Film Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once

It’s not every day you encounter a film that is simultaneously a work of absurdist scifi, a screwball action comedy, a heartfelt drama and a meditation on intergenerational trauma among diaspora families; it’s even rarer to find one that works. Everything Everywhere All At Once is – bizarrely, delightfully, touchingly – such a film, and while it will doubtless confuse or frustrate the kind of viewer who balks at risk-taking and complexity in art, or who thinks that only serious art matters, for everyone else, it’s a masterpiece.

As hardworking migrant Evelyn Wong (Michelle Yeoh) prepares for a new year’s party, her father’s visit and the audit of the family’s small business, all while wrestling with the fact that her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) has brought home a white girlfriend, her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is acting strangely. There are two reasons for this: the first is that he’s procured divorce papers; the second is that he’s being periodically controlled by a different version of himself from another universe – Alpha Waymond – who believes this version of Evelyn can save the multiverse from Jobu Tupaki, a nigh-unstoppable agent of nihilistic chaos. When Alpha Waymond makes contact with Evelyn during their audit under the critical eye of IRS agent Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is catapulted out of the life she knows and into an infinite web of roads not taken. With her consciousness ricocheting between the sublime and the ridiculous reaches of reality as she learns to verse-jump, Evelyn must figure out how to save the multiverse, her family and her own small world from the terrifying despair that comes from seeing everything, everywhere, all at once – and, in the process, find out what matters most.

It’s easy to imagine an alternate universe where Everything Everywhere All At Once turns out an ambitious failure, overwhelmed by the many balls it has in the air and unable, in the end, to juggle them. In fact, the actual film contains a meta joke to this effect: fake credits start rolling midway through, only for the camera to pull back and reveal that we’re seeing the premiere of a movie-version of these events in a different world, one where Evelyn Wong is a famous actress living a life akin to Michelle Yeoh’s. (The gag is emphasized by the inclusion of a smatter of clips of the real Michelle Yeoh attending real movie premieres, and as I was lucky enough to see this movie at the LA premiere, although sadly without the real Michelle Yeoh in attendance due to Covid, this added an extra level of meta-hilarity to the whole thing). But instead, we live in this reality: one where the film is superbly written, directed and balanced by the Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and where every cast member gives a tremendous performance, creating a narrative whose extremes somehow compliment rather than contradict one another.

In large part, this is due to excellent editing – were the transitions managed less masterfully, the whole thing would’ve come apart at the seams – but it’s also aided by a deep thematic resonance between all the disparate parts. Life is hard, says the film, and to contemplate the hugeness of the world and the smallness of your place within it is terrifying. What does anything mean, really? What can it mean, when you zoom out beyond the petty immediacy of human concerns and see how empty most of the universe is? Life is absurd for trying, absurd for being obsessed with itself; absurd for making us care about the cruel inevitabilities of death and taxes when, in the scheme of things, none of it really matters. But this is also why it matters: because we decide it does. In choosing to be kind, says the film, we choose meaning. Joy is not an inherent, finite resource we can exploit by pressing the right combination of buttons, but something we conjure over and over again, even when life is stupid; especially when it’s stupid, because stupidity might be bleak, but it can also be funny, and there’s power in laughter.

With this deeply sincere central thesis, the film is able to get away with absurdities which, in another context, might be its undoing: a universe where everyone has massively wobbly hotdog fingers, and where Evelyn and Deirdre are going through an affecting almost-breakup; a universe where an ambitious young chef is controlled by the skilled raccoon under his hat, Ratatouille-style; an extended action sequence where verse-jumping combatants gain the combat powers of their alternate selves by performing incongruous actions, including jamming suspiciously buttplug-shaped IRS awards in places buttplugs traditionally go; fights where bodies are equally likely to explode into gleaming confetti as be brutally smacked down by overlong, wobbly plastic cocks; a reality-destroying everything bagel that really does have everything on it. It’s weird and hilarious and deeply absurd in a way that evokes both Weirdmageddon in Gravity Falls and the Infinite Improbability Drive of Douglass Adams’s seminal The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, but turned up to eleven a-la Spinal Tap – and yet it never undermines the serious stuff, because the whole point is that the multiverse is both absurd and meaningful, so why not laugh about it?

