A Gentle Introduction to Conan the Cimmerian

Margaret Brundage, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Conan casts a mighty shadow over the swords and sorcery genre. You might even say, Conan is the genre. At the very least, he is the gold standard and all sword and sorcery fare is measured against the Cimmerian, regardless of the fairness of it.

The half-clad, sword-wielding barbarian is the trope de jour in all things swords and sorcery. From movies, to short story collections, to heavy metal music—if it’s swords and sorcery, it’s got buxom ladies, evil wizards, and loincloth bedecked barbarians.

This isn’t a bad thing. I like tropes, I think they’re useful—good, even! And this trope is one of my favorites. I love a good sword-swinging savage man, bare-chested, blood covered, roaring insults against cowards and foes alike.

And if you like this trope too, Conan is your man. But, he’s also wily, cunning, quiet, pensive, chivalric, deceitful, womanizing, loyal, sneaky, brash—in other words, he’s complex.

Now, complex does not mean he completes a full “modern” character arc—in fact, he wouldn’t be Conan if he “changed” at the end of his tales.

“The Pulp Structure” as I call it, is about a character facing an obstacle or series of obstacles be they physical, mental, or both and overcoming those challenges. The story is found in the way they overcome the contest. Most importantly, they need to surmount the obstacle with their character or morality or ideology intact.

This resistance to change serves two purposes, it preserves the integrity of the kind of character that Conan is. It is also the mechanism that allowed Robert Howard to write Conan into all sorts of situations. The fun of a Conan story is in how Conan solves the problem before him.

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.”
-The Phoenix on the Sword

This is Conan, a savage from the wastes of Cimmeria. A mercenary and robber. A man who has known great joy and even greater sadness. Impudent, knavish—he scoffs at kings and peasants alike. He lives, he burns with life, he loves and slays and is content. Plunder is seized and spent just as quickly—his philosophy, if a man like Conan has one, is this:

“I think of Life! The dead are dead, and what has passed is done! I have a ship and a fighting crew and a girl with lips like wine, and that’s all I ever asked. Lick your wounds bullies, and break out a cask of ale. You’re going to work ship as she never was worked before. Dance and sing while you buckle to it, damn you! To the devil with empty seas! We’re bound for waters where the seaports are fat and the merchant ships are crammed with plunder!”
-The Pool of the Black One

Conan is not a man who goes out of his way to protect the weak. In fact, he doesn’t have a lot of respect or understanding for the weak and the poor.

By his estimation, the poor ought to get strong and rob the rich. The life of man is warfare, so men ought to take up sword and war. The strong will grow stronger because they are strong and the weak will die, because they are weak.

In this way, Conan is pure pagan. He would hear the words of Jesus “blessed are the poor” and sneer and ask how man is meant to eat a blessing.

This is best exemplified by the shadowy, utterly absent, cold and grim, god of the Cimmerians—Crom.

“Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?”
-The Queen of the Black Coast

Conan’s fatalism is more Norse than it is Roman. His grim god’s attention promises doom, but despite that he seems to call out Crom’s name as if tempting fate, daring, maybe even demanding that promised doom so he might conquer it.

The Hyborian Age, the fictional pre-history setting of Howard’s Conan stories is awash in pagan fatalism. There is Bel, the god of Thieves; Mitra, the most widely worshiped and beloved of the gods; Set, the snake god of the Stygians who demands human sacrifice; the mysterious Asura. The good ones, if there are good ones, are Bel, Mitra, and Asura.

Conan does not call on any of them. Nor does he seem to care for their cults and practices. He has little regard for “blasphemy” and would do battle with a god if it suited him. The Priests of Asura have aided Conan in his journey, and Mitra has aided others in finding Conan’s help. He has spurned Set in a more physical way—slaying his children and confounding his priests.

For the average people of this mythical age, there appears to be little hope. This fatalistic caste system, where the strong prey on the weak, makes slavery, wanton cruelty, and human sacrifice the order of the day.

Power is all that matters, and those who don’t have it, live and serve at the pleasure of those who do.

Women are the particular victims of this system. Although Howard never spells out exactly what occurs in the flesh markets, harems, and pleasure palaces of the civilized nations, it is easily discernable to any but the most naïve of readers.

“…her worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized.”
-Iron Shadows in the Moon

The tension between civilization and savagery is the red-hot pulse of the Conan stories. Howard does not hide what side he comes down on—barbarism is the superior. What Howard really appears to be doing is showing the ultimate end of degenerated civilizations. Rome degenerated and fell to “barbarian” incursions. The same fate befalls Aquilonia.

