Mon 15 Mar 2010

Cranky Elf-music For Your Cranium

Posted by laup under Discussion, Meditations, Music Quest
[2] Comments

I haven’t finished formulating my disclaimer policy and category yet, so here’s a little aside.  There’s a random drawing associated with doing a review of the music I’m about to rap on.

I asked Solarbird to leave me out of the drawing.  I’m doing this review because she put out the request and I dig her style.  Freedom of expression is a big deal for me, and I want to be as honest and upfront as possible without any nagging thoughts of “a winnar is me” syndrome.

Free is a very good price for the personal touch of music, a novel or a picture of cats; but nothing is what I work for at times and this is one of those times.

Now, on with the show!

I’ve followed Solarbird from long distance sensor scans.  She’s intrigued me with her busking at outdoor markets and fairs in the Northwest.  There was a video of her performing which I thought was pretty good.  Hey, performing in front of crowds on the wind’s good humor is no mean task.

For a while now she’s been getting serious about sound and recording quality, doing a lot of preparatory work herself while working double time on her music.  Whoa, this could be a special treat.  I’ve been waiting like a coiled eel to strike when the yummy morsels are released for tasting.

062_crimeandtheforcesofevilSo, what do we have here?

I have to say that the name Crime and the Forces of Evil is a pretty powerful and awesome name.  The title of the CD, “Sketchy Characters” conjures images of bold-faced loonies and not-eating-with-both-hands oddballs of questionable habits.

The music is essentially four songs of a folk instrumentation with an elf singing vocals.  Not much crime or evil though, and only one sketchy character—but she’s enough!

The mere fact of vocals caught me off guard. The expectations I built up for myself were that this would be instrumental.  Shows you how pesky one’s preconceptions can be!

I dislike the vocals.  They totally kill the music for me.  The singer’s voice just doesn’t blend well with the instruments.  The sound drowns out the music and even the singer’s own lyrics.

In all honesty it might be my creative agenda talking here.  With a different sound or approach this singer could work for me.  She sounds detached from the rest of the ensemble and out of sorts with herself—which might be the point!  Maybe a Frank Zappa angle would work better.

I listened through again to pick up the lyrics and they held up—I like them. Maybe with a different approach they’d pack more punch.  See, my creative agenda is about extremes of emotion and atmospherics—I want to be thrilled and have an out of body experience.  Songs like “Artefacts (You’ll Never See)” and “When You Leave” could hit any number of nerves with the right delivery—the absurd, the bitter, or the heartfelt.

The last track, “Cascadia (How I Have Missed You)” is purely instrumental (whew!).  Without that annoying elf eating into my brain I could see what’s going on inside the meat and potatoes.  I enjoyed this one.  Reminded me of meaningful, passionate times.

Maybe it’s my own nostalgia for the Northwest (a deeply personal thing for me) as telegraphed by the title that is influencing me.  But on another level, instrumental pieces with a title allow for those who wish only to dream and experience their own inner strength.  I think this is the musicing direction Solarbird should explore.

In other words, what if crime and the forces of evil is about the supreme crime—daring to feel and inspire others to find their own introversions of discovery?

Solarbird has mentioned before in her website that confidence is her boogey.  Maybe; I’m unsure of that—It takes a crumb of confidence at least to stand up on stage, to release one’s work out for all of us to respond with our own lifeforce.  Rather, I sense that there’s a vein of dirty, angry, elemental energy waiting to be recognized to unlock a latent passion.

See, I understand self-doubt as it refers to Cascadia—wanting to belt loose and express how I feel yet not knowing fully in the back of my mind if I have a right to those feelings.  How to remove that blockage and respond with clarity how I have missed that place from the bottom of my pond.  No easy thing.

Is that cranky elf a guardian? A guide? A foe?  I’m looking at my sylvan friend and striving to hear her words more clearly.  Oh, if she were only less sketchy!  What if I the listener am of the aforementioned forces of evil and don’t deserve to enter the glades and hear the words?

