030: I'm sorry for your pain.
Hullo.
Today I am feeling happier, fitter, more productive. I am writing this in a coffee shop and I am ignoring the blueberry crumble that is making eyes at me from across the room. I am going to ignore its siren calls now, no matter how its dewy berries eye me through the bell-jar glass. It won't happen. Never. Ever.
Oh no. I've had sex with a cake in a coffeeshop. Again. :(
Contents!
Imperial Phase!!!!!!!!
More Than Bearable
For Fuck's Sake Vote, Just Vote, Vote
Pleased to Sakhmeet you
Byeeeeeeeeeee!
****
Oh, look at this beauty.
Imperial Phase (Part I) is the first part of the self-described proggy part of The Wicked + the Divine. It starts with the Kevin Wada Magazine issue, which is one of the most ambitious things I've ever been involved with. It segues through modes, and falls apart and coalesces in unusual parts. It's our What Do You Do When You Win? Arc. It's about many things, but not least how success breaks you. And, as I said at the very start of all this, it's about problematic people doing problematic things.
It's available from your local comic shop, as well as book shops. Here's an amazon link, if that's your thing (though it only will get you next week).
Here's an interview I did about Imperial Phase, and WicDiv generally, in case that you have no idea what I'm talking about in the above, and you've somehow been signed up to this mailing list without your knowing.
I'm writing the last part of Imperial Phase (Part II) this week, which is one hell of a time. Probably more later. It's good to be ahead again, so I can get clean optics on our final year.
I am also slightly panicked that I have to write the next special shortly. I'm sure it'll be fine.
****
Oh, look at this beauty (slight return.)
WicDiv Editor Chrissy launched her first poetry collection last week, in a room in London that looked like Twin Peaks' the Black lodge. A little poetry, a lot of drinks, dancing and sweat. Perhaps unsurprisingly I'm biased on this one, but this is a startling collection of her work, and charts her own questioning eye. She is suspicious of certainty, of any easy answers, of anyone who'll give you easy answers, of anyone who'd use that to control you. She knows that it's okay to write a poem about Robot Unicorn Attack, and she is good enough to know that a poem about Robot Unicorn Attack isn't just about Robot Unicorn Attack. She should be as proud of it as I am as proud of her. It is my favourite Bear since Beorn, because nothing tops Beorn, except various elves in my extended Beorn fanfics.
It's out on Bloodaxe, and you can order it here from there or from your book shop. Or Amazon.
The cover is by the always astounding Tom Humbersone, if you were wondering.
****
Election tomorrow. For those in this country, it's no surprise which way I'd urge you to vote, and it's simply “tactically.”
The British election system is, to use the technical term, fucked. We had a chance to take a step towards making it less undemocratic, and decided that we didn't want to, so we have to work with what we've got. A vote of conscience is basically unethical in our system, at least in any seat where a vote matters. It's like playing a boardgame and ignoring the rules – as in, desperately self-indulgent, and in times like this when the stakes are as high as they are we really don't have time for that. It's depressing, but depressing is all we got with our political system.
But the depression isn't what I'm feeling. As many have said, it's not the despair that'll get you, it's the hope.
It's been an interesting campaign, which has been another reminder of how little anyone really knows anything and how you should be wary of anyone who is too certain about anything which, by its nature, is uncertain. Go back and look at what I was musing at the start of this, in terms of tactics that I'd have done if I were Labour. That's nonsense. Turns out, all you had to do was campaign and wait for the Tories to fuck it up.
My god, they fucked it up hard. It's been amazing to watch. A strong-and-stable leader who is too cowardly to actually talk to her opponents. That's astounding. I literally can't believe she may get away with it. I suspect even if the Tories have, she hasn't. I can't think of a Prime Minister who's seemed weaker during an election in my lifetime. At the start of the campaign, the country is convinced Corbyn is a bad leader. The campaign's main theme is that it's clear that May's just as crap. She's less Darth Vader and more Dark Helmet.
The terrorism has shaped the campaign. It is proving a difficult line for the conservatives to sell that they are the party of law and order, when they've been in power for the best part of a decade, and the prime-minster herself was in charge of cuts that the police expressly warned would be problematic. A last minute push for torching the human rights act manages to simultaneously be opportunistic and desperate – the former as it's what May has pushed for all along, and desperate in terms of playing to our worst fears and instincts. The Monstering of Corbyn in today's papers is as predictable as it is depressing. The Tories are aware that they were overconfident in this election, as they were when the did the Brexit vote.
Perhaps they'll learn. Let's hope they don't.
Of course, a Labour victory is unlikely, according to the polls. Even a hung parliament would be an upset.... but if the last few years have shown anything is Democracy likes to Game-of-Thrones-end-of-season twist our lives. These years are the death of certainty, and your vote can be another blade in the death of that. It's worth your time. Even if you're desperately cynical of it all, you want to be involved in this story, because this story is involved in you, and everyone around you.
****
Short review: I loved Pantheon. It's an accurate if irreverent re-telling of the Egyptian myths. It starts with ejaculating reality into existence and ends with a back page, because that's how books ends. It has considerably more sex than WicDiv, and is much funnier. If you're anything like me, i) I'm sorry for your pain ii) you will laugh a lot.
My edition has a lovely gold foil, which is a typically excellent No Brow look for a volume, so Kudos. You can buy from Nowbrow, your local comic shop or the usual internet places.
****
Work generally? Well, the WicDiv stuff, running a game of Dungeon Worlds (and I'm half tempted to write up my Adventure Starter properly) and a prose short story for a (er) thing. I'm also very upset that my copy of White Dwarf hasn't turned up yet. That'll do.
Byeeee, etc.
Kieron Gillen
London
7.6.2017