Study Notes: December 21-27, 2014: "The Book No One Read"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "The Book No One Read: Why Stanislaw Lem's futurism deserves attention" by Lee Billings
• Essay, "Study of Leviticus 18-20 'Abomination'" by Dave Cornwell
• Post, "Surviving in an Alien Environment: Human + Christ as Medieval Natural-born Cyborg" by Ruth Evans
• Essay, "The Sword of Laban as a Symbol of Divine Authority and Kingship" by Brett L. Holbrook
• Article, "The Horizontal and Vertical Axes of Storytelling" by James George
• Article, "The Remarkable Queerness of Shinji Ikari" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "Tony Stark in the Integrated Circuit: The Iron Man films and Cyborg Feminism" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "Stark Modernism: Fine Art and Iron Man" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "The Thingiverse-- Model Reuse in the 3D Printing Community" by Jarkko Moilanen
• Article, "The Practical Guide to the Future of Medicine" by Dr. Bertalen Mesko
• Article, "Controlling Genes With Your Thoughts" by ETH Science Writer
• Article, "The Fermi Paradox, Self-Replicating Probes, and the Interstellar Transportation Bandwidth" by Keith B. Wiley
• Article, "The Stars Are Wrong: Why Cthulhu Needs To Go Away" by Sam Keeper
• Article, "AnimalTech-- Wearable Technology for Fido" by Clara Mancini

The Art Gallery: "Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)"

Alright. I'm going to start this out by saying that I'm not really sure where I'm going to be going with this. I would like for this to be a kind of "these are the stories that are coming out of these pictures" thing, but I'm not sure if that's what it's going to be. If it can manage to be that then I'll transfer it over to White Marble Block. Otherwise it'll stay here as... I don't know. As a thing. 

Study Notes: Dec 14-20, 2014: "The Evolution of Names and Personal Identifiers"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Post, "The Evolution of Names and Personal Identifiers" by Eric Hellman
• Essay, "At One with Nature: An Ecocritical Study of the Nature Motif in Three Swedish Horror Writers" by Lars Martinsson
• Article, "Five Bold Predictions for the Future of Humanity" by Balam T. Salem
• Article, "Twenty Top Predictions for Life 100 Years From Now" by Ian Pearsson
• Article, "Is Vat-Grown Meat Kosher? We Asked a Rabbi" by Tim Barribeau
• Article, "The Next Big Disruption: Three Major Shifts That Will Influence the Future Global Economy" by Terry Young
• Article, "11 Predictions on the future of social media" by Mary Catherine Wellons
• Article, "The Transhumanist Bodhisattvas," by Butsugen Chigen
• Article, "Turn Your Inkjet Printer into a Chemistry Lab" by Mark Lorch
• Article, "PAN'S LABYRINTH-- Interview with Guillermo Del Toro," by Michael Guillen
• Post, "Will Rituals Return?" by Robin Hanson
• Article, "Today's Apps Are Turning Us Into Sociopaths" by Evan Selinger
• Article, "Anti-aging Oxymorons and Anti-oxy-morons" by Josh Mitteldorf
• Article, "Robotics Update" by Len Rosen
• Article, "Is It Better Never To Have Been Born? (anti-natalism)" by John G. Messerly
• Article, "Lithium for Life Extension?" by Josh Mitteldorf
• Article, "Designer Viruses Could be the New Antibiotics" by Luc Henry
• Article, "The Future of Lunar Archeology" [sic?] by Dr. Beth O'Leary
• Article, "Aging Brains Aren't Necessarily Declining Brains" by Angela Gutchess

Study Notes: Dec 7-13, 2014: "How Steampunk Screws with Victorian Gender Norms"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "Queer Cogs: Steampunk, Gender Identity, and Sexuality," by Lisa Hager
• Thread, "What's the difference between aesthetic/sensual attraction and sexual attraction?" on Asexuality.org
• Article, "How Steampunk Screws with Victorian Gender Norms," by Molly Westerman
• Essay, "Blooms of Banjeli," by Eugenia W. Herbert and Candice Goucher
• Article, "Monopoly is Theft," by Christopher Ketcham

WikiLearning #9 (folklore)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

"Old-Time Religion" entry in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia

"Stereotypes of mountain religion that came to the fore during the 1960s had been created over a century and a half through outside observations of religious practices in Appalachia, mostly by home missionaries or people seeking exotic experiences or local color."

WikiLearning #8 (the Mafia)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

"We know from Gay Talese's book Honor Thy Father that being a professional mobster isn't all sunshine and roses. More often it's the boredom of stuffy rooms and a bad diet of carry-out food, punctuated by brief, terrible bursts of violence." Roger Ebert.

WikiLearning #7 (lumberjacks)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

"Lumberjacks" entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia

"It was only around the turn of the 18th century, however, that the professional logger-- or lumberjack-- was born... It grew to be the backbone of the region's [eastern Canada] industrial economy, and focused on harvesting white pine. From roughly 1800 to 1840, production was centred on cutting and hewing square timber for the British market. Then this industry underwent a reorientation, whereby the pine logs were increasingly sawn into planks for sale largly in the United States. It was estimated that during the 19th century, which was the heydey of the white pine era, half the males in Canada were employed as lumberjacks. By the turn of the 20th century, the receding stands of mature white pine in the East was sending that part of the industry into decline while lumber production-- based largely on harvesting Douglas fir-- was accelerating in British Columbia."

WikiLearning #6 (various cultures)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

High-altitude peoples are probably descended from people that originally moved higher-up for only short periods at a time before eventually settling there.

Tibetan people have lungs that "synthesize larger amounts of... nitric oxide" and may also have larger blood vessels.

LDS History in Context of the Strauss-Howe Generational Cycle

In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe proposed a system of generational cycles, each cycle having four distinct stages that lasted twenty years give-or-take. Each generational stage took its nature by reacting to the generations that preceded it, most especially by reacting to faults in the generation that directly raised it (these reactions, of course, produce other faults that cause a similar reaction in the generation to follow). All countries go through this cycle, but Strauss and Howe were specifically interested in America's.

Study Notes: Nov 30-Dec 6, 2014: "Zombies, Vampires, Democrats, and Republicans"

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Post, "Correlation of the Week: Zombies, Vampires, Democrats, and Republicans," by Marc West
• Post, "An Introduction to a Non-Violent Reading of The Book of Mormon," by Joshua Madson
• Post, "The Constitution: The God That Failed (To Liberate Us From Big Government)," by Bill Buppert
• Article, "A Muslim RuPaul at the Dawn of Islam: Tuwais and the Mukhannathun," by Maryam
• Post, "Why I Am Not an Anarchist," by Matt Zwolinksi
• Post, "(the) Gambia, (the) Lebanon, etc.," by M. Lynne Murphy
• Paper, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later," by Philip K. Dick
• Article, "Graphene Could Lead to Better Bullet-Proof Vests and Hydrogen Fuel Cells," by Justine Alford
• Article, "Ravens have Social Abilities Previously Only Seen in Humans," by Declan Perry
• Article, "Anarchism, not Anomism," by Skyler Collins
• Post, "In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization," by Scott Alexander
• Video, "The surprising decline in violence," by Steven Pinker

Notes: "Norse Mythology for Smart People"

Notes for "Norse Mythology for Smart People," a website written by Dan McCoy."

