A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 10
February 19, 2018
The Real World and Wakanda (and Why It Matters)
What follows are some thoughts about Black Panther and cultural context. These are, by default, outsider’s thoughts in many regards. I acknowledge this in advance.
Reality influences fiction. As much as we might want to separate art from the moment, especially pop art that is meant to be mostly enjoyed, we can’t really do that. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and while I’m not interested in limiting or censoring creative output (even “vacuous” output that is as much product as art), I think it’s good–important even–to discuss how our popular media relates to the world around us.
It is impossible to talk about Black Panther in any interesting way without broaching the subjects of Blackness in America, African Cultures (yes, turns out a whole continent has more than one culture), International Politics, Technological Utopian Ideals vs Technological Fears, Colonialism, Representation, Diversity, Feminism, and probably a dozen other topics I’m forgetting in this moment. Black Panther is a tentpole superhero blockbuster produced by a multi-billion dollar corporate entity to further its globalist capitalist agenda and sell toys and T-shirts AND also a huge moment in cultural history. One that can’t simply be dismissed because of the blockbuster part.
That doesn’t render Black Panther immune to criticism. I still wish that they’d done something more interesting with Klaw (I’m spelling it comic book style) and while I enjoyed the action, I didn’t find it as creative or as engaging as Civil War, Ant-Man, or Doctor Strange. All very subjective complaints, of course, but I stand by them. I enjoyed Killmonger as a villain, though I didn’t find him particularly compelling. (Then again, why would I? His character isn’t meant to speak to me, and I’m cool with that.)
The truth though is that Black Panther could’ve just been okay, and it still would be an amazing moment in time. Its significance isn’t really up for debate, and a big part of that is this moment in time. In another twenty or thirty years, a film like Black Panther, with its non-white cast and very obvious global outlook, might be the norm, not the exception. Perhaps future generations might view Black Panther the same way many people view the Lord of the Rings films: Hasn’t this all been done before?
Yes, but this was the first time.
It’s not that we haven’t had other black superheroes, but all of those were visions of the American experience. From Meteor Man to Blank Man to Blade, all of these stories have explored the idea of what it’s like to be an underdog. Meteor Man is just a normal man who gains amazing powers. Blank Man is a comedic take on budget Batman. Blade is an outlaw, working underground.
T’Challa is a king.
T’Challa isn’t a reluctant hero.
T’Challa is here to make the world a better place and has no doubts about that. He’s not perfect, but he’s an ideal and one that eschews most expectations. The closets parallel in recent films is, without irony, Captain America. Like Cap, Black Panther is physically powerful, enabled by technological improvements, and devoted to doing the right thing. More importantly, both characters are emotionally open, avoiding the stoic badass that defined many of these characters in ages past. Heck, in Civil War, T’Challa exhibits emotional maturity that eludes Tony Stark. And just like The Winter Soldier, Black Panther is willing to forgive and even sympathize with his enemy.
Both Black Panther and Captain America embody an unapologetic virtue that somehow manages to have depth and intelligence.
There is, however, one huge difference between the two:
Cap is white, and while it’s generally unfashionable to have such a good guy be our hero in this day and age, the MCU is full of good white guys. Most more flawed than Cap, sure, but still good guys overall. The running joke that good-looking blond guys named Chris inhabit the MCU is relevant. T’Challa might have a lot in common with Cap, but he has at least one amazing difference.
In the context of their universes, that difference might seem negligible. No one in the MCU has so far demonstrated a noteworthy element of racism. Tony Stark might be flawed, but he’s not racist. Very few people comment on race in the MCU, and outside of the Black Panther film, there’s little comment about the expectations of race. No one’s uncomfortable working with War Machine or the Falcon.
There’s Hydra, of course. But even in the original Cap movie, they moved away from the Nazi’s racism to a more generic “World Conquerors” agenda. And even in comics, Hydra’s exact level of racist motivation varies immensely, depending on the writer and whether or not the Red Skull is running it or not.
It would’ve been so easy to have the bad guys in Black Panther to be some version of white supremacists who were offended by the mere existence of Wakanda. Given the people working on the film, it probably would’ve worked too. But instead of electing for a simple: Racism is bad, m’kay theme, the creators went with a more nuanced, Race is Complicated. Instead, the story revolves around a villain who represents abandonment and rage and the failings of Wakanda’s isolationist policies (and by extension, America’s own failings).
This won’t stop some people from accusing the film of being a power fantasy and, even more absurdly, anti-white. But such people aren’t worthy of any more discussion than the rest of this sentence.
Yet the film doesn’t ever go with an easy answer. Killmonger is a bad guy, yes, but he’s also got a point. Wakanda is a thriving country, but it isn’t perfect. T’challa’s father was a good king, but not a perfect man. Technology is a good thing, but not a perfect thing. Tradition matters, but so does looking forward. Our ancestors weren’t flawless. Neither are we. This is a film that manages to be a crowdpleaser while daring to say, “Life is complicated” and good for everyone involved for having the courage to do that.
And all of that is great, but the truth is that it could just be okay and it’d still be amazing.
I keep repeating that because it’s true.
Like Wonder Woman before it, the film’s mere existence in the space it occupies is enough to mean something big.
On the other end, Bruce Willis’s new version of Death Wish feels weirdly wrong-headed and confusing at this moment. Even watching the trailer, I felt a sense of unease at the notion of a successful, wronged man unleashing righteous violence against the criminal scourge of society. I watched hundreds of movies like this in the 80’s and at the time, it seemed like good, harmless fun. And then I realized how ubiquitous the image became and how so many people absorbed it without question.
This is not me advocating for the censorship of Death Wish. But it’s good to talk about it outside of “It’s just a movie”. Even silly stories say something, and for my generation, watching a white guy blow away criminals (often played by minorities) was a steady bath of social programming.
Heck, I used to love Revenge of the Nerds, which time has proven to be a film about one sex crime after another, culminating in rape through deception that is played off as a joke. And you bet that this perception is something that troubles me because of the fact that I didn’t even notice it before.
Seeing crowds of people on social media cheer on the Black Panther in a way that they’ve been clearly waiting for is not something to be dismissed. It matters because of the culture we live in, and to try to remove that in an effort to achieve some kind of artistic distance is like trying to read mythology without understanding the culture behind it. And whether we like it or not, we’re living in a culture with its own myths, most of which we don’t even question. And along comes Black Panther to question it.
And we, and our culture, will be better for it.