This attitude is personified by Waymond, a relentlessly cheerful and good-hearted man whose heroism is rooted, not just in his kindness, but in his determination to be kind. Early on, Evelyn is frustrated by her husband’s habit of putting googly eyes on everything, dismissing it as silly; but at the film’s climax, embracing that silliness becomes a form of power. A bullet pressing against her forehead becomes a googly third eye, wide open to see and welcome the absurdities of the universe. It’s ridiculous and beautiful, but as Evelyn contemplates her life and her choices – her relationships with her husband, her daughter and her father (James Hong) – she learns that it’s not enough to do one right thing. You have to keep trying – to be determinedly kind, even when it’s hard; especially when it’s hard and you don’t know what you’re doing – because that’s what makes the difference.

It’s hard to say more without spoiling the film, which I’m reluctant to do: sufficed to say that Stephanie Hsu turns out a phenomenal performance, easily holding her own in scenes where veterans like Yeoh, Hong and Curtis are also being masterful. The Wong family’s relationships are a profound emotional core to the film: a literalised metaphor for the forces that can either hold the multiverse together or tear it apart. Joy wants her mother to accept her as gay instead of hiding it from her grandfather; Evelyn wants not to feel as though her life is going nowhere, a constant disappointment to herself and her father; Waymond wants to be acknowledged, his steadfast kindness and humour seen as strengths, not weaknesses. At a runtime of just over two hours, you could argue that the film ought to be tighter in places, but it’s the steady (but by no means slow) early build, establishing the family’s relationships, that cements so much of what happens later: we care about these characters, and in the moments when Evelyn’s verse-jumping brings her back to what is, for us, the real universe – her universe, the one where she started – there’s a genuine deep investment in things working out for the Wongs. Their difficulties matters, and when Jobu Tupkai’s infectious nihilism prompts Evelyn to take a google-eye-adorned baseball bat to the window of the family business, it truly feels like a world is being broken.

Generally speaking, mainstream cinema likes to avoid direct philosophical questions, which means there’s not a lot to compare it to. At various points while watching, I found myself thinking of the existential detectives from I heart Huckabees, or recalled The Dude from The Big Lebowski proclaiming, “They’re fuckin’ nihilists, Donny!”, but neither of those films is doing anything nearly so ambitious or emotionally complex as Everything Everywhere All At Once; they’re not even in the same genre. In fact, in terms of using the impossible to drive a story about the Chinese diaspora, parental pressure, trauma, disappointment and finding your place in the world, the closest film I can think of is Pixar’s Turning Red, but even that’s too simplistic a comparison, and one which only feels handy because both are recent releases dealing with (wildly different!) facets of the Chinese diaspora and the different experiences therein of grandparents, parents and children. Scifi has dealt with the multiverse before, but the two quotes that keep rattling around in my head in relation to Everything Everywhere are both from SF books rather than films or TV shows, and only one of them concerns parallel worlds.

The first is How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, a specific line from which has always stuck with me: “You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.” The second is from Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold, and is the closest thing I can think of to the film’s central thesis: “Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history... Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn’t going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.” Evelyn’s life is one of wrenching change and poverty, though the multiverse shows her versions of her life where she’s had great wealth; yet always, always, history is there, both culturally and personally, tying her to the present moment. She has already endured pain; her daughter is Joy, and finding her is, in some ways, what the film is about. This is how she makes her own meaning in a universe – or multiverse, rather – determined not to supply it. She is a moving target, verse-jumping her way through different lives and selves in the quest of finding one that makes sense. And in the end, the message is simple: live. Live. Live.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a remarkable film: silly, dizzying, heartfelt, curious, inexplicable, brutal and, above all, kind. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Water to Burn

