Working on ‘Son of Hel’

You’ll have to excuse my long absence. At work, we’re gearing up for the end of summer and the coming school, so I’ve been taking my work home with me at night.

I should probably be working right now, but instead I’m continuing my preparations of the world bible for Son of Hel, my next novel, which will feature Krampus, a reindeer with a radioactive nose, and a war between elves.

This will be, as far as I know, the first “___ Saves Christmas” story that attempts an honest harmonization of extant Santa Clause legends without also attempting to distance the legendary figure from the historical saint.

The cast of the story keeps growing as I discover more Christmas legendry from around the world. I’m a lumper rather than a splitter when it comes to syncretizing folklore, so I am combining all the various gift-giving bearded figures—Ded Moroz, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas—into the figure of the historical St. Nicholas of Myra, who is, after all, their original inspiration.

Snegurochka

Similarly, I intended to collapse most of Nicholas’s disreputable companions into the figure of Krampus. Some of them, however, don’t want to collapse. In Russia, Ded Moroz (“Grandfather Frost”), a depersonalized St. Nicholas figure, has a companion named Snegurochka, an unusually pleasant companion who is a young maiden originally made out of snow (or created by some winter deities, take your pick). I’ve decided to add her into the story as a sort of counterpoint to the rough and vicious Krampus.

She also gives me an excuse to explain away the “Mrs. Claus” popular in America: Since St. Nicholas is a monk and a bishop, he can’t have a wife, but some who have caught glimpses of Snegurochka riding in his sleigh may understandably have thought he did.

The Butcher

There is a character from French folklore, Père Fouettard, I originally intended to blend with Krampus—but his story is so singular that I think he must be a separate character in his own right: He is a butcher who slaughtered three young children, cut them up, salted them, and hid them in barrels. St. Nicholas discovered the dastardly deed, resurrected the children, and punished the butcher by … making him follow him around.

Weird punishment, I know.

I rather like the idea of a murderous, ax-wielding butcher tagging after Krampus, Snegurochka, and the nameless radioactive reindeer on their mission to kill bad elves and rescue Santa Claus. None of the other characters in this motley troupe are out-and-out murderers, but this guy is. He probably even shocks Krampus with his bloodthirstiness.

Black Pete

I’m also not sure at the moment about what to do with Black Pete, the companion of St. Nicholas from Scandinavia. I’m not at all concerned about the recent ruckus over his supposedly being racist (from what I’ve gathered, he’s “black” because he’s Spanish, having originated in the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, and is therefore not “black” at all in the current sense of the word). It’s just that I’m honestly not sure what role he’s going to play. I like him, though, because I can set him up as a genuine friend of Nicholas. Krampus and the butcher dude are too creepy and weird, and I expect that Nicholas is somewhat embarrassed by them. Snegurochka he probably treats like a daughter. But Pete can be an equal who works alongside him, advises him, and seriously helps him.

I’m intrigued by the Spanish occupation and may use that, but I’m also contemplating giving Black Pete an earlier origin in Al-Andalus and making him a Muslim. Still haven’t decided.

Oberon

I’m still working out the role of Oberon. The backstory on the elves is inspired by the Matter of France; according to the Legends of Charlemagne—drawing on, presumably, Orlando Furioso—the king of the fairies had converted to Christianity. If we conflate this unnamed king character with Shakespeare’s Oberon and also with the elves of Santa Claus, then we can reach the conclusion that Oberon, King of the Fairies, is a Christian elf in charge of Santa’s workshop. It’s likely Nicholas who converted Oberon in the first place; that would explain the elf-king’s Christianity in the legendary source.

Nisse

But there are also the nisse of Scandinavian mythology, diminutive creatures who resemble garden gnomes with their wooly beards and pointy hats. These nisse are similar to brownies in that they protect homes and do housework and are rewarded with butter-laced porridge. They over time became associated with Christmas and are apparently the inspiration for the tiny Christmas elves associated with Santa Claus in the United States.

These creatures would give me a good excuse to incorporate some Scandinavian culture into the elvish society at the North Pole, something I am eager to do, being inspired by the use of a Laplander language as “Elvish” in the movie The Christmas Chronicles, which starred Kurt Russell as probably the most convincing screen Santa I’ve ever seen.

I could claim that the nisse, as fairy creatures, are rightly under Oberon’s rule, and that most of them therefore converted to Christianity and joined Nicholas’s band—so they may make up the greater population of fay folk at the North Pole. This would explain the predominance of small, bearded figures among Santa’s elves.

