Born Free
It didn’t extend the text very much. It doesn’t let me move that column. Ah well.
For now I just want to point out that contrary to rumors, neither Greebo nor I are cyborgs.
And I don’t have a throne in my volcano lair.
Okay, so I MIGHT be slap happy.
I’ll post something real tomorrow.
So, what was the last writer of color you read?
Hint, the answer is “whatever writer you read last, since I’ve still to find a single transparent writer.” Which is good, since it would be disturbing. And I hope one of the last you read is this chick Sarah A. Hoyt and her novel Deep Pink(which is profoundly weird, yes, but come on you guys, if you didn’t like weird, you wouldn’t hang out around here, would you?)
Anyvay….. I swear there are people who never read a book trying to dictate not just what the rest of us MUST write, but also what the rest of us must read.
I thought the “challenge to read writers of color” was stupid enough when I first heard of it 10 years ago, but it’s only gotten stupider. Now entire writers’ organizations (puts hat to chest and holds a minute of silence for RWA. I’d do it for SFWA but RWA was once far more useful including teaching and mentoring stuff SFWA never had. Besides SFWA is long dead and rotting, so I’m going to edge away from the coffin.) are falling into this insanity. We’re hearing that BLIND-JUDGED-CONTESTS, where you can’t even guess at the name of the writer (and these days, honestly, it won’t help. I swear my kids, now mid to late twenties are the last properly spelled names in their generation.) are “racist.”
And we’re hearing that your novels must be “inclusive” and at the same time you can’t write anyone who isn’t exactly like you.
Seriously, how many cat-addicted Portuguese-born women can I write? (The person who just muttered he or she is waiting for me to write ONE can go to the corner without dinner AND without a book to read. I’m not saying I’ll never write someone with my background, but she won’t be ME. Mary Sues fail to interest me.)
They also think writers read only about characters just like them. And that if you aren’t actively seeking out writers “of color” (Well, you must tell me, chilluns, where you find transparent readers. Because I’m curious.) or giving awards to them, then you’re evil and racist.
This bullshit has gotten so bad that Stephen King himself has gotten out of his left-leaning tower that what matters, really, is the novel. Or the work of art. The actual writer is irrelevant.
He’s right you know? To this day it can’t be proven who Shakespeare was. Me, who studied the era, think that the Oxford theory is a bunch of elitist codswallop and that the Anne Hathaway/Queen Elizabeth theory is a bunch of feminist nonsense, for the Marlowe theory to work the man would have needed massive doses of thorazine which they didn’t have, and… But the truth is we don’t know. Was he actually gay and just married for show? We don’t know. Bisexual? Likely, but we don’t know. Did he identify as a winged dragon and an ornate building? We don’t know. Did he dress like a woman and hang out in bars? We don’t KNOW.
What we do know is that the characters and plots he created still speak to us across time and space and often in translation. The art lives, as the artist lies moldering in his grave. Or rather (as someone who as a kid played in some ancient stone mausoleums (what? you know you only didn’t do it because you didn’t have them. Amazing places for hide and seek with a side of making your cousin pee himself when you jump out.) probably mostly some musty-smelling dust.)
This is how people read. We don’t care what the writer looks like. Actors are a little different and we DO care because we have to look at their mugs. (And no, I’m not watching any historical dramas set in Europe with prominent people played by black actors. No, it’s not racist. It’s the fact I know history. You want an historical drama with black people? Set it in Africa. There weren’t many white people around.) But writers? People could be purple with pokadots. I don’t CARE.
Sure, if you’re writing about a village populated by Zulus, I care that you know what you’re talking about. That has zero to do with your skin color, and everything to do with research and sometimes (but not always) life experience.
I know I could have got a lot more publicity and push in my trad career if I’d written about Portugal. Double if I could write about victimhood.
The problem is writing about the REAL Portugal doesn’t translate well. When you think you’re being pretty sympathetic but realistic, people tell you that you’re a narrow minded pain in the ass (a rejection I once got for a story set in Portugal. And Larry and I still get bitching about the Portuguese scenes. Some of it from Portuguese. Don’t ask.) Because you don’t fit the American head-picture of Portugal.
I actually had to learn to write Americans, because of that. Okay, my contemporary Americans are odd, as in, see Dyce Dare, but then all my characters are odd.
Anyway, the point is the many people who read Dyce Dare, not a single one — not even on finding out who I really am — has given a good g*ddamn that I didn’t grow up in Colorado, with crazy parents who own a bookstore. (One out of three isn’t bad.)
People read novels for novels. If you read people’s skin, you …. are in a completely different sort of hobby.
I won’t claim that I write what sells. Me and salesmanship are rarely in the same zipcode at the same time. heck, my garage sales usually give stuff away because I don’t know how to sell.
