Crawl out through the Fallout

 Sometimes when I need a break I take it playing games. But not really playing them, not in the sense of plowing through the main campaign with all the shooting and required cutscenes. More of the zen-like side stuff; like driving endlessly around the winding roads of Medici in Just Cause 3, or settlement building in Fallout 4.

You can almost skip settlements if you are just trying to complete the main campaign. If you just do the minimum the game points you to, all it does is give you a place to stash your loot. Like any AAA game there are a bunch of side things like crafting and collectibles and side quests, of course, all of which can buff you a bit and make the main quest easier.

There's a couple of hacks in the settlement system. If you stumble on Abernathy Farm (very close to the path the game is pointing you down) it is easy to build it up into a farming menace. It takes boring time collecting crops but it gives you lots of caps to buy ammo and upgrades.

Or there's the hack in Sanctuary. Unlike almost every other settlement, there is a big creek right there and you can fill the thing with industrial water purifiers. Can take a bit of time tracking down all the scrap to build them, but after that, you almost never need stimpacks again; you can just quaff pure mountain water.

Of course there is game balance here. To get all the screws and nuts and plastic scraps to build the things, you have to explore. When you explore, you get jumped by Raiders. Raiders carry stimpacks in their pockets. If you are playing on anything other than Insane difficulty, by the time you build your water purifiers you are swimming in health already.

But anyhow.

The real draw of settlement building is putting together the picaresque shanty-town of your dreams, broken chairs and salvaged plates and a few splashes of paint. And that's fun; working within the restricted build set and all the stuff that is already there. The garage in Sanctuary is beautiful by itself and it is hard not to include it in your new town, and that goes double for the Red Rocket service station.

But that gets a little old and you start going into mods to get access to all the crazy stuff that is already in the game and just not made available to you to build. Me, I rapidly went away from the whole depressing junkyard aesthetic and hunted down mods that let me build clean new-looking stuff. Hey, if the Institute can do it...!

And once you've proven you can actually do it the hard way, the hard way stops being interesting. That's when cheat mods or, better yet, console codes come in to allow you to side-step the whole digging through wheelie bins throughout the greater Boston area for broken coffee cups and just magic up all the ceramic you need.

And that's when the settlements start getting crazy big and ambitious.

I've already hit the next step, though. That's when you realize that all these cool places you are building are for nobody but you, and you start trying to get your settlers to do more than pull weeds and complain. My latest discovery is a couple of packs of magic sandbox markers that trigger animations that are already in the game. So they'll do more than sit on chairs or use the basic crafting stations.

That is a bit of a useless chase, though. This is not The Sims. The AI is really stupid, and there's no way to script at any kind of level. The best you can do is assign a settler to a specific job. So you can give a settler a rifle (I got so tired of raiders I gave them all the tin-toy like Alien Blaster, with a free community mod that turns it into a carbine with scope and all, and my own tiny tiny mod that doubles the damage) and assign that settler to a guard post.

So they'll stand there like they are guarding something. For eight hours without a break. Then all the AI get up at once from their assigned jobs, go wander around whatever chairs or spare crafting stations they can find to sandbox on, then head to whatever random bunk their tiny pea brain sees first. There is no way to have the soldiers mess and bivouac on their own. And no way to keep the shop-keeps from running out to attack the advancing Deathclaw to pound at it with their bare fists.

(Well...you can hack some of this, but the game AI always trumps whatever you and your mods try to do. If you lock a door, they'll teleport through when you aren't looking. Among other things. And they get stuck on everything.)

***

So that's my fix for the weekend. I hope. Back to revising the Sukeban Deka fight, trying to keep Doctor Noh's speechifying about the Imperial Rescript on Education to a minimum, and plowing through the to scene I'm calling the "Embassy Ball." (There's no embassy, and no ballroom dancing.)

I am seriously losing faith in this thing. I want to experiment with new covers to see if I can see how much is that nobody wants to read it, and how much that nobody has even noticed it. But I haven't the heart for all the work coves are going to take. I'd hire someone if there was a way that I could hire them to do it right. But that's the problem; they want to sell you their package. If it is Fiver, they want to be the artist and dictate what you buy. If it is cover art speciality shops, they want you to buy the package that works for their business model. Art is a commodity, sure. But I don't even know enough to know what genre I'm trying to hit and that means I can't just Chinese Menu my cover needs. 