Keelah Se’lai
Wakanda Forever
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
January 15, 2018
Longrunners and the Cruelty of Time
I’ve written before about how I find Star Wars to be uninteresting in terms of storytelling analysis. There’s simply too much baggage around it for any kind of judgment, either good or bad. But I do find Star Wars interesting in how it sits in our popular culture, especially how that culture has changed over the course of 40 years. If you think about it, that’s a lot of time for something to stick around, and like all longrunners, Star Wars is shaped by the culture of its past and the culture of its present.
We can debate merit in many ways, but much of it is a waste of time without discussing the changes in our perceptions and expectations as creators and audience over the course of four decades. It’s like trying to discuss Tarzan without discussing the tangled cultural reality that surrounds the character’s past. I love Tarzan, but the notion of Savage Africa tamed by a physicaland intellectual European ideal is a sticky wicket. It’s not that I agree with all the deconstructions of Tarzan, but it’s okay to admit that many things audiences once took for granted about Tarzan can be a bit problematic. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying Tarzan stories, but I also get why it’s so difficult, despite efforts, to bring Tarzan forward into the modern era.
Star Wars isn’t the only longrunner. Comic book superheroes, in the pages of their own comics, have been around for decades. Most are steadily adapted in one way or another. Iron Man was originally a capitalist ideal who fought communists. Captain America was birthed in the fires of WW2. Spider-Man’s exact level of nerdiness and “woe is me” attitude has varied over the decades. It’d be weird for Black Widow, originally a Russian femme fatale, to remain that character in this day and age.
Incidentally, this is why I found Spider-Man: Homecoming so refreshing. It felt like a very necessary update to a character in this modern world. The notion of the tech geek who is bullied by jocks and made fun of by everyone else is a hard sell in a world where tech geeks rule the world. Peter Parker is still a bit of an outsider, but no longer ostracized and overlooked. He still struggles with his responsibilities, but the world of 60’s Peter is a heck of a lot different than the current one. It’d be strange for Peter to be selling photos to newspapers, for example, and in a world where cell phones have changed how we coordinate, the idea of Peter not showing up isn’t the big deal it once was.
Hearing grown men bemoan that Spider-Man is no longer aimed at them is unsettling to me. Spider-Man was intended for teens and young people. It isn’t a flaw in the character when he is updated to reflect that. A lot of older fans would do well to consider that maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that they’ve outgrown Spider-Man. It’s not such a bad thing if we can’t relate to the struggles of a teenager like we once did.
Back to Star Wars:
Much of the debate around The Last Jedi could be a discussion about the differences in storytelling over the decades. This isn’t meant as defense of the film, but rather a cold, hard fact. I could dissect many of those differences, and I probably will at some point, but let’s stick with a simple one.
Luke Skywalker is no longer the protagonist of Star Wars.
This is something comic books have been able to avoid since inception. Peter Parker is a drawing. He doesn’t need to age. Other longrunners have gotten around this by recasting. Most people have their favorite James Bond, but most people accept that he is no longer synonymous with a single actor. Godzilla has always been a concept. But Luke Skywalker has always been Mark Hamill, and Mark Hamill is, despite himself, a human. He ages and changes.
Things might have been different if there had been several Star Wars movies after the original trilogy featuring the further adventures of Luke, Han, and Leia. In such a universe, it might’ve happened at some point that they’d recast the actors, like Bond, and we’d be accustomed to the idea of these characters being larger than the actors who inhabit them. We never had that though, and with the new movies, the choice was made to carry the continuity forward.
This continuity issue is going to interesting in the MCU. Will the films recast the characters or let them retire, replacing them with a next generation of heroes? I don’t know. Superhero comics have a tendency to reboot and return to default, but in the world of drawings, there’s incentive to stick with what you know works. Reality isn’t as accommodating as an entirely fictional universe. Concessions have to be made.
This may come as a surprise to many of the angry hardcore fans of Star Wars, but Hollywood doesn’t spend 100’s of millions of dollars to win affection of middle-aged folks. Yeah, it’s kind of a bummer, but these blockbusters are designed to appeal across the board. And the studios sat around thinking whether it made more sense to put younger characters in the protagonists’ seat or stick with the old cast. They probably went with the right decision.
Luke’s transition (via the reality of age) means that he’s now a supporting character, and the transition highlights how story treat different characters. Some might argue that Luke’s doubts and bitterness are “out of character”. (Though it’s been thirty years since we’ve seen this guy. Character changes, even extreme ones, might not be that strange.) I’d argue that they have less to do with his character and more to do with his role in the story. In the original trilogy, Luke is there to solve problems. In the new trilogy, he’s there to create conflict.
The same could be said for Han in The Force Awakens. In the original trilogy, he’s there to save the day. In TFA, he’s there to inform the protagonists a bit about the backstory and die for extra drama.
Whether these elements are executed well or not is a discussion worth having, but many folks are basically upset and confused that the series original protagonists have been pushed aside in favor of new characters. It might even feel like a betrayal. Worse, it might be an unpleasant reminder of our own transitory natures. I’m not saying that all complaints (or even most) stem from the uncomfortable realization that we, like Luke Skywalker, are doomed to an inevitable decline and replacement, but I’m saying it can’t be a very comforting subtext for everyone.
In a world where even Luke Skywalker gets old and bitter and loses his way, what chance do any of us have?
I don’t think this bit was intended by the creators of the new trilogy, but it’s there regardless. Every story is shaped by the culture and reality that creates it, and one truth about the new Star Wars is the reminder that you are going to die and that all your great deeds may indeed be forgotten. And all this is because of the cruelty of time.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
January 9, 2018
Vader v. Anakin: Dawn of Backstory
What makes a character work and what doesn’t isn’t always easy to define, but I will say that backstory is probably the least important aspect of nearly any character. We love digging into a character’s past, to find what makes them tick and drives them. And many a great character has gained something from having an interesting backstory.
BUT…
I’d put forth, in that typical A. Lee Martinez contrarian way, that by focusing on backstory, we lose much of what makes a character interesting and memorable. I have a tendency to not do much backstory for my characters, and even my protagonists and villains tend not to have much elaboration on their past. For some readers, that’s confirmation that my stories and characters are shallow, and it’s all subjective, so I’m not going to argue. I might not agree, but I can see where that comes from.
Yet I feel like my point holds up well under actual analysis. What makes characters interesting isn’t where they came from, but who they are in the story. Darth Vader strode onto the screen and was immediately an icon. Learning more about his backstory, beyond the broadest strokes, didn’t make him more interesting. People might blame the clumsy writing on the prequels (and they are very clumsy), but few acknowledge that there was practically no way to tell of the fall of Anakin Skywalker in an interesting way. What makes Darth Vader so effective as a character isn’t his past. It’s his presence, his voice, his powers and his methods. What makes Anakin boring (beyond the obvious flaws in the prequels) is that he’s just another Jedi among Jedi. Nothing about him is particularly distinct. Not his clothes, nor his tools, nor his abilities. The only distinct element of Anakin is his emotional instability, and that’s one of the things most people find annoying (and perhaps even accidentally comical) about him.
