For some reason zombie fiction always seems to take place in settings that are so wholly unlike the real world that no one knows about zombies. The Resident Evil game franchise, which I've been looking back at recently, doesn't. People are quick to point out that there are zombies and monsters.
But it still has a lack of people picking up on the fact that shooting the zombies in the head is the way to go. The occasional character will pick up on it (or at least say they have), but usually one who has plot reasons to know more about the zombies than ordinary characters. Otherwise, even when shots to the body demonstrably don't work very quickly and shots to the head are one bullet and done, the characters keep on aiming at the chest. This might make sense if they were horrible shots (no amount of aiming at the head and missing is going to stop a zombie while enough shots to the chest will stop a Resident Evil zombie, so if you're a bad shot go for the bigger target) but some of them are excellent shots and they still don't favor headshots.
But back to general zombie fiction.
Bad people are coming to do bad things and you've reached the point of lethal force. You fire a shot into the person's chest. Either they don't even fall, or they get back up again after falling. After you've shot them. At this point zombie fiction usually expects us to believe that you'll be confused and unsure of what to do next.
I quote Wash: "What about his face? Is his face wearing armor?"
The local police force might not be willing to make the leap to realizing that the evil crowd advancing upon them is made up of the walking dead, but after shooting people repeatedly in the body didn't stop them, wouldn't they at least consider the possibility that they should aim for the one place they know doesn't have concealed body armor shielding it?
Yes, zombie fiction, for reasons that defy explanation, takes place in a world with no zombie fiction (it's why Jaws was set in a world where no one had ever heard of sharks-- oh, wait...), but it seems like well before people reach the conclusion, "Dead people are walking around and biting living people," they should reach the conclusion, "Aim for the head."
Yet I can think of no instance where someone said, "They must be wearing body armor, aim for the head," in a zombie movie or game. I have not actually read zombie books.
Showing posts with label Musing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musing. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Friday, April 18, 2014
More on reincarnation
In some theologies if one has passed through all the trials and tribulations necessary to become a human (their karma is that good) then they find themselves in a hallway full of couples having sex. They choose one of these to be their parents. At the end of the hall is a light and passing through that they become reincarnated.
Assume this is accurate. (This must be done for the sake of argument because otherwise we have nothing to talk about.)
First, not all sex is good. Not by a long shot. Some souls must see horrifying things and of those some must decide, "That's who I want my parents to be." Second, it means that rich people choose to be rich and poor people choose to be poor.
Now, think about that. What kind of a person says, "I want to live in the lap of luxury being spoiled rotten and never having to work a day in my life," and what kind of person says, "See that poor woman who's obviously going end up as a single mother because look at what that bastard is doing to her? I'll live in abject poverty with her in hopes that I can bring some joy to her life"?
When you think about it, doesn't it seem like those born rich must have been those who barely made the cut and were almost restricted to being baboons (these theologies tend to say that being a human is the best) while those who are born poor must be the most compassionate souls of the lot?
Assume this is accurate. (This must be done for the sake of argument because otherwise we have nothing to talk about.)
First, not all sex is good. Not by a long shot. Some souls must see horrifying things and of those some must decide, "That's who I want my parents to be." Second, it means that rich people choose to be rich and poor people choose to be poor.
Now, think about that. What kind of a person says, "I want to live in the lap of luxury being spoiled rotten and never having to work a day in my life," and what kind of person says, "See that poor woman who's obviously going end up as a single mother because look at what that bastard is doing to her? I'll live in abject poverty with her in hopes that I can bring some joy to her life"?
When you think about it, doesn't it seem like those born rich must have been those who barely made the cut and were almost restricted to being baboons (these theologies tend to say that being a human is the best) while those who are born poor must be the most compassionate souls of the lot?
Monday, April 14, 2014
Recruiting souls
No one chooses to be born, as other means of creating people come into being it will likely still be the case that no one chooses to be made. One can choose to be cloned, but the clone has no choice in the matter.
But one wonders if such things could happen.
One imagines, in some future where we've found a way to avoid creating people without getting their consent, someone standing in a spiritual plane of existence with a clipboard in hand, sighing at how behind ze is.
"I've got a body on earth, a perfectly good healthy body, can I--"
Soul 1, "No."
"Ok, you, you there, can I interest you in a human body on earth?"
Soul 2, "Nope."
"Hey, souly soul-looking person near the back, want a body? Good health, rich family--"
Soul 3, "No!"
"COME ON PEOPLE! I've got access to a human body on earth and it's yours for the taking, doesn't anybody here want it."
Soul who is just passing by, "Earth, what a shithole."
"Damn it, I'm never going to meet my quota."
-
Soul who is just passing by, "Earth, what a shithole."
"Damn it, I'm never going to meet my quota."
-
Or something like that.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Working toward a grand unified theory of the the tonal changes in the Star Wars Expanded Universe
Star Wars, the original movie and original trilogy (1, 2, 3) as a whole, was sort of a singular story. A comparison arises in my mind because something I've talked a lot about is too: Deus Ex.
Beyond the first level and a bit of the second I still haven't played any of Human Revolution because I don't have money, certainly not enough money to buy a videogame. In spite of this I have been able to talk about continuity problems between Human Revolution and Deus Ex, to which it is allegedly a prequel. (They're blatant to the point you can spot at least one thing that makes it impossible for Deus Ex to take place 25 years later on the same planet by looking at almost any still picture released of the game, and they were acknowledged and owned by the HR design team well before the game hit shelves.)
