In case the basic plot has escaped your memory, allow me to recap the salient points (spoilers, etc.):

1. Handsome prince is cursed for his selfishness, becomes the Beast
2. Beautiful girl meets Beast
3. Girl and Beast fall in love
4. Beast is critically wounded by a jealous suitor
5. Girl saves Beast with power of love, and he becomes a handsome prince again

On paper, this sounds fine, if a bit cliché.  It’s a tale as old as time the storytelling tradition itself: you’ve got the character development, the romance, the villain, the climax, the resolution.  What more could you want?

The problem is Item 3: Girl and Beast fall in love.  Well, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but the motives for it happening aren’t consistent with Item 5, or at least not the way Items 1 and 3 flow into Item 5…look, let’s back up a bit.

—

The Cannon [sic] of the Disney Princess

If I had even the barest smattering of drawing ability, I would draw a picture of the various Disney princesses as cannoneers.  But since I don’t, I’m going to have to ask you to just imagine it: the deck of a ship, worn and battered from the ravages of combat at sea; the tempestuous waters, rising in a fury, ready to claim those who fail the trial of war; enemy ships fast approaching (have them manned by Disney villains if you’re really feeling it); and of course the lovely ladies, grim-set and determined, hard at work readying the guns for battle.

Humor me, here. It's a pretty awesome visual, pun though it may be.

The Disney Princess canon is, of course, the set of theatrically-released animated films featuring the Disney princesses.  They’re significant to Disney’s bottom line due to the obscene amounts of merchandise revenue they generate, but they’re more significant to us because they represent an interesting set of variations in the design of stories, characters, and especially romances.

Like getting to Paris, writing a romance for film is hard.  There’s just not enough time in a ninety-minute film to fully nurture an interesting romance, especially when you need to allot time for character development, musical numbers, celebrity sidekicks, and what-have-you.  The writer has to be especially clever to come up with a romance that can be developed in a very narrow window of time but still be convincing to the viewer.

Conveniently for our purposes, the Disney Princess canon takes two basic approaches (with just one outlier).

Disney Classics: the storybooks

I want to say something like “‘storybook’ wasn’t an adjective until Disney came along and made it one”, but unfortunately the OED has citations for “story-book” as an adjective dating back to at least 1844.  So instead I’ll say: in the early days of Disney, the princess films weren’t especially invested in telling compelling stories or creating interesting characters.  Rather, they were intended to produce in film the atmosphere normally associated with a child’s storybook.

A princess in one of these films, despite being a protagonist, is scarcely a character at all.  She has no personality, no aspirations, no particularly human characteristics.  She just floats, waif-like, through the story, maybe singing a song or two, and then at the end she marries the prince du jour because it’s inconceivable that she might do anything else.

Incidentally, these movies still work rather well as film in spite of the zero-dimensional princess characters.  They work because they relish the fairy tale; the characters, sets, dialogues, songs, all exist to serve the fairy-tale atmosphere.  Experiencing that atmosphere is a perfectly satisfying experience, even if the story is basically drivel.

The princesses in question:

Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

There’s not much to say about the character of Snow White.  Her character serves no function other than to provide a focal point for forest animals and the dwarfs.  Her relationship with her prince entails a brief love-at-first-sight scene at the beginning of the film followed by the equally brief true-love’s-kiss scene at the end.  As cliché as you can get, even in 1937.

Cinderella

Cinderella is actually a pretty sad character, willing as she is to be pushed around constantly.  (There’s probably some kind of masochist reading of this, but I’d rather not tease that out.)  In any case, she could care less about her prince until she sees him for the first time (two-thirds of the way through the film!), at which point she also partakes in a bit of love-at-first-sight.  Despite a ballad claiming otherwise (“So This Is Love”), Cinderella seems less interested in the prince and more interested in getting out of her abusive household; and really, who could blame her?

Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

While Sleeping Beauty is probably the best of these three films at creating that magical, storybook atmosphere, it also has the weakest protagonist.  She does nothing meaningful or useful at any point in the story, and she sleeps through the last third of it.  She does manage to fall in love with the obligatory prince, but that’s hardly a surprise since he’s the first male human she sees after living in a forest with three old ladies her entire life.  (Sadly, this is actually a more realistic romance than the other two films can manage.)

After Sleeping Beauty in 1959, Disney managed to go for thirty years without releasing a movie with a princess in it.  (Not counting The Black Cauldron, but then who does?)  But a lot can change in thirty years…

Disney Renaissance: the New Princess

By 1989 (a good year to be born in, if I do say so myself), audiences were less tolerant of sappy storybook fantasy.  They wanted strong female characters, and Disney obliged.

The overarching theme of the New Princess is self-actualization.  The modern Disney princess has a dream and has to reject society’s expectations / overcome adversity / etc. to fulfill it.  Oh yeah, and she will end up falling in love with someone (it’s still a Disney movie), but, crucially, the romance always aligns with the nature of the character’s self-actualization:

Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

Stifled by her overprotective father.  Obsessed with humans and living on land.  Willing to give up her greatest talent (her voice) in order to achieve her dream.  The fact that she falls in love with literally the first human she sees should surprise no one.

Belle (Beauty and the Beast)

Lives a simple (and to her, boring) life in a small village in the countryside.  Yearns for the kind of adventures that she reads about in the books she loves.  When thrust into a magical environment, she takes to it naturally because it’s exactly what she’s always wanted.  Falling in love with the Beast is a natural extension of this.

Jasmine (Aladdin)*

Stifled by her overprotective father.  Pressed to marry against her will.  Wants to explore the world “outside the palace” (i.e. outside her father’s strict control).  Attracted to the first nice guy she sees outside the palace, then falls in love with him as a result of a well-choreographed musical number.  Crucially, though, both the guy (and the musical number) represent, to her, exactly the freedom she craves.

Pocahontas

Pressed to marry against her will.  Wants to live a life of carefree exploration.  Falls in love with the first white man she sees, presumably because he’s a decent guy, but also because he is antithetical to the man her father wants her to marry.

Mulan

Pressed to marry against her will.  Unable to meet the expectations that her family and society have for her.  She eventually finds an unorthodox way to bring honor to her family, and in so doing attracts the handsome prince-analogue.

Rapunzel (Tangled)

Stifled by her overprotective father mother-apparent.  Wants to explore the world outside her tower.  Falls in love with the first guy she sees, who is also the person who helps her to escape her tower.

Obviously there are a lot of recurring themes (overprotective fathers, forced marriages, dreams of exploration/adventure, etc.), but the takeaway here is that the romance is correlated with (though secondary to) the princess achieving her goals.

The Black Sheep

…Why yes, that is a race pun.

Disney’s most recent foray into traditional 2D animation, The Princess and the Frog, is, appropriately, also its first new entry into the Princess canon after eleven years.

For the most part, The Princess and the Frog is a very good movie, especially relative to the other Disney animated films released in the 2000s.  (Atlantis: The Lost Empire, anyone?)  As a film about a girl who gets too wrapped up in her work and forgets how to live her life, it totally works.  The story is good, the characters are complex, the Randy Newman score is fun, the plot twists are tragic, and in general the film just works really well.

But unlike the other Disney Princess films, the romance in The Princess and the Frog falls completely flat.  Tiana is too headstrong and independent for the tropes of old-school storybook romance to apply.  And while there is self-actualization in the film (Tiana getting the restaurant she’s always wanted), the romance isn’t related in any meaningful way to her working towards her goal.  As a result, there’s no good way to explain how two characters totally at odds manage to fall in love over a matter of days.  It feels totally forced, marring an otherwise excellent film.

—

What were we talking about again?

Oh right, Beauty and the Beast and its terrible ending.

Since Beauty‘s Belle is clearly in the New Princess camp, her plot hinges on her self-actualization.  And remember our five plot elements from earlier?

1. Handsome prince is cursed for his selfishness, becomes the Beast
2. Beautiful girl meets Beast
3. Girl and Beast fall in love
4. Beast is critically wounded by a jealous suitor
5. Girl saves Beast with power of love, and he becomes a handsome prince again

Belle’s greatest desire is to live the life of fantasy, adventure, and romance that she reads about in her precious books.  And look!  The plot of Beauty and the Beast is pretty much exactly that: she gets to live through a fantastic fairy-tale story.  This is clearly exactly what she wanted, and she got it.  So what gives?  What is with my bitching and all of this buildup?

Read on, grasshopper.

See, I tricked you when I laid out the major plot elements of the movie.  Or rather, the film’s writers tricked you.

1. Handsome prince is cursed for his selfishness, becomes the Beast
2. Beautiful girl meets Beast
3. Girl and Beast fall in love
4. Beast is critically wounded by a jealous suitor
5. Girl saves Beast with power of love, and he becomes a handsome prince again
6. Girl and handsome prince live in a castle with a bunch of regular dudes for the rest of their lives

There’s a reason I (and the film’s writers) omitted Item 6: it’s boring.  Hella boring.  I’ll grin and bear the saccharine of Happily Ever After if I must (and this is Disney, so I must), but in this case it’s not even believable.  How on earth would the character of Belle be happy living ever after in this environment?  She’d be bored to tears after the first week.

Has Disney ever constructed another plot where the long-term resolution is boring?  Absolutely!  I can point you to three obvious examples:

1. Snow White
2. Cinderella
3. Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

Those of you exceptionally skilled at pattern recognition may see where this is going: these are of course the three classic Disney Princesses, who we already noted are scarcely characters at all.  Who cares if they live boring lives?  They’re boring people; they deserve it.

But surely the later princesses have their happy endings too, right?  Those are boring too, right?  Well, maybe; it depends on your definition of “boring”.  Rather than debate the point, let’s play a little game of “One of These Things”:

One of these things is not like the others

Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

Wanted: to live on land
Got: to live on land, plus a prince

One of these things just doesn’t belong

Belle (Beauty and the Beast)

Wanted: a life of “adventure in the great wide somewhere”
Got: married to a prince in some castle

Can you tell which one is not like the others

Jasmine (Aladdin)

Wanted: to see outside the palace and marry based on her own interests instead of her father’s
Got: to see outside the palace and marry based on her own interests instead of her father’s

By the time we finish our song?

Pocahontas

Wanted: to exchange friendship and culture with the English settlers
Got: to exchange friendship and culture with the English settlers

Doo doo, doo doo, doo, doo, doo doo-doo

Mulan

Wanted: to bring honor to her family
Got: to bring way more honor to her family than intended, plus the hot guy

Doo doo, doo doo, doo-doo, doo-doo

Tiana (The Princess and the Frog)

Wanted: a restaurant
Got: a restaurant, plus a prince/mushroom-mincer/ukulele-player

Doo doo, doo doo, doo, doo, doo doo-doo

Rapunzel (Tangled)

Wanted: to see the world outside her tower
Got: to see the world outside her tower, plus reunited with her real parents, plus the hot guy

Doo doo-doo, doo, doo-doo doo, doo

Alright, pencils down.  Now for those of you who answered “Belle (Beauty and the Beast)”, good job!  You correctly identified that, despite appearing to be story of self-actualization in the mode of the other princess films of the Disney Renaissance, Beauty and the Beast actually is no such thing.

With the exception of Beauty and the Beast‘s, all of these endings are fulfilling; that is, they meet the goal established by the princess’s actions.  But in Beauty and the Beast, this doesn’t happen at all.  The ending is a fairy-tale ending, but it’s attached to a real-human-being’s story.  It simply.  Doesn’t.  Work.

Oh, and just in case you don’t want to take my word for it, here’s a fun trivia fact: there are two direct-to-video Beauty and the Beast films that expand the story of the original.  They share an interesting property.  You only have to look at the introductory paragraphs of the two relevant Wikipedia articles (here and here) to find it.

With your pattern-recognizers all warmed up, you may have managed to spot the word “midquel”.  Why might Disney produce two midquels for a film that had no space for any, rather than a sequel as they’ve done for pretty much all of their other successful films?  Think about it.

—

Beauty and the what, then?

It’s not likely that Disney is going to go back and change the film, but it’s worth the exercise to try and figure out what a better ending might have been.  Coming up with one isn’t straightforward, though, due to a fundamental trichotomy of the story:

1. Belle wants to live a life of fantasy/adventure.
2. The various castle servants (Lumiere, Cogsworth, etc.) want to be human again.
3. The Beast in theory wants to be human again, but (a) the beginning of the film makes it clear that he’s resigned to his fate as a beast, and (b) as we approach the end of the film, he only cares about his relationship with Belle.  (This is in fact the redeeming attribute of his character, so it’s kind of important!)

Unfortunately, the movie is structured such that we empathize with all these characters, but their goals aren’t especially compatible.  If the curse is broken, the servants are happy, maybe the Beast is happy, but Belle isn’t.  If the curse isn’t broken, Belle is happy, maybe the Beast is happy, but the servants aren’t.  (And what kind of monster would condemn Chip to life as a cup, hmm?)

Our tack here is to try to separate Belle’s goal from the Beast’s enchanted castle.  She gets her first big dose of adventure over the course of the film, but even if the castle remained cursed forever, she would probably get bored with it eventually.  What’s next for her? How do we construct an environment where there is a natural progression for her when the credits roll?

Well don’t you get it?  That’s how [she] finds happiness!

The most obvious solution for Belle is that she leaves.  That’s what she wanted at the beginning of the film after all: she was fed up with her provincial town and wanted to find something more.  And if Belle leaves at the end of the film, that means the plot’s resolution has to somehow enable her to do so.

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave

The castle staff, then, is easy to gratify.  If Belle leaves to seek her fortunes elsewhere, nothing stops us from ending the film with the castle uncursed.  All of the servants now have their human forms once again, and their lives can go back to normal.

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave
• Break the curse

Then we have the Beast.  An effective (though potentially controversial) approach to the Beast is to have him remain cursed rather than turned human again.  This is sensible from the perspectives of both Belle and the Beast.  For Belle, the Beast is who she fell in love with, not the random-ass prince.  (Note in the film her immediate indignation after the Beast is turned back into a human.)  For the Beast, the whole point of his character arc was for him to understand the importance of selflessness and inner beauty; once he’s achieved that, there’s no compelling reason for him to become human again.

(Of course, we can’t forget that the Beast’s transformation was also used as a cheap plot device to heal the fatal wounds sustained from his fight with Gaston.  We’ll have to deal with that to avoid plot holes.)

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave
• Break the curse on the castle
• Leave the curse on the Beast
• Bring the Beast back to life

We could make sweeping changes to the plot to make these happen, but the first 95% of the film is so finely polished I would hate to risk upsetting it.  So on top of our goal of making the ending not suck, we’re also going to try to perturb as few plot elements as possible.  (Up to the death of the Beast, at least.  Everything past that is resolution, and hence fair game.)

Hacking the curse

The problem with our to-do list is that we’re trying to both preserve and break the curse, but like any good fairy-tale curse the rules are pretty strict.  The rules are, and I quote:

If he [the Beast] could learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken.  If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.

So do the events of the film satisfy these criteria?  The relative order of events is pretty clear:

1. Beast confesses his love for Belle (to Cogsworth of all people, but whatevs)
2. Beast dies
3. Belle confesses her love for the Beast
4. Last rose petal falls

Nowhere do the rules of the curse specify that all parties have to be alive at the time of fulfillment.  The curse HAS to break, and by the definition of the curse, the Beast HAS to turn back into a human.  The only way to avoid this would be to change the rules of the curse, but as above that risks upsetting the balance of the rest of the movie.  So fine: the curse is broken.

So now the castle is back to normal, which is good because the staff is human.  They’re no longer very interesting to the story; we move them to the background and call it a day.  One down, three to go.

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave
• Break the curse on the castle
• Leave the curse on the Beast
• Bring the Beast back to life

For our next move, let’s ruin the writers’ cheat: the arbitrary use of the Beast’s transformation to bring him back to life.  There’s no logical basis for this, so boom! we cut it.  Now the Beast is dead, the curse is broken, and the handsome prince né Beast is still fucking dead.  (Also, since we’ve still got some drama at this point, we can skip the unnecessary castle transformation sequence of the original.)

So now we have a handsome prince lying dead and a sad girl in love who is aghast because her Beast (who she was in the middle of mourning) has disappeared before her eyes.  This is perfect for us, because now the transformation of the castle is simultaneously joyful and tragic.  On the one hand, it’s what the viewer has been waiting for the whole film.  On the other hand, the heroine is now all the more tragic, and the viewer feels like a jackass for ever wanting the Beast to be human again.  That’s right, we’ve barely started and already our revised ending has more complexity and emotional resonance than the original’s.

But while emotional complexity is great and all, we still have a dead prince that we would like to be an alive Beast; we need an impetus that can make that transition happen.  How do we transform people and/or bring them back to life in Disney movies?  Fuckin’ magic, that’s how.  We essentially have two options for magic:

1. Divinity: some magical being appears for whatever ineffable reason and does what they do.  This is the Fairy Godmother mechanism, as featured in such classics as Cinderella and Pinocchio.
2. Bullshit: with no context whatsoever, magic just happens.  This is the “power of love” approach, often with tears as a catalyst, as featured in such classics as Tangled and Pokémon: The First Movie.  (Incidentally, many classic renditions of La Belle et la Bête do use tears to revive the Beast and transform him back into a human.)

Because the latter option is, trivially, bullshit, we’ll opt for the former.  We just need a magic-practitioner.  Any Disney movie worth its salt has at least one, and incidentally that’s exactly how many Beauty and the Beast has.  The only magical force in the entire film is, in fact, the enchantress who cursed the Beast originally.

Ok, we’ve got something here.  Since the enchantress was physically present when she laid the curse, let’s invent our own tiny conceit (much more reasonable than the original) that she also needs to be present to lift the curse.  So when the curse is ready to be broken (Belle and Beast have both confessed their love), that magically summons the enchantress.  By the same rules as before, she HAS to lift the curse.  The castle staff turns human, the Beast turns human, and now Belle is confused/horrified.

Ok.

We’ve fuckin’ got something here.

See, the enchantress is a nice, easy, one-dimensional character.   We know she believes strongly in the importance of inner beauty, love, compassion, etc.; that’s why she cursed the Beast in the first place.  So we have a powerful magical being, one that embodies the concept of selflessness, that shows up in what should be her moment of triumph, only to find our dead prince and our sad/frightened/confused beauty.

This is perfect.  This is a blank magical check.  If this enchantress isn’t a complete hypocrite (a trait too complex for such a basic character), she’ll see that she is somewhat to blame for creating this tragedy.  And having lifted the curse, she’s no longer bound by any particular contracts, so she can do pretty much whatever she wants to make things better.

The enchantress, in this way, acts as a proxy for the viewer.  The viewer, like the enchantress, wants the characters to have a happy ending, and if they could just get in there and draw the cels themselves they’d get one.  But while the viewer doesn’t have the power to adjust the story, the enchantress does.

So the enchantress does exactly what you (as the viewer) would expect.  She sizes up the situation and sees that Belle won’t be happy unless the Beast is alive and in Beast Mode.  (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)  So, in recognition of the fact that his death was in pursuit of the goal that she set before him, she brings him back to life as the Beast.

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave
• Break the curse on the castle
• Leave the curse on the Beast
• Bring the Beast back to life

Adventure in the great wide somewhere

So now we’re most of the way there; the castle staff is happy (they’re human and the Beast is alive) and the Beast is happy (he’s alive and indifferent towards his physical form).  Belle is momentarily happy (the Beast is alive, yay), but we still don’t have the self-actualization required for her long-term happiness and our gratifying ending.  We have to get her out of the castle and out into the world.  How should we approach this?

Well, the first thing to note is that we can’t get “self-actualization” without the “self”; Belle has to be the driving force that the actualization to occur.  That helps scope our options right away.

Another useful fact is that we have a dichotomy that the original ending didn’t: the castle staff is human, but the Beast is not.  It doesn’t take much of a mental leap (for any of the characters or the viewer) to come to terms with the fact that things are going to soon be going back to normal at the castle, but with Beast still cursed he’ll never be “normal” again.

It’s more or less trivial, then, to add a brief scene to this effect.  As in the original, the Beast is delighted to see the castle staff back to normal.  The castle staff starts talking about how things will finally be normal again.  Everyone comes to terms with the fact that things can’t be normal if the Beast stays around, and Belle, seizing her opportunity, proposes that she and the Beast leave.

Things to do:

• Enable Belle to leave
• Break the curse on the castle
• Leave the curse on the Beast
• Bring the Beast back to life

Reprise

That wraps us up from a story perspective; everything’s been neatly explained away, the characters are all happy with their lots, and the plan for the future is appropriate.  But if films were just stories…well, we’d call them “stories”, not “films”.  There are a couple of logistical issues to consider for the ending to work as a complete cinematic construct.

From the discussion above, it’s pretty straightforward to come up with storyboards, dialogue, etc. that map out the sequence of events.  We need one new character design (the enchantress), one fewer set (no daytime castle), and everything else basically shares the assets of the original ending.  The characters act out the ending we’ve described, and bam! all of the interesting plot threads are resolved.

But ending on the story’s resolution is boring!  Part of the problem with resolving the plot in a way that’s consistent with the viewer’s expectations (as we’ve worked so hard to do) is that it is, by definition, predictable.  So we have to add a little spice to the ending to give it some pop, even if the ending is just Happily Ever After.