An even more straightforward example is Boba Fett the bounty hunter, who in the original films doesn’t do much beyond a little tracking. But damn it, the guy has a cool outfit and carries himself like a badass. His first impression is so powerful that when he dies in a Three Stooges like moment, fans demanded that the extended universe fix that. And maybe the extended universe created the myth of Boba Fett, but the movies portray him as a smart-ish guy who is killed by his own jetpack.
But, jeepers, that jetpack is neat.
When we study how to make great characters, we spend a heck of a lot of time learning about motivations and backstory and all that nonsense, when, really, all you need is a good helmet and a great entrance. Star Wars is full of great characters, and all of them in the original trilogy are so simple you could sketch their traits on a cocktail napkin. It’s contrary to what we expect, but Han Solo is defined by his smile, his blaster, and his black vest. Luke might be among the most complicated of characters in the original trilogy (which isn’t saying much), but his characterization can be summarized by a desire to help people and a cool lightsaber.
It’s strange to say that a tool can define a character so thoroughly, but that’s exactly what it does. It’s why when there are more Jedi, they all suffer. The more characters running around with lightsabers, using the Force, the less interesting they all become. It doesn’t matter if you try to elaborate on them. The thing that defines them at a glance is inherently less interesting.
Rambo uses a bow. The story justification is that it’s a silent weapon. The character justification is that bows are cool and distinct and make him stand out against his enemies. See also: Hawkeye, a character who has been a staple in the comic books for decades. He’s a tactician, leader, and carries a bow and arrow because just shooting people would be boring. Ultimate Hawkeye started doing that and lost anything memorable about himself in the process.
Captain America uses a shield. Batman throws batarangs. The Falcon flies. Thor has his hammer. These tools define the characters on a fundamental level. They define how they approach problems, and what make them distinct from each other. Sure, they all have different backstories, and those backstories matter. But those backstories don’t come up every minute. Cap’s shieldslinging is far more of a constant than many other parts of his character. So much so that in Civil War when he gives it up, it highlights the rift between Cap and Iron Man more than just about anything else they could do.
The best example of methodology, tools, and costumes defining great characters is found in Overwatch. While the characters in the game all have backstories, they are all irrelevant to the game itself. In the end, what makes these characters memorable is everything you get by looking at them and playing them. In this regard, Overwatch is a master class in how to give characters . . . well . . . character through visual language and gameplay alone.
Winston is a gorilla with glasses in power armor. He is rarely shown scowling or angry. His default expression is curiosity. And his gameplay is all about an up close and personal confrontation. Winston doesn’t hang back, and everything about him informs the characters of this style. From his lightning cannon to his jump jets to his forcefield, this is a character meant to be in the thick of the action. And when his ultimate powers up, the reminder that he is, in fact, a gorilla in power armor, is pushed to the forefront.
Tracer flashes around the battlefield. She’s deliberately under-armored and armed with a pair of light pistols. These choices are there to have her fulfill a specific role on the team, but they also define who she is as a character. Even without knowing her backstory, it’s not hard to figure that Tracer is impulsive and slippery and fun-loving.
Reaper, draped in black with his skull mask and duel shotguns, is exactly the opposite. Among my favorite bit of characterizations is the way he reloads, throwing his guns aside and pulling two more from his coat. It is absurd, but it highlights his indifference, even to the tools he uses.
Every character is helped too by terrific voice direction. Every character has their own distinct way of speaking. Whether it’s Mei’s apologetic glee or Pharah’s military precision, you needn’t read a single page of backstory to get a sense of these characters and who they are.
Am I saying that a cool costume is more important than an elaborate backstory?
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
What the heck did Captain Phasma ever do that was interesting beyond having silver armor? (And don’t give me extended universe explanations. If I have to research a character to find them memorable, then you haven’t done your job.)
Most great characters, when you think about it, have very simple backstories. Batman’s parents were killed by criminals, and so he trained himself to fight crime. (Also, Batarangs and a cool car.) Superman is a strange visitor from another world who is here to fight for truth and justice. (Also, flies and can punch out meteorites.) Tarzan was raised by apes, with all the savage instincts and physical ability that comes from that. (Also, usually half-naked and a noble.) Wonder Woman is an Amazon warrior who fights for peace. (Also, bullet-deflecting bracers and a magic lasso.) Indiana Jones is an adventurer who explores hidden temples and fights Nazis. (Also, cool hat, whip.)
Granted, these are all adventure characters, whose ability to beat up villains is at least part of what defines them. A lot of these rules probably don’t apply to stories about regular people living regular lives. If we’re talking about Bob the accountant, he’s unlikely to have a magic power that defines him. In such stories as that, backstories might matter a little more, but I’d still argue that I want to know who the character is now, not who they once were. Knowing where a character comes from can be vital to many stories, but not quite as vital as we’ve been led to believe. That’s all I’m daring to suggest. There are plenty of exceptions, but even then, a great backstory doesn’t make a boring character much more interesting.
Putting everything aside, interesting characters are interesting because of what they’re doing in the moment, not what they once did or what they might do. Even in quieter stories, it’s important to remember that we like spending time with characters who engage us, usually through their actions in some way or another. And most writers I know, especially when they start out, are so busy creating cool backstories for their characters that they never ask if they’ve made someone who is interesting to hang out with.
Give me Darth Vader over Anakin every time.
And even Bob the accountant should be doing something engaging, even if he isn’t carrying a lightsaber on his hip.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
December 24, 2017
The Book of Luke
December 18, 2017
The Perils of Fan Canon
October 30, 2017
The Long Halloween of Horace Slater (short fiction)
Life in Rockwood
Rockwood spread across the desert, and aside from the trailer park and a few clusters of houses here and there, it was a long walk from door-to-door on Halloween. Some parents drove their kids around, but it was a lot of work for not much candy. Especially since the next town over had an annual carnival with a bounce house for the kids and reasonably priced alcohol for the parents.
There were a still few diehards who’d make the rounds, but these exceptions were usually done before dusk. Except for Horace Slater, who came out long after darkness fell to prowl the night in search of tricks and / or treats.
He’d been doing it for the last 72 years.
Horace had been too old for trick or treating in ’46, and there was something peculiar about a 17 year old in his official Roy Rogers cowboy costume, a touch too snug, palling around with a bunch of children at least a foot shorter than him.
To Horace’s credit, he’d saved Billy Jackson from getting hit by a car while crossing a darkened street. Witnesses said that Horace had been run over, but he got up, dusted himself off, and carried on for the rest of the night. He’d come home, gorged himself on his candy, and promptly died.