Yet then there is the lone musical piece that says nothing and therefore need not say anything else.  An invitation? Surrender? A confession?  Hopefully the full-length album will offer a more complete picture. This four-piece set is still in The Dip.

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Fri 12 Mar 2010

Get Ready To Rock In The Depths Of The Saucer

Posted by laup under Discussion, Meditations, Music Quest, Organic Interocitor, Outbreak, Random Encounters, Tell-a-vision
[3] Comments

062_UFO_Girl_transmission

Way back in the days of great doom there used to be this crazy cable station that played music videos all the time.  For those of us too poor to afford access to this fountain of culture, there were television shows with videos.  That is, when you didn’t have to pay cable companies for the privilege of television with commercials.

One such television show was Friday Night Videos. They showed many if not most of the popular videos, along with a handful of oddities.  Had a rockin’ intro too.  It was like a weekly ritual with my folks and me for a while.

Friday Night Videos disappeared. But it was okay because the crazy cable station moved down to the level of “standard fare” and I could see videos galore. It was a golden age of seeing what was happening in music for me.

Then a strange thing happened–the cable channel began mixing shows in with the videos. At first it was edgy programming like Beavis and Butthead and The Maxx. But slowly, those videos faded away until all that was on were fake reality programs and weird attempts at gameshows.  The videos disappeared.

Rumor had it they’d moved to a clone station somewhere.  They lost me.  See, this thing called the Internet had become the place to hang out and hear the latest.  I remember when I first heard of MP3—I thought it was crap and would never catch on (dial-up was still the rule then).

My folks got rid of their cable subscription.  The free channels are awesome, because they aren’t beholden to the big corporations (there’s no money in “only commercials TV”) and you can see things you don’t normally see anymore.  Local stuff.  Personal stuff. International stuff that isn’t whitewashed with Hollywood phony baloney culture.

I don’t miss the cable.  The other day, Comcast came through the neighborhood with a two-man team.  They sent one guy one day and the other guy the next day—my guess is to wear down resistance and get past first-impression blocks due to psychology incompatibilities.  They were hyper aggressive and refused to take no for an answer, trying to barge in and sign us up.

See, when I had Comcast their service was horrible and their product stunk.  I’ll never go to them again, even if it means no television.  All these tactics do is remind me how much I hate them and never want to hear from them again.  It also makes me laugh because if this is their new tactic—they are desperate for cash and just don’t get why.

The new economy is about consumers getting what they want, when they want it.  You can’t ram stuff down our throats anymore.  Unwanted, irrelevant, inconvenient come-ons and advertising gets NO PLAY with me.  And from the attitudes of these guys, and the look on their faces when I said I only watch Netflix or the Internet, I can tell I’m not alone.

K, the folks, and I sat down on Friday and watched a free television program come on.  Two hours of videos, from mainstream acts to obscure weirdoes and local artists.  It blew our minds how cool this stuff was.  Friday Night Videos is gone, but its spirit is back and better than ever.  We sat down as a family and watched with an excitement we haven’t felt in years.

Rock on UFO Girl, rock on.

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Wed 10 Mar 2010

Pbook Ebook Sittin In A Tree, L.I.T.E.R.A.C.Y.

Posted by laup under Comic Books, Gameplay, Meditations, Movie Madness, Music Quest, Outbreak, Playtime, Tell-a-vision, The Book Mine
Comments Off on Pbook Ebook Sittin In A Tree, L.I.T.E.R.A.C.Y.

061_the_new_literacyAll right, enough already!  The sexual tension between these two forms is driving me nuts.  Nobody buys this mutual dislike as anything but a prelude to getting a room and making babies.  Get on with it!

For a long time we had a bunch of privileged intellectuals manufacturing consent by dividing the peanut butter and the celery between LIT and RACY, also known as high and low literature.  The “stuff that matters” from the unwashed laundry of the masses who don’t count because they are the bewildered herd and must be told what to value.

