Carasynthia Doom

 Okay, okay, the character's family name is actually Dune, but that doesn't fit the theme of the blog.

I was awake at an unreasonable hour this morning, and watched The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 7, "The Believer." No spoilers are forthcoming; the episode was just the catalyst for my thoughts to coalesce and for me to realize that those thoughts needed to be expressed.

Carasynthia Dune, AKA Cara Dune, AKA Marshal Dune, is exactly the sort of woman I fall for.  Cara is loyal to her friends, protective of innocents, strong of arm and sharp of aim. She's a hero. I want her to look at me the way she looks at the series' titular character when she accepts the duffle bag from him.

But note that I'm writing here about the character, not the actress Gina Carano who plays the role.

Actresses. 

Once upon a time, I was an actress. I trod the worn boards of my high school stage, declaimed my lines with some minimum of skill and talent, and when my time in high school was done, so was my time as an actress. Before that, however, I had learned enough about what drove people to want, to need to act that it became one of my Rules for a Happier Life: Don't Date Actresses.

When I was in that phase, it was a dark age. We knew nothing about the figures we saw on the screen except for what we saw on that screen. It was years before we knew that Princess Leia's actress got addicted to drugs. We didn't know that the creator of Star Trek raped one of the actresses on set. We didn't know that our heroes had feet of clay.

In the movie Moulin Rouge... the 1952 version with Zsa Zsa Gabor, not the one with Obiwan Kenobi... the artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec is given the line, "One should never meet a person whose work one admires; What they do is always so much better than what they are!"

And yet, we now live in an age of social media. It has become indispensable for public figures to be able to give their hot-takes on all the issues of the day, and for their fanciers to absorb those hot takes. I speak, in particular, of Ms. Carano here, though my issues might well include Ms. J. K. Rowling and numerous others.

During the prolonged aftermath of the recent election, Ms. Carano apparently tweeted out that she supported recounts, and that she believed the incumbent deserved to win the election. This statement, this opinion, resulted in howls of anguish from fans of the series. The role of Cara should be recast, or better yet, the character should be killed off. When Pedro Pascal, the actor who portrays the titular character of the series, praised her acting, people reacted negatively.

This behavior is insane. It's the kind of behavior which led John Boyega, Oscar Isaacs, and Daisy Ridley to declare they had no further interest in participating in Star Wars projects in the future. It's the kind of behavior which led Harrison Ford to demand that Han Solo be killed off as part of the price for participating in The Force Awakens.

We, as consumers, as fans, have to let it go. There's a line between Ms. Carano saying that she supports a politician supported by nearly half of the American public, and Gene Rodenberry raping Grace Lee Whitney on set. The former may lead to tsks and headshakes of disagreement; the latter rightfully deserves anger and ire.

My point here is that though there is no going back to the days when all we knew was what we saw on the screen, we should carefully judge which parts of the creators' behavior are subjects of disagreement, and which are worth getting up a torch-and-pitchfork mob about.

In the meantime, I'll be over here watching my dream girl, Carasynthia Dune, punch out armored stormtroopers with her bare hands. 

I'm Not Dead (Yet)!

 So, um.  

It has been more than a year since I last posted something here. Sorry about that.  

I'm doin' alright, but not very well. Mostly, I'm hiding in my blanket fort and reading trashy novels. Looks like I'm going to hit four hundred this year.

... and that's about all the news.

The Roles We Play in Our Own Doom

I started playing Role Playing Games (RPGs) in 1980 or '81. Like many of my generation, my gateway was Dungeons and Dragons. At that time, trying to convince my friends to play with me, I described the game as being "like playing Barbies, but with rules for settling disputed outcomes." It rarely succeeded in winning converts, though I still think it an apt description.

In the late '80s and early '90s, I was a teetotaling sailor stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Not being interested in bars, but still being interested in RPGs, I spent a great deal of time in a friendly local game shop called Campaign Headquarters. There, I played a great many different game systems, with a fair number of people, many of whom were also sailors stationed in Norfolk.

