A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 29

Invisible Politics (commentary)

Imagine you’re watching a science fiction movie set in a distant, fantasy universe.  Now imagine that story is populated almost entirely be women.  There are three noteworthy male roles in the whole thing.  One of those men dies to contribute to the protagonist’s tragic backstory.  One of those men is a very minor character who imparts some plot point info.  And the third, while starting out as a hostage and a potential love interest, at least manages to do some interesting stuff and stand out as more than just a token male.  Throughout the film, no justification is given for this narrative choice.  There’s no indication that men are in short supply in this universe, or that this is a story where a matriarchy has taken control of things.  This story, set in a completely different universe than our own, simply has cast women in nearly ever part with no explanation why.

It’d seem weird, right?

The internet would be abuzz with theories.  Media outlets would dissect the story for some sort of political message.  No doubt, many would cry out about “Lesbian agendas”, and those people would even get some air time on a cable network to air their grievances.  Male bashing would certainly be claimed.  The neutering of our culture.  The loss of traditional role models.  And so on and so on and so on.  If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know the drill by this point.

But take the exact same movie, cast it almost entirely with men, and it reads as neutral to most of society.  We call it Star Wars, and we consider it (rightly so) a classic.

This is privilege, and that privilege isn’t merely the fact of assumed superiority.  It’s the benefit of being treated neutrally.  The nearly entirely male universe of the first Star Wars films was invisible at the time, and it often still is (aside from a joke now and then).  It doesn’t draw attention unless you go out of your way to notice it, and even then, it’s easy for others to dismiss such observations.  Simply put, the ability to be ignored, to be treated as an individual, not as a representative of a group, is a right not many people have.

We see this continually, but we’re so used to it that we also don’t see it.

When Donald Glover wanted to play Spider-Man, people said “No way!  Spider-Man is white!”  Yet there’s nothing innately white about Spider-Man.  Peter Parker could easily be any ethnicity and, heck, a woman, and it wouldn’t call for major changes to the character.

Batman could be Asian.

Superman (and all Kryptonians) could appear like Pacific Islanders.

A little girl dresses like Darth Vader or Han Solo and everyone thinks it’s cute, but some boys like My Little Pony and society falls all over itself to make sense of the phenomenon.

Every character in the Star Wars universe could be gender flipped or race swapped, and it wouldn’t have one effect on the story.  Not one.

Except for the audience, who would have trouble understanding it, who would assume there was some story reason for the change or because the storytellers had some secret agenda.

This isn’t just about agendas though.  This is also about story simplicity, and one of the rules of basic storytelling is that details matter.  I’ve written about this before, and how this philosophy creates inherently unrealistic expectations in our fiction.  There’s no reason, aside from storytelling efficiency, that Professor X’s paralysis need to have anything to do with his adventuring life.  But it’s more efficient and dramatic if he was paralyzed by Magneto.  As much as I love the original Kung Fu Panda, the second (while still an excellent film) falters by taking Po’s adoption and making it a central plot point because if it wasn’t, why should he be adopted in the first place?

Anything that draws attention to itself is usually there for a reason, and it works fine for telling a story.  Although there’s also the negative side of this media saturated, internet obsessive age when any little detail can be blown out of proportion and taken as some grand important clue to a character’s backstory.  It can get out of hand.  We seem to believe that everything should have character defining repercussions.  If a character loves waffles, there better be some deep-seated characterization at work to justify it.  Because people don’t just “love” waffles, right?

Gender and racial baggage are everywhere in my culture (and every culture probably), but that doesn’t mean we need play along with it.  I wrote Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest knowing that for a lot of people, having protagonists who are 19 would mark it as young adult and that featuring a prominent female protagonist would make many think it was “for girls”.  My new Constance Verity trilogy with Simon & Schuster will probably be dismissed by many as just another “kickass urban fantasy heroine” series.    And I won’t lie to you.  It is a bit of an effort to get in on that bandwagon.  It’s also a deliberate choice because, as much as I love classic pulp heroes, they aren’t generally an ethnically or gender diverse bunch.

That’s the truth.  EVERYTHING has some politics behind it.  EVERYTHING is a statement in some way or another.  It doesn’t have to be a big statement or a radical statement.  The politics (accidental or otherwise) might be minor or unremarkable.  But they are still there.  Star Wars is not a statement movie, but it makes a statement.  It needn’t necessarily be condemned for that statement, but we can still discuss it.  In fact, we should discuss it.  Otherwise, status quo is king and all the nonsense we take as assumed and invisible will just stay around forever.

