Fables of the Flying City, Episode 5: A Time of Extreme Reality
Originally published at jaredaxelrod.com. You can comment here or there.
A Time of Extreme Reality properly introduces one of my favorite characters in the whole story, renegade journalist Hanner Gatling. We’ve already had her voice in the story back in Episode 3 (voiced by the astounding Jennifer Summerfield, no less), but this is the first time she’s been a physical presence, wandering around and interacting with the characters, dropping pearls of wisdom and cannonball of malice and madness.
She is, as you might imagine, a joy to write.
So much so that she has her own Formspring page: http://www.formspring.me/HannerGatling where she will answer any and all questions posed. She’s already got a few responses up already. Two gems:
What was your favorite book as a child?
We were not allowed books as children. My mother felt that learning made a child willful and prone to violence, and saw to it that reading materials were kept as far from her offspring as she could muster. And she was exacting, with eyes like a torch at dawn, blistering away the fog that might be thrown up to confound her.
Though, it must be said that however sharp her eyes were, the woman had short arms. The top shelf was beyond her reach, and therefore beyond her purview. So it was there my siblings and I stashed out bounty of words and phrases, scrabbling up the shelves like monkeys so that we might learn how to me more than mere apes.
My favorite book of these purloined and hidden gems will always be Hypatia’s HISTORIES AND LIES. Hypatia never differentiated between the two, which is where she and I part ways.
What is your weapon of choice?
The Truth, darling. Always the truth. The truth can destroy armies, lay waste to cities, bring the strongest man to his knees and weep at your feet. Always the truth.
That said, I keep a wickedly curved hunting knife lashed to my thigh at all times,.Because while the truth is powerful, it is can slow to work. The truth works like a poison, a virus, worming its way through hearts and minds. It is effective, but there are times you need to cut a bastard and run for the hills. For those situations, I have the honesty of a sharp blade against soft skin.
Hanner makes a marvelous entrance in Episode 5. Give it a listen.
Photo cropped from Woman with her pipe, Butbut, Tinglayan, Kalinga 1954 by Eduardo Masferré