Values Dissonance and Reboots

I wrote, in a review of Cassandra Clare's "City of Fallen Angels" the following thought: "I understand playing with the mythos. I understand fleshing out things that have been left vague, but blatantly changing the story so that it barely resembles the original myth to create a CHEAP villian is offensive to me, not because I'm christian or jewish, but because I think disrespecting a faith so badly is a mark of hubris that is not easily forgiven." This review continues to nag me and apply in other areas of my life. This topic cropped up again at game night.

(We were playing "Fortunate and Glory" -- I highly recommend the game, by the way.) It then morphed into a much longer conversation about the Avengers and Foghorn Leghorn between myself and our "GM" (he provides all the games, therefore, he's the GM even when we aren't roleplaying.) Why the Avengers and Foghorn Leghorn? Well, that's complicated. They aren't exactly contemporaries, though Captain America first appears in 1941, Leghorn in 1946, Thor in 1961. (The Avengers as assembled group first appear in 1963.) What they share is they originated in an era where that which wasn't W.A.S.P. was fair game. They first appear before much of the civil rights movement had come to fruition. This means that racism, creedism and sexism was pretty rampant in the world which they inhabited. While perhaps inside the world of the comic books these things didn't impact the plot dramatically, these comics were still necessarily a product of their world. As were the cartoons, but let's face it, Foghorn is blatantly sexist, homophobic and in some ways, racist. He may be a funny mysogynist, but he's a big ol' bigot. At least in the idealistic comics, those sort of things aren't present as admirable, humorous, likable traits.

 I love Foghorn. I also understand why the younger kids in my family barely recognize him and don't really like him. Foghorn isn't appropriate. He endorses attitudes that aren't part of a healthy society. Warner Bros knows this and they run his tamest cartoons, which out of context don't really flatter Foghorn at all. Instead of finding Egghead laughable, they identify with him, and hate how Foghorn treats him. Foghorn is fading out of the Merry Melodies canon. This world isn't his world. He's interesting to historians, because he's a meter by which we can say society has changed, but he is no longer and appropriate public figure, especially not for children. Warner knew where the buck stopped with him. And they've gracefully retired dear ol' Foghorn. He appears in "let's get the gang together" numbers, but he doesn't appear as he was. He's been bowlderized, not rebooted. He appears rarely, likely for the sake of the parents. I imagine in five years you won't see him at all, not in reruns, not in "let's get the gang together" numbers either. (Compare Speedy Gonzales, who had completely disappeared. They all but deny he ever existed as a caricature of Mexicans and now play up only his 'speed' aspect. We'll see how the reboot goes.)

 Graceful retirement is probably the best way to deal with a character or universe that has serious values dissonance or serious disrespect of the source material (E.g. black-face sketches. Very disrespectful of the source material, that is, black southern minstrels). However, you do lose the revenue associated with the reruns/reprints of the franchise, and a certain segment of the population, as discussed, wants to see NEW material from that franchise, so future revenue is also lost. For social and economic reasons, reboots are a popular treatment for characters and universes with iffy backstories or sketchy plot lines. In the reboot, certain unsavory or contriversial elements either disappear (Superman's NIMBY message) or they get unpacked ( Green Orion Slave women become Green Orion ANIMAL women that are actually the instigators of the syndicate, and not 'victims' but 'bait.' Smooth move, Star Trek.) There's a limited capacity, however, to reboot certain franchises/characters without making it unrecognizable or "in name only" work. While comic book worlds have very flexible histories, and are more pliable than most worlds, they still have a basic foundation on which their world rests, and that foundation can only flex so much before the universe or characters are completely unrecognizable to the fanbase OR the work becomes incoherent.

 So let's go back to the Avengers. It's a good action movie. But it's a problem reboot. The Avengers grew out of the "Thor" franchise. The Thor franchise is, in my opinion, comparable to Foghorn Leghorn. Anyone with any familiarity and respect for the prose and poetic eddas would be unamused, just like anyone with any respect for equality and liberty is unamused by Foghorn Leghorn's wordier sketches. Thor is not an affectionate tribute or parody of the eddas, it's just plain wrong. It was acceptable in its own time -- people didn't know any better than to go mucking with these figures. After all, back then everyone was Christian, so Thor and Loki and Odin were just stories, just public domain figures. No one would know any better than what the comic presented, other than some scholars. A few general trappings, a few of the most familiar features, and yeeehawww, another hero! Playing to a few common misconceptions and decompiling a complex character and yeeeeehawww, another villian! Marvel, with minimal work, creates another money-making franchise. It was the silver age of comics, before the civil rights movement, before other creeds had respect. It was what it was. But they rebooted it with the flimsy, mocking backstory for Thor, and the blatantly wrong backstory for Loki.