I did put out an enquiry on Fiver about buying a custom stock set. I'll be really surprised if I get any useful results there.

And one of these days I'll feel too out of words to write, but still alert enough to open PhotoShop and see just how bad the repaint I am contemplating would be.

Shooting Ratio

 I got through the first draft of the Sukeban Deka fight. But then of course Kei is Penny's guide to the next scene in the Akihabara, and I hadn't actually done any work on her character.

I had the idea that she speaks a mile a minute, not in the least bit shy, mixing English with an extremely strong accent with Japanese and various bits of intercultural loan-word slang. Which does turn out to be a thing (but rather more complicated), and I did some reading up and found some interesting resources.

And found I could actually sort of do it, although it took a lot of work and once again I can't reflect the way she really sounds as that would be all sorts of cringe-worthy "Engrish" phonetic spelling...

“Sugoi! Those sangurasu are so igirisu-chikku, they look like John Lennon wore them! Sweet Perfect-uppa for my Ashisu-chan!”

And then I bailed on that plan. It was just too much, for one thing. The reader will be lost at sea, and it isn't really the point of the scene or their interaction. And also...I didn't like this for her character. I've only watched a few minutes of Sukeban Deka but if there is anything you can say about Saki Asamiya is that she doesn't smile a hell of a lot. Her standard expression is serious, and although she is a talker, it is more like speeches. Giggling and talking like a maniac is not her.

Not that Kei is Saki, but I think it works better. Besides, her main role is to get Penny to Akiba then bow out, so Doctor Noh can take over the info-dump duties...

***

Between writing the draft and cutting it out to do something better, I answered on Quora about shooting ratios. Deadpool has a current (unofficial) record as having shot 555 hours to make a 110 minute film.

Racing towards...Part IV

 Been a weird couple of weeks. New drugs to try, family tragedy, all that good stuff. Also standing in a scissor lift trying to bolt a subwoofer to the ceiling (sometimes my job is like that.)

But I've been slugging my way through chapters and they are happening, bit by bit. Part III is the Tokyo sequence; the catchphrase is "Robots and Neon" (after a remark Penny made) but it is also Lost in Translation.

So there's the Shinkansen to Tokyo. I revised that several times, including deleting an entire Tokyo Station scene. One of the weird voices is the English announcements are read by the same Australian voice actress who was the voice in the headset on one of the Metal Gear Solid games.

Then check-in to Shinjuku Park Hyatt -- which is not named, although I did name the New York Grill (and bar). I got stuck for a very long time on that scene, and before I'd finished with it, I'd added a telephone conversation with Mei University, where Yuji Yamada is more-or-less the faculty you go to if you want a Degree in Ninja.

There's a bit of the Ginza, a rehearsal studio out towards the Imperial Park (in the neighborhood where Tokyo Takarazuka is), stuff about kitsune and a few acting exercises. Including one that almost forced me to put in a Firefox joke that even the narrator is sure nobody is going to get...

But at least things were starting to move along.

The Robot Restaurant scene (with a bit of background on Kabuki-cho and the Golden Gai) went faster than I'd expected. This also name-drops the final battle of the Genpai War, plus bits of Grass-cutter and Yoshitsune lore. And I was left with things that needed to be advanced and added a new scene back at the New York Grill.

There's a bit more Takarazuka stuff with my takarasienne (who tells Penny she is an otokoyaku but never explained what it meant). Then to the carts, which also proved simpler than I thought, and a brand-new micro-scene to resolve what I was setting up with Scorpion (a ninja from Mortal Combat) and the following scene.

Then to Odaiba, in Tokyo Bay. The sports facility is completely invented; the climbing wall is like nothing I've ever been on, one part a few fancy gyms I found pictures of, one part American Ninja, and one part sheer imagination, all the way up to foam rubber spikes because this is totally a Tomb Raider climbing exercise.

