George Orwell wrote about the process by which figures of speech, through repeated use, cease to convey the original vivid images and become habitual ways of saying the thing they stand for. This is actually a normal part of the way languages develop; if you look at etymologies you'll find multiple layers of dead metaphors recycled into new metaphors that die in turn.
It struck me that there's a linguistic marker for this, at least in English. English has a lot of homophones: Words that are pronounced the same, but spelled differently, and that mean different things. When a metaphor dies, people stop thinking about the meaning of the separate words that make it up. If they don't actually remember the spelling, they may guess at which homophone to use, either randomly or going for the more commonly used word—and get it wrong some of the time.
So expressions like "tow the line" (for toe the line) and "reign in" (for rein in) indicate that a lot of people have learned these as habitual phrases without thinking about what they originally meant.
In both these cases, we see a verb that's more often used as a noun being replaced with a word that's more familiar as a verb. The expression rein in also comes from an activity that far fewer people engage in now than when it originated, making it less familiar in general. Both of these probably help fade the original image.
It struck me that there's a linguistic marker for this, at least in English. English has a lot of homophones: Words that are pronounced the same, but spelled differently, and that mean different things. When a metaphor dies, people stop thinking about the meaning of the separate words that make it up. If they don't actually remember the spelling, they may guess at which homophone to use, either randomly or going for the more commonly used word—and get it wrong some of the time.
So expressions like "tow the line" (for toe the line) and "reign in" (for rein in) indicate that a lot of people have learned these as habitual phrases without thinking about what they originally meant.
In both these cases, we see a verb that's more often used as a noun being replaced with a word that's more familiar as a verb. The expression rein in also comes from an activity that far fewer people engage in now than when it originated, making it less familiar in general. Both of these probably help fade the original image.
I've been reluctant to get involved with Kickstarter, partly for financial reasons—so many potentially interesting projects, so little budget. But as the old joke goes, "I can resist anything except temptation."
A recent post from
amedia mentioned a webcomic, SPQR Blues, whose creator, meritahut, has proposed a collection of the first four chapters, for which she's raising funds via Kickstarter, to celebrate its tenth anniversary. This sounded possibly interesting–and chorale was really interested, and encouraged me to look at it.
SPQR Blues is a mostly realistic story set in the early Roman Empire, shortly after the death of Nero and before the destruction of Pompeii. There are occasional appearances by goddesses, but whether they're literally present, or hallucinated, or storytelling devices in the epic tradition, is left unresolved. This is partly a "slice of life" comic about a returned veteran, his strained relationship with a local mercantile family, and various characters' romantic relationships; it also has a noir storyline, not so much mystery as a mix of crime and police procedural (the "blues" refers to the men who patrol the streets of Herculaneum). Both genres appeal to me; I've run roleplaying campaigns in almost exactly that mode. I had some difficulties with the storytelling—the cast of characters is huge, and some of them look alike—but I found it worth persisting.
A big selling point for me was that I could see that it was thoroughly researched, and showed a lot of familiarity with classical culture—and with the mix of cultures that inhabited the Roman Empire. Very early on, for example, we saw a woman making legal arrangements, and then having to bring in her tutor, the man who had the legal authority to approve or disapprove them—because Roman women didn't have full legal standing. There's a wonderful scene where a young woman is about to get married, and an older woman of her family is giving her and her friends a lecture on her wifely duties—and then is called away, and a slave woman in attendance offers to tell them all the real secrets of marriage! There's no attempt to make this conform to modern American tabus; for example, it's clear that marrying one's cousin is thought desirable, whereas most Americans find the mere thought creepy. One of the recurring characters is a physician whose medical knowledge seems to fit with what I've read about Roman medicine and surgery.
One neat little detail was an image that was identified as a small figure of Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of luck and prosperity. I looked that one up and found that that's an actual archaeological find that's now in a museum: There was enough trade between Rome and India that a family in Pompeii had a sculpture of a Hindu goddess! And apparently Roman artifacts have been found in South India. That's something I had never learned about anywhere else.
