Multi-Level Marketers are Modern-Day Plague Doctors

Art by Michelle Browne

Today, I saw a video that sparkled across my neurons and absolutely demanded I share some weird facts with the world, so here ya go.

MLM huns: "let's take this failed attempted remedy for the Black Plague and use it as a disinfectant! That'll work" 

*Plague Doctor intensifies*

Now, you may or may not know what Multi-Level Marketing is, but if you don't, let me throw some names at you: Doterra. Amway. It Works. Mary Kay. Silpada. LuLaRoe. Young Living Essential Oils. NXVM.
One of my many weird interests is studying Multi-Level Marketing (and watching Reddit dramatic readings that discuss it), and I have always been interested in cults, so the overlap in these is natural. But since I've grown up in a medical family, with parents who are actively aware of and concerned about fake treatments and bad science (since it harmed patients), I also like to learn about fraudulent cures and quackery masquerading as alternative treatments. Now, alternative treatments can have value, but sometimes, they pray on the scientifically ignorant and vulnerable. 
And there's a long, long history of this...some people will take any opportunity to make money, even if it means monetizing a crisis or shaking down sick, scared people. 

Plague Doctors? 

Fun fact, but the "thieves' oil"? Yeah, it comes from the Plague Doctors who'd come in and pillage areas of Vienna and Florence when the Black Plague was running rampant.

Thieves would also smear on the oil in hopes of looting homes of the dead without getting their Plague. Another superstition of the era holds that opal rings would crack and turn black when someone caught the Plague. Unfortunately, the killing of cats believed to be associated with witches only worsened the Plague, since it traveled on and infected the fleas on rats that came on ships from the east, and from trade caravans. But cats killed rats - and taking away cats made things worse. Sadly, Jewish people were also blamed for the plague - even though kosher and hygiene laws were keeping their enclaves safe, many Christians thought the Jews had started the plague (which is obviously not true). This probably made things worse - hence the emergency situation of the worsening plague, especially in Italy. The reason for those weird bird masks is that people in that era believed that "miasmas," or "bad air" would cause infections - a primitive attempt at germ theory. (Their Islamic Colleagues to the east were much better informed about "invisible contagion," as we can see in the works of Avicenna, a famous physician of the era, but I digress.) Anyway, those long beaks were stuffed with dried flowers, potpourri, and other stuff that smelled nice, essential oils included, in hopes of warding off the "bad air". Unfortunately, the doctors were often unethical, unlicensed, and sometimes experimented on Plague victims. Yikes! Although the Plague Doctors' heavy coats and masks often kept them safe, unfortunately, they still carried the bacteria on their cloaks and coats...infecting more patients. 

So in a way, MLM huns are carrying on a "proud" tradition of fraudulent medicine, quackery, and fake cure-alls that sabotaged real medical research and science for centuries. They're even using the same tools.

You can learn more about this by checking out the phenomenal and funny podcast "Sawbones" or watching Frederick Knudsen's "Down the Rabbithole" episode on Plague Doctors. There is also a Vice documentary on the Black Plague that may be of interest. Although cases of Bubonic Plague still crop up here and there, we now have treatments for it.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people's manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

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 Ko-fi

Podcasts and Horror Writing: Some Observations

Hello hello!

In the last six or eight months, I've fallen in love with podcasts. I started off just listening to Welcome to Night Vale, courtesy of Tumblr, and The Thrilling Adventure Hour soon followed after they ad a crossover. Following Mara Wilson's Twitter feed led me to I Don't Even Own a Television. From there, I started to poke around, and talked to a few friends, like Louisa (blog link). I got hooked on Sawbones and Oh No, Ross and Carrie. My Brother, My Brother, and Me became my nightly comfort, the McElroy brothers' voices lulling me safely to sleep. Listening to a happy, healthy family kibitz and bond over Yahoo answers and social niceties  has made dark times that much easier to endure, and helped me step back into the light.

