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Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor

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  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-10 19:19 +0000
    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-10 19:42 -0400
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-11 00:13 -0700
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-11 06:55 -0400
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-12 04:25 +0000
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-12 08:23 -0400
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-12 08:59 -0400
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2018-10-12 20:17 -0400
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor David Johnston <davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-12 19:20 -0600
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-13 02:50 +0000
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-13 05:46 -0700
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-13 14:55 +0000
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2018-10-13 09:29 -0500
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-13 15:21 +0000
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-13 11:41 -0400
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-14 21:50 +0000
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2018-10-14 18:29 -0400
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-14 23:24 +0000
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-14 20:01 -0700
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2018-10-15 02:05 -0600
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor lal_truckee <lal_truckee@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-15 09:18 -0700
                    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-15 16:45 +0000
                      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2018-10-17 22:54 -0700
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-15 19:32 -0400
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) - 2018-10-16 07:13 +0000
                    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Magewolf <Magewolf@nc.rr.com> - 2018-10-16 14:13 -0400
                    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-16 23:53 +0000
                      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2018-10-16 21:31 -0400
                      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2018-10-16 22:43 -0600
                        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) - 2018-10-17 05:03 +0000
                        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor frank.scrooby@gmail.com - 2018-10-16 23:44 -0700
                          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-17 06:54 -0400
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor peterwezeman@hotmail.com - 2018-10-13 13:21 -0700
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-13 21:48 +0000
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor David Johnston <davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-13 16:01 -0600
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-12 21:42 +0000
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-12 18:16 -0400
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-12 23:48 +0000
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-12 20:00 -0400
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-13 00:36 +0000
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-12 22:04 -0400
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-15 00:21 +0000
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-15 19:31 -0400
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor -dsr- <dsr-usenet@randomstring.org> - 2018-10-18 12:48 -0400
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-19 04:33 +0000
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-19 16:29 +0000
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-19 18:12 -0400
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Magewolf <Magewolf@nc.rr.com> - 2018-10-20 09:45 -0400
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-26 02:30 +0000
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-26 12:35 -0700
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net> - 2018-10-28 19:30 +0000
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> - 2018-10-28 23:03 +0000
        Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-30 08:18 -0400
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2018-10-31 01:12 -0600
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-31 02:33 -0700
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-31 10:53 -0400
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2018-10-31 14:27 -0500
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-10-31 13:54 -0700
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2018-10-31 14:41 -0700
                    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Titus G <noone@nowhere.com> - 2018-11-01 14:40 +1300
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Titus G <noone@nowhere.com> - 2018-11-01 14:34 +1300
          Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net> - 2018-10-31 16:12 +0000
            Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-31 20:11 -0400
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2018-11-01 11:55 -0500
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2018-11-01 16:12 -0700
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2018-11-01 17:43 -0700
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-11-01 19:35 -0400
                  Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2018-11-02 16:47 -0700
              Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2018-11-01 10:18 -0700
                Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-11-01 19:35 -0400
    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-10 19:47 -0400
    Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-10-11 14:57 +0000
      Re: <Princess Holy Aura> by Ryk Spoor "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> - 2018-10-11 18:15 -0400

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#500583

On 10/14/18 2:50 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

> The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents
> and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.

Heinlein's juveniles are rife with intact families, although several 
failed families are also featured.

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#500586

lal_truckee <lal_truckee@yahoo.com> wrote in news:pq2el4$tai$1@dont-email.me:

> On 10/14/18 2:50 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
 
>> The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents
>> and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.
 
> Heinlein's juveniles are rife with intact families, although several 
> failed families are also featured.

The way I remember those I've read, though, usually the kids are the 
main focus.  To be fair, in <Lifelode> the adults are, but we do get 
a fair amount of kids' POVs, and anyway the original issue was 
stories about parents, not stories about both.  So here my main point 
was intact family, albeit not of a kind common in contemporary North 
America; I'd instanced or asked about various kinds of one-parent 
family and noticed that <Lifelode> was different because it had a, 
um, four-parent family.

I don't remember <The Rolling Stones> (already mentioned) at all well, 
but doesn't that focus more on parents than most of them?

Of course, several characters in <The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress> are 
parents.  That's like <The White Pipes>, though - thriller comes to 
them; or, arguably, they seek adventure without actually questing.  
Also, the kids don't get much airtime; and parenthood is mostly 
spread among even more people than in <Lifelode>.

Joe Bernstein

-- 
Joe Bernstein                                    <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

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#500910

On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 16:45:14 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
<Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

>I don't remember <The Rolling Stones> (already mentioned) at all well, 
>but doesn't that focus more on parents than most of them?

     No, the whole family is covered with a focus on Castor and Pollux
(the twin sons).

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

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#500694

On 10/14/18 5:50 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

> [1] But what happens to, um, a book that certainly *isn't* <Princess
> Holy Aura> if Stephen Russ has a wife, not in name only, *and* a
> fourteen-year-old daughter?
>     It would be way too melodramatic to have his hitherto unmentioned
> daughter show up in the second book and find out that her long-lost
> father is now, um, her peer.
> 

	That would indeed be... AWKWARD.

	



-- 
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
                        ;;;	
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog: 
http://seawasp.dreamwidth.org

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#500726

In article <XnsA97B9703EB14AKdeuramagmailcom@85.214.115.223>,
Joe Bernstein  <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:
>The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents 
>and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.

Several by Diana Wynne Jones come to mind: _The Ogre Downstairs_,
_Dark Lord of Derkholm_, and _Year of the Griffin_.  Maybe more.

In visual media, there's the superhero movie _The Incredibles_,
and its sequel.  Also an old and deservedly obscure cartoon series
called _Bionic 6_.

-- 
   David Goldfarb          |"Now you're living in your own fantasy world.
goldfarbdj@gmail.com       | We're into a whole weird area here."
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu  |         -- MST3K, "Mr. B Natural"        

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#500739

On 10/16/2018 3:13 AM, David Goldfarb wrote:
> In article <XnsA97B9703EB14AKdeuramagmailcom@85.214.115.223>,
> Joe Bernstein  <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents
>> and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.
> 
> Several by Diana Wynne Jones come to mind: _The Ogre Downstairs_,
> _Dark Lord of Derkholm_, and _Year of the Griffin_.  Maybe more.
> 
> In visual media, there's the superhero movie _The Incredibles_,
> and its sequel.  Also an old and deservedly obscure cartoon series
> called _Bionic 6_.
> 

Bionic 6 is worth remembering for the opening alone.  Now most of the 
rest of it was rather pointless. They had super bionics that could run 
for like five minutes a day so they were mostly useless.

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#500787

goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) wrote in news:pGoK29.t3E@kithrup.com:

> In article <XnsA97B9703EB14AKdeuramagmailcom@85.214.115.223>,
> Joe Bernstein  <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

>>The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents 
>>and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.

> Several by Diana Wynne Jones come to mind: _The Ogre Downstairs_,
> _Dark Lord of Derkholm_, and _Year of the Griffin_.  Maybe more.

I should've remembered the latter two.

<Lifelode> is on my mind largely for log-related reasons.

> In visual media, there's the superhero movie _The Incredibles_,
> and its sequel.  Also an old and deservedly obscure cartoon series
> called _Bionic 6_.

Not to mention <Lost in Space>, now that I think of it.

I don't remember whether <Lost in Space> is parents sought adventure 
with kids or parents stumbled on adventure with kids, but it's 
certainly one of those.  (English Wikipedia says sought.)  Similarly, 
I don't remember whether the parents in <The Incredibles> tried to 
keep the kids away from their jobs or not.  (Doesn't seem so.)

Joe Bernstein

-- 
Joe Bernstein                                    <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

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#500792

On Tue, 16 Oct 2018 23:53:50 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
<Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

>goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) wrote in news:pGoK29.t3E@kithrup.com:
>
>> In article <XnsA97B9703EB14AKdeuramagmailcom@85.214.115.223>,
>> Joe Bernstein  <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents 
>>>and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.
>
>> Several by Diana Wynne Jones come to mind: _The Ogre Downstairs_,
>> _Dark Lord of Derkholm_, and _Year of the Griffin_.  Maybe more.
>
>I should've remembered the latter two.
>
><Lifelode> is on my mind largely for log-related reasons.
>
>> In visual media, there's the superhero movie _The Incredibles_,
>> and its sequel.  Also an old and deservedly obscure cartoon series
>> called _Bionic 6_.
>
>Not to mention <Lost in Space>, now that I think of it.
>
>I don't remember whether <Lost in Space> is parents sought adventure 
>with kids or parents stumbled on adventure with kids, but it's 
>certainly one of those.  (English Wikipedia says sought.)  Similarly, 
>I don't remember whether the parents in <The Incredibles> tried to 
>keep the kids away from their jobs or not.  (Doesn't seem so.)

The father in the Incredibles worked in an office.  He didn't bring
the kids to work that we saw.  Remember, being a superhero was
illegal.  The parents biggest issue with the kids was keeping Dash
from showing off his super speed.  Later, when it hit the fan and
Elastigirl had to save the day, the kids snuck aboard IIRC.

