Okay, I didn’t mean to be angry in my post today. It was just late, and the flesh is weak. I feel as though for the last week or so I’ve been metaphorically speaking standing in the corner, holding the broom as a Samurai sword. Enough. It grows tiresome.
It needs done, of course. Sometimes people need a good thwack. And it must be exorcised in ways other than fiction, or the fiction becomes terrible and brittle and eventually mere sloganizing.
Though I suppose I could write slasher fic under another name.
Which brings me to my problem.
I know that every profession has problems not obvious from the outside, dilemmas people face that no one who doesn’t do the same thing for a living would believe.
Mine is ontological uncertainty. Or perhaps morphological uncertainty. The phenomenon defies explanation.
A day this week, I was coming out of the shower when the love of my life, who’s been married to me for twenty years, after asking what a (writer) friend is working on said, “You know, I’m still not convinced you’re not her.”
This might make perfect sense if a) my friend weren’t published mostly in indie. The man sees my returns from indie, so any secret name can remain secret from him for about a quarter. And then he gets to go in and do my tax work. Surely, he’d know? B) My husband has IN FACT met this friend and her son. A few years ago my friend came over to stay while her son looked over the Air Force Academy.
I pointed this out and he sighed. “Yes, but I read her Mad Genius Club post today, and you still sound exactly alike.”
I want to say that Amanda Green and I dispute this. We’ve read our own stuff and we’ve read each other. Not once have I paused in the middle of one of Amanda’s pieces and gone “Wait, is this me?” On the other hand perhaps it’s like my kids. Now they’re both grown up, total strangers, and even our banker say things like “I know you’re not twins, but—”
The kids then start listing everything they are different on. And it’s true. Robert’s nose is much flatter. Marshall’s hair IS curly. Robert’s brow ridge is a little heavier. Robert’s face structure is rounder. But does it matter? No. they are the same general coloration (Robert is less olive and more pink, but not enough to be really noticeable) and have the same expressions. They’re also about the same height. People receive an impression of equal. After that they don’t see the differences.
Half in self defense and half in laughing, Amanda and I have developed this theory we’re really twins. (Given she’s a redhead and a head taller than I this is odd, but not impossible.) I was just sold at an early age to Portuguese Gypsies, who then abandoned me in my family’s coal chute – thereby following the origin story my family told me when I was very young! See, it all fits. And think of it as Ransom of Red Chief not once but twice.
However this week I faced a different bit of odd. In the middle of the week, someone asked me if I was Ellie Ferguson. The funny part about this, is that Amanda and I have been looking at Ellie’s very, very good numbers climb up and scratching our heads and going “Maybe I should write Paranormal Romance?”
Amanda THINKS she might be able to, but I don’t think I could. Because see, once you bring in the paranormal, then I want to explain it. It’s always part of my issue with writing fantasy. I either create such a complex magical system it becomes a multi-series system, like the one in Witchfinder – or I create such a complex magical system that in fact I write science fiction in all but name.
From what I understand – the second problem is that I don’t READ the stuff – paranormal romance is shorter on explanations and larger on hiding-the-sausage in a REALLY safe place.
I think I’d get bored. I mean, I don’t care how much fun the characters are having, it’s not my fun.
But when my friend asked me if that was me, I went back and read Ellie. I don’t see it. Not only not my genre, but not my style. And Amanda can shut up already with the “But you could totally do it” because I can’t. If she keeps this up, I’ll close her down as a pen name and we’ll see how she enjoys vanishing mid-air. Though, of course, her mom might get worried. Drat. None of my other pen names have real life relations…
Then yesterday, another friend, who is an agent and should know better, also asked me if I was Ellie Ferguson. I swear I don’t get it.
Have five secret names. No, wait, four, and no one trusts you.
However, I swear this one isn’t mine. Even in Austen fanfic, where I wrote what could be termed “romance” for a good while, what I wrote was regency romance.
There is an element of fairytale and distancing in romance that I cannot do if it’s apparently about everyday life. I suppose the shifters could take care of that, but I don’t do shifters that way. In fact part of the reason I don’t READ paranormal romance or UF of the shifter kind is all the dominance and submission stuff. While it can be fascinating to read ONCE, I much prefer my critters to be self-willed and at least pass for rational.
Anyway, considering the last week, I’m waiting fresh accusations of my being someone else so I’ve decided to come clean.
I am Kate Paulk. The Aussie accent and completely different appearance — for those of you who have met her at conventions – are just a ruse you haven’t got yet.
And speaking of ruses, I’m also Dave Freer. Weirdly, the hard part of being Dave Freer is not swimming with sharks, or gluing that wild beard all over my face every morning with spirit gum (good disguise. Why did you think he wore it?) or even keeping his wife of decades convinced I’m male, or even fathering two sons (that’s just a ruse they haven’t got yet – they’re actually characters, loosened on the world.) No, the hard part is writing at a completely different and much higher level. That ability comes, of course, from using the name Dave Freer.
When I was little I went to a sorcerer (shud up. Did too) and was told that the name Dave Freer immediately makes one write better by at least a magnitude.
I couldn’t pass that up.
It’s just a ruse you haven’t got yet.
According To Hoyt 
… the name Dave Freer immediately makes one write better by at least a magnitude …
Well, to be completely fair, it’s mostly the “Dave” part that makes you a better writer. “Freer” is more a superlative descriptive. Of course, what he’s freer to do than the rest of us is up for debate . . .
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I have a friend who writes under a bunch of names and sells through the usual eBook places, and he says his PNR is consistently his highest selling. But it’s not what he enjoys writing the most. But if he has a car payment due, he can knock one out quick enough to cover it.
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Shudup Ellie.
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I am ALSO RES.
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I am a figment of my imagination. Nobody else would tolerate such a persona without resort to frequent cleansing with alcohol.
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So you’re Vodkapundit?
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I’ve met vodkapundit…
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If only there were like … evidence in support of your bold claim.
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Yeah. Steve is, as the guys at Gay Patriot say, “Fetching”
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… Vodkapundit is a friend of hers.
I ain’t no Vodkapundit.
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Oh my heck. You really are Spartacus. All of you.
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I am not Spartacus. Sheesh, perish the thought. A Thracian? How droll.
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Belisarius was Thracian. As was Justinian, though that’s no great commendation, unless you’re into bankrupting empires.
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Now, now. I suspect that had the Black Death not made its debut when it did, Justinian’s conquests would have paid for themselves. Well, with the help of his financial and legal reforms.
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Exactly, not my class as a Patrician.
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You have something against Maximinus Thrax?
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…or I create such a complex magical system that in fact I write science fiction in all but name.
Hm, utterly left-field– maybe this is why I like the sort of fantasies I like; their magic is no more BS than well done scifi, it’s just in a totally different direction.
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Inserting obligatory paraphrase of either Clarke or Asimov, I always forget which:
Any sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic to the common people.
Come to think of it, Heinlein addressed the issue a few times as well.
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Any sufficient advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a Really Big Gun.
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Maxim 34: If you are leaving scorch marks, you need a bigger gun.
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Maxim 37: There is no overkill. There is only “Open fire” and “I need to reload.”
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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Any sufficiently advanced technology never works as well as the rigged demo.
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Or the Girl Genius switchup: “Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science”.
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There is no such thing as magic. There is only technology which you do not yet understand.
M
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Drinking willow-bark tea was once magic.
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Yep. That’s what I write.
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But…. some of us LIKE those sort of complicated fantasy magic systems!!!
How is writing them a bad thing? :)
You aren’t the only one in that boat by far, though. I think is has something to do with the same systemic/explanation framework people of libertarian and engineering bents possess.
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It’s bad in paranormal romance, not otherwise.
I come from an engineering family and would be one myself, if it were not for digit dyslexia.
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Digit dyslexia? Which fingers am I holding up?
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ALL OF THEM. It has a name. I think it’s discalculia? But my issue is not the calculations. It’s that 435 and 354 are functionally the same number in my head. What I mean is, if I have to copy one I’ll likely get the other. Yes, this was made worse by learning math in Portugal where tests were often copied from the blackboard. If I had a teacher who actually looked at what I’d copied and what I then got — I usually had As. If I had a teacher who had an answer sheet I had C/D. Eh.
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This is probably one of my problems as a writer, at least in terms of sales. My subconscious ignores the various “genres” as defined by publishers and prefers to throw in what it wants to, rather than what I know would appeal to a particular genre reader.
So near-future utopian science fiction with a heavy mystery, military and police component plus a touch of western mentality? Yep, I can do that, just as long as you don’t expect me to describe it to anyone who is expecting a genre label. Make it action/adventure, but toss in some fantasy-like world building and a new-to-the-world viewpoint to explain it with? Sure, no problem!
Where it really trips me up is that an adventure/thriller reader will read the above mentioned book and complain that I don’t describe/explain enough up front (normal science fiction methodology of letting the reader figure most stuff out from context), while a science fiction reader will wonder why the science and the cool gadgets are treated as part of the background, rather than as central to the story.
I’m too much of a generalist, while a lot of readers seem to be specialists. Limits my audience a bit, I suppose, but what can you do?
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You problem–mine too–is making sure you attract the readers who will like what you write. A blurb or tags that mislead will (1) miss your potential fans who will buy everything you write and (2) get bad reviews from people who expected something else.
You might try http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=7474
for the Genre Structure class.
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My own personal theory of Magic says that it is simply the same physical laws but the mechanism for manipulating it is heavier on Mind and Will. That allows the physical world to operate as it actually does unless the magician is doing something to alter the operation. The reason that creating matter is harder than transmuting it is that you have to manipulate enough E to pull the m out of E=mc2 where transmuting simply involves rearranging the atoms / molecules that are already present. Extra dimensional beings are simply visitors from the Many Worlds.
YMMV.
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And apparently WP doesn’t recognize standard HTML for superscript. Sigh.
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This is why I like Randall Garret’s Lord Darcy stories so much. Magic was reduced to a science in that universe.
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In fact part of the reason I don’t READ paranormal romance or UF of the shifter kind is all the dominance and submission stuff. While it can be fascinating to read ONCE, I much prefer my critters to be self-willed and at least pass for rational.
*wry* You can’t get around the “I turn furry once a month, so now I’m stuck in a homicidal caricature of wolf society as explained by ’70s nature videos”?
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What I would like is for the heroine to find out about this hidden world of werewolves or vampires or both, and come to realize that it’s really as horrible as all the legends say — perhaps werewolves get that way by a demonic pact, and turn to vampires when they die — and the monster-hating fanatic is the hero of the story.
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I’d read that. > >
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I’d read it! If only for the “Hello, they eat people.” scene.
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ask Larry Correia to write something then… :)
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Hell Yeah!
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I started writing a paranormal romance like that. I planned to have 6 titles in the series. So far, the first book has turned into a 3-book Urban Fantasy series dealing with original sin, envy, corruption and the discipline of a loving G-d. Um, yeah, I guess I can’t do paranormal romance, either. But it’ll be an awesome series once I finish it!