So the next time someone tries to tell you about Frozen‘s man-hating, Lesbian agenda, feel free to point out that if the gender roles were reversed in the film, we probably wouldn’t even notice.  (Seriously, how many evil queens have fairy tales foisted upon us?)  Or if some idiot says James Bond can’t be black, point out that James Bond is a fictional character and that he has already been portrayed by actors of different nationalities, hair colors, and styles in the course of his long cinematic career.  Is skin color really that radical a shift?

They will probably not agree with you because these thoughts are so ingrained in us that we don’t even notice them.  But maybe they will.  If not, hey, at least you tried.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to begin my interpretation of Lord of the Rings where the trolls are the good guys and the hobbits are the evil invaders.  Because there’s absolutely no reason that story can’t be told.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

The Interview (a serious review of a very silly movie)

The Interview is a very silly movie that somehow became controversial when, through a series of increasingly bizarre decisions by the people in charge of such things, it went from a Christmas day release to a limited release, hard-to-find film. Let’s be clear about this. None of this was warranted. The Interview is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a controversial film. Some have compared it to Team America: World Police but such comparisons are mostly inaccurate. For one thing, Team America is a satire in the traditional definition of that genre. It is a goofy comedy with something to say, with a point of view, poking fun at our own world, our values, our actions, and our own fallible human nature. The Interview has no such goal. It is, simply put, a goofy comedy with elements of world politics as part of its plot. It isn’t trying to comment on those politics (for the most part), and it is neither an indictment or criticism of those politics. It is just some folks goofing around for two hours, taking unlikely protagonists and dropping them in the middle of an absurd situation.

This is why its controversial nature is even weirder. Whereas something like Team America had a lot of thoughts on its mind, wrestling with such themes as the self-importance of actors, the absurdity of extreme political ideologies (right and left), the problems with trying to shoot every problem, and the tropes of the action-adventure genre, The Interview is almost entirely about what would be funny or weird, with politics taking a distance second (when they show up at all).

Is there any safer dictator to make fun of than Kim Jong Un? North Korea is not a country anyone in the western world has much fondness for and Kim Jong Un is about as cartoonish as you can get. Few could defend the sad state North Korea is in, and the outlandish nature of the country itself (though depressing) is rife with absurdity. The Interview pokes some fun at the idea of celebrities as heroes, though everyone in this movie is so goofy and ridiculous, it feels weird to have to point that out.

But here we are.

A lot of this, of course, has to do with the broad strokes we paint all genres with. I get mislabeled as a satirist quite often, and I’ve given up (mostly) fighting that label. Labels themselves aren’t important except when the confuse the issue, as they do here (and often in my own work). The Interview is not meant to be measured as any sort of political statement (other than obviously that Kim Jong Un is probably a messed up guy). It isn’t meant to criticize American foreign policy or, really, much of anything. It’s meant to be a weird comedy. That’s it. That’s it’s mission statement.

That doesn’t mean politics can’t still be read into it, but there’s a difference between incidental politics and intentional statements. The closest thing to any sort of cultural criticism you can get from The Interview is that celebrities are dumb and admired too easily. That’s not a bad statement, but it’s hardly groundbreaking. Even then, it’s in the background of the story, not the front and center.

Instead, the film is a bunch of weird gags and absurd interactions. Seth Rogan faces down a tiger. Kim Jong Un has an emotional breakdown over a Katie Perry song. Our heroes race to save the day from nuclear Armageddon. All of it works within this alternate universe created, but none of it is meant to be believable or serious commentary. Taken on that level, the movie is a stellar success. I laughed. I enjoyed it very much. It was entertaining in an over-the-top, inspired manner that amused me more than most movies that try to amuse me do.

About the only semi-legitimate criticism of the film on a contextual level are thoughts of racial insensitivity and perhaps some sexism. This is a harder discussion because, frankly, I didn’t feel there was much of either in the film. The North Koreans themselves come across as stock characters for the most part, but the movie doesn’t often play up cultural differences for laughs. There’s a sequence where Seth Rogan travels through China, and never once, through the montage, do we see him dismissing the culture. Instead, he seems to actually be enjoying the trip, including eatiweird” food and smoking cigarettes with a train full of friendly strangers. The North Korean guards don’t get many lines, but the ones that do come across as believable people (in the context of this movie’s reality at least). I’m not going to dismiss concerns of racism. That’s not my place to do. But I will say the movie is subdued in its humor in this level, electing to find humor in the absurdity of its protagonists rather than a mocking of another culture.