The sequel started out with Elastigirl's having her turn at bat but
again when it hit the fan the whole family got involved.
>
>Joe Bernstein

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#500797

Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents 
>>>and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.

>I don't remember whether the parents in <The Incredibles> tried to 
>keep the kids away from their jobs or not.  (Doesn't seem so.)

I think Mr Incredible and Elastigirl met about the same time as it was
becoming illegal to be super.  So they were trying to be mundane when
the kids came along.
-- 
We are geeks.  Resistance is voltage over current.

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#500799

In article <g2nt23F2mugU1@mid.individual.net>,
Greg Goss  <gossg@gossg.org> wrote:
>Joe Bernstein <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>>The only spec-fic book I can think of that focuses on both parents 
>>>>and kids in a more or less intact family is <Lifelode> by Jo Walton.
>
>>I don't remember whether the parents in <The Incredibles> tried to 
>>keep the kids away from their jobs or not.  (Doesn't seem so.)
>
>I think Mr Incredible and Elastigirl met about the same time as it was
>becoming illegal to be super.  So they were trying to be mundane when
>the kids came along.
>-- 

Setting aside the time they lived as mundanes, in the first movie,
Elastigirl finds the kids have stowed-away on her rescue flight.  She
probably would have taken them back home, but is shot down and perforce
the kids are involved in the Island assault.  Likewise, the kids are
in the airborne van leading up to the terminal giant robot fight, and there
is no time to drop them off.

It does appear that the parents bless the kids participation in the fight
against The Underminer which closes the movie.

In the second movie, the kids are kidnapped out of Frozone's supervision
and kind of join the boat fight on their own by which time there is no way
for the parents to get them away from it.  There is a nice bit where Violet
comes to realize the most important thing she can do in the boat fight
is protect her baby brother: a sign of growing maturity.

So, it's not 100%, but in general the parents try to keep the kids out of
heroing, but the plot usually intervenes.
-- 
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

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#500800

Greetings all,

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 6:44:53 AM UTC+2, Greg Goss wrote:

> I think Mr Incredible and Elastigirl met about the same time as it was

They had clearly known each other for longer than that. Mr. Incredible was on his way to their WEDDING when he stopped to save the kitten, stop the bank robbers, stop La Boom (I think that was the villain's name), saving the stupid future super villain from La Boom's bomb, and then saving the train full of people. All in all the night would have ended better for almost anyone if he'd just got himself to the chapel ahead of time. Seriously who calls a super to rescue a cat out of a tree. Isn't that what fire fighters are for? Or neighborhood kids. 

Unless of cause the supers all exist in some kind of bizarre supers culture which explicitly practices arranged marriages where bride and groom never get to meet before the date.

Regards
Frank

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#500804

On 10/17/18 2:44 AM, frank.scrooby@gmail.com wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> On Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 6:44:53 AM UTC+2, Greg Goss wrote:
> 
>> I think Mr Incredible and Elastigirl met about the same time as it was
> 
> They had clearly known each other for longer than that. Mr. Incredible was on his way to their WEDDING when he stopped to save the kitten, stop the bank robbers, stop La Boom (I think that was the villain's name),


	Bomb Voyage.


> saving the stupid future super villain from La Boom's bomb, and then saving the train full of people. All in all the night would have ended better for almost anyone if he'd just got himself to the chapel ahead of time. Seriously who calls a super to rescue a cat out of a tree. Isn't that what fire fighters are for? Or neighborhood kids.

	I think it's like calling the fire department. You're mobilizing all 
that power for such a trivial problem when, as you say, any able-bodied 
person in your neighborhood would do as well. Given that people HAVE 
called the fire department to rescue their cats, I see nothing terribly 
odd about supers being asked to.

	But you're right, it'd have been better if he'd just finished rescuing 
the cat and then gotten to the church.

	On the other hand, it seems to me that the point of that sequence was 
that the culture was poised and ready to try banning the supers, and it 
just happened to be THAT sequence of events; the same thing would've 
happened some time later, and probably not much later.


-- 
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
                        ;;;	
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog: 
http://seawasp.dreamwidth.org

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#500460

On Friday, October 12, 2018 at 9:50:17 PM UTC-5, D B Davis wrote:
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> >
> >        I'll also note that I have indeed "loaded the dice" or "weighted the
> > scales" in the book. To an extent, that's true of EVERY adventure novel.
> > There are potentially infinite versions of "The Lord of the Rings" where
> > Frodo dies or otherwise fails completely, Sauron gets the Ring, and
> > Middle-Earth is plunged into darkness for however long it takes for
> > Illuvatar's next savior to show up. This is basically the case for all
> > stories: we have chosen to show the universe in which THIS happens and
> > not all the infinite THATs which COULD have been.
> >
> >        In the case of _Princess Holy Aura_, the thumb on the scales is similar
> 
> > to that on the scales for _Polychrome_. In both cases the real-life
> > analogue of the protagonist had a family -- a wife and at least one
> > child. In both cases, that would make the decision to follow the Call of
> > Adventure virtually impossible; if they're the good, decent people that
> > they MUST be for their adventures, they can't very well run off and
> > abandon their lifelong commitments. They have to be free to accept, and
> > that comes with a lot of other implications for the story.
> >
> >        Yes, the call to Adventure conflicting with family obligations can make
> > a good story, and one I'm working on, but that wasn't the focus of
> > either PHA or Polychrome, so I wasn't going to add that to all the other
> > mess.
> 
> Raising kids is hard work. It's a full time job. The only adventure 
> available to good parents is providing care to their kids each day.
>     Parents who prioritize adventure must ditch their kids first.
> _Hollywood, Interrupted_ (Breitbart) reveals that some adventurous 
> Hollywood celebrities ditch their kids with a full-time governess. (The 
> kids bond with their governess, who eventually subsumes the role of 
> parent.)
>     Some fiction works the same manner. _The Last Command_ (Zahn) has
> Councilor "Leia" Organa Solo ditch her twins with Winter, a governess in
> fact, if not in name.
>     Although an governess provides a prestigious kid ditch, an author
> can also go down-market. _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)_ (RAH) uses
> crèches as a kid ditch.

It can be possible to take the kids along on some kinds of adventures.
In real life many families make extended ocean voyages on sailboats.
Children are home schooled en route. Heinlein used this in his novel
_The Rolling Stones_. 

In _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ many of Star Fleet's ships carry 
the crew's families on board, including children.

In science fiction there are many cultures that live on space ships, 
for example the free traders in Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_. 
The entire family shares the risk of death or enslavement if they
encounter pirates.

In Donald Wollheim's YA novel _The Secret of the Martian Moons_ 
the Martians go on periodic voyages of exploration and discovery 
for the specific purpose of finding adventure. Since they travel 
hundreds or thousands of light years at high relativistic speeds
the entire culture travels together in an immense fleet of ships 
so that none of them become temporal castaways.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist     

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#500470

peterwezeman@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, October 12, 2018 at 9:50:17 PM UTC-5, D B Davis wrote:

<snip>

>>     _The Last Command_ (Zahn) has
>> Councilor "Leia" Organa Solo ditch her twins with Winter, a governess in
>> fact, if not in name.
>>     Although an governess provides a prestigious kid ditch, an author
>> can also go down-market. _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)_ (RAH) uses
>> crèches as a kid ditch.
>
> It can be possible to take the kids along on some kinds of adventures.
> In real life many families make extended ocean voyages on sailboats.
> Children are home schooled en route. Heinlein used this in his novel
> _The Rolling Stones_.
>
> In _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ many of Star Fleet's ships carry
> the crew's families on board, including children.
>
> In science fiction there are many cultures that live on space ships,
> for example the free traders in Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_.
> The entire family shares the risk of death or enslavement if they
> encounter pirates.
>
> In Donald Wollheim's YA novel _The Secret of the Martian Moons_
> the Martians go on periodic voyages of exploration and discovery
> for the specific purpose of finding adventure. Since they travel
> hundreds or thousands of light years at high relativistic speeds
> the entire culture travels together in an immense fleet of ships
> so that none of them become temporal castaways.

Except for vicious Cathedral cubs, _Logan's Run_ (Nolan & Johnson) keeps
most of its kids out of sight (and out of mind). Bradbury has 
"The Veldt"'s vicious vindictive kids permanently ditch their parents
into an adventure. The first generation of kids in "Frost and Fire"
(Bradbury) were stranded in a rocket trip gone bad.  

