FAUN – Walpurgisnacht
Author: Autumn
I write 'n stuff.
Literary World
Whenever I take a gander at the hottest new releases on Amazon, I can’t help but feel like there really isn’t a place for me in the literary world. It’s not that I don’t believe that I have the skill to write, but rather, I think that society’s tastes have drifted too far for my novels to have much appeal.
I’m old fashioned, and I like sentences that flow well together as an easy thought, that can be read out loud to others. I like to focus more on straightforward storytelling, and I don’t particularly care about impressing anyone with my command of purple prose. I’m nothing like Game of Thrones, and I don’t feel any desire to erase my own voice in order to imitate the bestsellers. I don’t have any points to prove; I’m just make-believing because I like to, and savoring the process of filling up page after page.
I really couldn’t care less about what celebrities or the New York Times say about anything. Their opinions are more of a disincentive, to be truthful, and I will feel like an epic failure as an individualist if I gained their approval.
Sometimes I think that the real world is all about hyper-conformity, and trying as hard as possible to be “3 edgy 5 you” to prove how thoroughly you belong in the 21st century. Me? I’m enamored with the basics of True Love and Motherhood, and it doesn’t bother me that I don’t particularly belong to any century.
Ultimately, it doesn’t much matter. I’ve never been one for approval seeking, and in many ways I’ve lived my life to the opposite. As long as I’m happy and fulfilled, nothing else really matters.
I just kind of wish that I wasn’t so gosh darn weird compared to everyone else. Why can’t there be more weirdos in the world?
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The Chosen One
A trope that I see every now and then that drives me absolutely batty goes something like this:
Congratulations hero! You are the CHOSEN ONE! You have special powers that no one else does!
The intro is all about letting the audience know how super awesome this character is, being the Chosen One and all, and you think that you’re in for some impressive ass-kicking all around, literally and/or figuratively.
Then, as the story progresses, it turns out that the character isn’t that awesome after all, because:
- They don’t want to be the Chosen One.
- A dozen other characters are introduced who also have special abilities.
- Their power turns out to not be anywhere near as cool as it sounds.
Any one of those three would put my teeth on edge, but for whatever reason I usually see all three of these together. I used to try to finish stories that pulled this trope, but experience has taught me that the ending never gets better.
So, let’s break down my bullet points:
- They don’t want to be the Chosen One
I suspect that the writer is trying to be subversive with this one, but societal context has changed to the point that aspiring to be a mediocre nobody is par for the course — you can even decorate your home with quotes about how you will never do, say, or think anything unique or special. Personally, I have been heavily criticized every time I’ve taken on a new responsibility, often because others treat it as some sort of enslavement.
You have four kids? How on Earth are you ever supposed to do anything?
Oh, I don’t know. Occasionally the kids take off the shackles and I’m allowed a bit of sunshine; just enough to keep me going. So tell me, what do you do with your freedom? Work all day, then veg out on the internet?
Anyway, it would be far more refreshing to see a character who actually wants to be the Chosen One and takes the responsibility seriously.
- A dozen other characters are introduced who also have special abilities.
I wish I could say that this is due to a lack of imagination, but I can’t shake the suspicion that it’s wish fulfillment on the part of the writer. Usually, the main character is no longer set apart, instead belonging to a tight-knit group where everyone knows everyone else’s pain, and never has to face the possibility of loneliness.
After the cadre has been formed, the enemies start popping up with even stronger powers to justify it all, and the hero is looking less and less unique and interesting. But at least the writer vicariously has imaginary friends!
- Their power turns out to not be anywhere near as cool as it sounds.
This is the natural consequence of the previous bullet points. Even if someone is uncertain at first, they’ll naturally be drawn into enjoying ULTIMATE POWER when they realize what they can do with it, so in order to keep up with the mediocre aspiration, the ULTIMATE POWER can’t actually be all that seductive or useful. You also can’t make your friends feel bad by being obviously better than them, and the battles need more suspense by dangling the question of whether or not the entire group has what it takes to defeat the single bad guy. Working alone. Against all of you.
