Poltergeist Leak, OR, To Each, Another

Tuesday D’amato smells it, but thinks it’s a bad dream. Then Trystram and Ysolde’s claws tack-tack-tack up the stairs as they flee the basement, and they mewl so loud they’ll wake Delilah. Cats are so needy. So Tuesday gets up and opens the basement door, and they flee for the safety of the bedroom, while he takes in the musty smell. Like sweat on copper pennies.

There are two water leaks down there. Physical water is at least two inches deep in the gloom, lapping around the base of the stairs and the boxes from two years ago that he still hasn’t unpacked. His fault, he’s resigned, and he doesn’t care about that water. The other water, a ghost leak, shimmers halfway up the stairs, and translucent trout swim in the air.

“Except they’re not trout,” he corrects himself. It’s late and he’s groggy. He pads back into the bedroom, careful not to wake Delilah. Trystram and Ysolde are already in his closet, twining around his iron harpoon. Ninety-nine percent iron, a ghost’s least favorite metal. Delilah had just about killed him when he ordered it, but it kept coming in handy.

Tuesday D’amato hastens back to the stairs and sits at the top. He stirs the second water, the spectral water leak, with the tip of his harpoon, and the things that look like trout spook and swim away, into the recesses of the basement. Of course they look like trout. The ghost pipes are leaking directly above his unpacked boxes, and so they’ve gotten into his mementos, and they know all his childhood memories. About him falling in the water while fishing.

The trout fleeing, he rests the harpoon on the third stair down. The tide is climbing and he’ll need to keep an eye out until the ghost water dissipates back into another plane of existence. Then he’ll need to call a plumber. The super better cover this.

He doesn’t realize he’s grown nervous, that his bare feet are shifting on the top stair as though begging him to run. He doesn’t realize anything until Delilah touches his shoulder, and then he jerks up at her. He’s never been so relieved her head isn’t a trout.

“What is it, Big D’am?” she asks, pushing on his shoulder until he slides over. Then she plops down beside him, her hip rubbing against his. She’s wielding a night gown and that precious tablet of hers.

“Another leak,” he says, gesturing at an errant spectral trout with his iron harpoon. “Got to make sure it doesn’t rise to this floor.”

“Mhm. Mhm,” she says, turning on her tablet. “Anything neat in the water this time?”

Tuesday D’amato so tired that he forgets how to answer, and he rests his head against the harpoon. Sweat on iron does not smell the same as sweat on copper, at least not when you’re afraid for your life. Or when you’re relieved for company.

Delilah takes his head from the harpoon and instead lays it on one half of her broad lap. He can’t argue; it’s more cushioned here. But she doesn’t baby him, rather staring down into the retinal screen, booting up an avatar to slay digital ghouls for better loot drops. As the beeps and squelches and high-def MP3 soundtracks whirr into being, he wonders if there are harpoons in her game. She always plays the same one, never buying different ones, only the sequels to this. He doesn’t understand the game. He doesn’t like the game. So why, he wonders as he hears the attack sound for the two-millionth and thirty-thousandth time while resting his temple against her knee, does he find that sound soothing?

“Got to keep watch,” he says, trying to blink sleep from his eyes, trying to blink sight back into them. The ghost water laps five steps down now; he thinks it’s receding, draining into another dimension. “Got to keep us safe.”

The two million, thirty-thousand and first attack noise is her first response. Then there’s a little victory tune, and she strokes his temple with the back of her hand. “I know, and you always do. Lucky you don’t have to stop the Ghoul Lords from breaking out of the digital dimension.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs into her lap. He’s glad he bought her the silk nightgown for Christmas. “That work seems hard, too. How do you keep it up?”

“Hm?” she asks, eyes already diving back into the game, new attack noises sprouting up as she slays the undead trapped into silicon chips. “It helps having someone who understands.”

Where John is Going for a Week

So, the Bathroom Monologues have been a little quiet lately, and they’ll be a little quieter next week. I’ve got a fresh Bathroom Monologue for Tuesday, and a Friday Flash ready for the following Friday, but otherwise, I may be off the internet entirely.

Where am I going? Viable Paradise.

No, it’s not a cult. It sounds like a cult. When I first heard Moses Siregar III mention it, I thought he was saying “Bible Paradise,” which made the reverence sound even more cult-like.

Okay, that slogan is slight cult-ish too.

But it’s actually an intense weeklong workshop with several of the leading editors and authors in American Fantasy and Science Fiction. Of particular excitement for me are Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, two lead editors from Tor, and novelists Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear. Lynch is coming in straight off a press tour for Republic of Thieves, which I imagine will be a whirlwind.

I’ve seen a few peers surprised or even angry that I applied to a workshop. I’ve hesitated to write about this, but, what the hell. It’s as though they thought they were about as good as me, and they jumped into self-publishing thinking they were good enough to go immediately, and I’m offending them by taking more pains for craft. It’s a weird position to be in, and I’ve yet to deal well with one of these arguments. Responding to being yelled at by neither a) deflecting nor b) turning belligerent is one of those abilities I certainly need to hone. I have, perhaps, too strong a desire to engage.

The truth is that I push myself very hard in my writing, am enormously self-critical, read as much as I can, and never feel like I do enough. This year my health failed enough that I could no longer keep up my writing schedule, which is a big part of why the Bathroom Monologues are no longer daily. And there are small presses that would take my novels at this point, but I want to run them through a real crucible. There are many things to get out of Viable Paradise, and for a year now this has been the planned precipice. I’m returning to hard subs and publishing plans as soon as I leave.

Friends Theresa Bazelli and Brent Bowen are both graduates of VP and have glowing words for it. Whatever it says about me, I’m most looking forward to critiquing my fellow students’ work, to helping others toward perfecting their craft. That’s a unity I cherish in prose communities.

Yet I’m not excited, as I don’t get excited about many important things. I get excited about dumb things, like going to Pacific Rim with a friend, or an ice cream break at the end of a diet week. The wait for VP feels like learning to walk again, and going to college, and having surgery. God willing it’ll be more fun than surgery, but my head is just in Wait Mode until the minute things actually happen and demand response.

