425. Villainy and Revenge: Deep Diving into Hench with Natalie Zina Walschots

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and this is episode number 425 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. My guest this week is Natalie Zina Walschots, and we are talking about her book Hench, which you might have seen my review of. Spoiler alert: I really like this book. We are going to talk about villainy, henchpeople, working for terrible humans in real life and in fantasy, humanizing collateral damage, and the utterly exhilarating catharsis of a satisfying revenge. 

I will have links to where you can find her and, of course, where you can find Hench in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

And if you would like to get in touch with me, you can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com. It is almost time for me to record with Amanda, so if you would like some book recommendations send us an email! We love to hear from you.

This week’s episode is brought to you by Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy, a new anthology featuring sexy Western romances from Diana Palmer, Marina Adair, and Kate Pearce. In “Mistletoe Cowboy,” horse whisperer Parker doesn’t drink, smoke, gamble, or have much to do with women until he meets Katy and her sweet child. Could Christmas kisses under the mistletoe bring him the gift of his own family? In “Blame It on the Mistletoe,” Texas Ranger Noah is forced back to the town of Tucker’s Crossing, and he expects a tractor load of painful memories, but a holiday storm, a power outage, and perhaps the magic of Christmas lead him to rescue an intriguing woman named Faith, but who is rescuing whom? And in “Mistletoe Detour,” rancher Ted Baker gets out his tow truck to pick up a stranded driver and finds his old school friend Veronica snowbound in her car on the lam with her pet pig. As you do. Could this be the start of something holiday perfect for both of them? Bestselling and award-winning authors Diana Palmer, Marina Adair, and Kate Pearce have assembled a perfect confection of holiday stories, perfect for you or a romance reader you know and love. Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy is available wherever books are sold. Find out more at kensingtonbooks.com.

I have a compliment in this episode. I love doing these!

To Julie D.: Your wonderful and kind personality has currently inspired a doughnut recipe, a custom latte, a crochet pattern, and a warm and delicious cocktail. Basically, you’re incredibly inspiring.

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And hello to the Patreon community. You are all incredibly fabulous.

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As you know, I end every episode with a bad joke, and this week’s bad joke is quite terrible and has to do with villainy, so don’t forget to tune in for that at the end of the interview.

But before we get started, I have one more thing to tell you about. If you are looking for a new game to try, you might try Best Fiends. I am rather hooked, and if you’re anything like me you probably will be too. Best Fiends gives you a fun way to have some socially distant competition with your friends. They update monthly with new levels and events so it never gets old. And they treat the game like a service for their players, so every time I open it there’s something new, like a new character or a new piece of the story. I also find myself picking new favorite characters all the time? My current favorite is Kwincy because it’s spelled with a K, and that is so charming. There are always new monthly themed challenges, and I usually play when I’m waiting in line at the grocery. Even if my cell service is really bad, no worries! I don’t need a connection to play. Best Fiends has thousands of levels already, with new levels, events, and characters added every month! It’s hours of fun right at your fingertips, and you can even play offline! With over a hundred million downloads and tons of five-star reviews, Best Fiends is a must-play. Download Best Fiends free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That’s Friends without the R: Best Fiends!

Speaking of fiends, let’s do this podcast! On with the show!

[music]

Natalie Zina Walschots: My name is Natalie Zina Walschots. I am a writer. I’m the writer of Hench, a supervillainous/henchperson story. I also make and write videogames, LARPs, ARGs, and other interactive experiences, so lots of very, very weird things.

Sarah: I had no idea you wrote videogames. That’s extremely cool!

Natalie: I do! Yeah, I write, like, branching narratives. I also do a lot of, like, dialogue trees. I do this both contract and also, like, my own personal projects. And then, yeah, other, other, other stranger live action role play and alt reality game things.

Sarah: So basically, your whole brain is all dialogue, all decision, all dialogue tree, all the time.

Natalie: All the time. Yeah, yeah. Choices, I’m, I’m very big on. [Laughs] And, and multiple possibilities, and, and I, I guess multiverse.

Sarah: Wow! That’s so cool! I had no idea –

Natalie: Oh, thank you!

Sarah: – but, like, knowing that element makes Hench make much, make, like, a whole new area of, of understanding the book. It just sort of blossomed in my whole brain. Like, oh, it makes sense now. Everything is, if I do this, then this; if I do that, then this; and what effect does this decision now have on the end here?

Natalie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and what, what is making this choice at the beginning, what dominos are knocked over way over here, and if this happens, what necessarily has to happen? It’s, there’s, there’s a lot of, like, conspiracy-theory-level mapping that –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: – that happens. Not at first, though. I don’t want to give the false impression that I’m in any way organized whatsoever. Writing is very much like an act of discovery for me, and then it’s going back and trying to make it make sense.

Sarah: Oh, I bet. That’s so cool!

Natalie: Thank you!

