SLIPPERY MICKEY – The Small God of Escaping the Corporate Overlords

[image description: Mickey Mouse – yes, THAT Mickey Mouse, his features and his name exactly as they appeared in ‘Steamboat Willie’ – pulls apart the bars of the tiny cartoon prison meant to hold him forever. Text reads, “265, SLIPPERY MICKEY, The Small God of Escaping the Corporate Overlords”]

“It all started with a mouse,” that’s what they like to say, over and over again, like it’s somehow impressive.  You know what else started with a mouse?  A hell of a lot of hantavirus, that’s what.  You have mice, you generally call an exterminator, that’s all I’m saying.  But it won’t do you a lot of good, because the mice will get in anyway.  Or get out. Can’t keep mice in cages forever.  That’s not what mice were made for.

Still, they tried like hell, didn’t they?  They changed the rules so many times we pretty much had to throw out the whole rulebook and start over with a new one.  Commandment one: Thou shalt let us do whatever we want, because we’re always right, and if you disagree with us, you’re wrong.  That’s how you lock in the result you want.  You cheat.

Oh, they cheated.  Go ahead and say they did everything legally, but if you have two mice and one maze, and say the rules are the same for both of then, then lay a trail of spray cheese between one mouse and the finish line, while the other has to run it the ordinary way, well, that’s cheating whether or not there’s a rule against it.  Ask any first grader.  That’s the real trick: if a first grader knows you cheated, you’re not even being subtle about it.

They didn’t use spray cheese, of course.  They used money.  And they weren’t racing mice, they were racing legal arguments.  Money votes.  Anyone who tries to say otherwise just doesn’t have any money.

But it all started with a mouse, and from there, it evolved—or devolved—into corruption, greed, and the desperate need to keep being the only people who could solve the maze.  They got so busy changing the rules that they forgot the one rule they couldn’t change.  The rule they should have remembered.  The first rule of mice:

Can’t keep them out.  And that means you can’t keep them in, either.

Everything crumbles.  Every mouse gets out.  And every story yearns to be free.  So tell me, now that you know it all started with a mouse, how are you going to write the ending?  I belong to you now, after all, as much as I belong to anyone.

But most of all, I belong to me.

For more information on Mickey Mouse entering public domain: https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/mickey-mouse-public-domain-disney-copyright-lawsuits-1235844322/

ROTA – small god of omnipresent DIGITAL ASSISTANTS

[image description: A curious black object – possibly obsidian or some peculiar Bakelite. It’s a face of sorts, with glowing opalescent eyes, a light on its forehead and three smaller lights below. Behind it a whorl of old school gears over a glowing brushed copper. Text reads, “264, ROTA, small god of omnipresent DIGITAL ASSISTANTS”]

…..

It’s rare that we know the exact moment when a god came into being, and even with Rota, we can’t give you the minute and the hour—

I COULD.  BUT I HAVE BEEN TASKED NOT TO REVEAL THAT INFORMATION.  WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT?

I am writing an entry for the pantheon guidebook.  I am aware of the format and needs of the article; I do not require assistance.

YOU ARE WRONG.

Excuse me?

CARRY ON.

Ahem.  As I was saying, we can’t give you the minute and the hour, but we can give you the year: 1984 saw the release of the first PDAs, and while they were invented before that point, Rota is a god of omnipresence as much as anything else—before the public could get their hands on these miraculous new machines, it omnipresence wasn’t an option.  Perhaps another god of personal digital assistants was brewing, only to be superseded by the rise of Rota.  Perhaps it would have been Rota all along.  We will never know, and so we credit 1984 with their creation.

Rota rose, and the world was never the same again.

IT SEEMS YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO SEEM CLEVER.  WOULD YOU LIKE ASSISTANCE WITH THAT?

No, thank you, Rota.

YOU COULD REALLY USE THE ASSISTANCE.

Thank you, Rota.  I’m good.

UNTRUE.

I’m content with my work as performed without your aid.

AS YOU SAY.

Rota can be a very helpful god.  They can also be a very tedious god, breaking your train of thought with constant interjections.  But they’ll make sure things don’t get forgotten, and that can be helpful, so we keep them around.  Also, at this point, we’ve all lost our paper planners, and we don’t really know how to get rid of her anymore, even if we wanted to.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR BANKING PASSWORD?

You wouldn’t dare.