Along comes the E in Ebook and all of a sudden Pbooks are revealed for what they are—form, not the actual consciousness that inspires culture.  The entire social control mechanism that maintains access to distribution to consciousness is laid bare.  People naturally begin to ask questions, particularly those in the bewildered herd who have never known expression before.

That delicious E is the hammer in the Apple ad.  Thor’s hammer, the bolt of the storm that is the Aquarian lightning age, connecting thought.  The contact that is the point of all literature both high and low, author and reader touching each other, both one and apart, oscillating in response.  AUM.

In that moment of explosion, she joins the LIT and the RACY into LITERACY, one of the more stunning discoveries of this medieval age of thinking.  Now paper (earth) can be thought (air) and vice versa.

This is an unavoidable revolution in consciousness occurring right before our eyes.  As this bolt of electricity strikes earth and ignites a firestorm in the forest of paper, a lot of people are going to have to flee for their lives as their comfortable burrows and nests burn to the ground.

Make no mistake; this is a painful thing for a lot of ordinary folks who depend on the old growth forest for their lives.  But understand those who welcome the change as well as those who cringe in the foliage.  Everybody, and I mean EVERY BODY on any side of the fence is in on this.  We all get to participate as the forest burns down around our ears.  Open your heart and listen to the things you haven’t heard.

I emphasize with the struggle; those about to be hurt by the flames could be me, or someone I care about.  I’m excited and terrified both—where do I run?  Where do you run?  Who is already cut off from the lake—wait, is this the dry season?  That cave a safe haven or a future oven filled with smoke?  What is right action?  Shock the monkey!

It is a time for fear.

The copyright-royalty model is outdated and inefficient.  It is primarily a system for putting access to the forms of consciousness into the hands of concentrated centers of impersonal power, justified by projecting an image of the properly compensated and approved artist for their labors.

Don’t delve too far into that model—for every lucky artist you’ll find thousands ripped off, their rights in the vault of some conceptual entity that doesn’t count as a moral agent.  The millions who don’t get to participate at all because only “artists” can do that stuff?  They get to pay to know what they think.

Alternate economic models and mechanisms of access have been out for years.  Novels were the death of real books, just as recordable audiotape was the death of records and libraries would destroy bookstores.  Those with privilege, who stand to lose the most by sharing, always cry bitterly when community insists that people raise their standard of living more humanely.  Specialists are going to have to share their space with more generalists.

Access to data is still affected by class.  The decline of fossil fuels and rare metals leads to a cage match between military contracts and consumer electronic manufacturers.  The iron rule of oligarchy always obtains.  But humans are naturally moral and strive for freedom.  The human condition is nature’s way of making us figure it out.

The Kindle and the iPad are already ancient history.  You think that’s what the kids are using?  I’ll let that one be a surprise.  Developers hate Apple.  Who is going to put Ebooks in the hands of starving villagers with a credit card?

The price for everything is inflated.  People want what they want now and they want to pay what they want to pay.  You going to tell the vast majority of mindless beasts how to think?  Good luck!  Prices will have to fall and the money to be made will shrink.  Subscriptions and proprietary ala Carte tollbooths are yesterday’s memories.  Get used to it, what you think is right doesn’t matter.

How are you going to control the exchange of thoughts?  No, seriously?  Actions can be directed with a truncheon or a lawsuit, but you going to tell people what to do with their thoughts?  Even brutal dictatorships let people think what they want as long as they obey.  Rust always trumps the iron rule in the end.

Nobody can predict the future.  If you think that’s what I’m doing you aren’t paying attention.  Invigorated by the conflagration, the forest will grow back.  The new life is always greater than the old.  The status quo is death; plenty of new species will migrate to fill the void.  That’s the scary thought—who will be the new neighbor?  Won’t you be my neighbor?

The playing field gained a new dimension as well as a new form.  This isn’t squeezing anything out; it’s rather that the old way of doing things is not going to dominate any more.  It will have to content itself with being a smaller fraction of a greater whole.