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Geez– I can’t either– it turns into search for the villian (some loving along the way– but not the point) who is trying to use werewolf DNA for supersoldiers. *corruption *corruption *and more corruption.
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I actually read that plot in a UF/PNR book, of course the werewolves that the DNA was stolen from were the good guys.
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Well yes– in my case as well.. but my werewolves are more human with transformational abilities. The evil researcher in my case believes that DNA belongs to the State and not to the individual. (I am working on the second in a series.) ;-) Also– there is a question in my world (they haven’t come out) about the humanity of the packs. (only known by the government–and probably only one department)… anyway, if they are not-human then there is a possiblity that this variant of humanity can be used as laboratory mice. It’s a matter of family (and pack) vs. sociopathy in some of the research… I know– I tred a very fine line– But my werewolves are once again not the ones we get in myth and legend– (brainless– kill and eat people in the forest on the full moon).
BTW I haven’t run across that plot– in anything other than my own writings. But, I have an extreme dislike of dystopia novels. ;-)
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Also– mine are set in Nevada or the West so they aren’t UF… they are contemporary (at least that is how it is explained to me– when a PNR is in a rural setting).
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The main difference between UF and PNR is that PNR _must_ follow the romance genre style. Complete plot focus on the romantic relationship. And having lots of sex is apparently expected, too.
You’ve got to be very careful how you tag and label UF. If you attract PNR readers, they will complain. Loudly. And write bad reviews.
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I meant didn’t mean PNR (as in romance arg)… I don’t write romance. With my flirt gene disabled, it makes me unable to write convincing Romance. … I meant contemporary paranormal fantasy (PNR read paranormal in my mind).
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BTW I put one of my books in fantasy and still got a PNR reader. ARG– yes a bad review from the loudly unhappy reader looking for sex.
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*cough*… well, they are just short stories, and just vampires.
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Ilona Andrews’ vampires (in the Kate Daniels series) are definitely monsters as in mindless predators. They are “safe” only when controlled by their “riders”. [Grin]
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Well, think about it. If one has a controllable supernatural ability, one could choose to take it to court, and demonstrate that, yes, this stuff can happen, under these circumstances, maybe as an expert witness. The standard ‘we keep it secret because of x’ stuff is at least colluding to conceal information from the legal system. If one knows or reasonably suspects that supernatural abilities are used to commit crimes… I’ve for a very long time been able to parse that as treason and criminal conspiracy. This is probably the best I’ve ever managed to articulate things.
I’ve partway worked out things closer to what you say, I think.
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Only if someone had standing to demand the information.
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I don’t know.
Consider the case of Mafia/Democrats/IRA killing in a public area when no one would admit to seeing anything. Often this was done through a combination of co opting elements of the government and terrorizing anyone not a supporter into compliance.
In short, creating a competing state, or statelike governmentlike entity, and subverting rule of law in its favor.
Those who would not bear witness to such killings, whether by personal preference or due to coercion, amounted to supporting the outlaw state more than the official state.
Likewise, someone who keeps magic a secret actively or passively, especially if they scorn recourse to open legal means of resolving problems, can be viewed as supporting something of that sort. This is even greater if they have reason to believe that monsters are taking advantage of that secrecy to better kill people.
It just seems to me that someone living in the United States, primarily loyal to the United States of America, would look to ways to have magical events of a serious nature fall under the oversight of the people.
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The “knowing about magic makes you more vulnerable” version might work alright, though; then you only have to worry when some idiot starts an Ouija craze or some such. All those folks willing and believing in their ability to reach across and touch another power?
GREAT power source for nasty things that like to munch people.
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If you build the magic system correctly, you can make it something that cannot stand up in court, or you can give good and sound reason to keep it secret. I’ve seen both, as well as a lot of writers that have neglected to do either.
Still not necessarily a situation that leads to corruption free organizations accountable to the public. That said, currently I am not hugely confident in the trustworthiness of many public institutions, so maybe I’m just cynical.
I’ve also played with ‘recreational drug use unlocks latent mental powers, specifically the power to get taken over by things outside reality’.
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I rather doubt corruption free organizations are possible….
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I envision a sorta reverse Dorian Grey effect — the inner corruption is reflected in a person’s outward appearance, so that anybody looking at you can see the stains on your soul.
Naturally there would be a huge industry dedicated to defining beauty in terms of …
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Yes but there is a difference between one guy dipping in the till, and mass murder or covering up same.
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The second one sounds like 90% of governments, ever.
I don’t believe the one-big-huge-conspiracy ones. The ton of little groups doing stuff that benefits them model? Totally believable.
And even in modern, totally mundane society, you don’t tell the authorities about a suspected murder unless you think there’s some chance they can find out it actually happened.
The only situation I can think of is one I actually lived through, the murder complete with simi-confession by murderer, of a family friend who was deathly ill. While we were driving to scatter her ashes. There’s no possible way it could even be investigated.
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Yes.
Yeah, it tends to be the bunch of people following their own interest. My own goal is to keep my eyes out, and if I can’t catch everything, at least catch and stop the groups before they escalate and get to me. I take it you are interested in jousting at a similar windmill?
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L. Jagi Lamplighter had a good version in her Prospero’s Daughter trilogy. The Order of Solomon keeps knowledge of magic from mankind so that we will, instead of worshiping dubious beings for power, resort to science, which works better anyway.
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Can be viewed as that — once you’ve proved they have magic. But that’s what you set out to prove.
It also revokes the Fourth Amendment in a manner which smells of witch hunts, and by your own admission, revokes the requirement for standing. The backlash from that would complicate your claims.
Furthermore your rather paranoid scenarios give an excellent reason to avoid it, since you are arguing that the mere existence of magic creates a parallel and competing state. It sounds like a leftist fantasy of rightwing separatist nutcases with magic substituting for guns. I would be very, very, very eager to keep any knowledge of magic from you.
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Oh.. oh my.
Then the 2nd Amendment becomes the right to keep and bear wands.
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The Constitution authorizes the issuing of letters of marque. This necessarily entails the private citizen being able to own the best weapons the armed forces can.
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…what does it say about me that I’d actually prefer if folks COULD own and drive fully armed tanks?
*sigh*
It’d freak out the ‘danes.
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It says you agree with a lot of the people I know, including several active or formerly active military.
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Sad thing is, I can see the cost in lives…but I’m also aware of the cost in lives of BANNING stiff that’s big and scary. It’s just less obvious.
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That you have good sense?
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Well, there are some complicated licenses for certain of the weapons, but lots of people own tanks, usually without operable cannon.
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I rather fancy owning an orbital laser cannon. On a clear day you can zap forever.
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I think a normal truck is more damaging, practically, in that case….
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See Harry Potter. There the magical society never had the relatively recent arms control the UK bought into, so the right to wands.
One thing I don’t like about Marvel/X-Men is the focus on mutants as an ethnic group. Mutant powers can sometimes be used as weapons, and as such should be protected by the second amendment.
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If there were any ethnic group whose adolescents could sometimes destroy a city by accident, one suspects they would face more restrictions than you could shake a stick at.
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What drives me nuts about X-Men is that they’re irrational; they make the NPCs treat “makes pretty flashes” the same as “CAUSES FREAKING NUCLEAR BLAST TYPE EXPLOSIONS” and “can read your mind halfway across the county, and sometimes can CHANGE what you think.”
They ditched rational issues for straw man racism– my grandma was racist, fretted about getting black and Mexican blood, but her favorite 4H student was Mexican. Why? Because real racists don’t do what Hollywood racists think they should, they’re just a quarter-turn off of “normal” and share a lot of characteristics with the modern “right thinking” race mongers.
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yep.
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I’m not looking at the legalities as a matter of correct lawful court procedure.
I don’t really have the background for a deep examination of that, and it might be a little outside of the scope of what I am talking about.
The other day, I heard about a case of a ten year old and a sixteen year old who were hungry, and cut a deal with people running a check point for food. Taliban found out about it, and made a point of cutting off their heads in public. Part of my reaction is, of course, that doing that is simple common sense. In that sort of conflict between governments or pseudo-governments, you want people to use your institutions or no institutions rather than the other government’s institutions. When you are in a position to do so, terrorizing people into doing that by killing people for using competing government institutions is a method that works.
That is purely what I am looking at. I only have enough legal grounding to guess that it should possible, if difficult to solve issues of magical through the existing legal system. I do not have enough to write an academic paper on the legalities and technicalities of such a process. If it is possible, the decision to do so or not is a choice. I’m not saying that it is a legally actionable choice, I figure it probably isn’t most, if not all, of the time, but I see it having weight as far as morality and loyalty go.
a) I see this level of concern as due diligence to attempt to prevent a re-occurrence of the segregation/Jim Crow related ethnic murders and related cover ups.
b) It isn’t just ‘because magic.’ It requires provable magic being used in secret while there is a workable legal system at hand, at the least. It works better with a secret magical society hidden from and parallel to mundane society over a long time. It works best when there is an active secret police enforcing secrecy.
c) Whenever you have a legal system encountering a system of magic that is utterly alien to it, there are issues. If it relies on expert witnesses, there are few of them, and the limits are widely unknown, there is a moral hazard/conflict of interest (?) in that they might be able to gain benefit from colluding to mislead people about the nature and scope of magic. There are reasons witch hunts happened in the first place. That is, if the limits and scope of magic are not well and widely understood, it is difficult to sort random chance from directed magical action. In our world for the common law system this was essentially solved by deciding magic is impossible.
d) If magic were real, I would probably prefer not to have knowledge of it.
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When you are defending a procedure on the grounds it’s similar to something the Taliban did, you ought to revisit your premises.
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I didn’t read that as defense so much as explanation. Saying that something is understandable is a long ways from saying that something is good. It’s understandable that the NSA would keep a copy of every electronic-form conversation we make, including e-mails, drafts in Google Docs, even this blog. It’s not GOOD by any rational stretch of the imagination (at least of my imagination. Please note that any claim of rationality on my part should be taken with copious amounts of salt.), but it’s UNDERSTANDABLE, and so you can kind of suss out a rational defense from a different set of starting premises.
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Nonsense. It’s an explanation made to defend the thesis that people have somehow have a duty to reveal certain information who have suffered no harm from ignorance, on the grounds that merely have such secrets constitutes some kind of revolt and formation of a new government.
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Malarky. Horsefeathers.
Suffered no harm from ignorance? That flies in the face of human nature. That is, having magical powers that one may use to one’s benefit, a person will almost certainly use those powers to their benefit, to the detriment of those who do not have those powers. Have those who lack magic powers then not suffered some form of harm? Or at least been disadvantaged in any number of potential instances?
Moreover, isn’t ignorance of something as fundamental a change in the perception of reality as the existence of magic harmful in and of itself?
The wider question is simply this: Given the existence of magic – and not some new “change” like in Shadowrun, but magic having been baked in the existential cake from the beginning – how does civil society deal with it being dragged out into the open? Of course the legal questions are there, but there’s a wider societal question. The Taliban has no legitimate legal standing, but they certainly have the extralegal power to enforce their rules. As do organized crime families. An order of Benedictine monks has the power to enforce their own extralegal rules, it’s just that the penalties likely do not include decapitation or concrete overshoes.
