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David Stewart on Endless High School

David V. Stewart has some interesting comments on the Dungeons & Dragons Strixhaven campaign recently announced by Polygon, a site famous for its trashy reporting:

The first thing I did, upon reading that tweet, was wonder what the hell D&D has to do with college. Last I checked, it was about being a murder hobo crawling through underground mazes with the option to build a fiefdom if so inclined. But then again, the last time I checked was back during the Satanic Panic when I played occasionally as a forbidden pleasure.

Now, of course, D&D has a vaguely medieval veneer, and it was in the Middle Ages that the first universities were invented, so we might argue that colleges could conceivably exist in D&D—but we know very well that it isn’t medieval universities that this Strixhaven thing has in mind. That’s obvious from the artwork accompanying the post.

Stewart writes the following:

What I’ve realized from interacting with these sections of millennial fandom is that the escapist feeling they pursue is not so much escape from this world and its limitations per se, but an escape to a life that is somehow better and (most importantly) more meaningful than their own. Thus, the return to high school is about experiencing an alternate memory, one in which the high school experience was all they were promised it would be by shows like Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, or even (perhaps more so), Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This is a reality in which they are special, they are well-liked, and they are doing important things that give their life purpose and meaning. This is almost the exact inverse of what high school actually is for 90% of normal people, including the popular jocks. Real high school is a prison experience, where you are merely a single interchangeable member of an infinite line of grey-goo nobodies who are immediately forgotten (even by your friends) and almost everything you do while in school has no purpose or point beyond getting a grade so you can eventually be released from your captivity.

My own comments:

Someone could point out that the original post says “college,” not “high school,” so Stewart is arguably off base, but since college today had dgenerated into a more expensive high school with less adult supervision, the distinction is irrelevant. However, it’s difficult to know whether his explanation of the endless parade of fantasy schools is right or not.

At least one reason we see so many schools in fantasy settings is the success of Harry Potter, as such success naturally breeds imitations. But Harry Potter didn’t originate the idea. Another reason schools are common settings is the YA demographic of a lot of fantasy, a demographic that is usually in school (though why they’d want to read about school while in it is another question). A third reason is that a school setting makes it possible to intersperse sit-com humor and situations with more action-oriented material, a formula that has proved successful for a lot of anime and manga. I do that myself in Jake and the Dynamo.

But then again, a lot of the school-focused YA fantasy material that’s come out recently is fixated on certain hang-ups. You can see that in the artwork at the top of the post. And that suggests that Stewart is on to something. A lot of this really does look like small-minded people screaming, “Look at me! I’m important!” Or like the products of adults who just never got over high school and moved on.

Another example of this high-school fixation is the recently released and much-derided YA graphic novel from DC Comics, I Am Not Starfire, in which the antisocial authoress stars as the self-insert protagonist. This protagonist is of course in high school:

So Stewart may be basically correct: The rash of high-school fantasies is due to authors who have failed to grow up.

Marcus Williams on Magical Girls

Over at Honey’s Anime, Marcus Williams has an essay on “What Constitutes a Magical Girl Anime.”

His essay is worth reading because he steers away from the superficial answers that might involve animal familiars or fancy costumes and instead focuses on common themes in the genre, which he lists as companionship, perseverence, and growth. Or to put that altogether, magical-girl stories are generally coming-of-age stories, often but not always with a sentimental tone. So go read his comments.

Speaking of magical girls, we’re just getting started with the news about Jake and the Dynamo and its upcoming sequel Dead 2 Rites. Remember, you can preorder Jake and the Dynamo right now for only 99 cents.

Find Me on Social Media

Using social-media apps can feel like screaming into the void, but they’re still basic author-promotion tools. Since I’m planning some new book releases in the near future, I’m working to arrange and build my social presence. To that end I’ve created a new page for the blog that lists my active social-media accounts. You can find it in the menu at the top of your screen. WordPress will automatically push to some of those services, but others I have to update manually. So I created the page for my convenience as much as yours: When I post, I can easily find all my accounts and update the ones that need it.

