Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at May 12th, 2006

Not that I expect that anyone’s been wondering about or waiting for this but I ran across a link to a cut scene from Star Wars. It’s one near the beginning with Biggs, Luke’s friend who dies in the assault on the Death Star.

Posted by Jim at March 11th, 2006

Before you read the rest of this, you might want to read this comic *…

I’m not a great lover of Yanni or David Hasselhoff’s music, but I haven’t any great dislike for them personally. Thus news that both of them are under suspicion of domestic abuse is pretty strange. Funny to find these sort of charges against people who perform soft, inoffensive music. Not that I seriously expect music to offer a window into the soul of the performer, but if we were talking about people whose music was known to contain violent themes, it would seem less odd.

Oh well.

* Yeah, the comic is kind of offensive. Sorry.

Posted by Jim at March 4th, 2006

PVP is a webcomic that generally focuses on interpersonal relationships, work, role playing games, geek culture, and computer gaming. It does not generally focus on social issues.

Last week Scott Kurtz did an interesting thing in that he let us into his head as he was trying to write a black character, something that he’s apparently not entirely comfortable with.

If you read the two comics I just linked in the preceding paragraph you’ll know exactly what I mean by that. If you didn’t you might want to because what follows will assume you did, possibly ruining the humor in the process.

Anyway, I can understand why Kurtz might feel uncomfortable writing a black character. I’m writing a novel–one that includes a black character–and I’ve sometimes felt a little nervous as I do it. There are a number of reasons that a white writer might feel nervous about writing a black character.

The first and best one is simply the need to have the character feel authentic and real to to the reader. If you’re black you will have experiences and assumptions that are different from those of your average white writer. If you are a white writer and you’re realistic, you know that you can only guess as to what those experiences might be. How are you going to avoid screwing things up and making the character feel fake?

Unfortunately for the realistic writer, however, there’s more of a risk than simply having the character feel not quite right. There’s also the risk of having the character come off as a racial stereotype. Having the character feel fake is merely a technical failure. Having the character turn out to be a racial stereotype (unintentional as it might be) opens you up for public humiliation.

To me this underlines something about current moment in the US experience of race and racism. As a society, we’ve come to the point where most people agree that racism is wrong, but it’s still such a raw wound that it’s hard to talk about it publicly.

The obvious and best solution is to write a person of whatever race (or gender) as first of all a person and hope that common humanity will carry the day. I think about Michael Bishop who included a gay AIDS patient in his novel Unicorn Mountain. Michael Bishop isn’t gay, doesn’t have AIDS and doesn’t obviously have a lot in common with the character.

He made the person feel like a real human being and his gay character seemed as real to me as Samuel R. Delany’s various gay characters (Delany, incidentally, is gay). Of course, I’m not gay so I may have missed something there.

I am, however, a US citizen of Dutch descent and though that’s far from a persecuted minority, it has been interesting to read books in which people of Dutch descent appear. For example, at least in the books I read, the primary association with being Dutch is sailors and traders. Farmers and immigrants to the US barely ever appear–and when they do it seems that they turn out to be sailors.

I remember being particularly irritated by one alternate history which imagined that England never conquered New York City/New Amsterdam. It irked me that in an alternate version of the US with a strong Dutch presence I found little awareness of Dutch Reformed thought or much of a sense of Dutch history other than “sailors and traders.”

There were also structural problems with the novel, but I won’t get into that here.

Making your characters human doesn’t always quite work either and Scott Kurtz is right to be uncomfortable, but as my comments about the above book indicate, writing about white Europeans isn’t as easy as you might assume either. I’m hoping Scott sticks with the character. Even if he makes mistakes in the process, I think he’ll eventually get the character right.

Of course, if he sticks in a character who’s descended from Dutch sailors, I’ll be cranky.

Posted by Jim at March 1st, 2006

Octavia Butler is dead. Unlike Steven Barnes, I didn’t know her personally, but I did read her stuff and enjoyed it.

Who was she? She was one of the relatively few black science fiction writers–though that’s not the source of her importance. I’m not saying that race was unimportant in her writing (far from it), but rather that she was one of the better writers out there in science fiction of any race.