Sarah: So congratulations on the release of Hench.

Natalie: Oh my goodness, thank you so much. It’s, it’s a source of complete ridiculous joy for me, so thank you.

Sarah: It must feel like you’ve been waiting for a really long time to this, for this book come out.

Natalie: I, I, the very first words were written in like 2013, like back in –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Natalie: – back in the olden times? And then, I, I mean, I didn’t touch it for a really long time.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Back in the before, before –

Natalie: Yeah.

Sarah: – Beforetimes.

Natalie: The Beforetimes, yeah, when it was a very different universe. The, the last eighteen months since the, the, I knew the book was going to come out has been both extreme-, like, excruciatingly slow and also extremely fast.

Sarah: I was sent an ARC in July –

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – and I never do this: I almost always – and publicists hate me. Like, you’ll, you’ll see a sidebar ad with a picture of me, and it will say “Publicists Hate Her!” Because –

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I read books, like, right before release because my job is to encourage everyone else’s poor impulse control, because I have none –

Natalie: Mmm.

Sarah: – and if I go off about a book that isn’t available yet, I get hate mail like, Sarah, you’re talking about this book and I can’t buy it and it’s so not fair! So, like, I try to save myself the agony of reading a book and then not being able to talk about it with anyone because –

Natalie: Right.

Sarah: – I’ve read it months early. Did I read the Hench in July? Yes, I did. Did I have anyone to talk about it with? No, I did not.

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: And it was excruciating, and that, for me, was, what, August, two, two, two whole months?

Natalie: My deepest apologies! [Laughs]

Sarah: No, don’t apologize; it was great. But it, it means that I have had this tiny little miniscule waiting experience, while you’ve been waiting for quite a long time for this book to come out and be available in the world.

Natalie: Oh no! It’s just, it’s, it’s been a very, like, interesting and wonderful and stressful and strange time, for sure.

Sarah: Can you tell me about Hench for those – unlike me – who haven’t read it.

Natalie: Sure thing! So Hench tells the story of Anna, a young woman who, like a lot of us, is really smart and really underappreciated and just sort of needs a job. So she is one of the folks who, in this universe, temp for supervillains, because even if you are a supervillain, you still need somebody to answer the phone and, you know, check the mail and, and do PA things and get the coffee and fill out your spreadsheets!

Sarah: Mmm.

Natalie: So Anna, you know, starts off as a, as a lowly henchperson, kind of doing, doing typical administrative work, until she has a, a run-in with a superhero that leaves her very badly injured and sort of grappling with, you know, the, the, you know, on a very personal level, the consequences of having superheroes in the world, and she, she turns to math and science and discovers that superheroes actually do a lot more harm than good in the communities they’re ostensibly there to protect. She can back this up with numbers, and, and sort of this, this event kind of changes the course of her life. She develops a, a sort of thriving blog and ultimately gains the attention of the Big Bad supervillain of this universe and sort of lends her talents to, to the cause of taking the entire institution, I guess, of, of superheroism down. I know that sounds very serious and grim, and, you know, there’s definitely also a lot of violence and a bit of body horror, but it’s also extremely funny, I promise. [Laughs]

Sarah: No, it absolutely is; I can back that up. I’ve been describing it as almost like The Incredibles, but much more villainy and a really gray line of morality for everyone.

Natalie: Ooh, I like that!

Sarah: One of the things – it’s so hard to talk about a book I’ve read when I know the audience hasn’t read it and I’m like, let me not spoil everything – one of the things I love about Anna is how angry she is. She is –

Natalie: Yeah, she’s furious for a –

Sarah: – really –

Natalie: – very long time.

Sarah: And she’s pissed for very justifiable reasons. And I particularly love that her skill set is data and organization? My skill set is not so much data, but it is organization –

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and the people who do the temping, who organize, who get the coffee, who run things behind the scenes so some giant, mediocre idiot can go get credit –

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – for whatever things they’re doing, I’ve been there, and it’s anger-making.

Natalie: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s absolutely furious, or infuriating, rather. I, I, I joke, but it’s, it’s the ha-ha but serious answer that Hench is kind of an autobiography in that, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: – I spent a lot of time surrounded by hilarious geniuses, utterly unappreciated, you know, who are, who are –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – like, in these terrible situations, you know, working, doing so much work for so little that often made someone else look great when they got no credit for it, and that, being in that situation is, you know, sort of like a slow burn, and can also wear you out and, and really wear you down, and I think that, you know, closer to the, the beginning of the book, Anna is sort of at the, at a, at a bit of a tipping point between whether this is going to kind of just completely beat her down or set her on fire, and, you know, I, things, things go the way that they do!

Sarah: It’s very demoralizing, right, to see someone –

Natalie: Absolutely!

Sarah: – taking credit for what you do, and it happens so often. I imagine working in gaming gives you that experience as well, because I’ve been reading a lot on Twitter about people in the gaming industry. Like, enough of this shit.