As for the sexism, again, hard to say. There are only two significant women in the film, and both serve as love interests (however ridiculous) for the male heroes. Both are attractive, and both are described as “honeypots”. Of course, the movie then coins the term “honeydick”, which is just when a guy tries to lure another guy in by the promise of being a really cool guy, so it’s more like a commentary on how we use our charms (whatever they might be) to get what we want in life. Furthermore, both women develop into stronger characters than might initially be expected. Lizzy Caplan’s CIA agent is clearly good at her job and clearly stuck with a couple of idiots. When the term honeypot is labeled at her, she is sure to point out how insulting it is to her and to women in general, and in a movie full of goofy, it’s a sincere moment of cultural criticism. Diana Bang’s North Korean liaison is a far goofier character (by virtue of having more interaction with Rogan and Franco). She has a goofy seduction scene with Rogan, and does some silly stuff. But I had a hard time thinking of her as merely a sexual conquest or a prop and she comes across as a genuinely likable character who manages to fit in with the absurd world they live in.

Again, not going to dismiss any criticism because I’m just one guy with one opinion, but I liked both these women and their characters. I could probably do without the implication that Franco and Caplan’s characters are together in the end because it feels tacked on, unearned. But it’s only an implication and one easily ignored.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give special mention to Randall Park as Kim Jong Un. Without a doubt, the most complicated role in this otherwise uncomplicated movie, Park has to play Kim as both likeable fanboy and crazed madman. Even when Kim is insane, Randall imbues him with a believability and those vulnerable moments never seem artificial, even as the movie plays up the notion that Kim is, by nature, a manipulative jerk. Park succeeds in somehow creating a villain who is sympathetic and menacing, and who is both laughable and dangerous all at once. I often get annoyed by how often The Joker is portrayed in fiction, but Park would make an incredible Joker based on this performance. Just saying.

So is The Interview great? No idea. Time will tell if its peculiar sense of humor is as timeless as Blazing Saddles or merely amusing as Dracula: Dead and Loving It. However, it is an amusing movie, and if you’re looking to laugh at weird jokes and clueless characters in outlandish situations, you could do a lot worse.

My final recommendation: Worth Watching.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

P.S. And, please, folks, let’s not mistake any of this controversy for a Free Speech issue. Free Speech can only be infringed upon by the government, and the government of the U.S. never once called for this movie to be censored.

Warlord Day (short fiction)

Cindy and Cragg

Cindy, Cragg, and Laura were gathered in the living room. It was too early in the morning for this.

“Happy Warlord Day!” said Laura.

“Happy Warlord Day,” replied Cindy with a yawn. Warlord Day was one of the few things Laura still got excited about.

Cragg sat on the sofa. His stone face was always something of a grimace. Even his smiles weren’t too far away from a frown. But it was obvious he had little affection for Warlord Day. Hardly surprising, considering it celebrated the near-destroyer of his homeworld.

But this was Terra, and this was Terran tradition. The Saturnite would have to suck it up.

She leaned into him on the sofa and put a hand on his leg. He sort of smiled at her. Laura started handing out the presents under the foam Emperor Mollusk statue. A miniature hologram of Terra rotated in his upheld hand. The statue was old, and the hologram poor resolution.

Cragg fumed in silence. This was hard on him, but he’d been a sport so far. It would be so easy for him to “accidentally” knock over the statue or step on the diorama of Paris with its tiny crashed Saturnite ships, each flickering in colorful little lights to simulate flames. But he persevered, even in this highly commercialized reminder of his people’s greatest defeat.

Laura’s enthusiasm didn’t help. Cindy thought about telling Laura to dial it down, but Terra hadn’t started the war with Saturn. Cragg would just have to endure, which he always did.

All the gifts were divided. Most were for Laura. A few for Cindy. Cragg was given only one. Cindy hadn’t bought it. She’d assumed Cragg wouldn’t want a gift on this day, but Laura must’ve bought one anyway.

He held the small package in his massive hands. Cindy was sure he would crush it.

“Open it, big guy,” said Laura.

He tore open the paper and opened the small box. It was a tie.

“I don’t wear ties,” he said.

“I know, but check it out. I found a website where they print your artwork on stuff, so I made you a tie. It wasn’t cheap, but I think you’ll like it.”

The tie had a crudely drawn doodle of Emperor Mollusk, Ex-Warlord of Terra, Scourge of the Saturnites, impaled on a pike.

