You are a guard in a fantasy world. You notice a man in elegant armor kick a chicken in the streets. In your lawful rage, you manage to kill this man in the name of justice. To your dismay, you realize you just killed The Chosen One. You just doomed the world.
In my defense, it was self-defense.
I saw him saunter through town in his expensive, fancy armor, nearly bowling over Granny Fairchild when she didn’t get out of his way fast enough. I didn’t think much of him – no one did, that I knew – but what was I going to do? The man was clearly some sort of lord or higher, and I’m just a guard. Not even a captain or sergeant! Just a normal, everyday run-of-the-mill guard.
In short, there’s nothing special about me. No special training, no special knowledge – unless you count laws, which I memorized – nothing whatsoever.
I didn’t say anything when he demanded prices to be lowered, and forced his “goods” on us. Spoils of adventures, he said. You can’t get them anywhere else. What are we going to do with forty preserved wyvern eyeballs! It’s not something any of us can use. I don’t care how much some wizard in a city we’ve never been would pay for them.
I didn’t say anything when he aggressively flirted with all the women, to the point that little Maria started crying and her brothers looked for sharp objects. Thank the gods that Maria’s wife is so quick-thinking, and got his attention elsewhere! It would have been a very ugly, very deadly brawl, and Maria would have lost her brothers.
I didn’t say anything when he co-opted the blacksmith’s forge to make a few daggers to push on us – because his skill is so legendary, however were we to survive without his priceless daggers? Ahmed was unable to fulfill his orders that day, and will now have to work twice as hard to catch up! And I wanted him to look at my gauntlet, too, because it was starting to look a little warped at the wrist.
But when I saw that man start to kick around Granny Fairchild’s chickens, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Those chickens are all she has! Every morning, Granny Fairchild comes to market with a basket of fresh eggs, and we all buy some – even if we don’t need eggs – to make sure she doesn’t go hungry. Like most of us, she refuses handouts and charity, preferring to get by on her own.
“You can’t do that,” I told him, using my sternest voice.
“Do what?” he asked, kicking a hen and sending her scuttling.
“That,” I said. “Kicking chickens. Or any animal. You can’t do that.”
“Who’s going to stop me?” he asked arrogantly. He looked me up and down, mockingly. “You?”
And just to be an ass, he took out his sword and killed one of the chickens right then and there.
Now, killing someone’s animal isn’t necessarily an arrestable offense. You get a fine, you pay it, and you go on your way. Especially something small, like a chicken. A cow, now, or a horse, that’s a different story. But a chicken – no.
But by this point, I was so tired and so fed up with his attitude. Who was he to walk into our village in his fancy, expensive armor and harrass our people? Making our shy girls cry, assaulting our widows and grandmothers, nearly robbing us blind by forcing his “goods” on us in exchange for ours, and putting good people out of work for his barely average daggers? An entitled ass, I tell you.
So I took out my sword and intended to bash him at the back of his head to bring him to his knees. It’s not a very brave act, to attack someone from behind, but you must understand that even then, he was some mighty adventurer while I am a lowly village guard. In a fair fight, I had no chance.
Apparently, I hit him too hard, or just right, because he went down like a sack of potatoes and didn’t get up. I looked him over, then call for our healer. When she arrived, she pronounced him dead and congratulated me.
Imagine that, being congratulated for being a murderer.
Well, we gathered his things and I sent out a report to my sergeant in the next village over, who must have forwarded it to the captain, because the next thing any of us knew, we had an entire garrison marching on us. The captain demanded to see me, and I reluctantly made my way up.
I murdered a lord’s son, I thought. They’re going to arrest me for murdering a lord’s son! There goes my career!
I hadn’t murdered a lord’s son, of course. I did something much worse.
“You killed Adam Draxon, Hero of a Thousand Lands?” the captain demanded. He looked me up and down, much like the man did, but less mocking and more incredulous.
“I never knew his name,” I managed, nearly biting my tongue in two I was stammering so bad.
“He wore the Crest of King Ellifry!” the captain said. “How could you not know?”
