Christianity and Fallout (Part 2: Redemption Stories)

January 27, 2026January 27, 2026faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

Let’s start with a warning: if you haven’t played Fallout 4, or watched the TV show, this discussion may not make a lot of sense. I chose characters from 4 and the TV show in the expectation that the greatest amount of people were likely to have played that game, if any of them, or to have become interested because of the television program. Also, of course, spoilers for both the game and the show, so if you’re not caught up, you might want to avoid this post until you are.

The Fallout world is full of redemptions, both minor and major, amongst characters you encounter and those you only hear about. I think it would be difficult to avoid these kinds of stories–a post-apocalyptic world certainly carries the atmosphere of a fall from grace, and the struggle to survive in light of scarce resources and centralized civilization or authority begs the question of what people are and are not willing to do to others–and for what purposes.

I’m interested in examining some of those stories here, but not in some allegorical way. I don’t think you find any analogue of a sacrificial Christ in the games or the TV show (maybe there’s an argument based on your choices at the end of Fallout 3), but that’s just fine. In fiction, I’m more interested in investigations into the human experiences and struggles relative to morality and redemption than in having a symbolic retelling of the truth I already believe in (sorry, C.S. Lewis).

Hancock (Fallout 4) – The Redeemed Rogue

As one might expect for Fallout, this example’s a little ragged around the edges, as Hancock remains a somewhat questionable character given his prediliction for violence resolutions and, if you are persuaded that drug use is inherently immoral, add that to the mix. Maybe that’s why I’m starting with him: to show that, as is often the case in real life, redemptions are not black and white, and no human (or ghoul, as the case may be) becomes perfect. We do well to remember that all of our mortal heros have their moral failings.

Nevertheless, I think there’s a credible redemption story for Hancock. If you’re not familiar with Hancock’s back story, or need a refresher, here it is. Hancock was the younger brother of Mayor McDonough in Diamond City; he left Diamond City when he failed to stop his brother from expelling all of the ghouls. He became a drifter and a heavy chem user, eventually landing in Goodneighbor, a town ruled by a mobster. Hancock tried to get some of the displaced ghouls from Diamond City to take refuge in Goodneighbor, but this didn’t work out as well. The mobster in charge of Goodneighbor, Vic, ruled as a tyrant, allowing his goons to torment civilians for fun. Hancock witnessed these goons murder a fellow drifter and failed to intervene, further driving him into despair. It was this despair that drove him to take a unique chem that gave him the best high of his life and turned him into a ghoul. In conversation, he’ll tell you he’s happy he’s a ghoul now because he didn’t want to see his old face in the mirror ever again.

When Hancock came to from his bender, he was in The Old State House in Boston next to some of the clothes from the historic John Hancock–this is when he took on the name by which he is known. Returning to Goodneighbor, he organized a massacre of Vic and his goons before taking over the government of the settlement himself, where he seeks to protect those who need protecting under the maxim, “Of the people, for the people!”

In a certain sense, Hancock’s redemption has already occurred by the time you meet him. One of the reasons he chooses to accompany you in the wasteland is to avoid letting the power of his mayorship corrupt him into becoming the tyrants he finally found the strength to fight against. If you peek behind the scenes to the in-game actions that award you affinity with Hancock, it’s almost entirely about protecting the innocent or weak (with a smattering of delivering wasteland justice to those who would prey on them). His journey is not about discovering right from wrong–he knew this from the beginning. His redemption is about believing in his own agency to do something about the injustices of the world.

Hancock’s redemption is, tangentially, about the turning away from sloth. Although this category of cardinal sin formulated by the early church varied in its specific meaning from one theologian to the next, I think it’s safe to settle on two parts to the idea–particularly if we go back to the original word used, acedia. The term means either an apathy toward God and God’s desires for us or a knowledge of what is just and right but a reluctance to work for those things. As usual, I have some caveats. First, we must be careful in using this category, because there are places of significant overlap with mental health struggles, particularly depression. Second, when, as in Hancock’s case, the issue is a lack of courage or self-confidence rather than a desire to do what is just, I think we need to keep some charity in mind for the frailties of the human condition. This latter point, is exactly what I think Hancock’s “redemption” tells us.

In a game in which you play the redoubtable hero, expected to overcome any violent encounter, trap, puzzle, or ambush, the primary question is not about what you can accomplish (at least not in the long-run) but the choices that you make. Hancock stands as a reminder that that’s not the case for everyone. It’s not the case for the vast majority of us, especially when acting alone.

In the present time in the U.S., I think we can sympathize with both fear of standing up for justice and a lack of confidence in one’s ability to actually make a difference against the tide of hate, selfishness, greed, corruption and anti-democracy that has taken hold in this country. When ICE seems to be able to kill peaceful protestors with impunity, when trumped up charges are brought against political enemies and dissidents, when due process has been ignored and the rights of the people trampled upon, the danger of standing up for justice has become palpable in a way that I have never before seen in my lifetime. The dangers faced by the heros and advocates of the Civil Rights movement are the closest I can think of.

Had you asked me a decade ago, I would have foolishly thought that we (at least most of us) had moved beyond such discrimination, hatred, and exclusion as those faced by Black Americans, indigenous persons, people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and all others who have been discriminated against because of race, ethnicity, nationality, skin color, gender, sexuality, self-expression or religion. But even now, Governor Greg Abbot and his cronies raise the old canard about “Sharia law coming to the U.S.” and the pathetic assumption that any organization related to Islam must be linked to terrorism so that they may use governmental power to deprive real people of real rights that they are guaranteed under our Constitution.

Both the costs of and the need for action in the pursuit of justice are very real in this country–and undoubtedly elsewhere abroad. Hancock’s redemption is about willingness to take the risks to make change, however, small, because it is the right thing to do, despite it not being the easy or safe thing to do.

To be clear–as is hopefully obvious to those who have read much of this blog, or even the first post in this series–the analogy and example ends where Hancock uses violence to achieve his ends. Morally, I do not believe that violence and evil can be truly defeated with more violence and evil. Pragmatically, violent protest in the U.S. would feed into the narrative that those in power want us to believe about those who are standing up to the totalitarian tactics of ICE and protesting the other outrageous actions of the current government and escalate conflict in an unproductive way. I think we’ve seen that non-violent protests where the protesters accept their vulnerability (despite it not being just that they should need to do so) and that have used creative tactics rather than aggressive ones (I think of the inflatable costume protests in Portland calling to attention the utter surreality and nonsense of the beliefs and actions of anti-immigration apparatus) have been most effective.

For me, my return to this blog is in part my attempt to do something, however small, to push back for justice. It is my hope that I can help lay out a Christian theology that wholeheartedly rejects the actions of those who are doing evil in our country without rejecting the people themselves–a hard line to walk, I fully admit. But, let’s onward to continue the point of this post in particular.

Cait (Fallout 4) –

Fallout 4’s Cait is a redemption story that follows all of the usual tropes–but it’s also the one that potentially hits closest to home. Here’s the recap:

Cait was born into an abusive family that tormented her until she was 18, and then sold her into slavery. That the designers made her Irish seems a low blow and a lazy stereotype given her story. As a slave, Cait was used for the “entertainment” of the slavers, only adding to the already significant emotional trauma she must’ve experienced as a child. She eventually bought her way out of slavery, tracked down her parents, and murdered them. She then became a cage fighter and a drug addict in attempts to stave off her pain, developing the tough outer shell to protect a fragile interior that makes her believable as a character despite the stereotypes. She is also the most sexualized character, or at least the one who makes the largest number of comments with innuendo (sometimes not so subtle); for someone who has come to view relationships as transactional, this rings true.

On its surface, Cait’s companion quest is about getting clean; you’re tasked with taking her to Vault 95, which possesses a machine that can remove even her deep-set addiction. But it’s not really about that, or at least not only about that. Your assistance of her in a time of need gives her, at least in theory, someone who cares for her without expecting something in return. It’s the first non-transactional relationship she’s experienced, and it shows her something about the world that she had stopped believing was true or possible. That, experiencing love (I mean this more in the sense of philia or agape than eros, despite her being a romanceable character), is her redemption.

I admitted that Hancock’s redemption, as I argued it, wasn’t really a sort of salvific redemption. Is Cait’s? I’d argue that it is, or at least the start of one. Let’s start with what I call the “transitive property of love.” That is, if God is love, and one knows love, then one knows God. Usually, I use that as an argument that people who practice love have a share in God’s redemption whether or not they speak particular words about what they believe theologically. Here, though, let’s flip this. If a person has never known love, real love rather than affection doled out as a means to an end, have they ever known anything of God? If there is no belief in the possibility of love, can there be a possibility of belief in God? Imagine the profundity of such despair if you have not experienced it directly; there are undoubtedly those who have suffered such a fate. Now imagine that someone breaks through the armor you’ve donned to protect you from such despondence and plants the seeds in your imagination of a world full of love instead of dark. Such an experience must necessarily be transformational. A theologian or biblical scholar would call this transformation metanoia.

Cooper Howard/The Ghoul (Fallout TV)

Now we get to what I think is the most interesting example. This could be a matter of my esteem for Walton Goggins as an actor, or it could be because the more traditional narrative format makes this arc easier to see. Maybe its that we’re getting to watch it unfold in realtime. Maybe, and this is what I’ll stick with, it’s because Cooper Howard’s story–provided the writers stick the landing–has a poetry to it that sings a harmony that suits me on some level.

Before the Great War, Cooper Howard is an idealist. He’s a war hero, an American patriot, an example of the American dream, and a man of principles. We watch as his naivite sloughs off and those principles are challenged. His wife, Barb, is instrumental in his fall. First, she convinces him to star in commercials for Vault-Tec. This is already a compromise of his values, as he’s never worked in advertisements before–and admits that he’s only doing it for Vault-Tec because his wife asked him to. As Charlie Whiteknife introduces him to Moldaver, the facade of the American ideal begins to crumble. At the same time, as he learns about Barb’s role in Vault-Tec, and Vault-Tec’s own plans, any hope of returning to the good ol’ American cowboy retreats from sight.

