After last Friday’s post, a friend reached out to tell me that she understood my point, but loved fanfics too much to agree with me. It made me realize that I had never actually talked about fan fiction in that post, and that made me question why.
The first and obvious reason is that I don’t really read fanfics. I know a lot of people who do, I am aware that there exists some great literature in that community, and I am familiar with the tales of great commercial success that originated as fan fiction (though, sadly, when the first example that comes to mind is 50 Shades of Gray, I struggle to feel very appreciative about it).
However, it has just never interested me. To me, the “canon” is always what the creator of the work says, and nothing else. Even in superhero comic books, where there are so many authors and artists working on the same characters, I will still almost never read “what if” or alternative reality stories, because they just detract from the “real” thing (please, don’t take this as snobbishness, it’s far more obsessive-compulsive than it is pretentious, I promise).
With that said, fan fiction has also never bothered me, and I do see a firm distinction between that and author tweets or fan theories. See, fan fiction is actual fiction. Good, bad, brilliant, or atrocious, it is a dramatized experience of the characters of a given work. A story. It treats them the same way the original author does – as creations to be put through their paces in an isolated frame.
Fanfics don’t treat people or events as any more “real” than the work that inspired them. And this is why, while not for me, I have great appreciation for the form. In the end, fans want more or different adventures (or, yunno, crazy naked sex) for the characters they love, so they create them, or go read the works of others who have created them. It is ultimately a positive and constructive act on both the creative and reading end.
Tweets about the characters, providing “information” about them that does not exist in any kind of work, be it original or fan-made, are not the same thing. Neither are theories that presume material that does not yet/will never exist. And, as I said last week, I am not in any position of authority – legal, moral, or otherwise – to tell you how to enjoy the things you enjoy.
But if I am going to learn about pooping wizards, I want to learn it from a work of fiction, not social media. You are not your characters’ town crier. You are their creator. And as far as I am concerned, you should always act like it.
Disclaimer: This is going to get opinionated. I want to preface it with saying that I am a massive fan of Harry Potter, and I utterly adore Bonds of Brass. What I am about to say should be taken as a broad commentary about the nature of fiction, rather than dissing either work, or its author.
There is something that has been chewing on the sides of my brain ever since I wrote my review of Bonds of Brass.
Bisexuality.
No, just kidding (kind of). It was Emily Skrutskie’s tweet (and comments in other places), stating that the two main characters of the book were bisexual, when they were not coded as such in the book itself. I have been trying to examine why this statement bugged me so much, and I realized it has nothing to do with identity.
Instead, it’s about what is on the page, and what isn’t.
Now, if the title hasn’t forced your mind in that direction, let me just remind the world that, at present, J.K. Rowling is the undisputed champion in extra-literary revisions. With every new tweet about the Wizarding World, she erodes our love for her books a tiny bit more, but it goes further than that — she adds information that was never part of the narrative of those books. That is not a problem for some people, but it is a massive issue for others.
I think there are two fundamental approaches to perceiving fiction (just kidding, there are a million. But stay with me on this one). You can treat it as an alternate reality that you are viewing form the window of the book/screen/whatever; or you can treat it as a work of art, with its internal rules and limitations — a sort of fourth-wall approach, in which you are aware of your role as a spectator. The two are not mutually exclusive, of course. In fact, I think they always intertwine to an extent. But in their extremes, they lead to different perceptions of the reality of the work.
If you see the fictional story as something real and independent of your perception, you can easily incorporate any piece of external information into the work. Such as — you guessed it! — Dumbledore being gay. It’s not in the Harry Potter books. It’s not hinted at, it’s not implied. There is literally nothing you can even retrospectively point at, and say “This codes Dumbledore’s sexuality”. If anything, he is the quintessential ace character — a wise old mentor archetype with no sexuality whatsoever.
But if you think of him as a real person, existing independently of the books that tell his story, he could easily be gay. The narrative isn’t about his personal life, after all, right? It’s plausible that it wouldn’t come up.
I don’t think in those terms. And I won’t claim that my approach is “the right one”, because hey — who am I, really, to tell you how to enjoy fiction? But I have always been on the opposite end of the spectrum. I hate fan theories with a fiery passion. I avoid forums that discuss ongoing fantasy series like the plague. No, Tyler, Daenerys is NOT secretly Tyrion’s niece. Jaime didn’t kill his mother. Arya doesn’t have a secret Braavosi lover.