This is commentary. And this is really good.

I'm not going to record every detail, just the really snappy awesome bits that Wikipedia never taught me. Some sections (Tales, Book Reviews, My Book, The 5 Best Books on Celtic Mythology, News/Updates, The 10 Best Norse Mythology Books) are not recorded here.

WikiLearning #5 (Diners, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Some bits on "Cuisines in America":

"There is so much sugar in the recipes of many, if not most, dishes here in the States that foreigners not accustomed to it are said to find our food disconcertingly sweet. Note that this can be inverted in the case of starches. The American palate expects bread (that isn't specifically a sweet bread such as cinnamon rolls), to be more 'yeasty' in flavor, and potato-based dishes to be starchy-salty. This can be disconcerting to a visitor to, for instance, China, where bread tends toward sweet, as do potato chips."

Study notes: Nov 23-29, 2014: "Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern" and other things

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "The Seven Types of Short Story Opening, and How to Decide Which is Right for Your Story," by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern," by Nicholas Wade
• Paper, "Buddhist Hard Determinism: No Self, No Free Will, No Responsibility," by Riccardo Repetti
• Article, "Vladimir Putin is Right Out of a Russian Novel," by Linton Weeks
• Letter, "Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Artists," by Who Do You Think?
• Article, "Neoreactionary Movement," on Rational Wiki
• Article, "Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neo-Reactionaries," by 
• Article, "Mormon Women, Traditionalists and Feminists: An Evolving Conversation," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Mormon Studies in the Classroom: Mormon Women, Patriarchy and Equality," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Pragmatism and Progress: An Overview of LDS Sister Missionary Service in the Twentieth Century," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Ukraine, Not the Ukraine: The Significance of Three Little Letters," by Katy Steinmetz
• Article, "Ukraine or the Ukraine: Why do some country names have 'the'?," by Tom Geoghegan. 
• Article, "Life Tips You Need to Know," by Likes.com
• Article, "College Life: Tips for Survival," by Hassan Ishtiaq
• Article, "What's so bad about hating the Daleks, anyway?" by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "The Economics of Star Trek: The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy," by Rick Webb
• Article, "BYU prof fears Mormon scholars are giving in to secularism," by Peggy Fletcher Stack

WikiLearning #4 (Archeofuturism, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Aglaonice (also called Agloanike, or Aganice of Thessaly) was a Greek astronomer who lived in the first or second centuries BC, "the daughter of Hegetor (or Hegemon) of Thessaly."

Notes for "The Anti-Reactionary FAQ"

Notes for "The Anti-Reactionary FAQ," by Scott S. Alexander. I was originally going to be including this in my weekly Study Notes post, but then it got really long. So here it is, early and all on its own.

While I have included some highlights, I highly encourage you to read the original document yourself.

WikiLearning #3 (gunpowder, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Gunpowder manufacturing

"For the most powerful black powder meal, a wood charcoal is used. The best wood for the purpose is Pacific willow, but others such as alder or buckthorn can be used... Cottonwood was used by the American Confederate States."

WikiLearning #2 (aestheticization of violence, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

Blueseed is or was a "company working on launching a ship near Silicon Valley which was to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. The shipstead planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland. The project aims included overcoming the difficulty organizations face obtaining US work visas, intending to use the easier B-1/B-2 visas to travel to the mainland, while work will be done on the ship."

Full disclosure, I accidentally typed "sheep" instead of "ship" the first time around. 

Study notes: Nov 18-22, 2014: "Philosophy in Prison" and other things

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week:

TED Talk: "The leaders who ruined Africa and the generation who can fix it," by Fred Swaniker
TED Talk: "Is there a real you?" by Julian Baggini
TED Talk: "Philosophy in prison," by Damon Horowitz.
TED Talk: "All it takes is 10 mindful minutes," by Andy Puddicombe
TED Talk: "We can be Buddhas," by Robert Thurman
Blog post: "Contemplating the Red Pill," by Free Northerner
Article: "Fifty Ways to Leave Leviathan," by Max Borders & Jeffrey A. Tucker
Article: "How Long Ago Was Adam Created!?" by Maan Khalife
Blog post: "The Most Useful Mnemonic Technique," by Brienne
Article: "How Climate Change Will End Wine As We Know It," by Sandra Allen
Article: "Latter-day Saint, Latter-day Lovecraft: an interview with W.H. Pugmire," by Theric Jepsen

I have also written notes on David Pulsipher's talk, "Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology & History Lead Us to Nonviolence," and compiled some knowledge from Wikipedia and elsewhere.

WikiLearning #1 (sea organs, &c)

Things I've learned from Wikipedia, and sometimes other places.

This is commentary. And this is really good.

The Sea Organ is an "experimental musical instrument which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps." Built by Nikola Basic "as apart of the project to redesign the new city coast (Nova riva)" of Zadar, Croatia, which had been destroyed during WWII.

Notes: Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology & History Lead Us to Nonviolence

Notes to the forum seminar Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology and History Lead Us to Nonviolence, by David Pulsipher, who is teaching "US History 1820 to 1920" and "History of Peace" this semester.

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

A link to the video will be posted in this spot as soon as it it uploaded to BYU-I.

So I don't feel so bad in the end

A few days ago I decided that I was going to put on hold the second draft and polishing of my novel, The Girl Who Was Half-Imaginary. Taking little bits of time here and there just wasn't cutting it. I need to wait until the school year ends so that I can spend a sizable chunk of time every day for as long as it takes (I figure two or three weeks). In the meantime I'll work on short stories and on novel outlines, which are both better-suited to here-a-little-there-a-little.

Somewhat randomly, I found myself back on MS Paint Adventures, and lo and behold, what did I discover. This itty bitty really long note from Andrew Hussie, updating everyone on the Gigapause. For those not in the know, Hussie decided to stop updating so that he could just deal with finishing up the comic and getting it done and crap and soon as possible without bothering about updating in the meantime or anything like that.

As he notes in the note, there is not much to show for this a year later. Certainly some other stuff, but it doesn't seem to have been as productive of a year as he would have hoped.

So I figure that if Andrew Hussie can take a year off to buckle down and finish up a major project, and out of those twelve months work on it for only three, and get caught up in other unanticipated tasks the rest of the time, then I shouldn't be too down on myself when it happens to me.

Ethical Hedonism, Consent, & Antinatalism

You may also be interested in 

• Constructive Complexity, or Posthuman Ethics and Value Systems, which explains hedons, terminal values, and the idea of constructive complexity. 
• Constructive Complexity: Follow-up Notes

Today we're going to talk about

• What hedonism is
• Why "consent" is integral to any form of hedonism that we can coexist with
• How this means that hedonists must also be antinatalists

Constructive Complexity: Follow-up notes

You may also be interested in 

• Constructive Complexity, or Posthuman Ethics and Value Systems

Just a couple of notes about constructive complexity.