Nor did I give up on table-top RPGs after I became a civilian again. I lived here, there, and everywhere, and in most cases, found people with whom I could play. Most of them were good folk, with whom I became friendly outside the game environment. Some of them were jerks I barely tolerated at the table.

I remember one particular night with a group I often attended: the Game Manager (GM) was my uncle, Thomas (who lived in a trailer early in life, but never, so far as I can tell, a cabin). We were having one of the periodic spats and disputes to which geek packs are prone, and Tom went around the table, saying what he thought each of us got out of the gaming experience. This fellow used it as a substitute for tactical wargames, and was unhappy if the GM played fast and / or loose with the rules. That fellow's wife was mostly there for companionship and connection to other Humans. This fellow wanted to be able to make mistakes without real life consequences. And Jenny? Jenny just wanted to be someone else for a couple of hours each week.

And he wasn't wrong. But over time, I came to realize that there's a fundamental split in gamers, and what we want out of the games. Because of our social roles and expectations, I'm going to label this split as masculine / feminine. 

The masculine gamer (who may not always be male) wants Action and Adventure. This gamer is there to get the dice on, to have a Walter Mitty moment of being an action hero doing daring deeds with a smile while never spilling a drop of their martini. Anything which does more than linking those scenes of action and adventure together is superfluous, boring, and wasted.

The feminine gamer (who may not always be female) is looking for connection, community, and belonging. Scenes of conflict are fine, if they serve the purpose of establishing camaraderie, but kicking in the door, slaying the monster, and adjudicating the treasure is not their style. Storytelling is never wasted; emotions are involved in play.

And like most dichotomies, this split is exaggerated here. Most people fall on a spectrum somewhere between these extremes. As a GM, you have to know your players, know what they want out of gaming, and strive to provide each person what they want -- which can be a tricky balancing act, and is part of why the aforementioned group had regular flare-ups and spats.

Why was I thinking about this, enough to sit down and use energy to put it all into words, and freeze it into web-published words? Because, since I became disabled, the majority of my role playing experience has been through coöperative fan fiction writing in the Star Trek universe. In such circles, each person has a primary character for whom they write. They work with other writers to produce scenes in which their characters interact, and over the course of time, the scenes create an overall narrative.

I got involved a few years ago with Starbase 109, one of those coöperative writing games, because my oldest and dearest friend mentioned that it was starting up, and it would be nice to have someplace to write together. After about a year, the founding GM dropped out, and my friend and I, along with a third woman, ended up accepting the GM role as a triumvirate. For the last couple of years, we've been cruising along, telling our stories and having a good time.

Every once in a while (twice in the last year) we get a new writer who is very much a masculine gamer. They're there to be Jim Kirk or Johnny Rico, to get in fights with bug eyed monsters and seduce their women. At best, these guys only skim other writers' posts. They don't really care about all that touchy-feely stuff, or about the plotlines. They just want to shoot something, gorram it!

And that's really not the kind of game Starbase 109 is. Everything is more complicated than that; problems can't generally be solved at the point of a phaser, or in a burst of torpedo fire. Espionage happens, but it's not the James Bond type of thing; it's quieter, subtler.  Conflict happens, but it's on a personal level. Coming in and insisting that you can solve everything by waving your, er, gun around is Just Not On. But they want to.

Which stresses me out, because as a gamer, I want to provide everyone in the group with the kind of experience they want. As a writer, I want continuity. But as previously mentioned, these guys (and it usually is guys) don't care about your storyline. They think it's boring and superfluous. They know everything about Star Trek, and you, silly little girl, are wrong -- just go over there and play with your Barbies, and let the Mens charge their light brigades into the torpedos!

And I'm burned out with dealing with those conflicts. I don't think I want to be the personnel GM anymore. Currently, I'm on hiatus, with the other two members of the triumvirate guiding the game and taking care of administration. I'm not sure I intend to go back. It's been a while since I felt much joy from writing there.

I get the impression that the three of us are the only ones who care about the overall story. I get the impression that many... perhaps most... of my posts get skimmed, or skipped altogether. I get the impression that most of our players aren't really involved in the game. And I wonder... why am I doing all this, again? 

Saturday Scene, 15 September 18

It's a frustratingly short #SaturdayScenes excerpt from my WiP Smokey and the Monkey Girl. Now here's your snippet!

