WickedThought

It has been a long time coming, but I believe I’ve lost my affection for fantastic literature. Beaten within an inch of its life by mediocrity, it lies bleeding in the ditch, and no medicine nor healing potion can save it.

William Gibson once lamented that he (and Bruce Sterling) were the only men still writing science fiction. (This was before the arrival of Stephenson, I think.) Everyone else was just writing fantasy. Sometimes, I feel that nobody is writing fantasy anymore; they’re just writing junk juvenalia.

This may come from the fact that my bookshelf contains less fantasy and more non-fiction these days. The book currently grabbing my attention is Christopher Hitchens’ Letters to a Young Contrarian. Having just finished god is not Great (capitlization intentional), I feel something in Hitchens’ writing that I’ve missed in fantasy for many years. A sense of kinship.

Alan Moore said the purpose of Art is to remind ourselves that we are not alone. Not alone in our fears, not alone in our hopes, not alone in our desires. Someone else out there feels as we do. Thinks as we do. Hopes as we do. In Moore’s work, I feel this. Feel him reach through the page with his fingers–heavily adorned with symbol and metaphor–and touch my cheek. “I know,” he says. “I know.”

I feel that in Hitchens’ wriitng. I feel it in Chuck Palahniuk’s writing, in Alice Hoffman’s writing, in Richard Dawkins’ wiritng. I don’t feel that in fantasy anymore.

I felt it when I read Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books. I felt it when I read Sandman. I felt it when I read Tanith Lee’s Silver Metal Lover… which brings me to a tangent.

When I was younger, I was infatuated with the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I was enchanted. Lovecraft represented everything I loved about fantasy. I read fantasy because I loved the idea of building a world. An authentic history, authentic culture, authentic world. Making people believe in something that didn’t exist. Maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was just showing off how clever I was that I could come up with ideas that nobody else had come up with. A kind of intellectual masturbation. It wasn’t until noltain introduced me to that book I began to move beyond my juvenile infatuation with Lovecraft. That’s something I’ve never said “Thank you,” for.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

It was when we started working on Legend of the Five Rings that Matt Wilson and I started talking about a storyline that would mean something. A story that would reach through the cards and touch the players. Something that would say, “You are not alone.”

That was my goal. To tell a story that wasn’t just about katana and ninjas and “gamer kewl.” A story that said something about courage, about honor, and about sacrifice. About human beings who were thrown into a circumstance they didn’t fully understand. About the fall of pride and the healing power of compassion. I fought for ideas and events others didn’t want because the choices compromised the character’s kewl. (Sorry for using that twice in one paragraph.)

Many people involved were swept up in the notion that their favorite character must always make the right decision. Mary Sue popping her pretty little head into the equation. My favorite character can’t stumble, can’t stutter, can’t make any mistakes. And this is what I find in fantasy literature. A whole genre dedicated to Mary Sue.

There’s a few hundred words about this in Houses of the Blooded: words on tragedy. That your character is doomed to fail. You have a weakness as a mechanic. And every Aspect has a tag and a compel. Every ven hero is a deeply flawed character. It is impossible to make a Mary Sue in HotB. You just have too much working against you. As much as Shara looks like she’s got it all together, nothing could be further from the truth: as readers will discover soon enough when The Great and Tragic Life of Shara Yvarai is finally translated and published.

It isn’t a story of accomplishment or heroics or “the perfect woman.” It’s a story about pride and arrogance and the kind of blindness those things bring. And about the fall. It’s about desire and hope and how fragile we really are. About Revenge and the price it demands. A price we think we are willing to pay.

I like the line from Amadeus: “Characters so noble, they crap marble.” That’s what reading fantasy is like for me these days. Characters so two dimensional, they can slide through the plot without ever touching it. Like watching the Star Wars sequels: pretty, flashing lights to distract me from the fact that nothing’s really happening.

Give me a fantasy novel that isn’t about how cool the characters are. Give me a story about pain. About decisions. About consequences. Something that isn’t in love with its own language. Something that doesn’t feel compelled to convince me how well-mapped the world is every other paragraph. 

Something that bleeds. Something that suffers. Something about people.

Something that reaches through the page and touches my cheek, softly whispering, “You are not alone.”

WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.” 

Because we used to be fish.

When it first came out, I reported that I enjoyed I am Legend except for the change in the climax. I suspected the producers changed the ending to give it a more hopeful feel, thus betraying the entire point of the book.

Regarding the future DVD release of I Am Legend…

The movie will be released on DVD in two editions: a one-disc release, including the movie with four animated comics (“Death As a Gift”, “Isolation”, “Sacrificing the Few for the Many”, and “Shelter”), and other DVD-ROM features; a two-disc special edition that will include all these extras, plus an alternative theatrical version of the movie with a new controversial ending. 

Cool. 

I recently came across an observation about the roles of protagonist and antagonist in a story. The concept that the protagonist of a story is the one who changes and the antagonist is the instrument of that change. For example, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we know that Huck is the protagonist, but it could be argued that Jim is the antagonist. Jim challenges Huck’s assumptions in the world, instigating a vital change in his character.

Likewise, in the film The Shawshank Redemption, one can argue that Red (the character played by Morgan Freeman) is the protagonist—he is the narrator of the story and the viewpoint character—while Andy Dufresne (the character played by Tim Robbins) is the antagonist. Andy is the instigator in the transformation in Red’s character. Red begins the story without hope. A broken man. By the end, his transformation could not have occurred without Andy.

Likewise, in Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago serves as the antagonist—this time a deadly one—but his hatred for the Moor is not what defines him as such. Instead, it is the fact that he does not change but inspires change in Othello himself that defines Iago as the antagonist.

Like most observations about literature, I do not mean to say this is an absolute truth in every story—it most certainly is not—but it helped me refine the roles of my own antagonists in stories. I hope it helps you do the same.

I hate the video game industry. First, they stole “RPG” from us, now they’re gonna bury the LARP. Let me explain.

I’m here at GDC talking to a ton of people. One of the folks I talked to was Jan Libby, one of the women responsible for the breakout “Lonlygirl15” Youtube craze. We were talking about interactive literature. We’re talking about the same thing, but when I say “LARP,” she says “ARG.” She recognizes what I’m saying, but nobody else does. Everybody else in the meeting hears “ARG” and they know exactly what she’s saying. I say “LARP” and their eyes glaze over.

But we’re talking about the same thing. Folks who adopt characters, who operate in a closed rule set, where events occur and people react “in character.” And they’re talking like this is a new idea. Like Bungie invented it.

She talks about working with Keifer Sutherland and Fox on a new ARG coming out next year. And, of course, there’s the “I love bees” ARG that Bungie did. And the AI ARG Spielberg did. And the NIN ARG. The Cloverfield ARG.

Ask anyone to name a roleplaying game, and they won’t say “D&D” anymore. They’ll say WoW.

Talk about LARPs and folks will scratch their heads. But you say “ARG” and they all know what you mean. And no, they won’t be talking about pirates.

So when we’re talking about the nationwide interactive storyline for Houses of the Blooded, I stopped talking about the HotB LARP; we’re talking about the HotB ARG. And we’re not talking about meeting in a school or in the middle of a park or anything like that. We’re talking about real cash. Stupid money.

(I told Peter, “Our unofficial motto should be, ‘Smart people with stupid money.'” He laughed.)

So, just like that, the video game industry has stolen something else from us. Put away your boffer swords. Put away your black dress. Put away your puffy shirts and your blood tokens.

The LARP is dead, ladies and gentlemen. Long live the ARG.