Mostly I write because a character shows up in my head and says “Hey toots,” (My characters are very rude. Also the last one to say so was a cat. Yeah, yeah. Look for The Protectors Series later this year.) “write my story.” That’s it. And because I’m assured that if I let the books build up forever, they will drive me insane(r).
I write because I like telling stories. Which means… I don’t know. That I’m a traitor to my gender and skin color, not to mention genetic origin? Bah. I can’t betray things I have no allegiance for. Sure, all of them influenced who I am, and I’m assured my voice is unique (most used word in my reviews. It’s probably not a good thing.)
BUT most of all? I write because I must, and I hope people enjoy it.
I’m very proud of my award wins, mostly because neither award gives a flying flick about people’s skin color and orientation, age and nationality, or any of that.
For all of those clamoring that we must give awards “properly” by skin color and other characteristics that have bloody nothing to do with writing: I’m a first generation immigrant, a woman of (tan. The paintchip says spun gold) color, writing in my third language and from my own “unique” perspective.
What do I hear when people tell me one must read writers by color and other such characteristics, including but not limited to whom they sleep with? What do I hear when I’m told we must give awards to more people like that? Even though NO ONE can tell the color of a writer unless they employ extraordinary effort and search engines?
I hear “You poor little thing. We know you’re not as capable as male, white people, and those who speak English natively. And we want to give you an A for effort.”
My answer to such racist, sexist, demeaning bullsh*t is and will remain “Gaze upon my middle fingers. Behold! I have a matched set.”
I don’t have any pictures with Mike Resnick. This is because our acquaintance and elbow rubbing at cons dates back from when all our pictures were in actual paper.
Which is to say, I PROBABLY have pictures with Mike Resnick, but our box of pictures (I know, other people put them in albums) hasn’t surfaced since we moved. (It’s probably in the storage room or the garage. I want to find them before mice or flood get them, so we can have them digitized for the kids.)
Weirdly, the moment I heard he’d died, the first thing I thought is that I’d never got to keep my promise to belly dance for him.
Which is stupid, because unless I lose another thirty pounds (hey, it was eighty early last year) no one wants to see THAT.
But finding he’d died was a shock, and people think weird things when shocked. I knew he was very ill, but I had no clue of the gravity of it. This is happening a lot these days, because you know, in a way the science fiction world has fractured. Part of it is politics which have torn asunder what used to be a network of acquaintance and friendship. I personally have lost a lot of the first friends I made among my colleagues who now think I’m insane, while I can’t figure out where their logical thinking went. I mean, I knew we always disagreed on political principals, but that’s not the same as disagreeing that everyone should have what my friend Dave Freer calls “a fair go” and be treated decently. This broke a lot of long running mailings lists where pros communicated. The other part of it has been SFWA beclowning itself to the point that most of us walked away in disgust. SFWA used to be, if nothing else — and it really was very little else, since SF geeks never could figure out how to make it work as a professional organization, partly due to the weirdness of the business itself — a good mailing list/reference to figure out “where so and so is now.”
Of course, when I sold my first novel in 98, we relied on the pony express for communication, so we might not know someone had died till the new edition of the directory listed his properties as “estate of.”
The other part of losing track of everyone has been the (good) collapse of the gatekeepers. These days I might not know of a major seller, even in my favorite subgenre, until I get one of his/her books and realize they have twenty out and their reviews run into the mid-hundreds.
It was easier to form mailing lists and associations of writers when every break-in was announced in Locus.
Actually when I first broke in, I was almost immediately pulled into a mailing list with a lot of professionals, including — of course — Mike Resnick. Very cautiously and tentatively, we used the list to communicate which publishers not to trust, how someone had got shafted and also what publisher x was looking for this season. Cautiously and tentati
I’d met him in person before. I believe it was at my first Worldcon, Dan and I went to a launch party, and right now I can’t remember for which book. He’d had a lot of t-shirts, shorts and other swag printed with the cover of the book. They were free for the picking, and I got a shirt and Dan got a pair of shorts, and Mike, good humored, signed them. Which is why they’re still in (a different box of) keepsakes, in my closet. As he finished signing them, Dan — who is the more normal of the two of us and is sometimes afflicted with a sense of property said — “I wish I’d brought a bag. When we get in the elevator, people are going to think we undressed you.” Which of course got Mike laughing and explaining he never signed his own clothes. One conversational gambit led to another, and I told him I was taking belly dancing classes to lose pregnancy fat. He had belly dancers at his party and was amused with the idea of a writer who also belly danced, so he said next party I’d have to dance.
I’m sure some of the idiot younglings are clutching their #metoo stuffed dolls at the remark, but it wasn’t in the slightest lecherous. He just gathered I was shy about dancing in public, but wanted to, and was trying to do what he could to encourage me.
Health, and hypothyroidism putting weight on me made me give up the hobby. As did the fracturing (though not precisely breaking) of the friendship with the person who shared the hobby. (Um…. I’m ten pounds from the weight at which I can comfortably run, though of course I want to, running being addictive. Maybe belly dancing might be resumed.)