And now I'm back in Shinjuku, once again at the mercy of geography as I'm forcing Penny to wander aimlessly so she can manage to stumble upon the next scene I want her in. There's four scenes to go and then I'll be at the end of part 3 of 4 and on track to finish the book in another month or so.

First is the fight with "Sukeban Deka." The last ninja fight of the story, and not even a ninja, despite the Bruce Lee/The Bride yellow jumpsuit call-back. 

Then the insanity of the Akihabara, when the otoku and the hikikomori come out to play on the late-night streets. I suspect this will be fast, even though I've got a character who is going to talk Penny's ear off about being a young person in modern Japan.

Then the pay-off of her Takarazuka training and the delights of a Little Black Dress as Penny fully engages with the cult figures she was hired to stop, at a fancy black-tie event the evening of the 25th.

One thing I still have to decide is if Aki-on-headset has been replaced with Fake Aki -- or even if I'm going to do that bit after all.

Then we finish off the Tokyo arc with the "scars" scene -- a romantic dinner in a most unexpected form.

Then it will be on to Part IV and all I'll have to do is show off the Ken Adam style cult headquarters (yes, they even have a monorail), some pseudo-archaeological/ancient alien ramblings, one or two "Hello Clarice" scenes with the charismatic cult leader, a bit more on religion in Japan, a day trip to a French Restaurant situated in a garden drawn straight out of a Monet...and then the end-game, with chimpira and snowmobiles and a Black Star pistol, culminating in yuki-onna, yamabushi, an abandoned village, multiple verses of "Yuki no shingun" and Christmas Cake.

And then all I'll have to do is edit, beta read if I have patience, do the blurb, format to Amazon's latest change in what software and formats are acceptable, do the cover, re-do ALL the covers, and do a big advertising push.

With three books I might be just on the edge where it starts to pick up sales. I've been collecting notes for the Paris book and am hoping to hit the ground running on that one...and not take QUITE so long at it!

How do you say...

I've got a cold, that's making me depressed, and that means the recurring lack of confidence. What the heck was I thinking, trying to write, and why does it matter anyhow, in the greater scheme of things?

So while I'm dealing with that, an essay on the difficulties of writing other languages.

***

First off, why do it at all? Well, because culture is interesting. We read to meet new people who do things differently than we do, and language is one of those things. A language is a way of looking at the world; the way concepts of gender or status or even a conception of time are embedded in it.

There are words like weltanschauung that are difficult to translate directly. Other phrases that can be, but lack a certain je ne sais quoi.

And, also, the struggle -- the experience of imperfect understanding, and the joys of discovery -- is a significant part of visiting other places and exploring other cultures.

But it is miserably difficult to present in fiction.

In older books written for an educated audience, it was expected they could grasp basic Latin and Greek and had a working understanding of German and possibly French. This is one of the few places where the power of the other languages could really be shared. The best modern equivalent I can think of, besides works that are by and for an already bilingual audience, is within anime fandom where "weaboo" Japanese can be thrown around with the assumption that many of the words and the cultural connotations will be familiar to the reader.

***

So what doesn't work? Well, spelling dialect has largely gone out. When used, it is used sparingly, just a touch here and there to give the flavor. Readability is one reason. The other is that this has grown uncomfortable connotations. And I think this is as much a problem of the written word. Hearing a voice speaking in an accent is a different experience than seeing words that are spelled incorrectly. It comes across, to put it bluntly, as stupidity.

And, yes, this has been part of dialectical spelling all along. Huck's creative spelling isn't just giving us a taste of his accent, it is reminding us that he is uneducated. LOLspeak (and the related Dogetalk) are not, despite the existence of a functional and fully grammatical computer code based on the former, seen as a different but equal approach to spelling and grammar. They are seen as child-like, well-meaning but ignorant.

And that's before we get to specific use of certain dialects as signifiers -- aka, Black english forms as shorthand for "thug" -- and as the butt of jokes; infamously, the supposed conflation in Japanese speakers of the sounds of "R" and "L."

Another typical approach is to put some words of the other language in, untranslated. Unfortunately, the general reader has to be assumed to know only a few common words. This leads to the ridiculous situation where the French physicist is explaining, "To demonstrate the ridiculousness of this implication of quantum theory we imagine a box in which we place le chat..." And then, because even that might be too much for the monoglot audience, "...le chat, that is, a cat..."

