TEN CANDLES: IS IT A GAME?

What IS a game anyway, exactly? The simplest definition I can find is “a structured form of play”.

Games can be played for fun, for entertainment, or as a teaching tool. Some say games are separate from “work” . . . but don’t some people play games for money? And don’t some play games professionally? And don’t some people also enjoy their jobs very much?

Roger Caillois, author of Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men)*, gives his own list of criteria, whereby a game must have the following characteristics:

• fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
• separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
• uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
• non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
• governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
• fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality

Let’s see how Ten Candles stacks up with the above definition of a game. I’ve never played it, but I have listened to a lot of its playthroughs, which made me think a lot about the ins and outs of participating.

1. Is it fun? Well, I suppose it is if so many people are playing it, raving about how much they enjoy it, and trying to get their friends to play. It seems to me that very few people outside the field of game design have reason to praise a game unless they genuinely enjoy it. So yes, this factor supports the premise that Ten Candles is indeed a game.
2. Is it separate in the way described in Caillois’s list? I suppose it is. There are a limited number of locations set up by the GM, in an overall setting that, while quite large, is somehow isolated (at least, in every playthrough I’ve listened to).
4. Is it non-productive, in that it does not “accomplish anything useful” ? I’m going to assume that in 1957, society’s line definition of “useful” was far more practical and well-defined than our own definition of it is today.
5. Is it governed by rules? No doubt about it.
6. Is it fictitious? Definitely “yes”.

Oh, wait! . . . have I missed something? What about #3?

As a gamer and a game designer, I admit that my own context includes a profound preference in favor of uncertainty in the outcome of almost any game. For me, wondering what will happen next, trying to predict what will happen, and trying to influence the game’s events are all very important.

Here’s one of the world’s tiniest, most harmless spoilers: One of the first things people learn about Ten Candles is that by the end of the story, the player’s characters will all be dead.

Comparing Ten Candles to other games

At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. But then, I started comparing Ten Candles to other games. Out of all the thousands of games I’ve played, how many of them would I want to play if the outcome was written in stone before I’d even sat down at the table? For game players, the answers will vary. For me, the answer is: very few, maybe none.

Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t play Terraforming Mars, 7 Wonders, or Ticket to Ride. Not just because I wouldn’t win — but because of the foreknowledge of how everything would resolve. Suppose for a moment, that Major League Baseball made a public decision in advance about which team would win every game of the next baseball season, all the way up to the World Series. If you’re a baseball fan with a favorite team, would that arrangement still deliver the same shots of excitement for you as it does now?

But for me, it goes even a bit farther than that. Because Ten Candles doesn’t stop with a hard rule that all characters die by the end. It also dooms everybody in the world, indeed the world itself. Whatever dangers now beset the game world, you will die. In fact, everyone you’ve ever known is either dead or doomed. Humanity is on the verge of extinction, because “They” are on their effortless march to victory.

There’s nothing wrong with horror. I know a lot of Ten Candles fans enjoy the horror.  They might even get a rush from the tragedy: people do watch tragic movies and plays, after all. Tragedies include a large portion of the world’s most compelling drama.

In conclusion, my opinion of Ten Candles is this: it’s a highly immersive, dramatic experience in tragic horror. But it’s not a game. It’s a group of players, collaborating with their Game Master in the forging of a compelling dramatic experience.

And as far as my opinion of it not qualifying as a game? How important is that, really?

Even though this is a game I’ll never play, I’m not trashing Ten Candles. If I was down on the game, I wouldn’t listen to the game’s YouTube playthroughs. (Some of the conversations that take place during play are quite compelling.) If you like Ten Candles, and would like to try listening to a playthrough, I recommend it for a long car ride at night. The best one I’ve heard so far is called The Last Boat. 

*published by Éditions Gallimard, 1957.

 

 

GAS STATION CUISINE

 

5 03 2020

I was recently at a bagel place, and figured I’d grab a Snapple iced tea. I was horrified to see that all of the Snapple bottles were now plastic, not glass. The labels were newly adorned with the words “NEW PLASTIC BOTTLE!”, so it’s not like Snapple was ashamed of it.

This disappointed me . . . why the switch? Did some executive just figure that we needed more plastic in the ocean? This seemed to indicated that Snapple had caved to the greed of Big Plastic — isn’t glass made largely out of sand, and far more biodegradable than plastic? It seemed there was literally no good reason for doing this!

A bit later though, I came across an online reddit discussing about this very same subject.  The first redditor I came across had posted:  “If a case of plastic bottles weighs one pound less than a case of glass bottles and Snapple makes a million cases of drinks a year, this change takes a million pounds of freight out of a long and convoluted logistics chain.”

Well, that’s sobering . . . heavier containers for the Snapple means more fuel burned by the trucks that deliver iced tea and soft drinks to gas stations.

I had to admit, I felt a little schooled by that one. But my online educator wasn’t done! Whoever it was, this person went on to postulate that the oil used to make the plastic bottles had to be less than the oil and gas used to refrigerate the bottles 24 hours a day in gas-station refrigerators.

And there’s more! Outrage at the Snapple plastic bottles was called out as a bunch of “feel-good slacktivism”. Moreover, everything you buy in a gas station (or convenience store) is an atrocious waste of labor, water and petrochemicals. . . still, given that we’ve been using gasoline to run our car’s engines for over a century now, you’d think that people would acknowledge that they’re better off going to gas stations (however flawed) over buying your own tanker truck, getting the appropriate license to drive the thing, and then haul ALL your own fuel for the year (or whatever) straight from a New Jersey refinery.