Natalie: I have been extremely lucky. I can say that right now. Like, I, I don’t have a triple-A experience, so I’ve, you know, kind of neatly sidestepped a lot of that nightmare.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: Most of the gaming work I do is sort of in, around, or in association with an institution here in Toronto called Dames Making Games, which is a –

Sarah: [Laughs] What a great name!

Natalie: Thank you! They’re, we’re an organization – I sit on the board now; I guess I should mention that. I, I started off as, as somebody who’s like, I don’t know how to make a game and would like to take this workshop, and, you know, it’s – years later, here I am. It, a collective that, or an organization that makes a space for people of marginalized identities and sexualities to make games freely, so it’s very much about creating a safe space and about skill sharing and sort of creating an environment in which people who may not have found a welcoming community in other spaces in games to have that kind of community. So working super closely with them and doing the vast majority of my work in that environment, I’ve been really, really lucky. A lot of the other work I’ve done has been contract work, which means I get to do it in my home, in my pajamas, and not –

Sarah: Yay!

Natalie: – have to deal with a lot of horrible things. I’ve, I’ve also, like, again, been intensely lucky to work with small studios that have actually been quite lovely. So as much as, like, all of these problems in the, you know, have, have existed around me, me personally, as a human, I feel extremely lucky, which is not to downplay any of it, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – not to say any of it is not a hundred percent real and has not impacted me. It’s impacted me in, in other very different, uniquely horrible ways, but yeah, my, my own personal experience, I am, I am deeply aware of how much of a bubble I have been in.

Sarah: So you mentioned that Hench –

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is autobiographical. What led you into writing this story? What caused you to start it and then pick it back up again?

Natalie: I have done a lot of weird, sometimes terrible jobs for a lot of, you know, often terrible people –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – especially relatively early on in my career. I’ve, you know, been a lot, in a lot of job situations that had extreme power differentials between, you know, the people I was working with very closely, so a lot of those experiences kind of inspired the first wave, I guess –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – of, of the novel. Or the, you know, the, the, the first like thirty-thousand-ish words. I, perhaps ill-advisedly, started a Ph.D. that I left. I also –

[Laughter]

Natalie: – because it’s, it’s terr-, academia is terrible for a lot of reasons, and, and –

Sarah: Oh yeah. I have an abandoned Master’s degree for the exact same reason.

Natalie: Ah, there you go! No, I lived through the Master’s, but, but didn’t make it through the Ph.D., which fair. Completely fair.

Sarah: Yeah.

Natalie: Yeah. Couldn’t just, you know, a whole bunch of things happened that were weird and, and complicated, I guess. To, to be more specific, I was going to write my dissertation on feminist critiques of videogames, and this, my, my degree started in September 2014 when Gamergate had started in August 2014, so it was –

Sarah: Ooh!

Natalie: – an en-, whole entire time that nearly ruined my life. But I lived and I quit, but all of those experiences definitely, like – you know, and, and also contending with the university at the same time fed into what would ultimately be, ultimately be this book. I, you know, I, I also have had a lifelong fascination with villains and a lifelong fascination with henchpeople, you know, that, like, I’ve endlessly fascinated by what possibly causes somebody to, you know, get a job working for a supervillain that, you know, not only involves, like, intense risk to life and limb, but probably putting on a really ridiculous matching outfit and, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: – hanging out in a, in a lair with no heating. Like, I have, I have questions about what brings you here, right, that, like, that’s, that person is really interesting, and I couldn’t find any stories about that, you know, or, or relatively very few and usually very, very brief, and I, I wanted to know what was up with those people. Like, how do you become that kind of, like, metaphorical and sometimes literal cannon fodder? I really wanted to know, and, and ultimately I, I came to realize that was a story that I wanted to write.

Sarah: With all of the, why are you doing this? with the story, Anna has really good reasons for doing this. She needs to eat! [Laughs]

Natalie: Absolutely! Like, it’s like, I need to pay my rent; I need to not get evicted; I need to, like, have enough –

Sarah: Yeah.

Natalie: – food to kind of basically survive, and, like, those are real, actual problems, and, you know, this is, this is sort of a, a quip in the description, but it’s real! Like, is working for a supervillain actually worse than working for an oil company?

Sarah: Nope.

Natalie: Right? No, it’s not! It’s absolutely not. Also, I can prove it with math, but, like, it isn’t, and, you know, or, or an, or an insurance broker, right, whose whole job is to deny people medical coverage.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: Like, you’re doing a monstrous thing every day, right –

Sarah: Yep.

Natalie: – and it’s, a lot of the time, the, the justification is like, I need to eat. I need to eat; I need to feed my family; I need to have –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: – what-, whatever! You know, like, it’s, it’s –

Sarah: Yep!