Originally this was going to be part of an article entitled Constructive Complexity Today, where I'd go over stuff like body modification and ecological conservation and whatnot and why these things would be considered Good in any ethical system that held constructive complexity as its terminal value. Then I realized that most of it was superfluous fluff.

I guess that the polyamory one might bear some discussion later on, but still the majority of the article could be summed up as "These things: they are good. Bcz net complexity." That is to say, until it's proven to the contrary I'm going to assume that if you think that paving over the whole entire world is a good thing, then our disagreement lies in our terminal values and not in how we're interpreting constructive complexity.

There are still some things worth saying, though.

Table of Contents

I. Agency, or Liberty
II. A Quick Note on (Transhumanist) Abolitionism
III. Constructive Complexity vs. Alternative Terminal Values
IV. Why Love Doesn't Work (as a terminal value)

Jumpchain: Fallout (world-7)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Yu-Gi-Oh
>>Next Jumpchain: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

Link to this Jumpchain

Starting location: Capital Wasteland
Identity: Twenty-six-year-old Courier (-100)
Skills and additional powers: skill tags (barter, outdoorsman, science), pathfinder, cult of personality [-150], chemist [-100], educated [-100]
Gear: bag of 2,500 caps [-50], robot butler [-100], food purifier [-100], Pip-boy 3000 [-300]
Setbacks: Wild Wasteland [+0]

Who was on the Lord’s side, who?

(Nutshell for Non-LDS: Mormons believe that everyone alive once dwelled with God before being born. Before the world was even formed there was a war in Heaven, as John’s Revelation made famous, and this war was about whether we should be allowed to make mistakes when that would mean we would suffer, or if our lives should be so controlled that nobody would be able to sin or choose wrongly at all. Satan advocated for the latter, and the rest is mythology.)

If the War in Heaven was a war of words, an essentially missionary war, and nobody was won over from the Bad Side to the Good Side, then it had to have been the most supremely ineffective missionary effort of all time. Which means that we need to consider…

How many of us were once on Satan’s side of that war?

I Watch: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

And I really didn’t like a lot of it.

First, just to get it out of the way: I didn’t appreciate the deathism of Gwen Stacy’s speech. Death gives meaning to our lives? The shortness of our lives is what makes them precious? Fuggin’ Stockholm Syndrome. No. Just no.

I also did not approve of how even though Peter Parker’s friends were no younger than he was (and were perhaps demonstrably more capable of making smart decisions), he decided that he knew better than them and had the right to decide their lives for them. Gwen Stacy, you don’t get to make cost/benefit analyses and decide if a situation is too risky for you. Harry Osbourne, you don’t get to do that either, even though you’re going to die.

Burning Out & Other Adventures in the Forward-facing Timestream

Or How I Learned to Finally Slow Down & Maybe Not Break Myself. Maybe.

Haha, not really. If the past is any indication this is just a temporary thing and I’ll be back to my old high-pressured over-clocking demands that send me flying into the highs and sinking into the lows with the sort of whiplash that’d rip my head clean off in any other circumstance.

Allow me to explain.

Jumpchain: Yu-Gi-Oh (world-6)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Fullmetal Alchemist
>>Next Jumpchain: Fallout

Unfortunately I don't have a link to this Jumpchain. Well.

Starting location: Satellite
Identity: Twenty-year-old Technician
Starter Deck: Original Deck (40 unique, 10 normal)
Skills and additional powers: Mandatory crazy hair, advanced combat card training, It's a TRAP, spirit partners, sphinx got nothing, outside battle luck, blend in
Gear: Duel gazer, dueling integrated motorcycle, destiny cards

Jumpchain: Fullmetal Alchemist (world-5)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Knights of the Old Republic
>>Next Jumpchain: Yu-Gi-Oh

Link to this Jumpchain

Starting location: Xing
Identity: Twenty-three-year-old University [-100]
Skills and additional powers: Advanced formulae, simplified formulae, Truth [-800], alkahestry [-300]
Gear: Mil-Spec/advanced automail limb [-250], mechanic's tools [-150]
Setbacks: Enemy of the state [-300], hostile rival [-200]

Jumpchain: Knights of the Old Republic (world-4)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Harry Potter
>>Next Jumpchain: Fullmetal Alchemist

Link to this Jumpchain

Starting planet: Korriban
Identity: Twenty-four-year-old; Mandalorian
Specialization: Intelligence (Force heal)
Skills and additional powers: Enhanced memory [-100], demolitions, persuasion [-100], comprehend speech [-300], force persuasion [-600]
Gear: Lightsaber, breath mask, medkit, health package implant [-100], T3 series utility droid [-200], armored robes (cortosis) [-100], protoype vibroblade [-100]
Setbacks: Notorious [+300], aura [+300]

Jumpchain: Harry Potter (world-3)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Infamous
>>Next Jumpchain: Knights of the Old Republic

Link to this Jumpchain

Identity: Eleven-year-old; middle-class [-50] Pureblood [-100] Slytherin
Skills and additional powers: Occlumency [-100], clean-blooded, wandless magic [-300], memory spell specialist [-100], nonverbal specialty [-200], metamorphmagus [-400]
Gear: Pet owl
Setbacks: Werewolf [+250]

Jumpchain: Infamous (world-2)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Cosmic Warehouse & Body Mod
>>Next Jumpchain: Harry Potter

Link to this Jumpchain

Starting city: New Marais (public opinion: conduit friendly; military presence: moderate; crime: moderate)
Identity: Twenty-two-year-old; drifter
Conduit type: Electrokinesis
Skills and additional powers: Toggle [-150], regen [-100], durability [-100], subdue [-300], analytics [-300]
Gear: Safehouse, expanded space bag [-100], hardened cell phone [-100], light body armor [-50], motorcycle [-300]
Setbacks: Greenlit [+300], Stalker [+300]

Jumpchain: Cosmic Warehouse & Body Mod (interlude)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Previous Jumpchain: Pokemon Trainer
>>Next Jumpchain: Infamous

Link to Cosmic Warehouse
Link to Body Mod

Now that I've finished my first world, Jump-chan is giving me a pocket dimension to store my stuff in, and a body mod package. Check the link for details on how these work, but in summary the warehouse is big, and I can access it from anywhere that there's a door.

Jumpchain: Pokemon Trainer (world-1)

>>Jumpchain CYOA: What is it? 
>>Jumpchain Masterlist post
>>Next Jumpchain: Cosmic Warehouse & Body Mod

Link to this Jumpchain

Region: Hoenn
Identity: Thirteen-year-old male; moneybags [-100]
Starter: Totodile w/ mental bond [-100] & egg move (metal claw) [-50]
Skills and abilities: Save state [-600], combat training [-100], freerunning [-100]
Gear: Bag, pokegear, pokedex, x5 pokeballs, x3 potions, hat, 400k pokedollars, laptop, bike, HM collection, medical kit, collapsible baton [-50]
Flaws: Silenced [+100]

Jumpchain Masterlist

A list of all the Jumpchain posts on my blog, for easy referencing.

