The Bookhouse Boys discussion
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message 901:
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Matt, I am the Great Went.
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Jun 25, 2014 08:32AM
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Thanks, buddy! I felt like we really figured out what we were doing with that one and it came off much more even. Glad you liked it. Plus, you got to see me in the video flesh in the bookends. :)
Also, if you felt inclined to leave feedback on the iRiff's page, I would be super stoked!
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The movie can be seen, in all its surreal glory, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE45g...
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Oh, and the "from the New York Times best-selling author..." - does anybody actually check these claims? Does selling 1 more copy than any other book make you a "best"? WTF?
I've been meaning to talk ask the Bookhouse about this guy, Diabolous Rex from Portland, OR. He is building what he calls a Ragnorak Engine/Machine. Our very own Lovecraftian (mad?) scientist. Here is a link to one of his shows:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
He's also been on ground zero with Clyde Lewis. In my crazy, drug days, I actually sat next to this guy at the Montage and talked with him for about 2 hours. Check out his FB page, too.
Here's the link....scroll down to the bottom to hear the podcast.http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2014...
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http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/thats-...
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http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment...
Twin Peaks will be returning for a short run in 2016 on Showtime. Needless to say, I find this news incredibly exciting. Can't wait to see what Lynch and Frost have cooked up for the legendary 25 years later.
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Also, we all KNOW that the very best episodes were the ones directed by Lynch, and he's directing ALL of the new ones. IT WILL BE AMAZING. So excited.
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Farts are funny. They have always been funny, since the first fish-thing climbed out of the primordial sea, and they will remain funny until the universe collapses in on itself.
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Anybody get any books for the holidays?
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And for a laugh, my sister bought me "Fun With Kirk and Spock" (go boldly, go!)
Most importantly, between my mom and dad I got $150 in Amazon funny money, so there will be books in my future, OH yes.
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Matt wrote: "I got another gift card for a belated Christmas present, just enough to get The Private Eye: The Cloudburst Edition. Yay!"Great choice!
I used my Amazon dough to buy The Bronze Age of DC Comics, and the acclaimed dark fairy tale Beautiful Darkness. A natural pairing, no?
Under my tree were Lumberjanes volume 1 (my daughter gets first dibs on that one), Sandman Overture, and volume 2 of Naoki Urasawa's Master Keaton. And one long-wished-for book: the oversized, slipcased and absolutely gorgeous The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures by the late great Dave Stevens.
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http://mic.com/articles/137435/fans-a...
What do you think?
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I guess I might have misinterpreted some of the responses as being more "you can't use this" rather than a resistance to her using it in a lazy, stereotyping way.
You may disagree with that assessment, but that is the reading I am seeing most Native Americans who are upset about it say. But judge for yourself - this is the first installment of the "History of Magic in North America" (14th Century to 17th Century):Though European explorers called it ‘the New World’ when they first reached the continent, wizards had known about America long before Muggles (Note: while every nationality has its own term for ‘Muggle,’ the American community uses the slang term No-Maj, short for ‘No Magic’). Various modes of magical travel – brooms and Apparition among them – not to mention visions and premonitions, meant that even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact with each other from the Middle Ages onwards.
The Native American magical community and those of Europe and Africa had known about each other long before the immigration of European No-Majs in the seventeenth century. They were already aware of the many similarities between their communities. Certain families were clearly ‘magical’, and magic also appeared unexpectedly in families where hitherto there had been no known witch or wizard. The overall ratio of wizards to non-wizards seemed consistent across populations, as did the attitudes of No-Majs, wherever they were born. In the Native American community, some witches and wizards were accepted and even lauded within their tribes, gaining reputations for healing as medicine men, or outstanding hunters. However, others were stigmatised for their beliefs, often on the basis that they were possessed by malevolent spirits.
The legend of the Native American ‘skin walker’ – an evil witch or wizard that can transform into an animal at will – has its basis in fact. A legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.
The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand.
The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.
And the second installment, 17th Century and Beyond:As No-Maj Europeans began to emigrate to the New World, more witches and wizards of European origin also came to settle in America. Like their No-Maj counterparts, they had a variety of reasons for leaving their countries of origin. Some were driven by a sense of adventure, but most were running away: sometimes from persecution by No-Majs, sometimes from a fellow witch or wizard, but also from the wizarding authorities. The latter sought to blend in among the increasing tide of No-Majs, or hide among the Native American wizarding population, who were generally welcoming and protective of their European brethren.
From the first, however, it was clear that the New World was to be a harsher environment for witches and wizards than the Old World. There were three main reasons for this.
Firstly, like their No-Maj counterparts, they had come to a country with few amenities, except those they made themselves. Back home, they had only to visit the local Apothecary to find the necessities for potions: here, they had to forage among unfamiliar magical plants. There were no established wandmakers, and Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which would one day rank among the greatest magical establishments in the world, was at that time no more than a rough shack containing two teachers and two students.
Secondly, the actions of their fellow No-Majs made the non-magical population of most wizards’ homelands look lovable. Not only had conflict developed between the immigrants and the Native American population, which struck a blow at the unity of the magical community, their religious beliefs made them deeply intolerant of any trace of magic. The Puritans were happy to accuse each other of occult activity on the slenderest evidence, and New World witches and wizards were right to be extremely wary of them.