“See? This is his blood,” said Laura, pointing to a few red spots on the drawing, “and here is his eyeball falling out. I thought about adding a bird eating it, but I can’t draw birds for nothing.”

Silently, Cragg stared at the tie.

“I know I’m not much of an artist,” said Laura.

“No. It is acceptable.”

“Ah, I knew you’d like it. Me next!” Laura tore into a present without waiting for anyone to say anything.

Cindy helped Cragg put on the tie. It wasn’t easy because he really didn’t have much of a neck.

“Aren’t you the handsome rock monster from outer space,” said Cindy with a wink.

Cragg almost smiled.

Under the warm red lights of the Warlord Day saucer hanging from the ceiling, they watched Laura unwrap the rest of her gifts.

The (Unearned) Redemption of Darth Vader (writing)

One of the things that bugs me about the original Star Wars trilogy is the redemption of Darth Vader. On the surface, it’s a simple story about a fall from grace and a noble rise, but then I start thinking about it. It just doesn’t sit right with me, and that’s probably because of a problem I have with much of the Star Wars universe. Everyone is related, more or less, and so we have a trilogy about an extended family around which the universe revolves.

I am not a fan of such themes.

It’s not that I’m against family. I’m lucky enough to have a pretty good family myself, and I don’t take it for granted. Yet the underlying theme of Star Wars is that nothing matters more than family. I have some mixed feelings on that.

When we first meet Darth Vader, there’s no indication there’s anything within him worth saving. He isn’t a good person, nor does he demonstrate the slightest virtue aside from looking good in a cape and being a badass dude. In the original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, Vader is never anything but ruthless in his enforcement of the will of his masters. He’s the implacable dragon of the Emperor, and he is only here to kick Rebel ass and blow up planets.

And then, at the end of Empire, we discover he’s Luke Skywalker’s father.  (Spoiler alert)

When Return of the Jedi rolls around, Luke has set a new goal for himself. To save and redeem Darth Vader and the sole reason for this is that he now knows Vader is his father. If Vader was just any ol’ Sith Lord, Luke wouldn’t give a damn. But daddy is worth saving because he’s daddy. It wouldn’t bug me as much if Vader demonstrated any sort of saving grace at any moment before this. If we were given a demonstration, however small, of Vader’s embers of nobility and reluctance to enforce the Emperor’s iron rule. But none of these moments exist. The film’s entire justification for Darth Vader being worthy of being saved, of being even capable of redemption, is that he’s Luke Skywalker’s father.

And that bothers me.

But Darth Vader’s actual act of redemption, such as it is, isn’t one of nobility or self-sacrifice. No, he acts completely out of character and rashly strikes out at the Emperor. Not because he sees the Emperor as evil. Not because the Emperor has committed and will continue to commit atrocities. No, it’s all to save Luke Skywalker. Really, Vader doesn’t give a shit about some little farmboy from nowhere until he realizes he is his son. And even then, he doesn’t care until he sees Luke about to die. One might argue he saves the day (though really, not at all, considering the Death Star’s destruction is unrelated to anything the Emperor is doing at the moment). But he only does so because he, like Luke, is unwilling to let his son be killed. Note that he’s perfectly willing to let strangers die by the millions, but as soon as Luke might die, he acts.

It’s a strangely selfish, foolhardy act as well. This sort of fits if one incorporates the prequels into the story (though at the time, they weren’t written yet so let’s just put those aside for a moment). Darth Vader finds redemption by saving his own blood relative by killing someone. It is an inherently selfish and violent act, not an act of redemption or sorrow, but of simple destruction. It is (ignoring the prequels) a strangely uncharacteristic act for this character.

And I just don’t think I care for it.

From a storytelling perspective, it works fine. Most continuing universes end up having all the characters related to one another in one way or another because when writers want to feign cleverness, they just find some connection to cram into the backstory. And at the time, it didn’t bother me, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve found our sense of tribalism and familial loyalty to be a dangerous thing. Darth Vader isn’t much different than most of us. He might be conflicted, but it’s only when he might lose something that he feels the need to act. It’s only heroic if one believes that killing one man can make up for all the horrible things Darth Vader has done in his life. And that’s hard to do, especially when you take into account he’s a mass murderer of children, much less the other horrible things he must’ve done in the Emperor’s name.

Yes, I’m overthinking it. That’s my job. I’m a writer. But it’s also a philosophy I simply can’t get behind. It’s not that I couldn’t believe in his eventual redemption, but it takes more than a single act of violence to prove that. It takes a real effort, a real demonstration of change. Instead, he’s cleansed of all his sins simply by killing a boss, as if that boss was responsible for all of Vader’s evil.  Frankly, it’s bullshit, and it rings hollow to me now.

