chilari

I've started writing articles for Suite 101. I figured, I've got two degrees, and I'm certainly not using them while sitting behind the till at a charity shop two mornings a week. So I've started writing articles, and I'm going to list them here, adding new articles as and when I write them. Listed alphabetically.

Bees in Greek Mythology
Immortals and Hollywood's Interpretation of Greek Mythology
Writing is Magic: Classical Greek Attitudes to Literacy

Update: These added:

The Roman Military in the Lands of the Cornovii
Ideals and Realities of the Classical Greek House

Andrew Stanton, the director of new Disney film John Carter, based upon A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, recently stated that the title had been changed because “not a single boy would go” to see a film with “princess” in the title, and because the story was more about the character John Carter in any case; but then he dropped the “of Mars” from the previously planned title “John Carter of Mars” because he believed no girl would want to see a film with Mars in the title. (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/12/05/john-carter-title-boys-girls-princess-stanton/)
 
Well here’s one. Hello.
 
This stems, of course, from the long-held belief among, well, to be honest I don’t know who, that Girls Don’t Like Science Fiction. I’ll come back to the blinkered, sexist nonsense that that is in a moment, but first I want to clarify exactly who believes this rubbish.
 
You see, I’ve read a lot of articles talking about gender in science fiction and the prevalence of males and how women writing science fiction or, indeed, fantasy are encouraged to use a male pen name or only use their initials, not their full first names. It’s certainly easy to find female writers in these genres who do this – J K Rowling, as is widely reported, was told by her publishers to use two initials rather than her first name to make her gender ambiguous to potential readers. So publishers believe in the gender divide in science fiction. From the comments of John Carter director Andrew Stanton, it seems the same belief floats around in the film making industry too.
 
But as Damien G Walter explored in the Guardian back in 2008, there are an awful lot of female writers of science fiction and fantasy, and the old claim that Girls Don’t Like Science Fiction showed through for exactly that: an old claim, out of date and obsolete. And that was the status of it three years ago. Ideas, it seems, are slow to change, and I’ll admit it’s perfectly possible that Andrew Stanton might not have read that article in the Guardian, so he might not have gotten the memo.
 
The thing is, though, he should have. Now, this might not seem like a huge amount of evidence to you, but I can confirm that the University of Leicester Science Fiction and Fantasy Society has had all-female committees for two consecutive years now, and when I was on the committee last year, women outnumbered men by at least two to one. And we watched Firefly and Alien and all sorts of films which people like Andrew Stanton and J K Rowling’s publishers think Girls Don’t Like. This is particularly ironic, since we had a society social to go and see Harry Potter 7 part 1 at the cinema, and again, women certainly outnumbered men on that trip. And at the pub, after the weekly meetings, we’d talk about the latest episode of Doctor Who or Merlin or even Outcasts, a sci-fi series I consider to be vastly underrated, particularly by tabloid reviewers.
 
Admittedly, programs like Doctor Who and Merlin might seem like soft-core sci-fi and fantasy to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genres, but there’s not much else available at the moment to those without the means to buy DVDs, and I’ll admit to getting a touch annoyed at both on occasion for taking the easy way out or resembling in some small aspect a soap opera, but they’re not bad, and in the meantime I can afford to go to the library and borrow any one of thousands of brilliant novels in the genres – and I judge more on what has been recommended to me by those I chat to on fantasy writing forums and the like than I do on the apparent gender of the author, based on the name on the cover.
 
Now, it’s true, this is the testimony of just one female fan of science fiction and fantasy. But I’m not alone. There are others. They are making their displeasure at such old-fashioned ideas known all over Twitter and the blogosphere.
 
But there’s more to it than just saying “you’re wrong, girls do like science fiction”. Regardless of whether a particular individual girl or woman likes science fiction or not, the claim that Girls Don’t Like Science Fiction is a sexist generalisation which should not be allowed to stand. It’s as absurd as claiming that all cats are female and all dogs are male. Some cats are female. Some dogs are male. My cat is male. And I like science fiction, while other female friends – though interestingly, right at this moment, I can’t seem to think of one – don’t. We shouldn’t still have to be telling people that in 2011.