Of course, I seek more than comfort and the joy of new information. These days, I often enjoy horror rather than fearfully avoiding it, and one of the best creepy podcasts around has to be Lore. As always, however, one can only binge-listen to a cast for so long before running out of episodes, and I sought alternatives and supplements to my fix. The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast caught my attention as well, and after I'd run out of episodes of that--no mean feat, but I tend to listen obsessively to shows I enjoy, rather than just taking them in once a week or every two weeks--I had to find more horror and fiction podcasts.

Where did I go next?

I haven't finished them or listened to much of them, so I will not yet link Psuedopod, Drabblecast, or Knifepoint Horror, but they come well-recommended. TANIS and The Black Tapes are also moderately popular, though have mixed reviews. Perhaps one of the best known is the Reddit-sourced NoSleep podcast, based on the subreddit of the same name.

I have not yet completed the podcast's run of back episodes, but my favorite episodes of NoSleep, and the ones I consider the best, are the following. I have included notes about the entries.

Episode 1--the very first story is perfectly chilling and one of the most unnerving I've ever heard.
Episode 3--the first story is the best, once again.
Episode 7--only We Don't Talk about Sarah, though.
Episode 8--My Best Friend's Grandmother; again, the others are meh.
Penpal Part 1--generally, both parts are an interesting and suspenseful mystery, but see below.
Penpal Part 2
Episode 14--the whole thing is pretty great.
Episode 18--both stories are rather good, but the last one is remarkable.

Normally, I wouldn't include so many links, but I want readers to understand my sources and references before I shovel conclusions over them like so much grave dirt.

What is it about horror? 

I've come to like horror because it allowed me to frame my own demons in a more useful way, and to get in touch with the dark side of my imagination. Many authors have written about the appeal of horror, and I would be redundant to ask why the world of shadows and fear calls to so many.

I would suggest, however, that in addition to expressing personal darkness, the appeal of horror is partly in how it inverts some expectations. Most stories involve things ultimately going right; horror is about things going wrong. The Hero's Journey structure (see below) becomes inverted, and often foreshortened abruptly by disaster.

Source. This is allegedly what all stories come back to.

In a horror story, the hero's journey still occurs, but there's no guarantee of redemption, just further horror and loss. Readers, viewers, and listeners derive a weird comfort from facing their fears about the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Meet the new boss? 

The exciting thing about the NoSleep podcast is that it's a trove of unknown and developing writers, rather than old hands and established experts. Sometimes the writing is mediocre or amusingly inept, but the variety is a real pleasure.

These authors tend to use an X-Files sort of sensibility--setting mysteries in the local environs, even in office buildings, subdivisions, and backyards. Narrators/protagonists are often relatively innocent, rather than being guilty of violence before the narrative's events take place. Surprise encounters dominate most of the events, or narrators become the victims of more powerful and often abusive, stalking forces.

Unreliable narrators are common, and it is often difficult to determine whether the main characters have a loose grip on reality or are truly experiencing paranormal events. This is enhanced or exacerbated by circumstances of shyness and social isolation; protagonists are usually lonely, ordinary nebbish types--not just Everyman sorts, but updated ones, often labouring under the kinds of crappy jobs that so many Millennials and Gen Xers take.

But not everything is intriguingly updated. With many modern sensibilities come unwelcome old friends.

...Same as the old boss.

No, what I want to know is--why does horror reinforce so many old ideas? The NoSleep podcast is a particularly interesting example of this, because the writers are culled from Reddit. Reddit is mostly populated by young men, under the age of forty. 

One might not expect that so many younger men would reinforce gender stereotypes as strongly as these writers do, but an interesting thread through even my favorite stories tended to be gender essentialism. Female characters were usually mothers, were depicted as more fearful and physically weaker than male characters, and tended to be subjected to far more violence.

Female antagonists, however, are common, and usually tend to be lurking spectres or haunted children. They present menace but rarely enact the actual violence. Other antagonistic forces are often either genderless or somewhat male-coded, and tend to be far more violent.

