2011 – Page 2 – Sarapen

February 12, 2011

Mine at last

Finally, all of the posts and comments from Sarapen II have been imported here. At last, my blog is whole once again. None shall stand before me!

Or not. Say, does anyone out there remember the Infinity War crossover mini-series from the 1980s? No? It was pretty fun as long as you checked your brain at the door. Man, check out how wordy comics were back then. Like a third of the picture is nothing but words, almost all of them unnecessary. Purple dude gets a magic glove, how many words does it take to describe that?

Magus there used to have a totally sweet afro, though, instead of that chasen-gami samurai topknot he has in the pic. And damn if he isn’t afraid of rocking the codpiece and the hot pants. Now that’s a man who deserves to be ruler of the universe. If you’re too much of a wussy to even wear short shorts in public, how could you be trusted to wield the Infinity Gauntlet responsibly?

February 11, 2011

Alternate prehistory

I just finished reading Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter. It’s an alternate prehistory novel set in 7300 BC in the former land bridge that connected Britain to the continent, before the water from the melting glaciers raised sea levels and turned perfidious Albion into an island nation. Against this backdrop of climactic change occurs the story of the Etxelur people and how they come to build great dikes to keep out the sea and thereby changed the face of the earth itself. The book is first and foremost a novel, so the story focuses mainly on the relationships and petty struggles between the various individuals and factions and not on the admittedly dry and boring geological details.

After a small tsunami wipes out half of her tribe, Ana organizes her people and their neighbours into a labour force that works on the dikes during the abundance of the summer. Her obsession with preventing the sea from claiming more lives and land eventually leads her to buy stone and slaves from another tribe.

Essentially, this part of Stone Spring depicts the hydraulic theory of state formation in action, which proposes that states formed because people needed to organize themselves in order to build and maintain complex irrigation systems, otherwise they’d have starved to death.

I didn’t like this part of the book because it felt unrealistic from an anthropological point of view.

Continue reading “Alternate prehistory”

February 8, 2011

Appallingly bad story ideas

I have great ideas. I think I do, anyway, but I’ve never gotten around to actually putting those ideas into action. For many years, I’ve had various ideas for stories fermenting in the back of my head, and I’ve even got a few notes I’ve written out here and there. However, I’ve never actually tried to write those stories down.

Until now. Seriously, I thought to myself, why the hell shouldn’t I try to write these stories? Why shouldn’t I try to publish these stories? There’s a lot of unreadable crap out there that somehow got published, so at worst I’ll just be adding another drop of literary horridness into the ocean of mediocrity that surrounds the rare islands of genius which make reading such a pleasure. And I might get paid for doing so!

As part of my quest for joining the creative industry, I’ve started looking at venues for short story publishing. Specifically, I was looking at the submission guidelines for the Strange Horizons sci fi magazine when I came across their list of Stories We’ve Seen Too Often. All of these story types sound incredibly bad, but the situation turns from amusing into horrifying when you remember that all of these stories keep getting submitted.

Still, while some of these stories are simply uncreative (honestly, a story about a writer having difficulty writing?) while others are merely clichéd, some stories are actively detestable, particularly the ones that are heavily misogynist in plot. If you can get past that, though, then it can be kind of fun to spend some time being reminded that there are worse writers out there than you. Some favourites:

A "surprise" twist ending occurs. (Note that we do like endings that we didn’t expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we’ve seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.)

The characters’ actions are described in a way meant to fool the reader into thinking they’re humans, but in the end it turns out they’re not humans, as would have been obvious to anyone looking at them.

Creatures are described as "vermin" or "pests" or "monsters," but in the end it turns out they’re humans.

The author conceals some essential piece of information from the reader that would be obvious if the reader were present at the scene, and then suddenly reveals that information at the end of the story. (This can be done well, but rarely is.)

Person is floating in a formless void; in the end, they’re born . . .

Story is based in whole or part on a D&D game or world.

A party of D&D characters (usually including a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief, one of whom is a half-elf and one a dwarf) enters a dungeon (or the wilderness, or a town, or a tavern) and fights monsters (usually including orcs).

Story is the origin story of a D&D character, culminating in their hooking up with a party of adventurers.

A group of real-world humans who like roleplaying find themselves transported to D&D world . . .

Strange and mysterious things keep happening. And keep happening. And keep happening. For over half the story. Relentlessly. Without even a hint of explanation . . .

Evil people hook the protagonist on an addictive substance and then start raising the price, ruining the protagonist’s life . . .

Twee little fairies with wings fly around being twee.

Man, suddenly I feel like ten times more confident in my writing abilities. Thanks, Strange Horizons!