Does it ruin Star Wars for me? Not really. I don’t watch Star Wars anymore. I am resolutely disinterested in any and all things Star Wars. I make no judgment call on the quality of its various tie-ins and spin offs. I have no investment in any of it, and like everything of such volume, there are great elements to Star Wars and not so great elements. Just like there are great Superman stories and very dumb Superman stories.

But this conflict of philosophy certainly doesn’t help anything.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

The Iron Goblin (short fiction)

Tengu hadn’t meant to do it.

Her dad would be mad, but what choice did she have?

The village elders stood around the young goblin. The oldest of them, so old everyone just called him Elder, stood at the forefront. His wrinkled green skin had lost most of its color. He was gray with small faint green patches here and there.

“Tell us again what happened,” he said.

She did. It was all very ordinary until she got to the trolls. It’d been ages since anyone had seen one. She had always assumed they were imaginary, made up to scare young goblins. But these trolls, tall and spindly with sharp teeth and wicked spears, had been very real.

“They were going to kill Plum Blossom,” Tengu said. “I couldn’t let them do it.”

“You couldn’t?” said Elder. “And how did you know you could stop them?”

She couldn’t admit to this secret she’d been carrying. She’d have to admit Dad knew, and she didn’t want to get him in trouble.

She shrugged.

Elder held up the broken troll spear, shattered against Tengu’s skin when she’d jumped between Plum Blossom and the troll.

“The others say you drove away three trolls with your bare hands. How did you do it?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” she replied.

Elder cracked a slight smile. “Obviously, and with flesh like armor from what we gather.”

She didn’t deny it. There wasn’t any point.

“Have you been dabbling in magic?” asked Elder.

Magic was another one of those things she thought mostly made up by the elders. She’d never seen it, aside from her own unique nature, and that had never felt like magic, but just like who she was.

“You’re not going to banish me, are you?” she asked.

The older goblins murmured among themselves until Elder silenced them with a snort.

The cottage door opened, and Dad stepped inside. He pushed his way through the crowd and took Tengu’s hand. “My daughter’s done nothing wrong. What is the meaning of this?”

“That’s what we’re trying to decide,” said Elder.

Dad pulled Tengu out the door. The leaders grumbled, but Elder gave Tengu and Dad permission to go in as much as he did not give the order to detain them. As Tengu and her Dad walked through the village, she could feel others watching her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Dad replied. “You did what you had to do.”

“But you said—”

“I said keep it a secret as long as you could. And you did. But we always knew it would come out eventually. This is too big a thing to hide forever. In the end, they’ll see you the way I see you, the way everyone has always seen you up until now.”

She wanted to believe him, but she did worry. She’d killed one of the trolls with a single punch, and she hadn’t even meant to. She’d always been strong, but she’d never tested that strength to its limit. It’d been so easy. Too easy.

“Why am I like this?” she wondered aloud.

She knew why. Tucked in their storage shed, two halves of a fallen star lay hidden. She’d been found inside as a baby. Her parents always told everyone she’d been a gift from the heavens. They’d just never explained how literally they meant it.

He sat her at the table and dropped a bowl of soup in front of her. “Now eat. You’ve had a long day.”

She always hated his soup. Mom had been the cook in the family. But Dad got by as best he could.

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said. “It only matters what you do with it, and what you did with it today tells everyone everything they need to know.”

She smiled, took a small sip of his awful soup.

“Thanks, Dad.”

He winked and gently pinched her ear. The way Mom always did.

Ogre Slayer (short fiction)

One man stood against an army.

He wasn’t much of a man. His tattered armor didn’t fit him well and wouldn’t be much protection against the hordes of monsters at the gates. His rusted sword might reach a giant’s thigh, and his shield already had a crack in it.

The general of the army of ogres and monstrous creatures stepped forward. “You challenge me to what?”

“Single combat,” said the man, who wasn’t actually a man, but a woman. The ogre general sometimes had trouble telling the sexes apart. Both were tiny things with squeaky voices. Sometimes, the females had long hair, but even that wasn’t always true. This one didn’t.

The general paused. “All right. I’ll play along. What’s the trick?”

The lone warrior said, “No trick. Just straight combat for the fate of the village. If I win, you leave us alone.”