Let’s run through the Disney Princess films once last time, looking specifically at how their ending scenes play out:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White kisses the dwarfs goodbye, the prince puts her on his horse and they walk/ride off to the prince’s castle.
Choral reprise: “Someday My Prince Will Come”
Closer: transition to storybook

Cinderella

Cinderella and prince are married, ride off in a carriage, and smooch (d’aww).
Choral reprise: “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”
Closer: transition to storybook

Sleeping Beauty

Aurora and prince present themselves to the king and queen (including a surprisingly dispassionate display from the parents of the prodigal daughter), theye dance, and there’s a fun little callback to the fairies arguing over the correct color of Aurora’s dress.
Choral reprise: “Once Upon a Dream”
Closer: transition to storybook

The Little Mermaid

Ariel and prince are married, Ariel says goodbye to her father, they sail off into a rainbow, they smooch (d’aww).
Choral reprise: “Part of Your World”
Closer: smooch

Beauty and the Beast

Belle and prince dance in a scene almost identical to the one in Sleeping Beauty.  That’s literally it. (I think I’ve made it clear by this point that this is a shitty ending.)
Choral reprise: “Beauty and the Beast”
Closer: transition to stained-glass window

Aladdin

Aladdin and Jasmine sing their own reprise while riding on the magic carpet. They smooch (d’aww).  There are fireworks and they fly off into the moon.
Semi-choral(!) reprise: “A Whole New World” (sung by Aladdin and Jasmine, with the chorus on backup vocals)
Closer: flying off into the moon, followed by brief Genie gag

Pocahontas

Oh hey, in this one the lovers are tragically separated!  That’s a refreshing twist.  John Smith’s ship does sail off into etc., but the symbolism is for once quite a bit different.
Choral reprise: “Colors of the Wind”
Closer: transition to artwork

Mulan

Mulan has the least cliché ending by a mile of any of the Princess films. (No choral reprise, sweet!)  It’s got a great reunited father/daughter moment and a fun little “aw look, burgeoning romance” moment.  The last bit with Mushu and the ancestors probably could have been cut entirely, but then pretty much every scene with Mushu could have been cut entirely.
Closer: Mulan and Mushu (ugh) outside ancestral shrine

The Princess and the Frog

This ending does have a reprise, but Tiana sings it rather than a chorus.  This actually does a really nice job of contrasting the state of things at the end of the movie vs. the beginning, and I’m all in favor of Anika Noni Rose getting as many musical numbers as they can manage to throw her way. She and the prince smooch at the end (d’etc.), but it’s shorter and, frankly, more sincere than convention would dictate. Of all the movies listed here, this ending is by far the best.
Solo(!) reprise: “Down in New Orleans” (sung by Tiana)
Closer: pan up to Ray and Evangeline

Tangled

No reprise, but then the songs in this film weren’t really good enough to justify one.  Rapunzel is united with her family.  The kingdom rejoices.  Rapunzel and the prince smooch (d’aww) and are married off-screen.
Closer: some weird-ass cupid guy

Some recurring themes should be obvious; let’s see which ones might be relevant for our purposes:

Reprise

Because Beauty and the Beast is heavily musical (unlike, say, Mulan or Tangled), it seems appropriate that we do include a reprise.  The only song that even remotely qualifies for a reprise is, or course, Beauty and the Beast.  (This is why it’s the reprise of choice in the original ending.)  Unfortunately, the only character qualified to sing the song is Mrs. Potts, who already sang it once; the only alternative is to give it to a chorus, but I find choral reprises insufferably cheesy.  As far as I’m concerned, either option is acceptable, but neither is great.  If we wanted great, we’d need to make more aggressive changes earlier in the film, either with a new song or new characters that make the reprise work.

Reuniting daughters with family

Belle has already been reunited with her father, so there’s nothing we need to do here.

Marraige

We could explicitly show a marriage scene, but it doesn’t really add anything.  In some of these films (Cinderella, The Little Mermaid), the marriage is symbolic of the future of the protagonist, but in our case the interesting symbolism is in the happy couple leaving in search of adventure.

Farewells to important side characters

Obviously this is important, since the protagonists are leaving.  This can be token, though; we don’t need anything too involved.

Riding/flying/sailing off into whatever happens to be convenient

Very appropriate for our purposes, since (as already mentioned) the symbolism is all about searching for adventure.  A sunrise would be the most appropriate target, since (a) it has the new beginnings symbolism we desire, (b) it aligns with the lyrics of the reprise (“certain as the sun rises in the east”), and (c) it’s chronologically sensible, since the climax of the film happens at night/early morning.

Smooches

Normally I would be all “smooches in film are a cliché and aren’t indicative of real romance blahby blobby bloo”, but I’m going to have to allow it here.  Belle and the Beast go the whole film without a kiss (or any other mutual acknowledgement of love), so including one in our ending is going to be important for proper closure.

“Surprise!  This wasn’t actually a film, it was a storybook/stained-glass window/painting” closer

I have no idea why Disney does this.  It makes a little sense for the storybook films (since the films make them out to be literal storybooks), but in our case there’s no excuse.  We’ll have none of it.

So this is what we’ll do.  We’ll include a kiss because it makes sense, but we’ll bump it back into the scene where the Beast is brought back to life.  Then we’ll do our bit (as above) where Belle and the Beast decide to leave.  They’ll bid fond farewells to the appropriate characters.  Then we’ll have them ride off on horses (wild adventure symbolism, natch) into the sunrise, and Mrs. Potts (or the chorus if it must) will sing a reprise of “Beauty and the Beast”.  And while it is a cliché, we’ll cut the scene on them riding off into the sunrise because the symbolism demands it.

Summa cinematica

So, to summarize our new ending:

1. The Beast dies
2. Belle confesses her love, mourns
3. Last rose petal falls
4. The enchantress appears and breaks the curse
5. The Beast and the castle staff are turned human; we forego any transformation of the castle proper
6. Belle is horrified because the Beast has disappeared, begs the enchantress to bring him back
7. The enchantress, seeing that (gag) true love has won the day, turns the Beast back into his beastly form and brings him back to life
8. Belle and the Beast are joyfully reunited, they smooch (d’aww)
9. The castle staff brings up the fact that things will be normal again
10. Belle is distraught by the idea of things being normal, and the Beast realizes that as a beast he can never fit in with the no-longer-enchanted castle
11. Belle proposes that they go out into the world instead of staying in the castle
12. Belle and the Beast say farewell to Belle’s father and the castle staff
13. Belle and the Beast ride off into the sunrise with Mrs. Potts (now human!) singing a reprise of “Beauty and the Beast”

This ending’s got all kinds of advantages over the original:

• Fuckin’ logos.  Instead of the original conceit of “oh hey, the transformation to a human magically healed the Beast, ain’t that convenient“, we have the much more subtle stipulation that breaking the curse requires the physical presence of the enchantress who laid the curse.  This is itself a pretty logical thing to ask of the story, and then the rest of our ending flows logically from it.
• Fuckin’ ethos.  In the original, the transformation and final sequence just sort of happen, without much sensible explanation.  (As above, this is the “bullshit magic” approach.)  Bringing the enchantress into the scene helps give the magical events some context that’s more consistent with the story’s environment.
• Fuckin’ pathos.  We get two big pathetic advantages with our ending. The first is that the transformation of the Beast, which is supposed to be what we’ve been waiting for the whole movie, actually becomes a tragic moment.  That’s dramatic!  And interesting!  And it makes the happy ending all the more palpable.  The second advantage is, of course, the happy endings for all of our characters.  This naturally includes our original goal for this ending: the self-actualization of Belle.

The scenes we’ve described here take place in about the same amount of time as the original ending, so the pacing doesn’t change.  All we’ve done is deepened and complicated the tragedy, fine-tuned the resolution of the tragedy, and thus fashioned an environment where the characters, instead of living Happily For This One Scene, can actually live Happily Ever After.

As the wind whipped and whirled through the ship’s rigging, Calvin thought back on the recent events of his life.  He had just last year graduated from whaling school, and he was now seven months into his first real whaling voyage.  So far, it had been a luckless trip; not a drop of precious oil greased their holds.  But Calvin didn’t mind so much; he was still going to get paid, and he was learning how to live life on the high seas.

Thinking about school made him think about home, and those happier memories were the more painful.  He had left behind his family, which he missed terribly.  He had left behind all of the familiar places of his home village and all of the people he had known there.  And, worst of all, he had left behind his precious Liza.  Ah, Liza.  He missed most the saffron of her hair, which to him had always shone with a radiance brighter than any he could imagine.  The only thing he knew of brighter than the gold of her hair was the smile on her face.  To say she was an angel was to speak ill of her; angels had too many eyes, anyhow.  Liza had just the perfect two, each orb ivory and pellucid, the circlet of each iris a deep irradiant sapphire, each pupil a black hole into which Calvin could etern’ly stare.

Calvin sighed with a deep, forlorn sigh that could come only of heartache.  He had known he was leaving life and love ashore when he set out for the glory of adventure.  The high seas and the thrill of the hunt were all he had ever wanted as a child, and this was his chance to finally live out his dream.  And he knew that, at the end of this long voyage, he would see his beloved again; that made it all bearable.  Besides, she had wanted him to go.  She knew whaling was his dream, and Calvin’s happiness was her happiness.  Calvin hugged himself tightly against the chill that blew over the deck; he missed having someone near to keep heart and body warm.

“Cold night for ye?”

Calvin didn’t need to look to identify the rough, yet tender voice from behind.  It was the second mate, Hobbs, with whom he had become friends.  Hobbs was a whaler of nearly fifteen years, and knew more about the art than Calvin believed could ever be known.  It was Hobbs who had hired him on as a crewman on the Daisy Bell, and it was Hobbs who had been giving him guidance and teaching him the way of the sea.

And now, it was Hobbs who had brought up a spare blanket from below and draped it around Calvin.  “The sea be colder than any fine woman, and her air be no better.  Best that ye don’t find yerself too chilled, lest ye fail to be alert on yer watch.”

Calvin wrapped himself in the blanket.  “Thank you,” he said.  Hobbs was right, as usual.  He couldn’t let the chill of the ocean wind or his homesickness distract him.  He was a man, now, and a whaler.  He needed to act like one.

He turned to Hobbs.  “What brings you on deck?  I didn’t think you had a watch tonight.”

“I don’t, lad,” said Hobbs.  “But I got a feeling that we’re close, very close.  I can feel the wind in my bones, and it tells me that soon, we strike oil.”

Despite his trust in Hobbs’s instincts, Calvin was unconvinced.  “We’ve gone months without even a sighting.  What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t know,” was Hobbs’s reply.  He was no longer looking at Calvin, but instead staring out into the bleakness that had been Calvin’s realm just moments ago.  ”I don’t know how I know, but I know that I know, and I know that soon we’ll find what we’ve been searchin’ for these long months.  And when we do, and you see the whale, you’ll begin to understand the meaning of the hunt.”

After a few moments of ponderous silence, Hobbs started to walk back to the hatch, but then paused and turned back to Calvin.  “And of course,” he said, “ye might get a chance to see the Captain in action.”

Calvin shivered, partly from the chill and partly from the thought of the Captain.  Captain Argot was a legend of the day, renowned for his disarming placidity while the seas were empty, and his ruthlessness and brutality when a whale came into sight.  Individual crew members would at times whisper bits and pieces of the Captain’s long and fabled history, but no one was sure what was truth and what was myth.  All they knew for sure was that he seemed to have roamed these bitter seas forever, and would continue to roam them, but no one could tell what drove the man.

Calvin returned his attention to the night.  He’d have plenty of opportunity to learn more about the Captain once they actually found a whale.  But they hadn’t found a whale.  And all Calvin had seen on his watch was a bunch of water and that small island about a mile off.

Wait, island?  There hadn’t been an island there before.  Calvin rubbed his eyes and looked again.  Nothing but water.  The sea was black and rough, but it was definitely all sea.  Had he just been imagining things?

Then, almost indiscernible over the crash of the waves against the ship’s hull, Calvin heard a murmur.  A gurgle.  Then a splash.

And there it was.  No more than half a mile from the ship, there it was.  The whale.

Calvin scrambled for the ship’s bell, scarcely able to steady himself as he tripped over the rigging in his enthusiasm.  But when he arrived, he saw Hobbs already standing there.  Through the dim light of the ship’s lanterns, he could just make out Hobbs’ grin.  “I had a feelin’ it would be soon.”  He handed the bell cord to Calvin.  “It’s yer watch, so ye’ve earned this.  Bring forth the wrath of the Daisy Bell.”

Calvin pulled the rope and sent the peal of the bell ringing out into the night.  Calvin couldn’t help but expect an echo, but the ringing just traveled out to sea, forever, never to return.  But then, there was a new sound: the sound of the sailors below, finding themselves and coming up on deck to see what all the damned fuss was about.  And then, above it all, the slam of a door.  There was only one proper door onboard ship, and that was the one that led to the Captain’s quarters.

The Captain strode out onto the deck.  Despite the burgeoning frenzy of the crew, he was cool and collected; however, his stride betrayed the barest hint of enthusiasm, and his eyes shone just so with the thrill of coming battle.  He walked straight up to Calvin and looked him dead in the eye.  By physical height, the Captain was maybe two inches shorter than Calvin, but to Calvin he seemed a mile tall.  Calvin said nothing but simply pointed out to the sea, and the Captain’s gaze followed until it fell on its prize.  The Captain gave a small smile, and, with a voice that chilled Calvin’s bones, yelled the fateful words:

“Thar she blows!”

A shout went up from the crew; this was the moment that they had been waiting for.  The Captain began to shout orders, but everyone knew their tasks as though they’d been born to do them.  Boats were loaded, harpoons were brandished, and the plan of attack was laid.  Calvin’s responsibility was a minor one; he was to assist the helmsman in maintaining sight of the target.  He was headed for his post when the Captain laid a hand on his arm.  “No, boy; you ride with me today.”  A tingle thrilled down his spine; Calvin nodded silently and followed the Captain to his boat.  They were the last two to board; all the other men were in place and awaiting their fearless leader’s command.  The order was given for the boat to be lowered, and they descended into the tumult.

Calvin had gone down in the boats plenty of times before, but he was sure that tonight the waves were blacker and more violent than he had ever seen.  Was it the whale that stirred up this fierce ocean?  Was it just unlucky weather tempering the crew’s good fortune?  Or was it all a trick of the mind?  There was no time to ponder it, because the Captain had given the order for full speed, and every man was at his oar.  The chase began.

The boat seemed possessed of an unholy speed as it bore down on the whale.  The black waves crashed against them, causing them to careen wildly back and forth, but the rowers’ blades carved the water with a hellish fury, and their approach continued unhindered.  The harpooners steadied themselves; they were men of sure hand and stout heart, and had earned their posts through years of hard experience.  And the Captain stood stock still; the mad traverse of the boat over the unbridled waters could not unsteady him.  The whale, meanwhile, seemed content to lie in wait.  Slowly, so slowly it seemed not to happen at all, a single massive eye rose up above the water, and for a brief moment Calvin swore it looked right into his soul.

Suddenly, they were upon the whale, and just as suddenly it was gone as it dove into the murky depths.  Down it went, its massive bulk quickly passing out of sight.  The frenzy of rowing stopped all at once; though the sea still tossed them, there was silence from the men in the boat.  The signals quickly came from the other boats; they too had lost sight of the whale.  There was nothing to do now but watch and wait.

And then, with a sickening crack, the boat split into two.  The whale tore through the breach at a fearsome speed, and Calvin could only watch in horror as it threw itself onto the bow.  There was another sickening crunch; this time of whale against flesh against bone against wood.  As the whale rolled over, Calvin swore that he saw its eye looking at him once again.

Almost half of the boat’s men had been lost in a trice, but the Captain remained stalwart.  He barked his orders, and with a single mind his men obeyed.  Both of the harpoonists had been in the now-shattered bow, so the Captain himself fished an unbroken harpoon from the wreckage and made it ready.  The other boats drew near to pick up those who had survived the onslaught; the Captain’s boat headed for the prize.

Though the crew rowed with newfound vigor, the whale disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.  What remained of the boat would barely have been seaworthy in placid waters, much less in these stormy waves.  The chase seemed mad, unwinnable; but still they plied forward.  They had no idea if they were headed for the whale, or away from it, or whether it was beneath them readying for another onrush.  And then, just feet ahead of them, the whale burst out of the water.  The men froze; unsure of what to do.  They couldn’t row forward, and they had no other orders.

Only the Captain has the presence of mind to act.  He raised his harpoon and grimaced.  With a mind-flaying scream he drove the harpoon into the mass of the whale.  The harpoon’s bite was deep, and the whale began to thrash in a rage.  With a tremendous sweep, the whale flung its mighty tail directly at the aggressor.  The tail connected, and the Captain was flung into the briny waters.

Though just moments before they had been paralyzed, the Captain’s loss brought the crew back to their senses.  The priority had changed; the Captain was down.  Two of the crewmen immediately dived into the water, and the third signaled the other boats toward the Captain’s last known position.

Calvin simply sat as best as he could in what remained of the stern of his whaling boat.  There was little he could do to aid the rescue operation at this point, and even if he tried he’d likely be lost himself.  So he sat and watched, until he realized something: in the mad scramble of the rescue, no one had noticed that the whale hadn’t left.  It was sitting patiently next to the fragments of Calvin’s boat, harpoon still sticking out of its side.  What was it waiting for?  Calvin could only guess.  Maybe it was waiting for the Captain to be recovered so it could make a killing blow?

Calvin looked back along the smooth wall of whale flesh.  He saw the Captain’s harpoon just as it had been lodged, and there was a thick stream of blood gurgling out of the wound.  Calvin looked at the rescue operation of the crew, still frantically searching, and then back at the whale.  Clearly, they were not going to take this whale today.  Almost without thought, Calvin reached back, careful not to disrupt his precarious perch, and with a quick yank pulled the harpoon from the whale’s side.

The whale rolled over onto its side, and Calvin once again swore that its giant eye looked right at him.  It continued to roll over and slowly sank beneath the surface, leaving just Calvin, the waves, the wreckage, and a bloody harpoon in his hand.

—

Back on board ship, the mood was black as the water.  The Captain had been recovered, but he was unconscious.  Calvin had eventually been picked up, fraught with cold, by one of the intact boats.  He was recovering now with a mug of hot cocoa.  Hobbs came up to him and brought him a blanket; the same blanket, Calvin noted, that he had brought him earlier that night.

“Normally,” began Hobbs, breaking the silence between them, “I would take this time to tell ye that the first time out in the boats is always the hardest.  The water is mean and the whales are meaner.

“But that…I’ve never seen so fierce an attack.  That was foul weather to be sure, but a might fouler whale.  We’re lucky the Captain made it out alive.”

Calvin didn’t respond.  They were lucky, sure.  But there was something about the whale, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on…well, it hardly mattered.  He wouldn’t see it again.  He could move on.

And yet, for some reason, he didn’t want to.

—

That night, Calvin tossed and turned in his hammock.  After almost twenty-four hours, the Captain still hadn’t regained consciousness.  The whole crew was on edge, unsure of what to do.  The first mate had taken command, and basic operation of the ship continued; but the vim, the intensity, the joy was gone from it all.  Calvin twisted restlessly and looked down in the corner where he kept his meager belongings.  Leaning against the wall was the harpoon, still coated with now-congealed whale blood.  He hadn’t known what to do with it, and for some reason he had been loath to clean it or put it back in the armory.  He figured he’d hold onto it until he had a good reason not to.

Though he passed in and out of sleep a few times, Calvin was still uneasy.  He couldn’t stop thinking about the Captain, or about the whale.  Eventually, he decided to head abovedecks; the night air might be just the thing to put ease his mind.  He quietly got out of his hammock and made his way up to the deck.  The sailor on watch, he noticed, was fast asleep at his post.  Calvin thought of waking him, but decided against it.  Everyone in the crew was suffering with the Captain unconscious; better to just let him sleep in peace.  Calvin decided he would simply take watch instead.

He gazed out to stern.  This night was so much like the last, when he had seen the whale.  The water was the same inky black, the sky was the same bleak and starless expanse, and the wind was just as cold and biting.

Calvin closed his eyes and tried to feel the eddies of the wind blowing around him.  He could feel it rolling across his skin, tousling his hair, and the chill was so sharp that we was almost convinced that some of it was blowing right through him.  He could hear it whistle through the rigging.  He could hear the rustling of the sails, lowered and tied up for the night.  He could even, just barely, hear the creak of the masts as they strained against the wind.

Then, suddenly, Calvin’s concentration was broken.  Over the wind’s howls, he heard a sound from the water: a murmur; a gurgle; a splash; all barely detectable against the night.  The sound was eerily familiar…and then there was a realization, so subtle he scarcely noticed.  Could it be?  He opened his eyes.  The waves ahead broke, and a mass of flesh rose up to greet Calvin’s watch.   It turned, and there again was the single, lonely eye that Calvin could never forget.  Calvin’s hands gripped tight; he didn’t know what to do.  Should he sound the bell?  Would the crew want revenge?  Or without the Captain would they be too lost, too disorganized to bring down the whale that had previously bested them?