I find it appealing that narrative points are often established indirectly; I'm thinking, in particular, of a sequence where the slave Menander visits a house of some friends while he and his owner are in Pompeii.
So, anyway, I found this particular bit of storytelling quite worthwhile; I started out to sample a little to see if it justified spending money, and now I've read the whole run, over several days. It appeals to me in somewhat the same way as A Bride's Story, which is set in nineteenth century Central Asia. If you like historical fiction and dense character interactions, you might want to give this a look. And I'd encourage anyone who might like to support it to do so now; the Kickstarter has about a week to go.
Addendum: And the good news is that it's just gone over, so the bound volume will be coming out early next year.
A recent post from
amedia mentioned a webcomic, SPQR Blues, whose creator, meritahut, has proposed a collection of the first four chapters, for which she's raising funds via Kickstarter, to celebrate its tenth anniversary. This sounded possibly interesting–and chorale was really interested, and encouraged me to look at it.SPQR Blues is a mostly realistic story set in the early Roman Empire, shortly after the death of Nero and before the destruction of Pompeii. There are occasional appearances by goddesses, but whether they're literally present, or hallucinated, or storytelling devices in the epic tradition, is left unresolved. This is partly a "slice of life" comic about a returned veteran, his strained relationship with a local mercantile family, and various characters' romantic relationships; it also has a noir storyline, not so much mystery as a mix of crime and police procedural (the "blues" refers to the men who patrol the streets of Herculaneum). Both genres appeal to me; I've run roleplaying campaigns in almost exactly that mode. I had some difficulties with the storytelling—the cast of characters is huge, and some of them look alike—but I found it worth persisting.
A big selling point for me was that I could see that it was thoroughly researched, and showed a lot of familiarity with classical culture—and with the mix of cultures that inhabited the Roman Empire. Very early on, for example, we saw a woman making legal arrangements, and then having to bring in her tutor, the man who had the legal authority to approve or disapprove them—because Roman women didn't have full legal standing. There's a wonderful scene where a young woman is about to get married, and an older woman of her family is giving her and her friends a lecture on her wifely duties—and then is called away, and a slave woman in attendance offers to tell them all the real secrets of marriage! There's no attempt to make this conform to modern American tabus; for example, it's clear that marrying one's cousin is thought desirable, whereas most Americans find the mere thought creepy. One of the recurring characters is a physician whose medical knowledge seems to fit with what I've read about Roman medicine and surgery.
One neat little detail was an image that was identified as a small figure of Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of luck and prosperity. I looked that one up and found that that's an actual archaeological find that's now in a museum: There was enough trade between Rome and India that a family in Pompeii had a sculpture of a Hindu goddess! And apparently Roman artifacts have been found in South India. That's something I had never learned about anywhere else.
I find it appealing that narrative points are often established indirectly; I'm thinking, in particular, of a sequence where the slave Menander visits a house of some friends while he and his owner are in Pompeii.
So, anyway, I found this particular bit of storytelling quite worthwhile; I started out to sample a little to see if it justified spending money, and now I've read the whole run, over several days. It appeals to me in somewhat the same way as A Bride's Story, which is set in nineteenth century Central Asia. If you like historical fiction and dense character interactions, you might want to give this a look. And I'd encourage anyone who might like to support it to do so now; the Kickstarter has about a week to go.
Addendum: And the good news is that it's just gone over, so the bound volume will be coming out early next year.
I was hoping to end this month with a report of finishing one more chapter in the new book, but it's not going to happen. I've written just under 80% of the estimated wordcount. I have only three sections to go, so it's possible that it will come out a page shorter than I estimated, which will let me either expand the content or give more pages to another chapter.
Going by total wordcount, I'm two-thirds of the way through. I've done several of the hard, rules-focused sections, but I have a few more to go.
Addendum: And now (two days later) I've written everything but one section, which I think will have to wait till I've completed chapter 3, as it will refer back to a section in chapter 3.