Two examples of the “poetry” (or at least good writing) in the story here. First, when Cooper is filming the movie scene in which he reluctantly shoots the bad guy instead of arresting him, pay attention to the short speech he gives: “Feo, fuerte y formal…it means he was ugly, strong, and had dignity.” (This phrase comes from what John Wayne wanted inscribed on his tombstone, which itself creates some interesting connections we won’t explore here). This is exactly what Cooper becomes when he transitions into The Ghoul. Dignified, yes, but also morally questionable (if not deplorable, which seems to be Lucy’s point of view), having lost all of the ideals he held as a human.

Second, the conversation between Barb and Cooper in the hotel after Cooper’s meeting with Robert House. He questions whether Barb was always a monster or became one working for Vault-Tec. When he incredulously asks whether she’d kill millions, billions, of people to save her daughter, she responds by asking, accusatively, “Wouldn’t you?” He may not be operating on Barb’s scale (Eddie Izzard might comment that she must get up very early in the morning), but as The Ghoul he certainly succumbs to her logic.

Here is the arc as we have it for Howard–weltschmerz has rendered him nihilistic, amoral. Can his view of the world, and thus himself, be redeemed and returned to the man of ideals and principles he began as? It’s a classic story of “the Fall” writ large in the blood of countless raiders and wastelanders.

With the latest episode (S2, E6), Howard says his real name as The Ghoul for the first time. We’ve learned more of his history with Hank MacLean, and he’s rejected an alliance with the super mutants for the war that is coming. In the latter act, he’s shown us that he has not fully succumbed to his nihilism, and I expect that his betrayal of Lucy, subsequent defenestration, and need to be rescued will function as the low point from which he begins his redemptive climb. I’m excited to see!

In the last post in this series we’ll look at the Fallout universe’s satire and criticism of late-stage capitalism, particularly in comparison to the Gospel according to Luke.

Christianity and Fallout (Part I: Violence)

January 14, 2026January 14, 2026faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

One of my most popular posts (maybe the most popular) was a post about Christianity and the Warhammer 40k universe. I thought I might write on a similar subject with another beloved setting.

I cut my video-gaming teeth on Fallout, playing both 1 and 2 when they came out, and pining for Van Buren until it was finally cancelled. I’ve played through Fallout: Tactics, 3, New Vegas, and 4 multiple times, the non-canonical Brotherhood of Steel games (set in my home of Texas) spent more time fooling with Fallout Shelter than I ought to have, and have had my share of adventures in West Virginia (the only place I’ve lived outside of Texas, coincidentally) in Fallout 76 (although that’s been long enough I ought to go back, as there’s a lot of added content I’m haven’t played). I’ve loved the TV show so far; Walton Goggins has become one of my favorite actors (and the show has given him a character with a wide range in which he can shine), and I’m decidedly less grognardian about supposed retcons and changes to canon the show has made (I just don’t think it ultimately matters if Shady Sands was located in a slightly different place in the games than in the show, for instance). With my bona fides established, let’s talk about the setting and where it might or might not intersect with the Christian faith.

At the outset, I want to address a question that I see with some frequency on the internet: does Christianity survive in the late 23rd century of Fallout? The answer, emphatically, is “yes,” though the extent to which it does probably cannot be known. Rather than lay out the examples, I’ll point you to an article on the subject on the Fandom Fallout Wiki (which, I’m given to understand, may not be as reliable or accurate as some of the other available wikis, but it has plenty of citations from the games to make the point on this subject).

But, unlike my discussion of Warhammer 40k and Christianity, there will be fewer direct theological comparisons of in-setting ideas. Instead, Fallout provides a potential for examining Christian values in a setting that takes some of the moral dilemmas of our own world and dials them up to eleven.

If Warhammer 40k is “grimdark,” how should we categorize Fallout? Is it “grimlight?” I’d certainly argue it’s a grim setting; if you doubt that, read up on the Vault-Tec experiments in the vaults. Or consider the body horror of forced conversion into a super mutant or unexpected conversion into a ghoul. Or the things the raiders do to people for fun. Or maybe just the state of America before the Great War. Like cyberpunk settings, we daily find the ideas more prescient of the current history than is at all comfortable.

Here are a few additional examples: (1) Vault City is a slave-owning society; (2) New Reno is a hive of scum and villainy; (3) the Enclave represents the worst facets of American government and political discourse; (4) the Brotherhood of Steel, for all its initial ideals, is a fascist and intolerant organization that has deviated significantly from the spirit of its initial purpose.

But, while it’s certainly dark, there’s a lot more light in Fallout than in Warhammer 40k. There’s a lot more humor, and while “war never changes,” we’re beyond there being “only war.” Both the games and the TV show have a smattering of the comic, the satirical, and the “wacky” parts of the wasteland to balance out some of the grim and grit. But more than that, there are many examples of goodness in the Fallout world that do not exist in the same quality or quantity within Warhammer 40k. Naive as she may be, Lucy (as well as most of the other vault dwellers not in on Vault-Tec’s schemes) wants to do good. Shady Sands was a place of hope and tolerance. The NCR in general attempted to rebuild some semblance of a civil society.

These are beacons of hope in a largely corrupt world, good people fighting against the weight of the world for something better. And here is where the Fallout setting shines, I think: it doesn’t shy away from tough moral decisions and doesn’t leave decisions without their consequences. Neither do the games judge you for taking the low road and, in a fictional setting, it’s worth being able to explore the nuances of immoral or amoral behavior as a practical thought experiment or maybe just to let off some misanthropic steam–fantasy is a much better place to do that than the real world. That same factor–that Fallout is primarily encountered as a video game–is also its major weakness. If you don’t approach the game with the discipline of roleplaying a developed character encountering the Fallout world for the first time (and I don’t think most people do this or want to do this, and that’s fine), then meta-considerations creep in. Instead of asking “What is the right course of action in this situation?” or “What would my character do in this situation?” the question often becomes about the choices necessary to get the best game items. While there’s a potential investigation of amorality there, I think it largely breaks down the value of the moral quandaries that can be thought through in the Fallout world. This requires a sense of immersion.

I’ve been listening to Tom “Robots'” Fallout Lorecast the past week or so as a break from reading for school. If you just want to explore the lore of the Fallout world, I’d recommend you just follow rabbit trails on the several fan-made wikis. But what Robots does differently is that he often asks you to step into the shoes of someone in one of the Fallout situations: What would you feel and do if you were Paladin Danse upon his life-changing discovery? How would you feel and respond if you were a member of Vault X and discovered the experiment being conducted on you there? Robots’ background in philosophy comes to the fore as he uses the Fallout world to create immersive thought experiments.

It’s one of his podcast episodes that became the impetus for this post, in fact. If I remember correctly, it was his episode on Vault 3, where he discusses the naivite of the vault dwellers, their takeover by Fiends, and the philosophy of violence as necessary (with a mention of just war theory thrown in). Those of you who’ve followed the blog for a while know that the Christian ethics of violence is a topic that continues to fascinate and confound me. I think the Fallout setting is a great place in which we can look at the topic again.

If I understood him correctly, Robots’ core argument is that violence is necessary to keep evil from winning. I think that’s a commonly-held belief. Certainly, it’s the justification used by the “good guys with guns” argument in America, to which I once subscribed. But are things that simple?

Let’s except from consideration the Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel games which, by their very nature and design are fundamentally based in violence. In the true RPG Fallout games, the world seems like one in which violence is inevitable. You’re given weapons early on, and the wasteland is replete with creatures and people who unambiguously wish to do you harm. Within the genre itself, there’s an expectation that combat and violence will be aspects of the experience. There’s a whole ‘nother conversation to be had with why we often want combat and violence to be part of the games we play as a matter of interesting and high-stakes conflict, but this is a long post as it is.

If you’ve played through any of the Fallout games, did you ever consider that non-violence might be an option? I took for granted that violence would be part of my experience in every single one of the games–hopefully with me doing more of it than receiving. And yet, there are discussions and demonstrations of pacifist runs of the Fallout games all over the internet. Some people, whether through moral righteousness, creativity, or the simple love of a challenge, had the thought that they might survive the wasteland without becoming its moral victim. Until the most recent episode of the TV series (Season 2, Episode 4, “The Demon in the Snow”) and with the possible exception of her treatment of Snip-Snip, this was the journey Lucy trod. With the Ghoul as a ready foil, her character arc seems to be devoted to the question of whether one can maintain one’s values upon encountering and living in the wasteland.

Certainly, by “common” standards, much of the violence in the TV and the video games seems to be “justified.” There aren’t a lot of ways to talk a super mutant or a radscorpion out of violence, and–as with Vault 3–the raiders are an ever-present threat to those who would seek to live in the wasteland in peace and mutual cooperation. But terms like “justified,” and “just war” are often confused with “good violence” and “good war.” Is there ever really such a thing? Here’s maybe the more difficult question: is it ever acceptable to make a potentially immoral choice in favor of survival–yours or someone else’s?

Let’s take an example from Season 2 of the Fallout TV show (SPOILERS AHEAD!). Let’s look at Maximus’ killing of Xander Harkness. He does it to save lives, the lives of children no less, and in opposition to what amounts to racism. Certainly, in the moment, killing Xander and thereby preventing the murder of children is justified (and, in meta-narrative, I think the writers intended this moment to be a callback to the fact that the first Fallout games faced pushback and censorship because of the possibility of doing violence to children, but perhaps I’m reading too much into it). But every character who comments on what happened is clear that Xander’s death means war with the Commonwealth Brotherhood.