She seemed to specialize in cataclysms–the destruction of civilisation occurs in at least a couple series by her–but she made it entertaining. She put her characters through hell and made the reader care about them.

One of the things I liked about her books is the way they examined our own social problems from another angle and altogether without preaching. It was obvious she had a perspective, of course, but the story came first.

Run out. Buy her books.

Listen to her on NPR:
Octavia Butler remembered
Talks about race
On Science Friday with David Brin

Posted by Jim at February 22nd, 2006

My wife recently noted that I hadn’t written much of anything in my blog lately and she’s right. I’ve been somewhat busy, wretchedly tired, and generally unmotivated for the last week or so. Nonetheless, I do have something to write about at the moment even though it is something that Kristen will find entirely uninteresting.

I’ve been roused from my stupor by the on-going crankyness related to Ron Edwards’ post about how some people who play role playing games have had their ability to enjoy stories (and notion of what stories are) damaged by certain sorts of games. Specifically, he seems to mean the games of Mark Rein-Hagen.

He may be right about this, but, I’ve no way to know from experience. As someone who’s done an awful lot of gaming with Ed and Joe, I’ve never actually played Mark Rein-Hagen’s games (with the exception of Ars Magica which was co-written with Jonathan Tweet). Though I had some mild curiousity about Vampire, I never ended up playing it–largely because either Ed or Joe (I’m not sure who) regarded it as a pretentious pile of steaming crap.

I don’t know that anyone used that precise terminology, but that’s the impression I got.

Anyway, I’m not going to go too far into the specifics of any of that. Ron Edwards may be right and he may not. I don’t know, but, the idea that you’re marked by the sort of role playing games that introduced you to the hobby does interest me.

Personally, even though I like a lot of the ideas and games that come out of the Forge, I find that I’m still drawn to the old player/GM relationship in which the GM gets to do pretty much whatever he/she wants and everyone else ends up responding to his/her ideas.

I’m not saying this is good. In fact, I’ve had some of the better gaming experiences of my life with Forge influenced games so I’m open to the possibility (even necessity) of changing this relationship.

What I am saying is that my perspective on gaming is undoubtedly colored by my introduction to the hobby in the form of Basic Dungeons and Dragons (which was quickly followed by AD&D). As experimental as my gamng has overall been (I dropped dice entirely following the release of Amber Diceless RPG till last year), certain things haven’t been questioned.

In messing with some Forge-influenced games and reading some gamer theory blogs, I’ve run across yet more things to experiment with and that’s a good thing.

That being said, everybody’s got a point at which they somehow lack the ability to quite grasp a particular change and incorporate it into their thought.

In reading a history of Jazz, I noted that the writer would often point out that a great musician was trained during one movement in Jazz, broke with that training and became known during the next movement in Jazz, and couldn’t quite absorb the movement after that. I don’t remember why he thought that musicians failed to absorb a third iteration of the music.

I do remember listening to an interview with Ray Charles (who was not primarily a jazz musician though he did play jazz) talking about rap. He basically felt that he had nothing to learn from it.

It seems to me that in order for someone to move away from the view they find comfortable, there’s got to be something cool on the other side that they want. I know that I want the level of player involvement that I’ve seen in Forge influenced games. That draws me. A critique of what’s wrong with me probably wouldn’t draw me in.

Posted by Jim at January 30th, 2006

I’ve got a few thoughts that don’t really fit together, but aren’t developed enough to warrant their own entry. Rather than develop them, I thought I’d get them out of my head in one fell swoop.

This Blog
I’ve been thinking about getting a little more organized about this blog. Rather than just spitting out what happens to be in my head, it might be interesting to deliberately try to cover certain topics. For example, one day a week I might do commentary on a webcomic, novel or movie. Another day I might regularly write on programming topics, cooking or something else. Nothing is set in stone, but I’ve been thinking that more focus might help.

Webcomic?
I’ve been wanting to start one and have even done some preliminary character sketches, but haven’t. It’s a lower priority than my novel, so don’t expect to see it soon.

Novel
I’ve been having a good time working on it, but I’ve mostly been doing the background work that I should have done long ago. I’ve been working on character motives, plot arcs, thinking through thematic elements, and generally trying to set things up so that I can make the current draft go as quickly as possible.