What it will all amount to for you, my beloved faithful readers, is a series of novels that will be worth your time. I will not waste your time.

Bathroom Monologue: Apocalypses Like Me

Please do not waste this man’s life by killing him. He’s like me. Let me deal with him.

For the first time in his life he’s worse than deaf. He can hear everything that everyone in the city around him says – he can hear your war room talking about the best way to put him down, and my dissent right now, but he can’t understand any of us. Every word he hears is a sliver of glass tearing through his mind. This man is in agony, like me.

He doesn’t understand how to stop calling the waves. He’s not making it hurricane or earthquake because he’s angry. Like I was when I first woke up, he’s too confused to be angry at anyone, and he desperately needs someone who won’t turn to stone when he looks at them. Once he calms down enough to understand anything, when the world stops being noise, he’ll be desperate for someone who can resist him.

I can’t imagine how much it would have meant to me to have one person around when I woke up who I didn’t turn to ash by accident. Someone who understood what it means to remember the entire world all at once.

Let me talk to him. He’s like me. All the storms in the world won’t stop him from hearing me.

Horror Writers Donating Blood

It'd be great if Horror authors would agree to donate a pint of blood for every one they spilled on the page.

A nasty wound? That's one donation to the Red Cross.

You fridged the lead's girlfriend? How clever. That'll be six pints.

Most phlebotomists I've talked to recommend donating only once every two months. At two pints, that's only one literary murder per year. You'd have to make it count.

Alternatively, for humorous Horror writers, it's ten thousand paper cuts per year.

Another alternative would be putting your Horror novel on layaway. You've just got to kill five people? That's going to take you almost five years. Of course, some authors strive five years in writing a good scare, so you could earn your way to your body count by the publication date. Heck, if your publisher drags its feet, you may have a few pints of credit by release, for that sequel.

You may, however, resent the laws of Horror sequels being bloodier. You may buck convention to save yourself a few pricks and cases of lightheadedness.

Blood donation is something more people would do if they thought about it. It actually does save lives, and every year some region has blood shortages. In my case, I didn't do it regularly until this year. Why? Pure ignorance and laziness. I never thought about it, despite seeing ample footage of public shootings and having friends who worked as EMTs. I deserve no quarter for not getting around to it until a blood mobile literally parked in front of my hotel.

Feel free to write a story about a blood mobile pulling up in front of a hotel. Anyone could climb out. The outcome, though, may cost you.

“Apparently there's a Narcoleptic Vampires series...” – Colin F. Barnes

DeMarcus has always possessed an alarming tolerance to alcohol and pain killers, which is why he dropped out of college. It's also why he's custodian here, of all places, though being custodian of any busy cemetery requires tolerance for people's discomfort and oddities. Because his mother is a head trauma specialist who married the president of a Fantasy Football League, he has a high tolerance for the absurd. That last serves him well this Wednesday morning as he discovers another mound of ash in front of one of the doors to one of the crypts.

DeMarcus squints from the ash, to the authentic faux-gothic crypt, to the sun. That last makes him wince; he’s never been good at not looking the sky in the eye, and it's always too bright in the mornings. Must have to do with Global Warming. Jerking away causes his neck to ache, and he rubs at the bandage. The twin punctures beneath sting familiarly. He wishes he could take something for it. Maybe holy water?

Any non-holiday Wednesday morning is a slow one; the dew before every grave is undisturbed. He collects his broom and dust pan, then notices the keys jutting from the crypt door's lock. He steps over the ashes, pushing the door with the broom handle. It jostles against its bolts; it's still locked.

"Passed out that close to home, eh?"

DeMarcus rubs his bandage again. He's also grown a high tolerance to irony, he thinks, as he pulls out his cell and dials Kristopher. He always gets voice mail. For all his tolerances, DeMarcus hates that Kristopher always lets him go to voicemail, and so DeMarcus just says it.

"Another one bites the dust. Also bit me - third one this season, so I'll be keeping eighty percent of his deposit this time. You can put out another open space ad. Got to tell me how you keep finding the narcoleptic ones." He chuckles, which causes the muscles in his neck to lock up in protest until he squats against the crypt for support. This hurts like hell, even for eighty percent. It's in the throes of the ache that he adds, "You're lucky I've got a high tolerance to vampirism, asshole. See you before dusk, unless you want to handle a night shift for once."

Bathroom Monologue: The Cutting Edge of Football

The following is an experimental product to be sold only to the most adventurous professional NFL team.

Do you think it’s odd that it’s illegal for a ball carrier to kick or punch the defense, which is empowered to tackled and injure him? Surely a few well-placed blows to the opposing team would greatly reduce the pain a Running Back suffers over the course of a season. Yet he is not permitted even the slightest physical altercation against attackers.

To my best scrutiny of the NFL’s rules, he is allowed to wear protective clothing. This includes armored chest pieces, thigh pieces and helmets, all meager, if well-intentioned, defensive gear for a collision with an attacker. But as the best Americans have often pointed out, the best defense is a good offense, and to protect the most important parts of your offense.

Consider the benefits of a chest plate covered in knives.

Not truly covered – only six protruding from the pectorals and shoulders would dissuade many linebackers from most high-speed physical contact. If tackled, the attacker would surely get the worst of it, but preliminary testing in high school football programs suggests an 86% decrease in general tackling. And good luck stripping the ball of a Running Back who’s impaled the pigskin on his left boob.

Detractors will say this is illegal, immoral, or ruining the game. They say this about every advancement in personal safety. I say if you’re going to dress like a Raider, then dress like you mean it. You’re protecting your players and keeping the NFL on the cutting edge.

Bathroom Monologue: You Didn't Have to Elope

You didn’t have to elope. Okay, your mother never would have given her blessing to you marrying a… one of them. But I would have. You’re my boy. You would have made the decision no matter what I said – that’s obvious because you ran off and got married without asking me! And if you had to do it that weekend, fine. But if you called, I would have come. I would have been on the first plane to be there. I would have gone to your Bachelor Party. I would have paid for dinner after the reception. I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could have been there for this. And I’m not angry at you. You’re a married man now, and you’re going to have a lot more problems than some over the hill guy from the middle class being mad at you. I’m telling you this because I want you to call me. When you buy a house. When she gets pregnant. When my first grandchild is born. I don’t know what I ever did to make you think you couldn’t call me or shouldn’t tell me, but please: call. I will be on that first flight to see my grandson take his first steps or graduate third grade. Just call.

