GORDON: Ladies, gentlemen, voices I hear in my head during the dark, long hours of the night, we’re going to deviate from our past record of discussing television to talk about creating a new literary genre.
EVAN: Which is a daunting task, to say the least. I mean, genres have gotten ridiculously specific as of late. There’s a “gay horror” genre now. It’s not something to spook homophobes, it’s literally horror fiction for homosexuals.
GORDON: There are so many terrible, ignorant jokes I wanna make right now, but I’m not going to. But I agree- we can’t just slap two genres together. Poe is credited with inventing the deective novel- is there a particular profession that hasn’t really been explored much?
EVAN: Hm . . . Everything dramatic and even slightly connected to death is out. That includes forensic scientists, doctors or any sort, lawyers, etc. And the thing is, a genre that revolves around a profession requires an exciting one.
GORDON: Would it count if we revived the explorer/exploration novel?
EVAN: Not if the title of this post is “Evan and Gordon Talk: New Lit. Genre.”
GORDON: Touché. Here’s an idea: a “Nietzschean” novel.
EVAN: Go on-
GORDON: Well, to brutally simplify the philosophy, the only “bad guys” are the people who aren’t doing anything. Otherwise it’s more like an epic tale of colliding forces all of whom technically could be the protagonists and antagonists.
EVAN: That’s an interesting direction, but I suppose my issue is how alternatingly broad and specific it is- So in these novels you’re proposing, the only villains are the idle?
GORDON: the idle, the apathetic, those trapped by their antiquated sense of morality, and those enslaved to their brute instincts and empty rationality.
EVAN: I suppose it works, but have difficulty seeing it as the header to a shelf in a bookstore. Which is sort of what I was envisioning we would do in creating our new genre.
GORDON: Huh. What’s your idea?
EVAN: Well, this isn’t my idea, but I recently came across this brilliant new novel put together by Ryan North, creator of the webcomic Quantz.
GORDON: Go on.
EVAN: He Kickstarted it and it made like, twenty times what they asked for, but basically it’s Hamlet, but a Choose Your Own Adventure story. And it’s for various characters, too- like, you can read as Hamlet’s father, who eventually must die to become a ghost, et cetera.
GORDON: Huh. If we’re going down that track, how about a novel written in such a way where you can rip out certain sections, rearrange ’em, and wind up with a completely different story?
EVAN: It would work, but sounds exceedingly difficult to pull off. I’m trying to think of how exactly one would go about writing one . . .
I think, keeping in discussing literature, we could devise a new medium of sorts- it would be a marriage of the graphic novel and the traditional novel. Heavy on both text and imagery, a seamless integration that showcases both the artist and the author.
GORDON: That’s sounds like your average Alan Moore book.
EVAN: The Watchmen comes close to it, but it’s ultimately still a graphic novel which prioritizes that sort of storytelling over the bits of prose sandwiched in between the panels.
How about we look at steampunk, and see if we can branch out from it? That seems to be the newest sort of genre out there nowadays.
GORDON: Fair enough. I’m just struggling to figure out an era of technology to “punk.” After all, steam power was really the first major leap in technology.
EVAN: And “cyberpunk” is already a thing as well.
GORDON: This is true. But what else is there? Modern tech? “Modpunk”?
EVAN: Well, we don’t necessarily need to “punk” something. We just need to look at what makes/made steampunk so popular and work off of that-
GORDON: It’s the art, the world, the fancy suits. But yeah, it’s the rich world that’s created; it appeals to us.
EVAN: It’s also a union of history junkies and the sci-fi/fantasy crowd, I think that’s a pretty large aspect of it.
Are there two sort of interest groups that we can intertwine? I mean, it’s already been done with horror and romance, long before Stephenie Meyers ever came along.
GORDON: Huh. I’ll admit, I’m having trouble trying to think of one that hasn’t already been covered. As of yet, I think my Nietzschean idea was the strongest lead we yet have.
What if went down that route? Trying to twist philosophies into narratives- the allegory of the cave would make a good story.
EVAN: I think the main issue is how broad it could get- though I suppose it could just be “Philosophical Fiction.” That I could see in a bookstore.
GORDON: That’d be cool. I mean, it all appeals to the questions and struggles we already have. Yet barring Rand (may raccoons urinate on her grave) and LeGuin, I can’t think of any explicitly “philosophical” novels.
EVAN: That may speak for their effectiveness/popularity.
I was thinking about taking a genre that’s immensely popular to this day, and smashing it together with another one. Self-help books.
GORDON: Heh.
EVAN: People eat ’em up.