The difference, of course, is Conan.

He bucks against the spirit of fatalism. He forges his own path, mocks the gods. He has no need for the rules of civilization or savagery. If he is a barbarian, then I suspect we’d all wish to be barbarians.

“We do not sell our children.”
-Iron Shadows in the Moon

Conan says to a woman sold into sexual slavery by her own father. He’s never forced a woman against her consent, bought a human being, or forced a heavy tax burden on his people. He is a thing apart. Perhaps the only true example of rugged individualism that has and even will be.

Conan is a renewing force; an infusion of fresh blood into a sickly man. He does not change, but all who meet him are changed. Slaves are freed, spines are steeled, villains are slain. In a bizarre, round-about way Conan is a liberator. Whether physically, or spiritually, Conan slaps sense into those around him, especially those who read him.

If you’re tired of tepid modern fantasy with it’s warmed-over Tolkienian platitudes, or handwringing, “grimdark” antiheroes; Conan might be the barbarian for you. Think of life! Think of rich red meat and stinging wine, think of passion and the flash of crimson blades, and be contented!

“Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,

To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,

How many deaths shall serve to break at last

This heritage which wraps me in the grey

Apparel of ghosts? I search my heart and find

Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.”
-Cimmeria

Above: A section from the August 1934 cover of Weird Tales featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian in The Devil in Iron.

I write my own weird tales, check them out here and follow me on X/Twitter.

May 4, 2024 1

Tripping over Easter Eggs

Ninara from Helsinki, Finland, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

It probably started with the Marvel movies. Not references themselves, but the relentless, in your face, Easter eggs that constitute a meaningless dog whistling. “Hey fellow nerds,” this little pop culture reference seems to say, “remember this cool thing? Only serious fans remember this obscure piece of ephemera!”

With Disney’s permission via example, pop culture easter eggs suddenly became something I started tripping over, especially in the fiction of the last decade or so. Not just in movies and tv, but in books.

For the first few years, I appreciated having my nerdy ego stroked. I liked that I was more familiar with Hawkeye than my friends, I liked that I could smugly explain the significance of a clunky piece of written dialogue, I liked that I could state “that’s from Dungeons and Dragons.”

But, as I got older, the charm wore off.

The clumsy, often non-sequitur references felt less like a wink and a nod and more like a slap to the face. Not someone hinting at me that they enjoy the things I enjoy, but more like a corporate apparatchik with no interest in the thing I’m interested in trying to convince me that they don’t hold me and very reference itself in contempt.

I can’t take a reference and by extension the writer who makes it, seriously anymore.

Take, for example, the Wilhem Scream of cinema fame. What started out as a piece of cost-saving sound design, Star Wars turned it into a “pop culture icon,” and now has become so ubiquitous it’s in approximately 400 films. As an inside joke, it’s bereft of any meaning. It breaks tension, it breaks the cohesion—it calls attention to itself.

Whenever I hear the Wilhem Scream, I think “oh yeah, that’s right. I’m watching a movie.”

When you’re writing a story, this breaking of immersion can be disastrous.

The willing suspension of disbelief is an unspoken contract between the reader and the writer. In exchange for a good yarn, the reader willingly suspends their skepticism. They simply accept faster-than-light travel, magical talking swords, or healing crystals, despite that logic and reason dictate those things as impossible. A good story doesn’t have to be realistic, but the logic of your constructed world must be internally consistent.

Constructed being the operative word—all written stories are, by the nature of story, contrived.

A written story must follow certain laws. The laws of grammar, spelling, and language, the rules regarding structure, character typology, typeface, cultural mores, etcetera.

When a reader opens a book and escapes into the world that a writer has created, the last thing the writer wants is to slam on the brakes and make the reader remember “oh yeah, that’s right. I’m reading a book.”

Do not call attention to your grammar. Do not call attention to your clever typeface. Do no call attention to a piece of media they might very well rather be enjoying than your story.

When I read a book, I don’t want to be taken out of your story, not even to laugh, not even to feel smug. I’m giving you my attention, respect my time and give me a good story.

Regarding Video Games

The term Easter Egg comes from the world of programming. It’s tempting the call them a “tradition.” I would be the first to admit that I enjoy the occasional references that I’ve found in my favorite games.

