The World's Still Here. I'm Mildly Dissapointed.

Hmm.  I haven't posted here in a while (I've actually been using a blog-space connected to a fandom message board more often because I happen to be popular enough at that board that sometimes people read it and I feel generally informal there).  I have a short story / experimental novel chapter I could post, but I'm not sure it's very good, plus I'm trying to bring together more of the ideas I have for the greater story in my brain.  I shared the little chapter I have so far with a friend and she "wants to know more about how the world got that way" - and, frankly, I do, too... I'm waiting for the details to come to me. 

A lot of news going on in the world. You could say it's part of the reason the world dissapoints me by still turning, but that's sort of dark. The short story/chapter I mentioned had a mention of gun nuts vs. people who actually use guns to hunt because of when I was writing it...  I could use this space to say something about the woeful state of mental health care in this country, but I'm all ranted out from responding on news sites and serious blogs by people who actually count in this world.  Besides, who wants to listen to a crazy person?  As for the gun issue... I quipped to my guy "I think we should have a compromise.  We keep the 2nd Amendment on the grounds that civilians are only allowed to have guns of the models that were around when the 2nd Amendment was drafted!  Imagine how rampages would go if someone had to muzzle-load a musket between shots!"  - Okay, so that's not a real solution to anything, just a joke.  Take it as an interest in historic weapons.  I have relatives who know how to hunt with powder-rifles, so you know, it *does* happen as a sporting and meat-getting thing in the modern age.

 I wasn't expecting the world to end on the Solstice.  I did what I'd planned to do that day: Whipped out "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" and started playing a new file.  For those of you unfamiliar with that videogame, its major theme is Apocalypse, in that you play a child-hero character who gets trapped in an alternate world (of his homeworld, it's a sequel to "Ocarina of Time") and must save it from the machinations of an angry child, a demonic mask that wants to make his darkest desire come true and a falling moon that will crash into the world on a "three-day" time-limit from the start of each gameplay session. Every Legend of Zelda fan I know was making references to Majora's Mask and the 21st.  I also remember playing a bit of MM during that May 2011 end of the world claptrap.  It's a beautiful game, too... you cleanse corruptions, ease the regrets and pains of the dying (seriously, you comfort dying people in this, it's how you partner with their souls in form of masks that give you powers) and, of course, you meet The End of the World and kick its ass!  It's all basically what I describe as a "whimsical nightmare."  If one wants me to get philosophical about the game, I sort of see the villain of the game (Majora's Mask) as nihilism personified and Link (your player character) fighting against it for all he's worth - because people and the world (even when it's not his own) are worth something! 

Which brings me to something I saw today... some comment on an article about the "Mayan Apocalypse" with someone talking about how the end of the world nuts will just move on to the next fad... we survived Y2K, we've survived the end of the last Ba'ak'tun (spelling?) and the person was wondering "why" about that.  I think the reason why is that these "End of the World prophecies" are distractions from the real problems going on. If you're stocking up for "doomsday" you aren't as likely to be worried about today, are you? I seem to vaugely remember a passage in one of the letters of Paul in the Bible's New Testament where he was basically rippinig into his fellow Christ-followers who'd decided to give up their jobs and sit around waiting for the Second Coming.  If more self-proclaimed spiritual leaders of today had that kind of wisdom...a lot of people wouldn't be distracted from their solid real-world work. Then again, a favorite blog of mine wouldn't be nearly as popular if it didnt' have a certain apocalyptic book series to rip into...At least I know that's how I found out about it.

We have a lot of problems in our world that are essentially "destryong it" - making it an unfun, dangerous place to live (not that it hasn't always been), but we have some major things going on now, in our interconnected age.  The spectacular pronouncements of "The world is going to end on this day!" or "on this year!" priming people to expect some major cataclysm perhaps serves as an mind-catching distraction from the "slow path" things that are happening every day and whittling away peace and justice by increment. I don't even mean a vague "belief in Heaven," either, because I know a lot of people who believe in somelace nice to go after they die who care about here and now *more than anything* (myself included).  It's the whole idea that the world is going to end in some kind of sucidial bang and it's going to happen on this date, this hour that's the distraction from the problems of the world that seem ordinary, but are still problems.  It entertains people, nothing more.  The idea of the world's sudden death probably hurts less than the slow death.  I know that I react to a lot of news these days with sheer, staggering apathy, and that scares me.  The Conneticuit shooting... I saw something blip online about it and thought "Okay, another one" and thought it was something that had happened a month or so ago with only a couple of deaths.  It was only when I turned on the news and saw the mass death - and child deaths - that I cried.  Before I knew the magnitude of it all, my attitude was sort of "ho hum" because what was once and should be EXTRODINARY has become ORDINARY. 

