a well-established, highly successful social structure

“How does one reshape an entire society? How does one convert this impressive example of the instinct to survive into a communally positive force? Clearly, we needed to follow a well-established, highly successful social structure as our inspiration—”

“Rats.”

“Well done, Bugg. I knew I could count on you.”

Homunculus – Hideo Yamamoto

I don’t read many mangas these days but I make exceptions for those masterpieces that set themselves apart. There are certain signature works in every medium and genre, Homunculus isn’t very much “signature” because it doesn’t seem to represent any canon, but it sets itself apart as one of those rare, significant works. It is a true masterpiece, of the kind you can count on your hands. I’m writing about it also because it’s finally complete. It’s 15 volumes, the last one came out in Japan in April 2011 and translated in English two days ago. Yes, it’s not officially licensed, but it also means that there’s the possibility to read it online, all 15 volumes for free, thanks to the work of fans who did the translation. It’s not the same experience of actually having the volumes in your hands (I read most of the volumes as they were published in Italy), but believe me that this is something you can’t miss.

Considering the gruesome picture I decided to use one would expect some kind of brutal manga about violence or serial killers. While Yamamoto, the writer and artist, is the guy behind the more famous “Ichi the Killer”, that you may know for the movie adaptation by Takashi Miike, Homunculus is an entirely different thing. There’s not much violence, or action. It’s instead a deep psychological and metaphysical journey into consciousness. In that scene you see Nakoshi, the protagonist, trying to drill a hole into the girl’s skull. It’s gruesome, but he does not intend to kill her. It’s part of the metaphysical conceit the manga is based on, by drilling that hole you stimulate the brain to a different kind of activity, augmenting perception. In the specific case the hole allows the protagonist, by covering his right eye, to see the “truth”. To see demons, or “homunculus”, which are essentially symbolic constructs of the people he sees around himself.

They aren’t the demons “outside”, from the outer world, those typical in horror movies. They aren’t supernatural or magical. They are the demons inside, those who live truly within each of us, every day, and that we can’t exorcize since those demons are “us”. As real as everything you can touch and feel. Deep psychology and symbols, the stuff we live off. And it’s here that this manga reaches its apex. From the first to the last page, beside the single case of the premise of the trepanation, there’s nothing fantastic or that falls outside science. You’ll see all kinds of weird, freaky stuff, it flirts with the occult, but it will all be slowly explained in logical terms. Everything will be explained.

It is a masterpiece because of how it keeps the tension for 15 volumes straight, unrelenting. It’s an unbelievable crescendo that reaches the top right at the end. Truly ambitious works usually have problems finding a worthwhile ending that matches expectations and wraps up all mysteries and plots. This is an example of “flawless victory”. It does everything perfectly, with an ending I feel powerful. Recently I was discussing the difference between “ambiguous” and “ambivalent”. It’s a meaningful difference because I consider one satisfying and the other frustrating and infuriating. Ambiguous endings are infuriating, because you don’t get the answers you seek, the ending is open-ended, you’re left wondering what the authors wanted to say, you can’t come to grips with it. It’s not over and you can’t let it go, but you can’t do much with it either, because you feel like you can’t solve it, or that it was all a fraud, with no solution (hello LOST). Instead ambivalent endings are fine. They are still open-ended because you don’t get to know “exactly” a specific solution or truth, but at the same time you are given more than one specific solution. Each explaining plausibly what happened. You get your answers, mysteries are solved and explained, but there’s more than one single solution. You’re given more than one combination, but they all potentially open the lock. You don’t get to see the one that does it, but you know one of them will. The path is clear, the message delivered.

During the course of this manga, page after page, the protagonist will face the homunculus of other people that he needs to “solve”. Each is its own mystery, bound to the whole life of a real person. You’ll see stories surfacing and every single mystery about them slowly being explained. At the same time every chunk of these stories will go to build up the bigger picture, it will build up to the mystery of the homunculus. What these homunculi are, where they come from. The mystery will be revealed and the whole manga is built so that everything leads up to it. It’s a masterpiece because how every story exists on its own and yet builds up to that ultimate mystery. And it’s a masterpiece because how every single image, frame after frame, goes to acquire a symbolic meaning. Yamamoto is a genius, you’ll see the deep, meticulous research after every symbol, taking often hundreds of pages for the “descent into truth”.