Most of the time, the references must be hunted down, hence “Easter egg.” The player can choose to actively look for them or not. Engagement is optional. That doesn’t mean I’ve never stumbled upon an obvious reference and had to look it up in order to understand it, but it does mean that I can choose not to participate in the hunt itself.

Unlike video games, books are wholistic. By reading, I must engage with the totality of the work, references, grammar, structure, and all. A cringy, out-of-place pop culture reference takes up precious space, both in the reader’s imagination and in the physical work.

Easter eggs can be stumbling blocks, or worse—an assault on the good tastes of a reader, who, out of the all the stories in the world, picked yours. Respect their good taste and don’t remind them they’re reading a book. Instead, let them escape into your world and grieve when they must put it down.

Above: The Renaissance Easter Egg, a Fabergé Egg, part of the Easter Series. Mikhail Perkhin 1860-1903, Russian. Materials: Gold, rose-cut diamonds, agate, rubies. Housed in the Blue Room of the Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

You can find my written works here. Follow me on X/Twitter.

March 9, 2024 0

Anvil #4 – Pre-orders are Live!

Carl Geyling, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Read me in Anvil Issue #4

I’ve hammered out another short story for Anvil. Pre-orders for issue 4 are currently live on IronAgeMedia. The guys at IronAgeMedia are always great to work with and I can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on this issue! More details to come.

While you’re checking out that pre-order, and if you haven’t already picked one up, don’t miss Issue #2, in print and digital. Anvil #2 features my my short story Afflicted: Nourritures les Ver. Here’s the blurb:

Amélia Mitre is Afflicted. Cursed by a pact of her own making, she is made to follow the Weird Way of Scealfe, God of Death of Decay. Summoned to the industrializing city of Beauanne, the Cursed Doctor finds herself investigating a disturbing disease that defies the laws of nature and therefore, the laws of her dark patron. She must discover the origins of the plague and punish anyone foolish enough to pretend rivalry with the God of Death.

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Check out my other written works here.

Above: Three Workers in the Iron Works. Oil on panel. Carl Geyling, Austrian (1814–1880), founder of Carl Geyling’s Erben a stained glass company.

March 3, 2024 0

Adventures in Storytelling 6

Entry 6, gathering brushwood.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t write short stories. And by that, I mean that I had this youthful, naïve belief that I was a “novelist” and would never write a short story. It was really just an excuse for the simple fact that I didn’t know how to write one.

In school we read tons of short stories—I even liked some of them—although none of them covered genres I read for pleasure. As a reader I’ve always gravitated towards fantasy. I like stories with swords and sorcery, something with an evil to overcome, heroes I can click with, and an adventure I can get lost in.

Needless to say, the “great American short story” was not something I read unless a class made me. I don’t like Virgina Woolfe, I loathe Mark Twain, I don’t have the life experiences of Ernest Hemmingway or Edgar Allen Poe.

Short stories always felt like opaque little pieces of highbrow literature. High art, rich in irony, drama, and meaning, with messages or morals I usually disagreed with or a muddy, bleak modernist outlook I definitely disagreed with. They were the kinds of work I was expected to read and write essays about. All of them far from the kitschy, heartfelt fantasy I love.

When I finished high school and was able to distance myself from the drudgery of school work and look at short stories as a piece of fiction and not as an assignment, I bent a little. I discovered H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Howard, gained a deeper appreciation for Edgar Allen Poe, read Hemmingway and fell in love with him.

I still don’t like Virginia Woolfe, and I’ll never enjoy Mark Twain. But I found Flanery O’Connor and the short works of Leo Tolstoy. While F. Scott FitzGerald has become one of my favorite authors.

But before any of that, I over-corrected and spent the first few years out if high school reading nothing but absolute junk food. I flew through every shallow, vapid, horrendous teen-fic fantasy I could get my young adult hands on.

I knew I was reading dreck, and yet I still imbibed. I was happy to drink up any piece of romance-laden, hand-wringing melodrama. I could slurp them up within a couple of days; the characters, setting, and story promptly forgotten as soon as I picked up the next terrible piece of mass produced, corporate trash.

And so my stubborn, arrogant “I’m a novelist” attitude metastasized. I wanted to be like these YA authors, you know, but better.

But one day, I woke up and couldn’t stand the idea of picking up another novel.

