Masochistic Monday

Because apparently I enjoy suffering, I spent the weekend debating politics on Facebook. Maybe I did it to remind myself why I don't do it, I don't know. What I do know is that I went into it with facts and logic. They brought slurs and innuendo.

Remember that scene in The Two Towers at Helmsdeep? It's the one where Theodan, King of Rohan, gets his first real taste of how Orcs fight.

Afterwards, he asks himself "What can men do against such reckless hate?"

That's pretty much how I feel right now.

It's coming in February 2013

Got the cover last week. I think this is the final version.

More Vacant Graves News

Got to see the cover art this week for Vacant Graves (February 2013 for those who forgot). I think it's finalized but I need to make sure before I post it here. It's the right mix of creepy and awesome while still being true to the story (though the guy on the cover has a top hat again. I just keep telling myself that it must be someone else because Donovan has a bowler goddamit).

I've also got a new video hint for you about Vacant Graves. Ambiguous, I know. Hopefully that excites you. Does it excite you? It excites me.

Rather than worry about copyright issues I decided to link someone who recorded their music specifically for YouTube. There's a lot of great voices out there. It's one of the things I love about YouTube.

I had a real blog for you but it's 800 words and I haven't trimmed it down yet. If you look at the time stamp, you will see that I'm having one of those days. Or you could say 'one of those nights' and it would be just as true.

I'd say I have too much time on my hands but I really don't

I’ve been working on the latest Donovan draft, the one which has a name I haven’t told you yet, the one which is still, more or less, in my mind.

Donovan has a fun verbal duel with a proto-feminist in the Bronx. Fun for me to write, anyway. I don’t think he enjoyed it much.

Feminism is a fun topic. Growing up, I was told, from my male friends and the voices on TV, that the only male feminists were always emasculated, that it was OK to want things to be fair but that feminists took things too far.

As you get older, appearances start to matter less than fairness. So go ahead and call me a feminist. I realize that on the internet that is an invitation to be called a douche-bag hipster fag or whatever today’s epithet of rage is. I don’t know because I don’t subscribe to the troll-newsletter.

Anyway, I thought I’d put that out there before I jump into today’s topic. As I was reading Le Morte d’Arthur a few weeks back, I was really struck by something. I’ve been digesting this information for a while now and feel I can finally comment on it.

In the Quest of the Holy Grail, a whole lot of knights almost sleep with Satan. Yeah, you read that right: Satan. And sex. Real satanic sex, not that pretend psychedelic stuff that Anton LeVey and Black Sabbath fans do. I am referring to actual sex with The Devil.

You see, Satan…or maybe I should go with Lucifer, which sounds more feminine and well, sexy. Anyway, Lucifer (or “Lucy” for short), being full of metaphysical powers and such, appeared to Camelot’s knights as a drop-dead gorgeous babe in a blatant attempt to get them to violate their vows of chastity. This would, of course, steal their pious mojo and prevent them from getting the Grail. Naturally, most of the knights wanted Lucy bad but discipline wins out and they send her packing.

At first blush, this looks kinda misogynous. And maybe it is. But I’d like to propose a more nuanced

Obviously, a misogynist can put women in positive roles but I think this is more about masculine identity than how the author felt towards women. When Satan appears as a woman, the author is, typical of his period in history, warning men about Satan’s lure. It’s easy to turn Satan down when he’s all ugly-red and razor-sharp with his black horns and hooves. But when Satan is a hottie…well, now it’s far more likely the reader might say “I woulda done her,” which is a result you wouldn’t see as often if the scene was simply the Dark Prince offering the knight power. Many men will tell themselves they can turn down power. But sex? That’s another story.

There’s also the whole angle that being fooled by someone is, in many ways, emasculating. Being beaten in fair combat has a certain manliness to it. But being tricked is another story. Unless it’s because of a woman. Call it the Samson-Delilah Trope. Maybe this gets misogynist, though it could be more a statement about male identity than female. For some reason, getting tricked by a Satan in a female form seems more likely—and palatable—than the alternative.

Or maybe I’m just overanalyzing things.

Game of Heroes

This would hardly be worthy of the title ‘Quantum Rumba’ if I didn’t occasionally talk about alternate universes. Since I haven’t been able to get funding yet for the Quantum Rambler Mark 1, we’ll have to settle for an imaginary trip.

Today’s fiction isn’t new and many of you will recognize the name behind it: George R.R. Martin. A couple decades back, Martin decided to tackle that quintessential American genre, the comic book super hero. Of course, this is George R.R. Martin we’re talking about, so he did it gritty and hard-hitting and above, he did it good.

I have mixed feelings about The Song of Ice and Fire series, but I want to be very clear about one thing: George R.R. Martin is a master of the craft. What’s more, with the Wild Cards series (beginning with Wild Cards I), he demonstrates he’s a masterful editor as well.