Let me repeat something I quote above: "...Blatantly changing the story so that it barely resembles the original myth to create a CHEAP villian is offensive..." As pointed out by the GM, they couldn't have retconned Thor or Loki and still had the Avengers work out. It was too fundamental to the universe to go away or be significantly changed. It also, due to the fan, wasn't possible to simply rename the hero and the villain to disconnect it from the mistakes of the past. He said that his opinion was that, since they decided to reboot it, it was going to have to be rebooted that way. But, he certainly could see my point that perhaps it shouldn't have been chosen for rebooting at all. We both agreed that some things should just be allowed to gracefully retire.

ETA: There were many aspects that were right, that called back to the mythology. This was almost more disturbing than the overall disrespect -- it was as if they were telling those of us in the audience that would notice those details that 'we knew better, and we don't care.' It was probably intended as a wink -- 'we know, we did the research, silly Marvel' -- but it didn't work, at least for me.

Got an aversion to the IRS?

Not that we wouldn't want you to get your taxes done on time, of course, but why distract yourself with scrubbing the toilet, or mowing the lawn when we've gathered together all these awesome fantasy books for you to read.? Every last one of the them is free all day long, so no matter when you decide you need a 'break', they'll be ready for you and your Kindle Reader. (Or, Kindle Application.)

Betrovia by Dave King



The White Tree by Edward W. Robinson



Last Chance Jack by Cate Dean



Fall of Ossard by Collin Taber



Jadeflies by Matthew Musser



Death's Hand by S.M. Reine



The Red Cross of Gold Books I and II by Brendan Carroll



Corner of a Round Planet by E. Stoops



Lovers and Beloved by MeiLin Miranda



Thieves at Heart by Tristan J. Tarwater



Blood Duty by J. R. Tomlin



Ice and Fire by Christopher Bunn



Maggie for Hire by Kate Danley

Remember, if you get it for free, be kind; pay it back and leave an upbeat review.

Bombardment

Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood called television "bombardment" when speaking to the U.S. Senate.  I have to admit, having not owned a television for the better part of a decade now, when I encounter one, I certainly feel the same way. I do watch, like so many people do, streamed tv shows, but this is a different experience -- there are no commercials that are several decibels louder, and I don't watch a lot of the noisier, overwhelming shows. Right now I'm watching "The Universe" -- a science show.

This theme is crops up early in "Remodeling Witchell." Tavin did not grow up with a television, and he rarely uses one now. But more to the point, Tavin didn't grow up in our fast-paced world. Being wealthy has afforded him the privilege of pacing himself to himself. There have been very few outside influences (though it does not come up in the book at this point, despite being rather bright, he wasn't a very good student because he didn't see much reason to change his priorities to better match what school wanted of him.) and he can afford to take as long as he likes to pursue certain things. There is very little that he forces himself to do. That is not to say he's lazy -- he's far from it -- but it is to say that a lot of modern 'bombardment' is circumcised from his life. And thus, he's not well inured against being overwhelmed.

This does, in some ways, make the story harder to write. I think for a reader that is used to going to work, hustling home, dealing with what the dog may have destroyed, realizing that a bill is late, all in a single day might have some trouble wrapping their mind around someone that is so badly upset by disruptions to their  very slow routine. It makes the characters seem a bit naive, a bit 'victorian'. They are like all sheltered children, really. But I don't think that's as obvious as it should be. I need to point this out more often, and more consistently to reinforce that Tavin is desperately out of his element the minute the action starts. I think I may also need to lampshade this fact as well.

Enjoy the Movie

The joy-suckers. J. Peterman calls them the "pleasure deniers." You all know of whom I speak. The people in the bookstore who notice you plucking up the newest Jim Butcher to read the back and say "Oh do you really read him? You know, his books aren't very well edited. There's an awful lot of little errors in the books." You probably stare at them, and they, not knowing that you are wondering what's wrong with them continue with their little lecture, "I just can't get into the series. The first book has a bad printing error. It's clear just how cheap the book is."

