Fighting the Good Fight II: Vigilance and Freedom of Squick

For all of you who don't already read Neil Gaiman's blog, I recommend you check out this post on freedom of speech, especially and including the icky stuff.

The issue is this (and I'm probably late to the party - I bet you've all been following this case for weeks already): according to an article on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's website, Christopher Handley, 38, of Iowa, faces up to 20 years in prison. For more details, I'll just quote. It's better that way.

"Mr. Handley's case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley's collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley's collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful."

Now, admittedly, what this quote isn't getting into is what, exactly, was objectionable about Handley's manga. What Handley had is what's called lolicon and yaoi. The first is creepy by design: cartoon stories featuring little girls in sexualized situations. The latter - homosexual romances starring beautiful, androgynous men - is sometimes creepy by accident, as pubic hair is a major taboo in Japan and many characters are drawn without it, making them appear younger than they actually are.

Having read Neil Gaiman's blog, I'm going to weigh in as well.

I think it's terrible that Christopher Handley is being prosecuted for owning these comic books. I don't approve of them - I certainly wouldn't read them - but he has the same right to them that I do to whatever interests me.

How can I say this? Why do I think people should be allowed to distribute and purchase stuff I don't like and don't approve of? Because the law has to be principled, it has to function according to abstract ideals, otherwise it's just a matter of who's on top.

I think this matter is larger than just weird, icky sexual preferences. It applies to all kinds of literature, and politics as well. Furthermore, I am perfectly willing to protect the rights of everyone.

I firmly believe that if you ban lolicon today, we'll be banning ordinary pornography tomorrow, and next week, we'll be banning classic novels and new works that are a little too sexy for some people's tastes. If we stop the Nazis from marching today, we'll be stopping the Communists from marching tomorrow, and who knows? Maybe we'll be stopping the Democrats from marching next month. This is not a slippery slope argument - they fail, because all lines are arbitrary, and a line must be drawn somewhere - it's an argument based on the fact that if the law is not impartial and principled, it will simply be at the whim of whoever is in charge, and in America, a change of government is just one election away.

But, I hear you ask, how can we protect ourselves and our children? How can we protect our children from media we think is harmful (or stupid, I'm looking at you, Twilight) How can we protect a town full of Holocause survivors from the Nazis marching down their main drag or a military funeral from the hate-filled preaching of a fundamentalist maniac?

Vigilance!

The Wiktionary defines Vigilance as:

Alert watchfulness.

Close and continuous attention.

"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing." Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

We all need to be on the lookout for harmful speech that the law nonetheless allows and do our best to mitigate the damage it causes. When maniacs and morons want to demonstrate, we need to stage counter-demonstrations. When books are on the shelves that we don't want our children to read, we need to have frank talks about the topic with our children and lead by example. I am always surprised by how often people I know - good, active, moral people - fall into the trap of wanting to ban things they don't like rather than accepting the burden of vigilance.

Fortunately, in this case, the Comic Book Defense Fund has taken up the responsibility for defending Christopher Handley. Unfortunately, when a ban-happy government persecutes private citizens for their purchases, a different kind of vigilance is necessary.

You can donate to the Comic Book Defense Fund here.

I Can Has Cute Forest Feast?

So, as promised, a Thanksgiving (post-Thanksgiving?) post about fantasy food.

My first exposure to food in literature was in Brian Jacques's Redwall series, which I read in elementary school and middle school. Practically every book included a long and loving description of a feast hosted by one group of cute sentient forest creatures or another. The forest creatures were always pescetarians (the kind who also eat eggs and milk), which makes sense since most game animals were too big for them, all small creatures were sentient, and fish were dumb animals (and sometimes monsters). Anyway, the feasts were gorgeous, complete with small tangents about the preparation or gathering of the foods. Jacques spent pages and pages exhaustively described the taste, the smell, and the presentation of each dish.

Some people have mocked Jacques for his attention to culinary detail in the dietary habits of cute sentient forest creatures (and I may have joined in, because hey, they are kind of funny), but I always thought his descriptions added to the story (even as reading them made me hungry). Jacques brought his forest creatures to life with his detailed descriptions of what and how they ate. In some stories, that might be an unimportant detail, but something I realized very early about Jacques's books is that the life and times of small forest creatures was one of the main attractions. Jacques wanted us to be as fascinated as he was with how the cute forest creatures ordered their world.

