Student of Trinity

I'm imagining that live theater will survive and even rebound. But movies are already so artificial. The sense that there's a live person behind the role seems pretty remote to me. I imagine there will still be identifiable actors who appear in multiple movie roles, looking slightly different; I think that's a convention people like. It helps set up a character by reminding people of all the other characters that actor has played; the actor is a sort of meta-character. I just don't see why the persistent meta-character needs to be a real human being. I think movie stars in the future will be like Mario and Sonic and Micky Mouse. Live actors may still work on films, but they'll be helping the modelers get the expressions right, not playing through every scene. Maybe I underestimate the durability of the celebrity industry. Maybe the fact that actors have off-screen lives is an irreplaceable element of movie marketing. But I think the celebrity industry is more flexible than that. It can make celebrities out of anyone and anything. Movie actors aren't the only candidates at all. And even Mario and Sonic can have off-screen scandals. Just pop them into a controversial YouTube clip. Sure, film studios will lose some of the real human interest that comes from movie stars having actual human lives. They'll also lose the drawbacks of having stars crack up or need rehab. I'm thinking that the computer models will win out.

I think that's where I'm maybe just naive and idealistic. But the way I think is: the villain's shiny axe and freakish hair are cool, and it's hard to go back to a story without such things, once you've seen the 3D glory; but the cool graphics are still really icing on the cake, gravy on the meat. What will make people really enjoy your production, and remember it, will be the same things that made people enjoy stories in the cave around the campfire, and remember the legend thousands of years later. The basic substance of the story itself will still be what really matters. Everything else, by itself, is at most a fad that will quickly pass. On the other hand, let me argue on the other hand. All the good basic stories are basically simple, and already told many times. What matters is to get synergy between different elements of your story. There's a weird kind of threshold at which everything pulls together and the story's heart beats. It could be that the villain model's quirky hair is just the little touch that somehow picks up threads in the plot and theme and setting and makes it all click. Or at least it could be that the details of your models really work in creating a look and feel that sets everything else in a unique light. But all right, try to synthesize. There's a limit to how much a human mind can take in. You need to reach a threshold of synergy between all your elements, but past that threshold, returns diminish. The right thing to do for a real artist is to reach that threshold, then ship. Exactly what parts of your production are used to hit the threshold can vary a lot. Webcomics are maybe a great sort of herald medium for what I'm thinking about, here. Serial graphics are a much lower bar than 3D film, but you can already see how affordable software has drastically widened the bottleneck of manual talent. And some webcomics still work mainly on story and dialog, with primitive artwork, while others are beautiful tapestries with minimal prose and obscure plot. All of them can work. The element with the heaviest weight, in any extended production, is still the story. Great scenery can put a mediocre story over the top, but nothing can save a lousy story: people will just clip your single best post for a screensaver and stop following your comic. And a great story can easily carry some pretty crude artwork. So the skills of basic storytelling won't be the only skills, in the future, but they'll remain the most important skills. And while achieving magical synergy with elements apart from the story itself may remain as subtle an alchemy as ever, the obstacle of being able to achieve those elements at all will be much lower than ever before. So the skills of basic storytelling will have a wider scope for application than ever before. Alchemy will still be the Ars Magna, but a lot more people will be able to get into alchemy, when you can get antimony from Amazon at a click.

I'm waiting for the day when an ordinary chump can tell Siri or Google, "Make me a villain with a big axe and really cool hair," and Poof! they've got a photo-realistic 3D model ready to be inserted in an action game or a movie. And in effect producing movies and top-grade games will be about as easy as writing a novel is, now. That is, it will be a lot of hard work to make a good one, but the tools and skills needed to finish one at all won't be the bottleneck. I doubt it will ever get quite that simple, actually. At least not in my lifetime. But I can imagine an awful lot of basic sound and graphics getting provided rather cheap by companies that cater to the amateur artist market. Siri probably won't make your villain that easily, but BitParts.com will, for twenty bucks. Sure, that particular villain will then be pirated all over the world; but I'm thinking that BitParts.com will do just enough customization of your villain, based on the background you provide about your game/story/movie, that you'll pay them for the customization, rather than taking a stock character for free. Along with the above I predict the eventual entire collapse of film acting as a profession, though I expect that the convention of having many different characters in many different stories all be Brad Pitt will survive, in the sense that recognizable base models and algorithms will appear in many places, and this will even be a selling point.

