The Webcomic: A Daily Dose of Creativity

Rough couple of weeks, eh? I swear, in this time I've kicked about the ideas for so many angry, analytical blog posts, the kind where I set myself at a tangent to everybody and wring some sense out of my confused feelings regarding the dreadful stuff happening in the world and a narrative critique of it. I could do that right now. I've woken up every morning with a little burn of anger in my stomach that has been hit with a thousand comment pieces or new bits of god-awful every time I check into social media, or chat to friends, "Did you hear about...?"

Things are dark out. It's January, a tired, dirty month. We've had enough of winter, of injustice and violence. I could scream out against those things, say the necessary and bring another little patina of hopelessness to your day.

But for all my pretensions of politics, this is a blog about books. Stories, at their best, are the little lights we kindle against this dark, they are sanctuaries into which we can fold ourselves, temporal anomalies where we can play our favourite times over and over again, worlds closed off from decay and pain.

I read a lot and this is the place where I write about it. Still, a whole stream of my reading tends to get bypassed on this blog - the webcomic. I check them in the mornings, when I wake up at the weekend, or getting back from the school-run in the week. A single screen shot of story; fantasy, comedy, superhero or erotica. It's just a moment that lifts me out of diurnal drudgery, a gift from someone I've never met. There is so much to be angry at, to be saddened by that today I just want to celebrate a daily moment of pleasure, of joy taken in creativity, to thank those who make it and to pass it on.

So, here's the stuff I read, in no particular order. NB: I'm only putting in comics with an ongoing storyline.

Namesake by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton
Updates Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
The Beginning / Most Recent Update
 Let's start with my favourite shall we? Namesake is a fantasy adventure comic, suitable for a YA audience.
It's the story Emma Crewe, a young woman who discovers an ability to visit fictional worlds. This is the power of a Namesake -  a person who shares the name of a protagonist and must complete their quest - but what is Emma's story? And why have her powers carried her to the wrong one?
Pros: Wonderfully written, engaging, large cast piece. Brilliant characters. Lots of sub-plots. Very clever handling of a premise. Beautiful artwork. Totally YA friendly, SFW. And, er, Flawless Warrick.
Cons: Addictive. Quite a big undertaking. Linear narrative

Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto
Updates Monday-Friday
The Beginning / Most Recent Update 
And to the other end of the spectrum. Girls With Slingshots is a real world comedy webcomic aimed at adults. It follows the misadventures in life, love and alcohol poisoning of surly writer Hazel Tellington and her exuberant best friend Jamie 'The Rack' McJack. Romance detectives, ghost cats and a talking cactus feature in the perfectly realistic and ordinary lives of 20-30 something American women. Generally funny, occasionally hilarious. It can be read from the beginning as a single arc, or you can dip in at any point into the ongoing story.
Pros: Funny, thoughtful and occasionally very touching, another one with a brilliant cast of characters, lots of mini-arcs and a wonderfully rakish handling of a tired premise. SFW.
Cons: It's ending this year *sob*. Despite being SFW, it is quite rude in places - this might be a problem for some people.

Something Positive by R. K Milholland
Updates Monday-Friday
The Beginning / Most Recent Update 
Another real-ish world webcomic that occasionally crossovers with GWS. Slightly darker in comic tone, it follows the tribulations of misanthropic geek, Davan and his smilingly maladjusted friends from malacious irresponsibility to reluctant adulthood. There is some very moving stuff in some of the arcs, but also some truly wicked laughs. Again, it can be read from beginning to end, or picked up from the more recent strips.
Pros: A story that really grows as it was told, a webcomic that is currently firing on all cylinders. Also, scroll down for 'The Last Trick or Treater' watercolours.
Cons: The early comics are a little uneven in quality and tone. At times, not for the faint hearted. The suspicion that liking it makes you a bad person.

Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink
Updates with depressing irregularity
The Beginning / Most Recent Update
Steam-punk erotica about love, loss and robotics. Unable to satisfy his wife, inventor Robert creates a mechanical gigolo, Chester 5000 XYV. But love is more powerful than programming in this sweet, wordless, pornographic comic.
Pros: Astonishing artwork, so expressive that the text is not missed at all. A real capturing of the aesthetic of late 19th/ early 20th  pornography.
Cons: NSFW - if you hadn't already gathered that. Very NSFW. Seriously. Also, it doesn't update often.