Wild Cards received some attention back in the ‘80s but went out of print. I was familiar with it due from the role playing game GURPS, which printed the tabletop system for it. I’d been watching out for a copy whenever I hit a used book store but hadn’t found any. Game of Thrones changed everything. Anyone who has ever published something by Martin is now scrambling to put out his old stuff while his name is front-and-center. I say that in a snarky way, but it made things easier for me.

Although Martin didn’t write every story in Wild Cards, his realistic tastes and writing talent show up in the editing. There are a few stories I wasn’t too fond of, but all of them were readable, which to my mind is high praise for an anthology.

Most of them are more than readable, though. Most of them kick ass. They’re dark, of course. That’s a given when Martin is involved. Some get really dark. I’d seen warnings about “adult content” in a GURPS book. When I encountered stuff about drugs and violence, I figured the editors at GURPS had overreacted when they issued the warning. Then I reached the scene where an avenging pimp sodomizes a dead man. And the pimp was a good guy. Yeah, the whole series isn’t like that. But there are some grisly surprises for the unprepared.

Dark as the series is, not all of the stories have dreary endings. Some of them are even happy (more or less)…including one by the Character-Slayer himself.

I felt I should mention this book on the Rumba because at its core, this book is an alternate reality. What if super heroes (and nasty mutants) were a reality? Wild Cards may be inspired by comic books, but in many ways it is a sort of thought experiment about how modern society would react to super powers. That means some things get better. Gandhi doesn’t catch that bullet, for instance. But JFK still does. In the end, super powers can’t stop evil—especially if evil gets them too. And nothing seems to stop human stupidity: Joe McCarthy proves a more formidable opponent than kryptonite.

The jump from comic book to other genre can be problematic but Wild Cards manages. If you’re looking for a novelized string of super hero stories or just a look at another universe, you could do worse.

Past Guilt

One of the things about living in Florida is a breathless anticipation of autumn. In February I start noticing on Facebook all my northern friends (‘Tundra-dwellers’ to us Floridians) asking when spring will arrive. Here, starting in late July, we start wondering when fall will get here. Well, she’s finally getting here and we can’t wait. Less humidity, less burning sun, less sweaty backs when we get out of the car.

 

                On a totally unrelated note, I’ve been tinkering with an online game after watching my wife play a console game. Both were fantasy. Both irritated me. The irritation stemmed from their choice of aesthetic. Both games were trying, I suspect, to avoid this formula:

Fantasy = Medieval Earth + Elves.

                I should laud them. I mean, I’m all about creativity. Make your own path. Make the genre yours.

                Only I don’t like it. I couldn’t put my finger on it but those vaguely contemporary-looking clothes and weird architecture kind of bothered me.

I only realized recently why I don’t like it. It bothers me because deep down, the reason I like fantasy is because of my strong, almost fetishistic obsession with the medieval ages. The truth is, I’ve always sought out fantasy because high quality games and books and movies about the middle ages are so rare.

                This would also explain why I went and got a couple of history degrees. In the end, my thesis may not have been about the middle ages, but it was medieval history which got me interested in history to begin with. (I also suspect I didn’t write a medieval thesis because I knew I’d be sick of my thesis topic by the end. And I was.)

                Which brings us to my third and final tangent. As I reread Le Morte D’Arthur, I thought a lot about my obsession with the medieval ages, which goes back to when I was ten or so. As a child, I more or less ignored the plight of women, peasants, and ethnic minorities such as Jews.

                Now that I’m older, I have to quiet the historian in me to enjoy these books. I have to rekindle that romantic fool, the antiquarian. Antiquarians are often ridiculed by historians, but fact is, nostalgia for the past was a driving feature behind men like Tennyson and Lovecraft, so it can’t be all bad.

                It’s funny because there’s a certain shame in liking a brutal period in history. Once when I told an older (white) woman about my interest in history, she got excited and told me about her interest in the Antebellum South. She loved those southern belles and their dresses.

                Then pain flashed across her face.

                “But slavery was awful.”

                This immediately put me in mind of my obsession with knights—and my childhood blindness to the peasants.

                I smiled. “Of course it was. But you can still like the dresses.”

                Years later, I encountered a strange sort of epilogue to this story. I was teaching American History I (1492-1866). It was a night class full of professionals who’d came back for a degree. There were a lot of African American students in the class.

                I was on my antebellum lecture, which usually engages students of both races but reverberates with black students especially. My powerpoint reached a slide about the gross disparity between how the planter class lived versus everyone else. Naturally, I had a picture of a woman in a bright, voluminous dress with more ruffles than woman.

                An older black woman looked up from her notes. She’d made it clear from previous discussions that her ancestors were slaves. Her husband, a much older fellow, was born a sharecropper. Here was someone whose family were victims of those same southern belles, someone fully aware of how unfair the South was, antebellum or postbellum.

After staring at the picture, she heaved a sigh. “I love those dresses. They’re so beautiful.”

                “They really are,” I agreed with a smile.