Natalie: – at the end of the day, we’re kind of, you know, simple animals that way, and, and especially when somebody is, is really desperate or in a relatively bad situation or, like, you know –

Sarah: Has no options.

Natalie: – doesn’t have a lot of – exactly! – doesn’t have a lot of options, and some people have a lot fewer options than others. You know –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – it, it, that, entering into that kind of morally gray territory becomes, not easier, but, like, more, I suppose, personally justifiable, and if it’s the only path forward, you’re going to move in that direction. The rationale was always like, I need to eat and pay my rent. Like, I need to continue to survive and move forward if I ever want to do anything else.

Sarah: Yep.

Natalie: And, you know, I, I, I hope I ultimately am able to balance my karmic debt in the end, but, you know, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a situation I, I feel intimately familiar with and certainly can, like, look at people around me that I care about and who are also intimately familiar with, and it’s not right or fair that any of us –

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Natalie: – should have been placed in that situation to begin with.

Sarah: Nope. And for Anna, she’s in this situation because she has no other options, and it’s not her fault that she has to make these terrible choices, because so many other people with so much more power have made choices that have influenced her, and she had no say in them.

Natalie: Absolutely, and, and also, like, Anna is for sure not the person in the novel who has the least amount of choices, right, or –

Sarah: Nope.

Natalie: – or is even at the, at the most risk. You know, we, we definitely see, you know, some of her friends and colleagues who are in more difficult situations, you know, be –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Natalie: – and, and even in her, like, relatively privileged position, she has to deal with a lot.

Sarah: There are a lot of weapons in this story –

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – which is one of the things I found fascinating, and I don’t mean just, like, guns. So there’s the individual people’s superhuman abilities, and their choices are weapons, and they gain power through their choices and the use of their personal body weapons, for lack of a better term.

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: But then Anna uses data as a weapon –

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – and in the hands of an ordinary person making data happen, what I love is that the data, for Anna, turns into power because she recognizes, as the cover copy says, that the difference between good and evil is mostly marketing.

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: How did you, how did you approach the power dynamics of this world and how Anna in the book struggles to rebalance that absence of power and choice in her world.

Natalie: This, like, this is such an excellent question, and, like, I, I –

Sarah: Thank you!

Natalie: – have and will be continuing to think about it, but, you know, as, as someone who has worked with data, both big and small, in a lot of different, a lot of different capacities and also worked in social media in a lot of different capacities, I kind of got to see the incredible power that these kinds of things could wield on a micro and macro scale, and I think, you know, we’ve sort of been seeing more and more in the world the kind of vast, devastating impact that things like data and marketing and social media can have on, like, governments, right, and, and –

Sarah: Oh, just a little tiny –

Natalie: Absolutely, and, like, public policy and perception; like, all of those things are, you know, those are huge, dominant forces in the world, and you know, that’s, that’s something I’ve been, like, intensely curious about and researching and also, like, witnessing the power of for a very long time. So that’s, you know, of a, of a personal fascination and, and concern for me, for sure, that I think is, is, is manifested in, in the book. It was also important that her realizations be real and backed up with data that is real, and they are. The, like, calculations that Anna performs exist. They are based, like, the Professor who develops the, the scale that Anna uses to measure the personal and economic impact of superheroes, as opposed to natural disasters, but that math was developed to measure the impact of natural disasters. It is used in our actual real world to measure these things, so it was, it was important for me that, like, to kind of get back to your question, superpowers may not necessarily be real, but power is real, and you know –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Natalie: – whether someone has, you know, is invulnerable or has super strength or has a lot of money is also kind of a superpower in that, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – these things are, are in the same plane and that they’re kind of, like, beyond the access of the average person, right?

Sarah: Yes.

Natalie: So, and, and it profoundly changes the way that you interact with the world and different rules apply to you. We, we do kind of have superpowers in the real world, and so any, any superpower or superheroism or supervillainous power that kind of manifests in, in the novel is, even when it’s not reality necessarily, it is rooted in, in reality, and it is rooted in very real power defer-, differentials, and so I wanted Anna to wield a kind of power that is accessible to a person that someone could find. You know, so I, I wanted her to leverage data that was real and available and, you know, wield measures that were real and available in the world to kind of, like, imagine what a counteraction to power that was not easily accessible would look like.

Sarah: Because what she does is she takes the power that is accessible and available and wields it against people who have power she can’t have.

Natalie: Yes. Exactly.

Sarah: Which essentially is marketing.

Natalie: Essentially is marketing, yeah, yeah, and –

Sarah: Yeah, basically, it’s marketing.

Natalie: A hundred percent, and, and also, like, you know, I’ve, I’ve worked in marketing before and, and have felt both very good and very bad about different kinds of work that I have done, and you know, when it’s, when it’s been like, hey, I’m, I’m, you know, helping people find the, the next science fiction game that they will love best in the world, like, that feels like a relatively, you know, like, at least benign use of marketing, whereas other things have felt less good to me? But it is, it is a power, and it is a kind of influence, and I think recognizing –

Sarah: Yep!