Five Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys, and please put your feet in this tub of cement, Brother Wilfred
To whom does the magic practitioner’s loyalties lie? To the country of his birth? Or to the magician’s order/coven? Where should they lie? How is that decision justified? If there are expectations, how are they enforced? What happens when someone decides that their loyalties lie to the country rather than to the secret society?
That’s all we’re getting at. It’s a problem bursting with potential conflict, as the ongoing conversation no doubt shows.
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…Is society likewise harmed by many, many folks I meet not realizing I’ve got my CC weapon in my diaper bag?
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Apples and oranges, I’m afraid. CCL means ignorance of your weapon, not ignorance of the existence of firearms altogether. Concealed Carry is something anyone could get, part of the normal society (probably should have more people responsible enough and willing to carry, but that’s a different discussion). Given time and inclination, I could get a weapon and a CCL myself (An egregious oversight to be corrected ASAP). But I can’t get magic or were powers or telepathy. So if there was a secret cabal of people who could and did, and operated under rules that differed significantly from those of the rest of us, you get conflict with society at large. > >
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Problem: I’ve had folks TELL ME that of course nobody they know would have weapons.
And we know of the IDEA of magical abilities… we just assume nobody actually has them.
Much like the women who assume that guys aren’t really more physically powerful than they are.
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Well, in that case, they’re just not in touch with reality. And I don’t know how to help them.
It’s a good thing magic doesn’t really exist, huh? (knocks on wood)
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How is that different from ignoring centuries of stories and tradition saying that Magic does exist?
Just ‘cus the gov’t says it exists, rather than tons of stories?
(note: this would be an AWESOME thing to copy into a world where it did exist, and someone was trying to sway folks into believing.)
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In the situation that was originally raised, one user (maybe a small group of them) were essentially acting as whistleblowers, which I assume would have all of the accompanying media coverage, and lead eventually to expert witness testimony on a court, tests and measurements, repeatable rituals and spells, etc.
That would make for a really interesting scene where someone was testifying before Congress.
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Assuming they can get anyone to listen, since everyone knows….
To link with my gun metaphor, there’s also the cost vs benefit thing. If I showed my gun, even to someone that I was pretty sure would support my having it, there’s the risk that I’d be kicked out of every social group I’ve managed to join in meatspace. Ouch.
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Hmmm. That’s another aspect of it, isn’t it? Magic users would have to conceal a significant part of themselves to fit in with their social groups. That might be enough to keep some quiet, just so they don’t get ostracized from the friends / family that they can actually talk to about magic.
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You have a point because there is a scripture that is thrown at people who at least think they use magic (Do not suffer a witch to live–). At least from my studies the word witch in this verse is mistranslated– some believe it means a person who uses natural powers to cause harm. Someone who could be considered a witch (in our culture) but does good? –may I point to a person with healing hands. Also– there are certain talents like dowsing (my great-grandfather was a water dowsers), which have been considered gifts from the devil by the Catholic Church a long time ago– but still the talent shows up in family lines.
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While I, personally, am not one who believes in the effectiveness of such things as dowsing, my father has used it in the past as a matter of course, to find things like water lines when needed.
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Certain people who dowse today believe that they can feel certain magnetic lines– If they can or if it is something else, it can be quite effective.
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Note: every freaking single thing I’ve been told was “done by the Catholic Church” at some point in the past has turned out to be simi-Catholics applying folks knowledge against Church teachings.
Barring a chapter and verse citation, two translations of the orginal or the original in English with footnotes, do not trust any “The Church once said” things.
Heck, don’t trust any “the Church says” claims without citation.
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The Catholic Church was the Christian church for centuries– so yea, it had people in power who did things that shouldn’t have been done. It was a power– it was power– so many things they did and endorsed was not Christian or biblical. Take for instance the witch trials — (I think it started in Spain mostly– and their were isolated spots in other countries) The protestant churches in the US also had witch trials — most famous as Salem. So the point is the Catholic Church got blamed for the leadership–
I may have used the Catholic Church… but these abilities were also considered devil worship by the Protestants and by other Christian churches… as well. I wish I could remember where I read that the Catholic Church had an edict against dowsing (around the Renaissance period, I think)… It was one example–
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Witch trials are actually exibit #1 of things done by people who said they were Catholic that folks then say “The Catholic Church did X.”
Using the chrome ap, this is the sixth time I’ve retyped, so going to post this before I go try to find the dang stuff….
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Yes, I know Foxfier because it is the first thing that popped into my head… but I can point to other things like in Germany, a Catholic Archbishop took his army and tore down a castle because the castle and lands and sworn to become Protestant. There was a lot of terrible things done to the Duke and to his people (the castle is around Landstuhl)… Or if we go into some of the popes personal lives … it begins to get rather hairy.. (they were more like princes than spiritual leaders)… or that the world changed when Gutenberg put the Bible into the hands of the people (who could read). The Catholic Church has a lot of history– and for many years religious power was used for political purposes… So I am NOT attacking the Catholic church– I can see from your remarks that you are upset…
I am saying that the history of the Catholic Church and of the Protestant churches have not always been clean. BUT the history of human development has not been clean either… What has happened is that Christianity has civilized us (through imperfect vessels) until we have the values we have today. I was just putting my two-cents in about magic… and dowsing… and didn’t want to get into a religious debate about how the Catholic Church has a bad image. For that matter imho all religions have bad images. and have had bad leaders as well.
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Again, Catholics doing X isn’t the same as “the Church
.Incidentally, the old “the Church didn’t want people reading the Bible” thing is a myth; the Church smacked down bad translations all the time, but also had a habit of being the biggest buyer of Bibles to have out where anybody could read them.
The nice thing about the Catholic Church, as opposed to most Protestant ones, is that they have a specific way of organizing what is actually a teaching vs what is someone doing stuff or telling folks they should do it; if folks are saying “X is a binding teaching” when it’s not, then THAT GUY is wrong.
It’s like… *grasps around for a comparison* y’know those universal standards things, “this is an inch” and such? The Church is like that. Doesn’t matter who says “my house is one inch by one inch,” if that inch doesn’t match what the official Church measurement is.
On the downside, the Church doesn’t freaking say what an inch is until it’s a big enough problem…..
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Foxfier– I don’t think you are seeing what I am writing and you are narrowing into ONE specific thing– so yea, I heard that same argument when I left the church of my childhood (it’s not the church that is wrong… it is the people).. but I just don’t see it. The church is the people and is in the people. Plus absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have given you the point that our civilization is better (better values) because of the Catholic Church… what more do you want? I will not argue anymore with you because I was NOT really into this argument anyway. I used the Catholic church as an example– when I could have used the Protestants, the Baptists, or the Non-denominationals. I am also kind of tired….
What I was saying is that when anyone is different from the NORM– i.e. a Trekkie, a dowser, or sees things differently than those around them– they will get persecuted and the most common reason would be “it is from the devil” even today. So if there are people out there who can use real magic, then they would keep it quiet. It is not worth the hassle.
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The church is the people and is in the people.
Well, no, not really in this format; that’s like saying “America released information about their surveillance programs” when in reality Snowden, who is American, did it.
May as well say “Christianity supports adultery” because so many Christians do it.
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Plus absolute power corrupts absolutely.
1) the Church doesn’t have absolute power, and 2) that quote was actually about how folks talk about people who have power. (Hey, he did a bunch of cruddy stuff, but he was so incredibly important we should make allowances type stuff.)
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I have given you the point that our civilization is better (better values) because of the Catholic Church… what more do you want?
It’s not a matter of defending if the Church is good or bad — it’s a matter of clarity; pretty frustrating over here, because you don’t seem to be reading what I’m writing, either. (In the “what I’m saying isn’t what you’re hearing” sense, not the “you refuse to listen” sense.)
“The Church taught X” has a specific meaning, because we have a system for establishing Church teachings– stuff that doesn’t go through that process isn’t a “the Church taught” thing, even if it’s taught by someone who is in the Church. (Makes more sense if you remember that science and stuff use to be taught by Church folks.)
It’s sometimes tough to get Catholics to keep that in mind…lots of folks like to push their prudential judgement as binding. See: “Harry Potter is Demonic,” “tattoos are not allowed,” etc…. which wraps back around to supporting your point of “people will claim stuff that’s different is demonic” and the risk/reward metric would very much be tilted to the “risk” area.
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Okay– I can agree with that–
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My problem is– I know you had a bad reaction that the church is in the people and the church is the people and pointed to Snowden.
When I was in the Navy and had some high clearances, we were told that when we were stationed in other countries that we were ambassadors and that the people there would judge all Americans by what we did. So yes, Snowden is an example of Americans now– Is it right? NO? Does it change what is? No…
So when we identify with a group we are also examples of that group. imho
Plus– once again– I don’t think many of the lay members of the Catholic church know or understand the process for “Church teachings.” btw. It’s not one of those things that get out to someone like me– except here (for the first time btw).
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American Catholic religious education sucks massively — that’s part of why I try to spread around that there’s a difference between someone doing/teaching something, and it being an official teaching/doing of the Church. I was a victim of the poor teaching!
Bonus, I can usually work it around to sharing fun stuff, like Jimmy Akin’s “Theology of the Living Dead,” or TheO’Flynn’s “Return of the Dog Heads.” (Both blog posts)
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I am beginning to see– understand the poor teaching thing– ;-)
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I think you are right about not understanding what you are saying– we have come to the place where my experiences have diverged from yours. :-)
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Yes, but that was different. The 100 year war was a temporal war with religious … underpinnings — or if you prefer with religious dressing. The papacy at the time was a temporal power and fought like one, plus there were people standing to benefit on both sides.
Most of the “church forbid this” is propaganda, from one side or the other. (Though frankly the puritan side of Christianity was wwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy crazier than any other sect. they’re the reason the colonies almost starved at first.)
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It seems that people generally decide what they are going to do, then find a religious reason to justify it (if you cannot find religious justification for what you want to do you have to fall back on those people are infidels/heretics, which usually justifies anything you want to do to them.)
For most such mass actions religion is just a tool.
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I do agree that the Puritans were crazy– and a lot of the American Christianity (I am going to make someone else mad–) I can see) comes from there–
I can also point to priests in Panama today who are treated like kings in their neighborhoods while the rest are poor poor poor– It doesn’t look good to outside parties. I think that the new Pope is remarkable because he was willing to live with the people– But I can also tell you stories of other faiths and denominations too, which I have seen on my travels—
I have a good view of spirituality… I don’t have a good view of religions and the people who work in them– (not all are negative… but like politics it is so easy to use them for the benefit of the ones in charge).
Plus you don’t have to tell me about how crazy it can get– I have read the stories from my great grandparents and others who were starting a new church. (Not that they weren’t a little nutty too imho).
