Fantasy-icism

• Actually have a theme for today.
• Before we get to that, however …
• “Steph, I need some music on, but I don’t have my earbuds.”
• Her: “I guess you better get your earbuds then. … Alexa, play Taylor Swift.”
• Me: glares.
• Her: laughs.
• Alexa starts playing Taylor Swift.
• Me: “Alexa, fucking stop.”
• Her: more laughter.
• End scene.
• GenX hot take: Reels suck.
• I don’t care what platform they’re on.
• The ones on Facebook are the worst.
• Like five seconds of nothing.
• No narrative value at all.
• Video of random shit with no purpose.
• If that is what the younger generations are imbibing, we’re screwed.
• I’m ready to buy a cabin in the mountains, move, and pound out rants on an IBM Selectric is what I’m saying.
• JFC.
• Another reason I hate social media.
• I have a bag fetish, right?
• Like backpacks and messenger bags.
• It’s one of those things I would blow stupid money on.
• Constant vigilance!
• There’s this one from Code of Bell I’ve wanted for some time.
• The thing is $239.
• I do not have it, obviously.
• It popped up in the Facebook feed the other day, and I clicked on it just to, you know, gander at it.
• Virtual window shopping.
• Suddenly, my feed filled with bags.
• Waste of life.
• That’s what social media is.
• What it’s become.
• By design.
• Keep you distracted.
• Keep us divided.
• Part you from your money.
• Rinse. Repeat.
• Greed pisses me off.
• F the rich. F the greedy.
• Okay, there’s the pre-ramble.
• I said I had a theme.
• Nerdery.
• The other day at the grocery store, I had on my Magic and Violence t-shirt.
• (I can drive, but I’m not getting out a ton, mind you. One errand, come home, pass out.)
• The girl behind the register said, “That’s the third D&D shirt I’ve seen today.”
• “Really? Three?”
• I come from the time of Satanic Panic.
• We were actually in the den hanging out once when my dad burst in and told me I had to get rid of all my “satanic” D&D books.
• No, sir. I prefer not to.
• Did not.
• Have always been a bit of a hybrid nerd, which I’ve talked about before.
• The gang was into all the things. Cars. Sports. Video games. Skateboarding. D&D. Comics (some of us). Movies. Music. \m/
• Wouldn’t be fair to call us “nerds” or “geeks,” necessarily.
• But … I beat the genre drum often enough around here.
• Could just be me.
• I buried it during college because … girls.
• Being honest.
• The older I get, the less apologetic about it I am.
• Fly your freak flag, kids.
• You can be a nerd about anything.
• Sports guys … you’re sports nerds.
• What kind of person knows all those damn stats?
• Bow up all you want.
• Nerd.
• Anyway.
• Yesterday, I mentioned the rewatching thing.
• The Fellowship of the Ring gets multiple rewatches a year.
• We’ve been soaking it in the last week or so in pieces.
• Not The Two Towers or The Return of the King.
• Only Fellowship.
• It made me think of how I got into fantasy in the first place.
• Yeah, partly because my cousin Jeff gave me my first D&D rules set.
• For sure that lit the fuse.
• From there … books.
• Read a couple Conan books by Robert E. Howard.
• Then there was Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Weis and Hickman.
• That book at that time consumed me.
• I pushed it on all my friends.
• I still have that copy, the one we traded around.
• It’s shredded, but alive.
• (Don’t go try to read it now. That third-person omniscient stuff reads like poop.)
• That book opens in autumn, obviously, which is a motif in epic Hero’s Journey fantasy stories.
• I feel like they all start in autumn.
• The Eye of the World does.
• I think The Sword of Shanara did as well.
• And they all have that “normal kid (who’s probably the chosen one) gets recruited by a wizard to go fulfill his destiny” thing.
• Could happen to you, you know?
• Swords and Deviltry by Leiber did not, and those were the stories that really grabbed me.
• The Gray Mouser stands as one of my favorite characters of all time, even now.
• I don’t think you get Locke and Jean without him and Fafhrd.
• Like I said, nerding out.
• I haven’t gotten out of this godforsaken state enough, so I do it with books.
• I love that autumnal ambiance all the great ones open with.
• All this is subject to my nostalgia and spotty memory, mind you.
• No research was involved in the creation of this list.
• Last night while watching Fellowship, I found myself thinking, “I’m going to paint the Balrog to hang on the wall in my office.”
• I could do it you know.
• Probably another form of novel procrastination.
• I’m out.

Oh, go check out this from The Oatmeal. It’s about creativity. Read it (again) this morning. So good.