I know this subject has been beaten to death by every post-modern man hoping to open someone's eyes to how strange people who complain about being "friend zoned" should seem, so I tend to ignore it in the course of my various ramblings. However, while I was perusing facebook a few days ago I saw that several of my friends had shared a blog post about the friend zone from a woman's perspective and it got me thinking.
See only a couple years ago I was the sort of guy who would complain about being "put in the friend zone" by women, and I did so, often. I would come to stop making those complaints shortly after I had turned eighteen, but I never thought about why that was, or why I had been making those complaints in the first place. The blog post linked above brought those questions to the forefront of my mind, and I'll put the potential answers I found here, just in case I ever get "friend zoned" again and need a rude awakening. I will say I don't speak for everyone in my gender with this rant, just for myself and my experiences.
I'm only able to sit up on a high horse judging men who complain about the friend zone because I've already done my time in that mindset. I don't remember the first time I thought of friendship between a man and a woman as a function of a relationship some time in the future, but I do remember one of the first times I was introduced to gender differences. Because that's the answer I found while thinking back on my experiences with cross-gender friendships, it's all about how our culture perceives gender differences.
I was a happy-go-lucky seven year old at my friends birthday party, who for the sake of not having to use pronouns for this entire example I'll call Aya. Aya and I had been friends since we were two, we'd spent years running through the woods around her house, playing games like hide and seek, tag, and those role-playing games kids play. Both boys and girls had been invited to the party, and everything was going great for me, until I went to see the birthday girl.
I found her in the basement with some of her friends, playing an elaborate game of house. There was even a cardboard facade representing the front of the house, with doors and windows and everything. I had played house tons of times at that age, and proceeded to walk through the door to join in the fun, only to be rebuffed by one of her friends. "No boys allowed." was the only explanation I received. It was only then that I realized all the people I could see through the cardboard windows were girls.
Being a seven year old child I was perplexed by this turn of events, and made something of a scene until Aya came to the door to give me the same reply. After that my memories get a bit foggy, but I do recall being driven home in tears, sad and frustrated by what had up until that point been a non-issue between Aya and I.
This was one of the first times I was introduced to gender differences, but it wouldn't be the last, and over the years those differences would become more pronounced. My classmates and I would stop being "children" and start becoming "boys" and "girls". The older I grew the more differences I noticed between male and female classmates. They dressed differently, engaged in different activities, played with different toys, talked with different dialects, they were different. From all through elementary school boys and girls in my school started interacting less and less. Cliques would form not just between people with separate interests, but separate genders as well. After second grade almost every birthday party I went to and every birthday party I had consisted entirely of boys. This would continue into middle school, at which point the genders would suddenly crash back together. I can't say for certain whether the sudden intermingling of genders at that time, as twelve year old me couldn't have cared less about psychology and sociology if he'd tried, but I can theorize as to why relationships began to form soon after between the two genders.
See, at a young age, human beings don't know or care about the feelings of the people around them, or where they fit into our grand social web. They don't have the tools required to perceive the culture that surrounds them, or empathize fully with other people until around the age of ten. After that point though, culture starts making itself known, and these days it has a lot of ways to do so. The world is full of media these days, from music to the news, movies to games, books to the internet, all within the reach of a child that age, and most of it broadcasting the same messages. One of those messages is: women and men aren't friends. I know, huge generalization, so allow me to be more specific.
When I was a kid I did lots of normative things kids my age tend to do, and a few things not so normative. I went to see movies, I watched sitcoms, I read fantasy novels appropriate for my reading level, and all these stimuli told me one thing: women and men aren't friends, or if they are it's only an intermediary step that leads to future romantic encounters. Think about it, how often in upbeat movies do you see the movie end without a new couple having formed between a differently gendered dyad? How many sitcoms have their protagonists stay "just friends" with the opposite gender from the first to last episode? How many fantasy series see the protagonist never in a relationship? In fact, many of these forms of media seem to encourage coupling between friends, citing the benefits of having known them for some time already. And in the case of sitcoms, dramas, and other such television programs where romance is prevalent, these couplings are viewed as the protagonists "one shot." If they succeed, the relationship goes well (or crumbles only to start up again later if they get more seasons), and if they fail things are horrendously awkward and the friendship they once had is in danger of being lost forever.
My point being, these forms of media teach children social scripts for how relationships between men and women should work. And the people most easily influenced by these social scripts are children in their teens (ages 11-19). In a perfect world, people would apply these scripts to reality, find them lacking, and try to learn a more pragmatic set of romantic scripts, but this world is far from perfect.
After all, sometimes that scenario does play out in reality, and potentially those who see it do so would think that their failure to make a successful relationship happen is failure on their part, not on that of the script they used. Also, while culture may have the most sway on teens, once people advance out of that age bracket culture doesn't suddenly stop influencing them. It influences all of us, no matter our age, whether we want it to or not. Through these traps people may continue on with this mistaken belief for years, leading to a generation of 20-somethings complaining to their friends about how they were friend zoned by a woman they're romantically attracted to.
I didn't say all that to excuse the behavior of men (and women, I focused primarily on men as that's where my experience lies, but I'm betting this happens to women too) who complain of being friend zoned. Personally I think such a narrow relationship paradigm puts strain on gender relations that could be one of the causes of some of the worst gender relations available to us. I'm saying that culture and the media at large isn't helping to make friend-zoning any less viable of a belief structure. Much like people in the 1950's many people who complain of the friend zone today are victims of their times, and if we as a country are very lucky, maybe sixty years from now our grandchildren will look back on romantic interactions like those and wonder how such lunacy could have ever been possible.
