Straying Dangerously Close to a Worthwhile Topic

     I wasn’t going to write anything more related to Hunger Games, but then I stumbled across some nonsense regarding complaints about Rue’s casting. And damned if my English major siren didn’t kick on full-blast and make me write a post.

     As mentioned before, being an English major—especially at a small, private liberal arts college—was more about white¹ guilt than literature. At the undergraduate level, analyzing literature doesn’t mean a thang unless it involves delving into social undertones.

     Here, I’ll save you four years of term papers and break it down for you: all nonwhite characters written by white authors are indicators of some subtle form of racism².

     For example, if you were reading Hunger Games in American Lit 101, you would be talking about how the only overtly “dark-skinned” characters are from an agricultural district, harkening back to the time of slaves working the field. Then the discussion would turn to whether or not the author intended this as some kind of political statement, or if it was just a random detail that implies a much more innate form of racism³. Oh, wait. It already has.

     What really makes me wonder is when I look back at my own writing. I have completed two novels to date, and both of them are rife with nonwhites. Of the four protagonists of Reign of Rezal, one is Japanese and the other is ambiguously “dark-skinned.” Piercing the Sphere is a little trickier since it is a fantasy novel set in a made-up world—there isn’t an Africa, but there is a continent called Tholos that is largely swamp and jungle and located near the Equator; therefore the natives have darker skin. But again, of the four(ish) characters who I would consider top-tier, one is “Asian,” one is “black,” one is mixed, and only the fourth has “pale skin.”

     The big question I find myself asking⁴ is why. Honestly, I never really considered it during the writing process itself. As the characters formed themselves in my head, they just had backgrounds and characteristics that dropped them into racial groups. That sounds like a cop-out, I know, but it’s the truth. I don’t know why I came to envision them the way I did. The name Vincent Yamashita (from RoR) got stuck in my head from somewhere at some point during college, so I guess that set his race. In PtS… well, it was relevant to have some of the characters come from different lands. But, again, this is a made-up world. Hell, Ireland seemed like a far-off land full of a new race of people to the ancient Britons. So clearly I could have “foreigners” without changing their color.

     Really the question we should be asking is: does it matter? Especially in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, where the story is mostly not set in our current world, should we still care about our contemporary concepts of race and nationality? I like to play a game called “Replace the Race,” personally. Take characters from a book or movie you like (or have written), and swap around their physical characteristics so that they could be a different race. Does it change the story in any truly fundamental way? If so, why? If not, why? In either case, who really gives a damn?

¹ Correction: straight white male guilt

² Again, you can substitute for gender, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever other minority you wish.

³ “Well of course they work in the field. They’re black! What else would they be capable of doing?” says the Suzanne Collins’ theoretical subconscious racist

⁴ Yes, I’m asking myself questions.

Should've been "blood of a pomeranian"...I hate those things

     I'm thinking Wednesday is going to be "comics and/or other random crap I made a while ago because I'm running low on imagination in the middle of  the week" day. Behold:

     What I realize now, though, is that these comics are really inside-jokey. I mean, you have to know a lot about the Cthulhu Mythos if you want to understand the punchlines. For example, the Zanthu tablets are a type of "tome," carved onto jade that outline the history of the lost continent of Mu. In the world of Cthulhu, they would be obviously priceless, hence the comedic notion that some idiotic college kid would just have one stuffed under his furniture.
     Anyway, stay tuned for Friday's update, in which we will discuss something more intellectually stimulating. Class dismissed.

Date Night

     My wife and I had a "date night" of sorts this last Saturday. We saw Hunger Games and then went to dinner. The evening brought many revelations.

     1) Hunger Games is really not just a ripoff of Battle Royale or anything like that. Yes, there is a similar premise with the arena and kids killing each other, but the plot really has more in common with 1984 than Lord of the Flies. I was definitely one of those people who was poo-pooing¹ the franchise before, so this is my official retraction. I should know, as a writer, how impossible it is to come with a truly original story. Essentially, there are no "new" plots out there. Everything is a variation of something else. We haven't had a ground-breaking, mold-shattering, genre-birthing piece in centuries. It's just as bad in other media, too. When was the last time you heard a song that was anything more than just a mutation of another genre that's been around for decades²? There’s nothing new under the sun³, people, so give it a rest.

     2) I will end up paying full price to see two whole movies this year: Hunger Games and Avengers. It’s going to be a banner season. Before this, the last movie we went to see on opening weekend was the last Harry Potter movie. It has to be something special if I’m willing to plop down $9 a ticket (and that’s matinee prices, remember). Otherwise, I’ll either catch it at the dollar-theater or wait for Netflix to get hold of it.

     3) We are lame enough people that going to see a matinee in the mall and getting dinner at the food court counts as a date night. And yes, we were home before 8 pm and asleep before 11.

     4) Eating cheesesteak from said food court will make fire shoot out of my ass. Not recommended.

¹ There’s a joke here, I’m just missing it...

² I’m talking about real music here, not some art-house mess of noise that college kids whip up “because they can.” Painting a blue strip on a brown canvas and giving it a pretentious title like My Parents Told Me I’d Never Make It as a Painter isn’t art, and ten minutes of static isn’t music.

³ That’s, like, from the Bible, or something. Ain’t I profound?

Writer's Block

     As all writers do at some point in their life, I have been struggling with some blockage as of late. It’s a little different for everybody; for me, writer’s block manifests as a lack of specific motivation. I want to want to write, and I have many ideas and many projects in a partially-completed status, but I have a hard time making myself sit down and get anything done.