“Is that what it was? I thought it was a fat eagle…”
The captain and all his men stared at me for a long moment, where I was certain that time must have stopped, because it lasted an eternity.
“He was on his way to slay the vicious dragon plaguing Balewood Forest! And you killed him!”
“It was an accident!” I protested. “I was trying to arrest him.”
“Arrest him?!” The captain was apoplectic. “You were trying to arrest the Hero of a Thousand Lands? For what? What could he have possibly done to make you arrest him?!”
“He, ah, well, you see… Hm. It was like this…”
“Go on, I’m listening. I’m very eager to hear your reasoning.”
I took a deep breath. “IwasarrestinghimforkillingGrannyFairchild’schicken.”
“What?”
“He killed Granny Fairchild’s chicken,” I said again, slower. I didn’t dare look up. The captain wears some nice boots. Shiny. Tailored. “So I was arresting him.”
“You murdered Adam Draxon, Hero of a Thousand Lands, Defender of the Free People, for killing a chicken?”
“It was an accident!” I protested again. “I was just trying to… subdue… him…”
“And who, pray tell, is going to slay the dragon plaguing Balewood Forest?” the captain asked me scathingly. “You?”
“I can’t kill a dragon!” I said. I’m pretty sure I squeaked, too.
“You killed the Hero of a Thousand Lands,” he told him, sarcasm practically dripping from his voice. “You must be a mighty warrior, so a dragon can’t be too difficult a task for you.”
I stared at him in disbelief for a long moment. In that moment, I saw something. Okay, a lot of things, but mostly the one. I saw fear. Not of me, gods no. The captain was afraid. I had – accidentally or not – killed our only hope against the forces of darkness in our world. Who was going to slay the dragon? Certainly not me; I’d be lucky if I got close to the beast. And certainly not the captain. Really, there was only one person who was capable of such a feat, and he was moldering in an unmarked grave in our village cemetery.
The next few hours went by in a blur. I was given the Hero’s old things – things we had carefully packed away and inventoried to prevent theft – to protect me. I was told some of it had magic, like protection against evil and the like. It looked pretty, but ultimately worthless. What would a shiny ring do against a dragon, except make it envious and eat me for the ring?
Really, what else did I expect? If I had stayed, I would have been hanged for murder, at best. At worst, I would have been drawn and quartered in some public place while my entire family was arrested and enslaved for my crimes. In a way, the captain was saving me. This was a chance to redeem myself – albeit a very small, very dangerous, and very, very stupid chance. But it would keep me from a very public execution, which was generally better.
It’s not like the thought of chucking all of the Hero’s things the minute I got out of sight and running never occurred to me. It did. Numerous times. I thought about it as I lay awake at night. I thought about it as I heard story after story after story of the Dragon of Balewood Forest. But someone had to try, damnit. Someone had to at least try.
I never did get my gauntlet fixed.
When I had finally made it to the dragon – which, by the by, involved talking wolves and a bargain with a witch that I’m pretty sure she now regrets as you can’t exactly extract a dead person’s first born if they’ve never had children – I was tired, and hungry, and terrified out of my wits.
The mountain wasn’t as big as I pictured. It was a large hill, at most, with a shallow cave. I climbed up – a feat, I assure you, that sounds more daunting that it was. I mostly walked, and like Balewood Forest, it was a pleasant walk. And when I reached the mouth of the cave, I mustered all my meager courage to shout my challenge to the Dragon of Balewood Forest.
“H-hello?” I called out. “Anyone home?”
A roar echoed from the cave – a massive sound that had me quaking – and smoke curled out. I felt a blast of heat roll out of the cave.
“Look, I’d just like to talk for a bit,” I said. “If you have time, that is. I can come back tomorrow, if now’s not a good time for you!”
Heroic bravery at it’s finest, I tell you.
I felt an impact that was like being hit by a mountain. I thought at first it must be some sort of cave-in or avalanche, but not. Just dragon. I rolled down the hill a ways, losing the sword and shield almost instantly along with my bearings. I had barely stopped moving when a clawed paw pinned me to the ground, and I was face-to-face with a wall of long, sharp teeth and sulfuric breath.