Notch asked for a passage for when people won minecraft. Here's my contribution:

When you first encountered this land, you feared the dark, and the noises within it: every hiss and groan and clack sent you scuttling back to base, waiting for the sun to rise and burn away your fears. But bit by bit, day by day, you improved your situation. You worked hard. You fought, you farmed, you mined, you crafted. You found the means to be strong, and soon those things sneaking around in the darkness stopped frightening you, and began to fear you themselves. Now, your strength can be seen in the networks of mines beneath the earth, in the height of the towers you have built from scratch, and the shine of the creeper blood upon your sword, whatever colour creeper blood is. Green, I'd imagine. You have succeeded where others have failed. You have fought your way through abject loneliness and hordes of skeletons which for some reason are not hampered by their lack of muscle in their ability to draw back a bow and shoot you. Now, you have risen above all of that. You have fought such unnatural beings, and you have won. You are a survivor. You are a champion. You are a god.

So I've been doing a lot of painting this week. Quite a lot. All with my fingers, except for when I sign them. I have a lot of paint under my fingernails as a result. Anyway, I've been painting so much that I need to buy more canvasses. Again.

Originally, my plan was to sell them, and I would quite like to get a bit of money to just pay for my materials and stuff, but that didn't go well. Maybe I was asking too much for them. So the new revised prices are £10 for the larger ones (roughly A4), and £5 for the smaller (slightly smaller than A5), plus P&P (roughly £6). I am also willing to donate them to charity if there is a worthy cause that is interested.

As for what I've painted, here they are:






And the smaller ones:

I'm at 4998 words and so far it's going okay. I'm only a few hundred words short of the original attempt from back in November, but I haven't got nearly as far in the plot. I've let things move more slowly; I felt, reading the old version, that events felt rushed and I didn't leave myself any room to develop the characters. This time I've slowed it down, which has allowed me to introduce some of the other major characters in passing, and to spend a little more time setting a mood.

I like the idea of the contrast of light and dark, of warm and cold colours, to describe the mood; I've tried to include that in what I'm writing even though prose is not a particularly visual medium; we'll see how that goes. It's part of my attempts to be more descriptive; generally my writing is somewhat lacking in visuals: I write what they do and what they say, but rarely what they see while they're doing these things. Partly this has come about as a result of reading more webcomics, attempting to write a few of my own, and reading various articles about producing effective visuals in webcomics, mainly from Indistinguishable from Magic, the art blog of Aaron Diaz, creator of Dresden Codak. One of the articles in particular talks about picking a palette of colours and particular shapes for each character so that they are instantly recognisable even when wearing a different outfit. It makes sense; in some comics I've seen, you sometimes can't tell who a character is from what the artist has provided, particularly if the faces are identical and only the hair differs.

But that article really made me think about characters in prose too. While the visual aspects of shape and colour don't really come into it in a verbal medium, the principle is the same. And yes I realise that this might sound like something everyone says, that characters should be unique, with a unique voice and personal characteristics, and while yes, that's true, there is more to it than that. Having a unique voice is like having a unique look in a webcomic. It's not something you can just give to a character, it's something you need to work at, to build up, if you want the character to be interesting. In a webcomic you might have a tall thin character and a short fat one and a muscled one and an elegant one; and that's fine, but these things are on the surface. There are lots of different type of athletic builds, or overweight builds, or skinny builds. And in the same way, in prose you can have the teenaged princess voice and the overbearing mother voice and the firm father voice or whatever, but these are like the short fat and tall thin shapes. To create a voice for a character, you need to build it up, to pull in aspects of the character's life that would influence their voice based upon what they expect of life, what they believe they deserve, what they are used to, and what they want. The character's upbringing, level of education, social status, political leanings, religion, and desires should all be building blocks in their voice, both when they're talking and when you're writing from their point of view.