BoA never really took off, and it always seemed to me that this was just because it was too much work to make a game with the more sophisticated engine. Jeff couldn't manage the work to eliminate the many bugs that didn't happen to hurt his own scenarios, and few designers were keen enough to finish a scenario. The Geneforge engine is fancier still than BoA. I think BoG would be a nightmare. I saw the same pattern with Escape Velocity — the 2D space combat and trading simulator games. They came in three successively more polished editions. All of them have lots of user-made patches and modifications, like extra ships and outfits. But the big deal with EV was 'total conversions', where someone re-wrote all the graphics and planets and items, and made a whole new story line that just used the basic game engine. For the original EV, which wasn't all that far above Pong in its look and feel, there were quite a few of these. There were also quite a number made for Escape Velocity: Override, the sequel, which had more sophisticated graphics. Escape Velocity: Nova had beautiful sprites, and subtle banking and accelerating effects, weapons glows and everything. Only a handful of total conversions were ever made, and to be honest only one real one was ever finished. Its author had started it in the original Escape Velocity, kept doggedly on with it, and finally just upgraded it. Moreover most of his ideas were just lifted from a bizarre pen-and-paper RPG that he and his friends had been playing for years. So it seems that literally nobody ever just sat down with EV:N and a big idea, and pushed it through to the end. EV and EV:O were amateur games, and the bar was set at an amateur level. EV:N was professional grade, and the bar was just too high for normal folks. I also know that the very thing I like about the Geneforge games would discourage me from writing a BoG scenario. Geneforge is a unique world with a unique flavor, and Jeff's story arc is a fascinating epic. I don't want to write a fanfic game, kind of like Jeff's but not as good. I'd want to make something more uniquely mine. Starting from the Geneforge system, with the Geneforge graphics, would probably just make it harder for me.

That's exactly it: armies can't actually afford to be too tough to take. The superior's goal in an army, after all, is for you to obey him at the risk of your life while you are armed. Fear and intimidation are poor strategies for that. In really large armies, there are bound to be failures where things go really wrong. But normally military life is not that bad. What I'm saying is that harshness in leadership just isn't really very effective. Even armies are usually a good deal more mellow than some of the 'leaders' you can encounter in volunteer organizations.

Alorael, I believe this Bud's for you.

Nah, it really didn't. It was too silly. Zum Beispiel: (Soldier's hair is about a millimeter beyond regulation and so he needs a haircut. Sergeant detects this on parade, and shouts at the soldier from directly behind him.) Sergeant: Am I hurting you? Private: No, sergeant! Sergeant: Well I should be! I'm standing on your hair! (This is not one I made up. Yes, it's stupid. But every brick in ten thousand barracks around the world has heard it ten thousand times.)

Most of the new topics these days use the Nuclose feature. Only cool people can see them. Sorry about that.

It's not clear this is relevant, but one odd thing I was taught in the army was that an officer should never be sarcastic. And sergeants have a long tradition of critical humor, shall we say, at privates' expense; but if you listen carefully you notice that it can be insulting or it can be absurd, but sergeant humor isn't sarcastic. I think the theory was that sarcasm is really dismissive. It talks right past you on purpose, and that says you really don't matter. You can take that as a joke from a peer, but from someone who has actual power over you, it just isn't funny.

It's important to remember that your grandfather's own grandfather died, too. Your grandfather probably lost a lot of people he loved, in the course of his life. He grieved but went on. Your grandfather grieved but went on to live his own life, for which others were grateful, including you. If you can remember that, and use it to help build your own life, then that's one more thing he can have given you. I bet he'd want you to have it.