Blindsprings by Kadi Federuk
Updates Tuesdays and Thursdays
The Beginning / Most Recent Update
Gorgeous webcomic that's really only just getting going. YA pitched but politically astute, it's a tale of a magical power struggle between authoritarian Academists and the hereditary Orphic Witches. Following a revolution in which the tyrannical Orphic aristocracy were deposed, anti-Orphic feeling is high. Marginalised and discriminated against, they form a tenuous resistance. Into this unstable situation is brought the naive Tamaura, a lost, Orphic Princess hidden for centuries as part of a deal with the ambiguous Spirits. Freed by a renegade Academist, she offers the key to a return of the old magics - but at what cost?
Pros: Gorgeously drawn, clever and thought provoking piece. YA friendly and SFW.
Cons: As it's still quite early in the run, not sure where this is going yet.

Center Of Somewhere by Luke Foster
Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
The Beginning / Most Recent Update
Sweet and strange, a quirky comedy-webcomic set in perfectly ordinary small-town America, with everything you'd expect to see there: delusional fish, boy-detectives, bad tempered blue jays who live with neurotic squirrels... Can be read either as a single arc, or picked up from a more recent strip. It takes a bit of getting into,but there's something very charming about this one.
Pros: SFW, YA friendly, playful and occasionally hilarious.
Cons: Can feel a little episodic at times. Very difficult to spell correctly if you are English.

Moon Freight 3 by Luke Foster
Complete Arc
The Beginning 
 This is actually the first webcomic I read. Another comedy webcomic based on the time-honoured premise of a bunch of guys stuck in space and bored witless. The art is pretty shocking at the beginning, but does smooth out to tell a pleasingly-off-the-wall story workplace skiving. A slightly more adult focus than Center of Somewhere, but equally YA friendly.
Pros: SFW, YA friendly, silly and entertaining, bit of a Red Dwarf vibe to it.
Cons: Somewhat unsteady in quality.

The Young Protectors by Alex Woolfson, Adam DeKraker (pencils) and Veronica Gandini (colours)
Updates Saturdays (and Wednesdays as a bonus).
The Beginning 
Kyle (aka, Red Hot) is a young superhero struggling to come to terms with his sexuality and to come out to the other members of his team (The Young Protectors). Early in the comic begins a covert relationship with Duncan (aka, The Annihilator), one the planets more dangerous super-villains. Equal parts world-saving adventure and emotional narrative, The Young Protectors is a refreshing take on the superhero form. One of the nicest things about it is the lack of objectification in the artwork. While pitched at all readers, the 'gaze' is decidedly homosexual and male, and therefore inhabits the characters as subjects while presenting them as desirable, meaning that nearly everyone wears proper clothes and stands in natural poses. As a woman, it's very restful not to see bodies like mine aggressively sexualised, leaving me to enjoy the story without rage-gasms.
Pros: Excellent story-telling, engaging and moving. Mostly SFW. A really quality webcomic.
Cons: Not YA friendly, while excellent at representation in some ways, a little lacking in others. Also the website does not automatically take you to the most recent post which gets a touch annoying.

Mystery Babylon by Val Hochberg
Updates Mondays
The Beginning / Most Recent Update

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where - it is implied - superheroes are worshipped as Gods, Mystery Babylon (aka Kick Girl) is charged with keeping the seal to The Pit intact, and the other demons trapped beneath it. Angry and cynical she takes few things seriously; not the cultists who revere her, and certainly not Zero, the Vestal Priest who claims a angel bestowed a vision upon him that will lead them back The Pit and prevent it being opened.
Pros: Very interesting and original adventure narrative. SFW.
Cons: Quite long, and needs to be read from the beginning.

Alice and the Nightmare by Misha Krivanek
Starts February 14th
 I'm a little awkward about putting this one in here as there's nothing up at the minute. Alice and the Nightmare ran last year only to go on hiatus in the summer. It's now restarting on Valentine's Day. Taking it's cue from Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, it was shaping up to be an fascinating story of intolerance, compassion and eerie danger, told with beautifully cutesy art-work. I suspect the reboot will be all of these things, but we shall see.
Pros: The first run was looking to be very good.
Cons: Not enough info as yet.

So, there you are - the narrative webcomics I currently read. Any suggestions (including your own) are more than welcome in the comments below.

Enjoy. x
 

What Price Fantasy? Consent and the policing of desire

This is sort of a follow-up to Alys' Addiction to Villains, dealing as it does with that fraught line between the fictional and the real.

Sex scenes and Consent:

A while ago, I read this fantastic article on the importance of consent in fiction by literary agent Laura Zats. The reason it's brilliant is because she's right. Consent is necessary, and hot and, y'know, the line between fun-times and sexual assault. Yet while the majority of my brain was cheering on this home-run of good sense and ethical sexy times in romance novels, I read this sentence and a tiny part of me flinched.