I’ll just note that as recently as five years ago, Mike did the same thing encouraging me to write/start a series that I was very scared of doing because “people will hate it” because he KNEW I really wanted to do it and would never forgive myself if I didn’t. (No, I haven’t yet. Some of you know it as “WWI dragons series.” It will come. The health means a lot of things got shelved, and even at an insane pace, I can only write so much. Even now that I’m writing. Don’t worry. I have a schedule.)
Anyway, I’d of course read Mike. In fact he had a whole shelf of our sf book case. He was one of those writers Dan found, then passed to me. I knew he was brilliant writer.
Which is why it came as a surprise, in the list we were at, to hear him speaking frankly on such things as “make a fortune first, then work at your field. Not only can’t you really make a living from writing at least at first, but it will give you the security to write whatever you want.”
Honestly, if I didn’t have the kids and there weren’t some issues with the only means by which I could make enough money to be “rich” — scientific translation — that was at the time only really available in certain areas of the country, for instance, I SHOULD have taken his advice.
But when we break in, of course at the back of our brains, no matter how unacknowledged, we know we’re going to hit science fiction like a freight train and everyone will bow down to our brilliance, and we’ll be sleeping on a bed of gold.
Without really ever smacking my young and impudent nose, Mike made sure I — and other beginners — knew through his stories that there were accommodations that needed to be made to be a professional sf/f writer. He was frank about at one time having written uh…. salacious stuff (yeah, I’m totally a prude. Actually I don’t want to go into details) and being paid by the line. He also made it clear that the lot of even the best seller in our weird niche field was to spend his or her time “running scared.” Because you never knew whether the next book would sell, or even if this amazing thing in your head would interest any editors enough to be published.
He was kind, unstinting with advice, and treated the raw newby I was as a seasoned professional.
What stands out to me is a dimly remembered conversation in which someone asked if he’d made his fortune before writing, why writing? and why SF?
And the answer was because he loved it. Because he needed to.
He hasn’t been dead very long. I still feel a little shocked. I’d have written this earlier, except that stomach flu made it hard to write coherently.
In my favorite Don Camillo books by Giovanni Guareschi one of the… devices? is that when the priest is going to hear something particularly distressing or enraging, G-d in his mercy strikes him down with a fever, so he can’t process things, and once he emerges the feelings are muted.
I might have emerged too early. The same insane harpies who had to smear Mike Resnick while he was alive — mostly because they wanted control of the SFWA bulletin and organization — were out and spreading their scat on the man’s reputation yesterday. I won’t name them, since their foremost quality is to be entirely forgettable, even in villainy.
They won’t harm Mike. He’s now in the same company as Heinlein, whom they’ve been vilifying in vain for years. Heck, he’s in the same company with Tolkien, whom they’re also trying (poor fools) to cut down to size.
Their problem, you see, is what I said above. We all come into the field thinking we’re the bestest thing since sliced break with the bestest butter. And slowly we learn the limits of our talent and our ability, and our will power that keeps nose to grindstone.
I had some idea, to be fair, because I’d read a lot in the field. My rational mind knew I’d never be one of the giants, but that’s okay because I knew giants existed.
I think these younger people come into the field without reading much of it, and lacking mentors like Mike to teach them that “rapid enrichment” cannot be your measure of success. Sure, it happens to a precious few, but for most of us, when it happens is after 20 or more years of slogging.
And it can’t be immediate acclaim. That too has to earned.
So, the children who know no better corrupt institutions to gain “power” and “recognition” and police everyone’s language and thought to ensure they have “respect.” As in the case of most people who demand respect they don’t even understand what it is or where it comes from. And their takeovers are always an instance of confusing the wrapping for the gift.
Mike…. was the real thing. The wrapping doesn’t matter. And no matter how much they try to cut him down at the knees, he will loom to generations of science fiction readers as a giant whose shadow cannot be avoided.
Yes, I know it is my age, but it also perhaps the “diminishing” of the field in character and personality. I feel as though all the stars are going out, and all that’s left are we, poor candles, insufficiently pushing back the darkness.
I won’t say we will not see his kind again. After the great technological upheaval our field will settle in new patterns and there will mentoring, mentored, and people who worked so hard to break in that they love the field as much as Mike did.
But that won’t be for a long while. And none of them will ever replace his memory as writer, editor and mentor. His example remains something we’ll all have to measure up against.
Those who step up have a chance of growing in stature, to the limit of their ability. Those who, by reviling him, think they’re making him smaller, will in the end only succeed in defeating themselves.
Farewell, Mike. I’m glad I got to know you and benefit from your wisdom and advice and your reminiscences of the field. They were particularly precious for someone like me who grew up in a completely different culture and came into the field with no real attachments or contacts.