(This seems to be a misleadingly titled thread. Or at least bait-and-switch. Anyway.) Am I going to die for random junk? Heck, no. I know what these adventurers are like. First of all, in order to beat them, I have to kill every last one of them before any of them makes it to the town gates. Otherwise they'll come back in about ten seconds, all juiced up again. And will I have time, while they're gone, to rally the townspeople in defense against these brazen criminals? No, I will not. Talk about apathetic citizenry. These merchants and loafers just do the same things they always do, no matter what happens. Half of them are only here to suck up to adventurers, anyway, to get ten rat tails or a bottle of wine for uncle Ted or something. They don't pay me enough to fight adventurers. Do they even pay me at all? And then even if I do manage to wipe the whole party of adventurers all out, you know what will happen? Nothing, that's what. There'll be a bright flash, and suddenly I'll be back again, dealing with them again as if the fight never happened, except now they'll know all about my healing potion, in advance. I know, because ol' Captain Darbo told me about it, before he died of the shakes. At night I often think about it. Will there be a bright flash for me, when I die? Will I respawn somewhere nice? Or will it just end?

I'm sorry for your loss. It sounds as though your grandfather was a good man.

Two sites. One camera.

With this inauguration, the world quietly marks a significant turning point. We can all pause to reflect. Fifty years ago, the conflict over zombieism claimed billions of lives and brains. Twenty years ago was the infamous Wall Street Journal article claiming that the sharp housing price differential between animate and zombie neighborhoods had a biological origin. Have the scars really healed? Even now the lyrics of controversial rapper Arrinarr remain controversial. But public buildings everywhere now have low-rise steps appropriate for the gaits of all ambulant citizens, whether shambling or walking. And tonight, as the reanimated corpse of President Bill Clinton takes the oath of office for the third time, no-one can doubt that the era of conflict has given way to something new. This is Walter Cronkite, bidding you all good night.

I recommend installing a webcam, and letting the hits roll in.

Luke. I might be your father.

This is as far as I got with "True Magic", apart from a very vague note about what might actually happen in the story, and a brief final scene that is meant to imply that the old man and Greta take the young author into their company as a new colleague. In some way, despite his ignorance, he has contributed something that has saved the old man's scheme from disaster. They recognize this as a talent. They invite him to join them in a glass of their most potent cordial, which sounds rather like an elixir of eternal youth. The basic idea of the story is supposed to be that magic is real and yet not distinct from ordinary causality. It is rather a matter of bringing things that are normally random and unpredictable into deliberate control; a sort of engineering of coincidence and subliminal suggestion. It's always so subtle as to be almost impossible to see, but over time it can have huge effects. So, in particular, the old man's business is mainly cultural engineering. He is trying to change the world, very slowly. Sort of like Hari Seldon, in fact, but in a late medieval world. He's slowly working to tip it into a Renaissance. Poets being the unacknowledged legislators of the world, the young author really is a natural ally. All of which is much too vague for an actual story. You can see why this thing stalled out here. But maybe some day.

Another thing that several of my beginning stories have shared is multiple first-person narration. A Lady of Morandau actually continues this, albeit in larger blocks rather than chapter-by-chapter. Having considered the story from one limited perspective, I'm curious to see it from another. And I like the opportunities for surprise and irony, in seeing the same things from different viewpoints. I also like trying to construct distinctive writing styles, and keep them separate. The 'starving young author' in the inn was going to be this story's other narrator. He has two voices, actually. There's his voice as narrator of the story he's trying to write, which is rather purple, especially compared to the ancient magician's spare dryness. And there's his own voice, making notes, which is chatty and a bit morose. Here I'm experimenting with the unreliable narrator, because the young author is romantically fanciful, and gets lots of things wrong. But then again it was just too dismal to write as an idiot, so the hint slips in that he's not really living in a fantasy world, but simply trying to write one. He's perfectly well anchored in reality, but his reality is depressing; and on the other hand, fantasy is his stock in trade. And then, yet again: the old man really is impossibly ancient, and he really is in some way uncanny. Could the author somehow be right?