Going by total wordcount, I'm two-thirds of the way through. I've done several of the hard, rules-focused sections, but I have a few more to go.
Addendum: And now (two days later) I've written everything but one section, which I think will have to wait till I've completed chapter 3, as it will refer back to a section in chapter 3.
I've liked Supergirl as a character for a long time. Actually, I bought the issue of Action Comics that introduced her, back in 1959; I came to feel a particular liking for her during Paul Levitz's tenure on the Legion of Super Heroes, and in the Deadman crossover that followed her annihilation in Crisis on Infinite Earths. I wasn't sure what kind of job the current television show would do with her, but I had to give it a look.
( The rest is spoilers.Collapse )
( The rest is spoilers.Collapse )
I've done a fair bit of work on Chapter 2, but I felt a need to skip ahead to Chapter 5. I just completed my first draft of it. At 5,080 words it's almost exactly the planned length. I think it's fairly well tied together, both internally and with Chapter 1, but I'll have to go back over the manuscript before I submit it and look for ways to tie it together.
(Unlike Harry Chapin, I can't say, "Most great works of art have a theme that ties them together. This book doesn't.")
Now I'll probably be going back to Chapter 2 and working on the remaining sections. Unless inspiration strikes and I pick up Chapter 3 or 4 instead. . . .
(Unlike Harry Chapin, I can't say, "Most great works of art have a theme that ties them together. This book doesn't.")
Now I'll probably be going back to Chapter 2 and working on the remaining sections. Unless inspiration strikes and I pick up Chapter 3 or 4 instead. . . .
As many people have heard, I think, this is a film where Guillermo del Toro gets to work from his own artistic sensibilities. When he does this sort of thing the result tends to be both artistically and culturally sophisticated and deeply disturbing.
Crimson Peak is an emulation of classic Gothic, the sort of thing that Jane Austen parodied in Northanger Abbey: one of the roots of horror and also, by way of Frankenstein, of science fiction. It has a lot of the classic tropes of Gothic, but also some of those of romanticism, including, notably, the light and dark women characters from Scott, Stendhal, and Hugo.
It's set a century later, though, and in fact it starts out in New York, though it ends up in England. Its beginning is right out of Henry James: Two young English gentry, brother and sister, arrive in New York looking for funding for an engineering project the brother has taken up in the hope of restoring the family fortunes. They apply for a loan to a consortium headed by a wealthy industrialist, whose daughter, an aspiring novelist, meets them both and becomes attracted to the brother—and vice versa.
The Gothic formula seems to be at least in part a confrontation of Enlightenment values with archaic ways of life. Dracula is a classic example, with what amounts to a consortium of mostly bourgeois figures—a Dutch physician, an English physician, an English solicitor and his wife, an English lord, and an American adventurer—confronted a predatory Eastern European nobleman. But where Stoker make England the symbol of modernity, del Toro makes it the symbol of the past, complete with an ancient manor and a family curse. The scene where the industrialist shows his work-roughened hands to the Englishman, whose hands show he's never done manual labor, made me think not only of Henry James but of Gaskell's North and South—and of the speech in Atlas Shrugged where Francisco d'Anconia says that the thing he admires most about Americans is the phrase "to make money," because they think in terms of creating wealth through hard work, not of seizing or appropriating it.
The other thing that most struck me about Crimson Peak was that though, as I think a lot of people have heard, it's about ghosts, the ghosts have an entirely different significance from what they usually convey in horror stories. This is consistent with the way del Toro presented the supernatural elements in Pan's Labyrinth, though the outcome of their influence is almost diametrically opposed. This is a film about the classic theme of a family curse, and the ghosts are evidence of the curse; they're monsters in the original Latin sense of the word.
Crimson Peak is an emulation of classic Gothic, the sort of thing that Jane Austen parodied in Northanger Abbey: one of the roots of horror and also, by way of Frankenstein, of science fiction. It has a lot of the classic tropes of Gothic, but also some of those of romanticism, including, notably, the light and dark women characters from Scott, Stendhal, and Hugo.