Most other uses of food in fantasy or science fiction fall into two other categories: cliched or ignorant. In the latter case, food is simply forgotten, or described very blandly. We know the characters must eat, but no attention is given to what, or how, or what it says about them. In the former case, food is used simply to explicate some small detail of the setting - usually in line with some trope - but it isn't really given any attention. For example, in Tolkienesque Fantasy, trail food is boring, but fantasy creatures sometimes have nifty booze. Alternately, trail food is abominable because whoever ends up with cooking duty on the road is invariably bad at it. In classic science fiction, food comes from pills, or out of a replicator, and is utterly without character.

Ok, so, Jacques tells us a lot about his forest creatures by endlessly describing their feasts and a lot of science fiction and fantasy authors neglect the possibilities inherent in food... but wait, what are the possibilities inherent in food?

Firstly, food can do for us what it does for Jacques. It can tell us a lot about the lifestyles of the characters in our fantasy settings. What, exactly, do Jacques's feasts tell us about his cute forest creatures? We know that they live in close-knit communities, that they enjoy community projects that take a lot of cooperation and prepare food that takes many people to prepare, even though they could probably choose simpler dishes, and that they like eating large communal meals. We know that the cute forest creatures take great pleasure in presenting their food attractively and eat informally, but with the trappings of ceremony - bowls of rose-scented water to clean their fingers with, for example, and a procession of courses brought out one at a time to oohs and aahs from the assembled diners. Finally, we get some idea of the multiculturalism (multispecism?) of his cute forest creatures. We have mole-style soups and mouse-style roasts and badger-style stuffings (or whatever), and everyone enjoys them together, regardless of their origins.

Food can mean something. Does your fantasy culture eat delicately prepared meats with chopsticks? That implies a certain elegance, a distance from nature and an effort to approach the divine and eternal. Do your science fiction roughnecks drink weird-sounding boozes with exotic names? That helps imply that known space is larger than where your story takes place, and that trade has carried alien beverages even to this rough frontier. The possibilities are endless!

Food is one of those things that can tell a reader a lot about a character or a setting, but while travel writers know to cover it, science fiction and fantasy authors tend to forget about it. I think we could do worse than to take a page from Redwall and emulate the small cute forest creatures: describe our feasts in greater detail and bring our worlds to life.

* * *

• When have you noted food in something you were writing, and were you happy with the result?
  

And He Laughs

I'm sorry about the lack of a burning zeppelin post today. I'm sorry to say that it was not for the reasons I expected (general overload of work, parental proximity, and piemaking). Today in the early afternoon, the Abigail and I were informed that the Abigail's grandfather, Gabriel Lehrer entered what is almost certain to be his final illness.

Gabe hasn't been well for a while now. The details aren't really interesting, or for public consumption, but let's just say that we are all looking forward to the cessation of his pain, even though we'll miss him. It should take another three days.

I haven't known Gabe long, but the stories I have heard have astounded me. He was in World War II, where he distinguished himself by rushing towards danger to pull his shipmates out of a burning wreckage, which shortly thereafter exploded. Reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, and he pulled through despite serious injuries. Gabe spoke numerous languages fluently, and had some ability with several more.

Most of all, though, Gabe knew how to listen. When the Abigail was but a tiny geekling, Gabe listened to her. He listened to her endlessly describe her days at school, he listened to her talk about the fantasy books she was reading, and he listened to the stories she wanted to write. And he would share his stories. Gabe told the Abigail about the war, about his childhood in Brooklyn, about his life. He spoke frankly about his victories and his failures. He even wore the Abigail's silly knitted hats.

I don't really know Gabe very well. By the time I came onto the scene, he had already begun his decline. I do know, however, that he was a brilliant man, and he loved his granddaughters very much. He made the Abigail the awesome person she is to this very day. That's how I know how beautiful and brilliant he was - I see him in the Abigail.

Gabriel Lehrer was a blazing beacon, and in knowing the Abigail I get to touch a little of that fire, and I know that I am truly blessed. The fact that the Abigail says I remind her of him is an even greater honor.

So, today, for whatever it's worth, Burning Zeppelin Experience prepares to say goodbye to Gabriel Lehrer.

A Whedonesque Surrogate Playlist

NOTE: I'm actually not listening to my Whedonesque Surrogate Playlist, for two reasons. Firstly, I'm in a Starbucks and my headphones are crap, meaning I'm at the mercy of whatever Starbucks chooses to inflict upon us. Secondly, I haven't actually assembled the Whedonesque Surrogate Playlist - which will consist of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and everything on the Buffy: the Musical album that was released a while ago - because while I aquired the latter years ago, I have yet to get my paws on the former.