“Adam Draxon!” the beast roared at me. “You murdered my parents! You have left me an orphan! Do you have anything to say for yourself before I kill you?”
“Um, I’m not Adam Draxon,” I said.
“What?!” the dragon screeched. It pulled back just enough to look at me with one beautiful sapphire eye. Really, if you get the chance to look at a dragon’s eyes, you should.
“I’m not, um, I’m not Adam Draxon,” I repeated. “I’m not anybody.”
The dragon pulled away, glowering at me. “You’re wearing his armor. You’re wearing his Crest!”
“I still think it looks like a fat eagle,” I muttered as I took the Crest off and tossed it aside. “Look, I know you were expecting Adam Draxon, and I’m sorry, but I’m here. So can we talk, please?”
“Where’s Adam Draxon?” the dragon demanded, arching itself up to look bigger. For all the stories I’d ever heard, the dragon was really about the size of a large draft horse. Certainly not the size of a house, like I was told. And it’s scales – while very bright – weren’t exactly what you’d call shiny.
“Um, he’s, uh… well…” How do you explain that the Hero of a Thousand Lands is dead? Especially to someone who wants to cook and eat him? “He, uh, he died.”
The dragon cocked it’s head to look at me with one eye. “Dead? You expect me to believe that the Slayer of a Dozen Dragons and Terror to the Dark is dead?”
“Yeah, I was surprised, too,” I admitted. “It was an accident.”
“Accident?” the dragon roared. “An accident?!”
“Well, how else was he going to die young?”
The dragon lowered itself and stared at me for a long, long, long time. “You don’t smell like you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“But you don’t smell like you’re telling the truth.”
“It’s… complicated.”
“Tell me.”
I took a deep breath. “I was trying to arrest him. His back was turned, and I hit him too hard with the pommel of my sword.”
“… he’s really dead?”
“He’s really dead.”
“But he killed my parents!”
I walked up and patted the dragon on it’s shoulder. “I know, I’m sorry.”
And that’s how I “defeated” the Dragon of Balewood. He told me his story, and I listened for a while, and when night fell, he invited me to stay with him. A dragon lair is surprisingly clean and comfortable, and we talked most of the night. The dragon – Lorcanthan – was in need of a permanent home. The terrorizing was merely to get Adam Draxon to his location, so he could get revenge for the murder of his parents. There was very little terrorizing, I learned, as Lorcanthan mostly showed up and bothered the horses and maybe burned a field by accident.
That morning, I decided to go to the villages around Balewood Forest. For the better part of a season, I went to each village and spoke with the people. In truth, very little actual damage occurred, and even then, it was mostly by panicking animals. The mayors and headsmen were very reluctant to speak with me about the matter, at first, but slowly listened to what I had to say.
Later, I went to Lorcanthan and had him come with me to the outskirts of Balewood, where the mayors and headmen were waiting. I helped negotiate a deal for them, between the dragon and villagers. And so the Dragon of Balewood went from plague to protector.
Really, that’s how it started.
Afterwards, I went to speak to the witch about the bargain, and she was willing to wait. Being as the bargain was struck when I was under extreme duress, I managed to talk her down to shared custody. We’ll figure out the details when I do have a child, I guess. She sent me to talk to her sister, who was across the country, about a matter involving kidnapping.
That was a horrible, horrible case, where I discovered the the Wicked Sorceress of the North was being blamed for the actions of a vile man. The less said, the better, but when I had settled that matter, word go around.
And when a Horde of Orc Barbarians led by Thorid the Bloodthirsty threatened, I was sent to deal with them. I don’t know how, exactly, it happened, because I had a few drinks with Thorid, but I ended up accidentally challenging his eldest to a duel and – purely by chance, I promise! – killed her. Which made me, by Orc law, Thorid’s heir. Somehow. And second-in-command.
When Thorid died from gangrene from an untreated injury by boar, I became the leader of the Horde of Orc Barbarians.