It's set a century later, though, and in fact it starts out in New York, though it ends up in England. Its beginning is right out of Henry James: Two young English gentry, brother and sister, arrive in New York looking for funding for an engineering project the brother has taken up in the hope of restoring the family fortunes. They apply for a loan to a consortium headed by a wealthy industrialist, whose daughter, an aspiring novelist, meets them both and becomes attracted to the brother—and vice versa.
The Gothic formula seems to be at least in part a confrontation of Enlightenment values with archaic ways of life. Dracula is a classic example, with what amounts to a consortium of mostly bourgeois figures—a Dutch physician, an English physician, an English solicitor and his wife, an English lord, and an American adventurer—confronted a predatory Eastern European nobleman. But where Stoker make England the symbol of modernity, del Toro makes it the symbol of the past, complete with an ancient manor and a family curse. The scene where the industrialist shows his work-roughened hands to the Englishman, whose hands show he's never done manual labor, made me think not only of Henry James but of Gaskell's North and South—and of the speech in Atlas Shrugged where Francisco d'Anconia says that the thing he admires most about Americans is the phrase "to make money," because they think in terms of creating wealth through hard work, not of seizing or appropriating it.
The other thing that most struck me about Crimson Peak was that though, as I think a lot of people have heard, it's about ghosts, the ghosts have an entirely different significance from what they usually convey in horror stories. This is consistent with the way del Toro presented the supernatural elements in Pan's Labyrinth, though the outcome of their influence is almost diametrically opposed. This is a film about the classic theme of a family curse, and the ghosts are evidence of the curse; they're monsters in the original Latin sense of the word.
(The phrase "critical criticism" is a bit of a joke: Karl Marx wrote that a free man could "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner," and the phrase "critical critic" turns up a lot in his early writings. I'm thinking of doing a bit of criticism for my own pleasure, which seems to fit Marx's statement. I mean "criticism" here in the technical sense: not saying that something is good or bad—you can generally figure that anything I bother to write about is something I thought worthwhile—but commenting on things I think I saw in it that helped my understanding of it.)
Pride and Prejudice is fundamentally about moral character, moral choice, and the role they play in courtship. The crucial event in the story is Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth, her response, and the letter he writes in reply, which together lead each of them to rethink previous moral judgments, question their own actions, and change for the better. I lately reread the novel and then watched the BBC production of it from 1995, which I thought did an impressive job of capturing the story, though I found the last episode slightly rushed.
It seems to me that the moral psychology that Austen presents is rather specifically Aristotelian. Aristotle thinks that there is an objectively knowable good and bad, and that it's the business of our intellect to know it, and to give us a standard for how we ought to live; but he also thinks a lot of our life is emotional, that a good life ought to be emotionally fulfilling, and that we get that by cultivating emotions that spontaneously lead us to make good choices. So his concept of virtue doesn't involve reason suppressing passion, but reason and passion working together.
Austen's story, in proper comedic fashion, ends up with four couples having gotten married. And I think they can be made sense of in terms of Aristotle's psychology:
Jane and Bingley are both primarily emotional people; they're fundamentally sound, but Jane is a little too passive, and Bingley is willing to trust Darcy's judgment over his own feelings and believe that Jane doesn't much care for him—which delays their getting together. That's a fault, but a minor and correctible one.
Lydia and Wickham are emotional also, but without the guidance of reason: Lydia is a flirt who acts on impulse, to the point where she elopes with Wickham, not thinking about her future or the effect on her family. And Wickham's going off with her seems just as lacking in judgment, as it destroys his career for what he seemingly intends to be just a short-term diversion.
On the other hand, Charlotte Lucas marries William Collins purely out of rational calculation, and arranges her life with him to keep them apart as much as possible, because he really doesn't appeal to her; he's just preferable to a single woman's poverty. That's not as severe an error, in Austen's view, as Lydia's recklessness, but it doesn't lead to what Aristotle would call eudaimonia.