GORDON: I’m just imagining a really sarcastic self-help book.
EVAN: Comedy and self-help has probably been done . . . hm . . . I would love to see a whole line of books that masqueraded as self-help books that you could gift to the naive.
GORDON: Heh, that’d be cool.
EVAN: They’d be excessively over the top, but just believable enough for people to [literally] buy them.
GORDON: That’d be funny, but it’s really not a genre.
EVAN: I think if self-help books are a genre then fake self-help books would be as well.
GORDON: It’s really more of a gag.
EVAN: Yeah, I suppose you really couldn’t have that many of them.
How about an exaggeration of the choose your own adventure book?
GORDON: Like forcing you to branch out into multiple novels?
EVAN: Ooh, that’s an idea! So your choices would determine what novels you get next; that’s brilliant.
GORDON: Ain’t it? You’re welcome, America.
EVAN: And Canada. And the world. Let’s open up our borders here.
GORDON: Except Luxembourg. **** you guys.
EVAN: You don’t even know anyone from Luxembourg.
GORDON: Exactly- what makes ’em think they’re so good they don’t talk to me?
EVAN: We are going to lose the viewership of an entire country because of you.
GORDON: Boo hoo.
EVAN: All . . . possibly one of them.
GORDON: Hey, Luxembourg! Andorra called, they want their quaint charm and history back!
EVAN: And with the slamming of an entire nation done, and with a few very decent ideas about exciting places literature could go, we should look forward to what we talk about next-
GORDON: New film style?
EVAN: Seems like we’d be following very closely the same sort of conversation. Not to mention really most of what can be done has been done.
GORDON: This is true.
EVAN: Hm . . . How about . . . nerd culture, just in general- The Big Bang Theory, the current conversation about “nerd girls,” the whole shebang.
GORDON: Sure thing.
EVAN: Okay, that fully wraps up our time. Say good-bye to the nice people, Gordon.
GORDON: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I’m lousy at saying good-bye.
EVAN: I don’t know what I expected.
You can vote below as usual, if you’d like.
Culture War Reporters 
People Are Upset About Aveline de Grandpré [What Else Is New?]
So this news came out while I was still at camp, so I’m definitely a little behind the times. Ubisoft revealed at E3 in early June that another game in the Assassin’s Creed series would be joining Assassin’s Creed III when it launched this October 30th. The following is a trailer for that game:
The AC franchise has always been ahead of its time in terms of racial representation. Altaïr ibn La’Ahad, a Syrian assassin, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian, and Ratohnhaké:ton [Conor Kenway], English/Mohawk are the stars of the first, second, and third games respectively. Each game has given slavish devotion to historical accuracy, but each has also starred a male protagonist. Until now.
Aveline de Grandpré is an African/French assassin, the only black female video game character I can think of besides Rochelle of Left 4 Dead 2, and from what I can tell a complete and total badass. This is a huge step on Ubisoft’s part, and I’m both impressed and proud that they’ve made this choice. Especially when the reception was so expected.
It may seem like this is only to be expected from the video game community, often [and accurately] thought to be both extremely racist and sexist. It was only earlier this year that fans of the book series The Hunger Games took to the internet to express their disgust that Rue, a character in the novel, was portrayed by a black actress in the film.
While the role of Panem-ian heartthrob Finick Odair has already been given to Sam Claflin, months earlier a campaign was started to give it to biracial actor Jesse Williams. This was, again, met with some pretty intense criticism. From racists. Unfortunately a lot of the negative/ignorant comments on this messageboard have been deleted, though Jezebel’s write-up on the situation can be read here. The campaign tumblr is still out there, though it now also discusses racial casting, which I definitely don’t have a problem with.
Suffice to say, the world still has a ways to go before we, in North America, anyway, can simply start accepting that not everyone out there is white, and therefore not everyone who appears in art, either electronic or literary, is either. These comments I posted may just be an example of the “loud minority,” but if female or nonwhite protagonists are really a big deal, maybe we should be loud as well.
I think Aveline de Grandpré is an amazing addition to an already stellar video game series. I think it is fantastic that she’s black and that she is a woman, and I think that you should too.
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Posted in internet, literature, race, video games
Tagged Altaïr ibn La'Ahad, Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Aveline de Grandpré, biracial, black, comments, Conor Kenway, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, female, Finick Odair, Jesse Williams, Jezebel, Left 4 Dead 2, literature, nonwhite, race, racism, racists, Ratohnhaké:ton, representation, Rochelle, Rue, Sam Claflin, sexism, sexist, The Hunger Games, Ubisoft, video games