“Truth” is what lurks deep down, in that pit that is the symbolic unconscious. You’ll get to see some of those truths, see their freaky shapes. All the while, remember, without any “magic”. This is the real thing.

It can be quite disturbing. But the truth rarely isn’t.

Midnight Tides and Lovecraftian Gods

I’ve reached a point in the book where some big sea god makes its grand entrance. I was quite in awe and decided to write a bit about it, about how I perceived the whole scene and wanted it to be more than how it appears in the book. It has quite an evocative power but I feel that Erikson understated way too much such a grandiose event. It’s one awesome idea Erikson had, but that is dismissed in the multitude of other things. Other writers could have made this a dramatic pivot of a novel, but here it is somewhat resolved in three pages or so. 3-4 pages enough to introduce the threat posed by this unknown sea god, research its mystery, see it rise on the surface wrecking chaos, conclude the first battle and solve a first mystery. Too fast!

Embedded in those three pages there isn’t just that, but a treasure of fundamental ideas that go deep down. Even if so understated they still make a fulcrum of things. So I’m going to describe what I saw, in there, knowing it’s not going to be perfectly accurate, but not my own fancy either.

When I was a kid Lovecraft was my myth. I couldn’t get E. A. Poe because he was too psychological, but Lovecraft delivered fully what I wanted. He grasped the psychological side, but at the same time also going all the way with awe-inspiring imagery. Fantastic, otherworldly landscapes, truly alien creatures. He didn’t underplay the fantastic element. Today looking at Lovecraftian mythology it all seems quite thin. Lovecraft is about atmosphere, what it suggests. Under that surface there’s chaos and uncertainty that feed on the idea of “cosmic horror”. It’s a powerful feeling, part of the unconscious and dream world, but it is abstract and undifferentiated.

The implicit rule is that when you reveal a mystery, describe how it operates, how it works internally and externally, you defuse all its power. So if Lovecraft probed and replaced the void of the “cosmic horror” with something precise, then all the magic and evocative power would be lost. The magic is about not seeing completely, the horror of the unknown, something right out the corner of the eye. And so we get a tradition of Horror where we don’t quite see, something only suggested, vaguely hinted at, the monster is a shadow, an outline.

Erikson instead, striving for other goals, goes deep into the mystery, and instead of diminishing its power he manages to not “explaining it away”, but make it stronger and even more evocative and full of implications than ever! The danger down this path is evident if you for example watched LOST, the more the mystery was revealed the more it got broken, made no sense, felt more and more contrived and annoying. In less words: the answers to mysteries weren’t satisfying. They weren’t reaching as high as the expectations. Here instead we have an occasion to see how it can become satisfying.

In the book a character starts to analyze the situation and the possible origin of this sea god that is looming and threatening his army. He comes out with three possibilities (two in the book, that’s one of the reasons why I say Erikson underplayed this too much). The first is that in this region, possibly thousands of years before, there was another population. It is explained that the land was made of limestone and, due to underground rivers and currents, the ground was eroded and shaped, and some deep, circular natural pits were formed. This population used one of these huge pits as a sacred place to their own deity. They threw into this pit bones, living sacrifices and other precious materials, till it filled up. So the sea god they are facing in current times is what this ancient population worshiped thousands of years before. The second hypothesis is that there was no original god that fed on that pit, but that another spirit or god was lured by the sacrifices, it disguised itself as their god, it became and replaced their god (and this is a pattern that returns in these books, gods that deceive and manipulate, preying onto the delusion of common people), and so its power grew and grew.

