My Schedule for ConFusion 2020

Starting January 17th, I'll be at ConFusion in Detroit! It's a convention for Fantasy and Science Fiction fans to meet writers they like and attend talks on many topics. This will be my second year in attendance, and I hope it will be slightly less blizzardy. This year I'll be doing three panels, and then wrapping up with reading a brand new, unpublished story on Sunday.

I hope to see you there!


Toothless?: Making Allies of Villains and Monsters
 Day: Saturday
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Room: Interlochen
"Enemies to Friends" and the "Heel-Face Turn" are two of the most beloved and most common tropes in genre lit, particularly in fan writing. Shuffling characters into new teams between novels or seasons also lets us see characters, often villains or anti-heroes, in a new light. In this panel, we'll discuss the appeal of seeing what was once horrific or threatening become (relatively) "safe," the role of "redemption" (if any) in that process, and, of course, both favorite and "failed" Heel-Face turns.
Panelists: Tracy Townsend (M), John Wiswell, Brandon Crilly, Marie Bilodeau


Masculinity and Trauma Recovery in Genre Fiction
 Day: Saturday
Time: 02:00 p.m.
Room: Isle Royale
Science Fiction and Fantasy are full of tough manly heroes (and anti-heroes) with trauma in their backgrounds, from murdered families to witnessed war crimes. More often than not, these traumatic backstories serve as a justification for sarcasm, alcohol, and violence. In a world where men are significantly less likely to get professional help to heal from their trauma, how can science fiction and fantasy help to create positive examples of heroes who face their demons constructively?
Panelists: Brandon O'Brien (M), Adam R. Shannon, dave ring, John Wiswell, R.B. Lemberg


Non-Monarchic Governments in SF&F
 Day: Saturday
Time: 05:00 p.m.
Room: Manitou
Historical fantasy loves its kings and queens almost as much as space opera loves its emperors, but do we need them? What are some interesting (or terrible) alternative methods of government, and how do they show up in our favourite genre stories? From Star Wars’ Senate to Le Guin's Ekumen, what do we learn when we put aside crowns and dig a little deeper?
Panelists: Tracy Townsend (M), John Wiswell, Ehud Maimon, Kristine Smith


Reading: Marissa Lingen, Tim Boerger, John Wiswell
 Day: Sunday
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Room: Saugatuck
Panelists: Marissa Lingen, Tim Boerger, John Wiswell

Great Things I Read in May (2016)

There were too many good pieces of writing in May. As a result I only finished one novel and two non-fiction books (well, that and copious editing of my own work). I don't regret a moment of it, though it does mean my Favorites list is pretty bulky today. Bulky, and still incomplete.

Short Stories and Flash Fiction

"The Middle Child’s Practical Guide to Surviving a Fairy Tale" by Mari Ness at Fireside Fiction
-Meta on fairy tales is past its Best-By date, and yet Ness has a great steamlined take on them. Here we sympathize with the older (and usually less attractive) sibling in fairytales, the one that usually exists to die horribly as a warning, as a tragedy, or as plot fodder. Over her list of thirteen items, Ness points out the warning signs and tropes you must avoid to survive someone else's magical journey. Being supporting cast is hard. You might as well try to live through it.

"The Rogue State Next Door" by Vajra Chandrasekera at Unsung Stories
-It takes him six paragraphs to establish a cutting satire and vision of the world. It's an uncomfortable story about how the President tries to negotiate with another nation sharing his border, which is apparently so powerful his entire country fears them, and the President won't look through the fence at it. It gives a vaguely surreal vibe akin to Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, inviting you to wonder if this is a superpower, or some evil alien mega-entity. I kept the tab open to re-read it every week this month. It's like instant fiction: toss this in your imagination and it expands to the fill the container.

Should Obama Replace Scalia?

This isn't about respecting the dead, as Justices have almost always been replaced within six months after they die. Obama has twelve months left in his term.

This isn't about whether a president should be allowed to nominate a new Justice in the last year of a term. FDR, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover did just that.

The root of the Conservative objection is that they don't want such a Conservative icon replaced by a Liberal Justice. Antonin Scalia seemed, more than anybody on the Supreme Court, like he was Their Guy (even when he was sometimes selling them out to the Kochs). I can get that, but consider the other side.