The medical examiner said he’d been dead for a few hours before that, and no one was surprised. He’d always loved Halloween.
People were a touch surprised when he dug himself out of his grave the next year to indulge the obsession. Such things weren’t worth troubling over in Rockwood, and everyone kept a handful of candy at the ready for when Horace dropped by.
Everyone but Edna Babble.
Edna had never cared for Halloween. It wasn’t because of some religious objection. Edna was only passingly religious. She went to church now and then. She had a cross hung up in her kitchen. But everyone knew she kept her eyes open when the pastor called for a prayer, and if she caught you catching her, she’d stare you down in a way that somehow made it seem like you’d done something wrong.
Edna never cared for Halloween because Edna never cared for much. Her husband had smoothed her rough edges, but he’d died eight years earlier. The time since had not softened her.
Halloween didn’t help any.
And an undead teenager prowling around her property didn’t aid her disposition.
She parted the blinds and scanned the darkness. “I know he’s out there.”
John Junior said, “Mom, come away from the window.”
“Oh, he’d like that.” She popped her dentures lose and sucked them back in place several times. “That little shit thinks he’ll get away with it again. But not this year.” She laughed, which sounded less like a laugh and more like a cough. “Not this year, Horace.”
John Junior said, “Or you could just leave out a bowl of candy, like everybody else does.”
Edna scowled. “Oh, he’d like that. Defying the laws of nature, man, and decency and getting rewarded for it. That’s the problem with your generation. No discipline.”
Horace Slater had been dead and buried thirty years before John Junior’s birth, but everyone under fifty was lumped into the same group of nogoodniks and ne’er-do-wells in Edna’s estimation. It all went back to Woodstock and the seductive corruption of Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie.
John Junior gently pulled his mother away from the window. “Just watch some TV with me, mom.”
Edna was a wiry, shrunken old woman, but she was stronger than she looked. She fought back, slipping out of his grasp, resuming her vigil. “Ain’t nuthin’ good on anyway.”
“He’s probably not even coming,” said John Junior. “He can’t be much more than bones at this point.”
“That won’t stop him,” she hissed. “And don’t think I’m going to give some layabout shambling corpse candy just because it’s easier. So you can take that bag you brought and just throw it away.”
The paper bag of candy sat on the kitchen table.
“It’s crappy candy,” he said. “Candy corn and circus peanuts. It’s more like a punishment than a reward.”
She grunted, hunching on her stool, staring for the slightest trace of Horace.
Someone knocked on the back door, twice in slow succession. Edna leapt off her stool, grabbed her shotgun and ran to the backdoor. She was getting up there in the years, but her war with Horace always gave her a little extra pep.
She threw open the door. A flaming bag of dog poop sat on her porch.
“Don’t step on it, Mom,” said John Junior.
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” she replied. “Get some water, boy.”
He complied while she stood on the porch, scanning the darkness. She spotted something lurking behind her row of jojoba bushes. The figure hid in the shadows, but the moon reflected off his white cowboy hat and red fringe shirt.
“I see you, Horace Slater!” she shouted at the undead thing as it slinked deeper into the dark. “Get on now! I don’t have nuthin’ for you!”
John Junior dumped a pan of water on the flaming dog crap.
“He’s getting slower,” she said. “Still moves like a shadow when you can’t see him, but if you keep your eyes on him . . . ”
She grinned and danced a jig.
“We got him, boy. This time, we got him.”
The familiar sound of eggs splatting against her windows wasn’t enough to squash her enthusiasm.
“Go to the front door. Watch out for him.”
“I don’t know if–”
She grabbed him by the collar. “If you’re here, help me. If not, you can go home to that no good wife of yours.”
“Betsy’s never been anything but nice to you,” replied John Junior.
Edna’s face scrunched up. She pulled a box off the refrigerator and sorted through its contents.
“I don’t need your help anyway. I got everything I need from Nayni Carita. Them Mexicans know all about how to deal with angry spirits.”
“I thought Nayni was Venezuelan. And since when did Nayni know anything about anything like this?”
“She googled it for me,” Edna replied. “Ordered all this stuff. A vial of sacred salt. Some sage. Crow feathers.” She held up a mummified body part. “Whatever the hell this is.”
“I don’t know if you should be messing with that stuff.”
“I’m not too happy about it either, but what choice have I got? I’m sure the Good Lord will see the sense of it.”
She didn’t mention forgiveness. Edna’s version of God was every bit as ornery as her, and when Judgment Day came, she looked forward to sitting by His side and telling everyone how much they had disappointed her.
“Now all we need is a piece of the son of a bitch, and if I know him by now. . . . ”
She grabbed the shotgun and ran to the front door. Horace was throwing toilet paper onto her ironbark tree. He was already shambling into the night upon hearing the door open, but she got off two shots before he was gone. One went wide, but the other winged him in the shoulder. It didn’t slow him down as he melted into darkness.
Edna laughed. “Get me those pieces, boy,” she said as she ran back into the house.
John Junior reluctantly did so. He found a dustpan and swept a few scraps of withered gray flesh and bright red cloth. Horace’s white hat floating in the blackness.
“You’d best call it a night,” said John Junior. “She’s in a worst mood than usual.”
By the time he returned Edna had begun the forbidden ritual. She’d drawn a circle in her kitchen with the sacred salt, placed the bits of Horace into it, and started stripping out of her nightdress.
“Jesus, mom.” John Junior turned his back to her wrinkled, boney nudity.
“Don’t be a prude, boy.”
She lit the sage incense, paced around the circle three times, waving the feather and mummified whatsit. “By the power of Veles, by the will of Yama, by the command of forgotten Dis, I summon thee, restless spirit.”
The entire house trembled slightly as a shadow materialized in the circle. It congealed into something more tangible, first a blackened shape, then a rotting humanoid in a pristine cowboy costume, clutching a pillowcase full of candy in one gnarled hand.
Edna cackled, staring Horace in his decayed face. His eyes had long ago rotted away. His jaw clung to his skull with a lingering strands of sinew. Most of the teeth had fallen away, and a few maggots writhed from his nostrils.
“I got you, you son of a bitch.”
John Junior turned around and recoiled.
“Put your clothes back on, Mom.”
He covered his eyes until she slipped back into her nightdress. Only then did he dare look at the wretched undead thing standing in Edna’s kitchen.
The cowboy hat sat at a weird angle on Horace’s head, and his boots clomped as he shifted from foot to foot on twisted legs. A low wheeze exited a hole in his throat, and his jaw cracked as he snapped it shut once, with seemingly great effort.