"Romance novels are also examples of what love and sex should look like in the real world."

I ignored the flinch. I flinch a lot.

But as the article charged on breathless to its rebuttal of rape culture, the little bit of me that flinched wriggled around a bit, pulled and nagged at my mind, and before I knew it I had my arms crossed over my chest and there was that nasty little whisper that used to keep me awake at night, "Just what is wrong with you?"

Ouch.

I thought I'd kicked that one. I thought I'd accepted the kinky mess of my brain, thought I'd settled with myself that dark thoughts and darker desires were not incompatible with self-worth, that I knew what I really needed and deserved, and what was just fun to think about. I thought I was over this.

But you're never over it. And it never takes much to bring it back again. Just some sweeping comment from a misogynist, just some below-the-line comment from an intellectual lightweight trying to save me from myself.

Or a thoughtful, intelligent, necessary article from someone I'd be proud to call an ally.

My shipping, my head-canon, the erotica I write (that you chaps are seriously never reading) would this be judged by others as "examples of what love and sex should look like in the real world", when it's not, and it isn't intended that way, and for goodness sakes, aren't we all aware of that by now?

I'm done berating myself about this. I got angry. 

Fiction is another word for fantasy. 

Even the most real-world, blow by blow account of an ordinary day is a fabrication, a falsity. And yeah, while I agree that we need a world that does not normalise sexual assault via media, can we not accept that some things are an escape? That some people like to think about things that - in real world terms - would constitute serious criminal acts?

Politically, I am left of centre. 

Actually, I'm left of centre by quite a long way. 

In fact, I probably couldn't see the centre with a telescope, but that's immaterial. As an unrepentant lefty, I would like to think that I am ethical. As such, I want an end to all the ways that people use power to hurt each other. I want an end to rape. I want, desperately, for every kind of non-consensual sexual activity eradicated from our world. I want our conversations around sex to become unambiguous and free from shame. I would like all abusive tosspots to learn how to be decent human beings and, frankly, while we're at it, I'd like an anarchist utopia. 

That's what I pray for, after all: people being decent to each other not because of law, custom or fear, but because it's the decent thing to do.

But just because I want these things, doesn't mean I'm not allowed to read books that glamorise vicious feudal societies. Just because I'm anti-murder does that mean I must resist the charm of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Just because I am a pacifist, am I not allowed to enjoy Preacher?

So, yeah, I'm anti rape. But does that mean I have to bar non-con from my fantasy life as well?

Especially when we get kinky, it's all about consent.

It's probably about time I mentioned BDSM. This is, after all, as much as a fictional framing device as erotic fiction. However 24/7 a relationship, it is still has its limits, however extreme the actions, they are always bound by consent. BDSM allows people to hurt or be hurt at one remove, not to experience power but to play at it. Just because someone someone indulges in interrogation play does not mean they want to be interrogated. BDSM is a safe space for fantasies, it is a yes-but-not-really.

I have heard arguments from erotica writers and readers that this is how it should be, that non-con should always be framed as fantasy within the construct of a story. So, any scene where a questionable act is eroticised it is necessary to reveal it as a consensual activity where all participants are engaging in a mutual game of make-believe. We may see something vicious, even violent, but when the lens pans out we see the mutual laugh and hug afterwards, the safe-word and the quick release restraints. In a longer story, we see these safe guards working, we see that this is all consensual and that, however intense, it is all in the name of good fun.

BDSM gives us as neat a get-out clause in fiction as it does to real life. We can go to these places without ever bringing our ethics into question.

But when we're reading a novel or a story we already have a framing device which tells the reader that nothing that follows is really real. A work of fiction is, of itself, a consensual, mutual game between the reader and the author. If a reader likes the idea of a forceful hunk sweeping them up to the bedroom over their half-hearted protestations, then a book is a place they can have that without the ensuing emotional scars. If at any point something unsettles them, triggers them, hurts them, they can say a non-negotiable "no", and put down the book. Stopping reading is the best safe-word in the world. 

What is more, most adults are capable of this distinction between reality and fiction. We know what we're reading isn't real - any crimes committed are not real crimes, the blood shed disappears with the next turned page. To add to this wonderful game a second disclaimer would be almost like a massive subtitle on the dangerous bits of an action film which state "These explosions are a special effect! Stunt doubles were used and not harmed!" 

