#and also the respectful discussions of other fantasy cultures and religions in the game

[yuridovewing]

sigh…. might make isat warrior designs

[writingwithcolor]

Gingerbread man as golem

@yaronata asked:

I would like to write a character who is Jewish and uses a Golem. She's based on the D&D class of the artificer which looks magic but isn't, because they produce all their effects with inventions, like the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" quote. Her story is that her very Jewish town was under attack from a terrible monster when she was little. Her Rabbis made a Golem to protect the town, and it succeeded but was torn to pieces in the process. She was fascinated by the Golem and as a kid didn't see a big difference between it's sentience and person's so was really thankful for its sacrifice like you would a person's sacrificing their life for you. They thought all the pieces had been devoured by the monster before it died, but she went looking and found the piece used to animate the Golem, which she, kinda misunderstanding called its "heart". She kept the piece and grew up to be an incredibly skilled cook, specialising as a baker in the town. I imagine she would make a lot of really good food for the Jewish holidays, or to break fasts on ones like Yom Kippur or Tish'abav. But she also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice and the town still being alive, because I feel "we are not dead woo" is a big theme for Jewish holidays from my research, so it could fit, for which she invented ginger bread men to be the golem, and gave them little "hearts" of fruit or honey, and you're meant to eat them limb by limb like the beast did before eating the heart. This would be the inspiration for using the "heart" piece later to make her own giant gingerbread Golem to help her save the world.

These are my questions 1) would it be considered bad or disrespectful for someone who isn't a Rabbi to make a Golem, or is this method of taking an animating piece someone else made disrespectful? 2) Her journey will take her far from her town and her Jewish family and friends and she will likely travel with gentiles. Would it be disrespectful for a Golem to be used to protect a lot of gentiles and one Jew in the course of saving the world? I don't want to fall into the stereotype of someone putting all their effort into valuing and protecting very specifically the group that in real life is oppressive to them. 3) While she is not using magic and is actually mimicking its effects with technology she invents, is this drawing too close to the line of "magical Jew"? 4) I like to "play test" my characters in ttrpgs to really get a feel for them before I write. Would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character when I am a gentile, and would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character in a setting where there are demonstrably real gods other than the one of Judaism?

I really like this character idea and I think it's cute and fun and rooted in Jewish culture but I really want to make sure it's respectful and as good as I, a gentile researching on the internet, thinks it is. Thanks so much! Have a nice day!

My answer to this is very complicated because there are things I both like and do not like about this premise. First of all, I love the idea of a cookie golem, and I'm even imagining the magic word that brings him to life (EMET/truth) would be written in icing. And I'm okay with the part about how she found a piece of the old golem and used it to build a new golem, because that makes sense for a golem made from a baked good when you think about how people use sourdough starter to make a new batch of sourdough.

However, here are the thing that make me cock my head to the side like my little sister's German shepherd:

1. re: "magical Jew" - that's not a trope I've ever heard of. Remember, marginalized groups don't receive identical disrespect across the board. It is indeed a trope to use Black people or disabled people as supernatural plot devices who exist only to further the stories of white main characters or able-bodied main characters. But I can't say as I've ever seen anyone using Jewishness that way. Usually if we are someone's one-dimensional plot device it's as someone's lawyer, fixer, "money guy", etc, not a supernatural force. So this isn't something you have to worry about.

2. I have a certain level of discomfort with you playing as a Jewish character just because playacting as a marginalized culture you're not part of strikes me as off, but I understand that that's how you gain insight into a character you're about to write so it's more of a writing exercise than anything else. (I wonder if D&D regulars from marginalized groups have written about this -- I've only played a few times casually with family so if I did run into this type of discussion in my social justice reading I wouldn't have absorbed it. If anyone is curious I played first as Captain Werewolf, and then switched to playing as Cinnamon Blade because lawful good was too hard. :P )

3. I would prefer you omit the detail about eating the cookies piece by piece symbolically, for two reasons: a. it unintentionally evokes Communion by having appreciative people consume a baked good symbolic of an entity who sacrificed his life for theirs, and b. focusing on the details of flesh consumption reminds me too much of Blood Libel (yes, a gingerbread man is in the shape of a person but how many of us actually think about it literally, the way this act would cause?)

As to your first question: I'm fine with her making a golem even though she's just a rando. Second question: I see what you're saying and maybe it could be more okay if it's really clear how well these gentile folks are treating her? And questions three and four are answered above.

I really do love the idea of a giant gingerbread man golem. Cookie golem T_T <3

--Shira

I would like to second Shira’s point about not ripping apart the gingerbread cookies. I honestly would prefer they were used as decoration, and other cookies eaten instead, since that part just feels so not-Jewish to me, but I don’t have golem-specific issues other than that. It seems like you have already been doing a lot of research, which is appreciated.

As far as the ttrpg/DnD aspect… I bounce back and forth on the topic of playing characters that are so very different from our experiences, other than in fantasy-related ways. However, I am aware that a lot of people will play with, and experiment with gender in game, and learn something about themselves in the process (the number of trans players of ttrpgs who tried out their gender in game before they were out is high). It’s different with Judaism, and even more significantly different when it comes to things you can’t convert into, like various actual, real-world races. But because people do sometimes experience growth from experiences like this, I’m hesitant to dissuade players completely. I do urge you to, at a minimum, bring the same care, research, and willingness to learn, that you brought to this question.

--Dierdra

This sounds like a creative storyline that you could have lots of fun with 😊

At first I was confused by this part:

She also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice

But then you really got me thinking about different types of Jewish holidays and how they come about, so thank you for that!

Because it’s often the little details that either make a story super powerful or kind of nonsensical, I think it would be a good idea to decide what type of holiday is being created here:

A full-blown chag with restrictions on labour and halachic obligations? These are commanded in Torah and new ones can’t be added.

A minor yom tov with halachic obligations but no restrictions? These were instituted by the rabbis prior to the destruction of the Temple, so again new ones can’t be added.

A public holiday or equivalent? This would usually be declared by the Knesset in Israel, and filter to the rest of the Jewish world from there.

A community-based yom tov with specific customs only for people in the know, such as certain Chasidic groups celebrating the birthdays of their deceased leaders? I asked around, but no one can really tell me how these holidays get started, which is probably a good indication that they arise quite organically from a group of people who all just feel that it should be celebrated. Probably not created by a single person, as such.

Something she runs from her bakery, not religion-based, but more like a day of doing special products and deals the way many small businesses do on their anniversary?

Now, if the people of a modern-day town were actually saved by a real live Golem, that would arguably be the most overt miracle for many generations, so there would be a decent chance of options 3 and/or 4 happening. It’s entirely plausible that there could be special foods for this day that become a tradition, including Golem cookies. People who directly benefited might also return to the site where the Golem fought the monster and recite the prayer, ‘Blessed is Hashem, Master of the Universe, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.’

Alternatively, if it’s important that your MC created the holiday, something like option 5 might be the best. Hopefully this will still fulfil what you need: you describe her as incredibly skilled, so I can imagine the day when she goes all out on the Golem cookies being one of the most exciting events of the year for the townspeople, just because her baking is that good. Plus, they already have a personal stake in the Golem’s sacrifice, so I definitely think it could be a thing without being an official holiday. Also, if she is outside of an all-Jewish environment, don’t forget that she would have to decide whether to commemorate the anniversary in the Hebrew calendar or the local one.

Coming back to the cookies, sorry if we’re getting a little repetitive on this point! But I don’t see the cookies being torn limb from limb as part of a celebration. First of all, this doesn’t sound like a very celebratory thing to do, to say the least. Can you imagine explaining that to a three-year-old on their first Yom HaGolem? They would be terrified! (I don’t read this suggestion as accidental anti-Semitism so much as getting carried away with a metaphor, which I’m sure as writers we have all done!)

But also, it’s worth pointing out that our commemorative foods aren’t usually that literal. If you think about hamantaschen, maror, or apple in honey, they’re all symbols. That’s not to say that having Golem-shaped cookies is a problem, as this sounds like just a bit of fun that the MC is having and not something that is directly at odds with Judaism or Jewish culture. But it’s worth bearing in mind that the more literal you go from there in terms of tying the cookies to the event they commemorate, the less culturally aligned your holiday food becomes.

Finally, about the Golem protecting non-Jewish people: I like this idea! There’s a stereotype that we only use whatever is at our disposal to help ourselves and other Jewish people, so a Golem being created by Jews but helping others as well is a big plus for me. Of course, as has already been pointed out, this would be an odd choice if her Saving The World team were anti-Semitic or otherwise disrespectful to her/her community, but I don’t think you were headed that way!

-Shoshi

I have to come back in here just to squee over the phrase “Yom HaGolem.” Well done :D

--Shira

[studiesof-fandom-primaryblog]

The Journal of Fandom Studies

Volume 1, Number 2, 1 October 2013

Augmenting fan/academic dialogue: New directions in fan research by Paul Booth [DePaul University]

Fan studies as a discipline is still in its infancy. But even given this nascence, there have been significant shifts in the ways that it has theorized, studied and investigated fans over the first two and a half decades of research. As scholarship, fan studies has moved away from ethnographic investigations of fans as the main object of study to focus instead on the output of fan discourse as the key mode of examination. At the same time, scholars like Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills, both central to the discipline, have opened dialogue about the nature of the fan/academic, often called the ‘aca-fan’. This article uses the lens of aca-fandom to analyse fan answers to interview questions at a large Midwestern Doctor Who convention. Fans were asked about the role that fan studies has played in their life, how they perceive the study of fans and whether fan studies as an academic discipline has an effect on their fandom. The fans’ answers reflect a critical awareness of fandom but a general ignorance of fan studies. This article argues three points to take away from this. First, fan studies needs to refocus attention back onto fans themselves through ethnographic work. Second, the discipline needs to refocus its output less on esoteric academic titles and more on popular venues. Finally, fans and academics should engage in specific dialogue to open up avenues for new fannish and academic exploration.

A case of identity: Role playing, social media and BBC Sherlock by Ann McClellan [Plymouth State University]

Many fans of Sherlock Holmes are now extending their interest in the famous sleuth into the world of social media. In particular, the BBC’s modern adaptation, Sherlock, seems to have grabbed the public’s attention with multiple character role plays on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. It remains unclear, however, whether to categorize these narratives as fan fiction or role play game. This article explores the genre differences between fan fiction and role play game and identifies specific genre characteristics that place social media fan narratives in the role play game category. While adaptation studies and much of fan fiction center on issues of fidelity to the source text, role play scholarship emphasizes recreating the world of the sourcetext. Role playing both expands the boundaries of the original series in that it provides viewers with more—more stories, more character development, more adventure—but it is also limited by the constraints of the original show’s characterization and overall narrative arc. Online role play characters must speak like their source characters, they must interact with other characters from the show in textually appropriate ways, and they must respond to new situations in ways that are consistent with their televisual counterparts. Looking specifically at BBC Sherlock role plays on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, this article explores the ways in which contemporary audiences are using social media to challenge traditional understandings of genre, world building and fandom in order to approach a greater verisimilitude of play.

‘Drinking the Kool-Aid’ of cult TV: Fans, followers, and fringe religions in Strangers with Candy and Veronica Mars by David Scott Diffrient [Colorado State University]

This article explores episodes of the contemporary American television programmes Strangers with Candy (Comedy Central, 1999–2000) and Veronica Mars (UPN/CW, 2004–07) so as to ascertain and discursively frame the complex relationship between cults (or neo-religious organizations) and cult TV. Although different from one another in many respects, these two TV series share an interest in the cliquish formations of high-school life that divide students into warring camps of insiders and outsiders. Moreover, both programmes contain pivotal episodes in which the ritualistic practices of fictional cults are presented ambivalently – as a source of humour yet also as a gateway through which the unconventional female protagonists pass on their way to self-discovery. That journey has extraordinary resonance for fans or ‘followers’ of these programmes. As argued by Jonathan Gray in his recently published work on ‘affect, fantasy, and meaning’, fans and followers are viewers who are ‘most involved in their consumption’. As such, Strangers with Candy and Veronica Mars deserve scrutiny as steadfastly worshipped texts conducive to the kinds of meta-consumptive discourses and practices that might shed light on culturally entrenched attitudes related to neo-religious activities. 