You know why? Because they don’t exist.
These people are made up. Their experiences only ever occur in the fiction that features them. They don’t have independent life outside of it. I will not speculate as to the secret thoughts and actions of non-existent people, because the writer can, at any point, choose to take them in any direction they please. Sometimes — sadly — they do it specifically to subvert the expectations of fan speculation.
This is why the bisexuality of the Bonds of Brass boys bugged me so much. Because that is a story based around romance, and that romance is same-sex. That’s what is presented inside the book, and that’s all that exists of these two entities. Claiming otherwise, even as the writer, implies that they have a life outside of the work, that there are further dimensions to them that I am not privy to. And for all I know, maybe future books in the trilogy will blast their bisexuality in my face. I won’t love those two disasters any less for it.
But in the mean time, I believe that the work is the work, and only the work is canon. It doesn’t matter whether my story is about any particular kind of identity or circumstance. If it matters to me that my readers perceive my characters in any specific way, it is the simplest thing in the world to code them that way, without ever making it a focus of the narrative. A stray thought. A random line of dialogue. Someone casually noticing the attractiveness of someone else.
We are writers. The world of our own work is our butt-monkey. There is nothing we can’t make known to the reader, if we so choose.
In the actual real world that we live in, labels are still important, and identity is the nexus of social and political fights that have defined generations. Hetero is still the norm. Same-sex relationships still read “gay” or “lesbian”. Therefore, if we want to paint our characters in more complex colors (even when we are placing them in a post-identity world), we have to code them as such within the work.
I shouldn’t have to read J.K.’s tweets in order to know something so profound about one of her series’ most important characters. But BOOOOY would I love some hot and steamy prequel story about young Albus getting it on with another dude!
This one is narrowly focused on writing a specific type of
science fiction and fantasy, but it’s a fairly prevalent issue, so I figured I
would drop my two cents in that particular slot.
Something I had to deal with from pretty much the first
paragraph of my current book, was how to naturally insert the necessary
information, so that readers would have any chance of understanding what the F is
going on. I believe I have overcome this issue with some level of competence
(courtesy of obsessing over it for literal years), but it did make me evaluate
the role of infodumps in secondary world fantasy and science fiction.
First of all, the terms, for that one person who potentially
doesn’t know what I am talking about:
Infodumps are compressed chunks of information about the
story, world, or characters in fiction. It is, by definition, something to
avoid, as it stops the narrative in its tracks. Rather than the reader submerging
themselves into your work, they are taken out of the story in order to read a
glossary.
Secondary worlds, on the other hand, are locales that exist
outside of our present day world or its known past. Your Middle Earths, Narnias,
Westeroses, and Roshars, for sure. But just as much your Cultures, Dunes, Urths,
and Foundations, because whether an alternate reality, or a distant future, the
further away you get from the reader’s point of origin, the more terminology
and circumstance they will have to learn, in order to become part of your
worlds.
So, with that said, it is staggering how many ways there are
to present information poorly. Talking heads (which I’ve heard described as “Maid
and Butler dialogue” and “As you know, Bob…” as well) that spout exposition
when they have no reason to be having such conversations. Farm boys or
fresh-out-of-the-portal/cryochamber earthers who need everything explained to
them. Students in magical/SF military schools who supposedly know a lot, but
get to still give the reader tutorials through their daily experiences.
And of course, the old faithful – the omniscient point of
view in which the author’s voice itself stops everything to explain to us what
we are reading and how it works.
The types of infodumping are infinite, but what struck me, as I was thinking of how best to reveal my own worldbuilding to the reader, was that when it comes to secondary worlds, not all in-depth explanations are infodumps. And the delivery of information is not a binary, but a spectrum.
To give examples, on one end you have a Brandon Sanderson. He
likes everything neatly explained and structured, from the magic to the workings
of the world, to cosmology and theology. And if something is a mystery, the
reader knows it is a matter of time for it to be revealed. However, he rarely
falls into the trap of artificial explanations. He worldbuilds with the reader,
but he does it organically, and this approach to writing is at the core of his
work.