This, I think, is a good example of the theological belief I’ve come to (the argument for which must be relegated to another post) that one of the most profound messages of the Incarnation is that, on a cosmic level, evil cannot be overcome with violence or force; it can only be overcome by love. Violence begets more violence.

If we turn to very recent events in the U.S., let’s consider the violence perpetrated by I.C.E. Every tear gas cannister, every pepper-loaded gel round fired point-blank in the face of a peacefully-protesting pastor, every murder of an innocent woman, every violent arrest in violation of civil rights, every unnecessary use of force increases the likelihood that someone responds with more violence. I applaud the restraint and discipline of the many, many, peaceful protestors who have endured all of this violence without responding in kind; I believe that truly is the only way to achieve justice. If nothing else, it makes clear who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are, and both the rest of America and the world are watching.

Not only is the response of non-violent protest the moral one, but it’s also the practical one. Should someone respond violently to I.C.E., our government will use that incident, no matter how limited, to justify the deployment of greater violence against the populace. Which will engender more violence from the populace. So on and so forth. When Ron Perlman’s gravely voice opens the early Fallout games with the now emblematic “War…war never changes.” This is what he means. Violence only begets more violence, one war only sets up the conditions from the next. It’s only when we choose non-violent resolutions that we truly move toward the peaceful world God wants from us, where no one “studies war anymore.”

But the brilliance of Fallout as moral thought-experiment is that it does not simply leave us with satire of the violence in human nature. Let’s consider Vault 3 again. Even accepting my argument that, at the level of eternal redemption, on non-violence drives out evil, the question remains of whether violence is necessary, acceptable, perhaps even “good” to buy some time for love to win out. Put another way, if we have to choose between the naive but generally moral vault-dwellers to survive or the violent, immoral, and–we’re tempted to say despite not knowing the truth of the statement–irredeemable raiders, is it moral to allow the raiders to kill the vault-dwellers?

The question may perhaps be boiled down to this: do we prioritize the possible redemption of the raiders over the current moral superiority (in a general sense, of course) of the vault-dwellers? The knee-jerk response is an easy one. Theologically, though, the question is extremely complex.

Our soteriology frames the question. If we believe that the only possible salvation comes through the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, there isn’t a salvific calculus here: those who believe in Jesus are saved and those who do not are not, and that’s that, no matter who kills whom. But if we’re willing to consider a God who is more compassionate and less arbitrary than that (particularly in a world where the raiders may never have had an opportunity to hear the Gospel, depending on how things played out for them), the question is more complicated. And, if we consider the morality as a separate (but still theological) question from salvation, we cannot escape some sort of judgment at all.

Let’s work through this. If, arguendo, God redeems those who know and practice love in addition to those who have faith in Jesus as God¹, we have to look more closely at the original question.

One might argue that, if one is assured of their own salvation and God’s promise of eternal, abundant, life, the determination of a need to kill someone else, however bad that person may be, to survive, is a rejection of faith in God’s ultimate justice. That, I think is where all of the complexities enter in. If moral questions prioritize this life over belief in eternal existence, then the idea of “just war” and “just violence” is easier to come to. But, if we believe in eternal life and cosmic justice over temporal concerns, what does it matter if someone assured of their eternal life is unjustly murdered by an immoral person? Faith in God’s promises is vastly more important. This idea lies behind the actions of the martyrs. What if God’s idea of justice is not about people “getting what they deserve?” I’ll argue that its not in another upcoming post, but even without those arguments, the sacrificial salvation through Christ of undeserving mortals seems to discount a cosmic justice as a matter of dessert.

And yet, if we’re called to make this world like the Kingdom of God (I need to discuss alternatives to this phrasing in a separate post and soon), doesn’t that include protecting the innocent against the iniquities of predators? Is there a sort of “double justice” we must try to pursue simultaneously–a “worldly” or “temporal” justice and a cosmic and eternal justice? How would we balance such an idea?

There is no easy answer. In this life, we have to weigh the possibilities and do the best we can, never knowing until we’re face to face with our Creator whether we did the right thing. We can say that violence is never the best or righteous act while acknowledging that, in a fallen world, it may sometimes be the lesser of two evils. But it’s also possible to reject that position in favor of unflinching pacifism. We might believe, as Aasimov tells us in Foundation, that “violence…is the last refuge of the incompetent;” that we only ever choose violence because it’s the easier option, never the better one.

Fallout as the best fiction does, gives you space to consider the possibilities, not with a heavy-handed resolution in view, but as a thought experiment to help you determine where you might best position your belief. Fallout unflinchingly gives us views of the best and the worst of humanity, it acknowledges both the baseness and sublimity of human nature, just as life does. It reminds me of a quotation from beloved Christian author Frederick Buechner: “Here is the world. Beautiful things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I [God] am with you.”

I’d hoped to make this a single post, but my loquaciousness again gets the better of me. Two more posts on Christianity in Fallout will be forthcoming: one about the many examples of the journey to redemption that Fallout gives us, and one about the meek and the powerful, particularly with reference to late-stage capitalism.

For those who read this sentence and assumed we’re falling into a works-based or “Pelagian” idea of salvation, I disagree. There are several ways to get to my point. We might use simple logic through the transitive principle: If we accept the doctrine of the Trinity, then Jesus is God. If God is love, and those who believe in Jesus are saved, then those who believe in love are saved. We might also argue that the knowledge of Jesus as God and Savior is itself a transformative vehicle through which one achieves the totality of salvation, but if it is the transformation and not only the knowledge of God that is operative here (with Jesus being the clearest and most direct way to transformation, I’d argue) then the soteriological question remains complicated and mysterious in ways that should give us pause in going beyond attempting to “work out [our] own salvation through fear and trembling.” Yes, in making the argument above, I’m doing just the opposite, but this is one of the reasons I think we ought to hope for, if not definitively believe in, as expansive a view of salvation as possible–while perhaps holding in tension that God respects our free will and independence so much as to never force anyone into the acceptance of salvation. ↩︎

Writing Is Magic

September 28, 2022faithfictionfatherhood 1 Comment

Writing is the closest thing we have to magic in this world.

It is necromancy; through it, the dead speak to us.

It is the transmutation of alchemy; through it, minds and lives are forever changed.

It is enchantment; with words we shape our world.

It is divination; by writing, we understand the past and sift through the skeins of possibility and probability for the future.

It is the apotropaic talisman; through words we inure ourselves to falsehoods and lies.

It is evocation; through words we summon spirits from the aether itself.

It is goetia; through words we bind our demons.

It is theurgy; in creation we mimic our Creator.

If you long for a world in which there is more magic, write.

Let’s Talk About Midnight Mass

November 1, 2021November 3, 2021faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

[THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW! IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING, STOP NOW. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!]

K and I recently finished Midnight Mass on Netflix. I enjoyed it–this time of year I’m always in the mood for some horror fiction and there’s a lot out there that just isn’t good (I also recently watched Gretel & Hansel, which was mildly interesting but really just doesn’t merit a post).

Much has already been said about the series’ approach to religion, but rather than respond to the thoughts of others (many of which I’ve found cogent and insightful even where I may not agree with them), I thought I’d write my own instead.

Communion and Vampirism

Let’s first address the elephant in the room, shall we? Midnight Mass is certainly not the only piece of fiction to have made an association between vampirism and Communion. The Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game played with this idea and Biblical legend has perhaps always played a part in the various cultural ideas of vampirism–after all, if you have a Christian worldview and also believe in the existence of vampires (as was somewhat broadly the case almost to the 20th century and still has its holdouts) you have to figure out how the two ideas mesh. Various possibilities have been put forth in religious folklore–Cain, Lilith, etc.

The accusation that the “love feasts” of early Christians involved the literal eating of flesh was made by the Romans (probably either in cynical propaganda or credulous misunderstandings of the new religion’s rites), but Christianity doesn’t stand alone in this regard–the “blood libel” against the Jews throughout the medieval period represents a much more serious and lasting accusation than that against Christians. If you’re unfamiliar, the “blood libel” is a long-running tradition of belief that Jews were actually eating Christian babies and children, or at least killing them and using their blood. It shouldn’t need to be said but: this was an outright anti-Semitic lie perpetuated out of a cultural need for a culpable “other” and justification for pogroms against and the exile of Jews that had financial motivations as much as socio-religious ones.

For purposes of this post, though, I’m less interested in historical beliefs and more interested in the seemingly-natural association humans seem to draw between Communion and vampirism. In other words: what does it mean to “eat the body of Christ” and “drink the blood of Christ?” This will not be a thorough discussion of the theologies of Communion, but rather some general thoughts on the matter.

The first question raised, of course, is whether the terms are intended to be literal or figurative. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation takes the meaning literally–and this, of course, is part of the reason that Midnight Mass works with Catholic liturgy and theology in a way that just wouldn’t track the same for a Protestant theology holding that the meaning of Communion is symbolic and commemorative.

The doctrine of transubstantiation is a difficult one at best. On the one hand, that means a direct confrontation with the belief that you are literally eating your Savior (and the necessary follow-up question of “why?”). On the other, this creates the additional problem of what happens to the body of Christ once you’ve ingested it, requiring a doctrine of “untransubstantiation,” because it would be improper to defecate your Lord and Savior. Yes, that’s funny, and I giggle, too, but it’s the sort of corner that theology can back itself into sometimes. I am less inclined to believe that this is a matter of the foolishness of early theologians and more inclined to believe that it simply a matter of the limitations of the human mind as it struggles with divine mystery. There’s just really no way to definitively determine the question of transubstantiation, so doctrine on the subject must be based on other theological assumptions rather than logic applied to the question itself.

