and now, for my next trick: fated destinies

[kaigou]

I shall rant. Go me.

I could say this elsewhere but for the sake of at least attempting to avoid too-extreme offense, I'll post it here, blather off, and carry on (which I'd do anyway, but you know the drill). Now, in case any of da flist missed the random political commentary now and then, yes, American. Despite the tattoo, I was never raised, nor ever expected, any kind of royal or noble position, nor is it ever gonna happen. Because, y'know, generic American mutt. Please keep this in mind.

Talking about fantasy, taking one place as jumping-off point but not all of this is single-source. It's just on my mind in a variety of ways because that's the way my brain works.

First! Worlds in which characters are born to do X, Y, or Z because their parents do X, Y, or Z. While it's true that if your biological parents are Filipino that it's 100% likely you'll also be Filipino, this does not mean that if your parents are A, B, or C, that you will automatically also be the same. Uh, no. The first, because the majority of children-of-mechanics I know, and children-of-doctors, and children-of-preachers, do not, in fact, have any interest in growing up to do this -- and in America, it's not really expected, either. Some fluidity in the career world (even if not quite as much vertical/financial fluidity as I'd like, but hey).

I call this out in direct contrast to times in which the children of slaves are slaves, the children of farmers are farmers and marry the children of other farmers, the children of nobility grow up to be Dukes like their parents and marry other Dukes' children, etc, etc.

As for the "if your parents are, then you're likely to be (or outright 'are', depending on the author)" -- again, no. Sorry, did I miss a memo? Did someone discover that Einstein's parents were scientists? Did someone recently reveal that Jeffery Dahmer's parents were bloodthirsty murderers?

We are not our genetics, nor are we necessarily our social position at birth, though each may influence us to some degree. I grant that last part, of course, but it's the overwhelming assumption (and romanticization of) a system in which children just follow along behind the parents. Or maybe there's a lot of writers out there who practice a religion because they were raised in it, and thus for them the analogy of magic-to-children is as religion-to-children; we believe what our parents believe.

Since I see magic as technology and not even remotely religious, from my point of view, the idea of tech-to-children pretty much disproves the 'do as your parents' romanctic view. After all, if I did as my parents, I'd be writing this on an IBM Selectric, not a Powerbook.

[I think I'm writing science fantasy that just happens to have a veneer of the fantastical. This is disturbing, sometimes. It certainly makes me wonder just how I'd be marketed.]

Second, is magic a technology, or a religion? Pick one, please, or if you mix them, do me a favor and be frickin' honest about the moralizing. Here's my favorite example (those of you in the peanut gallery, sing along when we get to the chorus): you have a shotgun that you use to kill a deer during hunting season, and you use every part of the deer, from skin to bones to eat-the-meat, go you. You have a shotgun that you use to shoot a clerk at 7-11, after which you steal everything in the store.

It's the SAME DAMN TECHNOLOGY.

You put a bullet in the chamber, you lock and load, rack the slide, whatever, you pull the trigger, the little explosion goes off, the bullet is thrown out of the barrel at incredible speeds, it hits something, that something gets kamblammed out of all shape, end of story.

Don't like guns and thus don't like the analogy? Have a knife. Cut bread, slit a throat. Still the same damn technology.

If you want to moralize that a hunting rifle is somehow better and more ethically proper/correct/okay than an assualt rifle, be my guest but do it elsewhere, because they're both rifles. Gadgets, accessories, and paint color won't change the inherent nature of the rifle itself as a neutral technology that can kill something else to feed us, or kill us to feed someone else. I find the classifications of magic into 'good' and 'bad' or 'black' and 'white' (the latter of which is a loaded term if you, too, had spent time in racist Alabama) to be disengenuous at best, and hypocritical at worst. The difference is not in the technology (or magic, or even prayer) but in the user's intent.

Which is why, for all the anti-gun snarking, it really is true that "guns don't kill people" because a gun has no intent. Someone must pull its damn trigger, someone must perform that magical act, make that prayer, drive that bus into a flock of school-kids, but the individual technologies, magics, prayers, themselves are fundamentally neutral. Even the atom bomb harnesses the same energy that powers much of New England.