     I have had some success with what I call the Forced Creativity method, where I make myself write a few pages, even if I do later decide that it’s all uninspired garbage. The theory behind this method is best described—by Mercedes Lackey, I think¹—with the reasoning that if you want writing to be your job, you have to treat it like a job. I.e., spend the majority of your day at it. And it would seem to work, since Ms. Lackey has written somewhere in the neighborhood of one bajillion novels².

     On the other hand, some of us have to work real jobs to make money to live on, since writing has so far netted us precisely zero dollars³. So spending forty hours a week working and forty hours a week writing while actually sleeping and maintaining my house and marriage seems rather unlikely barring any kind of time-compression device⁴.

     However, as far as amateur-to-amateur advice goes, Forced Creativity is great when you’re the type of writer who never gets anything done because you spend all your time revising and rewriting the same chapter eleventy-thousand times until it is perfect. I used to be one of those writers, and finally broke myself of the habit with this simple mantra: there will always be rewrites. No matter what, I will always end up going back and tweaking things. So I might as well just forge ahead, finish the damn thing, and then edit the hell out of it later.

     Finally, I might suggest trying to get done at least a page a day. Especially if you’re working on a novel, because then you’ll have a book done within the space of a year. And that is a good rate for just about any writer⁵.

¹ At least, I think it was her. If I had actually done the legwork to look it up and confirm it, I would then be using this footnote to cite my source, like a good lil’ English major.

² Some of them involving elves driving racecars. No, really.

³ Negative dollars, really, if you count the cost of printing and mailing rejected manuscripts.

⁴ Of course, if I did have such a device, then the Doctor would likely show up to stop me because I was meddling in cosmic forces I don’t understand. Then my wife would run off with him, which would free up some of my time…

⁵ Unless you’re Mercedes Lackey.

This comic would have been called "Lovecraft Country"

As threatened promised, I am running low on original creativity today, so here's a look at a crappy old comic I did. Check the copyright date on that bad boy; this is ten years old. And it still holds up as funny today as it was the day I whipped up a "paper doll" version of Cthulhu¹. 

¹ That is, not funny at all.

Britsploitation

     Apparently, the other day was St. Patrick’s Day. Normally, I wouldn’t even give this holiday a passing acknowledgement, since, contrary to popular belief, I’m not Irish on that day. I am exactly 0% Irish all 366 days of the year¹. It’s just an excuse to drink, after all, like any other Saturday in America.

     My wife takes particular exception to this holiday, because she’s Welsh and complains that there isn’t any special holiday for her people. This warrants a bit of explanation, though. See, she’s only one-quarter Welsh, but has taken this ancestral minority to heart thanks to Dr. Who and, by extension, Torchwood.

     Both of these shows are made in Wales. Hell, Torchwood is almost completely set in Cardiff. If you’ve ever let the show run to the end, you’d see this:

     Anyway, my wife is obsessed with Dr. Who. So when she found out that she has a bit of British blood in her, the fire was well and truly stoked. I can’t say that I blame her, exactly. I like Dr. Who quite a bit. Case in point, here is a picture of me as Rory from “Day of the Moon” at Dragon*Con last year:

     I’ve always been a bit of an Anglophile, though. I grew up watching Red Dwarf, Black Adder, and A Bit of Fry & Laurie². I remember thinking that “bloody hell” was a perfectly normal saying, and it is only by sheer luck that I never actually called somebody a twat³.

     I chalk this up to not having cable when I grew up, which meant I watched a lot more PBS. When you only have eight channels or so—depending on the weather—you learn to make do. And the PBS stations in northeast Ohio showed a lot of British television. It is only now, thanks to Netflix, that I am able to watch all those old shows again, and find new ones.

     I’ve rambled quite far in this post, but I think the moral of the story is: if your kids don’t have cable, they’re going to grow up thinking they’re British.

¹ It’s a leap year, people.

² Yes, that’s Hugh Laurie of House fame. There was a time when he did comedy and dressed in drag (quite a lot).

³ Here’s a tip: pronounce it to rhyme with “cat,” and it’s British and funny. Pronounce it to rhyme with “pot,” and you’ll likely get slapped.

Thanks

     Before I forget, I should thank those who have helped to encourage me to get off my ass and get something done with my writing. I won't go into details, but you know who you are.

The Inaugural Post

     So here it is: the beginning of my blog. In a lot of ways, it’s a surprise this hasn’t happened sooner. I’m a writer, a gamer, and all kinds of geek and nerd. Spouting off about language, science fiction, and D&D should come as natural as breathing.

     Of course, these are the kinds of things I don’t like bringing up in public¹. When I mention that I was an English major, it immediately makes people worry that I’m going to correct their grammar and spelling. Sometimes they’re right. On the other hand, the English language is stupid, and nobody can keep track of all the rules². Because an English major is more about analyzing literature than anything else, and it’s very rare that discussions about the feminist themes of Wuthering Heights crop up in my work’s breakroom.

     As for coming out of the “gaming closet,” I find it a topic of much debate. There’s still a stigma around being a geek, especially if you still play pencil-and-paper RPGs (spending all night playing Halo is almost socially acceptable, but spending the same amount of time rolling dice³ in the company of actual flesh-and-blood humans is still weird). Am I going to hide here that I’m a gamer, and that I think of Dragon*Con as a holiday season? No. Am I going to introduce myself as a Dungeon Master? Probably not⁴.

     So here’s what I expect from this blog. I will ramble occasionally about stories I think are humorous or interesting. There might be the occasional book or movie review. I will more than likely sprinkle my posts with crappy old comic strips I made on MS Paint years ago when I have absolutely no other ideas.

     Be very afraid.

¹ The Internet is considered “public,” right?

² For example, I don’t really know what I’m doing with these footnotes.

³ Probably because they’re funny-shaped. What is that, a dodecahedron? Preposterous!

⁴ Although I guess I kind of just did…