Happy Canada Day! It's been 142 years since Confederation, and depending on how you count, we could four hundred years old or longer. John Ralston Saul argues we're effectively thousands of years old, because our usual way of counting leaves out aboriginal peoples who contributed so much to this country.

But still we like to think of ourselves as a young nation, naive in everything we do and likely to fail at any time.

I've done very little lately, aside from writing and working and researching -- I've half-written another article for my historical website. This heat has made me feel sluggish.

I've also been playing a fair bit of the Persona series. The third was brilliant -- one of the best endings of any game -- and the fourth game is even better, and even stranger. For example, I just defeated a giant decaying teddy bear that kept quoting Postmodern philosophy and hurtling bolts of pure nihilism at me. I defeated it with game's patented Jungian psychology combat system.

Using Jung to beat Foucault -- I doubt John Ralston Saul has ever played a video game, but somehow I think he would have approved.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which is the touchstone moment of the gay movement in the United States. Celebrations are planned all over Canada.

Don't get me wrong. It's worthy of commemoration. But yesterday, another anniversary passed that no one's talking about -- the 40th anniversary of the day the omnibus bill was made a law, making homosexuality legal in Canada.

It was the result of tireless efforts on the part of our activists, starting with Jim Egan. Egan became Canada's first gay activist in 1949, and our only one until 1961. He tried constantly to get others to campaign with him, but they wouldn't. They were too scared.

And they had a reason to be. Penalties were actually getting harsher. As late as 1964, a man named George Klippert was sentenced to prison for the rest of his natural life -- as opposed to a "life" sentence of 25 years -- as a "dangerous offender," because he'd had consensual sex with several men.

Egan retired from activism in 1961 -- his partner begged him to, because of the death threats. By then, he'd opened up enough of a space for the first activist organizations -- starting with Vancouver's Association for Social Knowledge. Activists from ASK and the groups that followed risked their jobs, their families, even their lives to fight an unjust law.

And they're the reason homosexuality was legalized between consenting adults in Canada on June 27, 1969.

So please, take a moment to remember the activists who fought for our freedom. Stonewall was a great event, but it was not the beginning of our movement in Canada, and saying so does a great disservice to everyone who risked so much so that we'd have the right to live our lives without fear.

(cross-posted to queer_mtl)

I just wanted to say that "vavasoress" is one of my new favourite aristocratic titles. A "vavasoress" is a woman's title, a rank below baroness, but it sounds like a carnivorous dinosaur.

It hasn't quite passed up "voivod" for me -- the title we translate as "count" for Dracula and "governor" for the head of a polish province. But it's better than "margrave" -- lord of a "march," where Christendom borders on pagan lands.

Otherwise, news of dead celebrities has pushed out news of nameless people in Iran dying for a democratic principle we can't even be bothered to support through voting in significant numbers. It's pushed it out even on CBC, which is supposed to be above that sort of thing. I'd rather hear about Iran.

Not that I bear Jackson any ill will. Didn't like his music much, but I always kind of felt sorry for him. I trust juries more than I trust trial by media -- where the verdict is always guilty, even if you're innocent -- so I rather felt he got a raw deal. He was just another emotionally mangled individual who had the misfortune of being in the world's eye, where his every neurosis was played out on the pages of newspapers.

I never post about celebrities. Star systems only interest me when they come with planets. It is a little strange when to think that one of the two people who supplied the soundtrack to my generation's childhood has died, though. The King of Pop is dead, leaving Queen of Pop Madonna undisputed ruler of the divided kingdom.

(Her tragedy was that she got boring. His tragedy was that he never did.)

Now the question remains, though, who's the Voivod of Pop? Or the Vavasoress? Who's the Margrave of Pop, brooding over the border he must protect, where Popdom joins the enemy country of the pagan hordes...?

Happy Midsummer/Litha to those who celebrate it!

I've lived like a hermit for much of the last week, which I think I needed. I'm about one-third through the a revision of what looks to be a complete second novel, but other than that and work, I've had a lazy week.

I am quite proud of this, though. That resolution was my idea. montrealais encouraged me to draft a resolution, which he helped edit and presented. He also brought it to MP Peter Stoffer's attention.

