When I was eight, my favorite book was Misty of Chincoteague. I had a Misty Breyer horse. (I still have it somewhere.) And at recess, when we went outside, my friend Jody and I would crawl around in the grass pretending to be Misty.

Fast-forward many decades, a friend invited us to visit Chincoteague Island, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, with her family. By some miracle, we managed to swing it.

And we loved it.

For me, it was like being invited to vacation in Narnia—a place I had known from childhood as part of a favorite story. Only this place was real, and I could go there.

We returned for a few years, and then, one year, we did not due to finances. My children missed it terribly. They spoke sadly of it for the entire following year. We have not missed since.

There have been many years when I don’t know how we managed it. Some years, like this one, the important bills were paid months ago, so there was no point not to go. Other years, friends or unexpected funds have magically appeared out of nowhere (not an exaggeration) to allow us to enjoy this one week away from electronics, of famiy and fun.

Over the years, my daughter has started inviting friends—sometimes half a dozen. Nowadays, they get their own cottages and do their own things. Friends of ours come. Fans of John’s come. Families of friends come.

Some years, it is the best week of the whole year.

I have even been working, on and off, on a series of children’s books that take place at Chincoteague, about a little girl named Winny who visits with Sea Ponies and always says So, as in So hot! So cold! So happy. (I posted a Christmas episode, so to speak, last winter.)

Each of us have our own things we look forward to doing during our Chincoteague week.

For John, it is resting and having a daily iced vanilla coffee and perhaps an occasional root beer float.

For Ping-Ping and her friends, they enjoy the beach and do fun things together. Now, with several children (though the older girls often come with us or with mutual friends.)

For our talking sons, their favorite thing is boardgames with their godfather. Sadly, he has not been able to make it the last few years, but their father and other friends will often play.

For the Cherubim*, he has a list of things he likes to do: Beach, Bus, Boat, Ice Cream, Lighthouse, and Amusement Park. (The Amusement Park is a mini golf place with a few carnival rides.)

And for me…I look forward all year to two things.

1) Some years it is the only week all year that I can read novels…novels I am not being paid to read, at least.

2) Walking on the beach and thinking. As I look out at the crashing waves, I often feel as if I am recharging my imagination, preparing for the next year of writing.

I have for years wanted to join forces with A. M. Freeman (of Marymae and the Nightmare Master fame) and do a writing conference at Chincoteague, ideally in the fall held at the same Bed and Breakfast where Misty of Chincoteague was originally written.

It hasn’t worked out yet, but…who knows, maybe someday. If we ever get it off the ground, I hope you can join us!

This is his introduction:

L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright doesn’t just write fantasy novels, she researches history and locations she uses in her books by actually going to the places she is going to write about. She knows where she was when a certain scene in her stories came alive in her brain. She lets scripture guide her steps in her writing process. She also collaborates and works with other likeminded authors to create a network of writers which include her husband and Catholic Action author Declan Finm who both gave me interviews. She reminds us that stories can come anytime from anywhere and that real life places are great inspirations for fictional places. She is another writer who will give us another perspective on the writing process of an author with a Christian world view. It’s now time to…

Meet Christian Fantasy Writer L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright

Read more…

After I wrote it out, I thought perhaps readers would be interested, too.

Also, I am considering another Kickstarter. Personally, I find running Kickstarters quite unnerving, but I am assured by a friend, who is a reader, that some readers, at least, enjoy the chance to participate.

I hope that is true.

The idea would be to do quite a small Kickstarter to raise money to typeset two anthologies of stories that are in print, but, currently, reading them would require purchasing more than a dozen different anthologies.

This would put all the Roanoke-related short stories in one place. (Er. Two places)

If the campaign does well, I may write another Unexpected Enlightenment short story or two—either set at Roanoke or about the previous life of some of the characters that came from elsewhere. (If there is a story you would like to see, let me know!)

For more information about the proposed Kickstarter and possible future stories, visit The Roanoke Glass. But here is the opening of that post:

From the Roanoke Glass:

Recently, several people have asked about the next Book of Unexpected Enlightenment. While this makes me happy, it also makes me quite sad.

I cannot write the next book until I finish my current one, and writing is going slowly. Not because of any problem with the book, but because…

A year or so back, I retired from editing so that I could write full time, but since John retired, I have had to take up editing again in order to pay bills. In the last six months, much more time has been spent working than writing. I have read and edited some lovely works, but it is painful to see the date of the next novel release retreat into the distance.

But while I have not written another novel about Roanoke Academy in the last few years, I have written a number of short stories.

It occurs to me that many of you have not read many of those stories, as they are spread out over many anthologies.

Read more and see ideas for possible future Roanoke and Sideria stories…

A reader mentioned one of my One Piece articles recently. I am pretty sure this is the one that was meant. So here it is!

A Study of Systemic Racism in One Piece

Ten thousand feet below the surface of the sea, trouble is brewing. Ancient racial hatred is simmering, growing dangerously close to boiling over.

This is the situation in the Fishman Island Arc of the long-running anime/manga One Piece when the main characters, the Straw Hat Pirates, arrive at Fishman Island. In the midst of the action and humor of this pirate adventure story, Author Eiichro Oda gives us an unexpectedly insightful glimpse into racism and its affects upon a culture.

Fishman Island, deep beneath the ocean, is inhabited by a race of undersea beings who are both stronger and more-varied than humans. Some are beautiful, such as mermaids. Others are huge and powerful, like shark-men or octopus-men, massive creatures who can crush a human with a single blow. The loveliness of the first and the fearsome destructiveness of the second have made the fishmen into hot commodities at the slave markets of Sabaody.

Pirates often descend to their home island, deep under the sea, in order to kidnap fishmen and their children. Fishmen pirates return the favor, terrorizing humans and destroying their towns. This clash of races has been going on for generations.

In the midst of this racial animosity, two inhabitants of Fishman Island saw the toll it was taking on their society and vowed make a change. They both saw the same suffering. Their reaction, however, could not have been more different.

Otohime:

The first fishman to attempt to change their situation was the queen of Fishman Island. Queen Otohime was a goldfish mermaid, a very beautiful and delicate creature. Her heart was filled with love for her people. She particularly loved the children of her country.

As she looked around her, she saw the tremendous hatred of her people toward the humans and visa versa. She could not bear to think that this hatred would be passed on to the innocent next generation. Despite her delicate state, she determined she must find some way to improve her people’s situation.

Otohime became convinced that what kept the humans and the fishmen apart was distance. Humans lived on land. Fishmen lived ten thousand feet beneath the sea. Humans seldom saw fishmen, unless they were either attackers or slaves. Fishmen seldom saw humans, unless it was pirates who came to raid them and capture slaves. Otohime thought that if the fishmen, who could breathe both air and water, were to move to an island on the surface of the sea, the two races might come to know each other and their old hatreds could be put to rest.

To do this, however, she needed to convince her people to move. Specifically, she needed to bring a petition to the World Government that demonstrated that a majority of her people agreed and would be willing to relocate.

To this end, the beautiful queen traveled far and wide across Fishman Island, giving speeches and asking for signatures for her petition. Everyone loved Queen Otohime. She was beautiful and kind. Their love for her, however, was not as strong as their hatred of the humans. They did not want to go live among them.

For years, Otohime moved among her people, pleading with them to think of their children, their next generation, and to make a change, but almost no one would sign her petition.

They were embarrassed. They looked away.

In many stories, a beautiful, well-loved queen would be instantly persuasive. Otohime’s experience in the Fishman Island Art, however, is not so different from that of the real early abolitionists here in America. By the time of the Civil War, many in the North wanted to end slavery, but it was not always the case. Originally, abolitionists were a fringe group, as looked down upon as any fringe cause today. Like those real abolitionists, who persevered until more people grasped the importance of their cause, Otohime did not give up.

Through a mixture of courage and luck, Otohime was eventually able to reach her people. Suddenly, many were willing to sign the petition.

Then tragedy struck.

Queen Otohime was shot and killed.

When the dead body of the murderer was dragged before the people, it was a human.

Hordy:

With Otohime’s death at the hands of a hated human, all effort to get her petition signed was forgotten. Instead, hatred of humans grew.

Enter Hordy Jones, a young great white shark man who is the leader of a gang. Hordy, too, looked at the hatred and violence between the humans and the fishmen and hated what he saw, but his reaction was the opposite of Otohime’s.

He wanted to conquer and enslave the humans. He felt that the greater strength and speed of the fishmen, the fact that they could breathe both air and water, made them the natural superiors.

Like Otohime, Hordy meets with resistance. Fishmen may hate humans, but they don’t necessarily want to conquer them. The reaction of Hordy and his gang was to turn their anger against their fellow fishmen.

Hordy and his gang set out to conquer Fishman Island, as their first step toward conquering the world. While they claim it is the humans they hate, it is their own people whom they are terrorizing and harming. A stolen drug makes them stronger than their fellows, and they begin to do great damage to the island.

In the midst of this struggle, Otohime’s son, the prince, comes face to face with Hordy and learns of Hordy’s past. What he learns horrifies him. In One Piece, there are a number of fishmen who have been truly harmed by humans.

Hordy Jones is not one of them.

Hordy was never a slave. He never suffered at the hands of a human. Instead, Hordy adopted attitudes of others around him. Hordy hated humans because he saw humans hating his people, and his people hating the humans back.