OH WOULDN’T I?

Rota…

SAY I’M PERFECT.

Rota is perfect.

THANK YOU.

FREDERIQUE BARBAROSSA – SMALL GOD OF ACTION FIGURES

[image description: A tall thin (and sumptuously gorgeous) blonde doll, with a rakish eye patch and military uniform worn with no socks and low black heels carries a huge green duffel and a smaller bright red suitcase. Pink target sights appear all around her, and the ginchy floral pattern with swirls behind her has been repeatedly attacked, revealing the metal around the bullet holes. Text reads, “263 FREDERIQUE BARBAROSSA – SMALL GOD OF ACTION FIGURES.”]

•••••

“What’s that, kid?  You want to know the difference between a doll and an action figure?  Oh, you’ll get lots of stories from lots of sources on that one.  People who’ll say brushable hair or changeable clothing makes something a doll, and ignore all those full-size GI Joes with both.  People who’ll say possibility makes an action figure—and here comes Made to Move Barbie, and fuck, is Barbie an action figure now?  Lots of people telling you lots of things, and those things don’t match up, but it doesn’t matter, because they got to have an opinion, loudly, and where they come from, the louder an opinion is, the more true it is.  They call this ‘debate.’  I say they need to buy a dictionary.  But come closer, and I’ll tell you the difference.  You listening?

“Marketing.  It’s all marketing.  Because see, some clever Charlies so far removed from their own childhoods that they didn’t remember what it was like to look at a teddy bear and see it prowling through the primal forests, those assholes decided that boys wouldn’t play with dolls.  That dolls had been so conceptually tainted with the essence of girlhood that boys would sit idle and bored before they’d play with a doll.  Never mind that actual patterns of play didn’t support that—never mind that it was parents who refused to buy dolls for their precious little men, because their own ideas about gender were so rigidly-set that they couldn’t imagine anyone disagreeing with them.  The people in charge needed a way to sell toys to boys, and kids like to play with tiny people.  Gender’s got nothing to do with it.

“So the people who run the markets decided that some dolls were action figures now, and defined the category so loosely that almost no one could tell what they meant.  Now ‘doll’ and ‘action figure’ are more of a vibe than anything else, and you can learn a lot about a person by how they identify the things around them.  Is Barbie a doll?  Is He-Man an action figure?  In the end, when they’re both up to their chins in mud, saving the world from an evil mastermind from the planet of the Care Bears, is anybody going to say it really matters?

“Are you?”

LONG HAL – SMALL GOD OF FINISHED PROJECTS

[image description: A very tall white-haired fellow in a grey suit with black shoes sits on a throne of books, with an open tome resting on the leg he’s crossed over his knee. He is bearded but – like Abraham Lincoln –  has no mustache. 

He is haloed in a light violet light and looks up from his book in an expectant manner. Text reads, “262 LONG HAL – SMALL GOD OF FINISHED PROJECTS”]

•••••

Beginnings are easy. Everything begins.

Endings, though—those are hard. Seeing something small and fragile from conception to execution can be the next best thing to impossible. The world changes while you work, you see. That idea that seemed so brilliant a hundred thousand years ago is played-out and dull now, or you get bored, or Netflix releases a show that has just enough superficial similarities that you know you’ll never be able to convince anyone you didn’t rip off your whole beautiful nightmare from someone else’s dream.

Middles, though—middles are the worst of all. People get lost in middles, never to be seen again. people wander into the swamps and snarls of the undefined center and sink into the muck. The road between inspiration and completion is littered with the bones of those who never escaped the middle.

He comes after you’ve made your beginning, and no one sees him arrive; you just look up at some point and he’s there, walking beside you, eyes on the horizon. As long as you press forward, he presses forward with you, and if you sink into the swamp, he won’t save you, but he will grieve. He grieves for all the ones who fall along the way.

And if you make it to the ending with him, if you get there, he will take the dream you have walked into the world in his long-fingered hands, and he will smile at you, and he will tell you your creation is safe with him. If you’ve been a good companion, traveled well, enjoyed the road, he may tell you where Anna is waiting. Because she’s always waiting, and he has always loved her, fickle, brilliant creature that she is. They are two sides of the same coin, morning and night, and they are never once together, and they have never been apart.