Community clip show: Examining the recursive collaboration between producers and viewers of a postmodern sitcom by Rekha Sharma [Kent State University]

In the new media landscape, exclusive communication within a TV show’s creative team or amongst its fans is no longer sufficient to maintain the continuation of the programme. Instead, a community arises through the collaboration of those behind the scenes and those in front of the screens. By utilizing interactive technologies, showrunners and audiences have redefined notions of media consumption and mass media. An illustrative case is NBC’s postmodern sitcom, Community (Harmon, 2009–). The show features metadiscourse on media production, responds to viewers’ feedback and preferred narratives and shares the creation of meaning with the audience. As a result, the show has developed an ardent following because viewers feel their concerns are directly addressed by the show’s creative team. Further, their contributions challenge the conventional belief that fan interpretations are merely secondary discourse to the primary television text, as Community fans’ works have helped shape the televised narrative. One episode, Season 2’s ‘Paradigms of Human Memory’, deals with the creators’ and viewers’ mutual conceptualization of time and reality encapsulated in the series.

‘I’m not a lawyer but …’: Fan disclaimers and claims against copyright law by Jenny Roth and Monica Flegel [Lakehead University]

Fan fiction has become increasingly widespread, and online discussions between fans about fan fiction and copyright reveal the extent to which fans are both governed by and resist copyright law, as they understand it. As complex agents both within and outside of law, writers and supporters of fan fiction reveal the problems of speaking against law from a position that is regulated by law, a position creative re-producers are forced to occupy in an increasingly copyrighted, patented and trademarked world. So long as those whom the law is meant to regulate see themselves as legitimate shapers of that law, even though they inhabit space outside the formal mechanisms of law or the legal world, the law will not be effective. When fans with little or no legal expertise invoke and interpret copyright, they reveal that copyright does not attend to the complex realities of creative production, nor the very active consumption, engagement with, and re-articulation of cultural artefacts and texts in society to effectively police at the grassroots level.

Continuing The West Wing in 140 characters or less: Improvised simulation on Twitter by Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore and Jonathan Hickman [Birmingham City University]

Sharing some of the findings from a study of fans tweeting as characters from US TV drama The West Wing (NBC, 2000–2006), this article uses data from Twitter observation and fan interviews to examine how participants negotiated the structures of Twitter through this activity. In particular, we consider what implications that negotiation has for the resulting fan text; for how participants perform fandom through this medium; and for how they perceive the value of their fan practice. Through this investigation, the article demonstrates some of the ways in which Twitter facilitates and constrains articulations of audience engagement.

Keywords: Doctor Who; aca-fan; academy; convention; fan; interview; BBC Sherlock; Facebook; Sherlock Holmes; fan production; role play; social media; world building; Strangers with Candy; Veronica Mars; cult TV; cults; fandom; religion; active audiences; interactive media; postmodern sitcom; television fandom; textual poaching; virtual community; authorship and authority; copyright law and legal discourse; fan policing;  fanfiction; law and society; producer/consumer relations; TV drama; Twitter; audiences;  online communities; television.

[kryptsune]

What are Shattered and Infernum about?

🌼I will try to give as much info as I can without completely butchering it with spoilers. Infernum is a story I created nearly 7 years ago back in High School. It combines a lot of different elements which I will discuss in a moment. In essence, it is the answer to the question, what is behind the other doors in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

It combines my love of mythology, fairytales, and the supernatural. Wonderland, as it is referred, has been corrupted with a curse called “the madness”. It consumes the entire world in a plague of insanity and fear. Each character has a design from their respective period in time. They do not all come from the 1800s even though the book was written at this period. In short, the world of Wonderland is the equivalent to an afterlife. It is very akin to the concept of purgatory. Corruption brings out the worst in all the inhabitants. In the case of Wonderland, it turns them into the thing they feared most in their seemingly forgotten pasts. 

The basic idea is that the Garden of Eden was not a place within our own dimension but just one of a multitude of worlds all connected at a central hub, the Hall of Doors. Now I don't personally believe in the concept of purgatory but in the story, I have made it so that those that would be in limbo or purgatory go to these worlds to live their lives without the hindrance of the past until they can be lawfully judged. This includes those close to death. It's like the scales of judgment and the weighing of one's heart in the book of the dead.

Usually, these people are either sent to heaven or to Hell but this world is for the ones that are in a morally grey area or the judges just don't see them as being one way or the other. If you take the idea of reincarnation it's very similar in my story only those that pass lose their physical form and are transferred to Infernum. Only certain characters can pass physically through dimensions as well. They mostly use their astral projection in the form of dreams or nightmares to contact those outside of Infernum.

After a while, the celestial beings that created these limbos decided upon another course of action. To use the world's two-fold. One for inspiration and creation of those still living on earth and the second a purgatory meant to guide lost souls. The descendants of the first are the rulers. Here is the catch they are fairytale, folklore, and mythological characters. The reason we know about them and their stories is because of writers and poets that were able to see the other side but lived to tell the tale so to speak. It was an inspiration to them to write and continue their stories for our present dimension.

Wonderland is supposed to be based upon the Garden of Eden.  In order to maintain a balance of both good and evil in the world, this limbo was created and therefore the evil side also had to make a contribution. The agreement that once a soul chooses its path they go to either Heaven or Hell was formed. The Angelic side did not honor the other and banished the demon hold on the world effectively breaking the balance. Each character has a tragic past life before they end up in Infernum. Their lives seem to be morally ambiguous so that their time of judgment is not fulfilled. So each character has their demons so to speak. It essentially becomes a second Hell. The more souls the demon side has the stronger they become to take over the other worlds and vice versa. 

The inhabitant's souls become twisted and corrupted. Each character becomes a demon form of themselves during the nighttime. It's supposed to play into the idea that first appearances are deceiving but no matter what the inner demons are always there. They become something you hate or are afraid of. Wonderland is one of the main locations or I would argue the main one but there are other characters and stories that all intertwined and are weaved together. Because this story is so old I need to overhaul quite a few things. That said the basic ideas/ core ideas are still present. 

Shattered on the other hand was actually a story or choose your own adventure narrative that I made for a course in college. I will post my notes on that as well for you. 

Environment/Background: The world is a huge unknown to its inhabitants. A dystopian society deeply rooted in Japanese culture and feel. It mixes some elements of a more feudal area of Japan with high sci-fi elements. The best examples of this aesthetic would be The Hunger Games and Ghost in the Shell. A technologically almost fantasy city, Seiiki (English translation: Sanctuary) stands alone in this world. The outside world has been infested by demonic spirits and monsters. Ones that threaten their way of life if the containment of the city were to fail. It is spread through the cities through various channels as certain sectors of the entire city support their own economies and ways of life. Seiiki is described as that of a major city but in reality, it is a largely populated landmass surrounded by what appears to be an indigo and black miasma, presumably where the demon/yokai threat has originated from.

Each sector of the “city” has its own leader that are then taken into a voting process in which the next “king” is elected to preside over the entire city. This sector's inhabitants see substantial improvement in the quality of life as the power and riches funnel to the current king in power. All decisions, however, are decided by the leaders of each sector for the rest of the people, supposedly. The city being technologically advanced seems to be a paradise that would account for the number of kami and divine imagery.

Propaganda: The city revolves around the cleansing of the citizens and their devotion. There are specific rituals that people have to conform to in order to “keep the evil” from the city. Each person or family has an A.M.E (Automatic Mechanical Entourage). It is a robotic creature or automaton distributed as a companion. “They keep citizens safe, make their lives effortless, and Happy.” These mechanical creatures have varying looks about them. The higher up on the social ladder the more intricate and complex. They are modeled off of Japanese spirits and made to the owner's specifications. At their core, they are a security system and “companion.” Those higher in power have A.M.E that reflect Japanese Mythos and even can be family and crest specific. The current ruler in power brandishes the kitsune as their symbol which can either be the head of a fox or the 9 tails.

Their religious practices have shunned the old Kami in favor of new ones that have given the city its ability to have these technological marvels and also keep the demons at bay. Each sector's citizens give offerings to these new gods as they pray for safety among other things. It is against the law to mention anything of the old religion as the people's devotion is said to have caused all this, to begin with, their heresy is to blame. The new religion seeks to cleanse them of these past sins.   

Every morning begins the same. The people wake up to join their families for tea distributed by the leaders. Then announcements are broadcasted through the entire city usually being news of some sort, product advertisement, and entertainment. In addition, there is a government-run group that acts as a peacekeeping faction. They seem to have a clandestine background as they never show their faces. They hide behind A.M.E masks of animals or oni brandishing black cloaks. They are considered a kind of secret police known as The Pack.   

[feebledungeons]

Me and my friends have never played d&d, but we want to try it out. Unfortunately we don't know anyone who has played before and we didn't find any groups in our city. Do you have any tips for the first times playing? (I'm DM)

Hi there Nonny!

When I first started D&D none of my friend group (including myself) had tried it either. It’s been great to have players in my group that have been with me from the start and gotten to see them evolve as players and GMs, just as I have!

Anyhow, here’s some advice:

I’d recommend the whole group downloading the 5th Edition Basic Rules (they’re free!) and having a read through before you start. Maybe have a chat together about anything that doesn’t seem to make sense to people and decide as a group how you want to play with those rules.

When everyone’s ready, have a ‘Session Zero’. This is a hang-out where you go through character creation, setting and table rules together. You don’t actually play the game, instead you hang out and chat about how you all want the game to go in general.

I wouldn’t run a Session Zero for every game or campaign. I usually just do it if we’re playing with an entirely new group or with people who haven’t played together for a long time. But even when I don’t do a proper Session Zero, I usually still do a chat group where we go over the below points.

The way I’d normally run a Session Zero is (below the cut):

1. The Pitch: 

As DM, chat about the setting of the game/campaign. None of these things are set in stone and, as DM, you should be totally open to what your players want to play. This is your ‘elevator pitch’ where you tell your players about how excited you are for your ideas while also checking in that this is the game they want to play. 

This includes things like: 

The general tone (is this a comedic/dark/emotional/light/scary/thoughtful type story) or genre (thriller/horror/action/comedy/farce/romp)

The practical details (is this setting a standard fantasy or a sci fi or gothic or a steam punk type campaign. Is there magic? Is there advanced technology? Is there prejudice? Are you dealing war? Is this set in a whole continent or contained to a small city?)

[Optional] The themes (the story explores themes of identity or mental health or loss or religion or violence)

To give you an idea, here’s a really short elevator pitch for my next campaign:

A standard fantasy campaign with magic but no advanced technology, set in a small isolated country where communities are deeply suspicious and cults run rampant due to the dangerous monsters that assault settlements. Based on Dante’s Inferno and dealing with themes of morality and temptation. Some horror elements.

After you’ve pitched, it’s time to to chat around the table and make sure this is the kind of story everyone’s up for playing. Feedback is a great thing and can help your story grow. It may seem uncomfortable to do this if you’ve put a lot of work into the world already but that’s why I’d recommend doing this before you get too far. You’ll regret it later if you don’t make sure your players want to play in the world you’ve created so make sure you’re all on the same page before you start.

2. Comfort Levels:

After you’ve discussed story, it’s time to talk about what’s off the table for everyone (including you! Don’t forget that you, the DM, are also allowed to call veto on things that make you uncomfortable). This is the chance for the group to discuss, in advance, what things you DON’T want to deal with in the game world. 

This might seem silly if you’re playing with friends you’ve known for years but I wouldn’t advise skipping it. Everyone has life experiences you don’t know about and roleplaying can feel very personal so it’s always best to check in before you surprise them with something that might upset them.

Remember: This is a personal preference for each of your players and TTRPGs should be fun, that’s why you set these boundaries.