When I have talked about continuity I've been accused of various things. Venerating the designers of Deus Ex as gods was one, but another one that has come up with surprising frequency is that I would not be satisfied unless the prequel was the exact same game just moved 25 years earlier and with different names for the characters. That I find baffling. The story of Deus Ex is one that changes the world in a way that prevents the story of Deus Ex from taking place again. Telling the same story a quarter century earlier would fuck up continuity to no end.
And that's sort of like Star Wars. To be consistent with the original requires a new story to be different from it. To maintain continuity with Deus Ex any other game set in the same universe needs to tell a completely different story. That's not all it has to do; that's merely necessary but not sufficient. But it is necessary. Star Wars is the same way.
You get that right from when Obi-Wan talks about the Jedi in the first movie.
They're living in what he calls the dark times, they're living in a fucked up galaxy. And it's pretty damn fucked up. To the point that in the first movie the rebels who are in theory supposed to be fighting to make things better are actually forced to fight against things getting worse instead.* But it was not always so.
Obi-Wan reveals that within living memory things were good. Not just good, but very good. The Jedi guarded peace and justice within the galaxy for over a thousand generations in The Old Republic. First off, so far as I know we haven't had a single generation in which peace was guarded in the history of this planet. Second, a thousand generations is a long damn time.
A thousand generations is longer than all of recorded history here in reality. Multiple times over. Now I think that that introduces some world-building (galaxy-building?) problems** but that's the story being told.
And in many ways I think that's what allows for the extreme idealism present in Star Wars (the original movie and the original trilogy) in spite of it being set in an extremely fucked-up galaxy where an evil oppressive government ruled the entirety of civilization and thought nothing of blowing up planets.
The extreme fucked-upness was an aberration. Steady stable sustained good times were the rule. In the original movie you learn that The Empire rose to power during the lifetime of Luke's father, in Return of the Jedi the Emperor is killed off along with his single greatest symbol of power in front of the assembled Imperial fleet. During Luke's lifetime (and still during the lifetime of Luke's father.)
The Emperor, the cause of these aberrant dark times, was in power for all of one generation. One generation of extreme bad times balanced against a thousand generations of extreme good times.
Going by the original trilogy there is absolutely no reason to believe that things wouldn't go back to the steady stable sustained good times.
That's the hope that's present in Star Wars. Fix this one thing and everything will be good for a basically unimaginably long time. That's pretty extreme idealism.
But that means you don't get to tell the same story again for at least (over) a thousand generations. Otherwise the hope of the original is dashed. It turns out to be a false hope, and the idealism shatters on the rocks.
Instead you have to tell different stories. Specifically it would go like this: Stories of guarding peace and justice, rather than fighting to establish them, under a benevolent and extremely stable government. Or stories that have nothing to do with that sort of thing (not all stories can be about Jedi) but are set in the same universe during the same period of sustained good times. The fall of that government, the good times along with it, and the rise of the Empire. The original trilogy. Re-instituting the Republic and rebuilding the Jedi. Stories set during a new period of sustained good times.
There's nothing wrong with these stories, and I think they could be quite interesting. But they're different stories. Sustaining good times is very different from fighting to get back to them. Building a good government is different from overthrowing a bad one.
You don't get to have more stories of blowing up superweapons or needing to overthrow governments unless it takes place in what should be the relatively short period of mopping up after the Emperor is killed and before the Republic is fully reinstated because reversion to the mean, in the universe of the original trilogy, means that once the cause of the aberrant bad times is gone things will, or at least should, go back to stable good times.
So that's the thing. You can't tell the same story again because the idealism and hope of the original rests on the idea that the story will not need to take place again. Once the immediate problem (the Emperor and the Empire) is dealt with everything will be good for a very, very, very (over a thousand generations of very) long time. If you try to tell the same story again what you do is make it so that the default is no longer over a thousand generations of peace and justice being guarded but instead much closer to the fucked up state of the galaxy shown in the trilogy itself.
Tell the same story again twice and you're really pushing things from idealism to cynicism. Do it three time and even more so.
But by telling the story again and again you're actually not telling the same story anymore because the repetition itself changes the story.
Evil had to triumph for Star Wars to take place. To rehash the same story evil needs to triumph again. To rehash the same story repeatedly evil has to triumph always. Even if every story ends with good beating back the the repetition of evil triumphant to set up those stories shifts the setting from a thousand generations of good times being the default scenario to one where good times can never last for long and evil will always be triumphant given time.
Star Wars began with evil having triumphed and all that was good and right in the galaxy being in a state of existential peril. If you're not willing to branch out and try new and different stories you need to keep going back to that. By keeping on going back to that you snuff out the hope that was present in Star Wars because the hope was that this situation would pass. And once passed stay in the past. It wouldn't happen again and again. Because it wasn't the usual state of things. It was a dark exception to the rule that the usual state of things is, hands down, good.