The Mounts

St. Nicholas is associated with various steeds. In Flanders, he rides a horse that can glide over rooftops. He is also associated with a creature called the Yule Goat, a prank-prone Scandinavian creature that demands gifts. I am still determining what to do with these critters.

Regardless of what I decide for the goat and the horse, I will necessarily give St. Nicholas his reindeer, though they will be full-sized and not tiny, and they will be true reindeer—not white-tailed deer posing as reindeer, as they often are in American depictions. The association between St. Nicholas and reindeer goes back a ways, but it was of course the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” that permanently associated the saint with eight reindeer and also gave them names.

Having a certain weakness for talking animal characters, I intend to incorporate these eight reindeer and give them personalities related in some way to their names. There will also be an unnamed ninth reindeer with a radioactive nose who is obliged to wear a lead mask, and who is totally an original character and in no way inspired by any other ninth reindeer who is presently under copyright.

The Black Precipice

Although not really directly related to the bewilderingly complex myths surrounding St. Nicholas, I am fascinated by old-time speculations about what was at the North Pole. One theory, found sometimes in speculative fiction from previous eras, is that the north and south poles have giant mountains made of lodestone, which kind of makes sense when you need to explain how compasses work and don’t know about the more complex physics involved.

Also supposedly at the poles are the Symmes Holes, named for John Cleves Symmes Jr., who passionately believed that the Earth was hollow and that holes at the north and south poles led into the interior, and whose vigorous promulgation of that belief made it popular for about a century.

There were in the past some legitimate reasons to think the Earth was hollow, reasons subsequently swept away by further scientific advances. Specifically, Edmund Halley, for whom Halley’s Comet is named, proposed four concentric spheres to the Earth, and he didn’t do this because he was a crackpot, but because he needed a model to explain some aberrations he had discovered in the Earth’s magnetic field—that is, he made a legitimate, albeit erroneous, scientific hypothesis.

Nonetheless, I’m unaware of any good reasons to think the poles have huge holes in them. Symmes apparently proposed this idea spontaneously, albeit passionately.

for reasons unclear, this fantastical and apparently baseless theory remains popular among internet conspiracy theorists today:

I have a great love for this kind of thing, so in my envisioning of Santa Claus’s military-industrial complex at the North Pole, a compound he built over centuries with the help of his elves, I feel a need to incorporate both the Black Precipice and the Symmes Hole. The mountain of lodestone, you see, is jutting out of the middle of the hole, and it is upon this mountain that Nicholas has built his elvish city.

This is inadvertently advantageous to the elves,because, although their baptism makes them immune to church bells and other Christian accouterments,  they still cannot bear the touch of cold iron—yet iron cannot be brought near the Black Precipice.

Makes sense, right?

Rag & Muffin Continues; Art; And Other Stuff

Featured Image: “Magical Girl Uraraka” by Hannahsrrex.

I haven’t posted for two weeks, but I have reasons or at least excuses.

Partly, the more I get settled into being a published author with a book out and two on the way, the less I have time (or interest, even) in watching and reading other stuff to review. This is perhaps inevitable.

Also, my computer is on the fritz. I’ve long known that this little laptop, though it has been a good machine all things considered, is well past its sell-by date. Recently, I managed to fry its keyboard with spilled beer (yes, really) so I can no longer type on it without a peripheral keyboard.

Also, it has stopped talking to my printer for reasons I’ve been unable to figure out. It’s possible the printer itself is to blame, but I doubt it, since all its diagnostics claim it’s working just fine and communicating with the network just fine. It’s just that the computer can’t see it. Turning off all the firewalls and antivirus software doesn’t appear to help, and beyond that I don’t know what to do about the problem. So I effectively have no printer, which will become a problem in the near future when I get back the edit requests for my last submission.

Basically, the computer needs replaced, and has for a few years, but I don’t really have the money for it, especially since I just had to replace my car, which I totaled in a flood. Part of my disappearance here came from the time it took to make sure everything was backed up.

Rag & Muffin Update

Speaking of which, as I’ve mentioned before, Rag & Muffin is finally out of the house. I expect it to need more editing before it’s ready to publish, but it is at least underway. It has taken an embarrassingly long time to get that novel completed and submitted, but I have reasons/excuses for that, too—it is my first novel, though I have two others preceding it to publication, and a first novel always takes the longest. It also took an enormous amount of rewriting and reshaping, partly for reasons I don’t say in public. Although its basic premise—”Fancy Nancy in Dungeonpunk India with guns and Kung fu”—is quite silly, it’s a very personal novel in some ways and was difficult to finish. The earliest drafts were quite lurid; they were torturous to write and I’m glad to have them behind me, but I’m comfortable with the content in this penultimate version I recently sent to my editor, even if it contains more than my usual number of cuss words.

