The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 11: Cassandra
October 31, 2019
Monster of the Week: Cassandra
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 11: Cassandra
October 29, 2019
Writing to be Read
I have a friend who said something that blew my mind the other day.
He said that he writes to be read, and if he's not going to be read, he has no interest in writing. He said that he's not the kind of person who has a story that needs to be told, a story he needs to get out. He said that he would never write just for himself.
I cannot understand this mindset. I've tried to use my empathy and see where he's coming from, and I literally cannot do it.
I write because I can't sleep at night if I have too much story in my brain, so I need to tidy up in there. The projects I have the most fun with are the ones that I assume no one will ever read. They're just for me, so I don't have to do boring transitions or work too hard on continuity or grammar. In fact, with some of the later Twenty Percent True Podcast seasons, I've gotten in my own head about it, because I know people will listen to it. It makes it so I don't want to work on it. Or maybe it makes it so I HAVE to work on it, and I get anxious about the quality of it, and I fight back against that anxiety by shouting, "You cant tell me what to work on!" and then procrastinating.
I will often go back and read my own unfinished writing. "Oh. This is fun," I say to myself, reading the first chapter of a novel from eight years that's only 15 pages long.
So the idea of "I'm going to write something because I want people to read it," just doesn't make sense to me from a philosophical standpoint. But it also doesn't make sense from a publishing standpoint. If you're going the traditional publishing route, you spend a year or more on a novel with no guarantee that it will be published. You find that out at the end, after you've put in the work. There are so many reasons outside your control for why a book could get canned, and there are a thousand reasons why it might not sell as much as it should.
I understand why the thought that someone could read your book could be a motivator. I find that feedback on an unfinished project can encourage me to keep going. But if that was my only motivation, if I was pouring out my blood, sweat, and tears in hopes that a hypothetical stranger in the future will like it...that's dangerous. You are not going to get enough out of it to keep you moving. Every piece of negative feedback is going to hit you ten times harder, because you've basically failed in your single goal to have people like your work. And, most importantly, you're putting your success and your enjoyment and your project's value entirely in someone else's hands. You're forcing a situation already out of your control even further out of your control.
As tired as the saying goes: Write for you.
October 24, 2019
Monster of the Week: See the Hodag
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 9: The Albatross
For more: Background Information
More about the Hodag
Season 5, episode 10: Come See the Hodag!
The Hodag is a fearsome critter from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where it is a local attraction, the high school's mascot, and in the name of several local businesses. It's fame has led to appearances in our old friend William Cox's "Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods," several Paul Bunyun stories, an episode of Scooby Doo, and a Harry Potter expanded universe entry on Pottermore. (One of these did not do any research, and I'll give you one guess as to which one.)
To talk about the history of the Hodag, we first have to talk about Eugene Shepard. He was a surveyor, timber cruiser, and renowned prankster/humorist. He illustrated several Paul Bunyun stories, which were then widely circulated. Later in life, he ran a resort in Rhinelander. And he invented the Hodag.
Shepard started spreading rumors in 1893 about seeing the hodag out in the woods. He described it as having "the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end." He claimed it was 7 feet long, 30 inches tall, and weighed about 200 pounds. In other descriptions, the hodag is a cross between bulldog and a dinosaur and about the size of a large dog. It's favorite food is white bulldogs, which it eats only on Sundays.
Shepard gathered up a big posse of men to go out into the woods and kill the hodag. The sheer number of people that went out with him showed not only how powerful the hodag was, but also how brave the people of Rhinelander were. Unfortunately, they had to kill the beast, and they had to do it with dynamite, so they returned back to Rhinelander with a charred hide, feeling successful. In 1896, Shepard brought the Hodag up again. This time he claimed to have caught one alive by gathering together a bunch of bear wrestlers, who put chloroform on the ends of sticks, and poked the sticks into the hodag's cave until it passed out.
By then, the hodag had nearly gone extinct, he explained, due to the severe lack of white bulldogs in the area. So, of course, he put the captured Hodag on display at the Rhinelander fair grounds, where people would pay a dime to go into the hodag's dimly lit tent. The dimly lit part was important, because if the Hodag knew that so many people were looking at it, it would become violent, and no one wanted that. In the dark, the hodag would swing its tail and roar and people would scream and run away. This all worked really well for Shepard until some people from the Smithsonian announced that they were coming to inspect his creature, at which point he fessed up that it was really a carved stump covered in cow hide and it's spikes were cow horns. It moved with wires, and the growls were Shepard's sons standing behind it, making scary noises.
This does not stop the people of Rhinelander from enjoying the hodag. Ans it shouldn't.
The Hodag is a fearsome critter from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where it is a local attraction, the high school's mascot, and in the name of several local businesses. It's fame has led to appearances in our old friend William Cox's "Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods," several Paul Bunyun stories, an episode of Scooby Doo, and a Harry Potter expanded universe entry on Pottermore. (One of these did not do any research, and I'll give you one guess as to which one.)
To talk about the history of the Hodag, we first have to talk about Eugene Shepard. He was a surveyor, timber cruiser, and renowned prankster/humorist. He illustrated several Paul Bunyun stories, which were then widely circulated. Later in life, he ran a resort in Rhinelander. And he invented the Hodag.
Shepard started spreading rumors in 1893 about seeing the hodag out in the woods. He described it as having "the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end." He claimed it was 7 feet long, 30 inches tall, and weighed about 200 pounds. In other descriptions, the hodag is a cross between bulldog and a dinosaur and about the size of a large dog. It's favorite food is white bulldogs, which it eats only on Sundays.
Shepard gathered up a big posse of men to go out into the woods and kill the hodag. The sheer number of people that went out with him showed not only how powerful the hodag was, but also how brave the people of Rhinelander were. Unfortunately, they had to kill the beast, and they had to do it with dynamite, so they returned back to Rhinelander with a charred hide, feeling successful. In 1896, Shepard brought the Hodag up again. This time he claimed to have caught one alive by gathering together a bunch of bear wrestlers, who put chloroform on the ends of sticks, and poked the sticks into the hodag's cave until it passed out.
 |
| Capturing a hodag |
By then, the hodag had nearly gone extinct, he explained, due to the severe lack of white bulldogs in the area. So, of course, he put the captured Hodag on display at the Rhinelander fair grounds, where people would pay a dime to go into the hodag's dimly lit tent. The dimly lit part was important, because if the Hodag knew that so many people were looking at it, it would become violent, and no one wanted that. In the dark, the hodag would swing its tail and roar and people would scream and run away. This all worked really well for Shepard until some people from the Smithsonian announced that they were coming to inspect his creature, at which point he fessed up that it was really a carved stump covered in cow hide and it's spikes were cow horns. It moved with wires, and the growls were Shepard's sons standing behind it, making scary noises.
This does not stop the people of Rhinelander from enjoying the hodag. Ans it shouldn't.
October 22, 2019
Gradually Increasing Tension and Moments to Breathe
4theWords, one of the writing resources I use, had a scavenger hunt this October, where they sent their members to people's blogs so they could be introduced to writing resources. I found it pretty interesting. Also I was one of the stops, so maybe I'm biased.
But on one of the stops, there was a woman who made videos about craft, and the one I watched was something like "Common mistakes amateur writers make during character arcs." And I want to talk about it.
First, I don't think there are really "mistakes" you can make in story telling. There are grammar rules you can violate and you could switch point of view in confusing ways or jump time periods or have continuity issues in a way that makes the story hard to follow, and I think those could be called mistakes. But in my opinion issues that deal with the shape of a story should be approached like, "This is a place where you have an opportunity you're not using to its fullest," or "You could do more with this," instead of "this is an error."
So with that in mind, let me tell you about the structure of a character arc. Since junior high, you've probably seen the diagram that makes a story look like a mountain. There's rising action, a climax at the peak, and then falling action.