And I think that's part of the problem. People weren't willing to let it go and try new kinds stories set in the same universe. If you've read the "Tales from..." series of books you know that everyone in existence was either Hero or a Villain on a pretty much galactically significant scale all around.*** Smaller more personal stories didn't really get told much. And even on the occasions when they were told there was always another superweapon coming down the line. Or, if not a superweapon, an invasion. Or, if not an invasion, internal corruption that screwed things over in a way external threats never could. There is always something bad coming, no matter how good of an end an individual story might seem to have.
More than that, almost always something worse. Which I think comes from a desire to differentiate works when combined with the desire to not really try much of anything new. If all that is good and right in the galaxy is always in a state of existential peril, if evil is always turning out to be triumphant so that it will need to be overthrown by the underdog, if you're telling the same story again and again, how do you distinguish things? It basically seems to come down to, "How bad it is this time?" and the answer always ends up being, "Worse," because if the answer is, "Well, not as bad as last time," it's treated as retreading the same territory.
Mind you it doesn't have to be. The thing is, to distinguish the stories by more than degree of badness requires originality. Which some EU authors do have. As you'd expect they're usually the ones you find doing the smaller scale more personal stories instead of the "The Galaxy Is At Risk (again)" stories.
So instead you tend to get things like Newer Better Space Nazis (now with organic technology!) that via their death toll make the old space Nazis seem not nearly so scary by comparison.
You've now got stories set a century down the line. Are they stories about what it's like when you're 100 years into those good times we heard about in 1977 that the original trilogy was to return things to? No. Not a fucking chance.
They're stories that by their existence show that the hope and idealism of the original was nothing more than a pipe dream because, turns out, rather than returning to the previous "over a thousand generations of good times" standard, a new standard of, "The galaxy is really fucked up and never stops being that way for long," has replaced the old standard that the characters of the original trilogy hoped in their idealism that they might return to.
And in this way the Expanded Universe has forced itself to go more and more to the cynicism side of the scale. Nothing good ever lasts, nothing bright ever stands the test of time, the only constant is that evil will always be with you and war will never end. "This, too, shall pass," doesn't apply to the general fucked-upness of the galaxy. Or, if it does, applies to the bad as slowly as it did the good (maybe in over a thousand generations things will start to default to good again.)
And once you've driven from the extreme idealism of, "Fix this one thing and everything will get better and stay that way," to, "It never stays that way; get used to war without end," it's probably unsurprising that things went from campy fun to the equally unrealistic but completely opposite end of the spectrum: grimdark.
The currently longest gap between, "Even worse than last time," in the EU after the original trilogy takes place is merely an artifact of the fact that the books that don't skip into the future have yet to catch up to the comic books that skipped 100 years into the future. The next no-timeskip book won't be out until July and will only venture one year closer to the comics. Thus there's currently a 78 year gap during which the only things that are known are that: at the beginning of the gap things really sucked and were tending toward darkness, at the beginning of the gap it was foreseen that another great war was coming down the line within the generation, for the entirety of the gap and then some on both sides of it evil with a slow plan to take over the galaxy was prosperous and successful in its efforts (slow plan coming to completion is what the timeskip comics are about), hatred seethed among the worlds of the theoretical good guys so much that, given an excuse, they'd tear civilization apart just to settle scores almost a hundred years old (the beginning of them being given this excuse is what marks the end of the gap) and stuff like that. (I'm getting the info off a wiki, so any more intricate details can't really be included.)
Hardly the visceral hope present in the original trilogy that once the problem at hand was dealt with everything would return to an extended period of peace and justice.
-
And I think that's really it. If you're not willing to try new and different (and the galaxy at peace where justice was the default rather than the exception that the original trilogy implied was to follow would be new and different for Star Wars) basically the only thing you can do to distinguish yourself from what's come before is to push a bit further in the same direction. Star Wars was originally the story of the dark times, so as people push in that same direction it becomes the story of the darker and darker times. The threats get bigger, the blows get more significant, the death tolls rise, the heroes become less pure in their goodness, and everything slowly marches from, "Idealistic campy fun," to, "Grimdark all the time."
No one can ever meaningfully improve things because if they do then that's a push back. Back toward the less dark setting one had to pass through to get to the point things are in the story. And that's something people telling the same story but pushed further (over and over and over again) won't do.
Even if every book ended with a happy ending (which... they don't) there would be no way for the overall universe to not get darker and darker as each new venture had things worse and worse. Hope has to be killed off when you can see that, even if things seem to end well, what comes next will be even worse than whatever was just overcome.
The original trilogy's idealism can't really survive that.
-
And I still don't think I've hit a grand unified theory as I probably haven't covered half of what was in this thread, which is what made me want to put things together to start with. I wanted to put things together because when taken separately things that actually go together can seem contradictory.
"Star Wars is extremely idealistic" and "Star Wars requires triumphant evil" seem sort of contradictory until you put them together to get, "In the original trilogy triumphant evil was presented as a single exception to the rule that peace and justice can be maintained for multiple times longer than actual recorded human history and thus if evil's only triumph was dealt with steady stable sustained good times would return, which is an extremely idealistic stance to take." Which is true, and I think tells you a lot about how the original trilogy was able to do what it did.
Anyway, the first two words in the title are, "Working toward," so the fact I didn't get there isn't too much of a problem.
-
* The movie is about them not getting blown up and making it so the Death Star, which wasn't there last week, isn't there next week. Those two things sort of go together since the Death Star was the thing that put them at risk of being blown up. The movie doesn't end with them making strides toward restoring the republic but instead with them surviving.