✍

Thank you,

-- 
Don

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#500472

On 2018-10-13 2:21 PM, peterwezeman@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, October 12, 2018 at 9:50:17 PM UTC-5, D B Davis wrote:
>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>         I'll also note that I have indeed "loaded the dice" or "weighted the
>>> scales" in the book. To an extent, that's true of EVERY adventure novel.
>>> There are potentially infinite versions of "The Lord of the Rings" where
>>> Frodo dies or otherwise fails completely, Sauron gets the Ring, and
>>> Middle-Earth is plunged into darkness for however long it takes for
>>> Illuvatar's next savior to show up. This is basically the case for all
>>> stories: we have chosen to show the universe in which THIS happens and
>>> not all the infinite THATs which COULD have been.
>>>
>>>         In the case of _Princess Holy Aura_, the thumb on the scales is similar
>>
>>> to that on the scales for _Polychrome_. In both cases the real-life
>>> analogue of the protagonist had a family -- a wife and at least one
>>> child. In both cases, that would make the decision to follow the Call of
>>> Adventure virtually impossible; if they're the good, decent people that
>>> they MUST be for their adventures, they can't very well run off and
>>> abandon their lifelong commitments. They have to be free to accept, and
>>> that comes with a lot of other implications for the story.
>>>
>>>         Yes, the call to Adventure conflicting with family obligations can make
>>> a good story, and one I'm working on, but that wasn't the focus of
>>> either PHA or Polychrome, so I wasn't going to add that to all the other
>>> mess.
>>
>> Raising kids is hard work. It's a full time job. The only adventure
>> available to good parents is providing care to their kids each day.
>>      Parents who prioritize adventure must ditch their kids first.
>> _Hollywood, Interrupted_ (Breitbart) reveals that some adventurous
>> Hollywood celebrities ditch their kids with a full-time governess. (The
>> kids bond with their governess, who eventually subsumes the role of
>> parent.)
>>      Some fiction works the same manner. _The Last Command_ (Zahn) has
>> Councilor "Leia" Organa Solo ditch her twins with Winter, a governess in
>> fact, if not in name.
>>      Although an governess provides a prestigious kid ditch, an author
>> can also go down-market. _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)_ (RAH) uses
>> crèches as a kid ditch.
> 
> It can be possible to take the kids along on some kinds of adventures.
> In real life many families make extended ocean voyages on sailboats.
> Children are home schooled en route. Heinlein used this in his novel
> _The Rolling Stones_.
> 
> In _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ many of Star Fleet's ships carry
> the crew's families on board, including children.
Really only that one class of ship.  It was not something that Picard 
had previous experience with and none of the subsequent classes we were 
shown continued that experiment.  Probably because of all the resulting 
dead kids.

> 
> In science fiction there are many cultures that live on space ships,
> for example the free traders in Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_.
> The entire family shares the risk of death or enslavement if they
> encounter pirates.

Yeah I found that one more plausible as a continuing thing.

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#500310

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in 
news:ppm2oo$mdd$1@dont-email.me a post to which I've already replied 
once, which he's answered in turn.  I try to integrate answers to 
both his posts in this reply.

> On 10/10/18 3:19 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>> news:ppi81l$e2u$1@dont-email.me:

>>> (Spoilers below, naturally)

Now in abundance.  Really, don't read on if you haven't read the book.

>>> On 10/5/18 7:57 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>> [<Princess Holy Aura>'s status as a magical girl novel helps explain]

>>>  But a
>>>> whole lot of other stuff is weakly developed if at all.  We're told
>>>> that somewhere inside the transformed protagonist's mind there's a
>>>> discrete bit representing her former male self, reacting in fairly
>>>> predictable ways to milestones in her female life.  But we're also
>>>> told that this character ultimately has no desire whatsoever to do
>>>> as the book's setup demands, and go back to male life when the
>>>> apocalypse is averted.  Huh?

This was careless reading and writing on my part.  The opposition I 
highlight here is real, but not as clearcut as this phrasing at all.  
Specifically, "discrete bit" is how the author writes casually, but 
when he focuses on it it's always to deny that bit's reality.  And 
"no desire whatsoever" is a little too strong.

>>>       Steve/Holly changed during their tenure. To a small extent, this is
>>> because there was, as Silvertail mentions, a "template" of the Magical
>>> Girl that gives the nascent Holly Owen/Holy Aura an actual foundation of
>>> ... well, "essence of teenage girl", that Steve-Before-Book didn't have.

>> OK, small extent.  So - as I give you credit for making *usual* in
>> the book - the magic doesn't dictate the personal here.

Chapter 65, Silvertail:  "Holly is just as much Steve's creation as 
she was mine, or that of her predecessors.  More so".  Not really a 
small extent, but not decisive.

>>>       The book leaves open whether Steve had any hidden TG elements; it
>>> wasn't necessary to delve into that one way or the other.

Um.  Silvertail says in chapter 22:  "If Steve had possessed a desire 
to be a woman, it would be less of a sacrifice."  To what extent is 
Silvertail an unreliable Speaker of Truth?

>> I remember that on first reading I felt something mildly strange
>> about his interaction with Dex before and after the game, FWIW.
>> No idea whether you wanted that vibe.  This didn't recur, as best I
>> remember, on second reading.

Nor third.  Beats me what I was thinking.

>>>       Another major factor is that while Steve had gaming friends, he had
>>> very few PEERS. He was essentially alone in his life, his parents gone,
>>> all his friends from childhood dead or dispersed, and his gaming group
>>> the only outside contact he had. He was a nice guy, and he knew as
>>> nodding acquaintances a lot of people around him, but he was in an
>>> isolated, dead-end existence. The promise of "well, the magic will make
>>> your life better if this ends well" is nice, but that's a vague future
>>> promise even if you believe it.
>>>
>>>       Her existence as Holly, OTOH, was very real, immediate, and more
>>> diverse and colorful than his existence as Steve.

>> Is a spouse a peer?  Seems to me that depends on the couple's views
>> on gender relations, and we're given plenty of evidence that Stephen
>> Russ would say yes to that question.

>      A spouse would be a peer. He has no spouse, though, so there's no 
> connection there.

Well, you say elsewhere (snipped below, actually) that you *decided* 
he shouldn't have a spouse.  Granted, you didn't have room for one.  
But it's not as though the question were irrelevant just because it 
doesn't apply to the character in front of us.

>> This is the core of my concern - this is essentially auctorial
>> confirmation of what I listed as possibility g) in a previous post,
>> there described as Holly having relationships Stephen couldn't have.

Which I said, in that post and subsequently,  I found problematic.  
So even though I was completely wrong in saying this was just a 
"possibility", when in fact chapter 52 is entirely about it, I get to 
keep at this.

>> I'm going to tackle this in two ways in this post.  First, abstractly,
>> so that'll be here.

[Snipping my words "manager" and "thumb on the scales", among others.  
Huh, OK, snipping all of this, including my additional words "the 
negative consequences of remaining unmarried", and your bit about 
Steve originally having been married.]

Oh, but one thing about "thumb on the scales".  I infer from the post 
you devoted to that, that you're at least somewhat OK with what I 
described as explanation f) for the protagonist's "decision":

| It's saying it's a magical girl story, so of course the decision.

>>>> But I
>>>> think the book *does* have a genuine flaw, at the end, when the
>>>> darkness proper to the protagonist's decisions is undermined by their
>>>> lack of clear motivation. [2]

>> In the post you're quoting, I waffled by putting it in plural:
>> "decisions".  Later I said the evidence that I was talking about a
>> "decision" at all was weak, but my interlocutor said it was a
>> reasonable word choice.
>> 
>> Anyway, what I mean is Holly's expressed preference for staying a
>> girl after the apocalypse is averted, followed by her action that
>> (almost certainly unintentionally) makes that preference
>> unavoidable, followed, of course, by the magical loose end that
>> enables the preference to happen (once again, in this book, neatly
>> subordinating the magical to the personal).  Her strong hostility
>> toward her (original) male form *is* dark, and should have dark
>> underpinnings; it doesn't.

>      I don't see it as dark but more conflicting. Holly's found a really 
> pretty wonderful life that she did not expect, especially with the 
> initial strain of becoming Holy Aura and abandoning Steve for very 
> practical reasons. After all the time -- very, VERY intense time with 
> strong emotional components -- with her new friends, 

This is, to a certain extent, careless phrasing on your part.  Much 
of the hostility I point to is already there after a relatively short 
time being friends with Seika Cooper.

Chapter 22 again:  "The voice he used to accept sounded completely 
wrong in his ears.  The way his body felt--slow, heavy, ponderous--
was actually repellent."

This is *before* the other three (though not before the new game) and 
*before* Dex even joins the game, let alone becomes her boyfriend.

> she's developed 
> extremely strong bonds with them-- stronger and more emotionally 
> powerful than likely any bonds he's ever had with anyone outside his 
> parents.

I'll get back to this below.
 
>      It's only DARK if you think that it's BAD that a person can change 
> their goals and self-image.

Well, um, how to put this?

Stephen Russ dies.

Or at least that's going to be the experience of a bunch of people 
whose existence you seem determined to deny.

The book is the story of two lives competing, because only one can be 
real, and that isn't even affected by the magical out at the end.  
It's got tons of sugarcoating, but that is a fundamentally dark theme.

Granted, there's a lot else going on in the book, not all of which is 
dark, but this aspect of it is.

