding the issues.

And in this case, he is me.

Even with a great deal of talent, an unending well of good intentions, and a broad platform from which to speak, I could utterly misrepresent an entire swathe of people I want to help but to whom I don't belong.

I have a wife, a sister, and many close female friends I love dearly. I have friends of color. I want to be an advocate for them, I want my eyes opened to what's going on in this world for them that isn't going on for me. I want to speak on their behalf because defending your friends against spurious attacks is the right thing to do.

And yet...

And yet, I could do the right thing in such a wrong way that I actually circle back around and become part of the problem.

If I were a little less stubborn, that could freeze me into inaction. But I won't let it. I can't let it. To borrow a Baptist phrase, I'm now "under conviction." I have to do something, which would be hard enough. But now I also understand I have to do something in the right way. From where I'm sitting, that looks infinitely harder.

I still can't wait to get started, though.

Anyway…

A reminder that even Mother Teresa felt needed hanging on the wall is a reminder I can probably use. You guys are just along for the ride. (Special thanks to Frank Viola for bringing it to my attention.)

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People need help but will attack you if you help them.

Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.

It was never between you and them anyway.

~ Kent Keith, made famous by Mother Teresa*

* Kent Keith originated this poem in 1968, and Mother Teresa placed it on her children’s home in Calcutta in a slightly different version. As a result, many have attributed it to her.

Ain’t That a Kick In The Head

We signed the boy up for soccer because this is apparently a thing parents do to their children. Honestly, I don't understand why soccer. I mean, I think football is really stupid, too, but at least people play football in Oklahoma. Anyway, we signed him up, he was excited, the Senior Partner was excited, and I was tentatively excited since the last time we tried soccer was basically an anger management exercise for me as the boy jackassed around the field not really listening to anybody

A week or so ago, the Senior Partner got an email from the guy that would be Elijah's coach. Practice would be at Hudson Elementary School on the evening of August 27. We started prepping the boy for fun a week in advance. The fateful evening arrived today and, at 6, the boy and his mother headed out.

At about 6:40, I got a call requesting I Google up an address for another school.

"What happened?" I asked as I typed.

"I don't know, they had to move practice or something. The guy's phone was breaking up pretty bad. You find the new place yet?"

I had and I gave her directions to Ridgecrest Elementary. She told me she saw the school and they proceeded to go practice. Or so I thought. About 6:50, I get another call.

"Screw this, we're coming home."

"What's the problem this time?" I ask gingerly. The SP did not sound happy and I could hear vague whining from the backseat over the phone.

"I can't find the guy and it doesn't even look like there are any kids practicing soccer at this field tonight."

"Do you think he told you the wrong school?"

"No, I distinctly heard him say Ridgecrest. I'll email him when I get home."

And so she did. I bathed the boy while she emailed the coach. We read some The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and then turned the lights out. By the time we'd extricated ourselves from the bedroom, SP's phone was ringing.

"Ugh. It's the coach. Here," she said, handing me the phone, "I don't have the energy to talk to any more people today."

I took the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, this is Brian, the soccer coach."

"Hey Brian. This is Josh, I think you've been talking to my wife. We must have had a mix up tonight."

"Yeah, let me check my notes. You're name is Unruh, is that right?"

"Yep."

"And your son's name is Kade?"

"Ummm, no. It's Elijah."

"Kade?"

"No, Elijah."

Pause. "Where do you guys live?" I gave him a rough idea with highways and street names. "And you signed up through Hudson?"

"No, we signed up through the city."

"That's weird because I'm only responsible for Hudson kids. You know, Hudson an hour north of Wichita?" Pause. "Wait a minute..." Pause. "I think I got an email address wrong here..."

You guessed it. We had been contacted by a soccer coach a mere week after signing up for soccer and being told we'd be contacted via email by our coaches. The coach had gone on to name not one but TWO different elementary schools that are near enough to us to be schools where practice would be held. Except the schools he was talking about are about four hours north of us.

He and I had a good laugh, apologized, and hung up. I turned to explain this to the Senior Partner while she looked at me with wide eye. She then burst into uncontrollable laughter, actually doubling over in our kitchen. And I knew exactly why.

Because this kind of crap happens to us all the time.

