Okay… the first part of this is a bit, shall we say, scatological… if you have a problem with that, skip down, where things get a little more Freudian.
I got home from grocery shopping to the following conversation:
Mate: “So, Zoomboy went to the bathroom, and you know what he said?”
Me: “Do NOT go in there?”
Mate: “You wish. No, he said, ‘Dad–the poop is above the water!'”
Me: Blank horrified silence.
Mate: (Pulling out his camera phone) “See, I’ve got a picture.”
Me: (Now horrified on several levels) : “OH. MY. GOD.”
Mate: (A little sheepishly) : “Yeah– I’ll delete that picture right now.”
Me: “Yeah, you do that–and I’m gonna get that boy some FRUIT!”
Okay… if you got through that one, you may have an opinion on this next one. Eric, I heart you muchly, but our conversation about indoor plumbing spawned a little rant–mostly because you’re not the only one I’ve had this conversation with (my mother!), and most people are not nearly as nice as you are about it (mom, I know you’re not reading this!).
So, given that, Eric just finished giving me some notes on my Beauty and the Beast story (heretofore known as ‘Truth in the Dark’) and one of the things he made note of was, that even in a fantasy story where I make my own rules, it just didn’t seem to be fitting to have showers in the bathroom.
And I said why not? If the Egyptians had indoor plumbing, and the Romans had hot and cold running water, why would it be so out of the realm of possibility for a Victorian-style fantasy to have showers in the bathroom? After all, the technology would exist, we just didn’t place a high priority on it as a culture, right? Let’s assume, since I’m writing a fantasy, that this alternative universe had better priorities than the most of Western Civilization.
And Eric said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t really fit.”
And I said (but not to Eric, because he was doing me a favor and I really appreciate it, but this rant has been building for a long time with a lot of other people so I thought I’d make it public so I didn’t take it out on him…) that anything I write in which two people were going to be licking each other’s dangly bits was going to have a shower in it. Because, let’s face it, the odds of a shower existing in a bathroom of a fantasy world is much higher than a blowjob existing outside of that bathroom withOUT said shower. Am I right? Who’s with me? I say, let all fantasy readers make a point of accepting indoor plumbing as a given, because if this is a fantasy world, and we get to make the rules therein, INDOOR PLUMBING W/HOT AND COLD RUNNING WATER SHOULD BE ONE OF THE RULES.
So, are you guys with me? Or am I rowing the ‘shower in the bathroom’ rowboat alone?
(Or, more likely, did I completely lose you with the first part of this post?)
You know, either way, let me know…