The third hypothesis is that there was… nothing. This is the most fascinating one because it took me a while to come to terms with it in these books. (opening necessary parenthesis here) One usually assumes that a god either exists or not. We either believe or we don’t. In a Fantasy novel, where gods are “tangible” and real, you assume there are no problems of faith. Gods exist, and that’s all. Yet, Erikson’s mythology is “protean”. Meaning that it is “fluid”. It’s a bit counter intuitive but let’s say that there could be some people that have their own pantheon. These gods exist and are real. Yet it’s entirely possible that on another continent there’s a different population with a completely different belief system and pantheon. They believe in different things and so their gods are different, but STILL very real. Belief, in our real world, is also protean, because it is created and is transformed. What a Christian believes is not what a Native American believes. In the Malazan world the “conceit” is that the mechanics are the same as our real world, but the gods come into being. Are made. So, going back to this third hypothesis, this means that a god may have come out of some, let’s say, “emotive or symbolic power”. The accumulation of lives sacrificed to some conceptual deity, the value of the symbols (the precious materials also thrown in the pit), all coalesced over time into something. “A creature came into being, and was taught the nature of hunger, of desire. Made into an addict of blood and grief and terror.”

Now take all these three possibilities and you’ll see that all three have significant implications. In the context the characters are preparing to fight this god in battle, so they need to learn as much as they can about it. What it is, what it can do. In the first case (a native, ancient god) the mystery becomes about what kind of god the ancient population worshiped. What its nature may be. In the second case (a spirit or a god that was attracted by sacrifices) the mystery deepens, because the ancient god is a mask and anything could have taken that position, hidden within, with its own motives and goals. What kind of creature was it? Was it maybe some other god or ancient creature? Where does it come from? What’s its true origin? Then the third case (a god was “fashioned”, from nothing), how do you fight something that is not there?

See, the mystery GROWS. It becomes filled with interesting implications, and consequences because in the context there’s a war ahead and this god is being used in it. Among all this, Erikson deepens the “import”. This is where I love what he does. It’s a fantasy story, but it has no power, no weight, if it doesn’t try to reach deep and say something that isn’t merely a clever “invention”. Take this quote:

Shorelines were places of worship the world over. The earliest records surviving from the First Empire made note of that again and again among peoples encountered during the explorations. The verge between sea and land marked the manifestation of the symbolic transition between the known and the unknown. Between life and death, spirit and mind, between an unlimited host of elements and forces contrary yet locked together. Lives were given to the seas, treasures were flung into their depths. And, upon the waters themselves, ships and their crews were dragged into the deep time and again.

Here Erikson, in a few lines, evokes a whole breadth of literature. Man and sea. All contained within that idea, then developed and shaped, “fashioned” in a myriad of stories. Thousands of books, movies, poetry, music. Ancient and modern. A theme that runs through this book, Midnight Tides, confirming that what I see in the title (the undercurrent, the subconscious, what’s hidden and unseen below the sea level) was not an illusion, but something that Erikson grasped fully (see also this and the quote about erosion).

The mythological work done in these three pages (btw, I already surpassed the wordcount of the whole scene I’m writing about, which also includes the battle itself, just saying) is not complete. The analysis continues speculating on the fact that this god should be dead.

The spirit was doomed, and should have eventually died. Had not the seas risen to swallow the land, had not its world’s walls suddenly vanished, releasing it to all that lay beyond.

The ancient population that filled the pit with gifts and sacrifices vanished at some point. Maybe they migrated somewhere else, or managed to destroy themselves (it wouldn’t be the first time in this setting). In both cases the god would be still bound to the pit, and, with the population feeding it gone, it would weaken and eventually die. Yet this was not a weakened creature, quite the contrary. What happened? That the whole land, including this pit, was in origin dry. At some point the level of the ocean rose (and this is likely as consequence of another cataclysmic event part of the mythology, opening new questions, possibly answers) and the land was submerged. Symbolically (see the quote above) and concretely, this means that the god was unbound, passed through the threshold between land and sea, known and unknown. It got unleashed onto possibilities. And unbound from the tie with its worshipers, it also got a sort of freedom. Out in the ocean ships sailed, more wars, more deaths, more to feed on. But outside of its pit survival wasn’t easy.