This being said, lady writers do occasionally contribute, and often focus on issues of mental health and abandonment, or lack of physical safety. Stalking also crops up. These elements are really interesting, and I'd love to see more of them. Perhaps the next seasons will deliver that!

***

Thanks for returning to the nest. Leave a comment and say hi! I want to hear from you. Keep up with the new releases by getting on the mailing list. Buy my books on Amazon, and keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!

Why You Should Be Hard on Your Characters: Power Porn, Part 1

Hello hello!

Well, as always, this is motivated by a few of the manus I've been seeing, and frankly, by fixing up one of my own works. Why do we pat our characters on the back so much, going to unreasonable lengths to talk about them as 'better'? This isn't always just about characters--their houses, their cars, their favorite cafes--they're

I said when I first started this blog that I'd avoid too many technique blogs, but frankly, I like analysing this stuff, and I also didn't expect to become a professional editor,, so I hope you guys are still enjoying this. Do let me know in the comments.

Moving along, let's talk about a bad, bad habit of both film and literary media: the pat on the back. There's a few ways to do this, and I'd like to mention the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's get to it! We'll start with analysing the essence of badassery.

Success is sexy: power porn  

I'm not going to lie, I really like the new trend of 'competence porn' or 'power porn'. I don't care particularly about the sex, though that is commonly a big feature. No, what interests me, and millions of other viewers, is the political machinations and the use of expertise to accomplish wonderful, unbelieveable things. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, the Warhammer 40K Ciaphas Cain series by Sandy Mitchell, Banksters by Nic Wilson--those are just a few titles I've enjoyed that tend to veer into this area. Other examples would be my beloved favorites Les Liasons Dangereuses by Du Laclos, The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski. All of these feature men (and sometimes women, though female-led power porn is rare) who manipulate, scheme, and use their intellect and social influence to accomplish their goals. As mentioned, sex is usually a big part, though revenge is also a popular motivation. I suspect Wolf of Wall Street belongs to the genre, though I haven't seen it yet.

What's the big deal? 

In addition to wonderful writing and cinematography, as well as superb acting (in the movies, anyway) all of these tend to focus on anti-hero characters. Most of them are evil or chaotic in terms of their alignment (sometimes chaotic evil, too).

The risk, the danger, the power imbalances, and often, the oceans of money, all have an intoxicating effect. We, the audience, are complicit in character's actions. Just reading/watching these stories makes one feel more like a badass, and I think that's a vital part of the allure. Everyone loves a bad boy/girl/person, a badass, and that's a blog of its own. So, readers/viewers get both the thrill of feeling cool and the closeness to someone cool. And, obviously, there's the whole BDSM aspect of control, consent, and the rest of it. Danger is another big part, and it's one of the reasons why so many people faint over these characters--even a cuddly character like The Doctor can turn on a dime and drop all pretense of sanity.

The other thing is that currently, we're in a pretty dark place with politics. Evil, frankly, is easier to believe in than good--not unlike that dark period we went through with entertainment in the eighties. Everyone' disillusioned. Furthermore, good characters have become caricatured, and evil and morally grey ones have grown more nuanced and numerous. There's more freedom with a dark character, and that is the other reason they're kind of everywhere right now.

David Tennant/the 10th Doctor has some of the best crazy faces.

Still not seeing a problem here...

The problem comes from the implementation of this. The way characters are made cool and powerful should be through their actions, but presentation is a huge part of the equation as well. When a character dismounts a flaming motorcycle, kisses someone, then walks into a room wearing a suit and reels off something brilliant, you know they're cool because you're getting that message from the writers. The problem comes in when the character's actions don't fit their presentation. Other characters are often part of the presentation, talking up your protagonist, but if the protag whines, simpers, shrugs, and smirks their way around (I hate the word 'smirk' and every character who does it ends up on my hit list, by the way) instead of doing useful things, there's narrative dissonance. The other issue is talking your characters up.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is not impressed. 