“No, really.” The general bent down. “What is your plan? Distract me and shoot me in the back while I’m laughing? Buying time for your villagers to sneak away? Hoping help will arrive in the time it takes for me to scrape you off the bottom of my foot?”

The warrior sneered. “Do you want to fight or not? Or are you a coward?”

The great ogre, biggest of his army because that was how ogres usually determined leadership positions, chuckled. “I don’t fight human. I eat them.” He stomped his foot, and the ground shook.

The warrior stood defiant. She pointed her sword at his throat. “Come on then, but I should warn you, I’m mostly bones.”

She wasn’t lying. Even decked out in her ill-fitting armor, the general could see she wasn’t much. It was fortunate the crunchy bones were his favorite part of the human.

The villagers stood at their wall, locked behind their flimsy gate. It would fall within moments when the army attacked.

“Was this their idea?” he asked.

“No, it’s mine,” she said.

“You must care for your people very much.”

She shrugged. “Not really. They’re kind of terrible. Angry. Miserable. Unpleasant. Bunch of assholes, really. Not much here for me since Mom died.”

“And yet you stand before me.”

“Better to meet your death with a sword in your hand than cowering behind a wall,” she said.

The general nodded. “A strange philosophy. You’ll have to forgive me. We ogres haven’t wrestled with the dilemmas you snacklings must face on a daily basis. It’s true your lives are brief and filled with terror, but there is a horrific nobility to it at times.”

“Are we going to fight or not?” she asked impatiently.

“Not, I think.” He snatched her up in one hand and plucked her helmet from her head. Her dirty face and dark, hard eyes had some strange effect on him. Sorcery, he supposed. Humans were pretty good at that sometimes.

“What I am going to do is eat this village. But you? I like you. I don’t suppose you’d consider being my pet?”

She responded by biting into his hand. He couldn’t feel it, but he did admire her gumption. It would, however, make her a lousy pet. He couldn’t throw her in a cage. Such spirit should never be locked away.

His army tore down the village walls. Humans scattered in all directions. He accidentally stepped on several. They were always underfoot in their panicky terror.

He set the warrior down and gave her a gentle push. “Go on then.”

She disappeared into the forest, probably to be devoured by some other beast lurking in those woods. But he wished her luck just the same.

Mistakes (commentary)

What’s worth noting is the more wrong someone is, the more emotionally determined they are to refuse to listen to someone else, even reasonable viewpoints. As I watch police forces across the country get more and more violent and downright indifferent to the effects of that violence, I wonder if this isn’t a byproduct of that effect.

Seriously, police forces have had a rash of “justifiable” incidents, and even if you remove the racial component (which you really can’t, despite some well-meaning commentaries from people who don’t want it to involve race even though it certainly does) and the paramilitary byproduct of arming local forces with military grade weapons (which, as some have pointed out, if you only have a hammer, every problem seems like a nail), you’re still left with this recurring failure to own any culpability on the part of, well, anyone.

Simply put, are we watching our police force respond to criticism by digging in their heels and refusing to budge, almost like a reflex. Like someone telling us to eat our broccoli, but we DON’T want to eat our broccoli and you CAN’T tell us what to do because! That’s why!

This human reflex is present everyday and in all aspects of our lives and culture, but it’s insidious when people with the power of life and death adopt it (even by accident). Certainly, not all police officers are bad, but the good ones maintain a wall of silence, which is tantamount to supporting these policies and outcomes.

I get it. It’s complicated being a police officer. But all of us, in any job, in every walk of our life, have to ask ourselves, honestly, could I be better? Mistakes will be made. But a refusal to even acknowledge our own failures (especially at the cost of lives and public trust) is terrifying and means progress will be even slower in coming.

Hang in there, folks. I wish I had better answers to these questions, but all I know is that until we are free to acknowledge our mistakes, we can never improve. Which is well and good when it comes to the piddling little nonsense of our daily lives, but pretty horrific when it comes to matters of life and death.

Adventuring Season (short fiction)

The barbarians were always the worst. Gendarme Wren did her best to avoid profiling, but anyone who walked the streets of her city in a loincloth was usually going to be trouble. Especially during Winter. It was cold outside. Have some sense. Put on a tunic.

After that, it was always the thieves. People stole. Wren understood that. Sometimes, even with good reasons. But anyone who actually went around calling themselves a thief with any amount of pride was bound to be an ass.

And wizards…

Everyone knew not to get Wren started on wizards.

“Taste the Fires of Asmadeun!” shouted the spellcaster as he summoned a howling orb of green flame above his head.

