 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am reading a litany of the Sacred Heart, where it names Christ as one obedient unto death and contrasting it inadverdantly with a recent ad that sarcastically refers to requiring absolute obedience as something worthy of contempt when I feel his attention. I wait, expecting the head explosion. "What good is obedience if one is not willing to render it unto death?" "We don't hold obedience as a virtue," I say. "Followers are supposed to judge whether orders are worthy before they execute them." "Is that so?" Shame says. "In most things, yes." I look at him. "Which naturally is not the way you do things. Right?" "If a person in power knows that their orders will be followed only if their orders are good, then what incentive do they ever have to learn to give good orders?" Shame says. "They know their mistakes will have no consequences, so they can be sloppy." There it is. The brain exploding. I am resigned to the stars floating past my eyes by now, the confetti showers. I am the piñata of alien anthropology. "We don't do it that way," I say finally. "No," Shame agrees. "You attempt to create virtue in your leaders by telling them if they become corrupt or make mistakes, you will rise up against them in violence. We attempt to create virtue in our leaders by telling them if they become corrupt or make mistakes, they will kill or hurt others. Either way there will be death." "In your system, innocents die," I say. "The people following the orders of corrupt people unto death. In our system, it is the corrupt leaders who usually end up dead. And some innocents en route to killing them, I guess." "Yes," Shame says. "Your leaders do not have another chance to make amends, to repent, to be Corrected. They are slain, from which there is no returning." "But your system requires the death of innocents to matter to corrupt people," I say. "It assumes virtue and introspection even on the part of those who are wrong-headed. Isn't that... um... a little optimistic?" "People don't start out life virtuous," Shame says. "They must be taught. Your system presumes everyone has the moral status of an unmolded child; ours requires a certain level of maturity to function, and so it must attempt to instill that level by its nature." "Does it? Always function?" I ask, staring at him. "More often than not," Shame says. And smiles. "And no, we didn't start out this way." He nods toward my project notes for the Book of Castes. "So you have seen, and so you will tell the aunera. What good is a discussion of Kherishdar, if one assumes that we are magical paragons of virtue for whom special rules obtain? The true value in your visits to us, O Scribe, is that we were once more like you. And so you ask: how does one become like us?" "I don't know how one becomes like you!" I exclaim. Shame laughs. "You don't have to know. You just have to ask the question." I put my head down on my desk... and when I look up, I'm alone. Of course. And then I realize what he's done. You have to ask the question."Hey!" I call. "You're using it against me! My cultural reflex to question things instead of just accepting them!" I don't know where he's gone, but I bet he's laughing somewhere. Stardancer Home.Tags: ai-naidar, culture, meta-conversations
Current Mood: O_O
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are an odd number of people at practice, so I get to do my drills with the Assistant Coach. I love this; sometimes the younger folk get bored and stop paying attention or want to wander off, but the Assistant Coach always takes it seriously no matter how simple the exercise. We're doing one of those simple exercises now: he steps forward and lunges, I wait until he begins the lunge to step back, parry and riposte (an attack after a successful parry). It's easy to do sloppily and hard to do well, so we are going at it, over and over, while I concentrate on different parts of it. About ten minutes later, Coach comes by to demonstrate the second stage of the drill, which involves both parties advancing and retreating. I am trying to figure out who is signalling the attack: it's not the attacker, as I assumed, but rather the defender. I think, anyway, I'm still studying them. When Coach stops, he glances at me and says, "Do you understand?" "I think so," I say. "It's a trigger!" Assistant Coach exclaims, gleeful. "You see, he starts the footwork and I follow what he does, until something triggers in my head and says: "I'm ready for him to attack me," and then my body stops moving, causing him to say—" I am already laughing; I've seen this precise body language before... in meetings. "What am I? A stored procedure in an Oracle database?" "You see," the Coach says, pointing at his assistant, "I am thinking tactically and he is thinking... I don't know what he's thinking." "Like a coder," I say, grinning at the Assistant Coach. "You are such a geek!" He straightens, the tip of his practice sword digging into the floor. "I have claimed many things, but never not to be a geek!" I laugh. "All right, all right. Bring it, IT guy." Stardancer Home.Tags: fencing, humor, technology