The root of the Liberal desire is to see a Justice that doesn't dismantle the rights of racial minorities, LGBT+ people, unions, and the poor for another thirty years. It's not just that Scalia said racist and homophobic things. He facilitated numerous reductions in rights and protections for so many marginalized people, and was at work doing more of this around the time of his death. Liberals are eager to see someone who will stand up for egalitarian values get into the Supreme Court and go to work immediately addressing grave concerns.

It's pretty easy for me to pick which is more important. One side wants someone from their team in power, while the other side wants millions of people who aren't in power to be treated like they're on our team.

You and I Will Ruin X-Files

If one thing ruins this X-Files revival, it will be us. It won't be Chris Carter's zany and plodding scripts - you liked that twenty years ago. It's not the actors aging - Gillian Anderson has only gained more gravitas with time. No, we've changed. We've changed in a way that can screw this up for us.

I had a great time watching the premiere last night. It captured the unabashed hokeyness of the original series, a willingness to believe things that no one in my social groups does. It is once again a show about Belief and Plot getting along much better than they do in reality. It is once again an escape from the way things are, an itch only Welcome to Night Vale scratches for me these days.

But people got furious over the New World Order conspiracies that flooded the episode. They were angry that the show wasn't doing "better" than Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. Jones and Beck are contemptible in real life, but X-Files is not The Wire. It performs a different function. From the first episode when Mulder spray-painted an X on the street and gauged how much time a flash of light made him lose, it's been about indulging in tinfoil hat thinking.

Last night's premiere was remarkably faithful. The X-Files didn't change. We did.

#NaNoReMo Wrap-Up

March is on its way out and maybe, just maybe, spring is coming. My boiler is busted and winds are rattling my walls, so it’s cold enough inside that it still feels like winter. Winter is a good physical state to read some angry Russian novels.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is probably going to be on my #bestreads list at the end of the year. It’s a unique novel and excellent in too many ways, the greatest being that it somehow balances all those ways without losing them. It’s political and religious satire, it’s sincere literary soul searching, it’s mad-cap adventures. Its tone changes on the scene to feel like it’s bridging worlds usually separated by genre.

Since I have this whole wrap-up post to write about the book, I’d like to target the dumbest criticism I’ve read of it. I’ve jumped around Google to collect context for Bulgakov’s life and the culture he was tickling, and there are many sites that have a nub about the novel’s aim on Soviet Russia’s secularism. The Wikipedia entry mentioned:

“However, the attempt is ad absurdum – the novel shows the reality of evil and demonic powers in this world. And the resulting question is, "If those powers exist, and the world is run by Woland and his entourage, why does this world still exist?"”

It’s one of many little atheistic editorializations that never seem to get flagged or cleaned up on Wikipedia. This is a particularly stupid one, as having read fifty pages of the novel you know Woland’s agents wouldn’t destroy the world because they don’t spend all their time here and they enjoy its excesses. Woland visits us so seldom that he’s baffled (and then elated) that the Soviets disbelieve in him. And near the end, the devil speaks with a possible superior (guess who) who seems able to get him to change his actions for the kinder.

It’s unbecoming when a line on Wikipedia bothers me for weeks like that, but at least I can get that out of my system, just like Woland got earth out of his.

If I have a regret about the novel, it’s that I read it while writing so much of my own. Composition takes up so much of my mind that often I couldn’t pay The Master and Margarita proper attention and would hold it off to a weekend or a travel day. I read half of the novel on trains headed towards Waiting for Godot, and it was a delightful experience, but it felt like it deserved better. It’s definitely one I’ll revisit in multiple translations.

Other National Novel Reading Month Wrap-Ups: 
Elephant's Child Vs. Salman Rushie
Cindy Vaskova Vs. Jekyll & Hyde 
Helen Howell Vs. Tom Brown's School Days

Lists of Other Magi

"If it’s really a second coming, he’ll need a bulletproof hummer. That’s my gift: the gift of not getting martyred again by some asshole on the way to work."

"You have no sense of tradition. Luckily, I have enough for both of us: I bought a pound of frankincense, a pound of myrrh, and a pound of gold. He’ll understand."

"I couldn’t afford any of those things with my job. I think those were all the magi could offer, so I’m offering him all I can: I’ll babysit whenever his parents are busy, and whenever he’s old enough, I’ll give him a hot home-cooked meal and host his first sleepover."