And then they drop 'the bomb' (those are sarcasm quotes) "I'm a bit of a literature (feel free to substitute grammar, language, whatever for this word) snob." I tune them out at this point. First of all, I knew that from their second remark. Secondly, I suspect they wouldn't know how to enjoy a good book if you handed them the book, made them the tea, provided the Bon Bons and explained how the process worked. It's fundamentally antithetical to their world.  They don't really enjoy books. They think they do, but they don't. They like everything to be technically perfect, and display knowledge of each figure of speech, and each trope associated to the genre. So long as a book has no complicated grammar (which inevitably is viewed as incorrect by the joy-sucker crowd) and has the bare minimum of similes, metaphors and such that the joy-sucker in question thinks it should have then the joy-sucker declares that it has all the necessary qualities to be a good book and crowns it as such. Nothing else matters. The writing can be otherwise dry, the characters lifeless and the plot paper-thin and plodding. So long as the book is technically perfect then it is a good book.

I want to ask these people the hundred-dollar question. "When you read a good book, do you see the movie?"

Most of you will  know that I am not talking about 'the movie of the book.' I'm talking about the fact that when I start reading a good book, I, in a way, stop reading a physical book and start watching a mental movie. The page flips disappear, the words aren't exactly there. I'm aware of the fact I'm reading, I'm aware of my cup of tea, but every word I suck in is another still frame, and they are going by at such pace that I'm watching a little movie in my head. If I'm lucky, its nearly the same movie that the writer saw when they were putting the words on the page.

The reason I don't ask this question though, is because I know the answer.  The joy-sucker is only concerned with technically perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation. They don't know that, but they are. To the detriment of all other aspects of the book. They are so myopically focused on one aspect that the things that make a book wonderful are never considered. They never visualize the characters in their mind, they never hear the words nor smell the smells.  When you are watching the movie, the words are barely there, typos are glossed over, your brain automatically fixes minor misspellings or adds in accidentally omitted words. Your suspension of disbelief applies to the book itself. And it would take the mother of all typos to shake you loose from your cinema experience. (I know this because it took a misprint of recall magnitude to jolt me, and that's the only time it's happened. The only reason I noticed issues in the Dresden Files' first book was that it took me longer than usual to get into it. If there were typos in the latter half of the book, I wouldn't know.)

I feel bad for the joy-suckers. I really do. They never even see the trailer of the movie.

They also won't enjoy the following at all. But you will.

Perpetuation

 This post may seem political, but it's really in reference to several other things going on in my life, and also, a significant plot point in my book. So, it's a topic worth exploring, despite the seemingly obvious connection to United States political hoopla. Why do people perpetuate behavior they hated? When I was much younger I would sometimes say "I hate this, and when I grow up, I'm not going to do it." Sometimes I'd also add some vehemence to the statement. Now, some of this is banal stuff. I hate off-white walls and want them no where in my own house. I do not want 'ecru' walls. I do not want "bone" walls. If the future owners hate my vibrant color schemes, so be it. I refuse to live without obnoxious color. It makes me happy. Some of it, however, was rather serious stuff. I hated being bullied on account of.... nothing.  When I grew up, I decided I needed reasons for everything. Even if they were petty or simple.  And what I hated even worse than bullies was that I was always supposed to be "big" about it and smile nicely and let people get away with bad behavior. I'll be a doormat to a lot of things. But they'll drag me kicking and screaming in protest if they ask me to turn a blind eye these days. I'll admit, this attitude has gotten me in trouble. In fact, even recently. More than once in the past three months!

Understandably, some of the things we hated as a kid are things we later come to understand as we learn the method and logic behind the behavior or action. Whether we just accept that some distasteful things must be done, or whether we suffer the consequences of not doing them and learn the hard way, we come to find out that some things we hate, we will always hate, but they have to be done anyway. This is, I believe, possibly the only acceptable answer to my main question: Why do we perpetuate behavior we hate?

I think another common answer to this question is apathy. Upon becoming an adult, it's easy at times to fall back onto these bad behaviors or let them continue because 'that's what we know.' And anyway, it becomes eerily easy to justify by saying 'well, I grew up that way I'm just fine. I hated it, my kids will hate it, but it's alright in the end.' I despise this response on two levels: first of all, it means that the person in question gave up fighting for a better world which is.... pretty sad considering their very own kids get to inherit this world. Hint: this is known as passing the buck. Also, it assumes that, despite the fact that rarely less than 20 years has passed between when they were their kid's age and now, all things are still the same. Bad behavior that goes unchecked for twenty years does not magically get better or stay the same. It gets worse.

(Please be mindful that this is not about to be a good old days post.)

For example: my parents, when they grew up, bullying was limited to a few scuffles and some name calling and the occasional prank. My sister got tied up with a jump rope and attacked. By third graders. My parents blew their tops off. Hello Amazon Warrior, what did you do with my Mother? Clearly very bad things happened on schoolyards back then. People got their noses broken, teeth got knocked out, I'm sure bones got snapped and such. But that often put an end to it. Not so much these days. It's all over the news, you can read all about it. Apathy towards bullying in the last twenty years has turned into a rash of suicides. And not because these kids were weak -- it's because the bullying has become worse, and with cyberbullying, there was never any respite. Without any schoolyard fights, bullies never end up in their place. They don't get knocked down and the people being "big" and taking in what the bullies were dishing out take the hit.