For all that, the spirit had known… competition. And, Nekal Bara suspected, had fared poorly. Weakened, suffering, it had returned to its hole, there beneath the deluge. Returned to die.

There was no way of knowing how the Tiste Edur warlocks had found it, or came to understand its nature and the potential within it. But they had bound it, fed it blood until its strength returned, and it had grown, and with that growth, a burgeoning hunger.

And so it rises again and is used as a tool in a war. Again and again in this series the past returns, sometime as it was, sometime disguised, manipulating and manipulated. Erikson already dealt with this sort of Lovecraftian mythology in Memories of Ice (I’m referring to the Matron buried under the plain), where he made real a line by Lovecraft I only remember in Italian, that retranslated sounds like this: It is not dead what forever can wait.

Erikson goes deep into the myth by not treating it merely as a self-serving invention. It feeds on its core, which is the anthropomorphic vision of the world and its coming to terms with reality. As the cover blurb by Glen Cook goes, I also stand slack-jawed in awe of what Erikson is doing. Yet I’ll leave a tiny, little disappointment because I sometimes feel that he doesn’t run all the way with his ideas. As if he didn’t completely believe in their strength. So much and more was contained in those three pages, that ultimately is understated as a small scene buried within a chapter. I haven’t gone further so I don’t know what this creature truly is, but I feel that too much potential was dismissed in a short run-through of hypothesis and even shorter confrontation. Which by the way was confusedly described (has the wizard somewhat shot himself into the creature? how could he see and describe what happens to his partner if one was on top of a lighthouse and the other far at the end of the docks?). I always have a problem of scale with Erikson’s descriptions, sometime he can evoke some huge setpieces filled with sense of wonder, but sometime one doesn’t “feel” this and it seems instead cramped, or not as vast as it could. Visually, it should be given some more “punch”, and it’s again something that doesn’t satisfies me fully. Give me some great imagery when you have motivations and means to do it (and what I wrote here is the foundation to make it happen, having earned it). Erikson’s creatures are sometime lost in the trivial, big dog, big wolf, green eyes. Give me something awe inspiring, huge, that also looks cool. You don’t have a budget on special effects. Ramp up the scale, make something truly grand.

I’m saying this because that’s as far I’ve read and the scene leaves me with that kind of disappointment (after having achieved and deserved all that awe). I don’t know what this creature looks like since it wasn’t shown yet. I don’t know how truly big it is. But from one side it all happened too fast, the prose not giving it enough emphasis and space compared to the rest of the novel. And from another its grandiose visual potential is somewhat lost on a minor PoV, minor battle, minor scene. On a creature that is “big”, but big as a ship or BIG, as a mountain-spanning behemoth of a beast? The writing, for how good it is and how much it packs in the economy of words, runs contrary to what the scene needed, imho.

He disappoints me on the easy parts. Yes Steve, you are too conservative and not enough EPIC.

The reader is not the message

I followed again some links from Larry’s blog to the indignant woman on a crusade.

I’m not writing this to judge, but to understand. I was analyzing my own reaction to certain claims and try to see why I perceive a difference. And so, as consequence, why I don’t often agree with her reasons and arguments.

Take this hypothetical case:
– A writer presents a book to his editor/publisher. The protagonist of this book is a black man, and the editor says the book is good and will be bought, but then asks the writer to make the protagonist white, so that the book can reach a wider public and sell more.

This case strikes me as evidently racist and would trigger a real negative response on me. I do admit that I tend to care about the illegitimate intervention on the author’s will more than the racism embedded in it. But I do notice the racism and it disgusts me.

Take this other case:
– A writer writes a book where only white people are presented, or white people in dominant roles. A reader infers the writer is racist, and so he needs to be called out for what he truly is.