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Um… South America is its own type of craziness, Cyn. They are some of the most unashamed racist societies in the world, and sometimes outsiders can’t see the difference at all. You can’t judge the Catholic church (which at any rate has issues of its own, since it’s been dancing with liberation theology — and has had them whenever it went off with temporal power, since the middle ages. See crusades, inquisition and other fun stuff) by what happens in South America. I doubt it is a “directive from Rome” because in Portugal priests receive no money from what they do and most of them have a day job. Also in South America — if I may say so — just from reading their untranslated literature, it’s very easy for Americans to mis-step and mis-understand. Do the priests “live like kings” because they think they’re better than the people, or because they come “from good families” and have the family money to spend? At the same time, do they “live like kings” because they want to or because it’s expected of them?
Portugal is not South America and is FAR more European in that (with a touch of the British, even, since those had close contact with Portugal) and my mom’s main complaint about me was always that I didn’t act/dress according to my class. I can see her point, even (though acting like that would drive me nuts) because it opened me up for stuff no one would say/do if they perceived my “birth station” correctly. I know this sounds like sacrilege to Americans (and to me, to an extent) but most societies come form Rome behave that way.
Also while on that, it is important for Americans not to be played by what is left of USSR propaganda. The whole anti-Catholicism thing and talking about priests/church officials as privileged is very much a part of that since the French Revolution (and anti-semitism just behind, so I feel no sympathy with that particular set of lies.) I worry about the new pope because South America, was the devil’s playground of communist proselytizing and a stronghold and liberation theology. There is a type of lording it over people that comes from pretending to be one of the people or “fighting for their rights.” It never ends well. See Robespierre.
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Well– I was also in Texas around the Bible belt and a pastor came in to eat breakfast. Of course the people who knew him fawned over him (I know that is human response to some person higher in station that they admire–) But, the owners of the restaurant gave the man and his party a free meal. That wouldn’t have been remarkable, but the owner looked around the restaurant and then told the pastor LOUDLY that he wasn’t going to pay for the meal. I found that offensive… Pay your way–
As for Robespierre (referring to the French Revolution) You are right. But the other group isn’t right either. I may have misunderstood– but I did live in Panama for over six years and saw the strangest things… When you talk about Portugal and some of the things that happen there– I saw it in Panama as well. It drives me crazy when that kind of influence starts to show up here in the US. For instance I would watch the Panama legislature– many times they would cry to the President as Father and beg him to help them. They believed that they were owned by the State. What a shock to see it happening here — coming from our OWS and propagandized youth.
In Panama– the priests would lead mobs and also would fight against perceived corruption. But in those situations, there would be a priest-led mob on both sides of the question. It was there I learned why we have the Constitution with so many checks and balances (with the State required to keep their hands out of religion). Power is power is power. Plus religious power can equate to temporal power as soon as someone figures it out… and then uses it. South and Central America is still the devil’s playground imho. My brother is married to a Guatemalan girl (they keep their heads down). I have a friend who was born in Mexico City and would not go back (she has some really interesting things to say about Mexico’s politics). I was in Panama during the turn-over of the Canal.
I didn’t want to go here… because religioun and politics are such heart-held beliefs in people. It is like stirring a beehive. Plus when people hand over their welfare (spiritual, physical, or mental) to other people — things happen– usually not for the benefit of the individual person. Once again I used the Catholic example (although I do have friends who profess the Catholic faith) because it is has the longest history. I am not even interested in this subject except in the sense that I don’t like how the churches are going in this country. Maybe I am an idealist.
When I compare the churches of now to the churches of the past, I see good changes– still I said before we are all imperfect vessels and the changes have happened despite our imperfections.
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Going off of the guy that they shipped into my aunt’s parish– note: since he went to a small, rural parish, there was some sort of thing wrong with him so possibly not very representative– there’s also a lot of “if you’re Catholic, you’ll just give me whatever goods and services I ask for.”
She runs a photography shop, and he tried to use “but you’re Catholic” as a way to get out of a rather expensive package deal she did for the Church. (I did not care for him because I spent a half-hour trying to explain to him that we already had done the pre-baptism class for my girls, and no I couldn’t just come visit a couple of times before setting up the baptism, so he may have not been very bright on top of that– or just had really horrible grasp of English in that area.)
Didn’t stick around very long, thankfully.
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K, some links:
http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfmr?recnum=4005
Plus there’s the “elves have no souls” thing when the Suma Theo. goes directly against that claim for legolas type elves
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Nit, Spain didn’t have many witchcraft trials. The Spanish Inquisition focused more on heresy, hidden Jews and hidden Muslims. There are plenty of records that indicate that the leadership of the Spanish Inquisition believed that witchcraft was just superstition. Apparently one of the leaders commented that “stories of people being hexed” appear mainly after somebody enters an area *looking* for witches.
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Not surprised…
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Actually, the two worst countries for the witch mania were France and especially the Germanies…. and a huge chunk of the reason was that unlike the Anglosphere they allowed the witch-finders to confiscate the properties of the accused, with predictable results.
Reading through the histories you run across numerous accounts of the witch-finders having such things as better quality horses than the local nobility, and that once all the propertied inhabitants had been persecuted, they went somewhere else.
Any resemblance to our current scheme of asset forfeiture in the War on Drugs is purely intentional…..
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Oh yes.
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LOL
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I don’t think — at least in my knowledge — dousing was ever considered diabolical. Healing hands… can be more iffy, the same way that whether it exists or not is more iffy.
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I’m actually ambigious on dowsing myself, but my dad says that he knew a family that did it when he was a kid, and his mom– who wouldn’t allow fairy tales in the house, because she got massively freaked out by too accurate tealeaf reading in herself— let him hang around them.
He’s pretty solid in the whole scientific method thing, and says they did stuff he can’t explain.
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Healing hands are hard to prove– but my grandfather had it. It enveloped you and made you feel you were special.
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The Catholic’s church (at least from something I read in a book about the war between the church and the state, which in Portugal was in the time of the first republic, so early 20th century) seem to take the view that it matters in whose name you do it. I.e. if you’re well with the church, and you do it in the name of the church, they let you do it. If you’re invokind weird entities, they will throw tizzies.
However, part of the reason there were fewer witch trials etc in Catholic countries (Germany possibly excepted. They were a little nuts) is that the Catholic church made it a policy of winking one eye at strange/folk/older practices. (I say “older” last because there is no proof of an unbroken pagan tradition anywhere. The very fact it was oral means it probably was mostly lost/distorted.) Having come in often at a king’s invite, they treated everyone as converted and sort of winked at stuff still going on, or changed it’s name. Summer Solstice became St. John’s, etc. The same applied to village healing women (I have reason to know this) and even fortune tellers and others. The church pretended it wasn’t happening, or gave it a white-wash of some sort. Fortune telling was ALWAYS frowned upon but the other stuff could be very grey-area. And the local priest had a way of pretending he didn’t know some families made their entire income from fortune telling. I really can’t explain the difference between an old society “in principle and by rules” and an old society in action. The easiest thing to say would be: we American live by our rules, to a great extent, or know when they’re broken. But we were FOUNDED on rules. Other parts of the world integrate so many different peoples and unspoken rules, that if they tried to adhere strictly to anything (even religion) the society would fall apart.
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Ah– I can see that. Probably why some of Panamanian ways totally offended me. Since I am born in Canada and bred in America.
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So, we’ve got two examples of what could loosely be called “magic”– three, if you include my grandma’s freaky-accurate tea readings with dowsing and healing hands– that “nobody” believes in, unless they’re actually part of the sub-group directly touched by it.
Makes the “if magic were real, folks would believe in it” argument look a lot weaker.
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No, it just means we need to define the term “real”. Real for lots of people would mean a controlled experiment, which nothing described here is.
Show them someone who can be hauled into the presence of someone with a known specific illness and then heals them with the cameras rolling, and that would change.
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So it can be real, and if it can’t be done on demand in an artificially controlled environment, it isn’t real enough to trigger the “magic is real” setup; in the case of dowsing, people have and still do get results that are tested against scientific ones, to the support of the dowser. It’s still not “enough,” and gets “disproven” by any single example of someone claiming they can when they can’t; the usual reason that I hear folks say it’s hooey is because there’s not a good theory on HOW it works. It just does.
So, you could write an entire urban fantasy series where all the main characters do magic, but it’s not “real” enough… that would be FUN to help design!
No wonder Tolkien spent so much time making worlds.
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Plus there is the group who think that every one is psychic, or can be a dowser, or do some type of magic, etc. etc. when it is like any other talent in that it runs in families usually. So no wonder there are so many folks who say they can, but actually can’t. It muddies the waters.
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Was turning over in my head in the shower, and realized: all the stuff that’s easy to prove like that has already been done, and moved over to the “science” category; like Mary (and SuburbanBanshee’s?) example of the “magic” of willow bark tea.
Oooh, and that just triggered another thought: willow bark tea is a really bad idea practically speaking, compared to aspirin, because it’s so hard to get consistent results. Because the how was identified, we figured out a way to apply it and get scientific type results…..
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Yes– while aspirin did have consistent results so it was put into production first.
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This is at the crux of my objections to “medical marijuana.” While not disputing the efficacy of the active ingredient’s analgesic abilities, the delivery system imposes so many negative secondary effects and makes dosage control so unreliable as to induce doubt regarding the legitimacy of the claimed derived benefit.
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There seem to be two problems with establishing any such ability as real. The first is the matter of reliability/replicability. Most “magic” is neither reliable at levels beyond happenstance nor replicable in controlled environment. We need not go into the factors affecting these defects beyond noting their existence.
The second problem is we lack an underlying theoretical construct for magic. The human mind accepts more readily that which comports with our intellectual construct of reality. In the West that means scientific explanations about how things achieve their ends. Because we lack an explanation for how magic works (at which point it ceases to be magic) we are slow to give credence to magic.
This second factor is most obvious in reverse: pseudo-scientific adornment makes all sorts of crap digestible. Witness the use of people in white lab coats in TV adverts, extolling the virtues of the sponsor’s product. Or note how computer models and Power Point presentations can make the most absurd scientific theories seem plausible.
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To make it more confusing, that very scientific mindset is why we’re poking at it and going “how does this work?
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Well, what if it required the practitioner to use a mindset or a way of learning that didn’t use traditional Western ideas of experiment, hypothesis, etc? And moreover, what if there was some kind of weird quantum effect that was brought about by the perceptions and pre-judgments of the observers?
IIRC, Christ himself did no miracles in Nazareth because of their perception of Him (Matthew 13:54-58).
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I don’t like the “you have to believe to see it” thing, not sure why… but the quote about Jesus getting hassled because familiarity leads to contempt triggered an idea: perhaps some of it is like other skills where if you’re feeling self conscious or thinking about what you’re doing, you screw up?
There was some bigtime golfer who tried to figure out how he did it, and managed to screw up his game entirely.
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Ah! (Because I can’t seem to get my head out of the theology space… or the pop-science space…) So it’s like the Heisenberg principle on steroids – an attempt to measure the outcome influences the outcome, and in this case does so in such a way as to destroy the desired outcome?
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Oooh, that works… plus you can have things like having to fully focus all your thoughts on what you’re doing, so even considering “how” makes it not work.
