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December 24, 2005
Eric Burns-White: A brief Administrative Note and Wish
I have two -- count them, two essays started that I haven't had time to finish. I don't have time to write the third I need to start, either, because I have to get in my car with my cat and go do things that mean it's Christmas.
I will hopefully have some writing time later, in and around doing things that mean it's Christmas.
If, however, I don't, I hope you all have the very best possible Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I still hope the day is phenomenally good to you. If you celebrate other things, I hope they're good too.
(If I come back and discover a "War on Christmas" debate in the comments, I will sob. Sob tears. On Christmas Eve. Just for the record1.)
Merry Christmas, everyone.
1 If preemptive guilt can work for mothers, maybe it can work for me. If not... well, everyone likes debate, right?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:09 PM | Comments (46)
December 22, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Is it weird that I realized her boss called her "Penny" instead of "Peejee" *before* I realized she'd just collapsed and lost consciousness?
(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Oh shit!)
Yeah, there was no chance I wouldn't comment on this one.
Weirdly enough, as I watch Peejee -- one of my favorite character in Something Positive fall to the floor, I find myself thinking of Davan. Davan who left early to be with Nancy (a person who has displaced Peejee and Aubrey somewhat in Davan's life. Which itself makes sense. If Davan isn't changing, and Peejee and Aubrey are both growing up, naturally he's now hanging around with a younger person who has some of -- though not all of -- Peejee and Aubrey's qualities). Davan, who was given a cell phone by an outraged Aubrey because they could never reach him, and who then fed that cell phone to his cat (who likes the vibrations). Davan, who may well not discover that Peejee has collapsed and (likely) gone to the hospital until he reaches Texas.
Or possibly not until he reaches Boston again.
See, here's the thing. Davan just -- just -- asked Scotty if he could stop missing him now. Missing his dead friend. Missing the past, the guy who isn't coming back. In Boston, Davan feels safest at the site of Branwen's father's grave. He feels like he can talk to him.
Davan lives in the past. He doesn't want to be reached by the present. He's stopped thinking about the future.
What happens if Peejee dies?
And don't say it can't happen. This is Randy Milholland. You think he wouldn't kill Peejee off? You think he wouldn't make it funny?
If Peejee dies while Davan is away, it will smash him down into tiny little pieces. Just in time to fly back to Texas and take care of a father who is himself living in the past.
Is that what's going to happen? Who knows. I have faith it'll be good, no matter what. But thematically speaking, this is exactly what should be happening next. Even if it's hard to read.
EDIT: By policy, I don't remove comments. However, be warned that the next sequence of Something Positive strips has been spoiled in the comments thread. You'll probably want to go to Something Positive first before reading.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:28 PM | Comments (58)
Eric Burns-White: The Snarkographia Webcomicka
My field of study, for those who don't know, is literature. And, within said literature, literary criticism and critical theory. I've logged a lot of hours learning the ins and outs of it. I've cut my eyeteeth on it. I've done the criticism thing.
Well, one of the foundational works in literary criticism -- required reading if you want to graduate -- is the Biographia Literaria. Published in 1817, it was an absolute landmark in the study of literature, in the study of poetry, in the study of imagery and composition. It delved deeply into critical theory, but also deeply into the study of poetry itself -- most prominently the Lyrical Ballads, which itself was an exercise by Wordsworth and Coleridge to overturn what they felt was the priggish, lackadaisical, overly formal, underly emotive state of poetry in English Literature at the time.
(In this, they succeeded. Wordsworth and Coleridge -- along with Blake and in a sense Robert Burns (and echoing the work of Milton in a previous generation) -- launched what today we see as the Romantic movement in poetry. Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth collectively formed the first generation of Romantics, followed closely by Keats, Shelley and Byron in the "second generation." Though, ironically, all of the second generation of Romantic poets died before any of the first generation did. But I digress.)
The author of the Biographia Literaria? Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poet himself.
To Coleridge, a true poet was also a critic of poetry. He had to be willing to delve deep, to break the surface, to tear the living guts of poetry out. He had to figure out how one took nature and reflected it in words, in a way as true to the nature as was possible, but even more importantly true to the poetry. As he said in the Biographia Literaria itself (ch.15):
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
And the philosophy of literature and of the aesthetic is critical theory. Indeed, Coleridge believed that the critical faculty -- the philosophical outlook -- that formed the perspective necessary to produce art of any kind had to be applied to the world. One had to examine all things with a sense of the critical, before they could produce art. And that most especially applied to the works of other artists, writers, and poets. One could not glean truth or beauty from a work -- truth that could be used in one's own art -- until one had applied the full extent of their critical prowess to that work. "Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding," he wrote in Chapter 12, and he meant every word of it.
This was hardly a controversial position, however. At this stage in history, poets, writers and artists were presumed to also be critics and philosophers. A poet who didn't also write essays was seen as something of a lightweight at best. An artist who didn't also examine the art of others was less a genius and more a dabbler. Fair or not, proper or not, the bias existed.
Robert Heinlein, who remains one of my favorite writers, expressed similar but more extreme opinions. He held literary criticism in disdain, because so many critics weren't writers. Who but a 20th Century American Poet was qualified to critique 20th Century American Poetry. What were philosophers and pedants and critics doing interpreting and breaking down the work of writers and artists? If they were any damn good at it, why weren't they writing literature?
This is, of course, fallacious. Of course a person might be better at interpreting literature than writing it himself. Likewise, a bad critic might be a brilliant poet. But some folks are driven to both write literature and criticism, even if it's not simply a given in today's day and age.