If there’s an ever after and such things are allowed, I’ll procure a belly dancing outfit. Or whatever it is on that side. Perhaps it is showing you some new and startling world that I really want to help create but I’m afraid to. Who knows? (I just don’t believe the capacity to create will be utterly snuffed out. Or that Himself would want such an outcome.)
Meanwhile, while on this side, I’ll try to remember how you encouraged me and draw courage from it. And I’ll try to live up to your example of dedication and love for the field.
It’s a promise.
*First an update on Hoytness: I’m ALMOST normal. This is the dangerous part of getting better, because I’m impatient. I never dusted or vacuumed for instance, and the temptation is “I feel better. Let’s do it.” Similarly it’s a beautiful day (and last week wasn’t) and my mind is going “I want to go for a walk.” But if I do make too much physical (or even mental, to be honest) effort, I’m going to end up sick again. And I don’t want to do that.
Meanwhile Euclid is eating, but his mind is obviously not right. We have him confined, because he was peeing/pooping wherever, but in the boarding cage where we keep him, he’s been okay, because the box is RIGHT THERE. Now he is pooping in the box, but OBSESSIVELY peeing on one of his “shelves” on the comfy (and expensive) blanket. If I remove it, he just pees on the shelf. Thing is, it’s not smell, it’s position. I’ve changed the shelves, he still goes on that one. This isn’t right. Also, yesterday we left the cage door open while we cleaned and did other stuff. He didn’t even try to get out. (We still close it because other cats would get in, eat his food and possibly beat him.) I honestly don’t know what to make of that. But he’s acting more lively and engaged with us. (Which still isn’t much) and for now we’re considering that “Palliative care.” It will do. For now. – SAH)
*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog. Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so. As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste. If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*
(Note, I’m trying out a new, less work-intensive way to post these books. If the stuff above is just blank squares, don’t worry, I’ll be fixing it after I get another coffee. Sometimes stuff shows like that, but it’s fine in the last posting. We’ll see. AND posting STRIPS it. I guess hosting a completely not native HTML thing is something that being hosted by wordpress forbids. Sigh. Okay, old school now:)
FROM SAM SCHALL: Fire from Ashes (Honor & Duty Book 4)
At war with an old enemy, betrayed by a supposed ally, Fuercon is a system on the brink of disaster. All that stands between it and defeat are its Space Navy and Marines – and the fact the betrayer does not yet know its secret plans have been discovered. But will that be enough to turn the tide of war?
Honor and duty.
FROM KARL K. GALLAGHER: The War Revealed (The Lost War Book 2)
Newman and Goldenrod survived landing in a monster-infested wilderness. Their group of historical reenactors no longer fears starvation. But can they control the magic powers people are developing? Discover how they were transported there? And stay safe from the orcs and dragons?
***
“Karl Gallagher’s first production, the Torchship Trilogy, was good enough so that I read and reread it. He has now turned his hand from science fiction to fantasy.”
– Professor David D. Friedman, Professor, Santa Clara University, author of The Machinery of Freedom and Salamander
– Also known as Duke Cariadoc of the Bow, KSCA, OL, OP, founder of Pennsic War
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: All in Good Time (April Book 11)
Living by bad neighbors is hard. Especially when there is a whole mob of them. Needing to do business with them makes it harder. Imagine nine billion noisy disrespectful neighbors who can’t keep their word and would be just as happy to see you dead.
The orbital nation of Home moved the fence line a little by moving from Low Earth Orbit to beyond the Moon, but the Slumball, Earth, is still a just few light seconds away and thoroughly unpredictable.
April and her partners Heather and Jeff know they need an entirely new neighborhood far away. Their superluminal drive will let them do that. It’s better than anything the Earthies have. They have just started learning to use it and explore both its capabilities and the nearby stars. They don’t want to jump out too far too soon and disappear inexplicably like the Earthies’ first starship the Pedro Escobar did.
Starships aren’t cheap and they have two now and a sort of lifeboat. They’ll need more and a lot more trained crew. Right now, they need to gather resources including money. They’ll do business with the Earthies to do that, but there are real limits how much crap April will put up with for their support. Such as if they kidnap her banker friend. They haven’t found anywhere men could live or full of valuable resources yet but they haven’t lost hope of doing so and expect to make it all work in good time.
And, oh, yeah, I did a thing. I’m memeing Deep Pink to promo it. Yeah this one isn’t deeply artistic. I was feeling like crud and this is the best I could do. Still (I hope) funny. FB is still throttling the link, so if you guys want to disseminate the meme, MUCH appreciated. And not just on FB, of course.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: POINT
The title of the post says it all. I’m much better. I’ll do your promo and challenge vignettes tomorrow.
Right now, I’m trying to do three overdue short stories, and … well…. catch up on everything I didn’t do yesterday.
Not completely well, yet, and feel like sleeping rather a lot, but that’s acceptable. So, I’m going to try to do the shorts and hope I can get through them.