>> I don't see much alternative to doing what I did above again
[the stuff I snipped this time]

>> So OK.  In the book, I'm not sure of Holly's age.  She's a freshman
>> in high school in an area that has junior highs.  I thought junior
>> high went to 9th grade; so is Holly in 10th?  But let's pretend she
>> really is a freshman, and fourteen (the back cover's "twelve" can be
>> ignored).  

The book actually shouts "fourteen" early on, especially in chapter 2.  
I thought I'd come up with that on my own, but no, it was there.

[me as a freshman]
>> but this was a rich social life compared to much
>> that lay ahead.  If we go on to when I was fourteen (I was two grades
>> ahead), it was even richer, because by then girls who interested me
>> were talking to me (though not dating me).

>      This is not my experience of high school, nor that of most of the 
> people I knew. I had very, very few friends. I did not socialize with 
> anyone who did not share a number of interests with me. My richest 
> social life lay much farther ahead. (I DID use the terror of 
> homosexuality on occasion; threatening to kiss guys bothering me would 
> get them to flee)
> 
>      Part of the irony of Holy Aura for me is that she finds her high school 
> life ATTRACTIVE, when it was a period of life I wouldn't have gone back 
> to if you paid me. OTOH, compared with Steve's life... that's a 
> different choice.

Yeah, well.

When I was thirty-five I lived in Madison, *where I had no friends*.

I wouldn't have gone back to high school if you'd paid me then, nor 
would I now - when, by the way, I'm not sure I have any friends in 
Seattle.  But I had significantly richer social lives in my freshman 
and junior years than I had in Madison, or have here now.

Which of us is more like Stephen Russ?

I don't believe his emotional history is as drab as you think it is.

[me in my thirties]
>> There's a line in <A Civil Campaign> that I first read during those
>> years - "Once past his school days, Tien had never made a new good
>> friend."  It isn't actually true of me, but it worried me a lot,
>> around then.

Possibly out of courtesy, nobody has noticed a pretty obvious subtext 
to this story, which is that I'm much better at losing friends than I 
am at making them, and this has been true for decades.  I actually 
have made one good friend even since becoming homeless six years ago - 
but have lost him, too.

From my point of view, except perhaps for the "decades" part, Stephen 
Russ can only be convincing if he shares this talent for alienating 
people.  But he loses it as soon as he becomes Holly Owen, and in any 
event he's much more effectively concerned about other people than 
I've ever been, so I don't think he ever had it.  So the more I think 
about it, the less convincing he becomes.

>> Which brings me to ...  Already in my 20s, I'm pretty sure I'd
>> noticed that my next older brother, my elder sister and I all have
>> essentially the same face.  Probably if my twin sister had lived,
>> she'd have had it too.  In women, it's a pretty face.  In men, not
>> so much, and of course my *height*, never over 5'3" (160 cm) didn't
>> help.  What I'm getting at is that as I reached higher and more
>> embarrassing ages at which to retain one's virginity, it became ever
>> more obvious that if I'd been born a woman (or even, for that matter,
>> gay), in this one increasingly important respect I'd have been a lot
>> better off.

>      Except that it's not better off for women in our society (especially if 
> you go back decades), 

What part of "in this one respect" was unclear?  I'm describing 
something that much preoccupied me at that time; I assure you I 
thought about the disadvantages of womanhood too.

That said, we're talking about the period from 1997 to 2007.  Why 
didn't you also point to the difficulties of being a gay man at that 
time?  One thing I'm saying here is that I thought I'd find more 
people interested in me among roughly 1% of men than among roughly 
99% of women.  This necessarily involved thinking about what it'd be 
like, having one's field of possibilities shrunk by well over 90%.  
That's a difficulty of being gay that hasn't changed.

> and it seems you accepted more of the cultural 
> norms of THAT period. Mine was much more "sex comes with marriage, not 
> before" and I was a virgin until I married.

It would never have occurred to me that one could answer a paragraph 
in which the writer confesses to having been a forty-year-old virgin 
with, of all things, slut-shaming.  I'm impressed by your creativity 
and audacity.

(Though not your clarity.  Just which period is "THAT period" ?)

>> This isn't much like Stephen Russ's story.  Mine included college;
>> his ?didn't.  

This now seems pretty clear.  It's also reasonably clear that Holly 
Owen's could include college, unless she's too busy as Holy Aura.

>> His may have included the military; mine certainly
>> didn't.  

As previously noted, his *did*.  So let's go into that.

The book appears, in chapter 7, to begin in June of a year fourteen 
years after 2001, so either 2015 or perhaps 2016.  It explicitly ends 
soon after March 15, 2017, much of a single school year having passed 
in between; that obviously argues for 2016 as the start.

Holly had been Steve for thirty-five years, so he was born in 1980 or 
1981.  Assuming he enlisted right out of school, that'd be 1998 or 
1999.  If you're correct that his tour of duty would be four years, 
that gets us past September 11.  Did the Air Force do stop-loss at 
that time?

>> I sought all sorts of social hobbies; he focused on one. 

Two - he also acted in amateur theatre.

>> He
>> seems to have stayed in one place; I moved around a lot, although for
>> much of my thirties I was actually in my hometown.

And you say this in chapter 7:  "Helping kids deal with their issues, 
well, I've done that before." - refers to his associations with 
relatives' kids.

It hasn't been my experience that I could associate with relatives' 
kids much without also associating with the relatives too.  In 
particular, nobody sends their kids to spend summers with people like 
Steve or me.

>> But I think I'd need a lot of evidence to refute this before I'd stop
>> believing it:  that unmarried men in their 30s who live near
>> minimum wage, all other things equal, have worse social lives than
>> well-off teenaged girls.  In general, across the board.  My life, the
>> lives I've observed, my reading, all say so.  Hell, my life says even
>> a poor teenaged boy has a richer social life than a poor thirtyish
>> unmarried man.
>> 
>> In other words, I think the comparison the character makes is rigged.

It turns out it's rigged both ways.

Steve Russ is not the complete non-entity the first page suggests, 
after all.  He probably has Air Force buddies, though as usual these 
are scattered around the land.  He knows people from work and the 
theatre, though you tell us none have become friends.  He has 
relatives with whom he's spent enough time that he could help their 
"kids deal with their issues".  Hell, what if the Ochoas knock on his 
door to invite him to dinner?

Are none of those people going to try to contact him?  Ever?

Does he just disappear from the point of view of his high school 
reunion committee?  Of the VA?  (He's had enough injuries that he 
probably knows people at the VA Hospital by name.)

If the book had ended the way its characters expected, he could have 
been among those who died in the battle, and maybe there'd even be a 
body; or it could've ended according to plan, and Holly vanishing 
instead.

But as things are, you've created a can of worms for yourself, which 
you seem to think doesn't exist.

Also, because none of his previous life is foregrounded, let alone 
depicted, except the game, the book's power is weakened.  We don't 
see much of what Stephen sacrifices by becoming Holy and Holly.  
Granted, to offer more of his previous life would cost some of 
the new life's pages, and would make the can of worms bigger, but 
there you are.

>> So the book's advice to people like the earlier me boils down to "be
>> a rich girl instead".  This is why I'd rather the protagonist had
>> decided on pretty much *any* other grounds.

>      There's no advice in the book at all.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

[snip something I may address even later, but my reply to which 
doesn't belong in *this* post]

OK, all for now.

Joe Bernstein

-- 
Joe Bernstein                                    <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

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#500313

On 10/12/18 5:42 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
> news:ppm2oo$mdd$1@dont-email.me a post to which I've already replied
> once, which he's answered in turn.  I try to integrate answers to
> both his posts in this reply.
> 
>> On 10/10/18 3:19 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> 
>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>>> news:ppi81l$e2u$1@dont-email.me:
> 
>>>> (Spoilers below, naturally)
> 
> Now in abundance.  Really, don't read on if you haven't read the book.
> 
>>>> On 10/5/18 7:57 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> 
>>> [<Princess Holy Aura>'s status as a magical girl novel helps explain]
> 
>>>>   But a
>>>>> whole lot of other stuff is weakly developed if at all.  We're told
>>>>> that somewhere inside the transformed protagonist's mind there's a
>>>>> discrete bit representing her former male self, reacting in fairly
>>>>> predictable ways to milestones in her female life.  But we're also
>>>>> told that this character ultimately has no desire whatsoever to do
>>>>> as the book's setup demands, and go back to male life when the
>>>>> apocalypse is averted.  Huh?
> 
> This was careless reading and writing on my part.  The opposition I
> highlight here is real, but not as clearcut as this phrasing at all.
> Specifically, "discrete bit" is how the author writes casually, but
> when he focuses on it it's always to deny that bit's reality.  And
> "no desire whatsoever" is a little too strong.
> 
>>>>        Steve/Holly changed during their tenure. To a small extent, this is
>>>> because there was, as Silvertail mentions, a "template" of the Magical
>>>> Girl that gives the nascent Holly Owen/Holy Aura an actual foundation of
>>>> ... well, "essence of teenage girl", that Steve-Before-Book didn't have.
> 
>>> OK, small extent.  So - as I give you credit for making *usual* in
>>> the book - the magic doesn't dictate the personal here.
> 
> Chapter 65, Silvertail:  "Holly is just as much Steve's creation as
> she was mine, or that of her predecessors.  More so".  Not really a
> small extent, but not decisive.
> 
>>>>        The book leaves open whether Steve had any hidden TG elements; it
>>>> wasn't necessary to delve into that one way or the other.
> 
> Um.  Silvertail says in chapter 22:  "If Steve had possessed a desire
> to be a woman, it would be less of a sacrifice."  To what extent is
> Silvertail an unreliable Speaker of Truth?

