燕

Wikipedia article on ghost writing. Quite fascinating, actually. Not sure what I think of it.

Regarding this article in TIME Magazine about James Patterson, and James Patterson's complaint about not being highly respected: how is it possible to respect an author who says of his next book, "I don't think it's terribly worth reading, honestly"?

In repayment to myself for surviving the second most miserable class ever today, I'm going to spend some time doing something that is only relevant and enjoyable to me, and that I've been wanting to do for a while: ramble on about my old roleplaying characters.

As a small measure of mercy to those who are far enough from sanity to actually read my journal, I'm sticking them behind cuts. Feel grateful.

( Kamiya Ashura )

I don't usually bother with these, and it might take me a few days before I reply to any posts in response to this, but I am occasionally a woman of my word.

1. Reply with your name and I will write something random about you.
2. I will then tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I will pick a flavor of ice cream I would feed you.
4. I will say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I will tell you my first or most vivid memory of you.
6. I will tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll then ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your LJ.

I found this link on Neil Gaiman's livejournal, and spent some time going through it. It's both . . . fascinating, disgusting, and repellant all at once. I found myself preferring the pictures before they were 'retouched,' to be perfectly honest. And I'm not just saying that. The retouched versions . . . they look like plastic, they just don't seem like people. All the tiny quirks that make the human body unique and interesting smoothed away, the colors made too bright and unnatural, the flaws that ought to be endearing subtracted in favor of some untouchable ideal . . .

Yes, this from the same mind that managed to conceive of Emrys. But even his perfection has personality to it, the fleeting trace of expression, a particular way of moving, a customary somewhat cynical cast that marks him as alive.

Also, all of the people in the photos are already beautiful by most people's standards. Some of them are rather too thin, but even so.

When it comes to these photos . . . I'd take the reality over the illusion any day.

Also telling is the fact that most of the touch-up work is on the women. When men appear (granted, only twice, but still), they have a lot less changed about them. And even then it's mostly changing the shadows, smoothing over an unartistic wrinkle. Their shape is not altered, not as the womens' shape is altered. There's no rounding out at the rear, no filling in the chest, no widening or lightening of the eyes.

I'll let you come to your own conclusions about it, but it certainly bears thinking about.

Interestingly, when my family went to get our portrait done for some sort of dumb church yearbook thing (there are things that I do for the sole reason of making my father happy. This was one of them), we were offered by the photographer the opportunity to have the photo altered, the small blemishes smoothed over with a forgiving paintbrush tool. I'm happy to say that we refused, but I wonder how many other people did. And why they felt it necessary to have a book lie about them, when memory contradicts . . . ah, but memory is as easily edited as a photo, when you get right down to it. And the edited photo will serve to edit the memory, until they become the same thing.

Anyway, Nijo-jo.

I went there because it was an easy walk from the hotel, and I remember it as being quite spectacular. Which hasn`t changed, of course. Nor was the weather any different from the last time I was there; it was spectacularly hot. Thank all the gods for the ever-present Japanese vending machines, else I`m certain I would have keeled over. For a few minutes as I was walking, I was seeing scintillating shadow-stripes on the multicolored brick walkways where they did not in fact exist.

You have to cross a moat to get to Nijo-jo. The moat is wide, the mossy green shade of stagnant water, but when you look over the wooden railing of the wide stone bridge, you can occasionally see the dark shapes of carp swimming below. The wall of castle side is stone, huge grey-brown cut blocks that slant in a steep wall out of the water. On top of that is another wall, white, capped with dark tile.

After passing the moat, there`s a massive gate to go under on the other side. The form is what I`ve come to expect, the iron-studded wood door swung back on its ponderous hinges, the white-painted works around it, the dark tile roof on top. On the other side is an expanse of hot gravel, with a gaurdhouse off to the right and elegant pine trees to the left. Another wall rises around the palace, just as high as the first.

I pity the poor soldiers who once had to assault Japanese castles. It must have been hell. And Nijo-jo`s hardly the worst of them (it was more palace than anything else); Himeji`s a bloody maze of fortifications. Jeez.

In any case, following the broad walkway around the corner of the enclosure, another gate is set into the wall. This one is thatched, not tiled, but is far more impressive. The roof on the gate is curved upwards in the center rather than peaked on the ends, and the lintels are capped in elaborate gold filials. Gilded woodcarvings decorate the inside, once brightly painted but now faded: leopards and dragons, phoenixes and cranes, blue deer with golden antlers and spots, all playing among peonies and chrysanthamums.

