I know this because I make a living trading on that gullibility.

Technically, I’m a fiction novelologist, but that’s just a fancy way of saying I lie for a living.  I make stuff up, create characters that have never existed, invent situations that are purely fantasy, and if I do it right, the reader will go along with it, even knowing it’s all artifice, smoke and shadows.  The only reason I’m not considered a liar is because it’s clearly established from the beginning that I am going to tell you lies, but those lies are fun and enticing and somehow rewarding enough you don’t mind.

Perhaps gullibility is the wrong word.  Gullibility implies stupidity.  Or at least naivety.  It assumes that the gullible are dumb because they simply don’t know better or are simply incapable of recognizing deception.  It’s a loaded word with too much negative baggage.  So let’s abandon it for something less inherently insulting.

Let’s say humans are fanciful instead, prone to flights of fancy, eager to believe anything that appeals to them emotionally.  That’s not so bad, is it?  And it is undeniably true.

Fiction is all about this emotional manipulation.  And make no mistake, manipulation is exactly what it is.  Without it, where would fiction be?

Imagine your favorite stories, your favorite characters.  Now imagine them . . . different.  Imagine Batman dressed like a bear, fighting crime in Cleveland.  Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a grizzled old fat guy who is chosen to kill monsters.  Imagine if the hobbits were actually orcs who loved drinking blood rather than eating mushrooms.  Imagine if nobody died at the end of Million Dollar Baby or if everybody died at the end of Grease.  Imagine every single story ever written ending with a sudden alien invasion.  Just ALIENS from the sky out of nowhere.

All the above examples are fictional.  They aren’t real.  They exist purely in the realm of imagination and as such, any of those things could be the case.  But most would either alter or destroy the appeal of the work.  Why?  Because the emotional appeal is destroyed with it.

It’s not, as most might assume, because it violates the reality of the stories.  Stories have no reality.  They are only limited by their creator’s imaginations.  Ask a child to tell you a story and reality will soon fall to the wayside in favor of whatever cool idea that pops in their head.  As we get older, we begin placing limits on stories because it helps to keep them focused.  But those limits aren’t so much based on reality as on hitting that emotional sweet spot for us.  It’s in striking that sweet spot that a story succeeds or fails.

If a story or character can fill a need then the audience will forgive it almost anything.  But if it stops fulfilling that need, then nothing can be forgiven.

This is why aliens don’t invade Desperate Housewives.  It’s not for the sake of realism.  It’s because the moment those aliens appeared, all the fans of the show would have a visceral negative response.  That isn’t what people watch that show for, and so, the emotional shock would throw everything out the window.

But to be clear, aliens could invade this or any show.  Or everyone on Hawaii 5-0 could become telepathic.  Or CSI could become a show about people who fight morlocks.  The only thing preventing this is the good sense of the creators who understand that this sudden change would destroy the good will of the audience.

At the end of the day though, all stories are fake and we willingly believe the ones we like anyway, even as we mock the ones that don’t speak to us.  I’ll admit I don’t usually get Academy Award winning movies.  They just seem so artificial and ridiculous to me.  But then I realize I’m a guy who wrote a novel about a squid from Neptune who conquers the universe with superscience.  It’s ridiculous, all right.  But what isn’t?

This is why, though I’m not a fan, I usually don’t mock Twilight.  Regardless of whether it speaks to me, it speaks to a lot of people.  It’d be unfair to dismiss those people’s emotional response, even as I realize that all of Twilight‘s sins (it’ stilted writing, its overblown romance, its unsubtle versions of good and evil) are all things that are found in John Carter of Mars books.  And damn it, I love John Carter of Mars.

It’s almost as if we are all blind to our own emotional needs, our own hot buttons (both good and bad).  If not blind, at least willingly oblivious.

Whenever I watch a ghost hunting show and someone says, “I felt really scared so I knew there had to be a ghost there”, I think to myself, “I almost cried during Wall-E, despite knowing that none of the characters were real.  What does that prove?”

Yeah, I almost cried.  I don’t cry.  But I can come close.

Fiction is proof that not only are we human beings fanciful, but we are easily manipulated by that.  It’s like the cheat code to hack into our brains.  Find the right emotional cue and ninety percent of the work is done.  It’s not exactly a secret.  Politicians, salesmen, and undisguised liars such as myself have been doing it since the dawn of time.

The only amazing thing is how so few people have ever caught on to it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

While I’m not a big horror fan, I do believe though that monsters that are genuinely scary usually come in two types:  The Single-Minded and The Unknowable.

The Single-Minded monster is straightforward.  It exists for one simple purpose and lives to only fulfill that purpose.  It doesn’t generally care if you, specifically, live or die.  It just wants to do what it does and if you get in the way, you’re screwed.

The Blob is the best and most terrifying example.  It isn’t intelligent.  It doesn’t scheme.  It just stalks and eats.  And the more it eats, the bigger it gets.  It carries no particular malice toward individuals.  They’re only food.  And unchecked, it would eat everything in the world.  The Blob is a known quantity.  It might not be very mysterious, but it doesn’t need to be.  Because even knowing what it is and what it wants doesn’t give you much of an advantage when dealing with it.  Other than to run away from the damn thing and hope someone, somewhere, manages to stop it.

Jason Vorheese is another example.  He lives to kill.  He has no other purpose.  And while he’s appeared in so many films, it’s hard to take him seriously as a monster at this point, it doesn’t change the fact that he is one.  And that he’s a pretty darned effective one at that, considering he is just as difficult to kill as the Blob.  Maybe more difficult.  Jason certainly has more movies.

Whenever animals attack, they tend to fall into this category.  Whether it’s rabid dogs or crazed bears, birds or giant rabbits, they tend to be remarkably simple in their motivations.  And that single purpose is what makes them so scary.  Because if all the birds in the world just decided to attack us, it’d be pretty ugly.

The second monster type is The Unknowable monster.  The unknowable monster is trickier than the single-minded beast because the unknowable remains largely unfathomable.  It’s a much harder monster to create and it’s a virtually impossible monster to sustain.  The more often the unknowable monster appears, the less unknowable it is.  And the more we know about it, the more concrete its motivations and methods, the less terrifying it becomes.