“Now what?” asked John Junior.
She shrugged. “Now nuthin’. I got him. And I’m going to keep him.” She danced a short jig. “You hear that, Horace? You’re mine, and you’re going to spend the rest of eternity in this kitchen.”
Horace’s head shifted to one side as a low groan came from somewhere within him.
“Mom, you can’t leave him here,” said John Junior. “What if you want to have company over?”
“Hmmph. Horace is all the company I’ll need.”
“He’ll stink up the place.”
“I don’t smell nuthin’.”
“I’m not bringing Betsy or the kids over with this thing here.”
“Good riddance.”
“It’s cruel.” It was his last effort and one doomed to fall on deaf ears.
“Serves him right. Tromping around in the night, frightening helpless old women. You dance with the devil, Horace, the bill comes due.”
She went to the living room and sat on the couch.
John Junior studied the misshapen creature imprisoned on the other side of the kitchen table.
“Are you in there, Horace?”
Horace turned his eyeless gaze toward John Junior. A worm fell from his socket to land on his shirt. He wheezed and reached out a hand, his bones cracking as he did.
John Junior stepped back but Horace wasn’t reaching for him, but for the bag of candy on the table.
John Junior glanced at his mother, smiling in the dimly lit living room. The TV cast strange shadows on her wrinkled face.
“I can’t really do that, Horace,” whispered John Junior.
Horace lowered his arm, reached into his pillowcase, and withdrew a fun-sized Snickers. He stuck it between his jaws without unwrapping it and chewed slowly twice before the candy fell to the floor.
“You might consider conserving that,” said John Junior.
Horace found a grape lollipop and crunched into it with one of his few remaining teeth. The tooth impaled the lollipop, and it hung there while he stared ahead blankly.
He reached for the candy corn and circus peanuts and hissed.
Edna was no longer smiling. The fleeting joy she’d received from capturing Horace had already left her. She was not a joyful woman by nature. John Junior couldn’t leave the pitiable undead thing with her. No soul had sinned so gravely as to deserve that.
“I won’t be able to stop her if she catches you again,” warned John Junior, handing the sack to Horace.
His crooked fingers grasped the sack, and the house rattled again as the circle was broken. A hot wind swept through the kitchen, blowing away the salt circle. Horace shambled toward the back door.
Edna leapt up. “Boy, what did you do?”
John Junior intercepted her. “Mom, it’s better this way.”
The backdoor creaked as, unseen, Horace was gone with supernatural speed. Edna fired a few shots wildly into the dark.
“He learned his lesson,” said John Junior. “He won’t be back.”
“Oh, he’ll be back,” she said.
A joyless smile crept across her face at the prospect. She disapproved of Horace Slater, but she disapproved of most things. That was what kept her going.
But Horace didn’t come back to Edna’s. Not the next year. Or the year after that. Or ever again.
Edna would often tell the story about how she’d scared the dead back into his grave and how everyone should thank her. And folks would listen politely at the tale.
No one would mention that the candy offerings they left every year were still being taken by some twisted figure in a white cowboy hat and fringe shirt.
And if some suspected that John Junior hid a bowl of M & Ms in Edna’s Jojoba bushes every year out of sympathy for that shambling undead thing, none bothered telling Edna.
October 6, 2017
You and Your Hippo
Imagine one day, someone (maybe yourself) buys you a hippo toy. Who knows why? Maybe they saw the hippo and it reminded them of you. Maybe they thought it was just cute and worth buying. Maybe they love hippos and wanted to share their love for hippos with you. Regardless, you now own a hippo toy. Maybe you asked for it. Maybe you didn’t. But it’s there, and you don’t throw it out.
Maybe you even come to love and appreciate the hippo. People notice your hippo, and you’ll tell them a fun little story about it. Maybe you’ll discover that some people also love hippos too (as is inevitable). It’s cool. Something in common with people. You’re not exactly a hippo person, but you have the hippo and it makes it easier to make friends as a jumping off point.
And then you get a second hippo. Maybe you get it for yourself. Maybe someone who noticed your hippo buys you another one. Whatever. Two hippos. You’re not really a hippo person on that level, but it’s just two hippos. And maybe you are a hippo person after all.
Eventually, you have more hippos. How you got them isn’t really important. They just keep showing up. Friends buy them for you. Family knows you love hippos and just buys them for you by default. Eventually, you have too many hippos and you put them on a shelf for display. Eventually, everyone, even passing acquaintances, know about you and your hippos. It becomes a habit. Not just for you, but for your friends and family. You’re the hippo fan.
If you weren’t, why would you have the hippo shelf?
And maybe one day, you realize you never dug hippos. You enjoyed the feeling that came with the hippos. You loved being able to talk to people about your hippos. You fell into a reflex of buying things with hippos. You found the ease of conversing with hippo fans enticing, and you loved all the little hippo inside jokes, the knowing wink of being part of hippo culture, of having something to do with all the hippo conventions and the hippo sites where you can spend hours detailing minutia about the newest hippo trends.
The hippos, though, you really don’t care that much about.
We all have our hippo shelf, our hippo room. I have way too many board games, so I’m not throwing stones. I’m just saying that there’s a point when you look at your hippo shelf, and you really need to ask yourself, “Do I like hippos?”
The answer might very well be yes.
But what if it isn’t? What if you love everything that comes with the hippo shelf, but not the actual hippos on it? I’m struck by this every time I hear someone say, “Well, I didn’t care for X for much, but I’m a fan of X, so I watched / read / bought it anyway.”
It’s vital to realize that you don’t need to love the hippos on your shelf, that you are free to not buy another hippo no matter how many dozens upon dozens of hippos you have sitting your shelf. It doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of your old hippos. Or that you can’t go back to hippos. It just means you’re free to use your own judgment based on your current hippo feelings.
We all get how hard this can be. I spend decades collecting comic books, and it took me years to break the habit. Even as I found myself disinterested by so many staples of the medium, I somehow felt that I was wrong for that. I looked at my hippo shelf (my long boxes) and assumed that I must love these things still. It was only in a moment of clarity, when I gave myself permission to accept that a one time love of hippos didn’t have to mean a lifetime love of hippos, that I realized I was allowed to keep the shelf while not adding more to it.
I still buy comics now and then, but I’m much pickier. Most of the staples of comic book titles don’t interest me though, but the ones I do buy, I do enjoy more. I’m no longer a hippo enthusiast. More of a casual hippo enjoyer. And I’m happier for it.
On the other hand, I still spend way too much on board games, and I don’t regret it yet. Who knows about tomorrow?
Fandom isn’t an obligation. Never forget this. No matter how much culture and marketing and your own instincts tell you otherwise, you are under no requirement to love hippo toys, no matter how many you’ve got stacked on your dedicated hippo shelf.