Dallas follows Jessica silently. The pair walk up the hill and cross the street to a parking lot, where Jessica makes a beeline for a car under a tarp. Dallas rolls her eyes. “You’re one of those people?” she asks rhetorically.

Jessica just raises an eyebrow, and pulls out her phone. She taps on it for a moment, and there’s the sound of a lock opening, and the bottom edge of the tarp falls loose. Another moment, and she’s swept the cover off, dramatically, revealing… Dallas isn’t sure what she’s looking at. A car, that’s certain. Yup… four wheels, two doors, headlights, turn signals. A car. A very, very sporty looking car. And even in the twilight, it’s clearly a very, very blue car with shiny silver accent stripes on the nose and down the sides. “What is it?”

“It’s a 2017 McDowell Spyder,” Jessica grins, leaning over to tap the word “Spyder” in cursive chrome lettering just in front of the driver’s side door. “Well. I guess it’s kind of a 2013 through 2017 Spyder?” She laughs at the confused look on Dallas’ face. “I built it. Mostly in Auto Shop in high school.”

“Oh,” says Dallas, watching as Jessica opens the driver’s side door and touches something inside. The trunk pops open and the roof of the car folds itself, withdrawing into the trunk. After a moment, the trunk closes again with an audible thunk.

Jessica walks around to the passenger side, opens the door. “M’lady.”

“Thank you,” Dallas says, taking a seat and glancing around. The seats are patterned on racing buckets, but they are comfortably padded and upholstered in blue and white leather. The dashboard is one solid slab of black glass -- unless it’s obsidian? The steering wheel looks more like the control yoke of an aircraft, and the logo in the center is an M in an irregular octagon, with eight legs sprouting out of the long sides.

“Buckle up,” Jessica directs, sliding into the driver seat. “For this ride, you shouldn’t need the fifth belt, but do pull the shoulder and lap belts tight.” She illustrates the comment, and Dallas follows suit, making sure everything is tight and nothing is twisted.

“Power up, James.” The dashboard lights from inside, forming a bewildering array of indicators and gauges. “It’s not instant power,” Jessica explains, watching the gauges. “It’s a Stirling cycle engine -- a hydrogen fired, external combustion engine which uses heat differential to generate power. So it has to come up to temperature before we can take off. The engine is tied to an ultra-compact nested pulley infinitely variable transmission. I put in a drive-by-wire system with inverted recurve suspension.” She looks at Dallas and laughs. “Sorry.”

“At what point in there did you just start making up words?” Dallas quips.

Fragment brought back from a dream

Two eight year old girls stand on the shore. "You need water," Rihoko said, frowning at the crumbly mound of sand.

"Water?" Jane asked, scrunching up her nose and turning to look at the ocean from under the brim of her straw hat.

Rihoko nodded. "My dad told me the Roamin's made the best roads the world has ever seen, by mixing water, sand, and limes."

"We don't have any limes," Jane pointed out, sounding Very Practical. "Or even any lemons."

"Well, we don't want it to last a thousand years. Just today. So maybe sand and water will do."

Saturday Scene, 25 Aug '18

There are only two dorms closer to the south campus dining hall than the one on north campus. Dallas eats, not talking to Ashlyn, then goes to the dorm she doesn’t live in. She walks the halls asking, “Jessica? Asian girl, green jacket?” and following the pointing fingers. When she finds the door decorated with construction-paper letters spelling out Jessica and Monica, she pauses, knocks.

Jessica answers the door, blinks. “Oh,” she says.

“I wanted to apologize,” Dallas explains. She holds her hands in front of her, pulling on her left thumb with her right hand, looking down and away. “Ashlyn’s not a homophobe; she’s just a jerk.”

“Oh,” Jessica says again.

There’s silence for a moment. Then Dallas sniffs. “Is something burning?”

“No,” Jessica says, glancing over her shoulder. “That’s my hot glue gun.”

Now it’s Dallas’ turn to say “Oh.” There’s silence again. “Well,” she says, “I should be….”

“Would you like to come in?” Jessica says, in the same moment.