Calvin looked at his hands.  He was holding the harpoon; he hadn’t even meant to bring it up with him.  Unconsciously, Calvin ran his fingertips over the blood-stained point, feeling the nuances of the dried claret.  The crenulations, though rough, seemed ready to meld to Calvin’s touch.  There were bits that yielded to pressure, and Calvin was sure that if he pressed hard enough, the surface would break and reveal some uncongealed blood.  The temptation to pierce that surface was almost too much to bear, but Calvin retracted his hand.  This wasn’t the time, he knew.

Calvin looked again out into the water.  The whale had gone, but somehow the gaze of the giant eye seemed to linger.  Calvin shivered, but not with cold.

—

Three weeks passed, and the Captain remained unconscious.  Calvin felt personally responsible, and he tried to spend as much time tending to the Captain as he could, though the ship’s doctor didn’t care for his presence.  For the most part, the Captain’s health had refused to change, either for better or worse.  There had been a brief scare a few days back, when the Captain’s breathing had become ragged and his heartbeat had become dangerously fast, but the medic had worked his science and the Captain’s condition had stabilized.

The mood of the ship was lower than it had ever been.  Even if they found another whale, Calvin doubted anyone would have the ardor to make chase.  Even the first mate, who after taking command had tried to raise the men’s spirits, had given up and lapsed into ennui.  He kept the ship running, but just barely.  Without the Captain, they didn’t have anywhere to go.

With the malaise of the crew smothering conversation, Calvin found himself mindless pacing the deck, gazing ever so often out to sea.  He hadn’t seen the whale again since the night after the chase, but he had been watching, waiting.  The memory of the whale’s presence haunted his mind, and his dreams, and he didn’t know why.  Whales were whales!  There was nothing special about this one.  An obsession might make sense if he craved revenge, but he didn’t.  He just wanted the whale to come back.

Hobbs, climbing down from the rigging, saw Calvin’s futile watch and went over to him.  “Looking for whales?  Even if ye found one, it wouldn’t matter.  This crew is dead.  The Captain is the heart of the crew, and not much can live without a heart for long.”

Hobbs sighed.  “It won’t be long now.  Soon, we’ll give up and head back.  There be nothing more for us out here.”

Calvin involuntarily flinched at that last comment.  He had worked so hard to come out here, to train in the art of whaling, to become a member of this crew, and now there was nothing?  He just had to go back?  Empty of…empty of what Calvin couldn’t quite say.  But he knew it was wrong, and he said so:

“Hobbs, we can’t give up.  The Captain’s not dead, and as long as he’s alive the crew is too.  We all came out here to find something, to earn something, to win something; we can’t give up until we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

Hobbs smiled wryly.  “Ah, the exuberance of youth.  It would be tempting to say that ye don’t know any better; that yer naïve; that yer dreams are foolish and unwarranted; that this is the real world and things don’t work that way.  But I know better; I’ve done this too long.  I know we need that kind of wild-eyed hope out here, lest these waters and whales swallow us up.  It’s a hard life, and only the hardest men can find what they seek.”

Calvin turned to Hobbs.  “Hobbs, do you…”  Calvin paused, but then pressed forward; he had to know if he could find what he needed to find.  “Do you think love can blossom, even on the open sea?”

Hobbs smiled.  “Ay, I reckon it can.”

—

That night, Calvin volunteered to take the midnight watch.  He knew what he had to do.

He watched and waited, waited and watched.  The night was as black and cold as any he had ever seen, and Calvin’s only warmth was his hope.  If he was right, then this was what he had come out to sea for.  This is why he had gone to school, why he had signed on to a whaling crew, and why he had come out onto this deck tonight.  He had to know; he had to find what he was here to find.

The hours passed.  The sky was pitch black but for the ghost of a moon tracing its arc behind the clouds.  But Calvin didn’t see the moon’s traverse; his eyes didn’t move from the ebon waters.  The watch was nearly over, and he had seen nothing.  Calvin’s heart sunk.  Was he wrong?  Had this all been for nothing?  Had his…life been for nothing?

He closed his eyes in despair, and then it happened.

He heard the murmur.

The gurgle.

The splash.

Calvin gripped the harpoon tight.  This time, he had meant to bring it with him.  He needed it now, more than he needed anything.  Anything, except…

He opened his eyes, and the whale broke the surface.  The eye peered above the water, and Calvin’s heart peered back.

Calvin walked up to the edge of the ship.  This was his moment.  With the whale’s eye coupled to his soul, he knew.  This was what it was.

There was a clattering of a deck hatch behind him.  Calvin turned, startled; it was Hobbs coming up on deck for his watch.  He saw Calvin, and the look in his eyes, and at first was confused.  Then, looking past Calvin, he saw the whale, and he understood.  He walked up to Calvin and wrapped him in a hug.  “So, ye’ve found what ye needed to find.  Ye’ve done what all us whalers come out here to try to do.  I’m happy for ye.”

Calvin hugged back.  Of everyone, he was glad that Hobbs understood.   Then he released, and turned away.  Hobbs wiped a tear from his eye.  Calvin strode up to the edge of the ship, looked into the depths of the whale’s eye, and jumped.

The blackness swallowed him.

But by far the oddest thing to end up on my idea list is “whaler fanfiction”.

It’s odd for the obvious reason, i.e. it’s whaler fanfiction.  But it’s especially befuddling to me because I have no memory of adding it to the list, and I cannot for the life of me think of why I would have put it there.^†  But if it’s on the list, I must have thought it was a good idea at some point, right?  (That, or I was just trying to sabotage my future self.)

So let’s run with this.  How would one write whaler fanfiction?

Well, fanfiction is conventionally fiction, usually short story or novella length, that makes use of characters and settings from established media franchises.  It’s generally typified by an extremely amateurish writing style, a lack of relevance to the source material, and a goal of wish-fulfillment as opposed to a serious attempt at creating something of value.

(It’s worth noting that there is also a class of what I am hesitant to call “literature” wherein professional authors write authorized spin-offs of existing media; while a tiny bit more respectable, it’s still generally hack work at best.)

The problem with defining whaler fanfiction is that it lacks an existing subculture (or “fandom”) to generate enough context for us to work with.  Whaling doesn’t exactly have a cult following, and there’s only one piece of existing media¹ with enough visibility to be useful as source material.  But that’s a tractable problem: all we have to do is figure out what we might expect to be the motifs of a whaler subculture if it did exist.

The first step is to define our setting, which is pretty easy:

• Ships
• High seas
• Port towns
• Circa 1800s
• Sailors
• Whales
• Harpoons
• Peg legs

Note the similarities to maritime piracy, which does have an existing subculture we can reliably draw from.

The second step in coming up with our genre theory is defining characters.  Unlike most fanfiction, where the fandoms have more source material, we lack a well-defined set of pre-written characters.  We can work around this, though; fanfiction gives us access to a number of universal archetypes:

• Mary Sue protagonist
• Pathetically obvious love interest
• Childhood best friend (homoerotic tension vis-à-vis the protagonist is the norm)
• Rival (homoerotic tension vis-à-vis the protagonist is the norm)
• Sage elderly character
• Helpful allies

The third step is to take the cross product of our setting and our character archetypes, which yields a pretty straightforward dramatis personæ:

• The Protagonist: male, Mary Sue, crewman on a whaling vessel.  Either a green sailor out on his first adventure, or a high-ranking crew member (first mate, perhaps).  Probably not the captain, though may become the captain before the end of the story.

• The Love Interest: female, idealized relative to the protagonist.  Career options include: saucy wench, stowaway, left behind and pining for her lover’s return, lost at sea, ghost, mermaid, or (if you’re feeling particularly ficcy) a whale.

• Sailor #2: male, friend of the protagonist.  Probably a gross personality foil of the protagonist.  Possible dolosus servus (scheming ally).²  Possible homoerotic love interest (primary or secondary).

• The Salty Sea Captain: male, either a friend of the protagonist or mysterious and aloof.  Takes the role of senex (wise old man) or senex iratus (heavy father, impediment to the protagonist).²  May be the source of a MacGuffin as necessary.

• The Rival Sailor: male, enemy of the protagonist.  Possible homoerotic love interest (primary or secondary).

• Red-shirt Sailors: can take up a host of archetypical roles, including but not limited to: miles gloriosus (boasting soldier), bomolochoi (buffoon), or agroikos (straight man).²

• The Whale: either as a cherished resource, or alternatively as a dangerous foe.

Variations on this cast list are of course possible, but this gives us a good baseline.

With setting and characters established, what about the plot?  Don’t forget, this is fanfiction; the plot can be anything, and by no stretch of the imagination has to be in any way related to the characters or setting.  But there are some fanfiction classics we can certainly make use of:

• Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they live happily ever after
• Boy meets girl, they fall in love, tragedy strikes
• Any song from Mastodon’s “Leviathan” written as a short story
• Whaling in Space
• Post-apocalyptic whaling
• Whalers are secretly ninjas and fight pirates
• Love interest is in a coma / is dying / dies
• Best friend is in a coma / is dying / dies
• Captain is in a coma / is dying / dies
• High school dance
• MPreg
• Sex with a whale
• Best friend turned into a whale
• Sex with best friend turned into a whale
• Actual Goddamn whaling (not this one, naturally)

If you need more than that, TV Tropes will hook you up.  Happy ficcing!

—

¹ I refer, of course, to Moby Dick.  Though, arguably, Moby Dick is itself whaler fanfiction.

² I’m availing myself of some archetypal analysis here, specifically using some of the classical archetypes defined by Northrop Frye and (normal-sized) Carl Jung.  Some might argue that the archetypal approach is not valid in modern literature, which is more complex and tends to resist this type of analysis.  I say that that’s all well and good, but attributing that level of subtlety to fanfiction is, frankly, giving it too much credit.

^† Update (8/3/11): Using the power of the Google, I’ve determined that the inspiration for this was almost certainly Dinosaur Comics.  Now I’m just wondering if footnote ¹ was an unconscious reference as well.

The story is essentially an alternative ending to the book.  If you’ve never read Crime and Punishment, you probably won’t find this especially amusing.  Oh well.

—

Raskolnikov ambled down the streets of V———, muttering to himself.  “I haven’t eaten . . . for almost . . . a week now . . . .  Do I even deserve to eat?  If I eat, they may suspect . . . but if I don’t eat . . . it will only be more evidence of my insanity!”  In his delirious stupor, he stumbled over a stone and fell immediately asleep in the bushes on the side of the road.

As he slept fitfully, he began to feel a great weight upon him.  He could not make out the nature of the shape; he saw only darkness pressing upon him.  The weight pressed against his chest, making it difficult to breathe.  “What does this mean?” he thought to himself.  “The press of this darkness . . . is suffocating . . . .”

Suddenly, he awoke to find, to his utter surprise, a small kitten sitting on his face, impairing his ability to breathe.  He began to mumble to himself aimlessly about this, but found that he could not, as there was a kitten on his face.  Surprised at this new turn of events, he decided that, although it may not turn out to be the wisest choice in the future, it would be best to remove the kitten from his face.

Sitting up, he looked at the kitten now sitting next to him, looking at him with its big black eyes.  “So, Cat, you have come to me too.  Do you ask me too to confess . . . just like the rest of them?  You think that just because I have committed this heinous crime, I deserve punishment!  What have I done wrong . . . I have only tried to do what is best . . . but then . . . what have I done right?  Oh, Cat!  I fear that you are right in this . . . though my goal was to further society, the results of my actions have helped only a few, least of all myself . . . very well; I will go. . . .”  Resolved to this new course of action, he promptly got up and immediately fell down again; his poor health made it difficult for him to move quickly.  Dragging himself slowly to his feet, he began to trudge his way down the X——— Street to the police station.

Finally reaching the police station, he went up to the office of Ilya Petrovitch, the Explosive Lieutenant.  As he stood at the door, he decided that it would be unwise to confess to this particular police officer.  “The police have nothing but contempt for me, thanks to the accusations of that Porfiry Petrovitch!  I will not receive the justice I deserve from the likes of him.”

He opened the door and surveyed the scene within.  In front of him was the desk, at which sat Ilya Petrovich.  A lone window let a single beam of light into the room.  The light fell on a potted plant, and it was to this that Raskolnikov now turned.

“Oh plant . . . ,” he began, but was unable to continue.  His mind reeled: was this really the way to go?  Must he turn himself in, even to this fine example of Perovskia Atriplicifolia?  Bewildered, he left the offices and stumbled down the stairs.  When he reached the door, he smiled an ugly, meaningless smile.  He was free!  Nobody could tell him what to do!  As he gazed over the city that was now his domain, his eyes fell again the kitten.

“Cat!” he cried.  “Have you returned to torment me?  Is a small, fluffy mammal to make demands of me . . . ?”  But then, as he gazed into the kitten’s eyes, a wave of guilt washed over him, knocking him back up the stairs.  As the shame pushed him up the three flights, he realized that he must go through with this: “I can not . . . let others suffer for this . . . when my goal was only to help!”  Finally, beached in Ilya Petrovich’s office once again, he turned to the plant in the corner.  He fell to his knees; “Oh plant . . . I must confess . . . it was . . .”

Suddenly, the window shattered into infinitesimally small pieces as a suited man swung through and rolled into the room.  He stood in the middle of the office, tall, majestic, and partially bald.  The room filled with silence as he began to speak: “Bob Dole says it was Bob Dole killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.”

Конец.

French – I generally don’t hold the French or their frog-speak in particularly high esteem, and being fluent in the language doesn’t appeal to me.  That said, the ability to effectively interject French phraseology into English dialogue is a very useful trick:

• It portrays an air of sophistication.  (If you’re very sneaky, you can also pull this off by faking it.)
• It can be used to selectively isolate parts of your audience (i.e. the ones who know some French).  In the mode of satire, you can make the smart people feel smart and the dumb people feel dumb.
• The sound of the French language is generally considered pleasant by English speakers.
• Interjecting French phrases into speech has the ability to give your speech a certain je ne c’est quoi.

Though if I did learn French fluently, I would be able to read Voltaire in the original!  Given that it’s pretty hysterical translated, I have to assume that it’d be even better in French.  Worth it?  Eh.

Latin – Like French, it’s not particularly useful for holding a conversation, but can be great for spicing up English discourse.  Nothing like throwing a modus or an ad nauseum into a conversation and then shrugging it off.  Equal parts pretentious and academic.  Plus, useful if Sean Connery is dying and you need to proceed in the footsteps of God.  (In the Latin alphabet, “Jehovah” begins with an “I”.  And in the language of the Sioux people, “Sioux” means “Snake”!)

Italian – A great language for yelling, cursing, or generally emoting.  Highly gesticulitive, with wide open vowels and great fricatives.  Just plain fun to speak.  Plus, it makes ordering Italian food way easier (or pretentious, depending on how you choose to live your life).

—

Some other good choices for the budding polyglot to consider:

English English - A.k.a. Double English, a.k.a. British English, a.k.a. “Standard” English, a.k.a. the King’s English, a.k.a. a language with too many names to possibly be taken seriously.  A fun language because it’s so much like American English, except with better accents and the occasional vocabularic stonker.

Indian – Not actually a language, but it’s fun to tell people you speak it.

Sanskrit - Bitches love Sanskrit.

Python – Doh ho ho look at me I’m a software engineer and I made a computer joke.

Kitty pidgin – A pidgin, not a language.  (And not learned so much as “degraded to”.)

Tagalog - Mostly it’s just fun to say “Tagalog.”

Granted, for some people writing is their career. And if that’s the case, fine; you’re a writer. But I live in Seattle, a city filled with “writers” who can’t write but do it anyways. And even of those who do somehow turn hobby into career, the vast majority can’t write.

There is a discontinuity here, as there usually is with any kind of contentious statement. By “writing”, I am not referring to the ability to put pen to paper and make words come out. Nor am I referring to the practice of describing a series of emotions or ideas with the written word. I’m not even referring to the phenomenon by which people manage to produce something that a publisher wants to sell or a consumer to buy. I’m talking about a craft.

Some people would call writing art, not craft. We have a thing for writing-as-art; we call it “literature”. Literature is fine, I guess; like paintings or symphonies, we have a particular place in our culture for “art” of this type. But I personally have never bought much into it. In the “culinary arts”, there are two kinds of food; food that tastes good, and food that looks good. (Or, at least, looks difficult to prepare.) If you prepare a delicious steak, you’re not an artist. But if you make an inedible sculpture from food, then you are.

No, what we’re talking about here is writing as a craft. Like the culinarian and his ribeye, writing-as-craft is the art (if you will) of digging deep into words, and the ideas that they can express, and from individual lexemes constructing something that is both wonderful to consume and substantive enough that the craftsman can take pride in it. This isn’t writing for writing’s sake; this is writing for creation’s sake. To write is to practice one’s craft in order to make something that is better than nothing. And, like any craftsman, a writer needs tools.

Why Writers Need Linguistics

Frankly, I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain this. I think just averring that this is Mind-Blizzeringly Obvious would be as reasonable as an actual explanation. By analogy, I could have called this topic:

• Why Architects Need Physics
• Why Poets Need Emotions
• Why Chefs Need to Know What Food Tastes Like

As above, writing is a craft. It’s not some random happenstance, where someone pulls a “thousand monkeys” and comes up with Shakespeare by accident. It’s not black magic, developed through dark dealings with unclean Spyrits. It’s a craft, which you learn when you’re young and hone as you grow and mature. And, like any craft, you’re not likely to develop reliable skills unless you understand the kernel of how it is that you practice your craft. For a chef, that means understanding how food looks and tastes, and why, and what will happen when you cook and combine foods in particular ways. And for a writer, that means understanding how words and ideas look and sound and feel, and why, and what happens when you express certain thoughts with certain words.

Take a simple example. Many is the writer with a frankly pathetic grasp on things like grammar and spelling. Now, granted, it is possible for someone with a poor grasp on grammar and spelling to be a good writer; oftentimes, a creative (if roughshod) writer paired with a good editor can make something from this. You can be a chef and never taste food, but it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

But it’s not just a matter of knowing “good grammar” (whatever that means) and how to use a spell-checker. Anyone who manages to get through a very basic education should possess this knowledge. But this is like the chef knowing that “when meat gets hot, it cooks”. Yes, it’s true; yes, it’s important to know. But the understanding needs to be much deeper than that.

For the craftsman, it’s not enough to just know “grammar”. The craftsman needs to know why grammar works the way it does. Why is grammar in English one way, but grammar in Spanish another way? Why do grammar rules change based on region and audience? Same goes for spelling. Why are words in English spelled (spelt?) the way they are? Where do those spellings come from?

There are a number of reasons why this deeper grasp of language is important. The most obvious one is believability; a writer’s characters need to sound like actual human beings, and their dialogue needs to be sensible. But you don’t actually need an intellectual grasp of language to write like this; you just need to be a good observer of human behavior. (A skill writers also need, but that’s another show.)

No, the writer’s need is more nuanced. For the writer practicing his craft, understanding language at a fundamental level helps him to understand when and how rules can be broken. A chef who religiously follows recipes is not a very good or interesting chef, and a writer who idolizes “correct language” is no better. In this essay so far, I have abused semicolons, incorrectly capitalized, started untold numbers of sentences with conjunctions, misspelled at least one word and made up at least one other. But I am confident that I am communicating my message, and I’m choosing the words (and grammatical constructs) that let me do it in a way that uniquely identifies my writing as mine. As for the chef, flair and personal style define the work of a craftsman rather than a drone.

—

But there are even subtler reasons for writer-craftsmen to possess themselves of the inner workings of language. A writer who understands the psychology and emotional impact of language has the power to write in such a way that is not only indicative of his skills, but is also engineered to effectively create a memorable experience for a reader. For example, take the work of van Dijk and Kintsch on discourse comprehension.

(A disclaimer: I am not a practicing psycholinguist, and am not especially familiar with more recent research in this area, and as a result I may in my ignorance make an inaccurate claim or two. But the core argument that writers need to understand these kinds of theories should remain unhindered.)

Van Dijk and Kintsch proposed a particular mental model for the process of reading and understanding written text. Specifically, they proposed three mental models, which process information in parallel and at different levels of understanding:

• The surface form is the literal string of words that the reader consumes.
• The propositional textbase is the set of logical constructs, independent of the words used, that let the user perceive the events being described by the text.
• The situation model is the mechanism by which the reader can apply the content of the words themselves to the context of the rest of the text.

It’s debatable whether these models exactly represent the process that goes on in a reader’s brain, but the research to date suggests they’re at least reasonable approximations. And that means that the clever writer can take advantage of this understanding of their reader’s cognitive process to do interesting things:

• The obvious thing to do with this knowledge is to construct a written work as a set of layers. Rather than simply sitting down and writing, a writer can try to decide what is the situation and/or context that they want to impress upon the user’s mind. From that: what set of facts about the topic being written about can generate and support that model. From that: what is the right set of words to best communicate those facts.
• If you’re writing non-fiction, where the situation model and propositional textbase are the priority (i.e. you care more about communicating your message than being a clever wordsmith), this notion of comprehension suggests that deliberately making your surface form straightforward and non-memorable might reduce the cognitive load on the reader, making it more likely that they decipher your point.
• As with grammar and spelling above, you can also use this understanding to break the rules and tease the reader. In a more surreal work, for example, it might be appropriate to align the surface form and the situation model, but intentionally misrepresent the propositions to create a world that doesn’t align with what the reader might normally expect.