And while the shape thing isn't necessarily relevant in a verbal medium, colours can be. Colours have meaning to people. They have symbolism, and it is far simpler to use a colour to evoke a mood than to describe it in detail, and more effective. Associating particular colours with characters can therefore give an insight into their mood and temperament, as well as their role in the story and the ways in which this changes. It applies in visual media, not only webcomics but also films and TV shows, plays, even artwork. I don't see why I can't adapt it for prose.

Here's the thing: I'm sick of getting stuck in the middle of stories, or writing a few scenes and going back again to thinking about the story. I've had enough of not completing what I've started. But while NaNoWriMo is all well and good, I feel it's too much. 1667 words a day is a lot, day after day, and after a certain point I find myself sacrificing quality for quantity, which isn't good. And then, after 30 days of being tired, pushing myself too far, writing poorly in both fiction and the assignments I've had to do, I end up with a half-complete novel with massive gaps in it because I hit a wall and still needed the words.

So this is what I'm going to do: Starting tomorrow, which actually is in about 15 minutes, I'm going to try to write a novel in 100 days. This should take me roughly to the end of September, which is also when I stop being a student. Also in that time I'll need to research and write a 15000 word dissertation, spend a week digging at an iron age hill fort, and find a job for next year, but I should have sufficient time in the evenings and weekends to write.

I don't have a concrete plan. I'm working on a novel I barely planned when I first attempted it in November last year for NaNoWriMo, and I only got 5000 words into it then. Since then I've paid almost no attention to it, and even gave it up for salvage, stealing one of the characters to use in something else (which also ended up in the "I'll deal with it later" pile). I've got a notes file which basically outlines the world and the characters, not even the overall plot. My notes are arranged under subjects including "themes I want to include", "plotlines I want to include", "religion" (a key part of the story), "factions" (including two monarchist factions, one oligarchic faction, a monarchist neighbouring country, and a group of escaped slaves, criminals and homeless debtors), and "characters" (giving about three sentences for each, with who they are, their outlook and demeanor, what they want, what they learn, and what faction they most identify with).

So that's it. I don't have a plot, beyond a vague idea in my head losely based upon what I was doing last year. I plan to see how things go, how characters change what I had previously planned. I'm going to record how my writing goes, what difficulties I face, how my life impacts it and is impacted by it, probably once or twice a week. And I'm going to write for 100 days and see what comes of it.

So I made a city in Minecraft. Not just any city, but the city from my novel (in a slightly scaled down version anyway). And I did it all properly, no cheating, no inventory hacking, no map editing. I did it in peaceful, because let's be honest, mobs are annoying if you just want to build. I do have another map I play in Hard mode when I want to do that, but for building projects it's all Peaceful.

It took a LONG time and it's not actually quite finished yet - I've got some farm areas to put in (but I don't have enough seeds and it takes ages to get them), and I still need to furnish the houses with doors, beds, etc. Also I need to add market stalls in the main square. But the place is pretty much built now. It has taken a long time. Allow me to illustrate. This is how the land where I built it looked when I started:



For anyone interested, the seed is "i dunno, something". No speech marks, obviously, though I can't remember if I capitalised the I or not. Possibly not. It does have a comma. You actually spawn a little west of the pain, sometimes southwest. but it's not that far away from the spawn. And there's surface coal near the spawn, if anyone is interested.

So it's a decent sized plain, if you get rid of those two hills in the middle there. It didn't take long to dig through them either - an hour maybe. They're tall but not large, so it wasn't much work. I needed a fairly large flat space, and I wanted to put a river through it and have farms and stuff too. So i made it a bit flatter and cut off that little hill on the right and then decided I needed a little more space than that. Well anyway. Here are some progress shots, taken from the same place:



So yeah I removed the side of a very big hill too. I left a tree standing where it had been to show how much I removed. It filled about 8 double chests, all the cobblestone and dirt I mined. Oh and i kept the tree in the middle of the shot for reference in screenshots.