Here’s my personal list of NOs:

No abuse of minors - I will not roleplay in a game where child abuse of any kind is roleplayed (References to it or having it in backstory as long as it is treated as abhorrent is fine)

I won’t have rape/sexual assault scenes (References to it or having it in backstory as long as it is treated as abhorrent is fine)

I won’t have explicit sex scenes with NPCs or PCs at the table (‘fade to black’ type stuff is fine)

Race/Culture/Genetics = Alignment. I don’t wanna play a game where your morality is defined by your birth.

Here’s my MAYBEs:

Prejudice - as long as we’re all on board with how and why it’s wrong

Oppression - see above

Systemic Violence - see above

Mental Health - as long as it’s not going to hit any of my personal issues (which I’m not gonna share here)

Gore/Self harm/Torture - I can cope with this as long as it serves the story and isn’t indulgent

Here’s my COOL WITH MEs:

Horror - I’m fine with being frightened

Character death - I’m cool with characters being killed off (not all players want this, be aware)

Gallows humour - I’m fine with dark humour as long as it’s punching up not down

3. Table Rules: 

This is just a quick run down of how you want to run the game IRL. Generally things like:

No phones at the table

The DM’s rules are more important than the book’s

Players can always question the DM but the DM’s rule is final

Everyone gets a chance to speak

Anyone can request a break at any time but play may go on without you

Respect your fellow players

These don’t need to be written down but they need to be a general guide of how you all expect to be treated and treat each other.

4. Character Creation:

Once you have everything agreed between you, it’s time to start creating your characters together! It’s a good idea when you’re all newbies to at least start the process off together. As DM, you don’t need to worry to much about this bit, just be on hand to help out with setting questions and with suggestions to help tie the characters to the world.

I hope all that is helpful! This turned out to be a lot longer than I was expecting!

Just to note:

The best thing about D&D for me is that, as long as you’re having fun, there really isn’t a way to do it ‘wrong’. This is how we started (all those years ago) and we grew together as a group along the way to the point where most of us are introducing new players to the hobby or devoting a lot of our time to TTRPGs.

Last thing: Have fun!

[mechanicalwitch]

Pop Culture Magic, An Introductory

(This essay was written as a lecture for the discord server, Witching Willow, as an introductory to the topic of pop culture magic.)

Let’s start this off with a simple question. What is pop culture? The simplest answer is provided by the site dictionary.com states that pop culture, standing for popular culture, is “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”. However, John Storey argues in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction that popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across different contexts.

There’s a certain amount of energy invested each waking moment by almost everyone in our world – occultist, practitioner, mage, witch, or not – in pop culture. The media presents itself in ways to everyone with the resources to consume it, usually with a purpose in financial, political, or attention gain. There’s a practice that many occultists turn their noses up at, however, in making use of that energy we all put into the popular culture around us for self-betterment, gain, and other such magical purposes and practices.

Ironically, there’s a sense of counter-culture to it. Pop culture is presented for many purposes, from making money to – for the conspiracy theorists both mild and wild – government control over the people. Pop culture icons in celebrities, fiction, and media come and go, and change often. It dominates our world in a lot of ways, and therefore can be considered a force of its own worth picking by the watchful eye of a magician.

There’s many ways to use pop culture in your magic. Some use it subtly in ways of music-based rituals or more modern images driving a meditation. Others model spells and rituals after what they hear in their favourite songs or see on tv. And some go so far as to create and/or call on entities who originate from pop culture and media, seeking their magic, learning from them, and at times even worshiping them as Gods on par with those of ancient mythology. Some practitioners hold a philosophy that as pop culture changes and leads cultures with it, the investment borders on religious itself. Some may look to Michael Jackson with the adoration and love ancient Greeks held for their Gods.

For the purpose of today, we will hold a fair bit of focus on the fictional side of it, which can be more or less of fiction depending on who you speak to. Pop culture magic resembles more of a genre of beliefs and magical practices rather than one concise system. In this sense, practitioners will have many varying philosophies, beliefs, and methodologies behind their practices. These can all be as diverse as the individualism within each and every practitioner, just as many have different approaches to magic and the occult in general. Different practitioners will have different ways to utilize pop culture, and different reasons for doing so.

Divination, spellwork, and ritual work can take a lot of influence from fiction. See a spell idea on tv you wish to write and perform for an outcome, you can try that. Wish to base your element work on a system of elemental practices similar to that in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pokemon, or whichever source you find has lore on the subject? That’s something else you can do. Many fantasy, sci-fi, and other stories, games, shows, movies, and media may display systems of magic within their lore worth drawing inspiration from.

Many deck makers may create cartomancy decks tailored to be fan work of different sources, and these may hold different levels of significance to a user. Two practitioners who use the same Pokemon or Dragon Age tarot deck may read it differently – one viewing it as the same system but with more fun images, and another reading using the characters on the cards to assist in finding each card’s meaning or involvement in the interpretation of the reading. The amount of weight an image of pop culture has to a practitioner is a very personal thing, and no single person can say how much or how little of that should be involved in your practice.

Diving in a bit deeper, we meet those who work directly with entities who originate from pop culture, be this from fiction, celebrities, and the media around them. Just as there are so many views towards what pop culture magic is, there are even more views on what the entities are, where they come from, why they’re here, and why or how one should contact them.

In my personal experience and belief, these entities are created in the same way as any other deity or spirit from classical mythology: through the belief, thought and invested energy of their followers and those who invest in or create their stories, for whatever purpose. But that’s my personal belief, looking at it from the perspective of chaos magic, deity creation, and god forms. Others may believe in theories such as the Multiverse, or the inherent belief of these entities to exist whether or not their stories exist in our world. Beyond this, the ways and reasons a person may contact or be contacted by these deities varies. Some may outright worship them as another would a god of their religion, and others may not view them as to be worshiped, but worked with for the purposes such as learning and magical influence.

There’s even those who are connected to their entities to the point where it is their religion, worshiping them as one would a mythological deity, and can refer to themselves as pop culture pagans. This is more of a devotional approach to working with these entities. These people may practice pop culture magic, but are not always practicing such. Just as not all pagans are witches or magic practitioners, not all pop culture pagans will practice pop culture magic. It’s more like a venn diagram with overlap, rather than either being a subset of one another. Whether or not the devotional or religious approach to working with pop culture in a spiritual sense is beneficial is entirely up to the practitioner. Any pop culture practitioner may view themselves as a pop culture witch, a pop culture magician, a pop culture pagan, something else entirely, or any combination of those. Because of this, I’ve avoided the claim that pop culture paganism is a part of pop culture magic, or the other way around. Though there is much overlap, they are not logically the same.

As a practitioner myself, I work with my patron deity, Giratina from the Pokemon franchise. I view Giratina as it has told me it views itself, a mass creation through the investment, thought, and energy devoted by at least a couple million fans. I do not worship my patron, however seek its guidance and knowledge that have been collected by these millions of thoughts which formed it. I also work with, from the same franchise, Dialga, Palkia, and Lunala. Each has their own skills and fields of knowledge, and each brings something new and important to the table of my life in turn for the respect, offerings, and energy put back into them through this practice. Mutual benefit, I’d say.

When asked about the subject in the server I manage for pop culture practitioners – Pop Culture Magic Central – varied responses were received, even respectfully disagreeing with one another. One member emphasized “I think I’d just like to share that in my experience, pop culture witchcraft is less about the actual entity existing, and more about a connection to what that entity stands for. Alternatively, it is also very thoughtform focused”. Another member spoke up to disagree in the discussion, stating “I would rather emphasize that pop culture witchcraft and paganism are as broad of categories as the fandoms and cultures they draw from. None of my entities are thoughtforms, and my own practice is heavily dependent on the entities themselves”.

Further Readings:

1. The Pop Culture Grimoire and Pop Culture Magic 2.0 by Taylor Ellwood

2. A Look at Pop Culture Magic by Heather Green - https://wildhunt.org/2015/07/a-look-at-pop-culture-magick.html

3. What is Pop Culture Magic? by Taylor Ellwood - https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-studies-blogs/magical-transformations/what-is-pop-culture-magic.html

4. Pop Culture Witchcraft, Chaos and the Left-Hand Path by Jasper Jacobs - https://mechanicalwitch.tumblr.com/post/185946522860/pop-culture-witchcraft-chaos-and-the-left-hand

 Citations:

Storey, J. (2018). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. Routledge.

Ellwood, T. (2004). Pop culture magic: An exploration of modern magic. Stafford: Immanion Press.

Ellwood, T. (n.d.). What is Pop Culture Paganism? Retrieved from https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-studies-blogs/magical-transformations/what-is-pop-culture-paganism.html

[very-serious-nonsense]

WIP Introduction

I’ve already made a brief Writeblr introduction here. Now it’s time that I properly introduce my current work in progress A Fools Errand (working title). The story takes placed in a magical fantasy world I have been imagining and developing since childhood. Now augmented by my history degree and experiences with dungeons and dragons, I have come to take my own fantastical nonsense very seriously. 

What this basically means is that I’ve got a thousand pages of random notes and about twenty pages of actual readable literature. I have always been terribly self conscious about my writing (for reasons) and it has taken me this long to finally start putting words on paper. Now I have chosen a critical moment in the history of my world to share with you fine people. I am still figuring out precisely how I’d like to do that, but the current plan is this: the narrative will follow through a series of short fairy tales highlighting a select number of major characters. Perspective may switch, but characters will often crossover between chapters (and not always in an obvious way). Dinah (my #1 protagonist) will most likely appear in all of these, acting as the primary narrative to follow and the a consistent link between all the separate stories. 

Dinah is a whimsical, strong willed young girl living on the frontier with her mother Beryl. She is always getting herself into trouble by asking too many questions and calling out adults on their bullshit. She also suffers from terrible nightmares, sleep paralysis, and all sorts of waking dreams. Beryl takes Dinah to speak with the local Hermit/Sage Palenszar who tells her that her that the dreams are prophetic and the gods are sending her messages. His advice is to that on the first good omen she should go on pilgrimage to the Oracle of Tuath in the Great Bay City of Mer-We. 

(check out what i’ve already posted about them here here and here)

Something else important: I am also working on a series of WIPs within this WIP (because that’s how I function). There is A History of Laurie which will attempt to tell the complete history of my world from the perspective of someone living there, of course in a familiar format reflecting Herodotus. I am also working on a religious text that will borrow from the format of the Iliad/Odyssey and other classical epic poetry. Additionally, I intend on writing a scholarly piece from a modern perspective of my world piecing together inscriptions and fragments from the past to paint a picture of the culture’s formative years. This is only a sampling, but other projects include a board game, comic series, and video game. Basically, anytime I have a new idea or even just learn a new thing I figure out a way to stitch it into the world.

A few more brief words on the world at large: it is made up of six major realms Mer-We, Bhulka, Kalkozo, Saaziland, Waake, and Acharii (reflecting the six major deities; Tuath, Sekow, Ge, Axzemio, Ammu, and Ptilnor, respectively). The six realms together make up the Land of Laurie (side note: named after my grandmother Laurie who would always tell me that when we were rich one day she would buy an island and call it Laurie Land, and all he family would live there. Still working on making it a physical reality, but in the mean time it’s easier to at least construct it metaphorically). I will make a separate, more articulate post about my pantheon of gods and the various religions about the lands, and also for an explanation of my magic system (which in many ways is reflective of my own personal religious views as a pantheist and practicing wizard). Many of my characters are also low key designed to represent the major arcana from tarot and inasmuch act as foreshadowing omens when those characters appear in the story; ie. Dinah is the Fool, hence the working title.

This project is something so incredibly personal and important to me that I feel the need to share it with anyone who will listen. The ideas I will be discussing here may be incredibly complex and often contradictory,  so if you are interested at all please feel free to message me with questions, opinions, critiques - whatever! As personal as this is, I take criticism very well.  Also, I know my grammar and syntax are terrible. I didn’t learn how to read until I was ten and then I just never picked up on some things. syntax and grammar can be pretty elitist anyway.

thanks for reading! let me know what you think!