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| The y-axis on this graph is not labeled, and I want to burn it to the ground. |
What this video said was that everything during your rising action--so everything from your inciting incident to your climax--should get harder, and one of the common mistakes she sees with new writers is that one event will be very hard and the next event will be less hard and the next event will be a little hard, and it won't escalate.
And I have some issues with this. Mainly, I think that if things just escalate and escalate and escalate without breathing room, the narrative becomes overwhelming. Moments of quiet are necessary for the characters to reflect on why the last horrible event was horrible. They're also necessary in novels to give the reader a break. If we look at the hero's journey, there's always a point where the hero faces death and usually has a revelatory moment or a second wind. Think of "Die Hard" when John McClane is in the air duct with his feet all cut up, talking to Carl the cop, thinking he might not make it. It's a lull in the action, a breath before the climax. There's still tension, but it's a different flavor, and I'm not gripping my seat waiting for someone to get thrown out a window.
So already, our neat triangular shape has some divots in it, or some moments between events.
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| I didn't add a y-axis label |
Also, I think phrasing it like each episode or event should get harder is a simplification, which is fine when your audience is new writers. You want to lay out rules and then later talk about how and when they can be broken. Let's say I have a story where the kickball team has to play against a neighbor school who is also not very good, and then they play against the good team in town, and then they go to state. That gets harder with every new challenge. It would be a little weird for the games to happen in a different order. But why's this team only playing three games in their combined season and post season? Surely the teams they play in the regular season will be a mix of difficulties. Maybe they'll even lose a few! The thing that maybe would make each challenge progressively more difficult is that after winning against an easy team, maybe now there's an expectation set up, and they're fighting not just the other team but their own hopes and fears and the expectations of their coaches and parents. Maybe after the game they lose, they're fighting against their fear of losing, maybe they super have to prove themselves. Maybe they have to impress one kid's dad who finally shows up! So it's not just that each team they play is more skilled and therefore more difficult to beat, but each game they play is harder because of baggage the characters have.
So if there's a story like a character is trying to get the band back together and has to visit the rhythm guitar player and the bassist and the drummer, it could be that the drummer is harder to convince than the bass player, who's harder to convince than the rhythm guitar player. Or it could be that our main character has bigger drama with the drummer than the bassist than the rhythm guitar player, and each encounter is emotionally more fraught if not more difficult. OR! It could be that our main character brings all the drama from meeting the guitar player into their visit with the bassist, so they're going into the conversation with level 2 anxiety rather than level 0 anxiety, so already it's a harder meeting. They go into the meeting with the drummer all wound up from meeting the guitarist and the bassist and they're starting from anxiety level 5. As long as they consistently carry that with them, each new situation builds.
So instead of the problem that each new episode doesn't provide a greater challenge, the real issue with the story telling might be that the character isn't carrying previous challenges with them or that the writer is letting the tension drop in unhelpful and unrealistic ways.
October 17, 2019
Monster of the Week: The Albatross
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 9: The Albatross
For more: Background Information
More about the Albatross
Season 5, episode 9: The Albatross
The albatross is an actual family of sea birds. They have the largest wingspan of any living bird, reaching up to 12 feet in width, which allows them to fly for 10,000 miles over open ocean without landing. The albatross is a symbol of the Cape Horner's Association (people who have sailed around Cape Horn).
They appear largely in the mythology of Pacific peoples, but this episode is in conversation with stories from western traditions, most specifically the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there's a guy on his way to a wedding, which is about to start. The bride has arrived and the band is playing and he's anxious to get inside and watch this wedding. But he's stopped by an old mariner who sets him down on a rock and tells him a story and the story is so captivating and the ancient mariner's eyes are so wild that the wedding guest can't leave. In the story, the mariner set out on a ship headed south, when all of a sudden there was a storm that blew them to Antarctica, where they were surrounded and trapped by ice. An albatross appeared, flew over the ice, and guided them back to the open sea through a fog while a south wind picked up. The sailors where cheering and crying, when all of a sudden, the mariner shoots the albatross. At first, he's wracked with guilt and all his friends are like, "How dare you kill the bird that lead us out of the ice and brought this wind that's bringing us home!" But when the fog clears and the wind keeps up, they say, "Maybe the bird actually brought that fog, and it's a good thing you shot it." But, as soon as they decide this, the wind dies and the ship is stuck for days and days in the middle of the ocean, where they see slimy monsters rise up out of the water and the water burns green and they think spirits are following them. This is where the line "Water, water, every where, /Nor any drop to drink" comes from. Everyone agrees it's the spirit of the albatross that did this to them, and they hang the albatross' corpse around the mariner's neck as punishment. The mariner sees a ship approaching and assumes they're saved. (There's a wild bit here where the mariner's lips are so parched that he can't speak to draw attention to the ship, so he bites his own arm, and drinks his own blood so he can shout out.) But as the ship approaches, it's a ghost ship, and aboard it is Death and Night-mare Life-In-Death, and they play dice and Night-mare Life-In-Death wins, and everyone aboard the mariner's ship except the mariner fall down dead, their souls making the same noise as the mariner's crossbow when they leave. The mariner is stuck alone on the ship for a week, unable to die. Finally, he notices the slimy things in the water are alive, he blesses them and feels love in his heart, and the albatross falls off his neck. It rains and then a wind picks up, and when the moon rises that night, all the undead sailors stand up and sail the boat. They all lie down again when the sun comes up, and the wind disappears, but the ship keeps moving because a spirit under the ship is moving it. Eventually, he comes within sight of land, and a luminous seraph (an angel) appears over each corpse and waves at the lighthouse until a boat comes out. When it gets close to the ship, the ship sinks straight into the ocean, and the mariner ends up in the little boat. When he gets the the shore, he feels the need to tell his story to the man who rescued him, and now he wanders around, compelled to tell his story to people.
Honestly, the thing I like best about this story is the framing device. A guy with wild eyes just runs up and won't let you leave until he's told you a ghost story. This happens to me at least once a month.
A second, less familiar story with which this episode is interacting is the story of the last Great Auk in the British Isles. Great Auks were real birds that have been hunted to extinction because their feathers made really good down for pillows, their meat was delicious, and sailors made oil from their fat. They also had no fear of humans, and the preferred method of hunting them was to walk up to a bird and strangle it with your bare hands while a hundred other Great Auks watched. They were a bit like large penguins, except they lived in the North Atlantic. The last Great Auk was found on an island off Scotland in 1840. By then, it was already a rare bird and the three guys who spotted it were like, "Whoa! Look at that weird penguin!" Instead of killing it (like pretty much anyone else from the time period would have done), they decided to grab it, tie its legs together, and take it with them. The bird started to wail, the rain started to fall, and they holed up together in a tiny hut to wait out the storm. They kept it alive for three days, but the bird would not stop wailing and the storm would not stop storming, and they grew stir-crazy and convinced that the Great Auk was causing the storm because it was a witch. To put a stop to the storm, they decided to stone the bird to death, which does not seem like the quickest or easiest way to kill a slow, flightless bird, but what do I know?
What we learn from these stories is that you just shouldn't bother large birds, because they're magic.