February 5, 2011

Stoolpigeon Wanted, Inquire Within for Details

As you may know, over the last few years the corporations that own copyrights on several intellectual properties have been doing their best to shut down the programs and online venues where the filesharers get their free stuff (movies, music, whatever). But since the people in the corporations themselves of course don’t participate in the illicit filesharing scene, how do these corporations identify the websites and programs that the filesharers use? Why, they advertise for snitches on Craigslist, of course. To wit (link is now defunct):

The web team at Double Take Net Media is seeking a Web Research Assistant for their Toronto office. This is a junior level position for a rapidly expanding web team, focused on growing web properties. This is a full time, junior level position that has been developed to be responsible of supporting our existing websites, including but not limited to:

* Researching via Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) for web sites and online applications using content and materials that are being distributed illegally;
* Tracking website content and materials, then alerting offending sites/ISP’s via Email of illegal activity;
Skills for ideal candidate:
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
* Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills;
* Self-starter who requires little supervision or direction;
* Good time management, multi-tasking and prioritization skills;
* Should know some basic internet protocol, Email programs, and searching for content;
* Able to work with Mature content;

This position is perfect for a someone looking to get into media. There is definite opportunity for the right candidate to move up in the company – especially in project and product management. Competitive salary, benefits, RRSP, paid sick days, etc.

Location: Toronto

Compensation: $27, 500.00 per Year

Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.

Please, no phone calls about this job!

Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

The pay actually isn’t bad for a New Media job that requires a vaguely defined skill set. I’m kind of tempted to apply. Still, one must have principles, and despite my jobless streak I still refuse to apply for a marketing job despite having exactly the skills and experience that would go far in that industry. How, then, could I go against the ethos of “share and share alike” that so defined the early Internet? Oh well, guess the job hunt must continue.

January 18, 2011

On realizing one is a pedantic shit

I was rooting around in my computer when I spied a text file from 2005 that I apparently wrote for an online debate about prehistoric agriculture in New Guinea. Googling an entire paragraph verbatim reveals that it was for a message board discussion of Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The mini-essay was fairly well-reasoned, made reference to some current scientific knowledge, and synthesized information gleaned from several academic sources not easily accessible to the layperson. It was mostly ignored except by one person who clearly based his objections on self-taught stuff gleaned mostly from the Internet. The “debate” quickly petered out after I made my contribution and the message board thread sank out of sight into the archives.

Jesus, why did I even bother? Looking at the date, it appears that I wrote the mini-essay in my first semester of graduate school. I suspect that I was trying to distract myself from the fact that at the time I was living in a tiny, crappy apartment where I could hear the slapping sounds of my neighbour having sex with his girlfriend. That and I was probably trying to fill the loneliness of moving to a new city. Yes, I hung out with my grad school cohort but we all had our own shit to shovel, our own rows to hoe, so to speak, and the alienation of the modern city can get pretty acute when you’re living by yourself and you don’t know anyone living nearby well enough to call friend.

I’m reminded of this New York Times article about what Internet trolls are like offline. Who could have known – from the content I’d written on the message board – of the specific personal circumstances that fueled my frustration at dealing with the ignorant and the misinformed who’d dared misconstrue the knowledge of my chosen field of study. I was especially annoyed because the message board is the adjunct to a newspaper trivia column that specifically bills itself as “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973”, when in my experience the board was and is a bastion of white privilege and anti-feminist “common sense”. I finally had to quite the message board when I saw how often the same topics came up over and over. I’m kind of back now, but I decided not to read any topics that involved race, gender or American politics in an attempt to prevent my demise from apoplexy.

Anyway, I’m embarrassed at having spent so much time and effort on what was in the end an inconsequential matter, though I suppose helping to correct popular misconceptions is a decent hobby for an aspiring anthropologist (god knows a lot of anthropological knowledge directly contradicts mainstream ideas about human nature). Still, there are only so many hours in a day and only so much energy in one person. Better to do things that one actually likes.

January 15, 2011

Law and the Multiverse

I’ve just discovered Law and the Multiverse, a blog devoted to exploring the legal ramifications of life in a superhero universe. For example, one post discusses human rights in the context of non-human intelligences (i.e., aliens), while another covers Superman’s immigration status and whether he counts as an American. Like its subject matter, the blog deals mostly with the American context, but sometimes it deals with issues with a greater scope, such as whether supervillain lairs in outer space are protected by the Outer Space Treaty forbidding the militarization of space. It’s fascinating, though the American focus means I end up reading only half of the posts (what do I care about US traffic laws?).

January 13, 2011

Amerika

Over in the Alternate History Discussion Board, a message board where people go to discuss historical what-if scenarios, someone asked the question of whether a communist or fascist America was more likely to happen in the past. Obviously it would have to happen before the Second World War and quite possibly earlier – home-grown communism in particular would have needed to arrive before 1918, otherwise the panic over Bolshevism would have tainted communism with the whiff of essential foreignness. The general consensus was that fascism was more likely, given that the pre-existing capitalist state was and is already closer in form to fascism anyway (I paraphrase, of course). However, other posters have pointed out that a communist America was not quite a wild-eyed hallucination, and that there were already certain strains of American socialism that could have eased the transition into communism. Like many discussions of American politics about communism, many participants confused socialism and communism, but it was still enlightening to read about an America that could have been.

