Luke Green's Blog - Posts Tagged "ranting"

Well, it looks like I'm going to be heading to Japan in the near future. I've applied for a job through Interac which provides Assistant Language Teachers to the Japanese public schools among other things. The job pays around 230,000 yen (close to $3k) a month out of which I'll have to pay rent, utilities, insurance and a couple of other things. I might be required to get a car (for which I'll be reimbursed).

What I'll basically be doing is traveling to different schools in an assigned schedule. One day at one school with one set of classes and another day at another school. I'm legally required not to work more than 29.5 hours in a week, but that's just scheduled time. Anybody who has taught knows that teaching as a lot of off the clock work associated with it.

I'll be leaving either in the middle of March or the middle of summer and I might be out of internet contact for a month or so afterwards while my apartment is getting set up. But all the dates I've seen so far indicate I'm leaving in March on either the 18th or the 26th.

I've been looking at getting a job in Japan for a long time and I've finally succeeded. Hopefully while there I'll be able to open up some opportunities with the Japanese film festivals similar to what I do for the Korean film festivals: watching their English-speaking movies and typing up an annotated script for the translators to make use of. And finally get to experience a little bit of the Japanese culture.

I was in Korea for 3 years at a Hakwon and I hope to have about as much time in Japan, possibly more.

It is a very exciting and nerve-racking event. Not the least because I'm going to have to pay for my own airline ticket to Japan as well as the set-up costs for my new apartment. This combined with the fact that I won't get paid until the end of the second month. Which is why they ask you to be bring around 500k yen (about $6.5k) with you.

If I had gotten this job last year, this wouldn't have been much of a problem, I'd have used my Texas Public Schools retirement to fund the trip. If this was happening in mid-summer, I'd have tax season (tax preparation), test season (Pearson testing projects) and the start of the Korean film festival seasons (transcription) that could be used to gather the necessary money.

Since it's looking like they'll be sending me in March regardless of when the job starts due to paperwork issues (my Certificate of Eligibility and my Visa both have to be good when I enter the country and the CoE, which I think they're applying for now, is only good for three months), I'm worried that I'm going to be in a bit of a bind.

I've got roughly $3.2k in expenses coming in the next 3 months, if I really reduce myself to bare essentials like food, rent, gas and various bills. And maybe $4k in income...assuming substitute teaching and tax prep run well. I hope to see some of my November/December transcription pay out as well, but it's hard to tell when that stuff will finally reach my accounts. I also plan to sell my car, and that might be another $2k to $3k, but the 3 month time limit is really short, especially with the really weird way substitute teaching pays its employees. (I'm told that the way my substitute pay schedule works would be illegal if it wasn't run by the Texas government).

As such, I'd really like to ask for everybody's help here.

And I don't mean by giving me donations. I mean by spreading the word about my books.

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The electronic copies of all three are currently $1 and will be through January.

And this is the point I sound like one of those charity commercials and say "this doesn't sound like much, but..."

Okay, ready for it?

Not going to say it. Except I already did. Moving on.

I'm not going to give the stats on how many watchers, friends and followers I have on various social media.

I'm also well aware that some of you have already purchased my books and a lot of you have helped me out with spreading the word on my books and that's basically what I'm asking now.

Please, again, pass the word along.

I'm fairly certain most of you like the same sort of things I do and most of you have your own large list of friends, watchers and followers each of whom have their own lists. There's no way that I can expect everybody to purchase a book or even to pass the word along. And I know that I ask for help in this way fairly regularly and some of you are probably tired of it, but I still need to ask.

I am tired of being embarrassed about self-promoting my own books. I know my books are good. Bystander and Divine Blood aren't what I'd call thought turning classics or great works of introspective art for art's sake. But they're fun and they're entertaining and at some point they'd both make really good TV shows, animations or movies. Greenwater and Zodiacs are the same. Some think Bystander's my best, some think Greenwater's the best and I already have one person asking me advice on writing a Divine Blood fanfic set in the US that seems to involve Sumerian Demons.

They're fun for fun's sake, one-liners, over-the-top fight scenes and a few hints of a deeper world for when I progress the series. I have no shame in saying they're the kind of stories that I like to read, so yeah, lots of author appeal in the form of lady badasses, cute non-human girls, ridiculous coincidences and non-traditional relationships. They're aimed at a light-hearted easy read looking for adventure and a few laughs.