My question for this one is simple: What is your opinion about the concept of the friend zone? And what past experiences, both personal and cultural, might have lead you to think that way? Think about it future me, you'll have more experience than I do.
PS: I realize at the end of this rant that I could do a whole other rant on how historical gender politics affect how the friend zone presents itself in modern society and why it does so, maybe some other time. The possibility of their being other reasons didn't slip my mind.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Monday, May 6, 2013
Random Rant: Communication and the Internet
I figure I'll record my opinions on communicating via the internet in 2013 here. Granted, to my future self this may seem antiquated to someone who can talk to people holo-projector style a-la DS9 (or any of the other Star Trek iterations I may have seen by that point), but it should be interesting all the same.
Like all forms of communication it has its pros and cons, which for lack of a better format I shall list in numerical format:
1) You can be anyone you want to be
This is both a pro and a con. On the positive side there are many people, especially teens/young adults who can try out personae different than the ones they may show their friends and family out in a retribution free environment that is completely separate from the foibles of ones past (ie. "Hey, remember that time you bit Katie Whatserface? That sure was crazy.") Much like college this can be a very freeing experience for some, to go to a place where no one knows who you were so you can be anyone you want to be, and that kind of release can be very cathartic indeed.
It also protects one from more...lets say direct forms of redress for negative remarks. Take online gaming for example, when I play League of Legends (or LoL for short) and I've had a bad day I tend to be a bit peeved, and by a bit peeved I mean that if someone gets in my face about not laning properly their screen will fill with asterisks and words that somehow make it past the censor (Really riot? You censor "fuck" but not "fucked"?). If I were to make such comments to the face of the person involved it would likely end in a fist fight, by which I mean their fist would fight my face with the maximum degree of success.
This leads me to the negative part. After all, on the internet you can be anyone you want to be, but then again, on the internet you can be anyone you want to be. If you want to be a condescending jerk, whose to stop you? If you want to visit fanficiton sights, find the most hopeful new writer you can, and tear them a very eloquent new one, how will they seek redress (other than finding a moderator to ban the IP, but that only directs the problem somewhere else)? And yes, if someone answers your mildly negative comment on LoL with a series of much more negative comments (working on not playing LoL angry), how will retribution be meted to the offender?
This, and the many questionable things one can download from the internet are a large part of why some people say the internet should have stricter sanctions placed upon it. There are some rare people who have been cyber-bullied into committing suicide, possibly by some once well meaning people who let their internet persona get out of hand. It may be all fun and games to vent some anger on the internet, but to some people that sort of thing can be very emotionally damaging.
2) You can have a conversation without having a conversation
What do I mean by that? Well let me use an example. In situation A you're out with a friend at a cafe and you see a man walking by wearing a tie-die shirt, rainbow suspenders, and rainbow jeans (they exist, trust me on this). You want to say something funny about him to your friend, but you can't think of the right line. While you're thinking your friend points to him and says, "I wonder is his boxers are the pot of gold." You smile and laugh a little while thinking damn, I wish I'd thought of that. In situation B you're on Facebook talking with that same friend while perusing all your like and friends and friends likes when you stumble across a picture of the very same man. You want to say something about him and after thinking of the right line for a couple minutes you hit upon it and link the picture to your friend with the comment just below. They type "lol :D" and you've nailed it.
What I'm trying to illustrate with that example is that conversations in person happen in real time, you have about a second at most to think about what you're going to say next and once you say something you can't unsay it. While on the internet you can think for hours about what you're going to say (I've been thinking about how to write this for almost a week now, and had the idea of this rant germinating for much longer). If you feel like it you can even edit each thing you say several times before saying it, like your own mini-essay. In theory the internet conversation format sounds preferable, but it does have drawbacks.
Most importantly, the inability to convey tone. In a conversation face-to-face there are tons nonverbal and verbals cues (divided about 80% verbal to 20% nonverbal) that we pick up on that tell us what people mean when they say something. There's still a lot of reading into things and guesswork on our part, but with all that information to help us it's a lot harder to be wrong. On the other hand, the closest thing the internet has to conveying tone are emoticons such as :) :D :( :< :3 >:( ^_^ , and while they may be amusing they don't do nearly as much to convey tone as an actual smile, frown, or furrowed brow.
And yet tone is conveyed somehow. How exactly? By the other person's impression of us. Their own mental framework that outlines who we are to the person we are talking to defines how they read our words. The only control we as writers have is our choice of words.
Before moving on to the next topic I will address two things. One is the question, "But Sid, what about Skype and other video chat functions? They're also online forms of communication, but they have all that verbal/nonverbal stuff you were talking about."
I love Skype. I think it's a brilliant idea that allows people to be brought closer together over longer distances than the phones it might someday replace. But I choose to ignore it because not everyone has access to webcams and microphones, whereas everyone who owns a computer has access to a keyboard and mouse.
The other question is, "But Sid, what about letters? Letters have the same text-based flaws that internet chat and emails do, so why aren't you harping on them?"
For much the same reason I'm not focusing on Skype, the letter-writing community is much smaller than the texting/emailing community. Most people under the age of 40 don't write letters that often these days, but they send emails and text people all the time.
