Liner Notes for A Fixed Fight

 

Liner Notes for A Fixed Fight

A gladiatorial contest is a fight, an athletic competition, and one that can end fatally. My model is, of course, Ancient Rome (late Republic rather than Imperial for reasons that will eventually come up). Many gladiators lived to retire; deaths in the arena were mostly criminal and the untrained, the bloody warm-ups rather than the showmanship of the professionals. And yet, every time they got into the arena they’d be facing someone who could kill them, if only by accident, or the crowd got upset or excited and whoever presided that day gave them their way.

Yet for all that they might be killed, it’s a show. Do we remember boxers for their boxing, or for their character, their personality, their out of the ring antics? Both of course. Yet the ones who loom largest in the public consciousness have a hook, not necessarily a gimmick, but something unusual. Moving slightly over into the realm of sports entertainment, that’s what being a professional wrestler is, being a character, and then getting in the ring and doing athletics.

And between bouts there are other entertainments, the music, the clowns (not at the circus, that’s for chariot races). I did think the idea of the clowns dressing up as the participants in the fight and then doing jokes about them was fun, maybe more in the concept than the execution.

If you go to see a game, it’s not just the sport. Or rather yes it is, but people have things to sell you. Food, drink. Merchandise. Maybe cushions or umbrellas for either sun or rain. And betting.

Any time there’s betting there’s people trying to beat the odds. And a bookie syndicate combined with organised crime will try to fix it in their favour. A foolish idea, you can afford to employ the best oddsmakers, and with a troop of bruisers and legbreakers you can collect your debts without causing trouble. Still this is (not) the Roman Republic, everyone’s mortgaged to the hilt, looking for advantage. A nice money-making gambling ring isn’t enough you have to squeeze it until it bleeds.

Not everyone’s on board with that. You can bribe a gladiator but will they stay bribed? Is money what they want? And how do you threaten someone who risks their life every time they do their job?

Vinculus is thinking several steps ahead here. What is a man like this doing in the arena? The plan is for the story to answer that, though I haven’t actually written the last episode yet. Maybe it will all go wrong! Excitement in the fiction and outside it as well.

Come back next month to see if I’ve figured any of this out.