And have your magicians stealing Pratchett’s “it’s quantum” quip.
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Reaction time offers a parallel/metaphor for the process: a trained person can react to stimulus (thrown punch, fired bullet) in less time than the nervous system requires to transmit its signals. As Crash Davis advised: Don’t think, Meat — you’ll only hurt the team.
Assume that we the spirit exists in a higher level of reality — fifth dimension, eight, whatever — and is constrained to operate the four (three and a half) dimensional meat puppet. Magic is merely operating outside the constraints of normal meat-space but, like the golfer’s swing or writing a story, is best done unself-consciously. It is just one of many things we do better when we don’t think about it (e.g., I can tie a perfect Windsor knot except when I think about how to do it.)
Because we are operating at a higher level of Dimensional reality than the meat-space, magic requires a Zen-quality which defeats scientific inquiry. Any veteran cook has had the experience of trying to turn a dish into a recipe and having it turn out the worst ever.
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So magic as you are describing it becomes a method whereby the soul directly interacts with the universe as opposed to interaction through the body.
I am totally taking this and running with it.
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I suspect that there is a price as well–
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Probably, else why would the soul bother driving the meat?
Perhaps the body is an interim, developmental stage, akin to the cocoon? Sure, and it seems a long time but what is three-score and ten when divided by Eternity? Eine Augenblick, nichts mehr.
Just as we spend developmental time in utero until the body is strong enough to sustain itself in 3D space, so it takes years to get the soul running well enough to become a self-perpetuating reaction in higher space?
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an interesting thought–
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Tapping into the higher order energy fields prematurely can be damaging? In somewhat the same way as children can be developmentally impaired from sampling aspirin or alcohol before their systems are up to it … which is why Our Heavenly Father puts the dangerous toys out of our reach and warns us off playing with magic, fortune-telling and the like. Just as adult novels (truly adult, not simply smarmy) are not good reading for the average youth.
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So how does this account for family lines? or people who tap into this energy naturally?
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Perhaps, even those people aren’t getting the “full flow”. Image of a drinking fountain compared to Niagara Falls.
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Um, yeah. That’s the concept I was groping for … umm, feeling up er … fondling … ah, trying to express.
Or words to that effect.
Sorry – the Subscribers’ Space discussion of evacuation has me desperately suppressing poo jokes and my language processor is getting blocked.
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So, my timing in not subscribing yet is impeccable? (while it is also an egregious oversight?) > >
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Perhaps Heinlein was right and the universe is not logical but whimsical?
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I like that. I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
(Waits…)
Get it? Look at…? Perception…? Heisenberg…?
(…crickets)
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What’s that? Your comment seems to have faded out as I tried to focus on it… :-)
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IF you write, do not try to figure out HOW you do it. No, seriously.
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I absolutely love how heated and wonky you guys get when discussing “this system would work that way” And no, I’m not joking. It’s fascinating.
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It’s fun!
Part of why I love this place is that it’s the closest thing I’ve found to my geek group on the ship.
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Funny thing– psychology has become legitimized w/o being able to completely cure people… ;-)
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Don’t forget the dreamers — another subgroup that is hard to prove– (prophetic dreams)
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Lifts hand. And a right pain in the knob they are, partly because I can’t STOP them.
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If we’re going to reach, we could include kind of silly things like how my dad is able to deal with flatly insane animals like they’re normal. Some of it is just applying sense, but he can tame barn cats just by feeding them once a week. (I fed them daily when I was living at home, and hardly ever saw the dang things unless he was with me.)
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That is an animal talent– my hubby has that one. I don’t understand, but my default I gain the benefits. YEA… even scary dogs.
Also add the GREEN THUMB– I can’t get any plant to grow btw.
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Ah, you have brown thumb. I do too.
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I call it the black thumb lol– the hubby has a green thumb. *sigh
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It’s been a while since this happened, but for a while, people kept giving me houseplants even though I kept telling them, “Please don’t give me a plant. I’ll just kill it.”
Then they’d say, “Oh, you can’t kill this one, it’s so easy to care for.”
Oh, yeah?
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 10:06 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > accordingtohoyt commented: “Ah, you have brown thumb. I do too.” >
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We had a Wandering Jew that survived me for 15 years (possibly because kin is kin) but moving to this house and going in a room I no longer use every week (In Manitou our writers’ group met in our dining room EVERY week) meant I forgot to water it for a month… It didn’t survive that.
When we move, I’ll buy a new one, I guess.
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So far as animals are concerned, keep in mind that to a dog’s nose we are an olfactory Las Vegas, all flashing, glaring lights and loud signals.
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I do understand that RES because it was explained to me by a biology psychologist (yes, there are some) that the brain we use for our speech centers is the same part of the brain the dog uses for smelling ergo it is how they discover their world. So being calm even when the dog is upset or angry is a really good idea. ;-) I end up in a trance state– actually.
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We’re sisters? My dad can get things like wild birds and hedgehogs to come to his extended hand and act like tame animals. Younger son has a touch of it, though not living near a forest hasn’t got the full idea what he can do. I thought it was normal for people to call bunnies out for their little daughter to see…
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Plus in our world we need Energy to make something Work (physics). So if a person could use their own energy (or earth’s energy), that person would become tired pretty quickly. There is only so much energy… and if using magnetic force (or another type of energy) it takes energy to use it as well…. In the long run it would be easier to just do it manually and keep the rituals and procedures for special occasions.
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Someone said here just recently that magic is just technology we don’t understand yet. So yes– it does.
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OK, here someone has veered straight into the Marxist “equality of outcome” swamp. I have no more “suffered harm” by someone having “magic powers” than I suffer harm because someone is smarter than I am or has the ability to run faster, or…. If he uses those powers to burn me to a cinder or take over my mind or simply to lie to me more effectively, then you might have a case, but it’s no different than any other use of “force or fraud” against me. Magic, like a gun, is simply a tool; how the individual uses that tool is what matters.
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Marxist equality of outcome? Bub, them’s fightin’ words. Though I’m willing to assume at this point that I just didn’t explain myself clearly enough.
OF COURSE other people are going to be faster, smarter, stronger, better looking, more talented, taller, less bald and have better breath. They will be better shots, better gardeners, better smooth talkers, better dancers, have better connections, have more money, less body fat, etc., etc., etc. Hell, some people are just luckier. That’s reality. And if I didn’t make clear that I totally a) understand that and b) am okay with it even when it disadvantages me (and it does that pretty often), then that’s my bad. I guess that one’s on me.
Someone uses a ritual and their business gets picked for a contract instead of mine? That’s harm. And if the magic user wasn’t going to be caught? COULDN’T be caught using mundane methods? Then human nature says a lot of magic users will take advantage of their powers in that situation. Magic user mutters a cantrip and I suddenly slip and fall? That’s harm. That’s the kind of harm I’m talking about. Direct action, with magic, against someone who can’t defend against it, and will never know what happened. It doesn’t have to be the decisive “I will take over the brain of that person and direct their will,” but a glamour so they look just a little better than normal as we’re both walking up to the same girl to ask her to dance? That’s what I’m talking about.
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“Someone uses a ritual builds a better server”; no harm, no foul.
“Someone uses a ritual to control the procurement officer’s mind“: see “force or fraud.
Again, it isn’t the existence of the ritual that causes the problem. It’s how someone uses it.
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I’d hate to see the service contract on a magical server.
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What Zachary says is more or less what I was trying to articulate.
There is the additional issue that people are really bad at keeping secrets. If this has been kept secret as a long term matter, how was this done? If mind control, or body control, there are issues of liberty. If by something like a gang initiation, where one has to do something like kill somebody to join, there are other issues. If a secret police, what happened to the secret police, or is it still active?
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In Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels, it is stated that most people don’t want to acknowledge supernatural happenings. If they witness magic happening or see supernatural beings, they try to explain it away in their own minds.
So while human magic users prefer to keep a low profile, it appears that if they wanted to go public, they’d have a hard time convincing the general public that magic is real and supernatural beings are real.
Of course, some of the supernatural beings prefer that humans don’t believe in them because humans would *rightly* want to destroy them.
By the way, this massive “it isn’t real” mindset is one of the things I don’t really buy about the Dresden universe.
I suspect that this massive mindset is the result of a Great Spell created centuries ago that is still active.
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Take for instance the witch trials — (I think it started in Spain mostly– and their were isolated spots in other countries)
On the contrary. Spain had immensely low rates of witch trials, because the Spanish Inqusition quenched them with immense vigor by demanding they adhere to the same standards of evidence as any other trial. The one time that the populace succeeded in suborning some Inquisition support, the friars responsible were punished.
Witch trials are found all over the world. The largest ones on record were in the Roman Republic. The Church was instrumental in laws against witch crazes, and they revived again when trials passed from religious to secular authorities.
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They are still very popular in Africa… It’s a human thing.
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Yes– and scary–when you think about it
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Yeah, the “evil Witch” is IMO the result of people wanting to *blame* somebody when things go wrong. The “evil Witch” wasn’t a “pagan” but was somebody who caused “bad things to happen” just to be “evil”. In Africa, there was seen a difference between a witch and an evil sorcerer. The evil sorcerer made bad thing happen to you so that he could steal your cattle/land/daughter/etc. The witch made bad things happen just because he was evil.
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Yea– when I was in South Africa in the early 80s, there was a lot of newsreports about witches convincing certain groups to cannibalize members of their groups. Since it was illegal, many of these people would disappear into the police system. I don’t know if it was an accusation or the real thing. Just that some people who had more would get accused more often.
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Plus in our world we need Energy to make something Work (physics). So if a person could use their own energy (or earth’s energy), that person would become tired pretty quickly.
There’s always plenty of Energy. Just not very usable.
For us.
Notice how ghost stories are filled with accounts of things getting cold. There’s one source of energy not currently available to us.
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Hmmm… this is where I need to do a little research on “dark energy”.
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There is that too– the current theory is that the ghost or projection uses heat as a source. Many ghost hunters look for cold spots… I wonder if certain people connect to that energy imperfectly…
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I’ve never understood the people that don’t believe in dowsing, since it so obviously works, and has been proven to do so countless times. It is kind of like people that believe the earth is flat, even in the 14th century all sailors and anyone who had traveled knew the earth was round, it was only people that lived in one place their whole lives and never went anywhere that thought the earth was flat.
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Exactly–
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So far as I am defending any side by bringing up that example, I am defending both or more sides.
I see these sorts of conflicts as being endemic in human societies, and sometimes as bloody as they are in a civil war with a lot of nutjob factions.
Taliban killing kids for accepting food, mafia killing a witness before a trial, and a vigilante being arrested and facing legal consequences are examples of the same thing, even if some of them are right, some are wrong, some legal, some illegal.
There are things that legal systems cannot really work with, but we as readers may be able to see in books. What I am talking about in regards to books here has very little to do with what a legal system can be expected to deal with.
I consider myself a fanatic adherent of the American way of government, to include Fourth amendment, and limits on what government has a right to compel from people.
If I understand what you are getting at, I agree that a government that steps beyond Caesar’s role, to seek God’s due, no longer is owed Caesar’s due.