3) It has the potential to keep ones social life entirely inside a computer
Allow me to use a more personal example this time. My roommate spends almost all day every day skypeing with a group of friends. This friend group met playing online games (League, World of Warcraft, etc.), none of them live in the same state, and none of them have ever met in person. And yet, they maintain what would, if they were all in the same town, be considered a normative social life. They drink together, watch movies together (they time it perfectly so that they all start watching the same movie on their computers at the same time, it's fascinating), play games together, and discuss various semi-philosophical ideas, social problems, and political problems. If you heard about a group of people who did this in any city in the United States you wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but if each city were a different city, that's another story.
The example above is a rather extreme case, but there are many others. The internet is full of forums, debate sites, social media sites, online games, and blogs. All of which have the potential to draw one's attention for hours on end. It can be a sensory overload, as stimulating as it is time-consuming. And for the lonely, the neglected, or the ignored, the internet may be seen as a safe-haven.
To reference number one of this rant you can be anyone you want to be. On the internet you aren't poor, alone, or (and I use this term to mean not beautiful by current societal standards, not to defame any particular person) ugly unless you want to be seen that way. Much like movies before the internet, or books before movies, the internet can prove a seductive escape, one which many people everyday lose themselves in to forget problems that exist in the outside world.
But what does this all mean for my opinion? This is a blog after all, what good would it be if I didn't throw my opinion into the ring. Like many things in this crazy world I believe the internet is just a tool. We humans have always been good at making tools, tools to farm and hunt, tools to build and trade, tools to entertain and kill, all sorts of wondrous things. It's strange to blame the tools for the work of their owners, just as it's strange to blame the internet as a whole for the destructive tendencies of those that call it home. A tool can be used positively or negatively, and in the end the person who should take responsibility for the results is the person who used the tool in the first place.
I don't think anything about the internet, it's just another tool, but I think we should all be a little more socially conscientious in its use. In the end the internet is just another world within our own, and I think we as a whole should be working to make it a brighter place to live.
If I were to draw one question out of all of this for future me and perhaps my one visible reader it would be this: If you had to personify the internet, what would it be to you? Friend? Lover? Confidant? Therapist?
Like all forms of communication it has its pros and cons, which for lack of a better format I shall list in numerical format:
1) You can be anyone you want to be
This is both a pro and a con. On the positive side there are many people, especially teens/young adults who can try out personae different than the ones they may show their friends and family out in a retribution free environment that is completely separate from the foibles of ones past (ie. "Hey, remember that time you bit Katie Whatserface? That sure was crazy.") Much like college this can be a very freeing experience for some, to go to a place where no one knows who you were so you can be anyone you want to be, and that kind of release can be very cathartic indeed.
It also protects one from more...lets say direct forms of redress for negative remarks. Take online gaming for example, when I play League of Legends (or LoL for short) and I've had a bad day I tend to be a bit peeved, and by a bit peeved I mean that if someone gets in my face about not laning properly their screen will fill with asterisks and words that somehow make it past the censor (Really riot? You censor "fuck" but not "fucked"?). If I were to make such comments to the face of the person involved it would likely end in a fist fight, by which I mean their fist would fight my face with the maximum degree of success.
This leads me to the negative part. After all, on the internet you can be anyone you want to be, but then again, on the internet you can be anyone you want to be. If you want to be a condescending jerk, whose to stop you? If you want to visit fanficiton sights, find the most hopeful new writer you can, and tear them a very eloquent new one, how will they seek redress (other than finding a moderator to ban the IP, but that only directs the problem somewhere else)? And yes, if someone answers your mildly negative comment on LoL with a series of much more negative comments (working on not playing LoL angry), how will retribution be meted to the offender?
This, and the many questionable things one can download from the internet are a large part of why some people say the internet should have stricter sanctions placed upon it. There are some rare people who have been cyber-bullied into committing suicide, possibly by some once well meaning people who let their internet persona get out of hand. It may be all fun and games to vent some anger on the internet, but to some people that sort of thing can be very emotionally damaging.
2) You can have a conversation without having a conversation
What do I mean by that? Well let me use an example. In situation A you're out with a friend at a cafe and you see a man walking by wearing a tie-die shirt, rainbow suspenders, and rainbow jeans (they exist, trust me on this). You want to say something funny about him to your friend, but you can't think of the right line. While you're thinking your friend points to him and says, "I wonder is his boxers are the pot of gold." You smile and laugh a little while thinking damn, I wish I'd thought of that. In situation B you're on Facebook talking with that same friend while perusing all your like and friends and friends likes when you stumble across a picture of the very same man. You want to say something about him and after thinking of the right line for a couple minutes you hit upon it and link the picture to your friend with the comment just below. They type "lol :D" and you've nailed it.
What I'm trying to illustrate with that example is that conversations in person happen in real time, you have about a second at most to think about what you're going to say next and once you say something you can't unsay it. While on the internet you can think for hours about what you're going to say (I've been thinking about how to write this for almost a week now, and had the idea of this rant germinating for much longer). If you feel like it you can even edit each thing you say several times before saying it, like your own mini-essay. In theory the internet conversation format sounds preferable, but it does have drawbacks.