The significance of the Whedonesque Surrogate Playlist will be explained presently.

* * *

In anticipation of the upcoming holiday, what could be more appropriate than a discussion of family? I've already covered smell, death, and wolves, and I'm not sure I can think of sufficient connections between fantasy writing, roleplaying, and food... wait, scratch that, of course I can. There's tomorrow's post!

Anyway, family is important. In the real world, everyone has a family, even though we might sometimes wish we didn't. In fantasy, we have more options. Tragic Orphans and last survivors of ancient races are a dime a dozen, and you can even choose to have your characters spring forth ex nihilo. But a character's family is where she comes from. On some level, it's very important to who she is.

I consider myself lucky that I have never had a hard time keeping my characters' families in mind when I write or roleplay. In Rat and Starling, Rat is defined by her mother's extreme neuroses and borderline abusive behavior, while Starling is a Tragic Orphan who was raised by people he calls - affectionately, I'm sure - the evil monks. In A Knight of the Land, Kurzon Mors's family doesn't come into the story much - they're pretty normal, pretty functional bunch of middle-class types - but Iveren Mors's obsessive efforts to ensure the safety of his people eventually bring the brothers into conflict. In Ghostly Tam Lin (the working title for my NaNoWriMo novel), Janet comes from a broken home, and piecing together her mother after her parents' divorce left her with a powerful mothering instinct, while Erik still carries his father's rage and bitterness at being crippled in World War II. Perhaps this is because I, as you already know if you know me in real life, have a somewhat rocky relationship with my family, but it has always come naturally to me to think of a character's family.

In roleplaying games, it becomes much more complicated. When you write a character's family you are handing these central characters over to someone else - the game master, Storyteller, or whatever (*snicker* Hollyhock God *snicker*) - to portray. That can be tough, because if the game master gets it wrong, your character is suddenly cut loose, disconnected from a past that no longer refers to him. My best experience with this was with Glyph (the Changeling version), who you'll recall, if you've been paying attention, had an adoptive father who he wanted to be just like when he grew up. The Storyteller, Jon, did a brilliant job. Sir Corrigan was delicately portrayed as a tragic figure, a man of honor whose very nature as a fae being was killing his beloved wife; the toughest Changeling warrior in Georgia, but unable to protect his own son. His wife - Glyph's mother's - growing madness and unflagging love for her adopted son made the eventual quest to save her life one of the most powerful roleplaying experiences I've had. Glyph was connected to the world and deeply enmeshed in the plot, in part through his parents.

Another concept I'd like to touch on is chosen family, known between the Abigail and I as the Whedonesque Surrogate Family (see, I told you I'd get to it), a reference to Joss Whedon's fondness for, well, surrogate families. He does it in Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, he does it in Firefly, and if he doesn't do it in House of Dolls, I'll eat my hat.

Well, I'll eat your hat. I don't really wear hats.

What is a chosen family? A chosen family is what you get when a group of characters makes the leap from frends into something else. When they love each other like siblings, care for each other like parents, and can't stand each other in the way only family can't. Have you ever looked at a friend and thought to yourself "Well, God, I guess I'm stuck with this dude, because getting him out of my life would be like cutting off my arm"? That's chosen family. You roleplayers out there should be familiar with the idea of chosen family: a lot of Obligatory Player Character Groups end up becoming a chosen family.

I find chosen family particularly fascinating for several reasons.

Firstly, you can write (or roleplay) the formation of a chosen family. Blood families gather together much more slowly, and you can't really write them growing unless you're willing to write smut (not that anything's wrong with that). Chosen famlies gather the way friends do, however. Over a matter of a few years, friendships deepen, new friends are introduced through mutual friends, and complex interrelationships grow, combine, and mutate.

Secondly, chosen families provide me as an author and game-runner with a particularly fascinating opportunity to create families that are narratively interesting. Blood famlies are potluck. Sometimes you get something fascinating and sometimes you get the Brady Bunch. But because chosen families are chosen, it's a lot easier to write characters ending up with people who challenge them in interesting ways. Many people look for friends who challenge them, and those friendships can often become chosen family.

Finally, blood families are forged in the exciting heat of... time and breeding. Not exactly dramatic. Dramatic things can always happen to blood families, but nothing about the concept demands it or makes it easy. But chosen families, on the other hand... chosen families are intense friendships, forged in the hot fires of whatever plot comes to mind.