On the other end, you have someone like Steven Erikson, who —
in Gardens of the Moon — parachutes the reader into the middle of a war
in an unknown land, right as some kind of dark elf on a flying mountain has a chaotic
magic battle with a group of humans. Names, titles, factions, and plot points
fly around and bounce off of each other, and none of it is explained. You
are left to slowly build your own picture of the Malazan world, if you have the
patience for it.
I tend to prefer understanding a world by myself, absorbing
it through the eyes of characters who are part of it. As I empathize with them,
I can empathize with their reality and circumstances, and it is my favorite
type of “learning curve”. However, I still need some core principles and terminology
to be if not explained, then immediately obvious (and there are many naming
conventions that help with that). Otherwise, curiosity turns to confused frustration.
Meanwhile, the opposite approach has great merit as well. A
gem like Mistborn does not work if Kelsier is not around to explain allomancy
to Vin. The glorious battle scenes of that book only impress because we
understand the “science” of what the characters are doing. Some stories need
the reader to have a firm grasp on their setting in order to tell the story
they want to tell.
Both extremes, and anything in-between can be done well, or
poorly. But I have come to realize that whether you want drop the reader in the
middle of your world, or introduce them slowly to it, some measure of infodumping
is unavoidable, at least for larger works of secondary world speculative
fiction. In this aspect, SFF is fairly unique in comparison to any other genre,
which can lean on the real world for support in its narrative. We don’t have
that luxury, and so we must use tricks and shortcuts to give the reader enough
to work with.
Ultimately, I don’t mind some direct infodumps in the books
I read. If the world, magic, space-faring tech, or the complicated relationships
between characters and factions, are key to understanding the plot, but not the
point of the plot, I’d rather know enough about them from the get go,
rather than trying to piece them together, while figuring out where the
story is going. Some of my all-time favorite authors are able to do that seamlessly
enough that I don’t even notice information has been dumped on me.
And so, this is what I aspire to as well. Because, really, you
try telling a space fantasy story comped as “Final Fantasy meets Mistborn on a
terraformed gas giant” without some infodumps!
Today’s post is more stream of conscience-y than usual, mostly because I need it for therapeutic reasons. Hopefully, it’s not entirely useless to read, but either way, I have to process this.
We live in a shitty time, all the shittier for how unclear everyone is on how much we are actually supposed to panic, and on what axis. Is our health in danger? Certainly, though not all that much, unless you are old or immunocompromised. Is society in danger? Definitely, because of said old or immunocompromised people who you would put in grave danger with your healthy ass walking outside and potentially spreading a virus you don’t know you are carrying.
Is the economy in danger? Uh, yes. Very much so. Duh. Especially with this incompetent mobster in charge of government.
All of the separate factors add up to this weird miasmic feeling of disquiet, where one feels both kind of safe, and really seriously threatened. Simultaneously overreacting and underreacting in a time that is both a complete emergency, and somehow totally normal.
Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, I have been reading and listening to the professionals, I have not stocked up panic-level amounts of toilet paper, and I am overall fine. I have the luxury of a nice home, human contact, and not risking bankruptcy just yet. My situation is on the privileged end of the spectrum.
But that doesn’t mean I am immune to the oppressive feeling of doom and gloom. Self-isolation is still isolation. It doesn’t matter if you normally work from home, or that you might be anti-social or introverted. Even with company, the awareness that you can’t (or at least shouldn’t ) leave the house, and if you did, there is nowhere for you to go, can tear you down.
So what I am doing about it is, I wake up at normal times. I don’t sleep in late, just because I have nowhere to be. I dress up in adult human camo, even though no one is likely to see me. I have me super gay iced coffee (from concentrate, organic). Then I sit down and I try to do some work, be it editing my novel, scheduling a new post for the blog, writing book/movie reviews for other places, or setting up violin lessons on Zoom.
Before videogames or reading yells at me that adulting is too hard (which inevitably happens). Because then, once I log onto Destiny or puddle myself into bed with a book, I know I did something with my day.
I think it is of profound importance to act like life goes on, like you can still work, or find other ways to be productive. To me this is the best way I can think of to stave off feelings of depression, panic, or plain old apathy. Not terribly novel, I know. But it is what I can do.
Last year was the first time I actually went to a panel on
writing. Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo is a comic-con, rather
than a professional one, but they had acquired some impressive names, such as
Mary Robinette Kowal and Cory Doctorow, among others (both of whom are absolute
rock stars by the way). This time around the stable was even larger, with
people such as John Scalzi, Terry Brooks, and Sam Sykes, as well as a number of
first-time authors like K.M. Szpara and Chris Kluwe, and a serious presence of
the Horror and Young Adult variety, spearheaded by Joe Hill and Rainbow Rowell
respectively.