"Why do you think he’s going back as a boy? The Lord would take a woman’s shape based on the geo-political climate. I got her The Complete Joan Didion to prepare her."

"I also got her some books, but mine are about reincarnation and destiny. I’m not so much interested in teaching her about it as I am finding out what parts she thinks are BS. I figure I can write my own bestseller just based on that."

"I got him the same thing I have towards all men: good will."

"Why would he… Oh, smart ass. Well I got him an iPhone 5, and he’ll use it way more than your lousy good will gag."

"I hope that Jesus is a Droid man."

"I really hope He’s ambivalent about that stuff. But I can’t know what He’ll want for His first birthday back on earth, so instead I’ve bought some comfortable shoes, some instant coffee, and a lot of diapers. I’m buying presents that’ll be convenient for His parents, because this is going to be harder on them, at least for the first few years."

"Okay, but I’m still giving him or her A Charlie Brown Christmas."

The 4 Ways Marvel Really Got Thor Wrong

Recently, Marvel Comics released their second movie about Thor. It’s part of their Avengers franchise of movies, which show very little scholarship about mythology. Many of us wonder if Marvel cares about anything more than making lots of money by way of vapid movies that are a lot of fun to watch. In doing so, they've utterly ruined the character forever. This must be remedied. Here are their four greatest transgressions.

Why would they do this to him?

1. Thor Speaks English At All
Some critics have pointed out that, historically, Marvel made Thor speak in a bad impression of Shakespearean English. A Norse god wouldn’t sound like Shakespeare. But this ignores the real contention: a Norse god wouldn’t be speaking English at all. He should be bantering in a dialect of Old Norse that’s unrecognizable even to modern Scandinavians. It would seriously help the authenticity of Marvel films if everything Thor said was utterly incomprehensible to any typical American moviegoer.

They didn't have contact lenses, either.

2. The Race Card
Some people have complained that Heimdall is blackwashed in the Thor movies, played by Idris Elba. Idris Elba is blacker than the average American imagines the average Icelander is. The average American doesn’t know much about how many ethnicities spread across Europe by the 13th century, and the average theologian has barely cracked why gods do anything, much less why they pick a specific skin tone or bone structure. However, Idris Elba has an amazing gravitas that we can all agree every god should have. Because Idris Elba is only one actor, most of the gods in the Thor movies don’t have this gravitas. Marvel screwed this up big time by not cloning Idris Elba.

No one asks if Tom Hiddleston is the right race to play a trickster god.

3. Thor Coexists With The Hulk
Look, it’s not that hard. The pre-Christian Nords didn’t know about radiation. There is nothing in their lore or cycles that references gamma waves or their implausible relationship to human emotion. The Incredible Hulk is simply irreconcilable with any of Thor’s mythology. Any modern science has no place in a shared universe with Thor, even science as miraculously bad as what supports the Hulk’s existence.

Yup. Pride, Instagram and Haar.

4. Thor Wasn’t a Comic Book Character
Our primary sources for the Norse gods are the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and the Gesta Danorum. While some of the manuscripts in the Prose Edda were illuminated with beautiful imagery, the stories of Thor were never relayed in screen-printed sequential art. Frankly, everything Jack Kirby ever drew looked entirely inaccurate to visual stylings of the 13th century Scandinavians. Worse: they didn’t have movies. Making the things into movies is fundamentally inaccurate. If Marvel had any cultural sensitivity, they would force audiences at all their premieres to starve around camp fires in the middle of a blizzard and have Stan Lee recount the tales orally. He’d probably do it. He loves cameos.

This is actually 100% historically accurate.

It's my hope that by starting a dialogue about Marvel's failure to accurately capture their source material, that we will bring about change. By forcing blockbuster movies to be entirely accurate to someone else's vision, and by stripping anything that anyone was having fun with, we will create films that no one wants to see. And once no one will go see them, no one will ever complain about them again.

The future is in your hands, True Believers.

It's :EL

This is the story of two cultures coming together, told by one of them. It's the story of one proud and old culture, making the most of everything on their land, and so using precious little of it to get by. And it's the story of a bustling, revitalizing culture that couldn't get enough of the world, and so bridged its rivers and sailed its oceans.