Last night, I stayed up until 2am finishing my ARC of Water to Burn, the second Nola O’Grady novel by Katharine Kerr. Despite being set in San Francisco and following the exploits of Nola, a psychic employed by a secret government agency on the side of Harmony, it’s not quite accurate to describe the series as urban fantasy. For one thing, an ongoing plot point from book one, License to Ensorcell, focuses on the discovery and exploration of deviant world-levels – that is to say, alternate and parallel realities both similar and dissimilar to Earth – populated in some instances by doppelganger inhabitants raised under vastly different circumstances. This puts the flavour closer to SF than fantasy at times, raising questions about the setting’s scientific theories and contributing to a rich sense of narrative possibility. The series is also distinguished by its strong sense of Earth politics: Nola’s offsider, bodyguard and love-interest since book one, Ari Nathan, is a high-level operative with both Interpol and the Israeli government. While some writers might be tempted to mention this merely by way of exotic background detail, Kerr actively incorporates it into events, not only in terms of Ari and Nola’s respective efforts to balance duties and secrets with their personal relationship, but also as a source of cross-cultural commentary and plot relevance. Just as Nola’s character is defined in large part by her family ties, psychic gifts, religious upbringing and Irish-American heritage, so too is Ari defined by his family ties, martial gifts, religious upbringing  and Israeli heritage. Kerr has done her research, and if ever Nola lapses into forgetting that Ari, despite his perfect English, was raised in a different culture, neither she nor the reader is allowed to keep that ignorance for long.

Plot-wise, the events of Water to Burn follow closely on from the end of License to Ensorcell: the Chaos masters who orchestrated the events of book one are still at large, though their influence is being felt in difference ways. A twelve-year-old girl drowns when a freak wave seemingly pulls her from the shore; Reb Ezekiel, the self-professed prophet who ran the kibbutz where Ari spent his childhood, has been sighted in the city, despite having been thought dead for some years; and a shady businessmen appears to be blackmailing Nola’s affluent brother-in-law. Though seemingly disparate at first, these separate occurrences all begin to tie in with the mysterious Peacock Angel cult and its Chaotic adherents, increasing in intensity as Nola and Ari get closer to the truth.

There are several satisfying differences that set this series apart from other UF works. Firstly, the romance: though Nola and Ari flirted and danced around each other for a significant portion of License to Ensorcell, by novel’s end, they’d reconciled their attraction and embarked on an actual relationship. There is no mysterious third wheel waiting in the wings to try and turn things into a love triangle; nor did Water to Burn begin with either party calling things off, thereby restoring a default state of unresolved sexual tension. Instead, they look for a new apartment and move in together, while Nola wrestles internally with her fear that ‘picket-stakes of domesticity’  are dropping into place in her life, confronting her past issues with commitment and abandonment. Given the fact that her other novels have cheerfully featured romantic, sexual scenes, the fact that Nola and Ari’s encounters are always hidden by a cut-to-black suggests  that Kerr has made a conscious decision to differentiate the O’Grady books from the plethora of sexy, paranormal crime series already available. In this instance, the romance isn’t about wild, passionate tension, but rather about two defensive, similarly wounded people struggling to turn chemistry into love, with all the pitfalls, doubts and self-recriminations that involves.

The series also places a tremendous significance on family. Again, this runs counter to the usual intuitions about urban fantasy: Nola’s gifts are genetic and certainly contributed to her childhood woes, but she is neither an isolate orphan nor an only child. Instead, we’re  introduced to the loving-yet-complicated network of brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles – most of them similarly gifted, though in different ways – that make up Nola’s family. We know her mother is in deep denial about her own magical gifts, let alone everyone else’s, while her father, for reasons that are slowly being uncovered, was forced to leave his wife and children while they were still a young family, with consequences that are still being felt in the present. Nola has seven siblings, one of whom was murdered before the start of the first book; a strong relationship with her caring, religious Aunt Eileen; and a plethora of other such kinships, each one uniquely complicated in the way that only extended family can be. So far, we’ve only been allowed to glimpse Ari’s history, but his own upbringing has already proved crucial to the plot, and with Nola fixing to secretly contact his mother, it seems plain that sooner or later, his family secrets will be subject to just as much scrutiny as Nola’s.