When one reads - especially when one reads erotica - one suspends one's disbelief in order to get one's jollies. One does not want to come back to earth with a thump. We get it. It's a construct. If you aren't conversant with that, you really shouldn't be playing the game - you are still scrabbling at the backs of wardrobes seeking passage to Narnia, still walking into walls between platforms at King's Cross. 

So I could get scornful here, vicious against the people who fail to understand that, just because I entertain questionable notions in my head, doesn't mean I am ever going to act upon them in real, non pre-agreed reality.

But this attitude is rather glib.

Because that isn't what this is about. Because even though books are safe spaces, even though they are the finest of fetish clubs, even I draw back from too much realism in my villain. One might be fine with the idea of an elf-lord dreamboat pinning one's hands and ripping one's bodice, but when the setting is a market town in Surrey and the ravisher in question is a stockbrocker then no matter how much emotionally escapist bliss comes into play, to me that's going to sound like date rape.

Likewise, while I know that writers have no particular responsibility to their readers as a moral force, I am also aware of the part they play in creating cultural discourses and normative modes in the media. And these discourses - for all they are created in that 'harmless' realm of paper an ink - can cause real-world suffering, real world pain. I'm not talking about Harry Potter being the slippery slope into Satanism, I'm talking about semiotics. I'm talking about yet another strand of media excusing sexual assault, normalising it, glorifying it. 

In short, I'm talking about rape culture. Faced with that, to say, "It's only fantasy, I won't self censor, sod the consequences" is to show either blinding privilege or borderline malice. 

There should probably be a conclusion here

But there won't be. Because I know that people can't be held accountable for their fantasies provided those fantasies remain fiction (in whatever form). Because I know that reading about non-con, however horrific or scary, and getting off on it is not the same thing as wanting it to happen. I know that, as people, we need to challenge the dark bits of our minds, to embrace them and enjoy them if we can do that without harming people. I know that devotes of the macabre, fans of the kinky among us shouldn't have to feel like freaks, shouldn't need to be ashamed that they get a frisson from things a bit beyond the beaten track. The stigma against these things is strong enough as it is; let's not shame people further.

But I know, too, that if a story is told often enough to become our mode of understanding a thing it can do incalculable harm. I know if a person's, particularly a woman's, "No" comes to signify only token resistance, then we live in a society that excuses rape. And I am a hundred percent certain that this is wrong.

So I can't reach an answer. The line between fiction and reality is nothing like so definite as the line between enthusiastic consent and everything else. The boundary of what is too close to the bone changes from reader to reader, author to author, person to person. What's more, in a society that has so much shame, so much obfuscation around desire, too many people find themselves unable to communicate, to give or to ask consent. So, yes, we certainly need discourses which show us the words to do this, but as fiction reflects reality, we also need words which reflect back the pain of that inability, words for that struggle, for that uncertainty. 

How much do writers owe to ethics? To reality? At what price do our fantasies come? I wish there were a rubric that I could get behind, a pocket guide to acceptability because with the cost so high in human suffering, I could do with one.

All I know for certain is this; I am a Gothic writer, a teller of fucked up little narratives with ambiguous moralities, and I am not always sure that I am doing the right thing.

Female characters: What is strong?

So, another year rolls round, and there is another best-selling book, read mainly by women, that we are getting told off for enjoying¹. The reasons we are given are plentiful, but familiar:  poor writing, slushy plot and a weak female lead. You know, a silly little bimbo who lets herself get pushed around, subscribes to a totally self-sacrificing ideal of love and ends up...

Actually, this is just far too boring. Go and look on any one of a million websites and you'll get some version of this diatribe in full. In fact, we heard it all last time anyway. I, for one, can't be bothered. Not getting involved, not interested. The reason I'm standing well back from it this time round can be traced to two female protagonists from books that are both acknowledged Classics² and can therefore be safely discussed without anyone getting too vehement.³

So, two names: Jane Eyre and Fanny Price.

Let's start with the confession, but please, don't shoot:

I hate Jane Eyre. It is not only the single set text from an academic course that I have never actually finished⁴, I failed to finish it on two separate occasions and once even pulled a sickie to get out having to discuss it in a seminar. It's not that I can't handle 19^th Century fiction (I love 19^th Century fiction) it's that it's a turgid, repressive and oppressive wish fulfilment fantasy related by a main character with the pizazz and inner strength of an over-boiled turnip. I first studied it at an all girl's school, and our gushing teacher burbled incessantly about how virtuous, how committed, how inspirational a main character was dear, sweet Jane. I could just see them force feeding us this stuff, trying to get us to toe the line, behave in the acceptable way. I called b/s. I'll admit it, I ranted, and I swore  to anyone who would listen and I dissected that novel to prove my point. I did exactly the kind of thing that this blog post is complaining about, because it got right under my skin.

