Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Epic Heroes

[dr_pretentious]

Don't ask me why I tried to explain North Korea to my five-year-old. It's tempting to joke that North Korea's foreign policy might be easier for a five-year-old to understand than for an adult, but Gareth was as baffled as the rest of us. My explanation boiled down to approximately this:

North Korea has a Mean King who wants to build the Biggest Bomb in the World. Nobody has completely stopped him yet because he has a lot of Follower Meanies--people who might have led perfectly nice lives, except that they're being led by a Leader Meanie. Meanwhile, the people of North Korea don't have enough to eat because it costs a lot of money to build the Biggest Bomb in the World, and the people of South Korea have to worry about whether the Follower Meanies are going to try to make them serve the Mean King.

Gareth's solution is that he will wait until the Follower Meanies are asleep, sneak into North Korea, and defeat the Mean King, after which everyone will be so grateful to him for bringing lots of rice that they'll reward him by teaching him to do real magic. It's a good thing we live on the far side of an ocean from North Korea, because Gareth's ready to pack his messenger bag and set out on foot. He feels sorry for the people of North Korea, and besides, he wants that magic spell power.

Probably the mothers of most the great epic fantasy heroes wished their sons would stay safely home.

This week's Black Gate blog post talks about revealing heroic characters through their relationships with other characters. In the epic of Gareth's life as a sword-slinging sorcerer with a neverending messenger bag of rice, his dialogue with me reveals his obstinate determination to defeat bad guys. I kept trying to say things like, "The Mean King locks up anybody who tries to come from outside and help the people in his country," and Gareth only got more and more determined to put an end to the Meaniocracy.

Comments

[showingup.livejournal.com]

T read this aloud as we had breakfast, and we cheered. Gareth the Great! Gareth the Mighty! Gareth the Possessor of a Keen Sense of Justice! What a good kid.

[citabria]

Probably the mothers of most the great epic fantasy heroes wished their sons would stay safely home.

Yes, I have no doubt that they do.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Still waaaaaayyyyyyy too adorable. Love hearing your stories.

[aspenwolf.livejournal.com]

What a good-hearted, justice-minded child you are raising! It's not surprising, given his wonderful parents. It's awfully sweet: Gareth the Swordsman-Sorcerer, vanquishing the Leader Meanie to feed the Sad People with the help of his Bottomless Bag of Beneficence! :-)

Ooh, quick side-note: I'll be moving to MD to join a household of concentrated awesomeness in a little under 2 months, with J. to follow a couple of months later when he's wrapped up some work stuffs. You & D. should come down with the boys to visit! We'll be just outside D.C., and we'll certainly have the room to host you.

[(Anonymous)]

Woohoo! Is this the household of your concentratedly awesome bridesmaids? We'll definitely be getting together. What are you guys going to be up to in MD?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Gotta remember to log in before I reply. That was me.

[aspenwolf.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the delayed reply; what with packing & all, I've barely been on LJ & just saw your reply today.

It's a household with two of my bridesmaids, all of whom were & are indeed concentratedly awesome! For visual cues, S. & her wife ashnistrike were the tall, pale one with the wasp-waist in a corset-backed dress & the short, bespectacled one in the flowy halter-top dress, respectively. (I'd rather go with conversation/personality-based cues, but don't know what to reference. Umm, S. is interested in sociology & semiotics, is largely autodidactic in those fields, and used to be an ambulance driver; ashnistrike has a PhD in cognitive psychology and now works as a government-funded Fellow in climate change awareness & education. They both love feminist science fiction and old World of Darkness gaming.) Also in the household are tavadriel & her husband J. (who were once my housemates in your old apartment) and their baby girl, whose Shakespearian / Buffyverse name is only further proof of their awesomeness. Tavi was at J'aime_sama's wedding in Kawaii with us. Another of my concentratedly awesome bridesmaids, Tiff, now lives in the Silver Spring area.

I'm going to be continuing to tutor & finding whatever more regular work I don't have to give 70+ hour weeks to, so that I can start going back to school. I hope to get my nursing school prerequisites knocked out via U-MD's Science in the Evenings program, so that I can get a BSN & then pursue a Certified Nurse Midwife qualification. Ideally, if all goes well & the Gods are kind, I'd really like to do my CNM at either Georgetown (preferred because of its dual-cert program status of CNM / Women's Primary Health N.P.) or Johns Hopkins (a longer commute, for a dual-cert program of CNM / Public Health). After a year and a half of being told I'm unemployable in the Houston area because I'm not bilingual in Spanish, documentably experienced with payroll & accounting software, or possessed of years of experience in the dominant industries of the area (and nobody needs a French teacher here), I *really* want to balance doing something that calls to me & feels sacred with finding a more portable career than non-Spanish World Language Teacher turns out to be. My J., stormsinger322, is looking to continue his current career as a Car Sales Professional at a dealership in the area, with a view toward possibly building a future career as a trainer and/or motivational speaker; he really loves the work he's doing now, which is a joy to see. I only hope his writing doesn't go completely by the wayside!

Oh, and I'm planning a kitchen garden for the household, since MD is above the frost line & thus gardening should, I hope, become no longer automatically likely to prove deadly. (Stupid fire ants, with their cumulative venom! Stupid immune system, deciding that freaking out over the stings is more important than breathing! I'll show them both: I'll move someplace that has winter! So there! *grin*) I can. not. wait. to stick my hands into soil again!

It'll be wonderful to see you guys! We've got a generous porch; you should come over for lemonade or sekanjabin & homemade ice cream before the summer's over. Not to mention games: ALL the games from the wedding are coming up with me in July, including Catan (Settlers & Seafarers), Zombie & Pirate Fluxxes, & Cranium.