Dragoness Eclectic's Journal

I have noticed an interesting thing among all sorts of internet folk: in this harrowing time, when it seems like the world is re-enacting the run-up to WWII with the U.S.A. cosplaying Nazi Germany...

All sorts of people have turned for comfort and inspiration to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote of a world in dire straits, and in a world in dire straits, in which evil seemed about to triumph everywhere, but reminded us that the Shadow cannot last forever, and there are good and beautiful things forever beyond its reach. He reminded us that even the least of people make a difference by doing the right thing; and that hope matters. "Despair is for those who see the end beyond all doubt; we do not."

People also write beautiful fanfiction about hot elves. We all need some hope and escape.

So far, every single fanfic longer than about 400K words has been in desperate need of editing. No, I am not including series whose cumulative word count is greater than that, because the smaller individual stories are usually fine. I am referring to single fics that weigh in at 500K or more.

If you are writing purely for self-indulgence, and don't care if no one else reads your fics or likes them, fine, this doesn't affect you. However, if you are writing for an audience that you hope will enjoy your fic, please look over your massive epic carefully. In my experience as a reader, the middles of such fics are often rambling, with the plot wandering in repetitive circles, or the main character having redundant character-development arcs, or otherwise slow and boring.

Less is more. Prune some of those plot branches; tighten up your character-development arcs. You don't need to show every minute of the main characters recovery from trauma, or falling in love, or having important epiphanies. You don't need to have the main ship characters having the same argument over and over--let them settle it the first or second time! Hit the highlights and key epiphanies of character-development arcs--don't grind them into the dirt with repetition. Move the plot along. Let stuff happen; keep the reader interested. Have an end point in mind, and stick the landing.

I have yet to see a single long story that couldn't have been told in 350K or so words, at most. If there are multiple major, long plot arcs, you might actually have multiple stories in a trench-coat, and should recast it as a series of stories. Otherwise, your story probably needs some editing and pruning; it's gotten leggy and tangled.

Just don't bore your reader, because that's more likely to lose them once they've started reading than missing content warnings or the wrong ship.

I've learned some important life lessons watching Columbo and Perry Mason and "Murder, She Wrote".

• Don't be the biggest asshole in your family or social group. You'll get murdered.
  
• If you find a dead body, call the police and your lawyer immediately. Do not call your brother/cousin/uncle whose first notion is to hide the evidence and dispose of the body. It makes you look really guilty, and it's probably a felony.
  
• If you find a dead body with the murder weapon laying next to it, don't pick up the weapon! If you do, someone will inevitably barge into the scene and witness you standing over the dead body with the murder weapon in hand.
  
• Don't make death threats, even casually. If you do, someone will inevitably overhear you and tell the cops about it after the person you threatened turns up dead.
  
• Don't blackmail the murderer about their crime. They've already killed someone once; no reason not to make you number two. (Seriously, every time someone in either Columbo or Perry Mason blackmails the murderer, they get murdered. Every Single Time.)
  
• If you're the murderer and you've constructed what you believe is the perfect alibi/frame-up, don't double-down on the frame when Columbo starts questioning your alibi/frame. Just pretend you have no clue why things don't add up--the world is weird that way, isn't it, Lieutenant? Also see next entry.
  
• If Columbo (or J.B. Fletcher) keeps turning up to ask questions about "one more thing", get a very good criminal defense lawyer on retainer, and follow his advice (which will be "Shut the fuck up!"). I recommend Perry Mason. You'll need them.
  
• If J.B. Fletcher or Columbo show up to confront you about the murder, don't add to your felonies by threatening violence. Fletcher and Columbo ALWAYS bring backup of the armed and official variety. Perry Mason does his confrontations in the courtroom, so you have no hope in violence there.
  
• Don't bother faking your alibi by time-shifting the tapes or staging fake phone calls to dead people. Columbo has seen that too many times.
  
• Don't bother threatening Columbo with your friends in high places. They're not going to pull his badge on your say-so, because he has a far higher clearance rate on "homicides committed by rich, influential assholes" than you do.
  

One more thing I've observed watching these shows: Columbo is an idealized police detective. He's courteous, patient, and gets warrants for searches. Likewise, on "Perry Mason", Lt Tragg is another idealized detective: he won't plant evidence, he gets warrants, he doesn't rough suspects up, and he got very angry with one of his sergeants who tried to get rough with the lawyer. Hamilton Burger, the DA, is also an ideal: he's a zealous prosecutor, but not overzealous: he wants justice, not convictions. When he realizes that Perry Mason is right and someone else is the murderer, he drops the case; he doesn't double down. He has openly said that he cares about justice more than scoring convictions, and that convicting an innocent would be unjust. He does sometimes take a lot of convincing that he's wrong, though--he brings charges based on evidence and/or witcnesses, after all.