[aion-rsa]

Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars

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Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher known as the Queen of Hell, owes one more soul to demons due to an infernal bargain she struck. Young violinist Katrina Nguyen needs to escape her homelife, where her transness is rejected by her family, and to start anew, hopefully making videos with her music. And Lan Tran and her crew are striving to build a stargate—before the Galactic Empire falls to the Endplauge—while selling donuts at Starrgate Donuts in Los Angeles. Light from Uncommon Stars is the story of how these three women’s lives intersect, and is a novel filled to the brim with music so beautifully described, readers can almost hear it in the narrative.

Katrina opens the novel with her flight and her passion for music; Shizuka comes in quickly after with her soul-contract deadline and her desire to find one last musician to condemn to hell. When readers first encounter Lan and her alien crew, they may wonder how author Ryka Aoki can pull off a story that is at once soul-bargaining-with-demons and refugee-aliens-building-a-stargate. But as the story progresses, the themes and characters dovetail together so beautifully that readers will wonder how they ever doubted. 

Aoki explores what it means to be human, the nature of souls, and the importance of hope and love even in the face of what may seem hopeless, filling the novel with both good humor and acknowledgment of suffering. There is pain, and yet a sense that better things are to come. The love and care with which the characters imbue parts of their lives—whether it’s the music they play, the instruments they shape, or the food they create—gains a greater meaning by virtue of that love. The result is an incredibly powerful story of hope and redemption, of small voices shouting into dissonance and being heard. Ahead of the novel’s September 28th release, Den of Geek had the chance to pick Aoki’s brain about how this novel came together, and insights into her inspiration…

Den of Geek: First, what brought together the two very different speculative fiction tropes—soul-bargaining and stargates—together into the same story for you? How did you create a universe in your head where both things worked without contradicting each other?

Ryka Aoki: I respect both science fiction and fantasy, but I had honest intentions and reasons to mix them in Light from Uncommon Stars. I was a little bit worried about how people would accept this—or not. But I’ve been thrilled with how readers have embraced and accepted this book.

I think this book might resonate with readers because we all hold seeming contradictions. In the book, Shizuka Satomi mentions how great pieces of music contain such different-sounding sections and movements. And, as music reflects the soul, doesn’t that say something about us, and our own shifting arrays of motifs and counterpoints?

In my case, being of Japanese descent, and being queer, and being trans, means that I play a lot of different things to a lot of different worlds. Yet working toward true acceptance and love of self can be like composing your own sonata—you’re striving to express and share your entire music. The person who I am with my family lives in a different world than the person who teaches English and Critical Thinking. And that person seems very different from the writer, or the martial artist.

And yet, I don’t feel fragmented. I feel pretty whole.

And so, when I wrote Light from Uncommon Stars, I always had faith that it would work out, somehow—because I worked out, somehow.

(At least I’d like to think so…) 

Demon Tremon Philippe and Shizuka’s relationship may bring to mind more of Mephistopheles and Faust than the devil at the crossroads. But there is a long tradition of musicians trading souls for greatness, brought into American folklore via blues musicians, who may have drawn on tales of Papa Legba rather than the European devil-bargaining stories. In the novel, you’ve brought many cultural traditions into play—where did you start from in the soul-selling elements? What did you borrow from earlier tales, and what did you invent whole cloth?

Thank you for asking this question because it lets me talk about another tradition. The early days of Internet message boards were the first time ever that trans people could speak freely yet relatively anonymously with people like them around the world. In fact, one of my dearest friends had such a board and they live in Iceland. We needed each other. We helped each other go through some horrible times… But there were also some goofy and fun times come as well—it was the first time that we realized that we’re all a bunch of science fiction and fantasy geeks. I mean, anywhere we can dream, right?

And I remember at the time being struck by how many trans women had created their own creation myths, to explain how their soul was placed in this other body. Many religions ignore trans people. Yet to know where one came from—and why—is a necessary question for many human beings.

In these stories, and the discussion surrounding them, there was much talk about having the soul of a woman, or the soul of a man if one were a trans man. “Do you have a female soul?” was a very relevant question to those with trans binary identities. (Discussions of nonbinary identities and gender fluidity were happening as well—entire vocabularies were being invented. Those were some exciting times.)

I think that even now many trans women, perhaps when first trying to make sense of who they are, still ask themselves this question.

And so, the cursed Shizuka Satomi, precisely because she is so focused on acquiring souls that she finds bodies irrelevant—offers Katrina the space and place to find her answers.

The descriptions and understanding of music and violins—and violin competitions—in the story are tangible. What is your music background?

I love writing music. I used to play in a band, and when I do my spoken word pieces, I compose all my own soundtracks. My main instrument is the piano, but I also play guitar, and some flute, and harmonica. For the most part, I am self-taught. However, I’ve been taking lessons for the past couple of years with a wonderful piano teacher—the irony is because I’m promoting this book, I’m on a brief hiatus from that.

However, I had no idea how to play the violin. I remember the first time I went into a violin shop. There were violins, but violins of different sizes, and cellos and violas and basses, and I was laughing to myself that I have no idea how to make music with any of this. I couldn’t put a tune together with one of these instruments to save my own life.

I did manage to teach myself some violin. And I really love the instrument. I have an acoustic violin from eBay, and I also have an electric violin now. This Christmas season, I am looking forward to jamming to some holiday music. We may never be ready for a committed relationship, but the violin and I have become good friends.

So, although I didn’t grow up in violin culture, as I researched violin culture, I found many parallels with a culture that I was familiar with—martial arts. Like many communities with overachieving children and parents with unrequited dreams, I found that in violin competitions, it was sometimes difficult to tell which was more important, the violin or the competition. This was so much like what I had seen as an annoying little martial arts kid. And so, those were the experiences upon which I drew.  

The posturing, the pressure, the mind games…the nausea in the bathroom…so different, but not so different at all.

In addition to being a writer, you are a teacher. Are any of your own feelings about teaching reflected in Shizuka’s feelings about mentoring?

*giggle* ALL of them…the good, the bad, the obsessive, the self-serving, and the hopeful.

This novel felt, in many ways, like a pandemic novel–in a situation that should be full of hopelessness (the Endplague, a coming soul-deadline), there’s still this tonal quality, even in the early pages, that things will turn out right, even if we have no idea how that will happen. Was any part of the novel written during the pandemic? Do you see it differently now that it’s coming out as we’re still dealing with the coronavirus?

During the first few months of pandemic, most of the novel had already been written, and we were deep in edits. I was pushing so hard to get my story just right that the first part of the lockdown went by unnoticed. Plot hole here, inconsistency there…even without a lockdown, I don’t think I would have gone out, anyway.

These days, I’m feeling the pandemic more, especially because this is when I was to tour, sign books, and meet people in person. And, as I engage with the lockdown more actively, I do notice how the pandemic does seem to echo the themes of the Endplague. Although Covid-19 did not inspire the Endplague, I based the Endplague on how civilizations can often fall, not from outside cataclysms themselves, but from the conflicts and fissures they cause their populace…and a collective loss of hope.

In the book, without going into too many spoilers, Lan and her family come from a very advanced civilization that has conquered many diseases and social ills, but is still battling with divisions, suspicions, and fatalism.

Looking around at world today, the parallels are hard to escape.

Late in the novel, you use Bartók as a way of framing and understanding transness in a beautiful way. Could you talk about the theme of Katrina finding her voice through the violin, and about how music and self-intertwine in the novel?

Provided the instrument is well-maintained, when you play the piano, you’ll automatically play in tune. A violin can be perfectly in tune, but that is far from enough—you need to be in tune with yourself.  

Furthermore, when I actually played the violin, I learned that certain notes resonate very well with other strings. In fact, sympathetic resonance is one way that a student can know if she’s in tune. If we listen for the resonances, we can feel the entire violin glow. There’s no better way to say it—it seems like the instrument glows.

This is very important to Katrina’s development, for human voices—and human souls—don’t have keys, or even frets, either. And when you’re playing in tune with yourself and others, you do get this internal glow. I think feeling this is very important to Katrina. It gives her security, weaves her into the songs of others.

But we are not always in harmony, nor should we be. Sometimes, our true songs are dissonant, or expressed in notes between notes. At that point, for all the rest of the world knows, your composition is wrong, or your intonation sucks. So, when your own music is so insistent, yet so at odds with what people expect—what do you do? Well, there goes Bartók.

There is a difference between playing with people in harmony and speaking to them in melody, after all. What does this mean for Katrina?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I think I’ll just leave it there.

Starrgate Donuts cannot fulfil online orders for their delicious donuts, unfortunately, as it is fictional, and videos of Shizuka Satomi’s performances are still not available to watch, due to interference from demonic forces, but Light from Uncommon Stars is available at bookstores everywhere on September 28, 2021. Find out more here.

The post Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2XOiGKJ

[chrisengel]

four years ago, during the same summer the Superhuman exhibition took place, London also hosted, with a huge hullabaloo, the Olympic Games as well as its supposedly ugly little sister, the Paralympics.  To promote and kindle interest in the latter, various TV channels broadcast a 90-second video promo,  produced by a Channel 4 team, advertising the event. In the video, we see a number of disabled athletes, training hard, faces full of determination, visibly ready to kick ass, and get a glimpse of the events that caused them to be what they are today: terrible accidents, war, genetic defects. Yet the film is made in such a way that those athletes do not come across as disabled at all. On the contrary, they appear to be immensely abled, despite the fact that they have got a limb or two missing or are confined to a wheelchair. There is no weakness to be seen, nothing that is apt to arouse compassion, or worse, pity in us. What we feel instead, and are meant to feel, is admiration, or even more than that: something more akin to awe. This impression is reinforced by four lines of text superimposed over the pictures: “Forget everything you thought you knew about strength./ Forget everything you thought you knew about humans./ It’s time to battle./ Meet the superhumans.” It was thus suggested that we regard the athletes competing at the Paralympics not as disabled, but on the contrary as superabled, not as less than human, as deficient in some way, but as more than human. I find this utterly remarkable, because it turns the usual perspective on its head. Superhumans are normally pictured as gifted with special physical or cognitive abilities that allow them to do things that no mere human can do. They can fly or have X-Ray eyes or read minds or bend time or are indestructible, or what have you. This is the kind of fantasy that informs much of our current thinking about human enhancement. The radically enhanced human or posthuman that transhumanists and others envisage is really not much different from a comic book superhero. Both are able to do things that mere humans cannot do for the simple reason that for them the  boundaries that determine our human existence no longer exist. They have overcome those boundaries by making them disappear. What the Channel 4 video spot about the Paralympics suggested, though, is that real strength does not show itself in a limitless existence, in the creation of an environment that no longer presents any obstacles to the satisfaction of our will, that is, in other words, in virtual omnipotence. Rather, real strength consists in the spirit. Instead of leaving behind all boundaries, we become more than human by deciding to live with them, but at the same time refusing to let ourselves be bullied by them. We prove both our humanity and superhumanity by refusing to buckle, by putting up a good fight and by accomplishing great things despite our limitations. Thus it is not human enhancement, at least not the kind of human enhancement that is commonly discussed as such, that will make us superhuman. If anything, it is resolve, and courage, and related virtues of the mind and heart. Clearly, this is not a story that we would expect a transhumanist to tell. It is simply not compatible with the transhumanist worldview. So what kind of stories do transhumanists tell? They certainly perpetuate the myth of inevitable progress and the myth of science’s “omnicompetence” identified by Mary Midgley (2011, 18). Michael Burdett (2015, 133) defines the myth of progress as “the belief that history/society/humanity has advanced, and is continuing to advance, and will advance in the future”. The myth entails that the present is deficient (with respect to the expected future progress). Transhumanism radicalizes this view by pairing it with the myth of science’s omnicompetence, the belief that science can solve all problems and will ensure our continuing advancement to ever higher levels of existence and experience. “In terms of narrative” the literary theorist Northrop Frye once remarked (1957, 136), “ myth is the imitation of actions near or at the conceivable limits of desire (…) . The fact that myth operates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily presents its world as attained or attainable by human beings. (…) The world of mythical imagery is usually represented by the conception of heaven or of Paradise in religion” For the transhumanist, Paradise is attainable. Science and technology make it so. In the following chapters I will explore these and other myths that I take to be central to the transhumanist enterprise, focusing on verbally transmitted stories (or elements in the overarching transhumanist story) rather than images , which of course also play an important role in cultural story-telling. Transhumanist imagery featuring human-machine mergences and all sorts of other super- and posthumans are all over the media, functioning, as Frommherz (2013) has argued, as self-replicating cultural memes in the service of propagating transhumanist ideas such as an understanding of evolution as progression and the sublimity of technology, in order to “perpetuate the dream of an autonomous and omnipotent humanity” (Frommherz 2013, 148). Images and words work together to get those ideas a firm hold in our collective mind and to create and promote the transhumanist mythology. The next chapter will start off our exploration of transhumanist story-telling with a discussion of transhumanism as a form of utopianism. Transhumanist writings are rich with utopian ideas and images that can be traced back to ancient and medieval myths, dreams and hopes. By analysing the former in the light of the latter, I try to show that the persuasiveness of transhumanist arguments for radical human enhancement crucially depends on their utopian content, and that this seriously undermines transhumanists’ self  -proclaimed commitment to critical rationality and, consequently, diminishes the weight that we should give to their arguments

http://www.academia.edu/29000478/Mythologies_of_Transhumanism

# Michael Hauskeller

[beesandbooks1]

Discussion: The Problems with Witchcraft in Historical Fiction

To read this post on my book blog instead, click here!