Most importantly, the inability to convey tone. In a conversation face-to-face there are tons nonverbal and verbals cues (divided about 80% verbal to 20% nonverbal) that we pick up on that tell us what people mean when they say something. There's still a lot of reading into things and guesswork on our part, but with all that information to help us it's a lot harder to be wrong. On the other hand, the closest thing the internet has to conveying tone are emoticons such as :) :D :( :< :3 >:( ^_^ , and while they may be amusing they don't do nearly as much to convey tone as an actual smile, frown, or furrowed brow.
And yet tone is conveyed somehow. How exactly? By the other person's impression of us. Their own mental framework that outlines who we are to the person we are talking to defines how they read our words. The only control we as writers have is our choice of words.
Before moving on to the next topic I will address two things. One is the question, "But Sid, what about Skype and other video chat functions? They're also online forms of communication, but they have all that verbal/nonverbal stuff you were talking about."
I love Skype. I think it's a brilliant idea that allows people to be brought closer together over longer distances than the phones it might someday replace. But I choose to ignore it because not everyone has access to webcams and microphones, whereas everyone who owns a computer has access to a keyboard and mouse.
The other question is, "But Sid, what about letters? Letters have the same text-based flaws that internet chat and emails do, so why aren't you harping on them?"
For much the same reason I'm not focusing on Skype, the letter-writing community is much smaller than the texting/emailing community. Most people under the age of 40 don't write letters that often these days, but they send emails and text people all the time.
3) It has the potential to keep ones social life entirely inside a computer
Allow me to use a more personal example this time. My roommate spends almost all day every day skypeing with a group of friends. This friend group met playing online games (League, World of Warcraft, etc.), none of them live in the same state, and none of them have ever met in person. And yet, they maintain what would, if they were all in the same town, be considered a normative social life. They drink together, watch movies together (they time it perfectly so that they all start watching the same movie on their computers at the same time, it's fascinating), play games together, and discuss various semi-philosophical ideas, social problems, and political problems. If you heard about a group of people who did this in any city in the United States you wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but if each city were a different city, that's another story.
The example above is a rather extreme case, but there are many others. The internet is full of forums, debate sites, social media sites, online games, and blogs. All of which have the potential to draw one's attention for hours on end. It can be a sensory overload, as stimulating as it is time-consuming. And for the lonely, the neglected, or the ignored, the internet may be seen as a safe-haven.
To reference number one of this rant you can be anyone you want to be. On the internet you aren't poor, alone, or (and I use this term to mean not beautiful by current societal standards, not to defame any particular person) ugly unless you want to be seen that way. Much like movies before the internet, or books before movies, the internet can prove a seductive escape, one which many people everyday lose themselves in to forget problems that exist in the outside world.
But what does this all mean for my opinion? This is a blog after all, what good would it be if I didn't throw my opinion into the ring. Like many things in this crazy world I believe the internet is just a tool. We humans have always been good at making tools, tools to farm and hunt, tools to build and trade, tools to entertain and kill, all sorts of wondrous things. It's strange to blame the tools for the work of their owners, just as it's strange to blame the internet as a whole for the destructive tendencies of those that call it home. A tool can be used positively or negatively, and in the end the person who should take responsibility for the results is the person who used the tool in the first place.
I don't think anything about the internet, it's just another tool, but I think we should all be a little more socially conscientious in its use. In the end the internet is just another world within our own, and I think we as a whole should be working to make it a brighter place to live.
If I were to draw one question out of all of this for future me and perhaps my one visible reader it would be this: If you had to personify the internet, what would it be to you? Friend? Lover? Confidant? Therapist?
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Contradance: A First Impression
Having just returned from my very first contra, I feel like getting my impressions of it down before sleep distorts my memories.
For those of you who don't know, all one of you (yes I did see I have gained one follower, and for what it's worth thanks Ariadne), Contradance is a national organization that hosts dance events consisting mostly of called line dances in nearly every city or closely grouped collection of cities in the country. Think square dancing, but with English/Irish country music instead of American country music, also better dances.
Previously my experience of the Portland dance scene had been disappointing. The tango scene only wanted people with several years of experience dancing tango behind them, and was less than kind to newcomers stepping in to the actual dance events. So as someone who had only been dancing tango six months I wasn't exactly welcome. On the other hand the swing scene loved any and all blood no matter how new, but kept odd hours in sketchy locales, which seemed dangerous for a college student with no car and barely enough money to pay bus fare depending on the month. And finally the waltz scene, where I hoped I would find some dedicated folks supporting my absolute favorite dance, was dominated by the elderly. Don't get me wrong, some of the best leads and follows I've ever seen are in that community, but as the only young person there I felt as if every person I danced with was trying to absorb my youth through osmosis. It was disconcerting to say the least. Contra blew all the expectations I had gained through my experience in those communities out of the water.
The veterans could care less that it was my first time doing any of the line dances. In fact, many of them offered to help me through my first few dances and to teach me the basic moves of most contras in between songs; the location was a quaint little community center just outside Portland proper where what we considered the dance floor was a basketball court most of the week; and the group was larger than any I'd ever seen in the Portland dance scene, with people running the age gambit from early seventies to only a few years older than myself (20 years of age for frame of reference). Even better, the young and the old meshed seamlessly together, as each contra dance required one to change partners every minute or so. They had a live band too, three people on a banjo, accordion, and violin respectively that shouldn't have meshed together to create such lively, harmonious music but did.