** Specifically either technology has been completely stagnant for a very long time, or I kind of think a group that's been spanning a galaxy for a thousand generations would have better tech. There's a reason that when I did a thousand generation thing I set it in a period before the rise of civilization. That's a place where I can realistically believe that there would be a thousand generations of relative stability. After civilization gets kicked off I don't see things remaining stable for a thousand years, much less a thousand generations.
*** It was this observation that led to the creation of the, so far as I know never finished, parody "The Jedi Who Sucked" which can now only be found on the internet archive.
Beyond the first level and a bit of the second I still haven't played any of Human Revolution because I don't have money, certainly not enough money to buy a videogame. In spite of this I have been able to talk about continuity problems between Human Revolution and Deus Ex, to which it is allegedly a prequel. (They're blatant to the point you can spot at least one thing that makes it impossible for Deus Ex to take place 25 years later on the same planet by looking at almost any still picture released of the game, and they were acknowledged and owned by the HR design team well before the game hit shelves.)
When I have talked about continuity I've been accused of various things. Venerating the designers of Deus Ex as gods was one, but another one that has come up with surprising frequency is that I would not be satisfied unless the prequel was the exact same game just moved 25 years earlier and with different names for the characters. That I find baffling. The story of Deus Ex is one that changes the world in a way that prevents the story of Deus Ex from taking place again. Telling the same story a quarter century earlier would fuck up continuity to no end.
And that's sort of like Star Wars. To be consistent with the original requires a new story to be different from it. To maintain continuity with Deus Ex any other game set in the same universe needs to tell a completely different story. That's not all it has to do; that's merely necessary but not sufficient. But it is necessary. Star Wars is the same way.
You get that right from when Obi-Wan talks about the Jedi in the first movie.
They're living in what he calls the dark times, they're living in a fucked up galaxy. And it's pretty damn fucked up. To the point that in the first movie the rebels who are in theory supposed to be fighting to make things better are actually forced to fight against things getting worse instead.* But it was not always so.
Obi-Wan reveals that within living memory things were good. Not just good, but very good. The Jedi guarded peace and justice within the galaxy for over a thousand generations in The Old Republic. First off, so far as I know we haven't had a single generation in which peace was guarded in the history of this planet. Second, a thousand generations is a long damn time.
A thousand generations is longer than all of recorded history here in reality. Multiple times over. Now I think that that introduces some world-building (galaxy-building?) problems** but that's the story being told.
And in many ways I think that's what allows for the extreme idealism present in Star Wars (the original movie and the original trilogy) in spite of it being set in an extremely fucked-up galaxy where an evil oppressive government ruled the entirety of civilization and thought nothing of blowing up planets.
The extreme fucked-upness was an aberration. Steady stable sustained good times were the rule. In the original movie you learn that The Empire rose to power during the lifetime of Luke's father, in Return of the Jedi the Emperor is killed off along with his single greatest symbol of power in front of the assembled Imperial fleet. During Luke's lifetime (and still during the lifetime of Luke's father.)
The Emperor, the cause of these aberrant dark times, was in power for all of one generation. One generation of extreme bad times balanced against a thousand generations of extreme good times.
Going by the original trilogy there is absolutely no reason to believe that things wouldn't go back to the steady stable sustained good times.
That's the hope that's present in Star Wars. Fix this one thing and everything will be good for a basically unimaginably long time. That's pretty extreme idealism.
But that means you don't get to tell the same story again for at least (over) a thousand generations. Otherwise the hope of the original is dashed. It turns out to be a false hope, and the idealism shatters on the rocks.
Instead you have to tell different stories. Specifically it would go like this: Stories of guarding peace and justice, rather than fighting to establish them, under a benevolent and extremely stable government. Or stories that have nothing to do with that sort of thing (not all stories can be about Jedi) but are set in the same universe during the same period of sustained good times. The fall of that government, the good times along with it, and the rise of the Empire. The original trilogy. Re-instituting the Republic and rebuilding the Jedi. Stories set during a new period of sustained good times.
There's nothing wrong with these stories, and I think they could be quite interesting. But they're different stories. Sustaining good times is very different from fighting to get back to them. Building a good government is different from overthrowing a bad one.
You don't get to have more stories of blowing up superweapons or needing to overthrow governments unless it takes place in what should be the relatively short period of mopping up after the Emperor is killed and before the Republic is fully reinstated because reversion to the mean, in the universe of the original trilogy, means that once the cause of the aberrant bad times is gone things will, or at least should, go back to stable good times.
So that's the thing. You can't tell the same story again because the idealism and hope of the original rests on the idea that the story will not need to take place again. Once the immediate problem (the Emperor and the Empire) is dealt with everything will be good for a very, very, very (over a thousand generations of very) long time. If you try to tell the same story again what you do is make it so that the default is no longer over a thousand generations of peace and justice being guarded but instead much closer to the fucked up state of the galaxy shown in the trilogy itself.
Tell the same story again twice and you're really pushing things from idealism to cynicism. Do it three time and even more so.
But by telling the story again and again you're actually not telling the same story anymore because the repetition itself changes the story.