Freddy Krueger started as an unknowable.  He was something that came in your dreams and killed you when you slept.  You couldn’t really fight him, and why he chose you was a mystery.  But then the film explains that he’s the ghost of a serial killer and he’s coming back for revenge.  It takes something away from him then.  Instead of being an indefinable thing come to slay you in your sleep, he’s an evil ghost out for vengeance.  While he’s still scary, he isn’t the same.

As the movies progressed, as Freddy became less of a nightmarish force and more of a serial killer with a gimmick, he became correspondingly less frightening.  By the time Freddy Vs. Jason rolled around, Freddy was more of an evil genius in ghost form than anything else.  Jason, though, remained a simple-minded killing machine who exists only to kill.  It’s true that he loses some of his teeth when we see him as a frightened little boy under it all, but considering that in the real world, he is still a monster who slaughters everything he comes across, he’s still fairly direct.

Cthulhu and most of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos suffers from this affect.  Does anyone really fear Cthulhu anymore?  While he once represented the inevitable doom hanging over our heads, he’s instead become something of a mascot for fear, rather than an agent of it.  The more written about Cthulhu and his gang, the less terrible they are.  Oh, sure, they’d kill us all in a heartbeat, but they still seem to have motivations that make sense.

Cthulhu is just the janitor for much more powerful forces.  He’s just a workin’ stiff with tentacles.  He’s the concept of abstract horror put in solid form and then made into stuffed animals.

In watching the trailer for the new Paranormal Activity 3, I couldn’t help but be struck by how unscary the monster is at this point.  The first film was all about a monster that we never saw, that might have been a demon, might have been something else, that was lurking invisibly in the house.  What it wanted was never clear.  Why it existed at all was never mentioned.  And where it came from . . . hell, it could’ve been outer space for all we knew.  What made Paranormal Activity frightening was NOT knowing these things.

I get that Hollywood can’t let go of a moneymaking idea, but I don’t see why horror fans find this stuff frightening.  Because, aside from a few shock scares, the monster has lost its most terrifying quality, its unknown nature.

This is what made Cloverfield interesting.  There’s a giant monster attacking the city, and because we view it from the perspective of just random citizens, we never learn much about it.  Just that it’s big and frightening and it’ll kill you by stepping on you and not even notice.  And those little things that drop off of it, what are they?  Is this an invasion?  Is it just a big misunderstanding?  Is the monster just as confused as we are?

Actually, all those questions have answers.  That was part of the marketing for the film.  If you looked, you could find the answers.  But why would a horror fan want them?  Why would I want to know more when, by knowing more, I rob myself of the mystery that makes the monster scary in the first place?

Maybe it’s because, even when we embrace our fears, we are always striving to defeat them.  We like to be terrified, but only on our own terms.  And we also can’t resist seeking answers.  We are terribly uncomfortable with the unknown.  The Blob might want to eat us, but at least we can comprehend that.  And Cthulhu might rise out of the depths to destroy civilization, but it’s some small comfort to understand why he’s doing it.  And if you give us a movie about a giant monster rampaging through New York, we can’t resist asking “why?” and seeking out those answers.

The horror of the unknown so terrifies us that we can’t allow it.  Not even in our fiction.  We need to know, and I think that’s where H.P. Lovecraft was wrong.  We aren’t frightened by answers, even answers that aren’t especially comforting.  We’re terrified by the prospect of not getting answers, of living without ever knowing.

That’s why the prequel will remain appealing.  Not because they ever really give us good answers.  They don’t.  But they give us answers, regardless, and answers are what we seek.  And even monsters aren’t allowed to get away without supplying those answers.

The one horror we will always reject is uncertainty, and that isn’t just why our monsters tend to lose their teeth.  It’s why we tend to reject the abstract, why we become beholden to flawed philosophies of all types, and why we are so easy to lie to.  Because we’ll take any answer, no matter how silly, over no answer.

The most horrific concept isn’t found in blobs from outer space, slashers, or torture flicks.  It’s found in three little words:

I don’t know.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Bob Bob asks:

What inspired a) a Lovecraftian story, b) about the nihilism and absurdities of life?  Also, is this book the answer to a question asked by another writer or fan?

To answer the first part, I’m not really sure where it came from.  I had the idea of a protagonist getting stuck with a cursed apartment and a monster that came with it, but other than that, not much else.  I think themes of nihilism and absurdity pop up quite frequently in my books.  I just tend not to focus on the depressing aspects of these themes, which for many will probably seem like a contradiction.  Once Chasing the Moon started exploring strange concepts like monsters from beyond time and space and the limits of human perception, it sort of drifted in a Lovecraftian direction.  It wasn’t a calculated decision.  Just a natural progression.

I suppose if the book is a reply to anything, it would be to question why we assume that human beings will automatically crumble when faced with the incomprehensible.  Really, we face the incomprehensible every day.  We’re constantly reminded of our own limitations and powerlessness, and while it’s true we tend to ignore that, its influence is everywhere.  Almost everything we do and believe could be as attempts to cope with, deny, or accept our our own insignificance.  It’s such a universal theme that I’m not sure you could write a story without it.

I could write a whole blog post about this idea, but we’ll save that for later.

It seems as if you’re suggesting Moon might not be a traditional, whatever that means, A. Lee Martinez novel.  How have pre-readers reacted — what’s been said?

It’s weird to consider that there is such a thing as a “traditional” A. Lee Martinez novel, but Moon will be my eighth novel.  I’m somewhat past the “Who is this guy?” phase of my career and more into the “I think I’ve heard of this guy” stage.  I don’t know how I would consider the novel in comparison to my other novels.  It’s similar in many respects.  The same guy wrote it who has the same style and certain philosophical views of the universe.  I don’t think Moon is terribly radical from what I’ve written before.  But it is different in that I think it’s more horrific than anything I’ve written before.  Gil’s All Fright Diner had werewolves and vampires, but it was a fantasy adventure story.  But Moon is less about adventure and more about dealing with the strange stuff that comes our way.  It’s more nebulous, less black and white.

Pre-readers have enjoyed it, but you can never really know how people are going to react.  That’s why you throw it out there and see what happens.