Let's call the proud and old culture _____. They were the first to discover government, and chart the seasons and subvert the rain to feed all. _____ barely recognize what they live on top of. This is a story of _____ staring gratefully from their shores as the bustling, revitalizing culture proves to them that they are not alone under this endless and unfeeling sky. It's the greatest moment in their history. Sure their ignorance causes some _____ to die off from a disease or accidental dispute, but they're ecstatic.

Let's call the bustling, revitalizing culture *****. ***** are as ecstatic as _____ are about not being alone on this cold planet, and to find a people who live on such rich mineral deposits and resources. Rich mineral deposits and resources that _____ barely know are there, the very sorts of stuff ***** had to leave their homes abroad due to scarcity of. ***** generously assist _____ in mining and harvesting their resources, teaching them how to do it quickly, hastily, even riskily, because _____ are so happy to help their new neighbors from across the ocean. Soon _____ perform nearly all the labor out of love for *****, who they see as brothers. ***** say that _____ always saw them as brothers.

This is a story about a bond that lasts a hundred lifetimes. Harvesting the minerals is caustic to the human body, and so the healthiest and youngest ***** become sicker, and the _____ have to find ways to comfort and motivate them. _____ use their superior education to tell ***** when to eat, and where to live, and which customs are best to keep following as their cultures move forward. ***** are grateful for ______’s lessons in government, but take governing over for them, and subvert the rain to feed all who need feeding rather than carelessly feeding all.

Soon ***** live in the highest towers ever built, and more of their people sail hither to enjoy the spoils of _____’s minerals, and to watch _____ at labor, even if _____’s productivity has fallen behind for reasons that don't bear recording.

Soon _____'s numbers dwindle until they are difficult to record, too.

This is the story about a culture that embraced another, and worked itself to the bone of its own accord, and when it died, it did so thanking the outsiders for having shown it how to live. ***** will never forget the people who used to live here, even if they can't remember their names.

Bathroom Monologue: Why do you own so many pillows?

Photo by GardenKings.

This is the Monarch of the Pillows. Unlike most animal monarchs, this is not the biggest or strongest, yet it must be the ruler because it always rests on the top of the arrangement. It is unique in that it is circular and possesses gold frills, and too small to be of any utility in sleeping. Lenin would smile to know that the Monarch of the Pillows is the first cast to the floor every night.

The twins it rests upon must be the arch-dukes or some form of Pillow Priesthood. They are a stark color against the Monarch, standing out like wings behind his back. They take flight second and third to the floor every night, unless one of us tosses or turns in our sleep, in which case we may pretend one is useful between our knees for a while. That delusion is always brought to end by the Priest-pillow being punted back to the carpet.

One would expect them to descend into a pyramid of pillows. Instead, the Priesthood rests against two larger pillows, of size to jut out and remain apparent despite being three rows back on the bed-top. These are some level of elite Laboring pillows, stuffed enough and of mass to support the head. Why they have not cast off their ruling classes and taken up sole occupancy of the bed is beyond me. I sleep with one; my wife with the other. We need no additional cushioning for most of the year.

And yet there is a fourth layer, a wall of Gargantuan pillows the size of my torso, stacked like soldiers behind the Laborer-class of pillows. These are clearly too large to serve for sleep; a shoulder jars, and the neck is never at a comfortable angle. Sometimes one is of use to cuddle during a depressing or romantic film, but only until my wife returns. They are as ornamental as the Monarch, yet considerably more pathetic, adding such volume to the pillow display while adding almost no actual aesthetic. Oftentimes other ornamental pillows are placed on top of them, adding a second tier to the ranks. It is my belief that the laborer pillows pity the Gargantuans, and shelter and hide them, knowing they have no right place in the world and yet trying to afford them continuation. These I drop on the floor last, out of shared sympathy for something so large and so useless.

I do not understand why there must be so many pillows on the bed. I have wondered, but I have never been so foolish as to ask.

Bathroom Monologue: And now, The News

If everyone believes it, it's the truth.

If enough people believe, it's history.

If too many people believe it, it's a lie.

If the minority believes it, it's a myth.

If nobody believes it... well, there's no such thing.

BM: Was Lincoln's Depression the Fuel for Greatness?

Joshua Shenk wrote a book called Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. I read an article by him about it, not the book itself, but the title spurred something in me. The following is what it spurred.

The gnome was puzzled as soon as he departed the esophagus. His fellow gnomes were shoveling what looked like solid sadness into great ovens that burned around the president's stomach.

A slightly taller than average gnome approached him with a clipboard.