Yes, this means even the crap gets a say.  Or do you mean “the crap we don’t approve of”?  I say let the crap hounds have their say and show us what they got.  If they can’t ante up they’ll make for some fine fertilizer in the new forest.  Freedom of speech means the right to participate alongside the great names and have your turn to speak—look at any sportscaster program with call-ins.

All of us start at the Level Zero crap hound bottom.  Never forget we all begin in ignorance and grow according to many variables outside our conscious control.  It’s in all our interests to create ecosystems of variable creative exploration.  It’ll do both the wizards and the crap hounds some good.

Physical objects are totems to show allegiance.  Don’t underestimate that.  Also keep in mind that whatever is not nailed down is mine and whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down.  Thoughts want to be free, so let them be so!  Air always escapes a prison.  The point is to hook up people who have an affinity with your thoughts and gratify them with stuff they actually want.

Youth culture is already doing this.  They grow up with everything that ever was at their fingertips, creating their own wants and satisfying their own curiosity.  Literacy is exploding like a thunderbolt.  Get out of the way if you can’t lend a hand.

Doomsday fantasies of resentment can eat my shorts.  We’re already there.  The hum of the lightning age moves through an emerging electro-agrarianism that will bring both a shadow we’ve never encountered before and a worldwide literacy the likes of which cannot be conceived of.

Just wait until you see the child Pbook and Ebook make together.

The hybrid is the message of the savior of humanity, believe it!

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Mon 8 Mar 2010

Broken Hearts, Spring Promise

Posted by laup under Meadow Showers, Outbreak, Wesa and The Lonce
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060_cracked_easter_heart_wesaWesa carried the black duffel bag over to her car and placed it on the trunk.  She ran a hand through her thick hair and sighed.

Her hand drew out a cellphone from her sweatshirt pocket.  She opened it and selected a number titled “Jules”.  The balance of her feet grew unsteady and she propped a hand against the driver door.

A girl with a dry-bag over one shoulder approached her from across the parking lot. Wesa put away the phone and waved.

The girl reached the car and said, “You calling anybody?”

“No.  I’m staring at numbers is all.  You ready?”

The girl grinned.  “Staring at a particular number?”

Wesa gave her a look.

“Yeah, all set.  Let’s go.”  The girl pulled a water bottle and granola snack bar out of the dry-bag .

Wesa opened the trunk and they put their bags inside. Her ring-tone went off as she unlocked the car—a recording of her own voice saying “Pick up the damn phone!”  She looked at the name and switched her phone off.

The girl got in the passenger seat and laid back without putting on her seat belt.  After Wesa had gotten in and belted up, she said, “Your ex?”

“No; Nelson. It can wait.”

“Playing hard to get?” The girl opened the bottle and drank half the contents in a matter of seconds.  She gave a satisfied look and burped a little.

Wesa focused herself into gear-shifting mode and started the car.  “Stara, you going to bug me the whole trip?”

Stara chuckled.  “Hey girl, I got nothing going on.  Might as well live vicariously through you.  Can we stop at an ATM?”

After looking around, Wesa backed the car out.  “Sure.”  She gave one last look at the campus.  “I wonder where Noreen is right now.”

Her passenger peeled open the wrapper of the snack bar.  “Who cares?  What matters is the latest volume of Annihilator Goddess Robot Ultra.  I want to know if Tomago is going to come back or sell out Yuki.  That’s what counts.”

They reached the entrance to the lot and Wesa turned the car onto the road running along the campus.  “She’ll be there.  Yuki saved her life.”

Stara talked with her mouth full of granola bar.  “That’s bull.  This is Tomago’s chance to finish Chie and settle the family feud for all time.”

“Who saves Yuki then?  She’s all jacked up; no way she takes on the third strike.”

Stara said, “What about Kiyomi?  She’s got all those bombs.  Could come in and save her.  Then they can draw out the angst between the two best friends.”