As a Methodist, I belong to a tradition that denies transubstantiation and views it as a sacrament, but one that serves as reminder for grace and divine action rather than a regular miracle. Maybe that sits well with me because of my own skepticism (where, of course, skepticism is the exercise of intellectual analysis before coming to a conclusion rather than taking an answer entirely on faith–or, conversely, denying a possibility outright). This is because I think that the metaphor of Communion is two-fold: on the side of the supplicant, the metaphor is one of spiritual sustenance embodied in reference to literal sustenance. Jesus states in the Gospels that he is the source of the living water, and that he is the bread of life, but we do not take these statements to mean, literally, that Jesus was made of water or of bread. Nevertheless, the meaning is clear–God is sustainer of all things, whether that’s the coherence of reality itself or the strength of the individual soul.

The metaphor on Christ’s side–body and blood–serves as a metaphor for sacrifice. “No greater love has a man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Does that qualify as a mixed metaphor? Maybe, but I’d chalk it up to Chesterton’s argument that Christianity overcomes “problems” of contradiction by “combining furious opposites, keeping them both, and keeping them furious.” Hence, perhaps, the love of some Christian theologians for “both/and” as the answer to apparent contradictions.

If we view Communion in this light, the comparison to vampirism breaks down immediately. There is no predation or consumption on or of one party by the other, but two different ways of looking at the meaning of the same event, both of which are simultaneously true if not directly compatible. For me, personally, this is where I find the argument for a commemorative Communion more convincing than the argument for transubstantiation; not in the rejection of the possibility of miracle but in preference of the meaning that most fits with my understanding of Christianity as a whole.

None of this is to discount the possibility of a personal, existential and mystical encounter with God through the act and ritual of Communion, regardless of your theological view of the sacrament.

Critique of Religion

Much has been made of the character of Bev Keane as vehicle for much critique of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Rightly so, she is the main villain and a truly horrible person. But, I’d argue (as others have done) that the critique demonstrated by her character is not a critique of religion itself, but of the use of religion–and equally applicable to the misuse of any philosophy or system of belief adhered to without any doubt or humility. That could just as easily be aggressive atheism, materialist science, the social-Darwinism tenets of neo-capitalism, political beliefs or, in a slightly less dangerous and much more amusing version, fandom.

It is not the substantive belief (i.e. Christianity) that makes Bev Keane evil. The story provides Christian characters antithetical to such a reading. Think in particular of Annie Flynn, who first offers a verbal rebuke (from the lens of Christianity) to Bev Keane and then lays down her life for the benefit of others in that ultimate expression of love meant to counterbalance the evil Keane has worked. If you want to argue that the fact that Annie doesn’t actually die undercuts her sacrifice, I have two responses. First, there are some consequences that are worse than death–especially to a Christian who believes in the promise of eternal life. Becoming whatever she became after she transitioned into undeath would not have been a welcome prospect. Second, that does not undo the terror that must be overcome to willingly slit one’s own throat and experience what followed.

Instead, there are two possibilities for explaining Bev Keane’s evil, and both are both infuriating and ubiquitous in humanity. The first possibility is that her position and the use of her faith serves only to fulfill those petty desires of the small-minded: something to control, something to feel superior to, something to set you apart for special praise. The second is that she has allowed her convictions to stand in the way of her compassion. This is the behavior that causes Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees so many times in the Gospels, to call them “white-washed sepulchers.”

I would argue that all genuine faith (regardless of creed or theology) must begin from a place of humility and an acceptance of love for others as the deciding factor in all moral questions. It is humility that keeps us from the surety and pride in our own ideas that allows them to justify hurting others in the interests of “purity of doctrine.” It is love that guides us not to hurt others for our own gain. That Jesus demonstrates these points time and time again is one of the most convincing aspects of Christianity to me, personally. At the same time, regardless of doctrine, I cannot conceive of a good God who would not appreciate a person who follows these practices, regardless of the specifics of their theology.

Erin Greene’s Speech

Here’s the problem that I have with the narrative and the arguments it makes: Erin Greene’s “I am that I am” death speech. Now, to be complete forthright and honest, I’m biased against the argument made by this speech in the first place, so take it as you will (which may be not at all). Here’s a transcript of the monologue so that it is fresh before you:

“Speaking for myself? Myself. My self. That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the whole thing. That word: self. That’s not the word, that’s not right, that isn’t — that isn’t. How did I forget that? When did I forget that? The body stops a cell at a time, but the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightning bolts, like fireworks inside, and I thought I’d despair or feel afraid, but I don’t feel any of that. None of it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy in this moment. Remembering. Of course. I remember that every atom in my body was forged in a star. This matter, this body, is mostly just empty space after all, and solid matter?

It’s just energy vibrating very slowly and there is no me. There never was. The electrons of my body mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air I’m no longer breathing. And I remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy. Not memory. Not self. My name, my personality, my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after, and everything else is pictures picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets printed on the tissue of my dying brain.

And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy fighting the neurons. And I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. It’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been a part. All things, a part. All of us, a part. You, me, and my little girl, and my mother, and my father, everyone who’s ever been. Every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on the beach.

That’s what we’re talking about when we say God. The one. The cosmos, and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time. But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this split second, in the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again and again and again and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”

The first thing I take issue with is that the speech exists at all. If you’re going to spend an entire series deconstructing religion and the problems that arise within it, I find it disingenuous to substitute your own argument for cosmological truth in the final act–it just makes everything that came before a strawman for knocking down, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand to lend strength to a belief about fundamental reality just as unprovable as the ones you’ve spent the rest of the story questioning. Given that the rest of the narrative raises questions about how we judge the leaps of faith we willingly make–or are called to make by others–trying to answer the question only cheapens it. The more honest approach is to leave the question open: we don’t know for sure what ultimate reality is or what happens when we die, no matter how deeply we believe in the answer provided by one faith or another, so let’s start from a place of compassion towards others and humility in our understanding of self.

For this same reason, this speech is entirely unnecessary and overreaches. The only satisfying answer that we find in the questions raised by the story lie within our lived lives, not our expectations of the afterlife. How our faith causes is to treat people in the here and now is the primary focus of any theological argument made by the show, so why suddenly go beyond that?

[Aside: I’d also note that this is the same focus that Jesus takes in the Gospels–he spends much less time (but not none) discussing the nature of the afterlife or resurrection, because (I think) however God has (or has not) structured any life to come, anything more than the hope of it is a distraction from the lives we lead now. Jesus has much more to say on how we ought to conduct ourselves in our present lives; I’d argue the central theme of his teachings is a revelation of how creation operates (or should operate) so that we can use that knowledge now.]

Here’s where, if the approach taken by Erin’s speech appeals to you, you may really want to leave off. I think it’s only fair to deconstruct that argument about the nature of reality in the same way the show does for other religious ideas. Here we go.

The speech begins with a denial that the self exists, but continues to speak in the first person. This is a problem that I have with any theological argument that asserts that denial of the self and re-assimilation to an undifferentiated whole is the purpose or end of existence. First, because this is, effectively, death. If you do not believe in an afterlife, that’s fine, this concept will work for you. But it is incompatible with the idea that we continue to exist after the assimilating event, you are, by necessity, a self.

More important, if you are arguing that the self is only an illusion (as does Greene in her monologue, as do some forms of Buddhism), who is making the argument? You have no internal consistency when you argue that there is no true thing as self and then make a bunch of statements as assertions made by yourself. This is the same problem with the materialist arguments that “there is no self, there is only the illusion of self because consciousness is an unfunctioning byproduct of firing neurons” (something that Green alludes to herself) or that we lack free will because “we’re just bags of chemicals.”

Erin’s cosmology leads to nothing morally superior to Christianity or any other philosophy or theology–it is not exempt from being misused. If I am everything and everything is me, I can justify doing whatever I want for my own power, because it’s all me anyway. If my actions only hurt myself, there is no one but me who can truly complain about anything I do, even if it seems to hurt part of me–I have the right to hurt myself as an autonomous being. Bev Keane could find ways to work with this kind of solipsism with no more difficulty than she justifies herself through Christianity.

I’m going to sidestep the hubris of decided that one is God, not to mention the absurdity of denying the existence self and then claiming such an expansive definition of self.

That said, I do believe that this philosophy is particularly apt for a horror story…if the point of the philosophy is existential terror. Really think about what Erin is arguing about her existence–she continually “forgets” and believes that she’s a self, has experiences, comes to find out she’s not a self and it has only been a “dream,” then forgets that dream and goes through the process ad infinitum. This is a cycle of believing that there is meaning in existence and then finding that there is none. It is a masturbatory universe playing with itself because there’s nothing else to do. Without variety, without self, without memory, without relationship, where can meaning be found?

Between Riley Flynn and Erin, what I really see motivating their beliefs is a desire for oblivion, a desire for the end of suffering. That’s understandable from a certain perspective; given enough suffering, the will to continue to exist in the face of pain and despair will eventually abate. I’d like to say I think of the Book of Job when I think of this, but really I think of the narrator in Fight Club: “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” This is a desire for escape, a desire simply to stop suffering. Given Riley and Erin’s experiences in life, I see why such a belief would be appealing. And maybe that’s all we get at the end of life, a ceasing to exist that alleviates all pain–but that also denies any of the joys of existence. I have only my faith to say otherwise.

But that is, in fact, part of why I have faith. I want to believe that there is an ultimate meaning to existence, that we exist in the creation of an omnipotent and beneficent God who wants the highest joy for each of us when all is said and done in this world. No joy that ends can be the highest joy, so it stands to reason that eternal life is necessary (though not sufficient) to the abundant life Jesus promises us. Instead of having a hope to one day escape the bad, I would rather have something more–a hope for being complete in the good.

That faith and hope makes me a better person. Yes, it helps me to suffer more patiently. Yes, it helps me to be generally happier. But it also helps me to strive to create meaning, in both life and art. It helps me to love others and to push for that abundant life here and now (what, after all, is eternity but an unending “now?”). It helps me to do good. This kind of faith isn’t a crutch; it’s a ladder.