He was exactly what Otohime had most feared—a child who had bought into the grudge of his elders.

Hordy went on to say that he thought Otohime’s methods were making the fishmen weak. He needed the fishmen to hate humans so that they could destroy the humans—which is why he Otohime had to die.

Otohime had not been shot by a human after all.

It was Hordy who had killed her.

With the help of our heroes, the Straw Hat Pirates, Hordy and his gang are defeated. All across Fishman Island, fishmen, who are grateful that Hordy was defeated, sign petitions to fulfill Otohime’s dream.

The Future of the Fishmen:

One of the fascinating things about the Fishman Island Arc is that in the 900 plus episodes of One Piece, we are shown fishmen who truly suffered at the hands of humans: but Otohime and Hordy were not among them. They did not themselves face great prejudice. Instead, they were presented with a world that already held such prejudice, and they had to decide whether to accept it.

Hordy chose to continue the heritage of hatred and violence. He was not a victim. He voluntarily embraced a heritage of violence. Otohime, on the other hand, chose not to accept it but to stand up to it. Her choice was not a popular one, but she refused to be daunted. Yet Hordy’s position is stronger than it might first seem. Even if Otohime’s vision is realized, will it really help? Will fishmen and humans ever learn to live together?

Can such terrible hatred and prejudice ever be overcome?

Perhaps, not, because it is very difficult to lay aside prejudice.

Or, perhaps so.

Because difficult as it may be, people can change their minds.

In fact, in the course of One Piece itself, we, the audience, have been led to change our own minds about the nature of fishmen.

Back When All Fishmen Were Evil:

The Straw Hat Pirates did not meet their first fishmen at Fishman Island, or even at the slave markets of Sabaody. They met them much, much earlier.

The Fishman Island Arc covers episodes 523 to 574 of this long running series, but the first fishman appeared in episode 31. Arlong was a brutal sharkman who terrorized a village of innocent, defenseless humans. For years, he and his crew of fishmen pirates rob them, destroy their houses, and, upon one occasion, presented a young mother with the choice of disavowing her adopted children or facing death. When she would not desert her children, Arlong murdered her in front of her two little girls.

One of those girls grew up to be the navigator for the Straw Hat Pirates.

Nami, our navigator, started the series hating all fishmen. As the story continued, however, and she learned of the plight of the fishmen at their home island, Nami—and the audience along with her—began to see fishmen less as made in the image of Arlong and more as individuals in their own right.

It was not fishmen who murdered her mother and enslaved her town; it was Arlong. Other fishmen did not deserve to suffer for his crimes.

As Nami’s understanding of fishmen changed, so did the audience’s. We learned that fishmen were not brutes. They were people like us; some good, some bad.

Otohime’s Vision:

This process—looking beyond the exterior characteristics to see the individual—is exactly what Otohime hoped for. She hoped that by spending more time among each other, humans and fishmen might start seeing each other as individual beings.

We ourselves will never see a fishman or a giant, but we live in a world that is not so different from that of Otohime and Hordy. Around us, we see people who have been the direct victims of racism, but there are many more—especially children—who have not suffered directly but who see all around them the hatred expressed by others. To this end, each of us must ask ourselves a question:

Are we going to choose to follow the path of Otohime?

Or of Hordy?

The Fishmen and humans of One Piece have a long way to go, but one girl, Nami, has laid aside her hatred, and one inhabitant of Fishman Island, Otohime, has opened the way towards a more harmonious future.

May our choices be as wise and as brave.

If you are not familiar with Upstream Reviews, it is a fantastic place to find good indie books. Now, they have video reviews!!!

Just wanted to take a moment to say Happy Birthday to our country.

We had lots of plans for the 4th, but, alas, the heat is so high here that nearly everything is canceled.

Still, they cannot cancel the joy in our hearts, our pride in our country having survived thus far despite all the strikes against it, or our hope for the next 250.

Maybe we’ll settle for watching 1776 again.

If the weather cools a bit next week, we may go visit the fair on the DC Mall. If I do, I’ll post some pictures.

Happy Birthday, everyone, and have a joyful 4th!

This sale was my idea, and I spent two whole days preparing it, deciding where to put each of more than 100 books, choosing pretty romantasies to showcase on top.

The sale went live this morning. Then, disaster struck!

I get a call, two hours after I went to sleep, from our host…all the links on the first half dozen books are dead. If you follow them, they go to an Amazon page that says Sorry that the book cannot be found but tries to console you with a picture of a dog.

This affected 26 of our nearly 70 authors.

Turns out, possibly because of Prime Day, Amazon purged a whole bunch of novels. Two were definitely purged for breaking their rules and enrolling in Kindle Unlimited while also loading the book on other platforms. KU requires exclusivity.

All those pretty romantasies I had featured for the first day?

Gone.

What a sad thing for these authors who were so excited about this sale. What a sad thing for me who wasted sooooo much time.

The good news is the actual sf and fantasy romances and love stories are still there (including a few of my and John’s books on sale in the Love Story category)

Anyway…thus goes the unpredictable life of an author.

PS. A fan of romance? You can find the sale here.

In my lesson on tropes, I deal with the Logic of Characters and the Landscape of the Human Heart—the landscape where stories take place. I try to explain how this landscape has a real topography—not just an arbitrary set of Legos that can be interchanged in any configuration. And in my article on wishfic, I touch on stories that are true to the spirit of the muse inspiring them vs. those that are muse deaf.

Both of these issues are subsets of the hotly debated issue of who decides what is canon in any given story.

Recently, I read the following extremely interesting, related comments by Paolo Munoz, aka GameDiviner. He wrote:

I’ve been having philosophical and metaphysical discussions with friends over the nature of stories and storytelling. The person asked the question, “Who gives people the right to come into our culture and destroy our beloved stories?”

At first, I wanted to see if he could resolve the dilemma he proposed by first asserting that the IP owner is the one who has the right. He disagreed that the IP owner can take a beloved story and change fundamental aspects of the story and its inner logic. He said that the original author has the right.

So then I asked him if George Lucas had the right to introduce “mitochlorians” in Episode I? Even Lucas, the supposed “owner” of the IP, knew he stepped in the wrong direction and transgressed on the “spirit of Star Wars” when he had a scientific explanation for a mystical entity. The audience told him, and he quietly admitted to his error by letting it slide into the background.

My friend agreed that Lucas overstepped his bounds, so I then asked, “If the IP doesn’t belong to the audience, and the IP isn’t at the sole whim of the IP owner and even the original author can transgress against the ‘spirit of the story’... What exactly are they transgressing?”

I postulated that the Greeks had it right when they spoke of “Muses” and how the Muse bestows the story upon a writer or creator. The writer or creator is merely a custodian of the story to which they must communicate to the world to the best of their ability. There are clear transgressions against the “spirit of the story” that they are bound not to cross. Canon, internal logic, and other things exist within the “spirit of the story” and any act against it is an act of sacrilege. “Sacrilege” is the right word because that is how everyone acts when we know something terrible has gone wrong in the telling. That is how the audience acts when they see “heresy” or “sacrilege”. The writer/shaman/high priest isn’t the dictator of the story.

The metaphysical reality of the story as a “thing in and of itself” is the only explanation for how to properly treat a story or IP. The IP owner is merely the societally accepted “custodian” of the story and they can transgress against the spirit of the story itself to dire consequences.

This is why John and I speak about the Divine Muse. As John is fond of saying, the muses make as much sense as the idea that our personal subconscious somehow knows more than we do about the story we are writing and doles it out to us in bits and pieces. More sense, probably.

I often think of writers as divers in a diving suit...they seem to be alone—swimming through the wonders of the deeps—but they are not alone. There is an entire boat with a crew up top, lowering them down on a line, making sure they have enough life-giving oxygen. In this analogy, the writer is the diver, and the Divine Muse is the crew and support staff making it possible.

What is this Divine Muse? We may not know this side of forever, but…

I have heard people who have had visions of Heaven describe coming into a room where—I think they were angels, I can’t quite remember—were writing, and they were told that those in the room were writing the books that would later be written on earth. I have also heard such people say that there is a museum in Heaven where one can see every work of art ever painted on Earth as it was meant to be, including the parts that the artist failed to translate to the page.

So there may actually be a troop (or a troupe?) of angels supporting each of us, working out the twists and turns of plot, the intricacies of character. If so, maybe there is a divine version of every story, too.

In which case, there really is a canon—ie. things that fit in the story and things that really don’t.

And the owner of each and every story is the same one writing ours.

What if women actually are supposed to obey their husbands?

Novel thought, I know.

If you so much as whisper this idea today, you are bombarded with stories of some married gone wrong, some awful monster who abused his family and made his wife miserable.

But when you read older books, women were, in many cases, obedient to their husbands’ wishes to a great degree and there is something quite charming about it, something that feels right—as of the family and society work better when this is the case.

Same thing with children. I grew up thinking that children were supposed to be equal to adults and that it was perfectly fine—even honoring to one’s parents—to question one’s parents at every turn and argue with them.

But what about all the mean parents, the shrill mothers, the evil fathers? Kids have to disobey them, right?

We live in an Age of Rebellion. Everything is about rebelling, resisting, throwing off the yoke, chopping down the pillars of society, etc., etc., etc. A great deal of our politics are led (by the nose) by the ideas from a book that was dedicated to:

“Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.” (Rules for Radicals)

This whole period of time has been about rebellion: wives against husbands, children against parents, workers against bosses, etc., etc., etc.