Finally, Elizabeth and Darcy are both mainly guided by their minds—but possibly a bit too much so. Each of them is a bit too quick to judge the other, even though they clearly are interested in each other—they're the classic "unresolved sexual tension" trope and might even be one of its sources. Darcy's first proposal in fact says that he still rationally rejects Elizabeth, but feels overwhelmed by his passion for her—that is, that his reason and emotions are out of harmony. But Elizabeth's refusal and his letter to her cause each of them to think things through and reevaluate their own past conduct, and they end up by correcting their own faults.
Now, in the late eighteenth century, Aristotle's ideas came to be questioned; and the key spokesman for the questioning was David Hume, who wrote that reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions—an idea that was ancestral to utilitarianism. Hume's "is-ought dichotomy" is taken as an axiom by most 20th century moral theory. Hume had the intellect on its own assigned the role of academic speculation in the study or the library; but in practical life he thought the intellect had to do what the emotions wanted. And Austen actually gives us a story element that's based on this: The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. He's an intellectual, who spends his life in his study, and is a bit ineffectual in practical matters; his most important practical decision was marrying Mrs. Bennet, which he did because he found her physically attractive, not thinking about her character. And Mrs. Bennet is solely concerned with externals; she wants to get her daughters married, but she isn't very effective even in doing that—her letting Lydia go to Brighton is a near disaster. Mr. Bennet criticizes the idea, but gives in to her: He really is "the slave of the passions," though he reserves the right to make ironic comments. And his younger daughters reflect that split: Mary is one-sidedly rational (though not very bright) and Kitty and Lydia are one-sidedly emotional.
Pride and Prejudice is fundamentally about moral character, moral choice, and the role they play in courtship. The crucial event in the story is Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth, her response, and the letter he writes in reply, which together lead each of them to rethink previous moral judgments, question their own actions, and change for the better. I lately reread the novel and then watched the BBC production of it from 1995, which I thought did an impressive job of capturing the story, though I found the last episode slightly rushed.
It seems to me that the moral psychology that Austen presents is rather specifically Aristotelian. Aristotle thinks that there is an objectively knowable good and bad, and that it's the business of our intellect to know it, and to give us a standard for how we ought to live; but he also thinks a lot of our life is emotional, that a good life ought to be emotionally fulfilling, and that we get that by cultivating emotions that spontaneously lead us to make good choices. So his concept of virtue doesn't involve reason suppressing passion, but reason and passion working together.
Austen's story, in proper comedic fashion, ends up with four couples having gotten married. And I think they can be made sense of in terms of Aristotle's psychology:
Jane and Bingley are both primarily emotional people; they're fundamentally sound, but Jane is a little too passive, and Bingley is willing to trust Darcy's judgment over his own feelings and believe that Jane doesn't much care for him—which delays their getting together. That's a fault, but a minor and correctible one.
Lydia and Wickham are emotional also, but without the guidance of reason: Lydia is a flirt who acts on impulse, to the point where she elopes with Wickham, not thinking about her future or the effect on her family. And Wickham's going off with her seems just as lacking in judgment, as it destroys his career for what he seemingly intends to be just a short-term diversion.
On the other hand, Charlotte Lucas marries William Collins purely out of rational calculation, and arranges her life with him to keep them apart as much as possible, because he really doesn't appeal to her; he's just preferable to a single woman's poverty. That's not as severe an error, in Austen's view, as Lydia's recklessness, but it doesn't lead to what Aristotle would call eudaimonia.
Finally, Elizabeth and Darcy are both mainly guided by their minds—but possibly a bit too much so. Each of them is a bit too quick to judge the other, even though they clearly are interested in each other—they're the classic "unresolved sexual tension" trope and might even be one of its sources. Darcy's first proposal in fact says that he still rationally rejects Elizabeth, but feels overwhelmed by his passion for her—that is, that his reason and emotions are out of harmony. But Elizabeth's refusal and his letter to her cause each of them to think things through and reevaluate their own past conduct, and they end up by correcting their own faults.
