Number Eight

So, eight this month. Guess 2011 is shaping up to be like 2010, in the "me blogging too much" department. I had a few thoughts.

• So, as you know, I have posited that the English are the authors of all evil ideologies of the modern era. It's true (or I wouldn't have said it): both Rousseau and Marx were influenced by contemporary English nonsense. Indeed, the English invented non-Marxist socialism, or at least had its most effective proponents (the term was coined in France); meanwhile the French invented the free market, as the term laissez-faire might suggest. As would a basic knowledge of the economic positions of the Jacobins.
  
  Of course, point out that England has done precious little good since before the Hundred Years War—except founding America, which quite rightly rebelled against its abusive psychopathic mother country—and you'll immediately get a bunch of people arguing that whole, individualism, not-responsible-for-sins-of-ancestors, thing.
  
  Well, huh. First off, the modern English are just as bad if not worse (an amusing thing to point out is, the only decisions their government has made since the 13th century that weren't purely selfish, have been going to war in Belgium in 1914, and in Iraq in 2003). Second off, this merely confirms my suspicion that individualism is quite frequently the same thing as "plausible deniability". Basically, apparently, if you can manage to stay unpunished for your rapes and mass-murders till you die, and manage to leave your ill-gotten goods to your heirs, you're home free. They'll never be called to account.


• So Pumpkin Scissors is pretty cool, the manga anyway. It's darn lucky it's got the disclaimer about "this has no bearing on real militaries", 'cause, flamethrower-guy. See, they banned flamethrowers (accurately described as being designed for defoliant use) because people were using them on soldiers. But, flamethrowers essentially have no real anti-personnel use; their only purpose aside from defoliant is psychological, like Dragon's Breath ammo. A flamethrower is monstrously impractical as anything other than a scare tactic ("Oh crap they're throwing fireballs")—unless one was going to be like Henry V (of England, what a surprise) and posit that "War without burning is like beef without mustard". But that's mainly only useful against buildings. Flamethrowers can be and have been used against personnel, and anyone who does that should be shot, but it's not practical to do it very often, so there'd be no point to banning them and doing without their defoliant and psychological benefit.
  
  Other than that, though, it's awesome; I especially like the part where the Lieutenant tells those peasants, "Being poor doesn't justify murder. You're hiding behind your position just as much as those nobles are." Could you even put that in something American? I'm pretty sure Hollywood would have you murdered in your sleep, for questioning victim-politics like that. And please remember, Japan's communist party is actually viable.


• So, in my writing, I tend to think of characters as having classical (which here means "public domain instrumental", just like at the music store) themes. I don't know why. It's Tite Kubo's fault I assign my characters themes, though.
  
  For instance, the felinoid cop who's one of my SF book's main protagonists, has, as one of his themes, the Russo-Turkish War song "Grom Pobedy Razdavaisya" ("Let Victory's Thunder Sound"); their emperor's is "God Save the Tsar". When he acts like a dork, for instance when he's sneaking cookies to his future wife's little sister (against the older girl's wishes, since she's a doctor and a busybody), his theme is still "God Save the Tsar"...but played on kazoo. The felinoids' spaceship-battle theme is the Napoleonic march "La Victoire Est En Nous".
  
  That pseudo-Hermetic guy who wants to upload his mind has, as his theme, the Sorcerer's Apprentice. See, the story it refers to has to do with a golem, not a broom, and the "sorcerer" was actually a Baal Shem Tov. And, of course, all of that is Kabbalah: which is Hermetic. He also does something with nanomachines that's very "accidentally forgetting to have the golem Shabbas-Goy stop pouring water"-esque, except intentional. Yes I mean gray goo; the question is why. Read it and find out, O King.
  
  One of the vampires in my second dark fantasy has the final scene (scène finale) from "Swan Lake" as her theme; the little girl vampire she works with has "the little swans" as her theme. The villain-vampire from that has "Infernal Dance of Koschei the Deathless" from Stravinsky's Firebird as his theme.
  
  On the other hand, though, all my characters also have rock themes; the felinoid cop-guy's theme is "Judgment Day" by Whitesnake, his gunrunner pal's theme is "Heaven" by Warrant.


• I decided to change the felinoid cop's love-interest's last name; before it was "Chester", now it's something like "Horse-breeder", though the things they ride are more like horse-sized Cape Hunting Dogs. So something like Stallone or Cavalli or Rossmann or Stoddard or Pullen or Coulter (weird, Ann Coulter and Sylvester Stallone have the same last name).
  
  I decided to give their guns the names of their designers; since it was added in later I haven't had a chance to change it so I can mention that the inventor of one of them wasn't in that craft-association (basically guild, but not exactly). See, the way their system works, if some schmoe comes up with some invention that relates to a "guild", he can either sell it to them and get royalties for the rest of his life, or else he can use the invention as a "masterwork" and be made a full member (though, y' know, probably with, like, an orientation, or something).


• Speaking of their crafts, I thought an interesting cultural setting tidbit would be, since they're a militocracy, the names of their crafts are all the military aspect of the discipline. They're not state-run at all (each craft sets its own rules, the state only gets involved when someone breaks them), but all the Romance languages basically use late Roman military jargon as their vocabulary. So, for instance, the IT and communications people are Signalers, doctors are Medics, etc.


• On a related note, I just know (I have come to anticipate your stupid antics, you bunch of lemurs) that someone's going to give me some half-baked 8th-grade civics lecture about the fact their government's posts are for life (or, you know, till retirement, unless they screw up enough to be removed). But, I reply, the only things their government does are military, law enforcement, and adjudication; their state is just cops, soldiers, and judges, all of which, last I checked, were permanent posts here, too.
  
  And yeah, basically, each community sets its own laws; the officials just enforce them. Direct democracy functions because (A) they're voting by household, not individually; the unmarried don't have the vote because they're not entirely legal adults, and (B) the state has the principle Catholics call subsidiarity firmly in place. The check on the possibility of communities making bad laws is that roughly 5/7 of their society is one religion, and virtually all of them accept approximately a common morals. So any law that violates that religion or morality in general is struck down. Is that a better system than your precious, precious judicial review? I don't know; all I'll say is, there is no "penumbra" of the Catechism, from which politically convenient "rights" may be said to emanate.


• So remember how I said that that other species, the fuzzy dromaeosaurs, thinks of its economy as working by gift even when it doesn't? Well, here's what I meant. In most gift economies, whether they be medieval Norse or 19th century Polynesian, the feast as a social function where gifts are given is vital. The way these guys work is, instead of state staff or private dependents ("employees", though their property is held by clans rather than corporations, and they're often distantly related to their bosses) getting salaries, they're given "gifts" by their employers, at their regular mealtimes. Which, yes, is just a salary, really, but it evolved differently.