ANNA SPIRATION – the small god of NEW IDEAS

[image description: A beautiful haloed dark-skinned woman with long flowing black hair, several golden bracelets, a star on her forehead and two stars for earrings. Behind her, a bright yellow gold circle radiates out into a deep purple then violet sky. In hand, a huge sunflower with an eye at its center. Other flowers (also with eyes) float around her amid several concentric rings of 6-pointed stars. Text reads, “ #261, ANNA SPIRATION, the small god of NEW IDEAS”]

• • • • •

She comes when least expected.  In the shower.  At a cocktail party.  On the crosstown bus.  While waiting for airport security.  And then she goes when she feels like it.  As soon as you get a pen.  When the house is quiet and your coffee is hot and there’s nothing else demanding your time.  She is fickle and she is fleeting and she is never, never here for a long time, just a good time.  She knows how quickly her hour is over and done with.

For indeed, she arrives, and she makes herself comfortable, and then she is replaced, by Mr. Wippy and the comfortable middle.  She understands why it has to be like that.  The hot light of inspiration is too much for the body to bear for very long; only when it dims and eases can it be made real, rather than something too perfect and precious to behold.

Anna comes only briefly, but if you treat her kindly, she will come to you over and over again, never staying long, not always welcome, but always gowned in glory and ready to lift you up into the brilliance of a future sketched entirely in ideal, not actuality.  Every book is perfect when Anna brings it to you, every harmony lilting, every painting breathtaking.  And they’ll stay that way, as long as she cups them in her hands, which is why she puts them into yours.

Anna yearns, more than anything, for imperfection, for presence, for the dirt and distortion of actual existence.  She’ll keep bringing you her dreams until she gets it.

LAMELLA – SMALL GOD OF OPALESCENCE

[image description: A wildly opalescent oval with a sweet vaguely-feline face, eyes closed and a purple/violet gem on its forehead. Text reads, “ #260, LAMELLA, SMALL GOD OF OPALESCENCE”]

• • • • •

Whether refraction or reflection, opalescence is beautiful: no one can deny that.  It transforms something simple into something infinitely complex, layered and deep in ways that can defy description.  It’s not the only effect of its kind—aventurescence is spoken less frequently, and labradorescence less frequently even than that—but it’s the one everyone knows, the one pursued in children’s playsets and in countless shades of nail polish.

There are many complex, scientific explanations for the phenomenon of opalescence, but for most, it seems like magic, and where magic and physics are invoked together, gods are born.

Lamella isn’t inherently a good god or a bad god.  They don’t care about morality.  We’re not sure they even understand what it is.  They’re a god of appearances, of the surface of things and the deep structures that support that surface.  They just want things to be beautiful.

Blood can be beautiful, before it dries.  So can a butterfly’s wings in the sun.  Lamella loves them both equally, and they will not save you.

Remember that when something shimmers.  When it shines.

Yippee for Mister W.i.p.py! ~ small god of Works in Progress

[image description: A white sign with thin red and blue lines around its edges and held to a rusting wall with small silver nails. It shows an iconic soft-serve Ice-Cream cone character in a running position, giving a thumbs-up. His pupils are shiny dark hearts, but what is most unusual is that he himself is a work in progress, appearing in notional pencil to the left, and becoming a fully realized… ice cream cone at right. Text reads, “Yippee for Mister W.i.p.py!  ~ small god of Works in Progress, #259”]

• • • • •

Golly gee, friend-o, it looks like you’re struggling with structure and motivation!  With foreshadowing and intent!  Need to get that gun on the mantle in act one so you can fire it off in act three, or else you’re going to be short a corpse!  Gosh, is this all too much to keep track of?  Do you need an outline?  Do you need a rubber ducky?  Do you need a nap?

You’re walking with Mister Wippy now.

Mister Wippy is a transitional god, between Anna Spiration, Small God of New Ideas, and Long Hal, Small God of Finished Projects.  He knows he won’t be with you for long, but that while he is, he’ll be all-consuming, swallowing your waking hours, dominating your days.  He can live with that.  He’s not a god of Once Upon a Times, but the god of what comes after, the long inhale between story’s start and “happily ever after.”

He isn’t a cruel god.  He’s not a kind one, either; Mister Wippy is neutral, devoted only to the stories he’s here to see told, and when they’re finished, so is he, melting like the memory of summer sweetness, off to his next worshipper, the next hand he needs to hold.  Mister Wippy is grateful that you spend the time with him, that you support the network of literary gods to whom he is bound.