Programming Projects
Let’s see… I’m trying to learn Ruby so that I can use it with Rails, and investigate AJAX. I’d also like to expand the PHP based content management system I wrote for work. I’ve been thinking that there’s a way we could use it to manage email lists and write/send our email newsletters.

And then there’s the master’s project…

Role Playing Games
Back in July when I first started messing with adapting Dogs in the Vineyard to my campaign idea, I thought up something I wanted to try. Unfortunately, it seemed to violate a person’s control over their own character. I’m thinking that I’d like to revisit that one in light of current discussions on Vincent’s blog. Apparently, he’s deliberately entering into that area.

General Blog Maintenance
I noticed recently that my blogroll doesn’t include half the blogs I actaully read. I should change that. I’d add the webcomics too except that the list is embarrassingly long.

Posted by Jim at January 18th, 2006

I’ve been going over prior drafts of my novel lately, reflecting on my mistakes and considering what I have to do to fix them and improve this thing.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my first and second drafts is faling to establish character motivation adequately. Basically, the main character moves from one scene to another as dictated by the coolness of the plot idea and not so much because it flows naturally from the character’s wants and needs.

Obviously this is a problem and must be changed.

What’s harder, of course, is to figure out exactly how I’m going to change it.

A key part of the story is that there are multiple time lines. In some of them he starts working for a particular man and as a result he becomes part of terrible things, eventually losing much of what makes his life worth living. The character and ideally the readers know that this is a possibility for the main character as well. A major tension in the story, therefore is whether he will do this himself.

To my mind, this means that I will have to make doing terrible things in some way attractive to the character and perhaps also to the reader.

And that sounds hard. So, I’m still thinking about how it will work.

Posted by Jim at January 6th, 2006

I’ve been curious about the current indie rock scene for a couple reasons. First, I’m trying to get back into writing my novel. Many of the characters are college students who are trying to get a band going. I’d like to throw in references to recent bands that they might like as opposed to having the characters’ tastes in music be out of date.

Second, I’ve been reading Questionable Content (a webcomic) lately and get about half of the music references.

It’s kind of funny. Though I wouldn’t call myself particularly knowlegeable about independent rock, I did deejay at Hope College’s radio station and hung around with at least some people who knew a lot about it. Thus, there were about 10 minutes (more than 10 years ago) when I had a good idea of the lay of the indie rock land.

Amusingly, certain attitudes in the indie rock scene haven’t changed.

1. The more obscure a band is, the better it is.
Once a band becomes well known to the general population (and signs on with a major label), it instantly begins to stink and it’s time to find a new favorite band. Questionable Content has a good illustration of that one…

Oddly enough, that’s what happened to at least a few of the bands I liked back when I followed indie/alternative rock. Personally, I’ve never believed this one, and don’t find that my enjoyment of someone’s music is sullied by the fact that more than five people now know of their existence.

2. If the music came out before a certain date, it’s by definition less interesting than new music.
As someone with a strong interest in jazz, I’ve never been able to buy into this assumption. There is great new stuff coming out in jazz, but it’s got a history that you can’t ignore. Mind you, people in the jazz community used to have this attitude as well.

Anyway, the sidebar of this comic has a good example of this assumption in action.

Music changes, but human beings don’t change much at all.

Posted by Jim at January 3rd, 2006

I’ve been rereading my novel lately. It’s not a published novel. It’s the novel I started near the end of college, but never quite brought to a publishable state. I stopped near the beginning of draft three due to a combination of work, children and multiple graduate programs.

You might wonder why I would be looking it over now instead of working on my master’s project. Honestly, I need a break. For the last year, I’ve been either working on my master’s project or avoiding working on my master’s project. I need more variety in what I think about. Also, I think I’m just happier when I’m involved in telling some kind of story.

I’m not going to go into details about the plot. Part of that’s because there are a lot of unsettled details. Part of it’s because I feel uncomfortable describing a work in progress.

I am comfortable mentioning that it’s a contemporary fantasy that makes use of local, West Michigan history. Among other things, I mess around with time travel and the alternate histories that come about when people make choices. That’s really just the tip of the iceberg, though.