And if you love your hippo shelf, more power to you.
But be sure you love your hippos.
Life is too short to waste time gathering hippos you don’t give a damn about.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
September 20, 2017
The Fanfic Dialogues, Part One
What defines something as fanfiction?
It’s not as easy a question as it might appear at first blush. Most of us have an idea of what fanfiction is, and that idea is built on our experience, or lack of experience, with it. Most people who care know that 50 Shades of Grey started out as a fanfic of Twilight, which is usually added to the list of its failures. Even if you’ve never read a fanfic in your life, you probably have some passing acquaintance with its tendencies and flaws. Whether talking about Mary Sues or slash fic or shippers or mash ups or whatever else, anyone with an opinion on fanfic probably has it shaped by their expectations rather than the reality.
I haven’t read a lot of fanfic, myself, but when I hear it hastily dismissed, I get the same feeling I do when I hear anime dismissed as “tentacle porn”, as if the medium is so one-dimensional and easily defined. With so much fanfiction floating around, my only certainty is that a lot of it is probably terrible, much if it is okay, and some of it must be pretty good.
So really no different than any other form of art out there.
As a professional artist, I find my opinion of fanfic evolving in many ways, and still evolving. Now, I’ve done a bit of searching now and then, and I don’t appear to inspire much fanfiction. A wise friend once pointed out that fanfic tends to spring from unanswered questions or unexplored bits of continuity that inevitably result from long-running series, and since I haven’t written a series yet, there’s not much inspiration to be had for fanfic writers. Considering the few pieces of fanfic I’ve run across are exactly of that type, I’m curious to see what happens with the Constance Verity trilogy. Will it inspire more fanfic? We’ll see.
But if you really want my current opinion on fanfic (and if you don’t, why are you reading this?), I think it’s fine for training wheels. Most writers start with fanfic in one way or another. My own first novel was a Conan the Barbarian pastiche, but Conan was also a wizard! It wasn’t set in the Hyborean Age, and the world was my own, but in most ways, the foundational ideas were all cribbed from existing works that I enjoyed. It’s a safety net, but also a way for a fledgling writer to focus on creating without being overwhelmed by the act of creating.
Does this mean I’ll always consider fanfic to be a “lesser” form of fiction?
Short answer: Yes.
Ouch. I know. It’s rough to say, but it comes with some disclaimers. Some people just want to write for fun and some small acclaim among a select group, and fanfiction is a perfect outlet for that. Not only is the audience built-in (You like My Little Pony? I can write that.) but it allows one to create in a more well-defined universe. It isn’t bad to write as a hobby, though The Mighty Robot King knows I’d never do it. But to each their own, right?
The bottom line is I fault none for writing fanfic and consider it a fine outlet for creativity, but it is, by its nature, a limited form of creativity. Nothing wrong with that, but I’ll always prefer a writer who takes a chance with original material over one who chooses to play it safe. Sorry about that.
Lately, I’ve come to see and use the term “professional fanfic” more and more. It might seem like an oxymoron, but that depends on how you define fanfic. For me, the defining aspect of fanfic will always be “fan”. And fandom is a tricky proposition. Not just for artists who create in their preferred fandom but also for the audience who enjoys media in that fandom.
(Can I pause here to say how much I dislike the very notion of “fandom”. It feels too much like an oath of allegiance, a swearing of unquestioning fealty. I enjoy having fans, but I don’t need, nor would I ever ask, for anyone’s devotion. I want people to like what I write, and I hope they’ll give my weird stories a chance, especially if they enjoyed them in the past, but I don’t mind if someone has something negative to say now and then. You can criticize my work even while calling yourself my fan. I’m cool with it.)
Simply put, there’s a critical mass of fandom where something becomes unassailable as long as it gives the audience what they expect for their fandom checklist.
We really don’t have to look much further than the current incarnations of nearly all long-running properties. The new Star Trek might be hit or miss, but it certainly knows what beats to hit. And when it fails, it fails based on trying way too hard to hit those beats (i.e. Into Darkness) and when it succeeds it does so by hitting those beats just right (i.e. most everything about Beyond.) The new Star Wars films are all about hitting those beats, to the point that you could see the script being written with how it could be cut up to make an interesting trailer. (Search your heart, fans. You know it to be true.) Heck, Rogue One is professional fanfic on every level, including having reshoots meant to make it less of a story and more of a continuity nod to all the cool things fans love.
And here’s where we run into that term again: Professional Fanfiction. Is there even such a thing? Isn’t fanfic defined by its lack of professional capacity?
I’d say the answer isn’t so simple as that. The first thing we have to remove from the equation is actual quality itself. Whenever I bring up this idea, people’s response tends to boil down to either, “I liked it, therefore I disagree” or “I didn’t like it, therefore, I agree.” Both positions are flawed by their assumption that fanfiction is innately bad or that indulging fandom is innately good.
The complexity here is way more than I want to get into at the moment, but just because fans enjoy something, that doesn’t make it good. Most fans seem to love the gratuitous appearance of Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One, which from a pure storytelling 101 point is a complete failure. A villain irrelevant to the story we’re experiencing kills a bunch of characters we don’t know to stop a foregone conclusion. If it wasn’t Vader, the scene would be viewed as a pointless time waster. Though because it is Vader, it’s not exactly a time waster because the fans don’t really give a damn if it works as a story. Just if it pleases their fandom.
On the other end, I happened to enjoy the heck out of John Carter, even with its flaws. In particular, I’m always happy to see Tars Tarkas, one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. If Tars didn’t serve a purpose in the story, I’d probably still forgive a lot if he appeared in some form or another. But Tars does. So that’s a fan element I feel incorporates well into the story.
(Of course, John Carter suffered from a lack of fandom. While not a great movie, I’d argue that it’s a more solid storytelling than anything recently put out in the Trek or Wars franchises. But then again, I’m a fan of the original books, so I’ll acknowledge I could very well be guilty of the same bias I’m talking about elsewhere.)
As a long-time superhero comic fan, I’ve seen the rise of the professional fan (and by extension, the professional fanfiction story) with all its mixed results. How many writers have wasted their time trying to recreate classic, if dated, stories like The Dark Knight Returns or The Killing Joke? Heck, even Frank Miller can’t reproduce his success with Returns.
My own feeling here is that the most vital element a creator can bring to their creation is a voice and a style that is uniquely their own. And this is where most artists run into a lot of trouble without the shackles of fandom. Even artists struggle to stay interesting and relevant once they become defined in their style. What is awesome and interesting in one moment can be stale and repetitive in another. We all know great creators who seem stuck on their greatest hits, but what is it like to be stuck on someone else’s greatest hits?
