James Cameron to Remake Dances With Wolves

((I don't usually complain about things I have next to no idea about, but this really got under my skin. I sat there fuming for half a minute, blinking back tears of hate and dreaming of convoluted vengeance schemes against the whole universe, probably involving the Anti-Life Equation. But then I decided to write a blog instead.))

Not literally remake it, but he is making a video-game-and-movie both called Avatar, which is about a world on which the ignorant, invasive humans clash with the peaceful, nature-loving Na'vi, and a human goes from being part of the oppressive human force to joining up with the locals. If this doesn't sound like a certain Kevin Costner flick, you haven't been paying attention. (It's also the same as The Last Samurai, but Dances With Wolves is the better movie, and I'm standing by that statement.)

To make matters worse, a BBC News story on the movie-and-game quotes a producer: "'Our industry has not created a new universe in 32 years,' said Mr Landau. 'We have now.'"

You can't be serious. I've already played this game. It's called Starcraft, in which the wise and benevolant Protoss come into conflict with the expansionistic, greedy Terrans, and the hero Jim Raynor switches sides when he realizes what a bunch of toads his leaders really are. In fact, when I first saw a vaunted screenshot from Avatar, I had a reaction very similar to that.

"Oh, look. It's a Terran Marine standing next to a Goliath. I guess they're shooting at Zerg."

Now, I'm no scholar, but this is a common storyline--and recognized trope--in science fiction. It appears in Ender's Game and that whole nonsense. It's pretty much the whole film Princess Mononoke. It's even in the first Final Fantasy movie, and you don't want to be associated with that, do you?

And, of course, this goes back at least as far as Gulliver's Travels, in which Gulliver figures out how greedy, corrupt, and cruel humans are and ends up siding with a bunch of super-intelligent horses. And when you'd rather hang out with horses than humans, that's pretty bad.

Dr. Jonathan Swift wants his cut of the profits, Mr. Cameron.

Simple Gifts

I remember learning that song in perhaps third grade and thinking it was remarkably dull. "To turn, turn will be our delight?" Sounds like a bunch of hippies. And hippies are just a step above Wiccans.

Setting aside my burning torch for a while, let's talk shop. People say it's the little things in life that matter. That's not true. It's just that the 'little' things many people overlook are the things that are really the big things. Ever since I was a wee lad, I've had a fanatical devotion to creative writing. Some novels are dearer to me than most people are.

I value reading things written by my friends. Like a child who is given a blank piece of paper by a psychiatrist and some crayons, the blank page shows the soul of the creative writer with clarity not found in anything else. In a piece of creative writing, be it nonfiction, poetry, or fiction, we reveal our inner selves, our longings and our doubts and our terrors. When we create from the heart, our veils are penetrated, and readers nestle into a private nook of our soul. Even more so than in a painting or a sculpture, which is only a snapshot, a piece of creative writing is a world in itself, with its own rules and values. It reveals if the writer is calloused or romantic, cruel or kind, petty or generous.

Flannery O'Connor believed in a just world, one where truly good people are rewarded and the sinful are punished. She then went on to demonstrate how all of her characters were flawed.

Charles Dickens wanted to believe in a happy world that is safe and good, but they always came out flawed.

Courage and loyalty were paramount to Rudyard Kipling.

Of course, you can argue any of those sweeping generalizations, but my point remains: creative writers don't write about the absolute real world, but rather the world as filtered through their hearts. It's the world as they see it, as they hope it is, as they fear it is, as they wish it was, as they are terrified of it becoming.

This is why I value the writing of my friends above almost anything else. In it, I feel like I really get to know the person. It's not just when you hold a person over a volcano (what, you haven't seen Firefly?) that you meet him, but when you read his poetry.

Perhaps a year ago, a good friend of mine gave me a chapbook of his poetry to read and critique. I never did get to critique it, but I read it every now and then, and I am amazed by both the depth of the writing and I feel like I truly meet again a person I only glimpse in 'real life.' Frankly, I feel a little guilty to hold onto this poetry and read it, but that's a part of someone's soul. It's not the kind of thing I can throw away.

Moments like those, like a sunrise over a treasured landscape I'll never see again, are as unforgettable as they are sacred.