The albatross is an actual family of sea birds. They have the largest wingspan of any living bird, reaching up to 12 feet in width, which allows them to fly for 10,000 miles over open ocean without landing. The albatross is a symbol of the Cape Horner's Association (people who have sailed around Cape Horn).
 |
| Association of Cape Horner's Flag |
They appear largely in the mythology of Pacific peoples, but this episode is in conversation with stories from western traditions, most specifically the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there's a guy on his way to a wedding, which is about to start. The bride has arrived and the band is playing and he's anxious to get inside and watch this wedding. But he's stopped by an old mariner who sets him down on a rock and tells him a story and the story is so captivating and the ancient mariner's eyes are so wild that the wedding guest can't leave. In the story, the mariner set out on a ship headed south, when all of a sudden there was a storm that blew them to Antarctica, where they were surrounded and trapped by ice. An albatross appeared, flew over the ice, and guided them back to the open sea through a fog while a south wind picked up. The sailors where cheering and crying, when all of a sudden, the mariner shoots the albatross. At first, he's wracked with guilt and all his friends are like, "How dare you kill the bird that lead us out of the ice and brought this wind that's bringing us home!" But when the fog clears and the wind keeps up, they say, "Maybe the bird actually brought that fog, and it's a good thing you shot it." But, as soon as they decide this, the wind dies and the ship is stuck for days and days in the middle of the ocean, where they see slimy monsters rise up out of the water and the water burns green and they think spirits are following them. This is where the line "Water, water, every where, /Nor any drop to drink" comes from. Everyone agrees it's the spirit of the albatross that did this to them, and they hang the albatross' corpse around the mariner's neck as punishment. The mariner sees a ship approaching and assumes they're saved. (There's a wild bit here where the mariner's lips are so parched that he can't speak to draw attention to the ship, so he bites his own arm, and drinks his own blood so he can shout out.) But as the ship approaches, it's a ghost ship, and aboard it is Death and Night-mare Life-In-Death, and they play dice and Night-mare Life-In-Death wins, and everyone aboard the mariner's ship except the mariner fall down dead, their souls making the same noise as the mariner's crossbow when they leave. The mariner is stuck alone on the ship for a week, unable to die. Finally, he notices the slimy things in the water are alive, he blesses them and feels love in his heart, and the albatross falls off his neck. It rains and then a wind picks up, and when the moon rises that night, all the undead sailors stand up and sail the boat. They all lie down again when the sun comes up, and the wind disappears, but the ship keeps moving because a spirit under the ship is moving it. Eventually, he comes within sight of land, and a luminous seraph (an angel) appears over each corpse and waves at the lighthouse until a boat comes out. When it gets close to the ship, the ship sinks straight into the ocean, and the mariner ends up in the little boat. When he gets the the shore, he feels the need to tell his story to the man who rescued him, and now he wanders around, compelled to tell his story to people.
Honestly, the thing I like best about this story is the framing device. A guy with wild eyes just runs up and won't let you leave until he's told you a ghost story. This happens to me at least once a month.
A second, less familiar story with which this episode is interacting is the story of the last Great Auk in the British Isles. Great Auks were real birds that have been hunted to extinction because their feathers made really good down for pillows, their meat was delicious, and sailors made oil from their fat. They also had no fear of humans, and the preferred method of hunting them was to walk up to a bird and strangle it with your bare hands while a hundred other Great Auks watched. They were a bit like large penguins, except they lived in the North Atlantic. The last Great Auk was found on an island off Scotland in 1840. By then, it was already a rare bird and the three guys who spotted it were like, "Whoa! Look at that weird penguin!" Instead of killing it (like pretty much anyone else from the time period would have done), they decided to grab it, tie its legs together, and take it with them. The bird started to wail, the rain started to fall, and they holed up together in a tiny hut to wait out the storm. They kept it alive for three days, but the bird would not stop wailing and the storm would not stop storming, and they grew stir-crazy and convinced that the Great Auk was causing the storm because it was a witch. To put a stop to the storm, they decided to stone the bird to death, which does not seem like the quickest or easiest way to kill a slow, flightless bird, but what do I know?
What we learn from these stories is that you just shouldn't bother large birds, because they're magic.
October 16, 2019
Keep Going for the 4theWords Trick-or-treat
You're here, dear trick-or-treater, opening the creaky gate on my blog and hazarding your way toward the house, because you have a goal. You're going to get through this blog post even though it's spooky—even though the tree branches hang limp and the path is lit only by poorly spaced candles in paper bags. You jump as a cardboard cut-out of a ghost pops up out of the over-grown grass. It lights up, and—with a click—recorded ghost voices send shivers up your spine. A second ghost pops up. Then a third. You press your hand over your heart.
The ghosts moan, "Your chaaaaaracters have no motivaaaaation!"
"Theeeeere is no market for thiiiiiiis!"
"Start oooooooover in first person present teeeeeeense!"
They are truly fearsome obstacles. Only with courage will you get past them. Do you turn back? No. You are determined.
Keep going. Always keep going. Keep going after you finish the first draft, after NaNo, because now it's time to revise. Keep sending out queries and submissions. Keep writing, and start a new project when an old one goes out to readers. Keep reading this blog entry to get to the special code word.
You can't hear the other trick-or-treaters anymore. There was a crowd just on the sidewalk, but now their laughter is dampened. You're alone. Except for me.
And me—well—let me tell you my tale. I finished a novel, and I queried it, dedicated to sending out 100 queries by the end of the year, because it was the thing. This novel was going to make it happen for me! I just knew it! While I queried, I worked on a second novel, but I hit a road block there and decided to take some time away from it. But not away from writing. I set myself a challenge to write a short story a day about monster girls, like I'd seen on a tumblr art challenge. Why? Because I had to write a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it would be good practice. I ended up with 12 stories, which I recorded and turned into a podcast. Why? Because it sounded fun. Surprisingly, that podcast got popular, and I was approached by some people who wanted to option it for TV. Suddenly, I had this contract that I needed someone to look over, so I threw together a new query letter and frantically reached back out to agents. And all of a sudden, I was getting bites. (In the background, like a ghostly echo, you can hear the phantom cries of frustration and panic and disappointment that are notably absent from this chipper story.)
So that first novel wasn't the thing. This podcast that I did for fun as a way to work through some plotting issues was the thing that actually got the ball rolling. I never would have guessed that. It's an unpredictable process.
Publishing is subjective and swings with the market. Even if you did write the best thing ever, it still might not take off. "We love this story and love your writing, but this genre just isn't selling right now." "We just bought a story about yetis. Sorry. We would take your yeti story if we could." It's just out of your hands. It's spooky like the fake spider webs thrown between the trees on my blog. Sometimes it feels like the only thing I have any control over through the rejections and the hard times is that I keep going, and keep working, and keep trying. It's so easy to get discouraged when something you poured your heart into isn't an immediate, wild success. So many people drop out at that point. But if you have something else to work on, then the sting of rejection from agents and editors isn't as bad, because this next thing you're doing is going to be great. Maybe that will be the one to make things happen for you.
That is my advice to you, dear trick-or-treater. The only advice I'm really qualified to give. Keep writing. Keep trying. Keep going. As you finally reach your goal, as you reach your hand into the basket I've left on the steps, pull out a candy, pull out an agent, pull out a book deal. Squint until you can read the code word on the wrapper.
It says, "Costumes."
***
If you're not here from 4theWords, I highly recommend them.
4thewords in an online writing platform that takes your writing into a game world. Use quests and monster battles to help increase your word count all while leveling up your character. All throughout October, you can unlock hidden items using special code words, found on some of your favorite writing resources (like this one). If you haven’t tried 4thewords before, use my code word to unlock a surprise and a free month of play time!
October 15, 2019
October Plans
National Novel Writing Month starts in November, and I am spending #preptober (October where you plan for NaNo) getting my life in order more than outlining or thinking about characters or world building for the story I'm going to write.
I got revisions on my Firebird novel back from my agent. (Possibly the penultimate round of revisions, because an editor will want another round too!) And I'd like to have that in shape by November so I can set it aside and not have it looming. I want to came back to it in December, read through it with fresh eyes, and then see what I missed or didn't hit hard enough or what I can do even better. But in order to do this I have to get these revisions done. I let my agent's notes stew for a while, then I printed the manuscript and went through it with a blue pen for stuff I could correct right that second and an orange pen with stuff I needed to come back to later, because I needed to give it some thought or doing some research or rewrite a huge section. Then I went through and put all the notes I made on the printed out manuscript into the latest version of my novel in a Word file, changing the stuff in blue as I came to it and putting the stuff in orange in comments. Turns out these orange things can be grouped into larger categories, from low-hanging fruit like "Find a more violent word" (in the synonyms category) and "Is it 'Forest Service' or 'Forestry Service'?" (in the quick research category) to pretty serious re-writes like "Re-do the climax" (its own category). Then I pulled up my October white board calendar and scheduled when I was going to do these groups of revisions. Some days I'm tackling two categories, sometimes I'm taking several days (and always including the days when my kid goes to grandma's) to do some serious rewrites. I gave myself the weekends off because I know I don't work much on the weekends, and I knew I'd need some wiggle room in case something turned out to be way harder than I anticipated.