An experienced writer with some good intuition could probably do these kinds of things simply by instinct; but if you have the knowledge to make use of these techniques deliberately, the sky’s the limit. And this argument isn’t limited to this one model of discourse comprehension; writers can make use of all kinds of knowledge about human psychology to pragmatically construct their works.

And of course, this kind of argument is hardly limited to linguistics and psychology. I would submit that an understanding of even such mundanities as typography and page layout can equip the writer with the tools to better practice his craft. But writing is, at its core, language, and the science of understanding language is linguistics, so that’s where an aspiring writer should start.

And Ne’er the Twain Shall Meet

But alas, my dream is a pipéd one, for a number of reasons:

First off, don’t nobody care about linguistics. It is an unfortunate fact that linguistics, as a science, is still relatively young and, as a result, not held in particularly high esteem. Most people don’t even know what it is. Hell, I think I know what it is, but I’m probably wrong. We teach the pedagogy of spelling and grammar in elementary schools, but if you want to learn the science you’ll have to wait until college, and even then the opportunities are only so broad.

Second, while the notion of writing as a craft isn’t a new one, most people aren’t likely to accept it. We have a cultural understanding that writing is either art (in the case of literature) or commercial (like hack fiction or non-fiction). It doesn’t help that craft, generally speaking, is simply not very highly regarded by the masses. (Thanks for nothing, Internet.)

Finally, writers are lazy. Or rather, they might work really hard, but at all the wrong things. They read and read and read and write and write and write, and admittedly all six of these activities are important towards becoming a better writer. But learning the meat of what makes up language is going to be a far more robust and time-effective way to improve your ability to write. Unfortunately, most of the writers I’ve met don’t want to learn how to be better writers, they just want to be better writers.

You might say that I’m unfairly cynical. I say: prove me wrong.

According to Wikipedia:^3,4,5

Reason is a mental faculty found in humans, that is able to generate conclusions from assumptions or premises. In other words, it is amongst other things the means by which rational beings propose (specific) reasons, or explanations of cause and effect.  [emphasis in the original]⁶

The crucial point to take away from this is that reason, in the abstract sense, is something that is usually associated with sentience in general and humanity in particular.⁷  Reason is, many would say, that thing which separates men from beasts.⁸  It is fairly reasonable to assert that reason is requisite to defining human behavior, and by contrast to assert that the abandonment of reason is the abandonment of humanity.⁹

The definition above defines reason in terms of reasons, which are logical rather than cognitive.  It’s certainly not a coincidence that the two concepts use the same word, since the former is strongly dependent on the latter; in a sense, reasons are the mechanisms we invoke to utilize our capacity to reason.¹⁰

Again with the Wikipedia:

In informal logic, a reason consists of either a single premise or co-premises in support of an argument. In formal symbolic logic, only single premises occur. In informal reasoning, two types of reasons exist. An evidential reason is a foundation upon which to believe that or why a claim is true. An explanatory reason attempts to convince you how something is or could be true, but does not directly convince you that it is true.  [emphasis in the original]

The discussion below gets a little thick, so we need to establish some consistent terminology:¹¹

• Reasons are, for our purposes, sufficient reasons; that is, reasons that compel an action to be taken (as below)¹².  Actions frequently have multiple compounding reasons, but when the decision to take an action is made, there will  be some subset of reasons that, together, constitute a sufficient meta-reason, a.k.a. the “dealbreaker”¹³.  The dealbreaker is what determines whether an action is to be taken or not; “reasons” in this discussion will refer only to dealbreakers.
• Taking an action is a tricky one.  By “taking an action” here we mean doing something that a person would not do as a matter of course.  This can be material (walking down the street), cognitive (selecting a favorite song), or passive (holding one’s breath).  Specifically, taking an action is to enact an intention upon one’s environment.  Having an intention implies having a reason, which will be important later.
• Intention is some goal that you are trying to reach by taking an action.  You have reasons why that goal is desirable.  You take an action to make that goal come about. It’s also important to note that the goal is necessarily something that is distinct from your default state¹⁴; that is, a goal of “be exactly the same as before” doesn’t count.

Many reasonable people, if you asked, would probably draw a distinction between “reason” and emotional states like passion or duty.  Personally, I don’t believe that emotion is any less valid an example of reason than pure logic.  Why?  Because if you do something because you were in some kind of emotional fervor, you still had a reason for doing it.  If you punch a wall, and someone asks you why, and you say you did it because you were just so angry, then that is a reason.  It might not be a good reason; it might not be a moral reason, it might not be a logical reason, but it is still a reason.  It is some premise that causes some sort of conclusion to be true.  The humanity of reason does not derive from the fact that reasons themselves are logical; rather, it comes from the fact that humans are capable of taking actions beyond pure animal instinct because we can formulate reasons (logical or not) for doing so.¹⁵

I would go so far as to claim that it is vital to have reasons for one’s actions.  After all, as discussed above, the presence of reason is part of what defines our humanity; to act without reason is to act inhumanly.  If you’re doing something, and someone asks you why, and you’re unable to come up with a better answer than “I don’t know, it just seems like I should be doing this,” then you have a serious problem.  Even saying “I just felt like it” constitutes a reason, albeit probably not a very good one.  (In that case, you might at least have some ineffable¹⁶ emotional grounding for your action.)  Without reasons behind them, actions are purposeless and mechanical (or animal; pick the metaphor you prefer)¹⁷.

But that’s not a very difficult claim to convince someone of.  Most people would probably agree that reason is an important aspect of humanity, and that we should do things purposefully.¹⁸  I didn’t need to write all these words in order to make that point; I needed to write all these words in order to contextualize my real point: if we agree that it is necessary to have reasons for our actions, then it follows that the inverse is also true.  Simply put:

You cannot provide a reason for failing to take an action.^19,20

Think about why this must be.  As above, the argument for reasoned actions comes fairly naturally to us.  Propositionally, we would say:

(A) you take an intentional action IF AND ONLY IF you possess a reason

That is, if you have a sufficient reason, you take the action.  Conversely, if you take an action, it means that you had a reason to do so.  Note that I’m talking about having a reason; whether or not you know it or can explain it is unimportant.

Of course, since (A) is biconditionally true, it stands to reason (in fact, it is logically necessary) that the inverse is also true:

(B)  you do not take an intentional action IF AND ONLY IF you do not possess a reason

The crucial point here is that the failure to take an action is logically equivalent to the absence of a sufficient reason.  Again, this is only true if you make the assumption that all actions have reasons.  (Which is not necessarily the case in the real world, but more on that later.)

This is a little tough to grasp in a formal sense, so let’s look at an example.  Say you’re considering going to the store to buy some chocolate milk.  If you go to the store, you have an intention (acquisition of chocolate milk) which you work towards for a reason (desire to drink chocolate milk).  If you don’t go to the store, it’s not because you acquired some deep aversion for chocolate milk that kept you from wanting to go to the store.  You simply decided that your desire for chocolate milk did not constitute sufficient reason to take the action.  (Why someone would reach that conclusion when chocolate milk is involved is beyond me, but this is strictly intended as a pedagogical device.)

Again, this is true for intentional actions, which may actually be passive.  An example: You have a job.  The reason?  To make money and support yourself financially.  However, going to work each day, while technically “active”, is a non-intentional action because it is implicit in some previous action you took (i.e. the decision to have a job).  You do not “decide to go to work” every day, you just go.  Staying home from work, to take a vacation or because you are sick, is an intentional action because it is a deliberate decision that requires sufficient reasons.

Natural language makes this distinction difficult to draw; we think of intentional actions and non-intentional actions alike as “things that we choose to do”, but this is simply not the case.  Not becoming the President of the United States is not something that you choose to do.  No one, when they are a child, says to their parents, “Mommy, Daddy, I’m going to grow up to not be the President of the United States,” at least not unless they are exceptionally cynical for their age.  A person has a default state, and changing that default state can only be impacted either by environmental factors outside a person’s control or by taking intentional actions (or non-actions, as the case may be).

Think of an analogy to physics.  In Newtonian mechanics, an object retains its velocity unless acted upon by an outside force; reasons and actions are the same thing.  The “velocity” of a person is his current default state.  It remains constant unless some “force”, either from the environment or from the person himself, acts on the person to change their life’s course.  But the velocity doesn’t have to be zero.  A person’s default velocity probably includes breathing, for example.  Not breathing, then, is akin to “slowing down” a person’s velocity; it still requires an intentional force to do it.

The implications of this are monumental.  The obvious result this claim gives is that, if you give a reason for a non-intentional action (i.e. something you would have done anyway, “just because”), it is meaningless.  Bullshit.  Bupkis.  A reason for a non-intentional action cannot exist logically, at least according to (B).

Of course, the problem with this claim is that people give reasons for not doing things all of the time.  ”Working out takes too much time.”  ”I’d like to, but I’m just really busy right now.”  ”I can’t go out with you, I have to wash my hair that night.”  And if you believe the above argument is valid, then these reasons are nonsensical.  They cannot have meaning.  In these examples, it’s pretty obvious that the speaker is just making an excuse, and that’s what reasons on non-intentional actions are: excuses.  They are without substance.

So the next time someone gives you a reason for not doing something, think carefully about what they’re saying.  Are they really giving you a reason?  Are they making a deliberate action based on some intention?  Or are they just coming up with an excuse to put you off?  Something to think about. Or at least, something you probably have a good reason to think about.

—

Reasons for actions taken:²¹

¹Since I cannot (or choose not to) give a reason for any sort of introductory fluff at the beginning of this essay, it is appropriate to avoid it all together.

²Throughout this essay, I make use of well-known language constructs that make use of the word “reason”. This makes things a bit more difficult to decipher, but to me the wordplay is too good to resist.

³I use Wikipedia as my reference of choice for a number of reasons: there is good reason to think that it is reasonably accurate, both because of Wikipedia’s reputation and because it is collaboratively produced; it is now more or less the accepted standard to refer to Wikipedia for purposes of encyclopedic definition; and, of course, it is free to use.

⁴I provide a definition of reason (the cognitive construct) in order to provide a point of reference from which to begin my own analysis of the topic, and also to introduce the topic at hand in a very concrete way.

⁵It is worth noting that I have very intentionally broached the topic of reasons (the logical concepts) via the related (but notably different) concept of reason.  This is in order to provide a context from which I can attempt to establish the intrinsic value of providing reasons for one’s actions.

⁶I have indicated that the emphasis in the quotation is from the source material (Wikipedia) in order to eliminate any ambiguity that may suggest to the reader that I am trying to emphasize certain points.

⁷Here, I summarize the key point I am trying to draw from the provided definition in order to guide the reader along the logical progression that I intend to make.

⁸The comparison of men to animals is deliberately provocative. My goal is to make the notion of actions taken without reason to appear offensive and inhuman; this is a rhetorical device intended to make the reader more invested in my conclusion.

⁹This logical inversion parallels an inversion I will use later to establish the essay’s thesis. And, as in the previous footnote, I am attempting to create an association between a lack of reasons and inhuman or animalistic behavior.

¹⁰This paragraph is my effort to point out the use of reasons in the definition of reason, as well as to segue neatly into the next Wikipedia definition.

¹¹My first draft did not attempt to provide specific terminological choices, and as a result was basically unreadable. This section ensures that I use phrases deliberately and consistently in the remainder of the essay.

¹²These definitions have a number of tight interdependencies. I tried to be explicit about these interdependencies at this point, so I could be a bit more prosaically free later on.

¹³I refer to dealbreakers here because they have a wider popular understanding than the notion of sufficient reasons.

¹⁴Defining intention in terms of default states is important to disambiguate between intentional actions and non-intentional actions, as well as to provide better parity with the analogy to Newtonian mechanics later on.

¹⁵Including emotional reasons into the category of “valid” reasons seems reasonable, and helps make the thesis less refutable by simply pointing out the existence of illogical reasoning.

¹⁶A tribute to Douglas Adams, whose writing and philosophies are strong inspirations on my own.

¹⁷While “mechanical” is the more traditional metaphor here, I wanted to again observe the association with the animal and instinctual.

¹⁸This summary statement exists to keep the reader from getting overly focused on the first half of the essay when the interesting points fall in the second half.

¹⁹This statement of the essay’s thesis is intentionally simple and provocative. It is in bold and italics to make it obvious that it is the thesis.

²⁰At this point, I was really sick of explicitly writing out footnotes for all of the reasons. I felt that the point had been made and that the marginal returns (relative to the effort required) had diminished to the point where it was no longer worth continuing.

²¹I provide documentation of reasons for most of the pertinent decisions in the context of crafting this essay (the first half, at least) in order to more effectively make the point that I believe in this philosophy.  Also, I do enjoy me some meta.

Hopefully the Daily will keep their archives consistent long enough for these links to stay valid.

—

On language and the Facebook friend – 1/25/2010

This column is about how the social construct of the “Friend on Facebook” can actually impact the way that people classify their relationships with others.  It’s satirical in nature, which I avoided after this column since I didn’t have much faith in my readership.  It also has nothing to do with language; I just use some comments about language to introduce the topic.

This was originally titled “Friends on Facebook”, and I posted the original version shortly after this was published.  The substantial revisions stemmed from a combination of my misunderstanding of what sort of material my editor wanted, and my editor’s last minute changes without my input.  I do think the changes made were for the worse, but it was a one-time issue; after this piece, my editor and I improved our communication substantially, and we were able to avoid future disagreements.  Also: in the web version, both “Internet” and “Internets” are used, thanks to inconsistent editing by those monsters on the copy desk.  (I had used “Internets” consistently in the original, though I abandoned that style choice for future columns to avoid conflict with editors.)

—

Seven words you can’t say on the Internet – 2/4/2010

This column is about the US government’s stated commitment to “Internet freedom” and how it is inconsistent with many of the actions being taken by the FCC and the FTC to regulate the Internet, especially vis-à-vis censorship.  This was also my first of several columns to hit upon the broad theme of freedom as compared to the security provided by government regulation.

This one was originally titled “Seven Words You Can Never Say on the Internet”.  The difference isn’t all that substantial, but it is a little irritating because I went to the effort to get the wording authentic to the original George Carlin routine; my guess is the copy desk (those onerous bastards) changed it to match the more popular phrasing of it, which is exactly what I was trying not to do.  Ah, well.

—

The media of yesterday’s tomorrow – 2/11/2010

This column is about how news media are terrible at using the Internet.  Specifically, this one was inspired by my irritation at watching CNN go on and on about what people were saying on Twitter, regardless of whether or not it was newsworthy.  However, my research for the column suggested that at least some entities (CNN included) were making strides towards improving, so I tried to give everyone a fair trial.

This is my second of several columns that make reference to my linguistics background.  This is kind of surprising because I was hired to write a column about the Internet because I was a computer science major, not because I happened to be interested in linguistics.  I don’t think I ever referred to computer science throughout my tenure.

I used the word “wont” in the phrase “as would be their wont” because I love that word.  Then I got an email from a reader saying that I had misspelled it as “want”; as it turned out, the copy desk had made the change because apparently the jackanapes don’t actually know the English language.  (You might be noticing a theme here.)

I made reference to jetpacks as a way to make fun of futurologists (making fun of people works out to be a great lead-in), and I got another email from a reader who asked what they were.  This made me very sad.

—

Zen and the art of social media – 2/17/2010

This column is about the recent (at the time) release of Google Buzz; it was a hot news item, so I figured I should comment on it.  I basically said that getting into the social media business was hard, but if anybody could do it successfully it would be Google; as it turns out, Google decided to not really push adoption, so now Google Buzz is essentially a dead technology.

This one was originally supposed to be titled “Zen and the Art of Social Media Adoption”; not a huge edit, but since the column was about adoption and not social media per se I was a bit irked by the change.  Incidentally, this was the second column to use the “zen and the art of…” meme in the headline; my old dorm neighbor had written “Zen and the art of campus” the previous summer.

This was also my first of two short columns; I never figured out how short columns were assigned, so I just assumed if I got assigned a short that my editor was unhappy with what I had written the previous week.  That’s probably completely baseless, but it’s something.

—

The unbearable lightness of Tweeting – 2/25/10

This column is a defense of Twitter; I try to make the case that, if used in the intended way, Twitter could potentially be a very valuable social tool.  Of course, this is like telling cows that they’d be better off if they built guns, but I figured it was something worth saying, and it had the added benefit of being a very nonstandard view.  It also had some interesting social psychology implications, which I built on over the next few pieces.

The title is based off the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which I have never read (I don’t even know what it’s about), but it is my favorite phrase to parody in situations like this.  Of course, copy desk didn’t know that, so they uncapitalized all the words except for “Tweeting”, which isn’t a word people usually capitalize.

This is probably my favorite column.  The Huffington Post agreed, since they ran this on the college portion of their website; sadly, I didn’t learn this until after they had already moved on to newer postings, so I never got to see it on their site.  (And apparently they changed the title, which seems ridiculous to me since it’s my favorite part of the whole piece.)

—

Who are the ‘Mythica’? – 3/11/2010

This column was the first of two to discuss the notion of the “Mythica”.  The idea of the Mythica is that they are the people on the Internet who create all the content that you see, but with whom you never actually have any real interaction.  This column fleshes out the concept and suggests that the Mythica are an unfortunate byproduct of an Internet that values content creation over interaction.

This column features one of my better asides, in which I refer to semantic autologies, or words that describe themselves.  It has little to do with the topic, but it was certainly fun to write (though it’s much less fun to read).

I also used this column as a way to mention Chatroulette, thus fulfilling my obligation to cover relevant Internet news, without actually discussing it, something that has in my opinion been done to death and somewhat beyond.

—

Who are the ‘real’ people? – 3/25/2010

This column, which I usually just call “Mythica II”, continues with the concept of the Mythica but moves in the opposite direction.  I basically try to make the point that “real” interactions on the Internet are no more or less “real” than those that take place in the real world.  People on the Internet aren’t fictional, and if you can move beyond the Mythica archetype then it is possible to find meaningful interactions between disparate people.

Frankly, I thought this was the worst of all the columns I wrote, but my editor liked it fine and at least one person I talked to said it was their favorite of all my columns, so what the hell do I know?

—

Set the record gender-neutral – 3/29/2010

This column is about perceived misogyny on the Internet, and how it is really just a function of general bigotry combined with groupthink.

This one was fun to write because, while the subject matter is handled seriously, it is a parody of the columns of another Daily columnist who was reviled by many for writing quite misandristic works.  (She eventually quit the paper after a number of her columns received a strong backlash from male readers.)

—

Do not vote in MSA elections – 4/7/2010

This column, unlike all my others, has nothing to do with the Internet.  It is instead about trying to convince people that the Minnesota Student Association, the supposed student government at the University of Minnesota, was an essentially powerless organization that serves as a tool for the administration to convince students that they have some power (which they don’t).

My editor hated this one initially; he referred to it as “myopic and cynical”.  I tweaked it a bit to be a bit more solution-oriented, and my editor was a lot happier with it.  He did change the title; the original was “Don’t rock the vote, baby”, but he insisted (and I conceded) that his title was much more provocative.

—

Conscious consumption in the Internet age – 4/12/2010

This column is about how large corporations get away with activities that many people consider untoward, but nothing is done because consumers are too lazy to hold the corporations accountable.

I talked technology in the first couple of columns, then moved towards social psychology, and at this point I was moving into corporatism and government interventionism.  It sort of grew out of my economic rant from the previous week; people complain about corporations (which the University is), but refuse to use their economic power to assert their distaste.

Incidentally, I received the following email in response to this column:

Good article.  It is very important to remember that (I just read about the Pulitzers being handed out) it is actual journalists who are doing the work of collecting and publishing information.  When I attended the U of M (graduating in mid-70s), people believed in fact-checking and the consequences of not doing so.  I want to believe good work matters.

Google does nothing but make information available. If I search on “Stem Cell Research”, what do I find? An amazing variety of opinion, blogs, a few wacky websites. The only information that has much value is that done by journalists who have painstakingly checked facts.  Obviously, in some ways we have moved ahead, as a society.  But who is doing the measuring?

If someone can explain to me what this has to do with the column, please let me know.  I’ve got nothing.

—

To have our net neutrality and eat it too – 4/22/2010

This column is about, unsurprisingly, net neutrality.  Specifically, it talks about how net neutrality is often misunderstood because there are two different forms of it: market-regulated and government-regulated.  This is probably the capstone of my stance on free markets vs. government intervention.  (I originally intended to end the column by saying “Bonus column: replace all instances of ‘net neutrality’ with ‘health care reform’.”, but I figured that wouldn’t make it past my editor.)

I thought this one was pretty mediocre when I wrote it, but my editor loved it.  In hindsight, I can see why; it’s neat, topical, and raises good questions.  But I still feel a little meh about it.

After this was published, a reader representing Broadband for America suggested that I write a column about broadband adoption.  I thought about it, but eventually opted not to, especially since it probably would have worked out to be the exact same column, but with “broadband adoption” instead of “net neutrality”.

—

YouTube and the ethics of copyright – 4/29/2010

This column is about how complicated the ethical issues surrounding copyright are, and additionally how YouTube’s rather lax stance makes it even more difficult to behave in a legal and ethical way.

This was my last column before the semester ended.  I didn’t exactly go out with a bang (I thought I had one more column to write), but I thought it came together well.  This was also the first column I enjoyed writing since “Set the record gender-neutral” a month prior, so it was nice to go back to actually enjoying the writing process.