Finally, there’s the issue of Nola’s eating habits. As the books are narrated almost exclusively from her POV, the fact that both Ari and her family members are concerned about her having an ‘eating disorder’ is brushed off in her thoughts as meddlesome paranoia. And yet, we also see exactly how much calorie-counting Nola really does: scrimping her portions, foregoing meals, declining various dishes at family gatherings, and generally keeping herself half-starved. It’s both a refreshing and a confronting move on Kerr’s part: refreshing, in the sense that so many heroines are described as meeting society’s physical ideals without any conscious effort on their part or narrative criticism about the value of said ideals, and confronting, because by the end of Water to Burn, we’re left in no doubt that Nola really does have a problem. Happily, our heroine seems to understand this, too, but issues of esteem are never easy to overcome, and we’re left with the knowledge that Nola has a long road yet to travel.

Water to Burn is an immensely satisfying second installment in the Nola O’Grady series. Rather than relying on sexual tension and violence as the backbone of her series, Kerr has instead built a rich, original, complicated world of politics both real and magical, parallel worlds, family ties, cultural clashes and work-in-progress relationships that cannot help but suck the reader in – and I can’t wait to read book three.

Immortal Children

My husband and I saw Eclipse at the movies today. (Let the record state that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it was his idea, not mine – I went along with it on the grounds of being hungover.) I’ve only read the first Twilight novel; he’s read none, though we’ve watched all the films together. Beyond this, my knowledge of the series has been fleshed out via numerous and detailed internet plot summaries. Walking back from the cinema, we started talking about what we’d seen, and one way or another, this lead to my mentioning the existence of Renesmee, Bella and Edward’s daughter as of Breaking Dawn, and the circumstances surrounding her birth.

Here is what I know about Renesmee: being a special hybrid child, Bella is only pregnant with her for a month or so, and by the end of the book, the continuation of her rapid physical and intellectual development means that, after little more than a year of life, she resembles a bright, precocious six-year-old. Off the top of my head, I can think of six other instances of Magical Pregnancy and/or Fast-Growing Children in fantasy narratives, but even where the device is used with skill and integrity, I’ve come to realise that it bothers me on a number of levels. At the most basic level, it’s simply too…convenient. Nine months is a long time, and small children are complicated, narratively as well as in real life: someone always has to be with them, and though they can’t contribute much in terms of dialogue for the first few years, they nonetheless exert a significant pressure on the actions of those around them. In that sense, using magic to speed things up is an understandable reaction. But what are the costs?

Back in the days of Xena: Warrior Princess, there were a series of episodes given over to the story of Gabrielle’s daughter, Hope, the evil child of the dark god Dahak. After gestating for only two weeks, Hope attained the physical age of a nine-year-old in just a few months, going on to reach full adulthood not long after. Given her intended role as a villain, this sped up her confrontations with Xena and Gabrielle, not to mention the fact that, in a TV setting, you will never see a child grow from infancy to school-age unless the show is specifically about that sort of development (Full House) or there’s a reasonable way to keep them off-screen most of the time (Friends). If a baby is introduced elsewhere, however, the writers have a problem: what happens next?

If the whole point of introducing the child is the person they’re going to grow into, then leaping right ahead to that point certainly makes sense – but it’s also something of a cheap trick. The actions of TV characters are already constrained, certain choices forbidden them in order to maintain the static premise of their shows across multiple episodes and seasons. Confront this normalcy with the prospect of week-in, week-out pregnancy and/or childrearing, and even the least analytic of audience members knows that the threat is hollow: magical or otherwise, something is bound to avert it. Through all the formula and familiarity, the tension in television comes from our knowledge that, even if only once a season, one of the threatened changes will be carried out, forcing the characters to react. Someone will die, a relationship will end – but raising a child is too great a threat. We know the writers are bluffing.