Bathroom Monologue: The Head Case

Reed’s head was a book, and one that was three-quarters unwritten.

Penn’s head was a writing utensil. Not a pen or pencil, because even I’m not that bad, but a fine horse hair brush. Penn fell madly in love with Reed, and he went on to scrawl most of the following in the margins of his lover’s head.

Taryn’s head was a fire hydrant. She spat on burning buildings, and for this was considered a hero. She had many unwanted suitors.

The Finn Quintuplets’ heads were fish. They kept trying to swim in Taryn’s spittle, following her around from heroism to heroism. She found this untoward, and so kept her valve shut whenever the Finns were at the similar parties.

If there was someone Taryn admired, it was Antonio, whose head was a water filtration system, and whose head filled hers with the naughtiest thoughts a hydrant can retain without leaking. He was, to Reed’s estimation, Penn’s mental image of himself. Antonio threw the best parties, with the spiciest foods, and interesting foreigners who played the latest music on their heads, and it all would have been perfect if Antonio didn’t own the biggest and most elaborate swimming pool in the city. The Finns always used this as an excuse to come, and so they followed Taryn along through the intricate tubing of the pool. They could be in any room she was.

Marta Maria’s head was the most elaborate swimming pool in the city. It was very hard on her neck, and she got quite lonely having to keep her body two floors below the best parties in the city. Thus Antonio often excused himself early to go downstairs and visit with her, and rub tiger balm on her neck.

Taryn would excuse herself early and follow Antonio to be jealous of Marta Maria’s neck problems.

The Finn Quintuplets tried to excuse themselves, but were stuck up in the pool, unless it was raining. If it was raining, they followed Taryn down and performed obnoxious tricks with flakes of calzone crust.

Marta Maria would have given them all a disparaging look if she were capable. However, she was capable of asking Miss Yaki for help. Miss Yaki was a city councilperson and universally heralded as wise since her head was an idea. If you wanted solutions, you had to look into Miss Yaki’s eyes. Fortunately for Marta Maria, Miss Yaki loved spicy food and was entirely intolerant of it, and so always attended Antonio’s parties, and always ate a bite too much, and always needed a glass of water. As you’d imagine, Marta Maria had always been good at finding glasses of water. Miss Yaki owed her a favor, and Miss Yaki came up with a solution seven seconds later.

Now Penn thought this solution should have been: “That solution, like the rest of this story, is in Reed’s head.”

Reed, however, kept blotting away Penn’s brush strokes. Reed felt that the solution should be: “And they found Rosetta, a nice girl whose head was the world’s best neck support, and Rosetta and Maria Marta fell madly in love, and they explained sexual harassment to the Finn Quintuplets, and Taryn confessed her feelings to Antonio, who let her down gently about his lack of reciprocity, and the two of them instead became casual friends with minimal awkwardness ever after.”

Penn felt that his lover, while cute, was a terrible writer. And so the man with head of pages and the man with the head of a brush argued about the ending for three dawns, until as a gag they started transcribing the best parts of their bickering, the sharpest lines and barbs, and goofiest ideas. It is surely for that reason that Jove showed up in their story, a radiant third-gendered young person with a god for a head, who fixed everything for everyone to everyone’s satisfaction.

If that seems like a disappointing ending, then you’ve likely guessed that by the third dawn, Reed and Penn had stopped taking their joint novel seriously. Co-authoring is very difficult for some people. Partners tend to get ahead of themselves.

Where John Went

This space has been too quiet, don't you think?  Aside from my Friday Flash, The Bathroom Monologues were pretty much dormant for the last week. It still feels like cheating. Does it feel like being cheated? I sure hope not.

Most of my energy had been going into the first feature length screenplay of my life. I can't say too much about it, or who it's for, or what might come of it - not yet. But I can say these three things:

1. It's a Horror movie.
2. In fact, a Slasher movie, responding to the things I grew up loving about them.
3. Specifically those things Scream and Behind the Mask didn't cover. Cabin in the Woods? Ehhh. No.

I'll throw in that Scream 4 was madly underrated. Love that final act enough that I'd pay money for a Scream 5. I'm one of those people. I grew up walking distance from a pharmacy with a VHS section that rented movies for a dollar a day. My siblings can attest to how thoroughly I plumbed the Horror racks. The amount of times I rented Predator 2 alone probably paid for some pharmacist's kid's braces.

That's also why one of my killers is a pharmacist.

Darn it, now I've said too much.

I've also been relatively quiet on all social media because I spent Friday traveling to visit a friend and build a new PC. It's the first computer I've ever built by hand and I learned that I really don't know what I'm doing. There's just enough competence for me to figure out that a zip-tie is caught in a side-fan. Just barely enough. But the new rig is sturdy, non-figuratively cool, and has Word 2003 all loaded up. I think I'm six scenes away from the rough draft being ready to rest in peace.


More than the building of the computer, the driving destroyed me. After six hours at the wheel for two days, I can barely move my ankles, my hamstrings keep waking me up, and my knees, neck and spine all hate me. It was still neat to know I can physically drive that far, even if it means a little agony.

Also, I'm going to start saying "non-figuratively" until we get "literally" back. Or, in case we never get it back. One seems more likely than the other.

What have you been up to?

The Canterbury Deaths

When I die, it'll be with a perky goth girl who's been waiting for me her entire life. She'll be gentle, and whimsical, and philosophical about easing me into a void where even the damned dream. They must dream or else they'll escape.

You read too much Neil Gaiman. When I die, it'll be an androgynous, tall figure in a black robe. It will carry a sickle. It will think of me as little more than grain to be reaped, for what else is earth but a field upon which death grows harvests?

You don't know that. When I die, it'll be a Backspace key. It'll delete the end of my life, then the midlife crisis, then the mistakes in my thirties, my time interning in Silicon Valley, then the mistake of going to college, then my all my awful teenage romances, and I'll de-adolesce into a string of nonsense sentences about childhood, until the only remark that's left is, "Unremarkably, Mario Marquez Jianming was born."