The one thing chosen families don't do is anchor a character's past. They can provide context for the present and the future, but only blood families tell you where your character came from. So, when you're looking at the pack of rabid monkeys you call your kin this Thanksgiving and wishing you had sprung into being ex nihilo, try to remember that.

And pass the gravy.

* * *

For the record, I think Nobilis is actually a fun game. I just think the title they use for game master is absolutely ridiculous.

• When have you read or written a particularly interesting family?
• When has the appearance of character's family positively or negatively effected a roleplaying game you were involved with?
• Do you or any of your characters (roleplaying or written) have a chosen family as well as or instead of a blood family?
  

Thanksguh-oh Update

And, while I'm at it, a real life update and warning about this week's posting schedule.

I have family members coming out to see me this Thanksgiving Weekend and a ridiculously full Thanksgiving Day planned, so this week's posting schedule is likely to look like this:

• Tuesday: A post is nearly a certainly.
• Wednesday: A post is quite likely, but not definite (I'll be making a pie!).
  
• Thursday: I am incredibly unlikely to post.
• Friday: A post is unlikely, but not as unlikely as Thursday.

I'll make an effort to create an extra post on Saturday and/or Sunday to make up for Thursday and/or Friday, but no promises at this time. NaNoWriMo remains my primary concern.

Seriously, whose bright idea was it to put National Novel Writing Month in November? November! Month of the first truly lousy weather of the year, the beginning of Seasonal Affective Disorder for those so inclined, Thanksgiving and its wild mess of relatives, cooking, and recovering afterwards, and, frequently, college and grad school finals. What's wrong with June? Nothing happens in June!

That being said, I wish each and every one of you, personally - even those of you that never comment - a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. I hope you all survive your families enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner and whatever pre- and post-Thanksgiving activities you have planned.

Paladin, a Love Story

I have always had a love-hate relationship with paladins. It was one of those "I hate you I hate you I love you" romances, where the two of us spent years at each others's throats, until the day we fell on each other's lips and declared our undying affection.

Let me explain: in the old days, I used to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd Edition - please, I'm not that old). One of the game's persistent concepts was of the paladin, a sort of a holy warrior, empowered by the gods, but not a priest. Paladins needed to live by a strict code of law and good, acting with kindness towards all, comporting themselves with dignity and respect, and obeying the letter and spirit of the law. Sure, a paladin could disobey bad laws, but she had to do so in a bold and open manner. A paladin could employ tactics, but she had to fight fair. A paladin could look the other way while her friends used stealth and deceit to achieve good ends... but she couldn't.

Of course, there were benefits to balance out these restrictions. Paladins had nearly all the benefits of a warrior, in addition to a limited ability to use magic like a priest, heal and dispel disease with a touch, and an inherent immunity to all fear, natural and otherwise. If they lived long enough, they got the service of a magical, super-tough horse (in later editions, a magical super-tough horse from heaven).

At the very beginning, my thoughts were "who the hell wants to play that?" Such a limiting code of behavior! Such goody two-shoes self-righteousness! I wanted a roleplaying experience that was freeing, not restrictive. I wanted to play characters that had some darkness to them, not four-color heroes.

It didn't help that a lot of the people I roleplayed with used 'paladin' as a code word for 'asshole,' or knew too many people who had. They liked to take advantage of the paladin's code of honor as an excuse to ruin other people's fun. "I'm sorry," they'd say, smirking, "it's not my fault my character just totally stepped all over your thief's efforts to sneak/your wizard's efforts to be clever/your bard's efforts to fast-talk - I'm playing a paladin! It's in my code of honor that nobody but me gets to have any fun my character can't tolerate that sort of thing!"

Over time, however, my antipathy began to transmute into curiosity. What would it like to play a character who was religiously obligated to care about the things that got glossed over in most roleplaying games: the cleanliness of his clothes, arms, and armor, the quality of his pipe tobacco? What would it be like to play someone who had a firm moral code? Could I find a way to play a character who was deeply, truly good, but also had a dark side to explore? What kind of dramatic tension was inherent in a character who partook of something pure and otherworldly in a deep and inherent way, living in a world full of cruelty and doubt?

Yeah, I was hooked.

Before I go any further, let's take a moment to explore just what a paladin is.

Wikipedia (ah, thank you, Wikipedia), claims that the the title 'paladin' comes from a group of knights also known as the Twelve Peers, "the foremost warriors of Charlemagne's court, according to the literary cycle known as the Matter of France." They also appear in the Song of Roland, an example of early French poetic literature, as warrior-paragons who exemplified Christian martial valor in the face of Islamic expansionism (or in the name of Christian expansionism - it depends on who you ask). The word itself apparently has its roots in Latin - 'palatinus' refers to a high level official of the Roman Empire associated with the Imperial palace. Later on, the word became associated with a high level official in any imperial or royal court, and later, to the warrior-paragons of Charlemagne. From there, the word spread to encompass any group of noble knights: the Knights of the Round Table, for example.