	Silvertail can't read hidden desires, only expressed ones. As I said, 
if Steve had any HIDDEN TG elements that's not explored. Yes, 
technically it might weaken the spell a bit, but breaking repression and 
such is itself a stress, so it probably balances out.


> 
>>> I remember that on first reading I felt something mildly strange
>>> about his interaction with Dex before and after the game, FWIW.
>>> No idea whether you wanted that vibe.  This didn't recur, as best I
>>> remember, on second reading.
> 
> Nor third.  Beats me what I was thinking.

	It's possible there's a tiny amount of unintended subtext in their 
interaction due to the fact that I as author knew where that would 
eventually go.

> 
>>>>        Another major factor is that while Steve had gaming friends, he had
>>>> very few PEERS. He was essentially alone in his life, his parents gone,
>>>> all his friends from childhood dead or dispersed, and his gaming group
>>>> the only outside contact he had. He was a nice guy, and he knew as
>>>> nodding acquaintances a lot of people around him, but he was in an
>>>> isolated, dead-end existence. The promise of "well, the magic will make
>>>> your life better if this ends well" is nice, but that's a vague future
>>>> promise even if you believe it.
>>>>
>>>>        Her existence as Holly, OTOH, was very real, immediate, and more
>>>> diverse and colorful than his existence as Steve.
> 
>>> Is a spouse a peer?  Seems to me that depends on the couple's views
>>> on gender relations, and we're given plenty of evidence that Stephen
>>> Russ would say yes to that question.
> 
>>       A spouse would be a peer. He has no spouse, though, so there's no
>> connection there.
> 
> Well, you say elsewhere (snipped below, actually) that you *decided*
> he shouldn't have a spouse.  Granted, you didn't have room for one.
> But it's not as though the question were irrelevant just because it
> doesn't apply to the character in front of us.

	I consider questions of "here's another character he could have been" 
irrelevant, because that includes ones where he's potentially ANYTHING. 
There are infinite numbers of things that he isn't; you can only read 
the book about what he is.


> 
>>> This is the core of my concern - this is essentially auctorial
>>> confirmation of what I listed as possibility g) in a previous post,
>>> there described as Holly having relationships Stephen couldn't have.
> 
> Which I said, in that post and subsequently,  I found problematic.
> So even though I was completely wrong in saying this was just a
> "possibility", when in fact chapter 52 is entirely about it, I get to
> keep at this.
> 
>>> I'm going to tackle this in two ways in this post.  First, abstractly,
>>> so that'll be here.
> 
> [Snipping my words "manager" and "thumb on the scales", among others.
> Huh, OK, snipping all of this, including my additional words "the
> negative consequences of remaining unmarried", and your bit about
> Steve originally having been married.]
> 
> Oh, but one thing about "thumb on the scales".  I infer from the post
> you devoted to that, that you're at least somewhat OK with what I
> described as explanation f) for the protagonist's "decision":
> 
> | It's saying it's a magical girl story, so of course the decision.
> 

	To an extent, certainly true.


>>>>> But I
>>>>> think the book *does* have a genuine flaw, at the end, when the
>>>>> darkness proper to the protagonist's decisions is undermined by their
>>>>> lack of clear motivation. [2]
> 
>>> In the post you're quoting, I waffled by putting it in plural:
>>> "decisions".  Later I said the evidence that I was talking about a
>>> "decision" at all was weak, but my interlocutor said it was a
>>> reasonable word choice.
>>>
>>> Anyway, what I mean is Holly's expressed preference for staying a
>>> girl after the apocalypse is averted, followed by her action that
>>> (almost certainly unintentionally) makes that preference
>>> unavoidable, followed, of course, by the magical loose end that
>>> enables the preference to happen (once again, in this book, neatly
>>> subordinating the magical to the personal).  Her strong hostility
>>> toward her (original) male form *is* dark, and should have dark
>>> underpinnings; it doesn't.
> 
>>       I don't see it as dark but more conflicting. Holly's found a really
>> pretty wonderful life that she did not expect, especially with the
>> initial strain of becoming Holy Aura and abandoning Steve for very
>> practical reasons. After all the time -- very, VERY intense time with
>> strong emotional components -- with her new friends,
> 
> This is, to a certain extent, careless phrasing on your part.  Much
> of the hostility I point to is already there after a relatively short
> time being friends with Seika Cooper.
> 
> Chapter 22 again:  "The voice he used to accept sounded completely
> wrong in his ears.  The way his body felt--slow, heavy, ponderous--
> was actually repellent."
> 
> This is *before* the other three (though not before the new game) and
> *before* Dex even joins the game, let alone becomes her boyfriend.

	Ahh, but *AFTER* she has spent MONTHS in the body of Holly Owen. The 
body dysphoria is separate from his/her emotional connection to the 
friends he/she meets.


> 
>> she's developed
>> extremely strong bonds with them-- stronger and more emotionally
>> powerful than likely any bonds he's ever had with anyone outside his
>> parents.
> 
> I'll get back to this below.
>   
>>       It's only DARK if you think that it's BAD that a person can change
>> their goals and self-image.
> 
> Well, um, how to put this?
> 
> Stephen Russ dies.
> 
> Or at least that's going to be the experience of a bunch of people
> whose existence you seem determined to deny.

	What people?
	Oh, those people -- I see you describe the people in question later. 
See later for that discussion.

	For those close to her, that isn't a problem. Even Holly accepts that 
she IS Steve. It's rather like saying that my friend Dan died because he 
transitioned to be a woman named Tori. They have the same memory thread 
and basic identity. All the other people in the book either (A) never 
really knew Steve, so while the loss of her ability to take on his form 
is sad, they see Holly as the original, or (B) understand fully that 
she's really Steve, just a new version.

> 
> The book is the story of two lives competing, because only one can be
> real, and that isn't even affected by the magical out at the end.
> It's got tons of sugarcoating, but that is a fundamentally dark theme.

	?? No, the book is the story of a conflict between good and evil, and 
the attempt to make the best, most moral choices in that conflict.

	In the end, Steve and Holly ARE NOT COMPETING. They are 100% in tune 
with what needs to be done and they're both just fine with it. Both of 
them expect to be obliterated -- and "both of them" is a miswriting, 
because it's really just two ... *personas*, two masks that they use to 
face the world. The SELF is still there, untouched, just changed by 
experience to see things differently.

> 
> Granted, there's a lot else going on in the book, not all of which is
> dark, but this aspect of it is.
> 
>>> I don't see much alternative to doing what I did above again
> [the stuff I snipped this time]
> 
>>> So OK.  In the book, I'm not sure of Holly's age.  She's a freshman
>>> in high school in an area that has junior highs.  I thought junior
>>> high went to 9th grade; so is Holly in 10th?  But let's pretend she
>>> really is a freshman, and fourteen (the back cover's "twelve" can be
>>> ignored).
> 
> The book actually shouts "fourteen" early on, especially in chapter 2.
> I thought I'd come up with that on my own, but no, it was there.
> 
> [me as a freshman]
>>> but this was a rich social life compared to much
>>> that lay ahead.  If we go on to when I was fourteen (I was two grades
>>> ahead), it was even richer, because by then girls who interested me
>>> were talking to me (though not dating me).
> 
>>       This is not my experience of high school, nor that of most of the
>> people I knew. I had very, very few friends. I did not socialize with
>> anyone who did not share a number of interests with me. My richest
>> social life lay much farther ahead. (I DID use the terror of
>> homosexuality on occasion; threatening to kiss guys bothering me would
>> get them to flee)
>>
>>       Part of the irony of Holy Aura for me is that she finds her high school
>> life ATTRACTIVE, when it was a period of life I wouldn't have gone back
>> to if you paid me. OTOH, compared with Steve's life... that's a
>> different choice.
> 
> Yeah, well.
> 
> When I was thirty-five I lived in Madison, *where I had no friends*.
> 
> I wouldn't have gone back to high school if you'd paid me then, nor
> would I now - when, by the way, I'm not sure I have any friends in
> Seattle.  But I had significantly richer social lives in my freshman
> and junior years than I had in Madison, or have here now.
> 
> Which of us is more like Stephen Russ?
> 
> I don't believe his emotional history is as drab as you think it is.