I focused on the SFF panels, which took the biggest chunk of my convention weekend, and it was an energizing (and a tiny bit frustrating) experience. Despite the well thought out panel topics, the actual result seemed to always amount to “writers talking about writering”, which I totally loved. And listening to people you admire share their experiences in the field you ascribe to, helps tremendously to humanize and demystify said field.
On the other hand, having people talk about living your life’s dream when you sometimes feel so far away from achieving it, can be a bit depressing (beer helps with that, by the way). More than anything though, it paints in stark colors the simple fact that the steps to traditional publishing are very simple, very accessible, and each one requires tremendous amounts of work, patience, and determination. There are no short cuts. But in its own way, this is motivating as well.
Some highlights:
K.M. Szpara and the importance of being earnest. Even among a group as diverse as the panels at C2E2 offered, Szpara stood out to me, and not only because I had practically just finished his book (or because, I was somehow the fanboy who got to be his first signee). He approached both of his appearances (“Tor Presents: Chaos and Cosmos” and “The Devil You Know”) with a mixture of thoughtfulness and passion that really resonated with me. An awareness of the current field, mixed with an impish attitude that I, in my rigid glory, can only admire from a distance. Plus, raising awareness of the important issue of whether Dolores Umbridge would make a good dom.
One thing that stuck with me was his advice on approaching fiction writing with the abandon of a fanfic writer. No fear of censorship, no need to worry about market or reception. It is a constant struggle and a subject of endless second-guessing for me, trying to determine whether I write a certain way because I want to, or because I think that’s how it’s “supposed” to be written. It was refreshing to hear someone who has achieved success vouch for the former. And though of course one can’t just ignore all external factors when pursuing traditional publishing, it is a nice reminder all the same that ultimately you write better when your primary drive isn’t worry about what the market might expect.
Zack Jordan and the value of showmanship. Zack appeared on only one panel – “Authors on ‘The Best Advice I Ever Got’” – which makes sense, considering his first book, The Last Human, is not even out yet (it is scheduled for late March). That particular panel quickly became a conversation about editing and author reaction thereof, and Jordan made the very important point that if you are trying to get published and sell your work for moneys, then you are no longer writing just “for yourself”. And the editor is the person whose job is to champion the book, not stifle the author, provided of course that the two are a good fit.
What was interesting to me about him though, was not the panel, but rather his booth on the main floor, glued to the Del Rey stand. Jordan, who has background in tech (one assumes) startups had set up a whole performance installation where he and a couple of other dudes in jumpsuits were “scanning” the crowd for potential humans, and issuing honest-to-Cthulhu, printed on the spot ID cards of your actual race, with picture and everything. Beyond the fourth wall, he was also handing out advance reading copies of The Last Human, and when I questioned him about the whole thing, he told me that Del Rey had provided the booth space, and he had set up everything else, from his helpers, to the card printers, the scanning app, all of it.
Moral of the story? For obvious market reasons, first time SFF writers are nobody’s budget priority. But if you are good at selling yourself, you can make a big impression with limited resources. Now if only I could in any way leverage classical violin training for PR…
John Scalzi and the JOHN FUCKING SCALZI!!! Perhaps a little context is necessary. I am sure I will end up writing about this in a bit more detail in the future, but suffice to say that The Collapsing Empire was the book that made me decide I was going to get off (on?) my ass and actually write a damn novel. Later that same year, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing was the collection of blog posts that made me decide I was going to pursue a writing career like a real boy.
So, while I wouldn’t credit Scalzi’s work with the inspiration for my own writing, his personality has definitely been directly responsible for my believing I can do this. And meeting him in person was such an amazing experience. He is a smug dork in the best possible way, and despite having the second largest autograph line after Terry Brooks, he spent a lot of time chatting with everyone and being friendly as hell. In the end, he told me to “keep writing, and don’t dare stopping”, and in my head canon, he is greatly invested in my success.
