Blood Feud: Prague

[Fritz]

As the guys who visit the Ectozone Forum know, I have a younger brother named Al (actually, he's one of three younger brothers I have, but that isn't important right now), who posts there under the user name OgreBBQ. He doesn't post very often, mind you, because 4chan has lots of porn for him to download and I don't, but he pops up once in a while.

What is not as well known is that Al dabbles in writing too. In some ways I still think he's better than I am, but he's even less motivated. Al's my first spellchecker, has given me more zinger ideas than I can count, and (under the pen name Jim Harley) is the creator of the Inquisitors, the team of characters seen in Shadow Of The Inquisitors.

Well, after a very long wait, I finally have something he's done ready to show the rest of you. If you've been wondering what happened to the brutal vampire hunter Anatole Vashnivski after he was Embraced...well, time to find out.

It's darker and more intense than most of the stuff I do, but that serves the subject matter pretty well. I hope everyone else has as high an opinion of Al's work as I do.

Blood Feud: Prague
By OgreBBQ
August 1998--Timeline Year Sixteen
There's carnage in the streets of Prague...and smack dab in the middle of it is a former member of the Inquisitors: vampire hunter turned vampire Anatole Vashnivski. And somebody is not happy he's there...

[EGBFan]

It's tempting to use the third person here, after that intro - but I'm assuming Al will read this, so I'll try and stick to second.

You have a very definite style, which is always to a writer's advantage. You're fond of your similes - and I happen to think they work very well. The story has a movie-ish feel about it, but you still use the words as well as you can - in this age of moving image, too few writers make the effort to pick the right words.

Yes, it's dark. I like dark.

Another phrase that comes to mind is "testosterone-fuelled". It's not really a phrase I like using, but it just kept coming to me, so I thought I'd better mention it. Three years of studying feminist literature (off and on, you understand) leaves one sensitive to such things: it's possibly even a bit Conan Doyle, in that the only strong female character seems to be the exception rather than the rule, and has masculine qualities (as stated in the narrative) - I do admit, it's something I think literature needs to move away from.

But still, cool story. You have a very compelling way of writing.

(Fritz, it occurs to me why, when I find your brother's story here and yours in my e-mail inbox, I read his first after your many years of loyalty to me. Curious, I guess. You'll get my comments very soon, of course.)

[Fritz]

(Fritz, it occurs to me why, when I find your brother's story here and yours in my e-mail inbox, I read his first after your many years of loyalty to me. Curious, I guess. You'll get my comments very soon, of course.)

Lol..don't sweat it. I barf up a story at least a couple times a month, this is his very first posted work. I don't blame you a bit for being far more curious about it than one of my rambles.

I'll try to remind him to stop by later, but no promises he will.

[SuperStantzio]

That was a awesome job on the story! I really enjoyed and your did a great job! It's now one of my favorites.

[OgreBBQ]

Looks like this thing's going over slightly better than a lead balloon.

Thanks for you glowing praise, SuperStantzio. Glad to know it was so to your liking.

EGBFan: You're right. There's not much in the way of feminine influence in this story or its characters. That is, in fact, by design. I wanted to tell a story that featured Anatole doing what he does best: killing things. That there was only one woman in the entire piece was mainly because I figure most women have better things to do than get involved in what boils down to an undead machismo contest.

That being said: I felt I had to include one as the big threat because Anatole is himself rather a misogynist, so having a "mere woman" be the person to take him to the wall after he'd so effortlessly killed everyone else that dared oppose him appealed to my sense of irony. However, I couldn't let her KILL him because I have every intention of keeping Anatole around for a while. I have more stories to tell about him (as the epilogue implies). I'll get to work on them just as soon as I figure out exactly what they are.

"Why was this woman not more feminine?" is a fair question. The answer to that (and I perhaps should have at least implied this in the story itself) is that she got her start in the immortal legbreaking game several centuries before anyone in eastern europe had ever heard of any such thing "women's rights" and has spent most of her unlife pretending to be a full-blown man so that the troglodytes in power would take her seriously, and centuries of habit haven't quite been worked out in just a short decade or three (and, if anything, vampires are even more hidebound than we are).

For what it's worth, I have every intention of including more women in any future writings I might manage to put together (it DID take me two years to finish this one). When (if?) that does happen, I have no intention making them all retiring wallflowers or helpless damsels-in-distress.

Let me know if i disappoint.

Just to make one more thing clear: thanks for the constructive criticism. I hope I haven't offended with my counter-argument, or created the impression I was myself offended.

[SuperStantzio]

ogrebbq said:

Looks like this thing's going over slightly better than a lead balloon.

Thanks for you glowing praise, SuperStantzio. Glad to know it was so to your liking.

EGBFan: You're right. There's not much in the way of feminine influence in this story or its characters. That is, in fact, by design. I wanted to tell a story that featured Anatole doing what he does best: killing things. That there was only one woman in the entire piece was mainly because I figure most women have better things to do than get involved in what boils down to an undead machismo contest.

That being said: I felt I had to include one as the big threat because Anatole is himself rather a misogynist, so having a "mere woman" be the person to take him to the wall after he'd so effortlessly killed everyone else that dared oppose him appealed to my sense of irony. However, I couldn't let her KILL him because I have every intention of keeping Anatole around for a while. I have more stories to tell about him (as the epilogue implies). I'll get to work on them just as soon as I figure out exactly what they are.