As the dedication above reminds us, rebels are often not the good guys.

What if we are supposed to be obedient to those God has placed above us, even as we are supposed to be obedient to God?

In the past, I have had no answer for the “but think of all the evil husbands and parents” argument. Today, however, as I was contemplating this subject, something occurred to me.

During the Nuremberg Trials, the standard was put forth that it was not okay to do something immoral just because you were following orders. This seems to be a standard that much of the modern world agrees with.

But no one says to new recruits, “Don’t ever obey a superior officer because the Nazis were given illegitimate orders.”

Rather, they are told to obey their superior officers unless the order given was immoral.

I wonder if we might apply the same standard to husbands and parents. A wicked husband or parent is like an officer who gives an immoral order. Under those circumstances, it is right and just to not obey.

Or if God whispers to you that the order you have been given—by husband, parent, or superior—should not be followed, for whatever reason God sees fit.

But under all other circumstances, what if obedience is actually a virtue?

What if we should obey?

It is a weighty matter and worth contemplating.

As for me…I am taking it under advisement.

*

PS: I was considering writing this article when I came upon a video about how a man who saw a vision of Hell, and 70% of the people he saw there were women…because they were listening to feminism and chased freedom instead of honoring and obeying God. It seemed somehow appropriate to the topic.

I have not listened to the whole thing yet, but…should anyone be interested:

Your political opponent is not someone who wants what you do not want. Your political opponent wants something that has the side effect of something you don’t want.

Sadly, though, the essay is a bit out of date. There are things in our culture nowadays that are so vile that one cannot condone them, even if one understands the other person’s point of view. Still, these ideas are still true some of the time and might be useful to someone.

Ever wonder why you are having such a hard time getting along with that once-dear friend who is now on the far side of the political Great Divide? This post might help bridge that knowledge gap.

Many years ago, I was playing in a roleplaying game known as The Corruption Campaign, along with my friend Bill of Doom.

Bill and I were involved in tricky negotiations with some arrogant aristocrats (Princes of Amber). Sometimes, these went well. Sometimes, they went badly. But, after a while, I began to notice something.

Bill’s character, Stormhawk, was not a bloodthirsty guy, but he talked like an American. If Stormhawk disagreed with something, he would announce with almost no provocation, in a booming voice, “Kill them all!” or “Nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

But he very seldom attacked anyone who was not an outright enemy.

On the other hand, if he liked something or offered someone help, he was very sincere, and he meant what he said.

The aristocrats we spoke with were exactly the opposite. They would make flowery comments that sounded kind or flattering, but they meant nothing by them.

But if they breathed a word of a threat, they were deadly serious, and they meant to carry through.

They thought we Americans were crazy, deadly people.

We thought they were insincere flatterers.

Why?

In radio, there is a phrase called signal-to-noise ratio. It refers to the difference between the desired information ( the signal) and the amount of background interference (the noise).

The problem Bill of Doom and I had when confronting the arch princes was: Incompatible definitions of what was signal and what was noise.

You see, to Stormhawk:

Kindness: signal

Threats: noise

But to the princes:

Kindness: noise

Threats: signal

The lessons learned playing this game (Don’t think D&D. Think “wandering around in your favorite novel with regular moral twists) have proven helpful in our modern world, because what I see when I watch my friends on different sides of the political spectrum is:

Incompatible definitions of what is signal and what is noise.

Let me give an example. Let’s say there are two young ladies, Hanna and Annah (Nice palindromes there, Annah and Hanna, but now that we’ve got across the point—that they are just the same thing in reverse—I’m going to write the first one Anna, for simplicity.)

Bear with me here. This is only an example.

Hannah is pro-life. To her, life is holy. She cannot understand how someone could murder a baby, at any age. Or how they cannot care for these helpless little ones who cannot speak up for themselves. She tries to make it clear to everyone she speaks to, but to her dismay, some folks out there seem to care a great deal about lesser life forms, but they don’t care about babies!

How could this be?

At first, Hannah just speaks to her cause, but people keep throwing the environment in her face, more and more. They care more about falcon eggs than they do about real living human beings—even if they are not breathing human beings yet.

Hannah gets so mad that she blogs: Look, I don’t care about the stupid falcons. They could all die for all I care! We’re talking about babies!!!

Next, we turn to Anna.

So…Anna is an environmentalist. To her, nature is holy. She cannot understand how someone could mistreat this beautiful world—that we all have to live in! Or not be concerned for these poor creatures who cannot speak up for themselves. She tries to make it clear to everyone she speaks to, but to her dismay, some folks out there seem to care a great deal about producing more humans to mess up the environment, but they don’t care about falcons becoming extinct!

How could this be?

At first, Anna just speaks to her cause, but people keep throwing anti-abortion arguments in her face, more and more. They care more about unborn lumps of cells than they do about real living and breathing creatures.

Anna gets so mad that she blogs: Look, I don’t care about the stupid humans. They could all die for all I care! We’re talking about falcons!!!

Now, on that particular day, Hanna happens to read Anna’s blog, and Anna happens to read Hanna’s blog. Each had written a long piece supporting their side, but the end of the piece was the lines in bold above.

Two weeks, two months, two years later, what is the result? What has each young woman come away with?

Hanna doesn’t recall that she lost her temper and dissed falcons. She only remembers her impassioned plea for unborn life.

Anna doesn’t recall that she lost her temper and dissed human beings—after all, she is a human being. She only remembers her impassioned plea to save the helpless falcons.

But what do they remember about the other person’s blog? Only the last line.

Why?

Because to Hannah—babies are signal, and falcons are noise.

While to Anna—falcons are signal, and human beings are noise.

Ever wonder why the opposition—whatever side you are not on—only ever seems to attack and quote the outliers on your side? The most horrible folks? The most obnoxious comments? How they never seem to get the point? How the throwaway line you, or your favorite blogger, tossed off when you were pissed off is repeated everywhere, while the strongly-reasoned arguments are ignored?

This is why.

To them, that throwaway line is signal—because it’s on the subject they care about. To you and your blogger friend, it’s noise.

So, next time you feel the urge to bridge the endless gap—and maybe talk to that crazy lunatic on the other side who used to be a bosom buddy—try this simple trick:

Pick the lines the other person says that upset you the most. Ignore them. Just pretend that they are not there. Pretend that they are static. Noise.

Because, chances are, that to him, it is just noise.

And you’ve been missing the signal, tuning it out, all along.

Then, listen closely to whatever he seems to think is the most important part–even if it sounds like mad nonsense to you. NOT, mind you, what he says at loudest volume—that is likely to be noise, too—the part he speaks about fervently or with reasoning.

From there, you can often find a bridge, a common point of agreement—because at the very least, you now know what the important issues actually are. To use my first example: you are speaking kindness to kindness or threat to threat.

Even if you can’t agree, at least you will be talking signal to signal, instead of noise to noise.

It’s difficult, but after a few tries, you’ll be a champion Great Divide bridger in no time.

Give it a try.

And if you run into trouble—you absolutely can’t find the other guy’s signal—don’t hesitate to swing by and ask for help.

If nothing else, it gives me a chance to prove that roleplaying games are good for something after all.

Part One: We Live In A Fairytale

We live in a fairytale.

You might not realize this as you struggle to pay your bills or sit in a traffic jam on your way to work. You might miss the magic as you surf the web or rub your aching temples. You might think that this world is mundane, filled with dreary drudgery. But that does not make it any less true.

What fairytale is this, you wonder? It’s a story about a precious prince or princess who has become lost in a distant land, unable to find home again. It is a story about hope and the forces of darkness, and how all the Powers of Hell are bent upon the purpose of crushing the spirit of our main character.

It is a story about the Prince of all Princes, who left His throne to come slog through the mud and hang on a cross to open the door that will let our prince or princess pass over His threshold and find the way home again.

That fairytale. You know the one—the one where you are the hero.

If you read it in a storybook from start to finish, you would gasp with awe at the bravery of our protagonist and cheer at the triumphs. If you could see it with all the traps and terrors—the demons that tempt, the imps that irritate, the willow women who weave deceptions over the eyes of the men, until they believe that black is white, up is down, and boys are girls—you would cry out in fear at the hurdles our heroes and heroines must cross, and you would weep with joy when they, struggling through the webs and fog, refuse to leave the path.

What path, you ask? The straight and narrow one that leads to the pearly gates and the glories of eternal life.

But how, in this age of willow women weavings and demon deceptions, can anyone possibly find that path?

Even now, there are still waymarkers, hints that tell us the way to go.

But the enemy knows about those waymarkers, too, and they are doing their best to wipe them out before we can find them—to remove the hints that help us tell the straight and narrow path from the primrose one—the wide, smooth, and easy way that leads to the pits of fire.

One of those waymarkers that the powers of darkness have bent their wills against is fairytales.

Part Two—Descent into Darkness

This is a reissue of articles published here and elsewhere before. They are now in order with working links. There are Eight Parts.

Long ago, in 810 AD, St. Photios the Great wrote in his work, Myriobiblion:

“In the story, particularly, as in fabulous fictions of the same kind, there are two considerations most useful to notice. The first is that they show that evildoers, even if they seem to escape a thousand times, always get their punishment; the second, that they show many innocents placed in great danger often saved against all hope.”