Here, I am not seeking to defend the current administration in any of the matters that have recently been in the news.
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Or, there is a difference between a thing being legal, and it being moral.
We can change the law in such a way as to make any number of things legal, but a change in the laws of men can never make something moral which wasn’t moral in the first place.
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It is one of the ailments of our times that we have apparently lost the distinction between acknowledging the … efficiency of a particular regime (Taliban, Mafia, Nazis, Soviets, Maoists) and endorsing that regime.
Similarly, to warn of a probable consequence of an action (If you persist in playing in the street/doing intravenous drugs/having unprotected drunken sex with multiple anonymous people and animals, then bad things are likely to happen to you) is too often conflated with desiring those bad consequences.
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I thought that I had made those distinctions, but I’ve missed enough sleep that I’m far from being entirely certain what I’ve written, even after rereading it.
I consider enemies the Mafia, the Taliban, and various historical groups of Democrats who were at least accessories to murder. Among other things, I dislike their methods and prefer that those things not happen.
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Drawing the distinction did not help your case because you were taking the position that refraining from doing so qualifies as “collusion.” If what the magical do is collusion, then that the mundane do is tyranny.
To posit that what the magical do falls under moral rules but what the mundane do is realpolitick and immune to criticism is odious.
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Zachary Ricks | June 13, 2013 at 4:37 pm |
It goes the other way as well, of course. Just because something is immoral doesn’t mean it should be made illegal. Just because something is immoral doesn’t mean that the force of the State should be applied to police, prohibit and punish it.
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That is not one of the distinctions I was trying to make.
Say the law sends a man before a jury for beating a rapist to death. By doing so instead of letting him off, they are trying to encourage other people to consider using the legal system for such things.
That is an example of what I am talking about. I used other examples of varying degrees of morality, legality, and legitimacy. The distinctions I was trying to make were that I was not uniformly endorsing or condemning the examples, or making statements about legality or morality.
For this distinction you find in my writing, I intended no distinction. Both sides would be doing the exact same general class of thing.
The examples I cited are like ‘a guy shoving’. Note that shoving need not involve force, violence, or killing.
Magical government versus mundane government is like ‘two guys shoving’.
Real world examples. Nazis versus commies on the eastern front are like ‘two guys shoving’. Republicans versus Democrats are like ‘two guys shoving’. Justin Beiber competing against Britney Spears are like ‘two guys shoving’.
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Okay. I was with you on the Commies, the Nazis, the Dems and the ‘Pubs.
And then you pulled the Beiber card.
You monster. > >
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yep.
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Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, we are all figments of Kate’s imagination. I thought you knew that. Or maybe Ellie is the only real one of all of us.
And, yes, you can write Paranormal, probably easier than I could, if you’d just let yourself. You only think I can write it since I already write urban fantasy.
But I’m sticking with my belief that we are all figments of Kate’s imagination. Yeah, that’s it. It’s all Kate’s fault. ;-p
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Amanda..stop trying to bully her into it. besides part of my problem with the scifi/fantasy section of the stores nowadays is that the shelves are littered with the stuff. Romance stories are given the patina of sci fi or fantasy so they can shelve it in tha scifi/fantasy. section .and that annoys the ever loving shit out of me.
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Oh, that bothers me as well. If there is a genre for it, it should have its own area in the store. Or, at the least, have a PNR/Urban Fantasy section. But then, I prefer my science fiction separate from the fantasy.
As for bullying her into it, only from a business standpoint because I have seen what Ellie’s making and have talked to others who write it as well. For whatever reason, paranormal romance makes good money.
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I suspect a lot of the reason is because it is light fast reading. Rather than stopping to study on an intrigueing point (or studying on it after they finish the book, instead of picking up another one) the readers just fly through to the end. Then they get rid of the book and pick up a new one, instead of saving it to reread in a while, since romance books are seldom reread, that means that more new romances are sold, since most readers have a limited amount of time to spend reading, the more time they spend rereading old favorites, the less time they have to read (and buy) new books.
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ALL money — honestly earned — is good money. Some of it is easier to earn. some genres return money on effort invested at a higher rate than others do.
Genre … eh. Eventually every author and series will be a genre all its own. What they will not ever do is divide books into the only two genres I care about: “stuff worth reading” and “other stuff.”
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I divide books/stories into one of two groups. Stuff that *I* like to read and stuff that *I* don’t like to read. I also keep in mind, that others may not like the same books/stories that I like and that’s OK. [Smile]
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That’s because SF fans won’t read outside the genre. Romance readers on average read about one-third outside the genre. That section sells more, therefore.
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I am a figment of my own imagination.
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Gah — title evading me. Borges’ story about…. Oh, yeah The Circular Ruins. ;)
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Sarah, think nothing of it. My writing style has been compared variously to that of H.P. Lovecraft, Margaret Mitchell (!) and Vladimir Nabokov. Most often, though, I’m compared to Cory Doctorow and David Foster Wallace. I had never heard of the latter writer until this was pointed out to me, so I read a little of him and yeah, there is a slight stylistic similarity, but he’s more modern than I am. I cannot see ANY similarity between me and Doctorow, so I don’t know where that comes from.
At least I haven’t been compared to Jay McInerny or Cormac McCarthy. I’d kill myself if that happened
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Now, now, now. I still remember the feminist tract where a woman described how another woman got a complimentary fan letter from a teen saying that Heinlein couldn’t have done it better. Resulting in this woman seething that Heinlein couldn’t have done it at all and she was joining every conceivable feminist group — with the tract writer citing this all in a complimentary fashion.
You don’t want to get too wound up about inept compliments.
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Mary, I don’t care about the comparisons, actually. (See the title of this post.)
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Love your new gravatar, Kim. You can practically hear the “… get off my lawn!” from here.
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One of the best compliments I’ve received on Sharper Security was that it reminded someone of early Heinlein…. from a Heinlein fan, of course. I’m sure if the wrong person said that they’d mean it as an insult instead.
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I know — whenever someone says that, I kind of melt.
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I’ll take Jay McInerny over Bret Easton Ellis any day.
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Nah, they both suck. Every single one of the post-modernist “literary” writers suck; no exceptions. Overblown, dense imagery, literary cop-outs (eg. magic*), two-dimensional characters, simplistic observation masquearading as deep thought, and last but not least: dislike/disdain for the reader. Take a bow, Proulx, MacCarthy, MacInerney, DeLillo, [50 other names deleted for reasons of space]. You all suck and you’re a disgrace to writers everywhere.
*Note that I’m not denigrating magic in the fantasy genre; I’m calling bullshit on magic in literary writing. In SF, it’s the equivalent of writing a story in which none of Newton’s Laws exist, ie. a total cop-out.
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I’m naming Margaret Atwood as sucking big hairy goat balls. It’s a public service announcement. Someone needs to do it, and I’m it.
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Gah. Atwood is so awful, you will see her picture under “Ghastly Writers” in the dictionary.
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Don’t forget Barbara Kingsolver, Chinua Achebe and Alice Walker. I’ve known fanfic writers who were better than Alice Walker.
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Maya. Angelou.
Ack.
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I had to read Chinua Achebe, and a brace of other African authors, in college (I misinterpreted the meaning of “Commonwealth Literature” for the class name). The one vivid memory I have of that class is when I asked the teacher whether the following line was an intentional pun, or unintentional:
“Uncircumcised women were the subject of cutting remarks”
and the dumbass went on a *35-minute* monologue about “the meanings of words” or some bullshit (the only reason she didn’t go longer was because class ended — I stopped listening about 30 seconds in).
Since then, I have avoided African authors like the plague — yet another in a long series of Unpleasant Memories. :P
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Hey, if you want some awesome African authors to get that bad taste out of your mouth, there’s Dave Freer, Kim Du Toit, and Peter Grant (blatant plug for my husband)! :-P
There’s also anything by Peter Capstick, and Lyall Watson’s Lightning Bird, and . My darling also recommends Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, as “cleaned up” versions of the creation myth and legends of the Zulus (the publication of which got the gentleman in question excommunicated from the sangomas, because he was printing their sacred myths.) For war memoirs, I’ll recommend Nick Lithgow’s LZ Hot.
Don’t let the bastards in public education put you off an entire continent just because they think they’re the gatekeepers of all that can be published and said!
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I wuvs you all. Seriously. You are like a sanity check and a cold beer.
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I’m pretty sure I failed my SAN roll several years ago, but the notion of a cold beer is downright enticing. I think I have a nice stout relaxing on the fridge. . .
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Folks, Sarah hast recht. I have seen goat scrota. They are huge, and smell like the rest of the goat. I can totally believe Margaret Atwood might do that.
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I have a soft spot for McInerny. I met him once not long after Bright Lights, Big City hit, back in the mid-80s. He struck me then as decent guy who had absolutely no idea how to deal with all the fame and praise that had come to him out of nowhere at such a young age. And extremely generous with his time that night to a lot of budding, even younger writers (including myself) when he didn’t have to be. I’ve always wondered what kind of a writer he would be now if he’d had more time to just develop as Jay McInerny instead of suddenly finding himself Jay!McInerny!Publishing!Phenom! I’d like to have read those books.
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Is there something wrong with me that not only have I not read any of the authors’ listed titles I have no clue who they are.
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No, absolutely nothing wrong with you, you just have good taste. I know this because I have good taste, and I have never heard of any of them either. Well I have heard of Atwood, but only in the context above, ie how horrible she is, I have no idea what she writes, although I assume it is some type of fiction.
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you haven’t been compared to Derleth yet?
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Who he?
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You’ve never heard of that august person?
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Ended up with the rights to H. P. Lovecraft’s work. Wrote stuff based on Lovecraft notes and called them collaborations. Too many people think of this stuff when they think of Lovecraft. The main reason Harlan Ellison has at least one friend sworn to burn all his unfinished work the second they confirm he’s dead.
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Derleth was a pretty good poet and publisher. Other than that, he was a fanfic writer with the keys to the canon, and that’s what made the problem.
OTOH, Lovecraft did let all his little friends play in his canon anyway, so it’s nothing that couldn’t have happened with HPL alive.
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Chuckle Chuckle
Sarah, maybe I don’t appreciate your “greatness” but I could not see how you could “play” Amanda, Ellie, Kate or Dave and it not be completely obvious that you’re the same person.
Especially when you have “conversations” with yourself.
Maybe you could have several blogs using different names for each blog, but using several names on the same site, no way. [Smile]
I once created a second persona on the Bar but I don’t think I fooled anybody. [Wink]
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“Especially when you have “conversations” with yourself.”
But that’s what writers DO!
Literary disssociative identity disorder
Only on us it works – fairly well. Usually. At times.
And any other weasel-words I can add to it.
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Sarah is a figment of my active hallucinary life. I know cause I’m on prednisone. ;-)
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Yeah, and my wife’s rheumatologist* confirmed you’re up in the range where hallucinations are a real possibility. ;-)
Dang spell-check never heard of a rheumatologist. Stupid Firefox.