As the night wore on I felt like I had gone back in time to a country dance in Ireland. Old widows and young maidens, apprentices and master craftsman, all gathered together on the village green to dance the day away until they collapsed in contentment as the endorphins became unable to sustain them any further. In short, it was a good evening.
I'm sure not every contra is like what I just described, but knowing that they do exist pretty much everywhere in the US does make me happy. It's a comforting thought to know that no matter where I go in life I'll still be able to go out one lazy Saturday evening and dance until my legs give out. It's good cardio, and a very good feeling.
For those of you who don't know, all one of you (yes I did see I have gained one follower, and for what it's worth thanks Ariadne), Contradance is a national organization that hosts dance events consisting mostly of called line dances in nearly every city or closely grouped collection of cities in the country. Think square dancing, but with English/Irish country music instead of American country music, also better dances.
Previously my experience of the Portland dance scene had been disappointing. The tango scene only wanted people with several years of experience dancing tango behind them, and was less than kind to newcomers stepping in to the actual dance events. So as someone who had only been dancing tango six months I wasn't exactly welcome. On the other hand the swing scene loved any and all blood no matter how new, but kept odd hours in sketchy locales, which seemed dangerous for a college student with no car and barely enough money to pay bus fare depending on the month. And finally the waltz scene, where I hoped I would find some dedicated folks supporting my absolute favorite dance, was dominated by the elderly. Don't get me wrong, some of the best leads and follows I've ever seen are in that community, but as the only young person there I felt as if every person I danced with was trying to absorb my youth through osmosis. It was disconcerting to say the least. Contra blew all the expectations I had gained through my experience in those communities out of the water.
The veterans could care less that it was my first time doing any of the line dances. In fact, many of them offered to help me through my first few dances and to teach me the basic moves of most contras in between songs; the location was a quaint little community center just outside Portland proper where what we considered the dance floor was a basketball court most of the week; and the group was larger than any I'd ever seen in the Portland dance scene, with people running the age gambit from early seventies to only a few years older than myself (20 years of age for frame of reference). Even better, the young and the old meshed seamlessly together, as each contra dance required one to change partners every minute or so. They had a live band too, three people on a banjo, accordion, and violin respectively that shouldn't have meshed together to create such lively, harmonious music but did.
As the night wore on I felt like I had gone back in time to a country dance in Ireland. Old widows and young maidens, apprentices and master craftsman, all gathered together on the village green to dance the day away until they collapsed in contentment as the endorphins became unable to sustain them any further. In short, it was a good evening.
I'm sure not every contra is like what I just described, but knowing that they do exist pretty much everywhere in the US does make me happy. It's a comforting thought to know that no matter where I go in life I'll still be able to go out one lazy Saturday evening and dance until my legs give out. It's good cardio, and a very good feeling.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Worldpost: Shadow World- of Gods and Men
Another thing I imagine this blog will be useful for, posting setting ideas for future stories. I tend to hold on to worlds for a while before I find the right story for them, and hopefully this will help me keep track of the ones I make. Starting with...
Shadow World
I know, not the most creative name, naming the worlds and the locations within them has never been my strongest point.
Anyway without further ado:
Shadow World, otherwise known as the Godless Lands or the Land of Night and Day is a world with only three gods. One is the Allfather (The General, Lord of Radiance, King of War, Keeper of the Sun, The Watcher, etc.) and he presides over quite literally everything under the sun. He is the god of more things than anyone but his priests can count and is usually referred to as the "Holy Father" by his followers. One is the Night Mother (The Weaver, The Dreamer, Moon Mother, Forest Walker, etc.) she is also the god of many (non-overlapping) things, but most notably the god of life. She is often called "The Lifegiver" by the majority of her followers, though names are different in different locations. The last is The Farmer, the name he is referred to when anyone dares speak of him at all. He only has one domain: death, and his is the only appearance that can be agreed upon of the three (rough spun cloak, scythee in one hand, bag of harvested souls over one shoulder, appears as the person most recently dead).
Both the Allfather and Night Mother own roughly half the world, in the sense that each of their religions is practiced in roughly half the space (excluding some valiant small countries and small island nations) on the planet they inhabit, with The Farmer being worshiped (or in most cases warded away) nearly everywhere in the world.
Now for the history portion, after which will come a rough sketch of the respective "factions" economies and city layouts.
A whole world is a lot of space for three gods, so the most important question is "How did there get to be only three?" Well, once upon a time hundreds of years ago there were many gods. All around the Shadow World there were nations praying to their own pantheon of gods. Those prayers in turn became energy which, when released out into the world, entered into repositories which would eventually become sentient and fulfill the roles of the gods the people prayed to. To do so they would be constricted towards acting in a manner according to how the people believed their gods would act, but in return they gained a nearly limitless supply of energy to do with as they wished.
Though with so many religions, there were also many religious wars. Countless men, women, and children died as countries battle to bring their religion to other, "heretic" countries or city-states. And in those days the power of gods was spread out enough that they too could participate in battles in the earthly realm, fighting for their existence. The results were catastrophic, entire cities wiped out in an instant, entire land masses shifting as the earth trembled and the sea flowed into crevices newly formed by the destruction.
In this time there lived three gods, their names lost to time. One was the god of the forge, another the god of dreams, and the last was the god of farming. They watched as the number of humans dwindled bit by bit to the petty infighting of their countries gods and goddesses and, being relatively minor gods with few worshipers they felt there was nothing they could do to stop it, no matter how much they may have wanted to.