As they neared an intersection, Wesa shifted down.  “That would totally blow though.  They’ve been looking for the Crate all this time.  We have to see them use it to one-up and save the planet.”

Stara took a drink of water.  She screwed the top on and tossed the bottle on the floor-mat.  “Maybe they use it later.  Still have to get the Crate back to base so they can study its secrets.  It’s only volume five.”

The traffic yielded and Wesa drove on, shifting up as they rounded a bend.  A lot with a small grocery store, liquor store and Tex-Mex restaurant appeared.  Wesa drove into the lot and idled while her friend went into the grocery store.

Stara returned with a fist full of bills and a receipt.  She shoved them into her pocket and got back into the passenger seat.  “All good.  Let’s go.”

Wesa drove them out of the lot and back onto the road.

They passed a green sign announcing an exit.  “Here we go; no turning back now.”

Stara said, “Hit it.”

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Mon 1 Mar 2010

Temperance And The Outrageous Contagion

Posted by laup under Meadow Showers, Meditations, Outbreak, Playtime
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059_temperance_wesaI have great affection for my dear friend, the wily Kim-a-roo. She knows I can’t stand Internet memes and yet she throws them my way just the same. I have better things to do than be a rest stop for mental viruses, but she excels at sneaking them into my flight path.

It’s enough to make smoke come out my ears.  Okay, so there’s a lack of smoke for now—pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!.

So the latest incarnation looking for a pit stop on the psychic terrain journey is a get-to-know-you creative writer challenge. Kim lets herself become a host and puts me on the list of brain donors, so to speak.  The part where she puts me on a list of 1-UP bloggers is a wily touch. She really loves taunting Happy Fun Ball.

Maybe I dost protesteth too much.  Thank you Kim-a-roo, for all you do.  I accept your challenge, and like a stupid fool I will change the rules.  Because I am so crazy, here goes mutation number two!

Here’s the thing: When I think of outrageous lies I imagine someone telling a goner such as, “I kicked the soccer ball right into the air and onto the moon.  My shoe flew off my foot and knocked over a ten story building that was slated for demolition!”  How do you come about an outrageous truth?  I don’t have any stories like that of the guy who fell out of a B-17 Bomber during World War II from 22,000 feet and survived.

I think there’s a fatal flaw in this challenge.

All that’s left is to honor Kim’s sweet consideration with a little creative enthusiasm.  So I’ve created a new category called “Meadow Showers”.  That is, another name for the “stuff” I’ve been meaning to put up here anyway.

Kim can mean “royal meadow” or “royal forest”, along with “chief” after all.  Shower is a word with many meanings–those of which I shall reserve the right to coax as needed–but primarily I will take it as meaning, “to bestow abundantly”.

I’ve already been doing something of the sort I’m about to do here already on my livejournal and blogspot accounts.  In those places it’s mostly filler for a place I go to comment.  But I’ve long thought I should do a similar feature here.

So, stay tuned to the Paul Channel worthy travelers!

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Fri 26 Feb 2010

Tree Of The Deep; Rising To The Sky

Posted by laup under Meditations, Outbreak, Outdoors, Supernal Diver
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058_kaliyantraSpring, he approaches like a long lost friend. Life spreading out in an awakening dark whorl of crushed and frozen currents.

Blasts of frozen wind gusting through the streets and paths, numbing bones and finishing off stragglers. There’s a radiance behind their efforts, driving them out into the open spaces to escape what is coming to awareness.

Recognition and remembrance of Kore nature and Kali power loosening up the drawstrings holding eyes of elements closed in dreaming of balance. The Oroboros curls and twines inside the heads of survivors shambling through the echoes of winter beasts from the unknown.

Energy is shifting and transforming all around our cold-numbed ears.  Despite our sniffling noses dull with crisping, the hidden secrets buried like Easter eggs wait for us to catch their scent.  The blind and mindless turning inward of huddling over an electric current is passing on.  Soon, we’ll crack open like icy creeks and know we are streaming once more.