For my part, I’m going to list the nutritional information from certain gas-station products, to at least shed light on the ones that have the best combination of relative healthiness. And while I think all the bars I’ve listed here are yummy, I make no guarantees about your subjective opinions you may form if and when you try them.

I figure that one of the most onerous statistic listed on granola-bar wrappers is “Saturated Fat”. I try to avoid any snack that lists more than 2 grams of the stuff. (Of course, I try to limit those to 1 a day.

If anyone wants to read that reddit — or even join in, here’s a link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroWaste

And if you’re as desperate as I am for ANY good news that might save us all from drowning in plastic, you might try this link:

https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/

Most importantly, read the label of whatever you’re eating!

CLIF BAR (Oatmeal Raisin Walnut): has 0.5 grams of Saturated Fat, 6 g of total fat, 140 mg of sodium, and 10 grams of protein. I’ve had plenty worse! It’s a 250-calorie bar.

KASHI BAR (Trail Mix): has 130 calories, ZERO Saturated Fat, 4.5 g of total fat, 105 mg of sodium, and 3 g protein.

NUGO (Peanut Butter Chocolate): has 170 calories, 1.5 grams of Sat Fat, 3 g of total fat, 125 mg of sodium, and 11 grams of protein.

KIND BAR (Almond Butter): has 220 calories, 1 lonely gram of Sat Fat, 10 g of total fat, 120 mg of sodium, and 8 g of protein.

NO COW (Chunky Peanut Butter): has 1 gram of Sat Fat, 3.5 of total fat, 220 g of sodium, and a whopping 21 grams of protein. It’s a 190-calorie bar.

If anyone wants to read that reddit — or even join in, here’s a link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroWaste

And if you’re as desperate as I am for good news about something that might save us all from drowning in plastic, you might try this link:

https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TO KEEP SOMEONE’S ATTENTION

Main Dual Selection

This month we’re offering a couple of books that deal with the crux of all communication and relationships (business or personal), by two giants in the field: Wayne Baines and Rugby Doobie.

HOW TO KEEP SOMEONE’S ATTENTION

Psychological research shows that readers of your writing give you only two to ten seconds to impress them before moving on. The eye of the reader scans the page like an old-time prospector, scouting territory for nuggets, panning for gold in river after river. He doesn’t stay in one place very long. If he doesn’t find anything after a short time, he likely moves along to another claim.

So what’s this mean to you? Plenty. No matter how you communicate with people, whether you write memos or a column, give speeches, or even give them orders face to face, the result is the same: you’ve got to make your point quickly. If you don’t cut right to the chase, and drive that point home as concisely as possible, you’re not communicating as effectively as you could be.

And if you communicate sloppily, of course the attention of the reader or listeners will lag. Their minds will start to wander. (For the sake of convenience, we’ll call refer to both readers and listeners as “information consumers”. ) You’ll be talking away, innocently (and blissfully) unaware that your information consumer is busy thinking about that earthquake in Greenland. Or those new parking regulations recently enacted by the city of Miami. Or whatever it was they had for breakfast. (My favorite breakfast is a Western omelette with lots of ketchup, and bagels with strawberry jam.)

I once gave a lengthy before-dinner speech at a business convention. I was feeling pretty impressed with myself when one of the executives who’d attended caught up with me later that evening in the bar. He told me that he’d hated my speech, that I’d put him through hell and that one day I’d pay for it. For my part, I confess that I’d had too much to drink; before long we had an all-out donnybrook on our hands. Several people were injured in the ensuing brawl (my lawyer differs with my insurance company with regard to exactly how many).

I spoke with this gentleman again, several hours later in our holding cell. After apologizing profusely to each other for our immature and destructive behavior, I asked him to give me a more detailed critique of my speech. He told me he couldn’t remember much of what I’d actually said, but that his mind had wandered during the speech — not just to the earthquake, but also to a monthly meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals in his home town.

This meeting had centered on plans of the town government to add a new wing to the local junior high school. The town appealed the former zoning decision to delay completion of the new basketball court until after the start of the next school year. Someone brought up that the local mayor was a major stockholder in the contracting firm in charge of the renovations, and an ugly scene ensued, with lots of finger-pointing and accusations.

And then a strange thing happened: the mayor brilliantly defused the situation by sending out for perogis.

The history of this Russian delicacy is fascinating. Reputedly invented for Genghis Khan in the eleventh century, it was no time at all before the perogi became popular throughout Europe. Local recipes differ on the best method of preparation — but of course that’s to be expected. After all, every culture has a right to its own peculiar cuisine, each with its own particularities. If more people were willing to accept this kind of thing, we’d live in a safer, more peaceful world.

I guess that’s what life is all about, right? Trying to be safe and peaceful. That reminds me of a song by some 1960’s music act. It came out on the radio while I was out on the links, practicing for the 1964 Vildemar Open golf tournament, in which I took fifth place (and won $20,000.)

And remember, twenty grand bought a lot more then than it does now.

Oh yeah, the book. So, since money doesn’t buy as much as it used to, this is a tough economy — so you’ll all be better off if you communicate well, right? So buy the book. You’ll be better off, everyone’ll be happy and I’ll be a little richer.

GETTING PEOPLE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT

The art of manipulating people. Controlling their every move. What power! What fun!