Next Project

I am trying to peel myself away from meddling with Rag & Muffin while my editor has it and instead turn my attention to Son of Hel, which will require more research to do it justice.

I’ll do a whole post on this in the near future, but one thing I will say is that, as I look at the various interpretations and reworkings that have been done of Santa Claus legends, I’m surprised at how few modern interpretations—none of them that I know of—want to connect Santa Clause back to the original St. Nicholas. Since nobody else wants to do it, I figure that’s one contribution I can make. My plan is to conflate as many characters and concepts of Santa lore as possible, so the monk who was bishop of Myra has also become the reindeer-breeding gift-giver with an army of elves in his workshop, accompanied by several interesting companions ranging from a Russian snow maiden to a half-demon to a murderous butcher.

Anime Review: ‘Ultra Maniac’

Ultra Maniac, written by Miho Maruo and directed by Shinichi Masaki. Music by Toru Yukawa. Starring Akemi Kanda, Yuie Hori, and Hiroshi Kamiya. Based on the manga by Wataru Yoshizumi. Ashi Productions, 2003. 26 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 10 hours and 24 minutes). Not rated.

Available on Crunchyroll.

The oddly named Ultra Maniac is a minor classic of the magical girl genre from the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although lackluster in its animation and presenting a more-or-less conventional plot, it contains enough unusual elements to make it stand out, and its satisfying ending comes as a genuinely pleasant surprise even if it could have been better set up.

A photograph of Nina and Ayu smiling
Nina and Ayu, our protagonists.

This anime is based on a manga by Wataru Yoshizumi, who’s most famous for Marmalade Boy. The manga and anime versions of Ultra Maniac, however, bear little resemblance to each other, as the former is more of a romantic comedy with magical elements while the latter is a straight-up magical girl show complete with the standard transformation sequences and McGuffin hunt.

Nina in her magical girl costume
Nina transforms … into possibly the frumpiest magical girl outfit ever.

The bizarre title is apparently in reference to the enthusiasm for manga that a couple of the characters have (maniac or mania being an older term for otaku), though this is downplayed in the anime to the point that the title is merely weird.

Continue reading “Anime Review: ‘Ultra Maniac’”

‘Rag & Muffin’ Completed and Off to My Editor

I just now finished revising Rag & Muffin. I have submitted it to my editor, so it’s out of the house for the time being.

Now I can get on to the research phase for Son of Hel. Yay!

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:5 years ago
100%

Goodreads Review: ‘The House on the Borderland’

William Hodgson's Horror Trilogy: The House on the BorderlandWilliam Hodgson’s Horror Trilogy: The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a pioneer of horror writing in the early part of the twentieth century, what Hodgson lacked in skill, he made up for in imagination.

I must confess, I have twice tried to read through Hodgson’s masterwork THE NIGHT LAND and failed both times. It’s a tough slog full of brilliant, hair-raising concepts weighed down by turgid, overwrought, and deliberately anachronistic prose.

By contrast, his “trilogy” of unrelated short novels, including THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, THE BOATS OF THE ‘GLEN CARRIG,’ and ‘THE GHOST PIRATES’ are surprisingly readable even if they could have benefited from additional editorial work.

In these novels, Hodgson reveals that, in spite of his tendency to fall into both irrelevant and monotonous detail as well as an amateurishly purple style, he has a real talent for action and adventure writing.

THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND, easily the weirdest of these works, becomes genuinely exciting as its lone, beleaguered narrator struggles to defend his supernaturally-infused house from an invading race of pig-faced and claw-handed invaders. By contrast, the book drags during a sequence in which the narrator has a vision of the end of the world that is analogous to passages in Wells’s THE TIME MACHINE, but considerably more monotonous. What these passages lack in excitement, however, they more than make up for in scope of vision, as Hodgson describes our sun growing dark and decrepit and ultimately falling into a gigantic super-star the size of a galaxy.

THE BOATS OF THE ‘GLEN CARRIG’ is a more straightforward adventure story. Starting in medias res, it depicts a group of harried sailors, after their ship has foundered, trying to make it home as they encounter weird and dangerous oddities such as an island of carnivorous plants and a continent of seaweed inhabited by giant octopuses and murderous mermen. The story drags as Hodgson narrates extraneous details (he describes each day, in succession, of the men’s making rope, instead of summarizing all with “We spent several days making rope.”) Like THE NIGHT LAND, the book becomes particularly insipid when Hodgson adds a romantic element. Nonetheless, it is a fun yarn overall.