I'll wrestle a serpent down the trunk of the first tree that ever bloomed, only resting when it submits to my will.

When I die, I'll get into an elevator where all the floors are 13. It's where they keep the places every other building is afraid to go. Sometimes I visit skyscrapers that have a 13 just to see what death is like. It feels a lot like a tense ball in your gut and minimum wage insurance auto-dialing banks.

Death isn't a thing. There's a sweet man with skin like a cardboard tube and hair the color of toilet paper, and he's a shameless flirt, and everybody wants his attention and his gaze and a dance and then another dance and then another of something else. Some people are stillborn and never meet him, and someone people stumble on the first step of the papery waltz. He's Life, and he's real, but death is just when he stops paying attention to you. It's a petty absence.

I imagine it'll be midway through the journey of our life, and akin to finding ourselves in a sloping and darkened forest, surrounded by wolves and lions that stir in us such feelings that we question if we are body or shade. That's the death of it – not the afterward. I need to flesh out the afterward.

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.

The Best of Beta Reading

I make it no secret that I love my beta readers. On both of my recent novels I've been gifted with some smart, incisive critiques. But sometimes the best of it are when they lose their composure, to laugh, or to mock me, or fighting to grasp what just happened.

A few of those moments bear sharing today. They're all anonymous, unless a reader wants to come forward as having typed one of these beauties.

Blogspot is being very testy about image sizing. Please let me know if any are illegible or won't embiggen when clicked upon.

How couldn't you love these folks?

Bathroom Monologue: Anatomy of a Theft

"I deserve a break; I've been writing all morning. What rewards lie in the kitchen?"

" More tea. Celery. Oh, Claire's ice cream! I love brownie bits. She hasn't even opened it… but didn't she say I could have some? I'll take a scoop."

"There weren't any brownie bits in that scoop. It's not very good chocolate – it probably relies on the brownie bits."

"Yeah, that's better. Shame it's only one big brownie hunk. I guess I could have a proper bowl of it – she did say to help myself. And I've been writing all morning."

"How did I eat half of this thing? I had four spoons at the most. And it's not very good, tastes too much like mocha. Does it say mocha on here anywhere? No, and no, I didn't eat half. It's almost half. I could even it out."

"Evening it out wasn't very much. Oh, there's a brownie bit right on the surface. She won't miss if I just scoop that there…"

"There is much less ice cream in cartons than there was when we were kids. It used to be bigger than my head and we'd eat one thing all weekend. Claire was cheated with this thing. I could really go for more, but shouldn't I save some for her? Yes, I need to write more."

"I just can't write knowing Claire will discover the carton almost empty. It's really worse that she find it that way than not find the carton at all. And today's chapters are so stressful to write. I could take a little break to…"

"No, I haven't seen your ice cream anywhere. What kind did you get?"

Why I Didn't Care About 9/11

9/11 is something I revisit frequently because it's the biggest incident of personal apathy in my life. These experiences are frequent, often occuring during tragedy, but there's been no singular moment as big as that one, and no one where my having the wrong reaction was so obvious in the culture. In the years afterward, I wondered if I wasn't sociopathic, but since then I've had dozens if not hundreds of Americans express similar experiences. And so I'd like to revisit that morning with you today.

In my dorm, the girl across the hall was having a fit that morning. She threw a tantrum over something every morning. I'd woken to her tantrums more often than to my alarm clock.

“They blew up the subway!” I heard. I dismissed it. I showered and readied for class – it was my first day of classes at college.

As I pulled on a t-shirt, I checked CNN.com. It was down. That was a first. I didn’t know sites of that size could go down.

I stopped in the Commons building to check my mail.

There was one cable television on campus, stationed in the Commons building across from the mail room. On my way to check my mail, I found the halls clogged with people. I looked over a boy’s shoulder and watched the plane hit the second tower. It was probably a replay.

I couldn’t move. Not for terror or awe, but because that’s what I felt the room wanted. In social situations I’m keenly aware of what I think is acceptable in the group. In seconds I had all the news the TV had to share; people were dead, these buildings were going down. And I was ready to leave, but no one else was. I only knew that walking away would break an unspoken covenant with these stunned strangers. That was my strongest feeling.

“Bullshit,” I heard from my left. “Bullshit. This is why everyone hates America.”

It was the Eastern European accent of one of my few friends. He was a prickly personality. We’d met during a Shakespeare workshop. When I confessed to the work shoppers that I’d taken it because I found his works unbearably stilted and desired understanding, everyone but him stared. He laughed his ass off.

Now he was cursing his ass off in two languages. His face scoured all the silent Americans, seeking argument. Most eyes remained on the TV, but some shifted with indignation. It grew hotter without the temperature going up.

I touched his shoulder. He tensed as though to clock me, but I spoke before he could ball up a hand.

“Why don’t you tell me about this?” I asked. It was all tone; I don’t really know what I meant. I only knew that the attacks on TV were raw voyeurism, and that this was an act of violence I could actually prevent. My tone of voice engaged him enough to follow me into the mail room. There, he was completely unable to articulate what offended him. Something to do with our media and our excessive self-pity. After two minutes of spitting and spinning in place, he departed for class. So did I.

Since then I've thought that if I had been at the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, I would have been furious to help, to run into the buildings and grab someone. It was distance that made my attention useless. Here, I was a little useful. Both the desire to pretend to be solemn for strangers and to save my friend from a fistfight were uses for me. These items I felt things about; the towers meant nothing beyond their effects on people around me, who in turn needed things.

Our first day of classes wound up canceled. I sat in the classroom, greeting my fellow students and letting them know what had happened and where to go for more information. In half an hour, I went to the lawn for the dean’s little speech. I spent hours lending shoulders for people to cry on. I knew enough to get out of the way of kids whose relatives might actually be in those towers, and enough to check up that no more attacks had happened. Once it seemed certain that it had ended with the fourth plane, my mind actually shifted to thoughts that if I could write a book about this fast enough I might ride it to publication. I knew enough to chastise myself for the thought, even though I didn’t feel shame.