They laugh together, and Jessica steps back, in, out of the way. Dallas follows. “Smokey?” Jessica laughs.

“Yes?” Dallas says.

“No, I mean… why do they call you Smokey? How do you get to Smokey from Dallas?”

“You take the I-40 to Farm-to-Market Road 199,” Dallas says, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Then she relents and holds out a strand of her coppery-red hair. “I’m a Forestry student. Red hair… forest fire… the smoke gets in your eyes?”

“Wow,” Jessica says. “That’s a long trip down a gravel road.”

“Yes,” Dallas agrees. “Yes; it is.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“Dallas; it’s my name.” She shrugs. “Though, honestly, anything is better than ‘Cowboy.’”

Jessica smirks but makes no comment other than, “Okay. Hello; Dallas.”

Dallas smiles. After a moment long enough that it has begun to feel just slightly awkward, standing there just looking at Jessica and smiling, she turns and looks at what the other young woman is working on; what requires hot glue and a scent of burning. “Oh! EVA foam!” She casts her eyes over the assortment of pieces, the foam, the pre-cut panels of flight satin and what looks like carbon fiber. “You’re making the… thing,” she says, running her hands vaguely in the air to suggest a vest-like shape over her chest.

Jessica rescues her, “the flak vest for my flight jacket. I’ve got an SDF-80 patch on order, and one for the fighter squadron.”

“Cosplay for the win!” Dallas enthuses, pumping her fist.

“You know, I did wonder about the Snow White outfit.”

Dallas beams. “You noticed!”

“I noticed.” They stand in silence for a moment, grinning at each other.

“Oh!” Dallas says, holding up one finger as if experiencing a sudden epiphany. “You said you have a sickle? May I see it?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind taking a short ride in my car? Campus rules make it iffy to have edged things about, and having a roommate…” Jessica uses her chin to point at the loft bed and desk on the other side of the room, “makes it even iffier. I’m hoping I can get a single next year, but for the moment, I keep a storage unit off campus.”

Dallas makes a show of looking over the smaller girl. “We just met, and now you want to get me in your car? How do I know you’re not a candy-giving murderer?” Her tone is teasing, but there’s a serious look around her eyes.

“Have I given you any candy?” Jessica counters.

“Point,” Dallas agrees.

Jessica scoops up her flight jacket, turns off the glue gun. She pats her pockets. “Keys, wallet, phone… oh!” She opens one of the front pockets on the jacket and pulls out a small paper sack. “Jelly beans?” she asks, as if ice cream wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“Aieee!” Dallas says, pretending to flee in fear.

Saturday Scene: 21 July '18

This is a list of words which describe Jessica McDowell: short, dark, dorky, quiet, observant, self-contained. She sits at a table in the student dining hall. It’s late November, and while snow has not yet fallen, outside is chilly. She’s wearing a sweatshirt with Sam-I-Am and his brightly colored eggs and ham; a green satin flight jacket; old black jeans; knee-high trooper boots. Her underpants are striped robin’s egg blue and white, because that’s a thing in Japanese animation, and she secretly wishes she had cooler name, like Sakura or Umiko or Nenene; a name to go with the epicanthic fold of her eyelids. She hasn’t bothered to wear a bra today -- who’s going to know, anyway? With one hand, she’s eating meatloaf. She loves meatloaf, even the way the student dining hall at the University cooks it. She also loves books, and her other hand is holding one, her chocolate-brown eyes reading eagerly.

Three girls approach the table. There are eight seats, and Jessica’s only taking up one, down at the end. The girls set down trays, start taking off coats, draping them on chairs. Jessica glances at the trio. A blonde, a brunette, a redhead; the redhead is only separated from her by one chair, Jessica notices before pulling her attention back to her book. She’s only halfway listening to the girls.

“The Sugar Skull is the easy part,” the redhead is saying with a shrug. “I mean, it’s just makeup. The black robes should be easy enough to distress… just a bucket with some gravel and kick it around the parking lot. But where am I going to get a scythe?”

The blonde girl shrugs. “I’m sure we can find a plastic one at the mall.”