We have a badass over here...or not. 

Having a character who is supposed to be SUPA KEWEL--and fails at it--can completely ruin a book. Make sure you minimize talk and maximize actions. Show, don't tell us that your character is cool. Have them do something badass, don't spend time with everyone else mentioning 'that awesome thing' they did. This involves taking a hard look at your character, and that's not always fun, but avoiding it leads to limp noodles. Sure, a bit of talking up is okay, but it's better to have a character show off without help from their friends. Too much foreshadowing or too many side details, and you lose the moment. I mentioned the 10th Doctor above because one of the writing issues Russell T. Davies has is talking his protagonists up too much, even when he just uses other characters' reactions to show off the protags' badassfulness. And that, ultimately, hurt the series more than few times; I can't count the number of times that excessive 'you know, our character's a total badass' speeches or scenes have acted as a buzzkill in books I've edited. Hamlet's whole spiel at the end of his famous 'to be or not to be' soliloquy is very apropos--

"And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard, their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action." 

FIX IIIIIIIIT

Of course, no Magpie blog post would be complete without solutions. This one is simple but poses a few hidden difficulties--the issue is to avoid too much foreshadowing. Character foreshadowing is a much more advanced technique than people think it is, because it requires a lot of balance. You have to tease your audience without giving too much away. Co-star reactions are important, but too many, and you can set up unreasonable expectations. Even showing your character's badassery instead of telling the audience can get kind of annoying. The key is moderation and a keen feel for self-parody. You may need a second set of eyes to make sure the character is truly badass but not a caricature. And, as always, avoid writing a self-insert cool character, because that will throw your judgement out the window.


We'll explore the really vital part of this in the second half of the blog. Stay tuned!

*****

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the phuquerie. Find Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr, and find her work on Amazon. Check back on the blog to see when one of the irregular posts has careened onto your feed. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out! 

Human Centipede Syndrome: A Meditation on Internet Activism

Hello hello!

So, those of you who follow me on various streams--Tumblr, Twitter, etcetera--will probably notice a bit of a change in the coming months. I'm giving up on formally trying to pursue activism. I'm currently taking a week of (mostly) blacking out social media, and it's really helped me articulate a few things.

I'm twenty four, and I'm tired. I should not be this tired and exhausted at the thought of interacting with people I like, on platforms I like, about topics I like. I still care about diversity and signal-boosting alternative authors. I still plan to write about queer people and people of colour and the disabled. I still care about environmentally sustainable lifestyles and humane, fair treatment of animals (tasty ones included). I am still going to write about women doing things that they aren't supposed to or 'allowed' to do. This stuff does matter.

But I had to ask myself, as I stared at my Tumblr feed full of people arguing that Joan of Arc might have been bigendered, people tossing around the word 'patriarchy' as an insult, and the endless links on Reddt featuring people complaining about Muslims and women and basically anyone other than themselves--is all this negativity doing anything? Is screaming at people really going to get us anywhere?

Source. I love you guys too much to put actual screenshots from The Human Centipede up.

Who gets to speak?

There is a time to scream and there is a time to pick up your sign, write some letters, and take a stand. Screaming can be good. It's important and necessary. But there's too much of it going on. Add to the fact that a lot of the people doing the screaming are--like me--privileged, white North Americans. That also got me thinking--do I know enough to adequately represent the stuff I care about in public forums?

The answer was, frankly, no. I don't want to misrepresent people from other cultures, the trans* community, or anything else when it comes to issues that revolve around them. I can lend my support, but I can't speak for someone else.

The problem is that people (like me, admittedly) pick up a cause or choose to slam a celebrity for making a misstep without realising the importance of their actions. And then others fight against them, often saying pretty horrible things (the subReddit "Tumblr in Action" is a pretty fine example of social commentary gone awry, and let's not talk about "TalesofPrivilege", which is irritating and misogynistic enough that I don't want to link to it.) Is arguing with a bunch of neckbeards on The Escapist forum going to actually get more diversity into mediaeval settings? And furthermore, do I know enough to really talk about these subjects the way I'd like to?