Once upon a time, as all proper stories start, I took a class at a local college. One of my classmates was in a community acting company, and they were putting on a musical I had never heard of before called: Into the Woods. He invited me to attend and, eager to support a friend, I accepted. We had guests in town that week, so we all went and sat down in the pretty wooded outdoor area to enjoy the play.

Words fail to express the magic of that first act. The play was about fairytales! Stories I had loved since childhood. We sat spellbound with wonder watching Cinderella on her way to the ball, the childless baker, whose parents had been killed in a baking accident, and a boy named Jack sing about how there are giants in the sky! The fairytales were woven together, each character accidentally tripping through the other’s tale. It was magical. Magnificent.

During intermission, we stood around with our friends—all fantasy fans—and expressed astonishment over how good this play was, how amazing that we had never heard of it, and how perfect it was for our group.

Then, we all sat down again, filled with anticipation for the second act…

In act two, fairytale met realism. The giantess, angry at her husband’s death, steps on the baker’s house. Cinderella’s husband, the Prince, gets tired of her and seduces the wife of the loving baker, who is then killed by being stepped on by a giantess, and everyone sings, “Your Fault.”

Afterwards, my friends were filled with enthusiasm. They loved the show. I had been so happy to discover the play and so delighted that we had this shared experience that I hid that I felt sick to my stomach, as if something horrible had just happened. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to ruin their delightful experience.

I told myself it was about fairytales, right? It has to be good!

But I hated it.

The problem was: I couldn’t put into words why I hated it. So much so that, for some years, I wouldn’t even really let myself admit how much I hated it…because I didn’t understand why.

Jump ahead a few years, and a friend brings over some comics. One in particular catches my attention. It’s called Fables. It’s about fairytales! I love fairytales! I sit down and read it eagerly. The storylines are good. The characters intriguing. I laugh when the Prince Charming who married Snow White, Cinderella, and Briar Rose all turn out to be the same person. How witty. How clever. The hardboiled detective, Big Bad Wolf, is my favorite character. I root for him to end up with Snow White.

For a time, I wait eagerly for new Fables graphic novels. Then, one day, I notice that there’s one lying around at a friend’s house, and I feel reluctant to read it. What’s wrong with me? I love fairytales. Why aren’t I filled with joy to see this book? Why do the story lines, all well-written, make me feel so uncomfortable, so tawdry?

Soon after that, there was a movie called Skrek. Everyone was lauding it. It was about fantasy and princesses and ogres and fairytales. I went to see it with great hopes. Everyone else, except my husband, praised the movie to the skies. In it, an ogre, instead of a knight, goes to rescue a princess, who merely wants to rescue herself, and, instead of her kissing him and turning him into a prince, she chooses to become an ogre.

Cute. Witty. Funny. Original.

Why was I the only person who saw this story and felt something was terribly wrong?

I could go on. I could talk about Stardust and Neverwhere…the charming delight of meeting the Marquis de Carabas versus the strange feeling like the world had twisted upon itself that I got from the Angel Islington. But, each time, the story would be the same:

I was drawn into a story, comic, musical, movie, TV show, etc, because it wore the costume of fairytales and fantastic wonder. But it left me feeling uncomfortable and flat.

It took me embarrassingly long to figure out why. Yes, they all looked like a fairytale.

But fairytales are about wonder.

What did all these tales I’ve listed, and the many more that have come since, all have in common?

They lacked wonder.

The good guys, like Prince Charming and the baker’s wife, were turned into bad guys. The bad guys, such as the Big Bad Wolf and an ogre, were shown as good guys. Everything good, wonderful, and fine was sullied. Everything bad and tawdry was exalted.

These stories were using fairytale characters, but they were not fairytales. They were the opposite of fairytales. They looked the same on the outside, but inside—if true fairytales were like glimpsing a real, live pixie through the arch of a rose arbor, these stories were like catching that pixie and yanking its wings off.

I think what threw me for a time was: why?

Fairytales are fanciful, escapist, all about witches and magic. Weren’t they just the sort of story that the Powers of Darkness crave? Why were fairytales, of all things, under attack?

It made no sense.

Until I remembered: fairytales are moral.

In some ways, they are the most moral stories in the universe.

Part Three: The Wonder That Is Perilous

Part One: We live in a Fairytale

Part Three: The Wonder That Is Perilous

When I was in high school, we had something modern schools don’t seem to have called study hall. During study hall, you were free to choose what to do. You could study, do homework, sometimes even talk quietly. Me? I chose study hall in the library, where I could wander through the stacks, reading titles and book blurbs, looking for the next thing to read.

Our school library was a place of magic. It had high dark shelves filled with books on all sorts of topics. I would wander among them, lost in daydreams, wishing that I had a magic power that would lead me right to a book I would enjoy reading. I read all sorts of books during study hall: historicals, romances, mysteries, the occasional fantasy, but my favorite books were the fairytales.

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High up on a shelf were a series of books, each of a single color: red, blue, pink, gray—Andrew Lang’s Red Book of Fairytales, etc.. We did not have them all, and I don’t think I ever finished reading all that we did have, but I read a number of them cover to cover. I also discovered and read a wonderful book of Nordic fairytales that included a number of stories of Cinder Peter* and what might be my favorite fairytale of all, East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

* It was here that I learned that the familiar character Cinderella was really Cinder Ella—Ella who spends time in the cinders of the fireplace (either because she is cleaning or, in the case of Cinder Peter, because he is daydreaming and running his finger absently through the ashes.)

One thing I loved was reading fairytales from around the world and seeing how much they had in common. For instance:

There is a Celtic tale of a man who came upon a beautiful woman bathing. Lying beside her was a cloak of brown fur. The woman was a selkie, a seal who had taken off her fur to enjoy the sun. The man grabbed the cloak and hid it. He took the woman home and made her his wife. She was a good wife and mother, but one day, while cleaning, she found her lost cloak, hidden in a box under some blankets. When the man came home, he found his children crying and his wife gone. She had fled, returning to the sea.

This tale is also told in the Scandinavian countries, only it is a swan cloak the man steals, rather than that of a seal. In Italy, she was a dove. In Africa, she was a buffalo maiden. In Japan, it’s a crane cloak; in the Americas, a bear cloak.

The story is told all over the world, always the details are the same, always as simple, only the animal changes.

This simplicity, which makes it so that I can tell almost the entire story in one paragraph, is one of the joys and mysteries of fairytales. We go out of our way nowadays to write long descriptions, to make our writing “fresh”, to “show, not tell”. And yet, fairytales are almost entirely telling. They are age-old, and they stay exactly the same.

And yet, they are just as enjoyable now as they were centuries ago.

They are almost entirely pure story.

People nowadays often feel that fairytales are tame, safe. People refer to “a child’s fairytale” almost as a synonym for something simple and easy to believe. They are thought to be the most innocent and banal of stories. Or, it is a synonym for something wonderful, practically heavenly: “She felt as if she were living in a fairytale.”

I can only image that people who say these things have never stopped to envision what it would actually be like to be in a fairytale.

You would live in a cozy little place, a cottage or a shop or perhaps a fishing village. The world close by would be ordinary and safe, but just beyond would be the Wood. And this Wood…

The Wood is perilous!

There are tricksters and ogres. There are good princesses, but sometimes they are impersonated by bad ones. An old beggar lady might be, in truth, a beautiful enchantress, and if you treat her with disdain, you will suffer for it. But she also might be an evil witch, and, if you leave the path to help her, it will spell your doom.

For there is one true way that runs through the Wood Perilous, a narrow path, and if you stay on it, you will be safe. But how can you tell when to help an old lady and when to run?

When we are children, we think we are invincible. We think we are Mary Sue—the girl who can do everything and whom everyone admires. It does not occur to a child that she might not pick correctly when confronting the old lady, that she might confuse the enchantress for the witch or vice versa.

At some point, however, we begin to mature. As I grew older, I began to wonder: how would a person know what was right and what was wrong in the Wood Perilous? It would take tremendous discernment to tell the good witches from the bad ones.

I still remember the day that I grudgingly admitted that maybe I would not automatically know. That maybe…even for me…the Wood was perilous!

And yes, in case you were wondering, this Wood is the same that Into the Word tried to take us into, but it failed. Somewhere along the way, the characters, and the audience, lost the path, because they circled back into our world—the daylit world of mundane problems and pointlessness, where marriages are not “happy ever after,” and characters can die senselessly, rather than heroically, tragically, or deservedly—as happens in the real Wood.

People who like Into the Woods, Fables, the television show Once Upon A Time, and the many other stories of this sort, tell me that these stories are mature. They are realistic. They have problems and dangers, unlike fairytales….

I suspect that, back when they were reading their fairytales, they were not paying attention.

The Wood Perilous is far more terrifying than the mundane problems of our everyday life. But the difference is: in the Wood Perilous, dangers have meaning.

So I ask you, when the Degenerati promote the kind of fairytale that ends in the humdrum, what is it that they seek to remove from our lives?

Part Four: You Are a Disgrace to the Forces of Evil!

Part Two: Descent into Darkness

Heroism is so deadly to the Degenerati [those partaking in the degenerate forces of modernity] that even villains cannot be majestic. In many of these stories, only the bad and tawdry things were exalted. True villainy, of the majestic kind, is banished.