Another example: in Season 4 of Angel the vampire Darla gives birth to baby Connor and dies, leaving Angel to raise his son alone. But, sure enough, the passage of a few episodes sees Connor stolen away by one of Angel’s old enemies, who takes the boy to a demon dimension where – conveniently – time passes at a different rate. Scarcely has his infant son been stolen than a portal opens at Angel’s feet and spits out an angry, vengeful teenager in his place. Fastwind through a series of increasingly melodramatic events, and we watch as the now-grown Connor saddles Cordelia with a speeded-up pregnancy of her own, bringing the trope full circle.

Beyond the realms of television, there are novelised instances, too. In Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, the main character, Alisa, carries and gives birth to a powerful, demonic and fast-growing daughter, Kalika, in the space of a few months. Though not evil, the same is otherwise true of Blessing, the daughter of Liath and Sanglant in Kate Elliott’s excellent Crown of Stars series, though this is the only instance of the trope I find palatable: nothing is circumvented because of it – in fact, it makes things more complicated – while Liath’s absence forces Sanglant to raise and protect their wilful daughter alone. In this iteration, it also helps that Blessing herself is a more realistic mix of childishness and maturity: her body might have developed quickly, but unlike Meyer’s Renesmee, she is still as naive, demanding and impatient as any toddler, and not just an angelic miniature adult. By contrast, the seven children of Snow White and Bigby Wolf in Bill Willingham’s Fables graphic novels progress from infancy to middle childhood in the blink of an eye for seemingly no better reason than that they can, a shortcut that allows their mother to continue her normal working life almost unimpeded. Rounding out the examples is the Icarii race in Sara Douglass’s Axis trilogy, all of whose offspring are sentient even before birth, able to communicate cogently via magic with both parents, thereby rendering the usual childhood troubles moot. This is possibly the weakest example, but even so, it is an instance of wherein normal human difficulties – such as parent/child communication – are erased with magic.

In each of the above instances, some explanation is given as to why these children grow so quickly. But even where that reason feels plausible, it also, with the notable exception of Elliott’s contribution, makes me sad. Because ultimately, what it seems to say is that motherhood – the process of carrying, birthing and rearing a child to an age where they are capable of walking, talking and learning on their own – is incompatible with a mother having separate adventures at the same time. That these parts of childhood must be removed from or circumvented in narrative, not because they might make for dull reading, but because they will inevitably curtail the actions of both parents (and particularly mothers) to such an extent that the story can no longer take place. That a fantasy heroine cannot be both a heroine and a mother at the same time; or at least, not a mother to small children. That it must always be one or the other.

Whenever it is that I have children, I hope that I’ll do my best by them. I don’t want to be selfish, neglecting their wellbeing and happiness for the sake of carrying on my own life as if I’d never had them, or as if they were no more than conversation pieces who’d changed me not in the slightest. But I refuse to believe that my own life, such as it is, will entirely cease to be. It will change, yes, in order to accommodate a different set of priorities, and I will change, too, because how could I not? It certainly won’t be easy. But in real life, parenting has no “skip to the school years” option. And every time I see a fantasy story take that route, a part of me worries that what I’m seeing isn’t just an easy television trope or narrative shortcut, but a warning about the perils of my future life.

Right now, it seems to me that children are an adventure in and of themselves, and maybe we in the fantasy business are doing a disservice to that fact by too often taking the easy, magically-aided route as regards the formative years of their upbringing. Alternatively, I’m being ridiculous and oversensitive. But even if I were given the choice, I think I’d prefer to slog out those early years and know my future children better than to press a button and have them be ready for school. Which, ultimately, seems to be the biggest cost of this trope – a loss, not of time, but family.

A Gendered Affair

Imagine this image: a human brain in a vat. The brain has been removed from a real, live person and painstakingly wired into a machine which keeps it alive, utterly duplicating the necessary processes of organic flesh. Sight, sound and smell are simulated by clever contraptions, emotional surges provoke the correct chemical and hormonal reactions. To all intents and purposes, the being – the brain – is real, their sense of self intact: they are simply no longer housed in a body.