There was no fear for myself or country. I knew enough to go stolid when others came around, to mimic being affected, because that's what crowds wanted. I knew enough not to say a lot of things. I wondered if everyone around me was acting, or if the majority possessed empathy I lacked. Was I fundamentally broken? Or were they all going through imitation shock, out of the same social instinct that had kept me glued to the TV room?

Several anniversaries later, I’m still not comfortable with this feature about myself. I've been in this extremely pragmatic and dispassionate head space for break-ups, family tragedies and deaths. For literary rejections and my own body falling apart. In most instances I know enough to do well even when I don't feel empathy or emotional inspiration. 9/11 was simply the biggest example, because it's still this cultural crucible that's supposed to show the best and worst of humanity. I keep hearing it was supposed to.

Bathroom Monologue: Oxytocin & Oxycontin

There are many more chemicals in the world than there are letters in the alphabet or syllables in the English language. Certainly many more chemicals than the syllables Hazel knew. She was two weeks too late to realize "oxytocin" and "oxycontin" weren't the same thing.

Oxytocin was a chemical related to love, and particularly the love that formed in a mother towards her child. Too little of it might have explained why Hazel's mother never wanted to talk, never made her lunch, and was so out of patience with her at every question. If there wasn't enough and her mother didn't want her, though, oxycontin didn't fix anything. It only created an addiction that took her further from Hazel.

She hated chemistry ever afterward.

WorldCon Recap: Special Needs and Accessibility

Apologies for tardiness in wrapping up my WorldCon posts. As I should have expected, by neuromuscular syndrome jumped and mugged me this week, and my spare energy has gone to beginning a certain screenplay. This is my last General Topics post; later this week I hope to transcribe an amazing panel on SpecFic Writers Living in Other Languages, and the story of the worst thing that I've ever done at a con. But for now, some pressing issues, particularly…

This seemed like a much better convention for accessibility than Chicago last year. Crossing a street to get in was much better than jamming everyone through the same couple of elevators and escalators. The Henry Gonzalez Center is a strange complex that demands a proper walkthrough to understand, the building bifurcated by its touristy river, both halves having three floors. Many of the elevators were enough out of the way that able-bodied people wouldn't bogart them as badly as other conventions I've seen. Escalators and staircases were placed more prominently. Visually, the structure reminded people to walk if they could, though still demanded you cross the bridges over the river if you wanted to access the other programming. I know at least two authors who got lost on the wrong side looking for their rooms.

Am I wrong about San Antonio's accessibility? That's something I want to hash out today. My experience isn’t everyone's, and many of the best conversations I had that weekend were about how semi-abled and disabled individuals can be very ignorant about the challenges each other face.

The con also made me wonder how any convention center can be perfectly accessible. If you're semi-abled like myself, then walking across the bridges hour after hour will eventually put you in agony. I never approached Jo Walton because I couldn't force her to stop and stand up another several minutes, and by Saturday night I had excruciating foot pain and leg tremors that I fought to hide.

Need a moment of inspiration? Here's author Michael Underwood signing a steel helmet for charity.

What is an ideally accessible convention center? I'm realizing that I expect to myself suffer at any convention, to have my body turn against me. I am demented enough to expect and accept this, but it ought not be the norm.

Because of my health, I probably won't travel to London for the next WorldCon. However, I may hit Detroit for America's make-up party, DetCon1 or "NASFiC" – the North American Science Fiction Convention. The Detroit managers were very considerate when I raised questions about accessibility and promised twelve elevators linking the three floors of the center as well as prominent escalators and stairs. They also claimed to have done a wheelchair run, though this never guarantees actual comfort.

One member of the committee offered me a spot in charge of special needs accessibility for NASFiC. I don't know if this offer is true, and I don't know if I'm up to such management. I'd rather someone living in Detroit did it so that he/she could visit the site a few times before the event.

However, I definitely will give input to the convention. If you had any special needs problems at WorldCon this year and want to voice them, or want them passed on to people who might act to address those problems at NASFiC, please, voice them in the comments here. I can't promise anything other than that I'll take you seriously. With good luck, we'll turn that into something productive. We're fans of the fantastic; surely we can imagine a more accessible convention.

Bathroom Monologue: How Jay Processes Grief

Spend one minute on the phone with her widower, learning the news and asking the questions everyone does, in Jay's case, because he thinks that's what you're supposed to do.

Spend twelve minutes on the phone with her widower, the widower trying to console Jay when all the widower wants is to hang up and grieve with his family. Jay will spend eleven of these minutes feeling worse about being consoled by the widower than about the death, which doesn't seem real, and socially stumbling and failing to let the widower go do what he obviously wants to.

Spend thirty-two minutes staring at the clouds through his window, drapes halfway pulled. They are snagged in a way he's never understood.

Spend two minutes fixing the cord on the drapes.

Spend all night watching clips of her favorite shows on Youtube, and searching for related things, and forgetting her entirely and laugh at Youtube videos until his alarm clock goes off and he realizes he forgot to go to bed and he remembers why.

Spend eight minutes in the shower wondering if rain on your face could ever really be mistaken for tears.

Spend three minutes toweling off and wondering if he's ever cried in his adult life, and if it's bad that he's not crying.

Spend lunch break spreading the news around the office and finding all the social crannies are already filled with the grief-news. Pause awkwardly whenever someone seems shaken up by her death; despite desiring to share the news, he is utterly unprepared to talk to someone affected by it.

Spend two hours of work time wondering why.

Go to the wake.

Go to the funeral.

Go to the after-work drinks thing on Friday that is not about her death but is absolutely and totally about her death.

Get drunk enough to spend thirteen minutes in a red-faced argument over what her religion was. Get thrown out. Relentlessly kick a dumpster for no good reason.

Spend drive home thinking she'd be on his side for that argument and they're all full of shit and never liked her as much as he did and remember some more Youtube videos to hunt down.

Spend fifty-two years occasionally remembering her because of a funny video, or when bumper repair is mentioned, or whenever someone actually looks happy in a Christmas sweater, sometimes eliciting a pang, sometimes a tranquil smile, and very occasionally eliciting the feeling that "over it" and "not over it" are nonsense terms.