Ordinary evils and dangers tend to be met by apathy. Only the dramatic and the cataclysmic catches our attention anymore. 

The moon is falling slowly.  Are you going to fight the darkness, free the good?  Is the world worth it?

Stories to Never Tell

I guess that every writer is like me in that the ideas one gets for stories vs. the stories that actually get written constitute a far greater number than anyone on the outside would guess.  We all know that some ideas just aren't very good, and then there are those that just kind of stick with you for a while and whine at your brain that maybe you should write them, but you refuse for whatever reason. 

I actually have an idea that's been with me for years that I might write - if I get into a close enough relationship with the right people and get their support. As it is, I'm actually afraid of hurting people with my ignorance if I attempt it.  It deals with sexuality and religion (but moreover about personal sacrifice and how it can backfire) and I think you know right with those words why it's been on the back burner of my brain for the last five or six years now, never actually penned. This is the "never-written story" that's stayed with me the longest, which means it might get written if I ever luck into what I feel would be the proper research needed for it to live. 

A story idea that I've come up with more recently is even trickier:  It deals with my love of fantasy - of impossible things, of wonders happening to people, whether they want them to or not.  If you read the stories posted on my blog, you know my predilections.  The idea was first sparked when I was thinking about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  It's, to date, the most recent game in the Legend of Zelda game series - a 25-years strong videogaming franchise that will never die, but I don't want it to because I'm in mad love with these games... I was thinking of making a post on one of the message boards for the series I go to about the "discovery of impossible" things that run through this series. 

Skyward Sword has something of a joke on an earlier title, Twilight Princess in that TP had a researcher character who was scoffed at by his peers for his belief in a City in the Sky, which you *find* in the game.  Skyward Sword is the reverse of that:  A prequel in the ur-mythology of the series that has Link (player character) having been born and raised in a city in the sky and the Surface, even as it plays a role in the society's religious mythology, is seen as something only eccentric people believe in.  They still believe in their patron Goddess, but fail to believe in a key part of their origin myth because no one has seen it and it seems impossible to them that anything might exist beneath the Sea of Clouds...  Thinking about this bit of interesting mythos, something in my brain went "Hey! Link discovering the Surface in his world is kind of like if someone in our world found out that Ken Ham was right!" 

Just an utterly impossible thing.  After getting into a conversation-thread Slacktivist about Ken Ham and Young Earth Creationism (for those of you who don't know who Ken Ham is - look him up... or don't.  He's a vocal advocate for trying to force science into an absolutely literal reading of the first chapters of the Bible).... After that and after viewing today a video by Bill Nye (The Science Guy)* telling Creationist parents to please not pass their beliefs onto their children and quietly die off (okay, so he didn't say it so harshly and he was stressing the importance of evolution to an understanding of life-science for our future doctors and inventors), well... it brought up my fantasy idea again. 

I think polls about American attitudes are skewed on this subject, or, at least there are probably more people who believe in mainstream science who say they don't because they don't want to be kicked out of their churches... Do pollsters ambush people as services are letting out or something?  I flirted with the YEC thing myself when I was teen-aged and stupid, convinced by elders and TV people (but strangely enough, not my parents) that I had to give up science and sense to follow what my heart wanted to follow.  That was all I'd ever heard: "If you want to follow Jesus / believe in Christianity / not go to Hell, you have to believe God created the world in six days."  I believed in "God" before - in a sort of "something out there," but not within a specific religious structure before. Thankfully, my teen / adult Sunday School teacher was a Theistic Evolutionist and that put a crack in the idea of un-science and brought me full-circle into a person who doesn't think having spiritual beliefs means one abandons science.  He didn't "preach" though - to the YECs in the church. He figured "We're all brothers/sisters here" and felt no need to preach his ideas on God and science to them.  I don't know if he was being gracious and polite, or if this was unbelievably sad.

In any case, just like the guy in the Zelda game who tells you to pray for good luck and protection a one of the bird-shrines around the sky-island (it's a game-save system), and clearly hopes the Goddess is smiling upon him -- who later jaws on about how he's never believed in the Surface... There are tons of people who believe the "substance of the myths" without believing them literally when it comes to popular religion.  Therefore...