On Twitter and this blog, you’ve been talking about changes in perception, how likes and dislikes change.  Is this a warning in advance about the style of Moon?

No.  It’s not like I wrote this one with a more “literary” mindset.  The book is not intended to be a huge shift in what I’ve done before.  Stylistically, it’s very similar.  It has a cast of weird characters, many of them not quite human, dealing with a strange situation.  Cliches are broken or tweaked in a manner that is often mistaken for satire or parody when really it’s just trying to do something different.

Just as in my previous novels, I don’t consider it a parody of the genre.  I think of it as a variation.  So the Lovecraftian themes aren’t meant to be refuted or denied.  They’re just explored from different angles.  That’s my bread and butter as far as I’m concerned.  It’s always been my biggest strength as a writer, the ability to try something different without having to tear down the entire concept.  At least, that’s how I see myself as a writer.  It doesn’t mean I’m right.  I could very well just be a silly fluff writer with delusions of grandeur.

Either way, I feel confident in saying if you liked my previous work, you’ll most probably like Chasing the Moon.  I’m not just saying that because I want you to buy it (although I do really want you to buy it.  May 25th.  Store near you.  Check it out.), but because I have seven books out there and so far my publisher keeps paying me to write them.  So somebody has to be buying the damn things.

I’m fairly certain that if you bought my previous books for the comedy, you’ll find plenty of humor to like in Moon.  And if you like them for the theoretical deeper themes and ideas I have to offer, then you’ll definitely find those in there too.  And if you just want to read a weird book where a woman armed with a claw hammer fights a giant beetle and baking is revealed as an excellent way to ward of insanity, then you’ll be glad you read it too.

Thanks for the questions, Bob Bob.  Hope this clears some things up.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

(Not on this site, of course.  I enjoy all your comments.  Keep them coming.)

But a quick scan of almost any website will reveal that people are dumb.  Very, very dumb.   Although the stupidity and ignorance bother me less than the hostility and rage that so often pops up there.  Recently, DC Comics had to shut down the comment section on its website because a debate over who was faster, Flash or Superman, devolved into a namecalling ragefest with personal attacks and probably even racism and bigotry thrown in for good measure.  Hey, it’s the internet.  If you can’t call someone a “faggot” for not agreeing with you, then what’s the pont?

Granted, not all questions are as important as Flash vs. Superman.  (By the way, the answer is Flash.  He’s the “fastest man alive”.  It even says so in his job description.)  But the debate is less about the importance of the question and more about how Terrans behave in general.

We are, for the most part, pleasant on a face-to-face basis.  There are exceptions, but these sort of aggressive, in-your-face types are usually considered obnoxious at best, pathetic at worst.  Most of us know not to shout slurs at people just for having an opinion we disagree with (TV pundits and famous people usually being the exception), and we realize that life is complicated and it’s better to get along than fight over every little thing.

But in the faceless internet, where we are freed from civility, where we are faceless and our opponents are faceless, where emotional context is difficult to pin down, we become uncaged monsters.  The freedom and lack of direct feedback confuses and overwhelms so many of us, we simply don’t know how to act.  So we lash out.  We mock.  We dismiss.  And we rage.

We rage like an overtired toddler at bedtime.

There are several different versions of this.  There’s the Aggressor, who mistakes typing IN ALL CAPS and mocking sexual-orientation / penis size / race / you-name-it as debate.  There’s the Hipster, who bemoans his title as cooler and smarter than everyone around him.  There’s the Fan, who thinks any attack on his passion is an attack on him and reacts as if the smallest complaint about it is the same as telling him he’s wasted his life.  There’s the Troll, who mistakes any responses to his comments as validation.  And there’s the Parrot, who spews out catchphrases and cookie cutter “wisdom”.  There are dozens of variations, and they all lead to the same realization.

Most people are not equipped to have a conversation or offer constructive criticism.

It’s a bit unfair to say this though because comment sections attract a very specific group of people.  We’ll never know how many people don’t leave a comment because they don’t feel the overwhelming need or because the conversation turned hostile so quickly.  We never know how many people have been shut out of the discussion because they find it’s not worth the trouble to post a thought when you’ll be shouted down by a sea of insults and verbal abuse for daring to express an opinion.

Yet even this shows a weakness in how we discuss things.  Give us a blank canvas to have a conversation and, inevitably, the reasonable and the polite will be frightened away by the rageful and the dogmatic.  Perhaps the trolls are only a small percentage, but they succeed in seeming much larger because of this.  They control the discourse through intimidation and misguided passion, and they probably don’t even realize they’re doing it.

On the one hand, I don’t know if this is a problem that needs to be fixed.  I’m not sure it matters if the internet is full of ignorant rage and empty dogma.  On the other, there’s something terribly frustrating about this rule that says on the internet, the most powerful tool of communication we have, that often the worst of us are the only ones who speak.

I don’t have a solution, and I’m certainly not the first to comment on the problem.  The optimist in my thinks we’ll work it out one day.  The pessimist thinks it’s just more of the same and that there’s really nothing unique or unusual about the internet.  More often than not, the loudest voices win the argument.  Not because they’re right, but because so many of us mistake passion for truth and the rest of us would rather not get involved.  Because getting involved doesn’t often help.  It just as often adds fuel to the fire.

I want to believe there’s a way to fix this, but damned if I know how.

Leave your enraged suggestions in the comment section below.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I recently bought a new board game: Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight Games.  I plan on writing an in-depth review soon, but for now, I’ll just say I’ve really enjoyed it.  Based loosely on Lovecraftian themes, one player takes on the role of The Keeper, controlling the monsters and obstacles the characters must face while the other players are Investigators, exploring a map and trying not to get killed or driven mad while doing so.  It’s a fairly unique game with some resemblance to a few others, most notably Betrayal at House on the Hill and Descent.   So far, it’s getting thumbs up from me, but I want to give it another play or two before really making up my mind.  Stay tuned.