Which begs the question: do they still have a gender?

It’s an interesting problem. Socially, gender is assumed through assessment of a person’s physical body, their voice, mannerisms, clothes and so on: but strip away all these things – remove even their possibility – and what is left? Is the brain (we’ll call it Sam, a neatly androgynous handle) gendered depending on the sex of its original body? Is it possible for a ‘female’ brain to wind up ensconced in male flesh, or vice versa? If one accepts that homosexuality is more often an innate predeliction than a conscious choice (certainly, I believe, it can be both or either), what role does the physical wiring of our brain play? Is it the only factor? Does nurture always prevail over nature in matters of sexuality, or vice versa? Is it a mixture? If so, does the ratio vary from person to person? Why? And so on.

Let’s lay some cards on the table. When it comes to sexual orientation, my two rules of thumb are: 

(a) mutual, intelligent consent; and

(b) the prevention of harm to others.

In a nutshell: all parties have to agree to what’s happening, and no bystanders can be hurt or unwillingly drawn in. While this doesn’t rule out BDSM (provided, of course, it keeps within the bounds of said rules), it definitively excludes rape and paedophilia, which, really, is common sense. Anything relating to homosexuality and transexuality, however, is fair game.

A few more points, in no particular order:

1. Life is often unfair.

2. Life is often weird.

3. Insofar as evidence is concerned, human beings are still shaky on the definitive origins of personhood (souls v. genes, or possibly a blend of both), but most people will agree that brains and gender play a more important role in this than, say, knees and elbows.

4. Original notions of gender roles developed in the context of reproduction and childrearing, but provided both these things still occur in sufficient numbers to ensure the survival of the species, there is little harm in broadening or questioning their parameters.

5. People have, or should have, a basic right to assert their identity. Reasonably, there must be some limits of credulity – there was only ever one Napoleon,  mankind are distinct from dolphins – but within the recognised sphere of human gender and sexual orientation, it seems counter-intuitive that appearance should dictate black and white rules for what is, quite evidently, an internal and subtle determination.

Witness, then, the idea of transgender couples, in which one partner may undergo a sex change without ending the relationship. Witness, then, the case of Aurora Lipscomb, born Zachary, who identified as a girl from the age of two and was removed from her parents when they refused to forcibly contradict her. These are just two examples that buck the trend of traditional gender ideas, and rather than making us squirm, they should make us think. When and why did certain socio-cultural ideas of gender develop, and how do they change? Consider, for instance, the well-documented and widespread instances of winkte, berdache and two-spirit people in Native American culture, compared to the deep-seated fear of these concepts in western traditions. Look at the long-standing tradition of male homosexuality in Japan, particularly among samurais, and the role of Sappho in ancient Greek lesbianism. Think of hermaphrodites.

Point being, there’s a wealth of diverse and fascinating history surrounding the ideas of gender, sexuality and male/female roles, to the extent that many legal restrictions now placed on non-heterosexual couples and individuals are faintly ridiculous. Throw in the question of child-rearing, and there’s a tendency to reach for the nearest pitchfork. Personally, I find debating my views in this matter difficult, if only because debate is meaningless without a modicum of mutually accepted middleground, and where my opponents object to homosexuality and transsexuality as an opening gambit, it’s well-nigh impossible to discuss the matter of non-heteros breeding, adopting and/or applying for surrogacy without both sides resorting to instant moral veto of the contrary position.

Still, it’s always worth trying, and the whole issue fascinates me. Socially, I marvel at where the next hundred years could take us, and cringe at how far we might also fall. But in the interim, I return to the question of brains in vats, and how, within the parameters of such a hypothetical, gender is determined. Is it innate, biological, genetic, spiritual, chosen consciously, chosen unconsciously, socially conditioned, random, nurtured, culturally selected; or can the glorious gamut of human existence countenance the possibility that these options simultaneouly coexist as true, contributing on an individual basis, in individual ratios? Or is that too confronting a thought?