Evil had to triumph for Star Wars to take place. To rehash the same story evil needs to triumph again. To rehash the same story repeatedly evil has to triumph always. Even if every story ends with good beating back the the repetition of evil triumphant to set up those stories shifts the setting from a thousand generations of good times being the default scenario to one where good times can never last for long and evil will always be triumphant given time.
Star Wars began with evil having triumphed and all that was good and right in the galaxy being in a state of existential peril. If you're not willing to branch out and try new and different stories you need to keep going back to that. By keeping on going back to that you snuff out the hope that was present in Star Wars because the hope was that this situation would pass. And once passed stay in the past. It wouldn't happen again and again. Because it wasn't the usual state of things. It was a dark exception to the rule that the usual state of things is, hands down, good.
And I think that's part of the problem. People weren't willing to let it go and try new kinds stories set in the same universe. If you've read the "Tales from..." series of books you know that everyone in existence was either Hero or a Villain on a pretty much galactically significant scale all around.*** Smaller more personal stories didn't really get told much. And even on the occasions when they were told there was always another superweapon coming down the line. Or, if not a superweapon, an invasion. Or, if not an invasion, internal corruption that screwed things over in a way external threats never could. There is always something bad coming, no matter how good of an end an individual story might seem to have.
More than that, almost always something worse. Which I think comes from a desire to differentiate works when combined with the desire to not really try much of anything new. If all that is good and right in the galaxy is always in a state of existential peril, if evil is always turning out to be triumphant so that it will need to be overthrown by the underdog, if you're telling the same story again and again, how do you distinguish things? It basically seems to come down to, "How bad it is this time?" and the answer always ends up being, "Worse," because if the answer is, "Well, not as bad as last time," it's treated as retreading the same territory.
Mind you it doesn't have to be. The thing is, to distinguish the stories by more than degree of badness requires originality. Which some EU authors do have. As you'd expect they're usually the ones you find doing the smaller scale more personal stories instead of the "The Galaxy Is At Risk (again)" stories.
So instead you tend to get things like Newer Better Space Nazis (now with organic technology!) that via their death toll make the old space Nazis seem not nearly so scary by comparison.
You've now got stories set a century down the line. Are they stories about what it's like when you're 100 years into those good times we heard about in 1977 that the original trilogy was to return things to? No. Not a fucking chance.
They're stories that by their existence show that the hope and idealism of the original was nothing more than a pipe dream because, turns out, rather than returning to the previous "over a thousand generations of good times" standard, a new standard of, "The galaxy is really fucked up and never stops being that way for long," has replaced the old standard that the characters of the original trilogy hoped in their idealism that they might return to.
And in this way the Expanded Universe has forced itself to go more and more to the cynicism side of the scale. Nothing good ever lasts, nothing bright ever stands the test of time, the only constant is that evil will always be with you and war will never end. "This, too, shall pass," doesn't apply to the general fucked-upness of the galaxy. Or, if it does, applies to the bad as slowly as it did the good (maybe in over a thousand generations things will start to default to good again.)
And once you've driven from the extreme idealism of, "Fix this one thing and everything will get better and stay that way," to, "It never stays that way; get used to war without end," it's probably unsurprising that things went from campy fun to the equally unrealistic but completely opposite end of the spectrum: grimdark.
The currently longest gap between, "Even worse than last time," in the EU after the original trilogy takes place is merely an artifact of the fact that the books that don't skip into the future have yet to catch up to the comic books that skipped 100 years into the future. The next no-timeskip book won't be out until July and will only venture one year closer to the comics. Thus there's currently a 78 year gap during which the only things that are known are that: at the beginning of the gap things really sucked and were tending toward darkness, at the beginning of the gap it was foreseen that another great war was coming down the line within the generation, for the entirety of the gap and then some on both sides of it evil with a slow plan to take over the galaxy was prosperous and successful in its efforts (slow plan coming to completion is what the timeskip comics are about), hatred seethed among the worlds of the theoretical good guys so much that, given an excuse, they'd tear civilization apart just to settle scores almost a hundred years old (the beginning of them being given this excuse is what marks the end of the gap) and stuff like that. (I'm getting the info off a wiki, so any more intricate details can't really be included.)
Hardly the visceral hope present in the original trilogy that once the problem at hand was dealt with everything would return to an extended period of peace and justice.
-
And I think that's really it. If you're not willing to try new and different (and the galaxy at peace where justice was the default rather than the exception that the original trilogy implied was to follow would be new and different for Star Wars) basically the only thing you can do to distinguish yourself from what's come before is to push a bit further in the same direction. Star Wars was originally the story of the dark times, so as people push in that same direction it becomes the story of the darker and darker times. The threats get bigger, the blows get more significant, the death tolls rise, the heroes become less pure in their goodness, and everything slowly marches from, "Idealistic campy fun," to, "Grimdark all the time."
No one can ever meaningfully improve things because if they do then that's a push back. Back toward the less dark setting one had to pass through to get to the point things are in the story. And that's something people telling the same story but pushed further (over and over and over again) won't do.
Even if every book ended with a happy ending (which... they don't) there would be no way for the overall universe to not get darker and darker as each new venture had things worse and worse. Hope has to be killed off when you can see that, even if things seem to end well, what comes next will be even worse than whatever was just overcome.
The original trilogy's idealism can't really survive that.