In this case the reader’s reaction doesn’t seem legitimate to me. If certain extremist groups “appropriate” the work of some writer it doesn’t directly mean that what they saw in this work is what the writer truly intended, nor that he agrees with their vision. Nor, obviously, he should be prosecuted for what others read in his work, and crimes done in his name. You can’t infer a claim by its absence. One can be blamed for foreseeable consequences, but not for what he couldn’t imagine. Call him stupid or naive, but that’s all.

A work that analyzes racial problems and that gives equal importance and treatment to different races can rightly be called anti-racist. But a work that does not rise these problems can’t be called racist because it doesn’t tackles them up-front and makes its position clear of suspect.

A reader may perceive racist undertones, the writer may have unconsciously embedded racist undertones in a book, for example by deciding its hero will be white, but you can’t loudly denounce this work as “racist”, as long there isn’t an explicit, proven racist message. That is deliberate.

There are various levels and there is surely merit highlighting the predominance of certain trends that don’t promote anti-racism. And so it’s good to draw the attention and sensitize the public on these themes. As Larry said, it helps to reassess and readjust how you perceive certain things that otherwise would go unnoticed. Help you being aware of them. But not noticing doesn’t mean endorsing. In most cases I guess it’s a simple consequence: if the majority of published fiction writers were black men, then it’s probable we’d get a majority of books with black men as protagonists. A statistic, cultural fact, not an intrinsic racist one.

Tolkien’s work is evidently not particularly sensitized about racial problems and sexism. But you can’t overturn that argument by declaring Tolkien was sexist and racist. It’s an accusation only based on inference, speculation and witch-hunting (suspect).

A note on Midnight Tides reading progress

Not that anyone asked, but I’ve been “reading” Midnight Tides for MANY months and I decided to clarify a bit.

It’s not that I’m not enjoying the book and so going very slowly or making no progress at all. In part the lack of progress is due to a quirk I have. The more I “invest” my interest and expectations on something, the more I delay it. Like a pathological need to keep the best stuff last. Also meaning that I’ll likely go through lot of crap just as long I feel the very best stuff is right there waiting for me (and for better days). I’ve been systematically doing this with everything. Books, movies, games, and everything else associated with a good feeling. I’m one who finished Rhapsody, A Musical Adventure (btw, nice soundtrack) instead of the Final Fantas(ies) because these were good, and so to keep for later. So I still today have all the Final Fantasy games and a staggering PILE of other ancient but precious RPGs on my to-do list. I bought my copy of LotR when I was around fourteen and worshiped it like a holy monolith. But I couldn’t read it once I figured out that more books were connected to it, like the Hobbit and the Silmarillion, I just never settle for anything else than everything. The result was that I read LotR more than 10 years later, even if it was at the time my “favorite book I didn’t read”. Or, in general, that I can manage to read something only when I stop caring about it.

These days I know this habit of mine makes no sense and I try to fight it as much I can, but it still wins often. It’s like one of those obsessive–compulsive problems, the more you fight them the more they slip through and affect your life. Maybe one day I’ll find some great psychologist that explains it to me and fixes me. But in the meantime it’s affecting my progress with Malazan since I consider Malazan a so great work that it achieves that “holy” status that makes then hard for me to actually read and enjoy. The other aspect affecting my reading progress is still partly connected. I only read when I can achieve some perfect condition. Meaning that I’ll read the book if I don’t feel tired, mind well awake and ready, active, with a hot cup of green tea to heighten the mind and awareness, desire to read and so on. It goes without saying that reaching this ideal condition is a rare thing. So I end up reading when I’m going to sleep, I’m tired and so on. So I pick up some other book instead of Malazan. I read Pynchon, for example. I absolutely can read Pynchon while I’m sleepy. I can even manage to have nightmares about it, afterwards.

That’s all to explain this problem of mine. The more I won’t do something the more it’s because I love it. That said, I’ll also have some negative or critical things to say about Midnight Tides (and, I guess Erikson’s writing in general) that I think are worth considering. That part interests me, and I’ll probably try to discuss them. Maybe that gives me enough motivation to actually break the enchantment and finish the damn book.

