The Great Update

You may have noticed that I’ve been rather quiet these past few months. However, I’ve decided that now is as good a time as any to speak.

And I’ve got a lot to share.

First, time to decloak. I am @Parvenu62 on Twitter and Weathervane X on MeWe.

Next, I have begun a series of gaming livestreams that I run every Thursday, though the frequency may increase in the coming weeks. As of this post, I am streaming Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War with a translation patch by a group called Project Naga. If you intend to watch the stream, I implore you to not look up anything about the game beforehand. It’ll have more impact that way.

And last, I’ve got a lot to say about an upcoming “Raygun Romance” project I’ve been working on over the past year.

On this blog, I have noted two pernicious phenomena in the world of popular culture: treating male and female as interchangeable, and tearing away at anything that can be called a male fantasy (h/t Adam Lane Smith), especially with regard to romance.

Scripts of this nature are explicitly targeted for exclusion by Hollywood’s script readers. Notice how in many modern TV shows and movies, feminine women who actually love their men have fallen by the wayside in favor of snark machines and ice queens. In Western-made video games, female characters are deliberately designed to be unattractive so as to repel the dreaded male gaze. Everything must be made ugly, gray, and neutral — so says “modern society” (read: a handful of critics.) Anything else is “sexist.”

It is in this frame of mind that I thought of the Raygun Romance project.

One day, I was looking at some old video game ads that used risque humor. I thought to myself, “no one would make ads like this today.” But that was precisely the problem: the entire notion that “we shouldn’t write X today” because of some dictate from on high, as if we’re subject to some stupid communist politburo. Thus, I resolved to write a story that could be advertised using risque ads.

Next, I had to think of what kind of story it would be. Straight-up erotica was right out — that genre was too easily pigeonholed and walled off as something weird. If this story would have any impact at all, it has to be approachable for general audiences, not just a highly specific niche.

Thus, I focused on the modern media’s most despised trope: the damsel in distress. It has been scientifically proven that modern filmmakers shun this trope nowadays; furthermore, it is commonly spoken of as a trope to avoid, an outdated relic from an unenlightened age. Because I find this so-called “modern” attitude to be sinister, I resolved to make this trope the center, the engine, the beating heart of the story.

But this will not be some “updated” take where the damsel is some Dowdy McShirtjeans with either no romantic aspirations or, alternatively, with a boyfriend who is stupid, indecisive, henpecked, or any combination thereof. No, this is a beauty who adores her boyfriend and would move mountains for him, and the boyfriend is a decisive man of action who blows away those who deserve it. That said, the damsel does attempt to escape; sometimes she succeeds, and sometimes she fails.

Though the heroine is a beauty, she is no princess or superhero, but an ordinary woman caught up in extraordinary events. To make her role as a damsel more believable, she couldn’t have any form of superpowers. It heightens the peril and prevents her from becoming a Mary Sue.

The above elements are frequently missing from modern work, deliberately walled out to sell dreariness and despair, which is then hailed as “realism.” The Raygun Romance I wrote is a deliberate attack on this so-called modern way to write male-female relations, because complaining on the internet won’t change anything. When did a beautiful damsel who loves her man (and is saved by him) become forbidden, while dysfunctional, strained male-female relationships (if romantic) become required?

Whatever the answer, it’s time to stop.

Release day is coming, and you all will love what I have to show you. It will be available exclusively on the new Kindle Vella platform for serialized stories, so be ready!