This is by no means the extent of my impressions of the convention or the writers I met there, but most of my other experiences boil down to small anecdotes, reinforcements of personal feelings, and some truly encouraging advice and raw emotion from Sam Sykes, who I shamefully had not read a word by until the very morning of C2E2 — a mistake I am currently fixing with enthusiasm. Also worth mentioning is Chris Kluwe , who was insanely charming and showed me that just because I am a bigot who thinks sportsball is dumb, doesn’t mean sportsball people can’t be thoughtful or have meaningful contributions outside of hoops, or whatever it is you do in the NFL.
Overall, after nearly a decade of walking around booths of comic books, artwork, and toys, standing in lines for autographs and photo ops with cast members of Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am discovering that my inner diligent student likes sitting in panels discussing the craft and business of writing more than pretty much anything else a con might offer. So I am definitely ready to test this theory at a professional lit-con. Hopefully, I get a chance later in the year.
Today’s exercise comes courtesy of a recent Writing Excuses episode, in which literary agent DongWon Song suggests rewriting drastically the first sentence of a work in progress three different ways. The result is, by necessity, short, but it actually took me a while to get the different versions to be anything I would want to start a story with. Funnily enough, I am now considering changing the original.
Disclaimer: the opening paragraph this is taken from is an establishing shot of a very non-terrestrial world. As such, it features some terms that are defined through context and might not make sense to readers in isolation. Hopefully, this won’t make the entire exercise unreadable for people who are not currently writing my book.
Version 1: A world with no horizon greeted me when I reached
the mouth of the cave, all distances drowned in the glowing mists of Ocean.
Version 2: An endless blue swirl of mist spreads
before you as you reach the end of the tunnel, the dance of color at once
calming and dizzying, making you put a hand on the stone wall so as not to fall
into the abyss below.
Version 3: The Arc in the night sky bathed Ocean in its golden glow when Valen came out of the cave, and he needed a moment to orient himself, his sense of proportion dwarfed by the immense vista.
Back when I started this journey of “You know what, Imma do this for realz!”, I began reading and listening to people who knew more than I did about the craft of writing. Everyone had their quirks of process, different things they were better or worse at, varying ways of approaching it. I am happy to have seemingly reached a point, where it doesn’t all feel abstract and I can start figuring out how those experiences apply to me, rather than stumbling completely in the dark.
But one thing that none of the books and podcasts prepared
me for, was drafts.
As I have said before, my current writing is a mutated form of obsessive-compulsive discovery. I completed the initial draft of a novel some time ago, after a fairly pants-y process of figuring out what the story was, and how to get it to go where it seemed to want to go. I went back constantly to rewrite, adding or removing passages, lines, or entire chapters. Then I gave it some time to ferment, while jotting down thoughts as they came to me, about what the second draft should be like.
Now, over halfway through said second draft, I feel incredibly overwhelmed. Happily, this is not preventing me from working on it, but it is so much more difficult than I expected it to be. The book is… not small, and I have introduced some significant changes after I had time to think about it. But my brain helpfully dredges up a constant stream of loose ends, things that have suddenly become inconsistent or nonsensical after the new alterations, or simply “better” ideas of how events and characters are to evolve.
This is not my first novel, but it is the first I mean to push through a querying stage. As such, it is the first time I am faced with such a level of complexity in editing, and I was surprised at how difficult it was. (This is not to be taken as me claiming that I am doing a good job of it…)
The conversations by professional writers regarding drafts,
that I have encountered so far, are mostly about the spectrum of outlining and
discovery. Whether people favor one, the other, or a mixture of the two, the focus
tends to go into the different approaches, with multiple drafts taken as a
given when the process is closer to the discovery end. I had expected that, of
course, since my fledgling attempts at outlining started way after I was
finished with my the first pass on this work.
But the sheer chaos of it, and the daunting awareness that for
every change I make, I might be creating three new problems? Or that I might be
losing the structure of the novel? Or realizing that for all the time this
draft is taking, the novel will require at least a couple more? I mean,
seriously, can you have an impostor syndrome before you’re published, or is
this just over-the-counter anxiety?
Either way, the challenge is still about 5% more inspiring
than it is depressing, so I am muscling through and learning from it. But It
goes to show just how surprising certain obstacles can be, despite thinking you
have anticipated them. Apparently – just like in literally every other field
known to the human species – no amount of preparation can make up for the real experience.
Who knew?