—

And there you have it, folks (or maybe just me).  Twelve columns, lovingly and/or hatefully crafted at $50 a pop.  A pretty nice gig, although between deadlines and those twits on the copy desk I doubt I would do it again.  But hey, now if I have ideas on things to write about I can go back to writing them here on my blog where no one will read them.  And here I thought the Daily’s readership was low.

The book in question wielded the evocative title “The Kid Who Ran for President”.  In this book, there is a kid who, in a Shyamalanian twist, runs for the Office of the President of the United States.  (Incidentally, the book’s title only implies this; I suppose the publishers thought that “The Kid Who Ran for the Office of the President of the United States of America” would hurt their ability to appeal towards their target demographic, or indeed anyone.  Also there is a giant American flag on the cover so that’s a pretty easy giveaway.)

Anyway, the book is about some chump kid who runs for President as a joke but finds himself actually doing pretty well.  Eventually, he learns that as a part of the political process he is expected to form a political party.  (Remember, in the Constitution it very explicitly states that all presidential candidates must be nominated by an extant political party. [Article ℞, Section ℣, Clause ⅍])  Since he has no actual political platforms or opinions of any kind, he on a whim chooses to name his party the “Lemonade Party”.  Reading this at the time (I was probably nine or ten), I remember thinking, “Wow, it sure is dumb that someone would name a political party, which is intended to represent important and pervasive political views, after a common beverage.”  I’m operating under the assumption that the author intended this reaction, which is just further proof to the claim that books are an effective method of brainwashing children.

So when a movement called the Tea Party starts to come into political prominence, and when another movement called the Coffee Party arises to counter it (or at least to parody it), I recall what I thought ten years ago and I start to get a little bit twitchy.  And when the former case starts to be irritatingly nationalistic, and the latter starts to hold pretentious coffee shop get-togethers, I get a lot more twitchy.

Political parties are wonderful things, since they all support things everyone wants.  The Tea Party wants lower taxes and less government spending, the Coffee Party wants people to be supportive of their elected officials to increase government effectiveness, the Democrats want everyone to have what they need when they need it, and the Libertarians want everyone to be free to do what they want when they want to do it.  (The Republicans, insofar as I can tell, don’t appear to want anything except to be in power.)  If you don’t want lower taxes, or effective government, or people having what they need, or people being free, then you’re probably not grasping what it means to be a decent human being.

But as long as these damned parties keep on operating under banners of broad sets of idealism, they will continue to divide more than they unite.  The Tea Party wants lower taxes, and maybe you do too; but say you want to pull troops out of the Middle East and return to a non-interventionist foreign policy, and they’ll call you a pinko Commie terrorist.  The Coffee Party wants people to support their government officials; but tell them you don’t want to support the government officials that you didn’t vote for and do things you think are unconstitutional, and you’re a right-wing warhawk Bush-lover.

My plan is to stay out of the party system until someone realizes that the best use of a political party is not to impose some concrete set of ideologies, but instead support a government where we actually use reason to come up with our laws instead of dumping our scalding-hot emotions on each other’s laps.  Until someone starts this Water Party, I’ll stick with keeping my personal politics out of the groupthink as much as possible.

So, for your reading pleasure: the following are some excerpts from the first draft of the first half of my no, namely those that I thought were especially clever.  Personally, I’m surprised anything in the no came out even remotely well, given that the time pressures involved in NaNoWriMo force you to wri very, very fast, much faster than most people can reasonably produce output that is even remotely decent.  (Wri good nos is not the point of the event.)

Oh, and moving forward I am just going to write “novel” because that joke has stopped being funny now.

First, I should explain the title.  The book title, “Ironica”, is a word that I came up with once that made me extremely happy, for reasons that are hopefully self-evident.  The name doesn’t have much to do with the contents of the book, but either the book is itself ironic, in which case the title is appropriate, or it is not, in which case the title is ironic and therefore still appropriate, so it’s a win-win.  ”And Other Stories” is the title of what was originally intended to be the novel that I was writing  but eventually became more of a novella, which if finished would have clocked in at around 30,000 words.  ”and other stories” refers to the fact that I intended to fill the 20,000 word gap between novella and novel with short stories, but as previously mentioned I got bored with the social aspects of the event so I did not have much inspiration to finish.  Thus, only one “and other story” was even planned, which was tentatively titled “Misa”.

Next, the following are the chapter titles for “And Other Stories” from what I had so far.  For convenience, titles containing references (i.e. most of them) have explanations in parentheses:

• Chapter One: The Dreamers of the Dream (a line from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
• Chapter 2: Kings of the Stone Age (a modification of the name of the band Queens of the Stone Age; also, the fact that 2 is not spelled out is not, as far as I recall, intentional)
• Chapter Three: And Your Bird Can Swing (a line from the song “And Your Bird Can Sing”, by The Beatles)
• Chapter Four: Attacking the Darkness (a line from the comedy sketch “Dungeons and Dragons” by Dead Alewives)
• Chapter Five: Not All Those Who Wonder Are Lost [sic] (a one-letter modification on a line from the poem “All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter”, by J.R.R. Tolkien)
• Chapter Six: We’re Here
• Chapter Seven: The most beautiful place in the whole fuckin’ world (a line from the song “You” by Bad Religion)
• Chapter Eight: The Meal Slot Dialogues
• Chapter Nine: And at the End of Fear, Oblivion (a line from the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum)
• Chapter Ten: I’m Talking About Piss and Shit (a line from the animated short “Metal Gear Awesome 2″)
• Chapter Eleven: The Wild and the Young (the title of a song by Quiet Riot)
• Chapter Eleven: Crank It Up (a reference to a line from the film This Is Spinal Tap; the common reference is to say “crank it up to eleven”, though that line is not in the film proper)

Unsurprisingly, most of them are references.  I’m not really all that shocked, since I am uncreative generally and especially uncreative under significant time constraints, as I was.  Oh, and I am aware that there are two Chapter Elevens, but I have no idea why.

Now, the following are some excerpts from the draft itself.  For the record, the name “Max” for the protagonist was a placeholder; I never decided what his name would actually be.

—

It was a dark and stormy night.  Suddenly, a shot rang out!  A door slammed.  The maid screamed.  Max rolled over in bed, trying to muffle the sounds so that he could fall asleep.

Ah, Snoopy, your contributions to literature are indeed infinite.

—

As long as he didn’t look at the clock it could be any time at all.  By refusing to observe the event, the probability waveform could never collapse, and it would never be the time that he didn’t want it to be but knew that it almost certainly was.  It was like Schrödinger’s cat, neither alive nor dead, but with less fur and more gears inside of it.  Like Schrödinger’s robot cat, perhaps.   Or Schrödinger’s bald cat that had a bad habit of eating small mechanical parts.

I admit it; I stole the concept of Schrödinger’s cat jokes from Douglas Adams.  My entire writing style is permeated with tricks I learned from his writings so this is hardly a surprise.

—

But habit is a kind mistress, more of a doting grandmother in reality, so breakfast practically prepared itself without Max having to exert anything even smacking of mental effort.

Why are there never metaphors with the phrase “kind mistress”?  ”Cruel mistress” seems unnecessarily stereotypical.

—

How could a shock bowl someone over anyway?  Bowling implied some kind of physical transfer of momentum.  How could a shock have momentum if it didn’t have any mass?  Didn’t the people who invented these metaphors have any respect for basic principles of Science?  But then, scientists rarely had any respect for metaphor, so Max figured that it evened out in the grand scheme of things.

I am aware that electricity, and electromagnetism in general, has momentum in accordance with Einstein’s theory of mass-energy equivalence.  The protagonist does not have perfect knowledge of science.  Go away, pedants.

—

He would have to find shelter, and the only landmark in sight was the nearest mountain, Mt. Mothma.  The mountain stood tall against the evening sky, as mountains are wont to do.

“Mount” in Latin is “mons”, like Mon Mothma.  Get it?  It’s funny if you know Latin and Star Wars, i.e. you are a super nerd.

—

“What happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?” countered Max.  “This is still America, right?  I didn’t accidentally crawl to Canada or anything like that?”

“This is America, all right, but ‘innocent until proven guilty’ only applies in a court of law,” said the woman.  “And this is more of a court of ‘do what I say or shoot you in the face.’”

“Does that qualify as a court if there isn’t an underlying legal process?”

“To make that judgment we would require a panel of arbitration of some kind.  I hereby appoint myself as chief arbitrator.  Any objections?”

“If I have them, does it increase the chance of you shooting me?”

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

judiciary lol

—

“It’s called Mt. Moon,” she said.

“What’s called Mt. Moon?” asked Max.

“This place,” was the response from behind.  “You asked what it was, and I told you to shut the fuck up because I didn’t want you to ask what it was.  But out of the infinite goodness that lies in my heart, I’m letting you know a harmless little fact that will hopefully satisfy your tendency for asking questions that you’re better off not knowing the answers to.”

Max pondered this new factoid as they continued to walk in stony silence.  Finally, despite her obvious preference for his silence, he had to ask:

“Why the hell is it called Mt. Moon?”

“Why the hell not?”

“Well, we’re clearly not on the moon.”

“Your point?”

“And we’ve only been going downwards, so we are clearly deep underground, not in the mountain, and we may not be anywhere near the mountain given the distance we’ve walked.”

“Any other brilliant observations, Holmes?”

“And the mountain already has a name, and it’s not Mt. Moon.”

“That’s because Mt. Moon is a terrible name for a mountain.”

Max considered this for a moment.  She was right; Mt. Moon was a terrible name for a mountain.  If it wasn’t on the moon, then the name didn’t make any sense.  And if it was on the moon, then it was just a stupid name.

“So, the base is called Mt. Moon despite not being on the moon, not being in a mountain, and being in the general proximity of a mountain that is not called Mt. Moon.”

“Your powers of analysis astound the mortal mind.”

“Huh.”

Max was at a loss.  In one sense, the situation was completely illogical.  At the same time, it was in fact perfectly logical.  You couldn’t name the place Mt. Moon if it was in a mountain or on the moon, but it was neither so it was apparently acceptable.  This was not something Max thought he was about to let go without a fight.

“So why is it called Mt. Moon, then?” asked Max.

There was a brief silence, then a response.  “What did I tell you about asking stupid questions?” retorted Lucy.

“You never said anything about asking stupid questions,” said Max.  “You said not to ask questions I would be better off not knowing the answers to.  I assumed that meant I wasn’t supposed to ask important questions, and I assumed that meant asking stupid questions was ok.”

“Well, you know what they say about assuming.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s that you should shut the fuck up and not ask stupid questions.  Or, indeed, any questions.”

I’m not very good at writing dialogue in the traditional sense of the word, but I think I’ve got banter down pretty well.

—

The man looked like some kind of Napoleonic general, dressed so that his very appearance might bring men to their knees, albeit probably in laughter rather than fear.  Max wondered what sort of deep spiritual impulses could drive a man to clothe himself in such a ridiculous fashion.  Catholicism, probably.

I was raised Presbyterian so I feel obligated to make fun of Catholics and Lutherans whenever possible.

—

The man in the chair responded in a slow voice that sounded like a child being dragged behind a horse on a gravel road.

Probably the best metaphor I’ve ever come up with.  (But I’m pretty bad at metaphors so that’s not saying much.)

—

His reconnaissance complete, Max decided to more thoroughly explore his surroundings.  He tried sitting on the cot for a while.  Nothing untoward happened, which given his recent experiences Max took as good fortune.  He then stood up on the cot, but somehow he remained completely intact.  Irony, he thought, would dictate that he slip off the cot and have another concussion, but the irony gods seemed to be mercifully ignoring him.  That was certainly benevolent of them, although from experience Max knew that the kindness of the irony gods was often simply a way for them to lull you into a false sense of security.  They were surprisingly vengeful considering that they didn’t actually exist and Max simply used them as an elaborate representation of the abstract concept of irony.  Max wondered if the concept of non-existent irony gods seeking vengeance was also ironic, and whether this irony was also a part of the irony gods’ vengeance, or perhaps it constituted sufficient reason that the irony gods existed, but then his head started to throb from the combination of repeated head injury and meta.

Meta-irony is my anti-drug.

—

When his eyes had adjusted, Max saw that Lucy once again had a gun pointed at his face.  He couldn’t decide whether to be comforted by the familiarity of the scene, or whether he should be concerned and frightened that he had a gun pointed at his head.  One was a question of theoretical humanity, whereas the other was more of a pragmatic, self-preservation concept.  Max hated to abandon his instincts, especially when they were so often correct, but taking a purely philosophical angle was not something he liked to do either.  Max was a firm believer in the Tao, at least to the extent that he believed in balance when it made more sense than the alternatives.  Chips were delicious, and cheese was delicious, but too many of either and one cannot nachos make.  In this spirit, Max decided he would, as Lao-Tzu might have said, just roll with it.

This paragraph has a blatant (and unintentional) contradiction in it!  In the context of Taoism that’s fairly ironic.

—

“If you’re not going to interrogate me about being a spy, and I can’t ask you about the circumstances surrounding my imprisonment, what exactly are we supposed to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” came the reply.  “Come up with something.  Ask me what kind of music I like.”

“Ok, fine,” said Max.  “What kind of music do you like?”

“I don’t really listen to music,” said Lucy.

There was another minute of silence.

“Why,” asked Max, “would you tell me to ask you about what kind of music you like if you don’t like any kinds of music?”

“It seemed like a good question for you to ask that had a decent chance of leading into an interesting conversation.”

“But you knew that it wouldn’t!”

“That’s hardly the point.”

Max wasn’t about to give up without a fight.  “You’re the person who’s trying to inspire a meaningful conversation, but then you deliberately prompt me with a question you know has a useless answer.  You don’t see the hypocrisy of that?”

“Not at all.  Music is a perfectly legitimate way to try and expand a conversation.  I simply proposed a valid possibility to you and you went with it.”

“It’s not a valid possibility!  You knew it wouldn’t work.”

“How could I know it wouldn’t work?  I didn’t answer the question until you asked it.”

“But…”  There was no way Max could fight this kind of metaphysical illogic, but he would be damned if he didn’t give it his best effort.  “You are well aware of your own opinion on music, yes?”

“Of course.”

“And you were aware of this opinion before you told me to ask you about music.”

“Certainly.”

“So you told me to ask you about music with the full knowledge that you didn’t listen to music.”

“Correct.”

“So you told me to ask you about music with the knowledge that the conversation would go nowhere.”

“Not at all.”

Max rubbed his temples.  He was fairly unpracticed in debates of this nature.

At his silence, Lucy continued.  “I told you to ask me about music because, absent knowledge of my preferences, which was the case for you, it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask.  While I knew my own opinion, I made the very reasonable assumption that you did not.  I knew that there was some probability that I would answer in the manner that I did, but I could hardly assert in advance that I would answer in the way that I did until actually observing myself doing it.  I’m not going to claim things that happen in the future are true when they haven’t actually happened yet.”

“Is that why you won’t tell me when I’ll be released?” asked Max sarcastically.

“No,” said Lucy, “I won’t tell you that because I don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to,” said Max, “or you can’t?”

“What’s the difference?” said Lucy.  “If I can’t, it’s either because I don’t know or because I know but am not allowed to tell you.  If I don’t know, then I don’t want to tell you because, as I already said, I don’t want to make claims about events that happen in the future.  And if I do know, the only thing that stops me from telling you is the desire to obey the person who is hypothetically not allowing me to tell you.  No matter what, I don’t want to tell you.”

“Well,” said Max, “what can I ask you about?”

“You can ask about anything you want,” said Lucy, exhortingly.

Max sighed.  “Fine, what can I ask you about that you will actually answer in a meaningful way?”

“Why should I have to come up with the questions if you’re the one asking them?  After all, I already know the answers so it hardly helps me.  Don’t you even know how conversations work?”

“I thought I did.”

“Well, it’s dangerous to think you know things.  You should know that you know things, and you should know that you know that you know them, and you should know that you know that you know that you know them, and so on ad infinitum.  If you ever introduce an uncertainty into that chain, you’re pretty much guaranteed that you didn’t actually know the thing in the first place.  I know how conversations work, and I know that I know how they work, and I know that you are a lot worse at them than I thought.”

This is not a conversation I have ever actually had, but I really wish it was.

—

Max lay on his cot, counting his toes.  He was fairly sure there were ten, but he knew enough quantum mechanics to know that, between the probabilities that one of his toes spontaneously disappeared, or that one grew, or that a neuron in his brain misfired and he lost count or forgot what numbers meant, there was a reasonable chance that the count would change.  And as his time in this cell tended towards infinity, which is what it seemed to be doing, those probabilities were just going to increase.  Well, they were technically constant, but that wasn’t the point.  Max wasn’t sure what the point was, but he knew that whatever it was it probably involved more math than he was willing to grapple with at this point in time.

This is a somewhat sketchy interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it is technically correct and also whatever I don’t care.

—

This was a twist of nearly Shyamalanian proportions.

“What a twist!”

—

Max had sunk into a deep depression.  He didn’t make any effort to amuse himself.  He didn’t try to ponder the mysteries of the universe.  He just sat on the floor or lay on his cot, trying as hard as possible to make time pass more quickly by the sheer force of his willpower.  Unfortunately, it seemed that the cosmic willpower of Time was greater than his, because if anything time seemed to creep by at an unbearable rate.  Fortunately, Max’s spirit was unbreakable, at least in the sense that sand is unbreakable.

I’m really paranoid that I stole that last sentence from somewhere.

—

“Don’t worry about it,” she said in a voice that almost (almost) sounded kind.  “I don’t really want to shoot you.”

“Isn’t it your job to shoot me?” asked Max.

“Meh,” said Lucy.

This is exactly how I feel about every job I have ever had.

—

Without a gun at his head, Max felt he was safe to ask questions.  “Where are we going?”

“I’unno,” said Lucy.

“I see,” said Max.  “And why particularly are we going there?”

“I’unno,” said Lucy.

“I see,” said Max.  “Could you explain to me then why we’re running down this hallway then?”

Lucy stopped suddenly; Max barely stopped himself from running into her.  She glared at him.  “Are you really that daft?  We’re going on an adventure.  If I knew where we were going and why, that would defeat the purpose.  But if you would prefer not to go on an adventure, and want something safe and reliable and predictable, I’ll be happy to take you back to that cell so you can tap on the bathroom walls some more.”

Max did not, in fact, have any desire to return to his cell.  “Got it.  Adventure it is.”

“Good,” said Lucy.  “Now let’s get our go.”  She started jogging down the hall once again.

This is the last bit that I wrote before giving up the novel.  Also: this is what adventurers actually believe.

This piece was originally printed, in a substantially and unfortunately edited form, in The Minnesota Daily on January 25, 2009.  (Link.) This is the unedited version, which I feel is meaningfully superior.

Ten years ago, the English language had a problem.  Admittedly, the English language isn’t perfect; no natural language is.  However, it’s simply ridiculous that spelling out the phrase “potato potato” causes it to no longer have its intended meaning.

Actually, wait.  The English language still has that problem.  Let me try that again.

Ten years ago, the English language had a problem.  Admittedly, the English language isn’t perfect; no natural language is.  But one of the issues English (and indeed most any language) faces is the issue of gaps in meaning between words.  Consider, for example, “yellow” and “green”.  Both are colors (hopefully you knew that already since you’re in college) and both reside in the same general region of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Once you are comfortable with the concepts of yellow and green, it is not much of a leap to consider the concept that lies halfway between them.  However, the color that lies between yellow and green does not have a word for it that is anything so well-established as the words “yellow” or “green”; technically such words exist, but they aren’t colors in their own right so much as they are just named after foods (“chartreuse”, “pear”, “olive”, etc.).  And since these words are not widely used as colors, most people would probably just call such a color “yellow-green” or “greenish-yellow” or something of that ilk.  As far as speaking comprehensible English is concerned, that’s a fine solution.

But, like everything else ever, it’s not that simple.  In the case of colors, having a precise set of words for every possible color concept is not all that critical because, let’s be honest, colors are not that important.  (Sorry, art students.)  Besides, even if you are a chromaphile, there are well-established, mathematically precise ways of exactly enumerating particular colors, so even if it’s not technically part of the English language we still have a system.  But lots of concepts don’t have nice, neat mathematical equivalents (though some of us might wish that they did): emotions, desires, and social relationships generally can’t be defined with formulae, and so we need words.  This is the reason language exists in the first place, after all; to communicate concepts we can’t communicate otherwise.

Let us consider another example.  When you first meet someone, they became an “acquaintance”.  “Acquaintance” is a nice word because it’s very precise and its definition is manifest: it means “a person with which you are acquainted.”  Basically every person that you have ever met can be described as an acquaintance, right?  Wrong.  Sure, that’s technically accurate, but calling someone an acquaintance strongly connotes that they are no more than an acquaintance.  Social correctness demands that we refer to an acquaintance by the strongest possible word: you don’t call your wife your “girlfriend”, you don’t call your girlfriend your “friend”, and you don’t call your friend your “acquaintance”.  As with most social constructs, this inevitably leads to confusion and irritation, both because two people might have very disparate definitions of what constitutes a “friend” or some such, and also because two people might disagree about where they stand in relation to each other.  Call someone your “acquaintance” someone who thinks of you as a “friend” and you’re pretty much guaranteed someone is going to feel hurt.  Of course, if you’re a misanthrope this doesn’t matter all that much, but for most people this is a meaningful problem.

