Pirates vs. Ninjas - A Paper

All right, you asked for it. Here’s the final paper I turned into my Folklore and Popular Culture class. It was an absolute blast to write, and I have to thank everyone who participated in my survey. You guys are as awesome as ninja pirates. I may have to drill a hole in my head so it doesn’t explode from cool.

 

In Perpetual Combat:

An Analysis of the Popularity of the Pirates vs. Ninjas Debate

 

When historians look back upon the political climate of America at the turn of the millennium, they will doubtless remark upon the number of diametric issues that polarized the nation: pro-life versus pro-choice, evolution versus creationism, the same-sex marriage debate. All these and many more will be mentioned as essential to characterizing the politics of the era.

 

Historians, however, will probably not spend a great deal of time on another popular millennial debate, even though it is known to thousands and rages on through the medium of the internet: the infamous and long-standing struggle of pirates versus ninjas.

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Interests Meme!

America's Kid's Day
Descendants Day
Orthodox Festival of All Saints (Orthodox)
Stupid Guy Thing Day
Antifascist Struggle Day (Croatia)

 

I seem to have been memed by chairman_wow. It goes like this:

 

Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

 

So … I guess y’all can comment, since I’m doing it.

 

Meanwhile, here are the ones I got asked about:

 

American Girl dolls – This is actually a bit of an oversimplification. I am actually a fan of a more general category that American Girl dolls are part of and got started: Big Damn Vinyl Dolls—which also include Magic Attic Club, Stardust Classics, iDolls, Globalfriends, etc., but American Girl has a special spot for me. Since I was 8 and got my grubby little hands on a Molly doll, I’ve been sort of obsessive about BDVDs, and at this point have … uh … nine of ’em in my room. I still pose them and do photostories with them and make them clothes and props. There’s something irresistibly fun about small versions of people’s things.

 

Interestingly, only two of them (Molly and the Stardust Laurel) are not original characters of mine, and even they are quite different from their “official” book version. (Mostly because Molly’s books are awful.) The others are either original characters from my stories, or original characters that started as dolls and moved into my stories.

 

I’m also in a community for discussing the dolls. I have opinions about the American Girl company, the book authors, race portrayal in it, and everything. You didn’t know these dolls had fans, did you?

 

chile peppers – I tend to spell it “chile” when referring to the pepper and “chili” when talking about it as a spice—hence the “chili powder” but “chile peppers.” I could go all I Have A BA In Linguistics on your ass about that, but who cares? They are simply tasty, dammit, and fun to eat because the heat adds a certan element of adventure. They look neat and are part of my love for the Southwest. Also, they are either helpful in treating cancer or they cause it. I tend to go with the treatment idea, simply because it reinforces my maxim that Everything Is Better With Chile Peppers. (It’s true! Have you ever had chile pepper jelly? Chile beer? How about a chocolate-covered chile pepper? Delicious, I tell you!)

 

creative biology – Is what I call it when you invent aliens or just animals with minute biological details—from what makes their blood that cool color to how they reproduce to entire ecosystems. The possibilities for nature are endless and science fiction writers love to play with them. Often my stories are driven by biological details, and I have entire Hitchhiker’s Guides* full of information on alien dietary habits, reproduction, eye structures, jet tubes, etc..

 

Favorite examples of creative biology include anything by Poul Anderson, ConceptArt.org’s Creature of the Week forum (thanks, chibicharibdys!), Discovery’s The Future is Wild and Alien Planet (both based on books by Wayne Barlowe), National Geographic’s ripoff of Alien Planet called Extraterrestrial, and of course the upcoming Spore game—which, incidentally, just came out with a creature generator! 
 

Deaf culture – This started when I got a little way into studying ASL—itself started by a deaf character in my writing who I wanted to research—and found out that certain deaf individuals also identify as a culture, distinguished as capital-D Deaf. The Deaf community is very tight-knit and has its own etiquette and folklore, and I find it fascinating.

 

Incidentally, that character has now become one of my favorite characters in any of my fictional projects—and he, along with his two crazy compatriots, seem to get into all of those projects. I think he has a TARDIS. And those nine Big Damn Vinyl Dolls I mentioned? One of them has hearing aids I made from Sculpey and twist ties.

 

laundry-sorting rabbits – My brother’s rabbit, Huckleberry, had her base of operations in our laundry room, and thus laundry day was a big day for her. Bunnies can be officious little critters with an enthusiasm for chores, and Huck did a lot of proprietary circling of the hampers and piles of laundry when that happened. After a while, we noticed that she was actively sorting it—dragging some of the darks into their own mound, and would get all grumpy if you moved them. We finally realized why she was sorting the darks out: they were my brother’s, and we figured she could smell him on them.

 

neurolinguistics – That would be how language is processed and produced in the brain.  What is not cool about finding out that different bits of your brain control different parts of language? That one part controls your vocabulary and another your grammar, and it all gets affected by what language you speak and your gender and all sorts of weird things?  And when things go wrong you may wind up losing vocabulary for just colors, or for everything but words like “thing” and “stuff,” or know all the words but speak like a telegram?  That’s just cool, dangit.

 

unnatural abominations – You may have to ask lookingforwater what her explanation is, but I’m referring to all those horrific creations made in laboratories by mad scientists who wander around giant vats with awful half-formed creatures in colorful liquid, stitching a rat to an iguana while muttering “They called me mad, MAD!! well I’ll show them I’ll SHOW THEM ALL!!!” and engaging in frequent maniacal laughter. Genetically engineered mutants, chimaerical hybrids, reconstituted corpses, cyborgs, jabberwocky—all productions of Igor’s Chop Shop are welcome to me!

 

 Well, that's seven. Any more you want to know about? Ask away!

 

 

*Those would be my little worldbuilding books for various planets.