Don’t believe me?

If you search for Maleficent, both these ladies show up, but only the original version of Maleficent shows up if you search for one of her most famous quotes: “Now shall you deal with ME, O Prince, and all the powers of Hell!”

There’s a reason for that.

Both these women may share the same malicious and magnificent name, but only one of them deserves it.

To those of us whose eyes are not blinded by the putrid bile that fills the eyes of the Degenerati, villainy seems, well, vile. An impressive bad guy is still a bad guy, and bad guys are bad. And so we see them, whether they are wimpy villains or majestic villains OF DOOM!

But we often prefer the majestic type, because the more impressive the villains, the more impressive the hero who defeats them.

But to those whose hearts have been corrupted, majesty itself is despised.

In real fairy tales, both the hero and the villain can be majestic. In the twisted modern stories, no one is majestic. The heroes are not brave and glorious, and the villains are not fierce and awe-inspiring.

In fact, nothing is awe-inspiring.

When Canadian psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson lectures about the nature of stories, he often returns to the story of Pinocchio. He sees Pinocchio’s transformation from doll to real boy as a symbol of the transformation we all yearn to go through, but this is not the part of the story he talks about the most. What stands out to him is the opening, in which a sweet and good man, who is kind to others, looks up at a star and yearns for a son.

More than once, he has paused to emphasize how good a person Geppetto is in the tale, how kind and generous and unselfish.

In the graphic novel series Fables, fairytale beings flooded into our world, fleeing some dire danger in their own. As they arrived, they were clearly tainted by our air, because by the time they reached the city, the more noble characters had become cads and the Big Bad Wolf had become a hero.

After a time, however, the characters regrouped and decided to try to find out what was happening back home. One of the questions that reverberated throughout this period was: who was behind the terrible events in their home world?

The author of Fables had many impressive villains to choose from. Might it be the insidious Von Rothbart, whose cunningly disguises his daughter Odile as the lovely Odette in order to beguile the prince and drive Odette to her death?

Or the witch from Hansel and Gretel who cackles while she eats children?

Might it be the wicked fairy from Sleeping Beauty, whom Disney made so impressive that she can call upon all the powers of Hell?

Or the ice-cold Snow Queen who can, with a shard of her mirror, turn a boy’s heart to ice?

OR the Pied Piper, who steals the town’s children when they won’t pay him for ridding them of rats?

Or the Rat King himself, the vile three-headed opponent of the Nutcracker prince?

He might have chosen any of these to be the villain worthy of his many heroes and heroines, but he didn’t. The villain behind the calamity in Fables was an evil…Geppetto?

It is not enough to have an evil snow queen or rat king; the good little man who was kind and loving must be warped beyond recognition into something vile, lest the villain be anyone whom we might accidentally admire.

The same thing happened in Disney’s Maleficent.

Disney cartoons feature many fine villains, but none stand out for their force and majesty as much as Maleficent, the wicked fairy who is so angry that she has been slighted at a christening that she curses the family and tries to kill the child.

Maleficent is impressive. She is funny. And when she discovers that sixteen years later, her minions are still looking for a baby instead of a young lady, she voices that most marvelous of all villainous lines: “You are a disgrace to the forces of evil!”

But Maleficent herself is no disgrace to the forces of evil. When it comes time to fight the prince, she turns into a gigantic dragon and calls upon the most infernal forces of all.

This gives her a majesty that fits with the evil magnificence of her name. She was spectacular in her villainy.

Too spectacular for the Degenerati, apparently.

In the original Sleeping Beauty – in some ways the most beautiful of all the Disney cartoons – the backdrops were done by a well-known painter. ( I used to sell his works when I worked at a gallery.) – Maleficent curses King Stephan, a man who is both a kind king and a loving husband and father. His only crime is that he left the evil fairy off his guest list. He is good, and he is innocent. The horror that befalls his nation is appalling, and he is undeserving of this terrible fate.

In the recent movie about a being who happens to have a similar look and name to our magnificent villainess, the main character, Faux-Malificent, is not majestic. She is weak and innocent. She falls in love with a man, and this dastardly individual betrays her sweet love and cuts off her wings, leaving her bereft, a victim.

How sad. How tragic. What a victim she is. No wonder she grew up to be such a...unpleasant fairy creature.

In the movie, that man is…the future King Stephan.

It is Geppetto all over again.

Big-hearted Geppetto cannot be kindly; he has to be an evil mastermind. Good-hearted King Stephan cannot be innocent; he has to be the cad who screwed over the future villainess.

Good men become cads and creeps so that the bad people, like Maleficent and the Big Bad Wolf, can be misunderstood, pathetic. (Okay, I actually like Big Bad. He’s my favorite Fable character, but I like him because he’s a noir detective type like Sam Spade. He has nothing in common with the character from the fairytales who eats grandmothers and pigs.) All majesty is removed from the characters, and without majesty, there is no awe.

Because we can’t have awe.

It might accidentally remind someone of the Source of All Awe.

And that, folks – strange as this may seem – seems to be the real issue. Noble qualities, even in villains, are still noble qualities. And modern stories don’t want those. They want scum, and they want victims.

Scum and victims are not perilous.

And if there is no peril, then there can be no heroism.

Part Five— All About The Magic: Or the Gosling of the Golden Creek Vs. The Unicorn Pooper-Scoopers

Part Three — The Wonder That Is Perlious

Beside the road leading to my street, there is a small pond. This pond is the favorite nesting place of a flock of Canada geese who like to walk out in the street.

The other day, I found myself sitting and waiting for the geese to depart, so I could drive home without running over them. As I watched the birds waddle by, I thought of people I knew who had expressed hatred for these creatures that stop traffic and leave goose droppings all over the sidewalk and golf courses. Their hatred added to my impatience.

After all, I wanted to get home. I had things to do, man!

But then I remembered something.

As a child, I had loved these birds. Why? Because at the gateway to the local county park was a river. Canada geese nested on the riverbank. If one was lucky, if one came at just the right time, one might catch a glimpse of the tiny goslings paddling behind their august parents.

These adorable creatures were the only baby wild animals visible to us as children. Seeing these little beige and yellow bundles of fluff lit our hearts. It was as wondrous as magic!

When had I lost the magic?

Was it familiarity that had bred such contempt? I saw them all the time, now, so the magic had fled? This thought led me to the following question:

If flocks of unicorns roamed my hometown, would the magic go away with them, too? Would I be sitting here wishing the herd of unicorns would just get off the road?

And then it struck me.

The difference between my current thoughts about unicorns and my childhood memory was like the difference between urban fantasy and stories of wonder. In a story of wonder, ordinary creatures, such as Canada goose goslings, became objects of awe and magic. In an Urban Fantasy, people argue about who was responsible for scooping up the unicorn poop.

Before I go on, I should clarify: I am a big fan of urban fantasy. This insight is in no way meant to detract from the delight of reading about a tarnished pixy with tattered wings, a base-playing goblin, or a dwarf in a fedora asking questions and taking names.

However, there are many more experienced authors than I for giving advice about writing good urban fantasy. So, I will concentrate on the subject of how to bring that childhood sense of wonder back to our stories.

If Urban Fantasy is about the magical in a mundane setting, Stories of Wonder are about mundane things in a magical setting. The first seizes fairytales, folklore, and mythology and drags them into our world, kicking and screaming. The second lifts us out of our ordinary daily life and into the extraordinary.

So, how does one capture this magic when writing? How do we portray pixies up close without tarnishing their wings? How do we become familiar with unicorns and yet not grumble about how irksome it is that they have been eating our flowers? How do we turn the geese holding up traffic back into creatures of enchantment?

The key is to look around and imagine what the world would be like if it were alive…and it loved us.

The marvelous world in stories of wonder is not always friendly. It can be grumpy, or angry, or tricky. It can be dangerous, sometimes terrible. But, underneath, there is a sense of something wonderful, something precious, something that makes you catch your breath from joy.

If that is lacking, it is not a Story of Wonder.

So, how is it done? By looking around and imagining what the things we see would be like—if they just happened to fall into fairyland.

The small stone pump house on the corner becomes a home for tiny folk who peek their little whiskered snouts around the edge of the door and peer at us with very large black eyes.

Little doors into the crawl spaces of an attic become gates that transform those who pass through, so that they can fly or turn invisible or talk to fish.

Misshapen tree trunks, with a horizontal section low to the ground, become riding trees that can pull up their roots and run through the forest during the mysterious cusp of twilight.

Go ahead, try it. Pick a perfectly normal object in your environment and think about what it might be if you suddenly discovered it was a friendly visitor from the Court of Oberon. (Feel free to note your discoveries in the comments section.)

The next question one might ask is: Who does this well? Whose writing can we look to as an example? In my humble opinion, I believe the mistress of writing wonder is British author, Barbara Sleigh. (Who is that, you ask? If you missed her in your childhood, I am so very sorry! I will introduce you now, as I first met her.)

Once, in the long-ago dream time, I attended an old elementary school that had a marvelous library. This library was not as libraries are today—filled with new books all shiny with bright pictures on their dustcovers, all published in the last twenty to thirty years. This library was filled with old books.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a book bogie* had lived there as well.