Well, noot exactly this crap, but definitely the kind of weird coincidences that would have a coach of the right sport contact us at the right time and rattle off two nearby elementary schools for practices while thinking he's talking to parents of a child who live four hours up an interstate from us.

I can't wait to see what kind of bizarre scheduling cock ups happen when the boy gets old enough to sign up for his own activities. At this rate, he may be the first soccer player on Mars even though he signed up for field hockey down the street.

O Holy Knight 4 – Controversial Statement

I have one more paladin thought. It's kind of a lame blog post, but it's a thing I feel needs to be said. There may be argument. I welcome it. I will bury you if you try and argue against this. But you should still totally try if you want to. It's just a fair warning.

Paladins are good guys, therefore Jedi cannot be paladins because they are just as evil as Sith...maybe worse because they lie about it. To themselves and the galaxy at large.

That is all. More, non-paladin related things tomorrow. G'night.

O Holy Knight 3 – Cleric v. Paladin

This is a little off topic of why I love paladins. That's partly because I'm not sure I can explain my appreciation for them in a more satisfying way than "their clarity of purpose and ability to actually hurt evil with a gun or sword rather than just perpetuating evil with their gun or sword" just by throwing more words at it. I can clarify my position, but I can't really justify it better than that.

Secondly, my insistence that traditional Dungeons & Dragons paladins don't actually make any sense merely underscores the fact the the clerics don't make any sense either. And if you're going to have two religious character classes that make no sense, you need to figure out what the relationship between them is internally because the fiction fails utterly to suggest anything.

Thirdly, this concept was new to me in that I didn't realize other people were confused about it. That's not a slam, it's just one of those things you instinctively understand and then get confused about when other people ask you why water is wet. Discovering an entire thread on Story Games that tried to parse the difference between a cleric and a paladin was like when I loaned comics to people and they insisted they couldn't figure out what order to read the balloons in.

Guys...it's obvious. Right up until you meet somebody for whom it isn't.

So I read that thread with much interest even though I discovered it mostly after it was over. I can say that, functionally, as in mechanically and by the rules, I have no idea how paladins and clerics are supposed to be different. I think that would depend wildly on the rules secondarily and primarily on whether one agrees with my delineation of their roles. All of which, by the way, are in-fiction.

Clerics

When the night is dark and dreadful. When you have an unshakeable disease or a wound that refuses to heal. When you're having a crisis of faith. When you need comfort. When you need to know which rule you broke that brought judgment down on you. When you need inspiration. When you need a marriage/blessing/christening/funeral/other sacred rite or ritual, you get a cleric.

There is a system, god-given or man-made, that codifies the rules of the deities into what you need to do on a daily basis. These rules can shift and change over time, but this is rarely seismic. There is a comfort in the cleric's presence because he or she represents these rules, the foundation upon which society rests.

Sure, they have weapons and armor, but that's because the (typical fantasy) world is a dangerous place. Clerics are often themselves rich or part of rich orders and kidnapping/ransom is a problem even in civilized places. The itinerant priest is on the edges of civilization where his status will not protect him because "decent folks" are few and far between.

But when he or she shows up, the village feels instantly better. The fortified city knows that deities are on its side. Clerics, on a metaphysical level, a warm blanket. They heal, they cure, they inspire, they are, above all, comfortable.

Paladins are...well, they aren't any of these things.

Paladins

When a vampire has fangs sunk into your neck. When demons threaten your village. When infidels stand ready to invade your nation. When someone requires divine judgment. When Evil threatens. When the situation is so dire that you would gladly get burned in order to fight the fire with fire, you get a paladin.

Clerics work within a system by learning the system. They're egalitarian in a way. After all, anyone who studies can become a cleric. Paladins operate outside and sometimes even in opposition to the system. Clerics discern the will of deities through the lens of their traditions. Paladins hear the voice of their deity directly. And for the paladin, that voice never says "comfort" or "evangelize" or "protect." It only says "kill."

Oh sure, they might be killing to protect, but that isn't the real issue at hand for a paladin. They are there to kill Evil Things, and if by killing Evil Things, Good Things are allowed to thrive, that's wonderful. If the Good Things have to be purged in order to kill the Evil Things, that's equally preferable.