I'm enjoying a certain random element in my Jumpchains, so I'm picking them up as they're completed rather than in any particular order. Sometimes this will lead to being ridiculously overpowered for the setting. By the time that The Fast & The Furious was completed... well, just look at the list. So sometimes these worlds are more of a rest time than anything else, at least compared to the usual fare.

Jumpchain CYOA: What is it?

I'll let 1d4chan explain CYOAs:

CYOA is an abbreviation of 'choose your own adventure.' When mentioned on 4chan, these are images that describe varied scenarios with a common theme, intended to spark discussion about the choices you would make as you describe why you feel one of the offered choices is better than the others.

It's like that question "would you rather fight a horse-sized duck, or a flock of duck-sized horses?" except you have a dozen choices and they're all awesome.

I'm a Mormon, and... I think that "Reign of Judges" is a horrible movie

There are a lot of problems that I have with this movie, Reign of Judges. The whitewashing, for instance.

I cannot tell you how frustrated the whitewashing in this film makes me. If for one instant the filmmakers are taking the Book of Mormon seriously as a historical document, as something that tells the stories of people that actually lived, breathed, and died, then it is an indefensible whitewash.

But there's something else that gets me, too. A few things, really, but the biggest of all is that it's promoting the idea that you have to kill in order to have peace.

Jesus Christ, the Serpent

The snake was originally a symbol for Jesus Christ. The reason can be easily seen if we look at other cultures: the shedding of the snake's skin is a type of rebirth that associates the snake with healing, regeneration, resurrection, and eternal life.

The Universal Sacred

It seems to me as I consider it more that it may be very likely that everything is a vessel for the Sacred. One questions how the label matters if it applies to everything, but there are a few other similarly universal labels, like "universe" and "existent," that apply to all existent things. Too, the label is important because it demonstrates our ability to understand a universal aspect.

Alloneliness

"Memes treat compatible intelligences as the same species. If we eventually discover or are discovered by alien intelligences, there is no doubt in my mind that memes will cross between us and them, for good or ill." Greg Porter, writing as Mas Noonuy.

Our history is a process of becoming, in the inclusion and spirit of companionship that relieves us of loneliness, alone once again.

Trans/Post Terminology: Some Errata

Here's the most pointless post you may encounter for awhile!

"Transhuman" and "Posthuman" are species-chauvinistic terms that ignore the fact that non-homo sapiens species could and almost certainly have reached the same state, and absolutely will in the future. And as you may have guessed from a brief aside in my Pronoun Sets and Present Tense article, I strive to avoid even things as presently irrelevant as species chauvinism (as I say elsewhere, it's silly to avoid changing now when you know that you'll have to change in the future and it's just that your arm isn't being twisted yet).

Pronoun Sets & Present Tense

This post is divided into two sections. Reading the first isn't necessary to understand the second.

Pronoun Sets

I'm sure that all of you are going to accuse me of thinking far too much about stuff that matters far too little, but something that I've wondered about for awhile is which pronoun sets to use by default (if somebody specifies, of course, then anything goes).

Constructive Complexity, or Posthuman Ethics and Value Systems

George Carlin once asked, "If God loved you, how come He gave you tumors?"

Let's find out.

Table of Contents
I. Background
II. The Rectification of Names
III. The Danger of Wireheading
IV. Beyond Wireheading
V. And Then What Will They Do?
VI. Aren't They Kind of Bastards, These Posthumans?

Things That I Like: What Homestuck and a random generator taught me about writing

This article originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on April 24, 2014. 

…

Or what a random generator taught me about writing, and Homestuck reinforced and Homestuck fanfiction prompted me to write about today.

Salt City Strangers [#1, #2]: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

A review for Salt City Strangers (#1 and #2). Credits at the end. 

Nutshell: The comic is about the latest incarnation of a team of superheroes defending Salt Lake City and, indeed, the whole world (because of Magic Stuff involving the transcontinental railroad that is actually kind of interesting). The series promises to deal with matters of faith (the Strangers range from Mormon-in-name-only to hardcore-believer) but has only barely begun to dip its toes in the water. Only time will tell if it can grow legs and live up to its potential.

Sarcophagus: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

A review for Sarcophagus, by Philip Hemplow. 

Nutshell: In the shadow of Chernobyl, Dr. Victoria Cox is told, "a little vodka keeps away the radiation." Don't look for blood and gore or fast-paced thrills here; Sarcophagus moves slowly but inexorably like a Crawling Chaos. Some points are predictable, but they are skillfully set in order to lull you into complacency and keep you from realizing how it's all going to end. 

What Hides Within: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

A review for What Hides Within, by Jason Parent. 

Nutshell: Jason Parent weaves a number of disparate storylines into a seamless whole. All loose ends are tied up by the end of the story, and in a way that makes you conflicted on whether it should be called bittersweet or a downer. You may struggle with tolerating Clive for awhile, but the story’s worth it.

Things That I Like: You are about to read an article about second-person point of view

This article originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on March 27, 2014. 

…

As your eyes move from the title to the body of the article, you commence reading it. You quickly determine that the article is self-demonstrating, and you think that it’s kind of awkward. You hope that the author will cut it out with the crap.

I’ll acquiesce, dear reader. As the preceding self-demonstration mentioned, this article is about the second-person point of view, not self-demonstrating works. For that, you will want to read David Moser. I shall wait patiently till thou hast wetted thine appetite for self-demonstrating literature.

Are you back? Wonderful. As it happens I had a sudden attack of the King Jameses, as you may have noticed, so it was good to have a moment to handle that. You’re back, I’m back, we’re all back to back to back and we’re back to the actual article, alright?

Thank you.

Second-person point of view gets a bad rap most of the time. I don't think that I was ever told anything on it except "Don't." It took seeing other people disregard that rule, and a certain amount of contrarianism, for me to begin experimenting with it myself. Besides a whole lot of fanfiction, where it leads a very fulfilling life, however, it's still not quite yet in vogue in these modern times, the biggest example of it today probably being Andrew Hussie's Homestuck.

I'm a big fan of the second-person point of view now. I'm currently using it in The Buddha on the Road (which could possibly be described as "Andrew Hussie writes a sidequel to Herbert West: Re-Animator) and previously played with it in Sedatophobia, which is cast as a mostly-but-not-entirely one-sided discussion between the narrator and yourself, much like Lovecraft's Pickman's Model (what do we call these conversational blends of first- and second-person? first-point-five points of view?).

Second-person is not a gimmick, though. Like the choice between first-person and third-person, the decision to use the second-person shouldn't be made haphazardly. Melissa Tydell states that there are three benefits to using the second-person pov in her Write Practice article advocating, unusually, for writers to use it more often:

1) Second person pulls the reader into the action

2) Second person gets personal

3) Second person stretches your skills and surprises the reader

There's a reason that Choose Your Own Adventure books are generally in the second-person. For all the technical difficulty that it poses, it makes the action that much more real and penetrating. To grossly oversimplify the mechanisms at work, your sense of empathy is based on an ability to mirror others' emotions in yourself, asking "How would I feel under these circumstances?" By using the second-person point of view the line between yourself and the Other is blurred.