The last, and probably the most dangerous problem encountered by wizards newly arrived in North America were the Scourers. As the wizarding community in America was small, scattered and secretive, it had as yet no law enforcement mechanism of its own. This left a vacuum that was filled by an unscrupulous band of wizarding mercenaries of many foreign nationalities, who formed a much-feared and brutal taskforce committed to hunting down not only known criminals, but anyone who might be worth some gold. As time went on, the Scourers became increasingly corrupt. Far away from the jurisdiction of their native magical governments, many indulged a love of authority and cruelty unjustified by their mission. Such Scourers enjoyed bloodshed and torture, and even went so far as trafficking their fellow wizards. The numbers of Scourers multiplied across America in the late seventeenth century and there is evidence that they were not above passing off innocent No-Majs as wizards, to collect rewards from gullible non-magic members of the community.
The famous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93 were a tragedy for the wizarding community. Wizarding historians agree that among the so-called Puritan judges were at least two known Scourers, who were paying off feuds that had developed while in America. A number of the dead were indeed witches, though utterly innocent of the crimes for which they had been arrested. Others were merely No-Majs who had the misfortune to be caught up in the general hysteria and bloodlust.
Salem was significant within the magical community for reasons far beyond the tragic loss of life. Its immediate effect was to cause many witches and wizards to flee America, and many more to decide against locating there. This led to interesting variations in the magical population of North America, compared to the populations of Europe, Asia and Africa. Up until the early decades of the twentieth century, there were fewer witches and wizards in the general American population than on the other four continents. Pure-blood families, who were well-informed through wizarding newspapers about the activities of both Puritans and Scourers, rarely left for America. This meant a far higher percentage of No-Maj-born witches and wizards in the New World than elsewhere. While these witches and wizards often went on to marry and found their own all-magical families, the pure-blood ideology that has dogged much of Europe’s magical history has gained far less traction in America.
Perhaps the most significant effect of Salem was the creation of the Magical Congress of the United States of America in 1693, pre-dating the No-Maj version by around a century. Known to all American witches and wizards by the abbreviation MACUSA (commonly pronounced as: Mah – cooz – ah), it was the first time that the North American wizarding community came together to create laws for themselves, effectively establishing a magical-world-within-a-No-Maj-world such as existed in most other countries. MACUSA’s first task was to put on trial the Scourers who had betrayed their own kind. Those convicted of murder, of wizard-trafficking, torture and all other manners of cruelty were executed for their crimes.
Several of the most notorious Scourers eluded justice. With international warrants out for their arrest, they vanished permanently into the No-Maj community. Some of them married No-Majs and founded families where magical children appear to have been winnowed out in favour of non-magical offspring, to maintain the Scourer’s cover. The vengeful Scourers, cast out from their people, passed on to their descendants an absolute conviction that magic was real, and the belief that witches and wizards ought to be exterminated wherever they were found.
American magical historian Theophilus Abbot has identified several such families, each with a deep belief in magic and a great hatred of it. It may be partly due to the anti-magic beliefs and activities of the descendants of Scourer families that North American No-Majs often seem harder to fool and hoodwink on the subject of magic than many other populations. This has had far-reaching repercussions on the way the American wizarding community is governed.
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I disagree. I think when you are using real, actual cultures or religions - that still exist and are practiced, are not "dead" cultures or mythologies - you owe them the respect of weaving the historical truth into your fictional world. N.K. Jemisin, a fantasy author I lurrrrrrve, wrote something similar on her blog: nkjemisin.com/2016/03/it-couldve-been-great. And here's a great perspective from an actual Native American person: nativeappropriations.com/2016/03/magic-in-north-america-part-1-ugh.html.Edited to add: I mean if you are using literal cultures and traditions. It's different if you're using something "inspired by" something else. That's your prerogative if you're creating a fictional world, but if you go that route, do the living culture a favor by TOTALLY FICTIONALIZING IT. Don't cherry pick something that is an actual, practiced religious belief and manhandle it because you feel like it. It's lazy writing, for one thing, and it's disrespectful of people who are alive right now. Create your own shit, even if it's inspired by something real. Or if you want to use the actual real thing, research the hell out of it and get input from people who live in that culture in real life before you publish it. I don't think asking a creator to respect other living people - PARTICULARLY if they are traditionally marginalized people - is too much of a burden. Or don't respect them - but be prepared to be called an asshole because of it. Free speech not being necessarily free of consequences and all that.
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Weird. I remember a bit of back and forth or something between you, Dave, and maybe one or two other people. I must be creating false memories.
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In this novel something mysterious causes insomnia among the inhabitants of the fictional sleepy little town of Caesarea. This insomnia causes many strange things to happen, such as the town’s figurehead mayor being replaced by a dwarf doppelganger and Neo-Nazi environmentalists accidentally unleashing purveyors of kiddie snuff-porn on the town. A so-called war is also being waged between the town’s respectable citizenry and the white trash from the trailer park.
Color me intrigued.
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he's not related to Anthony Burgess, by any chance?
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Anthony Burgess' real name was John Anthony Burgess Wilson. Oddly enough, he *is* related to Burgess Meredith. ;)
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The Bookhouse Boys
Books mentioned in this topic
Pontypool Changes Everything (other topics)The Private Eye (other topics)
The Bronze Age of DC Comics (other topics)
The Private Eye (other topics)
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Tony Burgess (other topics)Russell Banks (other topics)
Amitav Ghosh (other topics)
Mary Roach (other topics)
W. Somerset Maugham (other topics)
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