Paladins don't just carry weapons, they are weapons. They never get sick, they rarely get tired, they can heal, but it's usually just to keep fighting. When a paladin shows up, the village feels instant relief. But that only lasts until the threat, whatever it is, has been beaten. Then they fear who will come under judgment next...and secretly know they are as likely to feel the edge of the paladin's blade as whatever Evil Thing was just vanquished.

Comparisons

Clerics are shields, Paladins are swords.

Clerics are antibiotics, Paladins are chemotherapy.

Clerics are blankets, Paladins are armor.

Do a thought experiment for me. Imagine the average priest. Kindly, careworn face, smile lines around mouth and eyes. They're handing you food or giving you medicine. They are probably at least a middle aged man with time-tested values. They may pray for you, beseeching the Lord to protect and comfort you even as they are doing.

No imagine Jeanne D'Arc. She's a teenager, and a woman. She wears men's clothes and armor. She has a sword. She only ever either looks angry or has a faraway look. And you're way more worried about that faraway look because it probably means God is talking to her...or she thinks He is. And if He's talking to her, He's telling her to kill. Do you have a secret sin? Of course you do, everyone does. Do you think she might judge you if God spoke to her of your secret sin? Of course she would. And she's only got one sentence...death.

At this point, I don't even care if the Cleric and Paladin are functionally the same in the rules. They are going to be wildly different in the fiction. And as a gamemaster, I can work with that. I can create situations where the Cleric is the brains and the Paladin is the muscle. I can cast the Cleric as the loremaster and knowledge keeper, the one who knows how best to hit the monster, while the Paladin is the attack dog.

Does that make life easier or harder for the characters? I have no idea, but I know it'll make it more interesting.

PS: Modern D&D, whatever that means, appears to disagree with me. Looking at images and such, I honestly can't tell the difference between Clerics and Paladins. That feels like a mighty fail. D&D players who read this blog, speak up on this. What's the official line on differences?

I Did a Lot of Stuff Today

And if you count what I did yesterday, I have been absolutely a whirlwind of doing stuff! Seriously! What you ask? Well, let me tell you!

I had lunch with a friend I haven't seen in far too long. Good times and needs to be done way more often.
I mowed the damn lawn. With a new blade on the mower so it actually works properly. This meant the bag actually caught grass. I had to empty it 50 freakin' times. This was total bullcorn.
I named Courtney's intractably unnamed sequel to Rethana's Surrender by misreading a computer screen. #AccidentalGreatness
I sent out 16 Advance Reading Copies of Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall. Really, that was mostly aggregating email addresses and composing the mail before hitting "send" but it led to...
Sixteen mostly strangers are reading my book. I know it's a solid read so it isn't exactly nerve wracking, but neither am I entirely settled on the matter. It is a complicated headspace when you're wildly egocentric yet handing your baby to other people for the first time.
I've done the very tentative first steps of making a comic book. It's quite a balancing act between researching the how to do things versus the writing of new things I've never written before (scripts) versus just diving into the next writing project I already know how to do.
Also, I've had sticker shock over the above.
I suggested the next big publishing revolution as part of Aaron's Draft2Digital initiative. Hint: it has something to do with the above two bullets.
I've done a surprising amount of off the cuff plotting for The Next Project that I should probably write down somewhere before I forget it.
I butted heads with my kid a lot. This first full week of school stuff is pretty intense.
I've generally had a lot of interpersonal complications this week, although not so much in the last couple days. But it was big enough that the shadow looms over the rest of the week.
I, a grown-up, bought costumes for a fundraising event tomorrow night. I have not purchased a costume in a long, long time. We also bought one for the Senior Partner. Since she hates costumes and costume parties, it might literally be the first costume she's owned since Strawberry Shortcake was a hot new fad.

Seriously, when I finally got home (after an hour of driving due to some apparently serious car accidents on the highway), my head was splitting and I needed a lay down. Still, I'm pretty pleased with the output of my first full week of all day writer rather than all day dad with writing on the side.

INDUSTRY! PEOPLE PUTTING THINGS INTO OTHER THINGS...AND TURNING THEM!