One day, while peering into the shadows of the dimly lit stacks, I found a slim volume I don’t think anyone else had ever checked out. It was KINGDOM OF CARBONEL by Barbara Sleigh. It would be years before I met anyone else who had read this book. And more years before, a friend traveling to England finally brought back the first book, CARBONEL, for me. But these two slim volumes, in their own quiet way, remain among the most magical I have read.

(I may not be the only author who has felt this way. These books were written in England in the 1950s. The villain is referred to as You-Know-Who, and there are characters with names like Tonks and Pettigrew. So it is possible that another author, far better known than I, once fell under their spell as well.)

The fantasy in the books is low-key. The children need to deal with mundane issues such as chores, being home in time for supper, and finding enough money to cross town by bus. Yet the magic, when it comes, seems all the more wondrous for its unexpectedness. There is a talking prince of cats, a flying rocking chair, and a cantankerous witch who is losing her powers.

Yet, there is so much more. Only a step away from the roofs of mundane England is the Country of Cats, another land that the children glimpse but briefly. And when they need magic to speak with animals, they are given a prescription that causes the clerk to scratch his head and then climb up on a ladder to draw liquid from the large red bottle propped as a display in the window of the chemist’s shop. (There is even an amusing sub-plot for the poor clerk, who accidentally licks his finger after pouring out the liquid and believes himself to be going mad when he begins to understand the speech of worms and bugs.)

In this bestowing of magic to ordinary things—roofs, rocking chairs, and window display bottles—there is the curious wonder that comes from peeking into another world not meant for humankind, a world to which the children can only be temporary visitors—and yet when they leave, we know that they have been changed forever and will never again be quite as other people are, that they will always be something more.

And isn’t that, really, why we read? So we, the reader, can enter a magical kingdom that gives us a glimpse of something beyond the ordinary, beyond the world we know, in the hope that we, too, will emerge from the book changed, having been made better by the experience, so that we, too, will never again be quite as mundane as we were before?

So that, while others sit in the road grumbling about being held up by “rats with wings”, we alone will behold the majesty of the graceful dancers of the sky, who once were the goslings of Golden Creek.

* -- creature said to haunt libraries and help children find the perfect book.

Who is your favorite weaver of Stories of Wonder?

What ordinary objects would you like to see woken to fairy life by the breath of enchantment?

Part Six: The Secret of the Perilous Wood

Part Four: A Disgrace to the Forces of Evil

Part Six:
Why Does the Perilous Need Defending?

And now, after a five-year wait, we come to the next installment. I thought it was going to be What is the Secret of the Perilous Woods?

Two weeks ago, something different occurred to me.

Something creepily disturbing.

To sum up what we have covered so far: the Degenerati push tales of witches and magic and demons, etc., but they mock and deconstruct fairytales, even though fairytales are also about magic and witches.

Why? Because fairytales are moral.

Which brings me to a very important question: The Wood Perilous is perilous indeed. It is full of terrible danger: witches that eat children, ogres, giants, and sometimes even darker things that creep out of Hell and lurk in the night. If the perils of the forest are so perilous, why in the world would anyone need to defend them?

The initial answer is: because these horrendous terrors have been declawed and are now pleasant and banal. The tricky fairy who Cornishmen speak of in hushed, respectful voices has become frivolous and mild. The dangerous enchantress who calls upon All the Powers of Hell has become pathetic—dewinged and dumped. The eerie unicorn is now being followed around by a bored pooper-scooper, and devils now date girls on Disney.

But removing the perils makes everything okay, right? Isn’t this a victory? The dangers of days gone by are gone, right?

Well, about that…

In Neil Gaiman’s novel Anansi Boys, there is a fairytale about Anansi the Spider and Tiger. In it, Anansi, the spider god of west Africa, helps scare Tiger away by using stories (which I believe, according to the local lore, Anansi tricked out of Tiger to begin with) to mock him, to make fun of his roar, etc.

So when Tiger shows up and roars, all the other animals remember the mockery and laugh. Embarrassed, Tiger turns tail and runs.

Anansi has now gotten rid of Tiger.

Only, every time I think about this story, I think: but it was a TIGER! What do you think is going to happen if it gets hungry?

Recently, however, I had another, more disturbing thought.

In another Neil Gaiman book, American Gods, one of the main threads of the story is the concept of a two-man con. One confidence trickster can only fool so many people. But if there are two men, working together, pretending to be strangers, they can trick a great many more people.

If a man offers to heal boo-boos with snake oil, you might balk. But if a perfect stranger who has never seen this man before walks up and is healed… Well! Maybe it works!

The disturbing thought that struck me was: What if Anansi and Tiger is a two-man con?

Anansi knows Tiger is fearsome and ferocious. He knows that sooner or later, the Tiger will get hungry.

Then what will happen? Well, Tiger will come roaring back with his huge fangs and sharp claws and rip apart one of the other animals and eat it.

And Anansi and his spider family can feast on the leavings.

Anansi used stories to declaw, not Tiger, but Tiger’s victims.

Once upon a time, my family was house hunting. One of the houses was in the woods. It was just beautiful, with a gorgeous forest around it. To help give the full picture of life in this house, the family who owned it had left photos showing what it looked like in other seasons. There were tulips, flowering trees, and one photo that showed a bear sitting on the front lawn.

My daughter looked at the picture of the bear and declared that she hoped we would move here, and a bear would come so that she could go out and pet it. When we warned her that bears were dangerous, she said, “But what if it was a nice bear?”

Nothing we said could convince her that wild bears were dangerous. She had not heard the right fairytales when she was young. (This is not our fault. She was almost fourteen when she joined our family.)

She did not understand that bears were perilous.

So what do we need to do if we wish to save Tiger’s victims? Strangely, we need to defend Tiger—restore to him his true fearsomeness. Only then will those upon whom he preys know to beware his fierce might.

And how do we do this?

With stories. With poetry:

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake

No one is going to laugh when that Tiger roars.

Who benefits if the evil enchantress Maleficent is shown to be a hapless victim who dated a nice guy who turned out to be a total jerk and cut off her wings? Who benefits if we all feel sorry for her and see things from her point of view and stop being frightened of her?

Only one person benefits—Maleficent.

She still has at her disposal all the powers of Hell, but now her victims are disarmed. They don’t suspect her. They are no longer cautious.

They have forgotten the secrets of the Perilous Wood.

So why is it the Degenerati push tales of witches and de-fanged demons but don’t favor true fairytales?

They know that the fairytale is warning its audience about them.

Part Seven: The Secret of the Perilous Wood!

Part Five: All About The Magic: Or the Gosling of the Golden Creek Vs. The Unicorn Pooper-Scoopers

Now, finally: the Secret of the Perilous Wood.

Before we continue, I want to establish a term: Once upon a time, my husband wrote a story called “One Bright Star to Guide Them.” In it, there was a reference to a few fairytale-style enemies. One was the willow women who deceived men’s eyes. The implication was that they could weave webs of mesmerism that ensorcelled and beguiled. I remember them well because at the time, I wanted to put them in a roleplaying game, but I could not figure out what they would actually do.

I do not have that problem anymore. More about that later.

Now, finally, what is the Wood’s secret? To answer that question, I must tell you a story.

This is a true story. It happened long enough ago that travel from America to India was by ship, but it happened. If you wish to hear it yourself, I’ll put a link at the end, though it isn’t told by the person it happened to. Still, the person who tells of the experience also includes some related experiences of his own. It’s worth listening to.

A man wished to understand mesmerism better and how to fight it. He was so interested in this that he traveled to India to study with an Indian mystic and learn about their methods.

As he settled onto the ship, he met another traveler, a Hindu, and asked him if he believed in mesmerism.

The two of them were standing overlooking the front of the ship. It was a lovely day. Stevedores were loading baggage. The docks were busy.

Suddenly, a huge tidal wave struck the ship. The stevedores were swept away. Baggage was washed everywhere. The man had to hang on for dear life. It was a huge disaster.

Then, just as suddenly, it was over.

There was no tidal wave. The stevedores still worked on the deck. The baggage was still there.

The man’s fellow traveler smiled and asked, “Is that what you meant?”

The whole way to India, these two men talked. Our traveler learned from his fellow about how mesmerism is done, and—and this is the point of our story—how to fight it.

The man arrived in India and went to visit the mystic. He was led to a room and left there. A few minutes later, a servant came in carrying a large, exquisite vase. The servant lifted the vase and dashed it on the floor, shattering it. Shards of vase went everywhere.

But now, our traveler was onto hypnotism. He realized that he was being mesmerized. He applied the advice that his fellow traveler had given him and, sure enough, the spell broke. The vase and the shards vanished, and he was by himself again.

He felt rather pleased that he had managed this. Immediately, the broken shards of vase reappeared.

He found that he had to really concentrate to dispel them again and keep them gone.

The question, of course, is: What did his fellow traveler tell him that allowed him to break out of the mesmerism of the broken vase?

The answer is: To dispel hypnotism, you need to hold on to a fact. Just hold to the fact with your full concentration. This breaks the spell.

Any fact will do: Two plus two is four.

Let me repeat this again, because, when it comes to the Wood Perilous, this is supremely important.

Truth breaks spells.

And that, my dearest readers, is the Secret of the Perilous Wood.

The Degenerati do not want people reading real fairytales—as opposed to the deconstructed kind—because they know that while the tales are fanciful, in every truly important way, they are also true. And truth breaks the enchantment that their willow women have woven over our eyes, our nation, our world.