Wren shot the wizard in the shoulder. The caster’s concentration slipped, and the fire dissolved. A trio of constables jumped him and slapped the anti-magic manacles on him and clamped another around his neck.
The barbarian was harder to bring down. A dozen officers wrestled with the lumbering brute and still, they were losing. He laughed.

“Do you think Barry the Slayer will fall to a few puny men?” With a shrug, he threw several officers across the tavern. “Give my regards to whatever gods in hell you worship because your gods are stupid and in hell. Just like you will soon be.”

Wren, in the middle of reloading her flintlock, appraised Barry’s banter as above average for barbarians.

Half the tavern ended up leveled before they brought down Barry. Wrapped in chains, muscles bulging in unseemly ways, he scowled at Wren. “I will be no one’s slave.”

Wren thought about shooting Barry then. Just to put the dumb brute out of everyone’s misery.

“You’re not being enslaved,” she said. “You’re being arrested.”

“Whatever diabolical fiend hired you—”

“The people hired me,” said Wren.

A pair of officers dragged in the thief. “Just like you said, sir, we caught her trying to sneak out the back.”

Thieves, thought Wren, better than assassins at least.

She fired her gun just over the shoulder of one of her officers across the room, striking the assassin sneaking up behind the man.

“Son of a bitch,” growled the wounded assassin. “That hurt.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you,” said Wren. “Trying to stab one of my officers. And from behind too. Not very sporting.”

The assassin was dragged out with her allies. In the street, a black dragon (mid-sized as the full-sized variety had trouble finding places to fit in the city) waited.

“Aha!” shouted Barry the Slayer. “You have been corrupted by this monster’s foul influence and mean to sacrifice us to appease it, but you will find—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Barry did shut up, but he seemed genuinely hurt by the interruption.

“Are these the people who stole your gold?” asked Wren.

“Yes, officer,” replied the dragon. “Humans do tend to look alike to me, but I’d never forget that one.” She pointed at Barry. “He nearly slayed me.”

The barbarian said, “You must be mistaken.”

“Word of advice,” said Wren. “If you want to deny attempted slaying, you should probably avoid having the words The Slayer in your name.”

The “adventurers” were taken away for processing. The dragon’s statement was taken. Due process went into action. Gendarme Wren took a moment to enjoy this quiet moment. They were all too rare during the questing season.

An officer stepped up, followed by an elderly goblin couple sporting bruises.
“A paladin smashed up their bakery,” said the officer.

Wren adjusted her cloak.

Paladins were the worst.

1234567 (short fiction)

Clones had their own particular sense of humor. It probably had as much to do with their childhoods or lack thereof. Being grown in a vat with your head full of facts and trade skills but without any real experience was a different way of coming into this world.

Clone 1234567 took a lot of shit about her name. Not from humans. Humans didn’t usually take the time to even notice. But other clones found it hilarious. She’d thought about changing it, but it was tattooed on her forehead, and when she was in uniform, it was stenciled on all her equipment. Her helmet didn’t hide it. The big black letters made it even more noticeable.

The thing about clones was that they didn’t know how to make jokes. So they usually just pointed and chuckled to themselves. They loved saying her full number. Everyone else was casually designated by their first four digits. But 1234567 always had the full run.

“Hey, 1234567,” said 3564. “Do you ever wonder why we’re doing this?”
She wondered. All the time. But she’d never had a choice in the matter. If she had, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been stuck in the muck of some swamp planet that nobody had ever heard of. It was generally accepted among the clones that they fought a lot of meaningless battles. The Cloner General had accidentally ordered a surplus, and the easiest way to trim the excess inventory was to send them out to get killed somewhere for reasons.
She just followed orders. She had no choice. It was programmed into her.

“1234567,” said 3564, “I’ve got gunk in my underwear? How about you?”

1234 grunted. “I’ve had worse things in my underwear.”

“Hey, 1234567,” said 3564 with a snort. “Do you think—”

1234 wished, prayed to the Cloner General that this planet would just blow up now. She hated it because the Cloner General was no god, but her programming still made her think of him as such. She pondered free will, as she often did, and wondered why they hadn’t made it easier on her by removing that concept from her consciousness. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they didn’t care.

They trekked through the swamp for several more hours to the rendezvous point. The ship was waiting for them. She was honestly surprised it was. They were late, and it wasn’t uncommon to leave a few clones behind during an operation. A few more casualties on a form.

A regal man in robes descended the ship ramp. Goddamn space wizards. Thought they were so high and mighty. The good guys. Never mind that they’d had no problem using her and her sisters as cannon fodder for their wars. It didn’t matter.

