Admittedly, given my rather lengthy absence, there are a lot of things I should be blogging about instead of this.
I should probably tell you about my time at DragonCon.
I should tell you what I’m going to be doing at Surrey International Writer’s Conference next month.
I might tell you the new news about our eBooks and why Black Halo is still late.
I definitely should tell you about the giveaway of three signed sets of Tome of the Undergates and Black Halo I’ll be giving away, since we hit 1200 followers on twitter.
So, to address those in that order: it rocked and we sold out of Tome, I’ll be doing a panel on writing with all five senses, there was a mix-up and an employee was dumb so it’s coming soon, and it’ll happen as soon as I can figure out a giveaway contest.
So, with that all discussed, I’d like to tell you that Andy Whitfield is dead.
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned my utter, borderline alarming adoration for Spartacus: Blood and Sand on this blog before. That seems odd, as anyone who has ever heard me speak of God of War knows I tend to rave a rather curious amount about anything involving blood, naked breasts and half-clad men of the ancient world. Odder still is that I should come out here and call the show not only one of my favorites, but an inspiration to be respected and admired as a work of art.
Admittedly, that can be tough to swallow (tee hee) when a good 90% of the scenes tend to involve genitalia, swords or genitalia coming into contact with swords, but hear me out.
If you have ever seen the first episode of Spartacus, you are probably remembering the same feelings I was possessed upon seeing it. To put it into words: “come on, guys, I liked 300, too, but this is a bit much,” followed shortly by “good God, did anyone in ancient Rome wear trousers?” To be blunt, it was a very silly, very derivative episode that made me wonder why I had chosen it in the first place. The romance was sloppy, the gore was excessive, the villains were ridiculous and the hero was even moreso. I was very close to just writing it off as something wacky and never seeing it again.
I was very glad I didn’t.
In the episodes that followed, the romance was never not sloppy; it was violent, awkward and frequently troubled. The gore was still excessive; the fight scenes were over-the-top, vicious and remain some of the few to make me shudder. The villains were less ridiculous, but still at the point where you couldn’t help but wonder if someone had just said “fuck it, I’ll go play video games,” a lot of people wouldn’t be dead at the end. Spartacus himself never stopped being a little strange and Whitfield never so much as blinked at it.
And that’s when I began to love it.
Because Spartacus, upon trying to emulate 300 and failing, upon trying to emulate Rome and failing even harder, promptly said “fuck it” and became something else. In the episodes that followed, Spartacus was unabashedly, unrelentingly and unflappably itself. It carved out a niche from a very lame first episode and sat there, king of its own domain, paying tribute to no other series or film, a work of art that belonged solely to its cast, its story and itself.
And there is something amazingly inspiring in that.
There is limited success in emulation. That limit may be quite high and you may reach it quite fast, but it’s still limited. Being something else is much more difficult. It’s harder, people will not understand it, more than a few will give up on it outright and it might take a long time to hit the spot where you say “ah, yes, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
But it is something altogether more precious than whatever money or accolades you could get.
There have been a lot of 300 apes since it came out, a lot of Rome apes, as well. There will be a lot after them, too. They may make money, they may arrest the vision for a time, but they will never be immortal.
Andy Whitfield, despite this tragedy, will be.
I will miss his acting greatly.