Then, a couple of year later, this happened:

I gave myself a holiday treat by reading all of Austen's novels, and was just about to start Mansfield Park. My mum, the consummate Austen fan⁵, looked at it and smirked. “Have you started reading that yet?” She asked.

“No,” I responded, all innocence.

“Oh, you are going to love Fanny Price.”

And I'll tell you something. I did. I liked Fanny,⁶ I respected Fanny, I was glad⁷ Fanny got her man. Okay, she wasn't so much fun as Austen's other heroines, but she was sincere, committed, and determined. No matter what might happen, she would not compromise herself, her beliefs, or her limits; even under pressure, even when there was no hope. What's more, she got what she wanted. Okay, she could have done better, but, hey, what's so great about giving up what we actually want based upon some arbitrary value system concerning life choices?

Good for Fanny Price! Three cheers! An inspiration!

Then I started reading some literary criticism.

Oh dear.

Turns out people were saying of Fanny the same things that I had been saying about Jane⁸. Oppressive. Wish fulfilment. Pizazz and inner strength of an over-boiled turnip (okay, not in those exact words...) These people, they had quotes too; they too had dissected the novel, pulled out bits and pieces to support themselves (“Out of context!” I cried.) Some of them even compared Fanny negatively to Jane, for Jane is liberated, has strength of mind, makes her own way in the world, does not compromise... I'll admit at times, I started to wonder if there had been some kind of bizarre mix-up in the heads of these people, and they had got the names the wrong way round.

But then I started talking to other readers, and reading articles about books and found that people I respect were saying Jane Eyre had moved them, had driven them, solaced them. People, women, were saying that Jane had been, on some level, their liberator – or at least a friend in their struggle. So I tried to read it again and could still see nothing more than a narrator incapable of either ducking or dissembling when a man is about to hurt her⁹. Then, reader, she marries him – you know, the repulsive, broke one who kept his last wife in an attic for years.

That was when the realisation came to me: this is literary criticism, darlings. We can all be right.

That's not to say all opinions are equally correct, some after all are patently wrong. This, though, is usually based upon a misunderstanding . An example of this might be a misapprehension regarding the word 'ejaculate' in that lovey dovey scene between Jane and Rochester in the garden. Such an interpretation of that scene would be... interesting... but not exactly worthy of serious attention. Others, while valid and interesting, take a certain perverse inspiration and a degree of stubbornness. One is reminded of the four hours I spent arguing that the events of Dracula are a collective delusion, and the essay where I stated that the thing of the Count's that Mina is sucking? It's not blood. Yes, it was enormously good fun, especially that last one, but really? No, neither of those are what happen in the novel.

Still, with an honest reading of something, when we respond naturally to the characters and get involved with the plot, there is actually no wrong response. So, something in me didn't get on with Jane Eyre and still doesn't. Other people can't stand Fanny Price. So what? We each bring to a book our own set of experiences and values, so that certain things trigger us in certain ways – certain aversions, certain sympathies. We all take away something from a book which shapes us and our future actions.

In Fanny Price, I saw a young woman who knew what she wanted, however unobtainable, and would not be swayed from that course by the glamour of something 'better'. Sometimes, when I face certain people and decisions, I look to Miss Price¹⁰ for her strength and resolution. In Jane Eyre, though, I saw a young woman who faced bullies and let them hurt her, let them break her. That will not be me.

Other people, I appreciate now, feel that should be the other way around. Fair enough - that's their response. I have not changed my mind, but I have stopped hurling the insults. A character is strong in the strength she confers and the characters from whom we draw strength are our own business. If one¹¹ shy, lonely, unhappy teenage girl looks at Bella Swan and thinks, “It's okay. Adolescence ends. The things that scare me won't be scary forever,” then surely, for all the problems you personally see in the book, it can't be all bad.

I'm not saying don't argue about interpretations of books– for Gods' sakes, that's the fun of lit crit – what I'm saying is put down the pitchforks.

1No. I've not read it. I'm not going to. If I want erotica, I have Lost Girls and the works of Angela Carter.

2Whatever that means.

3Lights blue touch paper, retires.

4Okay, there is ONE other, but it was by the same author and had more or less the same main character and plot. (again, the bit about the blue touch paper)

5No, seriously, she's treasurer for the local branch of the Jane Austen Society.