This post is not meant to be a comprehensive history lesson, nor an appropriate reference. If you are a reader or writer of historical fiction and you want to know more about this topic, it’s imperative to do some research of your own. Look up Gerald Gardner and his creation of Wicca. Here is the “further reading” part of the Wicca Wikipedia article for sources and publications. Tumblr also has a thriving neo-pagan community with various blogs dedicated to collecting sources and disproving a lot of the issues I’ll discuss in this post.

To set the record straight, many books written in say the last twenty years that are historical fiction and fantasy based that focus on a “legacy” of witchcraft take their inspiration directly from Wicca. There are plenty of reasons–and good ones–for this. Wicca is a modern religion founded in the early twentieth century and there are a lot of branches of it that are practiced today. There are several prolific writers such as Scott Cunningham who publish widely on the rites and beliefs of Wiccans, including plenty of guides for beginner witches and Wiccans. These books are found at retail sellers and on Amazon with great ease, and are generally no more expensive than any other book. With the popularization of crystals, tarot, and other witchy items on Instagram and social media for the aesthetic, it’s pretty damn easy for a contemporary writer to piece together a convincing portrayal of Wicca or neo-pagan witchcraft.

The problems arise where historical fiction, or contemporary fiction that refers to a “historic legacy,” conflates Wicca with historical pagan practices. Once again, I must emphasize that Wicca was founded no earlier than 1921 and is largely considered to have officially been founded in 1954 with Gardner’s publication of his book on Wicca. Wicca and other neo-pagan offshoots do take inspiration from mythologies and historic pagan religions, however, a key part of Wicca is the discredited theory that there were ancient legacies of witchcraft based religions existing in Europe into the middle ages, and that many witch hunts were genuine attempts to stamp out pre-Christian pagan traditions. This belief in and of itself is problematic as it ignores the very real discriminatory and historically recorded motivations of various witch hunts and inquisitions. Many practicing Wiccans and neo-pagans today acknowledge this belief is based on a discredited theory and do not hold that belief, instead acknowledging and giving respect to the various groups–such as the Jewish people and Romani peoples–that were persecuted in these historic events.

What’s more, if an author only does research into Wicca and neo-paganism on the surface, borrowing rituals word for word from certain popular texts and dancing around the vague mythology of “the mother goddess,” the author might accidentally dip into another pitfall: cultural appropriation. Wicca and neo-pagan traditions regularly borrow from or follow other traditions, of which there are generally two kinds. There are open traditions, ones that regularly welcome newcomers and have resources for the basics. Open traditions thrive on a diverse neo-pagan community and encourage their practitioners to experiment and make their practice their own. A lot of solitary practitioners largely work with open traditions, as they can be learned about from books and online sources. Closed traditions are entirely different. A closed tradition is one that is initiation based, generally a cultural religion, and includes many still-practiced religions. Closed traditions may have invitation experiences, such as public events where anyone is welcome to attend but not participate, or have educational materials meant to spread awareness but not serve as an initiation. Unfortunately, due to the nature of solitary practice of Wicca and neo-paganism, there are a lot of practitioners who interpret the existence of these educational materials as invitations. They engage in cultural appropriation, using what they find as the basis for their own rites and rituals, and often spreading misinformation about their practice.

As someone who has been part of witchcraft and neo-pagan communities for over a decade now, I can pretty easily spot when an author has done what probably felt like a lot of research into Wicca and paganism, but has also been led astray. There are a lot of books on Wicca and neo-pagan traditions that are circular and refer to one another as sources despite being based on a lot of inaccuracies. Llewelyn is guilty of this, and are known for publishing a fair amount of white authors discussing cultural practices they have no business publishing on. What’s frustrating is the sheer amount of fiction books that perpetuate the exact same interpretation of witchcraft, making it harder to point out the discredited theory Wicca is based on, as well as the cultural appropriation going on with their interpretation.

If as an author you want to tell a story about witches, whatever witches look like in your world, being persecuted it’s best to be creative and come up with your own interpretation of their practices, why they are persecuted, and what that persecution looks like. Examples of this done well usually focus on the “fear of the unknown” trope, presenting witchcraft as something murky and difficult to understand from the outside. But authors who borrow from Wicca–some of them even calling the religion Wicca in their text–and create a dichotomy of Wiccans with “real” magic and just religious followers, fully immersing the reader in a world where Wicca has existed for centuries in one way or another… They’re contributing to a problem. I have known two types of people with an “interest” in Wicca: those who are learn about Wicca from fiction, and those that explore spirituality in neo-paganism texts first. As I said above, there are a lot of published books on Wicca and neo-paganism that are bad, engage in cultural appropriation, give dangerous advice (a lot of books on herbs don’t do proper research about bad combinations), or are generally misinformed due to many reference texts referencing one another in a game of misinformation telephone. So while it is possible to get the wrong idea of Wicca or neo-paganism from reading nonfiction, it’s also very common for new practitioners and explorers to have a false image of Wicca due to the fiction they’ve read.

It’s also important to avoid engaging in cultural appropriation, drawing from closed traditions and indigenous sources, just because others do it. A book on Wicca referencing Native American practices such as smudging does not permit any author to have their non-Native characters do the same. As readers, it’s also important to call out these instances when they’re seen. For myself, I tend to avoid historical fiction that features a Wicca-like witchcraft legacy because I often find a lot of instances of misinformation and cultural appropriation. But in avoiding these, I also need to be making note of them so other readers are aware. Not only so impressionable readers don’t get the wrong idea of what Wicca and neo-paganism are, but also so any cultural appropriation is properly warned about and called out.

As I’ve ventured into more books about witches recommended by fellow book bloggers I’ve encountered more examples of this issue. I’m sure many of the authors I’ve read have felt that they’ve done quite a lot of research into witchcraft and created a convincing and respectful portrayal, but have included a discredited author in their sources or accidentally borrowed from a source known for appropriation. I don’t see these things discussed nearly as much in book blogger spheres than I do in neo-pagan communities, so I suppose I’ll be trying to hit out on that topic more often.

[h4z1qim4n]

Novel Writing (Part 5)

Creativity: Novel Writing (Of Heaven and Hell) Date(s):  1st July 2020 Time:  Hours: 

P.S This is another novel I’m working on and I personally think it’s wayyy more interesting.

This novel of mine is based off a few games I love (one in particular almost gave me an aneurysm from the stress it inflicts), which are “the Diablo Series”, “Darkest Dungeon” (This is the one I was referring to) and “Castlevania” (Quite bloody for my taste actually). 

I tried to take the concepts from said inspirations and place them all into my realm of fantasy such as the concept of the ultimate battle between the Heavenly Host and the Burning Hells (Diablo Series), the afflictions that can plague party members (Darkest Dungeon) and the complexity of a castle (Castlevania).

The cover was also made by the same person from last time (She didn’t quit on me, which is nice :D) and before starting the novel, we discussed ideas and came to this conclusion. 

P.S.S This is a compilation of my notes, this is actually because I can’t open too many tabs on google chrome so I decided to copy & paste it into my notebook.

This novel is also tied to another novel I was working on (The End, if you forgot) and the setting of this is in the medieval times with the added bonus of magic. The main character is also female (I don’t know why, I guess my friend rubbed off on me). She’s is a disgraced noble and is forced to become a mercenary to return in the emperor’s good graces despite the discouragement from her family members.  

P.S.S.S This is my notes on the naming conventions, there’s currently only two because one of them will be heavily featured in the story and the other is a rare occurrence.

The main character’s ethnicity and empire she lived in, is based on the roman empire (Known as the Imperium in the novel). I was also thinking of expanding to other nations as well but that was left for the sequel to the novel as this story is focused on exploring a tomb underneath a city and protecting the city from the corruption of demons (At one point, the demon from the tomb is unleashed and the heroes rise up to defeat it.). 

P.S.S.S.S This is the character overview and it’s pretty bare if you ask me

The unorganized side are the adventurers going to explore the tomb and each of their names are unique to their respective culture while the other side contains the names of the angels (Gods to the regular folk or based on their religion) leading the charge against hell (The names and traits of the Demon Kings couldn’t fit in the picture but it’s beside the names of the angels).

The names of the angels and demons came from a name generator because I’m terrible at naming things, plus a demon called John sounds pretty stupid if you ask me (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a demon called John). 

P.S.S.S.S.S This is the religion overview and it’s kinda empty because I’m terrified of disrespecting other people’s religion.

The Imperial Pantheon is based on the Hellenistic religion that the ancient romans worshipped but their respective titles had to change to fit the story. It is worshipped by three different cultures as I plan to add other religions to the story based on real life religions as well. 

The Fescalan Gods are basically Norse Gods because one companion of the hero’s party worships them. 

[writingwithcolor]

Chinese writing a China-inspired fantasy world

Okay, so this is a question from an aspiring Chinese-European writer, considering writing a fantasy-verse influenced (but not solely coded) by my own culture:

I’m a little confused about the level of historical adherence needed to do this. I see in your previous answers for similar questions on other cultures that you have recommended doing research on specific time periods, but considering the sheer scope of Chinese history and how many interesting elements spanning the ages that could be derived from it, I’m wondering if cherry-picking is condonable. I mean, even actual Chinese historical dramas tend to mix up timelines for the sake of entertainment.

Furthermore, do I have to abide by the exact same cultural values reflected in real life? I want to incorporate elements from other philosophies – not specifically culture-coded ones, but things like Plato’s Republic, for instance. I realize that Plato himself was Greek, but if I’m not making a direct reference to him specifically, just borrowing pieces from his philosophy, is that still cultural appropriation? Is it so implausible to believe that another person in a different culture would be able to come up with similar ideas, especially sociopolitical ones?

If you’ve ever played the Dragon Age franchise, I thought they did this very well with other cultures— while Orlais is clearly meant to be analogous to France (with a little of Venice thrown in), Ferelden was a mix of Viking and British influences, Tevinter a bit of Imperial Rome and the Byzantine Empire, etc. The concept behind the dominant religion in the game was “Christianity with a Jeanne d’Arc figure instead of Jesus”, and there is another that is basically Plato’s Republic in form of a theocracy. No direct RL cultural references or cherry-picking appropriation; just glimpses of parallels if you delve further into the individual cultures. Some cultures are even so well-blended that fans debate among themselves what might have served as the original source of inspiration.