This book unleashes the untapped, irresistible forces of persuasion hidden deep within your psyche. Have you ever noticed how skillful little kids are at getting their way? We’re all natural persuaders at that age, but most of us lose some of that precious skill through neglect as we mature into adults. Let Rugby Doobie help you get back your native talent, with GETTING PEOPLE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT.

“I was reading the book on a 20-hour nonstop flight from Istanbul to Honululu. The pilot said we’d be landing in Dnepropetrovsk due to heavy fog. Imagine my chargrin! A delay of only a few hours was sure to make me miss the Opening Ceremonies of the Honululu Perogi Festival. 

So I strolled up to the cockpit and explained my dilemma, using the techniques outlined in Doobie’s book. In five minutes flat, I had the pilot raring to go! He practically jumped onto the intercom and informed the passengers that we’d be pushing through all the bad weather to get me to Honululu on time. It was full speed ahead, and the fuel level be damned!” 

— Anonymous fan of the book

 

WHERE, OH WHERE ARE THE MYTHS? MY PRECIOUS MYTHS!!!

Is anyone else as sick and tired of “The Hero’s Journey” as I am?  I know there’s a lot of people who feel all writers have a moral duty to conform all works of fantasy (and often, science fiction) into this hidebound template.

Well, if you’re one of those people, you’re not going to like this: I’m so sick of the Hero’s Journey, I just toss it in the trash can. Don’t let hidebound literati fool you into thinking that the HJ is somehow “timeless”, or that Australophitecene storytellers were already biologically hard-wired to regale and teach each other with spectacular HJ tales.

The HJ, at least as Americans know it, sprang from the theories of Professor Joseph John Campbell. THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, published in 1949, is his most well-known work (and the catalyst to making the HJ so well-known in the United States). In 2002, Campbell was credited by George Lucas with influencing his Star Wars saga.

And the “myth of the monomyth” was off and running!

My disdain for the Hero’s Journey is not some random whim; it’s very deliberate. While archetypes may sometimes serve legitimate purposes, they can lead to thin characterization when relied upon too heavily — and in such a case, it’s best for the writer to just ditch the archetypes and write a good story. While I haven’t taken any surveys, I think a lot of modern, intelligent readers aren’t interested in characters reduced to one-dimensional archetypes.

All too often, the expectation of an HJ in tales of fantasy (or sci-fi) is rooted in the belief that its value is proven by some sort of universal relevance. Surely something so deeply embedded in all facets of human literature is the “monomyth” – the Great Story that shares a timeless “wisdom of the ages” — and touches the very heart of what it means to be human!

There’s a problem, though; it doesn’t.

I remember once, as a child, aspiring to write a sort of Tolkienesque “fanfic” — before there was “fanfic”. It was going to be a story about Gandalf’s boyhood. I had put a lot of thought into trying to tackle the project of bringing to life a person of great intelligence, perseverance and accomplishment who was surely working and sacrificing, effectively earning (at least partially) the monumental power and wisdom that the adult Gandalf would one day have.

Later in my adolescence, I was crushed to find out that Gandalf was just plain lucky! Apparently, fate had simply chosen him to be an immortal superbeing. . . which is sort of a cheap, one-stop shop for a “Hero’s Journey”. Actually, Gandalf’s life story wasn’t much of a “journey” at all . . . and given his virtual immortality, he sure wasn’t putting himself at much risk! Where’s the heroism in Gandalf’s apparent “sacrifice” of falling into that chasm with the Balrog when it was certain all along he couldn’t possibly die!

Sadly, Gandalf was just the vanguard of a weak procession of cardboard “Marty Stus” that kept showing up to suck away all the enjoyment and thrill from so many otherwise promising stories. And yet, fans of the “Hero’s Journey” concept continually try to jury-rig Gandalf, Dumbledore, Yoda, Merlin, Papa Smurf, and many more into the role of “wise old man” providing the hero with timely advice.

I know that sometimes, the point of stories about “wisdom” is to actually show that wisdom is its own reward. But I don’t remember Gandalf ever actually studying, or even teaching the rest of the Fellowship very much.

I suppose you could argue that the point of such “wise old men” is for them to stand as proof that the best heroes still respect and honor wisdom and intellect (even if the heroes themselves aren’t always exactly geniuses), because access to wisdom and intellect is essential to so many worthy goals. “Wise old men” also reinforce the lesson that the skill most needed in a leader is . . . well, leadership; helping and inspiring others, to also learn and grow. Because for better or worse, human beings can generally accomplish a lot more in groups than they can on their own.

FLORIS KLOOT

Floris Koot’s article (Medium.com, 05/01/16, A New Hero’s Journey) bills itself as “a critical post about the biggest cliché story of all time and suggestions for new story lines toward a more united earth.” And, well, he has a point.

Kloot says it’s time to let go of the HJ, because at this point it’s probably already shown us all it has to teach us. He points out, rightly, that the Hero’s Journey will be of depressingly little use to readers stuck in the global problems of the 21^st century’s global perspective:  such as avoiding war, fostering freedom and prosperity, and keeping our planet habitable in the face of our burgeoning population.

We need to stop turning every story we hear, or like, into a version of the Hero’s Journey. And we need that in a big, big way.

CAROLYN WEST

(CITE: More Than a Hero’s Journey / Carolyn West, contributor; Huffington Post, 06/20/16 — upd. 12/06/17).