	Steve's situation was constrained by his resources, his setting, and 
time. Gaming was his one contact with other people that he knew HOW to 
find other people. He was kind and personable once you got to know him, 
but his connection to "people at work" wasn't the same. He was the nice 
guy in the neighborhood who everyone LIKED, but he wasn't quite in the 
social circle for various reasons that would be something of an essay 
itself since the reasons will be different for different groups

	Out-of-universe, of course, it's important not to put him in the 
position of having to have a dozen close friends and/or lovers because 
that's not the conflict the book is about.

> 
> [me in my thirties]
>>> There's a line in <A Civil Campaign> that I first read during those
>>> years - "Once past his school days, Tien had never made a new good
>>> friend."  It isn't actually true of me, but it worried me a lot,
>>> around then.
> 
> Possibly out of courtesy, nobody has noticed a pretty obvious subtext
> to this story, which is that I'm much better at losing friends than I
> am at making them, and this has been true for decades.  I actually
> have made one good friend even since becoming homeless six years ago -
> but have lost him, too.
> 
>  From my point of view, except perhaps for the "decades" part, Stephen
> Russ can only be convincing if he shares this talent for alienating
> people.  But he loses it as soon as he becomes Holly Owen, and in any
> event he's much more effectively concerned about other people than
> I've ever been, so I don't think he ever had it.  So the more I think
> about it, the less convincing he becomes.
> 
>>> Which brings me to ...  Already in my 20s, I'm pretty sure I'd
>>> noticed that my next older brother, my elder sister and I all have
>>> essentially the same face.  Probably if my twin sister had lived,
>>> she'd have had it too.  In women, it's a pretty face.  In men, not
>>> so much, and of course my *height*, never over 5'3" (160 cm) didn't
>>> help.  What I'm getting at is that as I reached higher and more
>>> embarrassing ages at which to retain one's virginity, it became ever
>>> more obvious that if I'd been born a woman (or even, for that matter,
>>> gay), in this one increasingly important respect I'd have been a lot
>>> better off.
> 
>>       Except that it's not better off for women in our society (especially if
>> you go back decades),
> 
> What part of "in this one respect" was unclear?  I'm describing
> something that much preoccupied me at that time; I assure you I
> thought about the disadvantages of womanhood too.
> 
> That said, we're talking about the period from 1997 to 2007.  Why
> didn't you also point to the difficulties of being a gay man at that
> time?  One thing I'm saying here is that I thought I'd find more
> people interested in me among roughly 1% of men than among roughly
> 99% of women.  This necessarily involved thinking about what it'd be
> like, having one's field of possibilities shrunk by well over 90%.
> That's a difficulty of being gay that hasn't changed.
> 
>> and it seems you accepted more of the cultural
>> norms of THAT period. Mine was much more "sex comes with marriage, not
>> before" and I was a virgin until I married.
> 
> It would never have occurred to me that one could answer a paragraph
> in which the writer confesses to having been a forty-year-old virgin
> with, of all things, slut-shaming.  I'm impressed by your creativity
> and audacity.
> 
> (Though not your clarity.  Just which period is "THAT period" ?)


	I have NO idea where you get "slut-shaming" from. I said, in effect, "I 
never saw that there was a problem with being a virgin", not "if you 
aren't a virgin you must suck". I never absorbed the idea that I OUGHT 
to have sex. Did I WANT to have sex, sure, thought about it a lot. But 
it wasn't, as you seemed to be saying, a Bad Thing that I was a virgin. 
I was somewhat envious of those who HAD lots of sex, but it wasn't 
something that then made me feel that there was either something wrong 
with THEM, OR something wrong with ME.

	Given your description, I guess you're probably at least as old as I 
am, so "That Period" would be well before "now". My impression is that 
the issue is less of an issue today.

> 
>>> This isn't much like Stephen Russ's story.  Mine included college;
>>> his ?didn't.
> 
> This now seems pretty clear.  It's also reasonably clear that Holly
> Owen's could include college, unless she's too busy as Holy Aura.

	Yes, there's no reason she couldn't eventually go to college. Assuming 
she ages. That would kinda suck, if it turns out the magic locks you 
into being a teenage girl for all time. That would make it a challenge 
to try to go forward with your life.

> 
>>> His may have included the military; mine certainly
>>> didn't.
> 
> As previously noted, his *did*.  So let's go into that.
> 
> The book appears, in chapter 7, to begin in June of a year fourteen
> years after 2001, so either 2015 or perhaps 2016.  It explicitly ends
> soon after March 15, 2017, much of a single school year having passed
> in between; that obviously argues for 2016 as the start.
> 
> Holly had been Steve for thirty-five years, so he was born in 1980 or
> 1981.  Assuming he enlisted right out of school, that'd be 1998 or
> 1999.  If you're correct that his tour of duty would be four years,
> that gets us past September 11.  Did the Air Force do stop-loss at
> that time?
> 

	Interesting point. Don't know. Too late to change it if so. The real 
Steve, of course, had this as his background but that was a couple 
decades earlier.

>>> I sought all sorts of social hobbies; he focused on one.
> 
> Two - he also acted in amateur theatre.

	Though that was when he was younger. He didn't have time or energy for 
much other stuff as he was always on the edge of poverty.


> 
>>> But I think I'd need a lot of evidence to refute this before I'd stop
>>> believing it:  that unmarried men in their 30s who live near
>>> minimum wage, all other things equal, have worse social lives than
>>> well-off teenaged girls.  In general, across the board.  My life, the
>>> lives I've observed, my reading, all say so.  Hell, my life says even
>>> a poor teenaged boy has a richer social life than a poor thirtyish
>>> unmarried man.
>>>
>>> In other words, I think the comparison the character makes is rigged.
> 
> It turns out it's rigged both ways.
> 
> Steve Russ is not the complete non-entity the first page suggests,
> after all.  He probably has Air Force buddies, though as usual these
> are scattered around the land.  He knows people from work and the
> theatre, though you tell us none have become friends.  He has
> relatives with whom he's spent enough time that he could help their
> "kids deal with their issues".  Hell, what if the Ochoas knock on his
> door to invite him to dinner?
> 
> Are none of those people going to try to contact him?  Ever?
> 
> Does he just disappear from the point of view of his high school
> reunion committee?  Of the VA?  (He's had enough injuries that he
> probably knows people at the VA Hospital by name.)
> 
> If the book had ended the way its characters expected, he could have
> been among those who died in the battle, and maybe there'd even be a
> body; or it could've ended according to plan, and Holly vanishing
> instead.
> 
> But as things are, you've created a can of worms for yourself, which
> you seem to think doesn't exist.

	Oh. That's something that exists, but I don't have to WORRY about it. 
Until I write the next book.

	That's obviously a major issue for Steve/Holly to decide how to deal 
with. But I don't have to deal with it in THAT book, only in any sequels.

	Until the very end, of course, it WAS NOT AN ISSUE... because once the 
mission was over, everything was going to re-set. Steve would be back in 
his apartment but things would start going right for him, he'd go on 
with his better life, and so on.

	NOW Steve's permanently (??) gone (physically) and Holly has not yet 
(since it was only a week or so by the end of the book) started to 
really grasp the MASSIVE set of problems that their assumption of "don't 
worry, it's going to reset" is handing them.

	Another obvious problem: Their identities aren't going to hold up 
forever. They assumed they only had to evade investigators for a year or 
less. Now they're stuck, and the OSC is ALREADY THERE. If they haven't 
found out their IDs, they almost certainly will soon.


> 
>>> So the book's advice to people like the earlier me boils down to "be
>>> a rich girl instead".  This is why I'd rather the protagonist had
>>> decided on pretty much *any* other grounds.
> 
>>       There's no advice in the book at all.
> 
> We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

	I guess. To me advice is if I say to you "you should do this" in a 
realistic context. So if I write a self-help book, I'm giving you 
advice. If I write a story set in a world clearly with little relation 
to this one, not so much, because the conditions in that world just 
don't apply to this one. The only advice PHA offers is "try to do the 
right thing".


-- 
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
                        ;;;	
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog: 
http://seawasp.dreamwidth.org

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#500323

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in 
news:ppr6fp$7fd$1@dont-email.me:

> On 10/12/18 5:42 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>> news:ppm2oo$mdd$1@dont-email.me a post to which I've already replied
>> once, which he's answered in turn.  I try to integrate answers to
>> both his posts in this reply.

>>> On 10/10/18 3:19 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>>>> news:ppi81l$e2u$1@dont-email.me:

>>>>> (Spoilers below, naturally)

>> Now in abundance.  Really, don't read on if you haven't read the book.

Also massive snippage again.

>>>>> On 10/5/18 7:57 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>>>>>        Another major factor is that while Steve had gaming friends, he had
>>>>> very few PEERS. He was essentially alone in his life, his parents gone,
>>>>> all his friends from childhood dead or dispersed, and his gaming group
>>>>> the only outside contact he had. He was a nice guy, and he knew as
>>>>> nodding acquaintances a lot of people around him, but he was in an
>>>>> isolated, dead-end existence. The promise of "well, the magic will make
>>>>> your life better if this ends well" is nice, but that's a vague future
>>>>> promise even if you believe it.
>>>>>
>>>>>        Her existence as Holly, OTOH, was very real, immediate, and more
>>>>> diverse and colorful than his existence as Steve.