Enter the Internets.  As usual, the Internets bring us nothing but harmony and happiness, generally bettering our society and improving the lives of all parties involved.  Since we’re talking about social relationships, we must of course turn to that most rancorous of Internets, Facebook.  And with the rising usage of Facebook, of course, comes the wonderful concept of the Friend on Facebook.

The following paragraph was not in the first draft; while I did indeed write it, it was added at the specific behest of my editor.

The Friend on Facebook is not a particularly new concept, but it is an increasingly pervasive one.  New data from marketing research firm comScore shows that Facebook is getting ever more Facetime from its users.  According to their data, in December 2009 the average Facebook user visited the site 27.4 times per month, 64% more often than December of the previous year.  And according to Facebook’s officially published statistics, the average active user uses the site for nearly an hour every day.  Given that college students are notorious Facebook users, it’s safe to bet that the numbers for the average student are even higher than these.  Facebook, it seems, gives us more exposure to our Friends on Facebook than we are even used to having with our more traditional friends.

What is a Friend on Facebook?  If you’ve been paying attention and didn’t just skip ahead to this paragraph, you’ve probably already guessed.  For those of you who are cheating, we define: a Friend on Facebook is a person whom (you guessed it) you have befriended on Facebook.  The concept of the Friend on Facebook allows us to linguistically and socially bridge the previously existing gap between the concepts of acquaintance and friend.  Additionally, the Friend on Facebook has the very useful property of being rigidly defined, unlike most social concepts.  Not sure if you consider someone your friend, but want to avoid hurting their feelings?  As long as that person is your Friend on Facebook, you possess a well-defined common ground on which you can claim a basis for your relationship.  Logically, the Friend on Facebook can extend to such concepts as In A Relationship on Facebook, Married on Facebook, and so on and so forth.  These stringently defined relationships that Facebook enforces are much more socially useful then the more old-fashioned concepts, since they are conveniently unambiguous and publically available.

Of course, some people might argue that the concept of the Friend on Facebook cheapens the concept of actual friendship, but it’s a small price to pay for clarity in language, no?

In all seriousness, Bender is probably the selling point of Futurama.  Without his character, the show would probably be more depressing than anything; I imagine it ending up in a very similar vein to The Venture Bros. But Futurama does have Bender, and Bender makes the show what it is: upbeat, unpredictable, and, of course, great.

To me, Bender is an interesting character because he represents the classic narcissist.  He is engrossed with himself to such an extreme degree that it almost becomes virtue.  As opposed to most people in the real world, who are just engrossed with themselves because they are selfish, Bender appears to believe absolutely that he is the greatest; and if he truly believes that, how can he be expected to act in any other way?

This narcissism is what makes the character appeal to me.  I have been accused by many people of being a narcissist, and for a time I referred to myself as one.  My entire life, people have been telling me that I am smart.  But it was in junior high when a girl told me I was smart that I first responded “I know.”  She then immediately told me I was self-centered and vain, which surprised me.  People had been telling me this for years, after all, and if I’m so smart, shouldn’t I know it?

It is, of course, difficult to objectively measure one’s own value.  I might think I’m funny (I do) or attractive (I don’t), but there is no way to know if I am right.  In the former case, I may be deluding myself to raise my self-esteem, and in the latter case I may be overcompensating for the possibility that I may be deluding myself to raise my self-esteem.  And you can’t ask other people, because they will consistently lie about these sorts of things; both about their opinions of themselves and of others.

This is why I identify with Bender.  (I have, in fact, intentionally adopted several of his grammatical mannerisms for this reason.)  I do in fact perceive myself to be pretty great.  I know that in nearly every field there is someone greater than I, and even in general I know there are people who I consider better than myself.  I have flaws, and I know them.  But I consider myself to be pretty great generally, and the large majority of people I meet I consider beneath me.  This sounds selfish and insensitive, and it is.  But why is that a bad thing?  On average, I should expect half the people I meet to be less great than me.  Given my self-analysis, I believe that it is actually much more than half.  Should I delude myself just so other people feel better about it?

Crucially, Bender-esque narcissism is distinct from classical narcissism.  If you are familiar with the story of Narcissus, you will no doubt be aware that there are two key aspects to narcissism.  The first is the elevation of the self with respect to others; as I have said, I subscribe to this and I believe it to be appropriate.  The second element of narcissism, however, is caring only about yourself, and this is where both Bender and I diverge from the classical definition.

The character of Bender is tricky to decipher on this point.  There are a number of cases where he truly appears to care nothing for his friends or for society in general.  In other cases, he goes to great lengths to help others, despite his outward statement of uncaring.  This might be the evolution of the character over the course of the show, or alternatively just inconsistent writing.

However, applying this concept to myself is easier.  I care deeply for others, despite what I might tell them.  Being raised Christian, the idea of putting others before myself has been drilled into me since I was in diapers.  In most cases, I am willing to sacrifice in order to help others who need help.  Ayn Rand might say that this is immoral for me to do; I say Ayn Rand can fuck off.  If I am so great as I think I am (and I am), then I need even more to care for others: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”  And besides, if I care for others less than someone else, then that person is now better than me, and we can’t have that.

The conclusion is this: narcissism, in the sense that one accurately determines one’s own value, is fine.  To not be narcissistic if you are a better person is really just a way to lie to yourself.  But you should never let your sense of your own value overwhelm the fact that others still have value, and may still be in need of you.  In one of the final scenes of Into the Wild Green Yonder (the last Futurama movie), Bender rescues his friends from prison.  Ostensibly, he does this to expand his own criminal record, but the fact of the matter is that he is still putting himself at risk to help those in need.  And he only manages to succeed by being, in his words, “so great” that he is able to bend the wall of the prison so they can escape.  I hate to say this, but: people should be more like Bender.  People who are great should know that they are great, so that they can use their greatness to better both themselves and others.

As people who use the Internet (and are thus reading this) are most likely aware, the phrase “om nom nom” (and to a lesser extent its derivative cousin “nom nom nom”) is used as an onomatopoeia for the sound of eating; the phrase is also used as an interjection to express general pleasure with regards to eating.  The top Urban Dictionary definition for the phrase is surprisingly robust:

Om nom nom

meaning food or eat.  verb: nomming.

Ok, perhaps “robust” was not the right word, but despite its somewhat nonspecific nature, this is a pretty accurate portrayal of how the phrase is used.

There are two strange aspects of the phrase I think are worthy of consideration.  The first is simply the fact that “om nom nom” can be inflected as a verb “nomming.”  I’m not just taking the Urban Dictionary definition at face value; this is actually how the phrase is inflected; the verb “to nom” basically means “to eat in a pleasurable or enjoyable manner” and can be inflected in the same way as any other verb.

He nommed away at his burrito.

She was nomming her meal as fast as she could.  (This might be ungrammatical; whether “nom” can take a direct object is not obvious to me.)

He usually noms early in the evening.

That the phrase “om nom nom” resolves to the verb “to nom” is rather strange; it suggests that the phrase is really just a derivative form of the word “nom.”  However, I don’t believe this to be true, which brings us to the experimental portion of this discussion.

According to Google, the phrase “om nom nom” (38M hits) is significantly more common than the phrase “nom nom nom” (12M hits).  However, if the phrase were truly derivative of “nom,” it seems like the second phrase would be the only logical one to use.

If we really wanted to be particular, the phrase can be represented by the regular expression /om (nom)* nom/, since an “om” followed by any number of “nom”s is generally considered the same phrase, with the 2-”nom” variant being the most popular.  Google tells us:

“om nom” – 456,000 hits

“om nom nom” – 38,000,000 hits

“om nom nom nom” – 121,000 hits

“om nom nom nom nom” – 905,000 hits

“om nom nom nom nom nom” – 12,900,000 hits

“om nom nom nom nom nom nom” – 1,030 hits

“om nom nom nom nom nom nom nom” – 187,000 hits

“om nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom (nom*)” – 186,000 hits

We get a rather surprising trend; there is a mean decrease as the number of “nom”s increases, but 2-”nom” and 5-”nom” phrases are the most popular.  (Although it is worth noting that Google’s hit counts are not the most reliable sources for estimating language frequency.)

Still, the strangest aspect of the phrase is that it starts with the word “om” rather than “nom.”  Let’s consider the phonology of the most common (and probably original) 2-”nom” variant.  Phonologically speaking, the phrase would be transcribed as /omnomnom/.  Traditionally, the phrase is properly pronounced as [ɔmŋɔmŋɔm].  I should point out that my IPA knowledge, especially with regards to non-English phones, is not too good; as a result, I may have the wrong [n]-class phone to replace the /n/ phoneme.  I can safely say that it is almost certainly not [n], and [ŋ] is the only other one commonly used in English.  It’s also worth pointing out that, if Wikipedia’s article on interjections is to be believed, English interjections often use phones that are not traditionally used in English.  However, which phone is correct is not terribly important in the grand scheme of things.

The strange thing about [ɔmŋɔmŋɔm] is that the sound [mŋ] is generally not used by words in English.  However, since it clearly is in this phrase, my hypothesis is this: while there is a verb “nom” in English, it is derived from an original word “omn,” pronounced [ɔmŋ], rather than a word “nom.”  This seems to make more sense.  Thus, the phrase “om nom nom” is actually phonologically /omnomnomn/; however, since words in English don’t seem to be able to end in [mŋ], the last [ŋ] phone is dropped to make the word pronounceable.

I believe this is quite similar to the English phrase “oh ho ho.”  Given the same argument, this phrase would phonologically be transcribed as /ohohoh/ but pronounced [ohoho], since /h/ at the end of an English word is usually silent.

It also seems reasonable that the verb form of the word would become “nom.”  First, the common spelling “om nom nom” rather than “omn omn omn” would enforce this behavior.  Second, the thought of having to inflect the verb “omn” is a disturbing one.  He omns?  She was omnning?  They omnned?  These just take the unpronounceability of “omn” to a new level of unpronounceable.

So now I suppose the question is: where did an inherently unpronounceable word like “omn” come from?  It is surprising that a native English speaker would divine such a word.  However, since the phrase originates from the Internet, it is entirely possible that the word originated from a non-native English speaker (or just a non-English speaker).  Unfortunately, “omn” is not very a very web-searchable term given acronyms, file extensions, etc., so it seems very difficult to determine whether the word ever existed as “omn” and when it would have originated.

There is a major ideological issue underlying the idea of socialized healthcare, which a friend of mine pointed out to me when he asserted:

I don’t agree with this for a second.  It is true that public education in the United States can be correctly characterized as socialist, and by extension could be viewed as a “right.” And while I take some issues with how the socialization of education is executed, I support the continued socialization of American education, at least through the high school level.

However, I do not believe in a “right” to education. I believe that it is the duty of a child’s parents to ensure that their child is educated, a belief that stems both from my religious upbringing and an understanding of basic Darwinism. I support socialized education as a direct result of my general misanthropy; I believe that the majority of parents are idiot fuckheads who will never do a good job of educating their children. I believe that a more equitable system is for all children to have an equal chance at an education; if they are willing to take something out of it, they will succeed in life regardless of their parents’ inabilities.

So if you asked me if I was for publicly-funded healthcare for children, I would say that I support it for the same reasons above. I don’t believe children have the right to healthcare, but I do think that it is just to give it to them, since they have no way of earning it on their own.

Once a child has grown to the age of self-sufficiency (which we generally set at 18 for convenience), the analogy breaks down. You can no longer blame your parents for failing to provide for you; you are an adult and it is your job to provide for yourself. And since you do not have the “right” to healthcare, it is your responsibility to earn your keep and provide for yourself what you need. If you need expensive medicine, then you may have to work harder. That seems unfortunate, but it seems less unfortunate (and more just) than making someone else work harder instead.

As one final aside: I also hate the concept of employer health insurance, and I’m not even a big fan of the concept of health insurance in its entirety. The whole industry exists just to cheat the healthy out of their money and to try and kick the sick off of their services. Employer health insurance is a concept that doesn’t really make sense, it’s just the “salary + benefits” concept now blown way out of proportion.

Recently, in a fit of abject boredom, I downloaded the World of Warcraft trial client.  As most frequent computer users know, this is to boredom what cutting is to depression: a silent cry for help.  But I was bored enough that I was willing to risk the addiction; I had briefly played before (up to about level twenty or so on a friend’s account) without succumbing to the madness, so I thought I could survive another brush with the infinite.  The correctness of this assumption is not the topic at hand, though it may appear in a later post.

Since it has been a while since I played WoW, I was not terribly comfortable with the keyboard.  I had to futz a bit with bindings and such before I got something I was comfortable with, but even then I didn’t really know where things were.  Sure, I know WASD, but ‘P’ for the spellbook?  ‘-’ to drink water?  I normally use those characters for typing words, not casting Frost Nova.  So in the process of adjusting, I at one point accidentally pressed the Toggle Run/Walk key, which caused my character to walk around very patiently while I madly stabbed keys trying to get away from Rot Hide Gnolls.

(I have now given you enough clues to know what class and race I played.  If you already reached the conclusion, without assistance, that it was an Undead Mage, you should probably get out more.)

After barely surviving my near-pretend-death experience, I thought about the implications of  the Toggle Run/Walk key.  This may seem like a rather idiotic thing to philosophize about, but as I have already mentioned I was pretty damn bored at the time.

Nearly every modern video game (basically everything made since the year 2000) has some distinction between running and walking.  It might be simple, like in WoW, where the character either runs at a constant speed or walks at a constant (but lesser) speed.  It might be on a gradient, where the distance you tilt a control stick or the pressure on a button determines your character’s movement speed.  But some level of distinction exists in nearly every modern game.

When you think about it, this is extremely odd for the simple reason that nobody walks in video games.  The fact of the matter is that people playing video games move as rapidly as they can to get from place to place, always (all other things being equal, of course; it doesn’t count if faster travel is more expensive somehow).  If they can run by holding the analog stick all the way down, they will.  If there is a sprint button, they will sprint everywhere (despite the fact that this generally means holding a button down for nearly the entire duration of the game).  If there is a vehicle or mount of some kind, people will use it.  And if there is some sort of teleporting ability, people will use it.

I guess, to be strictly fair, this is frequently true in real life.  People don’t run everywhere instead of walking, of course (one tires much faster running in real life than in a video game), but people frequently drive when they could walk, or take a plane when they could take a bus, or whatever.  The major difference is that, in real life, there is a kind of social stigma attached to it.  “Jet-setting” and generally the concept of fast-paced life, while considered the norm, are looked down upon as churlish.  The old platitude “life is about the journey, not about the destination” is oft-repeated, though like most old platitudes it is for all practical purposes a crock of shit.

Probably the simplest way to consider the issue, in video games at least, is that people will only use slower forms of transport if there is some value inherent in the travel; either it benefits them or is enjoyable in some way.  In Pokémon, for example, travel between cities means gaining experience and catching Pokémon.  For now, let’s just consider a couple of examples of this phenomenon in action.

—

World of Warcraft

WoW forces you to run.  This is simple fact.  As I mentioned, it has a toggle between running and walking, but this toggle has no actual function.  (It is possible there is some minor benefit, but not with regards to transportation.)  And before you get your mount, which is after a substantial portion of the game, you simply have to run everywhere.  Run from city to city.  Run to do a quest, then run back to complete it.  Run from the graveyard to your corpse.  And nothing in the game makes running fun.  Generally, when I run from place to place, I read a book while occasionally glancing at the screen.  You have to stay on the road, or you get attacked by mobs, which all seem to be aggro after level eight or so.  So you have to pay attention to make sure you don’t get run off the road or accidentally aggro, and that is all you do for several minutes.  Not so much a “game” as it is work, though that argument has frequently been applied to WoW itself.

One thing WoW has done interestingly, however, is long-range transportation, which is real-time.  To “warp” to and from large cities, you have to fly a gryphon or bat.  While you fly, you have to sit there and do nothing.  This sounds boring, but is more fun than simple running because (a) you don’t have to worry about being attacked and (b) it is more interesting to watch the countryside fly beneath you.  For really long-range travel, you have to take a boat or zeppelin.  You lose some of the interest in this case, but the real-time nature is in this case more of a penalty to discourage frequent cross-continental travel, which is reasonable given WoW’s design.

However, WoW has a number of instantaneous methods of travel available.  Warlocks have summons, Mages have portals, and everybody has a hearthstone.  While there are enough restrictions on use of these methods to keep things interesting, it’s still kind of a cheap cop-out that recognizes that people would rather be at their destination then spend twenty minutes running there.  This is not a fault of the player; for them, it is a simple economic judgment.  It is really the fault of the game’s designers, who do not seem to have put much effort into making the environment fun to traverse.  Of course, they are under no obligation to do so, since that’s not really the game they are trying to sell, but it is still a notable flaw in WoW’s gameplay.

—

The Legend of Zelda

I haven’t played the old Zelda games (sorry, Nintendo nerds), but I have played some of the more recent ones, including but not limited to Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.  I thought that both games were delightful and excellent in basically every conceivable way.  Both games also went to some lengths to address the philosophical problems of travel in video games, although each game did it a bit differently.

In Wind Waker, as those who have played it are aware, the kingdom of Hyrule has been covered by a massive ocean, and the few small communities that remain live on a scattered assortment of islands.  To compensate, the main feature of the game is that you sail a boat to get from place to place.  However, sailing the boat is somewhat tedious, so to further compensate for the boat, the game map is designed to have lots of interesting optional islands to accidentally run into.  Later in the game, a teleport system (via the Ballad of Gales) is introduced, but the number of allowed destinations is restricted to just a few key locations.

Personally, I thought Wind Waker’s travel system was beautifully done.  There were just enough portals that you could go from place to place without crossing the entire (very large) world map, but not enough that you could just warp everywhere.  And when you did sail around, you were liable to find at least one interesting thing on the way to your destination.  I may be a bit biased, as I know how to sail in real life and so that part of the game resonated with me a bit more.  (And lots of people that I know hated the traveling parts of Wind Waker.)  Overall, though, I found sailing from place to place to be the most fun aspect of the game, which seems appropriate since it was also the most marketed aspect of the game.

Twilight Princess, on the other hand, takes place on good old land-locked Hyrule, and thus travel takes a different form then in its cel-shaded older brother.  (Technically Twilight Princess is also cel-shaded, since it uses the same graphics engine as Wind Waker, but that is neither here nor there.)  Rather than some kind of land boat, Twilight Princess makes the prudent decision to bring back horseback riding, in a similar form to Ocarina of Time.  However, the controls and mechanics for horseback riding have been severely improved (including the much-welcome addition of cavalry combat), so riding your horse around is fun in and of itself.  Unfortunately, while Twilight Princess also has a portal system, it is a lot more liberal than Wind Waker’s and thus increases the temptation to partake in instantaneous travel.

In both cases, the crucial aspect that makes travel fun is a well-designed and expansive world.  In Wind Waker, it is the many islands to be found, many of which are less than an acre but are still fun simply by virtue of finding them.  And Twilight Princess provides interesting geography to traverse and lots of secrets to find.  I maintain that the Bridge of Eldin, despite its simplicity, is probably the coolest architectural feature of any Zelda game thus far.

—

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Oblivion is probably the most famous failure in immersive travel in video games.  Oblivion’s developers clearly went to massive efforts to design an elaborate in-game world for players to traverse, and for this they should be praised.  However, there are a number of problems I found when playing.

The first problem is that, while the world map is both huge and intricate, it is boring.  Much of the countryside looks the same.  The only interesting feature is the occasional wolf, which is more of an annoyance than a feature.  Like in WoW, travel from place to place is more of a chore than an adventure.  Unlike WoW, you are a lot more likely to find seemingly random points of interest, like a shrine or small village; however, unlike Zelda, these findings generally offer no meaningful value to the player.  This may be a realistic interpretation of medieval travel, but it’s not fun.

The second and more obvious problem is fast travel.  Fast travel allows the player to immediately warp from city to city, including cities to which the player has not yet been.  Presumably, this feature was added to compensate for Oblivion’s massive overworld.  However, when traveling from city to city is such an onerous task, there is basically no motivation not to use fast travel for nearly all travel purposes.  As a result, the immersiveness of the game is diminished, and the player loses the potential of an exciting travel experience.

—

What is the moral of this?  None, really.  Like in real life, people tend to care much more about arriving at some location than traversing that space.  As Douglas Adams once wrote, specifically with regard to highway bypasses:

“Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there.  They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.”

While this lends no credence to the “life is a journey” argument, it does make an important statement, both about video games and life: there is no need to try and go places as quickly as you can when you could instead just choose a place you actually wish to be.  While the odds of this ever being applied to video games in any meaningful way are poor, it can still be taken as a good lesson for life.  Maybe if where you wish to be is sitting on a couch playing video games, you should stay there?  I can’t imagine that’s what Adams meant people to take away, but what is philosophy if not blatantly misinterpreting the works of others?  Common sense, that’s what.

To be fair, Up does have many of the redeeming qualities that have made past Pixar films great. Visually, it is impeccable. The soundtrack is wonderful. On nearly every technical or aesthetic element, the film lives up to the celebrated Pixar tradition. However, that should not excuse the fact that the writing and direction seem to be sub-par, both by Pixar’s and even the general cinema’s standards, and as a result the movie suffers greatly.