Fortunately there are a couple of escape clauses. If the reader through the character is being introduced to a new cuisine or a martial art or even geography they can be given a number of new words to learn. These, however, are presented and isolated and explained; they are merely terms, such as you might learn terms used in chemistry. This is not living language.

The other is the "grease words." When you are in another country you frequently learn and use a few standard and simplified ways to say "hello" and "thank you" and even "pleased to meet you." This isn't quite phrasebook speech; you aren't trying to learn how to ask for a price or the direction to your hotel. These are simply polite ways of engaging with that culture.

This is the exception to the "funny foreigner" mistake. Instead of the use of only simple and common words being used because of the reader, these are being used by the characters. And they are justified; this isn't the artificial insertion of select words, these are the most common words used in daily interaction; and the place where using them is most polite. The use of the correct greeting essentially transcends language. "Arigatou" isn't "I'm speaking Japanese to be polite," it is "I am making the sound polite people make in this circumstance." It is no different than covering your arms when visiting a church or not showing the soles of your feet.

The biggest problem, though, is that these can come across as "le chat" usage for people who haven't had that experience of travel, or who did but never bothered to learn how to be sociable. It can also be difficult for some readers because we sometimes grasp the appropriate usage situationally; by watching other people. It isn't always a case of being told "memorize these three words, and here's what they mean."

Another place where the flavor can be put across is in grammar and usage. Stereotypically, the Russian speaker leaves off articles (because those don't appear in Russian) the French speaker puts in extra articles (because as a Romance language these are important to maintain the correct tenses for nouns), and the Italian speaker genders the articles (despite having the same Romance background, they pick up on this aspect instead!) 

Stereotypically, then, "Boat is sinking," "The boat it is the sinking," and "The boat, she is sinking." And you see the problem already. As in the LOLspeak example above, it too easily comes across as ignorance instead of the intended glimpse into a different way of thinking about words. More subtle forms, such as using alternate word orders to suggest German, often fly by the reader. In cases, they may simply think the author is guilty of awkward phrasing!

***

Which brings us to Japanese. In A Fox's Wedding I am trying to put Penny in a situation where language is an actual barrier. Part of this is the meta-narrative conceit, the "speaks seven languages and eats lost tombs for breakfast," as Penny puts it; the idea of the globe-trotting archaeologist-adventurer. The conceit is that, although she thinks she is failing miserable, she is effectively communicating in other languages -- though luck, lots of help, and especially through a narrative which is going out of its way to make it possible for her.

And it is the reality that most Japanese are not comfortable in English. I chose the word carefully. Much of the world has to do business in English, and put up with English-speaking tourists, and those points of contact have a rough but workable knowledge. Japan, and a few other (mostly Asian) nations, has an official recognition of this challenge which they have addressed in a not always effective way.

The most accurate way of portraying a typical Japanese speaker is for there to be essentially no mistakes or incorrect grammar. The grammar may be quite stilted; it is, compared with native-level speakers, always dictionary forms and lacking in idiom. There are endless drills in Japanese classrooms and they really don't get this stuff wrong. 

What they don't drill, however, is pronunciation. And here we bump into another peculiarity. The kana are not an alphabet, but a syllabary. And English has been imported into Japanese for a very long time, many words migrating into common use. Which means that even students of English fall back on writing out the unfamiliar words in a way they find easier to read (and given the absurdities of English pronunciation, who can blame them?)

This means this typical speaker is practically unintelligible to a native speaker of English. They realize this, of course. This makes them shy, which means they may understand English quite well and -- if they are recently out of school -- can probably write it better than the average American of similar age, but they prefer not to speak.

This is basically impossible to represent in a work of fiction.

Okay, it is possible, but it falls into all of the problems above. Hyper-correct grammar at least doesn't come across as uneducated; it just comes across as bookish and foolish (stereotypes that are already like to be applied). And the pronunciation! The R&L isn't even the worst of it, the kana-based pronunciation combines the excesses of comic-book Italian of the "It'sa me-a" variety, but gives it a sing-song flavor of the worst Asian stereotypes.