6UK readers especially, please imagine an immature laugh at the end of each clause in this sentence.

7Double laugh .

8Nope. Can't help it. Smirk.

9At least in the first bit of the book there's an element of defiance to this, but... Jesus Christ. It doesn't get any better once she's been tamed, does it?

10Ha! Avoided it.

11Oh, god, here I go. For all the good it will do me.

'Mobilis in Mobili': A Historical Perspective on Submarines, Swashbuckling and Rodents

Hello, my name is Alys and I like 19^th Century trash fiction.

There, it's out in the open. My shameful little secret. They say admitting it's the first step.

“But what do you mean by 19^th Century trash?” I hear you cry. Well, what I'm doing there is making a statement about 'high' and 'low' art and I'm being deliberately provocative. After all, tell someone you're reading a comic book, and there is a good chance they will look at you as if you are illiterate scum. Tell someone you're reading a novel by Dumas they will probably nod as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Some of them will even say, “how brave of you”.

Idiots.

As a culture, we seem to have a fear of the weighty tomes produced in the last century. Some people say it's the length that intimidates us, others the diction. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the defining factor is time. Give it a century or two and any old 'trash' can become 'literature'.

My intention here is not to criticise the 'trash', but to mock the people drawing the line. There is nothing inferior about a good comic, just as there is nothing inferior about Dumas. It is very easy to forget that, in Shakespeare's day, theatre was considered 'low' art. It is very easy to forget that 'novel' used to be an insult. The reason we forget is that the establishment appropriates these things because they are good. But some of us refuse to forget that, in their day, these things were scorned as appealing to the lowest common denominator.

And that's just what they do. It's why they are so bloody good. In order to grab attention they are fast paced, rip-roaring good yarns. They have wild adventures and exotic locations. They are full of witty dialogue and cheap laughs. They are immensely enjoyable. And, all too often, they have what the current Literary establishment would consider flaws. All the heroes are handsome and strong willed, all the heroines are beautiful, occasionally feisty and generally prone to fainting. These are not novels for the pompous - if you have a problem with so-called Mary-Sues, I might advise avoiding them. They are escapism. Truth be told, they are trash. But that's not an insult; it's one of the best things about them.

So, from an repentant AA type beginning, I find myself becoming an enabler. It's pretty easy to get hold of 19^th Century trash – charity shops and second hand book stores are good sources. Do check and see that they're unabridged, though. If you have an e-reader, there is also the wonderful Project Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org) which will give them to you for free.¹

But... well. Before you begin, a couple of warnings.

19^th Century trash requires a certain selective cultural blindness. There will be words and attitudes espoused by otherwise progressive authors that make any liberal reader wince. The trick is to whisper again and again, “they didn't know it was wrong.” In time, with willpower, the effect diminishes.

Then there's the problem of science. As we are often assured, hindsight is 20/20, and you would not have known any better then but... well, it can get a little tiresome to be assured that the properties of magnets, or electricity, or steam will lead to this, that or the other in the foreseeable future. Likewise, hearing phrenology and physiology described as 'sciences' without a 'pseudo' prefacing it, can strike one as odd. There will also probably be an endless stream of slightly dubious information underlying the plot. Abandon your pedantry all ye who enter here.

Perhaps from my tone you can tell I consider myself an old hand at this game. Still, it's possible to be taken by surprise.

In line with my addiction, I've just read '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' (Jules Verne.) I had been meaning to read it for a while and I enjoyed it immensely. It had everything I could have desired: some seriously outlandish science (but check out that Nautilus, man!), more slightly dubious info on marine biology than I could ever hope to use, and the kind of anti-hero who can make girls like me go a little bit silly.

What's more, by the standards of the time, it's really quite enlightened. The narrator laments the greed which has endangered the whale, or that viciousness which clubs innocent sea-cubs. In the latter half of the book, Nemo consistently draws attention to mankind's hypocrisy, cruelty and tyranny. But the good Captain cannot stop man's man Ned Land from spending most of his time killing (or thinking about killing) things, nor the narrator for admiring that very characteristic.

Now, as I've said, I'm a seasoned reader of these things. Just as I did not let the word “endangered!” cloud my enjoyment of Hector de Sainte-Hermaine's tiger hunt in 'The Last Cavalier'. I tried not to get too discouraged when stout Ned shoots a sea otter for sport even though the narrator has admitted that they are practically extinct. And so, of course, I tended to read parts that involved Ned Land – or, indeed, any other human interaction with nature - with a fixed, but wry, smile upon my face. “It's just the time it was written” I reminded myself. “They didn't know any better.”