From there, things got complicated fast. And now I’m the Leader of the Dark Forces, and it’s the eve of war. I sent King Ellifry a letter asking that he meet with me to negotiate this matter, but I haven’t heard back yet. I’d really rather avoid the whole war thing, but honestly, when you actually sit down and listen to the Dark Forces, you learn that there’s a lot of inequality and oppression that really needs to be addressed.
And as a guard sworn to uphold the law, it’s up to me to see that it is addressed.
Never did get my gauntlet fixed.
Nice, J! Thank you =)
Tag: writing
let your character fuck up. please. let them fuck up on a scale so massive that this particular thing cannot be salvaged. let their fuck up have permanent consequences. and stoooooooooooooooop having them being the smartest person in the room who always has a sharp comeback to put their enemies down, and who always handles their enemies with grace or at least an air of superiority that s justified because they’re so cool and smart and clever™
let them bleed for their mistakes, let them MAKE those mistakes, and let that bleeding be ugly and disgraceful. let them suffer for their own mistakes, and let them suffer in knowing that they cannot fix. and let other people hate them for the shit they’ve done, and for once let the haters not be ‘petty bad people’.
Let the haters be right.
on loving the Fair
i. you will never love them any way new enough to be novelty.
they’ve been adored, adorned, admired, doted on, devoted to—they’ve had
sacrifices of life&death done in their name, do you really think your gifts
of trinkets and cream are all that impressive? you might be amusing,
temporarily entertaining, but that is your talent appeasing their vanity, not
their hearts. poems to them bolster their ego, not warm their affections to you.
your love for them will only make Taking you easier, not make them love you
back.ii. if they do love you back, know they have different
definitions for that. know they are not always nice, not always pretty, not
always safe. more look like a mouth too-full of too-sharp, dripping,
stalactites/stalagmites-not-teeth than golden warm mornings, basking in their
(many) arms. be ready for this: their obsessions are more likely to burn out
than to bloom.
on loving the human
i. they will not appreciate all your gifts, will akin them to
a cat bringing dead mice to their feet. this is fine. everything else you give,
they will find gorgeous. if you are vain enough, give them something of yours
to wear. if you are rash enough, give them something of yours to wear. they
will find it beautiful and every Other will know you’ve claimed that one. be
sure no one else, such as Not-Cat or even the crows, have done the same yet. a
human, no matter their talents, would be worth such a war. you must remember
this, if you see them keeping feathers-blacker-than-night in their
hair/pockets/pouches. you might be able to fool them from another Fair, but, if
the birds have gotten to them, there is no return. best to pick another that
can catch your attention. any of them would start pleased with that.ii. to appear human while first wooing them is best. you will
need two ears, two eyes, a nose with (only!) two nostrils, 32 teeth, 206 bones,
and about 640 muscles that do not slide or slip or slush. both halves of your
(singular) face must react together, but not mechanically, robotically,
stiffly, or in any manner similar to plastic or silicon. one side of your mouth
must not be higher or lower than the other unless it is a facial expression, of
a half-smile or frown. your eyes must not be too close together, or too far
apart, your ears must be even, the spacing of your
nose-to-eyes-to-ears-to-forehead must all be within a certain ratio. if you
must, watch a good artist space faces to see the estimate. but you must not be
too perfect, either: your teeth not too straight or too white, your nails not
too clean or pristinely cut or without variation, your skin not too
blemish-free. you need some faults in order to appear human. you must maintain solid form at all times.
still, it’s likely they’ll know, regardless. at least, they’ll probably
appreciate the effort. (remember, being seen without protection is even more
telling. keep sugar and pewter/tin/aluminum with you at all times; these will
look enough like salt and iron. it is also advisable you carry ‘offerings,’
even if you never leave them anywhere. creamer cups are most popular.)
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things that people do.
William Zinsser
(via theliteraturenerd)
(via theliteraturenerd)
You have this… friend. Really nice bloke, buys you a beer when you’re feeling down, kills the people who’ve wronged you, etc. You don’t actually know his name though.
You watch him make his way through the crowded bar, clapping seemingly random people on the back and shaking his head at others. One woman leans forward and plants an enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. He responds by spinning her to the pub’s music and releasing her with a good-natured smile.
You wonder if she knows his name.