The palace enterance is framed by the gate across an expanse of gravel, and is of a similar construction, with similar decorations. The roof is broader, of course, but the walls rise only as high as the walls that surround it. The shade of the expansive enteranceway is a welcome releif after the hot sun and the dust. Of course you take your shoes off-- sandals, for me, and the wooden steps were both rough and delightfully smooth to my bare feet.

Nijo-jo is famed for it`s "nightengale floors"-- the broad boards squeak when you step on them, caused by a facet of their construction I will explain if asked, but which is unromantically technical. Besides providing a pleasantly musical accompaniment to the tour, they also served a practical function; it`s virtually impossible to sneak around that place. Not that it would be possible anyway. First, though expansive, the construction is quite simple, the rooms large and rectancular, the hallways straight and wide. There is no furniture, and hence nowhere to hide. Unless you`re a guard, of course. Small closets intended to be occupied by said gaurds are pointedly placed in every room the shogun was likely to be in.

Every room is floored in tatami mats, naturally, and the screen walls are elaborately painted. One room has a motif of pine trees, another is decorated with exotic leopards and tigers, another with wild fowl. The shogun`s chambers were all mountains and forests in relaxing sepia and white rather than the gaudy gold leaf of the audience and receiving chambers. Elaborately carved wooden panels covered the expanse above the painted screens, and also lined the top of the hallways, allowing light to pass from one room to the next.

Even so the hallways were dim, and the rooms likewise. One room had lifesize models of the people who might have been in the castle, the shogun before his retainers. Their outfits were elaborate, their faces frozen in pale masks of adoration. Each bore a crest on his back; this one two birds, that one three commas, another interlocking leaves, all based on a circle pattern. Their trousers and sleeves trailed a good two feet behind them from where they knelt on the floor. I heard one Japanese man tell the Americans he was showing around that they were dressed that way on purpose, to make it more difficult for them to attack the shogun. They all had their swords, but it would indeed be difficult to attack any man while tripping over one`s trouser legs. So if that was the reason for it or not, it was nevertheless effective.

Like all palaces, Nijo-jo is built to impress, and it does. I no longer find it so perfectly exotic as I did at first-- ah, the voice of experiece-- but it`s still amazingly beautiful, from the painted ceilings to the plain wooden hallways.

Outide is a garden, lazily draped around a small pond. It too is elegant, with a small waterfall in one corner, and three islands connected by natural-looking stone bridges. As I stood there, watching, a small crane landed on one of these bridges and stood there preening and shaking out its wings, its long neck impossibly flexible, its legs as delicate as the ribs that supported the paper screens.

Having just managed to break my needle while trying to sew trim on my uniform, I've decided to take a break. And give up on making it to martial arts tonight, because there's no way I'll have this finished in twenty minutes.

I mean, I broke the bloody needle. F-ing crazy.

Bloody is also fairly literal, in this case, since I've stabbed myself multiple times since I've started. Well, it's all for my love of Tang Soo Do.


" . . . assuming any of us can ever make up for anything we've done in the past. Maybe we can't. Maybe we just have to live with it, and get on with it, and do what we have to, never what we want to. It has to be done. I hope he can see that, someday."

Babylon 5 is full of good quotes. My mind moves this one to a slightly different context, to a different speaker, and the resonance changes to one of desperate inevitability. I used that to explore things that have always bothered me, concepts of a life shaped by terrible, uncontrollable forces. To explore what would happen if someone was moved beyond all hope of redemption, all possibility of forgiveness. Where the mind looped back on itself because of the boundaries maintained by itself, consumed in a fire of its own making.

I wanted that, the tearing sadness, the march of an unrelenting doom. Like a Greek tragedy, where men are at the mercy of some force beyond understanding, that is inside themselves, and that herds them without quarter towards their destruction. From it, I wanted to achieve that ideal of catharsis, the pity and awe that comes from watching greatness lost to despair. A star, swallowed by the darkness. A ship, sinking into the black depths, and that last ripple of its passage swallowed into the backs of the waves.

The courage to face that, the beauty of disappearing! The terrible power of it-- a power that is ours, to deny despite everything, to struggle even when we know it's futile, to dare to believe that we can triumph, that we can overcome!

He doesn't have that, too torn, too stained, too mired in the agonies of his own soul. He has borne too much to conceive of it, stood too long staring into the abyss to entertain hope.

But he doesn't need to. Because, better than hope, I gave him possibility.


Domination of Black, by Wallace Stevens

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The color of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry-- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

from Bookslut's article on ComicCon:

"12:34 PM: Someone asks what makes an interesting story. Chuck Austen has an acronym for the occasion: R.S.V.P. -- Relationship, Stakes, Vulnerability, Passion."

Wanted to make sure I remembered that one.