And here’s where we run across the peril of fanfiction, professional or otherwise. This entire line of thought came about because of a discussion of the new Fox show The Orville. The brainchild of Seth Macfarlane, it’s basically Star Trek with a looser attitude. Neither parody nor satire, and stylistically, it’s so close to the original Trek that I don’t know why Paramount hasn’t sued. From the uniforms to the technology to the storylines, it’s Trek to its bones, with the occasional joke thrown in.
For me, this is why The Orville IS professional fanfic, because it carries all the problems and limitations that come from unexceptional fanfic. It’s a decent idea but stale and gimmicky. With only two episodes in, I feel as if I’ve seen this show before. The opening credits, the visual aesthetic, the crew. None of it is particularly unique or interesting. It just comes across as a weaker version of the original by someone too afraid to take any chances. People love to remind us that 50 Shades started as Twilight fanfic, but that’s an informed fact. It’s not obvious from reading or watching 50 Shades.
And, yeah, I’m basically saying that 50 Shades is more original than The Orville. Perhaps more interesting as well. I might have a lot of issues with Shades but at least those are issues based on itself, rather than its resemblance to its forbearer.
So this is a big topic, and I think that’s enough for now. But we shall return.
Stay tuned, Action Force.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
September 18, 2017
Coded
I’ve been writing, professionally and otherwise, for over 20 years now, and while I’d never claim to be an expert, I’ve learned a lot over the years. I continue to learn a lot, which is why I’m reluctant to call myself an expert. But I won’t deny I’ve spent hours and hours and hours of my life thinking about storytelling specifically and art in general. It’s why I’m sometimes perceived as a bit too critical of much of media, particularly storytelling media. It’s not a point I can disagree with because most people don’t care about much of what bugs me. There’s some truth to the “overthinking” it counter-criticism, but that isn’t a bulletproof defense of weak storytelling either.
Lately, I’ve become obsessed with coding in media. I’m sure there’s a more technical term out there, but it comes down to the observation that media influences us via expectations and cultural defaults. And we aren’t usually aware of it. But what does that even mean?, you’re probably asking, if you’re still reading.
It’s a simple idea at its core. Let’s assume that you enter this world with zero expectations. There’s research that this isn’t true, and that a certain amount of human nature is built into our DNA, but let’s ignore that. Let’s just enter the world at zero. It isn’t long after that you’re presented with the rules and regulations of whatever society you’re part of. Your family, your culture, your media, your friends, everything is part of the bath of expectations that you’re soaking in from the get go.
Why do you find some people more attractive than others? What do you consider admirable? How do you identify villainy (for use of a simplistic term)? What kind of person do you aspire to be? What goals matter to you, and what are you willing to do to achieve those goals? There are literally thousands of questions like this we’re confronted with in our lives, and our cultural bath is happy to give us easy answers. Because humans love using shortcuts, much of what we come to love / hate / be indifferent to is programmed into us with a bunch of default assumptions.
A big part of media is using those assumptions as a framework. Done properly, you can get an audience to choose a side or root for a particular character or desire a particular outcome. Social and cultural coding is just as much of storytelling as grammar and plotting. And I know writing stuff like that makes me sound like a pretentious writer, but it doesn’t make it less true.
My favorite example is how we are trained to root for attractive people. Even in the world of books, where a character’s appearance shouldn’t matter that much, there’s still this default physical coding in description. Sometimes, it makes sense, as in the romance genre. Others, not so much. Yet how often does a character being described as unattractive stand in for a failure of their character? If a character has a hairy back or is balding or is fat, it’s often there to let the audience know that, even if they aren’t bad people, they aren’t the main character. The “fat best friend” is a staple of fiction, and if there is a book where it is explicitly stated that a character has a small penis where that character isn’t meant to be mocked for it, I haven’t run across it yet.
The other end though is that we are trained to dislike “shallow” attractive people. That’s why most protagonists in fiction are “natural beauties”. They might be beautiful, but they don’t work that hard at it, so you can still like them. Even most romance characters are beautiful by default, waking up with a glowing radiance. Sure, they might dress up now and then, but it’s not like they need it.
Movies and TV get away with a lot by how readily they trade on our natural desire to root for attractive people. A personal favorite is the movie Passengers, which would be a completely different film if the Chris Pratt role was filled by Steve Buscemi. Everyone loves Robert Downey, Jr’s portrayal of Tony Stark, but would they love it quite so much if he was played by ? No. Just no.
This isn’t meant to be a slight on either Buscemi or Fogler, both of whom are only guilty of being not Hollywood handsome. Fogler is actually one of my favorite actors, but since Balls of Fury he’s mostly been the funny, fat friend. Balls of Fury is the exception there because it’s a comedy that combines ping pong and Enter the Dragon and Fogler’s casting is a deliberate subversion of the athlete hero archetype.
Much of great comedy (and bad comedy) comes from subverting cultural coding. Balls of Fury does this throughout, by both playing to and against that coding. Christopher Walken plays a villain, but a weird version of a supervillain obsessed with ping pong. James Hong is the ancient master, but again, a master of ping pong and a vulgar, ridiculous version of one at that. Fogler is the washed up Randy Daytona, who has the traditional heroic arc even as he embodies a goofy everyman subversion. My favorite subversion is Walken’s “harem” of sex slaves, made up entirely of men apparently who in all ways function as helpless damsels that would normally be played by beautiful women. And the extra subversion is that none of the harem men are especially attractive. About the only failure of subversion in the film is in Maggie Q as the love interest, but no film is perfect. And Q is a solid actress regardless.
But even the subversion of cultural coding in media is coded, i.e. we are trained to see it as a sign of silliness or comedy. I love subverting expectations in my novels, and so many people think I’m simply writing goofy stories, i.e. parodies or satires. It doesn’t help that I do use humor in my novels, but it’s more than the books being funny. It’s baked into the very premise of most of them.
“A space squid supervillain battles an evil brain for the fate of the world.”
“A country fried vampire and werewolf battle supernatural evil in the middle of the Arizona desert, including a teenage cultist and zombie cows.”
“The gods are real, and they want to crash on your couch.”
“Constance Verity is a woman who saves the world on a daily basis and can do almost literally anything.”
I’m not saying they aren’t funny novels. I’m just saying that a lot of what people find funny about them isn’t necessarily intended to be that silly. I know even saying that about my stories isn’t going to make sense to everyone, even many of my consistent readers. I still almost always hear, “Your books are really fun / funny / silly” from fans, and I’m not going to complain if someone likes what I write.