Wait, who was supposed to be the Chosen One again?
It’s a terrible trope, which unfortunately plagues the fantasy genre, so I keep coming across it. Le sigh.
Maybe we could try something new?
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Disguised Genres
About ten years ago, I purchased a book that described demonic possessions in the summary on the back cover, and the first chapter was about the main character performing an exorcism. Seemed legit, and I had yet to learn to be jaded, so I went ahead and paid my scant pennies for the thing. However, after about a hundred pages in, the book was spending far more time and attention on gay BDSM than demons, and by the end it had never turned around. It turned out that the exorcism in the first chapter was the only exorcism in the entire book.
I had really wanted the demons.
Around the same time, I had purchased my field guide to demons (on clearance at Barnes and Noble, lol) and was ravenously studying everything I could find on demonology, so I thought it would be fun to throw in some brain candy on the same topic. When I had purchased the book that I had described above, I had been looking for a very specific sort of story, but what I got was completely different genre. The description never mentioned anything about BDSM or homosexuality, and I had been too naive and earnest to risk spoiling the plot by turning to page 150 to figure out what I was actually getting myself into.
It was such a huge disappointment, that it was the last newly released fiction novel I ever purchased. The best way I can describe it is that the author didn’t actually know what to do with her initial idea, so defaulted to the adage “sex sells” with the hope that no one would notice. As the reader, I felt like I had been sold fetish erotica in disguise, and I hate it when the product doesn’t match the labeling on the box.
So where on Earth is the literature for a girl obsessed with spiritual themes?
I still haven’t found it.
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Conformity
In the past, I used to try to socialize more. My oldest is very outgoing, and when she was 4-years-old, I felt guilty about being such a retiring introvert. Unfortunately, at that age, her social circle was my social circle, so I decided to put myself out there and see about those mom groups. The neighbor who was heavily involved in them seemed to be an okay person (I found out later that she was duplicitous AF), so I thought it would be a safe bet with at least one other “friend” already there.
At 22, I had danced naked in a forest during a thunderstorm (there was no chance of anyone else being around to see me), and I had felt magnificently connected to all of the elements of the Earth. I can still vividly remember the dark clouds overhead, the pink flash of lightning, the prickle of goosebumps in the cold rain, and the elation of nature and magic. I felt that I could never be struck down.
At 28, I was shrinking into myself, feeling hopelessly like an outsider around my peers, small and insignificant in their eyes. In turn, I found them to be boring, controlling, and generally unpleasant, and I was miserable around them. I hated being there. Hated being the only mom who carried my baby in my arms instead of hauling around a car seat, and the defensive reactions I got when I simply commented that it was because I thought car seats were cumbersome. Seemingly, everything about me was not only wrong, but actively offensive.
As much as I admire the stereotype of the self-sacrificing mother, there’s a huge difference between sharing my last bite of brownie and selling my soul to fit in. I have my limits.
Shortly after I quit, it filtered back to me that they had all been calling me a “doormat” behind my back. Um, what? I’m supposed to prove that I’m not a doormat by . . . abandoning my natural personality to become what someone else thinks I should be instead? No thank you, I’d much rather be a doormat; there’s more dignity in it.
No matter how others try to cajole or criticize me, I stubbornly stick to what I am. Why? Because I remember how it felt to dance with the wind and rain as the thunder kept the beat. Because I actually look at my peers, dressed in unflattering leggings with their hair tied on the very top of their heads like Teletubbies, and I know that I could never in a million years take myself seriously if I looked like that. Because my Jupiter is in Aries, so I need to be an uncompromising individualist in everything I do. Because I know what makes me happy, and what doesn’t.
As for my oldest, I adore the way she naturally is, and I don’t want her to learn to sacrifice her personality to have fake friends. It would break my heart if I lost her like that.