I hope any of my mutuals in Florida are well back from the shoreline and hunkered down or evacuated somewhere safer. This looks like another Katrina, only in Florida--which is to say, an Andrew or an Ivan.

God help us it isn't a Camille.

I recently finished reading Barbara W. Tuchmann's The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890 - 1914. Like all of her other books I have read, such as The Guns of August and A Distant Mirror, it was a very educational look at history I didn't know very well if at all.

One major takeaway about that period of history was that Anarchists and Marxists were about as useful as teats on a boar hog (to use an old expression).

Anarchists were (and presumably still are) fatally allergic to organized activism or politics, because organization and hierarchy are against anarchist principles. Unfortunately for them, that means they have no political power whatsoever. Their strategy, such as it was, was stochastic terrorism ("Propaganda of the Word") and plain old terrorism ("Propaganda of the Deed"). By murdering bosses, leaders, rulers and other oppressors, they thought that they could somehow spark the masses of working people to spontaneously revolt and overthrow all the oppressors and usher in a golden age of harmonious anarchy. Which is to say, Anarchists were either as dumb as posts, or had never actually met other human beings before.

Syndicalists were another development of Anarchism, except instead of throwing bombs and shooting rulers, they believed that General Strikes would magically bring about the overthrow of capitalism and usher in a new golden age. They seem to have overlooked that most union men consider strikes a tool to achieve a specific goal, not another way to have a revolution.

Orthodox Marxists believed in Marx's prediction that Late-stage Capitalism (a term the internet gets from Marxism, I believe) would lead to ever-increasing poverty for the working class, ever-increasing wealth for the ultra-rich, and the destruction of the middle-class, and this miserable state would lead in turn to the the collapse of Capitalism and the seizure of the means of production by the working class, ushering in a golden age of socialism (communism). Orthodox Marxists wanted nothing to do with improving conditions in the here-and-now for the working class, because that would delay the final collapse of Capitalism. Also, they were organized, but shunned getting involved in politics, because that would require joining with the bourgeoisie and playing by Capitalism's rules.

Both Anarchists and Orthodox Marxists struck me as being like evangelicals awaiting the End Times, and doing nothing to improve things for those suffering here and now, because "Jesus will take us all up into heaven by and by." In their case, the "inevitable working class revolution" was their future Rapture event.

Revisionism, a branch of Socialism that popped up in the Edwardian period, suggested that Capitalism didn't look like it was going to collapse any time soon, so maybe we ought to work with the existing government and get involved in politics and try to improve things for the working class. They were regarded as a bunch of heretics who would destroy the fabric of socialism by the Marxists, but I believe they're probably the origin of modern social-democracies in Europe today.

Also, Trade Unions had little use for Marxists, because Marxists didn't care to work for social safety nets and the 8-hour day and all those benefits that lift the working class out of desperate poverty. Unions weren't interested in overthrowing society, they just wanted to make things better for their members. They were actually useful and they and the socialists willing to work with them on their goals actually got things done.

(cross-posted to Tumblr)

"Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett is a fantasy novel about Ankh-Morpork's moribund postal service and the semaphore company competing against it. It's also a prescient view of what happened to Boeing Corporation. Just change the names from Boeing to Grand Trunk, and Dave Calhoun to Reacher Gilt, it's the same story.

..for the first time in several years. Out in front of the museum, there is a fountain full of gorgeous water lilies.

"dragonesseclectic@mastodon.social"

I have no idea if I'll ever post anything, though.

After rewatching the Wellerman Sea Shanty remix to show my spouse the wonderful thing made by Covid-locked TikTokkers, I finally realized that "Wellerman" resonates because, in a way, it's about COVID lockdown.

"Soon may the Wellerman come, bringing sugar and tea and rum" = soon may my DoorDash/UberEats/contactless grocery pickups be ready.

"When the tonguing is done, we'll take our leave and go." = "When COVID is done, we'll take our leave and go (out)".



I feel silly not realizing this until years later.

2013-08-17:

There are people who just don't want Rousseau's "noble savage" to die, even though it is an archetype that never existed in any age of the world, as far as we can tell.

I read Charles Mann's "1491" recently, and found myself comparing the war between Tikal and Calakmul to the Peloponnesian War. That was when I realized my own conceptions of indigenous Americans as "noble savages" was finally dead.

Closer to home is Old Stone Fort in Tennessee. The local park guides would have you believe that that 'fort' is a misnomer and it was just some kind of "ritual site", because "they didn't have any enemies that we knew of". My spouse and I looked at the site built on bluffs at the confluence of two small rivers, the archaeological evidence of palisade walls on the landward approach, and the dog-leg entrance to the site, and, both being military science enthusiasts, said, "Nope. This was a fort. They had enemies, or Old Stone Fort would not have been so obviously a defensive work. Might want to look around for those enemies."

Sadly, being just visiting tourists and not renowned archaeologists, we only got polite smiles at our "mistaken" notions.