Another fun game that I can definitely recommend is Thunderstone by AEG.  It’s a deckbuilding game, which is a genre that has blossomed recently.  Each player starts with a small deck of cards, and they draft more cards as the game progresses, adding and removing cards from their deck.  The goal is to build a strong enough deck that it can reliably kill the monsters populating the dungeon.  While I haven’t played any other deckbuilding games, Thunderstone is quickly becoming a favorite.  It’s extremely easy to teach, and rarely boring because player turns are fast and furious.  The semi-random nature of the monsters, heroes, and village supplies means that every game can be unique.  And if you add in the expansions, you literally have dozens upon dozens of card types where only a handful will ever be used in any game.  I enjoy the theme as well, so this one is definitely recommended.

Saw Unknown.  Good movie.  Heck of a cool car chase, which I always enjoy.  It’s not a “twisty” movie in the sense that it isn’t trying to surprise and shock you.  It’s up front with its plot points and if you’re paying attention at all, you really shouldn’t be surprised by the story.  But that’s not a bad thing.  It’s not the duty of the writer to impress you with how complicated he can make the story.  It’s to tell a good story that you’re glad you saw, and I found Unknown to be an entertaining, well-crafted film from top-to-bottom.  It engaged me, didn’t try to outsmart me, and ended up being good fun with some solid characters, great acting, and did I mention a kick ass car chase?

While I’m here, I’d like to go ahead and recommend I Am Number Four.  I don’t know how well it did at the box office, but by now, I expect that anything unapologetically fantastic is always dismissed as childish and beneath us.  I know nothing about the books is based on, but I Am Number Four is that rare film with good, relatable characters AND giant alien monster fights.

Number Four reminded me why I was so disappointed in Iron Man 2 because when we get to the climax of Number Four, a showdown between our heroes and a group of alien bounty hunters, we are treated to a smorgasbord of awesome.   In so many films of this nature, the showdown at the end is almost treated as an inconvenience.  “Fine.  I guess we’ll throw in a final battle because we’re supposed to, but let’s keep it short and simple.”  And it’s difficult for me to criticize this attitude because you so rarely hear anyone criticize adventure flicks for not having enough adventure.

But in Number Four‘s climax, we have blasters, teleporting, huge beasts, telekinesis, and cool martial arts.  These things are cool, and the way the film handles them is cool, too.  It’s a film I really liked which means it’ll probably be mocked by most.

Have I mentioned lately how astounded I am that I have a career?  Maybe it’s just easier in novelology than film.  It’s true that if Iwere writing screenplays, I’d have to reconsider a lot of the elements I write into a story.  But I’m a novelologist, and happy to be one.

Speaking of which, I should probably get back to work.  Catch you later, gang.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

So recently Ian Sattler of DC Comics, when confronted with the possibility of racial insentitivity, was quoted as saying something along the lines of: “Well, I just don’t get it because it’s not our intention.”  He also added that DC Comics have a very diverse cast of characters, including green, blue, and orange characters.

Okay, the “blue, green, and orange” response completely misses the point.  You can’t fake diversity by using fake ethnicities.  Heck, I love robots and aliens and monsters, but even I don’t buy that argument.  I’d be perfectly happy if the Justice League was filled with monsterish characters, but it wouldn’t solve the problem we’re talking about.  But I think the alien diversity argument is a red herring, a distraction from the real point.

Whether or not DC Comics intends to be insensitive or is irrelevent to whether or not they are being insensitivy.  Intent just isn’t important.

If I shoot a gun outside of my window in a random direction, and it accidently hits someone, I’m still guilty of being careless.  If it kills someone, I’m still guilty of a crime.  It might not be as bad as cold-blooded murder, but it’s still my fault.  I’m still responsible.  If that bullet flies through the air, hits a speeding car’s tire, causes that car to fly off the street into a tanker truck, and the resulting explosion causes mayhem, I am the cause of that mayhem.  When the police come to my door and place me under arrest, I can’t throw up my hands and say, “Well, I didn’t mean to do it.”  That’s just not going to cut it.

Granted, this is not the same thing as reckless endangerment of lives.  Nor is it as utterly ridiculous as the pointless, purely hypothetical discharge of a gun for no apparent reason.  But it still stands to reason that intent, while important, is not the be all and end all of these situations.

I fully believe that BP Oil didn’t intend to unleash a corrupting black sludge into the Gulf of Mexico.  I can’t imagine that they sat around like a shadowy group of Captain Planet villains and laughed maniacally while plotting to despoil our precious waters, source of all life.  Even if they were largely indifferent to the ecological effects, they clearly wanted that oil because it’s a valuable commodity.  It does them absolutely no good in the gulf.  In fact, it costs them money.

No, they didn’t want the accident to happen (hence the term “accident”), but it did.  And they’re responsible for it.  They can say, “Well, we didn’t mean for it to happen”, but meaning is irrelevant.  That’s what the senator from Texas (sorry about that, non-Texans) missed.  He sees BP as a victim, a hapless bumbler who is as clueless and annoyed by this occurance as the rest of us.  And they are.  Except that the rest of us didn’t do it.  BP did.  And whether or not BP intended to do it, they have to be responsible for the mess.  Your mess.  Your responsibility.

Going back to DC Comics (and comics in general), we fans continually hear how we are wrong for saying that the writers and editors don’t seem to care what we have to say.  Every time anyone brings up the specter of racism or sexism in comics, it suddenly turns into a debate as to whether or not the creators themselves are racist or sexist.  Suddenly, it’s personal.  Suddenly, instead of talking about the content of the comics (which is what this is about) we’re talking about people.  And suddenly everyone is defensive.

Nobody likes being called racist.  Even when they are racist.

Yet I firmly believe that this is not an issue of racism, but of intent (or lack thereof).  Intent is particularly relevent to being an artist because there’s the art you intend and there’s the interpretation of the audience.  These can be two different things.  And while it’s not the artist’s job to always play it safe, it’s also a mistake as an artist to dismiss the audience just because you don’t agree with them, just because their interpretation is not what you intended.

The obvious example for myself is how I don’t consider myself a comic fantasy writer and how pretty much everyone else in the universe does.  My intent, believe it or not, is not to write funny stories.  It’s to write cool stories with robots, gods, and giant eyeball monsters.  It’s to try and do something a little bit different, and while I use humor, humor is rarely my goal.  But my goal is irrelevant.  If people like my books because they’re funny, then I accept this.  I am a funny writer.  Everybody says so.  Well, not everybody, but most of my fans.