Source. Opinions, on the internet.

What's the point?

Sure, on issues of mental health or sexual preference, I can speak, but I have professional experience on the first one and personal experience with both. And it's not a matter of being 'not strong enough' to take the endless feces-flinging from both the privileged masses and the hyperaggressive activists. It's about how I want to spend my time.

I am a writer. That means I need to write. I'm also an editor, which means I need to help make other writers' books better. Will an essay on pop culture, the internet, the teeth of Neanderthals, or sci fi help me develop the skills for making good art? In short, yes. Yes it will. Will screaming at people en masse or clicking reblog on a hundred posts or wandering through the endless crap swamp that is Jezebel help me make good art? Nope.

So, what's going to change? There's going to be more phuquerie. I'd rather laugh than scream, and I'd rather comfort than kill. When something matters, I'll still be there with sword drawn and banner flying, but I'm going to save that for the occasions where it's really merited. I'll reach out to people, not just shout into a void.

Here's the raw version of what I was feeling, before I could articulate it more clearly, previously published elsewhere.

"Stop.

Stop telling me to wear makeup. Stop telling me to cut my hair. Stop telling me to watch my mouth when I really am being insulting. Stop telling me to not talk about my genitals. Stop telling me to talk about my genitals. Stop telling me to tag things that passingly mention hard topics. Stop telling me to ‘check my privilege’ as though spewing a magic phrase at me will make me a better and more conscious human being. Stop telling me to not be a feminist. Stop telling me to be a feminist. Stop telling me my activism is annoying. Stop telling me my activism is boring. Stop telling me not to wear dresses. Stop telling me to wear dresses. Stop telling me to cover up. Stop telling me I need Jesus. Stop telling me not to swear. Stop telling me you think I’m too PC or that I’m being diverse for brownie points. Stop telling me something is ‘too diverse’. Stop telling me to campaign 24/7. Stop telling me it doesn’t matter. Stop telling me I should feel awful for liking something. Stop telling me it’s stupid to criticize pop culture. Stop telling me I’m a bad atheist. Stop telling me magic isn’t real. Stop telling me creationism is legit and should be taught in science classes. Stop telling me I am irredeemable. Stop telling me I am lost. Stop telling me there is something wrong with me. Stop telling me I don’t know what it’s like. Stop telling me to be polite before I have opened my mouth. Stop telling me I’m normal. Stop telling me I’m a freak. Stop telling me I’m crazy. Stop telling me my sexual orientation is imaginary. Stop telling me I’m deviant. Stop telling me I’m not deviant enough. Stop telling me I’m obese when I just want to listen to music on Youtube. Stop telling me how to lose fifty pounds with this one weird old tip. Stop telling me my personality is more beautiful than my body. Stop telling me how to have sex. Stop telling me being an introvert makes you special. Stop telling me extroverts are king. Stop telling me you think queers are less than human. Stop telling me you think cis people are less than human. Stop telling me to tag things. Stop telling me it will be fine. Stop telling me it’s my fault. Stop telling me that rape is deserved. Stop telling me pregnancy is deserved. Stop telling me you miss the days when racism was the norm. Stop telling me to smoke weed. Stop telling me not to smoke weed. Stop telling me sex workers are just nasty lazy hoes. Stop telling me that you know better because you are white and male. Stop telling me I am too sensitive. Stop telling me my junk is a political statement. Stop telling me to calm down. Stop telling me to get angry. Stop telling me to just be happy.

Stop. Telling. Me. What. To. Do."

*****

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Don't miss any of the phuquerie. Find Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr, and find her work on Amazon. Check back on the blog to see when one of the irregular posts has careened onto your feed. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!