But then one day, the gods of dreaming and forges came up with an idea. The farmer was a god worshiped for his sickle, which was said to be able to reap a good bounty anything in this world. The two gods knew they couldn't change anything on their own, but maybe, when combined with that of the farmer, they could change the world.
And so, after discussing it with the farmer, the trio of minor gods put their plan into motion. During one of the many godly banquets , where the entire pantheon would gather to make merry, the two gods poured all but a wisp of their energy into the farmers sickle.
That night, as the gods made marry, the farmer stole through all the villages where they were worshiped and, one village at a time, reaped the very idea of gods other than the three from the minds of their citizens. That night the farmer brought back a harvest unlike any he had ever collected, the future prayers of every man women and child who prayed to their pantheon. It was only at this time that the farmer would ask "Now that we have power enough to change this world, what will I have dominion over when the time comes."
"Everything in the world dear farmer," his colleagues would reply, and as the farmer did not understand the concept of a half-truth the answer satisfied him.
As gods grew wise to the farmer's abilities they would watch over the villages that prayed to them with unending vigilance, but to no avail. The prayers given to only three gods by so many people made them too powerful, and the more gods they conquered, the more powerful they became.
It would take more than a century to see their task completed, yet in the end the three of them would come to rule all the world. Now, up until this point the three had held the power of the people's prayers in trust, all drawing from it as needed without any claiming true ownership of it. But their journey of conquest had come to an end, and it was time to divvy the spoils between the three gods. The forge god took a portion of the power and said, "With this power I proclaim myself god of all under the sun. War and metalcraft and so much more I take under my province, so that the world itself will weep when it sees my visage."
Next the god of dreams would come, take another portion, and say, "With this power I proclaim myself god of everything under the stars, I will walk in the stitches of blankets, the glens and forests, and in the heartbeat of all that lives. The secret places of this world will be at my beck and call and I shall revel in them."
Finally the god of farming would take the last portion, but his was different from theirs. As he took the power into himself his body began to wither and decay. It was an agony, through which the farmer screamed "You said I would have everything! You lied to me!"
"You will have everything," the Allfather sneered as his eye took on the glow of suns and his body became fit and lean, "At the moment of its death."
The Night Mother looked sorrowfully down at the farming god as shadows moved to become her clothing and her hair turned blacker than night. When it was done The Farmer rose to face his brethren, seeing in his eye sockets the moment of their deaths. He would leave then to some unknown realm and not be heard from again for some centuries.
In those years the two gods, and the people they protected prospered. Humanity grew from small collections of wooden buildings to cities of stone and glass. And as they grew, so too did their ambitions, especially those of the priests of the two gods, who saw each other god as an impediment to their power. It would take time, as things often do, but soon the religious wars would begin again, humans squabbling over which god was the true god.
The Night Mother and Allfather ignored this for a time, enjoying the depth and breadth of their power, but eventually they grew afraid that one of them would seek to usurp the other, as they had done to the rest of the gods centuries before.
Each of them hoped to use their power to end the war before it began, but found themselves evenly matched. For each city the Allfather could strike with beams of light hotter than the sun, the Night Mother could bury another in shadows. It was during these turbulent times that the Farmer chose to intervene, telling the two warring gods to recuse themselves from the fighting should they wish to avoid the destruction of the past. Let their followers decide who would be the true god.
Out of shame and fear of the third member of their pantheon the gods agreed, creating dimensions for themselves to reside in while they sought less destructive ways to give their followers and edge over those of their enemy's.
Now I've noticed this post has gotten as little long (and I'm running out of steam), as well it should have when I've spent about 3 years touching up this place. So I think I'll spread it out over several posts, break it up into parts between other miscellaneous items I put on here.
Next I'll probably cover the magic systems and (if I feel up to it) the catalyst which would drive elements of plot development in this setting. Look forward to it, I know I will.
Shadow World
I know, not the most creative name, naming the worlds and the locations within them has never been my strongest point.
Anyway without further ado:
Shadow World, otherwise known as the Godless Lands or the Land of Night and Day is a world with only three gods. One is the Allfather (The General, Lord of Radiance, King of War, Keeper of the Sun, The Watcher, etc.) and he presides over quite literally everything under the sun. He is the god of more things than anyone but his priests can count and is usually referred to as the "Holy Father" by his followers. One is the Night Mother (The Weaver, The Dreamer, Moon Mother, Forest Walker, etc.) she is also the god of many (non-overlapping) things, but most notably the god of life. She is often called "The Lifegiver" by the majority of her followers, though names are different in different locations. The last is The Farmer, the name he is referred to when anyone dares speak of him at all. He only has one domain: death, and his is the only appearance that can be agreed upon of the three (rough spun cloak, scythee in one hand, bag of harvested souls over one shoulder, appears as the person most recently dead).
Both the Allfather and Night Mother own roughly half the world, in the sense that each of their religions is practiced in roughly half the space (excluding some valiant small countries and small island nations) on the planet they inhabit, with The Farmer being worshiped (or in most cases warded away) nearly everywhere in the world.
Now for the history portion, after which will come a rough sketch of the respective "factions" economies and city layouts.