Might there be other paths to maturity through literature, other than this cumbersome “Hero’s Journey”?

Carolyn West was perceptive enough to catch the heart of America’s problem with the HJ: its ubiquity in top-budget films has tricked American filmmakers into thinking that stories failing to kowtow to the HJ must fail, as stories, in some essential way.

West provides a lot of valuable examples of more varied — and better! — traditions from a wide range of cultures: White Buffalo Woman, the Spider Grandmother, Saint Bridget of ancient (pre-Roman) Britain; trickster gods like Coyote and Anansi; Aesop’s Fables; and the Jataka stories of Gautama Buddha. (She goes into more detail than I do here; it’s well worth reading it.) Many Westerners have difficulty accepting that the Hero’s Journey is only one of many literary traditions that originated throughout the world . . . and it’s not even one of the better ones!

But how can that be, when we see it so often in America’s movie blockbusters? Stories of Marvel superheros, ninja turtles, Jedi Knights, the Matrix, and Gandalf the Grey? Surely these movies all did so well at the box office because they followed the wisdom of The Hero’s Journey, right?

Actually the CONVERSE is true: the stories referred to above made money, and everyone has been assuming ever since that the insertion of the HJ was the core reason for their financial successes. And since so many decision-makers in the film industry make that assumption now, they frequently insert HJ stories into film, assuming this will guarantee high profits, regardless of how poorly the movie is conceived or filmed. The belief that the Hero’s Journey “can’t lose” encourages greater investment in the upcoming film’s overall budget (i.e. actors’ salaries, special effects, score, etc.) in the hope that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

BUT . . . CAN IT REALLY BE THAT SIMPLE??

Yes, it can.

At the end of her article, West brings up the humble folk tale of Stone Soup. Three hungry, exhausted soldiers entering a hamlet ravaged by a recent war are regarded with suspicion and fear. One weary, weatherbeaten soldier who has seen enough cruelty and rage for one lifetime, reaches deep inside himself to find what remnants he can of the human instincts of humility, curiosity and generosity — to learn how to trust and be trusted again; to replace carnage with community, and to make soup from a stone.

I’ll take that sort of wisdom over Luke Skywalker’s self-righteous whining any day.

Let’s put the Hero’s Journey in the dumpster.

THE GREAT AGAINST THE POWERLESS

The predicament of Cyntoia Brown will not let go of Tennessee.

For those might not have heard of this situation due to matters of distance, or maybe work/family schedules that allows little time for news stories, she is a minor who was convicted of shooting a man who’d gotten her back to his house for sex (after arranging it with her trafficker, a man who called himself “Kut Throat”).

There are more details in the criminal fact patterns, which are widely available in the news right now, and the story doesn’t seem to be dying down.

For now, her future is in the hands of Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam, who is considering whether or not to alter her sentence (he is leaving office shortly, because his term is almost over). Despite considerable pressure from the public, he has not committed to any specific answers to frantic questions about this matter.

Interestingly, the timing of Cyntoia Brown’s case happens to coincide closely with the legal troubles of Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese citizen who is the CFO of Huawei, as well as the daughter of its founder. She has recently been arrested in Canada for some sort of fraud against several banks. President Trump, in an apparent attempt to avoid trade wars with China, has publicly mentioned the possibility of somehow aiding her case to secure her release (despite the fact that Meng isn’t being detained in the U.S.) Affecting criminal cases in another country (even one as close to America as Canada is), is a long reach — many would call it an act of legalistic and diplomatic overstepping. But the President of the United States is willing to go this “extra mile” for Meng.

It’s too bad nobody can get Cyntoia Brown a job as CFO. When it comes to her, well — no one seems ready to do anything on behalf of a victim of child sex trafficking.

The United States is no longer making even the most cosmetic efforts at pretense. It is openly, and quite proudly, siding with the great . . . against the powerless.

 

WHY THIS KIND OF STORY?

I rarely see the label of “military fantasy” applied to books that sell well, even when those books arguably fit the bill of what “military fantasy” might mean. Its most dedicated fans would probably agree that, despite the frequency of wars and battles in the works of Tolkien, Lewis, and George R.R. Martin, those stories do not fit into that category. An online search for “military fantasy” books that sell well invariably turns up Glen Cook’s Black Company series, but that was written a long time ago, when the realities of publishing were very different.

Rudimentary research into popular opinions of the Black Company series reveal that a significant portion of its fan base is real-world military, many of whom are happy to regard its characters as more believable representations of soldiers than they normally expect to find in literature, particularly fantasy literature.

This is a great endorsement of what Glen Cook has accomplished with this talent and hard work, but it narrows the category down considerably. I certainly haven’t tried to very hard to make any of my characters seem like soldiers of today. But I don’t think I should, since the story doesn’t have a 21st-century context.

Modern-day military personnel face much higher expectations than soldiers of the past. They have to understand multiple kinds of combat. They must understand, maintain and utilize specialized equipment. They all must follow command procedures and safety procedures far more complex than were required in the armies of centuries ago (if they were even required at all). There was a time when little was required of soldiers, other than courage and obedience. It was once feasible to keep order in the ranks by rationing daily doses of strong alcohol. But that time is long gone.

In Naomi Novik’s excellent Temeraire series, the story focuses on dragons, which bring forth flying aces and dogfighting to the Napoleonic Age. The people who maintain England’s draconic air force are presented as a breed apart — they are so specialized that they don’t mix much with other soldiers. They don’t act “like soldiers”, and no one expects them to. This is something that fantasy allows you to do, in a way that no other genre can.