A Rose By Any Other Name

As a life-long afficionado of names, I can tell you off the top of my head that Alinta is an Aboriginal word for flame; that Byron means born by the cowsheds; and that J.M. Barrie invented the name Wendy because he wanted something ‘friendly’ to call his female lead. Even when writing short stories in primary school, I was convinced that my character names were crucial to who they were, and disagreed fiercely (though privately) with my teacher, who said that they could all be called Bob and it still wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Once I got my hands on a book of children’s names I found at home, I spent endless hours reading through and making lists of all my favourites – not for any children I might one day have, but to use as characters. Names I liked wented to heroines (and, occasionally, heroes). Names I didn’t, or which sounded ominous, went to villains. Inspired by Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series – in which most of the horses had Aboriginal names – I procured an Aboriginal dictionary from my mother’s study and started my own story along similar lines, looking up words for things like stars, water, speed and various horse-related colours.

Now that I’m older, I still care just as deeply about what to call my characters. Even in RPG games, the thing that takes even longer than rolling stats – either in real life or through a game engine – is choosing a name. It has to match my avatar’s history, what they look like, who they are; and the thought of just calling them Stephanie and getting on with it rankles in a deep and resonant way. Because once you’ve named something, it stays named. And I’m ancient enough at heart to believe that there’s power in names. Roma gypsies have always thought so, and children in that culture are given three names: one private, and never told lightly; one commonly used among the clan; and one for everyone else, which is almost never used except on paper. Fantasy writers as diverse as Kate Elliot, Ursula K. le Guin and David Gemmell have all been fascinated by the concept of true names, and put it to appropriate use in their stories. But although most people might dismiss the idea out of hand, it’s worth having a look at the all-too-common disparity between the names we are given, and the things we are actually called.

For instance: my mother-in-law’s name is Margaret, but only as far as records are concerned. To everyone else, she is Janie. My niece’s name is Heather, but the family calls her Annie. Back in highschool, a friend’s boyfriend was introduced to everyone as Tain, which suited him, and it wasn’t until almost a year later that we realised it was short for Martin, which didn’t. At college, everyone had at least three names by which they were known, not in the least because we were asked to make them up and adopt them in Orientation Week. Those of us who already had familiar nicnames used them, and were consequently never known by our actual given names; everyone else had either a corruption of a first-or-last name, or something entirely random. One girl, called Lauren, asked to be known as Trucka, following the logic that Lauren abbreviated to Laurie, which sounded like lorrie, which is a kind of truck. But it stuck, and nobody ever called her anything else. Then there’s the Great Australian Tradition of oxymoronic names: fat blokes are Slim, short folk are Lofty, redheads are Blue, and so has it ever been, to the extent that an airline recognised globally for its distinctive red planes is called Virgin Blue. It’s multi-generational, even: two of my mother’s friends have been known as Chook and Vobbles since the sixties for reasons that are now completely forgotten, while there are people I know only by their online handles.

And in all this malarkey of names, I start to wonder: which are the ones with power? Which are, to borrow a term, merely safe and innocous use-names; and which are truly us? Juliet (or rather, Shakespeare) posited that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; which is true. But a rose by any other name would not be a rose; because the very nub of language is the point at which the word not only means, but is the thing. Think of Aztec pictograms, where each symbol stands for a whole word rather than a single letter. Then magnify the idea outwards. A word doesn’t just stand in place of an idea; it is the idea. Looked at this way, names don’t just mean us casually, merely as distinct from everyone else: they mean us specifically, behind the eyes and down to the bones, impossible to mistake.

The same idea is exhibited elsewhere in fantasy as the basis for spoken magic: the concept of a universal language, in which the word equals the thing to such an extent that speaking it aloud brings that thing into existence. For a real-world counterpart, one needs only look at the Bible: ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God’ is undeniably rooted in the power of names, and it’s worth noting that Hebrew, to the Jews, was (and still is) seen as the language of Creation; God’s lingua franca.