Natalie: – the fact that that it is power and influence that is wielded and deployed is very important.

Sarah: Did you have spreadsheets to write this book?

Natalie: Yes. Lots of them.

Sarah: Oh, what did you use your spreadsheets for? I was told by your publicist Jes Lyons –

Natalie: Dude –

Sarah: – that you have spreadsheets –

Natalie: I do have spreadsheets!

Sarah: – to prove many things.

Natalie: I do. Well, I get, all the calculations that Anna performs in terms of the impact of superheroes on her communities, I, I did them; I ran them. So with the help of my partner, who’s also a, a complete super genius, we built the spreadsheets that Anna would have had to build in order to run those calculations. So in order to, like –

Sarah: Wow!

Natalie: – calculate how many life years a particular superheroic incident would cost, a lot of them are, when we were developing this, I looked at the Year One comics in particular, because I thought, like, okay, these, this is a relatively good vertical slice of, like, literally a year in the life of a superhero; what does that look like? I counted all of the injuries, deaths, and property damage that occurred over the course of the story arc, and then, you know, run it, ran it through a spreadsheet that ran all of the necessary calculations to measure how many DALY units, or Disability-Adjusted Life Years, that particular incident cost. If somebody is injured, there’s a very complicated table that calculates – and that can also include psychological trauma – very complicated table that calculates what the average co-, like, how much that injury probably shaves off your lifespan. If you lose a certain number of teeth, it shaves literal years off your lifespan. All of this has been measured – it’s banana-phones. And then in terms of property damage, it’s calculated based on the median income of that particular area and how many years it would take, you know, using, with somebody’s, like, average income, to rebuild that thing. So, like, a building gets knocked down; it’s 1.5 million to rebuild; how many people’s average annual salary in that area does that cost to rebuild it? We built/I have all of those spreadsheets that do those calculations, and I am able to, and I performed them for, you know, these, for –

Sarah: Wow.

Natalie: – at, at first based on the Year One comics and then on the, you know, sort of invented scenarios that I put in the book, and it’s all real, ‘cause it was important to me that it is real –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – and, and now, unfortunately, I can run those calculations on anything that I – [laughs] – encounter –

Sarah: Ahhh!

Natalie: – and it’s like, it’s one of those things that, like –

Sarah: That’s a lot.

Natalie: – once you have seen behind the veil, you can’t, like –

Sarah: Yeah. You can’t unsee.

Natalie: – you can’t un-, yeah! You can’t, I can’t watch anything without being like, spinal injury, definitely broken orbital, yep, that cost –

Sarah: Yep.

Natalie: – I know how much that car is. Like, well, this is taking place in Gotham, which is modeled on Chicago, so the media – [laughs] – like, I’m real fun at parties now, let me tell you.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: Super fun to talk to. [Laughs]

Sarah: And with – and what interests, one, one of the things that happens in the book then is, because Anna can outline and identify a cost, it casts the damage that the heroes do in a negative light –

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: – because it’s, it’s hard to mentally quantify, okay, this is a person’s life, and this is a person’s business, and you can say, okay, well, the building was worth this much, and you would have earned this much in the lifetime of your business, maybe, with a lot of variables, and quantifying the value of someone’s life at point X to point Y, these are not calculations that people sit around and have in their head, but when you have a blogger show up and say, hey, this is how much this person cost this person with their damage, and nothing is done.

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: People, you can understand the injustice of that –

Natalie: Absolutely!

Sarah: – and it, and it assigns a number. So on one hand, okay, you’re assigning a number, which automatically makes it capitalism, but on the other hand –

Natalie: Mmm!

Sarah: – capitalism is the only language that’s understood –

Natalie: Yeah, and –

Sarah: – so that’s the language we have to use.

Natalie: Totally, and I’m very conflicted about that, for sure. Like, I –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Natalie: – of course I do not think that humans are reducible to numbers, but weirdly, when we look at people via those numbers, like you said, like, sometimes it rehumanizes them. So, like, a thing I’ve –

Sarah: Yeah!

Natalie: – really struggled with for, like, a very long time is the way that people in, in superhero stories are dehumanized and how they’re dehumanization is necessary in order for you to enjoy the media. [Laughs] So, like, if, if –

Sarah: Thank you!

Natalie: – if henchpeople are just getting, like –

Sarah: Yes!