But even my reputation as a “funny” writer is a type of coding. One I can’t argue against, but also, one that I struggle against. I know, even as I write a story featuring a minotaur girl as the protagonist that many people are just going to see it as a really long joke, and I accept it. I play against expectations, and I can’t be surprised when someone scans it as simply comedy and nothing more. And everyone brings their own baggage and judgment to every bit of media they consume. It’s hardly surprising that we would color our consumption with our own experiences and cultural assumptions.
Realizing this, I’ve had a harder time seeing media as simply good or bad. It’s all about the expectations and coding you’ve come to play by. I’ve watched a handful of episodes of A Game of Thrones and wasn’t wowed by it. It simply doesn’t push my buttons. I’m not excited by epic fantasy, low fantasy, or grimdark fantasy. I find the nudity and sex gratuitous and distracting, and I prefer having characters I can unapologetically root for. Yet all those strikes against the show for me are actually positives for most of its fans. If you were to ask me if I thought the show or novels it is based on where “good”, I’d have to say, “Not for me”, but I’m also not foolish enough to dismiss something for striking a chord with others. (Not that I can imagine anyone involved with the show or novels cares a whit about what I have to say. Nor should they.)
The thing about A Game of Thrones too is that it isn’t subverting expectations to a point. As it kills characters and employs gruesome violence, it’s not hard to figure out what will happen as the pattern develops. One of my gripes against dark fiction is that it isn’t really a subversion. Every dark fiction story I’ve ever read is as predictable as every traditional heroic story I’ve read. It’s just realizing what expectations are in place.
The first step to being a better artist (and maybe a better audience) is understanding how those expectations shape our perceptions. The next step is understanding that this isn’t a good or a bad thing. It’s just a thing, and no matter how many memes you’ve memorized or storytelling basics you’ve absorbed, it’s probably more complex than you realize.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
August 21, 2017
Chosen (short fiction)
Wren & Hess
Wren got the kid.
He was young, fresh off the farm. He hadn’t been in the city long. She could always tell because the grime hadn’t caked its way under his nails yet. It didn’t take long for that to happen. Maybe a couple of weeks if you lived in the city proper and not the Hills or Reaches.
He sat in the interrogation room with her. His hands and clean fingernails fidgeted, and he couldn’t look at her.
She unbuckled her cape and set it on the table between them. He glanced up at the sharp click of the clasps being undone, perhaps thinking her preparing some manner of torture device to secure his confession.
That was the old way. The Tower didn’t sanction such methods anymore, but Wren wouldn’t have used them if they had been. Torture and torment was a way of securing confession if you didn’t give a damn about guilt or innocence. She did. And the kid was clearly guilty, had been the moment they’d picked him up and brought him in.
“How old are you, kid?” she asked.
He glanced at the wall. “Sixteen years.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “And I’m told you attempted to assault a necromancer.”
The kid mumbled nothing in particular.
“Do you want to tell me why?” she asked.
“He was a necromancer,” replied the kid. “He traffics in dark, forbidden magics.”
“He had a license.”
The kid frowned. “You allow things like that here?”
“But most necromancers aren’t doing anything more dangerous than reanimated beloved pets, so we have more important problems to deal with. Like kids who come to town and attack our law-abiding citizens.”
The kid’s disgust faded, replaced by a nervous fear. He lowered his head and shielded his face with his hands. “It was the sword’s idea.”
Hess got the sword.
It lay on the table. It wasn’t much of an enchanted sword, aside from a few runes scratched into the blade, it would’ve been indistinguishable from a weapon cranked out by a competent, if unexceptional, blacksmith.
Hess disliked magic weapons, a corruption of honest steel.
“So one more time,” he said. “Why did you tell the kid to attack the necromancer?”
“Necromancers are evil,” said the sword, her runes flashing as she spoke. “It is my duty to slay all evildoers.”
“Did you see this necromancer doing evil?” asked Hess.
“I could smell the stink of death magic on him,” said the sword.
“I’m sure.” Hess reflexively flicked his tongue. He could smell most necromancers from across a room, mildew, rot, and fresh dirt. It put him in mind of the caves he’d been hatched in. As such, it inspired a complicated mix of emotions.
“Why the kid?” asked Hess.
“Because he’s been chosen for a grand destiny.”
“Chosen by whom?”
The sword hesitated. Its runes glittered as it thought about it.
“By the gods, of course.”
“You’re not the first,” said Wren.
The kid looked up. “What?”
“You’re not the first kid off the farm to wander into the city with grand aspirations of heroism and glory,” she said. “The slums are filled with them.”
“You’re wrong.”
He tried to sound defiant, but there was a waver in his voice.
“Do you think you’re the first kid to find a sword or spear or helmet or talking raven that offered promises of greatness? We see a dozen like you in a slow year.”
“But the sword said–”
Wren resisted the urge to reach across the table and slap some sense into him. It never worked.
“The sword lied,” she replied. “The sword always lies.”
“I was forged in the fires of Mount Hell by the famed magesmiths of an ancient and forgotten order,” said the sword as Hess turned it over, checking for a maker’s brand.
There wasn’t one, and it wasn’t surprising. Enchanted weapons of true power always bore an insignia of their maker, a point of pride and a requirement for any magic worth the effort. This sword was most likely the product of an assembly line of smithys and low-grade enchanters, churned out by the hundreds. Talking blades, singing halberds, and glowing warhammers most often sold as novelties to those who might find amusement in such things.
“Where’d he find you?” asked Hess.
“His attic,” replied the sword. “How I got there is quite a tale of legend, I can assure you. So amazing and improbable, you wouldn’t believe the tale.”
Hess studied the straightness of the blade, gave the weapon a few practice swings. It wasn’t bad quality. A little better than the one he normally carried in fact.
“Are you going to tell me where you really came from?”
“If you insist. At the dawn of time, the gods fought a great war among themselves–”
He sheathed the sword in its scabbard, and it went quiet.
He joined Wren in the hall, where they were leading the kid away.
“Managed to keep him out of the dungeons,” she said. “The necromancer isn’t pressing charges. I’m having the guard escort him to the gates. Told him to go home, marry, have too many children, and be more skeptical in the future.”
The kid walked with a defeated slump and a low head. He’d dared dream of glory, and it was easy to see how the sword had conned him. That sort of wishful ambition would make him easy prey to the worst the city had to offer.
“Think he’ll take the advice?” asked Hess.
“Who knows?” She nodded toward the sword in his hand. “Are you going to take that to the armory?”
“Thinking about keeping it.” He unsheathed it and tested its weight.
“Great news, my friend,” said the weapon. “You’ve been chosen by the gods to–”
He thrust it back in its scabbard and shrugged.
“It’s a good sword.”
“Whatever you say, Chosen One.”