If I had to describe it in a sentence, I’d describe it as a cross between the Godfather and Back to the Future.

Of course, I’d only describe it that way to someone more familiar with movies than science fiction. If the person were familiar with science fiction, I’d describe it as a cross between Kim Stanley Robinson’s Orange County trilogy and Roger Zelazny’s novel Roadmarks.

Anyway, I’ve been reading over my second draft and meditating on all the things that have to be fixed in the third draft. I’d probably be going over my first draft too but unfortunately that’s lost to time. I wrote the first draft on an Amiga using Word Perfect 4.2. Needless to say, I can’t open those files anymore (but I’ve still got the disks!).

Whatever the case, the laundry list of stuff that must be changed is very long indeed. Much of the writing in the second draft really stinks–clunky dialogue, scenes that go nowhere, scenes that must be shortened, word choices that make me wince. The only really good thing about the draft is that around two-thirds in, it tightens up.

Suddenly the overlong descriptions disappear, scenes get directly to the point, and the dialogue is okay. I don’t remember when I suddenly figured out where I was going with that draft, but apparently it happened.

Now I’ve just got to rework the preceding two-thirds of the story.

In some ways this fits with my normal way of writing. During the first draft, I tend to have very low standards. Whatever comes out, comes out. I build on that, deleting and rearranging as necessary. With a poem or an essay it’s a lot easier to keep in my head what I’m trying to say. A novel includes so many things that it takes a while for me to understand what I’m doing and figure out which details are important, which aren’t, and how they fit with the overall structure of the story.

I’m thinking that this time around, I’m actually going to outline the various key story arcs. I may also go back and fix things that I think are screwed up before moving on to the next section. I’ve been avoiding that in the past because getting a particular scene right didn’t seem worth it when I didn’t understand the overall shape of the story.

Now I think that I do.

Posted by Jim at December 3rd, 2005

I played Prime Time Adventures with Ed and Joe on Friday night. I’d been curious about it for a while and very much enjoyed it.

Prime Time Adventures is a game that involves creating a story in the style of a dramatic television series. The players and the producer (alias the GM) come up with the series idea and share responsibilities for imagining the events of the game and their resolution.

Our group’s idea was “Crashspace,” a story of college-aged aliens marooned on Earth and rooming with two human students. As an idea, it lends itself to comedy almost as easily as drama.

Having already played (and read) a few Forge influenced games now, I was familiar with the basic thrust of the mechanics. In this case you use cards as a randomizer instead of dice, but you still end up narrating the results of a success or failure. This particular game had some twists on this. For example, you the player don’t necessarily narrate the results of your actions. The player with the highest card narrates the results. it also included another interesting twist, “fan mail,” a system for allowing players to reward other players for doing something clever or amusing during the game.

As someone who’s more interested in creating a story that lasts over multiple episodes than self contained episodes, I was particularly interested that Prime Time Adventures clearly considers the entire season in the process of character creation. At the beginning of the season, you mark your character’s level of importance in each episode. That, in turn, affects how effective your charcter will be controlling the direction of that episode.

I’m still mulling over whether I can draw inspiration or even directly steal from this for my own stuff.

One thing that I dislike is purely personal. As someone who’s primary experience and attraction to gaming is as a GM, I enjoy describing what happens next. As a player, a person still gets to do this, but obviously you get to do this a bit less. In Prime Time Adventures, you only get to narrate the results of a conflict if you’ve got the highest card and in that case, you get to narrate everyone’s actions. This is fine except that I never got the highest card.

In pointing this out, I don’t mean to complain. I had a great time with the game. It’s a game that gives the players a lot of control. You can choose where a scene occurs, what sort of conflict will occur (if any) and even start scenes that have nothing to do with your own character should you feel the urge. It’s also worth saying that you very definitely do get to interact with other players in character and you can set your stakes such that you control the result of a conflict.

I’m just saying I miss the ability to describe my character’s actions as opposed to setting the stakes and making suggestions to the narrator.

This may well go away with more experience of the game. There’s certainly enough in it to explore for a while and one small dislike does not overwhelm the many things that I do like about it.