Spinning Wheels

I started playing Dragon Age Inquisition again. It's not a perfect game but it's one of those games that I can really talk story with another fan and no two people have the same focus or interpretation. Because I'd been several books deep into a series with obvious and vague parallels, I felt a sort of connection to this game (as well as the resolution to make it wholly different despite that).

Which means I'm not writing much, but that's okay. I had some issues with sitting up, fighting odd waves of vertigo, so I took it as a sign to pay attention to my health. I switched to housework and long walks to stay mobile but opted for video games so I could sprawl out on my memory foam mattress posture-free. My muscles feel energized, just needing to get the digestive system and head back in line.

In fact, I try not to think about my work at all. Why? Because different ghosts have been visiting me. I've been having strange dreams, sometimes lucid. They're crap as far as stories goes, but there's a personal element, namely WHO I see, that intrigues me most. It's not always the WHAT but the WHO and WHY that seems to matter. Maybe 15 minutes after waking, the mysticism starts to stale and I write it off as brain play (because brains do that too). All the same dreams seem to be giving me some reprieve from the physical discomfort and hiatus from playing creator.

I don't actually believe in karma or higher powers or cosmic balance, but I love that the feel-good hormones seem to find ways to kick in. It may not be in the way I think I need, but if I can be grateful for the way my body does work for me, I can find reserves for forgiving what alters my plans. There are plenty of things I don't understand and those things don't necessarily need sentience or reason for existing. It's because of this flexibility of evidence that I'm more rigid against the sort of arrogance that assumes moral authority based on feelings alone. You can get a sense over time of what stances are based first in feeling then try to build a shaky logic around it. The argument always circles back to appealing to feelings when the logic has holes for exceptions.

I'm going to pick on veganism again for this example, but I truly have no issue with the practice where it works for people (only the arrogance of a supposed morality). It is often successfully passed on by appealing to emotion. It's introduction, even when presented as a health concern still circles back to compassion for animals. When they can't wrap their head around a person loving fish but still eating it, then in an outburst of feelings, it often escalates to a personal attack. Would I eat my family? Well, no. Just like incest, there's consequences for cannibalism which is also why we largely disapprove of it. I don't love a fish as a fish myself so it's not cannibalism and moot point. I don't even love all human beings equally. I was devastated when my mother died but I was only distantly unhappy when a favorite actor passed away. To assume that all living things are equal or that I can be a truly compassionate person by spreading it so ridiculously thin is absurd. There are hierarchies basedmon experience and to be the most compassionate human to other humans and the planet alike, the battles I pick are not going to be yours. In fact, often we support and negate each other for the benefit or detriment and some things balance-- some things need work. Ruining the world with massive agriculture isn't feasible. Dreaming of genocide bringing the planet down to a happy utopia of vegans might work... But you've left all moral high ground where that is a worthy goal.

We don't need to appeal to the direct issues to inspire the intended feelings though. Successful vendors make you feel good about your purchase, like it was your idea all along. Someone sold them veganism, my burden is to sell my stories.

It's why I don't take the profound feeling of my weird ass dreams and assume that anyone could duplicate the feeling through that nonsense. It's not always about the content. The containers are not where you find the whole story. These places are where I find the thing I want to duplicate. How do I make someone feel bliss through the mediums I use? How can I hope to make someone want to pull their cheek muscles into a goofy smile? How people are drawn into books or pictures is, like in my dreams, how much we let ourselves go (or even how we are held hostage).

You could call it research. Or spinning your wheels. There's a freedom that exists where I am right now in this journey. I am free to step away and consider how to be a creature of experience. Yes, a writer is a manipulator, a list, but remove the negative context. You can like the content and be there to affirm it. You can dislike the content but if it's still intriguing enough, you'll want to see where it's going. When I write for me, I want to consider if what is for me makes sense to someone else. In real life, I often just don't get what is acceptable. I also get that it's my problem. Not that there is something wrong with me, just that I'm seeing it differently. So what needs to be in place for us to reach understanding.

People try to say it whenever bigotry is present, but struggle with the vocabulary. We aren't looking for your definitive morality or view, we're looking for you to handle the burden of proof and sell it. So many people on a moral high ground use yellow words to color a feeling with 'facts' that just don't apply to everyone. Is that not reflected creatively as well? Are we not looking for a way to charm our audience with words? In the end, it's not the ideas alone that sell it, but how you can reach the people who want to hear it.

In fantasy, even when the hero saves the world in some fantastical way, they are sometimes ordinary in their world at first. Sometimes they were never ordinary at all but still wanted to be. They are usually not born with a loyal army and the werewithal to conquer great evil. Winning free people is no overnight occurrence.

Of course, fantasy writers, you are welcome to completely prove any of that wrong in fantasy. However, ultimately, you understand it takes a fantasy world to make fantastical ideas work. We can't just wave a wand and make these ideals work here. Even if you could, you're aware that for someone to gain power that fast, the weight of oppression is also an immediate blowback.

In fact, for those conditions to be met, anyone not on the side of the 'hero' might resent and oppose such a regime and even call them the villain. There will never be a happy hive mind because free thought.

I'll wander off now that my wheels have spun, but please preorder the upcoming anthology! It was a fun chance for me to write just a one-off story with no intention to spin it off or expand it. It is what it is and I had a blast delving into a fantasy theme I usually don't write. I won't get the chance to read the other authors' work but I look forward to getting an advance copy before I buy my own print copy.

The Magical Book of Wands, available October 31, is up for preorder on Amazon. One year only! Prints will be available on release day as well.