When Dungeons and Dragons came out in 1974, they adopted the word 'paladin' to refer to their holy warrior class. The rest, as they say, is history. Like the lich, the paladin entered our fantasy consciousness by way of Dungeons & Dragons and has now become a staple of fantasy everywhere. An entire roleplaying game - White Wolf's Exalted - now exists that explores themes of chosen-ness and divine favor, albeit in a much more cynical and morally ambiguous world.

I first experimented with paladins in my freshman year of college. Of course, I couldn't just play a standard paladin. I had to mess it up a little, see how far the trope would bend before it broke. I played Sir Glypharous Fleckeren, a half elf (by now D&D 3.0 had come out, and were liberated from cruel restrictions regarding race and class) paladin who had been raised up from life as a street rat by a noble knight who was inspired by his pluck. Sir Glyph was noble and good, with a healthy respect for the law, but he also had a mischevious streak and a 'live and let live' attitude towards his fellow adventurers. He would be a good example, but he wouldn't preach and pontificate. He knew how much people hated that.

The goal was to play a paladin who stressed the 'good' half of the 'lawful good' equation. My feeling was that most people stressed the 'law' half, making paladins who were sticks-in-the-mud (and sticks-up-the-ass!), at the expense of the 'good' half. It seemed just as fair to make a paladin who thought it was more important to be good, but still obeyed the paladin's code to the letter.

The experiment failed. In part, it was a weakness of the game - among the best Dungeons & Dragons games I've ever played in, but certainly far from my finest roleplaying experience to date - but in part it was a weakness of the character. I was simply inverting the concept, producing a character who was as much a failure at being a paladin as the assholes I'd played opposite in high school.

Sir Glyph produced two more characters before the experiment was over. One of them was a fun-loving pathological liar Changeling who wanted to be a noble knight just like his adoptive father (check out this post for more teasing details and stay tuned for a more full explanation when I finally get around to posting about the joys and challenges of playing kids). The other was Sir Imaz Aronide, the Red Prince, the Flame of the North. Imaz was the son of a border lord, vassal to a dying empire, who had, after a fight with his father, decided to go see for himself if the empire's decay had reached the point that breaking their oaths to the empire and striking off on their own was the lesser of two evils (the other potential evil being sticking with the empire and risking being dragged down with it).

Imaz was fun. He had issues. His honor caused him problems. Imaz had all... um... needs of any young man, but he didn't do anything about it. He didn't want to lead any women on, since he knew he would have to make an alliance marriage for the good of his father's kingdom. Imaz couldn't let his friends kill prisoners who had surrendered in good faith, so he took personal responsibility for making sure they didn't escape and cause trouble. The Empire needed to be warned about the monsters swarming through a misfiring magical gateway, so Imaz was the one to give up a chance of honor in battle and ride his horse nearly to death so that reinforcements would arrive in time. Imaz made sure his (and his friends) had the best gear they could find and the best food they could get, because dignity is important - and yes, Imaz worried about the quality of his pipe tobacco.

That game didn't last (or my involvement in it didn't last - I can't remember), but I really got a handle on the concept. I reprised the character once more, in a BESM-powered fantasy game, but after that, I realized that I had learned what I needed to, and I could let the concept go.

I realized that I was right. There is fun tension inherent in a character who is otherworldly, connected to something pure and good, but living in and a part of a world that is venal and cruel. There's something interesting and challenging about playing a character who holds himself (and, to a lesser degree, others) up to unrealistic standards. It's fun to play someone who wants to do the right thing, even when it's at odds with his desires. Especially when it's at odds with his desires. Most importantly, I learned that there is a place for fear, doubt, ambition, and darkness even in a paladin's story.

So, I get paladins: tension between the faith and corruption, the problematic consequences of honor, being the kind of person who doesn't settle for less, check, check, check. What do I do with it now?

I want to try writing some fantasy stories centering on this trope, but stories like that are a dime a dozen. Paladins are a fantasy trope, and just repeating a fantasy story about a fantasy paladin might be fun and easy to right, but it doesn't really fire me up.