Then I read this:

“for Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct for destruction.”

After I'd read it, I stopped, blinked and read it again.

Nope, it was still there. That assertion, no matter what we do to nature, it can always repair itself. Verne's narrator states it as a matter of simple fact, as if it were obvious. Such innocence. Such naïvety.

And I, in my 21^st Century way, had been quite cheerfully assigning the label of 'arrogant bloody Victorians' (well, okay, Verne was French and, Victoria only came to the throne in... oh, you know what I mean!) Essentially, I had condemned them as being wilfully wrong-headed and ignorant rather than just lacking the dubious benefit of my experience (over fishing, mass extinction, climate change.)

Essentially, I had become the kind of person that I hate.

Because I get so annoyed when people start talking about the past as though it's not only a foreign country, but another planet. I get fed up of wannabe historians describing all life before the Industrial Revolution as an endless stream of fear, sickness and poverty. Fed up of descriptions of the whole populace huddled around meagre fires in leaking hovels or draughty castles, dressed in rags and warding off starvation with a few handfuls of barley. Fed up of the idea that for whole centuries everyone was mad with superstitious fear and terrified of being burned for saying one wrong word. I'm fed up with people telling me life in the past was so totally different that we can have no conception of the inner life of our ancestors. In short, I'm fed up with stories of Poor Starving Peasants.

Because I read. And the thing is, when you read the literature of these people, hear what survives of their stories and their songs, look at their public buildings (mostly churches, I admit), they stop looking like poor, miserable waifs hanging on for the Enlightenment (and failing that, the Renaissance). They strike you as people, just like you and me, making the most of their time on this planet and asking the kind of questions we would ask about morality, religion and sex.

Still, it's easy to forget how much your environment shapes your assumptions. Still, it's easy to be taken by surprise.

Another thing I've read recently is the reissued first volume of 'The Pan Book of Horror Stories' (2010, Pan Books, first published 1959.)

Horror is another one of my things, and it was another brilliant read. It also illustrates my point perfectly. Most of the stories in there are still so fresh, so contemporary, that it seems implausible they were written over fifty years ago and many of them are earlier than that. One of my favourites was Hazel Heard's Lovecraftian The Horror in the Museum.

By this point, I had forgotten the age of the book, had forgotten the relative age of the story. This, to me, was set in the bustling metropolis of the early 21^st Century. The characters were people I might know, the tone was contemporary, ironic, powerful. Then, once again, it happens:

“Rogers had once boasted that – for 'certain reasons' as he said – no mice or insects ever came near the place. That was very curious yet it seemed to be true.”

What? No mice? I should bloody hope not.

Now, I've not been sheltered as far as rodents are concerned. I've known of plenty of people who have mice in their lofts, or rats in their compost heaps, but, correct me if I'm wrong, is it not commonly accepted that most people no longer have rodents living in their wall space? Is not the Tom and Jerry style mouse hole a thing of the past?

The past. Yes.

We share so much common ground but, who, now, would think of mentioning that, “Oh by the way, I live in a rodent free house.” And who, two hundred, a hundred, even sixty years ago, would have bothered to comment upon a few mice. No, it is their absence - “very curious yet it seemed to be true.”

It doesn't occur to us to question our assumptions until someone faces us with something like that, something that seems to be an outright contradiction of good sense – not from the standpoint of bigotry or morality but of normality. Of expectation, even.

Because things have changed, and they continue to change. A couple of weeks ago Ian Birrell, former deputy editor of 'The Independent' described Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame as “despotic and deluded” on Twitter. As he included the necessary @, Kagame was able to reply and did so. In text speak.

In 1999, who could have predicted this? Text speak was a thing known only to those with mobile phones, and the internet was not even that prevalent (at least in my social milieu). Anyway, we were all far too worried that the Millennium bug was going to destroy computers forever to be thinking about such advanced communications technology. That was only twelve years ago. Yet when we think about it, don't we think of ourselves as the same people? Our world as, essentially, the same? Doesn't some part of us insist that nothing has really changed?

But it has done, and society with it. Rather more scary is the thought that, if we succeed in not wiping ourselves out, it will continue to change and that all the vaunted cultural assumptions we have will lose their force. “It was 21^st Century” they will whisper. “They didn't know any better.” Perhaps Jules Verne was being more insightful than he knew. It is only by abandoning society and all its trappings that we can see its constructs as beliefs rather than truths. And it is only Captain Nemo who can turn his mirror upon humanity and show us what we are.