If you're going to correlate magic to religion, then why wouldn't prayers work? Why wouldn't a rosary, or juzu, be as powerful as a five-pointed star? Why the star, and not some other symbol, say, a crook-back or a double-hump? If magic is religion, and carries as much moralizing weight as any religion, then the whole black/white dichotomy is just fancy dress for 'my god is bigger/better than your god'. It's just one more way humans have to draw lines between "Catholics aren't like us, dear, because they eat Jesus once a month, but we don't."

And finally, genetic predisposition, which could be a corrollary to number one. That is, you are born to be able to do such-and-such.

Uh, no.

We are not tabula rasa at birth, true, in that we are physically incapable of flying, lacking the proper physical accoutrements. We have potential but this does not map our fate to the nth degree, or even beyond a simple template: we will learn to wriggle our fingers, make faces, crawl, walk, run. It is true that I will never be a marathon runner, nor a gold medalist in weight-lifting. My body does not have what it takes to reach those pinnacles, but I have an innate potential by virtue of simple physical basics to at least be able to run a block, or pick up a stack of heavy books.

Secondly, I really, really hate the stories in which someone 'discovers' their ability and it's sprung fully-formed from the head of the author. Oh, please, it's only savants (and rare those are) who can sit down at seventeen and learn a new language, fluently, for the first time ever. (Hell, isn't there something about how not learning language, after a certain point, means you never will? As in, at all?) Those who can learn a new language when older (and I mention no names here, koffkoff), either were exposed to other languages when younger, or may have a history of easy mimicry, which is a good half of learning a new language. But there are still limits; it's habibti who pointed out once that if you're not raised with the unique Arabic sound of that odd 'gh', you'll never get it; you can try, but you didn't learn it soon enough.

There's very little we learn in adolescence that's absolutely new and previously unknown. Driving? You learned to ride a bike before then, or had some comprehension of spatial relationships, or perhaps you've supposedly learned to drive but you're pretty crummy at it. Not quite Mario Andretti, I'd expect. Drawing? Come on, every kid doodles -- on themselves, their siblings, the wall. High school wasn't the first time you picked up a pen. Cooking? What, you've never seen food before?

Or possibly I just don't like stories in which one's destiny is set from birth by one's parents' roles, one's social position, or any other lucky or unlucky facts o' birth over which one had no control, any more than I care for stories in which a neutral tool is judged--in itself--to be 'good' or 'bad' thanks to the whim of some moralistic attempt to measure intent and transfer the good/bad of that intent onto the tool.

Thanks, but pass.

Comments

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

Hell, isn't there something about how not learning language, after a certain point, means you never will? As in, at all?

Indeed there is. Hooray for my required "Intro to Linguistics" class! (And for help from linguistics type friends because for the life of me I couldn't remember the exact term.) It's called the "critical age threshold for language acquisition" or just "critical age" for short. Basically, around age 12 your brain starts changing how it learns things. Because of how it changes, language acquisition past this point, aside from some very basic concepts, becomes impossible.

If you want information on the best (and most famous) case study, look up Genie the wild child on your search engine of choice.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Or she could just look at my Intro to Linguistics textbook. {G}

[chibidrunksanzo.livejournal.com]

....Your mother! XD

[maldoror-gw.livejournal.com]

Which period (possibly mystical) was the book set in, assuming it's a book that had this dodgy heredity? There were times, 400 years or so ago, where a miller's son was a miller, a butcher's son was a butcher etc. or at least they had a really good chance of it. Well, that's the oldest son. The younger generation either got lucky and married a butcher's daughter, or else became an apprentice to another profession, joined a monastery as a lay person, the army as a peon/infantry/cannon fodder, etc. Yeah, so, still plenty of latitude for change, even back then.

In our modern days, I know a few doctors or scientists who run in the family, but it's more the exception than the rule.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Although I was just reading a history of Japan, and there was a period in japan where you were required by law and tradition to follow the same profession as your father all your life. I mean, you could change social statuses, but, uh, only downwards. Like changing from a peasant to a criminal, and then to dead.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

if you're not raised with the unique Arabic sound of that odd 'gh', you'll never get it; you can try, but you didn't learn it soon enough.

And as painfully stereotypical as it is, it's a rare, rare nihonjin who can ever fully internalize the R-L distinction.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

ask gunnel about the sje-sound...

and soon! hunting season! moose meat for the win!