Or in case my kid developed hives all over his body and was sent home from school, blowing my schedule to shreds. That happened on Tuesday.
The other thing I'm doing is getting Season 5 of The Twenty Percent True Podcast all queued up and ready to go. The last episode of the season will go up in November, and I don't want to have to think about it while I think about NaNo. So I want the stories revised, the audio recorded and edited with music cues and everything by the end of the month. This shouldn't be a problem, but I've felt pretty lazy this season.
Finally, in addition to writing a new first draft in November, I'll also be doing a podcast about National Novel Writing Month called *drum roll!* NaNo-It-All. My friend Jim used to have a podcast called NaNoWriPod, where he and his co-host or guests talked about their NaNo experience. I was a guest a couple of times. He eventually concluded the show after not winning NaNo for several years. I want to do a similar thing, but I'm going to have a new guest come in every episode (with probably a few repeats at the end) so the show will cover different strategies and points of view along with an array of projects. I also want to go in with an idea about what we're going to talk about, and then limit the show to around half an hour. It's National Novel Writing Month! No one has time to listen to an hour long podcast twice a week!
So I'm getting things set for that: scheduling guests, setting up a website. (The website looks so good!) I need cover art for Apple Podcasts and to find a theme song. I have a list of punny episode titles that I'm excited to use. I need to make sure I can record with two microphones, and figure out how to record a Skype call. I'll have a teaser trailer air sometime later this month so I can make sure Apple Podcasts and Sticher will have the show approved in time. It's kind of a lot, but I'm also pretty excited about it.
Wish me luck doing all this while also getting the not-for-profit I work for's 2020 budget ready to go!
I got revisions on my Firebird novel back from my agent. (Possibly the penultimate round of revisions, because an editor will want another round too!) And I'd like to have that in shape by November so I can set it aside and not have it looming. I want to came back to it in December, read through it with fresh eyes, and then see what I missed or didn't hit hard enough or what I can do even better. But in order to do this I have to get these revisions done. I let my agent's notes stew for a while, then I printed the manuscript and went through it with a blue pen for stuff I could correct right that second and an orange pen with stuff I needed to come back to later, because I needed to give it some thought or doing some research or rewrite a huge section. Then I went through and put all the notes I made on the printed out manuscript into the latest version of my novel in a Word file, changing the stuff in blue as I came to it and putting the stuff in orange in comments. Turns out these orange things can be grouped into larger categories, from low-hanging fruit like "Find a more violent word" (in the synonyms category) and "Is it 'Forest Service' or 'Forestry Service'?" (in the quick research category) to pretty serious re-writes like "Re-do the climax" (its own category). Then I pulled up my October white board calendar and scheduled when I was going to do these groups of revisions. Some days I'm tackling two categories, sometimes I'm taking several days (and always including the days when my kid goes to grandma's) to do some serious rewrites. I gave myself the weekends off because I know I don't work much on the weekends, and I knew I'd need some wiggle room in case something turned out to be way harder than I anticipated.
Or in case my kid developed hives all over his body and was sent home from school, blowing my schedule to shreds. That happened on Tuesday.
The other thing I'm doing is getting Season 5 of The Twenty Percent True Podcast all queued up and ready to go. The last episode of the season will go up in November, and I don't want to have to think about it while I think about NaNo. So I want the stories revised, the audio recorded and edited with music cues and everything by the end of the month. This shouldn't be a problem, but I've felt pretty lazy this season.
Finally, in addition to writing a new first draft in November, I'll also be doing a podcast about National Novel Writing Month called *drum roll!* NaNo-It-All. My friend Jim used to have a podcast called NaNoWriPod, where he and his co-host or guests talked about their NaNo experience. I was a guest a couple of times. He eventually concluded the show after not winning NaNo for several years. I want to do a similar thing, but I'm going to have a new guest come in every episode (with probably a few repeats at the end) so the show will cover different strategies and points of view along with an array of projects. I also want to go in with an idea about what we're going to talk about, and then limit the show to around half an hour. It's National Novel Writing Month! No one has time to listen to an hour long podcast twice a week!
So I'm getting things set for that: scheduling guests, setting up a website. (The website looks so good!) I need cover art for Apple Podcasts and to find a theme song. I have a list of punny episode titles that I'm excited to use. I need to make sure I can record with two microphones, and figure out how to record a Skype call. I'll have a teaser trailer air sometime later this month so I can make sure Apple Podcasts and Sticher will have the show approved in time. It's kind of a lot, but I'm also pretty excited about it.
Wish me luck doing all this while also getting the not-for-profit I work for's 2020 budget ready to go!
October 10, 2019
Monster of the Week: Worm Day
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 8: Worm Day
For more: Background Information
More About Worms
Season 5, Episode 8: Worm Day
The North English worm is a bit like a dragon, but without wings or (sometimes) legs. It's mostly a big serpent and usually lived in lakes and rivers. The area is full of dragon and worm stories from when their particular town was terrorized by a monster. While there are similarities between the stories, there's no agreement on where the monsters come from, what they want, what defeats them, or what they look like. The Sockburn Worm was defeated by a special sword, which is now presented to each new Bishop of Durham. When the bishop takes up his position, the Lord of Sockburn tells the story of the worm. The Worm of Linton also lived on the local hill, but was defeated by a knight shoving burning peat into its mouth. The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh is actually a princess turned into a Worm by her witch step-mother, and she's turned back into a woman when a knight kisses her instead of fighting her.
This episode is mostly in conversation with the Lambton Worm, a folktale that locals in County Durham still find important. It was popularized by a song by C. M. Leumane in 1867. The song is written in (kind of amazing) dialect. Part of the chorus goes "An' aa'll tell ye aall an aaful story," or "And I'll tell you all an awful story." It says that the villagers "Lost lots o' sheep an' lots o' sleep." It says of the worm, "He'd greet big teeth, a greet big gob, An greet big goggly eyes." It's rad. In 1911, Bram Stoker wrote a novel called "The Liar of the White Worm" about the Lambton Worm.
In the folktale, a boy named John Lambton goes fishing in the River Wear. In some versions, he goes on a Sunday and is warned by an old wise person that missing church is going to cause him trouble. While fishing, he catches a gross, wriggling eel-like thing. It has nine holes on the side of its head, and ranges from the size of a thumb to three feet long. It's not a fish, so he tosses it away into a well (later called the "Worm Well"). Many years pass and the boy goes off to the crusades and comes back to find the town and countryside ravaged by a gigantic worm that poisoned the well and eats people and cows and ruins crops. It's so big that it has wrapped itself around Worm Hill seven times and really settled in.
Lord Lambton, John's father, has pacified it by offering it the milk from nine good cows every day. That's 20 gallons, or enough to fill the big, stone trough they set up for the worm. A bunch of brave villagers and a few visiting knights set out to defeat it, but none of them are successful. If a part of the worm is cut off, it just picks up the fallen piece and puts it back, reattaching it. When the worm gets really irritated, it pulls up a tree in one of its coils and waves it around like a club.
It's pretty obvious that the thing John threw into the well grew up to be a huge monster, so he sets off to defeat it and make up for what he did. The old wise person reappears and tells John that he needs to cover his armor in spikes and fight the worm in the river. Then, after he's killed the worm, he has to kill the first living thing he sees or his family will be cursed for nine generations to not die in their beds. You can see where this is going, but the neat thing about this story is that John does too! He explains the whole thing to his father, and then makes a plan that when he kills the worm, he'll blow his hunting horn three times and his father will release John's favorite hound, which will run out to him, sacrificing a dog, but ensuring that John doesn't ironically kill his father.