(PS Probably fortunately for my digestive system, the bacon did stay green after it sat on the frying pan for a minute, which dissuaded me from chancing it.)

Not an Ideal Circumstance

Just a few minutes ago, I set about making myself something to eat. Not having finished off the bacon I bought maybe a week and a half ago, I took it out of my fridge to find that it had gone green. It didn't smell awful (it didn't really smell at all), so I asked myself just what could have happened to it. Is a week and some in a fridge too much for some slices of dead pig to handle? Even more perplexing, was it still edible despite the color change? I decided to throw some strips on the frying pan to see if they returned to their natural color with a little heat.

You're probably thinking that I'm crazy, and green food is bad for you, but I learned early on that green food isn't so bad. A very sage man named Seuss (he's a Doctor, people!) informed me that eating green eggs and ham isn't injurious to my health; if it was, the little boy could just have said "I will not eat it, Sam-I-Am. I will not eat green eggs and ham, because it could probably kill me, and I don't want to risk it." Instead, the boy provides the much weaker argument that he simply does not like green eggs and ham, suggesting that, apart from taste preferences, green eggs are perfectly safe to eat.

Of course, I came to my senses soon enough and threw out my green bacon, but it did give me pause.

Completely unrelated:

Whenever I write a blog post, I'm filled with blog fever all day and am full of ideas for more blogs. I pass them up, however, not wanting to post more than one a day and make my loyal readers feel overwhelmed. However, after that day has gone by, my ideas and my desire to write about them both seem to go away.

It's like my old rule for writing: if I want to finish writing something, I make sure to write a sentence a day, no matter what. It's a way of tricking myself into writing. If I aim to write a long time, I feel overwhelmed, or I think I don't have the time for it. But if I only set out to write a sentence, I can accomplish that easily and with very little time, but then I'm already writing, so I keep going.

Let that be my advice to you today, writers out there: write a sentence a day.

Perspective

I've been watching a lot of pirated television recently, mostly because I have a lot of time that's not regimented by outside sources that I should be using to write rather than enjoy television that I don't technically have a legal right to be watching--or is it legal to watch but illegal to upload? In any case, it's on YouTube, and if the world's most up-and-coming software giant lets it go (or, in any case, hasn't found it yet), I see it as my Google-given right to enjoy it.

If you're curious about what I'm watching, it's mostly the British car show Top Gear, because I know nothing about cars and can't even drive, but find something hilarious about watching middle-aged English men complaining about cars and each other. Also, the book series I was reading at the time of my last blog entry is The Dresden Files. It's not the greatest writing, but it's a solid Summer page-turner, the chief draw of which, for me, is that the narrator is so sarcastic.

At any rate, as I was watching unhealthy amounts of Top Gear, I came across an episode in which the gang race against a team from a German car show I've never heard of. I watched the episode in English, naturally, but then I decided to watch the German version for a lark. The difference in the focus was obvious: the shows focus on their respective teams. What struck me was that I bought the perspective offered by each show. In the British version, the Top Gear team seemed the way they usually do on their show: fun, enthusiastic, and a little acerbic in their sense of humor. They laugh, they smile, they make fun. The German team seemed like a bunch of Germans complaining, which is something they do with German efficiency. On the German show, however, the German team seemed much more likeable (although they still spent most of their time complaining), and the British team looked arrogant and obnoxious. The point is that I actually found myself rooting for the British team on the Top Gear version and for the German team on their version.

Side-note: on the British show, they made lots of jokes about World War II and its aftermath, even playing up the team showing up to the challenge in Spitfire fighter planes. On the German show, although they showed the Spitfire entrance, neither the team nor the narrator said a thing about it. On the other hand, even the polite Germans couldn't help making cracks about Dunkirk and Arnhem when they were given miniature tanks to play with.

This naturally got me thinking about my own life and opinions. I must admit that most of my opinions were formed not by my independent thinking but by the persuasive charisma of people I have run across, the people I respected and treated as teacher. Now I can't help but wonder if I would believe things completely differently if I had other teachers, not to mention other parents. Would I be riding around in a pickup truck with my hound dog's ears flapping as he puts his head out the window, listening to Country and Western and flying an American flag above the porch of my house? Would I go to church if I had genuinely connected with one of my priests? Would I have majored in something actually useful instead of English, and therefore be working at a solid career instead of sitting in my apartment on a Monday afternoon writing a blog?