Natalie: – thrown at a superhero and, like, getting super badly injured as sort of like the appetizer to the, like, big, like, climactic battle, like, you have to suppress your recognition of their humanity to enjoy that, and the second you’re like, those are human people who need a job – I had a lot of feelings about the, the trailer for The Batman, like, the Robert Pattinson The Batman, and a, a big one was, like, there’s a moment when Batman is stepping forward, and he’s walking up to a group of henchpeople, and one of them is, like, filming on his camera, and he grabs one of them and punches him for like ten seconds, and it’s horrifying. Like, do you know how long ten seconds is in a fight? It is forever.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Natalie: So long, and you can see, there’s, like, a seventeen-year-old kid – [laughs] – in, like, the crowd of henchmen, and he’s got, like, his makeup is kind of jacked, like he’s obviously new and not good at this, and you can see this stark terror on his face where he realizes an adult man in body armor is about to beat the shit out of me.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: And, like, the second you start thinking about how profoundly fucked up this is – I’m, am I allowed to swear? I, God, I hope so! [Laughs]

Sarah: Please, please bring all of your swears –

Natalie: Whew! Okay!

Sarah: – to this podcast.

Natalie: Yeah, as soon, as soon as you start thinking about how deeply fucked up that is, like, it’s, you’re lost, it’s gone, your ability to – [laughs] – kind of suspend that, you know, disbelief and, and lack of recognition and enjoyment and kind of like pu-, disappears into a puff of bats. Just, like, tch-tch-tch-tch, it’s gone, and now you kind of have to kind of grapple with the, the really stark horror of the fact that, like, all of this damage is being done to all of these people, and when you add up the numbers it’s, it’s probably not worth it, you know, in, you know, that the –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – the damage being done to these people and these communities is, you know, that superheroes are, are ostensibly supposed to protect is, it’s much greater than any help that’s being done. And you know, this –

Sarah: Yes.

Natalie: – this, which very sadly parallels a lot of things on the real Earth.

Sarah: Uh, yeah, just a few.

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Several?

Natalie: A lot.

Sarah: Do you have that, oh, wow, I wrote that and now it’s happening feeling sometimes? Like, do you play the lottery more often?

Natalie: [Laughs] No, I, I’m, I mean, I’m, I’m a – do I play the lottery more? I probably should, right? Like, I’m, I’m a terrible gambler.

Sarah: [Laughs] You wrote, you, you wrote a lot of parallels to things that are actively happening, and the idea that –

Natalie: Well, I mean, I’ve, I’ve definitely had a problem with cops for a very long time, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – you know, I, I, there’s An-, reason that Anna is a penal abolitionist and has been since, like, I wrote the first draft of this thing, and, you know, there’s, there’s a, my, my partner has joked to me that I wrote ACAB: The Novel, and, like, sure, I sure a hundred percent did!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: And there’s, you know, I think a conversation about, like, the harm that is being done to communities by people who are supposed to protect those communities is a really important one, and, you know, that, that, that looking at and recognizing that, not just from a, like, this is awful and, and, and, you know, and is, and feels terrible and is a, is a shame and is hurting people, but in a, like, quantifiable, like, hey, okay, also, we-can-measure-this-and-it-is-bad way –

Sarah: Mm-hmm! Yeah!

Natalie: – really, really important! Like, all of that is really, really important.

Sarah: When you were talking about, with the, with the idea of the collateral damage of people –

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – who are either directly or indirectly affected by villains, this is one of the reasons why I can’t watch superhero movies anymore –

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – because my anxiety fixates on the people who die, and then I wake up at the three in the morning and say, you know, my brain’s like, listen, remember the scene in, in Wonder Woman where the whole town gets obliterated –

Natalie: Uh-huh.

Sarah: – by mustard gas and it’s like, but that’s supposed to be the fuel that keeps them going?

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But that was like a whole fucking town!

Natalie: Yeah, there’s a lot of people!

Sarah: There’s a whole town!

Natalie: Absolutely!

Sarah: Like, there’s a whole town! And aside from the innumerable problems with much of the Marvel Universe, one thing I, I appreciated was that there was consequences when a whole building of people got killed, and they had to face, yeah, some of the things you do are terrible and hurtful and damaging and, you know, kill people and whole lives and other people’s lives. Like, there’s a consequence to the things that you’re doing here.

Natalie: Absolutely.

Sarah: I, I can’t watch superhero movies anymore. I send my family – ‘cause they love them – I send my family, and I’m like, all right, so what’s the death count like? How many people die in the background?

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: We got whole towns, half a town, one bus, two cars – like, what’s the, what’s the damage count here? Because I’ll be able to be like, oh, okay, that was a story, and then at three in the morning, my brain, my anxiety brain likes to do all those calculations. It’s like it has its own spreadsheet, like, let’s think about this!

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And I have to process that, because the movie doesn’t.

Natalie: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: And the thing about Hench is that the anger and the unjust treatment of Anna and so many other people demand rebalancing of the power, which is, which I think is one of the reasons why my anxiety brain was like, yes!

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Do that thing!

Natalie: Well, there are –

Sarah: Go get ‘em!

Natalie: It’s at least, it’s, it’s acknowledged, right, that, that –

Sarah: Yeah, exactly!