With all due respect to all writers paying tribute to Chinese culture, I just don’t want to create a universe that is blatantly “fantasy China” or “historical China but with magic” at first glance; I want it to be its own standalone culture where you can see subtle Chinese influences. I would still avoid tokenism or outright cast erasure of my own race, of course, being too familiar with it myself in other media; and I would study minorities more in-depth as well. (I wouldn’t want to accidentally offend non-Han Chinese by writing characters or conflicts that might coincide with their negative stereotypes.)

Would this still be considered offensive, especially considering how I’m Chinese myself, only born outside my country? I have discussed this with my (China-born) family and friends, and nobody seems to find this an issue; but then again, none of them are particularly concerned with political correctness.

—-

Chinese Writer Writing Standalone Culture with Subtle Chinese Influences

Speaking for myself only, I don’t think it would necessarily be that offensive on its own. I’m thinking of Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series, which isn’t fantasy!China but also has influences that I immediately recognized as Chinese. Having said that, though, the philosophies were also distinctly East Asian (to me at least). 

I also have to say, I’m cringing a bit at the use of “politically correct” and challenging tone of your question. It reads to me like you’re not particularly interested in being respectful, but want our approval anyway. 

–mod Jess 

For me historical accuracy isn’t so much about strict time periods but more about the building blocks of culture. China has had a fairly strong Buddhist/Confucian/Taoist core, plus a long history of earthquakes/monsoons, plus things like divine attribution to Emperors and war-as-unification followed by a heavy administrative/scholarly value.

The farther you get away from any of those key concepts (underlaying philosophy, environmental factors, and religious factors), the less a culture is going to look like itself. This can be for good or ill, depending on who’s got it. Swapping out philosophies for European ones is going to make it less like China, but if you have the other blocks then it’s going to still look mostly like China.

You don’t have to exactly clone one time period to make a fantasy!China. Picking from within itself, so long as the elements across those time periods are relatively similar (ie- the basic philosophies and how problems are approached feels roughly the same) is fine.

But when you start to mess too much with the basic elements, it starts to feel off because you have to ask yourself— could this thought process have come out of the culture I’m trying to base my society out of?

You can do your own research to see if the Chinese came up with something similar to the European influences you want to take. You can see if they adapted such philosophies for their own ends. You can also ask yourself what parts of other philosophies came as a direct result from something in that culture, and play the mind puzzle of how it would’ve come out of the culture you’re trying to pull from.

Because some mixes don’t work. If you tried to put in American individualism into China, that is very family/group oriented, it would feel wrong because group membership is such a basic part of Chinese culture and shapes a lot of who they are. But if you wanted to take something like democratic election, you can play around for what roles get elected, by whom, etc, in the same divine-emperor-rules-all framework of ancient China.

It’s about respecting the underlaying core of a culture. It doesn’t have to be exact, but so long as the core is what it is, the world is still going to feel Chinese.

~ Mod Lesya

[zandoct]

Why Mass Effect Andromeda is Great

So I finished MEA the other day, and I loved it to pieces. Easily top 5 games of all time, and only ten good games have ever been made. So imagine my surprise when I, the Discourse Liker, logged on and discovered that this beautiful work of art hadn’t been received very well. Who let the critics get away with that? Anyway, I’m going to explain why I love the game and why it’s really good and even some things it did better than the original trilogy.

Spoilers for the new alien species ahead

The Magnificent Ten

One of the great strengths of MEA compared to its predecessors in the franchise is the small cast of intimately written characters that form the Tempest crew. The Tempest is approximately one half the size of Normandy SR-2 and smaller than the SR-1, which means that there aren’t any faceless, nameless crewmembers. Instead, you have what I call the Magnificent Ten, because I’m bad at naming things.

To me, keeping the crew small and tightly knit is a fantastic improvement over previous games. This gives more space for the interrelationships (i.e. the way characters interact with characters other than the player) and helps you feel like you have greater agency over the Tempest, as a home. Which is one of the major themes of the game. Come on now. For instance, Lexi’s character is explored by her interaction with Drack as much as it is with Ryder, or Kallo with Suvi.

Compare that to ME2, which had a brilliant but very large cast that hardly ever interacted with each other. As discussed in this video, the only way a player can have agency in RPGs is if the NPCs have agency, and a great way to achieve that is to explore their relationships outside of the player. Using the banter system from Bioware’s other major modern title Dragon Age is one great way of making a team a family. WHICH IS THE OTHER MAJOR THEME OF THE GAME.

A rigorous analysis of the characterisation of the Tempest crew would take an entire other essay, but I’ll just comment that I found the interplay of themes shared between the crew – especially their loyalty missions – to be one of the best expressions of theme, tone and allegory in any game I’ve played.

For instance, Cora’s arc is (partially) about how you deal with being rejected, and Peebee’s arc is about how you deal with rejecting others. Liam represents your own mistakes and Jaal represents the mistakes of others. Vetra represents letting go of a role and Drack represents stepping forward into a role. Obviously this is just my interpretation but the very fact the narrative can be interpreted in so many fascinating ways is testament to its… beauty.

The supporting cast outside of the Tempest family are also a diverse, fascinating bunch. The Angara are represented on Aya by Commander Evfra, Moshae Sjefa and Governor Paaran. They have an interesting chemistry and each represents an individual, subtle example of Angaran culture. This makes the introduction to Aya a little overwhelming, filled as it is with so many important characters and unknown conflicts. But it’s a great way to be immersed in your Ryder, who’s probably also blown away by one of the game’s major discoveries.

A significant problem some critics have with the game is that only two sapient species were introduced in this new galaxy. While it would have been cool to see one or two more, the intense focus on two cultures is more reflective of the how the game interrogates having a smaller crew.

Plot Course, Setting Course (or; The Process of Renewal)

Another key criticism of MEA is that it is very iterative of the original series: keep in mind though that the original series is also iterative in its own way, drawing inspiration from a number of sci-fi/fantasy sources (KOTOR I’m side-eyeing you big time)

I think it can be refreshing to examine the themes of the original series with a new perspective granted by the different events and characters of MEA. Fundamentally, stories are only compelling because of what it tells us about humanity. Yes, the ancient Prothean tech is reminiscent of the Remnant. But they have different goals, different culture and most importantly, their two commentators – Liara and Peebee, respectively – are affected by them in different ways. As William Faulkner said:

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” What I mean by this is that the similarities between the Protheans and the Remnant are less important than the different effect they have on the player and our companions.

The same goes for the Reapers and Kett and their twisted idea of uplifting other species. The Kett’s semblance of Ur-fascism is part of what makes them thematically distinct from the Reapers, rather than their superficial aims. Throughout the series, the Reaper’s philosophy was vague and mainly gathered from piecemeal exposition of the supporting cast, especially Legion and Saren rather than the Reapers themselves. The Kett are also enigmatic for most of the game, but what you learn about them is more concrete than their all-powerful Milky Way counterparts.

A fantastic scene, demonstrating that there's a niche for moments with no dialogue in Bioware games.

Discussing ‘the Kett as fascists’ is worthy of its own article so I will only briefly explore it here. In 1995, Umberto Eco provided a great analysis of fascism, both past and future. He states that fascist ideologies can be extrinsically and intrinsically contradictory while also being equally valid under the umbrella of fascism, something he calls Syncretism. For instance, Nazism and Mussolini’s fascism disagree in their treatment of religion, but both are quite clearly forms of fascism. He goes on to describe the theoretical qualities of ‘ur-fascism’, a hypothetical social order that could potential arise from any of the aforementioned qualities. I propose that the Kett are best analysed from the perspective of these qualities:

1. Cult of Tradition. The Kett oppose developing their philosophy. For instance, The Archon is harshly scrutinised by the Primus for trying to develop a new strategy for exalting the Angara. “We will take Heleus the way we always have.” To Archie’s credit, he’s hardly a true progressive, just an example of syncretism in action, and he’s also more of a practical leader than an ideological one.

2. Fear of difference (or diversity). The Kett only wish to integrate the aspects of species they deem appropriate, in a carefully predetermined way. They do not allow actual species into their hierarchy and they do not tolerate unexpected diversity. Eco refers to this as “an appeal against the intruders” but this can equally apply as “an appeal against the conquered” – that strategy is just as common in human history as the former.

3. Irrationalism (or, action for action’s sake). The Archon is not compelled to justify his actions to the player, and instead simply acts. To criticise himself would be to generate difference, or imply that his ideals may be unworthy, and that is unacceptable.

It is difficult to consider the Reapers so politically, as their motivations are left more ambiguous. For instance, one cannot draw a comparison between the Reapers and the Citadel Council as easily as one can between the Kett and the Andromeda Initiative, who both arrived from beyond Heleus. The differences between the Kett and the Reapers, then, are subtle but still significant.

Me looking at the discourse surrounding Andromeda

It’s also worth keeping in mind the struggle Bioware faced in producing a game that incorporated the themes of the original series (discovering ancient things to lead into the future, the interaction between technology and humanity) while also doing something new. In fact, MEA very clearly is trying to revisit the concepts of the first game in a new and improved light, and I think from that perspective MEA excels.

But there is plenty new here, don’t forget that! They were damned if they didn’t incorporate enough of the original series and if they didn’t innovate enough, and I think this lies at the root of its lukewarm reception. That and the complaints about cinematics. WHICH ARE BASICALLY ON PAR WITH THE ORIGINAL SERIES SO SHUT YOUR MOUTHS

S.A.M., INTERFACE

Paragon and Renegade, eat your heart out

As you can probably tell, this essay has focused much more on narrative and metaphor than on gameplay, purely because I find gameplay the least compelling part of all games. However, most would agree that the combat of MEA is the most fun of the franchise and the difficulty is very well gauged. I also think the dialogue interface (no pun intended, hahahaha get rid) is a real improvement. The demise of Paragon/Renegade system is finally here, and the game is better for its loss. Every decision must be judged on its own merits and the tone of dialogue options is much easier to predict by having four consistent possibilities.

The psych profiles Lexi compiles are also a much cooler way for the game to express how your Ryder is developing than a coloured bar. It’s a shame that ‘persuade’ abilities are lost: a system similar to Dragon Age Inquisition, where perks in history, politics, academics etc can increase your character’s expertise and hence persuasiveness would have been nice. But MEA doesn’t give you an easy way out, and sometimes you have to make a decision knowing it’s the wrong one. That’s very cool.

Also, right lads, no listen right, they actually FIXED side quests in MEA. Don’t you dare look me in the eye and say the side quests were anything but trash in ME, ME2 and ME3. Don’t you dare. Other than the fetch quests, ME3 wasn’t too bad, but MEA gets them really right. I would have liked a bit more cinematic dialogue in some of them, but it’s SO much better than Shepard and co silently jogging around a heartless rock jungle, pressing buttons. Also, who are these folk who love ME2 but attack Dragon Age Inquisition? What the hell is going on?