A more obvious example though is found in the pages of Gil’s All Fright Diner.  I call it The No Fat Chicks mistake.  When we first meet Duke and Earl, our heroes, Duke is described as wearing a T-shirt with this written on it.  My intent on that choice was to just show that Duke had a cheap, commonly available T-shirt to fit his cheap jeans and on the go lifestyle.  It wasn’t meant as a statement on fat chicks and / or their availability.

Doesn’t matter.  I have taken quite a bit of heat, here and there, for that shirt, and I can’t blame overweight and heavy people, especially women, for being upset by it.  We are rarely presented with non-beautiful people, especially women, in fiction that aren’t the target of often mean-spirited humor.  And, yes, later we meet Loretta who is fat and who gets made fun of for it, but not any more than Earl gets made fun of for being bald and scrawny or Chad gets made a caricature of the horny, one-dimensional teen boy.  Loretta is a good character, a heroic character.  She has a lot of great things about her, but yes, she’s fat, and yes, I make jokes about it.  Those jokes I will take the heat for because I knew, even as I wrote them, that some people wouldn’t like them.

But the T-shirt . . . that was an accident.  It puts certain people in a bad mood, alienates a certain group of readers, and considering it’s not in there to be controversial or polarizing, it’s a mistake.  My intent was irrelevant.  All that matters are the results.

So, for the record, I apologize for the T-shirt to all those who were offended by it.  I’ll say the T-shirt was wrong.  I’ll take my lumps.  End of story.

There.  See, DC?  That’s not so hard, is it?  Just admit that you’ve made a mistake, many of them, and maybe we can see some progress.  Maybe instead of shrugging and saying, “Whoops. Didn’t mean to” it’s time to take some responsibility.

The question isn’t whether or not you meant to offend anyone.  The question is…what do you have to gain if you did?  I can argue, for example, that the fat jokes at Loretta’s expense fit with the narrative style of Gil’s.  I could argue that, bottom line, she’s a rare example of an overweight woman in fiction who isn’t obsessed with food, who isn’t conventionally attractive, but who can still hold her own against zombies and ghouls.  I can make a pretty good excuse for why I like Loretta and why I wouldn’t change that aspect of the book.

But I can’t think of a damn reason why I wouldn’t change that T-shirt if I could.  Even if I don’t find it offensive.  Even if I didn’t think it would be.  Because I have nothing to gain, as an artist, by leaving it in there.  It adds nothing to the story and only annoys some people.  If it was gone or changed, nobody would miss it.  And that ’s a good thing.  Because I want to sell books.  That’s right.  I want to sell books and that means doing my best not to alienate people, especially by accident.

But in the world of comics, there seems to be a surprisingly firm stand against listening to fans who complain about the treatment and portrayal of female and minority characters.  Part of it stems from “Well, I’m not racist so nothing I could’ve created could’ve been racist”, which is a mistake.  Part of it stems from an old school dismissal of any part of the audience that isn’t white and male (or, more honestly, the caricature of what a white male reader wants), which is where the creators tend to aim their stories.  And part of it is just old-fashioned pig-headed stubbornness, a refusal to just admit when you’re wrong, even by accident.

First of all, you can be racist by accident.  It happens all the time.  To assume that you can’t be is absolutely ridiculous.  Superman isn’t intended to be racist, and he isn’t.  But he’s a strong white male, surrounded by an equally white supporting cast.  He’s not racist, but he isn’t exactly a model of diversity either.  Batman is white as is every one of his rogue’s gallery.  Well, Poison Ivy is green and Joker is chalk white, but both are caucasians underneath it all.  I’m not so sure about Killer Croc, but I’m willing to bet he isn’t ethnic in the slightest when you get down to it.   The one girl Robin was greenlit just to have her die a horrible death.  Sure, they retconned it, but it doesn’t change the fact that, up until that point, the only female members of the Batman family were Barbara Gordon (shot, paralyzed) and Stephanie Brown (tortured to death).  And while it’s true that Batman characters can have a hard time of it, it’s hard to not see a problem.

Do you know what, DC?  I agree with you.  Fans can be hypersensitive sometimes.  And there’s no doubt that they were hypersensitive about Barbara and Stephanie.  Can you really be surprised by that?  There just aren’t enough female and minority characters around that fans can relate to.  So when you dispose of one of them to further the story of yet another white male hero, you have to expect some backlash.  When the day comes that there are enough female and minority characters populating your universe in noteworthy and important roles, maybe fans won’t be quite so upset to see them mistreated.  Or maybe not.

Fans can be pretty demanding.  That’s just part of the biz.  If it’s okay for the white guys to whine about there being too many minorities and women on the Justice League, then it should be okay for the women / minorities to complain when you maim one of their favorites.  The door should really swing both ways.

As for the white males you continually aim for, I have bad news for you.  You’ve got to get over that.  Increasingly, we live in a more diverse and open culture.  If you want to get anywhere, you have to aim your net a little wider than you used to.  Just as Rush Limbaugh is wrong to suggest that Republicans ignore Hispanics (because it makes perfect sense to ignore a group of growing population and influence), you have to realize that if comics are continue to be a viable storytelling medium, they have to reach out to people they ignored.

I know, I know.  Girls don’t buy superhero comics.  Except they do.  Maybe not as many as the guys, but they do.  And if you want to keep producing successful superhero comics, you have to get more of them.  Just as Lois Lane started out as an intrepid, but mostly clueless, reporter obsessed with marrying Superman but became something else as time went on, so too you have to get with the times.  Things change.  You either change with them, or get left behind.

And don’t start saying, “We do offer female-friendly superhero comics” as if you go out of your way to do so.  Most of these female friendly titles are just dull.  Just as many female friendly video games are like games with all the fun stuff taken out of them.  Women can like shooting zombies in video games and they can like reading about superheroines kicking ass.  I’ll say that Gotham City Sirens is a fairly solid comic about female characters beating up bad guys and having adventures.  You do a better job than Marvel at least, DC, so I’ll give you that.  Still, you could do better.