The pint in your hand is cold and exactly what you need right now. You can’t get the image of your husband’s body lying broken on the ground out of your head. You think you should be angry or scared or sad, at the least, about his death, but all you can drudge up is a mild sense of relief.
You drink half the pint in one go and the bartender looks a little more approving of you. You’ve proven that you’re not just a well-dressed woman in her mid-thirties who’s out of her depth in this dive bar. You’re a well-dress woman in her mid-thirties who’s out of her depth in this dive bar who can drink. That makes all the difference.
You actually don’t remember when you and he became friends. You didn’t know him in high school which is where you met your husband. Ex-husband. You didn’t meet him in college either, you would remember if anyone had died then. Surely you would have?
You are no longer sure. You don’t even know his name.
You see him on the other side of the bar, talking lowly to a rough looking group in the corner. They all seem friendly, nearly worshipful, of your friend. He’s clearly asking them for something, a favor maybe, and no one seems to be denying him. They look happy, glowing under his regard.
You know the feeling.
When he comes back, he’s smiling comfortingly. “My friends will take care of the body. I know that you can’t afford the police involvement right now, not with Senator Hudson’s reelection so close.”
Somehow my boss’ seat at the table is the last thing on my mind, you almost say. But you don’t because, as usual, he’s right. Police involvement right now would be disastrous and would make it so that you never worked on the Hill again.
“You’re always looking out for me,” you say, looking down into your almost empty pint. You are actually no longer sure that that’s true. In fact, the more you think about it, the more sure you are that it’s not true.
He pauses for a moment, head cocking. “I want to look out for you. I’m happy to do it. I think there’s something else on your mind, though. Wanna talk about it?”
There is a chill working its way up your spine. it tells you that your…friend must not know that you have doubts about his ‘looking out for you.’
Writing requires discipline, but disciplined writers are not necessarily prolific. Most good work gets produced over time, sometimes many years, allowing the writer to grow with the material, to allow her world, her command over craft, and her psychological maturity to coalesce at just the right moment to produce something of value. This process often involves dreadful periods of not writing, or, worse, periods of writing very badly, embarrassingly badly. As time passes in a writing life, the writer learns not to fear these arid periods. The words come back eventually. That’s the real discipline: to train the mind and heart into believing that words come back.
…
Be willing to wait. In the meantime, write when you don’t feel like it. If you can’t write, read.
Monica Wood, The Pocket Muse (masculine pronouns changed to feminine)
I needed to hear this today.
(via savetheteaboy)
And again today.
(via one-bite-at-a-time)
(See also: the Law of Undulations)
So You Want To Save The World From Bad Representation
Stop.
Wait a minute.
Realize we can’t fill your cup for you.
Wanting to stop bad representation is all well and good. It’s noble! But just as fetishization can turn “I love this culture” into a negative because you actually love your idea of the culture, wanting to save the world from bad representation can also turn very negative.
Why? Because you want to play saviour to PoC.
We don’t need a saviour. Chances are, we’ve already written about the issue you want to write about. In your valiant effort to give accurate representation, tripping over yourself to ask what’s okay, what to avoid, how you can properly write this situation, how you can be a Good Ally and get cookies and generally stop being a White Person that’s discussed whenever PoC talk about racism… you add to the burden of emotional labour instead of detract from it.
You’re putting your own desire for immediate knowledge above everything else.
Instead of turning to Google and educating yourself, instead of going through our guides over and over again, instead of educating yourself across an extended period of time, instead of searching for authors of colour you can lift up, you want answers to your questions right now so you can stop being a White Person and just be a white person.
You won’t stop being a White Person overnight. You will not go from 0 to Passable Representation thanks to one question and one conversation. Even if we were to give you a list of what to avoid (which, honestly, our blog is a very large list of exactly that), it would still take you years of noticing your own behaviour to change.
Take for example our most recent correction: using a Chinese example when the ask was about Tibet. Despite a fair chunk of education and several posts about how much China has taken over lands that do not want to be taken over by China, that mistake was still made.