Every book I’d read from high school until about 2015 was exactly the same. A plucky heroine who isn’t like other girls meets about 2.5 boys who needlessly squabble over her while the overtly masculine villain schemes and makes sexist comments until the heroine discovers her inner warrior and defeats the poorly contrived symbol of the patriarchy.

After that I found myself only reading non-fiction. Medieval history, specifically.

As I exhausted my local library’s poorly stocked history section, I turned to medieval literature. I read Dante’s Divine Comedy and Boccacio’s Decameron, various Arthurian tales, poems, etc.

I fell in love with Dante. His entry into my life spurred me into a frenzied trajectory that would alter the way I viewed the world. I’ll have more to say about my patron, later. Just know that it was through his work and my desire to understand it that lead me to reading Aristotle, Virgil, Plato, Homer, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Gottfried, Thomas Aquanis, Cretien de Toyes—

About the time the COVID lockdowns began, I started to really miss fiction. I wanted to escape, I wanted to be anywhere but in America circa 2020.

I was mentally exhausted by the drama going on in my real life, I was working full time, trying to write on the weekends. I watched as my future plans evaporated under the corrupting heat of COVID. I couldn’t focus on history the way I had been.

I tried to hop back into fiction; picking up some paperbacks from my local used book store.

I couldn’t read them. I didn’t have the patience or, rather, the tolerance for modern fiction anymore. I’d been feasting at the table of the Greats for so long, a mass market paperback seemed like thin gruel.

I mentioned in the last entry that COVID was a turning point for me. I had committed years of my life working on a novel that was too long to be published by an unknown author. I couldn’t abandon it; I won’t abandon it. But it was clear that I needed a different strategy.

As my life took a dark turn, I began to pull apart the things that bothered me about modern fiction—the pandering, the limp prose, the lame moralizing, the overwrought, needlessly complicated plots masquerading as “subversion”, the tiresome deconstructed heroes.

I knew I wasn’t the only one getting sick of the same-old-same-old, I just needed to find an in. An “in,” by the way, that I’m still searching for.

Regardless of my chances of success I knew I could either quit entirely or make myself a better writer.

Dante loomed large in the back of my thoughts during this time, pushing me onward. He demanded excellence of himself, trusted that he possessed the tools to reach the absolute heights of his craft. Could I do no less?

What I began to understand was that I needed to learn how to write short.

Looking back, it felt like a monumental task.

The first thing I needed to do was relearn to enjoy fiction.

The Lord of the Rings has eluded me my entire life. This fact is highly embarrassing to me, but there is it. I could never make it past Tom Bombadil. I just couldn’t fall in love with the books like it seemed everyone else could. I knew tons about the books and about Tolkien but the prose never sang to me the way it seemed to sing to others.

I was aware of their Anglo-Saxon/Germanic heritage. I knew that Tolkien wrote the Hobbit specifically to be read aloud to children. I was also highly familiar with Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic storytelling and poetry because every medievalist, amateur or not, eventually realizes that they have to read Beowulf and the Norse Sagas in order better understand the cultural context of the history they’re studying.

These people did not write things down. Beowulf isn’t meant to be read; it’s meant to be heard.

I made the logical conclusion that I should listen to the Lord of the Rings. I bought an Audible subscription and started to relearn how to enjoy fiction.

It worked. Not only did I finally fall under the spell of LoTR, I rekindled a passion for fiction.

I began to listen to books at work, before bed, while I brushed my teeth, while I did the dishes, while I went for a walk. I even listened and enjoyed books I’d written off as unreadable while in high school.

Never in my life had I thought I would stay up until 2am listening to Pride and Prejudice. But I did that. More so, a book I once disliked became a book I enjoyed.

While I listened to the more time-intensive works, I started reading shorter ones. I was already a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, so I went looking for others like him.

I found myself getting really into horror, I picked up a lot of classic ghost stories. I learned about Weird Tales and met Robert Howard. I fell in love with his Conan the Cimmerian.

It was Howard that really woke me up to the possibilities of short fiction.

Conan is a fantasy hero; he gets by with a canny mix of cleverness and brute strength. He fights monsters, he steals treasure, he saves maidens, he even becomes a king.

All of Conan’s stories are self-contained and short (usually under 50,000). You can read Tower of the Elephant, or the Jewels of Gwahlur, skip Red Nail (you shouldn’t), and still get to know Conan and lose yourself in the Hyperborean Age.

Once I worked my way through every completed Conan tale, I knew that fire was kindled again. My stubborn unwillingness to learn was broken down, the debris removed as brushwood for the firepit.