Let’s just get down to it, comic book creators (in general).  You’re wrong.  You’re wrong when you tell fans to get over it.  You’re wrong when you say you aren’t guilty of making mistakes.  And you’re most especially wrong when you dismiss the tide of concern from people who really, really want to like your stories if you’d just give them a chance.  Denying them that chance isn’t fair to them.  More importantly, it doesn’t get you anywhere.  It doesn’t help you sell comics.

And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

PS: To all the white males out there, I want to apologize for lumping you into a category that can come across as insulting.  I don’t believe that most white men are sexist or racist, and I don’t believe that the pandering done by comic book companies is even necessary.  So when I use the term white male, I’m really referring to a stereotype that is ultimately as outdated and ridiculous as any other.  And for that, I apologize.

PPS: Please, DC Comics, please, please, give Blue Beetle a new ongoing series.  I’ll take back everything I said in this blog post and even post about how awesome you are and how everyone is wrong about you (including me) if you do this.  Or, if you aren’t going to do that, can you at least promise me you won’t kill BB just for dramatic shock value?  Really.  If I saw a drawing of Superman cradling the dead body of Jaime Reyes, I think I would go to a cave, abandon hope, and wait to die.

I mean, really.

Just wanted to be clear on that.

Also, my CREATE A TITLE FOR A SYFY ORIGINAL MOVIE contest is over.  I had a ton of great entries.  So many that I think I’ll end up having a winner and two or three runner ups.  I’ll be posting a list of all the titles as well as my choice for the lucky winners in a day or two.  So stay tuned.

But enough of that.  While striving to come up with an interesting topic for my latest blog post, I was fortunate enough to have a recent comment provide that topic for me.

Do you read books written by other writers who write in the same kind of themes and tone that you write? Examples above being Michael Rubens sci-fi novel The Sheriff of Yrnameer, and John Connoly’s The Gates.

Do you feel like there is competition or animosity between writers who have similar styles of writing in terms of theme, tone, and character?

Have you ever one a single game of Heroscape using Brunak? He never seems to work well for me, despite the fact he looks super awesome.

Bradley

Well, Bradley.  Thanks for the questions first of all. 

To answer your first question, No, I don’t really read “similar” writers with “similar” styles.  I put the “similar” in quotes because, as I’ve mentioned more than once, I don’t really consider myself a comedic fantasy writer despite the fact that nearly every other sentient being in this universe does.  Heck, even my dog thinks I’m funny.

Frankly, I’m not just a fan of most “comedic” fantasy.  Most of it just doesn’t do much for me.  I don’t think that’s a flaw in those books as just a personal thing.  There’s plenty of great comedic fantasy out there.  I just don’t read much of it.  But, and here’s the truth, I just don’t read much fiction anymore.  Somehow, I slowly transitioned into a non-fiction reader.  I don’t know why fiction stopped holding my interest, but I think it just has to do with the fact that I don’t read a lot. 

(I know, I know.  I’m a writer.  I’m not supposed to admit that.  But I’m a busy guy.  I have games to play and world domination to plot.  I do actually read quite a bit, but very little of it is fiction of any genre, much less my own.)

To your second question, I can’t speak for other writers, but I don’t bear any animosity toward other successful writers, whether they’re “similar” to my style or not.  (Sorry. But I gotta throw in the quotation marks because perceptions of style are so individual that I find them hard to take seriously.)   When my first book, Gil’s All Fright Diner, came out I was compared to Christopher Moore.  An Amazon review even criticized me for aping Moore’s style too closely.  Yet, up to that point, I’d never even heard of Moore.  Since then, I’ve read some of Moore’s work, and I don’t think we write very much alike at all.  But that’s just one guy’s opinion.

And that’s something I realized a long time ago.  People are going to draw comparisons.  If the comparisons are meant as a compliment, then I take them as such, regardless of if I agree with them.

The flip side is that it’s quite possible to end up in a losing battle with comparisons.  The Christopher Moore comparisons are perhaps the most common ones I come across, and not all of them are positive.  Just because someone is a fan of a “similar” writer, doesn’t mean they’ll like my work.  But, again, that’s not Moore’s doing.  And, if it wasn’t Moore (or Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett) it’d just be someone else.  Nothing exists in a vacuum.  You just can’t get around it.  So you just deal with it, good and bad.

Finally, have I used Brunak?  Yes, I have.  Not many times, but I have about a billion Heroscape units (give or take), and I always like to try new combinations.  The units I use most reliably are probably The Venoc Warlord and Major Q10.  And I do love a good ol’ fashioned HORDE OF ORCS!  Mwahahahaha!  Suicidal, bloodthirsty, raging orcs charging fearlessly into the jaws of death!  Truly, that is a beautiful thing.

Thanks again for the questions, Bradley.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Amen, brother.

But onto the topic of this particular post.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked things that, for better or worse, most people think of as ridiculous and silly.  I love monsters the size of skyscrapers, killer robots, and superheroes.  You really don’t have to read many of my books to realize this.  Whether it’s cannibal witches, robot detectives, or fat werewolves, I’m a guy who likes the absurd, the bizarre.  I’d much rather watch Mega Piranha than Precious.  If a story has a dinosaur fighting a vampire, I’m all for it.

The problem though is that I don’t, as a general rule, like “camp”.  Camp to me is apology.  And I won’t apologize for thinking robots are cool or that Superman is awesome.  These things are absolutely true, and anyone with an ounce of sense should already realize this.  But if you haven’t, that’s your problem, not mine.

Yet there is an apology culture when it comes to this stuff.  Even people who like it try to excuse it.  Or, even worse in my opinion, they’ll knock it down before anyone else gets the chance.

The trailers for the new Jonah Hex movie look promising.  Hex is a comic book cowboy character.  You’d think that would get comic fans excited about his move to the big screen.  Yet I see far too many fans of the medium already eager to dismiss the film.  Sure, the trailer is full of explosions, one liners, and has horse-mounted gatling guns.  But isn’t that a good thing?  Do we really need another action film that takes itself dreadfully seriously?  Are those are only two options as a culture?  High art and dumb fluff?

