Questions For You

Check Your Batteries Day
Daylight Savings Time Begins
Dream 2007 Day
Johnny Appleseed Day

 

And while I’m busy with other stuff, here’s a meme for y’all to fill out! Taken from chem_nerd.

 

 

YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I WANNA KNOW YOU... I want to know 34 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, never liked each other, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine... I just wanna know you better! Thanks! =)

 

1. Can you cook?

2. What was your dream growing up?

3. What talent do you wish you had?

4. Favorite place?

5. Favorite vegetable?

6. What was the last book you read?

7. What zodiac sign are you?

8. Any tattoos and/or piercings?

9. Worst habit?

10. Do we know each other outside of LiveJournal?

11. What is your favorite sport?

12. Do you have a negative or optimistic attitude?

13. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?

14. Worst thing to ever happen to you?

15. Tell me one weird fact about you.

16. Do you have any pets?

17. Do you know how to do the Macarena?

18. What time is it where you are now?

19. Do you think clowns are cute or scary?

20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?

21. Would you be my partner in crime or my conscience?

22. What color eyes do you have?

23. Ever been arrested?

24. Bottle or draft?

25. If you won £10,000 today [$20,000 for the Americans], what would you do with it?

26. What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?

27. What's your favorite bar to hang at?

28. Do you believe in ghosts?

29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

30. Do you swear a lot?

31. Biggest pet peeve?

32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?

33. In one word, how would you describe me?

34. Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

No Unicorns For You

So I’m trying to read A Song of Ice and Fire, which is George R.R. Martin’s big gaping fantasy series, beginning with A Game of Thrones. I’ve got a running list of things I like and things I dislike about his writing style that are breaking slightly in favor of him right now, but I have to hand Martin one thing: he sure makes one hell of a world.

 

There are all sorts of reasons for making one’s constructed world the way it is. Dystopias are often Stern Warnings Of Things To Come. Very strange, alien worlds may be an exploration of our own nature, either as a reflection or as a contrast. Worlds with certain aspects different from our own may be meant to make a point. Me, one of my reasons for building a world is to fix the things I can’t fix in my own world. I made one world where a parallel to some of the bad shit I hate about our own past* never happened in theirs, because then I can at least make them happy. I also like to play with cultural parameters and see how I can make a different culture that still holds water and that people can be happy in.

 

Martin’s goal with this world, as far as I can tell, was to send Standard Fantasyland to boot camp.

 

I gotta admit, the sort-of-like-medieval-western-Europe feel of Standard Fantasyland is rather overused. It a cool setting, which is why it gets overused, but it also gets heavily distorted, usually in a fluffy sort of way. This story, on the other hand, takes that tame kitty setting and turns it into a huge rabid man-eating tiger. Class is strictly enforced, and the higher-up “Good Guys” aren’t all mushy about being friends with the peasants; they barely notice that the peasants are alive. There is no political correctness or business about being decent or respectful of others solely on the basis of their humanity—the characters refer to other characters bluntly as “dwarf,”** “cripple,” “bastard,” or “craven,” and they’re not delicate about making it clear that any one of those is a second class citizen. (Yes, “cravens.” Even being a legitimate man with the correct number and size of limbs doesn’t help if you aren’t a man’s man, apparently.) Women are also second-class citizens, but like the others I’ve mentioned that interacts with a complicated set of other identifying factors to stratify them. This is no mystical world of happiness with true love and life affirmation and inspiration. This world sounds like it sucks, and I frankly do not actually like it. It’s almost refreshing in that sense—none of this “our fair kingdom” crap for me today; this is a place I don’t want to live. Let’s see what people do within that context.

 

So the thing I really give it credit for is that he’s got it worked out very carefully. It’s cohesive, and it makes for a setting that, while I would hate to live there, is believable and much more carefully arranged than Standard Fantasyland. I’m impressed at the thought that went behind all this detail—he would have to have worked out some extensive background of history and culture to get as far as he has, and I’m not even halfway through the first book.

 

I may be undecided about the rest of the series, but I gotta respect that.

 

 

*Usually the kind involving Western European “colonists.”

 

**And let’s give it up for George for putting in an actual dwarf human. I thought my own Faridah was the only definitively achondroplasic human in a magical setting, until Tyrion Lannister showed up.