John goes out to kill the worm. When the worm tries to crush him, it spears himself on John's armor. When pieces are cut off of it, they are washed away in the river before they can reattach. After a long battle, John is victorious and (in another unexpected show of competence) blows his horn three times.
However, John's father is so excited that the worm is dead and his son survived that, instead of releasing the hound, he runs out to hug his son. Instead of "Well, now I have to kill you," John hugs his dad back, says, "Aww, Geeze," then has the dog released and kills it according to plan, even though he knows that it won't work. His family is cursed. Since the legend is local and the family is real, you can see how the next generations of Lambtons died, and they were all drownings or death in battle, so everyone in the area can point to that as evidence that the curse and the story are real.
I like how this story subverts my expectations. I like how John's using his head. I like how John realizes that having his descendants "not die in their beds" isn't that bad a curse, and he'd rather do that than kill his father. But mostly, I like how the town had come to an uneasy truce with the worm where they fed it milk and it didn't bother them. It seems like that could have lasted for a while.
The North English worm is a bit like a dragon, but without wings or (sometimes) legs. It's mostly a big serpent and usually lived in lakes and rivers. The area is full of dragon and worm stories from when their particular town was terrorized by a monster. While there are similarities between the stories, there's no agreement on where the monsters come from, what they want, what defeats them, or what they look like. The Sockburn Worm was defeated by a special sword, which is now presented to each new Bishop of Durham. When the bishop takes up his position, the Lord of Sockburn tells the story of the worm. The Worm of Linton also lived on the local hill, but was defeated by a knight shoving burning peat into its mouth. The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh is actually a princess turned into a Worm by her witch step-mother, and she's turned back into a woman when a knight kisses her instead of fighting her.
This episode is mostly in conversation with the Lambton Worm, a folktale that locals in County Durham still find important. It was popularized by a song by C. M. Leumane in 1867. The song is written in (kind of amazing) dialect. Part of the chorus goes "An' aa'll tell ye aall an aaful story," or "And I'll tell you all an awful story." It says that the villagers "Lost lots o' sheep an' lots o' sleep." It says of the worm, "He'd greet big teeth, a greet big gob, An greet big goggly eyes." It's rad. In 1911, Bram Stoker wrote a novel called "The Liar of the White Worm" about the Lambton Worm.
In the folktale, a boy named John Lambton goes fishing in the River Wear. In some versions, he goes on a Sunday and is warned by an old wise person that missing church is going to cause him trouble. While fishing, he catches a gross, wriggling eel-like thing. It has nine holes on the side of its head, and ranges from the size of a thumb to three feet long. It's not a fish, so he tosses it away into a well (later called the "Worm Well"). Many years pass and the boy goes off to the crusades and comes back to find the town and countryside ravaged by a gigantic worm that poisoned the well and eats people and cows and ruins crops. It's so big that it has wrapped itself around Worm Hill seven times and really settled in.
 |
| Worm Hill |
Lord Lambton, John's father, has pacified it by offering it the milk from nine good cows every day. That's 20 gallons, or enough to fill the big, stone trough they set up for the worm. A bunch of brave villagers and a few visiting knights set out to defeat it, but none of them are successful. If a part of the worm is cut off, it just picks up the fallen piece and puts it back, reattaching it. When the worm gets really irritated, it pulls up a tree in one of its coils and waves it around like a club.
It's pretty obvious that the thing John threw into the well grew up to be a huge monster, so he sets off to defeat it and make up for what he did. The old wise person reappears and tells John that he needs to cover his armor in spikes and fight the worm in the river. Then, after he's killed the worm, he has to kill the first living thing he sees or his family will be cursed for nine generations to not die in their beds. You can see where this is going, but the neat thing about this story is that John does too! He explains the whole thing to his father, and then makes a plan that when he kills the worm, he'll blow his hunting horn three times and his father will release John's favorite hound, which will run out to him, sacrificing a dog, but ensuring that John doesn't ironically kill his father.
John goes out to kill the worm. When the worm tries to crush him, it spears himself on John's armor. When pieces are cut off of it, they are washed away in the river before they can reattach. After a long battle, John is victorious and (in another unexpected show of competence) blows his horn three times.
However, John's father is so excited that the worm is dead and his son survived that, instead of releasing the hound, he runs out to hug his son. Instead of "Well, now I have to kill you," John hugs his dad back, says, "Aww, Geeze," then has the dog released and kills it according to plan, even though he knows that it won't work. His family is cursed. Since the legend is local and the family is real, you can see how the next generations of Lambtons died, and they were all drownings or death in battle, so everyone in the area can point to that as evidence that the curse and the story are real.
I like how this story subverts my expectations. I like how John's using his head. I like how John realizes that having his descendants "not die in their beds" isn't that bad a curse, and he'd rather do that than kill his father. But mostly, I like how the town had come to an uneasy truce with the worm where they fed it milk and it didn't bother them. It seems like that could have lasted for a while.
October 8, 2019
Link's Awakening and Player Buy-in
Spoilers for Link's Awakening, a game that first came out in 1993. And if you're wanting to play it for the plot...I'm happy to offer up some suggestions for different Zelda games that will scratch that itch for you.
So, Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was first released on the Game Boy. The big Game Boy. The one where I had a power adapter that plugged into the wall, because my mom refused to buy any more AA batteries. The one where I had a designated Game Boy playing chair with a lamp (because the Game Boy was hard to see) and my power outlet. And--not to brag, but--I had the fun magnifying glass attachment that I thought would make people want to talk to me.
Recently, they re-released it for the Switch and updated the graphics and the music and everything. So I recently bought a Switch to play this game again. (I know, okay. I know.)
Now, if you haven't played this game, it's a weird one. At the beginning, Link is sailing a tiny boat alone through a storm, when the ship is destroyed and he washes up on an island. In order to escape the island (according to a random owl), he must wake the Wind Fish, and he must do this by gathering the eight fancy instruments (each at the end of a dungeon) and playing a song in front of the Wind Fish's egg. None of the recurring cast appears in this game. There's no Zelda. No Impa. Not a single reference to Ruto. And there are weirdly a bunch of enemies from the Mario games. But the weirdest part of all is that about half way through the game, it becomes clear that the sleeping Wind Fish is dreaming the whole island. All the dungeons and monsters are part of his dream. But so are all the people who live there, along with all their histories and hopes and dreams. Waking the Wind Fish will cause the island to vanish and everyone who lives there to disappear.
And yet, the designers of this game intended for me to keep playing. I continue to collect instruments and interact with people who are going to cease to exist because of my actions. And I just keep on going. But I feel bad knowing that the "right" thing to do would be to stop collecting instruments and live a nice, quiet life on this fairly nice island.
Why doesn't he just...not? Why don't I just stop playing?
In part, I kept playing in hopes that maybe there had been a mistake. Maybe they've changed it so after I beat the final boss, it turns out that that owl giving me directions is evil and I have to fight him to save the island. Maybe there's not going to be a cut scene at the end where I see every character that was kind to me go up in a flash, and then I'm left floating in the ocean on the few pieces of driftwood while the Wind Fish sails away. Or maybe I've forgotten that the Wind Fish gives me a ride back to Hyrule...
Oh...No? Okay...Bye, Wind Fish! See ya in hell, I guess.
These dilemmas actually pop up a lot in Zelda games. The most glaring being if you ever play through Ocarina of Time for a second time (or eighth time). In that one, Zelda has this great idea to gather up these magic stones to open a door to the spirit realm, and Link goes and does that, but when he opens the door to the spirit realm half way through the game, it unleashes unspeakable horrors and the second half of the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment. So on the second play through, you think "...Wait a second. If I just did nothing, there would be no problem and the world would not need saving."
There's another part like this in Skyward Sword when you finish up a dungeon and right as you get to the end, Impa pops up and yells at you for taking so long, and thank goodness she was here to handle everything, and if you're not going to do better, why don't you just go home? And, chastised, I wondered...why don't I just go home? I mean...Impa looks like she's got this, and who am I anyway?
And the answer here for why I don't just stop playing is that there is more game to play, and it's still enjoyable even if I ought not be doing it.