1Local copyright laws permitting...

Semiotics of Hysteria: Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender" and Cameron's gaffe.

To start with some bald facts: on 27^th April 2011, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, (Conservative) told Angela Eagles, an MP from the opposition (Labour,) to “calm down, dear” during Prime Minister's Question Time. The resulting furore was predictable. In the midst of this, Samantha Cameron – David's wife – laughed off the criticism saying that she often told her husband to “calm down, dear.”

Now, if we can ignore for a moment the difference in register required by (respectively) a personal tiff and the kind of professional, political contact which is broadcast on national television, we can, perhaps, let the word “dear” fall by the analytical wayside. No, what I want to examine is the assumption that Mrs Cameron makes: that, when a woman say “calm down” to a man, it means the same as when a man says “calm down” to a woman.

What can she mean? Surely this is Political Correctness gone mad? Words are words, whoever says them. The gender of the speakers can't make that much difference, can it? Hmmm. Well. If I may digress for a moment.

A couple of weeks back, I read a very interesting book called Delusions of Gender, (Cordelia Fine, Icon Books, 2010.) In the introduction she quoted one Thomas Gisborne, an 18^th Century clergyman, writing on the gender difference as it is called. He describes at length the female virtues and especial abilities “to unbend the brow of the learned, to refresh the over-laboured faculties of the wise, and to diffuse, throughout the family circle, the enlivening and endearing smile of cheerfulness.”

Why, we might even imagine such a paragon saying – to an overwrought husband or rumbustious child, “calm down, dear.”

But surely, times have changed? Women are no longer confined to the family circle, nor, indeed to the caring professions. But, as Fine explores, we still have the lingering spectre of gender difference which lets us know that women aren't better or worse than men just... well, suited to different things. Men, for example, are still considered to have the advantage in maths, sciences and technology – they are still the critical, analytical thinkers, but women have something else. Something called, to use a cultural buzz word, 'emotional intelligence'.

Well, yippee! What is this strange and wonderful thing? I no longer care that my brain is totally unsuited to position of power or responsibility! I have emotional intelligence which allows me to feel empathy. It allows me to interact well with people. It makes me a good communicator. It gives me nigh on telepathic powers of intuition into other people's feelings. This is great! I feel so empowered! What does this great, newly discovered facility allow me to do?

Actually, as Fine points out, it makes me ideally suited to interpersonal engagement, dealing with people – especially the young or the vulnerable. It equips me perfectly for the... er, the caring professions. Or, better still diffusing throughout the family circle the enlivening and endearing smile of cheerfulness. Calm down, dear. Quite.

But who am I to argue with neuroscience? (I'll leave that to Cordelia Fine – and a damned fine job she does of it, too.) What I want to do is come back to is the fact that this idea of emotional intelligence is not new. Fine traces it back to the 18^th Century, but I recognise it from my days spent studying Medieval Literature. However far back you go into this Christian patriarchy of ours you will find facts which are intended to uphold the established order. You will be told that men are the thinkers, the reasoners, and that women are handed, as a consolation prize, the ability to feel. We are the mothers (just like the BVM,) we are the listeners (just like Mary Magdalane,) we are the mourners (who knew about the resurrection first?) and we are intuitively faithful. In fact, when we stay in line, listen, don't question authority and are content to feel rather than analyse we become so spiritually enlightened that some of those great theologians sought to emulate femininity in their souls because it was such a privileged position.

Thanks, Bernard of Clairvaux, but all the same, I'd rather have the vote.

Because there is a drawback to this privilege. It is all very well and good to be emotional – to be enlightened by a direct and uncritical interaction with spirituality, but it always leaves the patriarchy with a very powerful weapon. Because when we take it too far, when a woman starts to show what would, in a man, be seen as masculine anger, well, that's just our phlegmatic temperament making us hysterical. You see, that's the problem with emotional spirituality. It makes these poor girls a little bit unstable, prone to the old wandering womb¹. Nothing else for it. Calm down, dear.

Which is exactly what happened in during Prime Minister's Question Time on 27^th April 2011. Angela Eagles was doing her job, was making her point and arguing as well as she could and David Cameron – consciously or otherwise – felt his masculinity threatened. So he snapped into that old control mechanism which has been reinforced by centuries of theories, from ideas of the humors to neuroscience – that women are better at emotion. And because they are better at emotion, they can get emotional. And, as a fine, upstanding member of that patriarchy what else could David Cameron have said when out manoeuvred by a woman?

1The root of hysteria being womb, as any good dictionary will tell you...