Consider this excerpt from the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, by Matthew Stover. For context, this takes place at the very end of the movie when Anakin has returned to consciousness and has found himself in the Vader armor. Read, and pay attention to how it makes you feel.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don’t even have lungs anymore.

Do you have a good handle on your state of mind right now? Can you set it aside, acquire a couple of others, and pick it back up relatively unmarred? Good.

Let's read the same passage again, this time in the first-person point of view.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in my universe brings pain.
The light burns me. It will always burn me. Part of me will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon my flesh.
I can hear myself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but I cannot stop it. I can never stop it. I cannot even slow it down.
I don’t even have lungs anymore.

And again, from the third-person:

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in his universe brings pain.
The light burns him. It will always burn him. Part of him will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon his flesh.
He can hear himself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but he cannot stop it. He can never stop it. He cannot even slow it down.
He doesn't even have lungs anymore.

If you're anything like me, the second-person point of view cuts to your heart more deeply than the other two do.

The second-person point of view also opens up the room to tricks that you can't utilize in quite the same way, if at all, in other points of view. Secret Life, which also uses the first- and third-person points of view in supplementary fashion, is able to hide important facts in the second-person that would be revealed much sooner, if not immediately, in either of the other possible points of view.

In Things Unsaid, one of the stories in my Babylonian Medley cycle, the narrative even turns a little meta through the use of the second-person. At the end, for example, the protagonist struggles to find the words to describe a particular incident which happened in xir past but fails and fails again. The reason for this is that the particulars of the incident are unknown to you, so of course you don't know the words to convey what really happened. By taking the state of mind of the reader and mirroring it in the protagonist, the line is blurred that much more.

Your turn: What are some unusual literary devices that you have used in the past or want to employ in the future?

R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available here for free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction.

Productivity Report Mar 17-30

Oh my gosh, I don't even know anymore.

I can barely remember what's been going on. Like. Things.

Things have been going on. They have been  going on all over the place.

Lots of posts backlogged. I've read two stories and written reviews for them. Those reviews should be appearing over the next few weeks. Here, White Marble Block, and The Oak Wheel. Also appeared at Goodreads and Smashwords. Need to fix my problem with Amazon so they can appear there too.

Got a couple of issues of comics to review, and then the author of one of the books I reviewed may be sending me another book or two. So that's good.

Building contacts, reading books and feeling productive, yeah. Yeah.

Things. Going on.

I've gotten established on Ficwad. Archive of Our Own. Tumblr, too.

Everything's happening on the Twitter, lords and ladies. Everything.

So many followers. So few that aren't spam.

I've stopped auto-following. I was told to follow anyone who followed me but I'm going to follow just the ones who seem relevant to writing. Twenty million followers don't mean anything when they don't pay attention to your tweets.

Going on.

Getting established on Dreamwidth. May be getting established on LiveJournal, but that's a trip for another month. Not doing it tomorrow. No way, nuh uh.

Good amount of outlines finished up. Should go well. Won't be twenty even by the end of tomorrow but hey hey hey, that's alright. I'll get it done. Without prepped outlines I was able to do well last month anyway.

We'll figure it out.

So many things.

But it's getting easier and easier, smoother and smoother, yeah? Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't even know anymore...

Things That I Like: Some ways to draw out a fight scene

This article originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on March 13, 2014. 

…

In my last post on the Oak Wheel I established a problem with fight scenes, namely that the longer they are the more unrealistic they become. Like any good problem it’s a solvable one, and I’d like to suggest some possibilities. A lot of these will draw on examples from my own writing because, after all, other people may know us better than we know ourselves but we don’t know anybody better than we know ourselves (at least, we shouldn’t, but luminosity is a discussion for another day). I don’t expect all of them to be immediately applicable to your story but hopefully they should be able to give you some ideas.

There are a few different things that I’ve done. The first one is make both parties very, very skilled but just as lucky. This is very contrived, and I don’t think that I’ve ever managed to do it well, but in the right hands I think it’s possible. I don’t think that it’d be possible to do more than once a decade, let alone more than once a book, though.

Another possibility is disregarding some of the other shortness advice and zeroing in on every detail. Second to second, what is being felt, physically and mentally? Give us the panic, give us the adrenaline, give us the waves of pain from a broken rib, and the will that keeps someone moving despite internal bleeding. Lavish us with it as if we’re watching the scene in bullet time with an MMA commentator. Take the sensory detail and stab us in the heart with it.

It won’t work every time, but it’s possible.

For SF writers there are a few more options. In one story, maybe i’m just tired, people like the main character couldn’t die until they lost the mental strength to keep regenerating. Battles between such beings were long, hard slogs that were as psychological as they were physical, fought with the intent to stab, crush, beat, and chop the limbs off your opponent until the pain and the effort of regenerating were too great to summon the strength to heal themselves anymore. In fact, pure psychological attacks (such as when another character was taunted about her mother’s death, which she hadn’t known about until then) could be as deadly as anything else if they made it harder for your opponent to find the mental strength to keep going.

Similar to this, The Buddha on the Road features characters who, by dint of being zombies, are trying to make each other nonfunctional rather than, um, dead. Brain trauma matters to them as little as torn jugular veins (well, maybe a little bit more, but not by much), so the intent of each one is to take the other guy down into so many pieces that he’s no longer a threat. Both of these ideas are pretty similar to each other (i.e. characters with superhuman toughness) but the details are enough to make them and their fights distinct from each other. Whether you take these mechanics or come up with your own spin on superhuman toughness it should still result in something that smells fresh.

Fighting on some other plane is also great stuff. In Lost Girl the actual physical combat is presented but ultimately takes a backseat to the real conflict being fought between the two characters as they wield a kind of story magic against each other. Each one of them was trying to fit themselves and the other character into a particular archetypal story where their victory was inevitable, nay, required, and drew on incidental details to force the other character to fit the role that had been chosen for them.

This brings up magic in general. Perhaps there are enchantments at work which must be penetrated or used up before anyone can actually be hurt. Something like a mix of this and maybe i’m just tired was done in Her Body Moves, whose characters benefited from a regeneration system that can be overtaxed by suffering too much over too small a span of time. Or they have but one weakness which must be exploited in order to kill them (remember, one of the reasons that real fights end so quickly is because there are so many ways to kill a person).

Before you start to figure out how to justify a long fight scene, though, make sure that you should. Is it something that you can write well? Do you even need it? Many times the tension in the build-up to the fight, and even the aftermath, can be more interesting than the fight itself. Like everything else, you should only bother with a long fight scene when it’s going to serve the story to begin with. And most importantly of all, don’t forget the implications: Your justification, whether it could only exist in a fantasy novel or actually does have some realism to it, will undoubtedly have an effect on the rest of the story and its world. Even zeroing in and slowing down, as described in the third paragraph, will at least have an effect on the style of the rest of the story, which needs to be one that this technique can reasonably fit into and complement.