It’s possible that Erin’s explanation of reality is the correct one; I lack the knowledge and experience to say anything conclusive on the matter. But I also see no reason, theological or practical, to live one’s life with such a belief. I, for one, will continue to set my faith on something higher.

Conclusions

If you watched this show and felt that it singled out Christianity for special treatment (I think there’s an argument that it went softer on Islam, but it’s also true that that may only be a matter of space in the story and the fact that it is Monsignor Pruitt and his church that is the focus), I’d ask you to ask why you think that is. There is, as I’ve mentioned above, the strange relationship between Communion and vampirism. But I’d argue that that’s not it. Instead, I’d argue that this is a matter of the times in which we find ourselves and of the nature of American Christianity (painted unfairly in the broadest possible brush, of course).

In the past few years, we’ve had conservative Christians call Obama the antichrist, act as if Trump were the Second Coming (a thought so antithetical to me that I have a physical reaction upon writing it), call the Covid-19 vaccine a sign of the End Times, use their faith as an excuse for not showing compassion to their fellow man (again with the vaccine, and I’ve written previously about the use of faith as an excuse given by child placing agencies to discriminate within the Texas foster and adoptive care systems) to support fascism undercurrents and spread lies about our government, to make arguments against equality, and so on and so on. The litany of offenses would be a long one indeed, and this is nothing new.

Given these stances and their affect on believers and non-believers alike, they should be subject to scrutiny and criticism. It should be a matter for every honest believer, regardless of their specific beliefs, to introspectively question the rightness of their theological positions as a matter of a desire to truly live faithfully–entrenched tradition and interpretations of doctrine originating in very different historical contexts should be especially subject to this process. Not because we have changed for the better, necessarily, but because the interpretations that arose in one context may be influenced by that context just as ours affects our interpretation. The argument that progressive Christians are trying to “change the Bible” because of changes in culture is a willful ignorance that all interpretation is subject to human limitation and the influence of culture on the mind. By having a greater diversity of interpretations, we may be able to make comparisons and weigh arguments to find something closer to the truth.

Those who’ve read my blog for a while know that one of the primary focuses in my religious writing is to argue against the fundamentalist and conservative interpretations of Christianity that I believe grossly miss the meaning of the faith–and create barriers to others in considering what true Christianity is about by creating an image of the faith that is repulsive to those who feel that compassion and love, not fear and hatred, is the message of a good God, regardless of the specific faith. In that sense, Midnight Mass makes a strong and valuable point–we have a moral obligation to consider whether our religious beliefs lead to good things or bad, lead us to make the world better or to make it worse. When it’s the latter, is it really fair to resort to divine mandate theory–that because God said it it’s true and moral? Or should we believe in a God that does not ask us to hurt others for vainglory?

Blood Over Gold

February 27, 2021faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

[The short story below is the one I submitted to two magazines for potential publication earlier this week. Both responses were rejections, but not dishearteningly so. The first response was expected within 24 hours and came very quickly. The second magazine I submitted to also responded within 24 hours, despite a listed typical response time of weeks. This response included feedback–which pointed to a weakness in the story that I was aware of prior to submission–but was overall encouraging. I found this especially so because this piece wasn’t written with publication in a fiction magazine in mind; it was composed to provide a narrative look at the operation of shadowmen in the city of Iliessa in the Avar Narn setting as part of my worldbuilding and “setting bible project” on WorldAnvil.com (available here). Submitting this work for publication was more important (to me) for the act of starting the process and getting familiar with it more than publishing this particular story. Rather than rewrite this story into something it was never intended to be for additional submissions, I’ve decided to post it here for your enjoyment. I’m already working on another short story that I believe will be better suited for submission and (maybe) publication.]

Aramo grunted. Fontana pulled the tourniquet tight around his thigh. She clamped it with a rough iron clip. His nurse then grabbed the shaft of the repeater crossbow bolt lodged in the meat below the binding. The cart jumped as it hit an uneven cobblestone. The shaft shifted in Fontana’s hands, the metal tip tearing a new path in Aramo’s flesh. A wave of pain washed over him; he grumbled his responsive expletives through clenched teeth.

Fontana’s face contorted with sympathetic hurt. “Sorry!” she told him. “Try and keep her steady!” she yelled to Zerisi, their driver. Everyone’s ears rang, deafened by the musket fire Roran and Temas volleyed at their pursuers. Nellen reloaded for the two, trading spent muskets for fresh ones. Zerisi said nothing.

More repeater bolts from the pursuing House agents tinked off nearby walls on either side of the alley, careening back toward the crew at odd and harmless angles. The return fire proved just as inaccurate, filling the air with the smoke and fire of empty threats.

Their pursuers’ horses foamed at the mouth, struggling at the bit, stamping closer with the clitter-clack of horseshoes on stone.

“Piss off!” Temas yelled, the blast of his musket swallowing the words whole. He gripped the weapon too tightly, braced in expectation of receiving a biting bolt like the one that had struck his friend. He tossed the spent firearm into the cart’s bed next to Nellen; the squat man’s lips moved with unheard curses as he fumbled with the matchcord of another arquebus.

Roran threw a quick glance to Aramo’s wound, gritting his teeth as if it were his own. Anger sped the next bark of his firearm. He cursed again as he traded with Nellen, another miss only driving home the impotence he felt.

The House agents proved adept riders, managing their mounts only with their legs, their arms aiming more pointed death.

The cart took a sudden turn down a side path. The passengers shifted and swayed to one side, Roran dropping the loaded musket over the side and grasping at the railing to keep his bulky Rukhosi body from toppling headfirst after it.

As soon as they’d steadied, Fontana returned her hand to the repeater bolt, this time yanking it quickly and without hesitation. Air burst through Aramo’s lips as blood spilled from the wound, the tourniquet struggling against the flow. She pulled a small phial from her belt, using her teeth to pull the cork free of the top before spitting it over the cart’s side.

She hesitated with a grimace, knowing what came next. They’d all been in Aramo’s position at one time or another. They’d always pulled through. But that thought didn’t ease the experience of it. Roran leaned over and pushed Aramo down against the cart’s rough boards, holding him steady. Before Aramo could object, Fontana poured the contents into Aramo’s wound.

He spasmed with the pain. Nellen and Temas left their other tasks to hold him down. Every nerve in the bloody crevice flared back to life at once, sending signals through his brain that carried every excruciating detail of the flesh knitting itself back together.

The ordeal concluded, Fontana unclipped the tourniquet. “Good as new,” she said.

Aramo forced a weak smile, beads of sweat gathered at his brow and cheeks. “Do we have it?”

Nellen smiled, pulling back his cloak with thin, long Ilmarin fingers. The flash of burnished metal peeked from his satchel. “We got it,” he said, triumphant. Aramo patted him on the leg, a feeble but fatherly motion.

“That was a lot of blood back there,” Temas warned. “Will they be able to track us?”

“I threw the powder you made where I could, just like you said. Between that and the wards, we should be fine, right?” Aramo said, feigning returning strength. The firing of matchlocks had subsided, and the pursuing House agents had exhausted their ammunition as well, making conversation easier. The crew trusted Zerisi to do her job, and to do it well—they had no other choice, anyway. Her daring turns and sudden sidestreets had lengthened the gap between them and their pursuers.

“It’s worked well enough in the past,” Temas admitted. “We’ll hope it keeps up. Finding someone by sympathy isn’t an easy thing to begin with.”

The cart bumped along on the Upper City streets, between nobles’ townhouses and merchant family compounds, minor bureaucratic offices, laudatory statutes to the long dead, and all the other gaudiness enjoyed by the wealthy.

Fontana pulled a length of bandage from one of her pouches, looking to a cut on Roran’s arm. He waved her off, saying, “It’s a scratch. Don’t worry about it.” The others had been bruised and battered during their fighting escape, but Aramo had taken the worst of the injuries,. Behind them, they could no longer see the House agents or their horses.

“We’re clear,” Aramo called softly to Zerisi, who nodded without looking back. The cart’s horses slowed from the breakneck pace, still moving briskly. The cobblestones came gentler now. Not gentle, but gentler.

Adrenaline faded as the danger subsided, and irrepressible grins shone on each of the crew’s faces. It hadn’t been as clean as they’d preferred, but they’d survived. A job against House Meradhvor’s embassy in Iliessa, no less. Silent, self-congratulatory stupor set in as Zerisi directed them to a quiet courtyard between lavish estates, where an enclosed carriage, not the slapdash cart they’d arrived in, awaited them.

While Zerisi untethered the horses from the cart and transferred them to the carriage’s yokes, Roran and Temas collected jars of lamp oil they’d left behind some old shipping crates, dousing the cart with the odoriferous liquid inside. Nellen wrapped a length of matchcord around the cart’s railing, clenching a striker until the sparks lit the dangling fuse.

Zerisi turned her cloak inside out, a dark navy replacing the mottled brown on the other side. She wrapped it about herself and climbed onto the carriage’s driver’s bench. Aramo knocked on the wagon’s side when the rest of the crew had taken their seats; the driver clicked at her sweaty horses, urging them into a begrudging walk.

As the vehicle left by a side alleyway, a pillar of grey-black smoke rose behind them. From any distance, it seemed just another fireplace in a neighborhood of homes full of such comforts. Blocked by the surrounding buildings, each of them three stories tall at least, no Meradhvor agent would be alerted to the burning cart’s location.

Now came the true test. The carriage’s occupants leaned back, let the shadows of the interior corners conceal them. By now, Meradhvor had raised the hue and cry. Not only had they dispatched those agents and guardsmen they had available to scour the Upper City for fleeing bandits, but they’d no doubt recruited the watch to search out the shadowmen as well.