-
And I still don't think I've hit a grand unified theory as I probably haven't covered half of what was in this thread, which is what made me want to put things together to start with. I wanted to put things together because when taken separately things that actually go together can seem contradictory.
"Star Wars is extremely idealistic" and "Star Wars requires triumphant evil" seem sort of contradictory until you put them together to get, "In the original trilogy triumphant evil was presented as a single exception to the rule that peace and justice can be maintained for multiple times longer than actual recorded human history and thus if evil's only triumph was dealt with steady stable sustained good times would return, which is an extremely idealistic stance to take." Which is true, and I think tells you a lot about how the original trilogy was able to do what it did.
Anyway, the first two words in the title are, "Working toward," so the fact I didn't get there isn't too much of a problem.
-
* The movie is about them not getting blown up and making it so the Death Star, which wasn't there last week, isn't there next week. Those two things sort of go together since the Death Star was the thing that put them at risk of being blown up. The movie doesn't end with them making strides toward restoring the republic but instead with them surviving.
** Specifically either technology has been completely stagnant for a very long time, or I kind of think a group that's been spanning a galaxy for a thousand generations would have better tech. There's a reason that when I did a thousand generation thing I set it in a period before the rise of civilization. That's a place where I can realistically believe that there would be a thousand generations of relative stability. After civilization gets kicked off I don't see things remaining stable for a thousand years, much less a thousand generations.
*** It was this observation that led to the creation of the, so far as I know never finished, parody "The Jedi Who Sucked" which can now only be found on the internet archive.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Fantasy Reconstruction, how do you do it?
Ok, so you've just defeated the ancient evil and the traitors and whatnot. So, for example, the end of the Lord of the Rings. What do you do now?
You've got all these orcs and goblins and trolls and foreigners who are no longer under the influence of said evil, but for as long as there have been traitors and whatnot and ancient evil they've been living in an evil based culture and they have an evil based economy.
If they don't send out raiding parties to plunder/eat nearby peoples they don't have anything. If they don't make weapons of war then they don't make anything.
How does one deal with changing a culture that was designed by evil for generations with the sole purpose of making them evil?
How does one create economies and food sources to replace the pillaging and eating of innocent peoples, which currently serve that purpose?
What does one do to change these evil based cultures, economies, belief systems, memes, codes, traditions and so forth so that those who are members of species that were on the side of evil can be integrated into the new age rather than exterminated?
You've got all these orcs and goblins and trolls and foreigners who are no longer under the influence of said evil, but for as long as there have been traitors and whatnot and ancient evil they've been living in an evil based culture and they have an evil based economy.
If they don't send out raiding parties to plunder/eat nearby peoples they don't have anything. If they don't make weapons of war then they don't make anything.
How does one deal with changing a culture that was designed by evil for generations with the sole purpose of making them evil?
How does one create economies and food sources to replace the pillaging and eating of innocent peoples, which currently serve that purpose?
What does one do to change these evil based cultures, economies, belief systems, memes, codes, traditions and so forth so that those who are members of species that were on the side of evil can be integrated into the new age rather than exterminated?
Monday, October 10, 2011
I was almost a Canadian
When I hear about my birth it tends to be in terms of how I was born, and often how it contrasted with how my sister was born more than two years prior. By all accounts the births were quite different.
My sister was born so energetically no one ever believes the story. The doctor was ready to gently catch her as she came out, then she popped out with enough force to hit him in the shoulder. She fell right into his waiting hands after that so everything worked out fine.
When you're not a wide eyed child you realize that the distances involved aren't nearly as impressive as you'd first imagine when you hear about a child coming out flying. It's still enough that people don't believe it. The only time my mother ever expressed anything other than complete and adamant disinterest in birth videos was when she said that she sort of wished she had documentary evidence of how it went down, not to look at herself, just to show to the disbelieving.
If my sister's energetic theatrical birth set up expectations, I completely failed to meet them. My birth was much less eventful. I know it couldn't have been very interesting because I slept through it. My father thought I was dead when he saw my limp body. I didn't wake up until they poked me with a needle, and even then I didn't put in the effort to cry instead delivering a short sound that my father describes as, “'ey,” (sort of, “hey,” without an H.)
Those stories get focused on because in retrospect they seem bizarrely prescient, my sister was the one with the absurdly high energy, I was the quiet low energy one.
As such it sometimes gets overlooked that there was another somewhat odd thing about my birth story: I was born about a month before I was expected even though I wasn't premature. After I was born the doctor who handled the delivery told someone to tell my mother's doctor, “that he missed it and he can't count,” or something to that effect. I was a full term baby, but my parents had erroneously been told by doctors that I was one month less far along than I really was. That meant that they hadn't been acting like the birth could come at any moment. Part of that was that, apparently, that they traveled to Canada. Or at least my mother did.
I don't know the details of the trip, like I said the birth story tends to focus on me sleeping through the whole thing, but I do know that I came very close to being Canadian. Very, very close. I don't think my life would have been that different if I were. I'd still be a US citizen, I'd still live in Maine, I'm pretty sure I'd still be in the same place doing much the same things.
But I'd also be Canadian. They have birthright citizenship just like my country does, and I wonder how that would change things. This week, for the first time in my life, I thought about that in terms of national priorities in as reflected in healthcare policies. What would it be like knowing that a country I'd almost never been to thought I was entitled to proper medical care while the one I'd spent basically my entire life in thought that I wasn't?
