Reskinned

There’s this expression in game design, this term reskinning. It comes from programming, I think, but it’s essentially when you take an existing mechanical process and simply describe it differently—that is, change the forward facing parts, the parts people see—and keep everything on the backend the same. So it looks different, but it isn’t really; it is fundamentally the same, at least insomuch as its inner workings.

So in my first book, I talk about the Men of Skin. It feels—or should feel, anyway—like they will be major antagonists in the world of the 32C, that Thirty-Second Century, and they are, so the feeling proved correct. It wasn’t hard to guess, though, because they were simply reskinned villains we’ve seen before. In fact, most villains are.

The Men of Skin are so-called, allegedly, because they are “one man, one skin” and so on the surface of their credo, they are a unified group of people with the sort of implicit idea that anyone can belong regardless of one’s skin. But, in reality, they are fascist villains, like most villains and all fascists. They are reskinned to appear more palatable to the general public to allow them a greater freedom of movement and ease of proliferating ideas of ultranationalism, decline, rejuvenation, and rebirth. That’s what fascists do: they sell the story that the world’s in trouble because it’s falling apart, a strong leader (almost always a man, but not exclusively) is needed to set things back on track, expunge the problem (which is usually the relatively defenseless members of the population who are resented for being different somehow), and restore the virility and vitality of the nation. This is, of course, insane. Insane and evil. When I was a younger person, that much seemed obvious. My grandfathers fought fascists. Fascists were always the bad guys in the movies. But in time, that image normalized, weakened, became part of the culture. And that set the stage—along with many other factors—for something like the Men of Skin to happen.

The Men of Skin, after all, aren’t fascists. They’ll tell you that. They are the opposite of fascists. They’ll tell you that, too. They’re about freedom. Individual freedom.

Now I like individual freedom and enjoy quite a bit of it, despite being half-Tauran, trans, and feminine, I’m naturally going to want to see what this group has to offer me, right?

Wrong.

But, they did try to recruit me—a couple of times, actually. And I got to see beneath the skin, a look at the code. I wrote another book, what is situated generally as the third one, that has that story in it. But let’s say it didn’t work out so well for them.

That wasn’t it, though. They came back again with a different leader and on a much larger scale. This man of skin had backers; he wasn’t just some fanatic who’d grown a cult following. So, I took care of that guy, too. That’s in the fifth book. But, it wasn’t very helpful, and just paved the way for yet another guy to take the stage.

Are you getting it yet? Do you see it?

So then I’m busy with other things. Foxy was about to be born. My marriage was falling apart. My neural nets were failing again. I was pretty deep into neurotic magic, and I wrote The Black Book of Fear—which you are familiar with, of course, and may even have in your possession. I took on an apprentice then, sort of by accident. And they became obsessed with taking down this new clown, this new man of skin, who was poised to rule the world.

I tried to talk them out of it, but other people in my life would not let it go. Knot, more specifically.

Who the hell is Knot? you ask, and rightly so.

Look, I go, let’s … just wait on Knot, m’kay? They’re this whole big ball of wax that has to do with time travel and alternate selves maybe and The Secret of All Secrets and The Book of Life and The Book of Death … it’s this whole thing. If you’re impatient for it, you can read about them in book 3, The Grand Story of Not, book 5, We Can Never Go Back, and book 9, T Van Santana & the Black Book of Fear. That should tide you over till we get back around to them here.

So, as I was saying, I really didn’t want to mess with these guys anymore. I’d tried and each time I had won, something worse happened. That was a theme in my life, really, but don’t worry about that. Riley, on the other hand, was fresh. They were new to the secrets trade, new to the life, and they knew they could maneuver me to help them, since it was, after all, my responsibility to teach them.

So I did. And it went almost as badly as it could have, though perhaps not quite how you would think. It was the end of our relationship—that relationship, anyway—and the beginning of the end for the world, the galaxy, the universe. That happens in the tenth one, which is also sort of like a book of writing advice, not that I have any really.

Today we find ourselves with the remnants of the Men of Skin still around. People say they are tired of them. We’ll see. I hope so. But they’re already reskinning again. Of course they are. Do you see it?

Now, in the time you live in, which is sort of like my past, the are called ‘anti-woke.’ But they’re still just fascists, reskinned. ‘Anti-woke,’ ‘Alt-right,’ ‘National Socialists,’ a fascist is a fascist is a fascist regardless of what they wear or say they are.

I heard a voice say, “Come and see!” And I saw.

Do you?