Raingun’s protagonist is a commissioned member of a regiment comprised of spellcasting light cavalry. These cavalry often conjure their own mounts. They share the battlefield with lancers, pikemen, musketry — and wizards. Magic is used by the military not only for its tremendous power, but also because it’s economical: after an initial investment, keeping a regiment well-charged with basic attack magic is cheap and renewable. These mages think of expending their spells in much the same way that the men of Sharpe’s Company think of using up their bullets.

In the period of military history roughly corresponding to that of Raingun, commissioned cavalrymen literally bought their ranks. This was not only done in the open, it was an important part of military fundraising. Some commissioned cavalrymen were disciplined, some were brave, and some were competent, but many were none of these things. They enjoyed a lot of luxury (especially compared to the artillery and infantry of the time), and certainly did not behave the way we would expect modern-day soldiers or troops to behave.

Raingun, and the books that will follow it, is about a man born poor, who finds himself offered a commission — and the money to buy it — through a combination of luck and courage when his hometown is attacked by pirates. He is raised to rank and privilege, also taking pride in protecting his country. But as his country’s policies become more cruel, he gradually decides to put his new-found “good life” at risk by considering rebellion.

Raingun is not meant to focus on what “military life” is like. Instead, it focuses on the struggles that ordinary people face when they come to doubt the honesty and sincerity of their government. What freedoms do you trade for security? When do you speak out? When do you recognize a government’s misstep as a mere misstep, as opposed to a sinister long-term shift? When do you stop agreeing to disagree, and identify political opponents as enemies? When do you draw lines in the sand? And when do you rebel?

The wars of the decade directly following the 9/11 disaster often left Americans polarized. Addressing the questions they wrestled with into a fantasy novel is a very liberating way of controlling the focus. I don’t need to research conditions “on the ground”. I don’t need to become an expert in Christianity, Islam, or the history of the Middle East. I can ignore persistent, distracting refrains about whether religion is to blame, or even whether it’s all a lie: the existence of gods in the fantasy world is indisputable, and most of them are readily identified as “good” or “evil”.

Even if the existence of gods was logically indisuptable, proven on a daily basis by small miracles called magic spells, human beings would still waste their lives on vanity and greed. We’d find a way.

I’m a big fan of Bernard Cornwell, George Macdonald Fraser, O’Brian and Forester too. These people didn’t write fantasy, but they know how to put the reader in a thrilling scene, next to people that the reader cares about.

WAR IN NOBLEBRIGHT FANTASY

This post recently appeared in C.J. Brightley’s excellent blog on “noblebright fantasy” — a term coined as a foil to fantasy of the “grimdark” variety.

Everything written here is my own opinion. I hope you find some portion of it helpful; as for any portion you don’t find helpful — discard and disregard.  My purpose here is not to dictate to the world what “noblebright fantasy” is, or how its heroes should behave; but rather, to add my own voice to those of C.J.Brightley and others wishing to contribute to a body of ideas about the topic.

I will be concentrating on . . . war stories in noblebright fantasy. What makes “military fantasy”, or war stories set in fantasy worlds, different from other fantasy fiction?

WAR IN A NOBLEBRIGHT FANTASY SETTING

I try to keep my focus away from impressing the reader with the plot, and let the characters do the heavy lifting of impressing the reader. For what it’s worth, I’ve always been impressed by this quote attributed to Jessica Lynch: “The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it is always more heroic than the hype.”

What is “the hype” — and how can you separate it out from “the truth” of situations involving war? Well, I consider “hype” to be anything written with the primary motivation of getting people excited about war, looking forward to war, portraying it as one big action sequence (or even one big party). In what I’d consider “war hype”, the average wartime government’s portrayal of its enemies is that of bloodthirsty barbarians with no redeeming features whatsoever, while the government’s own forces and personnel can do no wrong. The friendlies are merciful; the enemy, cruel. The friendlies fight for a just cause; the enemy, for tyranny and greed. . . and so on.

“The hype” also tends to downplay just how confusing or terrifying combat situations (especially battles) can be. . . or how surreal.

WARTIME DEATHS IN NOBLEBRIGHT FANTASY

I’m sure David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington series, is not the only author to say something brilliant on writing war fiction, but he’s got the best quote I’ve yet found about it:

“I know from the moment that I introduce them that some characters are going to die . . . because of something the story demands. And some of them end up dying because I write military fiction and in military fiction, good people die as well as bad people. Military fiction in which only bad people – the ones the readers want to die – die and the heroes don’t suffer agonizing personal losses isn’t military fiction: it’s military pornography. Someone who writes military fiction has a responsibility to show the human cost, particularly because so few of his readers may have any personal experience with that cost.”

WHAT A WAR STORY IS NOT

While it’s common for fantasy tales to have battles in the plot, most of them are not “war stories”. Most fantasy tales are about the struggles of a single protagonist (who everyone hopes will be powerful and compelling) — or a “merry band” of adventurers who gradually bond through long periods of watching each other’s backs. But mostly, they won’t be “war stories”, no matter how many hordes of enemies such characters mow down.

This is doubly true when their enemies have no redeeming feature (and thus provide guilt-free carnage). There’s a reason why stories about a zombie apocalypse tend to be classified as “horror” or “survival” instead of “war”.

