The Blue Flame of Vengeance

For the second time since the beginning of Elder Sign, I didn't read the tale, but just listened to the episode (it had to do with not finding a cheap version of the story and already having a REH-book, which I didn't like very much, though it wasn't bad). But the recap and discussion were clear enough.

I really liked the episode, although the tale wasn't weird. And though ethics of a tale have been discussed earlier in Elder Sign, they hadn't been discussed at this scale. It was interesting to compare medieval chivalric literature with 'modern' chivalric and 'post' chivalric; and old, less old and new views on ethics (and gender) when talking about murder, justice and the (not) divine status of human beings.

I love the work of Alan Moore, who was one of the first persons in 'pulp' fiction to make a point of the questionable status of the hero (esp. in Watchmen). I think since postmodernity took its place in culture, there isn't a serious chivalric hero anymore in the Solomon Kane sense of the term. There are of course those revenge-and-violence types of things, like the Tarantino movies (Kill Bill), to which I personally have a love-hate relation: they give bad example, but it depends on the viewer how to interpret this I guess (though I fear it can make violence/resentment seem excusable for angry, thrill seeking people). Postmodernity indeed shows the thin line between ethics and arbitrariness, and the rise of uncertainty what to do as a not-divine human. I do think this existentialist questioning is not only there in noir, but also in new weird (esp. Thomas Ligotti) - so there we are back to weird fiction still ;-)

And though this episode wasn't on storytelling, it made me think on how to treat the ethical questions of the protagonists in my own writing, so I thank you for that also.