So if you use any of the services listed, I invite you to follow me there. Much of the content will of course be mirrored from this blog, but I will make an effort to include original content on most of those platforms and to interact from time to time with other users. (The exceptions might be my author pages and Tumblr, which mirror the blog but for which I have no other plans at present).

Also, I likely don’t need to say this because my readers are unusually polite for internet denizens, but I wish to note that I am really, really not interested in the politics of social media. I’m only interested in creating a web presence and promoting my work. If you see an app listed that rankles you, I will not remove myself from it because you complain. If I stayed off every app that someone has said people should stay off of, I couldn’t use any.

Also, I’m thinking of creating a MySpace account just because it would be funny.

New Book, ‘Pulp on Pulp,’ Available for Preorder

A collection of essays by pulp writers, entitled Pulp on Pulp*, is up for preorder on Amazon Kindle and will release on January 19th. It is currently listed as 99 cents, but it will be free forever when it releases. Last I checked, it was number one in Amazon’s new releases related to authorship.

The collection is edited by the prolific author of military sf, Kit Sun Cheah, and the equally talented Misha Burnett.

Two of the essays in this collection are by me. Since my interests are out of the norm for “PulpRev” authors, so are my essays. I discuss both the writing of harem comedies and what really defines a “strong female character,” with references to magical girls.

*This is an affiliate link but, as already mentioned, the book will be free forever, beginning on its release date.

On the Emasculation of Men’s Entertainment

Adam Lane Smith, an energetic and prolific author as well as a psychologist and self-help guru (two careers I consider deeply suspicious, admittedly) has an interesting essay on the degeneration of some beloved franchises in an essay entitled “The Scheduled Murder of Men’s Entertainment.”

In particular, he discusses the Star Wars sequels and what they did to Luke Skywalker, but he goes into greater detail about the God of War video-game franchise, which I admit I’m not familiar with.

Kratos slinks away from Greece in shame, finds a wife, has a son, and then neglects and abandons them both. When he is around them, he spends all his time agonizing over how ashamed he is of himself and everything he’s ever done. He’s hiding from the entire world and from himself. The makers originally intended to show him fat and out of shape. His (now dead) wife lays out a plan to reunite the verbally abusive deadbeat dad with his resentful son but she has to trick them both into doing it.

Following the tendencies of two of his professions, Smith delivers an analysis of this that is compelling:

The problem is that the creators are espousing a very specific post-modern nihilistic outlook brought about by weak fathers or absent fathers. Modern creators supported by Hollywood and big corporations have crushing attachment problems and broken relationships with their own fathers for a variety of reasons. They’re used to their saintly single mothers conditioning them to despise their own fathers. Men grow up worshipping their mothers, and women grow up seeing all men as worthless children incapable of real love.

As I read this essay, I keep hearing in my head the line from Fight Club: “We’re a generation raised by women. Maybe another woman is not what we need.” Of course, Fight Club meant this as a nasty joke (every generation ever is raised by women, as the audience is supposed to realize when hearing Tyler Durden pontificate), but Lane is serious, as have been many other commentators on the same subject.

The concern that the current trajectory of civilization is emasculating has been around for a while, going back at least to the publication of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest but probably predating that. The Fight Club novel, also, immediately predated several nonfiction works on the same theme, and the film adaptation became a movie of choice for a lot of Gen-Xers probably because that theme was already in the forefront of the national mindset: The director intended the movie to be ironic, but many of us viewers treated it as dead serious.

Back at the end of the 1990s, these fears of emasculation were easy to dismiss—but that is no longer the case; now that the American Psychological Association has come right out and declared manliness a pathology, claims of attack on manhood cannot be called mere paranoia.

Sharp observers have noted for years that popular entertainments consistently treat fathers as worthless deadbeats or at least fools. This probably traces to Freud, but it has become most pronounced in the last three decades. Smith makes keen observations of the otherwise inexplicable destructions of characters such Luke Skywalker and Kratos: The storytellers responsible for these works simply cannot imagine a man growing old without also becoming crotchety, worthless, and a deadbeat. It is an ugly mixture of self-hatred and, more importantly, hatred for daddy.