And that’s with education. That’s with knowing, intellectually, the context of China/Tibet relations. If you’re jumping in from scratch having only taken in enough racism education— enough to know you should be representing diverse cultures, not enough to know where to start— you’re going to make even worse mistakes.
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t start learning! But recognize it is a process, and that wanting to save the world isn’t a sustainable reason to educate yourself and write good representation. You probably shouldn’t jump straight into the deepest depths of representation right away.
So What Can I Do?
Write stories you think are worth telling because they’re interesting stories, not because you want to “prove” how good/interesting they are. Write stories you are curious about, instead of picking the most under-represented group you can think of. Make sure your drive is from curiosity, not white saviour. You shouldn’t be trying to prove to everyone these stories are worthwhile; you’re very likely to fall into model minority because you don’t want to show anything “bad.”
Signal boost stories PoC have already written. You are not the first person to write about an issue, and chances are authors of colour have done it better. You can use your white privilege to lift up PoC narratives, bringing them to a new audience. Look through #OwnVoices or #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a starting place. Give value to authors of colour writing about their own culture, their own world, instead of thinking the value comes from your outsider take on it.
Realize you’re going to have to start small: background characters, adding diversity to friend groups, having more than one of any ethnicity to avoid tokenism. If you do fantasy writing, start by learning about trade routes such as the Silk Road and add in references to other countries’ trade links, while also realizing “exotic trader” is a very toxic trope.
Also, realize you’re going to be in this for the long haul. If you are interested in a fully immersive story set in another culture, you’re going to be spending years, perhaps a decade, learning enough about it to do it justice.
You don’t need to ask us to get the basics (food/clothing/religion/trade relations) of a culture. We can tell when you haven’t researched it.
Writers are renowned for our research ability. How long will you spend looking up the weather in 1600s England, the process of learning how to be a swordsman, the average medical knowledge of a farmhand? The same applies to learning about PoC settings. You might be starting from scratch, but simple searches like “clothing in 1500s China”, “goods that traveled on the Silk Road”, and “Native American cities pre-contact” are starting places. It might be a little more basic because of unfamiliarity, but remember that you didn’t know stuff about Europe once upon a time.
Learn the definitions of appropriation, fetishization, and white saviour. Realize they all come from the same roots: a person’s ideas about a culture over the actual reality of the culture. Instead of assuming you know what there is to know, research to find out if you “know” a fake thing. You might “know” how horses work, but do you know the Disney version or the horseback rider version?
The research we are asking you do is the same research. It’s the same steps of searching for a particular fact and building your story based on the details you uncover. It’s not some murky waters of hard to find information— especially as the internet is ever-expanding, and sometimes a few years or even a few months down the line you discover the information has been made available (“weather in India” wasn’t a wikipedia article 12 years ago, for example).
Learn you and your ideas are secondary. The facts are first. It will take time to learn that you are secondary, because whiteness by nature puts itself first. It is not an instant process because you don’t realize how deep it runs. You will mess up. You will get corrections.
Apologize (genuinely— no “I’m sorry if I offended you”; say “I’m sorry I made this error”), admit you were wrong, and do better. Research more, take more time, maybe even edit the previous work with your new knowledge so it really sticks. This is, after all, a process!
You just have to do the work. You can’t come to us and say “how do I represent this group”, because we can’t tell you in a reply to one ask. You have to dive into the history, current situation, and culture of the people you want to represent.
You have to fill your own cup of knowledge, and willingly drink all parts of culture: sweet and bitter alike. Drink from cups we have offered you already instead of trying to build your own. You can’t just take the sweet (finding it a fantasy world) or the bitter (the trauma of racism) and think you have enough.
—WWC
I will reblog this every time it crosses my dash.
People who don’t get this infuriate me
tell me a magical story!
When the
witch says “I can make you this spell, but it will cost you your
name,” she doesn’t hesitate.Instead, she says “Which name?”
And the witch smiles. “Most aren’t so
clever as to ask. For that, I’ll let you choose which of your names
you give me.”*
“My child, my child,” says her
mother when she brought home the spell, when she heals the little
sister who was close to death. “What did you give up for this?”“Nothing I didn’t choose to give.”
*
just moving along like everyone else 