Never asked myself that before. I doubt it would change much in terms of actual access of healthcare, I'm here not there and I'm sure I still would be were I Canadian, but it's a message that I've never thought of before and will never have to face outside of a hypothetical.
What would it be like growing up knowing the entire time that I wasn't just an American? How would it feel to be one of the mythical anchor babies that people from south of the border sneak into the north to have? (How many Americans have engaged in this sneaky process to game the system into giving their children Canadian citizenship?)
Nationality is drilled into us forever. I am an American. If I leave the country today and never return I will still be an American for the rest of my life, it's part of my identity. How would I be different if that identity also included, “and I'm a Canadian too”?
I have no idea.
I was almost Canadian. I don't have much to add beyond that.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Twilight - Nobody is this incompetent; They're doing it on purpose
[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Musings.]
I keep returning to it, and there's no way this isn't completely absurd. Edward convinces Bella to lie for him by promising to explain, then we have this (italics are direct quotes from the text):
Edward: "Your father is waiting for you."
[snip]
Bella: "You promised."
[snip]
Edward: "In that case . . . I hope you enjoy disappointment."
First off, if he's going to a jerk that way I want him to at least quote the Dread Pirate Roberts:
Bella: I must know.
Edward: Get used to disappointment.
But second and more importantly: what the hell?
Edward: "Your father is waiting for you."
[snip]
Bella: "You promised."
[snip]
Edward: "In that case . . . I hope you enjoy disappointment."
First off, if he's going to a jerk that way I want him to at least quote the Dread Pirate Roberts:
Bella: I must know.
Edward: Get used to disappointment.
But second and more importantly: what the hell?
Edward is trying to send her to talk to the Chief of Police but making sure first to remove any incentive she has to cover for him? Aren't you supposed to hold off on betraying someone until after they've told the police what you want them to tell the police?
This seems like incredibly bad form. Like telling someone, "By the way, I was the one who sold you out after the thing with the jewels in Nairobi went bad. Now go into that interrogation room and tell the cops I'm innocent." Something about the timing seems somewhat off, don't you think?
Although it actually is somewhat worse isn't it? It's more like, "Remember how I promised to pay you if you corroborated my story? I was lying, I'm not going to pay you a single penny. By the way, the police, whom you have yet to talk to, are waiting for you and I'm sure they'd love to hear about your version of events."
It's just so ... words are failing me. It's wrong to a point that "wrong" is no longer adequate.
This seems like incredibly bad form. Like telling someone, "By the way, I was the one who sold you out after the thing with the jewels in Nairobi went bad. Now go into that interrogation room and tell the cops I'm innocent." Something about the timing seems somewhat off, don't you think?
Although it actually is somewhat worse isn't it? It's more like, "Remember how I promised to pay you if you corroborated my story? I was lying, I'm not going to pay you a single penny. By the way, the police, whom you have yet to talk to, are waiting for you and I'm sure they'd love to hear about your version of events."
It's just so ... words are failing me. It's wrong to a point that "wrong" is no longer adequate.
Maybe it's not that the Cullens are bad at the masquerade, maybe they pass the endless dragging years by moving into a town and seeing how absurdly suspicious they can get before the pitchforks come out.
The van thing was not planned, but toying with people =/= standing by while they die, so Edward saved Bella and has been improvising. It's a golden opportunity, not to be wasted. When he gets tot he hospital he finally confers with another member of the clan.
Carlisle and Edward are discussing off screen all of the obviously wrong things they'll do:
Carlisle: I've already put her and Tyler in facing beds so that they can discuss what happened and hopefully poke holes in your story. Then I'm going to come out, ignore Tyler, and talk to her first for no apparent reason. You'll be in the room the whole time of course.
Edward: Of course.
Carlisle: The moment she says anything about the event I'll mumble halfheartedly and make a big show of avoiding any real engagement. What do you think?
Edward: I won't argue with the efficacy of the that for creating suspicion, but I really think we should try something more direct.
Carlisle: Well what's your plan?
Edward: I promised her that if she played along I'd explain everything. I'll go back on my word right before she meets with her father. Hopefully she'll stop playing along as a result, and we can finally get Charlie involved.
Carlisle: I don't know, do you really think Charlie is up to the task? I've been dangling hints in front of him since we first moved here and it's always the same: nothing.
Edward: Alice did say that this town would be harder than the last one.
The object is to see how far they can go before they're found out and, naturally, how much fun they can have in the process. Edward's siblings were unhappy with how he saved Bella because they feel he skipped over several levels of escalation. If they use blatant superpowers too early then it takes all the fun out of it. (Unless they're playing a quick free for all.)
Of course mostly they do it for the memories.
The Cullens still tell the story about the town where Carlisle ate a rampaging moose in the middle of main street on a busy day and yet the next day it was like nothing had ever happened. They returned to school. Not a word. Carlisle treated patients who had been staring right at him. Nothing. No reaction at all. That town had required more than willful negligence or playful effort. It had been a tough nut to crack.
It's probably not the most productive way to spend your eternity, but it makes for interesting stories.