Parliament's out so I'll have to wait until after summer to see where it goes from here. It's highly unlikely that it'll pass -- private members' bills rarely do, and even in a minority government, the Opposition parties can't force the government to act on a bill that involves spending money.

Still, it's a thrill that something I wrote is going to be debated in government. And maybe it'll start the ball rolling on a debate that'll end in a real action. It'll probably have to wait until we have a prime minister who's not evil, though.

I've worked overtime the last two weeks at my main job and my occasional moonlighting job, so I've been largely absent from the internet. I haven't even signed on to Facebook in a week.

Yesterday, I took a day to just relax. I worked on my second novel -- I'll be finished version one today, but at 50 pages (100 novel-sized pages) much too short, and there's a lot that can be expanded upon.

I also played Persona 3. I'm far from finished it, but some initial thoughts:

• The main character is an emo kid who gains his powers by shooting himself in the head repeatedly. In other words, it's basically the band Franz Ferdinand done as a video game.
  
  
• The combat system is based on Jungian psychoanalysis. Which is as surreal as it sounds, but it really works, and I'm just glad it's not based on Freudian psychoanalysis. I'm not sure what that would mean, though I imagine the swords and guns would be very big.
  
  
• You build up your personae to fight the shadows through social interaction in daily life. This includes a friendship simulator that's a close cousin of the dating sims that are popular in Japan, but never make it out here. And it's good as far as it goes -- it seems to be teaching the younger portion of the audience how to be a supportive friend without encouraging your friends in self-destructive or outright stupid behaviour -- but I'm not sure I'd want kids taking away life lessons from a game in which you repeatedly shoot yourself in the head.
  
  
• At night, the main character's school transforms into a nightmare tower that spews hellspawn and becomes the site of some truly horrific violence. In other words, a pretty standard high school experience, except for the "at night" part.
  
  
• In many ways, it's a wonderful throwback to the old Sierra games, where conversation and intelligence -- rather than button-mashing -- determined victory. We rarely make games like that in North America now. I also appreciate the turn-based combat. It's an excellent game so far, and I'm really enjoying it.

Today I'm going to work on getting this apartment clean. I've been pretty lazy about it for the last few weeks, but seeing as I goofed off yesterday, I really have no excuse.

So I've been doing a fair bit of historical research -- not for my poor, neglected website, though I have all the material I need to read for my next entry gathering dust on my desk, awaiting a time of motivation.

No, I've been researching medieval Europe for the second novel I have going, especially those details that most fantasy writers just don't care, and just crib off other writers, who cribbed off other writers, who cribbed off other writers, who stole them from either J.R.R. Tolkien or Gary Gygax. It's about time the whole inbred fantasy genre got some fresh blood.

On that note, I've gone back to the history books for my setting, back to the medieval sources for my monsters, and back to medieval and Roman stories about witches for my spells. I'm reading an excruciatingly-detailed 19th-century history text on crime in medieval England right now.

Meanwhile, I'm returning to material I'd forgotten since undergrad history. I'd forgotten that spaces between words and small letters only really came into popular use in the court of Charlemagne, in the 700s AD.

Think about it -- up until then, all letters were written in all-caps shouting, which strikes me as very rude. No wonder there were so many wars back then.

So montrealais is off in Europe for a couple of months. Even though I said goodbye to him yesterday -- and even though his mother called this morning -- I still kept turning down the sound on the computer's speaker, as if I was worried I'd wake him up.

I finished version six of my novel on Sunday, exactly on deadline. Still not perfect -- the last page continues to give me trouble, and there's moments throughout that give me trouble. But I think the change in tone was the last huge altered. Plot-wise, much less is different since last version.

I'm determined not to even look at it for a month. I've made that promise before, and failed, but I'm starting to draft something completely different. Medieval fantasy specifically. I've done so much research into the middle ages -- and how fantasy novels get the middle ages wrong -- that I might as well use it for something besides D&D games and historical research.

I'm also thoroughly addicted to Full Metal Alchemist, which has now replaced Evangelion as my all-time favourite anime. Thanks to the miracle fan-scanned translations, I have now read every issue of the manga out in Japan, and thanks to streaming video, I've seen all nine episodes for the second series out in Japan.