He can almost use his eyes, this starving writer. Perhaps I must tell my invisible angels to draw up their hoods. But of course I have none. I do have servants, many servants, and some of these might be called invisible. Few of my agents are aware that they serve me, and none needs frequent direction. But my affairs are involved, and directing them requires ample time. My young author has seen this much truly, that I have needed more time than is normally given to mortals, and have secured it decisively. That was indeed the first condition of my career. How much more will he see? What magic will he have me do? I am content to join in his game of questions, hoping it may distract me from my cares. I am impatient, but not demanding. Impatience I have patiently carried, but I abandoned high standards long ago. * * * * * The old man is in the parlor again tonight, but in the side room, by the crackling fire. He is settled in the largest chair, beneath heavy blankets, looking all the more like a doll. He stares at the fire without moving, without seeming to breathe. If he weren’t a magician one would suppose he had been dead for some hours, but being a magician, a few hours without breathing would not harm him. He might simply forget. In fact, though, his breaths are only slow and shallow, and from time to time he slowly blinks. A plate of thin wafers and an empty glass sit on a tray beside him. Some of the wafers may possibly be missing, but there are no crumbs and the glass looks clean. It is impossible to decide whether he has consumed anything. The wafers are pale; in fact, they are even translucent. Who else would dine on food that could be mistaken for dragonfly wings? What other house would have such fare on offer? The magician is gathering his strength, in the house of his closest kin.

The old man is no merely ancient mariner, but a sailor who has sailed away from time. How old can he be? Surely he has seen kingdoms rise and fail; has he also watched their ruins sink in sand and sea, till new kingdoms rise in turn? He has, and it must be many times, for the question is not how old he is, but whether he is really a man. He is a magician, a true magician, and true magicians must be older than men dream, because true magic takes half eternity to learn. It is foolish and ignorant people who suppose that one approaches magic by opening the mind and accepting unlikely things. Nothing could be more mistaken, because true magic is only approached by the most caustic skepticism, scorning premise, despising conclusion. Only by exhaustive testing of minutest details, long past the point of human endurance, does one detect the infinitesimal signs of the deeper patterns. Only the labor of centuries can make them plain, and only after many centuries can one begin to apply their control. To extend life indefinitely might perhaps have been the summit of the magical art, if it did not have to be the very beginning. Even a journeyman mage must be frightfully old, to have advanced so far. The old man who has slowly drifted into the parlor of this fine little inn is a great master. Why does he not hover in a cloud of light, or proceed attended by a guard of fallen angels? Who can tell? Perhaps the dark angels are there, only hidden from sight. Perhaps he would travel quite differently if he were entering his enemy’s stronghold; but he has come to this inn to see his granddaughter, so many times over great. After so long a span, is his line not extinct? If it is not, why are his descendants fewer than millions? Somehow the art he has followed must have strange rewards and constraints, as legends hint, and the innkeeper’s beautiful daughter is the old magician’s only living fleshly relation. She has welcomed him without words. Fossil and flower are not more different, but see how he raises the tiny glass to his withered lips: the crooking of the fingers, the tilting of the hand, is the very mirror of her motion in setting the glass before him, only so much more slow. Seeing this now, one perceives the uncanny grace of his barely perceptible movements, so slow but so perfectly smooth, as the heavens wheel. Seeing that, then, one understands at last how the flight of her hands through the air can comfort a bruised heart, and bruise it again. [That just came to me this evening, when I saw the weird old man glance at me in Miss Greta’s mirror. Suddenly it was all there, and I’ve been at it all morning, hammering it into words. I’d forgotten what that’s like. Damn. I used to write pages in a morning. I think there’s more. Dear gods let there be more. He really looks like every bit of it. He looks like a dressed up stick. But he does move like that; I watched and watched. It was like watching clouds change, so slow you don’t notice but once you do you can watch for hours. And Greta too — it really isn’t just her face and turning thirty, she’s like that but quick. That’s a brilliant aperçu this time, you inky gods, not a stupid little conceit. So what on earth is he going to be up to now, if he’s a magician? Not just drifting in for a drop of that seabreeze elixir. What on earth must it cost? He must be truly rich, at least; the perfect model for a magician, of course. Why did I ever try to write a wizard as a busking rogue? No wonder that never worked. But what does a magician do, anyway? Well, magic, I suppose. He’s here for magic. But what will that be? What will it mean? Where is it going? I have to go back to Miss Greta’s again, two nights in a row just this once. She’ll let me sit once without drinking, I’m sure she will. I’m a regular after all even if I don’t spend so much. An inn needs its regulars. Even if he’s not there maybe I’ll remember something. Maybe I could even ask about him? Just ask around.]

