Logos, Ethos, and Pathos
The Three Musketeers
Newsletter #141
Of late, I’ve worked studiously to come out of a bit of a rut. Recent gaming has helped, particularly Witchfire and Monomyth, which I talked about last week. New addition Path of Exile 2 has further added to the gaming log, and a cooperative return to Baldur’s Gate 3 with my wife and best friends has rounded the circle and pulled me the rest of the way from the humdrums. I’m probably not going to talk about the games much today themselves; I try to vary what and how I talk about interests in this newsletter because I don’t want it to ever feel like it’s about just one thing. That being said, I am still stunned at how fully Baldur’s Gate 3, particularly when played with friends, captures the feel of sitting at a table playing Dungeons & Dragons. Baldur’s Gate 3 is quite obviously not the first D&D game, but it’s easily the best because it captures and presents in a microcosm the messy, wondrous completeness of humanity. The dragons and liches and goblins and - yes - dungeons are all quite fun and are easily some of the best set dressing this side of a Society for Creative Anachronism get-together, but I’m really there for the way the narrative, characters, and interactions with friends swing between uproarious humor and tear-jerking pathos, between disaster and delight.
This isn’t simply good gaming; this is great storytelling, and something I try to capture in all the things I write (with admittedly varying success), regardless of genre. I hope you’ll all see that on display when and if the stories I’ve been invited to submit to a prominent modern pulp magazine are picked up for print by said publication. I don’t want to talk directly about which publication since I’m still in the process of writing, but their editor has been a reader here for some time and kindly asked if I had any tales to share. This was the news I wanted to share this past Wednesday along with a bit of verse to preview one of those narratives, but work commitments in general ended up eating almost all of my time last week.
While I can’t talk directly about the stories and can’t share them here until after they’ve (potentially) seen print, I do hope I can bring the typical derring-do to these adventure tales while also offering something a bit outside the usual sword and sorcery stream, something a bit closer to Leiber than Howard, with the kind of perfectly untidy range of human emotion that truly defines some of the greatest pulp heroes. Conan, for instance, is oft-remembered for his bulging muscles and steely demeanor because most forget he was described by his writer as a man of great emotions who tended to great melancholy, and - as such - was closer to his humanity than “civilized” people. Elric was a sickly sort, and prone to malaise; Fafhrd was a drunkard, and his friend Mouser a slovenly womanizer. Pulp endures because it is human, and because it centers humanity in the orbit of the fantastic, and better juxtaposes the flaws inherent to its heroes with the metaphorical obstacles they overcome in spite of those flaws. Sometimes they fail, but - always - the struggle is what matters, the will to battle the worst angels of their nature, and so the fabulist circle closes and - even the grittiest, grimmest, and bloodiest tales - leaves the reader with a sense of enduring hope, of victory even when only defeat can be found, of moving forward even whilst simultaneously being set back.
Hopefully, I can share that preview verse with you this week and so introduce you to one of our potential leads; in any case we’ll definitely return here Friday to continue our tale of The Neon Tempest. Have a good week, y’all! Be kind to yourself and others!
Wado!