(Alice's story about the girl who caught her sunbathing and, rather than realize there was anything odd going on, asked where she bought her body glitter is another story often retold. It is still sure to get a laugh after all these years, but you really have to hear Alice tell it. Especially since only Alice can deliver the line, "Did Not See That Coming," in that special future-seer way.)
At this point they aren't sure whether Bella will fall into the category of hilariously obtuse, or move them into "let's be absurdly bad at the masquerade" phase two: rumor control.
Person: I heard-
Carlisle: That every member of my family is a vampire? A ridiculous rumor.
Person: -that you were looking to buy a propane lamp because yours broke and you were going on a camping trip.
Carlisle: Oh.
Person: What was that about vampires?
Carlisle: Nothing. Nothing at all. How much did you want for the lamp?
The van thing was not planned, but toying with people =/= standing by while they die, so Edward saved Bella and has been improvising. It's a golden opportunity, not to be wasted. When he gets tot he hospital he finally confers with another member of the clan.
Carlisle and Edward are discussing off screen all of the obviously wrong things they'll do:
Carlisle: I've already put her and Tyler in facing beds so that they can discuss what happened and hopefully poke holes in your story. Then I'm going to come out, ignore Tyler, and talk to her first for no apparent reason. You'll be in the room the whole time of course.
Edward: Of course.
Carlisle: The moment she says anything about the event I'll mumble halfheartedly and make a big show of avoiding any real engagement. What do you think?
Edward: I won't argue with the efficacy of the that for creating suspicion, but I really think we should try something more direct.
Carlisle: Well what's your plan?
Edward: I promised her that if she played along I'd explain everything. I'll go back on my word right before she meets with her father. Hopefully she'll stop playing along as a result, and we can finally get Charlie involved.
Carlisle: I don't know, do you really think Charlie is up to the task? I've been dangling hints in front of him since we first moved here and it's always the same: nothing.
Edward: Alice did say that this town would be harder than the last one.
The object is to see how far they can go before they're found out and, naturally, how much fun they can have in the process. Edward's siblings were unhappy with how he saved Bella because they feel he skipped over several levels of escalation. If they use blatant superpowers too early then it takes all the fun out of it. (Unless they're playing a quick free for all.)
Of course mostly they do it for the memories.
The Cullens still tell the story about the town where Carlisle ate a rampaging moose in the middle of main street on a busy day and yet the next day it was like nothing had ever happened. They returned to school. Not a word. Carlisle treated patients who had been staring right at him. Nothing. No reaction at all. That town had required more than willful negligence or playful effort. It had been a tough nut to crack.
It's probably not the most productive way to spend your eternity, but it makes for interesting stories.
(Alice's story about the girl who caught her sunbathing and, rather than realize there was anything odd going on, asked where she bought her body glitter is another story often retold. It is still sure to get a laugh after all these years, but you really have to hear Alice tell it. Especially since only Alice can deliver the line, "Did Not See That Coming," in that special future-seer way.)
At this point they aren't sure whether Bella will fall into the category of hilariously obtuse, or move them into "let's be absurdly bad at the masquerade" phase two: rumor control.
Person: I heard-
Carlisle: That every member of my family is a vampire? A ridiculous rumor.
Person: -that you were looking to buy a propane lamp because yours broke and you were going on a camping trip.
Carlisle: Oh.
Person: What was that about vampires?
Carlisle: Nothing. Nothing at all. How much did you want for the lamp?
Narnia's Food Supply
"I'll help you chop and carry that wood in exchange for an old tablecloth."
"Ok, but please take these five pounds of butter and two jars of marmalade as well."
"Do I have to?"
"I you want a table cloth."
And then that person has to figure out who they're going to dump this excess luxury on because they don't have space for it in their cupboards at home. Maybe they can throw a feast for some random strangers and use some of it up.
[This seems to have been a subconscious adaptation of this zombie story idea.]
Thursday, October 6, 2011
On Angels and Free Will
[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 8).]
[Yes. Some people believe that angels do not have free will.]
[Yes. Some people believe that angels do too have free will.]
I have difficulty buying the idea that they couldn't turn back either. Well, I should correct that. If an angel turning it's back on God is something that God thinks of as something like a human being taking the mark in Left Behind, then I totally understand why they can't turn back. It's not that they can't will it, it's that God won't let them.
Lucifer could be sobbing outside of God's door. "I'm sorry dad. I was wrong. I shouldn't have done all those things and the third and I all feel really bad about what happened. Could we start again please?"
And God will look down from a second story window and say, "No."
And possibly send Lucifer right back to Hell for having the nerve to even suggest such a reconciliation.
If, on the other hand, we're talking about whether or not Lucifer can make it to that point in the first place I have difficulty reconciling the rebellion with the idea he can't change his mind once made up. He must have decided to obey God before he decided to disobey. His every action until the plan was made would be a reaffirmation of that decision. If angels decisions are irrevocable then Lucifer never would have rebelled in the first place, having already decided to serve God. (Unless such decisions are like a lease and will expire unless renewed while failing to renew is eternal, but that would be really freakish and weird. "My Lord, I pledge fealty to you forever!" "Yeah, sorry, terms and conditions apply, you can only make that pledge for a period of one year.")
-
* If they did not choose out of free will but instead were designed by God to take up arms against God, then that wasn't rebellion at all. It was obeying every bit as much as when the other two thirds decided not take Lucifer's side.
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