Absolutely impossible to have on the page in a modern novel.

So what am I actually doing? I really can't do much. I can just say, "He didn't speak much English." Or for those times when I need to have a long conversation, I arbitrarily make this one of the native-level speakers (who are not that uncommon). It does mean that, at best, Penny is strangely running into the skilled speaker she needs every time she actually has to communicate something beyond hello and thank you.

It's a puzzlement.

Typhoon in a Cocktail Glass

So Amazon, having grabbed with all hands at the streaming market, is also going after the Wattpad market for serial fiction with their new product Kindle Vella.

I think the business model is suspect, the terms murky, the future bleak. But I am still tempted because serial writing might be something I need to break some bad habits.

Trouble is, the thing at the top of my work list (once I am at a convenient place in the Athena Fox stories) is The Tiki Stars. I hadn't intended it to be serial in form. It could be. But more importantly, there's a bunch of world building to do.

(And not the fun kind of world building, the "auto-generate lists of planets" stuff that neophytes seem to think is the bulk of it. No, this is the "how does this place work and what am I trying to say with it?" stuff. But that's a rant for another post.)

The even more serial in form is the idea I've bruited about of Weird War II. You know the basic form; supernatural and magi-tech crossed with more-or-less historical fiction. Except I decided I wanted to move away from the familiar battlegrounds and the standard hard-bitten (shell-shocked) frontline grunts.

On the plus side, I could pretty much start now, merely hint at any underlying mythos, and stop if nobody is reading. On the minus side...more historical fiction! (Plus, military fiction, which is a field where people really, really get cranky if you get the details wrong).

Well, I slammed through four thousand words over the last couple of days on the book I'm supposed to be writing, and most of the next chapters are already mapped out and fully researched. I have hopes now of finishing the draft by mid-June.

Nice Marbling

Just figured out how I'm going to do the Yukira scenes and I've been re-reading to get my head back into where I left off writing last.

And it is not going well. I'm tired, my concentration is off. But it also feels like way too much stuff is going on.

The thing I tried with this book was concentrate on "raw" description more. To not name things or explain things but try to just throw lots of generic words at things. This being Japan, "old wood" and "shrubbery" show up way too much. Plus so many twisty little paths I've run out of synonyms for "twisty" and "path."

It doesn't seem to work. It feels like filler.

I'm also carrying over something from the last book or two; when there is something that is plot-important I mention it several times. And each time I call back to the previous references just to underline. But coming back to a chapter "cold" (that is, after being away from the book for a week), these "catch up" sections seem more like extra-dense textbook sections. If you've forgotten the original information, it isn't a recap; it is a first lesson, and it is a lot to digest. 

“Tried to lead an Army coup to restore the Emperor to power.” I didn’t like this, not at all. I kept bumping into the same theme and I didn’t believe in coincidences any more, not after the year I’d had. The Meiji Restoration, the shinsengumi and their failed counter-rebellion…all the way back to the Genpai War, when the Minamoto and the Taira fought to control the Emperor and ended with turning him into a mere puppet of the Shogunate.

So that's not really working, either.

What I'm thinking is that maybe the writing meat needs more fat. What I mean is; a couple of chapters later I've got her checking in at the Shinjuku Park Hyatt, and of course describing the setting along with her growing feeling of Imposter Syndrome as she picks up on just how expensive that place is. So there's a lot of words that the reader is going to try to figure out, like how does the decoration work or what do you see from the elevator or whatever. So more of that frustration of feeling like too much information is being thrown at them, even if none of it actually matters much.

Here's the alternate; go into detail about the stuff that doesn't need detail. Instead of "I flashed the key-card at the door and it opened with an electronic chime" (not actually in the book), "I pulled open the door and stepped through and closed the door after myself."

Where I actually realized this option was at the reception itself; that I could have chosen to do that in dialogue. That could be up to half a page of "Hello?" "Hello." "Do you have a reservation with us?" "Yes." "What is your name?" "Smith."