Smith’s suggested solution to this problem is more stories that showcase manliness and masculine virtues, some of which he’s written himself. He’s correct that we now have a dearth of these: Simply browse the latest children’s books available at your public library, and you will see a quite a selection of grrrl power (and a peppering of smut, which blue-haired librarians love to give to children), with very few works designed to interest boys.

Admittedly, I prefer to write stories about girls myself, but I begin to think it’s time to ressurect the classic pulp genre of manly male adventurers who have young boys for sidekicks, in the vein of Terry and the Pirates or even Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I don’t think any of the “pulp revival” authors have shown much interest in writing child characters, so maybe I should consider filling that gap.

Nyanzi on Dark Magical Girls

The other day, I posted a link to Christopher Kinsey’s discussion of how the magical girl genre has grown darker and more adult in recent years. Shortly thereafter, senpai noticed; that is, Rawlye Nyanzi took up the subject and gave his own speculation.

He looks at the subject from a different angle and makes an interesting observation: Japan is facing a devastating population winter. That is, the Japanese are not reproducing at replacement rate. And that means that the traditional target audience of magical girl anime is not getting replenished.

Nyanzi writes,

Remember that child-focused anime aren’t only trying to sell themselves, but associated merchandise as well. Before, they could aim at parents. Now, since there are way fewer parents and way more childless adults (who have way more disposable income), magical girl anime no longer have to be child-friendly. There’s no money in the children’s market anymore because there are too few children.

He also points out that there were grimmer magical girls even before the most recent spate. He gives My-HiME as an example, but we could easily refer to others—and even some of the great classics have their dark elements. Let’s not forget that Sailor Moon was forced to watch all her friends die and that the girls of Magic Knight Rayearth were tricked into committing a cosmic mercy-killing.

Continue reading “Nyanzi on Dark Magical Girls”

Christopher Kinsey: ‘Magical Girls and What to Do about Them’

Anime Outsiders is an interesting website; I first discovered them on Twitter, where they claimed (and whether they were being honest or merely puffing themselves, I have no idea) that they had members who were disaffected former employees of Crunchyroll. Garrulous and highly opinionated, they’re worth keeping an eye on simply because they offer exactly what their name implies—an alternate opinion that’s outside the mainstream groupthink.

Christopher Kinsey has an article up over there entitled, “Magical Girls and What to Do about Them.” Like every author who discusses magical girls, Kinsey feels a strange need to give a history of the genre, but unlike most, he mercifully keeps it brief and gets into the real point he wants to discuss—how the genre has become darker, edgier, and more adult thanks largely to Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In doing so, he also points out a connection between Madoka and Lyrical Nanoha that I had not picked up on (mostly because I admittedly have a hard time remembering Japanese names).

For those among us who know our production houses, Seven Arcs began its life producing adult themed animation, the most notorious of which is known as Night Shift Nurses and the less said about THAT the better. But this was all to build the capitol to make a really honest to goodness TV anime series. As it turns out, they produced Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha which, as mentioned above, was a magical girl anime primarily designed to draw in a male audience.

Kinsey makes the case that the genre, in its recent developments, has ended up excluding the audience it was originally intended for—young girls.

I’ve repeatedly complained on here about the excess darkness in the genre today, with many series like Magical Girl Site trying to duplicate the grimness of Madoka without understanding why Madoka works.

Although I think Kinsey makes the common mistake of interpreting Madoka in light of Gen Urobuchi’s previous work (even though Urobuchi himself has said he was trying to write against his usual tendencies with Madoka), he ultimately turns to the Netflix adaptation of Smile Pretty Cure into Glitter Force and makes what I believe to be a great point:

Could it be translated better and still sold to young girls? Probably, but this is just the thing to remind the anime community that we have to cater to more than just young men with disposable incomes. Everyone deserves a chance at the table, and if Glitter Force can be a gateway to a new fan just as Sailor Moon scooped up many young ladies to the fandom back when I was young, then I think we need to have more series just like it.

The Emperor on Deep POV

I stumbled upon an interesting blog post at The Emperor’s Notepad. There, his imperial majesty addresses the subject of “deep point of view,” a technique of narration that is currently in vogue. His post is entitled, “Deep POV Is Shallow,” and I recommend perusing it.