War stories, even those set in fantasy worlds, are not about McGuffins of world-shaking significance; they’re not about a special “Chosen One” directed by fate to be the only one capable of saving the world.

In fact, I’d say that most fans of “war stories” want protags who are fairly ordinary. These protags know they’re ordinary; they’re not Gandalf, Ender Wiggin, Richard Cypher, or some other artificial, puffed-up cockatoo of a “hero”. The real heros step up to the plate to face danger, doing their very best on behalf of their civilization (and their fellow soldiers), just like all their buddies are. War stories are about the struggles and dreams of the multitude of regular people who fight: to improve the world for future generations, to replace tyranny with freedom, or even just to get out in one piece.

In any war story worthy of the name, any character thinking “This war is all about ME!” is, almost certainly, dangerously delusional . A true “war story” is all about everyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in ever-present, deadly danger.

WHAT A WAR STORY IS

A war story must be intensely social, since it is about the individual members of two armies, struggling against each other. In such stories, protagonists who don’t socialize much will often think about how socially isolated they are (whether they happen to prefer it that way, or not). Even spies poring over cryptograms alone all night in the basement of a “safe house” are intensely aware of (or at least, curious) about how their efforts might save — or doom — hundreds or thousands of lives.

A “war story” is one where the war, itself, is important to the lives of the people fighting it. In fact, it’s important enough that they believe that killing other people is justifiable. If they have faith in their leaders, maybe they believe that if they lose the war, they will fail to save their nation from invasion (and then, perhaps, life will not be worth living; their families may starve, or be slaughtered). They may even feel pity for their fellow humans fighting in the enemy army (figuring they must be brainwashed, or terrified into submission by tyrants).

On the other hand, if the people of a wartime nation disdain their leaders as bloodthirsty fools, then they may be rather cynical about king and country. They may hope that the war comes to a stalemate that goads both nations into making peace (or even try to make that happen).

WAR SETTINGS

Battlefields and war zones are horrifying, and they’re not so easy to find your way out of. Most people will be frightened out of their wits, maybe too scared to even be rational. Fits of rage, sadness, or grief will happen so often that a person may lose their ability to experience joy , relaxation, or even relief. On the other hand, they may experience euphoric joy at the merest bit of good news, or the smallest act of kindness.

Of course, war can also be very boring. Since everyone is expected to literally be ready for anything the enemy might try, the demand for constant vigilance can make it hard for a person to find diversion that isn’t prohibited (or dangerous). The bar of what they find “exciting” can get very low.

Wars turn cities and towns into miserable, smoking ruins that are barely habitable, requiring decades to rebuild (if indeed, they can be rebuilt at all). This can lead to new sources of tragedy: beautiful natural scenery being destroyed, animals wiped out, farms and orchards laid waste, families facing starvation, centuries’ worth of art and architecture turned to dust.

These same factors can also lead to hope, of course; maybe some characters who survive will go on to restore the land, cities or culture the war has wrecked. But it’s normal for some rebuilding projects to take many years to restore even  a small part of what might have been lost in a couple of weeks after a city’s fall to invaders.

Fantasy offers magic to mitigate much of this, but if your magician hero comes sweeping in with a simple fix for such distressing long-term problems, you risk altering the setting to the point where it’s no longer a war story. The backdrop should be bleak enough to make it cry out for heroes of the noblebright variety.

THE NOBLEBRIGHT FANTASY ACTION HERO – IN A WAR STORY

We all know what a “hero” is, in the sense that it’s often used by writers as a synonym for “protagonist”. But the “noblebright” brand, to me at least, demands that its literary heroes should share at least some characteristics with the reader’s understanding of the conventional use of the word. Not everyone will have the exact same definition of what a “hero” is. . . so for what it’s worth, here’s mine.

Hero: Someone who knowingly and willingly exposes themselves to risk or hardship (such as pain or death) with the primary motivation of sparing others the same (or similar) risk or hardship.

While “hero” is a word once reserved for males, everything I’ve written here can (and should) be applied to characters of any gender (including characters who are genderless, transgender, or even other possibilities beyond those now existing in the real world). Sexual orientation has no effect on whether a character can be heroic (or to what degree).

BUT ISN’T NOBLEBRIGHT ABOUT MORE THAN JUST CHARACTERS?

Of course. It’s also about plot, theme, and setting. So how “heroic” actions affect those aspects of the story are also critical to consider. These effects should not be predictable, even to characters who have experience with such matters.

A colonel who accepts a huge number of enemy as prisoners may be acting with a virtuous motive (she’d rather spare their lives than kill them). Sometimes, this will work out as the colonel would like, and she may even reap rewards: maybe her lieutenants admire her show of mercy to the defeated, or her superiors will be grateful for giving them a victory with a much lower number of casualties than expected. Of course, the colonel’s mercy could also backfire badly on her — her generals could overrule her and order the prisoners barbarically executed, giving her an undeserved reputation for ineptitude, cowardice or cruelty.

Even command decisions that seem trivial in the moment they’re made have the potential to “blow up” into something suddenly noteworthy, for good or ill. Most wartime military commanders will experience some reluctance toward bending rules (even for the loyal and the heroic), for fear of consequences that no one could have seen coming. These worries are well-founded, for wars are chock-full of events both unforeseen and unforeseeable.

HOW ARE SOLDIERS DIFFERENT FROM CIVILIANS?