Tension returned to the crew as the wagon slowly made its way to one of the lifts between the Upper and Lower Cities of Iliessa. Once they’d returned from these lofty bastions, they’d have the huddling masses of the working classes to mask them, the haphazard and crowded pathways of the City Below to hide them. Until then, any wayward eye, any suspicious glance, could be enough to renew the chase. They could not afford the attire that would mark them as ones who belonged to the Upper City—Roran and Nellen would stand out as unlikely inhabitants anyway. And then there was the small matter of the sundry weapons they’d festooned themselves with: matchlock or wheelock pistols, blades of all size and manner, the occasional mace or hammer for dealing with armored House guards, grenadoes and those alchemical concoctions they could source and afford. No disguising the ill intent on them. Even in the Lower City they’d draw attention and suspicion arrayed as they were.

But their Wyrgeas proved good this night, and they made their way to the lifts without incident. Zerisi slid a swan into the liftworker’s palm, far more than the cost of the journey, and he nodded his understanding. His family would eat well that month; he’d never had a magnate of the City tip so handsomely.

The other attendants hastily hammered wedges underneath the carriage’s wheels to keep them from moving during the long descent. The initial lurch of the lift, really a short, sharp fall of a few inches, pushed the crew’s stomachs toward their throats. But the sensation subsided quickly, and the steady downward crawl of the lift became pleasant. From the carriage, Aramo examined the side of Cloudcatcher Tor as it scrolled upward, scrutinizing every patch of weathered Aenyr stone or more recent patchwork that he could before it disappeared, wondering who the now faceless figures carved into the niches and alcoves of the structure had once signified.

His fellows passed a bottle of rotgut, artificially calming their nerves. They complemented one another for their meritorious actions during the heist, when one saved the other from certain doom or another’s quick thinking prevented disaster for the lot of them. Laughing and smiles had seized them, and for this moment, nothing outside the carriage existed. You can’t stare down the cold ruthlessness of the Artificer Houses and not come to love the ones who stand with you. And this wasn’t their first job. Far from it.

Finally, the platform settled upon the Avar with a bump, like a stair met more quickly than expected. The lower lift attendants removed the wheel-blocks and Zerisi set the carriage moving without hesitation.

The crew traveled more slowly through the Lower City, both out of a sense of newfound safety and out of necessity—the alleyways of the Upper City were as broad thoroughfares in the Lower. Some of the narrower passages obliged Zerisi to stop the horses and wait for pedestrians to duck into the doorways of homes or any other alcove at hand to avoid the carriage crushing them as it passed.

The crew made their way into the heart of The Scraps and its piles of dilapidated tenement buildings, each four or five stories high, many of them leaning against one another like comrades after a night of heavy drinking, framing timbers always somehow damp. Wastewater and piss moistened the cobbles below. Shallow stone trenches had once run on either side of the street, directing such filth away from passersby’s feet, but that had been centuries past, when people of means lived in this place, waiting for the towers to be restored and the Upper City to welcome them to a grandeur separated from the rough folk below. Nightsoil had filled those drainage runs long since, and little weeds, defiant in their very existence amongst the cobbles, grew from the nutrients left behind. It reminded Zerisi of her crew: born in shit but still green with life, beautiful in an oft-ignored way.

A squat, sprawling tavern building, constructed of fieldstone rather than wood—though as poorly maintained as the rest of the neighborhood—had been erected in the ruins of several apartment buildings that burnt several decades past. The Proud Pig, refuge of the Scraps. Here, Zerisi brought the carriage to a stop.

The tavern had no stables, but neither did a stolen carriage need to be left in one place for too long. A man in a wide-brimmed hat, chair leaned back against the tavern wall in the shadow of its larger upper story, looked up from his drink to the new arrivals. He caught Aramo’s eye and ran his finger along the brim of his hat. The shadowman responded by touching a finger to his temple, not particularly returning the fence’s gaze.

The other man nodded; Aramo and his crew returned to the narrow street to make the rest of the way home on foot. The man in the hat, or his lackeys, would sell the horses, repaint the carriage, and press it into service elsewhere in the city, splitting the income from the transactions with the crew.

Avoiding any inopportune run-in with the city guard by keeping to lesser-used snickelways in the poorer districts, the crew made the long journey to their safehouse in Bywater, a brick building once used as a warehouse and nestled in the shadow of the Great Aqueduct. Only once they had crossed the threshold into that place did they truly let down their guard.

Each member of the crew first went to his or her own personal space, sorting and putting away weapons, removing pieces of concealed armor, changing into more comfortable clothes. One by one, they reconvened at the uneven wooden table where they planned their heists, shared their meals, played their games, drank and sang.

Fontana lit the planks waiting quietly in what had once been a small forge; they’d converted it into a cooktop by suspending a sheet of heavy iron over it on chains. As the flames grew, she placed a pot of water on the slab to boil, grabbing a handful of coffee beans and throwing them in a mortar. She turned to the center of the building, idly grinding the beans into powder with the pestle.

Temas carefully inspected the obfuscatory wards, the crew’s sole defense against scrying eyes. He took his time, checking for any smudge, and alterations in the carefully-painted mixture of ash and oil. Satisfied, he, too, joined the others.

Nellen pulled the Artifact from his satchel and placed it delicately in the center of the table for all to see.

A sphere, bronze in color and elaborately etched in clean, sharp lines forming unfamiliar symbols and miniature scenes that could not be deciphered at distance, rolled across the planks before settling into a gap between two of them.

“What is it?” Roran asked.

“Does it have a sympathy?” Aramo followed, pulling back the scraps of cloth that served as curtains for one of the building’s few windows and checking the street outside.

Temas stepped forward and lifted the Artifact to his face. His eyes glazed over as he invoked the Sight, searching their prize for signs of arcane tracking. After only a few seconds, he stumbled backward, Roran catching him with a powerful arm and Fontana nimbly seizing the Artifact from the air before it clattered to the dirt floor.

Shaking his head, Temas recovered his feet, bracing himself against the table’s edge. “No sympathies,” he said. “It’s not House Artifice. It’s older…Aenyr.”

Nellen stepped closer, cocking his head at an angle as he examined the sphere cupped in Fontana’s hands. “What’s it for?” he asked.

“No idea,” Temas responded, using both hands, fingers and thumbs formed into pincers, to take the object from Fontana and return it to the gap between the table’s boards so that all could see its glory. “But it’s got to be worth a fortune. Way more than we’re being paid for this job.”

“You thinking we sell it to someone else?” Zerisi asked, crossing her arms below a relaxed expression.

“Nellen, you know anyone in the Grey Markets who could find us a buyer?” Temas asked.

The short man shook a long finger at his compatriot. “What? Because I’m Ilmarin, you think I know every Grey Artificer in the city? You’re natural born; do you know every slovenly beggar in the Twists? Every whore in Gracaellas? Don’t be an asshole.”

“I just thought that, being a burglar by trade, you might know a well-connected fence,” Temas sputtered.

“Oh.”

Chuckling at the exchange, Aramo leaned forward, hands stretched across the table to his sides, resting on the edge. “We’re not selling the Artifact to someone else. We took a job and we’re going to finish it. Where’s your sense of honor? Reputation?”

Roran stepped back from the table, recoiling with a belly laugh that bared all of his teeth—but especially the dagger-like canines. Even without gear, he cut an intimidating figure, just over six feet of pure muscle wrapped in greyish flesh. “Honor? Are you kidding me? We’re shadowmen, god dammit! The whole point is that no one knows who we are. If they don’t know who we are, how can we have any reputation, much less honor?”

“We’re not common criminals,” Aramo retorted, leaning farther over the table toward Roran. “We have to have a code.”

“Fuck off with that shit, ‘Mo! We have to survive is all, maybe make enough coin to live better off than we started, not have to risk our necks day after day for our next meal. Leave the honor and the reputation to the fucking halfwit nobles who have the luxury of such airy concerns. It’s us against them, ain’t it?”

Aramo’s face hardened. “Of course you don’t understand, Rory. You’ve never known anything else. You scraped your way up through the street gangs to working for the Coin Lords. I guess there really is no honor among thieves.”

Roran smiled in retort, malice in the tips of his teeth and scorn in his lips. “You were a mercenary before you became a shadowman. You killed people for money, same as me. Don’t think we’re different, or that you’re better than me. Hypocrite.”

“I—” Aramo started, face softening from the blow. It wasn’t the first time they fought like brothers; it wouldn’t be the last.

Fontana stepped between the two men, table betwixt her and Aramo. “No single haul is worth our status as shadowmen,” she said.

“This one is,” Temas said, matter-of-factly.

“He’s right,” Nellen added, “We could all retire. I know a guy in the Markets, he could give us a better idea of exactly how much we could get.”

Temas threw his hands up and turned away from the table. “’I know a guy,’ he says,” he muttered. The Ilmarin shrugged with a sly smile and the others laughed, the tension ebbing away for a fleeting moment.

“Of course you say this haul is worth giving up our livelihood, Temas,” Zerisi returned. “You could go back to practicing thaumaturgy if you weren’t a shadowman. The rest of us don’t have that luxury.”

Temas turned back, swiftly. “You know that’s not true, Z. I can barely manage the simplest of workings. My master deemed me unworthy of even training as an aspected practitioner. I left because the other option was a lifetime of servitude to some magister somewhere. If I’d wanted to be a servant, I could have done that anywhere; I wouldn’t have ended up here. Did you think that this was a game for me? That I came to this life on a whim? We’re all here for the same reason: we don’t fit elsewhere. Maybe that choice was made for us, maybe we made it for ourselves. But we’re all in it together because we’re the same.”

“Family,” Fontana said, eyes examining her feet.

“Besides,” Aramo returned to the fray, “If we reneged on a job, the Coin Lords would have our heads. That’s how it works. You might have the money, but you wouldn’t live to spend it. Not without always looking over your shoulder, at least.”