Imageshack has managed to lose some of my screens so I'll add the next progress shot when i get home and can sort it out. But after levelling the plain I made the river. To do this, I walked the route I wanted the river to take, placing torches as I went. then when it was dark, I used the edge of the torchlight as a guide for the edges of the river, and either dug down or built up the banks, depending on the level I was at, to mark out the edges. Then I dug out the river to a depth of 1, or filled it in where it was deeper than that. This is because of the way water works. Placing water doesn't work the way I want it when you're not placing it on a flat surface. So the whole river is one deep; at some point I'll fix this and dig it deeper in the middle, but for now it looks okay. At the ends, I've basically just stopped it; I plan on taking it further in both directions, but need to do some digging and levelling and it's out of sight around a hill in one direction and beyond viewing distance in the other.

Filling the river with water once it was fully dug didn't take long, because of the way water replicates if there is a source block on two sides. I used this princliple to fill the river in about ten minutes. And it looks good.

Then I started building. I started with the bridge, then planned out the city, starting with the palace and the main square, then the roads, the temple of Reth, and the gates. I didn't plan all of it at this stage, because I didn't know how much space I'd need for the houses and stuff. Anyway, this is the first progress shot after I started building:



I actually built one of the houses first. It's a courtyard house like what there was in ancient Greece. there aren't many windows, but light comes in through a courtyard, onto which most rooms open. More private rooms don't open directly onto the courtyard. It's about privacy, and about separating public from private. I based my city in my novel loosely on the archaic Greeks, so using architecture which wouldn't have been unheard of was part of that.

Also notice in the last photo, birch trees! That was just after the update with birch saplings, and since birch trees come in sizes from 5 to 7 blocks of wood high, it's easier to harvest than normal trees (oaks?) because I don't need to break any leaves or build any dirt towers to get at higher branches.

The next thing I did, after getting to grips with the houses, was the palace. I had quite a strong idea of how this looks, but I didn't have space to fully realise it. The version I've made is a cut down smaller version of the palace, but with the same essence of the layout. It's based around a courtyard, though a much larger one than the houses have (often as small as 2x3). On the right are the stables, on the left the official dining rooms, which open onto the courtyard but have doors into the corridor inside too. Straight ahead from the entrance is the main entrance into the building itself, which opens into a corridor with the doors to the great hall dead ahead, the stairs to the left and the treasury to the right, though more doors. the great hall has three entrances - the main one, the kitchen one, and then also stairs out which go upstairs to the royal quarters. There is also a balcony running along above where the corridor is. Upstairs are the private bedchambers, some of which have a nice view over the courtyard - in my novel, this is where my main character takes rooms. He likes to see what's going on.

Anyway, here's the palace courtyard, from the corner between the stables and the entrance:



With the palace complete, I got to work on the walls, the rest of the houses - split into two groups, the larger, sandstone courtyard houses, and the smaller, wooden houses, some of which have small courtyards - 2x2 or 2x3 - and only two rooms. Some of the smaller houses are just 1 room. After that, i built the temples - the temple of Reth is tall and majestic, loosely based on the Greek temple, but rather than having collonades it's just a rectangular building with buttresses, sorta. There were some temples like this in the archaic era in Greece, but none surviving. The temple of Sune is smaller, with a rounded roof (as much as possible in Minecraft anyway), and it has a basement with a pool of water in it. In the novel, this pool of water becomes significant.

I also added a brothel next door to the temple of Sune, since I had a gap there, and the royal mint between the main gate and the palace. There are a couple of large courtyard houses outside the city, which are farm houses, and some small wooden houses near the gates outside the walls. Finally, I built a little house next to the bridge, with a fence; this is the stables, where those without space to stable their horses in their own homes can leave them when they're in the city. The idea is that wealthy landowners will have a modest town house and a much larger country house, where they spend most of their time; and with city space at a premium, it's easier just to have this sort of facility. Like in Oblivion.