If anyone wants to compare the two anime series, the gory, horrific scene where the boys try (and fail) to bring their dead mother back to life is a good benchmark.

The scene in the first anime has good atmosphere, but is overplayed. The same scene in the second series (which starts seven minutes in, and includes unskippable commercials) is closer to the manga.

But it's interesting -- like comparing two different theatre companies doing Hamlet. Only with more bleeding children. And magic circles. Though it might be interesting to see a version of Hamlet where he brings Gertrude back from the dead and winds up with a cybernetic arm and leg. I'd pay to see that.

I've been offline much of the week. Mostly this has been because of writing. I edited 45 pages on Wednesday, which I *think* is my one-day record. I have to have it printed tomorrow in the early afternoon. I've only done 15 of the 51 pages I had left as of this morning, but my get-up-and-go has got up and left.

Work has been stressful. I won't go into details here, but I think it's the cause of some of my distraction. I'll know next Friday how bad it's going to be. I'd rather not have to look for work elsewhere -- I've grown rather attached to that job. It's the only one I've ever really liked.

Also, I've been seriously addicted to Fullmetal Alchemist. I've read all 18 volumes mostly in English, and volumes 19 and 20 in French -- the French is a year ahead of the English. I've decided the manga is infinitely better than the previous anime. I'm looking forward to the new series.

The seven sins are much better in the manga. Envy and Pride are both good examples of why the term "nightmare fuel" was invented.

I've been editing like mad the last few weeks. I've got about twelve pages left and I've been at this first edit for ten days. The second will have to be faster. I'll likely have to boost my quota from 15 to 30 pages a day to meet my deadline of the end of the month.

I'm really proud of this version. There are tweaks here and there, but there haven't been any major structural changes in the last two versions. Once I revised the tone (paragraph-by-paragraph), it really fell into place. I think I've learnt more about the craft of writing in the last four months than in the previous ten years.

Other than that, it's been a fairly quiet week since em_fish's going-away party. When I'm not working or editing, I've been glued to the Fullmetal Alchemist manga (damn you, maidenofirisa!).

Also, I've developed a serious addiction to TV Tropes. My favourite trope name is probably "[The Law of] Conservation of Ninjutsu" -- the reason why it's easier to fight an army of ninja than just one. I also like "Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds."

My favourite page so far on TV Tropes is for The Bible, where that particular book is dissected for its clichés, tropes, and fan responses like any novel, TV show, or movie would be, all by people with a wicked sense of humour. They put all references to the crucifixion in a spoiler box -- because, after all, they don't want to spoil the end of the book.

Also I have a Dreamwidth account, which I haven't done anything with yet. Some of my LJ-friends are migrating that way, though, so I might start re-posting in both places.

We had a good going-away party for em_fish yesterday at Café L'Étranger. It was good to see her again. I'm going to miss her during her year in Australia, but I'm happy she's she's coming back (and with sassysairs!).

Except for the party, I've been mostly indoors since the weekend, working on editing. I'm about two-thirds through the current edit. It's come a long way, this version, and I find I'm comparing myself favourably to some of my favourite writers, which I haven't done before.

ETA: And this song from a Dutch kids' show is so sweet it almost made me cry:

Happy Dollard-des-Victoria-Patriotes-Queen's-Birthday-May-2-4 Day to my fellow Canadians. Here's hoping you left out milk and cookies for Queen Victoria and Dollard des Ormeaux, and carrots for their eight tiny reindeer.

I've had a quiet recovery from a very nasty flu. My goal is to be halfway through the first of two short edits today.

So I just read American Gods, being the last geek in the world not to have read it.

At first I was disappointed with it. The plot seemed unfocused and rambling. About halfway through, it turns out that a lot of the aimlessness was misdirection, and he brings it to a brilliant reveal-type conclusion -- very Rowling-like, when Rowling is at her best.

So it was a brilliant plot. And a fun read. Most of the characters were interesting and fun. Too bad that in order to make his thematic arguments, he pretty much has to build a whole universe out of straw.