While I was still adventuring with Conan, I took a chance and penned an old-school sci-fi short story and submitted it to Cirsova Magazine. It was my first, published in Spring 2023. I’m going to break that one open in the next entry.

For now, let me leave you with what writing this entry has taught me. I refuse to give up. Writing has the flavor of a Vocation. I am called to it.

Even if the fire goes out, as it did with me especially during that depression spiral of 2020-2022, you can start another fire, relearn, reframe.

Humble yourself and commit. Gather brushwood to burn, you’ll be surprised at what happens when you pledge yourself to becoming a better writer. It takes just one spark to set everything ablaze.

Above: Saint Paul bitten by a viper in Malta. Ceiling of the Gallery of Geographical Maps in Vatican City.

February 10, 2024 0

Writer’s Review: Buffy and the Art of Story

Eli Francis elifrancis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

When I purchased Buffy and the Art of Story I had a very different notion of what I was ordering verses what I got. It was an impulse buy, I admit. I love Buffy—okay, I love the first three season of Buffy with some select episodes from the other four. The book promises that I’ll be “writing better fiction by watching Buffy.”

I expected the book to go through the entirety of the Buffy series, break down the character development, plot, motifs, symbolism, etc., all of this towards the goal of enhancing my writing abilities. It wasn’t until the book was in my hands that I realized it said “Season 1.”

When I made my cursory flip-through, I saw that it went through episode by episode. As I began reading, I learned it’s scope was very specific—structure, with some limited commentary of character development and story devices.

The disappointment was my fault. I misunderstood the scope and point of the book. I also got a bit too excited about the gimmick.

Gimmick really is the word here. One of the things that you start seeing with most of the how-to-write books is the reliance on gimmicks.

It makes sense. There are literally thousands of these kinds of books on Amazon alone. If you’re writing one of these books, you have to make yourself stand out.

For example, my own Adventures in Storytelling is, at its core, a how-to-write “book.” It’s gimmick is to share tips, tricks, and advice through the perspective of a personal odyssey.

Buffy and the Art of Story’s gimmick is Joss Whedon’s incredibly successful 1990s horror/comedy/drama television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy and the Art of Story, Season One by L. M. Lilly

Disclaimer: Per the introduction of Buffy and the Art of Story, the book is a transcript of a podcast by the same name. Because I review how-to-write books and not podcasts, I didn’t listen to it.

Let’s start with the vampire in the room: this book is extremely niche.

I’ll be the first to admit that I shun fandom. I don’t like the cringy, obsessive, argumentative ways that some fandoms operate (particularly online). So, I’m really not sure if there is much of a modern Buffy fanbase—that is, younger generation fans, not Gen Xers and Millennials like me.

My first taste of Buffy was catching a random re-run some October while I was in high school. I began to borrow the DVDs from my local library, some of which didn’t work properly, so I never ended up finishing the entire series until COVID gave me a chance to sit down and binge.

Although I’m a “new” fan, I’m not really sure how many new fans there are out there. The first episode aired in 1997, I wasn’t even ten! My age bracket is probably the upper limits of someone who would even be familiar (that is, nostalgic) for the cheesy 90s’ and early 00s’.

Buffy and the Art of Story is clearly for established fans of the Vampire Slayer. There are no recaps or synopses at the beginning of each chapter. Lilly simply “dives into the Hellmouth.”

You must already know the basic story and characters of every episode in season 1 in order to get anything out of this book.

The chapters are named by episode, so if you want to skip around and examine specific episodes, you can. Each chapter is arranged the same, starting with some background information about the writers and director; listing the particular story elements the author wants to highlight; a chronological breakdown of the episode catching each one of Lilly’s seven-pointed plot structure; some spoilers and commentary; and finishing up with a list of questions for your writing.

In the first chapter, Lilly gives us an introduction to her preferred story structure: “Key plot points and turns for your story.”

It’s solid, seven-pointed structure:

Opening Conflict, which opens the story and draws the reader in.
Story Spark (aka, Inciting Incident), the event that sets off the story at about 10% in.
One-Quarter Twist, the first major plot point that “spins the story in a new direction” and typically comes from outside the protagonist.
Midpoint, where the protagonist commits to the quest or suffers a major reversal.
Three-Quarter Turn, the next major plot point that spins the story in a new direction but usually comes from within the characters. It usually comes in two-thirds through a story.
Climax, the “culmination of the main plot.”
Falling Action, the end of the story.