A whole world is a lot of space for three gods, so the most important question is "How did there get to be only three?" Well, once upon a time hundreds of years ago there were many gods. All around the Shadow World there were nations praying to their own pantheon of gods. Those prayers in turn became energy which, when released out into the world, entered into repositories which would eventually become sentient and fulfill the roles of the gods the people prayed to. To do so they would be constricted towards acting in a manner according to how the people believed their gods would act, but in return they gained a nearly limitless supply of energy to do with as they wished.
Though with so many religions, there were also many religious wars. Countless men, women, and children died as countries battle to bring their religion to other, "heretic" countries or city-states. And in those days the power of gods was spread out enough that they too could participate in battles in the earthly realm, fighting for their existence. The results were catastrophic, entire cities wiped out in an instant, entire land masses shifting as the earth trembled and the sea flowed into crevices newly formed by the destruction.
In this time there lived three gods, their names lost to time. One was the god of the forge, another the god of dreams, and the last was the god of farming. They watched as the number of humans dwindled bit by bit to the petty infighting of their countries gods and goddesses and, being relatively minor gods with few worshipers they felt there was nothing they could do to stop it, no matter how much they may have wanted to.
But then one day, the gods of dreaming and forges came up with an idea. The farmer was a god worshiped for his sickle, which was said to be able to reap a good bounty anything in this world. The two gods knew they couldn't change anything on their own, but maybe, when combined with that of the farmer, they could change the world.
And so, after discussing it with the farmer, the trio of minor gods put their plan into motion. During one of the many godly banquets , where the entire pantheon would gather to make merry, the two gods poured all but a wisp of their energy into the farmers sickle.
That night, as the gods made marry, the farmer stole through all the villages where they were worshiped and, one village at a time, reaped the very idea of gods other than the three from the minds of their citizens. That night the farmer brought back a harvest unlike any he had ever collected, the future prayers of every man women and child who prayed to their pantheon. It was only at this time that the farmer would ask "Now that we have power enough to change this world, what will I have dominion over when the time comes."
"Everything in the world dear farmer," his colleagues would reply, and as the farmer did not understand the concept of a half-truth the answer satisfied him.
As gods grew wise to the farmer's abilities they would watch over the villages that prayed to them with unending vigilance, but to no avail. The prayers given to only three gods by so many people made them too powerful, and the more gods they conquered, the more powerful they became.
It would take more than a century to see their task completed, yet in the end the three of them would come to rule all the world. Now, up until this point the three had held the power of the people's prayers in trust, all drawing from it as needed without any claiming true ownership of it. But their journey of conquest had come to an end, and it was time to divvy the spoils between the three gods. The forge god took a portion of the power and said, "With this power I proclaim myself god of all under the sun. War and metalcraft and so much more I take under my province, so that the world itself will weep when it sees my visage."
Next the god of dreams would come, take another portion, and say, "With this power I proclaim myself god of everything under the stars, I will walk in the stitches of blankets, the glens and forests, and in the heartbeat of all that lives. The secret places of this world will be at my beck and call and I shall revel in them."
Finally the god of farming would take the last portion, but his was different from theirs. As he took the power into himself his body began to wither and decay. It was an agony, through which the farmer screamed "You said I would have everything! You lied to me!"
"You will have everything," the Allfather sneered as his eye took on the glow of suns and his body became fit and lean, "At the moment of its death."
The Night Mother looked sorrowfully down at the farming god as shadows moved to become her clothing and her hair turned blacker than night. When it was done The Farmer rose to face his brethren, seeing in his eye sockets the moment of their deaths. He would leave then to some unknown realm and not be heard from again for some centuries.
In those years the two gods, and the people they protected prospered. Humanity grew from small collections of wooden buildings to cities of stone and glass. And as they grew, so too did their ambitions, especially those of the priests of the two gods, who saw each other god as an impediment to their power. It would take time, as things often do, but soon the religious wars would begin again, humans squabbling over which god was the true god.
The Night Mother and Allfather ignored this for a time, enjoying the depth and breadth of their power, but eventually they grew afraid that one of them would seek to usurp the other, as they had done to the rest of the gods centuries before.
Each of them hoped to use their power to end the war before it began, but found themselves evenly matched. For each city the Allfather could strike with beams of light hotter than the sun, the Night Mother could bury another in shadows. It was during these turbulent times that the Farmer chose to intervene, telling the two warring gods to recuse themselves from the fighting should they wish to avoid the destruction of the past. Let their followers decide who would be the true god.
Out of shame and fear of the third member of their pantheon the gods agreed, creating dimensions for themselves to reside in while they sought less destructive ways to give their followers and edge over those of their enemy's.
Now I've noticed this post has gotten as little long (and I'm running out of steam), as well it should have when I've spent about 3 years touching up this place. So I think I'll spread it out over several posts, break it up into parts between other miscellaneous items I put on here.
Next I'll probably cover the magic systems and (if I feel up to it) the catalyst which would drive elements of plot development in this setting. Look forward to it, I know I will.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Random Rant: Alcohol and Other Such Habitual Drug Use as an Activity Unto Itself
Being a college student living on campus I overhear snippets from many conversations between people roughly my age as I walk (or in many cases run) from class to class, or go to one of the local cafe's to catch a lite lunch. Most of these conversations take me back to the days of middle school, where every slight was a death threat and every relationship was prophesied to last forever right up until the moment it imploded. But there are some parts of conversations I've heard that disturb me, and I will be writing about one of them in this post.