Continuing my journey through Brian Kiteley ‘s The 3 A.M. Epiphany, and Exercise 3 is both simple, and infuriating: Write a fragment of a story from the perspective of an unreliable narrator in tight third person. We are so used to unreliability being the realm of first person, that it was a really exciting thought process to tell a story I knew was wrong, but through the perspective of a more detached, supposedly less subjective point of view. Kiteley’s idea is that in this way, the author can play within the edges of unreliability, and actually coax more trust from the reader. And unlike a first person, where you understand the thought processes of your character and know how to use them to mislead, it seems that if you use third limited, you have to believe your own lie to a greater extent. Or at least that was my experience.
Waking up was a burst of joy. He arose and contemplated his
reflection in the mirror.
That he was alive at all, was a miracle to his parents. When
the terrifying illness had taken hold of their precious beautiful newborn, they
had wailed. Oh how they had wailed! Matronly nursemaids had ran from the castle
screaming in terror. Healers had fainted, too weak to comprehend what had
befallen the Duke’s family.
His mother and father had wept for joy, he knew, when the
illness had simply gone away one day. He woke every night, basking not in dreaded
sunlight, but in the feeling that radiated through his home – of a family that
cherished and loved him, of servants that rejoiced in his existence, saw him
not as master, but as kin.
He opened the door and left the shadowed cave of his
chambers, as he did every night. He enjoyed roaming the corridors upon waking, once
the harsh dayglow he only faintly remembered was gone from the world. The
hallways would echo with his footsteps, hushed voices drifting from far away.
Those usually dwindled further as he approached. He wondered now, as he
sometimes did, at the coincidence. He was the beloved master, the shining
liege, and as he grew fat with joy, so did his servants and parents grow to
love him even more. But yet there was rarely a soul nearby when he began his
nightly strolls.
No matter. Should he wish for something, he knew he had to
only call out.
There was much to do in the castle at night, much to
experience. His pale skin glistened. The light from the lanterns that lined the
walls painted oily colors across the length of his arm when he raised it before
his face. He laughed, turned it around to see the play of crystalline
reflections, as it danced up his lean triceps. The skin of his neck stretched
and he felt the familiar click inside as he moved his head to chase the pattern
further, over his shoulder and down his ribbed back…
A soft gasp brought him out of his reverie and he allowed
his neck to return to its usual position, to look upon a young servant boy, standing
frozen at the entrance of a side chamber. The boy’s eyes were wide with awe and
a bead of sweat traced a line down the side of his face. The servant dare not
breathe for fear that his beautiful lord would avert his countenance away.
He laughed. The boy need not fear. He moved forward,
crossing the distance with a single glide, and reached with long fingers to
caress the servant’s face, taking the bead of sweat with the tip of a nail. The
boy trembled with adoration. He laughed and made to turn away and heard a gasp
behind him.
He got confused for a moment. It happened sometimes. He was
used to it and did not let it worry him.
As he continued roaming the corridors, screams sounded
somewhere behind him. They made him wince. The castle was a happy place. His
very presence brought delight to all who lived there. And yet, on occasion
during his nightly strolls, there would be such dreadful tumult! It made him
angry, but he was as merciful as he was beautiful. The bounty of his joy was
big enough for all to partake, even if at times they would refuse to be
content.
His very mother had wailed and screamed at him once, the
tears so striking on her normally smiling face. She knew how much he loved her
smile, and so she always smiled for him. But that time she had not smiled, even
when he told her to. She had been the one confused then, his mother. Her voice
shrill with accusations, yelling something about a brother, calling him – him!
– a monster. Her distress had been tiring, and unnecessary as well.
He had never had a brother, he told her, and all the
monsters had gone away once he had come through his illness as an infant. He
had hugged her tight to console her, and her screams had turned into rasping
sobs. She fell on the floor when he let her go, twisted strangely, but when he
had made to help her stand, she had screamed that there was no need. She smiled
then, the way she knew he liked, and so had his father, when he had turned
around to see him standing at the doorframe.
His mother only sat in a chair now, with wheels. He giggled
as he thought about the silly contraption, but she was so attached to it. And
she never yelled at him anymore, so of course he indulged her in her game, even
if it must be uncomfortable at times.
The last vestiges of his confusion were now gone, and he
found himself alone once again, in the hallways of his ancestral castle,
seeking joy. He licked his fingers without looking at them. They tasted slick,
salty. Metallic. He loved that taste. Lived for it. Through it.