Also, no, I'm not depending on this. Even if I sell close to the 125 books I sold this December, that still be just a drop in the bucket and most of my books sales go back into advertising. However, if I'm lucky, if I'm really lucky, word of mouth might cause an explosion and I might sell tons upon tons of books. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how good my books are if no one knows about them, but I suppose I have more chance of that than...say...winning the lottery.

So here we go.

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Stuff that costs you nothing save a little time.

Post links to my books on facebook, twitter, deviantart and here.
Favorite the public chapters and art for my books here.
Tell friends about the really cool independent author you've heard of/read. Luke Green.

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Stuff that does cost money.

Buy my books. They're a $1 right now. I'm going to be honest and say right now that DrivethruRPG currently pays me better than Amazon so I really prefer people to go to DrivethruRPG (which also has better publisher tools than Amazon). At Amazon I get 35% royalties and at DrivethruRPG I get 65% royalties.

If you want print copies, lulu is still selling them, though you might want to wait until the drivethru print run starts, it'll be both cheaper for you and more profitable for me.

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If you've already bought my books and, more importantly, read them, please leave reviews.

Amazon
your journal
leave critiques on the public chapters at http://thrythlind.deviantart.com
Goodreads
Facebook
whatever sci-fi/fantasy forums you can think of

Trope up my stories on tvtropes.org

Divine Blood: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php... (not started yet)
Bystander: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...
Greenwater: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...
Zodiacs: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php...

Do anything else you can to tell people what you think and show people that my stories are good.

Luke Green

Morality is a funny thing, everybody seems to base it around different things. Everybody seems to have a very different idea of what is right. There is a current trend in fiction towards grey vs grey morality. The basic feeling is that if you look at matters from all the different points of view possible that it is difficult or even impossible to ever call any particular action morally right or wrong. The tendency is to point out that there are no absolutes, that no one group is any more evil or good than another and thus that the whole question of morality is moot and pointless.

Because according to the shades-of-grey idea, there are no absolutes.

To my mind, this is wrong.

The point of grey vs grey morality is that every side in a conflict has good and evil points. This is true, but it doesn't render morality moot, instead it does just the opposite. It establishes that the absolutes of morality apply across all lines.

For example, there is a particular show which I can't use well as an example without spoiling it horrendously and thus will be discussed without naming the show. The story is basically a masterful rehash of the Salem's Lot storyline. Vampires come into a small, isolated town and proceed to take it over slowly, person by person. Eventually, the humans learn what is up and start hunting the vampires.

The vampires' motive is to simply have a place where they can live without being constantly on the run. A place where they can feel safe. The humans' motive is to survive.

Neither side has a bad motive.

Unfortunately, there is no ability to co-exist between the two groups. The vampires must feed, and feeding eventually results in death followed by possible conversion. Though the specifics are not mentioned it is implied that the vampires can't simply feed around on a whole lot of different people in order to avoid killing any one person. The suggestion is that they've tried to do that in the past and it hasn't worked.

The eventual vampire plan is to either kill or turn everyone in the village (there seems to be some genetic switch that determines which humans turn and which just die), so that there is nothing left but vampires. In order to keep feeding those vampires, they'd send groups out to the nearest big city to kidnap humans for feeding. If they don't feed, they die.

Cohabitation is impossible and this would seem to give humanity every right to defend itself.

But the manner in which it is done is exceedingly brutal in places. One character's wife died, I forget whether he let her die or not, and he kept it secret from other people, pretending she was in critical condition. This let him privately document her case as she started to become a vampire. And then she woke up. Within the basis of the setting, vampires wake up without realizing what they are. The wife woke up to her husband, probably had a few moments of happiness and thinking she'd gotten better, and then had her mouth duct-taped closed while her husband proceeded to carryout experiments on her, recording the scenario and commenting coldly.

She spent the next few hours having limbs broken or removed until they heal, hydrochloric acid injected in her system, various poisons, electric shock, exposed to the sun and fire. All the time she was screaming and crying piteously. On the one hand, we know that she is now a blood-thirsty, undead creature, but, on the other she has no idea what she is and only really knows that she is being tortured by a man she was formerly married to fairly happily.