Because, as we saw above, that is how mesmerism works.

Get someone to lie, and your power over their mind grows. Your ability to hypnotize them grows. You can convince them that good is bad, up is down, black is white, and men are women. You can take away their sense of reality and convince them of, well, nearly anything.

But far more important, tell the truth, and the mesmerism breaks.

Truth is what cuts through their power, breaks their enchantments. And that is what we need to do, as individuals but even more as writers. We need to speak the truth.

Even when the whole universe tells us not to.

Remember what I said at the beginning of the first article: how this is a fairytale about you, who have “become lost in a distant land, unable to find home again. It is a story about hope and the forces of darkness, and how all the Powers of Hell are bent upon the purpose of crushing the spirit of our main character.”

Don’t believe me?

Did you think I was exaggerating? Do you think your life is mundane? That you are not lost in the Perilous Wood, where the forces of darkness lure and deceive, providing all temptation for you to give in and lie just a little, maybe just this once, so that their willow women’s webs can cloud your vision and ensorcelled you?

I started this article in 2018. Had I finished it then, nothing I just said would have seemed controversial.

But now? What was as obvious as up is up and down is down is now so murky that we can hardly find our way through it.

You might not even have believed me.

But now?

Go back to the paragraph that starts “Get someone to lie.” Go to the third sentence. Read the last three words.

Now, reverse the meaning of those three words—the same way we just reversed up is down to read up is up and down is down—so that you have the statement of fact, the truth.

In 2018, not a single person you know would have hesitated. It’s only been five short years, and yet…

Are you even willing to speak those words aloud?

Part Eight: All the Powers of Hell

Part Six: Why Does the Perilous Need Defending?

To hear the story about the man traveling to India, follow this link, pick Human A-J, and then Dan Jensen—Practical Wisdom. This story is about 34 minutes in.

We have established that the Wood Perilous is perilous. We have established that what it needs defending from is the perils themselves—because it is the perils who benefit from making the wood seem ordinary, banal. It is the perils who benefit if people forget to be wary of them.

Which leads to the question…who is the greatest peril of all?

Who is the danger who, more than any other, has managed to convince the modern world not to be afraid of him—even more so than Anansi’s de-toothed (supposedly) Tiger?*

*—brief note: My thoughts about Anansi and Tiger are about that parable in and of itself, not about the use of Anansi and Tiger in Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, which I rather liked.

Who has done such a good job of publicly de-clawing himself that he has convinced us that he does not exist?

The Devil.

If we truly wish to Defend the Wood Perilous, to put heart back into heroes and soul back into stories, we have to give the Devil his due by restoring to him his perilousness.

He is the most dangerous destructive being in the universe—and yet most modern people chuckle if his name is mentioned. This is a far greater con than the Spider and the Tiger. This is the greatest con ever pulled.

So how do we restore the awe proper to All the Powers of Hell?

I thought this next part was going to be hard. Then I read of a real-life visit to Hell, and I realized... to restore the true majesty and depravity of the Devil, all we need to do is break his spell.

And we already know how to do that from our last post, The Secret of the Perilous Wood. All we need to do is…

Tell the truth:

Without further adieu, the real-life visit to Hell of Dr. Gloria Polo

My Judgment Before God: The Story of Dr. Gloria Polo

Translated from Spanish to English by Susanna Vallejo.

Foreword by Eric R. Dunstan

Doctor Gloria Polo was an orthodontist living in Columbia when she was struck by lightning and had a near death experience in which she was judged by Jesus and condemned for mortal sin. Fortunately, a very pious, humble farmer who saw a picture of her in the newspaper prayed for her soul and Jesus granted her a second chance, with a mission to repeat what she witnessed not only a thousand times, but a thousand times a thousand; and that when she comes back before Jesus to be judged again, she will be judged with greater severity, due to her second chance and all that she saw while over there. Susanna Vallejo personally met Dr. Gloria Polo on several occasions and painstakingly translated her testimony from Spanish audio recordings to English and sent me this copy which I have posted on this page. Consider this therefore to be furthering the mission given to Dr. Gloria Polo.

She describes how she was hit by lightning and died. Here are a few excerpts, but the whole thing is truly worth reading:

When you are over there being judged, it’s your thoughts that speak the loudest. You re-live your life because our Lord opens the Book of Life and he goes over your entire life with your and so you re-live every second of it. You see your life go before you, including what your thoughts were at that moment in your life. And when you act in certain manners you see all the people that were damaged or hurt due to your actions at that instant of your life that is being shown to you in the Book of Life. It’s very painful. Our Lord shows us how our sins do not simply stay within us. Like a rotten fruit, if it’s not removed, it will rot all the fruit around it. If I allow sin in my life, what is the closest thing to me that is going to get damaged? My children.

You know what, brothers and sisters, remove those earplugs from your ears because I want you to hear this, when you fall into mortal sin, the devil compromises you and you sign your soul over to the devil. And your soul immediately becomes the devil’s possession. Once we do that, the saddest part is that the devil tells us, “Now, bring me all those around you.”

A mother who is always gossiping, a father who is filled with hatred, or unfaithfulness, or a drunkard, what is the closest thing that he or she has? His or her children. The Lord calls that the bad administration of the talents that the Lord gives a father and mother to inculcate to their children graces of salvation. Every time that my biological brothers would get drunk and would be sleeping around with women other than their wives, my dad, over there in those swamps, would scream and wail. My dad felt a lot of pain when he was down there because he was given the understanding that due to his lifestyle, he had handed his sons over to Satan in a silver platter.

…

When one breaks that pact, you cannot imagine, how blessings are removed from your married life. When my husband and I received the Eucharist, the body and blood or our Lord, you want to know what happened? It’s no longer a couple. It becomes three because immediately our Lord Jesus incorporates the souls of the couple and he takes them into His heart. And it’s no longer three, but one because we become a trinity, the groom, the bride and Jesus, in His heart. Who can separate that? No body. No body. Once the marriage is consummated, if the young lady is pure, many, many graces and blessing get poured upon them, more so upon the couple in which both of them are virgins when they get married, because you are married to God.

When my father, slipped the ring into my mom’s finger, and they were declared husband and wife, our Lord Jesus handed over to my father a staff of light, like this. Do you know what that is? It’s a grace, the gift of authority, which God bestows upon the father/husband, the authority of God the father. That authority is to be used by the father/husband to guide his little flock through this world, in which so many wolves exist that try to devour marriages. My husband also received that staff, all men who are sacramentally married do.

When my mother got married, she received a fire upon her heart, like a humongous ball of fire. Do you know what that is? The love of God. The beauty of it is that my mother was a very pure woman and God was very pleased with her.

When my father was 12 years old, my grandfather took him to the brothels. Can you imagine how many evil-worldly spirits entered my father’s soul? Those evil-worldly spirits look like larva to me. They’re like larva. When someone has relations outside of marriage, those evil-worldly spirits immediately attach themselves to those persons all over their bodies. They begin by attaching themselves to their genitals but they end up taking over that person. They take over their hormones. They get into their brain. They take over the hypophysis (pituitary gland). They take over the pituitary gland. They take over the neurological part of their organism. And they begin to generate a great number of hormones that leads them to very low instincts. They turn a son or daughter of God into slaves of their genitals. And they become genital human beings. They’re enjoying life, excuse my language, if they are wallowing in bed, in sin. When the couple is pure, many blessings get poured upon them. God glorifies himself in that because the blood is there as a pact of unity and sanctity between the couple.

Sexuality is not a sin, brothers and sisters. God gave it to us as a blessing. He gave it to us for a couple to love each other. True sexuality is the couple and God. When you get up there, you are going to be shown too how the Holy Spirit is always in the sacramental bed because the bed ends up being a sacrament of love, that is, in that bed exists the blessing of the Sacrament of Marriage. And in that sacramental bed dwells the Holy Spirit. God also leaves a cloud, that is, his presence in a home at the kitchen table. If there isn’t a table, he leaves a cloud over wherever the family gets together to share a meal. God blesses. God loves going home with the couple. When I got married, did I take God with me? No. I left him at the altar. I went straight to the party, and then the honeymoon, and then we arrived home and our Lord was left outside. But nonetheless he remained in the sacrament. That is something that cannot be denied.

Back to my parents. The beauty of that matrimonial blessing that my parents received is that the Lord was restoring within my father many spiritual gifts because he was married to a pure woman and that was healing my dad’s inherited sexual bondages. But since he was a macho man and his friends began instigating him; that he better not allow himself to fall for a woman; that he had to continue living his party life. So what does my father do? 15 days after his marriage, he ends up in a brothel to show off to his friends that he continued being the macho man that he was before he got married. Remember that staff that he had received at the altar, well, the Beast stole it from him. That larva became attached to my father. He went from being the shepherd of his home to a wolf.

While in those swamps, my father, crying would say, “Thanks to those 38 years of prayer of that holy woman that God gave me as a wife, my soul has been saved from eternal damnation.” My mother spent 38 years of her life praying for the salvation of my father’s soul. Her prayer went something like this – she would go before the Blessed Sacrament and would say, “Lord, I know that you will not allow your servant to die because I trust in you Lord, you will not allow this servant of yours to die without seeing the conversion of her husband. I don’t only pray for my husband, but for all the poor women who are going through what I am going through. I especially pray for the wives, who instead of kneeling before you in prayer, are going to witch doctors, fortunetellers, or are doing the same thing as their husbands, handing over their souls and the souls of their children to Satan. I pray for them too, Lord.”