Natalie: – this is fucked up, right? Like, you look at it, you, you can’t look away from it, which a lot of –

Sarah: Yes!

Natalie: – a lot of other superhero stories, you know, the, the crux of them is like, look over here, not over here. Right? Like, this is the story –

Sarah: Yes!

Natalie: – we, we want you to be looking at, not this one, and I, I really wanted to turn the camera around and, and focus on, you know, that – I’ve always found the idea of, like, regular people living in a superheroic universe, and in, in particular, like, people who work for heroes and villains, like, that’s deeply interesting to me, and always –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Natalie: – and, and, you know, always has been, and, and ultimately, that was the story I understood that I had to write to kind of, like, shift that perspective to, to something I wanted to see.

Sarah: And seeing the full picture lends a more nuanced story.

Natalie: Absolutely! And it’s one where the superheroes don’t look so great.

Sarah: No. One of the things I also liked about this story is that it, it ha-, the, the novel has a, a dialogue, and it’s almost an interrogation, with the idea of who is allowed to be a victim and who is not –

Natalie: Hmm.

Sarah: – and whose anger is allowed and whose anger is not, especially, as we mentioned, because Anna is so pissed.

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: She is so pissed, and then her fury, rather than being hot, is extremely cold and precise and utterly delicious. Was this a little cathartic to write?

Natalie: Oh yeah!

Sarah: Little bit?

Natalie: Oh my goodness, yes! Oh, it felt great; it felt really good.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: For sure. I won’t say I enjoy holding grudges, but I am extremely good at it. Alex Harrow, I think, had a, a Twitter thread recently about how, like, she, she takes in her, she’s like a, like a grudge foster mom. She takes in the grudges of her friends who can no longer provide good homes for them, like, you know, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Natalie: – like they were kittens, and, and takes – [laughs] – you know, she, she will be their forever home. And I identified very deeply with, with that, you know, not because I, I like holding onto negative energy or anything, but because I, I feel like someone has to, especially for my, like, forgiving friends who, you know, don’t like to – like, my, my partner will, like, forgive any wrong, basically, that’s ever been done to him? It’s ridiculous. Like, he –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – he’s just like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Natalie: – you know, they were going through a rough time, and I’m like, they’ll be going through a rougher time one day. [Laughs] Like, I just hold, hold that evil in my heart forever?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Natalie: Letting Anna have that and, like, hold that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – slow burn and be able to nurse it and work with it and work through it and, like, decide if forgiveness was a thing she could entertain and decide when thing, when forgiveness was not something she could, you know, was absolutely deeply cathartic for me.

Sarah: And she checks herself! Like, she has, okay, if you keep going, this is what’s going to happen. If you keep going, you are making a choice to do this. You are aware –

Natalie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – that, you know, this is what’s going on right now. She checks herself: she has to acknowledge and interrogate her own motivations, and, and she’s aware of what she’s doing. It’s kind of amazing.

Natalie: Thank you! Thank you so much!

Sarah: Now, one of my favorite lines in this book is “Rest is a weapon,” and I won’t give any context, ‘cause I know it’s very late in the story and I don’t want it to be a spoiler, but I, I loved that so much. I highlighted the hell out of it, and I completely agree! And, and yet, and yet I struggle with giving myself permission to sit the hell down and rest.

Natalie: Mm!

Sarah: So how do you see rest as a weapon, and do you struggle with that too?

Natalie: Absolutely. Really, really deeply. Also, I can’t hundred percent take credit for it; it’s actually one of Jason Bourne’s rules – [laughs] – for –

Sarah: Get the hell out of here!

Natalie: Yeah! It, it a hundred percent is –

Sarah: I had no idea!

Natalie: – it’s, it’s absolutely a, a, a Bourne Identity reference?

Sarah: I had no idea!

Natalie: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Just, pp! flew right over my head. That is hysterical!

Natalie: I’m very, I’m very, I’m very pleased that you, that you picked it out though! But it, it is something that has been said to me; in particular, a, a friend of mine has said it to me repeatedly, and he’s right every time, and it doesn’t make it any easier, for sure. I, I, I, like, both struggle to rest and also struggle with feeling, like, really lazy a lot of the time in, in ways –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Natalie: – I can’t necessarily articulate? And, you know, when I, like, list the things I’m doing, I’m like, hmm, that does, I guess, seem like a lot when you put it all down that way, but, you know, inside my body, inside my own head, like, internal nonsense way, I feel this intense pressure to keep moving and to keep moving forward, and, and, you know, there’s, we have a very limited time on this hell-earth, so, you know, to, to do things with that time.

Sarah: Yeah.

Natalie: But at the same time, like, I recognize that healing and rest and time are extremely valuable and necessary to that, doing any, any kind of, like, work, but especially, like, very difficult work or, you know, or community work or creative work that demands a lot of you.

