Thursday 17 October 2002

Pic of the day: Since I don't have any pictures of cute innocent succubi, I present this screenshot from Daggerfall (nipples censored for the benefit of the American reader - if you look at nipples, the succubi have already won!). Man, I wish I could draw sometimes. You see, I have it all in my head ... sort of.

NaNoWriMo & demon summoning

I must be out of my mind to sign up for National Novel Writing Month. I have barely even time to write this, how will I fit in a 50 000 word novel? That would be around 1700 words a day. Not likely, even if I take the three weeks of vacation I still have left for this year. And even if I should somehow magically write a novel during November, it would be so bad I would probably not want my best friend to see it. The whole project is officially "quantity over quality". It need not even be coherent, from what I understand. Though I guess most of us would exercise a little bit of self-control in writing.

I've not started to write, of course. You are not allowed to start until 12:00 on November 1. But I do have a working title (What daydreams don't tell) and a couple starting points. In a world where daydreams can spontaneously become real, it is all too easy to forget to make your daydreams idiot proof. Luckily for my characters, I tend to like my characters. Even so ... how about a superhero who doesn't look like a superhero? Who doesn't even look attractive? "Chicks will dig you if you do the impossible. Yeah, sure."

***

Another starting point is the fundamentalist Christian boy who, much to his surprise, becomes responsible for the continued survival of an inexperienced, cute, and very apologetic succubus. "It's been so long since anybody believed in succubi ... as far as I know, you're the only one around now. If you stop believing in me, I'm going straight to Oblibion." "Oblivion." "Whatever."

I have some second and third thoughts about that particular angle, actually. I notice there is a tendency in modern literature to make demons acceptable. Before that, we did the same with trolls, ghosts, ogres and various other monsters. Werewolves, even vampires show up as heroes just as likely as villains. Well, perhaps not quite. As a rule of thumb, if they don't have names they are evil. If they have names, they are either good or convertible to good.

The whole point of trolls, vampires and demons is for them to be evil. It's their job description. But the roles are loosening, and characters drift from evil to good and the other way around. I am sure I have written about this before, though i can't remember the exact words. Basically, I believe it comes from accepting the darkness in ourselves. We realize that we can be evil, that the monsters to be scared of are the humans. As we withdraw the projection and accepts our own evil, we no longer need to store it in creatures outside ourselves. So they get their chance of redemption, while we get our chance of perdition.

An extreme case of this is Margit Sandemo's novels, which are written in Swedish (in Norway) and translated into several European languages but not English for some reason. In her most famous series, Isfolket (The Ice People) she introduces Lucifer as a romantic hero, who becomes father of one of the main heroes in the series. Naturally, the church was not amused. Never mind that Lucifer really is not mentioned in the Bible, certainly not in the form that he is currently imagined.

To the best of my knowledge, succubi are not mentioned in the Bible either, but are later additions based on pious traditions. Given that celibacy was considered one of the great, heroic sacrifices by Christians in the dark ages, it should surprise no one that we got these ideas. Evidently the extremely holy men were plagued by visits from evil spirits in the shape of very beautiful women who wanted to distract them from their prayer and such. Well, I am sure the holy men did see these women, at least in dreams.

I'm afraid I can speak with more experience than most men alive today about what happens to healthy young men who don't have sex for years, and don't even masturbate. (Yes, it is possible. I've tried. Whether it is necessary, I don't know.) There were definitely times in my youth when I barely had to close my eyes to see imaginary women. With enough lack of sleep and company, they may well show up in daylight too. For all I know, there may be real demons tempting people to sex; but even if not, the idea would certainly be understandable.

But by poking fun of such concepts, am I in my own way "summoning demons"? What about the 'muses in my head' that help me formulate these stories? I consider them daemons rather than demons ... For those of you not familiar with UNIX and clones thereof, a daemon is a piece of software that runs autonomously in the system, performing routine tasks like looking for mail or starting backup. That's more like the way I view the narrating voices in my head. They are automated processes ... I've been telling stories for so many decades that I can do it without thinking.

At least I hope that's how it works.