As I read the book, I found myself, for the most part, agreeing with Lilly’s use of the structure. However, this book has some serious flaws and it’s for that reason that I cannot recommend it.

I don’t like doing “negative reviews.” The goal of these essays has always been to help other writers find how-to-write books that might expand their horizons. But if that is my stated goal, then I have to be honest.

Lilly’s seven-pointed structure is a good structure; it’s just not the only one. And it’s especially not the only structure Buffy uses.

For example, a lot of Buffy’s one-off episodes—the monsters-of-the-week—do not fit neatly into this structure. Some of them use what I would call a “pulp structure.” The episode isn’t really about the characters changing or growing in any profound way, it’s about the characters overcoming obstacles.

This kind of structure is easily seen in any given Conan the Barbarian story. There is a goal and a series of hurdles that the character must overcome in order to achieve said goal. The story is in the lengths a character will go in order to achieve their ends.

And while Lilly hits the mark for most of the episodes i.e. the two parts 1^st and 2^nd episodes (Welcome to Hellmouth/the Harvest); episode 7, Angel fits well within her structure; even the one-off I, Robot…You, Jane. She misfires by trying to squeeze every episode into her seven-pointed story structure.

That said, I think the structure is a strong one, it’s should be. It’s the Holy Trinty, the Tripod, better known as the Three Act Structure.

An ocean of ink has been spilled over the vagaries of plot structure and ultimately that’s the thing here. There are better books on plot structure.

But, there are also some problems in her analysis.

Take her chapter on episode 6, the Pack.

It’s a standalone Xander-centric episode wherein Xander and a gang of obnoxious bullies are possessed by the demonic spirit of a hyena. Here’s a link to a quick summary and analysis if you’re unfamiliar or need a refresher.

The main problem with Lilly’s analysis is that she misplaces story beats because she’s misidentified the active protagonist as Buffy when it’s Xander. This doesn’t mean that Buffy and Willow aren’t active protagonists—they are, but it’s Xander who sets off the story, it’s Xander who commits, and it’s Xander who saves Willow.

Lilly misremembers that Xander is with the Pack when they eat the school mascot and I think this is the critical error in her analysis. This causes her to misplace her midpoint because “from a storytelling perspective [the pack] are not the protagonists.” In a way, she’s right. The four “packmates” aren’t the protagonists, but Xander is. He’s their leader.

Another issue I have with Lilly’s analysis is episode Eight and I’ll admit that it’s somewhat a nit-pick, she says:

“…in addition to Moloch being this sort of mustache-twirling villain who is just evil for evil’s sake, we also have the people support this kind of demon apparently just for evil’s sake…

…so I know we were told from the beginning that Moloch preys upon the weak of mind. Also he’s the Corruptor, and that he has this way over people. So it’s probably unfair to say they are choosing to follow this demon. But it feels a bit like weak storytelling to me. It is less interesting to have a demon who just has this magic power of making people follow him rather than the followers having some reason. Some deep need the demon is filling, something that makes us understand why they would devote themselves to this demon.”
Buffy and the Art of Story, Pg. 168-169

There are several instances where I think Lilly’s grasp of symbolism and motif is woefully atrophied. And while this episode doesn’t have a great rap, I find it a wealth of almost painfully obvious symbolism.

Moloch is a demon, he preys on the lonely, he’s called the Corruptor, his name is Moloch.

Moloch is traditionally understood to be an ancient Canaanite deity, throughout the Bible the Israelites find themselves falling into idolatrous worship of him. Idolatry is best understood as misplaced love or corrupted love.

I, Robot…You, Jane is one of those episodes that I feel falls a bit short of the lofty symbolism it’s playing with, in part because the symbolism is clunkily spoon-fed to the audience. Moloch is a symbol of the tension between the characters. Willow’s unrequited love of Xander; Buffy’s crush on Angel; Giles’ utter distrust of technology; Fritz obsession—idolization—of technology.

Lilly’s miss regarding this symbolism was when I truly realized that I couldn’t recommend this book.

Final Thoughts.

Story is more than tight structure, its more than making sure each chapter ends on a hook, its more than twists and turns and reversals.

If Lilly kept strictly to breaking down structure, leaving out any analysis of the characters or plot, it would still be a flawed book, but it would be one with some minor use for novice writers who are also Buffy fans.

As it stands, this book isn’t terrible, it’s just not useful.

January 13, 2024 0