"You one of the new men?"

"Sir, yes, sir." The new gnome straightened his posture. "Reporting for duty in service of my country, sir."

"Good, good," said the superior gnome. "Fetch a shovel and get to burning that depression."

"Sir, is it constitutional to damage the emotions of the commander in chief, sir?"

The superior gnome frowned over his clipboard.

"That's why we're here, private."

"Sir, I read that depression was the cause of his greatness, sir."

"No, no. The fuel." The superior gnome came closer. "It's the fuel of his greatness. And what do you do with fuel?"

The new gnome kept his eyes forward.

"Sir, store it in something safe, sir?"

"You're a cute one. What do you do with gasoline? Burn it. What do you do with coal? Burn it."

"Sir, so what you're saying is..."

"What I'm saying is that if we want this president to get anything done we've got to find all his depression and set it on fire. Now come on. He's got to emancipate the slaves and win the biggest war this country's ever seen! It's going to take a lot of depression."

"And cause it, I'd assume.” And then he remembered to add, “Sir!"

The superior gnome pointed to the nearest oven, which billowed with a smoky melancholy.

"That is not our problem! Now fetch a shovel or start cleaning the stoves. The grease that builds up in there is figuratively and literally bad for morale."

Bathroom Monologue: A Narrative in Skin

Hers is a narrative in skin. There are castles at her ankles, drawbridges moored to the dimples on the inner junction to feet. The castle is burning, flames swaying mid-shin, and they sway whenever she jogs, cascading inked smoke to offend the clouds at her knees.

It's where tattoos of smoke ebb into tattoos of clouds that the narrative lives. Here, in the ridges and contours of inked air, the outlines of weeping and howling human faces emerge. There are no tricks; they do not murmur or tear at their hair when she does a little dance. They are remarkably still faces, frozen in mourning, caught in the cloud banks, no matter what she does. All their moist eyes peer up upon her thighs, to portraits of catastrophes that brought down the castle below. Their memories have been wrought across her midriff in sequential art that sags and wrinkles with time, and yet never loses its poignancy. Perhaps that's because she shows so few people the memories. Not all body art is public, after all.

All that is public is her face – colorless, you might call it, undrawn, never wearing make-up. All that is public are all the times she casts her eyes down upon the artifice climbing up her legs. Her expressions are a more living art. How do they look to you?

Why I tried writing a Wonder Woman movie no one will make.

TV series cancelled because a DC main character smiled.

So yesterday I posted the synopsis for a Wonder Woman movie that I tried to write in thirty minutes. It's rough as heck, but seemed worth trying when many people have spent years on adapting the character to film and came out of it saying she's an impossible character. At Comic-Con last weekend they announced a Flash and a Batman/Superman movie, and Twitter rightly got upset about the lack of such a famous character getting her screen time.

I wasn't offended until the old arguments that she's uninteresting or not fit for motion pictures resurfaced. These arguments are nonsense, and given that she is the most iconic female superhero, and the current glut of superhero movies are already decidedly light on ladies, it reads gross.

First and foremost: there is an excellent Wonder Woman movie. It's animated, free to stream if you have Amazon Prime and cheap on DVD, and could be remade live action shot-for-shot into a splendid blockbuster. And it'd be an empowering, fun action flick that happened to star an iconic woman. Please don't tell me that's the reason why you can't make it.

Second and possibly foremoster: Wonder Woman is a sexy warrior from a familiar but different culture who engages critically with ours and gets to fight anything from the Grecko-Roman bestiary or pantheon you want. She has a history of punching Nazis, robots, aliens and dragons - the untouchable holy quartet of ass-kicking. From a writing and promotional perspective, there is no reason she's not a franchise. Probably a really explodey dumb one that grosses embarrassingly well.

And my synopsis was for that kind of blockbuster. It's honestly not the Wonder Woman I'd like to make, rather the kind that seems like every producer deems unfeasible, a message I deem harmful.

If Smallville adapts the costume well as a gag,
then costume design isn't a valid excuse anymore.

The Wonder Woman movie I'd rather make is of a superhero who bridged to our culture in World War II against the worst of all possible enemies, then grew up with us for decades, with the moral decay of wars in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq, who is a crucible for our shortcomings and an agent against them. If it's too much like the Superman I'd write, well, tough. We deserve heroes we can’t relate to when we suck.