Probably not, to be honest. Probably going to finish them by mid week. Which is annoying because that’s also, probably, when I’ll be sending Other Rhodes to the betas, which I meant to have done…. oh, on the 1st. I feel like this year is already at least six months long.
Well, this too shall pass, and as RES didn’t put it but implied, it was my own stupid fault for thinking stomach flu was a good decision. ;)
I still have no clue what to do about Euclid. We’re well into the land of mixed signals. Yesterday, for the first time in several days, he asked for second dinner (and got it.) Today, he’s just sleeping, and had maybe a mouthful of food. Sigh. I don’t know what to do. Other than love him, pet him, and keep waiting for a clear signal one way or another.
Ah well. I scheduled a ridiculous number of books for this year, and if at least half of them get done, I’ll be okay. And short story invites — warning to everyone out there who might ask me — from now on get accepted (if at all. Unless you’re Hank or Correia or Ringo or someone else who pays on delivery) on a conditional basis. As in “Your theme sounds interesting. Tell me the due date, and I’ll try” because last year, through a confluence of being sick/the family needing me/and having accepted more invites than are good for me and not wanting to disappoint anyone, I ended up blocking myself from novels, and not doing anything for months (because I didn’t have ideas for the shorts, but they were due) then spending two weeks frantically writing short stories. Let’s admit this is not good for anyone, myself or the editors. So, in the future the policy is “Tentatively interested. Perhaps.” UNLESS of course, you pay up front, or I’ve worked with you in the past, and the story really INTERESTS me. For instance, this anthology has…. uh…. blinks…. paid more than I expected. (And it’s on sale for 99c, so this is a good time to get it.)
Actually that’s how I got myself into that particular fine mess, because though 6 months delayed, the “no pay upfront” anthos are paying as much (or often more) as the traditional short story market. On the other hand, as my husband reminded me this weekend (the poor man is not only the voice of reason, he’s also often my conscience AND my um “artistic guidance” [Uncomfortable with this term, because I’m not sure I’m an artist so much as a craftswoman, even if what I work with is words and pictures] It’s a lot of jobs) I am indie.
Or, as he put it, after 20 years in the Egypt of traditional publishing, often being required to make bricks without straw (and a few times with no clay) and whenever they were due, I’m now free. Now whether I’m free to starve in the desert remains to be seen, but at least I shouldn’t have to produce something arbitrarily on a theme that’s not in mind at the moment just because it’s impacting someone else, and I promised.
He has a point, which is why — though not refusing to write more short stories, because eh, they’re good promo and also they pay twice, as eventually I assemble a collection of that year’s shorts — I need to be more selective in accepting invites.
I see this is has turned into a state of the writer post.
The state of the writer is still mildly urky, but mostly exhausted, with a chance of some writing, though so far not a ton, and great annoyance at having to manage herself.
You know how it goes, working for yourself is great, but the boss is a b*tch/bastage. Eh.
Sometime this week I’ll bring out paper of Deep Pink, and then there will be a contest for signed paper copies. Might do some other books, too.
For now, though, I think I need a nap.
Turns out I have stomach flu. The good news is I’m (probably) not dying. The bad news?
ICK.
Today I must clean, which is annoying.
And I have to write, because this week wasn’t good.
So, today, be like Greebo. Take care of business….
I am not dead. Love you.
The world needs heroes.
If we learned nothing else over the last couple of weeks, it should be just how badly our world needs heroes. After all, the events in a church in White Settlement, TX illustrates just how important heroes are. One of that particular breed put the shotgun-wielding maniac down in just six seconds. Countless lives were spared.
Yet our society often denigrates the hero. Our fiction is filled with not just anti-heroes, but the non-heroic protagonist. Yes, I’m speaking to the male type of hero here, not because of some sense of sexism, but for other reasons which shall become clear in a moment.
And honestly, that’s perhaps the biggest reason we sometimes feel like we live in a world without heroes.
To be fair, we don’t. There are heroes out there aplenty. They’re your neighbor or co-worker, your husband or brother. They’re people who stepped up in the aftermath of 9/11 and went to war with the forces of evil.
But once those folks are out of the game, they often go back to being meek and mild.
That’s not surprising. After all, our society tells them that’s what they should be. Some reject that, but many more don’t. In fiction, that’s brought about by the fact that real, pure heroes are a thing of the past, something relegated to the dustbin of history.
Some will argue that art follows life, and to some extent that’s true.
However, life also follows art.
What’s more, we all know that the left knows this. They know it with a burning passion, which is why it’s so important for them to use art to undermine the institutions that they find antithetical to their Marxist positions. They undermine tradition, family, and yes, heroism.
They prefer moral ambiguity not because sometimes that’s part of life—it is, but not nearly as often as they like to pretend it is—but because it undermines the idea that sometimes life is black and white, that there are good guys and bad guys, and that it’s not always necessary to look at something from a different perspective.