Your turn: How do you handle action scenes?

R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available here for free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction.

A glimpse of the wall of doom

I have begun to post an ever-increasing amount of pages on the wall where I generally write, in order to easily access information without tying up my hands. One of the downsides to putting your computer on a stand barely bigger than your laptop is that there's nowhere else to put papers.

I imagine that I'll be adding yet more pages in times to come.

This is the list that I printed off to keep track of what I needed to do in my off/prep-month. "Vocab?" is in reference to the idea of printing off a sheet or two of words that I want to add to my vocabulary or that I think might be useful in a particular situation. 

As you can see I'm continually making notes, rearranging when something's getting done, etc. If something is circled then that means that it's not a high priority and doesn't necessarily have to get done this month. 

This is the sheet that I made use of while I was working on some of the articles for the Culture Column. Now that I took the pictures, in accordance with the note at the bottom of the page, I guess it's time to retire the page to free up space for more important things. 

The on/crazy-month's counterpart to the first page, I suppose. Going top to bottom, left to right: The first list (1-9, Finding Ginny, etc) listed the stories that I had already completed by the time that I first made this list. The second list (1-9, all scribbled out) is the list of stories that I was working on in order to hit fifteen stories. The third list (1-9, Irem, etc) is a list of culture column articles that I was planning. The to-do list made that obsolete. The mini-calendar to the left kept me aware of how many days were left until the end of the month. As you can see I didn't always check the days off. The last list, titled "Stories Outlined," is keeping track of the stories that I have outlined in preparation for the coming on/crazy-month. I aim to have twenty outlines, as you can see. 

Productivity Report

Did pretty well this past week, all things considered. Only 47 poems submitted, but that's alright. Also didn't expand the card catalog, but this weeks submissions showed that I actually have a large enough selection for now. I don't really need another twenty non-paying markets in the list just yet and I've got most, if not all, of the professional rate markets.

The blog is filled out for stories up through the first full week of April. I may or may not write another one. By the end of today [writing on Saturday] I should have gotten an idea of which stories I'm going to be outlining over the next two weeks.

Besides the tasks written out at the beginning of the week I also got two shiny published stories to review. I should have the first book finished and reviewed by the end of the month. I've also begun planning a little bit for a Lovecraftian toolkit PDF for gaming and writing, getting the basic structure figured out and asking people at RPG.net what they'd like to see.

This coming week it's looking like:

• Monday: Create three Useful Notes PDFs and the So You Want To PDF. Shoot an email to see if they'd mind me putting a link up on TV Tropes to the PDFs. Write So You Want To Write the Next HPMOR and shoot it to Eliezer Yudkowsky for props or anti-props, as the case may be. 
• Tuesday: Do a little more uploading of fanfiction (ficwad, etc). Restructure White Marble Block. Clean out the bookmarks. Clean out my files a little more. 
• Wednesday: Clean out email account. A story outline. Flesh out some fanfic seeds (a paragraph where there is none, doubled length where there is). After all that's done and I've read some stories for review purposes, see how much I can do on the Unlikely outline. It'd be great if I could get the outline down pat enough that, come next off/prep-month, I can take a five-day to sit down (or stand, as the case may be) and churn out 20-25,000 words and get it all done then. Assuming I update it every week and every other week includes an additional story, that's eleven weeks (22 chapters total) that have their stories taken care of. 
• Thursday: One or two Culture Column articles. A story outline, possibly but not probably. 
• Friday: Arrange for guest posts for White Marble Block. One or two story outlines. 
• Saturday: Take a day off to heal. 

Scattered throughout, I'll also be reading and reviewing all sorts of stories, some on Absolute Write and at least one of the published stories that was sent to me. 

The Commercial Curmudgeon: The Sad Demise of the "History" Channel

Keep in mind the soul of your story as you're writing it. Whether it's while you're still working on the original product or writing the fifth sequel, don't sell its soul just to play things safe. Unless that was what you were intending to do all along, of course. But if it's got a soul to start with then make sure that it's still got one at the end.



The Commercial Curmudgeon: The Sad Demise of the "History" Channel: I love history. When I was a kid, I'd spend hours poring over old history textbooks, looking for maps, graphs and charts and reading ...

Beta Schedule is progressing smoothly

I had to take yesterday off [as I write on Sunday] for a variety of reasons. Painting walls took some time, but for full disclosure I was reaching a burning out point anyway and the most that I was able to do was (in all fairness, a considerable and tedious amount of) prep work for some Culture Column articles. Which, by the way, I'm a little unclear about the status of, as the CC didn't go up last month and I haven't gotten a reply back about that situation.

So far I've completed five of the eight stories for White Marble Block (first one is going up the same day you're reading this), gotten an agreement for a guest post for WMB, completed a Culture Column article, all four articles for Things That I Like on The Oak Wheel, and ten of the eighteen WMB posts needed to carry me through this and next month and into the month following.

This coming week I intend to: finish the last eight posts for White Marble Block, make eighty poem submissions, increase my card catalog by twenty entries, write another story or two, get another two guest authors for WMB, and finish four more Culture Column articles.

Going day by day that might look like:

• Monday: Last eight posts, two Culture Column articles
• Tuesday: 80 poem submissions
• Wednesday: CC article, increase card catalog (if not done the day before)
• Thursday: CC article, write a story (maybe)
• Friday: CC article (sixth of the month), get another two guest authors for WMB, write a story
• Saturday: Take a day off to heal

I also want to have in mind, oh, twenty story ideas from which to develop my thirteen outlines, critique some stories on Absolute Write (gotta pay it forward!), and do some posting/editing/backlogging on dA, Tumblr, and so on. 

Leaves me with just forty-two items to complete in the two weeks following, fourteen of which are ultimately of varying degrees of optionality (that sounds like a made-up word for some reason but Dictionary.com confirms its existence). 

Next week I'll have pictures of the work-wall that's developing next to my computer so that you can see some of how I operate. 

Stage 2... Begin

And a new month begins.

Day 2 of the new month as I'm writing this, and I'm making a respectable amount of progress with preparing for my second on-month of crazy takka-takka keyboard smashing come April.

There are a few changes that I'm hoping to implement with this coming month that should help me to be a little more effective. The first one, as you may have noticed, is that I've changed my posting time. I'm going to be experimenting with this for a few months based on what reports have said is the best time for posting and see which works best for me. Some days and times are better for page counts, others for comments, others for getting people to link to your stuff. I don't know yet which is the most important for me yet, since it's not just what I'm losing or what I'm gaining for a certain day or time but how much I'm losing against how much I'm gaining.

Another change that I'm making is automating my Twitter account to schedule my Tweets like I do my blog. This'll mean that my Twitter account is something that I only have to think about once in awhile instead of something that can force me to choose between posting at a good time and disrupting a good writing period.