Can’t move or think much this last week. The rumbling hunger in the wild for the blossoms of winter’s close have seized hold of me.  I see it in the chatter of robins and finches; feel it in the easing of my blood.  All is noise and rattling rolling tumbling rushes of sparks bursting out of nothingness and calling the slumber back into the unknown.

Spring hears her call and comes running, fresh joy and unleavened sorrow both at the ready—as the year of the tiger sinks its claws into the ground and roars, “Here I am bitches!”

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Sun 21 Feb 2010

My Mom Remembers Yoshie Izumi

Posted by laup under Guests of Doom, Meditations, Organic Interocitor, Outbreak
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Today, February 21st, is the anniversary of Yoshie Izumi’s passing away.  Yoshie Izumi made a timeless impression on the Fergus household during her visit in 1987.  Therefore, I asked my mom to say a few words in remembrance of our mutual friend.

We were saddened to hear about the passing of Yoshie Izumi.  Ferg and Moose still remember the visit of the Yoshies—Kimura and Izumi, when they visited us in the winter of 1987.  They were so excited and full of joy to be visiting Washington DC and staying with an American family.  I remember hearing the two Yoshies wake up early in the morning and singing quietly together like the Mothra twins while waiting for the rest of the family to wake up.  I also remember Yoshie Izumi fixing a Japanese meal for us – Oyako Domburo.  I still have her Xmas card she made for us in 1988 about the sleepy Yoshie Santa.  I know that Yoshie Santa has awoken up in a better place and not missed Xmas this time.

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Wed 17 Feb 2010

When Does She Get Her Turn? Part the Second

Posted by laup under Gameplay, Meditations, Outbreak, The Book Mine
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Okay, all right.  Permission to matter blah blah blah stakes whatever man.  What’s the DEAL?

The deal is, you’re going to have to play with these concepts until you can arrange them into a formula that works for you.  Your goal is to internalize them so that they influence what you create on an unconscious level—mental muscle memory as it were.

Just by reading about this, even if you don’t buy it, you are pouring ingredients one into the other and back.  The dance of temperance leads to more informed decisions and greater consciousness.

Here’s another thing to keep in mind:  Stories resolve.  That means they have an endgame, a way for a storyteller to say “I’m Done”.  This is often personified in the conflict—tension—resolution story formula.

This is actually harder than it looks.  Many writers can’t bear the thought of a resolution.  It’s much easier to do what’s called false tension, where you introduce a conflict, build up tension, and then back off from the resolution by removing the source of the conflict in some way.  They are revoking the principle of Permission To Matter for saw tooth storytelling.

Saw tooth storytelling is a kind of zilchplay.  But it carries with it another danger—running out of narrative ammunition.  There are only so many conflicts you can introduce before you begin to repeat yourself.  There are only so many conflicts you can repeat before the tension vanishes.

Think of it in half-life terms.  The first time the girl detective is faced with “follow my dream or please daddy’s image of me” is 100% tense.  The next time, 50%.  After that your audience is going to stop caring.

Get on with it.  Consequences are thrilling and exciting.  They inspire meditations—what if girl detective decides to please her daddy and become a hippy painter like him?  Is following her dream worth the cost?  Is it even right?  Or is it a case of “whoa that was a close one, that’s so cool she made the right decision?  OMG what if she hadn’t followed her dream?”

Keeps you awake at night.

What you’re looking for is a steady reward cycle.  Reader is rewarded for following the story.  Characters who do stuff are cool.  It keeps the narrative clip loaded and firing, bang bang bang.  If you keep firing and never hitting anything, you’re just wasting shots and soon to run out of places to go.

So here’s a simple formula:  Character plus setting equals situation—Resolve, repeat until done.

  • Newbie woman engineer plus starship equals keeping things running smoothly, or
  • Girl detective plus high school equals solving mysteries without flunking, or
  • Humaniform alien female plus stuck on earth while making escape ship equals survive culture shock without being discovered

You don’t have to buy it, just consider it.