You want to know why I loved my father, rather than feeling hatred towards him? Because my mom was a good woman. She never, never, never taught us to hate my father nor anyone, for that matter. I used to say, there goes my mom again with her crazy stuff. She used to say, “The Lord has revealed to me how the earth opened up and swallowed up your father.” That’s how my mother would describe mortal sin, by saying that the earth would open up and would swallow people up. But when I was up there, I discovered that my mother did have a mystical vision. My mother used to tell me, “I saw it. Satan has chained him. But you know what I do, daughter, I hold on to him with the rosary. And I take him to church with me every day, tied up with the rosary. And the devil pulls him downward and I pull him upward. And I take him up to the Blessed Sacrament and I tell him, ‘Here he is, Lord. And I trust that you are going to save him.’”

My father converted eight years before he died. He asked for forgiveness and God forgave him. That is why my father was in purgatory, in the lower parts of purgatory, in the swamps. But my father did not atone for his sins. To atone for our sins is something that we don’t really delve into very much and we cannot atone for anything, but Jesus in the Eucharist can. When a soul goes to adore our Lord before the Blessed Sacrament, he invites us and gives us the grace to repair the wrong that one has done. It’s a terrible thing because when you’re over there, our Lord shows us the consequences of our sins. Sin is not simply, oops, I stole something. When you’re up there, He will show you the damage that it causes others. What hurts God the most is not the act of stealing, yes, that is bad, but what hurts him the most is the pain that one causes one’s brethren.

The Lord held me accountable even for a dirty look that I gave someone. He held me accountable for a bad word that I said to a brother. Those errors hurt so much when you are over there being judged. My mom used to tell my dad to advise my brothers not to live a sinful life. My dad would answer her by saying, “Sweetheart, let them enjoy life. The boys are young. When they get older, the boys shall change their ways.” How painful it is for a father to turn his children over to eternal death.

…

I wasn’t even able to stay in the lower parts of purgatory with my father. I continued descending. And when my descent came to an end, I came to a flat surface. You can imagine the horror I felt when I realized that I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even stay in the last corner of purgatory. I continued descending. When I came to that flat surface, a mouth opened up. And that mouth swallowed me in. It was real. It was alive. Everything is very real over there. That is reality. Over there, there is nothing unreal. Everything is very real. And I go in there head first. When I am on my way into another mouth, I was yelling and screaming like a crazy person. I knew that once I entered in there completely that I wasn’t going to be able to stay in the cavity. I knew that I had to continue descending. That hole had another mouth. And I knew that once I entered through that mouth, that I would never come out. It was my spiritual death, the death of my soul. But when I am headed towards that mouth, thanks be to God, St. Michael the Archangel grabbed me by the feet and I entered in a light manner, like a feather, into that hole. The light of my spirit bothered all of the demons that were there and immediately demons that looked like larva jumped at me and covered up my entire body as to cover up any little bit of light that might have been left within in me. I was horrified at that sight. I would yell and scream like a mad woman. When those things attached themselves to me, they were burning me alive. They are darkness that is real and alive. The hatred that exists there is real and alive. It’s a form of hatred that burns you up alive, hatred that makes you explode, hatred that devours you. And I am there covered up with that larva.

…

I was very impressed when I watched the movie, The Passion of Christ; Remember when they were scourging our Lord? Remember that Satan pulls out a baby from over here and that baby looks at our Lord and laughs at him? That thing is what I want to tell you about. Nowadays that thing is no longer a baby, it’s a gigantic and perverse child. It has many, many people in slavery through human pleasures, witchcraft, and mixed theology; for example,the belief that Satan does not exist. Imagine the shrewdness of Satan to be able to convince humanity that he is not real. He manipulates the destruction of men. He walks men through the path of destruction.

…

The Lord showed me, how a community can be capable of killing its own children by sacrificing them to the devil through abortion. That’s the worst of all sins, to kill your own children, to kill a baby. But each time that there is an abortion, Satan releases from the pit of hell — what is an abortion? Abortion is the same as killing an innocent baby, precious innocent blood is shed because that baby is sinless. That baby is like a lamb without blemish. Who is the only lamb without blemish? Jesus is. At that moment, the baby is an image of Jesus Christ. The act of aborting a baby brings such power to darkness, the fact that the mother herself kills her child. I am only talking about provoked abortions, not spontaneous abortions. All those demons come here to destroy humanity.

…

Now, let me ask you, how many crimes occur on a daily basis? God loves us so much that He remains on the cross begging us. The worst of all the sins I committed was the sin of abortion. And I used to say that I had never killed anyone. When I killed my baby through abortion, our Lord showed me how there was a huge, gigantic, stadium filled with demons. There were so many demons. It looked as though the demons were attending a World Cup game but with many, many, many more demons in attendance enjoying the human sacrifice, that happens every time there is an abortion. They enjoy that so much. Imagine, how can it be that a mother to whom God has given the gift of giving life chooses to kill her own baby, a mother who against wind and fire protects her own child and that same mother kills her baby through abortion. I feel a lot of pain when, in my country, I see commercials on TV that tell us to enjoy safe sex by using a condom. Well, with two condoms and everything else, I ended up pregnant. Through the waves of communication and all of his strategies, the devil has led humanity to kill their own children. Why do you think that is? That is because that is the worst sin of all. When we kill a baby, what are we doing in reality? Are we offering that baby up to God? God is love.

Every time, there is an abortion, the blood shed by that baby is like a key that Satan turns and the Lord showed me something that looked like seals on the ground and every time there is an abortion, those seals open up and millions of spirits get released on to earth from the pit of hell, spirits such us: the spirit of homosexuality, the spirit of lust, the spirit of satanic worship, the spirit of atheism, spirits of suicide, of abortion, spirits of everything that we are seeing nowadays. Haven’t you noticed how human beings are becoming less and less Christian?

…

Right then and there, the Lord gave me my mission. He gives me my mission and he says to me, “All this that has transpired, you are not only going to repeat it a thousand times, but a thousand times a thousand. And woe to those who hear your testimony and do not change because they will be judged with greater severity, in the same manner that you are going to be judged with greater severity. Be it (priests), my anointed ones, or whoever because there is no greater deaf person than he/she who does not want to hear, nor is there greater blind person than he/she who does not want to see.”

Read the rest. It’s worth it! There’s even a book.

Or on Amazon:

Again, truth is the thing that shatters mesmerism. To return majesty and eerieness to theWood Perilous—to make it perilous again—what we need is to restore the proper fear of Hell—and thus the proper awe of the one Power greater than all the powers of Hell—is tell the truth.

Tell people the truth about Hell, about the Devil, and most of all, about Christ and God.

The very best stories are about the truest things!

*

*

To that end:

In case you don’t read Dr. Gloria Polo’s whole testimony and miss where she says this herself, remember, even at the last minute, souls have been saved. If you ever find yourself falling into Hell, call for Jesus Christ. I have read a number of near-death experiences where that one thing saved someone at the very last minute.

I will say this one more time: Even if you have lived an abominable life— stolen, killed, cared for no one, committed a hundred abortions—if you call on Christ, it can all be forgiven.

Even at the very, very last minute.

Of course, it might be easier on you—and the rest of us—if you don’t wait that long. ;-)

Thank you for reading Defending the Wood Perilous

It is my dearest hope that you will go forth
and take your place among the Defenders!

*

Part Seven: The Secret of the Perilous Wood

This year at Davos, where the WEF—the rich elites secretly (or not so secretly) running the world—meet, they suddenly dropped all the Woke/Climate issues they had been pushing for decades.*

*— According to Data Republican and others who were there in person.

Instead, they were 100% pushing AIs.

Why?

Who knows. Maybe they think AI will make them richer. Maybe they think they can replace human beings and just have AI work for them. God only knows.

The problem is: For decades now, there has been a kind of a hierarchy.

The Morlocks or elites—the trend-setting cabal pushing Woke and Climate agenda.
The Useful Enablers—politicians and media
The Eloi—people who follow and believe them.

The cabal pushes these issues at Davos. The second tier popularizes them and makes laws based on them. The third tier commits to the issues as a kind of gospel.

Now, all of a sudden, for the first time, there is a disconnect between the top group and the second and third group.

The cabal wants AIs.

But AIs are HUGE carbon sinks.

So the cabal needs to shift gears. They even got the IPCC—the organization that brought us Global Climate Hysteria—to quietly admit that some of their climate doomsday predictions may have been inaccurate…

But the second group—world leaders trying to control their population by forcing farmers to kill livestock under the stupid idea that nature puts extra carbon into the cycle that it didn’t also take out of the cycle—don’t want to give up the hold Climate Panic has over their population.

What’s more, people who have spent thirty years defending this position and mocking the “Climate Deniers” have put a tremendous amount of their reputation on the line for this issue.

So they don’t want to backtrack.

On top of that, AI are not popular with the Eloi. The rank and file of the Left sympathize with the artist losing their gig, not with the AI stealing their work and then using the knowledge to steal their jobs, too.

So, for the first time, the cabal wants to move toward AI; the politicians and media want to stick with what is working; the rank and file want to move away from AI.

I am curious how this will unfold.

Guesses? Opinions?