So apathy is really just a way to escalate the problem without feeling directly responsible.

The final answer is the most insidious, the most predatory, and  the one that really makes me quake in my boots: Why do people perpetuate the bad behavior? Because they are benefiting from it. The most obvious example is a cycle of abuse, but pyramid schemes and other such monkey business also apply here. They've figured out the power that comes from being the worst guy in the room.  They figured out how to hose people the same way that they got hosed. The power that was taken from them, they are gaining back by stealing power from their former self. They become their hate. My god, just writing that down scares me. I never wanted that much understanding into the motivations of people I find evil. These people are a vacuum to society.

And they like it that way.

Money

Stoops is brooding away over processing "Corner of a Round Planet" which means I get to write my own work and ignore their clucking over artwork (not my problem -- yet), distribution (also not my problem, yet) and other  issues related to being so close and yet so far. Distracted from these issues, I'm presently thinking about money. "Remodeling Witchell" is a story that definitely has a money element throughout the story. The protagonist, Tavin, is unaware of how rich he actually is. While I'm sure this is a problem most people would, at first glance, wish they had, I can assure you I've spent a long time thinking about money. How much is enough, how much is too little. How much is too much.

Yes. Too much money. I've always said there is a such a thing as too much money -- I can remember being younger and thinking that there was such a thing (I'm an oddity in my family.) What I've come to understand is that I mean that there is such a thing is a too much money to stay out of trouble. This bracket of money seems to occur just a schosh after "More Money than Month" which is, of course, the stage after "More Month than Money."

Tavin is Old Money, albeit long since reduced to being house poor. (So he thinks.) This means that he does some of the financial juggling act that anyone less than upper-class knows all too well. He is generally in the bracket of "More Money than Month." But there are times when, due to his brother's indiscriminate spending, he falls back into the "More Month than Money" bracket. (Again, so he thinks.) When he gets money in the middle of the book, I'm wondering, does he get into trouble?

I know I would. Unlike Tavin, I've known months were the money was gone, and there was no reassurance that there would be more next month. I think this situation is key to falling into the financial bracket of "Too Much Money to Stay out of Trouble." This situation is also key to falling into the Financial Bracket of "Living Uncomfortably Pointlessly" but we'll get there. I promise. My experience has been that when there is often a situation where there is a lack of money, and a lack of future money, there is sometimes a reaction of immediately spending to fix immediate problems, even if those are temporary fixes. There are many, many frugal blogs that talk about this cycle.

I want to mention what typically seems to happen once the cycle stops. When enough money is coming in to cover bills and expenses as they come up, and there is even reason to believe that even large expenses can be swallowed, it seems like everyone ends up, even if only temporarily, in one of the following Financial Brackets
"Living Uncomfortably Unnecessarily" or "Too Much Money to Stay out of Trouble." The trouble with the first one is that people are continuing to live as though they are poor, and are making great short term decisions, but terrible long-term decisions. For example, buying pants for work that are 32 dollars and will fall apart in two months, as opposed to buying better quality pants that will last a year but cost 60-70 dollars. (Let's do the math quickly. For two pairs of pants a year, 140 dollars OR 376 dollars.) This sort of mindset also leads someone to pay for constant car repairs when long term sense would say "buy new." The trouble with the second one is all money saved goes straight to toys, drinks, dinner, movies, games, and other fun. Nothing, not even a minimum ends up in savings. In both Financial Brackets, you are still living in the past.

So, looping this back to writing. Tavin grew up without any poverty. There was never any of the fear that comes with always wondering when the money would end, and if there would even be more next month. While he's doing the financial tango, he's never in dire straights. So when he gets his money, I think he'll actually be quite sensible with his money. He may otherwise be very neurotic, but financially, he's got a better head on his shoulders because he is, albeit temporarily broke, Old Money. Moneysense is what marks that group, and despite the fact he's never been able to live as old money, he knows how money works.

In the book, I'll need to lampshade this.

"The Country I Want for Your Kids" -- Essay by E. Stoops

(Reprinted with permission.)

There is a great deal going on in the news right now about the politics of freedom. We have goons the left, and goons to the right. We have goons in the center. Despite the fact that the economy is in shambles, our schools are in shambles, our infrastructure is in shambles and our roads are downright scary (State Route (WA) 195 – I didn't think it could get worse, but then it did), our campaigning politicians are dead set on focusing on 'gay' marriage and womens' bodies.