Now, in the late eighteenth century, Aristotle's ideas came to be questioned; and the key spokesman for the questioning was David Hume, who wrote that reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions—an idea that was ancestral to utilitarianism. Hume's "is-ought dichotomy" is taken as an axiom by most 20th century moral theory. Hume had the intellect on its own assigned the role of academic speculation in the study or the library; but in practical life he thought the intellect had to do what the emotions wanted. And Austen actually gives us a story element that's based on this: The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. He's an intellectual, who spends his life in his study, and is a bit ineffectual in practical matters; his most important practical decision was marrying Mrs. Bennet, which he did because he found her physically attractive, not thinking about her character. And Mrs. Bennet is solely concerned with externals; she wants to get her daughters married, but she isn't very effective even in doing that—her letting Lydia go to Brighton is a near disaster. Mr. Bennet criticizes the idea, but gives in to her: He really is "the slave of the passions," though he reserves the right to make ironic comments. And his younger daughters reflect that split: Mary is one-sidedly rational (though not very bright) and Kitty and Lydia are one-sidedly emotional.
Having just finished up a copy editing assignment and submitted the invoice, I decided to take a break before starting the next one, and put in some work on the new GURPS book I've mentioned. Then chorale came in the door, back from her class—and I realized that I had completely forgotten my planned after-lunch trip to On Comic Ground! I'll have to go tomorrow. . . .
Checking word count, I find I'm just under 50% of the contracted length of the book. If this keeps up I'm going to be done ahead of deadline.
I'm glad to see this book falling into shape so naturally. I just hope it continues. Hail, Goddess, text to me of gaming. . . .
chorale came in the door, back from her class—and I realized that I had completely forgotten my planned after-lunch trip to On Comic Ground! I'll have to go tomorrow. . . .Checking word count, I find I'm just under 50% of the contracted length of the book. If this keeps up I'm going to be done ahead of deadline.
I'm glad to see this book falling into shape so naturally. I just hope it continues. Hail, Goddess, text to me of gaming. . . .
Earlier today I finished up the last bits of Chapter 1 of my new book. I had budgeted 6800 words; it came in at just over 5950, which gives me extra room for one of the later chapters. This was by way of an introductory chapter, so it was rules-light and ideas-heavy . . . but none of the chapters will be dominated by game mechanics.
Chapter 2 has a budgeted 11,900 words, so it will probably take a bit longer to get through. Really it has two different topics—but they're sufficiently related so it makes sense to put them together and avoid the space consumed by an extra chapter heading.
Chapter 2 has a budgeted 11,900 words, so it will probably take a bit longer to get through. Really it has two different topics—but they're sufficiently related so it makes sense to put them together and avoid the space consumed by an extra chapter heading.
Yesterday Apple made their new operating system, El Capitan, available for download. I was of a mind to take some time off after chorale's surgery, so I clicked on it. Then I started seeing download messages: 19 hours, 14 hours 30 minutes, and so on. Past experience has told me that these are sometimes inaccurate, so I went away—and when I checked back I was seeing 1 day 10 hours and even occasional multiday figures! That was kind of alarming.
But I figured I might as well carry through, so I disabled the sleep option to make sure the download continued through the night. And when I came out in the morning everything was downloaded and I was able to initialize it.
But the strange thing is thatchorale decided this was a good time to do the same thing—she wasn't going to be looking at her screen much while her eye recovered—and on her computer the download was complete in less than an hour!
chorale's surgery, so I clicked on it. Then I started seeing download messages: 19 hours, 14 hours 30 minutes, and so on. Past experience has told me that these are sometimes inaccurate, so I went away—and when I checked back I was seeing 1 day 10 hours and even occasional multiday figures! That was kind of alarming.But I figured I might as well carry through, so I disabled the sleep option to make sure the download continued through the night. And when I came out in the morning everything was downloaded and I was able to initialize it.
But the strange thing is that
chorale decided this was a good time to do the same thing—she wasn't going to be looking at her screen much while her eye recovered—and on her computer the download was complete in less than an hour!