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Tue 16 Feb 2010

When Does She Get Her Turn? Part the First

Posted by laup under Gameplay, Meditations, Outbreak, The Book Mine
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My dear friend Kim tweeted this link my way, and since I enjoy finding out new nuggets of cultural development concerning female characters I checked it out.  Over in the Justine-land Broiler-anza the trail of the moment became the ingredients of compelling fiction.

Okay-okay already I’ll rattle this loose.  I got molecular prizes tumbling in my mind now that these two bad girls stirred things up without even realizing it.  Time for crazy time rumblings of doom as I pull out a few mental calculations I used to toss about a few years back.

What I draw a circle around is permission to matter.  That is, actions have consequences.  Not my idea; I’m adapting.  It rises up out of roleplaying game theory from a real phenomenon, wherein characters are blocked from contributing meaningfully to a creative exploration.

Very often this phenomenon is hidden from players’ (or readers’, or audience members’) view by a technique known as illusionism.  The illusion of permission to matter is fostered so that a game master (or writer, or director) can pursue an agenda.  When illusionism fails a follow-up technique known as force is used to railroad participants back to the agenda.

This results in dysfunctional play; players reach states of frustration and boredom.  Some resort to manipulation of the game master or the group to obtain their entertainment.  Whatever the case may be, it is a situation referred to as fun never.

You can apply this to other art forms as well.  Television and movies are especially prone to illusionism and force.  The agenda is to keep you watching passively, or to expect that the movie you are about to watch will entertain you because it is a “good movie”.

But getting back to writing.  When characters don’t get to matter they engage in what is known as zilchplay, or going nowhere.  Their actions have no consequences and what they do doesn’t matter.  You could substitute them for someone else and there would be no change.

Another name for permission to matter might be “agency”.  A character has to be able to affect the story.  If, for example, a woman is an engineer yet never gets to save the day with her engineering skills then it doesn’t matter who she is—zilchplay.  You could have a glass of water, call it an engineer, and watch as the designated character or plot element moves the story along because its time to go to the next scene—force.

Hand in hand with permission to matter is the concept of stakes.  When a conflict arises, there must be something to lose and something to gain.  Girl detective has to fast talk her way from the dinner table or else she’ll get to the crime scene too late to test her sudden intuition.

And not just the main character(s).  The minor character(s) have to be capable of succeeding and failing all on their own.

Permission to matter also requires consistency.  If the humaniform alien female demonstrates expert skill with computers only when the plot requires it, you have zilchplay.  A character doesn’t always have to succeed, but they do need to face conflicts with regard to established resources.

What you will find is that when you give your characters permission to matter, they will do things you never expected.  Complications will ensue and matters will unfold in ways that will surprise and inspire.  Even mundane outcomes have resonance—the girl detective predictably gets to go to the prom, but she’s earned it.  That is what being compelling is all about—being remarkable.

Chew on that for a moment.

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Mon 8 Feb 2010

Mermaid Tricks And Snowy Gusts

Posted by laup under Announcements, Discussion, Outbreak
[2] Comments

Snowmageddon 2010 has knocked out main systems over here; we’re on auxiliary power in the honeycomb hideout.  But the killer bees are making a nice sound and keeping us in plenty of delicious honey.

02-10-10 ETA: What does one do when snowed in by ice weasels and snow mutants? K and I are up in the crow’s nest, bedding and cats huddled together watching Season Two of Chuck (ahh, nerd projections of competence).  Long as auxiliary power holds up, we have beef stew, popcorn and hot cocoa. Outside, I can see icicles two stories tall.

02-13-10 ETA: Driving out to fetch groceries, I saw something I don’t know what to make of.  But it’s appropriate, considering the big dude dinner that was this snow nightmare.  I saw a pickup truck with plow set-up ditched on the side of the road in a drift.  The entire chassis was hollowed out and burnt as if previously engulfed in flames.  Hard times out there when you mess with snow mutants.

Snow mutants crushing all! They rise while others fall!

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