I'd love to say something about misdirection here, but that's not the point of this essay. I'm instead, going to give you, dear reader, a list of names. Rowan, Riley, Gianna, Krysta, Raye, Skyla, Ronin, Sage, Andrew, and Liam. This an incomplete list of children I personally care about that are all twelve years old or younger. My vote this year creates the world they grow up in, the opportunities that may or may not available to them. Let me give you another list. Wanda, Herschel, Martha, Barb, John, Bill. These are people that have spent their lives being good people. Not perfect people, but good people. They are retired, and frankly, in too many ways at our mercy. My vote this year determines the level of health care they receive, the comfort level of the remainder of their life and in many cases, their mobility around the cities in which they live.

Luckily for me, it appears that politics are no longer jockeying to screw over retired folks. For once, I can say that is not on the chopping block. People about to retire are probably going to get the short stick, and I imagine I'll be completely hosed when my time comes due, but at least I can say right now that my grandparents and a few friends in that generation are not going to be beggared on the streets.

This is cold comfort however. I'm faced with the chance that children will be growing up in a much more limited world. A much more violent world. That scares me so very much. I don't want anyone to live in a world where there is a standard that some people, numbering about half the population, do not own their bodies. But I really don't want anyone to grow up in that world. They might get the mistaken idea that this is right and reasonable. (My grandmother fought this battle, and it is an affront to her that it may have to be fought again. What was all that fighting for, if the war just has to be fought again?) And if they get the idea that it's right and reasonable for someone else to have say over their body, then they naturally have a reason to accept abuse of that body.

No one has rights over anyone else's body. Not like this. Parents have the privilege of taking care of their children that cannot chose for themselves just like I have the privilege of taking care of my dog, who cannot chose for herself. (I compare these because the imperative command in this situation is the same to me.). But no one has a right to someone else's body. Not the unborn, not men, not any religion. You couldn't even consent to it if you wanted to. Look it up, there's a precedent in the US court of law.

If we say that someone does have rights over someone's body for the sake of skin color, anatomy, descent or religion, we reduce that person to that one aspect. We discount them totally. They aren't a person anymore. And someone that isn't a person certainly has no rights extended to a person. (Don't believe me? Go read about the Deep South in the 1950s. Despicable things happened to black people because their skin color was enough for people to dismiss their personhood.) This is not the world I want anyone to live in, and particularly not children. When you can dismiss that someone is a person, what happens to them, what you do to them ceases to matter. And what happens to people should very much matter.

In this very same vein, I want all the children I know to grow up with two other absolutes in their life – that their heart and their soul absolutely belong to them. That no one may tell them how to love another being. That no one and no thing may hold sway over over love. Love is love, and nothing can change that. They may not always act on that love, they may not always find it requited, but at the end of the day, no one can tell them the contents of their heart. Their soul/conscience, likewise, is governed by them and them alone. I wish very much that ours was a country where everyone had the chance to find their higher power the way I did (with a great rush of relief to be validated on such an important thing), and that no one mocked them or held against them their beliefs or lack thereof. I wish very much that our country found strength of character to be as noble a trait as a full pocketbook. I wish very much for our children that our country had good and bad, right and wrong governed not by money and spin, but by philosophy. It should be an ongoing conversation, not a series of decrees by whomever has sway at that moment.

The country I want for your kids is a place where their body is absolutely their body and no one may usurp that ownership, not even temporarily. To act otherwise hurts everyone. The country I want for your kids is a place where their heart and their feelings are as valid and equal as anyone else's. To act otherwise undermines everyone. The country I want for your kids is a place where everyone may praise or not praise their pantheon, is a place where no religion makes law, and no theocracy forms. To act otherwise ruins the value of discourse and debate. It stagnates us to homogenize good and right, bad and wrong. When I wake up, ten years from now, I want to know that the world your kid lives in is one where their right to swing their fist ends where their enemies' noses begins. I want them to know how to rationally discuss and debate their differences to come to mutual understanding. I want them to have justice, fairness, and equality that I can't yet imagine. I want all of that to simply be. Not taken for granted, but omnipresent nonetheless.

And I don't really care if I have raise hell and make sacrifices to make sure of it. I might be hosed, I might not be hosed. I may spend the rest of my life fighting to undo what a few careless strokes of the pen did and never accomplish it. But to stop fighting for this world is the best way to tell children it's an impossible dream, a pipe dream. A dream that cannot be realized.

I don't believe in lying.