January 8, 2011

Say what?

From linguaphiles:

Usage examples you wouldn’t expect to find in a dictionary
"They threw the newly born baby into the river." (for "river".)
"Suffocate the child so he will die." (for "suffocate").

I love the additional examples that the commenters provided.

"you will stick one end of it up your arse"
"it is better if I kill you and hide you[r body] where no-one will see it"
"do you want me to take my clothes off?" (for "clothes")
"This is the place where I always hide the bodies." (an example of an adverbial relative clause)

Some of the examples have to be deliberate attempts at surrealism, they’re too bizarre to be produced by a normal person writing in a formal context. But good lord, check out the novella written as an example of the phrase “a woman” for a Russian-English dictionary:

She became a woman at fifteen, when she fell in love with a good-for-nothing who used her feelings and deprived her of her innocence without thinking about the psychological consequences of this event for a girl who had grown up in a Puritanical family.

Let me guess, the writer of the entry is a failed novelist making ends meet by writing dictionary entries. I’m actually reminded of my French class in high school, where I fulfilled my dialogue-writing assignments by putting the speakers in bizarre situations (my favourite was a conversation between a junky and the dealer he is trying to score crack from).

January 5, 2011

Guardian of the Sacred Spirit

Discovering an exceptional but lesser-known work of fiction for oneself is one of life’s smaller pleasures, one made no less enjoyable for being such an ordinary experience. The story of Seirei no Moribito (Guardian of the Sacred Spirit) itself feels rather small and ordinary; instead of covering an epic struggle between good and evil, at its heart it’s about the depths of maternal love and how far a person can go to protect a loved one. The melancholy nature of the song in the video captures well the feeling of the show, much better than the opening song, in fact, which I found rather insipid in an inoffensive pop song way.

Seirei no Moribito is based on the first book of a Japanese fantasy series and it covers the story of Balsa, a female bodyguard, who is tasked with protecting a prince from his father’s own assassins. There are many things to like about the series, not least of which are the lush backgrounds as can be seen in the video. Generally speaking, it’s a lot more realistic than other anime that deals with swords and the supernatural. You won’t find arcs of blood stylishly spraying into the air or fighters shouting out the names of their attacks; rather, all of the fighting is firmly rooted in real-world martial arts.

Unusually for the genre, the anime does not deal with the samurai-and-ninjas feudal era which first springs to mind when one mentions “Japan” and “swords”. Instead, the series is set in a fantasy world based on Heian-era Japan, which is to say, Japan before the samurai. Japan was governed more like Imperial China, with the Japanese emperors wielding direct political power as the sons of Heaven. This is the opposite situation of the later feudal era, where the emperor was largely a figurehead.

It’s interesting to note that the hydraulic theory of state formation posits that states formed in early China because a centralized power was needed to organize the necessary resources that allowed complex irrigation systems to nourish rice paddies. Ancient Japan, of course, consciously modeled itself on China, and the fact that both countries relied on rice as the central staple food in their diets certainly helped keep their systems of government in sync for a while. Certainly a bunch of squabbling feudal lords couldn’t have organized things half so well.

Of course, one must then ask why feudalism arose in Japan if central organization was so necessary to keep a country of rice eaters alive. There are of course the political and historically-contingent reasons for why the strong Japanese state broke down (short story: a combination of screw-ups and bad luck for several Japanese emperors). Improvements in military technology and the resulting change in recruitment practices also gave greater power to regional leaders, and I suspect developments in agriculture also helped. A separate military class rose to challenge the power of the imperial government, a civil war happened, and slowly but surely the samurai were the new rulers of Japan.

Admittedly, all this is going rather far afield from the original topic of the anime series. What can I say, I have a certain fascination for states and state formation. Anyway, to return to Seirei no Moribito: I liked it. If you like serious anime, please try it out. Not that I hate the funny (Ranma 1/2 remains one of my favourite shows, period), but Moribito definitely deserves a larger audience, which I hope this blog post might in some small way help to provide.

January 3, 2011

New from Sarapen

New in the sense that it’s new to this blog – by which I mean that I’ve just imported the posts and comments from the first iteration of Sarapen (go to 2006 in the Archives to see the imports or to Sarapen I on the toolbar above to see the original). I still have to fix some of the pictures, though I’m honestly too lazy to bother with the categories and the tags. I think I might have to manually import the stuff from Sarapen II, seeing as how it only exists on the Internet Archive now. I’m definitely not looking forward to that. Ah well, there’s nothing for it but to do it.