Soldiers are fundamentally different from many conventional “action heroes”. Yet, in most fiction, they tend to be much tougher (and much more fearsome) than civilians. Why is this?

Many people would answer “combat training” or “armament”, but history does show times that those advantages alone often don’t win the day. Two of the most overlooked reasons of why a team of soldiers are likely to beat a team of civilians are: a) soldiers are trained remain alert for long periods of time, and b) soldiers are trained to instinctively remember that they are fighting as a group.

This can be very advantageous to writers who want to write about multiple characters; to perform most effectively, the characters must never forget that supporting each other, with every individual playing their own part to the best of their ability, is the best way to win or at least, survive. When characters do forget this, consequences can range from angry lectures all the way up to bloodbaths.

Characters fighting wars or battles in a noblebright setting will tend to respect and support their comrades, giving you more character relationships to write about — the more selfish characters will stand out, in a way that will provide you more character conflicts to write about.

MAKE THE HERO’S STRUGGLE A STRUGGLE

Noblebright fantasy stories do well to steer clear of the “super-characters” that dominate so many other brands of fantasy. Keep writing to your target audience! War entails large groups struggling together in concert (against other large groups who are generally just as determined.)  Membership in one of those “large groups” is sure to contain a lot of the meat of the story. While combat superstars serve a purpose in fiction and can be very fun to read about, they tend to leave some of noblebright’s intrinsic advantages “on the table”.

GIVE THE HERO LIMITATIONS

In my opinion, the hero must not be “the toughest”, or at least not the best at everything. When the hero’s courage or combat prowess is tested, he must sometimes fail. He must occasionally make mistakes, or the “wrong call”, to occasionally doubt himself. And sometimes, the randomness of battle and “fog of war” will simply cause him to miss a golden opportunity for glory (or to fail at rescuing those he holds dear).  With no risk, there’s less investment for the reader.

All this can provide dialogue between the hero and various comrades, which can offer character development in many directions. It can also offer opportunities for exposition of backstory or other details of setting and plot — which can be very challenging when writing fantasy stories, which can have so much more to introduce to the reader than stories of other genres.

DON’T BE STINGY WITH THE HERO’S ENEMIES

The hero must occasionally get the tar beaten out of him; maybe even volunteer for it because “someone’s gotta do it”. . . and there are lots of ways to give your hero opportunities to get his butt handed to him. This can be a fight with an inherent tactical disadvantage, like holding a bridge, rescuing someone from the enemy’s clutches, or even pulling off a purely symbolic stand whose only purpose is to provide needed inspiration to prevent everyone’s morale from collapsing.

The hero must also, at times, taste extreme frustration; feel hopeless; be defeated or humiliated. Wars are made out of numberless, neverending struggles (many of which end up forgotten). A war where the hero never loses, never feels tired or scared, or faces any setback, is boring. This applies to all aspects of the hero’s endeavors, including combat. Give the bad guys their due!

Of course, to get through these dangerous situations, the hero does need to be capable enough to deal with the situations you throw at him. He can be above average — perhaps, in one or two regards, even exceptional.  And sometimes, he can pull off something truly amazing. But amazing feats shouldn’t be so easy for him that they become trivial, so avoid making him the “the best” at everything. Maybe the enemy’s scariest intimidator can’t rattle him; but maybe their best marksman can shoot more accurately, or maybe their fastest messenger can run (or ride) faster.

This also applies to avoiding, when feasible, giving the hero (or his “side”) a 100% monopoly on the moral high ground. As long as both sides in the war involve sentient, individual beings whose species possess a broad range of personalities, your fantasy war can probably afford more than one reasonable point of view.

SEXUAL / ROMANTIC PARTNERS

The hero’s romantic / sexual partners may include someone he does not love (or even like very much) — after all, war’s constant reminders of death will inevitably cause some people to seek comfort or pleasure whenever they can. But, I strongly suggest that he respect his lovers.

A heroic character can even have an affair with someone he or she considers an enemy (or even “evil”) if he feels their options were sufficiently limited to mitigate their guilt; if their choices were somehow forced, or their loved ones somehow vulnerable or compromised. Of course, the hero might also hope to gain critical information to help whatever cause he fights for. However, in such a case the respect  I mentioned earlier must still be present, expressed, and acted on, or the hero may be perceived as just taking selfish advantage of  a vulnerable person (because everyone is vulnerable in a war zone).

NERVES OF STEEL

In my view, it’s okay to sometimes show your hero as fearless. Fear is not always logical — people in the real world who are terrified of lightning strikes and shark attacks may be very careless about driving too fast (which is statistically a lot more likely to get them killed!)

Fear is also exhausting, and some people may seem to  “shrug it off” because they just don’t have the energy to spare on being afraid of a given danger (especially one they’ve already faced a hundred times).

However, fear is an essential part of war. And during wartime, even when all is quiet, I suggest you let some of the hero’s personal regrets, failures and shortcomings — real or imagined — come creeping back to him, when he’s lonely, lost, cold and wet, ravenously hungry . . . or on the run.

The 13 Clocks

The 13 Clocks was once one of my very favorite books.

I remember a blurb for The Clocks . . . maybe one of the original blurbs, which said:

“Everybody has always wanted to love a Princess.

Everybody has always wanted to be a Prince.”

Of course, there are plenty of people who have never wanted either of those things, but hear me out.