Which brings us back to names, and the choosing of them. What with genetics, friends, cultural influences, free will and individual reactions to upbringing, there’s a good argument to say that apart from life, a name is the only lasting gift a parent can give (unless, of course, the child grows up to change their name by deedpole, a-la commedian Yahoo Serious or that bloke in the Sydney phonebook called Zaphod Beeblebrox). So why not make it a good one? Granted, not everyone agrees on what makes a fantastic name, and given my geekish tendencies, there’s a good chance that what I consider lovely might make the rest of the world flinch, but at the end of the day (to borrow a phrase abused to the point of ritual castigation by one forgettable Deputy Headmaster), it’s putting in thought that counts.

Or, to recall that much-thumbed book of children’s names, one could just read the notice that says, in bold print, not reccomended, placed with sensible good reason next to Jezebel (Hebrew), Lesbia (Greek) and Everhard (Old English).

The Maladay of Tongues

‘Is the King sick?’ asked my mother, somewhat archly. It was a telephone conversation, but still, I could hear the raised eyebrows. As I was meant to.

‘Well,’ I haughtily replied, ‘he’s not well.’

All of which might lead the casual eavesdropper to conclude one of three things about my family, viz:

1. We are intimately acquainted with royalty.

2. We are barking mad.

3. We have taken conversational existentialism to a new level.

In fact, the above vignette is, word for word, a quote from The Madness of King George, long-since appropriated by my mother and myself as a means of announcing illness. Specifically, if one of us hears through a third party (dad) that the other is sick, our next phone conversation will, inevitaby, be kicked off by this exchage, with the healthy person inquiring after the King, and the other responding. This has been the case for the better part of a decade, ever since the film in question first aired on TV, although why this particular line stuck remains a mystery of genetics.

Similarly, should one of my immediate kin be stricken with cough, cold, flu or any other such phlegm-wrought permutation, they will be dubbed victims of the Quodge, the Dreaded Lurgy or, in dire circumstances, the Great Spon Plague. All three terms derive from the Goon Show and, by inference, the brain of Spike Milligan; and while lurgy isn’t uncommon slang in Australia and the UK, it’s still a rare bystander who recalls the other two. Nadgers, or to have a case of the galloping nadgers, is another family favourite, although our useage of nadger refers to any scab, rash or visible skin ailment rather than printing subroutines, as the internet might otherwise have you believe.

Were I still living at home and recouperating on my parents’ lounge, there is almost a 99% likelihood that my father would pop his head in and suggest that I knit up the ravelled sleeve of care, as per Macbeth – sound advice, but in a slightly different context to Shakespeare’s original. I might also be offered a horse tablet, otherwise known as a Vitamin C pill, to keep my strength up: we’ve called them horse tablets ever since dad once bought a bottle of extra-large ones, prompting mum to comment that they were certainly big enough for a horse.

But the road to recovery is paved with pitfalls. On occasion, unscrupulous sorts have alleged that the invalid in question might not, in fact, be as invalid as claimed, meeting requests for the fetching of lunch and hot chocolate with rolled eyes. What’s the matter – got a bone in your arm?  my mother would ask, not entirely without sympathy. I’ve never understood this particular expression, as having a bone in your arm – several, in fact – is the normal state of affairs. Exactly how this might impede my ability to get something myself was never made clear, but the tone of delivery got the point across. What did your last slave die of? was another maternal favourite, until I thought of a decent answer: boredom.

There’s a much-touted bit of trivia which states that Eskimos have hundreds of different words for snow, because they’re surrounded by it. Not being an Eskimo, I can’t vouch for the truth of that statement, but it makes me wonder if, in the case of family phraseology, there’s a similar phenomenon at work. We’re not always sick, all the time – but when we do succumb to our yearly bug, it tends to take hold, and we like to describe it. Graphically. For us, it’s not enough just to say, ‘I’ve got flu’ – no. We have quodge. We have spon. We have lurgy. We knit up sleeves, eat horse tablets, gallop nadgers and quote King George (well, his advisors, anyway). All by itself, it’s a different lexicography – a malady of tongues.

Pity we’re not Pentecostal, really. We’d probably win points.