Likewise, there are some humans during the purge that follows that elect to pull some of the vampires out into the sun and let them burn to death slowly rather than decapitate or stake their hearts. Basically electing to consign the vampires to a slow, painful death rather than ending it mercifully and quickly. Others would do things like chopping limbs off first, running over vampires with tractors and deciding whether or not they're still alive.

The necessity of killing the vampires is clear, they kill faster than humans can reproduce and the only thing that keeps them in balance is low numbers and the fact that they have numerous weaknesses. When aware of the vampires' presence, humanity can kill them fairly easily. However, the manner of execution was very cruel. Unnecessarily so. They didn't go about killing the vampires out of necessity and regret. They were seeking vengeance and acting out of hatred.

On the other hand, there were vampires that quite clearly cared for and loved the others around them and who just wanted to live. There were even vampires that refused to hurt anyone else and opted instead to slowly starve death, or perhaps even be killed by the other vampires.

This show and scenario is shown as an example of grey vs grey morality and therefor an example of how the world can't simply be painted in a black or white brush.

The thing is, the morality of the piece is not grey.

Morality is never shades of grey.

There is always a right and a wrong thing to do. And the choice is in the hands of the individuals making them.

Grey vs grey morality stories are different because the characters themselves aren't always consistently choosing what is right.

Stargate SG-1 is another series that is supposedly leans toward grey morality, but again, the morality is not grey, only that there are existing motivations besides pure morality.

People want morality to be grey.

A grey light does not burn.

If morality is grey, that means that they cannot be legitimately called immoral for one reason or another.

The idea of grey vs grey morality is basically a way to absolve a person of behaving in a morale manner. If people believe that morality doesn't really have any solid bearing on things, then it is easier to make a choice against that morality. It is a way to remove morality from the list of values and thus give themselves an easier time with whatever decisions that they had made.

But again. Morality is not grey.

Killing another person, even in necessity, is wrong.

When you kill someone, you remove all the possibilities that lie before them. There is no telling what could or could not have happened because you took that person out of the equation of existence. Even assuming an immortal soul, as I do, you've prevented that soul from acquiring experiences it otherwise would have. Even if reincarnation is possible and the soul comes back, the experiences it would have in the next life can never be exactly the same as the experiences they'd have had if they hadn't been killed. Those unique experiences have been stolen...destroyed. Unique, priceless experiences that would have led towards countless other priceless, unique experiences.

It is an ultimate form of theft, the theft of existence.

Morality is not grey.

There is right.

There is wrong.

And if it looks like you're having trouble which is which. It is only because you're having trouble justifying to yourself making a decision that you know to be immoral.

This is where the grey vs grey comes in: the values, the motivations and the choices.

Not the morality, but the fact that good people aren't always moral.

You can sin and still be a good person. That's the reason why there is forgiveness and redemption.

Morality is hard.

Very hard.

There's a reason why one of the most famous quotes from the New Testament is "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

The next thing people try to use to absolve themselves of the responsibility of being moral is the concept that they did not have a choice but to do something.

There is always a choice.

The results of those choice aren't always results we want and because we've decided that a particular result is something we can't have happen that we have no choice but have to perform an action that would be considered immoral.

I had no choice but to steal the that money, because I was going to starve otherwise.

No, you have a choice.

The choice might mean you die, but that is still a choice. Note that stealing the money could mean that someone else dies other than you, but that possibility is far off from the hungry thief's thoughts and stomach.

We only say "I have no choice" when we mean "I think the other choices I have are worse than the one I'm making."

But if we admit to ourselves that we are making the choice based on getting as much of what we want as possible, then we admit to making a deliberately immoral choice, even just a small one.

Then comes the next big thing with absolving ourselves of morality and trying to ignore the absolute nature of right and wrong.

"It's not my fault, because..."

This is especially prevalent in the last few decades.

"It's not my fault I ran them off the road, I was suffering from road-rage."

"It's not my fault, I'm an alcoholic."

"It's not my fault because of racism."

"it's not my fault because I'm poor."

"It's not my fault because my parents are bad."

"It's not my fault..."

"it's not my fault..."

"it's not my fault..."

All of it more shallow attempts to absolve ourselves.

Nothing can really take away our choice. Free will isn't that easy to get rid of. Even when we're manipulated into making a choice.

We. Made. The. Choice.

Not the manipulator.

Us.

Our anger doesn't make our choice. We do.

Beer doesn't make the choice. We do.

It might be hard to make the choice, especially in the face of mental, physical and social problems. But we can make the choice.