>>>>>> But I
>>>>>> think the book *does* have a genuine flaw, at the end, when the
>>>>>> darkness proper to the protagonist's decisions is undermined by their
>>>>>> lack of clear motivation. [2]

>>>> In the post you're quoting, I waffled by putting it in plural:
>>>> "decisions".  Later I said the evidence that I was talking about a
>>>> "decision" at all was weak, but my interlocutor said it was a
>>>> reasonable word choice.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, what I mean is Holly's expressed preference for staying a
>>>> girl after the apocalypse is averted, followed by her action that
>>>> (almost certainly unintentionally) makes that preference
>>>> unavoidable, followed, of course, by the magical loose end that
>>>> enables the preference to happen (once again, in this book, neatly
>>>> subordinating the magical to the personal).  Her strong hostility
>>>> toward her (original) male form *is* dark, and should have dark
>>>> underpinnings; it doesn't.

>>>       I don't see it as dark but more conflicting. Holly's found a really
>>> pretty wonderful life that she did not expect, especially with the
>>> initial strain of becoming Holy Aura and abandoning Steve for very
>>> practical reasons. After all the time -- very, VERY intense time with
>>> strong emotional components -- with her new friends,

>> This is, to a certain extent, careless phrasing on your part.  Much
>> of the hostility I point to is already there after a relatively short
>> time being friends with Seika Cooper.
>> 
>> Chapter 22 again:  "The voice he used to accept sounded completely
>> wrong in his ears.  The way his body felt--slow, heavy, ponderous--
>> was actually repellent."
>> 
>> This is *before* the other three (though not before the new game) and
>> *before* Dex even joins the game, let alone becomes her boyfriend.

>      Ahh, but *AFTER* she has spent MONTHS in the body of Holly Owen. The 
> body dysphoria is separate from his/her emotional connection to the 
> friends he/she meets.

Yes, but for once I didn't write carelessly.  The body dysphoria is 
*exactly* what I called dark.  I'm not saying "Love wins" is a dark 
theme, I'm saying "Trash your own past" is a dark theme.

I've thrown away the long list of quotes I typed out, but there's a 
point later in the book where you have Holly think of it as an 
"alien aversion".  You also call it "self-hatred" a few times.

>>> she's developed
>>> extremely strong bonds with them-- stronger and more emotionally
>>> powerful than likely any bonds he's ever had with anyone outside his
>>> parents.

>>>       It's only DARK if you think that it's BAD that a person can change
>>> their goals and self-image.

>> Well, um, how to put this?
>> 
>> Stephen Russ dies.

>> The book is the story of two lives competing, because only one can be
>> real, and that isn't even affected by the magical out at the end.
>> It's got tons of sugarcoating, but that is a fundamentally dark theme.

>      In the end, Steve and Holly ARE NOT COMPETING. They are 100% in tune 
> with what needs to be done and they're both just fine with it. Both of 
> them expect to be obliterated -- and "both of them" is a miswriting, 
> because it's really just two ... *personas*, two masks that they use to 
> face the world. The SELF is still there, untouched, just changed by 
> experience to see things differently.

I say "lives", you say "personas".  This is partly because I'm 
looking partly from the outside, I think; to the Ochoas, what's gone 
is Stephen Russ's life.

Anyway, I probably should have said something like 

|| This book tells the story of ...

[High school and its futures, different versions of]
>> Which of us is more like Stephen Russ?
>> 
>> I don't believe his emotional history is as drab as you think it is.

>      Steve's situation was constrained by his resources, his setting, and 
> time. Gaming was his one contact with other people that he knew HOW to 
> find other people. He was kind and personable once you got to know him, 
> but his connection to "people at work" wasn't the same. He was the nice 
> guy in the neighborhood who everyone LIKED, but he wasn't quite in the 
> social circle for various reasons that would be something of an essay 
> itself since the reasons will be different for different groups

This isn't an exact description of me, but it's more than close 
enough for government work.  So I'm saying I don't believe that guy 
was so isolated in high school, in particular, or in the Air Force, 
that a close friendship is an utter novelty to him.

>>  From my point of view [...] Stephen
>> Russ can only be convincing if he shares this talent for alienating
>> people.  But he loses it as soon as he becomes Holly Owen, and in any
>> event he's much more effectively concerned about other people than
>> I've ever been, so I don't think he ever had it.  So the more I think
>> about it, the less convincing he becomes.

[A morass.  I can't read your previous paragraph as *not* insulting, 
but OK, let's try to go on.]
> I said, in effect, "I 
> never saw that there was a problem with being a virgin", not "if you 
> aren't a virgin you must suck". I never absorbed the idea that I OUGHT 
> to have sex. Did I WANT to have sex, sure, thought about it a lot. But 
> it wasn't, as you seemed to be saying, a Bad Thing that I was a virgin. 
> I was somewhat envious of those who HAD lots of sex, but it wasn't 
> something that then made me feel that there was either something wrong 
> with THEM, OR something wrong with ME.

The first girl I understood myself as loving - unrequitedly - went on 
to an abusive relationship.  The profoundly unflattering comparison 
thus invited *certainly* left me worrying what was wrong with me, and 
that may have spilled over into my ideas about sex.

But also, saving oneself for marriage wasn't something I can remember 
anyone really talking about in my youth, which was largely spent 
among the upper middle class, the emerging technocratic elite I 
suppose, in an academic family, a high school for "the college bound", 
and then the University of Chicago.

I haven't always been poor.  If I'd had the kind of morality you seem 
to infer, I'd have hired a prostitute decades ago.  But I don't have 
your morality either.

>      Given your description, I guess you're probably at least as old as I 
> am, so "That Period" would be well before "now". My impression is that 
> the issue is less of an issue today.

Nope.  My post earlier today identified my birth year as 1967; many 
web pages identify yours as earlier.  

Still no idea which period you're referring to, but I guess I know 
which moral ideas then current you meant.

I imagine there are still kids who intend to save themselves for 
marriage, just as there still seem to be kids doing hookups.  I doubt 
any of this changes all that fast without external influences.

>>>> This isn't much like Stephen Russ's story.  Mine included college;
>>>> his ?didn't.
>> 
>> This now seems pretty clear.  It's also reasonably clear that Holly
>> Owen's could include college, unless she's too busy as Holy Aura.
> 
>      Yes, there's no reason she couldn't eventually go to college. Assuming 
> she ages. That would kinda suck, if it turns out the magic locks you 
> into being a teenage girl for all time. That would make it a challenge 
> to try to go forward with your life.

One thing I'm wondering about is whether the magic actually cares 
about maidenhood.  More generally, as they get older, do they weaken 
because the dissonance between their real life and power is less?  Do 
they have to find a way to recruit new magical girls as they graduate?  
(Which is sooner for Devika Weatherill and Cordelia Ingemar than for 
the other three.)

>> But as things are, you've created a can of worms for yourself, which
>> you seem to think doesn't exist.

>      Oh. That's something that exists, but I don't have to WORRY about it. 
> Until I write the next book.

Fair enough.

Joe Bernstein

-- 
Joe Bernstein                                    <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