Current Mood: amused/tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The things you end up questioning when you go your own road.... Here's today's: trilogies. I'm used to reading them, so I didn't think much of the topic. And when I started writing for publication, I wrote them because that's what you sell. Or rather, I tried... some of my books refused to fit that template (I seem to love duologies, for instance). But now, as my own publisher, I don't have to think that way. I can write... duologies.. or quartets. Or I can package stories as one fat book, the way The Lord of the Rings was written but rarely published because it was so huge it strained the bindings. I can write (*gasp!*) both stand-alones and serials. This has led me to wonder, then: why trilogies? Why has the SF/F industry standardized on this particular format? And do you like them? Assuming you would pay the same total amount of money either way, do you prefer one fat book to three slim ones? For my part, I am tempted to wonder if The Lord of the Rings accidentally created that mold... and personally I don't care whether it's a single giant book or five tiny ones, as long as I get the story in a timely fashion. I don't want to be reading book 2 if book 3 isn't coming out for five years. But anyway, your thoughts? Stardancer Home.Tags: poll, writing
Current Mood: perplexed/tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 I woke up this morning working on a painting, with thoughts about color and visual orientation and which references I'd need... a real creative connective web that meant I'd been sleeping on it. This is in itself not at all unusual. What was unusual was that this particular painting has been in my head for at least half a year, and I still haven't figured out how I want to approach it. I don't even have a sketch for it, just two or three thumbnails and a lot of notes. But waking up with fragments of more of a plan for it has made me realize: I am using the same process for making this thing as I would for plotting a novel. I just sank back into the bed and stared at nothing for a while in stupid shock, the kind of 'Doh, this should have been obvious' shock that always feels mildly embarrassing but also a relief. For years now I've been posting my list of goals for the year, and that list is almost always 'write one novel, 12 short stories and paint 12 paintings.' Which means I've historically treated paintings the same way I have short fiction: as relatively quick to execute, something I could do once a month with time left over. Sometimes, paintings are that simple. But lately I haven't been going for simple. I'm spending so much time juggling symbolic, thematic, narrative and visual elements that I need to drop it all into my subsconscious just to get something that makes sense back out. And that's really good because it means I'm working on things that are so hard I can't just blow them off. But just like it takes me 3-12 months to write a novel, it's taking me months to work on any one of these paintings. Which means expecting myself to finish 12, or even six, or even three! of them a year is... um... I'd say "ambitious" but I'm thinking "unrealistic" is probably more accurate. So I've decided to change my yearly goals. This year, and probably for the next few years, my goals will be: • Finish one book, where book="writing project that is complete in itself and takes many months to create."
• Publish one book, where book="anything worth selling, whether that's a short story collection, novel, or coffee-table art book."
• Put down bones for book, where book="writing project."
• Finish one painting, where painting="something complicated enough to be a novel in art."
• Put down bones for another two paintings.
• Finish any poetry, short fiction or "short paintings" I feel compelled to do. The "bones" of two paintings in this case will be a finished composite I can print and go directly to work on. That's a lot of the thought process right there. A tremendous amount of stress evaporated from me when I finally understood that I'm treating my painting as a novel process, because I'd been ripping my hair out at how slowly I was working and not understanding why. Now, at least, I know. Stardancer Home.Tags: art, process
Current Mood: relieved
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am sitting across the restaurant table, rooting around in my purse for I know-not-what, while my mother holds the baby on her lap. The two are entertaining one another, eating, grabbing for things, etc. I am half-listening as my mom asks Wigglet what she wants.... " Agua? Leche? Tete? Pulpo?" I burst out laughing. "What??" My mom and the baby look up. "What do you mean, what?" " Pulpo!" I repeat, laughing. And, yes, there is an octopus toy on the table, but... "Well, she was reaching for it," my mother says reasonably. "I know," I say. "It was just the progression. It sounded so normal until then... Water, milk, pacifer... octopus..." The baby gnaws on the octopus's head. The surreality of it dissipates. But only a little. Water. Milk. Binky. Mmm, rubber calamari, rawr!Stardancer Home.Tags: humor, language, mom in spots
Current Mood: blearily amused
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Preparing the retrospectives involves several stages, and the first is thumbing through the next ten sketchbooks, refreshing my memory, looking for trends. I'm surprised at how frequently I remember exactly where I was when drawing, who was sitting by me, or what we were discussing; drawings done in lectures often bring back memories of the professor or the discussions themselves, even when the drawing isn't related to the lecture topic. Drawings done in coffee shops often bring back the memory of exactly what I was eating! Amazing, the things we remember! But mostly I realize that there are global trends in my work, and there always seem to have been. And one of the biggest is: other people. It amazes me that I can have been blind to how much other people influenced my work. I was very determined