The real problem comes when this happens in a novel, and I start to question, "Why don't you just go home?" "Why don't you just not try to date this dude?" "Why don't you just use that magic mirror Sirius gave you to talk to him in case of emergencies?" It's not a plot hole; it's a failure of motivation. And it's the worst.
I worked really hard in my last novel to make sure my main character's motivation made sense, that the reader bought into why he NEEDED to do all this nonsense. I wanted the reader to understand it was a bad idea, but also understand that it needed to be done. I worked so hard on it. And I succeeded, by which I mean no one has called me on the beginning since I worked on it so hard.
They called me on it at the 2/3 mark.
The nonsense escalates, and it gets to the point where the reader asks, "Why is anyone else letting him keep doing this? Why don't they just stop him?"
And I banged my head against a table. Because they're right, and I need to devote a big chunk of time to working on that.
I forget where I first heard the best piece of parenting advice I've ever received. It's this: If anyone ever starts their advice that starts with "Why don't you just..." that advice is bad. That word "just" implies that the solution is easy, and I'm just too wrapped up in my own drama to see that simple solution, that I'd rather complain about how my life is so difficult than do something easy that will fix my problem.
And when I was new at this parenting thing and doing everything wrong, that implication that it was easy for everyone else just made me feel worse. Is there a simple answer, and I'm just too stupid to make it work? Clearly no one else has this problem, and I am a disaster. But being able to recognize--to have a key word like an alarm that would go off--made it so I could say, "Wait. No. This is bad advice." It would stop that spiraling before it could get started.
In writing it's the opposite. When a reader asks, "Why doesn't he just..." it means there is an easy answer to the problem, and the reason the writer doesn't have the characters do that is because they want the book to keep going. If the characters don't answer a call to adventure, there's no story, and the writer wants there to be a story. If I stop playing Link's Awakening because I don't want to destroy the island, then I'm not playing the game. If Harry Potter calls Sirius on his mirror phone and Sirius picks up and says he's fine, the whole last act doesn't happen.
When someone says, "Why doesn't the character just..." that's when you, as a writer, need to pay attention. That's when you have a horrible problem and a big revision in the future.
When they say, "Why don't you just..." and then they suggest some way to fix something that's broken in your story...that maybe you can ignore.
So, Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was first released on the Game Boy. The big Game Boy. The one where I had a power adapter that plugged into the wall, because my mom refused to buy any more AA batteries. The one where I had a designated Game Boy playing chair with a lamp (because the Game Boy was hard to see) and my power outlet. And--not to brag, but--I had the fun magnifying glass attachment that I thought would make people want to talk to me.
Recently, they re-released it for the Switch and updated the graphics and the music and everything. So I recently bought a Switch to play this game again. (I know, okay. I know.)
Now, if you haven't played this game, it's a weird one. At the beginning, Link is sailing a tiny boat alone through a storm, when the ship is destroyed and he washes up on an island. In order to escape the island (according to a random owl), he must wake the Wind Fish, and he must do this by gathering the eight fancy instruments (each at the end of a dungeon) and playing a song in front of the Wind Fish's egg. None of the recurring cast appears in this game. There's no Zelda. No Impa. Not a single reference to Ruto. And there are weirdly a bunch of enemies from the Mario games. But the weirdest part of all is that about half way through the game, it becomes clear that the sleeping Wind Fish is dreaming the whole island. All the dungeons and monsters are part of his dream. But so are all the people who live there, along with all their histories and hopes and dreams. Waking the Wind Fish will cause the island to vanish and everyone who lives there to disappear.
And yet, the designers of this game intended for me to keep playing. I continue to collect instruments and interact with people who are going to cease to exist because of my actions. And I just keep on going. But I feel bad knowing that the "right" thing to do would be to stop collecting instruments and live a nice, quiet life on this fairly nice island.
Why doesn't he just...not? Why don't I just stop playing?
In part, I kept playing in hopes that maybe there had been a mistake. Maybe they've changed it so after I beat the final boss, it turns out that that owl giving me directions is evil and I have to fight him to save the island. Maybe there's not going to be a cut scene at the end where I see every character that was kind to me go up in a flash, and then I'm left floating in the ocean on the few pieces of driftwood while the Wind Fish sails away. Or maybe I've forgotten that the Wind Fish gives me a ride back to Hyrule...
Oh...No? Okay...Bye, Wind Fish! See ya in hell, I guess.
These dilemmas actually pop up a lot in Zelda games. The most glaring being if you ever play through Ocarina of Time for a second time (or eighth time). In that one, Zelda has this great idea to gather up these magic stones to open a door to the spirit realm, and Link goes and does that, but when he opens the door to the spirit realm half way through the game, it unleashes unspeakable horrors and the second half of the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment. So on the second play through, you think "...Wait a second. If I just did nothing, there would be no problem and the world would not need saving."
There's another part like this in Skyward Sword when you finish up a dungeon and right as you get to the end, Impa pops up and yells at you for taking so long, and thank goodness she was here to handle everything, and if you're not going to do better, why don't you just go home? And, chastised, I wondered...why don't I just go home? I mean...Impa looks like she's got this, and who am I anyway?
And the answer here for why I don't just stop playing is that there is more game to play, and it's still enjoyable even if I ought not be doing it.
The real problem comes when this happens in a novel, and I start to question, "Why don't you just go home?" "Why don't you just not try to date this dude?" "Why don't you just use that magic mirror Sirius gave you to talk to him in case of emergencies?" It's not a plot hole; it's a failure of motivation. And it's the worst.
I worked really hard in my last novel to make sure my main character's motivation made sense, that the reader bought into why he NEEDED to do all this nonsense. I wanted the reader to understand it was a bad idea, but also understand that it needed to be done. I worked so hard on it. And I succeeded, by which I mean no one has called me on the beginning since I worked on it so hard.
They called me on it at the 2/3 mark.
The nonsense escalates, and it gets to the point where the reader asks, "Why is anyone else letting him keep doing this? Why don't they just stop him?"
And I banged my head against a table. Because they're right, and I need to devote a big chunk of time to working on that.
I forget where I first heard the best piece of parenting advice I've ever received. It's this: If anyone ever starts their advice that starts with "Why don't you just..." that advice is bad. That word "just" implies that the solution is easy, and I'm just too wrapped up in my own drama to see that simple solution, that I'd rather complain about how my life is so difficult than do something easy that will fix my problem.
And when I was new at this parenting thing and doing everything wrong, that implication that it was easy for everyone else just made me feel worse. Is there a simple answer, and I'm just too stupid to make it work? Clearly no one else has this problem, and I am a disaster. But being able to recognize--to have a key word like an alarm that would go off--made it so I could say, "Wait. No. This is bad advice." It would stop that spiraling before it could get started.
In writing it's the opposite. When a reader asks, "Why doesn't he just..." it means there is an easy answer to the problem, and the reason the writer doesn't have the characters do that is because they want the book to keep going. If the characters don't answer a call to adventure, there's no story, and the writer wants there to be a story. If I stop playing Link's Awakening because I don't want to destroy the island, then I'm not playing the game. If Harry Potter calls Sirius on his mirror phone and Sirius picks up and says he's fine, the whole last act doesn't happen.
When someone says, "Why doesn't the character just..." that's when you, as a writer, need to pay attention. That's when you have a horrible problem and a big revision in the future.
When they say, "Why don't you just..." and then they suggest some way to fix something that's broken in your story...that maybe you can ignore.
October 3, 2019
More about the Furies
Season 5, Episode 7: The Fish Tank
The Furies, or Erinyes, were three Greek goddesses of vengeance. They were particularly concerned with homicide, unfillial behavior, disobedience to parents, violations of the respect due to old age, offenses against the gods, violations of the law of hospitality, and perjury. The Wikipedia page puts it well: against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants. When Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw the genitals into the sea, the furies arose from the spilled blood, while Aphrodite arose from the sea foam. From this violent beginning, the furies were most concerned with patricide, matricide, and crimes of a child against a parent. They had a spot in the underworld, where they would torture these people after their death, and they guarded the "Dungeon of the Damned," where Tantalus and Sysyphus are kept. But they also appeared on earth. Mostly, they would inflict madness on their victims. They also caused illness and disease, and could send plague and famine onto a country harboring a criminal they were after. The furies would stop only after their target went through a right of purification and did some sort of assigned heroic task.