I can’t recall if I’d heard the particular term before, but I recognize the technique: it means writing in third person, but sticking with a particular character’s point of view and remaining in that single point of view throughout a scene, with no “head-hopping.”

His majesty explains that he believes the technique is over-used because an omniscient third-person narrator can be more useful in many cases for setting scenes with less dreary dialogue and fewer awkward tags. He makes his case well.

As long as we’re coining phrases, I’m going to say that my own preferred technique when writing in third-person is “descending POV.” Readers familiar with my work may notice that I usually begin by setting a scene, and then move in to focus on an individual who becomes the consistent POV character for that particular scene.

But I’m not strict about it. Sometimes I cheat, of course: Jake and the Dynamo opens with an omniscient narrator and then descends into the POV of the Dark Queen for the first scene. In the second scene, it remains in omniscient POV throughout, but sneaks into Grease Pencil Marionette’s head near the end. Most of the rest of the book is from Jake’s POV, with occasional diversions to the Dark Queen, Chirops, and Marionette. A few characters are not allowed, for arbitrary reasons known to the author, to be POV characters at all, ever. Among them is Pretty Dynamo.

My preferred method is analogous to a film setting up with a location shot. The inability to do this is his imperial majesty’s primary complaint about so-called deep POV. So as an answer to both him and the writers he criticizes, I will claim it is actually possible to have one’s cake and eat it too on this matter. Although an admittedly new author, I have never yet received a complaint about the way I start with an omniscient narrator and then focus in, though I did just once receive a compliment for it.

I’ve Been Added to the Official Database of Oklahoma Authors

The Oklahoma Department of Libraries maintains several information databases, including one of Oklahoma authors. I was recently added, so you can check out my profile and add meta-tags to it if you like.

Sooner or later I should make a table on here of all the social media and similar places where I appear, mostly because I won’t be able to keep track of them otherwise.

Rachael Lefler Asks, ‘Have We Seen the End of the Magical Girl Genre?’

In light of Magical Girl Site, which I will be discussing at greater length in the near future, I recommend a reading of this essay, “Have We Seen the End of the Magical Girl Genre?” written by Rachael Lefler and posted at Reel Rundown. She discusses the increasingly grim tone of magical girl anime in the aftermath of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

I think this is a thoughtful essay worth reading, but I disagree with her premise. She thinks the disappearance of lighter and happier themes in anime (which have not actually disappeared, incidentally) is due to politics: that is, the world has grown grimmer, and therefore our entertainment has grown grimmer, magical girl anime included.

I disagree with this for a few reasons. First. the world is not actually a more terrible place than in the past. That kind of myopia is common to every age, but it is false in every age. Bad stuff has always happened, and many more catastrophic things have happened in the past than have happened in our lifetimes. To support the view that this is myopic, I note that Lefler’s evidence that the world has gotten worse is very much centered on America, which is not the source of the anime she is discussing. (She does, however, note Japan’s concern over a declining birthrate—and this has become a discernible theme in anime lately.)

Second, the hypothesis she rejects almost out of hand, that grimdark magical girl anime is largely due to the influence of Madoka, would be in keeping with other patterns of influence both in this genre and elsewhere. The magical girl genre previously fell into the pattern of Sailor Moon because of its influence, so we should not be surprised that it has now fallen into the pattern of Madoka—though often with Madoka’s atmosphere and without the elements that actually make Madoka work. In a similar fashion, American comics fell into the pattern of Watchmen.

Third, lighthearted anime most certainly still exists. Moe and “healing” anime are definitely still things. In fact, we could probably make a stronger case that plotless, saccharine, slice-of-life CGDCT is eating the medium alive, than that grimdarkness is.

Fourth, this is not an unusual pattern for a genre. The move from clunky but sincere to more expertly crafted but sincere to snarky and insincere seems to be the typical process of growth, flourishing, and decay.

I don’t think it’s due to a change in the world at large, but an evolution in the genre itself, that we see all these deliberately miserable magical girl titles. The question on my mind is whether this genre is vigorous enough to survive the current trend. It survived Revolutionary Girl Utena, just as the mecha genre survived Neon Genesis Evangelion. It remains to be seen if magical girls are tough enough to survive Puella Magi Madoka Magica.