As a writer, experiences like that always get filed away in the back of my mind, along with all of the emotion and aftermath, to reappear as overarching themes in my stories.
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Inspiration
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Seo Linn – Oro Se do Bheatha Bhaile
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Cellphones
My cellphone bit the dust.
I don’t consider myself to be a phone person. More than once, I’ve been the only mom working on crochet while waiting for the kids, while everyone else played on their phones. Mine lived and died in my purse, so if I was ever in the yard, or in my sewing room, I was unreachable — the old fashioned “do not disturb.” I like it that way.
But when the darn thing wouldn’t turn on, my first reaction was anxiety. How am I supposed to know when my appointments are? NOOOO!!
And I kind of hated that I was dependent on my phone.
I don’t think that technology is evil, or anything like that. It’s convenient to enter everything into my phone at the same time I make the appointments, to always have my grocery list handy for impromptu visits to the store, and to text random things to my husband all day long for the reassurance that he didn’t die in an accident while we were apart. I just also believe that I should be functional and not have a meltdown without all of that.
I decided to buy something newer, for the “pedometer” feature that my old phone didn’t have (I’ve had to think a lot more about fitness since baby #4), and ordered something from Ebay. While I wait for it to arrive, I will be 100% unplugged.
I’ve spent most of my life this way, yet now the prospect seems strange and a little unnerving.
More focus for writing, I suppose.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Realistic romance
I read a couple of creative writing articles on “how to write realistic romance” that essentially boiled down to knocking “insta-romances.”
As a hopeless romantic myself, I’m a firm believer in love-at-first-sight. I knew that I had found forever the moment I met my husband (told him so, too), we eloped shortly afterward, and ten years later the passion is still going strong. So, don’t lecture me on what doesn’t count as realistic!
Love is like magic: it has to be believed in and practiced in order to have an effect.
My number one source of knowledge for the romance in my stories comes from my own experiences, and I can’t imagine getting any more realistic than real life. That includes love-at-first-sight, which just so happens to be my favorite.
Just because I’m outside of the majority doesn’t mean that my life and marriage are impossible or doomed to fail, and I don’t write stories to express the norms that I don’t belong to.
And given that the marriage rate is at a record low, I don’t believe that people know as much about romance as they think they do.
So I’m going to do what I’ve always done, and ignore what everyone else says about romance, even if I earn criticism for it.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Mythago Wood
My kids very generously soaked my copy in water, but thankfully I didn’t have the dust jacket on at the time. You can barely tell that the cover underneath is warped.
This is a novel about two brothers, and a magical forest where the mythological figures of the collective consciousness literally come alive.
The first half of the book is a fairly exhaustive explanation of the forest and its magical inhabitants, named ‘Mythagos’, which feels fairly slow paced. It takes place primarily on a homestead on the edge of the forest, and the main character makes a point of avoiding going too far into the woods. The reader is also given quite a bit of background on the main character, his brother, and their father who had dedicated his life to studying the forest, but whose death serves as the catalyst for the events in the novel. There’s also a woman Mythago, the manifestation of the warrior princess archetype, who captures the main character’s heart and sends him hurtling helplessly into love.
The second half, which takes place in the forest itself, feels dissociative and confusing at times, heavy with mythological references and metaphors, turning this book into a very slow read for me.
However, I have forgiven all of that.
The author was seriously “tuned in” with the subject matter, and the book has a lot of metaphysical depth to it, which makes it good ‘thinking’ material. I have no doubt that this novel will leave a lasting impression, and I’m interested in reading some of the other books about this forest.
The villain is the most cold hearted bastard I’ve ever encountered in a story, and he uttered an absolutely amazing line (which won’t make any sense without context) that had me giggling with sadistic glee. His inevitable defeat came about in a way that was, frankly, unexpected.
Happy ending for most.
I feel bad for the mother, who is mentioned in passing as having committed suicide long before the events in the book take place. Poor woman.
My rating: 4/5
By Autumn Rain 