“But they only know you,” Roran objected. “You’re the one they approved. They don’t know the rest of us and don’t want to. That’s how it works, Mo.”

Aramo took a step back from the table. “You’d do that to me?” he asked. His voice remained calm and even, as if it were the sort of question you might ask anyone under any circumstances. Even so, the sense of betrayal and desperation was palpable.

“I’m just saying, cos,” Roran returned. “We’re just talking, right? Looking at the angles.”

“Well, if we gave Aramo an extra share or two to compensate, it could work, right?” Nellen asked. “He’d have enough to set himself up somewhere in anonymous grandeur and we’d still have enough to live comfortably here. Maybe not in the Upper City, but one of the better places to live down here. And maybe the Upper City. It’s worth a lot, after all.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about this!” Zerisi bellowed. “We’re not seriously thinking about doing this, are we?”

Temas lifted a hand to silence her. “We’re just looking at the options. Shouldn’t we at least consider the opportunities as we find them? That’s why we got into this damned business in the first place isn’t it? To seize opportunities for ourselves instead of helping some other bastard get richer than he already is?”

“I thought we joined to belong to something,” Fontana said, almost a whisper.

“Then you and Aramo can be naïve together,” Roran spat. “It’s easy to have a family and be poor; you can do it practically anywhere. But to live on your own terms, to climb out of the muck through your own sweat, blood and ingenuity, to live in wealth you earned for yourself. That is far rarer. You want my advice? Take the money and then find a family.”

“I didn’t ask,” Fontana retorted, a tear in the corner of her eye.

Roran shrugged.

Aramo sighed heavily as he returned to the table. “Do we need to take a vote?”

“No,” Fontana said, voice now firm. “There will be no vote.”

“Now wait a goddamned minute,” Roran roared amongst the general clamor in response to Fontana’s edict.

Holding up both hands like some master of ceremonies on a Gracaellas stage seeking to quell the audience, Aramo brought them back to calm. He looked to Fontana, all eyes following, and asked, “Why shouldn’t we vote, Fontana? That’s how we do things when we don’t agree.”

“I—” she began, but he could see the answer from the look on her face before she said another word. He’d seen that expression before, a face riddled with guilt enough to follow like a vengeful spirit, but powerless to stop the thing that had created it. Too many in the Lower City had been branded with that face, the broken face of a betrayer, torn between loyalty and ambition.

“You’ve already sold it,” their leader said, his voice heavy with despairing resignation.

Just then, the door and ceiling to the warehouse exploded inward sending shrapnel flying. The concussive blast deafened them all, leaving ears bleeding and ringing.

Cloaked men, hooded and armed with short blades well-suited to close quarters, descended from the hole above and the yawning gap where the door had been. The assault took only a minute, maybe less.

Roran threw the table at the assailants, knocked several of them over, attempting to shield Nellen with his body. The attackers slashed him relentlessly as he howled in pain. Temas threw himself between Zerisi and their murderers, feebly defending them both against stabbing blades with his empty hands. Aramo hobbled to his personal space to retrieve his matched wheelock pistols. He managed to fire them both, filling the room with a smoke that conspired to conceal from him the effect of his shots. He felt the firearms bark without hearing them, more noise in a world rendered silent. Except for that damn ringing.

A blade thrust into his back. More sharp stings followed. Aramo staggered. He collapsed onto the dirt floor. He could feel the warmth seeping into a puddle around his body, mingling with growing pools of his companions’ lifeblood. His mind raced through the past hours and days, searching out signs of Fontana’s betrayal that should have led him to prepare for this ambush. He could think of none; he’d loved Fontana as a daughter. It had made him blind.

Two thoughts followed: gratefulness that he’d not been able to hear or see his companions being cut down, regret that he’d escaped seeing the result of his failings.

Where he lay, slowly bleeding to death, too injured to move, he could see Fontana’s boots. His sense of hearing was returning, and he could make out some conversation, though it seemed muffled and distanced despite its proximity.

“Your reward,” a man’s voice said, followed by the clink of a bag heavy with coin dropping lightly into Fontana’s hands. “May you spend it in pleasure and health. Our House appreciates your service, and has a place for you should you wish it.”

“No. Thank you,” Fontana returned. “If it’s all the same, I’d like to be done with the whole business.”

“I understand,” the man said graciously. “Then this is where we part ways.”

The House agents retreated, undoubtedly with the Artifact, in near silence. Professionals, through and through. At least I haven’t been killed by amateurs, Aramo thought.

A moment later, Fontana had stepped back away from him enough that he could see her face. She looked at his for a moment, but when she saw him blink, she stepped back, swallowing hard, and turned away, fleeing into the night.

Aramo could hear the alarums raised by neighboring tenants, but he knew that the city’s guardsman would take their time in responding to any hue and cry in this district. That’s part of why they’d chosen a safehouse here. Safehouse, he thought. That’s a useless word. And then the darkness took him.

[A PDF copy of this story can be found on the “My Writing” page.]

More Patreon Info

December 19, 2020December 18, 2020faithfictionfatherhood 3 Comments

I am both excited about and dreading the launch of my Patreon with the start of the new year. Excited, of course, because it may provide both an impetus for me to really up my writing productivity and may create a community of support around Avar Narn that would be motivating in so many different ways. Dreading, because there’s every potential that the launch will garner no patrons and I’ll have to overcome that setback to morale to advance my writing endeavors (a task I think I’m up to).

Already, though, the Patreon plan has me tingling in anticipating, a restlessness that has turned to some productivity. I had in my last post mentioned my desire to have at least 30,000 words of background material waiting for patrons at launch. I’m over 32,000 words uploaded to WorldAnvil. Even that doesn’t cover the core elements of the world in terms of geography, history, religion, etc. What has been put in words so far seems just an amuse bouche, still needing lots of fleshing out. This, itself is daunting and exhilarating.

The only thing I’d mentioned having ready for launch that isn’t ready yet is a map of Altaene, which I need to finish by the end of the year. I’m now hoping to add to the launch matter a new short story (currently in planning) and some additional background and roleplaying material (the core mechanics have been included on WorldAnvil, with some additional bits close to being solidified and my initial notes on the combat system and encumbrance systems starting to come together).

Armed with an iPad Pro and and Apple Pencil, I’ve collected some books and courses on drawing and digital painting. I’m a beginner to both, at best, but I’m hoping to learn enough to provide at least some interim and passible art to get some ideas across. Devoting time to this course of study has become part of my general Patreon plan.

In terms of the launch itself, only one thing remains to be done–I need a picture for the Patreon page itself. For now, I think, I’ll create a very simple logo as a place holder, to be improved and enhanced at a later date. We’ll start humble and work our way up!

I’m very much looking forward to having some fresh perspectives on the setting as I continue to expand it, to sharing its depth and breadth with new people. I hope you’ll join me!

Patreon Planning Update

December 4, 2020faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

As I continue to plan for a launch of my Patreon at the beginning of the new year, I want to keep you apprised of the details so that you can determine whether this is something you will be interested in. A few changes or additions to the plans in previous posts:

(1) I intend to have only one Patron level instead of three to simplify delivery of “the goods.” This level will be $5 per month; I’m anticipating a $50 per year alternative if you’re the kind of daring soul willing to take a risk up front.
(2) I am establishing an account on WorldAnvil, which will be used to organize content for your reading pleasure. It’s my understanding that access to WorldAnvil can be synched with Patreon, providing some nice compatibility on that front.
(3) I have been working to write, compile, revise and codify existing worldbuilding material for Avar Narn, with the intent of having a ready reserve of material to post to hit promised monthly quotas. However, I’ve decided it’s better on all fronts for me to open with as much material as I can muster by the end of this year and to devote myself to new material when the first month begins. This way, you’ll have some background on the world to explore from the second your Patreon becomes active. Some of this will be rough works in progress (particularly the long history of the world), but some will also be focused write-ups on particular topics of importance to the setting. I believe that I currently have somewhere around 25,000 words of material to begin from, and will be working as furiously as I’m able over the course of this month to increase that number as much as possible for launch. I’m also working to have a new map of Altaene (the islands that are home to the “Seven Sisters” cities and the setting of Things Unseen) by launch.
(4) 10,000 words of new setting material (or equivalents in maps and visual design work) will be the bare minimum I strive to deliver each month. Additional features beyond that amount will include: new short stories, early access to revisions of the Things Unseen novel in progress, development toward a complete roleplaying game using my own developed system–Patrons will be encouraged to playtest and provide feedback once the ruleset becomes workable, and behind-the-scenes commentary on my work progress and methods. It is my intent for the Patreon to provide broad access to the world of Avar Narn, however you want to interface with it–whether that is enjoying fiction, becoming immersed in the lore and history of the world, or leading and taking part in your own adventures within the setting.
(5) It is my intent to pour all proceeds from Patreon back into the setting itself. Funds will pay for maintenance of the hosting and other costs of online material, the purchase of books and tools to enable me to better expand the materials available for you and, if possible, the commissioning of third-parties for high-quality artwork, maps, and layout/design for the compilation of materials into books and other media.
(6) As previously mentioned, I will also be establishing a Discord for Patrons to dialogue with me and others, pose questions about the setting and generally engage in a developing community around Avar Narn.

More to come soon!

Patreon Planning

October 31, 2020faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

I’ve thought about it since my first post on this subject, and I’m deciding to take the leap and create a Patreon to see how it goes in expanding my production and helping me to push forward toward my goals as a writer.

First and foremost, the Patreon will not replace this blog. You should still expect to see weekly (most of the time, anyway) posts on the blog on all of the usual subjects. Instead, the Patreon will supplement the blog by providing focused materials for a portion of the blog’s readers–I do not expect that everyone who reads my writings here will be interested in what the Patreon has to offer.