( Review continues, with spoilers -- a long review because it hit a few nerves )

Wow. My reviews are getting longer and longer. Could it be I actually miss English lit? These things are turning into term papers. Of course, I couldn't say most of that stuff in a term paper.

I still recommend the book. It's entertaining. It just gets messier and messier the more you think about what it's trying to say. Another bad habit I carry over from English lit, although maybe a good one for my own writing.

It hasn't been my best day, but far from the worst. Work was pretty quiet, mostly because they're installing new computers and a new server so we weren't able to work for twenty- or thirty-minute stretches. One of my co-workers made a fudge cake, and I got a signed card from everyone.

I wish I didn't have to work tomorrow. I'm at a critical point in my writing, and I'd really like to have a full day to work at it. Eight pages left on the heavy edit, and I probably won't have a chance to finish it before Tuesday. After that, I have a couple of short edits planned.

Still not entirely satisfied, but I like it better than anything else I've written so far.

I'm reading American Gods right now, and I'm about one-third of the way through. I also finished Death Note, which is one of the best animes I've ever seen. I'll put up a review sometime when I have the time.

I seem to have picked a bad day for my birthday party, as only four of my friends were able to make it in the end.

But there was good food and good conversation and nice gifts. I've actually got a certificate to get get some decent clothes thanks to the lovely em_fish, and another from montrealais for my first massage. scottevil was also there -- I haven't seen him much lately -- and maidenofirisa actually made it in spite of a very late work schedule, which made me happy.

After spending yesterday tidying, scrubbing, mopping, and shopping in the lead-up to the party, I don't think I want to do much of anything today except write. I want to be four-fifths through this edit by the end of the day.

I thought I'd pop in to wish a Happy Beltane to those who celebrate it.

Appropriately, I'm nearly finished Drawing Down the Moon, which has been for decades the one book a person should read if they want to have a general overview of Neo-Paganism. The first edition was published in the 1970s, the edition I read is from 1986, and I'm actually amazed at how well it's stood the test of time.

( Review continus )

For people who aren't interested in the history, Neo-Paganism as a cultural phenomenon, demographics, and thealogy, here are two fun facts I gleaned from this book:

1. Tim/Otter/Oberon/Whatever-he-is-this-week Zell -- a leader in that most hippie of Neo-Pagan groups, the Church of All Worlds -- holds the patent on unicorn creation in the US. It's patent number 4,429,685. It's described in detail here. To anyone who says unicorns start with horses, not goats, Zell points out that in the earliest legends, unicorns were goat-like.
   
   
2. Slepnir was the "newsletter of the Asatru Folk Assembly's Aerospace Technology Guild" and it explored "space sciences, rocketry, and aviation from the perspective of Germanic spirituality." I looked them up. Somehow they managed to publish at least twelve issues.

So there you have it. No word yet on whether the Asatruar have surface-to-air anti-unicorn missiles, but I'm certain it's only a matter of time.

It's been a quiet few days.

Writing progresses. This heavy edit is about 70% of the way through. I've heavily altered the tone. There's a couple of characterizations of secondary characters I'm not entirely sure about, and the dream sequences are always a sticking point, but I notice there haven't been any massive structural changes in the last two re-writes.

I don't think there will be any more full re-writes, just more edits.

Otherwise, I've been reading Drawing Down the Moon. I also finished the video game Okami, a strangely beautiful Japanese game in which the hero is the sun goddess Amaterasu, and the style of art is drawn from traditional illustrations of Japanese myth.

It's funny -- if a game like Okami were made here with Christ as its protagonist, or in the Muslim world with Mohammed, the studio's main offices would get bombed. In Japan, you can use Shinto's chief deity this way without fear.

And in spite of the game's many little irreverences and its playfulness, it proves to be very pious in its own way by the end -- an update of myths rather than a negation or parody of them.

Now I'm playing another game frequently mentioned on people's lists of video games that can be considered high art -- Shadow of the Colossus. And it is a sweet little jewel of a game, almost eerie in its unclutteredness, and more a lyric than narrative. It has a very Ursula LeGuin feel to it, and something of a dream, while being disturbingly realistic in all the ways that count. Here's the opening scene.