As such, the push for years is the “morally-complex hero,” the guy who is neither good nor bad. He simply exists.
While it’s perfectly acceptable for a female protagonist to be unambiguously good, the same isn’t true about male protagonists. Then again, we live in a world where masculine virtues are denigrated and ignored. Whether this is a case of art following life or the other way around is largely irrelevant at this point.
What isn’t irrelevant is that a change is desperately needed.
The shooting in Texas illustrates quite well that a good guy can stop a rampaging scumbag if given the opportunity, but we never should have allowed our society to get to the point where we had any doubt that such a thing was true.
We need more heroes.
The easiest place to start that, though, is in fiction. Much as I love Liam Neeson’s character in Taken or the incomparable John Wick, both are men who do some pretty sketchy things in their lives. While I would never remove them from popular culture, there’s something to be said about the unambiguous hero as well.
I honestly think that half the reason Harry Potter did so well was that Harry wasn’t some little prat going on that he was the chosen one simply because Rowling wanted to give him some depth. Instead, he’s a kind, sweet kid who while less than perfect is still someone fans can root for.
Owen Pitt of Monster Hunter International isn’t perfect either, but he’s a genuine hero with little moral ambiguity. In the first book, his most jerk-faced moment was tossing Grant into shark-filled water. However, he’d forgotten about the sharks, so it was a mistake, but not a lack of morals that dictated the actions.
Our own esteemed hostess has a whole slew of legitimately heroic characters in her Shifter books (which I want to read more of [hint hint]) where they’re not perfect, but they’re not immoral simply because someone thinks that’s what it takes to make interesting characters. [The DST books too, Tom. Read that while you wait for Shifters to get rebooted somewhere around the middle of the year!-SAH]
The problem is, there aren’t a lot of them.
Now, I have little doubt this crowd can name a pile of them, both from the golden age and from more recent works. Please do, in fact.
However, the truth is that so many of our heroes aren’t just heroes. As a result, so many men aren’t valuing heroism.
So the place to start is in our fiction. Let’s stop vilifying men and making them less than heroic simply to score political points. The existence of strong men doesn’t negate the existence of strong women. The presence of strong men doesn’t immediately place them at odds with strong women either. The two can co-exist on the page just as easily as they do in reality. [In fact, strong men tend to like strong women and vice versa.- SAH]
We need them, though, because as Sarah has pointed out before, storytelling is an integral part of being human. Stories fill us and guide us. They teach us what is acceptable and what isn’t. Fable, parables, chivalric romances, are all basically just stories meant to instruct us as to the proper mode of behavior.
Stories do more than entertain us or inspire us, they teach us. They instruct us how to be better people. [Or, unfortunately, worse people, as we have proof daily – SAH] They always have, which is why holy books aren’t just dull lists of things to do and things not to do. They’re instead filled with lessons in story form because our minds are just simply better at remembering those.
As such, we need those stories of heroic deeds and heroic men as a way to help guide us as a people.
While I enjoy a good anti-hero as much as anyone, it’s time to dial that back as a society. Instead, let’s bring back the heroes of yesteryear. [And learn to be fearless and brave in defense of the people and things we love again. YAY – SAH]
You can click on the image above to buy Tom’s book, The Last Champion, or click on the title link.
There was a time with Adam in the garden
When the beasts walked beside him in trust
And they all talked, because all had voice
Before the fall
Bird and lion, elephant and hyena
All came to hear the Man’s Counsel
For he was favored and could
Give them names
And tell them what they were
(And here you must understand, it wasn’t Adam as Adam
It wasn’t a garden as a garden
And the beasts too, were not quite beasts
These are ideas outside all we know
And outside time and space as our poor senses
Feel them.
But in the poor words we have, it was Adam
And beasts in a garden.)
But in that day when he sinned and he fell
As the angel held the sword and pointed
Adam and his crying wife to the hard realm
Of Earth, to earn their living with the sweat
Of their brow
Only three went before the Maker
And said, “Give us to him, Oh, Lord
Who is our Friend and who has Named us.
We know through him all have fallen
And all must go
To that harsh place where flesh eats flesh
And nature is red in tooth and claw
Grant us only to go with him
And be his helpers.
Let him shape us and change us
To his need.
Grant only that we may serve
His needs and ease his way.
His and his children
Till the end of time”
“But I cannot, the Lord said
Give to you his inheritance of eternity
That is his and his children’s.”
“We know, they said. And we do not
Ask that.
Only the joy to serve, the right to protect
To carry, to love, to comfort
To help in his toil, and keep away
Predators and vermin which would hurt
Him.”
Face with that love, at which even some
Angels failed
The Lord said “So be it. You will be Adam’s
And his progeny forever
To change and shape
To conform and to use.
But for your love, I will add
That through him and his you may
Join in eternity
With those humans who loved and
Whom you loved.”