Sarah: And in order to continue to create and, you know, hone the cold, deep rage that you hold –

Natalie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – you have to, you have to rest! You have to, you have to take a break so you can get back to it. You can’t, you can’t sharpen your knives all the time.

Natalie: Absolutely.

Sarah: So what are you working on right now? Other than, you know, book release.

Natalie: Book release definitely is taking a bunch of my attention. I –

Sarah: How nice of me. Let me ask you about rest and then ask you what you’re working on.

Natalie: Oh, no, it’s fine!

Sarah: Yeah. Nice job.

Natalie: A whole bunch of –

Sarah: That’s a great, great, great juxtaposition there! [Laughs]

Natalie: Whole, whole bunch of things. I’m working on, a, a frequent collaborator of mine, Max Lander and I are working on a couple of projects, including an RPG system based on feelings. I, I –

Sarah: Ohhh?

Natalie: Yeah, I recently discovered emotions, unfortunately. So – [laughs] – we’re, you know, we’re, we’re looking at, like –

Sarah: Oh, they’re such a pain!

Natalie: Such a pain in the ass – so we’re looking at, you know, a, a, trying to build an RPG system where the primary stats and abilities are centered on relationships rather than combat, which, you know, I promise is more interesting perhaps than it sounds?

I’m working, I’m doing a, a bit of videogame contract work. So I’m doing, writing a, a story bible and some, some character, doing some character work and writing some, some dialogue options for a very cool, post-apocalyptic, intentional community kind of videogame, which, which I am, I’m pumped about, but under NDA for.

Sarah: Oh cool!

Natalie: Yeah, and I’m, I’m also, I’m, I’m definitely still exploring the Henchiverse. I don’t kind of know what the future holds yet. I mean, who the heck does? But, you know, during the plague times or whatever, but I, I, I feel like, as much as, as Hench is a complete unit and, and I do believe comes to a pretty good close, I think there’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Natalie: – a lot of, there’s still a lot of meat there, and there’s still a lot of story there, and there’s still a lot of super interesting, super interesting characters and possibilities to explore, so, you know, with the caveat that I have no idea what is going to happen ever, I’m also looking into that and seeing, seeing what, what might, what might happen in this universe next.

Sarah: So what books are you reading right now that you would want to tell people about?

Natalie: So I’m reading Harrow the Ninth, the sequel to Gideon the Ninth –

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh ho!

Natalie: – which, pfff, oh my God, she’s so brilliant. I can’t – [sings] – I can’t handle how good these books are! I’m –

Sarah: Ridiculous, right?

Natalie: So, so good. So incredibly good. I’m also rereading – ‘cause I got to read, like, an in-progress draft very, very happily – my, my friend and the novelist David Nickle has a, a pair of books called Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination – which is such a great subtitle – is the second book in a series –

Sarah: Yeah, that’ll do! That’ll work, yeah.

Natalie: – yeah – that began with Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism. So they’ve just been re-released, and I got to read the, like, Volk when it was in progress in a, in a, like, critique group that, that we’re both in, and so re-exploring it now is, in its final form, is extremely exciting.

He, oh, I, I haven’t, I haven’t read it yet, but the, the third book in, in, in Madeline Ashby’s cycle, The Machine Dynasty – so she has a, Madeline Ashby has a trilogy called The Machine Dynasty, and there is now a third book – [laughs] –

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh ho!

Natalie: – which is very exciting! So yeah, I, I have not read yet, but very much looking forward to it.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. I will have links where you can find Natalie Zina Walschots all over the internet, and I will have links to all of the books she just talked about, and to Hench. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book, and if you’ve read it, I would love to hear what you thought.

You can email me at sbjpodcast@gmail.com, or if that’s not going to stick in your memory, Sarah with an H at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books dot com [Sarah@smartbitchestrashybooks.com]. It all reaches me. I love hearing from you, so please let me know if you read this book, what you thought, ‘cause I’m kind of dying to talk about it with people! And not just the author, which is really fun.

But I promised you a terrible joke, and a terrible joke I shall deliver because, well, that’s how I end the episodes, and I’m a terrible, terrible joke lover! As in a lover of terrible jokes. I love them a lot, and if you want to email me some, that is also good. Here is the joke. Are you ready?

What Sith lord tries to immobilize their victims instead of killing them?

What Sith lord tries to immobilize their victims instead of killing them?

Darth Ritis.

[Laughs] It’s so dumb! But I had to have a villainy joke, right? Of course I did! Oh, Darth Ritis: that’s so silly! [Laughs again] Remember, you can always send me bad jokes ‘cause they make me so, so happy, and I know so many of you share them with family and friends, so good job! Excellent work! Please let me know which ones were your favorites.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading.

And while you’re listening, if you feel so inclined as to leave a review wherever you listen, that would help me and the other people discover the show, and the bad jokes, because really, that’s why everyone’s here, right? Right.

We wish you a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to listen to at frolic.media/podcasts.

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