The novel that works best as horror is THE GHOST PIRATES, and it also shows Hodgson’s skill as a writer of speculative fiction. The story’s narrator has the misfortune to take work on a ghost ship, but not any ordinary ghost ship: in some mysterious way unhallowed, this boat is open to the invasion of creatures from an alternate dimension, creatures bent on killing the crew members one at a time. Hodgson steadily ratchets up the tension with a skill unusual for him. It is genuinely frightening, and unlike his other novels, this one kept me reading far into the night.

Hodgson was a pioneer of speculative fiction and horror. His work is in some senses ahead of its time, particularly his use of science fiction elements such as alternate worlds and speculation about the final fate of the solar system. He deserves to be read most of all because of the writers he influenced, particularly H. P. Lovecraft.

Nonetheless, in these three works (unlike, sadly, THE NIGHT LAND), he can be read for enjoyment, for his own sake, and not merely because of his importance in the history of genre fiction.

View all my reviews

Happy Sailor Moon’s Birthday

It’s June 30th, the official birthday of Sailor Moon. As this is the third or possibly the second most important holiday in the magical girl calendar, we cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. All are commanded to rejoice and make merry under penalty of death.

This is a traditional date for releasing news about the Sailor Moon franchise, and this year is no exception. According to CBR, there is now an official release date for Sailor Moon Eternal, the film that will form the sequel to the Sailor Moon Crystal anime series and interpret the manga’s fourth arc.

Here’s a teaser for the film:

This fourth arc is the one with Chibi Moon’s magic pony unicorn boyfriend. It just happens, coincidentally, to be where I’m at in the original ’90s anime … but it’s taking me a while to get through it because it’s really a downgrade after the show’s magnificent third season.

This film features yet another total character redesign, making the third for Sailor Moon Crystal. This time, the designs are by franchise veteran Kazuko Tadano, as reported by Anime News Network. The new, teased designs, as shown in the video above, look sort of like a hybrid cross between the original series and the new.

Some fans are excited, as I know from my Twitter feed, but my opinion is more mild, though that’s partly because I’ve gotten too old to geek out with wild abandon about this stuff. But what this all says to me is that Sailor Moon Crystal has been mostly a disaster. The first two seasons were poorly animated and poorly received, and the third, which revamped the character designs and brought on a new director, was only a slight improvement.

Each change in Crystal has been an attempt to bring it closer to the original ’90s anime: The third season reintroduced upgraded versions of the original’s poses, transformations, and hammy dialogue—but without the comedic timing or charm.

Getting the original character designer back on board appears to me just another acknowledgement that the new series failed to capture the magic of the original. This movie might end up being decent, but I doubt it will relieve this new incarnation of its reputation of being Sailor Moon: Also-Ran.

‘Key: The Metal Idol’: The Final Verdict

Dude, that was so metal.

Key: The Metal Idol. Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

This is an amazingly good show with haunting imagery, a brilliant story line, a satisfying conclusion, and one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in an anime. It’s not perfect, and the need to rush what was supposed to be its final half was nearly a disaster, but in spite of that, Satō and his obviously very capable crew of animators managed to pull this off.

A robot grabs an injured man's face from behind
A bad Monday at the office.

What’s most amazing to me about this, now that I’ve watched it, is that it’s not better known. It was overshadowed by other anime that came after it and that, in my humble opinion, were equally ambitious but not nearly as good—and certainly not nearly as intelligible. It is perhaps particularly astounding that they accomplished all that they did when the show was released specifically as an “experimental” title and sold extra-cheap. It was made with no faith that it could succeed.

Although it doesn’t look so strange nowadays when grimdark is the rule, we may guess some reasons why it was a risk at the time: Key takes some beloved tropes from Japanese culture head-on. It pulls apart Japan’s love of mecha and idols and robot girls. It deliberately makes all of these things look sick.

Key extends her hands toward the viewer
Key uses her power.

As a side note, for the teaser image of this post, I used what is probably the most iconic moment in Key: This image of her bursting nude from a robot’s body was reinterpreted in cover art and was subsequently reproduced in miniatures. This is basically an image of a young girl ripping a robot apart with her bare hands, an image that’s unquestionably striking and might have been stirring to its target audience of Nineties otaku.