As he traveled down the corridors, sometimes skipping on the
stone tiles, sometimes gliding above them, he laughed his rich laughter,
reveling at the happiness he felt. His dark world was beautiful and filled with
the brightness of love. He only had to reach out and pluck it.
I visited my boyfriend in Berkeley, CA this past week. As it turns out, this town is an orgy of bookstores that cater to every possible variety of reader, and I was not ready for this! The end result was a pile of books that I had to lug back to Chicago, because, as the title of this post hints at, I have zero impulse control. In my defense, those are all books I have wanted to read/own for a while. But the simple fact is, I acted like a puppy that was suddenly let off the leash in the dog park, and I feel not even the tiniest bit of shame…
Another exercise from Brian Kiteley ‘s The 3 A.M. Epiphany .As the name suggests, this one requires you to write 500 words of a 2-nd person narrative that is made entirely by imperative commands. I may have cheated a bit here and there — as far as I am concerned, it is still a command, even if it features a whole entire sentence surrounded by dashes, like, say this one —but the overall process was fun and just the right amount of challenging, so I am going with it.
Wake up. Come on, open your eyes. Try not to wince when the
light pierces your brain, it makes you wrinkle. Don’t think how grey and bleak
it is, don’t try to calculate how many days the cloud cover has remained in
place. Try to crawl from under the blankets faster. Remember where you are –
the big guest bedroom, as befits your so-called rank. Take account of all the
gaudy details the palace architect and that horrendous interior designer have
seen fit to vomit all over said interior. Appreciate it for a moment, yeah. Try
not to dwell on why you agreed to this state visit in the first place,
considering you are just a marionette and have absolutely no authority to do
anything this country’s glorified dictatrix would ask of you.
Don’t dwell, I said!
Get up – stop coughing, it makes you look like even more of a
decrepit old man than you already act like! – and get to that bathroom.
Yeah, don’t stare too hard at the mirror. Try to get cleaned up, to the best of
your uninspiring capability. Wash the shame of last night’s “reception”, or as
the young kids call it – “a clusterfuck of getting shitfaced on disgustingly expensive
wine, while half the continent is choking on poverty thanks to your hostess”.
Yeah, take that hangover pill, you know you want to. Forget that it’s another
admission of weakness. Embrace it – weakness is not out of your way. Don’t think
too hard, just choke it down, like you choke down your continuing political
impotence.
Get dressed now. Do this right, or you won’t be able to
impress the Empress, or whatever she calls herself these days, or her
lackeys who you are supposedly here to woo. Consider this carefully and dress
appropriately, so that your look screams courtly humility, with just a touch of
“I will degrade myself for you”. Remember why your country sent you and try not
to think of what the assholes who built this wonder of architectural kitsch will
do to your people if you fail. Don’t think about it – seriously, I know
I didn’t stutter – and pick that shirt with the pink ruffles. Look at yourself in
the mirror now, and asses your capacity to present just the right amount of court
buffoonery before you make the trip.
Ok, now get to the throne room for the early morning
reception. Act like you don’t know that they did this on purpose, to make you
and the other bobble-heads like you feel emasculated, defeminated, or however-else-they-identify-ated.
Pretend that it doesn’t sting. Fail a couple of times on your way if you need
to, while it’s still safe, then put on that broad, somehow charming “sentient
block of cheese” smile you are renowned for in literally no circle, and get on
with the theatre of diplomacy.
Walk down the long, gaudy strip of carpet like a good,
obedient boy. Don’t look at the crass opulence on display, pretend you don’t
hear the snickers. Ignore the metric fuckton of frills and lace half the court
is wearing, then avert your eyes from Her Corpulent Majesty, the Whatever She
Has Decided to Be Called Today, and just bow. Keep a straight face, damn it!
Stifle the giggles – nobody has time for your nervous breakdowns – and offer
her The Speech. Accept her gracious grunt of acknowledgement.
Go mingle with the rest of the diplomacy victims once this
is done and over with, and act like any of you matter. Try not to think what
her obnoxious kingdom can do to yours, and if you can’t do that, hold the
depression until tonight’s reception starts. Allow yourself to drown the inner
shrieks in more grossly expensive wine like an adult.
Then do it all over again tomorrow, and then do it the day
after, until you have saved your nation, or have found any other meaningful
reason to keep existing.