The redhead is chewing, frowning. The brunette holds up three fingers, drops one, then a second, and finally points at the redhead just as she finishes chewing. “No, I want a real one. Steel. If I’m going to be a reaper, it should be functional.”

Jessica looks up from her book. “Will you marry me?” she blurts. “I don’t have a steel scythe, but I do have a very sharp bronze sickle.”

The redhead turns her head and looks at Jessica. Jessica squirms, feeling the rays of judgement, the condescension. The redhead is cute, Jessica realizes. Beyond cute. Her skin is pale, with a pinkish undertone, and a scattering of freckles across her nose. Her eyes are hazel, not green, not brown, but both at once. She smiles. “Not tonight."

“Huh?” Jessica asks.

“Getting married is not on my agenda for tonight.” She sets down her fork and extends her hand. “Dallas.”

“Jessica.” Jessica notices that Dallas’ hand is very, very soft. Her skin is smooth.

“I may take you up on the sickle, though,” Dallas says. “If I can’t find a scythe.”

“Sure,” Jessica says. “Whatever you need.”



These are some words which describe Dallas Morgan: tall, passionate, brilliant, funny, va-va-voom. She has, as the boys like to tell each other, “all the right curves in all the right places,” and she’d started growing them before any of the other girls. People hardly ever notice, or at least, hardly ever mention, but she enjoys putting together outfits she calls everyday cosplay. She’s wearing a red crop-top under a blue cold-shoulder tee, paired with a lemon colored, knee-length skirt. It’s cold outside, so she’s also wearing a fuzzy white coat and black fleece leggings. She should be wearing a red hair bow, but red disappears in her hair, so she’s wearing a yellow one instead.

They’re walking away from the buffet line at the dining hall when Laurel points with her chin, and Ashlyn says, “Oh, look, it’s Smokey’s fiance!” She says it loudly enough that Jessica hears and looks up from her book.

Dallas smiles warmly at Jessica and heads that way, Laurel falling in behind her, Ashlyn bringing up the rear, still talking. “Should you both wear a dress?” she asks, rhetorically, “and does that mean we’ll need to decorate with two different colors of flowers? What about bouquets?”

Jessica is frowning, closing her book, standing. “I don’t have to sit here and be mocked,” she says, picking up her tray. “I can go anywhere on this campus and get that.”

“No, wait,” Ashlyn calls after her, “How do you feel about lingerie?”

“You’re an ass,” Laurel says, quietly.

“A whole ass,” Dallas agrees, then re-phrases, "an ass-whole."



There are only two dorms closer to the south campus dining hall than the one on north campus. Dallas eats, not talking to Ashlyn, then goes to the dorm she doesn’t live in. She walks the halls asking, “Jessica? Asian girl, green jacket?” and following the pointing fingers. When she finds the door decorated with construction-paper letters spelling out Jessica and Monica, she pauses, knocks.

Jessica answers the door, blinks. “Oh,” she says.

“I wanted to apologize,” Dallas explains. She holds her hands in front of her, pulling on her left thumb with her right hand, looking down and away. “Ashlyn’s not a homophobe; she’s just a jerk.”

“Oh,” Jessica says again.

There’s silence for a moment. Then Dallas sniffs. “Is something burning?”

“No,” Jessica says, glancing over her shoulder. “That’s my hot glue gun.”

Now it’s Dallas’ turn to say “Oh.” There’s silence again. “Well,” she says, “I should be….”

“Would you like to come in?” Jessica says, in the same moment.

They laugh together, and Jessica steps back, in, out of the way. Dallas follows. “Smokey?” Jessica asks.

“Yes?” Dallas says.

“No, I mean… why do they call you Smokey? How do you get to Smokey from Dallas?”

“You take the I-40 to Farm-to-Market Road 199,” Dallas says, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Then she relents and holds out a strand of her coppery-red hair. “I’m a Forestry student. Red hair… forest fire… the smoke gets in your eyes?”

“Wow,” Jessica says. “That’s a long trip down a gravel road.”

“Yes,” Dallas agrees. “Yes; it is.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“Dallas; it’s my name.”

“Okay. Hello; Dallas.”

And Dallas smiles.