"Why was this woman not more feminine?" is a fair question. The answer to that (and I perhaps should have at least implied this in the story itself) is that she got her start in the immortal legbreaking game several centuries before anyone in eastern europe had ever heard of any such thing "women's rights" and has spent most of her unlife pretending to be a full-blown man so that the troglodytes in power would take her seriously, and centuries of habit haven't quite been worked out in just a short decade or three (and, if anything, vampires are even more hidebound than we are).

For what it's worth, I have every intention of including more women in any future writings I might manage to put together (it DID take me two years to finish this one). When (if?) that does happen, I have no intention making them all retiring wallflowers or helpless damsels-in-distress.

Let me know if i disappoint.

Just to make one more thing clear: thanks for the constructive criticism. I hope I haven't offended with my counter-argument, or created the impression I was myself offended.

You're very welcome and keep up the good work!

[EGBFan]

ogrebbq said:

...I figure most women have better things to do than get involved in what boils down to an undead machismo contest.

Lol, clever.

Your counter-arguments are very convincing, actually. There is plenty of literature (e.g. Enid Blyton) and a bit of historical evidence (Queen Elizabeth I) to attest that there was a time when a woman with any amount of gumption considered herself to be the exception rather than the rule. There was a time when women aspired to be more masculine, which hasn't entirely disappeared now; it is generally considered ok or even admirable for women to be masculine, because it's seen as a step up, but there's something people don't seem to like about the idea of men being feminine because it's seen as a step down (she says to a guy who doesn't like pink ). But then recently there's been all this, what exactly do we mean by masculine and feminine? there are so many different degrees of gender identity... - fair points, I think. But I'm of the opinion that gender is 80-90% socially constructed anyway.

Maybe another two years down the line(?!), I'll be very interested to see your handling of some other female characters. I tell you, there are very good, very enjoyable male novelists who write the most wonderful books, which are let down only by their total lack of understanding of what women are actually like - Iain Banks springs to mind. Well, I say what women are "like" - but of course, we aren't all the same. A lot of male writers are guilty of playing on stereotypes; mothers, sex objects, jealous little tarts, kick-butt ninjas that attempt to redress the balance etc. Male writers would do better if they didn't try to present an image of femininity - you just need to write in pretty much the same way you do with male characters.

Not that I profess to be any kind of expert on gender representation. I've studied it, but even so, that doesn't make my testimony any more valid than the next person's. I have absolutely no idea how well I write about men, and maybe I am guilty of the reverse. There are women writers equal to or better than Iain Banks that are guilty of it: Maggie Gee (let's hope she doesn't find this in the academic year 2007/8 and realise I'm one of her students ), Shelagh Delaney, arguably Pat Barker, although I think this improves as her work progresses with time.

If I may offer a bit more advice, don't go making your women superhuman either. I think I mentioned ninjas back there. Unrealistic attempts to redress the balance are pretty self-defeating, really. The most likeable and believable characters, male and female, are ones with their share of strengths and weaknesses. And do bear in mind that femininity is a male invention. Read anything by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but particularly her novel(la)* Herland, and she'll expand on that.

*Critics can't seem to agree whether or not it's long enough to be called a novel.

(Fritz, Al's coming back to read all of this, right?)

[Fritz]

(Fritz, Al's coming back to read all of this, right?)

As before, I'll let him know he's gotten some more comments, but can't promise anything.

[OgreBBQ]

So I'm "the man who isn't there" now.

Fair enough. I HAVE gone months between posts (and visits, for that matter). In my own defense, the only time I have ready access to a computer is in the middle of the night, when ti has to compete with "get some sleep" (and as Fritz would no doubt tell you, I like myself a good night's sleep).

I admit right now that for the cast majority of my life the only real female influence in it has been my mother. So you're probably right: I DO have no idea how "real" women think and behave.

That being said, I don't buy in to the whole claptrap of men being "better" than women, at least not on any level I am aware of. Cultural conditioning is, I fear, unavoidable; so there is likely a degree of those thoughts sublimated in my head somewhere. At a guess: if I really knew just how deeply some of it has enmeshed itself into my consciousness, it would probably horrify me.

*********

At what point did this thread morph from a discussion of my little story into a combination social studies seminar/psycho-analyze Al session?

My guess: about four sentences into my own post.

Though on an unrelated tangent: how many people get compared to Arthur Conan Doyle and get defensive about it? I mean , the guy IS only one of the most successful writers of the last 150 years.

[EGBFan]

Psssst, Al, don't take it personally. Jeez, lighten up.

I'm talking about Iain Banks and Arthur Conan Doyle - I'm not accusing you of anything, and I'm certainly not attempting to psychoanalyse you. The men I have mentioned are both great writers (Conan Doyle isn't to my taste, but I do appreciate that he's a quality writer) - there's no reason for me to assume you're going to emulate their mistakes, and I don't, but I figure if you know what they are well in advance you can avoid them and make your writing one step better than theirs.

[Dr. Simeon Spengler]

I enjoyed reading this! Even though I hate vampires. I am like Sam Vimes in that way. Werewolves are more my style. But this was really exciting! Reminded me of old Blade comics. Not the crappy movies.