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Well – I was– I am now weaning and am finally (after ten years) at one miligram.. but I can still blame hallucinations. :-)
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Oh, sorry, I missed that that was old history you were talking about.
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LOL– thankfully it was ten years ago when I was trying to get this disease under control. It doesn’t mean that I won’t have to do it again. I am being as careful as I can. The more times I flare– the more years are cut from my life.
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Huh. I always figured Amanda was Ellie and you were E.L.James.
And as for Dave Freer, darling, take a look at his “history!” Totally unbelievable. I figure he’s an actor hired to stand in for an uplifted dog who escaped from the lab.
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Who IS E. L. James?
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And I wish I was Ellie. She makes more than I do. ;-)
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Oh, tell me about it. If she signs over her checks (we’re talking thousands, people) I’ll say I’m Ellie.
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Sorry, Sarah, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to frame that next royalty report and then go shopping. Maybe shoe shopping. I saw a wonderful pair just the other day I’d love to have but haven’t been able to afford. The next check will let me buy them and a few other things that I really want to add to my closet.
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Hey, I need some shoes too! (Sigh.)
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You can adopt us all– :-) I am sure Sarah would like shoes. (I would love books– )
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Silly Portagee, if you’d just admit to secretly being J.K. Rowling you could buy up all the traditional publishing houses out of petty cash and set the industry to rights with a wave of the magic checkbook.
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If she’s secretly JK Rowling then I’m going to send her low-carb chocolate cheesecake until she invites me to her castle ;-)
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Wow, I guess I’m really behind times. I only have one .alt.me.
But he has a Yahoo email account and numerous facebook friends!
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It’s funny getting friend requests on Facebook when you don’t exist.
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Hell, my protagonist gets spam.
Email.
M
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Yes I agree with Pam, Dave Freer doesn’t exist. He’s a former personality of Eric Flint that escaped and has been hijacked by the rest of you Mad Geniuses.
Actually I think all of you women are figments of the imagination of a nice lady called Madge Nius. She’s married to a Scandinavian gentleman called Evilge, they have 1.4 children and 3.14 cats and live just outside Omaha Nebraska
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Huh. You’re obviously different, Amanda’s voice is lower. And a little growly, pleasantly.
I suppose I’m going to have to talk to her on the phone sometime to confirm this.
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She has a Texas accent!
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yup, Amanda’s pretty good about not bouncing my head off the wall too, since I only seem to call her in regards to you, basset or when something goes wrong in my own life, like mom’s recent trip the the hospital about 2months ago now.
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And you have a Portuguese accent — as if accents weren’t the false mustache and eyeglasses of vocal disguise!
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ROFL.
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I’m not sure what would be funnier. Sarah trying to imitate Amanda’s voice, or Amanda trying to speak with Sarah’s accent instead of–not in addition to– the Texas flavor.
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** raises hand ** OOoooooo, I know the answer. Pick me. Pick me.
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I’m for Kat trying to speak a combination OZ, Portagee, and Texan. /runs
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Oh. My. Then we could try to get Dave Freer in on it . . .
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He could add some Afrikaans ;-)
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It’s been so long since I met him 2000? 2002? When was that ChiCon? I don’t actually remember what he sounded like. I think we frightened him. _Big_ mob of Barflies made it there.
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IF you’d been at Luna con, you could have been in on both the endless Portuguese Restaurant dinner (honestly, they were trying to get us to leave and not knowing how to do it. It was very fun for Dan and I. Like getting to take everyone to Portugal for a family dinner. Bonus, the food was roughly from my region.) AND the breakfast at which our table scared everyone ELSE. The talk of sausage between my husband, OMike and Monkey was particularly… pungent.
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Contemplating the reasoning underlying the titling of the Shifters books as well as Sarah’s venue in the Baen Bar, it has occurred to me that Hoyt’s Huns is slightly off as a sobriquet for the participants hereabouts. Given the traditional honorific employed by waitresses for their customers in diners throughout the nation, a more suitable cognomen might well be “Hoyt’s Hons”, as expressed in the greeting: “What’ll it be, hon?”
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That’s a good point.
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Speaking of accents, if anybody makes an audio book of Stirling’s Draka novels, he needs to hire Kim. From what I can see, the Draka accent is a combination of Boer and Southern. I wonder how much of a Texas accent Kim has picked up since he’s been here.
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Oh yes– Kim would be excellent ;-) Boer accents are very hard to lose (from what I have seen).
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Ever so slightly off-topic (but I have permission from Sarah/Kate/JKR/whatever she’s calling herself today)…
Clarion West, the speculative fiction writing workshop, is holding a Write-a-thon to raise scholarship funds and is seeking writers to take part. (Full disclosure: I volunteer for CW and have guard-dragon duty on their website). I thought it would be cool to encourage all you Human Wave writers to join in and get noticed. All you have to do is sign in to the forums and then fill out a webpage form and state a writing goal, very minimal–but you can also put up a writing sample, list all of your publications, link to your website…free publicity! Signup is at clarionwest.org/writeathon, deadline is June 22.
(hook reaches out from offstage and drags Sabrina off)
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Hm. When I read Kate Paulk’s ConVent and ConSensual, I became sure that Natalia Bosting was actually you. Now I think that should be reversed … do you happen to know an ancient vampire who attends SF cons?
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I ain’t talking. Hicky knows where I live.
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Well, I’m older than Sarah …
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But he rarely attends cons. COUGH.
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Just the ones with toga parties …
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NO! No more bad visuals! :-P
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As it turns out, I’m not Stephen Price Blair. But then, neither are they.
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In ancient times, the philosopher Chuang Tzu dreamed he was a butterfly. Upon awakening he wondered if he was a butterfly dreaming it was Chuang Tzu.
Good question, for the era—but neither the butterfly nor Chuang Tzu had the words to say that they might be parts of a computer simulation.
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People constantly confuse me with my brother, and I have no idea why. I look at pictures of the two of us side-by-side and cannot see any significant similarity. And I’m a person who thinks nearly everyone I see looks like someone else I have seen before!
I HAVE picked up some of my brother’s speech patterns, but that’s recent, and my mother has said we looked like each other since i was old enough to remember.
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I was going to cons for at least six years before I went to one where I wasn’t called Ann six times. (and no one knows how many people took me for her without saying anything.) Indeed, checking in at Arisia program participants, the greeting was, “Hello, is Mary here too?”
And just because we have long brown hair, doesn’t mean we resemble each other that much.
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The REALLY weird thing, is that people who never met my brother call me by his name, quite often (his name is Mark. I guess I look like a Mark).
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oh, my heavens. Do you know how many people who never met Dan’s late brother call Dan by his brother’s name? It’s WEIRD.
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Ha! I used to get confused all the time at cons for another local filker, at least by people not from our neck of the woods. Similar vocal range, similar cut of features, similar coloring. But I’ve gotten heavier and my hair’s gotten shorter, so it doesn’t happen anymore.
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Often a family resemblance is as much a matter of the portfolio of gestures and facial expressions as well as the transitions and the patterns through which they are deployed. It can be as subtle as a tilt of the head when listening or the ways eyes scan a room. These can be cultural – tribal – as well as familial and may derive from shared profession or experience. It is how you know a “cop” or a “soldier” when one walks into the room.
Because few people spend much time observing their physical vocabulary they are not likely to recognize it when it presents in another person. I have had the experience of making a gesture or uttering a phrase and recognizing it as coming from a parent or grandparent.
To quote Chico Marx: “He thinks I look like myself.”
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I see that RES– I have been told that I looked like my great-grandma Jane. Since she had dark hair and much darker skin that I do, I couldn’t see it. She was my favorite grandma btw. ;-) I think it was the attitude and mannerisms…
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In discussing it with the Beloved Spouse three examples came to mind:
In westerns a rider (say, J. Wayne) is recognized from a ways off because “Nobody sits a horse like you do.” I am not myself enough of a rider to know this, but find it credible.
Similarly, I am not dancer enough to show it, but you could identify the dancer from no more than how he extends his hand: Astaire’s gesture is different from Kelly is different from Fosse is different from Robinson’s hand extension. I can’t describe it but I can envision it.
One more: professional baseball players and many fans can identify a player from his batting stance and swing, such that it is common for players to mimic the swing of Babe Ruth, Joe Dimaggio, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron or Ken Griffey Jr.
It is part of actor training, conveying personality through mannerism and body language. One of the best brief demonstrations of this ability is provided by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep:
In this case it is not merely posture and mannerism but also the rapidity of gestures that express the persona. RAH touches briefly on this trick in Double Star.
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I look so much like my grandmother that relatives who hadn’t seen any of us in twenty years — back to when I was in my early teens — were able to pick me out from my mother and sisters on that ground. Of all our photos of her, we’ve found only one that makes us think I look like her.
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Oh, heck, Robert has this habit of whistling between his teeth that is my grandfather’s… whom he never met.
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Maybe the reincarnationists have it half-right: souls get recycled, but only after being dismantled into component parts and reassembled, usually within families, like components of bedroom sets.
Or perhaps there is more going on in the DNA than we suspect, so that mandible shape & musculature, dentition, lingual characteristics and energy levels combine to make some people into tea kettles.
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Wasn’t that — component parts — a belief of one sect of Judaism? (No, Sarah, tell us what WASN’T a belief of ONE sect of Judaism somewhere along the line? I mean, really. Three Jewish guys in an elevator: ten theories of how the world/afterworld/meta-world works. DNA? Possibly.)
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I love the studies of twins raised apart. We so pride ourselves on being able to learn things, and not being reliant on nor controlled by instincts like a mere animal . . . But there’s a surprising amount of behavioral stuff in our genes. It’s a bit spooky.
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I’m saving this thread to study later. This falls right into my built world on a crash orbit. Or however you describe that.
M
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I ain’t nobody but me, and I can’t prove it. Sarah, I believe you’re you, and a few other people I’ve discovered on the Web (names you have written under in the past). The thing is, WHO CARES, as long as we get a chapter of Rogue Magic a week, and books popping up on Amazon now and then… 8^)
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I read a lot of romance but I could never get my mind around writing it until someone explained that it was fantasy. Otherwise I’d keep thinking “but it really doesn’t work like that!” Which isn’t a problem so much when I’m reading but makes writing impossible.
I do like science fiction and fantasy stories with a romantic element where the main characters “get together” with some measure of happily ever after and when it’s not a *romance* that part of it can actually be a bit more realistic. I mean… Draw One in the Dark is a romance that way, right?
I have issues with paranormal romance that involves anything religious like angels or demons… I have a “that’s blasphemous” reaction to it. I don’t like vampires at all. I suspect that I couldn’t make myself write those, even for big bucks. I do like shape changers but I’m finding that I’m pretty picky about how that’s done. I have one author I like a lot but she puts in a whole lot of “if I’m your life-mate I protect you from me” and doesn’t do the dom-sub thing even though the shifters have a hierarchy and battle to be clan leader.