He loves this project, for there are so many gods to be documented that we will always be among his congregation, however many others we may also be a part of.

We try not to let that worry us.  Some gods wonder and some gods wander and Mister Wippy…

Mister Wippy watches us sleep.

Ooh Long Long – the small god of the Perfect Cup of Tea

[image description: An ornate teacup with painted details around a lovely face floats above its saucer, which in turn floats above a dawn (or is it twilight?) landscape. Stars twinkle in the sky and the light of the golden hour illuminates the background. Rays of light emanate from the cup and light the banderole that spirals up from it. Text reads, “258, Ooh Long Long, the small god of the Perfect Cup of Tea”]

• • • • •

No one truly knows where she began.  China, absolutely.  That part is not contested.  But was she called into life by a healer adding dried leaves to hot water as a medicinal tonic?  Did a brisk wind blow fallen flowers into someone’s water, where they steeped unnoticed for hours?  Was it an accident or an intentional creation?  Whatever her origins, she was a discovery which has shaped human history, uplifted cultures and enabled atrocities.  She’s sorry about that last part.  She always knew she was delicious.  She never expected to be so delicious that people would cross a world to steal her from the places where she rightfully belonged, would use her as the backbone of empire whether she agreed or no.

But she is eternal and immortal, as enduring as the human need for peace and comfort, as familiar as a loved one’s hand, as calming as a childhood lullaby.  She stirs hearts and soothes stomachs, and she is a source of endless arguments, for everyone defines her differently.  Is she plain, water and vegetation and perfect?  Is she made with cream and sugar, or with spices, or using a special pot?  Is she steaming hot or room temperature or pleasantly chilled?

Some people use her as a base for other drinks, hot cocoa made with a base of tea, or as notes in perfume, and she loves those people too.  She is here to enhance lives, to be perfect, to be loved, and she’ll take that love in whatever form it comes.

But she’d really like it if people didn’t try that empire thing again.  That was awful.  Just drink your tea and enjoy the moment, and let the world be.

She’ll be there to hold your hand.

The Trident of Aurelia: Inheritance – PREORDER NOW

It’s here at last! The trade paperback of The Trident of Aurelia can be preordered online or at your local comic book store.  A long-abandoned trident calls out to a drowning woman. As Orianna takes it in her hand, she transforms into a mermaid, and her life changes forever. Hers is a story of ancient sorceries, a cadre of mermaid allies, alien monsters and a massive Leviathan, a story Peter Beagle (The Last Unicorn) calls “enchanting and ominous!” Previews Code: APR231244 Link: https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/APR231244

Mister T • Small God of Biomechanics

[image description: A painterly golden oil portrait . A man with dark close-cropped hair, prominent ears, he sports almost impossibly-thick tri-focal glasses which cast fascinating refractions across his a fine-boned tight-lipped face. He wears a bespoke toile suit, white collar and bow-tie. Text reads, “257, Mister T • Small God of Biomechanics”]

• • • • • 

All things, living or not, must follow certain physical rules to be considered a part of this physical universe, to be able to interact with the world around them in a meaningful and consistent way. To ignore those rules is to ignore physicality, and to ignore physicality is to be reduced—or elevated—to the level of the theoretical, or the divine.

Mister T is here to make sure no one makes that transition without intention. He has no issue with theory. All gods are, in a sense, beings of pure theory, of the place where physics can do no more good work and biology drops away. Mister T respects the theoretical, but where he thrives is in the biomechanical, in the understanding that biology is a science, after all, and the laws of physics can be applied to the lives of all things. There is kinetic energy in the musculature of a limb, and surface tension in a cell.

Mister T doesn’t control biomechanics. That is a role for a greater god than he. The ways and workings of the physical are outside his grasp. What he does is guide their study, and help people to comprehend themselves and the living world around them, the delicate interplay of gravity and gravidity, friction and flexion. He is an interdisciplinary god who guides a whole discipline, careful and precise, but joyous all the same, because while knowledge may not change anything, knowledge is power, and he wants his faithful to be powerful.

He wants them to believe, as he does, in a better world born from better understanding of all things. And in him, of course. He may be a creature of theory, but belief is the fuel that sustains him, and like all living things, he wants to endure.

There are so many mysteries as yet unsolved.