And so, horse, dog and cat
All different from what they
Once were
Go with humanity through
Good times and bad
They carry and they hunt
And guard the graneries
And tame giant and house wolf
And house panther, they lick away our tears
And mend our hearts and love us without
Demanding anything in return
And through some great and imutable
Magic have they shaped us
As much as we have them
And made us human
Because being human is not walking
On two legs, or making tools
Or even striking fire from the inert wood
Being human is loving your companions
So a spark of your heart goes with them
And opens for them the gates of the eternal
Land
Where they’ll wait in perfect love
Until you come
(A very bad poem, on the occasion of Euclid-cat, my tame house-panther, refusing to eat, and after our twenty years together, the time coming when — if this doesn’t reverse — we will part this week or next. The picture is him (the black one) and his best friend, D’Artagnan (son’s cat) who is dying of renal failure. I have a feeling when one lets go, the other will also, and that they will walk the rainbow road together to that place where there’s no more pain. Where they will wait us and we’ll come in what will seem no more than an eye-blink to them.
Like Heinlein, I’m never quite sure there is an afterwards, or its boundaries, or even that I’m worthy of it. But the one thing I know is that in a well-designed universe, perfect love will not simply vanish.)
Sometimes the crazy is so crazy I don’t even know what to do about it.
For instance, even what is nominally OUR political side was posting “start world war III” memes on facebook. Yeah, I get you, I get you, some were really funny. But here’s the thing, they’re also truly, bizarrely, outlandishly crazy.
Why? Because there is no path, as things are right now, for the thing with Iran to start anything like WWIII. While Iran is an oil producer, its capacity is kind of diminished in recent years, and in any case, there is no way that Europe, much less Russia and China are going tow ar against us over Iran, of all places.
Yeah, yeah, joint military exercises. Those have been planned for months, and at any rate, one thing is to have a joint military exercise with your crazy cousin, to show the rest of the neighborhood you’re totally friends. Another is to actually go to war with the big kids in the neighborhood, whom your cousin has been throwing rocks on for years, to defend your cousin’s putative sanity or honor or something. In the long run? Iran isn’t even that hard to defeat. Also, it lost its best friend, funder and supporter when Obama left the White House.
As for running around with your hair on fire, because Trump engaged in “assassination” of a foreign leader: if you are Rand Paul you’re allowed to do that. Why? Because he also bitched, loudly and often about Obama’s happy go lucky murder by Drone. But even he should take a powder on this one for various reasons (he won’t. Big L Libertarians share with liberals the belief that the rest of the world are big, harmless teddy bears and that if the US doesn’t commit violence no one will attack us. Also the belief that if we don’t retaliate, the crazies of the world won’t attack again. Look, I don’t get it either. All I can say is that they must have grown up in a much more…. sheltered neighborhood than the one I grew up in. There you learned quickly that it doesn’t matter how peaceful you are. There’s always a crazy bully who’ll attack you because you nostriled at them wrong.) The main reasons being that this was an enemy combatant in a war zone. That he was actually part of the military of another country (a part of the military devoted by that country to actions abroad) doesn’t make it better. This is not a case of “oh, they’re just invading this country, still, at least nominally, under our protection, so we’re not allowed to shoot them.” No. It is very much a case of good riddance to bad rubbish. Where he’s going he won’t terrorize any more innocents.
Yes, I understand, technically — but not happily — that we can’t simply drone Maduro, blow up Evil Chinese Winnie the Pooh or take the mullahs out one by one. I do understand that it might have horrible international implications. (But what if we did them all at once, on camera, and laughed maniacally while we did it? Oh, come on. Surely there’s an insanity defense for nations. Like nuking the moon, but more so. Okay, yes, yes, I know. But my inner 13 year old DOESN’T. Deal.)
However, if one of those…. ah…. gentlemen were in a theater of war in a country we’re obligated to protect, for the sole reason of attacking us, if he had in fact led an attack on our embassy? Yep. Perfectly all right to drone the SOB. Much more so than most instances of death by drone under Obama. (And incidentally, can we convince those people to attack our embassies? in person? Because…. Okay fine. I get it. No. I get it. Being adult means you never get to have any fun. I’ll be sulking here, but I totally get it.)
Then come the bed wetters and nail biters who are afraid, somehow, this will personally lead to their deaths, unless they apologize to Iran right now and tell them how sorry they are.
Look, it’s mean to make fun of the terminally neurotic. But I’m going to assume, again, they came from a neighborhood where there was no interpersonal violence among the young. Because if they’d ever been through group wars, they’d know telling the other group “please don’t attack us” is what will MAKE THEM ATTACK YOU. Because it makes you sound weak. Which, of course, you are, but it doesn’t mean the US is. Pull your socks up, stop sniveling, and for the love of heaven, talk to someone over 55, who remembers when Iran took over our embassy and held our people hostage while Jimmah fiddled. Ask him about all the times that Iran screamed “Death to America.” Their claim now that they only hate Trump is either disingenuous or an admission that they have invented a time machine. Which do you think is more likely?