Anyway, photos:





You can see one of the houses outside the city is labelled "Arkin's house". Arkin is one of the man characters in my novel. It's called The General's Secret. He's one of the two generals. The losing one (that's not a spoiler, it happens right at the start).

So yeah, that's that.

I still need to add things like doors and furnishings, finsih off the farms and plant some "olive" farms and "vinyards" (tree farms and sugarcane farms). Someone promised to make me a texture pack, so I can get stuff to look right, and the walls will look better.

More screenshots when I have more to show.

Yesterday
So desperate to be home,
I was almost willing to double my ticket's cost to change my flight
To today.
Today,
Relaxed, unstructured:
A museum, some shopping,
A nice lunch,
A few drinks,
A spattering of goodbyes
Good lucks,
See you at graduations
Or in the mornings.
Tomorrow, the flight,
Earlier than planned,
And a little more expensive
(To save me a night at Gatwick
Waiting alone for Sunday's first train).
Tomorrow, a taxi ride,
A flight,
A train, changing in London,
The tube, what would be rush hour,
But it'll be Saturday,
Another train,
Another taxi,
Home.
His arms,
His voice,
His smile.
Tomorrow at this time,
I'll be home.

I puffed and panted,
Climbing the Watchtower hill
That in antiquity guarded this land
And monitored the sea.
Sheltered from the wind
In the saddle between the peaks,
We peered into the ancient tomb
Then continued up
Up, over broken stones
And tough plants.
There was no path here
No worn dirt road like below
And we scrambled and picked our way up.
I vowed to go to the gym more upon my return.
And at the top,
The views,
Wide vistas across glorious landscape,
Sun shining on the wine-dark sea
That same sea sailed by Odysseus
And Aeneas, and Theseus.
Below us on the slopes,
A stone theatre which has stood there
Thousands of years,
Ancient houses,
Workshops,
Mines,
Refineries,
Now nothing but gorse-covered ruins,
The wind catches my hair.
Ten minutes ago I asked
Why?
Now I know.
A few photos, grinning,
The adventurous among us waving
From the very peak,
A rocky climb a few metres higher.
This view was seen by the ancients;
Here Xenophon may have stood
When he condemned the town as unhealthy
But those fumes are gone,
No silver is extracted here now,
No lead or stone.
No ships sit at anchor,
But in the distance there passes
A huge metal cargo ship.
Then the descent,
And we can't find te route we ascended by.
Instead we pick out a new path.
I follow those who go ahead,
Find stones that aren't stable
Right before she turns and shouts back a warning about it.
A steep section,
My heart beating
The stone under my foot falls
And my other foot plunges into a hole.
I right myself, breathing heavily,
Shaking slightly,
And continue, even more carefully.
Tread on a dead plant and slip a little,
Swear so I don't cry.
Swear again, my voice higher pitched.
Whimper as my path crosses a large sloping rock,
Thorny plants blocking other routes.
I cling on and scoot across,
Pick my way down between two bushes
On dry, rocky ground.
Then the road again.
I let myself cry
And wish he was there to hug me,
And put my music on
On the way back down the road to the coach,
Shaking,
Wiping my eyes,
Trying to keep my voice normal
As I chat casually with another student
While in my head I'm singing along
To The Cave.
On the bus I swig some water
Wipe my eyes again,
Wish for chocolate, or ice cream,
Or a hug,
And tell myself I was perfectly safe,
I'd have been fine even if I did fall -
A bruise, a small cut,
And I have plasters.
A little lost dignity.
But I'm still shaking,
And I wonder
Why?

I'm in Athens,
Learning about so much,
And all the time the lecturer is talking about these amazing sites,
How they were built
And why,
And what was done here,
And how later men changed it,
Added this gateway, widened that road, built this temple,
I'm thinking:
"I can put this in my story."