I think writing a fantasy tale about someone discovering something that proves the YECs right just to shake up and screw with the brains of everyone in the world would be a neat thing to write.  As a fantasy.  An archaeologist discovers dinosaur-saddles or something.  Time-travel happens and people go to the past and see stupid stuff.  The crazy stuff that not even a lot of religious people who treasure the myths believe in anymore being true? WTF?  Whoa!  Part of me wants to get my research on and get out a pen and just scrawl down weirdness, but... no...

No, just no.

There is *no way* I could write a wild fantasy like this without it being mistaken for propaganda even if I go out of my way to *make fun.* 

You see, a fantasy author can write a story about a bunch of kids discovering a dragon in our world, or a forest full of unicorns, or real and present practical magic.  I vaguely remember a film from my childhood that was about a family adopting a Bigfoot.  You can do stuff like that in fantasy - people discovering impossible things. 

But other things that would make for awesome fantasy?  It doesn't seem like such ideas *can* come without politics and other damaging things. 

I find it sad to find my creative spirit hobbled like this, but maybe stupidity is as good a restraining bolt as any to keep stupid things from being created.

Anyone brave or foolish enough to want to try to co-write an extremely controversial fantasy novel with me?



*I grew up watching Bill Nye.  It is a tragedy that his show is no longer on the air. It was quirky, funny, and man, I learned stuff from it!  I learned about rods and cones in the eye from that show and about the mesosphere... I may not have become an important scientist or engineer, but common-knowledge is always good and I'm sure the show inspired people to get into science careers.  I remember it as one of the best kidutainment shows ever.   

The Isolated Mind

Very often, I think I just live in a different world than other people. 

Physically, I share space with the physical things of this world, including other people, but my mind feels…isolated.  I am pretty sure that no one thinks exactly like I do, and instead of meaning that in a fluffy “Mr. Rodgers” you-are-special-for-just-being-you way, I mean it in a “I’m just crazy,” way. 

Today, I commented on a favorite blog only to come back later and see my comment deleted without explanation.  It’s happened a few times there.  I have no idea if the blog’s owner thinks I’ve been insulting him somehow – I certainly didn’t mean to – but I do know I went way off topic.  He posted a cute story with a lesson, and I go off on a (happy) tangent about the usage of certain elements in fiction.  I’m pretty sure “way off topic” was the reason for the deletion and that it was nothing personal, but, the fact is that I seem to do that *all the time* and not just to this blogger… (I’ve been talking casually to friends about ideas I have and whatnot only to have them go “Huh?” at me. Yes, even online friends of mine who’d describe themselves as “weird.”) 

I wonder if this is common to people who enjoy writing speculative fiction as a hobby, or if it’s a problem that people who are creative in general face (oftentimes, even in talking with other creative people).  Then again, I do live with a man who was, through our creative-joking sessions, was largely responsible for the “Princess Poo-Poo” entry, so maybe I’m not as isolated as I think. 

We saw the film “Paranorman” the other evening.  We’re both grown-ups who like “kid’s movies,” especially ones with beautiful animation.  I found the protagonist particularly relatable… he’s a kid who can see ghosts and everyone in his town treats him as a freak for it (except his buddy, who’s teased for being fat).  In the end, it is one of those many films with a fantasy-flavor and an important message that I know is going to get largely ignored just because I grew up on film after film where “respecting difference” was the main message and the protagonists were “freaks” and never enjoyed the respect or even reprieve of my peers who saw the same films.  Sometimes, I think fiction can tell great truths, but sometimes, I don’t think those truths stick. 

In any case, I related to the protagonist because, even though I do not see spirits or anything (it seems, as emotionally-nutty as I am, my senses are firmly trapped in material reality), I thought to how the kid’s perceptions made him live in an entirely different world than the rest of the people around him.  A lot of people think that they’re “different” without knowing how popular and basically normal they are.  I know I wasn’t as bullied growing up as a lot of people and that I have it better than a lot of people. I know I’m saner than some unfortunates out there who have worse conditions than I am.  I still feel like I’m in a different world, though.  The manic-style thoughts, the running off on tangents, thinking of things that no one apparently thinks of and / or thinks are strange…Living in that all the time…  

Sure, my “weirdness” gives me the ability to think up stories about a man trying to live “life as a litch” after waking up from ten years gone, a person living happily in a world where everyone has vanished, or a selectively cannibalistic culture of otherworld vulture-people, but my mind is something that apparently offends people if I don’t keep it in check or tell it to shut up every once in a while. 

World, I’m sorry I’m not like you, but in the end, I’m not sure I want to be.  I’ll probably just be quieter from now on.  That seems to be my reaction… just getting quieter and quieter, choosing to largely speak in fiction.