Thoughts upon the second R.
- My first SF book's opening is a titsch weak, I think, or at least a little slow. On the other hand, it uses a device I've copied from movies: the establishing shot. First I describe the building, then I move to what's happening inside it.
I don't know, I like to know about cities, when things are happening in them. Since I'm on the subject, what did the DP of the third Harry Potter film have against establishing shots? I guess the setting is none of our business. - On the one hand, feminist science fiction is as legitimate as feminist philosophy or filmmaking. On the other hand, it's as illegitimate as feminist philosophy or filmmaking—which is to say, as illegitimate as Marxist philosophy or filmmaking, or Nazi, or white-supremacist.
Given that easily one-third of the subgenre's output is just Lifetime-movie plots about rape, and another third is a caricature of pregnancy-as-monster you'd expect from some mentally ill, slightly misogynistic male writer, I'm pretty sure the remaining third could also be burned with no loss to civilization. I'd wanted to say you could stick all the subgenre's practitioners in a bag and drown them in a river and still come out ahead of the game, but that seems a bit hyperbolic even for me. - Not actually, directly, about writing, but did you know the word "hyperbole" is related to the Spanish word "palabra" and I do believe also to French "parler"? Yeah, see, for some reason, Vulgate Latin used "parabola", from Greek, as its word for "word"—presumably meaning something along the lines of, well, "around what the thing is". Thus, a hyperbola is over "what the thing is".
If that is not the strangest thing in etymological history, I should dearly love to know what is. Which, to tie into my actual subject, goes to show that conlangs need to be creative, too. Another thing Vulgate Latin did, which is also quite odd, is use the diminutive for lots and lots of nouns—ears, for one. - Apparently people think Peter Singer invented the distinction between Sapience and Sentience (it's an important matter in science fiction, much of which conflates the two)? Somehow I doubt that, given Linnaeus named us "Homo sapiens" in 1758, and "sapience" meaning "understanding, awareness" dates from c. 1300.
Perhaps the confusion comes in because people have to translate whatever the Sanskrit is for the type of creature that possesses Buddha-nature as "sentience". But animals and I do believe plants have, or at least may have, Buddha-nature—or at least, since one might be reborn as one, they are subject to the cycle of suffering (they are probably not, within their lifetimes, capable of advancing toward enlightenment; being reborn as one is, I seem to recall, listed as one of the Ten Calamitous Rebirths in Shingon). - Personally, I have one suggestion for any writer who dislikes elves: Russian roulette with a semiauto. Seriously, any race you would come up with on your own is just going to be elves anyway, or else something else that's been done a million times. Even the Dwemer have been done before, though not usually in fantasy. Rather than bitching about elves, try doing them right for a change.
Again, two simple steps will instantly revitalize the fantasy elf. One is, the Faerie Fading Away thing is just as stupid a Romantic cliche as the be-ringleted heroine who trips around and whose eye-color can be seen from across a foggy moor. They've generally lived for millennia alongside trolls and dwarves, why should they start going into decline just because one of the apes abruptly learned to talk? And two is, don't rip off Tolkien, rip off his sources, or an equivalent. My elves, as I've mentioned, are based on the yokai from East Asian legend, and also the Navajo ye'i (a word that is usually translated "god" but actually means "spirits other than ghosts"). - Another idea I've had on elves is, the ones in my D&D campaign are pure carnivores. Not like the Bosmer (they don't eat people), like jackals (so they do occasionally eat vegetables, virtually all canids are generalist carnivores). See, I was thinking about how elves are commonly portrayed as having less sexual dimorphism, or at least less role-specialization (and more uniform size between the sexes) than humans. And it occurred to me, that doesn't go with the near-vegetarian, free-loving hippie society elves are usually depicted as having. No, low dimorphism goes with near-monogamous pack-hunters, like wolves or jackals.
So now, my elves are (socially, not physically) jackals, my dwarves are wolves, and my goblins (including hobgoblins) are lions (big dominant males with harems). My ogres (including orcs), on the other hand, are a mix of lion and other cat—the ogres usually live like, say, tigers, only coming together to mate (generally with stable harems centered on dominant males, which is common among felines), while the orcs live communally, also in harems. - Am I the only one who tires of the self-questioning little sissy-britches in fantasy fiction (slightly less often in SF and other genres)? The worst example is the Lord of the Rings movies: Jackson turned Aragorn Arathornion into freaking Tanis from Dragonlance.
Seriously, Aragorn didn't really have any self-doubt. He knew exactly what he was about: he was going to restore the kingship of Gondor, the last remnant of the power of Numenor (his clan being a cadet branch of the Numenorean royal family). For instance, although the books don't describe what he says to Sauron when he confronts him through the Palantir, we can infer from his attitude that it was, in essence, "Who the hell do you think I am?"
That's only mostly a joke. The very flag of Numenor, the white tree, is every bit as defiant as the flaming skull in sunglasses of the Gurren-dan. Kindly recall that the tree in question was a grafting of the trees, the trees of the light of Valinor, saved from Ungoliant and the machinations of Morgoth. Going into battle against Morgoth's lieutenant with a flag that says "Your master failed" takes a big brass pair, son.
Newsflash, Jackson, and all the rest of you who write characters like that, the words "I mustn't run away" are not even in Aragorn's vocabulary. And even people who like Evangelion don't usually like Shinji. - By the bye, I cannot belabor the point enough: any story, whether science fiction or fantasy, that uses the idea "humans are special" is automatically disqualified from posturing as anything other than the Jingoism it is. Especially since the ways humans are special are generally the (falsely) claimed superiorities of Anglo Protestant culture over the cultures Anglo Protestants liked to rob, rape, and murder. Anyone who paid attention during the 20th century might suspect humans are special in a manner involving wrestling headgear and truncated vehicles.
On the other hand, however, people are the only thing that matters in the cosmos, and anything else derives its significance exclusively from them. It is fascinating to me how many people can write (or read, or watch, or play) science fiction stories that are non-stop Anthropo-Jingo cheerleading, and then turn right around and deny that a baby has any more rights than a dolphin. Whether that is hypocrisy or just flabbergasting stupidity is probably an academic question.
That Evangelion reference reminds me, the dude what did Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series did a parody of the Evangelion theme that sums it up perfectly. Slight language warning.
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