Also, the superhero movie I really want to make is actually Daredevil & She-Hulk: Attorneys at Law, but that's another story and another company.

There's a Wired column I won't waste your clicks linking to that asserts a Wonder Woman movie has to be uncomfortably feminist and bondage-themed. That's needless clickbait writing, something encroaching more and more of Wired. The truth is that a WW film can be about uncomfortable feminist issues and bondage, or about other facets of her character. The bondage baggage, in particular, is something I couldn't think to incorporate in my half hour and probably wouldn't in my final draft. It ain't essential, but it's out there and a valid interpretation.

My guess is that the real pitfalls of a Wonder Woman movie aren't that no one has an idea. As many annoying things as Joss Whedon has said about the character, he had a decent idea before Warner Bros shot him down. It's more likely money-backers who don't believe in female leads, testy focus groups, the decreasingly tenable profits blockbusters must bring in turning studios even more conservative. It's enough to make you wonder what we'd get if copyright laws were different and anyone could make a movie about her.

Enough to make you wonder. Get it?

Bathroom Monologue: Death Becomes They

People have died for as long as imagination has existed. Death is a franchise that services every religion and spirituality, but it's more of a commerce thing. When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, he became a set of box seats at an undisclosed opera house. When Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup died, he became a song – I can't tell you which because of afterlife copyright issues, but it's a good one. Underrated, actually.

Many artists become works. Ella Fitzgerald became a tune that homeless children in Hudson, New York used to entertain each other, while Rodney Dangerfield became a Yo Mama joke. It's hard to become your own eulogy, and thus it's a prized afterlife.

But it's not the only option. William Penn became a doorstop, which seems blasphemous to some, unless you were privy to some of the conversations he let drafts into.

Albert Einstein became an equation, and not the one you'd expect. He became "2 + 2 = ?" on the first test that a young boy was taking. That boy is a physicist now. There's a bureau looking into whether that's permissible.

Lao Tzu became a road, but one that cannot be walked.

You don't have to be famous for your death to mean something. I'm fairly certain the telegraph, electric battery and iPad were built out of people you've never heard of. A funny kid who never did more than sketch clouds became the kite Benjamin Franklin flew to test his theory of lightning – or he turned into the folk tale about it. I'll have to look that up.

Often the living do the dead wrong. A river of starvation victims became an ocean of grain – though because there is no reincarnation, live people must harvest and deliver that grain in this life. They must or they dishonor what the dead become.

Many people die angry or hurt, which is why there are so many bullets in the world. Every modern war has been a thunderstorm of the deceased yelling about their unfair shake. Anyone would rather become vengeance, but you can't become an intangible. That's just not possible. Your physicality begets a physicality, and it's your lot to become a bullet fired at the wrong person. The living don't even know how unhappy murder makes the world.

You can make the dead sing in sowing a better world from their contributions, or you can make them regret they ever existed. It is all in how you use their memory.

Bathroom Monologue: Biograffiti

It's untold true story the author was never privy to. It's what Lincoln told his wife and never told anyone else, and told her with curiously curated story beats and concluded with a great sensitivity to how people would reenact it for a punchy film centuries later. It's what Nixon really regretted. It's what truly tempted Christ last.

It's based on real events you don't know well enough to disbelieve. It's a ghost story, it's a war story, it's a once in a life time love story that will somehow be told in ten different movies this summer by ten different ensembles.

It's bringing history to life. It's exploring the depths of people we never consulted. It's turning text books into coloring books.

Bathroom Monologue: No More Starlight

She can't paint. She can't imagine what she'd paint. She can't imagine which side to start from, what stroke or shade to apply, or what to feel. All that's making her heart rattle is other people's feelings, hypothetical reactions to creations she's too afraid to try. The world is prying the roof off her house and reaching in to strangle her imagination.

There is only one thing to do on foggy nights like this.

She visits the door of her one-room apartment. It is closed. She opens it as deliberately as you can open a door. She closes it as deliberately as –

-          not as deliberately as you could,

-          not as deliberately as Pierre-August Renoir could,

-          not as deliberately as Corinne Vionnet could,

-          not as deliberately as the unmatchable and far too young Amy Shackleton could,

– her Freshman art teacher could, but explicitly and precisely as deliberately as she could. This makes the world go away so quickly that she leaves the drapes open.