to be the genius loner artist, and yes, a good half of the stuff I produced was, in fact, my own, even to this day. But half is only half. The rest of it is gift art for other people. Collaborative work in shared world settings. Shared jokes I wanted to record. Drawings of my own characters, but exploring situations inspired by other people's questions. And a lot of RPG art. The RPG art is overwhelming. All of it, with few exceptions, is from RPGs I ran with original settings I created (because I didn't like working in other people's settings—I could never remember the details!). Some of is is from table-top, some of it from virtual stuff. I can see how the RPG stuff spawned ideas that became original work, but there's no question that I really enjoy and get a lot of creative grist from roleplaying games. I think only two things about this: first, that I'm glad I was open to other people's input because it made me a better artist/writer and expanded my thinking... and because, quite frankly, I like people. Second, that I had to have been a really insufferable teenager/young adult, completely clueless about how much I owed other people and how much they helped me. But I guess that's the way of all young people, and young artists in particular. We're self-absorbed by nature. I maybe just had a longer childhood than some. My other observation, related to the one above, is how having a market for my work influenced what I bothered to finish. Even before I had you fine folk leaving me commentary on a website, I often sketched whatever I pleased, but completed work only when I thought I'd have a place to send it or someone to give it or sell it to. This explains a lot of my early furry fixation: at the time, there were a profusion of B&W furry fanzines and I would often ink things because I knew I could place them. In fact, looking through some of this art I can remember actual conversations I had with other people while drawing them: "Well, yeah, but if I finish this one I can send it to X and I've been looking for markets that take more human/fantasy things and not finding a lot of them." It makes me think about marketing in art, and collaboration with your audience, and about the internet and how that's changed things. I might end up writing more about that some other time, when it's had more time to gel. But anyway! Sketchbooks 31-40 are now in process, and there are some funny things in store! Including (*laugh!*) a picture of me thanking an anthropomorphic Ayn Rand for her books. (She was a cat. What else?) Stardancer Home.Tags: art, gaming, life
Current Mood: thoughtful/sleepy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am revving up the printer to do another print sale in a couple of weeks, and as with the previous ones I'm only going to offer a limited set of images, five this time. Two of those are definitely going to be " Willow, the Night and Moon" and " Hadara and the Sun Prince." The other three, though, are up for grabs. Which images have you been wanting to buy? Did you miss a chance at " If You Guard Me From Myself"? Or do you want Raezha and her Ghost? Prints of the Aphorisms illustrations? I can even do prints of " Blue Willow", finally, after years of frustration. If you don't remember and want an excuse to wander, this link will take you to all the finished artwork in the archive. You can use the blog this function, if you want to show everyone your choice (and maybe influence their decision!), or you can just tell me the title, or even leave a comment on the image. A couple of notes about the upcoming print sale:
• I will be printing out postcards of "Willow" for all the people who sponsored the brushes (I haven't forgotten!). If you'd rather have a print of Willow than a postcard, you can beg off on the latter and apply a $5 discount toward the print.
• If you are or have served in the US military, just tell me and I will pay your shipping (or an equivalent if you are located somewhere the post office ships free to). Thank you, always!
• If you're planning your budget, fine art prints (the expensive ones) will be available in three sizes, 8.5x11, 11x17 and 17x22. I will also offer cheap poster prints at 17x22 on not-as-lovely-paper (but still archival quality ink).
Anyway, express opinions! :) Stardancer Home.Tags: art, sale
Current Mood: tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Act 5
False Witness • Addiction • Child Abuse II • Suicide • Sociopathy
I have drafts for four of the five final Admonishments, which means it's time for our second-to-last patron call for this project. The final act will see some of the most difficult Corrections: they were hard to write, and I expect they will be hard to read. This is the act that shows us how a servant of Shame can burn out in the service of Kherishdar, and it's intended to lead eventually to the novel that sees Shame healed... in fact, the final illustration, "The Master's Hand," will serve as an epilogue and the voice will be Thirukedi's. So while the book's text will end on a difficult note, you'll see the path out of that dark in the final plate. This is the end stretch. After this, the last chance to donate will be to fund the cover and the last illustrations, including one for the first act, entitled "Dawn." "False Witness" will go up next Monday. Also, I noticed the website was missing a couple of stories, so I archived them and cleaned up the index, which had a numbering error. -_- The Admonishments of Kherishdar.Tags: donations, the admonishments of kherishdar
Current Mood:  tired
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Previous