Go senile. Forget her.

WorldCon Recap, Day 1

"I think I just gave my seat to a bestseller."

Two years of WorldCon has spoiled me. Their guest list is simply untouchable for fiction, routinely hosting many bigger members than their guests of honor. Harry Turtledove cut in front of me in line one afternoon, and I just so happened to take the elevator to check-out with Robin Hobb. Moving between panels with Teresa Nielsen Hayden, George R.R. Martin stopped to greet us. When Charlaine Harris or Joe Haldeman can just so happen to be the dangling last member on a panel, someone you didn't even know was going to be there, it's striking.

I don't get starstruck, but there is a certain fuzzy feeling of walking with gods, or at least some pantheon of creators that's been so distanced. It's neat to chat with a relative stranger minutes before he goes on a stage, is projected on two giant screens and addresses thousands of attendees. When people argue about how to attract more younger people to WorldCon, I wonder how much would simply lie in conveying the chance to meet so many people they likely already read.

Also, Paul Cornell is very good at turning his nervousness in front of such crowds into charm. And more people ought to read his Saucer Country.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Jean Yates, Elizabeth Moon, Martha Wells and Elizabeth Bear talk about fight scenes for an hour.

"The Hugos are great, the Hugos are awful."

My favorite thing about the Hugo Awards is seeing people who didn't expect to win or who get emotional regardless. I could have hugged Galen Dara, a talented and worthy winner of Best Fan Artist, when she so shakily received her award. And Stanley Schmidt realizing on stage why his wife had cajoled him into visiting San Antonio was hilarious.

Arguably the highlight of my entire trip was seeing Neil Clarke, who almost died from a catastrophic heart attack last year and edited Clarkesworld from his freaking hospital bed, tearily accept the award for Best Semiprozine. It was a grand social hug for years of his great work on a truly great market that would have left this earth without him. And in a sense, it's the positive side of "popularity contests" – not in excluding their losers, but in sometimes affirming a winner's great struggle.

Every year there's some category to grumble about; the Hugos are populist with all the shortcomings that can bring. The Avengers won Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form in a year when Beasts of the Southern Wild, Robot & Frank and The Secret World of Arrietty weren't even nominated. George R.R. Martin received an award for a Game of Thrones episode declaring we now live in "the golden age" of speculative fiction television, as though Japan hasn't been crushing it with televised anime for decades.

And yeah, I'll put Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex up against any season of Dr. Who you please.

There's an argument brewing on Twitter about not condescending against "media fandom." I love media fandom. Most readers of my generation are also watchers, and many are enthusiastic players as well, and we enrich each other by sharing what others might not have seen yet.

The dream for populist awards is to get enough people aware of lesser known things that they are opened up, and that's happened in previous years, such as when Moon won. This was merely a year where the category more resembled Nerds' Favorite Blockbuster. It's likely tied to the same nerdy complaining that all Summer movies are the same these days – because too many nerds are only looking in one or two places for their movies.

 "I'm not a people person."

I'm getting the hang of conventions, which is to say, I'm getting to know people who have the hang and will hold on for me. Teresa Nielsen Hayden and the Reddit crew were exceptionally welcoming on the first day. Emma Newman continued to be one of the nicest people I've met in publishing, this time introducing me to her party at Booksworn as "an extremely talented author who will be represented by the end of the year," easily one of the most touching things anyone has ever said about me. And writers kept insisting it wasn't "if" I'd make it but "when," something that clearly needs to be beaten into my grey matter.

I've never liked selling myself, but there's a flipside, in that I like helping and being of service. A huge part of making conventions worthwhile is being kind to strangers. I happen to be the sort who loves holding doors and fetching water for elderly panelists – I don't have the health to volunteer, but will do that much. If someone is looking confusedly at a map or struggling with their wheelchair, asking if they want assistance is the connish thing to do. And it has never hurt to ask your fellow nerds for their con highlights, what they loved or are most looking forward to. It's not a terrible way to discover parties, either.

But you cannot pester. This goes beyond sexual harassment, because for whatever reason our nerd conventions attract droves of people who don't want to talk to anyone. Do I get it? More than is comfortable, because I have my mental modes of solitude. Let them enjoy things their way.

I'm learning not to be an accidental creeper. Sometimes I lapse into just enough shyness that I will linger instead of introducing myself, which, as an adult man whose physical problems often makes him grimace, can wig the hell out of people. So I didn't get to talk to Jo Walton – better letting her go than lingering near her conversation for several awkward minutes. She's semi-abled and standing and walking are difficult, though that broaches disability and convention accessibility, which I'll have to blog about this weekend.

RAQ 2013: The Rarely Asked Questions

It's my birthday! And that means it's time for the R.A.Q. – the Rarely Asked Questions. Here, I celebrate my birthday by collecting and answering questions that readers normally never ask anyone. They can be as serious or as absurd as they liked. Here we go…

1. Nicholas Sabin asked: If Jesus Christ played Dynasty Warriors, who would he play as? Follow-up: Could he defeat Lu Bu at Hu Lao Gate?

Nick Sabin, going for blasphemy out of the gate.

I suspect Christ would play as one of the Qiaos, as he was about empowerment of the least of us, and they are the youngest, the least consequential, most disenfranchised and most underpowered characters. He might co-op with his Dad as the other Qiao.

And by Dynasty Warriors 7, anyone can beat Lu Bu at Hu Lao Gate. Christ, however, wouldn't need to abuse the save feature and by the end Lu Bu would be renamed "Paul".

2. Tony Noland asked: If using normal baryonic matter accelerated to 0.2C, how hard would I have to hit Mars to initiate a self-stabilizing magnetic field?

Understand that if you've already fixed your matter and your speed for impact, then adjusting the "hardness" of the blow is quite difficult. Moreso the Moh's hardness for pentaquarks. Given that you're hoping to initiate a field, which must mean rebooting or hijacking Mars's own, I'll hazard that you'll have to hit it quite hard indeed.

3. Chaz asked: The Greek description of the sky is 'bronze' for it shone as bronze. If there were no color adjectives or understanding how would you describe the sky? Blood? The ocean after a storm?

Chaz here is clearly playing to my deep and abiding love of Homer. God bless you, atheist.