Leaves losing shades into a singular dark green, and then to utter silhouette. They waver against the overcast sky, some clouds thickening, grey on grey violence hiding where the moon might be rising. No starlight to bother her, and soon no grey-on-grey, only a thing that feels black. Her windowpanes become plastic white outlines on a ceaseless void.

There is no lamplight. There is no starlight. No cars backfire, no distant bridges cajole, and there are no stars in the sky because they are all too far away to reach her. To reach here. The world goes away. Her apartment doesn't rest on it; she lives on her own asteroid hurtling through a private bit of space. Would Renoir have liked The Next Generation?

Space abides no sound. It abides no neighbors, no debtors, no family angry at her for things she never wanted or intended to do with her adulthood. Her little apartment and perfect studio is so far away from any celestial body that gravity has to give up, and with it, the weight of all things social drifts and evaporates. A physiological metaphor plays across her shoulders and she feels that lift that's supposed to be cliché and that is actually so welcome it stirs tears. She dabs at them with a paintbrush, because then –

-          then she can stalk up to the canvas and look it in the eyes she's yet to birth.

-          then she can work without thinking of the verb.

-          then she can sleep the way the verb out to work.

– then she can open the door and face the world. She paints the knob first. It'll be avocado green.

Monologue for a male theologian who is somehow hired to do the commencement speech for an all-girls college

Thank you for inviting me. I’m not sure exactly why you invited me; perhaps “Jens” sounds feminine to American ears.

Uhm. Yes.

Well, I’ve always felt Christianity had more feminism to it than churches let on. I think they were intimidated. I grew up Irish Catholic and there was no stronger force in the world than my mother. My father was a distant second place. The local priest, somewhere in third. Sometimes she would even speak up during services, if she disagreed with the theme. One Sunday she and the priest got into such an argument over whether or not God could make a rock that He Himself could not lift that the services ended before the matter was resolved.

I hope that won’t happen today. It may be why I’m so nervous.

Sunday is for Empire of Gold and Jade

Since E-day was for a story and not a proper entry, I'm dedicating this day of rest to The Empire of Gold and Jade. Consider it giving tyranny equal time.

The Empire of Gold and Jade is more of a corporation than anything these days, but keeps the name and aesthetics for impressions. It is the first successful human empire in recorded history. It was founded 280 years ago after the Apocalypse of Demons, when the Golden Emperor and Jade Empress merged their tribes to fight off the fiery invasion. From the smoking remains of the east, the mighty newlyweds carried culture. It was hard to stop them from taking over after that, what with all the demons having devastated the populations of more powerful or established species.

The Empire of Gold and Jade has an immaculate history. It is deeply progressive, seeking rational explanation for most phenomena in the world, and it is that approach for which its citizens believe they have successfully staved off any apocalypses. They regulate most enterprise and banned religion, though critics question if the Empire, its rulers and founders have not taken on divine status. It presently rules the eastern half of the world’s known continent, up to the Uncanny Valley, which blocks passage to the west. They are working on that.

They have noteworthy achievements in architecture, including the invention of “whitestone,” a self-cleaning building block that makes for very tidy houses. They also invented golems, which have revolutionized industry with free labor that never needs to consume anything like some automatons we might mention. They even have a very humane prison where they keep any captured monsters. The tales those imprisoned monsters have to tell about how humane the prison really is makes up the plot of The House That Nobody Built.

They are the perfect ruling class for this world, according to government documentation. Government invented and controls the printing press. According to government documentation, they are sure they will never be hit an apocalypse. One hasn’t come in 280 years.

Bathroom Monologue: Birth of the Human Age, OR, 'E' is for 'Empire of Gold and Jade.'

So this is a cross-post. It is both my #fridayflash for the week, and my 'E' entry for the A-to-Z Challenge. 'E' is for the 'Empire of Gold and Jade,' the first, only and reigning human empire.

Everything noteworthy around here begins with an apocalypse. Theirs was the Apocalypse of Demons, when the womb of the world was torn asunder, imps stoking The Cracks in the distant west until their ancestors roused. Then emerged the demons, intangible and vast, and rather than bestowing the imps with an infinite kingdom, seeking to add our world to their blessed charnel. What magic the imps possessed was corrupted, and their bodies pulped into titanic corporeal forms for their ancestors to roam our plane. So ended the previous tyranny.