NBC has a new show called The Cape.  It looks like a superhero show that dares to actually be about a superhero, unlike Heroes, which was so determined to be serious that it robbed every bit of joy from the superhero genre.  The Cape, on the other hand, shows promise as a cop, framed for a crime he didn’t commit, adopts a costumed identity to fight for justice in a corrupt city.  Isn’t this what superheroes are all about?

I don’t know.  All I know is that I refuse to believe that things can either be smart and boring OR stupid and fun.  I refuse to believe that a story with a robot or talking duck is automatically unimportant and unintelligent.  I don’t think boring always equals deep, and I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with a killer elevator story.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

I did have one complaint though.  Each of the male leads are played by rather ordinary-looking guys (especially by Hollywood standards) but every female lead is beautiful, including having a fabulous bikini-ready body.  It’s not exactly a complaint, I suppose, but it is just another example of how our culture demands attractiveness from women more than men.  It’s hard to imagine the film reversing its gender roles, having all the women be average and all the men be super hunky.  I think what really bugged me though wasn’t that the women were attractive, but that the movie didn’t even have the decency to pretend that they weren’t super hot.  Would it have killed them to put at least one of them in a one-piece?  It wouldn’t really hide anything, but it would have at least been less blatant.  It’s a quibble, I know, and not meant as an indictment of the film in general.  Just an observation.

I bought Monster Hunter 3 for Wii this weekend.  Ended up disliking it so much that I returned it for store credit.  It’s not that it’s a bad game.  It’s just not the game I was looking for.  I bought it assuming I would get to kill monsters.  Instead, I spent most of the game collecting mushrooms and gathering herbs.  The game is called Monster Hunter.  Seems bizarre that so much non-monster hunting activity is part of the game.

Also, it cheesed me off to no end that even though the game can be played with up to 4 players, you need to have an internet connection with your Wii to be able to play with 4.  Or even 2 because if you’re playing on one system, you can only do a lesser “arena” mode with 2 players.  That’s just wrong.  Back in the good ol’ days (and for once I say this without irony) we were allowed to play split screen mode on multiplayer games.  Yes, it was a bit of a hassle to have your screen sliced into sections, but at least you could play with your friends.  In the same room even!

Sometimes, technology seems to work in reverse.  We used to play video games in arcades, a very public setting.  Then we started playing games in our homes, which was still a fun way to get together with friends.  Now, we all stay home and interact via headsets.

It’s like cable television, which always confuses me because doesn’t it seem like a backward step to take free television that traveled magically through the air, beamed into our homes, and have it transported via an elaborate electronic pipeline?  Also costs a hell of a lot more than free.

But back to Monster Hunter.  The lesson learned from the game is this:  Don’t lose sight of what you’re all about.  If your game is called Monster Hunter then there sure as hell better be some hunting of monsters.  And not just a little bit of hunting.  Not even 75 % hunting.  For every hour of gameplay, I better have at least 50 minutes of monster hunting.  Otherwise, I just feel cheated.  The non-hunting elements of the game aren’t bad.  They just aren’t what I’m looking for.

Reminds me a bit of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remake that seemed less concerned with an alien invasion and more interested in showing a dysfunctional family yelling at each other.  I wasn’t there to watch Tom Cruise struggle with bratty kids (who I probably would’ve left to the aliens’ tender mercies).  I was there to watch aliens invade.  Say what you will about Independence Day but it’s a movie that has the good sense to have aliens blow up monuments and epic jet fighter VS spaceship battles.

So what else?

  Warner Bros. has put the stops on many direct-to-video animated superhero films they were working on.  Shame about that.  From what I understand, the films did well in the long run, but were weak sellers at first.  Isn’t this kind of dumb?  The advantage of direct-to-video should be the ability to view profitability in the long term.  Gil’s All Fright Diner continues to sell well, and my hope is that this goes on and on and on.  It’d be cool to make a billion dollars all at once, but I’ll settle for a billion over the course of a few years.

One of the more annoying things about the announcement was that the Wonder Woman animated film’s slow start was taken as a sign that superhero animated features featuring female heroes are never going to find an audience.  That’s absurd, and again, illustrates the innate sexism built into our culture.  The Green Lantern movie had the same problem, but nobody is suggesting that male superheroes are passe.

I’ll admit that I didn’t rush out to get either of these films, but when I did see them, I found both to be highly entertaining and great fun.  The Green Lantern film was probably a little better than the Wonder Woman one, but I still really liked both of them.  If a sequel to either was created, I’d jump right on them this time.  Which brings up another good point.   What’s the logic in building an audience only to discard it as it begins to take notice?

Personally, I believe somebody was just looking for a chance to pull the plug on these direct-to-video movies from the beginning.  The performance of these films has less to do with their performance and more to do with preconceived notions.  If you think about it, Warner Brothers has always been reluctant to take advantage of DC’s superhero characters.  Aside from Batman and Superman, that is.  This makes Justice League Unlimited a true wonder.  Because, while it features Bats and Supes, it also dares to star great characters like The Question and Green Arrow.  Heck, the DCAU’s Supergirl character made me actually like Supergirl.

Then again, Justice League Unlimited gave me a grand affection for The Question, only to have DC Comics immediately kill him off.  That doesn’t make much sense since it’s Batman: The Animated Series that revitalized Batman in the comic books, much more so than any of the movies before or since.  Heck, my favorite Batman is still found in animated form.  You can keep the maudlin mopey goofball in comics and movies.

Oh, and for the record, Justice League Unlimited: Season One is the best thing ever produced for television.  Ever.  If you don’t own it, you really should.  Not only does it manage to take dozens of characters and create a great series of adventures for them.  It also manages to integrate a seamless season long story arc.  More importantly, this is the season when The Question tried to strangle Lex Luthor for the sake of the future, when Captain Marvel and Superman destroyed several city blocks in a battle to end all battles, where Booster Gold saves the universe, and Aquaman punches out a dinosaur.  Add to this crackerjack characterization, thrilling adventure, and an ability to tie it all-together in a way that showcases just how inadequate Heroes is and you’ve got something every intelligent person agrees is almost too awesome to exist in this reality.