They are described as ugly, winged women. They have poisonous serpents around their waists and wrists and through their hair. They held whips, and were either dressed as mourners in long, dark robes, or as huntresses.
Originally, the Erinyes were the personification of the curses shouted out at criminals.
Sometimes they are not individually named, and there are bunches of them. In later stories, they were limited to three, given names, and made more beautiful instead of monstrous. Their names are Tisiphone (Murder Restitution or vengeful destruction, punisher of murders), Alecto (Unceasing or endless, the punisher of moral crimes), and Megaera (Grudge or jealous rage, the punisher of infidelity, oath breaking, and theft). Individualizing them is more of a Roman thing, with Virgil recognizing three of them and giving them names.
My favorite appearance of the furies is in the Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. In the first play, "Agamemnon," Agamemnon returns home from Troy. You may know Agamemnon as the commander-in-chief of the Greek army at Troy. He had been itching to go to war with Troy, so when Helen left Menelaus (Agamemnon's brother) for Paris of Troy, Agamemnon was the one who was like, "We need to go after her! The Trojans won't get away with this!" You may also remember him as the guy who stole Achilles' slave girl, thus irritating Achilles into the plot of the Illiad. (I'm not a fan of Agamemnon.) So. Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan War, and it turns out that ten years ago, in order to get good winds for the voyage to Troy, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter. Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, has been stewing on this the whole time, so when Agamemnon shows up, she murders him in the bathtub in retribution. (She also wants the crown and also wants to take her long-term relationship with her boyfriend public and also is ticked that Aagamemnon comes home with a new girlfriend (/sex slave), Cassandra, who gives away Clytemnestra's vengeance plan even though no one believes her.)
No furies yet, but in the second play, "The Libation Bearers," Agamemnon's son, Orestes, learns about his mom killing his dad, and he's commanded by Apollo to take vengeance on his mom for this. He has a moral dilemma with this, as 1. Agamemnon sucked and 2. if he kills his mom, the furies will come after him. But you don't argue with Apollo, so he kills his mom and her boyfriend, and the furies are set after him.
In the third play, "The Eumenides," Orestes flees to Athens, and asks for help from Athena, who sets up a trial of Athenian citizens. Apollo defends Orestes and the Furies prosecute him, and they have a big old debate about if blood vengeance is necessary, if you have to honor your father and mother the same, and if you have to honor the old gods (like the Furies) the same as the Olympian gods (like Apollo). Basically, this is all way over Orestes' pay grade, and the whole thing is just so Athena can set up the practice of trial-by-jury in Athens. In the end, Orestes is acquitted, which ticks off the Furies, who threaten to torture everyone in Athens because of it. Athena tells them that maybe they should change and become protectors of justice rather than goddesses of vengeance. She urges them to break the cycle of blood for blood, tells them that Athens will honor them forever, and then threatens that she knows where Zeus keeps his lightning bolts. She renames them "the Eumenides," or the kindly ones.
The whole thing is bananas.
The Furies, or Erinyes, were three Greek goddesses of vengeance. They were particularly concerned with homicide, unfillial behavior, disobedience to parents, violations of the respect due to old age, offenses against the gods, violations of the law of hospitality, and perjury. The Wikipedia page puts it well: against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants. When Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw the genitals into the sea, the furies arose from the spilled blood, while Aphrodite arose from the sea foam. From this violent beginning, the furies were most concerned with patricide, matricide, and crimes of a child against a parent. They had a spot in the underworld, where they would torture these people after their death, and they guarded the "Dungeon of the Damned," where Tantalus and Sysyphus are kept. But they also appeared on earth. Mostly, they would inflict madness on their victims. They also caused illness and disease, and could send plague and famine onto a country harboring a criminal they were after. The furies would stop only after their target went through a right of purification and did some sort of assigned heroic task.
They are described as ugly, winged women. They have poisonous serpents around their waists and wrists and through their hair. They held whips, and were either dressed as mourners in long, dark robes, or as huntresses.
Originally, the Erinyes were the personification of the curses shouted out at criminals.
Sometimes they are not individually named, and there are bunches of them. In later stories, they were limited to three, given names, and made more beautiful instead of monstrous. Their names are Tisiphone (Murder Restitution or vengeful destruction, punisher of murders), Alecto (Unceasing or endless, the punisher of moral crimes), and Megaera (Grudge or jealous rage, the punisher of infidelity, oath breaking, and theft). Individualizing them is more of a Roman thing, with Virgil recognizing three of them and giving them names.
My favorite appearance of the furies is in the Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. In the first play, "Agamemnon," Agamemnon returns home from Troy. You may know Agamemnon as the commander-in-chief of the Greek army at Troy. He had been itching to go to war with Troy, so when Helen left Menelaus (Agamemnon's brother) for Paris of Troy, Agamemnon was the one who was like, "We need to go after her! The Trojans won't get away with this!" You may also remember him as the guy who stole Achilles' slave girl, thus irritating Achilles into the plot of the Illiad. (I'm not a fan of Agamemnon.) So. Agamemnon returns home after the Trojan War, and it turns out that ten years ago, in order to get good winds for the voyage to Troy, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter. Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, has been stewing on this the whole time, so when Agamemnon shows up, she murders him in the bathtub in retribution. (She also wants the crown and also wants to take her long-term relationship with her boyfriend public and also is ticked that Aagamemnon comes home with a new girlfriend (/sex slave), Cassandra, who gives away Clytemnestra's vengeance plan even though no one believes her.)
No furies yet, but in the second play, "The Libation Bearers," Agamemnon's son, Orestes, learns about his mom killing his dad, and he's commanded by Apollo to take vengeance on his mom for this. He has a moral dilemma with this, as 1. Agamemnon sucked and 2. if he kills his mom, the furies will come after him. But you don't argue with Apollo, so he kills his mom and her boyfriend, and the furies are set after him.
In the third play, "The Eumenides," Orestes flees to Athens, and asks for help from Athena, who sets up a trial of Athenian citizens. Apollo defends Orestes and the Furies prosecute him, and they have a big old debate about if blood vengeance is necessary, if you have to honor your father and mother the same, and if you have to honor the old gods (like the Furies) the same as the Olympian gods (like Apollo). Basically, this is all way over Orestes' pay grade, and the whole thing is just so Athena can set up the practice of trial-by-jury in Athens. In the end, Orestes is acquitted, which ticks off the Furies, who threaten to torture everyone in Athens because of it. Athena tells them that maybe they should change and become protectors of justice rather than goddesses of vengeance. She urges them to break the cycle of blood for blood, tells them that Athens will honor them forever, and then threatens that she knows where Zeus keeps his lightning bolts. She renames them "the Eumenides," or the kindly ones.
The whole thing is bananas.
Monster of the Week: The Fish Tank
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 5: Monster of the Week
Episode 7: The Fish Tank
For more: Background Information
October 1, 2019
The Dark Crystal and thoughts on Fridging
I have more to say about the Dark Crystal TV show. Once again, I'm going to spoil things, so if the show sounds like your thing, go watch it and then come back. And if it's not your thing, then join me as I talk about fridging.