I suspect my system would be based on decoration and opacity. Here night and day are irrelevant, as during both there is some illumination that defines by degree of presence. We'll describe the sky by how many clouds and how thick they are; partially cloudy, overcast, mild and diffused haze, or the super-cast as when you can't even make out the contours of the cloud system taking up the sky. Storm lighting utterly differs, and so it stands out. This also allows for days and nights of particularly light-intensity. Cloudlessness would be "full sky," whereas a super-cast time would be "absent sky." When the sky is full of birds, "birdy sky." Full of locusts, "pestilent sky."

By not actually describing the sky itself here, but rather degrees of interference with its visibility, we will supply young artists the ability to feel clever at the expense of the vernacular for generations to come.

4. Danielle La Paglia asked: I know everyone likes to ask funny questions, but I'm not a very funny person, so...what book has had the biggest emotional impact on you? Whether it made you actually cry or laugh or love (despite your granite heart) or whether it changed you in some profound way or gave you hope or spurred you on...whatever your definition of "emotional impact" is, I'll take it.

You're right that it's difficult for fiction to have significant effects on me. I know Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Roger Zelazny's "Divine Madness" both got me to gasp and take a few minutes to collect my mind at their conclusions – maybe the only thing the two stories have in common are absolutely crystalline final paragraphs. Zelazny's Lord of Light did that to me at least four times over the course of the novel, so that would be a leader in the category. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the only poem to suck me in deeply for its poetry.

But as far as writing, let me hazard that it's the junction between two authors: J.R.R. Tolkien and Akira Toriyama. The former wrote The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, so classic, so immersive, so brilliantly escapist that two generations of writers ripped him off to disgusting degrees. But very shortly after I read these books, I read Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball (not the later Dragon Ball Z – though I happily read that later).

Tolkien gave me kings and wizards on horse back with staves and swords and magic rings out to fight armies of orcs and braving into a volcano.

Toriyama, abruptly, gave me a monkey-boy who thought a magic ball was his grandfather, cars fleeing from dinosaurs, a perverted martial arts god in a Hawaiian shirt and clouds you can only ride in you're innocent.

If I'd gone from Tolkien to Wheel of Time or Lyonesse or Sword of Truth, I might have gotten mired in the Medievalist mindset forever, but because I had these two wildly different visions of the Fantastic, it left me always thinking about how much fit in Fantasy's boundaries. It's why, today, I'm stunned by how little apparently fits into what's supposed to be "Epic Fantasy."

That's certainly why you got Puddle out of me.

5. Katherine Hajer asked: When do you sleep?

Answer: Optimally, from midnight to nine in the morning. It's been off lately since visiting Texas's timezone and WorldCon's insane anti-sleep schedule. You are now amply educated to rob me.

6. Helen Howell asked: How do you stop your worm from slipping down the plughole when you wash it in the sink? (worms are covered in dirt!)

While I have limited experience with worm-cleansing, I would always stop the plughole up with a drain cover before cleansing began. This prevents aquatic descent.

7. Larry Kollar asked: You're in your writing spot. You look out the window (if you don't have one, pretend). What do you see?

I'm fortunate enough to have a real writing spot – my desk, by my window, in my room. I have a privileged view of the top of the woods descending toward the lake, and while I cannot see any water, the other half of my view is raw sky. For more on that view, see Chaz's question.

In Winter it snows over; other seasons I get to watch the life span of leaves. I cherish working to it.

8. Valerie Valdes asked: If you could have written any story or novel by someone else, which would it be?
Ooo, there have been very few works that struck me with serious writing envy, but they definitely exist. Most commonly I find a work fascinating and am grateful for the creator, thinking about their process, rather than imagining emulation. Jo Walton's Among Others, Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars – I wish I had the time write like that too while also writing the works I already do, I wish I'd done something in that neighborhood, but really, I'm just inspired by their existence. I don't envy or desire to swipe destiny.

The second Lupin the 3^rd television series was one envy-project – so funny, such character, and when my Trio novels see the light of day, you'll see the obvious influences. Similarly, I'd write the heck out of Gail Simone's Agent X and was unduly influenced by her.

The movie Stranger Than Fiction explored and even executed several meta-fictional ideas I'd been playing with for years. That's a case of someone beating me to the public. I envied them insofar as I wanted to get my take on something so defined by ideas that I couldn't write it and stand apart after they got to it. Jerks. Smart, talented jerks.

9. Medeia Sharif asked: Think about your skills, talents, quirks...everything. If you were a computer software, what would be your function in someone's computer?

Firefox browser. Dozens of tabs open, studying several topics and participating in too many conversations for my own good until I trip over my own re-hashed coding and crash.

10. Scribbler asked: How important is the reader?

Important enough that I'm answering any questions they have!

The slightly more serious point is that they're vital to the career of any good writer. I had the pleasure of boarding a plane Monday with Mary Robinette Kowal, who played down that she'd succeeded because of talent or hard work. To her it was the readers who supported her career and gave her this status.

11. Elephant's Child asked: Is life random, or is there meaning?

Both suppositions are exceedingly true. Complexity Theory demonstrates for us that many systems in which life exists or is comprised have chaotic and random sets of particles and outcomes. However, elements of randomness can only be identified because they are meaningful. If anything were meaningless, we wouldn't be able to recognize it. Finding, creating and encouraging positive meaning has been much of my best experiences of God.

12. Peter Newman asked: How would you define yourself as a D&D character? I'm talking class (or multi-class), race, alignment, stats.

Did Peter ask this because he knows I hate the false reductionism of D&D? That's a question I don't normally ask.

The first time friends goaded me into playing D&D, I defined myself as a midget orc. Thus I had lower than average intelligence and appearance, but none of the physical benefits of being monstrous. True to myself, his religion was ALL, and he believed himself to be chaotic-something-or-other. For the sake of the experiment, let's say I'm Chaotic Good because I mean well but don't know what I'm doing as often as I ought and that takes me down many ethical alleys.

And that wraps up everyone who asked me rare things this year! I'm off to find birthday cake. Did you enjoy the Q&A?