The Patreon will consist of setting material, RPG rules, and fiction for my fantasy world, Avar Narn. Each week, I’ll provide patrons with a minimum of 2,500 words of background material on the world. RPG rules and fiction will be included as it is written.

Look for another post soon that gives you a “pitch” for the Avar Narn setting, so that you can see what you’d be getting into if you’re not already familiar from following the blog. You can read some of the stories and work on the “My Writing” page to get a feel for things as well.

I will be setting up three Patreon tiers with the following material:

“Tourist” Tier: For $3 per month, Patrons will receive access to a monthly newsletter and the weekly blog posts with setting material.

“Explorer” Tier: For $5 per month, Patrons will receive the benefits of the “Tourist” Tier, plus access to RPG mechanics posts, access to a Discord server to participate in a community exploring the setting together in which I will directly and regularly participate, and the ability to vote on specific topics for me to address in subsequent months.

“Venture Captain” Tier: At $8 per month, this tier includes everything in the previous tiers plus access to work-in-progress fiction set in Avar Narn (including in the immediate future the revisions and rewrites of the novel Things Unseen) and “behind-the-scenes” posts on my methods and strategies for developing the information seen in weekly posts.

Money from the Patreon will most likely be used to purchase tools, books, and services (such as the creation of artwork) to further expand the material available for Avar Narn, with the plan of eventually publishing setting books and roleplaying rules to accompany the novels and short stories I hope to publish. If the Patreon income becomes significant enough (which I do not expect), then I may use some of it to pay bills and devote more time to writing (meaning more material both in general and for Patreon).

I expect to launch the Patreon with the new year. I’d really love to hear from you if you are interested, have comments or criticisms of the above-described plan. Feel free to leave comments or send me a message or email. In all honesty, I’m a little nervous about starting this venture and would love to know that there’s actually a desire for it.

I will be posting material for other settings on this blog, but these materials will not be nearly as regular nor as detailed as those for Avar Narn on the Patreon. Depending upon how the Patreon goes, I will consider adding some of those other settings to the Patreon (with an increase in detail and frequency of writing of material for them) if doing so looks feasible to add value without detracting from my work on Avar Narn or burning me out.

Review: The Sparrow

October 22, 2020faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

I know; I’m a little late to the game if I’m reviewing a book that’s twenty-five years old. But I’m excited about it enough that I really don’t care about that.

So, we’re gonna talk about Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, an exposition of theodicy wrapped in a sci-fi tale that’s secretly a bildungsroman of sorts. If you’re not a theology nerd, “theodicy” is the word for the study of the problems of evil and suffering. In Christianity, in particular, this problem might be more specifically phrased as “If God is all-powerful and entirely good and loving, why does God allow evil and suffering in the world? Why do these things happen to seemingly good people?”

Job is my favorite book of the Old Testament, in part because it addresses this very question and gives us the best answer I think can be had for it. When God appears to Job at the end of the poem, God’s answer to Job’s questioning is to tell Job that he cannot understand the answer. It’s too complex, it’s too nuanced, for the human brain to comprehend in all its depths. The ultimate answer God gives that humans can understand is “Trust me.” Faith, faith that God is sovereign over all things, that God is love and intends ultimate good for God’s creation, hope that everything will one day be clear and suffering and evil will be conquered fully after having served their purposes–as inscrutable to us as those purposes may be–is the answer. It is, admittedly, an answer that I find at once entirely frustrating and comforting. It’s not my job to solve the problem of evil and suffering; it’s my job to respond to evil in suffering in the way that God has instructed me.

Part of the brilliance and beauty of Russell’s book–and only part, mind you–is that she takes the same approach. There is no attempt to answer the question of suffering, only an attempt to hold it in her hands and turn it at all angles for the reader to view, to experience in part, all of its manifest complexity and difficulty. There are no apologies here, no arguments, only an investigation of the issue that is by turns beautiful and terrifying, humbling and infuriating.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but I’ve got to at least tell you what the book is about, right? All of that investigation into theodicy is not exposition or diatribe, it is examined through the experiences and humanity of the characters.

The Sparrow tells of the aftermath of a first-contact mission put together in secret by the Society of Jesus to the planet of Rakhat, discovered by the Arecibo facility in Puerto Rico in 2019, when the astronomy equipment there picks up radio signals that turn out to be the singing of the indigenous peoples of Rakhat.

Only priest and linguist Emilio Sandoz survives the mission; the handful of clergy and layperson companions that accompany him to Rakhat do not. The time dilation of space travel, the reports of the second, secular mission to Rakhat, and reports from the first missionaries themselves seem to tell the tale of a horrific fall from grace and into depravity on the part of Sandoz. The story jumps back and forth between the Jesuit interviews with the recovered Sandoz (in an attempt to discover the truth of the reports and, hopefully, salvage something of the Jesuit reputation after the reports of the missionary journey have decimated it), the first discovery of Rakhat and the synchronicity that brought Sandoz and his companions into the mission in the first place, and the events that actually unfolded on Rakhat. These separate narratives meet, as it were, at the climax of Sandoz’s telling of his story.

That main thread, and its analysis of theodicy, contrasted with the modern missionaries’ own thoughts about their relationship to the 16th century missions of the Jesuits to the “New World”, form the core of the text, but Russell’s writing of the missionary characters, their backgrounds, their feelings, their developing relationships to one another, their thoughts about their places in Creation as they confront their missionary (or priestly) status, provides just as much literary joy and human insight as the “mystery” that frames all of these subplots.

This is, after all, a sci-fi story (one for which Russell won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 1996, the year the book was published), and great detail is paid to the physiology and culture of the peoples of Rakhat, to the methods of space travel (the missionaries convert a mined-out asteroid into their spaceship) and the believable physics of story. At the same time, those elements never get in the way of the narrative; no time is lost on long exposition about the nature of technologies or theories of culture and alien psychology. These run seamlessly throughout the text, woven in with the unfolding plot instead of interrupting it.

The writing itself is beautiful, jealousy-inducing for an aspiring writer such as myself. The blend of familiar, practical tone with clever description and amusing turn-of-phrase reveals the intelligence and imagination of the mind behind this tale in an ever-delightful manner. The pacing and plotting of the story are an example of mastercraft in that aspect of the art, something especially apparent to me as I struggle with revising the plotting and pacing of my own fledgling work.

I must also express a debt of gratitude to my wife for bringing me to read this book. It’s one she first read–and told me about–almost a decade ago. It sounded interesting, but I must not have been paying close enough attention to her explanations, because this a book that fits with my own interests so uncannily perfectly. Only when she announced that she was going to read it again, now that her experiences in ministry and seminary had sharpened her abilities to appreciate the tale, did I agree to read it alongside her. As I must often admit, she was right all along. I should’ve read it the first time she told me to. So should you.

Infinite Recursions

October 14, 2020faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

I think it was Stephen King who wrote or said that, if one wants to be successful as a writer, one needs to writing like a (second) job. I’m not one for taking people’s advice on reputation alone, especially on something so deeply personal and resistant to generalization as writing. Nevertheless, I think (maybe “worry” is a better word) that he’s right.

In light of that, I’m considering starting a Patreon. Through that medium, I’d add some focused posts on my personal worldbuilding endeavors, including fiction and roleplaying rules for those settings. Avar Narn would, of course, be a particular focus, but I also have a handful of additional settings I want to develop—especially for roleplaying (mine and others’). Posts would be at least weekly, with deep dives into aspects of setting, maps, and much more for the enjoyment and use of patrons. I don’t know if I really have a critical mass for something like that to work, but I think it would be useful to me in several ways. First, the deadlines and accountability this could bring me would, I think, help my productivity.

I’m also reminded of a story about a Russian agent working for CIA case officers at the height of the Cold War. He’d regularly ask his handlers for money in exchange for his services, increasing the amount that he wanted every time he asked. Eventually, the Soviets found him out and did what they always did to suspected spies. The CIA officers rushed to his apartment to strip out anything that could link him to others before the KGB could recover it. As they did so, they found all of the money they’d paid him. He had never been the mercenary they’d expected; the money was his way of ensuring that the information he passed to American spies was worthwhile and valuable.

I’d like to think that that’s how Patreon would work for me—as a tangible indication that people are actually interested in my creative work. It would be nice to have some associated income—either to allow me to devote more time to writing and other creative endeavors or to invest in the settings themselves—for artwork and other needs that could allow me to produce professional-grade works—but I don’t expect the income derived therefrom to be a life-changer.

One of my reservations about taking the leap, other than the possibility that a lack of response becomes a de-motivator, is some release of creative control over my productions. Which leads me to the title of this post.

As I was thinking about the prospect of a Patreon, of what it would practically look like, I realized the fallacy of thinking about absolute creative control. Once a piece of art or writing is shared with others, it irrecoverably shatters into a number of pieces equal to the number of participants in the setting.

There is no single Middle Earth, no one Marvel Universe, no absolute Star Wars (just ask Disney). And this goes well beyond fanboy-ism and head cannon—the “feel” of a setting is going to be unique in some inexplicable way to each experiencer, even before we talk about fan fiction or roleplaying games set in that world.

And that’s not a bad thing—it’s a really fascinating one to think that every fictional world becomes infinite worlds, recursions of varying degrees all riffing in some core ideas.

Like all things, that makes the creative act both deeply personal and necessarily communal if it is to be enjoyed. That dialectic speaks to my soul, if I’m going to be honest, and all my worries about whether other peoples’ ideas creep into my own creations seems stupid, honestly, in the light of our corporate relationship between a setting with all of its idiosyncrasies created by our own idiosyncrasies, and the relationship that creates between each of us.

Frankly, it makes me want to create more, write more, give others more setting to make their own in their various ways and enjoy.

I think I’ll give Patreon a shot. We’ll see what happens.