We Made It (to a conclusion)

One of the key differences between the original series and MEA is the scale. MEA is about a small supercluster of the galaxy (a piece of a corner of the universe, as Suvi calls it) and the few factions that are influential there. In ME1-ME3, life as we know it is at risk on a galactic scale. There are hundreds of different factions and a broader cast. Which you prefer is a matter of personal taste, but the intensity and detail of MEA’s story is a refreshing change for the franchise. I’ve often felt the vast, vast lore of the original series is done a disservice by the main plot, which renders all of it largely futile because all that matters is defeating the Reapers. Both games are about survival, but Andromeda’s smaller stakes allow for a variety of factors – political, environmental, military, philosophical etc – to influence that survival. In the original series, the only thing that influences survival is resolving the reaper threat. The original series is about heroes of legend rising to the challenge of saving the galaxy from an ancient conflict. On the other hand, Andromeda is about an inexperienced, relatively ordinary group of people who are prematurely forced into difficult situations and have to make a home out of them. I know which one I’d rather believe in.* Let me know what you think, send an ask or reply or w/ever

*Just kidding I love every Mass Effect game. Righto, cheers

See ya

[spectaculardistractions]

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol declared war on the academy by promulgating pop art--the idea that comics, commercial labels, and industrial logos were as worthy of being considered art as any painting or sculpture. This new "art movement" was applauded by a philistine culture that had long felt insulted and browbeaten by the sort of cultural elites who summered in Paris and embraced difficult European abstraction and radical avant-gardism. Warhol's announcement had strong repercussions in the halls of power, where the bohemian affection for European modernism was already a hot topic in the intelligence community. Art was considered to represent one of the main ideological battlefronts in the capitalist war against social equity. Postwar emancipation movements, inspired by the work of Alexander Rodchenko and bankrolled by the Soviets, simmered in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia. Therefore avant-art--seen as a highly influential area dominated by the left and possessing a potential to wreak international havoc on willingness to cooperate with imperialist world domination--was aggressively co-opted by the ruling class. Cultural institutions in war-torn Western Europe were infiltrated, and soon most of the region's art magazines were CIA fronts, with many art critics and artists enjoying the largesse of the agency's payroll--whether they knew it or not (the money was often diverted through "legitimate" art-world sources). In their attempt to counter the USSR's influence over the leftist artist class, the "company" fostered abstract expressionism, which was USA's apolitical, "spiritual" version of Euro-style nonrepresentational sculpture and painting. Still, it was just a New World version of Slavic modernism. It was not a game changer. Pop art, however, was. Once announced, pop was a huge relief to the spooks in government who had been assigned to fixing the fine-art game. Since pop had distinctly American roots, no longer was the US artist a pretender, a stepchild, or an also-ran. And with pop, Warhol cemented New York City's claim to being the center of the postwar art world. As opposed to modernism's perceived difficulties and abstract expressionism's supposed mysticism, pop art was immediately understandable, witty, and inclusive. Snobby Europeans had long thought of the USA as a cultural trash heap, and pop art declared that, yes, it was true--and that the trash was in fact beautiful. Pop art was really a renamed, high-priced institutionalization of the gay world's camp aesthetic, the send-up of mundane vulgarity that was popular with the homosexual subculture. Camp was a vague and esoteric ideology that guffawed at emotional involvement or any sort of seriousness and that prized the garish and naive. Camp was infatuated with comic-strip villains, artifice, and all the ridiculous vestiges of an idiot culture. And comics, originally the newspaper industry's snare for illiterates and morons, were at the forefront of pop. Pop art was a massive success, inspiring fashion trends and TV series such as Batman and The Green Hornet. The theme to Batman even became a monster hit in the mid-'60s, with several charting versions. Brigitte Bardot had her own pop art anthem with Serge Gainsbourg. It was called "Comic Strip," and it featured a chorus of spoken comic-book sound effects. The effeminate mod movement's premier rock 'n' roll band, The Who, declared themselves a pop-art group, saying, "We're not just pop art on stage, but pop art all the time." Fellow mod group Creation penned a song entitled "Biff, Bang, Pow" and soul singer Gate Wesley recorded a song called "(Zap! Pow!) Do the Batman." Pop art could be said to be the most enduring visual aesthetic of the 1960s. The new movement permeated graphic design and fashion as well as music and TV. It was via pop art--and then broader pop culture--that comics evolved from their larval, Neanderthal origins and were thrust into the world of middlebrow tastes, high powered rock 'n' roll, and sophisticated sexuality. It was no longer an embarrassment for a self-respecting aesthete to be seen reading Brenda Starr. Instead, it became a signifier of a modern sensibility. Marshall McLuhan championed the comic as a "cool" medium. But let us not forget that at the roots of modern comics lie pop, and at the roots of pop lie camp, which is the little-discussed ancestor of comics as we know them today. As readers of contemporary comics, we owe much to the camp movement. It gave us license to consume comics. It moved the comic out of the closet. But how did camp come about? To answer that question, we must briefly trace the history of homosexuality. And to do that, we must travel back to the time just immediately after prehistory. This era, before the ascent of Christianity, is known today as antiquity. The people of antiquity--both those who were ignorant of Christ and those who lived before his time--were pagans. In their world, antiques were everywhere. So was sex. There was no TV, no rock groups, no internet. People would spend their time mashing grapes, picking figs and olives, weaving, staring at the stars, telling stories, and fornicating. The last was the easiest of all these endeavors. Therefore, people did it a lot, not only with one another but also with any available animal or object. Men, women, goats, sheep, chickens, children, cats, vegetables, great white mares--anything at all was considered fair game. Since ancient man lived with beasts, he witnessed the brutality and caprice of the animal world's sex play, and so the pagan's fantasy life was lousy with centaurs, satyrs, and were-things--the imagined offspring of the everyday carnal encounters between man, mammal, fish, and fowl. And since humans implicated every living creature within their polymorphously perverse web of nonstop coitus, they imagined that all creatures were spending their time similarly, and so they theorized hybrids like the sea-goat, the unicorn, Pegasus, and the hippogriff. The gods themselves were said to have the heads of beasts on human bodies, as evidenced in Anubis, Bast, Ganesha, and more. It was a violent, erotically charged landscape. Few records exist of this time, as people were too tired to write anything down, and what was written down was later destroyed by sex-loathing Christians who feared its power to tantalize the masses. Pagans engaged in sex with one another as well, regardless of the similarity of their genitals or the dissimilarity of their ages. Their morality was of an order now lost to us because in a pantheistic culture such as theirs, there are several gods, who were thought to live in a society that paralleled that of the people. Each god had distinguishing strengths and foibles, and since the pagan's gods were of varied proclivities, humans' diverse inclinations were tolerated by other humans. There was also no central religious authority, but instead many diverse temples consecrated to different deities, each one with a particular perversion. The ancient world eventually came to feature a handful of monotheistic religions, but they were wildly unpopular and notorious for their self-righteous making of rules. Instead of several gods with different personalities and myths, monotheism featured one god who was a fearful, faceless abstraction. There was the Persian cult of Zoroaster, the ancient Egyptian cult of Aten, and the Jewish cult of Jehovah, which had deviant offshoot sects of its own. One of these was called Christianity. Religion was central to the lives of the ancients just as television and comics and the internet are to us now. The emperors and kings of the time therefore tended to rule in tandem, or at least at the pleasure of the various deities. Egyptian pharaohs were divine themselves, as was Alexander the Great. But Roman emperors were merely semi-divine, enjoying divinity for a few ceremonial hours at a time. Rome was, of course, the great power for several centuries preceding what we call the "Dark" or "Middle" Ages. After extraordinary expansion, the Roman Empire was thinned and weakened by its many foreign occupations. Conquest was easily accomplished, but maintaining rule over the wilder tribes--the Germanic people and the various Goths--was difficult. As Rome incorporated various and sundry cultures, its leadership recognized monotheistic religion for what it is: a useful tool in teaching fealty to a central authority. Christians, unlike religious pagans, were absolutely intolerant of difference in belief and ideology. Their morality was unequivocal and emanated from a central source. They had only one god, who was humorless and had no face, name, characteristics, or identity. He was simply a force who punished those unwilling to submit to his will. Not only would the institutionalization of such a religion yoke new subjects to a foreign imperial dictatorship, but next to such a horrible master as God, the emperor would appear sympathetic--the good cop in a fearsome power-sharing duo. The plan worked for a time. The Romans couldn't have imagined just how thorough the Christians would be in their despotism. The Roman Empire, known for such practices as decimation, seemed milquetoast next to the barbarity, repression, and lunatic perversions of the Christian church. The Christians outlawed everyday behavior, pathologized it, classified it, and criminalized it. Eventually everyone was labeled a pervert or a scoundrel of some sort. Kinks were the major source of revenue for the Catholic Church, as each acolyte was compelled to compensate an angry God with alms and penance for their acts of sodomy, their wet dreams, or their erect nipples. Sex, the original universal pastime, was recast as an outlaw affair. Which brings us relatively close to the present day. Due to centuries of Christian socializing, sex in the Western world is now impossible to conceive of without some imagined transgression involved. The population invents intricate systems and obstacles to facilitate hard-to-get erections. Affairs, ogling, pornography, and prudishness are a few. Homosexuality is another. In the past, homosexuals, being an illegal minority, had to go underground. There they developed a highly sophisticated system of codes through which to speak to one another--not unlike Freemasons or needle freaks. One of these codes, particularly prevalent in theater productions and musicals, was the camp aesthetic. Camp made fun of cheap morality and emotions and was a survival tactic for the gay people who had to endure stultifying Christian hegemony. When Warhol announced camp, under the new banner of pop, as a new art movement and fashion trend, its die-hard adherents must have winced privately, though their camp ideology would have prohibited them from expressing anything more than a bon mot, perfectly delivered with blasé contempt. A keystone of camp is that nothing is to be taken seriously. It prohibits intellectual--and, even more so, political--thought. Susan Sontag followed up Warhol's dissemination with an essay, "Notes on Camp," which let the intellectuals know that camp was it, trash was fun, and high culture wasn't cool anymore. With this pronouncement, the USSR's Schroeder-esque (Schroeder as in Charlie Brown's aggressively classicist piano-playing pal) "high art for the masses" program, which had appeared extremely progressive in the '50s, suddenly seemed hopelessly fuddy-duddy. When Warhol declared the ascendancy of pop art he probably didn't realize that he would contribute to the decloseting of millions of adult goons who had been reading comics in secret. Now they read them proudly in public, the way people once read Dostoyevsky, and they eventually would be allowed to pin them to the walls of the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in NYC. Most films produced by Hollywood are now adaptations of comics--either traditional superhero fables or so-called underground misanthropy. Ironically, the genesis of the comic was the sort of drawing featured on the walls and stained glass of Christian churches, which used pictures to instruct the illiterate on moral and pious behavior. And when capitalism displaced Christianity as the West's religion, comics were utilized in a similar way to instruct the peasants in gender roles, patriotism, and justice, all through characters such as Superman. When the middle class was signaled by Warhol to consume--and then eventually produce--comics unabashedly, camp's pop deconstruction of the comic informed its new life, as did a camp sensibility of subcultural esoteric elitism. Thus began the era of underground comics. Underground comics, rather than being lessons in ideology for poor people, reflected a new morality--that of the privileged "creative class." Louche degeneracy, contempt for humanity, self-centred navel-gazing, and existentialism were the characteristics of the generation of comic artists spawned by the camp revolution. The new comics were individualist in the extreme: often autobiographical bouts of narcissism disguised as self-loathing confessionals. But central to camp ideology was anti-seriousness, and therefore an anti-art attitude. Similarly, Art School Confidential by superstar comic artist Daniel Clowes neatly sums up the attitude of the cartoonist toward the perceived idiocy and pretentiousness of the art world. The new cartoonist-identity was that of an outsider, ignored or actively persecuted, victim of the art establishment and the mores of bourgeois culture. This was a profound re-assignation--since the denizens of the high-art world had historically laid claim to a similar self-image, and since comics were of course the ultimate populist mass-media art form. Underground comics have grown from their sordid and combative camp-inspired origins into a respectable industry. They have shed many of their initial gay-inherited affectations such as outrageousness, vulgarity, and hatred for all mankind. Now they typically resemble something more akin to the gentle post-hippie craft-ism of the middle-class do-gooder. The paper is archival and the drawings tend toward Zen inksmanship. The stories are often about relationships. Form trumps content. The comic, instead of being a campy launchpad from which to lacerate humanity, is held in high regard as a sacred institution, with the forebears of comicdom being revered as heroic themselves (just look at Crumb and his Bible stories). But we know that burning within this serene, highly personal, self-referential, and contented exterior is the contemptuous, reactionary bitchiness of pop, the movement that--by rehabilitating American capitalism for the world via art--not only liberated us from straining our brains but also helped vanquish human movements for social justice forever. ZAP! BLAM! POW!