The idea that I've had living in the back of my head for a while now, though is to try writing a modern take on the paladin trope. The setting: typical urban fantasy, a world where magic exists in hiding, waiting in the shadows. I'd probably want to make the world a little darker than average, a little more corrupt, so the main character would have more to push against. And then, there's lightning and thunder, and someone who was just your run of the mill decent dude is chosen.

I don't know exactly where I want to go with this next, but the idea is living in my head. It's been there for a few years now and it won't go away. I don't know what I'm going to make of it, but I'll keep you posted.

* * *

In the meantime, here are some questions for you to consider:

• When have you explored the trope of the paladin in your writing?
• When have you tried playing a paladin and how did it go?
• Have you ever played opposite a particularly inspired or particularly obnoxious paladin?
• Where in fiction have you found the trope of the paladin taken into a new context, updated, inverted, explored, or otherwise rendered more exciting?
  

Creative Commons

So, today I was going to do a quick "creative prompt" style post, on account of having a lot of work work to do, not to mention NaNoWriMo. So, I was going to post some artwork for you all to look at and say "tell me who this person is!" I had spent a little while last night looking at my favorite online artists when I realized that there was a small problem.

None of my favorite artists - but none - have put a Creative Commons badge on their web page.

This is silly. I want to give them free advertising! I want to post their beautiful pictures on my blog, encourage people to talk about them, and include an attribution and a link. It's also incredibly frustrating, because that would have been a lot of fun, and I think I have just enough readers to carry it off.

However, let it never be said that I am the kind of person to be frustrated with a problem and do nothing about it. Here is my pitch for Creative Commons:

Old fashioned copyright doesn't quite know what to do with the modern world. Traditional copyright law clashes with the realities of the internet age in two ways: you own intellectual property only as long as you pursue it (that is, chase after people who try to steal it with a legal hatchet), and ownership is binary (either you reserve all rights - and people posting your images to their blogs need to be sued - or you reserve none, and what you created basically doesn't belong to you anymore). You can't take advantage of the internet, where information is everywhere, just begging to be posted and reposted and linked to, if you aren't willing to let your stuff be copied, but if you're willing to let your stuff be copied, it won't be your stuff for long. What's a creative person of the internet age to do?

Then, along comes Creative Commons to save the day. Their licenses - human readable, by the way, which means they are written in language that everyday people can understand rather than extensive and complicated legalese - cover all the needs of the internet age. They have licenses like mine that demand attribution and forbid derivative works, and they have licenses that allow derivative works and are 'viral,' meaning that all derivative works must have the same license, and everything in between.

Best of all, it's free! Actually, that's second best. Bester of all, it holds up in court.

So, if you are a creator with a blog, you should go to their website. They even have a nifty quiz to help you figure out which license is right for you. And maybe if that spreads to those fantasy artists, we can have that creative prompt post one of these days.

Actually, while I'm at it, here are a few of my favorite online creative artists:

Fredrik Andersson is a Dutch (I think) fantasy artist. I don't believe he's been published yet, but that doesn't stop him from being awesome. His work is very clean and simple line drawings that reveal a sense of humor and drama that I admire and envy. Just one thing, be warned of teh sexeh. Some of his characters don't exactly wear enough clothing. It's all gentle and fun... but some of it is naked.

One of my favorites from the world of rpg art is Melissa Uran (that site actually doesn't work - to check out her work, go to her DeviantART page), whose stuff is common in Exalted. Her style is very rich, clearly anime-inspired. She's the artist who frequently works for Exalted who I really, really want to illustrate my contributions.

Finally, I'm contractually obligated to plug Nicole Chartrand, who the Abigail hired to do a drawing of her Exalted character Leonore, and her then-boyfriend (now husband) Last Autumn Firefly. I suppose you could see her as a happy medium between Melissa Uran and Fredrik Andersson - clean lines, rich colors, and ornate situations.

Finally, Storn A. Cook brings the comic book style. He's a frequent poster to rpg.net and one of the Sons of Kryos. I actually ran into him at GenCon twice (though I don't think he remembered me from one encounter to the other), and he's a nice guy. His art is clearly comic inspired, but he has a good sense of drama, energy, and motion, able to create a great sense of movement with still shots. I also think his character design is among the best.

These are not my only favorites by any stretch of the imagination, but my list of art bookmarks is longer than my screen, so I'll share the rest of them over time. And maybe, if any of them get around to posting a Creative Commons license on their web page, I'll get to share their art, too.

Instead of a wonderful creative prompt, I will share with you my new favorite video on YouTube. The fact that this is my new favorite tells you something about me - probably nothing good.