And what do you think their plans for YOU are if they get Trump out of the way?
Grow up. I know five year olds in tough neighborhoods with more intestinal fortitude than you display, and more strategic thinking too.
The fact is, you moral cowards and wretched snivelers are only going to lead Iran to attack us again (as they did tonight) because since the media amplifies your whining, screaming, and temper tantrums, Iran will assume that we’re all in agreement with you and won’t let meaneviltrump hit them again.
Which means they’re going to attack instead of surrendering, thinking they can win this, to the glory of the caliphate. Or something. And then we’re going to really, really hurt them. We’ll probably shut down their oil business, which means they’ll have to eat sand. Not to mention that no matter how targeted, SOME innocents will be caught by our retaliation.
If that’s what you want: to increase casualties as much as possible, most of them amid Iranians, carry on. You’re on the right course.
If not, have some milk and cookies and take a coloring book to bed. When you’re old enough to read about strategy and history and to fully comprehend foreign cultures are different from us, and that Middle Eastern Cultures are very very different, we can talk again.
Then there’s the kids. Okay, I was going to say it’s not fair to laugh at the maleducated young. But the truth is, if they are as ridiculous as we were at their age, before we shed all the cr*p they taught us in high school (and double for college) they need to be laughed at. It is the sound of unbridled guffaws as you state the very important opinions TM you acquired from your teachers and professors that often cause you to reconsider that they might not be in line with reality. Right?
So, let’s laugh at them.
The young people are running around wearing la chevelure en flambe this season are afraid… wait for it… of being drafted.
It’s okay, it’s okay. I swear I’m okay to type. I’m sorry. Did my laughter alarm you?
Yes, I know they’re being scared by the dems, who have one play book: “Hey, in the sixties, we got the young people on our side by threatening them with the draft. Let’s do it again.” The dems are so much like the Iranians in that each has only one play in their playbook — we’re pissed off at America. Let’s find the nearest US embassy and attack it — that I’m not surprised the Dems are defending the Iranians.
But the truth is both embassy attacks and the draft are contingent on the conditions at that time. The Iranians made the fatal mistake of thinking Trump is Obama. (I guess all Americans look alike to them.) And the dems… never mind. They are managing to scare the young people…
So, listen you young idiots: contrary to what the Dems tell you, in the 21st century, war is rarely a matter of warm bodies. I will grant you if we were fighting China, we might need a lot of warm bodies, because they have a lot of warm bodies. But even that is highly unlikely. Unless we have a dem president who hampers us and puts both our military legs and one arm in a sack, we’re unlikely to need to overwhelm the Chinese with your skinny bodies. We’re more likely to fight them with technology. You see, we have an advantage over them. Our tech tends to work.
I’m not saying that should we get in a real pinch people won’t be drafted. But if they are, it will be a selective draft. The new, technologically equipped armed services aren’t likely to need to recruit ten underweight barristas and five overweight computer gamers. Actually, of the two the computer gamers are more likely to be needed, but it’s still not likely.
If they need people, it will be “We need five civil engineers, ten mechanical engineers, and 20 medically trained people in this age range.”
The era of the warm bodies sent to war to become cool bodies has passed. I understand that the dems think progress is moving steadily towards the 1930s, but it ain’t gonna happen, and war is very different now.
Before they get to you they’ll call back all the reserves (and we have a lot) and a lot of the veterans.
If they ever need to call you up in batch lots, it is because some virus has decimated most of the fighting age population of the US, while leaving say China and Russia intact. And honestly, if we get to that point, I’ll set my hair on fire myself. Because outside of a John Ringo novel, that war is already lost.
So put out the fire in your hair. Relax. No, the missiles flying tonight are NOT a sign that Donald Trump should not have killed Al Soleimani. It might be a sign that your bizarre displays of childishness has convinced Iran that the US is ripe for the plucking. But I don’t even think that. I think these were pre-planned actions. They were going to hit us anyway. These things take time to plan, you know?
The only way to prevent this from going on is to not ignore that Iran has been at war with us since 79. Wars don’t end when one side stops fighting. Unless that side surrenders. And I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of living under the mad mullahs.
No, wars end when we take away the other country’s ability to keep attacking us. If in the process we liberate the long suffering Iranian people from their Mad Mullah oppressors? Bonus.
But I don’t like foreign adventurism. And honestly? This is a tiny skirmish. If we get the fifth column to shut up for ten minutes, it will be over.
Put out the fire in your hair. You’re disturbing me while I’m eating popcorn waiting for the whole impeachment farce to collapse.
Iran? Meh. We’ll get this shut down, whether Nancy likes it or not. (She doesn’t. No president without a D after his name is allowed to kill foreign enemies.)
But at least now, the actual enemy in our midst has self-identified. It’s not nothing.
According To Hoyt 