Several times over the course of my college experience I have heard friends talking and one friend say to the other "What did you do yesterday?"
And their friend would reply, "I drank at Steve So-and-so's house, it was a blast." When I heard that the first time it deeply disturbed me. Not because of the alcohol use, I may go into my opinions on that subject when something in the world has suitably drawn my ire. The part that disturbed me was that drinking was the activity this person engaged in. They didn't drink and watch sports, or drink and hit clubs, they drank, period.
As I'm given to understand, drinking is often done to make other activities seem more enjoyable, but if that's the case, then why does it seem like more and more people see what comes after drinking as a secondary activity and the consumption of alcohol as the main activity? It unnerved me to think that some people would devote entire days solely to the pursuit of alcohol, and that the culture that surrounded them would not only condone it, but encourage it.
It's 2013, by this point in human history it's no secret that alcohol is a substance that can be overused and exactly what consequences that overuse will bring, yet it remains something of an open secret, that everybody knows but no one is willing to say out loud. After all, it would be quite the faux pas to lecture people at a party about the dangers of overindulging their alcohol habit, one severe enough to get a person thrown out on their ass if they aren't careful. Still, this culture of silence, especially in youth settings, can lead to a lot of wild nights, and a lot of loud and painful mornings.
Granted, I do not claim to be the sole authority on moral values or what can and cannot be placed into the bodies of others. Still, I often find myself thinking things like, "How much longer will this type of culture be able to sustain itself?" Or "There but for the grace of my uncommon sense go I." And if that comes off as a little judgmental, that's probably because it is. I may have no right to interfere in the lives of strangers, but that doesn't mean I can't judge them for their actions.
For those invisible people or perhaps myself in the future who may one day be reading this post, I pose this question: How would your world change if alcohol had never existed?
Several times over the course of my college experience I have heard friends talking and one friend say to the other "What did you do yesterday?"
And their friend would reply, "I drank at Steve So-and-so's house, it was a blast." When I heard that the first time it deeply disturbed me. Not because of the alcohol use, I may go into my opinions on that subject when something in the world has suitably drawn my ire. The part that disturbed me was that drinking was the activity this person engaged in. They didn't drink and watch sports, or drink and hit clubs, they drank, period.
As I'm given to understand, drinking is often done to make other activities seem more enjoyable, but if that's the case, then why does it seem like more and more people see what comes after drinking as a secondary activity and the consumption of alcohol as the main activity? It unnerved me to think that some people would devote entire days solely to the pursuit of alcohol, and that the culture that surrounded them would not only condone it, but encourage it.
It's 2013, by this point in human history it's no secret that alcohol is a substance that can be overused and exactly what consequences that overuse will bring, yet it remains something of an open secret, that everybody knows but no one is willing to say out loud. After all, it would be quite the faux pas to lecture people at a party about the dangers of overindulging their alcohol habit, one severe enough to get a person thrown out on their ass if they aren't careful. Still, this culture of silence, especially in youth settings, can lead to a lot of wild nights, and a lot of loud and painful mornings.
Granted, I do not claim to be the sole authority on moral values or what can and cannot be placed into the bodies of others. Still, I often find myself thinking things like, "How much longer will this type of culture be able to sustain itself?" Or "There but for the grace of my uncommon sense go I." And if that comes off as a little judgmental, that's probably because it is. I may have no right to interfere in the lives of strangers, but that doesn't mean I can't judge them for their actions.
For those invisible people or perhaps myself in the future who may one day be reading this post, I pose this question: How would your world change if alcohol had never existed?
よろしくお願いします
Hello internet, or whomever is in this small corner of the internet. For the purposes of this blog you can call me Sidereal, or Sid for short if anyone thinks my monicker too long. I do not speak to any one person, because my goal in creating this blog has little to do with people. "But Sidereal," you ask, "Why would you go to the trouble of creating a blog on some blogging site if you didn't want people to be following your every random thought and emotion with a near religious fervor?"
I'm glad you asked. For one thing there are plenty of other social networking sites that are much more social where I can find the validation most humans crave, that and the mystical land of Outside which I've heard is nice this time of year. The other reason is that I will mostly be using this as an infodump for my various musings on the world around me. Some will be abstract philosophical musings, some will be of a sociocultural nature, and others may resemble reviews of books, movies, and games.
The one thing they will all have in common is that I won't remember them in several days.
Therefore I will use this as a data storage system. Because hard drives can broken, flash drives can be lost, and computers can be destroyed by viruses, but the internet will last at least long enough for me to write down whatever I feel I should have record of for however long I decide to keep this endeavor in my favor.
では、おせはになっております、どうぞよろしくお願いします。
I'm glad you asked. For one thing there are plenty of other social networking sites that are much more social where I can find the validation most humans crave, that and the mystical land of Outside which I've heard is nice this time of year. The other reason is that I will mostly be using this as an infodump for my various musings on the world around me. Some will be abstract philosophical musings, some will be of a sociocultural nature, and others may resemble reviews of books, movies, and games.
The one thing they will all have in common is that I won't remember them in several days.
Therefore I will use this as a data storage system. Because hard drives can broken, flash drives can be lost, and computers can be destroyed by viruses, but the internet will last at least long enough for me to write down whatever I feel I should have record of for however long I decide to keep this endeavor in my favor.
では、おせはになっております、どうぞよろしくお願いします。
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)