—

Up is unoriginal

Up‘s writing suffers from a dearth of originality. Most of the plot elements and jokes are hackneyed and cliché, which is quite disappointing given Pixar’s usually high standards of original writing.

The primary plot is extremely unoriginal. An old man, who has lost the joys of his youth, is now grouchy and stubborn, unwilling to evolve as society does. A young boy from nearby is enthusiastic about life, and engages the old man for some reason. The two are nearly perfect opposites, yet in cinematically standard fashion, foils attract, and through daring and danger they form a deep friendship. Notice that I could just be describing Gran Torino to you and you would have no way of knowing. Old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold is extremely overdone fare; so old that even Family Guy was able to make fun of it and actually be funny.

In addition to the plot itself, most of the individual scenes and jokes are overused cinematic standards. One thing I hate in films is when some idiotic thing from the first half of the movie is somehow used as an even more idiotic plot resolution in the latter half. In Up, a good example of this is the use of yelling “squirrel” to distract the dogs. It was a little funny the first time used, but after using it to save the day it becomes rather pathetic. Similar devices were used in a few other places, like the “cone of shame” or Kevin’s love of chocolate.

(I should point out at this time that Dug’s joke about squirrels was one of the funniest jokes I have ever heard. It doesn’t forgive the movie, but it was hilarious.)

I also felt that the movie really went too far in its abuse of homage. Homage is fine, and I can appreciate it usually. (The poker scene with the dogs, for example, I thought was fine.) But parodying Star Wars and King Kong at the same time? At some point, things start to get a little pathetic.

—

Up is unrealistic

I understand that in film, and especially in cartoons, it is important to be able to suspend one’s disbelief when it is appropriate. One particularly idiotic reviewer asked “who took all of the pictures of Carl and Ellie?” to which I would respond “who gives a shit?” Obviously there are times when realism is a less admirable goal than art, and I respect that. The balloons lifting the house bit, for example, is clearly infeasible, but that’s the sort of thing that simply has to be allowed. But suspension of disbelief does not mean one can simply throw all logic to the wind.

One obvious problem is that the film is about old men in a semi-fantastic setting. This doesn’t really work. Geri’s Game (the Pixar short about the old man playing chess against himself) worked because it was about an old man in a quiet, sedate park, where there are no unreasonable expectations. The Incredibles worked because it was about fantastic people in a semi-fantastic environment. But in Up, we are expected to believe that elderly men chase each other on top of dirigibles and have sword fights. While there are a couple of allusions to their age in these scenes (lol dentures), the fact is that the scenes don’t make the slightest sense in the first place. The characters simply do not fit the environment. (If the film was about characters who don’t fit their environment, then I suppose that could work, but Up clearly is not that so it’s a moot point.)

Animals in the film are ascribed an unreasonable amount of intelligence. While I understand that Pixar has made bajillions of dollars making films with intelligent bugs or toys or fish or whatever, the significant difference is that those movies basically used animals as a replacement for humans. The story of Finding Nemo is about a father searching for his estranged son, not about the plight of fish in the Great Barrier Reef. But in this film, animals, even rather stupid animals like Dug and Kevin, make far more intelligent decisions than either the villain or the heroes. Dogs are flying biplanes, for crying out loud. That’s something I might expect from a horseshit Dreamworks film, but not from Pixar. (Even Buzz Lightyear couldn’t fly.) And don’t even get me started on the psycholinguistic problems of a dog being able to properly create sentences.

Another point, while we’re on the subject. We’re expected to believe that Charles Muntz somehow had the technological genius to create a dog translation collar. Even if we suspend disbelief and accept that, then other things fall out of place. If Muntz is genius enough to invent such a device, why does he seem to act entirely on impulse, whereas his “genius” would imply some tendency towards rationality? The director obviously chose to skirt the issue, as Muntz’ association with inventing the collar is mentioned once and then completely ignored the rest of the film.

There are more examples, but in general I feel that the film took far too loose a grasp on realism. Other films were intentionally fantastic, but by choosing to make a film about normal humans, Pixar has overstepped its bounds with the artistic liberties it takes. If you want to make a movie about people in the real world, do it; but do it right.

—

Up is unfulfilling

While Pixar films have a tradition of having rather sappy, family-oriented conclusions, they generally bring together an ending that provides solid emotional fulfillment. In Monster’s Inc., they save the day from the evil child-killing monsters and bring laughter to the world. In Finding Nemo, the father is reunited with the prodigal son, and they both learn a valuable lesson about the boundaries of their relationship. In Ratatouille, the protagonist is able to stop hiding behind the façade of another man and is able to come out and live his own life. All valuable, fulfilling conclusions. Not so with Up.

The first troubling part of the film for me was the introduction sequence. Don’t get me wrong; I think the first sequence was beautifully done. But the audience knows that the film is supposed to be the (rather cliché) plot of “crotchety old man with a secret heart of gold eventually breaks out of his shell thanks to exuberant young boy.” And when the film finally “starts,” with Carl as an old man, we already know he has a heart of gold. The rest of the film is just him flipping seemingly at random between kind and grouchy. There is also absolutely no inspiration shown for him being grouchy; the attitude is just attributed to him as an unnecessary stereotype of old people.

Then there is Russell. I found Russell to be an incredibly sad character. He clearly has no real friends, and has invested all of his time into Wilderness Explorers, which is a farce organization. (They don’t actually go into the Wilderness, which Russell clearly realizes, yet he accepts the sham as a suitable alternative for meaningful relationships with others.) His father is distant, but it is implied that he does care somewhat. So how does the film resolve these emotional issues? It simply doesn’t. We find out that Russell’s father actually doesn’t care about his son, which is incredibly sad, and Russell still has no friends aside from an old man and a dog who loves everything he sees.

The only other character that could possibly have emotional fulfillment associated with him would probably be Dug, but Dug is so fucking stupid that you can’t possibly care about him. As I mentioned earlier, Pixar movies traditionally place non-human characters in human roles, which allows us to empathize with them. But in Up, Dug is a non-human in a blatantly non-human role, so meaningful empathy is basically impossible.

—

Of course, I realize that in the end my criticisms will always fall on deaf ears. Up is a Pixar film, and so it will be the object of ineffable worship by the masses, regardless of what I say. But I hope this at least causes people to at least look critically at what they enjoy in movies, and decide for themselves whether Up is actually worthy of the absurd amount of praise it is receiving.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: a semi-fictional musical group that dates back to the 1950s.  The shtick, for those of you who are somehow unaware, is that there are three fictional chipmunks who sing covers of popular music, usually with very exaggerated harmonies.  The “chipmunk” element of the music is achieved by using normal singers, but then increasing the pitch (generally by an octave or two) so that the voices are much higher than would normally be achievable by human singers.

‘Tubers: the denizens of YouTube.  While YouTube does not have a very coherent user community, it does have a large number of cohesive sub-communities, all of them bad.  These include people who make AMVs (wapanese), people who make GMVs (wapanese + nerds), people who record themselves playing bad acoustic covers of songs that do not lend themselves to acoustic covers (musical incompetents), people who record themselves at a webcam ranting about something (pretentious buffoons), people who record themselves at a webcam ranting in response to another person’s rant (self-righteous ingrates), and so on.

For this discussion, we are going to be focusing on the intersection of the above two concepts: namely, a group of ‘Tubers who make “chipmunk songs.”  For our purposes, we will refer to these users as Dipmunks.

Now, my personal tastes in music have always been a bit strange.  As a general rule, I like classic rock, some metal, some jazz — pretty standard stuff.  But I have always had a soft spot for music featuring exaggerated harmonization, so lots of stuff from musicals, Beach Boys-style surf rock, a capella, and even the occasional bit of J-pop makes it into my set of preferred listening material.  As you might expect, music by the Chipmunks also falls into this category.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.  A pretty fair percentage of the Chipmunks library is actually quite fun to listen to.  They have some amusing (and musically interesting) original works, like “The Girls and Boys of Rock and Roll” from their 1987 film.  And lots of their covers (like “Achy Breaky Heart”) are as good if not more enjoyable than their original forms.  (Admittedly, “Achy Breaky Heart” might not be a fair example for this since the original makes most people want to slice their ears off; try “Wooly Bully” compared to its original.)  For me, I find the exaggerated harmonies tend to improve (or at least add an intriguing twist to) most of these songs, so I like listening to them.  If you don’t agree, then that’s fine; hopefully you can at least see where I am coming from.

But this is what is so horribly wrong with Dipmunks.  All that Dipmunks do is take whatever music they think is good (and given their inexplicably bad tastes, their selections tend to be pretty poor to begin with) and run it through Audacity to get the pitch up an octave.  Of course, anybody who is not an ignorant twat will notice several significant problems with this.

1. When a song is run through Audacity, both the vocals and the music itself are pitched up.  This means that, instead of the dichotomy you get in a real Chipmunks song, the whole song is just really high up and sounds unnatural.
2. While I applaud Audacity as a gem of open-source software, it’s not exactly professional-quality tone-shifting equipment.  It may not even be Audacity at fault; maybe Dipmunks’ computers just don’t have the sound-processing abilities to properly remix music.  I don’t pretend to be an expert an audio engineering; I just know that when a Dipmunk has their way with a song, the new track sounds grainy and corrupted.  Even if you wanted to listen to an annoyingly high-pitched version of a song, it’s too damaged to be enjoyed.
3. And of course, the aforementioned harmonies, which are the defining aspect of the Chipmunks’ music, are not present.  The exception is when the song being pillaged originally had decent harmonies to begin with, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of making a Chipmunks version of a song.

The resultant product is the musical equivalent of passing a kidney stone.  It is extraordinarily unpleasant, and there may be some blood when all is said and done.  Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

• Cover of Decode – Paramore
• Cover of Dragostea din tei – O-Zone
• Cover of Run to the Hills – Iron Maiden
• Cover of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – Wham! (notice this one has the harmonies, but is still shit)

(They also all seem to feature stupid backing images from the most recent movie.  I’m not sure why?)

In all truth, I am totally baffled by the Dipmunks.  Are they completely oblivious?  I will, for the moment, accept the psychological argument that people who make their own Dipmunk videos are unable to find fault with their own material.  But can they not see how atrocious everyone else’s material is?  Do they not even realize that the exaggerated harmonies and creative twists are what make the Chipmunks music good?

Probably the most damning evidence came today, which is what inspired this little rant.  I was looking for a particular Chipmunks tune on YouTube when I found this crappy Dipmunk version of Elton John’s Crocodile Rock.  Normally I would just pass this off as the standard Dipmunk incompetence, except for one minor problem: there is an actual Chipmunks recording of Crocodile Rock!  The professional Chipmunk version, while maybe not quite up to par with the Elton John original, is still quite well done and was famously featured in the “Rockin’ with the Chipmunks” special.  While I have no expectation that the average person is familiar with the special, anybody who has browsed on YouTube for Chipmunks material for more than three minutes has probably come across it.  Being a supposed Chipmunks fan and not knowing about “Rockin’ with the Chipmunks” is equivalent to being a Beatles fan and not knowing about their Savile Row rooftop concert, i.e. high treason.

What is the moral here?  Like all ‘Tubers, Dipmunks are self-serving, socially-unaware gibbons who have no appreciation for music in any way, certainly not the kind of music that the Chipmunks have won five Grammys for producing.  If you want to make Chipmunks music, here’s a suggestion: get some friends who can harmonize, learn to sing, buy some decent recording equipment, and track over vocal-less versions of songs you like.  Put that shit up on YouTube and maybe I will actually give it my time.  Otherwise, leave the song-making to the professionals, please.

To close: here are some actual Chipmunks songs.  See if you enjoy them!  If you don’t, that’s fine, but who knows?

• Cover of She Loves You – The Beatles
• Cover of Tutti Frutti – Little Richard
• Cover of You’re The One That I Want – John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
• Getting Lucky – Chipmunks original (technically the Chipettes, but it’s a somewhat irrelevant point)

Of course, it’s not that embarrassing, for the very simple reason that nobody actually reads this blog, since it is in no way advertised and nobody I know personally is aware of it (at least insofar as I am aware).

This actually presents an interesting philosophical dilemma.  I generally write strictly for myself, because I am self-centered and generally misanthropic.  (One or both of those is false.)  However, writing for one’s self becomes boring pretty quickly, since you always know exactly what you’re going to say next.  I have a terrible memory so I can get away with reading my older works to some extent, but it’s not really a sustainable system.

As an aside, I should point out my utter distaste towards people who go on about ”sustainable” agriculture.  I attend a public university, so all I ever hear is people talking about “sustainability initiatives” and the such, despite that these same people each spend thousands of dollars on coffee and bottled water.  The only sustainability platform I really care about is energy sustainability (more specifically energy independence), and unless the word “nuclear” gets thrown out at some point, which it never does among “sustainability” types, then I don’t really want to listen.

Anyway, the writing issue becomes rather immediately prevalent because, in all my years of schooling, one of the most significant points that I have learned about good writing is writing for one’s audience.  If you’re writing an academic paper for a published journal, you use very formal language and strict style rules.  If you’re writing an essay for a professor, you take a slightly more relaxed approach and maybe throw in some references to class material that will prove your interest in the course.  And, if you’re on /b/ (although why you would be is beyond me), you spam DESU and post pictures of rectal prolapse.  In any case, how you write and what you write about are very heavily dependent on the expected audience.  This revelation should not be new to anyone who has written anything beyond the most basic requirements to get through the modern education system.

So, then, is it possible to write for one’s self?  This is a tricky point.  There are a number of possible approaches when examining the question:

1. One possible angle is content-based: writing about something the audience is interested in.  This is extremely easy for self-indulgent writers like myself, because why the hell would you write about something if you weren’t interested in the first place?  (Answer: if you are extremely bored or are getting paid.)  So if all you care about is content, then it’s easy to write for one’s self.  Of course, it’s not actually that simple.

 

2. Another possible angle to take is originality: writing something that the audience will find original and creative.  In contrast with the above approach, this one is basically impossible to work around; it might be creative and original the first time you write something, but as soon as you turn around and read it it’s old hat.  You know, since you just wrote it five minutes earlier.  Really the only way to get around this is, as I mentioned earlier, by just having a terrible memory.  Not an elegant solution, perhaps, but it’s something.

 

3. The last possible point of consideration is writing style: writing something in a way your audience enjoys reading.  This is actually potentially fertile ground for the reclusive author.  This angle allows you to experiment with styles and literary devices, leaving the content as more or less irrelevant.  One of my favorite personal examples of this is when I wrote a short story (or rather, three-quarters of a short story) using a particular narrative style that I learned from the first chapter of The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams.  The story itself wasn’t any good, but I didn’t care; I just enjoyed the chance to try a different and interesting literary style, and I still can appreciate going back and reading it.  The piece is sufficiently dissimilar from my usual work that, when reading it, it feels almost like a different author.  Almost.

What is the point of this masturbatory philisophical discussion?  Nothing.  I just wrote it out because I was bored and needed something interesting to do.  And that, dear children, is what we call irony.

I have a seen a number of individuals, from simple-minded fanboys to prominent industry experts, make the claim that Killzone 2 will “save the PS3.”  There are actually two rather dubious claims in that statement: that Killzone 2 is a console-seller and that the PS3 is in need of saving.

I have an idea!  Let’s discuss each of those two claims in depth!

1.   Killzone 2 is a perfect gift from the heavens, come to bring salvation to PS3 owners.

Killzone 2 is not, in fact, Jesus incarnate as a videogame.  If anyone was offended by that metaphor, please leave me a nasty comment that I can ignore and then go away.

…Are they gone?  Good.

Killzone 2 is a shooter, designed for shooter monkeys.  Shooter monkeys are, of course, gamers who predominantly play first-person shooters, usually some subset of Halo, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, etc.  Shooter monkeys are notorious in that (a) they have terrible tastes in videogames and (b) they are by far the dominant demographic that purchases games en masse.  As a result, developers lean heavily towards developing shooters with no story, characters or depth of any kind.  Even truly pristine examples of the FPS genre, essentially anything produced by Valve, lack much in the way of real depth.  Team Fortress 2 is fun, and I love it, but it doesn’t have much to speak for it besides just raw entertainment.  There is a place for games that do only provide entertainment at this core level, but it saddens me that, as these games are by far the top sellers, it leads developers to develop bad games instead of good ones.

But I digress.  The point that I am trying to make is that Killzone 2 shares all the flaws of every other popular shooter.  Granted, I haven’t played it myself (and probably never will), but from what I know it seems like it brings nothing new to the table.  Maybe it will be a shining example of the FPS genre, but that’s like saying that the silent-but-deadly is the highest form of fart.  It’s still a fart and it still smells like shit.

2.  The PS3 is in dire straits and needs a shining white knight to rescue it from the mean, nasty console kings.

The PS3 is not doing well in the “console war,” as most people familiar with the industry could tell you.  The Wii’s manipulation of the casual market and the XBox 360′s pandering to the aformentioned shooter monkey crowd give them both solid selling niches, but the PS3 has little to speak for it in turns of sales.

This is unfortunate, as the machine is, in terms of power and structural quality, undoubtedly the best.  Simply put, the monolith is just a better machine than the 360.  The problem is that the 360 has pricing and fanboyism in its favor, and as a result 360s dominate the “hardcore” market.

However, this hardly means that the PS3 is dead in the water.  The PS3 has several factors that should keep it afloat.  Blu-ray capability, the hard drive, and its unbridled processing power means that, as game development advances, more and more games will have to develop with the PS3 in mind.  Metal Gear Solid 4 is the classic example of a game that was simply too technologically advanced to be released on the 360.  Unless Microsoft releases a new console relatively soon, the number of PS3 exclusives is probably going to increase at a decent clip until the PS3 once again has a sizeable market share.

Regardless of the above, the most important thing to remember is that games are for having fun, although it is nice if they have some depth.  If you own a PS3 and like shooters, get Killzone 2.  Enjoy it (assuming it is as good as people say).  I’ll stick with LittleBigPlanet myself.

Humor is so important to us, in fact, that we have begun to become dependent on it. It pervades our society in a way that devalues it enormously. Douglas Adams, author and humorist, once lamented:

“…Nowadays everybody’s a comedian, even the weather girls and the continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.” (Adams 1995)

It’s no secret that humor is overused today. One need only search Google for “lol” to find well over five-hundred million things that people think are funny, despite the fact that most of them suck donkey nuts and suck them like a ShamWow. (Like a vacuum, that shit.) As a result, humor that once could be thought of almost as an art form is now degraded to the same level of crass urbanity as standard-definition TVs or Outback Steakhouse.

To that end, I have compiled a list of as many kinds of humor as I could uniquely define. For each, I will briefly discuss the nature of that class of humor, and, if you find it funny, what enjoying that kind of humor says about you as a person.

This list may not be exhaustive, but compiling it was exhausting so that’s close enough.

—

Basal Humor

Basal (low) humor is the core of humor. As the name implies, it is the class of humor that has no meaning outside of itself. It usually does not require a great deal of intellect or contextualization to be entertaining.

Puns

Ah, puns. I start with this, one of my favorite forms of humor, to ensure you the reader that I am serious in my critique and have no intention of playing favorites.

Puns are, as most people are well aware, jokes derived through wordplay. Examples of puns might be: “this omelet is EGGS-ellent” or “that chicken had an EGGS-citing day.” (Something like 40% of puns have to do with eggs in some way. Science has not yet determined the reason for this.)

The love of puns is one of the lowest possible forms of humor. As Asimov (1956) discusses, puns are one of the only forms of jokes that people can develop on the fly; nearly all other jokes are simply reimaginations of pre-existing jokes, which simply evolve divergently over time. As a result, puns are often referred to as “groaners,” meaning that people usually don’t even bother to laugh at them because they are so pathetic. Basically, thinking puns are actually funny makes you a cretin.

A penchant for puns, on the other hand, may give you some hope. Unlike simple recognition of puns, which is trivial since they are almost always delivered with a modulated emphasis, creating a pun on the fly is a much more difficult. It requires you to be paying attention to available morphemes, do rapid comparison of possible matches, and determine whether insertion of the pun is appropriate for the given context or audience. Essentially, a properly executed pun is a work of craft and to be admired, but that doesn’t make it funny. Ever. (Obviously, this applies only to spur-of-the-moment puns; classic puns like those mentioned above are not clever in any way, especially not if they involve eggs.)

Slapstick

Slapstick, or physical humor, is one of the very few visual forms of humor. This is interesting, since while the visual arts (painting, sculpture, film) are frequently considered to be “higher” forms of art than non-visual forms of art (literature, oration), visual humor (slapstick, practical jokes, caricature) are generally considered “lower” forms of humor than non-visual humor (satire, repartee). This may be indicative of the fact that humor is not “art”; it may alternatively be indicative of the fact that the people who determine what constitutes “high” and “low” art may just be pretentious cuntwads.

Regardless, enjoying slapstick is just a classic example of taking joy from the suffering of others, or schadenfreude. Yes, yes, it’s very funny that he fell down the stairs, ha-ha. Now he has broken bones, he has to go through months of painful physical therapy, he requires several surgeries, the expensive hospital stays will expend all of his savings, his wife will leave him because he can no longer support their children, etc. Incidentally, Science has shown that feelings of schadenfreude correlate highly with low self-esteem (Portmann 2000). They also correlate highly with being an insufferable prick.