Maybe I’m just more jaded today, about the world and about myself, but it recently occurred to me (after reading it to my son), that it just wouldn’t be the same if I was reading it to a daughter. The object of the hero’s quest was a princess, who wasn’t a character at all, just a plot device. I know there are many shades and nuances to what some readers would say is necessary or desirable in a “strong female character” . . . but Princess Saralinda was particularly extreme in how passive and helpless she was. You could practically get away with calling her a prop.

After having loved the story for such a long time, it’s very hard to describe how sad and demoralizing it was to recognize this. It felt like a childhood friend had died, shortly after I’d missed a chance to meet them and “catch up”.

But of course, the root of it wasn’t an overwhelming sadness… it was a twinge of shame, at finding out that I wasn’t quite as open-minded as I’d believed.

Or maybe, I’ve just widened my scope over time. But even as a little boy, I never wanted to be a Prince (which always seemed to me would be awfully boring).

I wanted to be the Golux. . . I make things up, you know.

 

 

BULGINE PI – ABOARD THE SAUCY ARABELLA

In honor of the upcoming Pi Day (3/14/15), I’m considering a contest. There is no deadline.

It springs from this song, A Rollin’ Down the River:

Oh, the Arabella sets her main topsail, the Arabella sets her main topsail,
The Arabella sets her main topsail, rollin’ down the river.
Rollin’ down, rollin’ down, rollin’ down the river,
Rollin’ down, rollin’ down……..
Said the bucko’s mate to the greaser’s wife.
Oh a pumpkin pudding and a bulgine pie, a pumpkin pudding and a bulgine pie,
A pumpkin pudding and a bulgine pie, on board the Arabella.

Later verses replace “topsail” with “foresail”, “royal”, “gainsail”, or other sails.

It seems to be a shanty for sailors who were on a river, rather than the open sea: a “capstan-and-pumps” song. But some think it’s a sea song that travelled from sailors, to longshoremen, to railroad workers, changing here and there as it went. An alternate title is “The Saucy Arabella”.

You can find references to this song here and there on the internet — but no one knows what a “bulgine” pie. Some people think it’s a “bulging” pie, or died-out slang for a “cow-pie”. Since a “bulgine” was sometimes used to mean a train, others theorize it’s a big puddle of train oil left in a trainyard, or on the track.

Since there’s no doubt that pumpkin pudding exists, though, I think Pi Day would be a fine occasion for making a real-life, yummy pie to fit with the name of “bulgine pie”. Maybe to be good with some real-life, thick sauce? Or contain molasses? My favorite theory so far, is it should contain both peaches and plums.

Anyone have a good suggestion for a worthy prize for whoever comes up with a recipe for this? It needs a crust, of course, to appropriately carve the appropriate mathematical Greek letter into the center, in honor of the big day — even if a satisfying solution to this puzzle doesn’t come until long after it’s past!

By the way, I’m probably going to submit the books of The Talan Revolt onto a new site, ReadFreely: http://www.readfree.ly/

RIPPER STREET (spoilers included)

I truly, truly wanted to like this series.

And I guess I do like it, but before the end of Season 1 I’m already seeing a disappointing pattern. The show’s a victim of its own talent.

All the actors & actresses are doing a fine job. Matthew McFadyen (did I spell that right?) fits this role so much better than he did “Mr. Darcy”. His earnest face, on such a brooding and calculating hero, is a great focal point for the camera shots to revolve around. He’s just the right person to be at the center of these stories. And the offstage works are done very well too: set design, costumes, and music all pass muster. And the writing’s not bad either, to start with.

But I see a pattern that’s something of a pet peeve of mine: when the setting, the characters, the theme, and the narrative manner are so well done — so lovingly, so painstakingly constructed, that no one can bear to risk seeing any of it change.

MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW

I just watched the episode where Sergeant Drake (Jerome Flynn) falls in love. I don’t want to say too much more about it, but you find out some things about his past; another actor you’d recognize from Game of Thrones appears out of nowhere, playing his old commanding officer, and puts a difficult choice before him. Moreover, it’s a choice where questions of right and wrong appear ambiguous, and it also bears directly on his romantic aspirations. After seeing Flynn play such a jaded character in GoT, it’s a great switch to see him play a brutal pit-fighter of a man with such a faithful, sensitive heart. I loved this character, rooted for him, berated him when I thought he’d sold himself short.

Needless to say, a LOT happens in this episode — including some things that appear impossible to easily undo. Yet, the episode ends with literally every aspect of this character’s life in the exact same place it was before. It’s done as believably as possible — but it still hurts the show’s credibility. I don’t mind that so much, but then I started thinking about other parts of the story.

McFadyen’s Inspector Reid has a secret past he shares with his wife, about a daughter they lost (perhaps in a fire). By episode 7 there’s been no action on that whatsoever — just occasional cryptic ruminations and lamentations. The American “Captain”, sometimes referred to as a Pinkerton who has a talent for forensics and doing hard drugs (which go together better than you’d think, particularly at this time in history) also has a secret past he shares with the proprietress of a bordello — and again, the characters go on through murders, gunshot wounds, arguments, fistfights, and terrible verbal threats, only to repeatedly “reset” every tiny detail of their lives exactly to where they were at the start of Episode 1.

Obviously, a series needs to be grounded in something and you can’t change things too often just for change’s sake — changes need to spring naturally, coming about from the interaction between characters and setting. But the other extreme’s no good either — everything gets calcified.

I won’t stop watching the show — I still appreciate its very real merits. I just hope the writers get a little bolder.