And, yes, it is this sort of belaboring of the minutia that characterizes the rightfully panned Empress Theresa and A Handbook for Mortals (both of which I watched caustic reviews of recently). But I do have to wonder if there isn't a happy medium somewhere. Not all fat...just a little nice marbling to make the meat easier to digest.

James Bond Plotting

At some point between revisions and working on my endless Scapple file for the current novel I took a break with some classic Bond. And I came away with an insight into a different way of looking at how you can construct a novel.

A classic construction method is try-fail arcs. The hero tries something to stop the villain. It doesn't work, and only makes things worse. They try something else. That doesn't work, and the situation is getting critical. Finally, when all looks lost, they try a third thing -- and this time it works.

Another is mystery plotting, and that's essentially what I'm doing on the Athena Fox stories (except many of the clues are cultural; for every time she realizes Steve already knew about the mysterious door, she also has to understand what "mate" means in British circles and why Steve would have opened that door.)

With either of these (and several others as well) you know what has to happen and you search for a good setting to have that happen. Want the hero to get ambushed on his search for clues? How about the good old abandoned warehouse!

James Bond plotting inverts the scheme. Instead, we start with the setting, or the idea, or the gimmick; basically, some exciting set-piece; "I'd like to have a chase scene." Then you backtrack to whatever clue or reversal or other plot lump can happen in that setting.

The movie that really brought this out for me was Moonraker.

James Bond goes to Venice. Why not? I mean, who wouldn't want to go to Venice, given the chance? So the purpose of this is to have some appropriately Venetian shenanigans. Like a fight in a glass factory. And a chase scene in a canal.

In true James Bond plotting, once you've decided on the basics you snowflake it up; what else can we do to make this particularly spectacular? You've already got a high-speed motorized gondola. Why not make it a hovercraft as well?

Oh, but right. Why is this here, why is any of it here? Um...because there is some fancy glass in the Doomsday Device...quick, put a sketch for him to find in a previous scene...and while he is there he can stumble on the next clue to the next set-piece.

I am convinced all the later Star Wars films are done the same way. Let's have a fight on an ice planet, and walking robots. And, hey, all that snow...we could have Luke get attacked by a Space Yeti.

(I know there was actually a different, external reason why the Space Yeti scene was added in.)

This is of course the perfect plotting method for the Athena Fox stories. I'm going to be in Paris? Find a good excuse to visit Moulin Rouge, D'Orsay, and of course la Tour Eiffel. And what would be crazy fun to do in that place? Find something...then find a plot reason to justify it being in the book.

Notice Ne, Senpai!

 Transliteration of languages is a gift that keeps on giving.The character ン is glossed as "n" in most kana tables. Like several Japanese consonants, though, it changes to be easier to pronounce in certain positions/words. Such as the way "Hashi" becomes "Nihon-Bashi" in the name of bridge.

The actual Japanese pronunciation of "Senpai" is "Se m' pa i." Just like the famous station in Tokyo is written on the station sign as "Shimbashi," and the Portuguese loan-word is intended to be pronounced "Tempura."

But the actual character used (since the む/ム was retired), is always ン or ん. 

And that means that out of the half-dozen or more transliteration systems for Japanese, there isn't agreement about whether to follow the kana or follow the pronunciation. It is the same problem as "Arigatou/ Arigatō." 

And due to historical peculiarities, there are a lot of English-speaking fans of Japanese media with all the fire that a little knowledge brings, ready to shout angrily at you if you used senpai. Or if you used sempai. And every single one of the little kouhai are willing to lecture you in a pitying way if you don't follow the version they learned. 

Shaker Song

 I have trouble getting any writing done at work. So for my break times I build stuff:

Needed a shaker for my new recording anyhow. See, had these off-cuts left over from trimming (nominal) 1x6 to 2-1/2" ; it leaves a narrow piece of white pine left over. So, inspired by the construction of the bongos that arrived in the mail last week, I tried out stave construction. Went a lot quicker than you might expect.

Went to the bulk produce section and picked out lentils, popcorn kernels, and peppercorns, and it was the sound of the last I liked most for this one.

Now I just need to rehearse all the instruments and parts. Not that I've finished figuring out harmonies, mind you. But I have enough so it is time to start laying down tracks and see what happens.