The above should be read in Tom Servo's voice. If you don't know who Tom Servo is, then we may have nothing further to say to one another.

If I were a tougher guy, I'd write that "Paladins v. Clerics" post right now. But I'm not. So I'm going to do everything I can to write that up for you guys tomorrow and maybe also get something in the tank for Sunday. I think the PvC debate (see what I did there?) is pretty interesting, and I'll try and make it so outside my own head.

In the meantime, gentle ARC readers, godspeed (to your reading) and good luck (to the writing). To the rest of you, excelsior.

From the frozen lands of the North comes…The Myth Reaver! (And he’s bearing gifts!)

Greetings fans and well-wishers!

By this time tomorrow, the good people at Consortium Books and Draft2Digital will have Advanced Reading Copies of Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall. We have a few dedicated reviewers who are getting a copy, and I'm hitting up Aaron's fanbase as well, but I also wanted to extend the opportunity here.

We will likely publish this book the first half of next week. With that in mind, we'd love to have honest, helpful reviews ready to go on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. If you absolutely hate the book, I'd appreciate an email to me on the subject but silence elsewhere.

If you would like an early look at this novel (which I am very proud of and think is my best work to date) and can commit to those reviews (they can be copy and pasted, no need to reinvent the wheel for each site), then say so in the comments section.

Make sure you have a valid email address on your comment (I won't publish it) and, by close of play tomorrow, you should have a digital copy of my Viking dark fantasy ready to rock your socks. It will be in both mobi and epub formats, so any e-reader or app should handle it.

Thanks, guys! You're my favorites!

O Holy Knight 2

As promised, here's a few of my thoughts on the Western Paladin.

No, not that one! (Although this guy did imprint on me a bit, but more on that another time)

I mean this type of one.

Actually, I don't entirely mean this one either. It was years before I heard of the Song of Roland. My first real brush, and it was love at first sight I might add, looked more like this.

Dungeons & Dragons, baby! Get your dice bags and Doritos! It's time to roll a paladin, kill monsters, and take their stuff! And here's how I knew what I was doing.

Man, that brings back memories both misty AND watercolored.

Yep, well before literature or myths and legends, I fell in love with the paladin while playing D&D. In case you were wondering, my favorite of all time was Jombers, the Fist of Torm. That bad ass started out as an NPC fighter, but I made him into a holy warrior!

Here's the thing I didn't realize for a long, long time. Paladins in Dungeons & Dragons make zero sense. They are basically pseudo-medieval crusaders in a Germanic pagan, polytheistic world who had to follow Fauxdeo-Christian strictures. Say whaaaaaa...? Even Crystal Dragon Jesus doesn't really make this make sense.

But at the time, I didn't care. Holy warriors delving into the depths of the earth to kill evil things and bring back treasure to their ridiculously ornate and wildly out of place cathedrals was exactly what I wanted to play.

As for the current best and only paladin "done right," I can't suggest The Deed of Paksnarion enough. If you're going to do D&D paladins, at least this frames them in a conceptual way that makes sense. Go read it now!

At some point in the not-too-distant future, I, too, will be throwing my hat into the ring of "paladins done right." I'll keep you posted, but for now, just go read about Paks. She's pretty damned amazing.

More tomorrow! Probably "clerics v. paladins" since I opened the whole D&D can of worms today.

O Holy Knight

I love Paladins. As far as I can remember, I always have.

This is kinda crazy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being my own personal views on spirituality and pacifism. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like the idea of a holy warrior so much. It is much easier to fight and die for what you believe in than to just die. That clarity of purpose is hard to come by in real life, which may make it so attractive in fiction.

At any rate, the turnkey moment for my paladin was was the realization that I appreciate paladins across cultures and genres. Sure, the love started with the very Dungeons & Dragons idea of a holy knight dispensing justice from the back of his white charger, but there are some other archetypes I didn't understand my own appreciation for until I tied them into the concept of the Paladin.

Obviously this is a pretty broad definition of paladin as "holy warrior," but I think that's fair considering how far away from The Song of Roland the D&D paladin is. I'm just widening the net similarly, but feel free to argue in the comments. Now, without further adieu, here's two of my most Eastern examples of paladins I love.