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#500325

On 10/12/18 7:48 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
> news:ppr6fp$7fd$1@dont-email.me:
> 
>> On 10/12/18 5:42 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> 
>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>>> news:ppm2oo$mdd$1@dont-email.me a post to which I've already replied
>>> once, which he's answered in turn.  I try to integrate answers to
>>> both his posts in this reply.
> 
>>>> On 10/10/18 3:19 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> 
>>>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
>>>>> news:ppi81l$e2u$1@dont-email.me:
> 
>>>>>> (Spoilers below, naturally)
> 
>>> Now in abundance.  Really, don't read on if you haven't read the book.
> 
> Also massive snippage again.
> 
>>>>>> On 10/5/18 7:57 PM, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> 
>>>>>>         Another major factor is that while Steve had gaming friends, he had
>>>>>> very few PEERS. He was essentially alone in his life, his parents gone,
>>>>>> all his friends from childhood dead or dispersed, and his gaming group
>>>>>> the only outside contact he had. He was a nice guy, and he knew as
>>>>>> nodding acquaintances a lot of people around him, but he was in an
>>>>>> isolated, dead-end existence. The promise of "well, the magic will make
>>>>>> your life better if this ends well" is nice, but that's a vague future
>>>>>> promise even if you believe it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>         Her existence as Holly, OTOH, was very real, immediate, and more
>>>>>> diverse and colorful than his existence as Steve.
> 
>>>>>>> But I
>>>>>>> think the book *does* have a genuine flaw, at the end, when the
>>>>>>> darkness proper to the protagonist's decisions is undermined by their
>>>>>>> lack of clear motivation. [2]
> 
>>>>> In the post you're quoting, I waffled by putting it in plural:
>>>>> "decisions".  Later I said the evidence that I was talking about a
>>>>> "decision" at all was weak, but my interlocutor said it was a
>>>>> reasonable word choice.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, what I mean is Holly's expressed preference for staying a
>>>>> girl after the apocalypse is averted, followed by her action that
>>>>> (almost certainly unintentionally) makes that preference
>>>>> unavoidable, followed, of course, by the magical loose end that
>>>>> enables the preference to happen (once again, in this book, neatly
>>>>> subordinating the magical to the personal).  Her strong hostility
>>>>> toward her (original) male form *is* dark, and should have dark
>>>>> underpinnings; it doesn't.
> 
>>>>        I don't see it as dark but more conflicting. Holly's found a really
>>>> pretty wonderful life that she did not expect, especially with the
>>>> initial strain of becoming Holy Aura and abandoning Steve for very
>>>> practical reasons. After all the time -- very, VERY intense time with
>>>> strong emotional components -- with her new friends,
> 
>>> This is, to a certain extent, careless phrasing on your part.  Much
>>> of the hostility I point to is already there after a relatively short
>>> time being friends with Seika Cooper.
>>>
>>> Chapter 22 again:  "The voice he used to accept sounded completely
>>> wrong in his ears.  The way his body felt--slow, heavy, ponderous--
>>> was actually repellent."
>>>
>>> This is *before* the other three (though not before the new game) and
>>> *before* Dex even joins the game, let alone becomes her boyfriend.
> 
>>       Ahh, but *AFTER* she has spent MONTHS in the body of Holly Owen. The
>> body dysphoria is separate from his/her emotional connection to the
>> friends he/she meets.
> 
> Yes, but for once I didn't write carelessly.  The body dysphoria is
> *exactly* what I called dark.  I'm not saying "Love wins" is a dark
> theme, I'm saying "Trash your own past" is a dark theme.
> 
> I've thrown away the long list of quotes I typed out, but there's a
> point later in the book where you have Holly think of it as an
> "alien aversion".  You also call it "self-hatred" a few times.
> 
>>>> she's developed
>>>> extremely strong bonds with them-- stronger and more emotionally
>>>> powerful than likely any bonds he's ever had with anyone outside his
>>>> parents.
> 
>>>>        It's only DARK if you think that it's BAD that a person can change
>>>> their goals and self-image.
> 
>>> Well, um, how to put this?
>>>
>>> Stephen Russ dies.
> 
>>> The book is the story of two lives competing, because only one can be
>>> real, and that isn't even affected by the magical out at the end.
>>> It's got tons of sugarcoating, but that is a fundamentally dark theme.
> 
>>       In the end, Steve and Holly ARE NOT COMPETING. They are 100% in tune
>> with what needs to be done and they're both just fine with it. Both of
>> them expect to be obliterated -- and "both of them" is a miswriting,
>> because it's really just two ... *personas*, two masks that they use to
>> face the world. The SELF is still there, untouched, just changed by
>> experience to see things differently.
> 
> I say "lives", you say "personas".  This is partly because I'm
> looking partly from the outside, I think; to the Ochoas, what's gone
> is Stephen Russ's life.
> 
> Anyway, I probably should have said something like
> 
> || This book tells the story of ...
> 
> [High school and its futures, different versions of]
>>> Which of us is more like Stephen Russ?
>>>
>>> I don't believe his emotional history is as drab as you think it is.
> 
>>       Steve's situation was constrained by his resources, his setting, and
>> time. Gaming was his one contact with other people that he knew HOW to
>> find other people. He was kind and personable once you got to know him,
>> but his connection to "people at work" wasn't the same. He was the nice
>> guy in the neighborhood who everyone LIKED, but he wasn't quite in the
>> social circle for various reasons that would be something of an essay
>> itself since the reasons will be different for different groups
> 
> This isn't an exact description of me, but it's more than close
> enough for government work.  So I'm saying I don't believe that guy
> was so isolated in high school, in particular, or in the Air Force,
> that a close friendship is an utter novelty to him.
> 
>>>   From my point of view [...] Stephen
>>> Russ can only be convincing if he shares this talent for alienating
>>> people.  But he loses it as soon as he becomes Holly Owen, and in any
>>> event he's much more effectively concerned about other people than
>>> I've ever been, so I don't think he ever had it.  So the more I think
>>> about it, the less convincing he becomes.
> 
> [A morass.  I can't read your previous paragraph as *not* insulting,
> but OK, let's try to go on.]

	While I can't see it as being insulting.

	Which may be an example of why *I* didn't have any friends when I was 
young. I insulted people not only without knowing it, but I couldn't 
figure out how AFTERWARD, either.


>> I said, in effect, "I
>> never saw that there was a problem with being a virgin", not "if you
>> aren't a virgin you must suck". I never absorbed the idea that I OUGHT
>> to have sex. Did I WANT to have sex, sure, thought about it a lot. But
>> it wasn't, as you seemed to be saying, a Bad Thing that I was a virgin.
>> I was somewhat envious of those who HAD lots of sex, but it wasn't
>> something that then made me feel that there was either something wrong
>> with THEM, OR something wrong with ME.
> 
> The first girl I understood myself as loving - unrequitedly - went on
> to an abusive relationship.  The profoundly unflattering comparison
> thus invited *certainly* left me worrying what was wrong with me, and
> that may have spilled over into my ideas about sex.
> 
> But also, saving oneself for marriage wasn't something I can remember
> anyone really talking about in my youth, which was largely spent
> among the upper middle class, the emerging technocratic elite I
> suppose, in an academic family, a high school for "the college bound",
> and then the University of Chicago.
> 
> I haven't always been poor.  If I'd had the kind of morality you seem
> to infer, I'd have hired a prostitute decades ago.  But I don't have
> your morality either.


	I don't see it as "morality". You're imputing something to it that I 
don't. I associated sex as something for marriage, because that's what 
my parents said it was. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, 
really, just the way they saw things. Not that the way they did things 
was the only way to do so (they had friends who clearly didn't follow 
that path).

	(Understand, for me "right and wrong" were entirely about "did you hurt 
people". There was no religious context, and because of the way I didn't 
fit in society, no real societal one except in really broad terms)

> 
>>       Given your description, I guess you're probably at least as old as I
>> am, so "That Period" would be well before "now". My impression is that
>> the issue is less of an issue today.
> 
> Nope.  My post earlier today identified my birth year as 1967; many
> web pages identify yours as earlier.

	Okay, you are a bit younger than me. But still, we both grew up within 
5 years of each other.

> 
> Still no idea which period you're referring to, but I guess I know
> which moral ideas then current you meant.
> 
> I imagine there are still kids who intend to save themselves for
> marriage, just as there still seem to be kids doing hookups.  I doubt
> any of this changes all that fast without external influences.
> 
>>>>> This isn't much like Stephen Russ's story.  Mine included college;
>>>>> his ?didn't.
>>>
>>> This now seems pretty clear.  It's also reasonably clear that Holly
>>> Owen's could include college, unless she's too busy as Holy Aura.
>>
>>       Yes, there's no reason she couldn't eventually go to college. Assuming
>> she ages. That would kinda suck, if it turns out the magic locks you
>> into being a teenage girl for all time. That would make it a challenge
>> to try to go forward with your life.
> 
> One thing I'm wondering about is whether the magic actually cares
> about maidenhood.  More generally, as they get older, do they weaken
> because the dissonance between their real life and power is less?  Do
> they have to find a way to recruit new magical girls as they graduate?
> (Which is sooner for Devika Weatherill and Cordelia Ingemar than for
> the other three.)

	That's obviously something to explore in the other books. The ORIGINAL 
spell certainly does; that's why, as Silvertail describes, all of them 
ARE teenage girls.

	Do they have to remain that way with the Cycle broken? A very 
interesting question. Which opens the way to several possible answers, 
ranging from "yes, and thus the spell KEEPS them that way", which sucks 
in one way, to "Yes, and that means that their powers will weaken as 
time goes on" to "No, but things will change as they get older".


> 
>>> But as things are, you've created a can of worms for yourself, which
>>> you seem to think doesn't exist.
> 
>>       Oh. That's something that exists, but I don't have to WORRY about it.
>> Until I write the next book.
> 
> Fair enough.


	Said book partly set up by "On-Site for the Apocalypse"; Dana Kisaragi 
will be a major player in the second volume.

	Though I will probably not get to that one until I do another 
Arenaverse novel.


-- 
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
                        ;;;	
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog: 
http://seawasp.dreamwidth.org

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#500332

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in 
news:pprcjm$6j7$1@dont-email.me:

>      I don't see it as "morality". You're imputing something to it that I 
> don't. I associated sex as something for marriage, because that's what 
> my parents said it was. It had nothing to do with right or wrong, 
> really, just the way they saw things. Not that the way they did things 
> was the only way to do so (they had friends who clearly didn't follow 
> that path).

OK.  You actually wrote "cultural norms".  But considering that this 
came just before talk about virginity until marriage, I don't think 
it was much of a misreading to interpret that as "morality".

Anyway, I think we're just about done.

-- JLB

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