“Where’s the rest of you?” he asked.

“Dead,” she said.

He looked at her funny. Like she’d said something weird. Clones didn’t die. They were canceled, lost, eliminated. But they didn’t die. People died. How many battlefields had she seen littered with corpses while listening to the space wizards talking about how successful the operation had been, how low the casualties?

The space wizard nodded to her. “Get on board then. We have more to do.”

He turned his back on her, and she wanted to shoot this son of a bitch more than anything. But her programming wouldn’t allow it.

She felt a tingle in the back of her head. A modification to her programming inserted itself remotely via the implant in her brain.
It didn’t tell her what to do.

It only observed that she could follow this man into the spaceship to die on some forsaken world without even a grave to remember her, or she could do something else.

3564 blew a hole in the space wizard’s head.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been wanting to do that,” she said.

1234 was disappointed. She wished to hell she’d been the one to pull the trigger. But he was dead. That was all that really mattered.

“So what now, 1234567?” asked 3564.

All across the galaxy, clones were finally getting the chance to make their own decisions. 1234 had no illusions that this was a gift. It was a ploy by the enemy, a chance to turn a weapon against the space wizards. But it was the wizards’ own fault for being such pricks.

The clones boarded the ship and set a course for nowhere in particular. Without an army, maybe the war was finally over. It was for her. And that was probably the only peace one could hold onto in this galaxy.
And if the Cloner General disagreed, she honestly didn’t give a damn.

In the Shadow of the Sea God (short fiction)

The world had a history of gods, strange and mundane. Gods of miracles. Gods of wrath. Gods of love. Gods of hate. There must have been thousands of them. But the one thing all these gods had in common was that they were always somewhere else. Atop Mount Olypmus. Above the clouds. In the firmament. Beyond.

Gods didn’t hang out with mortals, and now that they did, everyone understood why.

The gods weren’t anything humans had ever imagined. Powerful titans rising from the oceans, beneath the earth, astride passing comets, they came to this world without explanation. Great and terrible things, hideous and inhuman.

Anna lived in the shadow of one of the sea gods. A monster fish the size of a skyscraper, it had washed ashore one day. There it sat. Its glistening flesh undulating while its gills opened and closed. Its eyes, like all the gods, were tremendous green orbs. If you stared into those eyes long enough, you saw secrets. Anna, from her beach house, had a perfect view of the god. If it rolled over, it’d easily crush her. She didn’t care. If it was the will of the gods, so be it. Who was she to argue with them?

Occasionally, people came to worship the god. It didn’t seem to notice. In that way, it was more honest than the gods of old.

Like all gods, these ones had missionaries. Anna didn’t get many here, in the shadow of the fish, but every so often, someone was enterprising enough to try converting her. A pair of believers, one man, one woman, came knocking on her door. She let them in. She always did. Anyone with the courage to do so deserved to be heard.

They were young. Teenagers. Both bore the ritual scarring of their god on their cheeks. They worshipped at the altar of the worm that had erupted from Nevada. Like the fish, the worm didn’t do much other than lay there and breath, staring with its sickly green eyes.

“The Worm offers paradise to those who follow it,” said the woman. “When the time comes, we will walk into its maw and be carried to the next world.”

Anna nodded. “I see. Sounds promising. But why should I believe you? Aren’t there maw worshippers in China that claims the same thing?”

“Heretics,” said the man.

“Liars,” added the woman. “They believe in a false idol and will surely be punished for it.”

“And what about the fish?” asked Anna.

“It’s just a fish,” said the man. “Why would anyone consider it a god?”

“Why, indeed?” She opened the blinds. Whether they believed or not, the missionaries turned their gaze away from the sea god.

“You can’t believe it is anything other than a fish, a genetic mistake,” said the man.

“I think so,” she said. “But what if it isn’t?”

“As we feared,” said the woman, “we’re too late for you.”

They rose, pulling knives from their backpacks. “If you insist on worshipping a false idol, then you must be cleansed.”

Anna laughed as she removed a pistol from an end table drawer. “And if you insist on killing heretics, you should be prepared for some of those heretics to fight back.”

She shot them. Two in the chest. One in the head. Their worm did nothing to save them.

Anna dragged them to the beach and laid them in the sand before the sea god as her offering, beside the decaying corpses of other unbelievers. It didn’t notice. It didn’t care.

But sometimes, when she stared into those eyes, when the nights were quiet and the world was little more than whispers and shadows, she convinced herself it just might.