Productivity report

For-market stories currently completed:

1. The Albatross Came 
2. The Angel in the Basement (completed this week)
3. Azazel's Goat (completed this week; formerly The Scapegoat)
4. The Dog Set Free
5. Finding Ginny
6. An Honor and an Horror 
7. Lost Girl
8. The Man with the Bloody Coat
9. Percival 
10. Perfect Engine
11. Pickman's Estate
12. The Philosopher's Ship
13. Sedatophobia
14. Thomas Edison's Last Gambit

You'll notice that I don't have The Buddha on the Road up there. I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Well, what's done is done...

There are a lot of forums that I plan to get into, for the first time or not. Community is essential for both feedback and awareness, and if I'm going to have any success then I need to pay it forward on credit: If I'm going to get reviews then I need to review other people first.

There are some other websites that I plan on posting fiction to, too. Every little bit helps. Most of them are fanfiction sites but I'm looking for original fiction sites too. Does anybody know of a site that uses the structure from Archive of Our Own but allows original fiction? That'd be all kinds of sweet bro and hella jeff.

Also: restructuring my blogs (and getting a few more guest posts like Mr. Gagne's); getting back to cleaning my files out;  reading more (both online and in print); writing enough fiction, WMB and TWTIGTD posts, & guest posts for The Oak Wheel and The Fridge to last until my next off/prep-month; finishing the last nine articles in the Culture Column; drawing up... thirteen outlines so that I have twenty come my next crazy/on-month; maybe finish cleaning out my bookmarks; send out a load's load of submissions (mostly poetry) to publishers (let's aim for... eighty? yeah, eighty poems) and build my card catalog of publishers; maybe do some pre-prep prep to make next off/prep-month a little easier; do some work on the Useful PDF; write a So You Want To... page or two; outline Unlikely; probably edit some stories; maybe do a little more tinkering with different story ideas I've got...

Oh, and do a little bit of work on Sundays for a certain story that I won't be telling you about until I've got it all figured out. It'll be interesting, I hope. Abraham Isaac and WWI and Catholic priests and maybe Tarot and... Well, it's defs not what you're thinking it is. Nope, not that either.

Just wait and see, kk?

...

Yeah, I think that's a good laundry list, plus the school prep and work-work that I need to get done. I'll take another looksie over the next month and let yous know if there's anything else I had to add, and probs get an actual schedule out for getting this done. I'm hoping to get all the stories (maybe all the posts) done by the end of this week. If I can get four or five culture columns done in a day then that leaves me with the two of the three biggest jobs done when I wake up on the Twelfth. Let's say Thirteenth to play it safe. Still gives me fifteen days plus Sundays to get the rest done, and that'll be good enough.

Yeah. I can work with that. 

Productivity Report Feb 17-23 (2014)

Just a quick update.

For-market stories currently completed:

1. The Albatross Came (completed this week)
2. Finding Ginny
3. An Honor and an Horror (completed this week)
4. Lost Girl
5. The Man with the Bloody Coat
6. Percival (completed this week)
7. Perfect Engine
8. Pickman's Estate
9. The Philosopher's Ship
10. Sedatophobia
11. Thomas Edison's Last Gambit

For-market stories I'm working on till the end of the month: 

1. The Asseveration of Harley Warren (formerly The Act of Harley Warren)
2. The Buddha in the Road
3. From Kadath Came
4. The Angel in the Basement
5. Scapegoat
6. To Dream a Dream

I hope to have The Buddha in the Road, The Angel in the Basement, and To Dream a Dream completed by midnight Friday. With a goal of twenty outlines/hard sketches done by the end of the coming month (so that I can do fifteen stories the month after that without drawing up new outlines if one fails to work out) that leaves me with fourteen more to draw up. 

Productivity Report: I'm slipping behind on this, I am

Well, I can't say that last night was stress free, but I got some important work done. I don't want to get into details, but suffice it to say that I made progress on, ah, fixing some "toxic" (as Magpie describes it, and I agree) mental programming. It's been an issue that I've recognized for a long while and tried to deal with in a multitude of ways, and I'm glad that I was able to step forward and feelvomit about it to someone. I'm even happier that I was overestimating just how bad it would make me look in that person's eyes.

There are a lot of issues that I've got to fix, some of which I don't even know about right now, but just talking about it has taken some weight off and made the job of debugging the code easier for me.

Productivity Report

Two more weeks until my off/preparation month, and boy howdy do I have a lot to get done that month.

The good new is while this month hasn't been as productive as I'd like, and isn't going to be, it's still looking to be reasonably productive. Writing this late Sunday night, I have eight stories complete at this point in time (all lists at the end, for those interested) and another that needs a couple of more paragraphs before it's done. With those nine out of the way I'm aiming to get at least another nine stories in particular done in the following two weeks, for twelve stories finished this month (not too short of my goal of fifteen per month, especially given that this month has also had to devote time to things like generating a backlog of posts, which the next on/writing month shouldn't have to deal with) and eighteen stories in total. If each of the following three on/writing months hit the 15/stories goal then that'll give me 63 stories to bounce around the market for Gosh Knows How Long.

For-market stories currently completed:

1. Finding Ginny
2. Lost Girl
3. The Man with the Bloody Coat
4. Perfect Engine
5. Pickman's Estate
6. The Philosopher's Ship
7. Sedatophobia
8. Thomas Edison's Last Gambit

For-market stories I'm planning on having done by the end of the month: 

1. The Act of Harley Warren
2. The Albatross Came
3. The Buddha in the Road
4. From Kadath Came
5. An Honor and an Horror
6. The Angel in the Basement
7. Percival
8. Scapegoat
9. To Dream a Dream

Let me tell you about Homestuck!

Productivity report at the end. 

Well, more like how I got into Homestuck, anyway.

I've known about Homestuck for awhile. I think that the first pages that I looked at were the quadrant pages. I skipped out pretty soon after that, about when Eridan showed up.

Fast forward. I don't think I've read more than a page more since then. I'm a little familiar with some of the tropes, though. I come across it here and there, and then I move on.

Enter Pandora. I'm listening to music, and eventually there plays Regina Spektor's Hotel Song. Later on I find it on YouTube to listen to it again, and then I try out Blue Lips. It's a Homestuck fanvid, so it's not too surprising that the suggested vidyas to the right are Homestuck too. Dirty Night Clowns sounds all kinds of interesting, so I click on it.

And I need more.

Just fanvids at first. I've no intention of getting into Homestuck proper. Too freaking long. 660,000 words and counting. Like I have that kind of time. Remember, I'm feeling guilty about reading anything at all when I could be spending that time doing something else. As if I'm really going to get myself sucked into a monster like Homestuck. Please.

But yes, I'll watch some videos. A couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, I'm feeling okay. And I get curious about the possibility of people animating scenes from Homestuck. Come on, there's this massive fandom, why not? Somebody, somewhere, has certainly done a couple of scenes.

I find Let's Read Homestuck. It is The Answer. Or the final nail in the coffin. I don't know. But I started watching, and I got hooked.

"It's not fair. It's not just. It never should have happened. And you shouldn't have to do this. And it's not your fault and there's nothing you can do and this is probably just making everything even worse. And I'm sorry for that but it hurts. It shouldn't but it does." And Justice For All, by a_mere_trifle.