Sohei

"Only three things disregard my wishes: the rushing waters of the Kamo river, the unpredictable dice, and the mountain priests."

-Emperor Shirakawa (1073-1086)

First off, just look at that bad ass! A masked samurai with a sword on the end of an eight foot pole! Shields and big horses aren't the only way to roll like a paladin.

Sohei were the military arm of Buddhist sects in Japan during at least the Sengoku and various Shogunates, especially Tokugawa. These guys are sorta the token example of "fighting for peace" and how relatively stupid a concept that is. But like all Japanese warriors, they made up for philosophical holes by being amazing fighters.

Sohei favored the naginata enough that the weapon has become traditionally synonymous with them. Part of their fame was the ability to spin the weapon so hard and so fast that no arrow would hit them. Otherwise, they armed themselves more or less like the samurai, often incorporating steel helms beneath their trademark white cowls.

"Temple samurai" is a pretty boss concept.

My favorite story about sohei shows that they were thinkers willing to use religious beliefs against their enemies just as deftly if not as often as they did their weapons. There is a tale of an intractable daimyo (lord of lands, akin to a duke) who simply refused to come to accord with the monks in the mountains near his capitol. Normally, the sohei would swarm down the mountain and fight the daimyo's forces. But this daimyo's capitol had grown over a trade crossroads, making the lord very powerful and very rich. This allowed him a standing army strong enough that such a fight would likely end badly for the monks even if they won the battle.

Instead of a massive force, a small cadre of sohei marched down the mountain bearing their shrine's idol, sort of a large, ornate box acting as a, for lack of a better term, Buddhist reliquary. They set it down at the crossroads of the daimyo's capitol, right in the middle of where the merchants conducted all their trade and business. They placed a curse upon the idol and walked back up the mountain.

For several weeks, the cursed idol crippled trade. Nobody wanted to go touch the thing. Most wouldn't even go near it. The daimyo found his brisk trade ground to a halt. He made accord with the monks, who promptly came down the mountain, de-cursed the idol, and took it back to the monastery.

Wudang Monks

You know these guys best from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, starring the inimitable Chow Yun Fat (pictured right) and Michelle Yeoh.

Wudang Monks were real, but their reputation as "holy warriors" is apparently largely fictitious. Since I'm not from ancient China, the fictitious reputation affects me way more than the historical reality. At their core, the Wudang monks are Taoist counterparts to the Buddhist Shaolin (or vice versa) named for the mountain housing their monastery.

On a basic level, they're "Chinese sohei," but they diverge in a few big ways that make them different enough to appeal to me in other ways.

First, they didn't typically go to war, which means no vast armis of Wudang monks. In fiction, the Wudang typically ran in singles or duos, although they would team up with larger groups of non-monks.

Second, and the reason they didn't go to war, is that Wudan monks fought primarily for justice. In a vast land with little access to anything like a modern day police force, an expertly trained fighter who wished for nothing but seeing justice done and stood outside the social order of wealth and privilege would have been an absolute godsend (see what I did there?) to peasant villagers. That's a recognizably paladin idea applied in a very Eastern way.

Third, they retained their unassuming, monkish look. Sohei wore the cowls so that nobody ever forgot that a monk stood beneath all that armor and weaponry. The Wudang wanted to be recognized as monks first and only, they just happened to be really amazing swordsmen as well. No stallions, no big armor, no piles of weapons. This is absolutely a paladin focused through an Eastern mindset.

Lastly, the fictional Wudang are the sorta inspiration for the Staten Island rap supergroup, Wu-Tang Clan.

Okay, this post has gone on longer than I expected. In the near future, I'll probably talk in more detail about the original, Western paladins. I'll suggest the best novel about a paladin (until I write my own, that is). I'll also discuss the difference between a cleric and a paladin in roleplaying game terms since D&D had made that a conversation almost necessary if you're going to write or game in the fantasy genre.

Settlers of Catan is a Harsh Mistress

So between hanging out with a bunch of people I love and playing frankly epic amount of Settlers of Catan, there is no paladin post. So I suppose I'll have to make it double big tomorrow.

Yes, even moreso than the one that had nothing going for it but cover art, this is a super lame blog post. I obey the letter of Blog Everyday in August law if not the spirit.

Good night!