Because this blog attempts to be halfway family-friendly, I had to clip the bottom part of the image; similarly, Pioneer had to censor the box art when releasing the original English dub:

Box art from Pioneer in which Key bursts from a robot
Those big metal chunks were not originally stretching across her chest or groin.

The grand finale, a movie-length “episode,” begins with an impatience-creating build-up. First, it opens with some of the most bizarre imagery from the series displayed under an extended version of the opening theme song. Then the screen goes black for almost half a minute while tense music plays and the opening credits start. So it takes its sweet time getting going.

Continue reading “‘Key: The Metal Idol’: The Final Verdict”

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 14

Protip: If you’re developing super-secret military robots in order to sell them to a foreign power, don’t send them walking all over Tokyo while simultaneously using them to run an idol business.

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 14, “System.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

The good news is that it’s not a complete disaster. The bad news is that it’s not all it could have been.

Shattered arm of a robot idol
What a disaster.

Through its thirteen-episode run, Key: The Metal Idol ratcheted up the tension with a measured and deliberate pace. Then, as so often happens to anime, the money fell through. Instead of producing another thirteen episodes as originally planned, Hiroaki Satō created two ninety-minute movies to finish off the story. This is the first of those two.

This movie is a massive infodump. Most of the “plot” consists of two guys sitting on a park bench and drinking beer while discussing Key’s extensive backstory. Occasionally, these sequences are punctuated by scenes of a crazy dude talking to himself … and discussing Key’s extensive backstory.

Tataki and Kagami talk in a park
“And then this chick was like, ‘I’m a robot,’ and I was like, ‘No way.'”

Although this is a terrible way to make a ninety-minute film, it nonetheless displays the consummate skill of the people working on this project, in that they succeeded in making much of this actually interesting. Yes, I definitely got antsy and fidgety at parts, but it really is a good story that the characters are telling each other, interspersed with arresting imagery and intriguing flashbacks. It finishes off with a good cliffhanger ending that sets up for the next, and final, film.

Miho gloats over Tsuruki, who's tied to a chair
This looks like my last date.

Also, I must give Key: The Metal Idol credit for laying its storyline at our feet in this way. Other anime that ran out of resources (I’m thinking mostly of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is back in the news thanks to Netflix’s new dub) simply gave up on storytelling and took refuge in opacity and esoterica instead. By contrast, instead of telling us, “You just don’t understand because we’re deeply symbolic and stuff,” Key says, “We gotta tap out, but here’s a lengthy description of what’s happening before we go.”

I respect that.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 14”

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episodes 12 and 13

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 12–13, “Virus,” Parts 1 and 2. Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

We have now arrived at the final of the thirteen episodes of Key: The Metal Idol, and we may in a sense call this the end of the series. Originally, this series was supposed to be twenty-six episodes, but as often happens with anime, the money and other resources fell through, so the series rushed to its conclusion. According to common opinion, the first of the movies is a massive infodump and the second is a bunch of incoherent weird stuff. We’ll see for ourselves when we get to them.

And the weird stuff, at least, may have been planned from the beginning: After all, this anime makes a brief Easter egg homage to Eraserhead:

A close-up of Eraserhead placed on a shelf in a video store
I’m a big fan of David Lynch’s famous body horror “ERASER BEAD.”

These two episodes end as the first half of a series often will, with a minor victory for the protagonists and the promise of a new direction.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episodes 12 and 13”

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 11

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 11, “Save.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

This is the last of the “stand-alone” (so to speak) episodes. After this comes another two-parter, and then it’s on to the two movies.

Key is in the hands of a crazy guy—and since the cast is made up almost entirely of crazy people, that’s not surprising. Tsurugi, the naked dude with glasses, has begun giving her dancing and singing lessons, except Key won’t dance or sing. She simply stands there while he plays piano.

Tsurugi is clearly up to something, but he appears to be playing some kind of reverse psychology game with her. Aware that she claims to be a robot, he tells her that if she had ever made an attempt to sing or dance, he would have thrown her out. He has in fact kept her on for a month now only because she refused to perform.

Key faces Tsurugi beside a piano
Key and Tsurugi.

He appears to be obsessed with her obsession: He probably does not believe she’s a real robot (nobody but Key herself seems to believe it), but he wants in some way to play on her belief and use it. He mocks her as unable to become human.

Tataki is back in town after having made some discoveries in Key’s rural home. He discovered that Key’s mother was a priestess (confirming that she’s the shrine maiden we’ve seen repeatedly), and was apparently believed to be some kind of wonder-worker. There are hints that Key’s mother had a cult of her own, perhaps not unlike the snake-cult that is still skulking around in the background.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 11”