It's fanfiction, but it does a durned good job summarizing Homestuck in a single paragraph. Not what Homestuck is, so much, but how, how it feels.

It feels very existentialist to me, to be honest. Maybe that's why Homestuck strikes such a chord in me. Among other reasons, but we'll get to those at a later time, maybe on White Marble Block (and maybe not- I know everything: I know nothing).

Incidentally, this convoluted path isn't unknown to me. First time I can remember it happening is with Nietzsche, who I was introduced to via Alpha Centauri. I well remember memorizing one of the excerpts that AC provided: Fellow creators, the creator seeks. Not corpses, not herds of believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks. Those who would write new values on new tablets.* Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. 

*After double-checking my work, it turns out that this sentence actually begins "Those who write," not "Those who would write."

Productivity report

I think that this is how I'll run things from now on. Hopefully I'll always have interesting things to say, but then there will be productivity reports, too.

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, really. Four outlines complete, and they're not really the longest ones. Some of the shortest ones, actually. But that doesn't mean that the week was a total wash. I was able, just barely, to make something presentable out of Brother G's Cyclopedia of Comparative Mythology, my short book of building blocks for worldbuilders needing to dabble in mythology and religion. It's not as big as it'll ever be (I can think of fifty more entries to add offhand) but it's a good start, and it's been of benefit to a few people already. Look for it Monday on White Marble Block.

I also made a good start on the outlines. Four done, and I think that I'll work on another one or two tonight (I'm writing this on Saturday). I still have to finish Perfect Engine before I go to any of those, too, so maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to keep ahead of the rush. Having a tablet will help with that since I'll be able to draw up outlines even when I'm away from my laptop.

I don't know how many stories I'll have done at the end of this month. Not a million, to be sure, but I think that I can get at least ten done. I also have to allot some time to write a few stories for White Marble Block, but after this month I'll have an entire month to build up a reserve for the month after that so I can dedicate it totally to for-market work.

I'm still trying to figure all this out, but I'm making progress. If I can manage an average of fifteen stories each of my for-market months then I'll have more than sixty stories flying between markets. Besides that, I plan to have a few other projects like the Cyclopedia done by that time. At this point in time I think that I'll take the Fall semester (September through December) easy. I'll work on a story or two for the market, maybe, but most of my creative energy will be focused on the blogs and on one particular project (I'm thinking a Cthulhu Mythos idea book). And, of course, studying.

Productivity Report for: This Last Week

Report: Totally unacceptable.

I can't say as though I'm pleased with how this week has gone, but I'm optimistic. I don't know if it was that I burned out, if I got hit by the dysthymia, or both (I think it's likely that even if I burned out, the dysthymia would have come in as a consequence) but I'm taking steps to address the former just in case (even if I never burn out I'm still wearing a little thin) and the latter... Well, I'm managing there, I suppose. I need to do better keeping track of my lows if I'm going to figure out the pattern that I'm currently under and anticipate my depressive episodes before they happen, like I was able to do on my mission.

I have high hopes for the next week and for the next few months. I will be finishing Perfect Engine by the end of next week and have a good deal figured out for my planned YA novel Fox Sense and Circumstances. I'm also working on nutshells and outlines for eighteen short stories that I will be writing in February. I should get anywhere from 18,000 to 54,000 words (or even more) from these and have a total of twenty-five short stories written and being submitted here, there, and everywhere. After that I'll take the month off from writing stories for market (with the exception of Fox) and focus on outlining and writing stories for the blog, which won't be anywhere near as much of a hassle for me. Even if I write another 50,000 words for the blog in March it'll be with the intention of producing a backlog so that, come April, I can go back to focusing on short stories for the market and not worry about the blog.

With any luck, by April I'll have also completed a few chapters of Unlikely, a Harry Potter fanfiction that's been slowly developing in my head and is almost fully sketched-out at this point. Fanfiction won't be something that I'll ever be able to sell, of course, but it's a different kind of writing, almost but not quite like what I do for many of my Lovecraftian stories. In that way it's kind of a sabbatical in its own right, and it has the added benefit of having a ready audience from the beginning. There's more than one author that I can think of who built a writing career from a fanbase that was developed while writing fanfiction.

My comparative mythology book is nearing completion. I can't say for sure but I hope that it'll be done by the end of January. There's far less to be done now than there once was, so it's getting there. Definitely getting there.

There's a possibility that I'll be dropping this blog at least for the time being. I've made a friend who has expressed an interest in teaming up, and while I like many things about this blog the fact is that I need to be pragmatic. It may be my own little corner of the interweb but it's practically a haunted house. A living, growing thing, to be sure, but its halls are only occasionally wandered by a living soul, which makes its continued vitality off-putting to me in some ways. Like talking to the darkness when no-one's there. Of course you must build it before they come, but in the meantime it feels awfully creepy at times and I will welcome the opportunity to move to a better-read blog if that will indeed work out for both myself and the blog's current writer.

But I don't know for sure. Like I said, just a possibility.

The ethics of AdBlock

I googled "AdBlock ethic" a few minutes ago as a joke, just to see what would pop up before I wrote this post. I was surprised (though I don't see how, honestly) to find that there were quite a few results. 241,000, exactly. This post by Andrew Taylor is especially good.

I didn't start thinking about this issue because of posts like that, though. It started with good old 4chan of all places (once upon a time I would have been surprised, but I've been on /tg/ for many years now). Moot mentioned, again and again, how blocking ads was hurting 4chan. Ads were how 4chan supported itself, and if you blocked the ads then 4chan was left dead in the water.

Started thinking.

Read Moot again, a different time, a different post.

Kept thinking.

Went to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, read some comics, read about Patreon and why Zach Weiner is so happy about it. Among other things, he won't have to worry about people blocking his ads anymore.

Thought a little harder.

And I have to say, at the end of my thinking, that I think I've thought up a solution. For myself, anyway. You have different concerns and a different chair that you're sitting in. But I do think that where there is a site which I enjoy, which has ads, then I should look at those ads. Some people pay a fee for internet access based on how much they download, including ads. I can see why they would use AdBlock, but I'm not one of them. On the other hand, my computer isn't very fast, and there are too many ads out there that take up too much of my computer's attention.

I'm going to go with a middle ground approach for now. If your site is one that I enjoy, then I will add it to the whitelist. If it is not, then its ads will be blocked. Its ads probably won't be relevant anyway. I'm looking at it as though ad impressions and clicks were a product you were trying to sell, and your website was your means of making me want to buy. If you hook me, I will buy, but if I am merely passing through your website, unimpressed and uninterested in returning, then I neither need nor want the extra delay that my computer will suffer from running your ads.

When I have a faster computer, I will reevaluate. I'll have a different chair to sit in then.

As for me and my house (blogs), there will be no ads here. No pop-ups, no banners, no nothing. I hope that we will get to a point where AdBlock is as relevant as dinosaur repellent (or that dinosaur repellent becomes as relevant as AdBlock is, which would totally awesome) and I intend to not delay that day.