I do have a couple of urban fantasy/ romance stories in the works and was thinking that the audience for that would want more sex than seems to be happening naturally and I’m thinking that I can put a bit more sexual awareness in there but it’s still not going to be a lot. (I recently read a couple thrift store buys from *the* paranormal romance queen and quickly got to the point of “oh, gawd, not again!” when the sex started. (A lot of her relationships strike me as all out abusive, too, so…)
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Long-time reader, first-time poster.
If you invent whole worlds in your head, you’re bound to go a little crazy. But man is it fun.
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Long-time reader, first-time poster.
If you invent whole worlds in your head, you’re bound to go a little crazy. But man, is it fun!
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How to troll a busy writer.
Step 1: ask if they are so-and-so.
Step 2: Sit back and watch as writer proceeds to read everything that person ever wrote to see if there are similarities.
Just a hypothesis of mine I’ve been working on…
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you… you… you…. GAH.
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You can strangle me in three weeks.
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I’ll bring the scotch. And popcorn.
Incidentally, I will be bringing scotch. Good single malt.
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It is all your fault, Sarah. You are the one who kept pestering me until I shared my writing with you. That lead to the first identity crisis of sorts — after all, Dan thought the short story I submitted to him was something you’d written. Then I shared the joy with Ellie. After all, if I’d been dragged into the wonderful world of writing, why shouldn’t she? So, it is all because of you and you deserve it all.
Of course, we are all still figments of Kate’s imagination. (runs, laughing)
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You say it is Sarah’s doing, but I don’t see you offering to share royalties with her. ;-)
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She makes more than I do and Ellie makes more than both of us. THEY should be sharing with me. sniffle
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I don’t worry about “taken ideas” because most stories have been told already. You just need a unique spin.
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Exactly what I told a younger writer of my acquaintance recently: file off the serial numbers and put it in YOUR voice. Everything’s derivative, and so what?
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Oh, it’s not ideas. It’s the “similar writing” — different thing.
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And while the ideas have existed… Say you want to write about a boy in Magician school… fine. But if he goes there by a magical train, faces an adversary who must not be named, has a redheaded friend or any of the above told in a similar enough way, Ms. Rowling’s lawyers will come knocking… and win.
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Add to the list (of what not to do) don’t have messages delivered by Owls. [Wink]
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*jotting down notes*
No… soulless… gingers…
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Ken Akamatsu shows the way with Negima. A Welsh boy from a magician school has to complete his training by teaching English to a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls who are older than him. He is also searching for his father. Several bad guys attack.
Another successful copying of an old idea was the Mega Man series of video games. Originally, the game was going to be about Astro Boy, but the producers couldn’t get the license, so they did their own thing and the rest is history.
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This is called “filing the serial numbers.”
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He does more than that. Read it if you have the time; it’s nothing like Harry Potter.
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Nonsense. After all, Sword of Shanara passed muster. Unless you get even closer than that, you will merely get tagged as horribly derivative.
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An interesting analysis of the matter
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I was going to ask why a work that predates the other would have to “pass muster” against it, then I went to the link. Did you misread above, and think that she was talking about Tolkien?
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No, I observed that Sword is an example of a published worked that hewed to its source material even more closely than the examples she gives.
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Mary, remember that Sarah said that Rowlings would have come after the person who “copied Harry Potter”. Tolkien was dead when Sword of Shanara was published.
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yep
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But his son Christopher wasn’t; he’s the reason Gygax had to call them halflings….
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there are persistent rumors in fandom that Sword had to be cleaned up to get it to the non-infringing derivative level.
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Then there’s Percy Jackson. You know, it would be very interesting to draw up a list of the parallels there. To be sure, it definitely has some virtues that Harry Potter missed.
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Actually, Percy Jackson was being written and developed in 94 (contract with Bantam in 97) while HPatPS was published in 1997.
Sometimes, ideas are just sort of in the water.
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Pratchett believes they rain down from the sky.
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Yeah, that’s why I call them “parallels”.
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Good point, I misunderstood that.
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Would the Shinkasen count as a magical train?
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The idea vs expression dichotomy in Copyright law is a difficult one to explain and understand. Even some courts get the issue messed up.
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I see.
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DO NOT ask me where or when, but I heard that every story worth telling, can be found in the Bible. If you’re going to steal from someone, steal from THE BEST.:-)
I do agree, find _your_ voice, by reading and writing, then become famous. BTW, if anyone is desirous of critiquing it, I have an unpublished YA/Childrens book that needs it. I swear that it’s true, and just the way Charlie told it to me. I’d be dozing off, and she’d tell me another part of it. I hope to get it published, so she’ll say. “Thank you.”
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Sigh. She won’t. She’ll say “write the next one, slave.” TRUST me on this. (Tries to glare INSIDE her head, at Nat and Luce.)
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However, if you want to get your stories done, you must work like a slave.
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I don’t know about that, but I’ve recently hit a rash of books – in different genre – that are all Xenophon. Sometimes not even barely disguised.
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Prince Roger and Blackjack Geary spring immediately to mind. Honestly, I’m always willing to read another one – provided it’s well-written. And the same applies to other stories: Belisarius’ conquest of Rome, any given fairytale, every nasty bit of the Bible. I really don’t care where you mined your ideas from, as long as you tell me a good story.
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The Last Centurion springs to mind even more than Prince Roger, especially when barely disguised is mentioned. Of course it is done in first person and the MC admits that he is trying to retrace Xenophon, with the exception of robbing the locals for olives and such.
Truly I think practically every author who writes for Baen long enough writes an Anabasis ripoff, and most of them I like.
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David Drake said that the reason he did Belisarius so often was that Jim Baen liked Belisarius, and that he thought Belisarius sold. (Which he does.) Same thing is true of Xenophon’s Anabasis.
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ooo — a little variety in our Kipling.
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There are very few situations where something written by Kipling doesn’t apply….
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All you figments of my imagination can stop it already. I’ve got a day job to deal with damn it, and it’s impossible to get anything done while you’re all off yapping away and having fun.
Hmph.
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PFUI. Like you’re special.
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Write faster, and we’ll complain less. *dodges, runs*
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seconded.
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Here’s the thing: writing your work to completion rewards you later, but procrastination rewards you now.
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Nah. Procrastination is an empty thing that leads only to frustration. Eventually, I’ll even choose hard work over the thought of not being a writer. After all: writers write.
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You said it. It’s like I can’t avoid writing. I just don’t feel right being denied an opportunity to do it.
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Well, actually, for writers procrastination can also be time to let the muse work.
The effects of neglecting this can be shown here.
Which is part of what makes the writing life so easy and laughably simple to navigate, because it’s seldom clear what sort of procrastination you are doing while you do it.
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Like we don’t know that… Fortunately I find writing fun.
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Writing is fun, but having written is even better.
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No. Well, not for me, or a lot of other writers. We ride the jag of writing. Having written is … okay.
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So you prefer to savor the journey.
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er… this brings up disturbing shadows of masochism, considering I usually write like I have hell hounds at my heels…
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Oh– some of my relatives… ;-) (I’m sure there is a hellhound of two in my family tree)
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Equating journeys with masochism. Quite original.
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No. Equating runs pursued by hell hounds — and enjoying those — with masochism.
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Yeah, most people would empty their bowels in such a situation.
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Which is quite a good strategy, always empty out before extreme exercise, you can run farther and faster that way.
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That marvelous feeling of completion fades away and there’s another story waiting to be started. Or finished. Or polished. They never seem to come along nice and neatly, one at a time. I usually have three in some stage of being written, and a stack of jotted down ideas that refused to be ignored and forgotten.
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Yes, unholy bargains, YES! I have the piece I am even in process of editing (Sarah, I apologize: I thought that was more readable. I hope the flaws don’t detract) the series of linked shorts I’m 1/3 through, the three ideas I haven’t worked hard enough to bring to a beginning and the two novels which are sitting in hiatus while the characters glare at me from the shadows. And the ideas STILL. KEEP. COMING. /whimper
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Tell me about it. I never feel satisfied with my stories.
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I try to start working on another story on the same day as I finish a revision of one. To keep my hand in.
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I’m busy right now… I’ll procrastinate tomorrow.
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Ha! Pretty good.
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Actually I stopped procrastinating when I almost died of pneumonia at 33. The awful prospect of stories left untold rose up before my eyes like an accusation — I became aware time is brief and so are we.
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Your story sounds a lot like Go Nagai’s. Pretty interesting.
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So stealing that! …with attribution!
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Hah! The day job is but an illusion sent by the evil minions of the anti-muse to keep you from writing. I thought you knew that (runs away even faster than after the above comment)
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Hey, if day jobs were fun, they wouldn’t be called work.
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If one of you damn alter-egos would go and cut firewood, the one of me that is pretending to be writer could get on with it ;-)
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Oy. Mine won’t unload the dishwasher or do laundry!
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You could really benefit from the Shadow Clone Technique. That way you could write, do laundry, and wash dishes at the same time.
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Won’t they argue about who gets to do which?
On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 8:26 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > rawlenyanzi commented: “You could really benefit from the Shadow Clone > Technique. That way you could write, do laundry, and wash dishes at the > same time.” >
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I just figured the real one would act as the leader, while the clones did what they were told before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
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I HAVE tried the Calvin and Hobbs method. Scientific progress did NOT go Boing.
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I don’t think any of us have a Korean kitsune in our belly-buttons to help with that style of clone.
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Dattebayo!
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Yes!
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Fine, fine, I’ll unload the dishwasher. It’ll be dear husband’s, not yours, but somehow I feel pressured into it. He can bribe you with ammo at Libertycon for the service.
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I’ll cut the firewood, but it is going to cost you a lot for delivery. ;)
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I’ll cut the firewood if you’ll write this chapter that has had me tied into knots for two days.
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Oh and to further RES ‘s John Wayne’s you’d know it was me if you saw me riding a horse. So long as you looked really really really fast, because my particular style involves a sudden departure after very few seconds. It’s how I used to get the swollen head before alter ego Sarah thought of the far simpler flatter yourself method.
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Ah, you went to the same riding school I did, the school of hard knocks… I dropped out.
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I know you’re real, Sarah; your cats informed me so. And my husband brightened up in the presence of a familiar accent so much it was like a lightbulb had been turned on in a room I never knew was dimly lit before.
I wonder if someone asked that just because you swore you’d never tell who your secret pen name was… and then posted about her next? Correlation is not causation, but that never stopped a brain from jumping to conclusions.
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I have been mistaken for an unsuccessful Bavarian painter more than once…. >;)
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Nah. More like a cuter Freddy Mercury.
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That discussion above about the legal ramifications of magic has me thinking – science fiction can be (rightly or wrongly) credited with inspiring so much technical development. Is there anyone, any authors or stories in the field that also inspire moral excellence?
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K, ran out of replies, so I’ll reply way down here….
In Panama– the priests would lead mobs and also would fight against perceived corruption. But in those situations, there would be a priest-led mob on both sides of the question.
Like “Reverend” Al? Or the various (for some reason always lefty) activist priests in the immigration fights, or the priest and nuns that broke into nuke areas?
Freaks me out to see stuff that’s like that, too.
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Yes– I was down there at the time… and it is even freakier when you are in the middle of it.
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