My Morandau story is the only writing project I have time to work on now. It's in its second draft, and precisely because it has really grown into a full-length novel, I've stopped posting it here. But it's the seventh story I've started over the years, and I can maybe post some of my earlier stalled-out starts. It's clear now why A Lady of Morandau took off when the others didn't. It's the only project of mine that has had action right from the start. The others weren't really stories, I realize now, but only premises or pitches for stories. I had scenes and characters, and narrative voices, and notions of what kind of world the story would happen in, what would be possible and what would not. I never had a plot. Maybe I was unconsciously writing as a Dungeon Master, laying out the setting and the NPCs, but leaving the events of the story to work out during play. Now that the clever trick of action has finally occurred to me, I may someday come back to these old ideas, and make something of them. Most of my stories have had first-person narration. I'm not sure now that this is such a good idea. It's quite a limitation in perspective. You can only show your villains cunningly planning, for instance, if your protagonist can eavesdrop on them. And it can feel as though you're writing dialog, because you're writing in the voice of your narrator-character, when in fact you're rambling on with too much exposition. It works very well in some of my favorite stories, though. I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to it. This story started with the whimsy to try a really passive narrator, who was virtually incapacitated with extreme old age. But a totally helpless narrator was such a crushing limitation that I found I couldn't go three paragraphs without slipping in some hint that this narrator was somehow not so completely passive or incapacitated. It couldn't just be that he was faking his age and frailty, though; those were more interesting than any mere disguise. So this led to the idea of a kind of story, about a kind of magic.

No-one in the inn even saw the old man before he appeared in the doorway, but the eyes that flicked to him there are staying to stare. He is so far beyond old, it takes very good clothes just to keep him from falling apart. His small grey coat is fine and new. His shirt is clean, his trousers are white, his shoes are black. His shriveled head sits in his stiff collar like the head of a doll. An ivory cane hangs down from within each sleeve, as if his arms are just long white sticks; but inside his cuffs he has hands that grip the canes. He moves to the bar very slowly, swinging on his canes in such small steps that he seems to be gliding upright. He looks straight ahead but he knows they are staring at him. In a few moments they will look away and be ashamed, but he does not resent their attention because he knows what they see. If he were borne on a litter or propped on a throne he might almost pass for a normal kind of ancient, but his softly creaking unassisted glide is an outrage. Anything as old as that should be under glass. He is only half way to the bar when the last gaze drops away, but by the time the first glances return he has somehow achieved a perch on the near corner stool. Pretty Greta, a being of a different species, has placed a tiny cut crystal glass in front of him. He looks at his thimbleful of pale blue liquor. The faint scent from its pouring has made everyone in the room think of sailing, without knowing why. He makes no move to drink. It is not clear that he can. The most ashamed eyes in the room are those of the starving young author. Young he certainly is, from my point of view, but he has just perceived how it comforts him to be so clearly upon Greta’s side of an age divide, and he cannot help blinking. His last ten years have been slower than they were supposed to be. His life has faltered like the plots of his half-finished tales. I am slow but I do not falter. I am the very old man. Once I was young. I was born just as everyone is, but it is hardly important. As far as the present is concerned, I have always been old. There are scarcely six persons in the world who understand my concerns, and these will not advise me. So I choose my own tasks. Some think I am wicked because my work gives nothing to anyone, but I act for the best as I see it. I must wait for one week. I can neither afford nor achieve any signs of impatience, but I hate to be bored. I will fill this week by reciting. The young author will have an inspiration, and tell one of my stories. The current one, of course, even though its ending is not yet certain. I have no interest in the past. I watch in the cloudy mirror behind Greta as his head jerks up and his eyes go wide. The two of us together, our contrast, have spoken to him. He has kept paper and pen on his table every day for ten years, but he seizes them as if it were luck to find them at hand. He has something to write.

I'm surprised at that level of uptightness, in a forum for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Maybe the Great Prophet needs a little poke from a Noodly Appendage?

Hail, Caesar! We could cope with sleet, but we can't work in hail like this.

There's probably a technical solution to the spambot problem, because we really don't have much trouble here. Find a better host. Though that might also be an issue: this place is a marketing forum for Spiderweb Software, Inc. So Jeff pays for it. Free sites may not get the good anti-spam measures, whatever they are.