Choice is always there, only we ourselves are not always strong enough to make that choice.

Everybody has quirks, personality issues, problems and other things, severe or otherwise, but some people overcome them, and others say "it's not my fault."

Another baggage that morality has received is confusing moral issues with issues of societal prejudices or taboos.

Morality, down to its base, is about respecting other people and doing what you can to avoid hurting them. A number of behaviors that are considered immoral aren't actually on that axis at all.

Premarital sex, promiscuity, homosexuality, drugs, gambling, "kinky sex", acting, various religions and practices.

(Note: the sex practices listed do not include adultery...adultery is a sin...you are breaking a promise that you made to someone and, in doing so, harming the intimacy between you and them and harming them as well....hence it is no longer just a thing to do)

All have been pegged as "immoral" at one time or another, or still are. Drugs, gambling and promiscuity are, at worst, unwise. The rest are generally neutral.

These activities can lead to immoral activity, but some of that is because of the societal pressures applied and any belief and activity can lead toward immoral behaviors. Because that choice is always there waiting for us.

It's just another way of absolving ourselves of the choice again. Or in this case absolving someone else.

The person isn't at fault, they're sluts or drunks or druggies or belong to some cult or whatever other slur or insult we can think of to apply to someone.

If we can just get rid of all these bad movies, we won't have people committing crimes. Or get rid of the gays, or this race or that, or that religion, or football, or video games, or dancing. Once again...it's an attempt to take away the responsibility from the person and pretend that the choice and the fault is not in us.

Such thinking tends to lead to the people thinking that way towards making immoral choices. Not only immoral, but immoral and useless choices. For example, the idea that getting rid of video games will solve a lot of our problems. It's useless because the fault isn't in the games, it's in the ability to make a choice that is wrong. So getting rid of the game is useless, the choice to be or not to be immoral has existed since we were given Free Will.

So there it is.

I'm an old-fashioned moralist. Despite the fact that my books include heroes that are of the type that a lot of old-fashioned moralists would say are immoral just on the face of what they are.

Morality is an absolute.

Only how we value it varies.

So there's a rather humorous youtube video up showcasing the similarities between the Streetfighter franchise and the characters in Naruto. It's called There can be only one. Of course, the fact that streetfighter characters are basically raw martial artist archetypes means that it has characters with a lot of similarity to a large number of other franchises, but that it is still amusing to point out where characters are very, very similar to existing properties.

Note, I won't even try to hide the heavy influence that Oh My Goddess! and Full Metal Panic! had on Divine Blood.

On thinking about it, however, I noticed one of their similarities they pointed out.

"Inexplicably blond Japanese guys who never shut up."

This is referencing Naruto and Ken.

The main problem with this is not on the Streetfighter side, while Ken Masters is definitively NOT Japanese, he at least lives in a setting where there is a Japan and, thus, Japanese people. No, the main problem here is with labeling Naruto as an "inexplicably blond Japanese guy."

Naruto's storyline is not set on Earth.

There is no Japan.

There are no Japanese people.

Yes, the names are Japanese, but that's rather like saying that Luke Skywalker is an American. Naruto is Asian flavored primarily because it is written by a Japanese man for Japanese audiences, but it is not Asia.

A brief look at the phenotypes in the Leaf village shows a range of hair colors from black to blond. They basically have the European range of hair colors. Sandy brown, dirty blonde, pure black, bright blonde and dark brown are all common hair colors in the leaf village with a couple of naturally white-haired individuals as well. The two standout hair colors are Hinata and Sakura with purple/lavender and pink hair respectively. In fact, as a hair color, blond shows up in at least two other major nations, the Wind/Sand and Cloud/Lightning. Red hair is a bit more rare, being only in a handful of places outside the Sand.

It can be reasonably assumed that blond is not a very unsual hair color as a result. Darker colors like black and brown are more common, however. Rather like the real world, actually.

Likewise hair colors range from black and dark brown to blue and green. The Hyuga and a handful of other people with "special" eyes have unusual eye colors, but, again, the range of eye colors is fairly respective of the real world Europe.

It is hard to tell if the facial and body types lean toward Asian styles or if that is simply an assumption we make based on the fact that the art style is manga. I'd at least say that Sarutobi's family would have features that compare to Asian features in the real world, but for all I know they may more resemble caucasians in feature. I actually strongly suspect that the Yamanaka family would most fit in with caucasians in the real world.