You're probably familiar with the concept of fridging. Basically, "fridging" refers to when a female character is killed for the sake of progressing a man's story. A girlfriend is killed, setting the hero on a quest for vengeance. The girlfriend wasn't really a character so much as she's an inciting incident. The term was coined by Gail Simone, and refers to an event in Green Lantern when he comes home to find that a big bad has killed his girlfriend and stuffed her into a refrigerator for him to find and grieve over. Sometimes the woman can be a mother or a sister or a daughter (but it's usually a girlfriend or wife) and sometimes she's not killed but assaulted or de-powered or put into cryo-stasis (talk about putting her in a refrigerator!). But is it always a woman? Yes! I suppose there could be a boyfriend who is killed off to progress a woman's story, and that would say something about how the boyfriend was characterized, but that happens so infrequently that pointing out examples proves the rule, and women in refrigerators happens so often that it says a lot about 1. how female characters are treated like non-entities in fiction and 2. how male characters in fiction are driven by the ideas of women in their lives and how them taking vengeance for things that happened to their girlfriends is seen as perfectly reasonable motivation.
In the first episode of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Rian's girlfriend is fridged. "I knew that was coming," my husband said, "because her puppet wasn't as good as the other ones." It's a big deal in the story because it's the first moment when the Skekses are outright violent against the Gelfling. Before, they'd done things to negatively affect the environment, and cause problems for the animals of the planet, and as an indirect result affected the Gelfling, but in this instance, they suck the life force out of Rian's girlfriend. It's also a big deal because it shows that this show is going to be dark. Characters are going to die. Rian's girlfriend's death becomes a rallying point for the Gelfling as they turn against the Skekses. Hey, the Skekses are literally sucking our souls out of our bodies and then eating it. That's BAD. Let's not be confused by how bad the Skekses are. Remember Rian's girlfriend!
Other women die on this show, and I'm not side-eyeing their deaths. But the fridging in the first episode was an unfortunate choice. I think that's mainly because in the first episode, we don't know yet that there are loads of strong female characters who I'm going to love and who won't be treated as plot devices but as fully formed, flawed characters. There are three main characters and two of them are ladies. The Gelfling are a matriarchal society, meaning most of their leaders (and therefore most of the secondary characters) are women. There are fantastic moments between the royal family of three sisters who love each other and are irritated by each other, and don't know how to react to each other and they're just trying so hard! This show has great female representation. But in the first episode, I don't know them yet, and I'm presented with the possibility that they're going to get fridged too. In the first episode, I'm presented with "This is a show that will kill women to forward the plot." Are all these ladies just going to end up serving Rian's story? I don't know. It's the first episode, and they haven't given me any evidence that that's not where this is heading.
Rian then sets out to convince the rest of the Gelfling that the Skekses murdered his girlfriend, and they need to rethink their relationship with the Skekses and take steps to protect themselves. But instead of framing her death as a rallying point for an entire society (which is what it is), her death is framed as a personal trauma of Rian's. She's not fridged so that the whole of the Gelfling can change the fabric of their society, she's fridged so Rian can go on an adventure. By the time the rest of the Gelfling come around on this, other Gelfling have had their essences sucked out and it stops being about her at all.
And, honesty, one of my least favorite aspects of fridging is that the guy is so set on his vengeance, but the love he carries for his lady friend tends to wane the farther he gets from the incident. He moves along from his girlfriend's death and starts making eyes at other characters, which is weird considering, "Remember Rian's girlfriend!" is supposed to be a rallying cry. Add to that that later in the series, Rian's dad dies and Rian seems to carry that grief much more deeply. (Which makes sense that he would grieve different relationships differently, but the differences are stark.) They have a funeral service for his father. Rian talks about his complicated relationship with his father. The loving handling of it just compounds how lazy his girlfriend's death was.
So what I've been wondering lately is "Was there a way to have her die and have it not be fridging?" And I think what would have made it better for me is if she wasn't Rian's girlfriend. What if they were colleagues who worked in the guard together? Then the way he moves on wouldn't be so strange, and his adventure to go and spread the word that the Skekses are awful wouldn't have the bitter after-taste that he's in action because the Skekses messed with his stuff. As weird as it is, I think if it tried to be more impersonal, it would have worked better, because it felt impersonal.
You're probably familiar with the concept of fridging. Basically, "fridging" refers to when a female character is killed for the sake of progressing a man's story. A girlfriend is killed, setting the hero on a quest for vengeance. The girlfriend wasn't really a character so much as she's an inciting incident. The term was coined by Gail Simone, and refers to an event in Green Lantern when he comes home to find that a big bad has killed his girlfriend and stuffed her into a refrigerator for him to find and grieve over. Sometimes the woman can be a mother or a sister or a daughter (but it's usually a girlfriend or wife) and sometimes she's not killed but assaulted or de-powered or put into cryo-stasis (talk about putting her in a refrigerator!). But is it always a woman? Yes! I suppose there could be a boyfriend who is killed off to progress a woman's story, and that would say something about how the boyfriend was characterized, but that happens so infrequently that pointing out examples proves the rule, and women in refrigerators happens so often that it says a lot about 1. how female characters are treated like non-entities in fiction and 2. how male characters in fiction are driven by the ideas of women in their lives and how them taking vengeance for things that happened to their girlfriends is seen as perfectly reasonable motivation.
In the first episode of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Rian's girlfriend is fridged. "I knew that was coming," my husband said, "because her puppet wasn't as good as the other ones." It's a big deal in the story because it's the first moment when the Skekses are outright violent against the Gelfling. Before, they'd done things to negatively affect the environment, and cause problems for the animals of the planet, and as an indirect result affected the Gelfling, but in this instance, they suck the life force out of Rian's girlfriend. It's also a big deal because it shows that this show is going to be dark. Characters are going to die. Rian's girlfriend's death becomes a rallying point for the Gelfling as they turn against the Skekses. Hey, the Skekses are literally sucking our souls out of our bodies and then eating it. That's BAD. Let's not be confused by how bad the Skekses are. Remember Rian's girlfriend!
Other women die on this show, and I'm not side-eyeing their deaths. But the fridging in the first episode was an unfortunate choice. I think that's mainly because in the first episode, we don't know yet that there are loads of strong female characters who I'm going to love and who won't be treated as plot devices but as fully formed, flawed characters. There are three main characters and two of them are ladies. The Gelfling are a matriarchal society, meaning most of their leaders (and therefore most of the secondary characters) are women. There are fantastic moments between the royal family of three sisters who love each other and are irritated by each other, and don't know how to react to each other and they're just trying so hard! This show has great female representation. But in the first episode, I don't know them yet, and I'm presented with the possibility that they're going to get fridged too. In the first episode, I'm presented with "This is a show that will kill women to forward the plot." Are all these ladies just going to end up serving Rian's story? I don't know. It's the first episode, and they haven't given me any evidence that that's not where this is heading.
Rian then sets out to convince the rest of the Gelfling that the Skekses murdered his girlfriend, and they need to rethink their relationship with the Skekses and take steps to protect themselves. But instead of framing her death as a rallying point for an entire society (which is what it is), her death is framed as a personal trauma of Rian's. She's not fridged so that the whole of the Gelfling can change the fabric of their society, she's fridged so Rian can go on an adventure. By the time the rest of the Gelfling come around on this, other Gelfling have had their essences sucked out and it stops being about her at all.
And, honesty, one of my least favorite aspects of fridging is that the guy is so set on his vengeance, but the love he carries for his lady friend tends to wane the farther he gets from the incident. He moves along from his girlfriend's death and starts making eyes at other characters, which is weird considering, "Remember Rian's girlfriend!" is supposed to be a rallying cry. Add to that that later in the series, Rian's dad dies and Rian seems to carry that grief much more deeply. (Which makes sense that he would grieve different relationships differently, but the differences are stark.) They have a funeral service for his father. Rian talks about his complicated relationship with his father. The loving handling of it just compounds how lazy his girlfriend's death was.
So what I've been wondering lately is "Was there a way to have her die and have it not be fridging?" And I think what would have made it better for me is if she wasn't Rian's girlfriend. What if they were colleagues who worked in the guard together? Then the way he moves on wouldn't be so strange, and his adventure to go and spread the word that the Skekses are awful wouldn't have the bitter after-taste that he's in action because the Skekses messed with his stuff. As weird as it is, I think if it tried to be more impersonal, it would have worked better, because it felt impersonal.
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