Practical Jokes

Practical jokes are generally forms of slapstick, but with a minor twist. Whereas slapstick is simply taking joy in the unfortunate happenstance of others, practical jokes (which are generally not very practical at all) are actively trying to make someone else’s life worse.

The most common practical jokes are relatively harmless, but at best inconvenience the victim and at worst permanently harm him. (I would add that once there is a “victim” then you know you have a negative form of humor.) Practical jokes can range from an unsuspected water balloon to the face to drunk-dialing somebody’s mom at 3:00 in the morning. While the jokes are usually funny to the perpetrators, this is just another case of schadenfreude and as such makes them dickheads. There are practical jokes possible where the victim is not actually inconvenienced and can also appreciate the joke, but these are extremely rare and generally are less funny overall, since they have to be less intense so as not to inconvenience the victim.

Raunch / “Blue” Humor

Raunch is not what happens when you put ranch dressing on your lunch, but is instead humor that derives its comedic qualities by being of a sexual nature (or some other form of so-called “toilet” humor). Raunch generally comes about for one (or both) of two reasons. It is possible that you are just so unclever that you can’t think of anything else, so you reach straight for the easiest possible topic with the greatest inherent shock value. Alternatively, you may be so sexually insecure that sex is all you ever talk about anyway, so jokes about it are simply the logical extension. In either case, native raunchy humor is simply the result of you being too incompetent to come up with a normal, non-sexual joke. Mitch Hedberg is one of the funniest comedians I know, and he made maybe one or two jokes of a sexual nature per act, tops. That is because, unlike practitioners of so-called “blue” humor, Mitch Hedberg is actually funny and intelligent.

It is important to note that jokes of a sexual nature are not inherently bad. Rather, it is that a joke that is supposedly funny because it is raunchy that is bad. It is entirely possibly to make puns about sex (“that’s what she said” jokes), parody about sex (the classic “pelvic thrust” comes to mind), stereotype about sex (jokes about penis size), or create any other humorous form. But without some redeeming comedic quality, a raunchy joke is just that: raunchy. And by that I mean lame and stupid.

Topical Humor

Topical humor is the class of humor that deals with current events, or immediately relevant issues. A topical joke today might make a joke about Obama as newly-elected president, the economy failing, etc.

Topical humor is characterized by a lack of interesting world knowledge and an extremely short comedic lifespan. A topical joke may be kind of funny today, but in three months no one will care anymore. This results in “Family Guy syndrome,” where an episode of a show may have seemed funny when the issues it played on were immediately relevant to the viewer, but once those issues have become old news (which in America takes about two weeks) then the joke ceases to have any comedic quality at all.

Basically topical humor can seem funny when it is fresh, but it goes stale so quickly that it’s hardly worth the effort to create it. It’s like making a fresh loaf of bread, but as soon as you take it out of the oven it turns into one of those terrible wooden chairs that everybody hates to sit in, and it turns out to be too small for you, and then you try to sit in it anyway, and it breaks. So writing topical jokes is equivalent to being a terrible baker. Or maybe a carpenter. Or something.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration to try and describe something in a way that makes it sound more interesting to the listener. For example, rather than say “I have probably 10-15 hours of homework,” one might say “I have a bazillion hours of homework.” This discontinuity usually comes about because (a) the thing you are describing is not sufficiently interesting, so you have to “kick it up a notch” via exaggeration, or (b) there is no alternative way to make your comment entertaining. Either way, if you are telling somebody something that isn’t sufficiently interesting as-is it is likely that you are just a self-absorbed douchebag. Creative lying is still lying and is not especially funny.

Anecdote

The anecdote is a personal story (whether true or made-up) told for humorous effect, usually as an icebreaker or to pass time in a larger social setting. Anecdotes require both the ability to create (or to have experienced) a legitimately entertaining story as well as a meaningful level of storytelling prowess. Sadly, storytelling is a dead art today, and thus most anecdotes are just boring retellings of things that happened to you that nobody else cares about. Like hyperbole, a tendency for anecdotes mostly just indicates that you care more about yourself than those around you, and since anecdotes are generally part of a social event you are basically being a giant attention whore.

Referential Humor

Humor by reference is probably the easiest form of humor to execute, and as such is one of the least funny. It essentially amounts to saying something that was funny (or not) in another context and trying to mooch off of the creativity of the original comic. Randomly spouting off whatever Internet meme you have last heard of is not funny, is not original, and makes you a complete biter.

Like most of the humor classes discussed so far, it is possible to execute in a way that is actually entertaining. Proper use of context and situational preparedness can make a reference legitimately funny. However, again it is the wit associated with its use rather than the reference itself that makes it funny.

—

Intellectual Humor

Intellectual humor, as opposed to its bastard sibling basal humor, is humor that is funny based on one’s intellect. The comedic nature of this style of humor derives from outside knowledge, understanding of context, and clever construction. Rather than ignorance, intellectual humor is grounded primarily in being pretentious.

Mockery

Mockery is somewhat borderline between the basal and intellectual camps, and really depends on execution. Basal mockery is simple: “ha-ha, you’re dumb, stupidface.” Of course, this isn’t funny by any extant method of qualification. Funny mockery generally requires intellectual superiority over the target as well as the audience’s knowledge of the aforementioned superiority. Essentially, the only way that mocking somebody can be funny is if you not only think highly of yourself with respect to your intended target, but you are so narcissistic that you have to explain to everybody else that you are superior. What does that make you? That’s right, a self-righteous cock.

Banter / Repartee / Wit

Banter is the school of comedy that breaks from the classic jokester/victim model seen in many lower forms of humor, exchanging it for an evenly-matched, duel-esque form of comedy. Banter requires a combination of repartee (exchange of insults) and wit (rapid construction and delivery of jokes). In a properly-executed session of banter, two combatants will hurl insults back and forth, attempting to parry each of their opponent’s thrusts while counterattacking with something even more humorous and/or offending. This exchange escalates rapidly until either a truce is reached or one of the jokesters is unable to top his opponent’s last comment. Unlike most other forms of comedy, banter is the only one that can be considered competitive, although the majority of practitioners don’t bother to take it so seriously that “winning” is actually of significant importance.

You may notice that I have not yet insulted bantering as a humor form. That’s because it’s actually a relatively classy form of communication that combines the more entertaining aspects of its cousins, simple mockery and formal debate. Of course, since banter is actually a high-class form of humor, most people cannot appreciate it as the art (or sport, if you prefer) that it is, and as such fall into the ranks of the proletariat where they belong. Quality practitioners, in contrast, know their high status and as such rapidly become elitist bastards.

Imitation / Parody / Caricature

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This is not even remotely true, but is rather an elaborate lie perpetrated by those who like to use imitation to mock others, the selfish assholes. Imitation as a form of humor is used for the sole purpose of poking fun at an individual or group, at their expense. Parody and caricature are even worse, since rather than simple imitation you are twisting the words and behaviors of a person so that they appear monstrous. In journalism, that would be called “slander.” (Technically libel, please go to hell.) In comedy, it’s called “funny.” Yet again, humor is derived from the deformation of others, and our old pal schadenfreude returns for another visit.

While the actual insults hurled via parody or caricature are not necessarily elaborate, imitation still constitutes an “advanced” form of humor as it requires a detailed knowledge both of your target and of your audience to be executed properly. Otherwise, raw imitation of a random target is very rarely funny.

Satire / Burlesque

Satire is probably the most evident form of intellectual humor in popular culture. Whether reading the classic Swift piece “A Modest Proposal,” the modern parody newspaper The Onion, or the critically acclaimed anti-discriminatory essay “Height Makes Right,” we are regularly exposed to satire of various kinds.

Satire, of course, is humor that attempts to portray itself as serious (similarly to deadpan) while in reality trying to be as absurd as possible. The goal of satire is to test the reader’s intellect; if they think it is serious, then the reader is a brainless oaf with no more class than a recently fired high school teacher. If they get that it is satire, the reader can be inducted into the elite group of “intellectuals” who get the joke. In other words, you are either a clod or an imperious snob, so you can’t win.

(Attention, pedants: “burlesque” here refers to modern, or American, burlesque, as opposed to classical burlesque, a type of commedia dell’arte, which is in turn a form of parody. Get over yourselves, please.)

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Meta-humor

Meta-humor, sometimes called first-order humor, is humor that is inherently self-referential. Meta-humor is not funny by itself; rather, it requires a knowledge of the context of the joke. Most meta-humor is of the form “this isn’t supposed to be obviously funny, but since I know that and you know that we can therefore find it funny.” If that definition seems a bit obtuse, that’s only because meta-humor is as well.

Absurdism

Also a philosophy that I don’t care about, absurdism is a school of comedy that generates humor via absurdity, or simply using constructs that don’t make any logical sense.

There is an art, or rather, a knack to proper absurdist comedy. Some comics (Monty Python, for instance) are famous for a mastery of absurd humor. However, the majority of absurdist comedy simply attempts to play off of the success of these famous masters, and as such they are both unoriginal and simply unfunny. I won’t pretend to understand what the quality of absurdism is that makes it actually entertaining, but I know that trying to return a dead parrot to a pet store is funny, but children using dead owls as toy dolls is not. And unless you take care in the use of absurdity, you’re simply a deluded pothead who can’t make an actually clever joke.

Another major problem in absurdist humor is people simply directly porting old jokes from good absurdist acts. Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” sketch is funny. You trying to recite the entire thing from memory is not. As such, it is important to refrain from this form of joke theft, as it will simply present you as an unoriginal twat to your peers.

Anti-humor

Anti-humor is a form of humor in which you make a deliberate attempt to not be funny. The classic example of this is the “no soap, radio” series of jokes. My personal favorite (since it involves penguins) is:

Two penguins are sitting in a bathtub. One of them says, “Pass the soap.” The other says, “What do I look like, a typewriter?”

Wasn’t that funny? Oh right, it wasn’t. Anti-humor suffers from similar issues as satire; it is an intentional collaboration between the jokester and some segment of his audience to alienate the remainder of his audience. The proper telling of the above joke is to tell it to a group where at least a few people know the joke in advance. Then, the involved audience members laugh uproariously, while the others try desperately to figure out why the joke is supposed to be funny. Either you make fun of them for not getting it or, if they succumb to peer pressure and laugh at the joke, you make fun of them for laughing at a joke that isn’t actually funny. In either case, you are a jerk.

Deadpan

Deadpan is similar to satire in that it is a neutral or serious presentation of ridiculous content. The significant difference is that in satire the focus of the joke is on the content itself. With deadpan, it is very much a performance art, attempting to make an absurd comment in a nonchalant manner that listeners will initially ignore. Properly executed, listeners will soon double-take as they realize what was said. As a result, deadpan is a bit less pretentious than satire since it less conspiratorial. However, since it is a “performance” form of humor, deadpan is frequently used to deliver unfunny jokes, and as such unentertaining nutsacks with no actual wit ruin it as a legitimate type of humor.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm can essentially be thought of as the classical form of irony. It is saying something that is clearly opposite of your intended. A simple example would be to say “great job” to somebody who has just failed miserably at some task. Sarcasm is usually used with intention to bite or offend, although with proper knowledge of audience it can be used quite light-heartedly as well.

Like deadpan, sarcasm is both a comedic construction and a performance art. Unlike deadpan, sarcasm is usually wrought with flourish. Sarcastic intent is indicated by emphasis on certain words (particularly those that are clearly opposite to the situation being described) or by appropriate gesticulations. In the above example, simply saying “great job” in a neutral voice is not especially sarcastic. Rather, one might roll their eyes and say it enthusiastically, as though they had in fact done a great job. Varying levels of sarcastic intent can be portrayed by varying the modulation and intensity with which sarcasm is displayed.

Sarcasm can be thought of as meta-humor (technically it is second-order humor) because it is essentially an alternative form of deadpan. Thus, like all forms of meta-humor, it is dependent on using a lack of humor to generate humor, and as such is the product of a degenerative mind too simple to make funny jokes using actual comedic talent.

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Personal Favorites

To close, here are my favorite classes of humor, one each from the categories of basal, intellectual, and first-order humor.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a simplified form of caricature, which places it firmly in the field of basal humor. Stereotyping is taking the act of caricature and applying it to a generic group rather than an individual. For example, rather than saying “My Chinese friend has slanty eyes,” you simply generalize it to “All Chinese people have slanty eyes and enjoy chicken chow mein.” Most well-known stereotypes are based on making just a few observations of some group and then ignoring all disproving future observations of the same group. This basically makes stereotyping the opposite of Science. In addition, it is common knowledge that enjoying stereotypes makes you a racist. I don’t care if the stereotypes are sexual, age-related, nationalistic, classist, or whatever; you are still a racist.

Sardonicism

Sardonicism, or at least the word, was first seen in Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus laughs bitterly (sardonically) to himself while fighting his wife’s suitors. Basically, sardonicism is characterized by humor derived from the suffering of others. Unlike basic schadenfreude, however, sardonicism is developed through ironic portrayal of the scene. In the above example, it is ironic that Odysseus has to fight off other suitors to “win the hand” of his own wife, and as such he takes a sardonic pleasure in killing them. The ironic basis of sardonicism means it requires a deeper understanding of context and of the victim than simple slapstick requires. But it is still schadenfreude, so enjoying it still makes you a total wanker.

Irony

Irony, as any pedant with access to the Oxford English Dictionary will tell you, is correctly defined as “a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used.” What the pedants seem to be unable to grasp (probably due to a lack of thumbs, the unevolved galliforms) is that nobody cares, since the socially prominent definition is quite different. More accurate to the accepted definition is the OED’s alternative definition: “a condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things.” Essentially, irony is when something happens that is not expected, but in hindsight can be viewed as contextually appropriate or as mockingly fitting the situation.

Irony is especially interesting because it is to an extent self-fulfilling. Irony can be considered a type of meta-humor, for example by making a joke about jokes. This ironic joke is self-referential, but there is an irony in the existence of an ironic joke that is itself ironic. Even the absence of irony can be considered ironic. If you find something ironic that is not ironic, then that dichotomy inherently creates an irony that can then be the irony that you thought you had found originally.

And if you agreed with anything in the last paragraph, you are a nerd. Great job.

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Conclusion

What can we conclude from this? Simply put, modern humor sucks ass. This is, as always, the direct result of people being ignorant of quality and having no sense of good humor at all. If we ever want to reach the Promised Land of infinite joy and bring comedy into the heights of human achievement, there is only one logical solution. We will have to brutally murder everyone who has a bad sense of humor. Only genetic purging can bring our society into the bright Tomorrow.

That’s called “black humor,” you guys. I told you I didn’t talk about all of them.

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References:

Adams, Douglas. “What Have We Got To Lose?” Wired, UK edition, issue no. 1. 1995.

Asimov, Isaac. “Jokester.” Infinity, December issue. 1956.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.

Portmann, John. When Bad Things Happen to Other People. Routledge. 2000.

Of course, the problem is that nobody believes me.  Maybe it’s because I’ve willingly dropped over $1000 on my Playstation 3, Wii, and their associated accessories.  Maybe it’s the giant stack of video games sitting next to my TV, many of which I have played through numerous times.  Maybe it’s because I’ve logged 350+ hours on my copy of Pokémon Diamond (not to mention at least another 1000 hours playing through Emerald twice, LeafGreen once, Crystal once, and Red and Blue more times than I can count).

The reason that, I maintain, I am not a gamer is because I don’t care.  I know that last paragraph might suggest differently, but hear me out for a moment.

One game that I play quite heavily is Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  I have played Smash since the original came out (Pikachu main for life!), and my copy of Brawl has all trophies collected and at least a couple hundred hours of playtime logged.  However, the important distinction between myself and most people who play Brawl at that level of frequency is that I am not a tourneyfag.

If you were too lazy to click the above link, a tourneyfag is somebody who will only play according to a very strict set of rules, on the grounds that the pseudo-random nature of the game makes competitive play “unfair.”  For a more in-depth discussion of tourneyfaggotry, read the Encyclopedia Dramatica page.  (At your own risk, obviously.)

The problem with Brawl tourneyfags, and by extension gamers in general, is that they simply care too much.  Gamers as a rule tend to be socially isolated, and as such they become extremely possessive of their medium of choice.  Like hardcore movie buffs, gamers maintain a level of knowledge and skill that they feel places them on a higher level than the average simpleton.  I can’t count the number of pointless “games are art” debates I’ve seen, or console fanbois flaming each other (on that note, 360 owners can eat shit and die), or talking about how Ōkami is the greatest game ever just because it talks about Japan and has an unconventional art style, despite the fact that it is poorly designed and is quite unoriginal in most of its elements.

Games don’t have to be art.  Games are games.  They’re meant to be fun, entertaining.  The original Spider-man was a shitty video game, but I still had fun playing it because it was Spider-man.  Ico might be original and picturesquely beautiful, but when I get stuck on a puzzle for an hour just because I don’t know I can reach down to pick up Yorda, the game stops being fun.  There’s no value in being pretentious about games, video or otherwise, since the moment you start making arbitrary judgments the fun gets immediately sucked out of it.

So play your Wii Sports, if that’s what you like.  (I don’t.)  Play Rock Band if you’re not enough of a man to play real guitar (or at least Guitar Hero, which has a way better track listing).  I don’t care, and neither should you.  If you are playing a game and having fun, than you are doing it right regardless.

On a closing note: I seconded a Mewtwo in Melee.  This either means that (a) I am committed to the ideals I have just stated, or (b) I am a fucking moron.  Your call.

The point of this is that I am a Star Wars nerd.  I admit this openly, because trying to deny it would be laughable.  I’ve seen (and own) the movies, I’ve read the Expanded Universe novels, I owned the toys when I was a kid, I have a collectible Force FX lightsaber, I even (shudder) did a stint playing Star Wars Galaxies, much to my dismay.

So when I was flipping through TV channels and found The Empire Strikes Back on, I felt obligated to watch.  Besides, it had been a few years since the last time I saw it, and I hadn’t watched it since at least before Revenge of the Sith came out.  I was interested to see how it compared, especially given the bile with which most “hardcore” Star Wars fans refer to the prequel trilogy.  Some things I noticed:

• Like everybody else, I complained about the scene at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith with the battle droids complaining and for some reason feeling pain.  What pedant didn’t feel the need to point out “hey, they’re droids manufactured for combat situations, why on earth would they feel pain?”  Imagine my surprise when, all the way back in Empire, C-3PO complains and says “ouch” when his head is hit against the ceiling or his body dragged across the floor.  3PO feeling pain is reminiscent of Marvin the Paranoid Android feeling pain in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but when they did it in Hitchhiker’s it was funny, whereas in Star Wars it is still stupid.

• Like Revenge of the Sith, Empire suffered from pointless wipes inserted at seemingly random points.  Granted, it wasn’t nearly so bad as Revenge (every time I watch it I expect to see a star wipe at some point), but you know that wipes are poorly done when you notice them.  Stick to raw cuts, Lucas.

• I was pleasantly surprised at the relative consistency between Empire and the newer films.  There wasn’t nearly so much retconning as I would have expected.  One thing I noticed was that Vader’s speech to Luke just after cutting his arm off is surprisingly similar to some of Anakin’s lines.  Specifically, he proclaims the Dark Side not as a route to power, but rather as a way to end the war between the Empire and the Rebellion, just like Anakin was trying to stop the Clone Wars in Revenge.  It was also interesting to notice that, while Yoda and R2-D2 didn’t exactly jump into one another’s arms, they certainly didn’t seem surprised to see each other.

• While an over-hashed point, I want to say it anyway.  Luke’s “NOOOOO” scream at the end of Empire?  Fairly classy.  Anakin’s “NOOOOO” scream at the end of Revenge?  Not so much.

• Overall, I was surprised how good the movie still is.  I had thought it might seem a bit campy or dated, since it is well over twenty years old (certainly older than me), but it still plays well.

Moral of the story?  Yeah, Star Wars is still good.  Hooray.

So why the change of heart?

Well, there are a number of reasons.  The first is that, as the Intertubes have evolved, it seems clear that the idea of the social network is here to stay.  The old bulletin boards of Usenet were great, but the ‘tubes have evolved well past the point where they are sufficient to support the subtleties of modern communication.  Nowadays, you’re not “properly” plugged in to the system without your IM client, Facebook, message boards, a blog, and your own SVN server.

(The SVN server in the above list springs to mind rather easily at the moment, since mine doesn’t work with Apache 2.2.8 and if I reinstall Apache I’ll probably have to reinstall half the stuff that is dependent on it and in the amount of time that would take I could probably just set up an Ubuntu partition which would have SVN preinstalled but then I would have to reconfigure my development environment which would mean reinstalling everything and trying to find all the old passwords to the various repositories I need access to which is ironic because I did all of this just so I could make my own local repository anyway so WTF.)

Did I mention I am a web application developer by trade?  And a nerd.  And a bit ADD.  Sorry, I’ll go back to what I was talking about.

The second, and actual, reason I am turning tail and starting a blog is that I want to write.  I love to write, in fact, even though only like three people I know are even aware of this fact.  The problem is that I don’t really have a forum for doing so; I have no desire to try to legitimately publish and posting things on Facebook tires rather quickly.  I promised myself I would try to write more, so here you go.

So I apologize that this first post is so dry.  Usually I try to be a bit more concise and humorous, but I guess meta-posts aren’t really conducive to that.  I will attempt to do better in the future.