Their slaves, the humans, fled into the east like water amid fingerprints. Away fell the nine-legs and triclopes. No one could survive the breath of demons, so toxic it reduced the largest sauropods to skeletons. Nine-legs, which many thought did not even have lungs, choked to death under the long strides of titanic demons. Deserts quaked, sinkholes supped upon cities, and the skies rained a burning wine. It was a most glorious apocalypse.

Only as they approached The Uncanny Valley did any opponents stand unyielding, the work of humans and not yet humans, the golems, the bodies of granite and brick, and within them all, hearts of jade. Secrets stolen and perfected by the cleverest slaves, these were the creations of the Jade Tribe, commanded by a voice that rose above the howl of demons. Her golems clung to their ankles, and then to the knees, dragging them to the ground where they could be pried apart.

Yet not all demons took to land, many sitting astride the clouds and hurling comets at the foolish mortals. Here came the Golden Archers, all-chemists who summoned power from without, not within, taking up the wand and the stave. Wizard snipers shot the demons out of the sky, cleaning heaven by making war. Surviving triclopes and imps hid in the shadows of humans for mercy.

Of those fallen demons, the majority exploded upon impact, maiming the land. Those demons who fell without combustion were made the campfires for the brave Golden Archers, and their chief, who will be marked as the Golden Emperor, climbed into the hull of the greatest fallen demon, and carried out from its sundry fires a breastbone of unparalleled magic. This he offered as a wedding present unto the chief of the golem-makers, she who will be marked as the Jade Empress. The bones of demons formed unparalleled golems, titans in their own mindless right, a bulwark against the inferno. No fire passed east of the humans’ brave army, and it unfurled west until the demons were extinguished, and all that lay behind it was a kingdom awaiting two thrones.

In the first dawn of their campaign, he who will be marked as the Golden Emperor and she who will be marked as the Jade Empress were wed, as were their retainers, and where the Golden Emperor had three additional retainers, so they were wed to the Jade Empress’s eldest sister and two brothers, and so were their generals wed, and where the Jade Empress retained two additional generals, these were wed to the Golden Emperor’s aunt and eldest blood brother. They wove their peoples together so that no tide could sunder them. It is recorded by every poet worth reading that together these two carried culture out of the fire.

And that’s how the latest tyranny began.

The Only Thing Worse is the Cure, Part 5

This is Part 5 in a weekly serial. You can begin at Part 1 here.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

They know he’s here. The trunk that came this morning was full of ashes from his house – from the very estate you served in, Cecil. They burned the bed he was birthed on. The mariners know he’s here, they see it from their ships, and they think he’s causing the plague that consumes the continent. Thousands upon thousands dead that he could cure if he’d go out there, and then they’d know what we’ve turned into a way of life. It is worse than an affront to keep him on this wretched island. We’re squandering him.

We need only to tell him something, and his heart will bring him to his feet. So why not tell him we found the Arab? Ruth and Hansel found an Arab hanged for heresy. It could be him. And your Young Master’s been practicing so long in cemeteries. Let him go raise his personal Lazarus and ask his identity. After that, we’ll never have to deal with these ships or assassins again.

This isn’t my notion. None of these are words original to my mouth; this is everyone’s notion, but yours, and the crone with her printing press. Everyone thinks we ought to spur him into manhood, save you, and that little gardener, and your Young Master himself, who only believes such because he’s so obsessed with these arcane books, so possessed of his own origin that he ignores his destiny. This is his time. A plague is the perfect time for the man who is the cure.

I attest this of sound mind, for once I was mad and fretted over the sensations of an arm that had long left me to gangrene. Your Young Master took my ghostly limb and ghostly anxiety, but if you shut him up in this little safe isle any longer, he’ll never know all the limbs that are truly at his command. You’re raising a bull to be ignorant of his horns, a lion ignorant of his voice. There are eight ships in the bay, and they’ve brought cannons, Cecil. They brought the trunk of ashes. They haven’t thrown a dead mariner overboard in a week; they circle to find the safe distance from your Young Master’s reach. Do you want to wait to find out the reach of their arms?

So let us tell him we found his Arab, and get him into the world. You can go to him this morning, speak one sentence, and he’ll believe you, because you’re the one he grew up trusting. Or, so help me, I will lock you in a cellar and find another way to convince him.

We need lions, and they need the cure.

Continued with Voice of the Lion