I joked recently that it seems like every story has to end with some gigantic battle. That’s how we know it’s the end, right?

Think about it. Which of the world’s great legends tell us that our problems should be addressed through something OTHER than violence?

Hercules, Beowulf and Gilgamesh all killed monsters. King Arthur’s knights in shining armor maintained the peace by fighting monsters. If no monster was about, they would fight each other to catch a lady’s eye. Lord of the Rings featured massive battles for the fate of the world. Military SF, of course, features more technologically advanced weaponry in exotic settings, but the role of the warriors remains the same. It seems the only way to “save” anything is through battle.

Then you get to other forms, like comic books. Superheroes level cities to bring in the bad guys. For this, we admire them. In gaming, the only way to get XP and level up is by killing things. Very few games award XP for clever solutions that avoid combat. Then there are movies, where we may move from combat to combat without time to think. The more explosions, the better!

It’s true that the world can be violent. Depicting violence in stories could be seen as mere honesty. Although, it’s hard to believe that most of us experience that much violence personally, in our daily lives. Not in proportion to the amount of violence we consume as entertainment.

Or perhaps the violence in storytelling is a form of wish fulfilment. As a teacher, I’m well aware of how much time we spend teaching kids NOT to solve their problems with their fists. Watching an animated fight could be viewed as a safe release for dark impulses.

Nevertheless, I was startled to realize how often I, myself, built in a gigantic battle to settle things at the ends of my stories. It wasn’t something I had really thought about. In the accepted frameworks, that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.

Still, it became my personal challenge to write stories where characters solve their problems in some other way than through battle.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a novella series, Minstrels of Skaythe, where the protagonists try to live peacefully in a dark and dangerous world. In Skaythe, the evil mage Dar-Gothul is an absolute ruler who has twisted the world in his image. Mages are the ruling class, whose magical power gives them the right to do whatever they wish. Selfishness and betrayal are “good.” Showing concern for others is “bad.” My good mages quietly move through the land, disguised as minstrels. They share moments of peace and harmony through their arts. For this, they are branded as renegades.

In the first novella, The Tower in the Mist, one of the minstrels is arrested for the crime of singing a love song. Keilos doesn’t fight back, but instead reacts with basic courtesy. The hunter-guards, led by Sergeant Zathi, are genuinely freaked out by his strange behavior. Captors and captive have adventures that require them to work together, but not all of the hunter-guards can let go of their assumptions about what’s “good” and “bad.”

In the second novella, Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts, Tisha is a gifted healer. She’s decided to undo a curse cast by Dar-Gothull himself. On the way there, she encounters a gravely wounded guardsman. Common sense would say Cylass is her enemy. It’s sheer folly to help him, but Tisha follows her own moral code. Devoted to peace, she tries to show Cylass a different path “” and risks betrayal by the one she saved.

While writing it, I played with the idea that comrades on a quest always have a strong bond of friendship and are working for a common goal. Setting them so much at odds brought a deeper tension to the tale.

Currently I’m in revisions of a third novella, The Ice Witch of Fang Marsh. Here I directly countered the idea that the tale has to end in a gigantic battle. I built the story toward that typical climax, but then the two antagonists talked, instead.

I have to say, the ending as written feels… weird. Like the conflict isn’t really over. My beta readers both said the same. Not that the ending was bad, or felt forced, just that they hadn’t seen that approach before.

Unsettled as it is, this outcome is what’s true to the characters. They had a previous relationship that allowed them to talk things out. Or maybe it’s that they were two women, with an instinct toward collaboration rather than combat.

Will this ending satisfy anyone besides me? Good question! I’m having a great time with Minstrels of Skaythe, exploring alternatives to the nagging prevalence of violence in storytelling. If you’re up for the challenge of a slightly strange outcome, I hope you’ll check out my novellas, The Tower in the Mist and Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts.

BIO: Deby Fredericks has been a writer all her life, but thought of it as just a fun hobby until the late 1990s. She made her first sale, a children’s poem, in 2000.

Fredericks has six fantasy novels out through two small presses. More recently, she self-publishes her fantasy novellas and novelettes, bringing her to 13 books in all. Her latest is The Tower in the Mist. Her short work has been published in Andromeda Spaceways and selected anthologies.

In addition, she writes for children as Lucy D. Ford. Her children’s stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Boys’ Life, Babybug, Ladybug, and a few anthologies. In the past, she served as Regional Advisor for the Inland Northwest Region of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, International (SCBWI).

You can find out more on her website or follow her on Twitter. Here’s a teaser for her novella Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts, available at Amazon and other retailers:

“He’s dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Mortally wounded, Cylass is abandoned on the battlefield by comrades who would just as soon have him out of the way. But as he waits for death, a strange savior appears. The dancer, Tisha, heals him with her forbidden magic, but also draws the wrath of his cruel former lord.

Soon guardsman and renegade mage are on the run. Will Cylass help Tisha, as she helped him? Or will he do the smart thing, and turn her over to the vicious Count Ar-Dayne?

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

When Lack of Social Grace Crosses the Line

An autistic responds to “The Shealy Logs” (Burgin Mathews, No Depression, Spring 2020)

In “The Shealy Logs,” Burgin Mathews relates the story of John Shealy, who created decades of logs of performances at the Grand Ole Opry. There’s a wrinkle: in 1999, police found that he’d “stalked, harassed, or bothered” 89 women. His lawyer obtained a psychological evaluation, and Shealy was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

At the time, Asperger’s was diagnosed as a developmental disorder distinct from, but related to autism; the most recent edition of the DSM collapsed them into a single category, Autism Spectrum Disorder. As opposed to autism, in Asperger’s, per the Autism Society, “there is no speech delay.” The diagnosis also excludes intellectual disabilities. Some individuals with Asperger’s are profoundly gifted: Bill Gates, musician David Byrne (lead singer and songwriter for the Talking Heads), and the late Derek Parfit, one of the most prominent philosophers of the contemporary era, are prominent cases.