Bathroom Monologue: Rorschark Attack

A Washington D.C. Rationalist Think Tank was on holiday at the undisclosed beach that day. Three employees saw it break the surface. Tammy saw a deck of playing cards. Guido saw a platter of fried shrimp. Ironically only one of the rationalists, Virginia Welsley, saw a shark fin. Even more ironically, she was the only rationalist in the water.

She swam like Hell. Tammy would attest that the shark went straight after Virginia, while Guido swears it swam in the opposite direction. Other beach-goers looked when they heard the screams, but the majority said they didn’t see a shark at all (while three saw an ice cream truck treading water behind Virginia).

When Virginia looked over her shoulder mid-breaststroke, she saw the gaping jaws of her third grade Math teacher – the one who always put impossible bonus questions at the end of his quizzes, presumably just to watch his pupils struggle and fail. That pungent memory felt apt as she swam for her life, and even more apt when she was seized in the middle-aged Math teacher’s overbite.

She was fortunate enough to awake, alive, in the local ICU. Apparently the shark had nearly ripped her in half. After much fighting with her doctors she was allowed to see the damage the shark had done to her torso. When the medical technician removed the bandages so that she could see the marks he instantly stepped back and crossed himself.

“It’s the Blessed Mother!” he exclaimed, looking at the bizarre shape of her bite wounds. She frowned at him and looked down.

“No it isn’t.” she said disdainfully. Then she squinted at the sutures. “Is… is that a Ferris wheel?”

Off the WorldCon! Join me?

Early this morning I'm off to the first of two flights to San Antonio. I've never been to Texas before and am looking forward to experiencing the culture, if not the climate.

The big reason for this journey is the 71st annual World Science Fiction Convention, or WorldCon. It's one of the biggest SF/F conventions in America, hosting many of its premiere authors, like Scott Lynch, George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman. This is my second WorldCon, and I'm better prepared after last year. I've met more of the authors before and am helping arrange one of the parties, which is exciting. Carrie Clevenger is actually coming all the way into town for the SF Signal lunch on Saturday, which I'm terribly excited for. It's been an entire year since I've seen Emma Newman or John DeNardo, and this is my first meeting with Carrie in the flesh.

If you're anywhere near Texas, SF Signal has a free meet-up at the Rivercenter Mall on Saturday afternoon. You can also look out for me avoiding alcohol at Drinks With Authors at Ernie's Bar. If I have the energy, I'll also be staffing the Reddit table in the Exhibition Hall for a couple hours.

I'd like to live-blog the Hugos on Sunday night, but I'm hearing the convention center has either no internet or very expensive wifi. I'll still try to live-tweet them, though, and you can catch me @Wiswell. As it is, internet unavailability will keep me relatively radio silent until I get back home Tuesday the 3rd - the day before my birthday.

That reminds me: keep those Rarely Asked Questions coming! If you're lucky, I'll answer yours while loopy from jet-lag.

I'll keep updated on Twitter if I can, though, and I have a pretty special Friday Flash planned. If it's a fruitful convention, I'll be blogging it up all next week. And I still owe you folks a recap of the overpacked glory of Otakon...

Bathroom Monologue: Coldblooded Body Image Redux

“I try not to talk about it because it's unfashionable for men to have body image issues. Society is acutely aware of how unrealistic their demands are on women's appearances, but you never think how much pressure you put on a man. I spend hours in aerobics classes, arms behind my back and undulating on my belly. I've paid thousands for skin creams and mud treatments without a single scale to show for it. There's a surgery to bifurcate your tongue if you want to half-ass it. Truth is, science won't ever give you a reptilian mouth. The funding isn't there. It isn’t profitable enough. Now you're going to tell me I'm silly, that I'm too hard on myself, that nobody expects me to become a snake. Ride the rails in my shoes for just one day. How they stare at me while I’m trying to coil in my chair. They're all thinking, "What a worthless cobra he makes." But none of them are willing to help me become whole!”

Do Readers Actually Want Character Development?

According to Jack Miles,
even He changes.

This post was inspired by a Reddit thread questioning if Fantasy readers actually liked character development. The original poster, bradbeaulieu, had been on a panel where Patrick Rothfuss had taken the devil's advocate position that Fantasy readers didn't abide much character change. It had to be at least a little capricious given that Rothfuss's famous Kingkiller Chronicle is about a young Mary Sue turning into a broken old man.

To me, it depends greatly on the kind of character, circumstance and length of the novel. Flowers for Algernon without character development is a ridiculous idea. He has to change - the development is the plot, the gimmick, the engine for social criticism and introspection, and for the experiment of the prose. Its fame is largely from readers having strong reactions to the character development, and whether they prefer his rise or fall in intellect, or hopefully, having deeper reactions than just "liking" it.

That extreme example points us toward how good change typically works: being appropriate to the personality and circumstance. I don't want Bilbo Baggins giving into blood lust and singing war songs. He adapts to his circumstances, is forced to assert himself more, grows confident and capable, but is still timid, anxious, and by the end of the The Hobbit, is actually opposed to the greed that stirred him in the beginning. He is a better person for going through this arc, and the novel far much richer for it. If he became a ranty pacifist, it would have gone too far in that direction. If he became just another warrior Thorin could rely on, it would have gone in a less imaginative and compassionate direction and damaged the book. Bilbo goes through changes that we buy and that help the book.

Brad wondered if audiences didn't only like certain kinds of change, specifically positive change. Certainly Bilbo changes towards the heroic or the moral. Yet audiences love Batman and Breaking Bad, which are respectively about an innocent boy becoming destructively consumed with revenge, and a cancer patient becoming a meth tyrant. A frightening number of Breaking Bad fans are still rooting for Walter White in the final season, more attached to him than ever. My brother is one of them.

While I want Walter to fall from disgrace, his development has been superb and worthy of the attention its gotten. Breaking Bad is originally about Walter White's transformations, and the stages of his character are earned. That's what I want. Gandalf can be the same guy all the time for his role and his personality traits, and I won't mind. Lupin the 3rd can always be that lecherous thief. But an affecting novel usually puts its characters through some sort of development, or at least reveals more of who and how they are over time. The notion of readers being opposed to character development scares me more than any change itself.