Trust me on this.  If you’re reading this blog, then odds are you’re a fan of mine.  And if you’re a fan of mine, then you will love Justice League Unlimited.  I guarantee it.  It’s not a money back guarantee or anything, and I won’t even apologize because if you can’t see how awesome it is then that’s your problem, not mine.  But go ahead and buy or rent it today.  You’ll be glad you did.

Well, I could go on and on.  I mean, I really could because this is a huge topic of a great deal of interest to me., but we’ll just have to leave it there for now.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Let’s talk about race.  Let’s rap, as the kids say.

As a writer, I wrestle with race.  It’s not something I particularly worry about, but it is something I have to consider.  Since most of my characters are weird creatures, usually surrounded by equally weird creatures, race (as we Terrans define it) isn’t always important.  But sometimes it comes up.

Teri and Phil, the mortal protagonists of Divine Misfortune, are African-Americans.  You wouldn’t know it though because they are never referred to as such in the book.  In fact, they aren’t really described in any specific details.  This isn’t unusual.  I do it all the time.  Unless I’m writing about a space squid or a mole man, I really don’t see the need to describe human characters in any great detail.  Perhaps because I usually envision my characters as being unremarkable physically.  Most are neither handsome or hideous.  They are you and me, regular people who are not defined by their appearance or the color of their hair.  They are people, and people are more than a collection of physical traits.  At least, they are in my universe.

But for Teri and Phil, I very specifically decided not to mention race.  Is this a copout?  Yes, it is.  It’s a copout because here are two minority characters who are automatically assumed to be caucasian because they don’t “Act Black”.  It doesn’t matter that Teri and Phil grew up in the suburbs, that they have an average middle class background, that neither of them has ever lived “in da hood”.  They’re black, and if they don’t act black enough than their characters will ring false to many.  Frankly, I just didn’t need the headache.

When I wrote Gil’s All Fright Diner, I took some heat for the character of Loretta.  Loretta is fat.  Very, very fat.  I made her fat because you just don’t see many overweight characters in fiction, particularly fantasy adventure fiction.  Loretta is a great character who just happens to be overweight, but for the wrong people, she comes across as insulting.  It’s true that I make plenty of jokes at her expense, but I do that for all the characters in Gil’s.  Nobody seems to notice when I poke fun at Earl’s scrawniness, Duke’s unshaven greasiness, or Chad’s churning teenage hormones.  But for some people, poking fun at Loretta’s weight is a definite sore spot.

I can’t really blame them for that.  Fat characters, particularly overweight women, are almost universally portrayed as undesirable and, often, insecure.  Whether it’s fiction or nearly ever magazine on the rack that tells women how to be thinner or obsesses over a woman’s weight, the appearance of a woman is nearly universal a shorthand for her character.  And if a woman is unattractive in general (and fat in particular) then she is usually flawed.  This leaves a writer with only so many options.  Either mention a character is overweight and take some heat for it or avoid the whole issue and just have the reader assume what they will about the character.

And it’s that assumption that illustrates the problem with race in our culture.  Because, inevitably, if you don’t mention a character’s skin tone or appearance, then the reader will almost always picture a white person.  If I don’t specifically point out a character is overweight, then the assumption is that they aren’t.  So a writer finds himself in a bizarre position.  Mention a detail that is largely irrelevant and hope that the reader won’t make much of it.  Except the reader usually will.

This is the insidious nature of race.  It’s not racism I’m talking about here.  Racism is obvious.  Racism is blatant and obnoxious.  What’s not so obvious is the assumption that caucasian is “average”, and that everything else is “not average”.  And when something is unusual, it can’t help but become a defining characteristic, even if it was never intended as such.

Being white (and usually male) is tabula rasa.  A blank slate.  Defining a character as white doesn’t give a writer much to work with, doesn’t give the reader much to hold onto.  To say a character is white is like saying he’s human.  It doesn’t mean a damn thing and usually can be assumed.

On the flip side, being non-white (or female) is often all a character needs.  To give them more than that can seem like too much.  Why bother with anything more complex when the reader will, unconsciously, consider them as an ethnicity (or sex) first and a character second?

Granted, this is a copout and a bit harsh.  I’m not suggesting that readers shy away from complex or fully developed non-white, non-male characters.  Rather, I’m suggesting that, even when we don’t want to, we can’t help but stick these types of characters in very specific categories with very specific expectations.  The same thing happens in fantasy, of course.  It’s perfectly acceptable for all orcs to be defined by their orc-ness, all elves to be generically elf.  But the humans have to be more than just human.  They have to possess personalities and culture and something that makes them more than merely human.

The character that immediately springs to mind for me is Luke Cage of Marvel Comics.  Luke Cage is defined by his blackness, now more than ever.  Just consider for a moment that Luke Cage is a superhero with super strength and invulnerability.  He fights crime alongside Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America.  All these characters have colorful code names, colorful costumes, and complex backstories.  Luke Cage, on the other hand, has no code name, no costume.  His backstory is quintessentially black.  Hard-knock life, prison term.  He fought crime as a Hero for Hire.  Yes, even as a superhero, he was just a hard-workin’ man tryin’ to earn a livin’.  While Cage’s backstory isn’t really negative, it is still very black.

Compare this to Spider-Man, who is a fully developed character that just happens to be white.  There’s nothing white about his backstory.  You’ll never hear the origin of Spidey start like this: “Once upon a time, a white teenager was bitten by a radioactive spider. . . ”  But it’s a guarantee that “A man from the streets (i.e. black)” will come up almost immediately with Luke Cage.

For cryin’ out loud, he even lost his code name.  Power Man might be generic, but at least it sounds like something a superhero would use.  And don’t tell me that he doesn’t have a secret identity and doesn’t need a code name.  Why the hell does Wolverine need a code name?  And when Tony Stark was outed as Iron Man, nobody started calling him The Invincible Tony Stark!

So what does this mean?  I don’t know.  Should I have outed Teri and Phil as black?  Probably.  But I chose not to, and while it is a copout, it was really the only way to ensure they would be treated as characters in their own right and not merely a racial backdrop on which a couple of minor personality quirks have been dropped.

Just a few thoughts.  Make of them what you will.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee