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lenora_roseSo, with my history quiz done (Less painful than the first, though I think I misidentified someone's wife as their sister. Ick.) I decided I could take this weekend for some shameless reading and writing time before I start into research for the next essay.
Progress notes for February 23, 2007:
Soldier of the Road
Total words new or revised : 3400
Probable percentage actually new: under 50%; the first half was mainly tidying and editing, the final third almost entirely changed.
Reason for stopping: I've been here hours already.
Tea: Dr Pepper, Milk, limoncello. Not together.
Music: Jim Moray - Self-titled, Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl
Mean Things: Snowstorms. Also, it's harder than he thinks to pretend not to be a Prince.
Darling du jour: The most disturbing thing was that the eyes did not close as they moistened and the flesh around them grew plump. He came back to life aware of just what was happening to him, and I cannot think it is much less horrible to return from such a state than it is to sink into it.
tyop du jour: indiveted. (SB: invited)
To-read pile: Midori Snyder - The Innamorati, Euripides - the Bacchae (Too modern a translation), Sir Philip Sidney - Astrophil and Stella.
Reread pile: Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds.
Inevitable Asides:
Things I am unabashedly a sucker for:
Benign or at least righteously annoyed ghosts (I hate the ones that are all malevolence beyond whatever wrong was done them, and poltergeists.)
Not least, lovers come back from the dead. Usually on a temporary basis, just to see someone or point out a murder, though evidence suggests not always.
I'd been thinking about just this mainly because I had a "Wouldn't it be cool to tell one of these stories again?" thought earlier, which made the smart part of me answer "Um, self? Soldier of the Road? Full of ghosts? The Molly Bond bit happening Real Soon Now?"
Naturally, it's the very scene after I stopped for tonight that will have the fun ghosties. Though, as above, we're not short of undead weirdness. After digressions of inspiration and/or research for this, that, and the other story, I'm actually happy to be feeling an urge to get back to the work I'm meant to be doing.
This led to the realization that I set up the entire afterlife of this whole world to explain how some of those folk songs could happen. My way of disguising this is to have the different cultures misunderstand what's happening due to their own assumptions and prejudices, but that's the real root of it. I wanted to tell Molly Bond, The Unquiet Grave, Standing Stones, and Nightvisiting* and have it make sense. I mean, I knew I was borrowing elements of some of those already, but not to the level of root worldbuilding.
__________________________________
Things writers do that annoy me, version umty-somethingth:
"We have guarded this bloodline for a thousand years..."
Simple mathematics of reproduction wipe this out in about two hundred years, if not less, when the children are so widely scattered and the line so diluted that... forget it. Even with some branches dying off on the spot, forget it. Never mind that; find me an unbroken succession anywhere in the real world that's that long, and doesn't skip off into cousins technically related on the wrong side at least once.
I know the Tudors tried to do it, but... well, anything that linked them to Arthur and Brut was a blatant *fabrication*. Even the attempt to link to Cadwallader, who at least can be documented as existing, is pretty much bunk and even they seemed to know it, if not publicly.
The only place I have a noble mention a direct descent from a God (accurately), she does so in passing, with near indifference; half the noble families in the country, and two surrounding countries, can claim the same bloodline to the same degree via the same daughter of the god, and most people gripe about the matrilineal descent anyhow.
This is not apropos of any immediately current reading.
______________________________________
Random observation:
In language debates lately, there's been some discussion of using "shot" for arrows, because of its gun associations. Loose is more medieval, I concede, and I can read that without blinking because it's what we use in winter shoot, but I've never blinked at shot.
I just saw it -- twice, I think, but I'd have to double-check -- in sixteenth century poetry, in references to Cupid/Love. Not medieval, but I don't think it's yet a borrowing from guns.
____________________
*Actually a shameless blurring of two folk songs, one of which, I Will Put My Ship In Order, doesn't have a ghost but should, and one I don't have a version of but sounds like just the ticket.
Progress notes for February 23, 2007:
Soldier of the Road
Total words new or revised : 3400
Probable percentage actually new: under 50%; the first half was mainly tidying and editing, the final third almost entirely changed.
Reason for stopping: I've been here hours already.
Tea: Dr Pepper, Milk, limoncello. Not together.
Music: Jim Moray - Self-titled, Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl
Mean Things: Snowstorms. Also, it's harder than he thinks to pretend not to be a Prince.
Darling du jour: The most disturbing thing was that the eyes did not close as they moistened and the flesh around them grew plump. He came back to life aware of just what was happening to him, and I cannot think it is much less horrible to return from such a state than it is to sink into it.
tyop du jour: indiveted. (SB: invited)
To-read pile: Midori Snyder - The Innamorati, Euripides - the Bacchae (Too modern a translation), Sir Philip Sidney - Astrophil and Stella.
Reread pile: Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds.
Inevitable Asides:
Things I am unabashedly a sucker for:
Benign or at least righteously annoyed ghosts (I hate the ones that are all malevolence beyond whatever wrong was done them, and poltergeists.)
Not least, lovers come back from the dead. Usually on a temporary basis, just to see someone or point out a murder, though evidence suggests not always.
I'd been thinking about just this mainly because I had a "Wouldn't it be cool to tell one of these stories again?" thought earlier, which made the smart part of me answer "Um, self? Soldier of the Road? Full of ghosts? The Molly Bond bit happening Real Soon Now?"
Naturally, it's the very scene after I stopped for tonight that will have the fun ghosties. Though, as above, we're not short of undead weirdness. After digressions of inspiration and/or research for this, that, and the other story, I'm actually happy to be feeling an urge to get back to the work I'm meant to be doing.
This led to the realization that I set up the entire afterlife of this whole world to explain how some of those folk songs could happen. My way of disguising this is to have the different cultures misunderstand what's happening due to their own assumptions and prejudices, but that's the real root of it. I wanted to tell Molly Bond, The Unquiet Grave, Standing Stones, and Nightvisiting* and have it make sense. I mean, I knew I was borrowing elements of some of those already, but not to the level of root worldbuilding.
__________________________________
Things writers do that annoy me, version umty-somethingth:
"We have guarded this bloodline for a thousand years..."
Simple mathematics of reproduction wipe this out in about two hundred years, if not less, when the children are so widely scattered and the line so diluted that... forget it. Even with some branches dying off on the spot, forget it. Never mind that; find me an unbroken succession anywhere in the real world that's that long, and doesn't skip off into cousins technically related on the wrong side at least once.
I know the Tudors tried to do it, but... well, anything that linked them to Arthur and Brut was a blatant *fabrication*. Even the attempt to link to Cadwallader, who at least can be documented as existing, is pretty much bunk and even they seemed to know it, if not publicly.
The only place I have a noble mention a direct descent from a God (accurately), she does so in passing, with near indifference; half the noble families in the country, and two surrounding countries, can claim the same bloodline to the same degree via the same daughter of the god, and most people gripe about the matrilineal descent anyhow.
This is not apropos of any immediately current reading.
______________________________________
Random observation:
In language debates lately, there's been some discussion of using "shot" for arrows, because of its gun associations. Loose is more medieval, I concede, and I can read that without blinking because it's what we use in winter shoot, but I've never blinked at shot.
I just saw it -- twice, I think, but I'd have to double-check -- in sixteenth century poetry, in references to Cupid/Love. Not medieval, but I don't think it's yet a borrowing from guns.
____________________
*Actually a shameless blurring of two folk songs, one of which, I Will Put My Ship In Order, doesn't have a ghost but should, and one I don't have a version of but sounds like just the ticket.
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On the lineage issue
Date: 2007-02-26 06:09 pm (UTC)I can even point to one person we both know who (while occasionally cantankerous) is very intelligent and yet still does this about her 'blue blood' geneaology. Sometimes to the point of being tiresome in fact. She should probably know better but has been brought up with it to the point where it's so central a part of who she is she cannot let it slide.
I'm sure the pharoahs felt the same.
Re: On the lineage issue
Date: 2007-02-26 06:52 pm (UTC)The reason it annoys me in science fiction and fantasy is different:
A) It's usually part of a setting which has somehow stayed identical for those same 1000 years, and the writer gives the impression that they've barely changed all that time; few shifts of borders or political or religious schisms, few intellectual advances. And I feel REALLY sorry for a country that failed to have any of that at all in 1000 years, but in all but one instance, such a culture is still portrayed as a vivid culture with plenty of intellects. I consider many wise and educated people to be completely mutually exclusive with a culture that doesn't change at all; even the longest running and most tradition-bound dynasties in China or India made advances and could point to the history to prove it. (The one case which portrayed such a culture as oppressive and the people forced into utter ignorance was *so* extreme in repressing new knowledge I can easily see the people involved revolting in under 200 years. The book annoyed me in other ways, but the thousand year culture from hell plus the thousand eyar bloodline had me turned off by page ten. I made it halfway. I don't know how.)
Babylon 5 runs into this with the minbari sometimes; but there are just enough cracks in the stories the minbari tell about themselves to hint that things were in transition before they met humans, and had more changes in history and tradition than they liked to admit. Delenn isn't telling history as such when she describes her culture; she's telling recieved mythology (Which isn't the same as mythology a la gods and heroes: it's the way "everybody knows" things about their country's civil wars that aren't necessarily right, but encapsulate the attitude and time: how "We Canadians burned down the White House", for instance.)
B) Invariably the bloodline is *special*, and this person with 1/24058ths of the blood of the original suddenly crops up with a genetic mutation that means they have *all* the powers of their great ancestor, whether or not there's been any sign of magic or whatnot since the original's grandkids. That's one hell of a genetic twist.
Well I'll not debate you on the hamhanded way in which it's used
Date: 2007-02-26 07:54 pm (UTC)However where societies remaining 'the same' for a thousand years or more while still being vibrant etc. - that would depend on your definition of 'same'.
We have the rather mucked up perspective of a society/culture/technology that is changing at a blinding and quite unprecedented pace. We have to keep that in mind when we're examining other cultures. While there may well be advances in art, philosophy, culture and science - some of which may or may not stick - when we look at the 'big' picture things can be pretty static sometimes.
Let's take, say, ancient Egypt. While there are clearly advances in architecture and mathmatics from the step pyramid of Sakahhra to the great Pyramids, many of the 'big' things didn't change during those circa ten millennia. Germ theory of disease? Nope. Industrial revolution? Nope. Motive power changes? Nope.
Indeed, looked at from the 'long view' of, say, a Traveller tech level system the entire culture managed to barely creep a single tech level during that entire period. At the beginning it's a muscle and wind powered culture with the very beginnings of soft metal working. At the end of that time it's a muscle and wind powered culture with fairly advanced soft metal working techniques. They still don't get iron until the Hittites give it to them.
Even Rome - known for its great advancements in architecture, military structure and engineering as well as some mathmatics etc. still barely crept upward on the large scale of things technologically. Sure there were advancements but not BIG ones. Like the Egyptians they were a culture of muscle and wind at both beginning and end although things like metalwork advanced noticably as did many civil and societal improvements etc. From space, though, things wouldn't look too different and despite a thousand years fighting with horses they still didn't manage to come up with the stirrup.
On matters of borders, I agree with you - those change a LOT in most circumstances. The exceptions being countries with very well defined natural boundaries which also happen to be pretty defensible (Switzerland anyone?).
The point I'm getting at here is that where 'advancement' and 'staying the same' and 'vibrant culture' are involved you can have your cake and eat it too - as long as you're careful in your definitions.
Of course once the Industrial revolution happens along things carry along at a pretty breakneck pace. Or at least they did here on Earth. The Rennaissance and the Industrial Revolution are what gave us round eyes the big jump on the rest of the folks on this world and if they Chinese had done it first we'd likely all be speaking Mandarin.
But they didn't - because for all their early vibrant advances they stalled out technologically around 400BC. Lots of art and societal changes and the like since then but from an engineering or military standpoint no real change for millennia.