But the description of the Naruto world-setting's ethnicities is not the main point of this rant.

Please...stop referring to people in fictional world settings as Europeans, Africans, Asians or whatnot. In a world where there is no Europe....there are no Europeans. Likewise all the other ethnicities that we are familiar with. Yes, they can compare to our world's ethnicities, but again, that's because the fictional settings are being written by people from this world.

The most egregious offender of this are the fans of the Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon series. When the movie came out there was a big stink about how they were casting white people for "Asian" characters. The fans had access to some very good evidence of prejudiced hiring policies, but the majority of them ignored the real, practical evidence and instead ranted and raved about how the characters were "Asian" and thus should be portrayed by Asian actors.

Let me just repeat that this is a fictional world setting and therefore there is no such place as Asia in that world.

I've received a little bit about this with Greenwater as well. Someone once commented upon seeing art for some of the characters in Greenwater that they were glad to see some "ethnic" fantasy instead of just sticking to the "racist" views portrayed by Tolkien.

On the one hand, I agree that a greater variety of characters and settings is appreciated. One of the reasons that I use characters that aren't white is because of the fact that I'd like more variety. Granted, I'm only really good at writing an American perspective and faking an Asian perspective (as filtered by an American who has lived in Asia for a time and likes reading the Chinese classics). Note my use of the verb "fake".

Still, this kind of boggled my mind. I mean one of the more touching parts of the Lord of the Rings is where Sam is looking at the dead body of one of the dark-skinned Southron men and basically saying that he doesn't think they're any different from the rest of people. And this was written in the 40s before the biggest social equality movies had gotten started. Yes, most of the good guys are of a model that is more considered European, but there is a reason for a lack of ethnic diversity in Lord of the Rings.

There tends to be a lack of ethnic diversity in a setting where most people don't travel past the bounds of their own village.

Actually, with the Dunlendings, Dunadan, Rohirrim, Gondorians, Pukelmen, Dale-men, Bree-landers and so on, there is a wide variety of ethnicities within the Lord of the Rings. The fact that they all tend to be pale-skinned makes sense given the story is set in the extreme North-East of the only continent with much detail and that section of the continent is characterized by extremely biting cold weather with mild summers and lots of clouds. Pale skin would be more likely to develop in such locales than dark skin.

And, again, we come to the fact that the lengthiest description of any Southron men was someone considering that he was probably just the same as any other man.

But ignoring the question of Lord of the Ring's ethnicities for the moment, let's look back at the comment that a person was glad to see "ethnic" fantasy characters for once. While I am fascinated by a large variety of human appearance, I have to wonder:

When the hell did people with pale skin equate to being not-ethnic?

Is being white automatically a bar from having a distinct racial and ethnic identity? What am I, just some sort of blank, undetermined generic product? Am I bland? Am I just some sort of shallow person who can only hope to imitate a true ethnic culture when viewed through other people.

You know what bothers me the most? The people that usually make these comments are usually also white Americans. I know there's an element of ethnocentricity and self-centeredness in the attitude, but it annoys the hell out of me whenever someone basically implies that ethnicity is something for people who aren't white. That our traditions and heritage is somehow just something we do and not really a cultural heritage at all.

That said, back to the topic at hand. Ethnicities in fantasy settings are NOT real world ethnicities and I wish people would stop trying to enforce real world definitions on people that don't fit into the real world.

The closest you can get is a comparison to existing phenotypes in the real world. Reference my discussion of hair colors and eye colors in the Naruto setting and then my brief discussion of the Water Tribe from Avatar. Trying to shoehorn a fictional people into a particular real world ethnicity is a disservice both to the real world people, since a fictional ethnicity will never be as complex as a real world one, and to the creator of that fictional setting.

Another example of this would be the Rokugani from the Legend of Five Rings game setting. While Rokugan is based on the cultures of Japan, China and Korea, they are not those cultures and there are some significant differences in the way things are done even once you ignore the supernatural aspects of the game.

Really.

Again.

If there is no Asia.

There are no Asians.

If there is no Europe.

There are no Europeans.

So please, stop insisting that Katara is an Eskimo when she's really Water Tribe.

Stop calling Naruto Japanese when he is Fire Nation.

They are not people from our world and they would not look exactly like any of our existing ethnicities as a result.