Perhaps. But the revelation I've had, or think I've had, is that it's vital for me to examine myself, to weigh for myself what I believe and what I hold most dear, and to determine for myself, not by the influence of others, who I am. Ever since I was in high school, I have defined myself by the reading and (attempted) writing of fiction. Perhaps it's time I had a good long look at that as well. It's not too late to become a theoretical physicist.

Viable Alternatives

Today, I woke up at around ten thirty. I played Fallout 3 on my PS3 until 5:30 in the afternoon, barely pausing for bathroom breaks, and not eating or drinking anything. I also didn't change out of my pajamas. When I was done, I felt very hungry and rather disoriented. Then I read a book for a while.

And I enjoyed reading much, much more than I enjoyed playing the video game.

Is there something wrong with me? Or am I just more literary and less digital than I think I am?

To lie back from the world, listening only to the sound of my own thoughts and the dry rustle of pages turning, to immerse myself so deeply in a book to the point that I no longer see the page but the scene that the words are weaving, this is a pleasure unique and wondrous.

If you read this blog...

You are invited to join a forum that we are putting together just to have a place to chat and share thoughts. So if you're at all interested in swords, ninjas, guns, video games, movies, books, dragons, or air, you're welcome to join the forum.

Seriously. If you're the kind of person who would read this blog even for .73 seconds, you should join the forum.

Yes, you.

http://forum-of-doom.proboards.com/

Freaking Thesis

I think I may have complained to every human being on the planet about this already, but I'm tired of all the hoops I have to jump through for getting my thesis approved. Who would have thought that by far the easiest and most enjoyable part of my thesis would be actually researching, revising, and writing it, while all the formatting, approval, and running from place to place is far more aggravating than it should be.

This university has a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy filled with underlings who could and should be doing this piddling stuff. I suggest we use it.

To other graduate students: I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do a thesis. It was wonderfully rewarding, interesting, and even exciting to work on the actual thesis part of my thesis. All the hoopla, on the other hand, interests me about as much as a turd on a shoe. It might be funny if someone else was dealing with it, but if it's me, it's just aggravating and kind of disgusting.

The Reason I Crunch Numbers

Although my crunching of the numbers for Star Wars might be excessive, I enjoy it, and I find it to be a useful activity, both as a fan and a writer. It's important to try to understand the way a world works, its nuances and behaviors. To be able to understand and write about a world, it's important to understand how it works. And that's where something like crunching the numbers comes in. A few years ago, I wrote an entry in another blog somewhere about why Sauron could never bring the amount of forces shown to bear on Gondor--there is no way that, with medieval technology and supply routes, he would have been able to provide food, shelter, equipment, stables, etc. for such a vast force. I brought in some modern arguments about things like the supposed million-strong army of the Persians: it's just not possible to have a force that vast all in one place. It's very rare to see an army over 200,000 strong in the ancient world for that reason, and even that army needs massive numbers of followers and support personnel. Historically, I've heard it said that an army would have followers on a 1/1 ratio. Even assuming orcs don't bring their families along... but now I'm getting carried away again.

These are the considerations every fan needs to take into account when thinking about a world. It's the little things that turn a book or movie from just a story into a living, breathing world in which the audience's imagination can run wild. Whenever I'm watching or reading something that moves me, I imagine myself into that world, creating new stories and characters on a whim. That is the deepest level of immersion in a world, and it's necessary to understand the mechanics of that world in order to do that. It's also the reason I read slowly: I can go through text very quickly if I'm just reading for comprehension, but I prefer to read slowly, to stop to picture scenes, to think about what if and to fill in the gaps in the story with my imagination.

That's my reasoning behind spending all that time on crunching the numbers for my favorite stories. It's fun, and it's useful. Maybe you should try it, too. Keep your favorite writers honest: what's possible and what isn't?

By the way, I notice now that I didn't take the modern navy numbers by a third, as I was doing for the others to simulate the lack of extreme poverty in Star Wars. In that case, there would have been 800 Star Destroyers rather than 2,400. Fewer, but that's still a lot. Then again, I doubt the extreme poor contribute all that much to military economies, so perhaps my initial figure was reasonable.