Recently, in an online forum for adult autistics, a young man posted about being kicked out of places for making women uncomfortable. As it turned out, this young man was looking up women he’d met on Facebook to make romantic overtures to them. I explained to this young man that what he’s been doing is cyberstalking.

This man found little sympathy from his fellow autistics. The responses, many of them from women””and female autistics, though less visible, very much exist””emphasized that it was his responsibility to understand what he’d done and correct his behavior. He protested that he can’t figure that out if no one will tell him what he’s doing wrong. Again, little sympathy: we emphasized that he just had to figure it out. I went so far as saying that, if he didn’t correct his behavior, he needed to curtail his interactions””up to the point of locking himself in at home.

“The Shealy Logs” also mentions that John would not accept his diagnosis. The article quotes him as writing, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He then violated the no-contact list that was part of his release, trying to make personal apologies for his behavior.

Neither of these is acceptable. Refusing to take advantage of his diagnosis meant that Shealy also refused to investigate the resources that were available to help him learn about and improve his behavior. No disability, including autism, can excuse a failure to meet basic obligations to treat others in a respectful manner that recognizes appropriate boundaries. If autism makes it more difficult to do that, then the answer is that you work harder and find a way.

When I shared Shealy’s story in the same online forum, one response was that this stalking behavior can’t be related to his autism, that it would have to have been due to a comorbidity. I wish this were true, but it’s not. While this behavior is unusual and deeply aberrant even within the autistic community, autistics””especially autistic men””can be prone to violating social boundaries. Combined with the intensity of interest that autistics tend to develop, this can lead to some ugly outcomes.

As a child and teenager, I crossed that line three times. In grade school, I biked over to the house of a classmate in the next town after looking up her address in the phone book. My freshman year of high school, I put a friend up to calling a neighbor girl who I had a thing for. And my senior year of high school, I badgered a girl’s friends to give me her phone number.

The last two resulted in blowback that shaped me permanently. The neighbor girl’s mother came to my house and gave me a severe verbal lashing. The second incident followed a two-hour phone conversation that, had I not screwed up, was probably headed to me dating a girl I had a years-long crush on.

I learned hard, and I learned well. Like any other group, people on the autism spectrum have different capacities for learning. Mine is pretty good, and once a lesson is hammered into me, it sticks.

Even when I’m not violating social norms””and I’m pretty good about that””I can still make people uncomfortable at times during interaction. I speak too loudly, or I stutter, or I laugh like a hyena, or I am “making a face,” as my mother likes to say. My affect tends to read as “a coiled spring that did a giant line of coke.” Especially now that I’ve met other people like this, I realize just how very unsettling that can be. (I’m not sure if it counts as irony, but autistics can be put off by other autistics just as much as neurotypicals can.)

I know that, despite my best efforts, I will make a mistake, and it will be some degree of spectacularly cringeworthy. I have a memory like the subject “The Shealy Logs,” so I know that, after it happens, I will never forget. This, as one might imagine, leads to fairly severe social anxiety. I’ve gone to parties and even spent entire days at conventions without having a conversation. I’m not good at knowing when people are approachable, and if I’m not certain it’s acceptable to approach, I don’t. For a few years, I came back from Capclave with many of the books I’d lugged around in my backpack unsigned, until I finally””maybe someone explained it to me””learned the etiquette around signing requests. (As it turned out, that there was a “mass signing” did not mean I couldn’t ask in other circumstances!)

There are books I may never get signed because I wasn’t willing to go out on a limb. I’m fine with that. I’ve accepted that I will miss some opportunities because I’ve chosen to act with an abundance of caution. I exclusively try to meet potential dates online, because I don’t trust myself to work out what’s acceptable IRL (in the last 13 years, I’ve broken this rule once, but only after a woman clearly indicated her interest by striking up a conversation). The equation here is I’m that losing out on far fewer real opportunities than I am preventing someone being made uncomfortable.

Most people on the autism spectrum will never engage in any kind of stalking behavior, and we overwhelmingly do not accept autism as any kind of excuse for that behavior. Unfortunately, like autism itself, there is a whole spectrum of bothersome behavior, which can range from barraging people with undesired (but, honestly, mine are HILARIOUS) puns to genuinely creepy behavior (had I gone through with my idea of hiding in the dark basement outside my roommate Gennady’s room, waited for him to come out, and hissed, “I’m the leprechaun, don’ ye steal me pot o’ gold”). These can be hard things for some autistics to get their head around, because they inherently rely on someone else’s subjective state of feeling bothered or threatened. But””to hammer home a point””the autistic community overwhelmingly believes that it’s on us not to make others feel bothered or threatened.

BIO: Mark Engleson is a hunchbacked, autistic aspiring fiction writer and former stand-up philosopher who works as a technical writer/government consultant in Arlington, Virginia, leeching off the bloated carapace of America. He regularly posts on Twitter as @MarkJEngleson, providing updates on his life, which he describes as “a stack of flaming tires in a trolley in a collapsing mine shaft.” His music criticism can be found at ParkLifeDC and Lyric Magazine.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!