Ian Svenonius, Notes on Camp, Part 2

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: August Derleth, Mack Bolan, Fandom History, Bill Crider Prize

Authors (DMR Books): One thing that A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos really clarified for me was just how much impact Derleth and his publishing business, Arkham House, had on the weird fiction scene from 1939 to 1971. Arkham House didn’t just publish HPL in fine hardcovers and keep his name and works in front of the public. Derleth, in the ’40s and ’50s, was easily the most high-profile and well-respected author to emerge from the Weird Tales stable.

      Fiction (My Drops of Ink): 50 Years Ago, Don Pendleton envisioned a fictional character that would soon become a literary bestseller and a phenomenon through which the new action/adventure genre emerged.  Mack Bolan, a professional soldier, highly trained and skilled in the use of military tactics and weapons makes a life-altering decision after the tragic death of his family—his war is at home, not in the bloody fields of Vietnam.  Mack Bolan takes on a one-man war against the evils and corruption of the Mafia.

  RPG (Euro Gamer): Developer Red Hook Studios has announced that it’s working on a sequel to its brilliant but brutal Lovecraft-inspired RPG, Darkest Dungeon.

The original game released in 2016, and tasked players with exploring numerous trap-infested environs, seeking out riches, and battling – in time-honoured turn-based fashion – a relentless procession of cosmic horrors. Each encounter with the unknown would send adventurers in a party to the brink of madness, eventually lumbering them with (usually) negative quirks and making future excursions that much harder.

  Fandom (Between Wasteland and Sky): Welcome to the third part of this incredible journey through Fandom’s history. I did not expect quite so much material to come from this book when I first found the thing packed away on a shelf in that store, but here we are entering part 3 of 5.

It turns out Star Wars releasing the same year as this book in 1977 really was a watershed moment. That one movie destroyed a number of delusions Fandom had about their genre as many of the claims in this work vanished overnight.

  Fandom (Between Wasteland and Sky): For the fourth part of our series we touch on two of the biggest tropes in science fiction and fantasy, and we deal with what brought them about. Of course because we are being guided by Mr. Lundwell we have to be reminded at just what a great and marvelous time we are (were) living in.

The 20th century was a hot mess of good intentions and brazen attempts to seize the new throne in the expanding wild west of civilization. Whereas it started with wars, sparks of ideas, and hope, it ended in wars, decadence, and pure nihilism. In every respect that counted it was an utter failure.

  Fiction (Pulp Archivist): Previously, I discussed Asimov’s three kinds of science fiction: gadget, adventure, and social.And while this trio better describes the wild and wooly mess of science fiction than the binary set of hard and soft science fiction, new sub-genres have cropped up that don’t quite match the categories Asimov created. Now, Asimov’s categories are descriptions based on function, so many hybrids exist. But there still remains one category outside this spectrum.

  Fiction (Pulprev): It is fashionable in modern SFF to denigrate religion as oppressive and outdated superstition. Priests are corrupt hypocrites, gods are dead or evil or both, religious doctrine is a lie — and the worst offender is always Christianity in fantasy dress. Science fiction goes one step further, portraying technologically advanced societies that have outgrown religion — including Christianity. Alternatively, religion is treated as window dressing, or as an afterthought plastered on to the setting.

  Writing Contest (Bouchercon): Debuting at the 50th Anniversary of Bouchercon, Carol Puckett and the 2019 Bouchercon Dallas committee launched the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction to celebrate this treasured literary form, both the short story and the widely-admired mystery author and reviewer, Bill Crider. Designed to encourage writers from all over the world, these distinguished prizes award stories with fascinating characters and twisty plots, all in the mystery genre.

  Fiction (Pattinase): I think a second subtitle might be “with Alpha Males.” Because the writers interviewed here are certainly that. All were popular when the book was written in 2009 and remain at the top of their profession 10 years on. The writers include: Crumley, Leonard, Woodrell, MacLeod, Ellroy, Collins, Cannell, Holden, Dexter, White, Russell, Friedman, Sallis, Bruen. I bet you didn’t have much difficulty in identifying any of them. Leonard, McLeod and Crumley are gone, I hope all the rest remain.

  Military History (Tom McNulty): My father bought this book in 1969, and this is one of the rare non-fiction books that he read. The Mickey Spillane novels were the only fiction that he read, but when it came to non-fiction he read about WWII or Popular Mechanicsmagazine. He wasn’t alone. Iron Coffins was the talk of the neighborhood when it was published, and the book’s reputation is secure all of these decades later. This book is often mistaken as the inspiration for the 1981 film, Das Boot, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, but that excellent film was based on the novel of the same name by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim.

  Gaming (Brain leakage): Case in point: I’m a big fan of the pulpy, Weird Tales type fantasy that makes up most of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N. As such, my campaign’s cosmology is ripped straight from Michael Moorcock. My game’s elves owe more to his doomed Melnibonéans than to Tolkien’s ethereal forest dwellers. I like Vancian Magic. One of my players is currently under a curse inspired by an unfinished Robert E. Howard fragment.

  RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Like most pre-published Chaosium campaigns for Call of Cthulhu, this one lacks focus.  There’s really no reason to deal with Mi-Go, Tcho-Tcho, ancient spiders, Hastur worshipers, and Ghouls, not to mention a ghost and some Sasquatch…Sasquatch?! in one, fairly short campaign.  I’m not a fan of putting traditional monsters (vampires, werewolves…Sasquatch…into Call of Cthulhu either, but that’s a discussion for another day).  It’s a bit of what YouTube reviewer Kurt Wiegel refers to as a ‘mythos hoedown.’

  Fiction (Superversive): There is a prejudice in modern SF so nearly ubiquitous that it can be considered a trope. I’m talking about the assumption that the more technologically advanced a civilization becomes, the less religious it will be. While this prejudice is normally implicit in a lot of science fiction, the assumption was stated explicitly not too long ago in the sixth episode of The Orville’s first season, The Krill.

  Art (Aleteia): The books of J.R.R. Tolkien are full of surprises. An exhibit in New York about Tolkien’s artwork has some nice surprises as well, and one of the best has to do with his fatherhood.

Long before John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) published his Lord of the Rings trilogy, he was honing his craft as a storyteller with his four children.

  Interview (R. D. Meyer Writes): I’ve dialed back a lot of stuff in order to just focus on fiction writing lately. That means less journalistic writing, because this is what I’ve set out to do—change culture, and now I’m finally in a position with a platform to where I can do it. It doesn’t get my name out there as often (cuz it’s usually only on releases and novels take time), but I want 2019 to be a body of work which blows others out of the water in just how much great fiction I can produce.

  Indie Business (Kairos): The solution is very simple. Just add a storefront to your web site. And learn to code a custom version of that site so you don’t have to deal with Blogger or WordPress. And build your own distribution network to get your books to retailers, which you’ll also need to build. You’ll also need to build your own payment processor, and you should probably found your own international bank while you’re at it so you can issue your own credit cards. Oh, you’ll also need your own domain registrar because the existing ones can just yank that puppy if they don’t like the cut of your jib.

      Sensor Sweep: August Derleth, Mack Bolan, Fandom History, Bill Crider Prize published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[lafortis]

⭐️hey nice job. what’s the book recommendation you’ve posted about a couple times lately?

thanks virtual gym buddy, it’s thanks to you :3.

i’m. glad you asked. :DDDD

it’s R. Scott Bakker’s The Darkness That Comes Before, the first book in his Prince of Nothing trilogy. it’s about uhhhhh... it’s complicated. but basically it’s like. the main character is a hybrid of batman, sherlock holmes and a supercomputer. he goes out into a fantasy world after his people spent 2000 years in seclusion, brought on by a giant fuckoff apocalypse that destroyed this world’s version of the roman/greek empires. the rest of society has carried on and the hub of humanity is sort of meditteranean, indian, persian ish? other main characters include the biggest toughest barbarian, who comes from essentially a scythian type culture? a prostitute who lives in what is essentially the vatican i guess. and a wizard spy who is part of a sect of wizards whose life mission is to uhh prevent another apocalypse basically? basically there’s like. weird fuck aliens. who want to murder everyone on earth. cus uhh then they won’t go to hell. becauuuuse... 

“There are no crimes,” he mumbled afterward, “when no one is left alive.”

so basically yeah! uhh there’s an ancient conspiracy to bring about the apocalypse but for real this time, the wizard spy guy is spying and tryna stop it, except no one respects him or his other wizard friends cus no one has seen the evil fuck aliens in like 300 years. there’s a new pope who is oddly good at everything, he’s gonna call a holy war on the muslims basically cus they control jerusalem. everyone listed above kinda worms their way into the holy war one way or another, and then it’s basically a speedrun of the first crusade. 

it’s uhhhh COMPLICATED and HARD TO EXPLAIN so sorry if that does not sound very appealing. i have yet to really perfect the pitch of it (to be fair neither has the fucking author or his publishers marketing team lmao they don’t know what to do with it). another way to pitch it is basically a realllllly dark high fantasy world, with some lord of the rings influence, with the twist that there’s objective morality. the author’s stated intent on making it was to make a fantasy world religion influenced by like old testament and old hindu morality, where like if you fuck up you’re just damned no take backsies. so this is that, and everything kinda stems from that. he’s i think a philosophy phd dropout, with a sharp interest in neuroscience, and it’s also kinda about his philosophy, which can kinda be summed up as neuro-skepticism? where he thinks that the further neuroscience advances the more we’ll realize that motivation comes from nothing, that man’s search for meaning will end in the realization that meaning was a useful evolutionary tool. that also plays a really big roll: the title refers to what the main characters cult thing refers to motivation as, i.e. the “darkness that comes before” the self, the place they can’t understand where their decisions etc. stem from, i.e. their soul, which they’ve made their life mission to understand and therefore comprehend the absolute. the stuff about there being no crimes when no one is alive is also a neat philosophy thing, which i don’t necessarily understand fully but it’s part of the metaphysics of the universe too

IF YOU CAN’T TELL I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THIS FUCKING BOOOK. as unappealing as i may have made it sound, it’s my favourite fucking book/series and it’s hardly close. i’m hoping to meet the man himself soon, i missed the last fan meetup a year or two ago. i fuckin moderate the subreddit for it cus i started a reread/first time read discussion thread for it. it’s just. so nuanced and complex and intelligent and heartwrenching at times and kicks so much ass at times

NOW. uhh. fair warning. the content even when it’s not requiring a trigger warning is somewhat really dark. in Those Scenes it really need a TW attached. there’s uhhh. r*pe. a lot. as drama, in war, by creepy aliens, by one of the main characters (the barbarian). the reason i still like the series as much as i do is because i know bakker knows what he’s doing when he does it; he’s not putting it in for fun or to get off to it like some fantasy writers i could mention, it’s an intentional horrible morass of evil shit (i think he also said it was intentionally to alienate his more progressive readers, make them go “holy fucking shit”, that type of thing. not cus he hates them but just cus sorta sympathizing too much with any particular character or liking the world too much really doesn’t go along with the themes lmao). i was real suspicious he would end up being a fucking terry goodkind type of fella (there i mentioned his name) cus there’s like a fifty fifty when you read this type of book. like several main characters are obvious power fantasies for a while for instance. but no he knows for sure what he’s doing.

that tangent aside, yeah, consider there being every content warning you can easily imagine being on this book. if any of that sort of thing triggers you or anything you should probably avoid. if it doesn’t it’ll still squick you out to be entirely fucking honest, but you can probably make it thru

i guess that’s another thing i like about it, it’s part horror. also part lovecraftian metaphysical horror but it’s reeeeeeeaaaaally subtle. like just barely there except for one recurring part in the second series and one specific part in book five or six. so YEAH.

i guess the best recommendation would be “if you liked game of thrones” maybe? that’s the best cultural touchstone, but it’s not that similar. just in the sense that they both are dark and serve as deconstructions of a lot of standard tolkienian fantasy tropes. 

ANYWAY YEAH! that’s my spiel. i impart you all with that recommendation and the ability to infer my reddit username if you so choose i guess