It's such a strange game, though. The RPG genre is usually so cluttered. This is an RPG with no levels or stats or menus or magic or lines of attack or random encounters or limit breaks or stores or money or treasure or towns. Just a teenage boy who can't do much of anything you can do, except maybe use a short sword passably well, and ride horseback. His only magic is a sword that points the way to things.

So I finished Final Fantasy XII for a second time today. And I've come to the conclusion that it's the Star Trek: Voyager of the series. It's not as bad as Star Trek V -- that'd be Final Fantasy VIII. But it's not at the standards of the best in the series -- VII and IX, and VI and X.

( review continues, riddled with soilers )

I think that's the longest review I've ever written for a game. But this series is close to my heart.

While playing all that, I haven't been slacking on my writing, or anything else. I'm nearly three-fifths through my novel, and have managed that while doing extra hours at work (we're badly short-staffed right now).

I just thought I'd pop in to wish my sister jc2004 and archdiva both happy birthdays. Also, it's Queen Elizabeth's real birthday today. Clearly it's a good day to be born :)

Things have been pretty quiet. I've passed the halfway point of this edit some days ago, and now I'm getting close to three-fifths. It's slow going because I want to get it right, so I keep stopping. Everyone's been crazy-busy or out of town lately, so I've mostly kept to the house and taken it easy. I would like to see people when travel plans/work schedules/schoolwork allows.

Also, I beat Yiazmat and Omega, which is a sentence which will make sense, I think, to exactly one of you. Maybe two or three.

So I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a book that often gets called "Harry Potter for adults" -- which seems like a vague insult directed at the many adult Potter fans.

But it's easy to see why the comparison gets made. Both are a mix of comic and dark, both centre on magicians in Britain, both are crammed with plot twists, and Jonathan Strange was published in time to ride the wave of Harry Potter popularity.

Overall, I'm with most people who compared both books -- Jonathan Strange is the better work overall in terms of craft, but with some reservations. And even though I think Susanna Clarke is the better writer, I still like Rowling better because she seems to understand things Clarke doesn't.

( Review continues, now with spoilers! )

On a totally different note, Vandana Shiva was on The Current this morning. I first heard about her through David Suzuki's writings -- she's a quantum physicist, an environmental activist, a feminist, and an anti-globalization activist, and I've always been a fan of hers.

It's been a good few days. I'm one-quarter of the way through the first big edit on version six.

I've been working on this novel for three years. The frustrating thing isn't the time it's taking, I think -- most first novels seem to take three to ten years, if all the author interviews I've heard on CBC are any indication. So I'm still on the low end, and not worried. It's been people's reactions.

Most people just assume I'm never going to publish, and it's a little depressing I inspire so little confidence. Increasingly I'm getting comments from people like "Well, as long as you enjoy it, that's what's important." I put that phrase into the same category most people put "He's got a nice personality" and "He's interesting and he means well."

But I have been mastering the elements of novel-writing one at a time, so there has been real progress all this time. I got dialogue first -- it was transcribing what people say in journalism that helped with that. Then characterization, then theme, then plot.

I bring this up because I've made a major breakthrough these last two weeks in one of the things that's been frustrating me through all versions. The tone was wrong. It was something that frustrated and annoyed, like a buzzing sound whose location I couldn't pin down. It felt like there was problem everywhere, but nowhere precise.

It wasn't until I started reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that I understood. The affected Victorian tone that it's written in made me realize I've been using too complex a level of language. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell uses that same level to comic effect. I've always like that, but in English you get it mostly in comic novels, which my novel definitely isn't.

For successful heavier things in English, we tend to use extremely simple, almost childlike vocabulary, and a matter-of-fact style. The simple style carries interest in a way that affected, long sentences do not. Think Lullabies for Little Criminals. Horrific events generally carry themselves without commentary. Embellishments are kept to a minimum -- it's the imagery, not the language, that carries the beauty.

This problem's been like a bug in my brain for six versions and three years. This is a breakthrough. There's still a moving around of minor plot elements to be done, and some aspects of character to be ironed out, and some aspects could be better integrated. But I don't think I'll be rewriting it from scratch again.