One of them fools

Just noticed this link on Bakker’s blog.

Quoting:

Abstract: Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.

I was thinking that these scenarios are consistent in the direction they all point to. Life without happiness. The more you are “aware” of the world and of yourself, the more happiness is precluded to you. Happiness can only be found in consolatory lies and story-telling. The more receptive and open you are, the more you’ll suffer. True self-knowledge only leads to despair and loss. Of everything.

You have the choice between being a lie, or nothing at all.

Mad at J. J. Abrams

Fringe is one of those TV shows that I’d have never watched if it wasn’t for the fans affirming it was getting much better after the first season. The couple of episodes I watched were cliched and forgettable. It seemed like an homage to X-Files without anything worthwhile to say on its own. Homages are all good, but only as long you can also raise the stakes at some point.

Fringe did it. The second season started right at a beginning like an “all in” attempt. They pulled out all the stops and started daring. Many episodes were still weak and dull, but overall it was gaining steam and the characters strong enough that they could carry the show during the slow moments. Season 3 was even better, it felt like the writers were having fun. Still plenty of weak spots, but tolerable. The two parts ending to Season 3 was half made of suck and half made of win, in the end still keeping hopes up for a wonderful continuation.

Season 4 started… fine. Definitely a low key compared to the beginning of season 2 or 3. But at least they seemed to do something interesting with the mythological device of the Observers. But it was an HOAX. Instead of building momentum and grow, it sank into the mud. Sluggish and contrived.

From the third episode onward, and for what seems going to comprise the entire season, it became full of indulgent wankery. The whole arc is essentially an USELESS SEASON-LONG DETOUR. Meaningless because the whole time is wasted re-introducing clones of former characters in cloned universes that ultimately will disappear when this season is over and Peter returns to the former timeline. I wonder WHO among Fringe writers believed this was a good idea. Make a whole season of cloned characters in rewritten/rebooted universes while expecting the public will give a fuck. WORSE than comic books reboots. Nothing relevant is being added, episode after episode with recycled characters and stories in a “what if” flavor. Reheated food, formulaic writing and self-referential homages.

I’m pissed at J. J. Abrams because this is clearly the result of “too much love”. You know, when a guy breaks through in BOTH Hollywood and Television. All he does gets a huge attention, so the guy believes his ideas are made of gold and he is a Genius. Currently he has three shows going on TV at the same time, along with his “minor side projects” like blockbusters in the cinemas. Fringe is one of the things that go to shit because HE COULDN’T CARE LESS. Both Hollywood and television love him and he’d always have his other gigs to really care about anything specifically. Success leads to pampering, and suck. Nothing is at stake for him and I even doubt he is involved in production. He’s the Boss now, others can do the work for him and took the blame. He’ll surely be there to take the praises.

If the creator of a series shows no interest for it, why should the fans?

Fringe will be obviously cancelled. It deserves to be cancelled because the writers decided it was better to plan a whole season around a formulaic “what if” than to actually solve any mystery. They had PLENTY of time to bring the show to a wonderful conclusion, but decided to piss all over it because of OVERCONFIDENCE (the one thing that Abrams himself surely has provided on his own). The kind of overconfidence that makes you think it’s a good idea to revisit the same stuff over and over and over through a sly, clever, full-of-itself perspective.

So the show is going to be canceled because it lost most of its public and the writers decided that it was better to use what (plenty) time they had left to go on a full wankery detour than to actually give the show the conclusion it deserved. I hope they do not give it any second chances because they clearly do not deserve them. Abrams replied to the concerns by saying: “I would say without question that if Fringe comes back, I would do anything in my power to direct an episode.”

My reply is this:
WHO FUCKING CARES!

Not only he helped dig Fringe’s grave, but now he wants to come back in a time of need so that he’ll look like a SAVIOR. Go fuck yourself, and possibly regain some humility and sincere interest in what you do. Next time do one thing, and give it your best.