However, in recent years we've had an interesting reversal of these positions. More and more, you hear critics of criticism (now there's a recursion for you) decrying writers who also write criticism. The charge -- one that remains almost hysterical to me -- is generally the same: a writer cannot be a critic, because a writer cannot separate his own work from his critique. He cannot be objective.
Guys, if I never, ever manage to do anything else, let me manage to do this. Let me manage to teach this one, ineffable truth of criticism:
There is no such thing as objective criticism.
All criticism reflects the opinions and interpretation of the critic. That is the innate distinction between journalism (the reporting and analysis of fact) and criticism (the rendering of interpretation and opinion). That is what criticism -- whether we're discussing the critique, the critical essay, or the review -- is. It is opinion. Thesis, in our terminology.
Good criticism is well written, and supports its thesis with example. Citation is the coin of the realm.
Bad criticism is badly written, or fails to support its thesis, or supports its thesis fallaciously (quoting out of context in such a way that a statement appears to be in support of a point, when the larger work contradicts that point, for example.)
Well. In Jon Rosenberg's latest blog entry, over at the (as always, excellent) Goats, he announces the revivification of the Fleen name. It's not the Fleen of old, but a webcomics blog. Specifically, it's a webcomics blog writ by critics who explicitly are not now, nor have ever been webcartoonists or webcomics creators. It is Rosenberg's thesis that the critic of webcomics who is also a webcartoonist is innately flawed. His writings are tainted by his hopes, his own work, his own thesis. He will advance his own works and those of his friends and like minded people. He will not be objective enough to produce either criticism or webcomics with veracity. In his own words:
The one thing that is unforgiveable is that, almost without exception, all of these sites are run by and staffed by webcomic creators. They all have agendas, they all have friends they want to promote, they all have their own approaches to the artform that they want to see vindicated. These people are biased from the get-go. In the worst cases, webcomics bloggers have used their bully pulpit to launch their own nascent webcomics initiatives. This is the worst kind of journalism, the most terrible kind of comics crticism. It is the same sort of cronyism that has corrupted larger organizations like Fox News.
If these sites hope to have any sort of journalistic integrity, we must establish a divide between the creators and the people writing about them. The new Fleen is the first webcomics blog to attempt this.
Check it out. Biased. Agenda. They all have their own approaches to the art form they want to see vindicated. It all comes down to the same thing. They will lack journalistic integrity. They're not objective.
He even makes mention how a biased critic will have his own thesis to advance. Believe it or not.
At this stage, of course, I had to pause and go outside so I could finish laughing. Because Jon Rosenberg is right. All critics -- all critics -- have their own opinions about the art form they're criticizing. All critics have examples they think extol the virtues of their art form. All critics have approaches they think work better than others. All critics have hopes for the art form they're writing about. And all critics -- all critics -- have theses they are writing about and supporting.
That's actually what an essay is. A thesis. Introduction. Thesis Statement. Support. Conclusion.
Opinion.
I've read Fleen. And you know what? It's good. The guys Rosenberg found to write on the site are good essayists. They have a clear knowledge of and love for webcomics. I'm going to keep reading it. You should read it too.
But I'm not going to give those guys any greater or lesser credence by their lack of desire to write a webcomic. And if they turned around and launched their own webcomic tomorrow, I wouldn't think any less of them. I'm going to take their posts, their essays, their theses and their opinions based on the criteria one must take these things: do they state their thesis clearly? Do they support their thesis well? Are they good enough writers to make their essay entertaining without sacrificing their essential point?
Rosenberg ends his post (which is, of course, itself criticism -- this time about webcomics criticism instead of webcomics proper) with a challenge to those critics who also produce webcomics:
Finally, I'd like to call on all of the webcomics creators who are out there moonlighting as webcomics journalists (and vice versa) to pick a side. If you want webcomics and webcomics journalism to be taken seriously, you can't be doing both. It's like how my ex-girlfriend used to put on stage shows with her friends for her other friends -- cute, but certainly not professional and ultimately pitiable. And everything you write until you pick a side will be suspect.
In other words -- if I want Websnark to be taken seriously, I'd better give up Gossamer Commons. Otherwise, I'd better give up Websnark. But I can't do both. Not without being suspect.
Ridiculous.
If you like what I write on Websnark, read it. If you agree with me? Cool. If you disagree with me? Cool. Comment if you like. Don't comment if you don't want to.
If you like the story we're telling on Gossamer Commons, fantastic. If not, hey, that's okay too.
But the idea that somehow, I have to pick and choose what kind of writing I want to do is, to be blunt, silly. You, the reader, get to pick and choose what you want to read. And if you don't like my webcomic, don't read it. If you don't like my criticism, don't read that. I won't be offended, either way.
But the idea that my essays are invalidated by my webcomic, or my webcomic invalidated by my essays? Is just plain wrong.
Am I biased? You bet. I don't even write about the comics I don't like, because I don't read them.
Are the essayists and critics on Fleen biased? You bet. Heck -- here's an excerpt from a really good post by Gary Tyrrell, over there:
This was Tex’s usual mode of creating cartoons: a wide-open, anarchic approach to story, character, and reality, but with a limitation that must be respected. Pushing up against that limitation (like a game of “I’m not touching you!”) is when things get funny. Jeff Rowland’s Wigu is in the finest tradition of Averian work.
Check it out -- a thesis. "Jeff Rowland's Wigu operates in the tradition of Tex Avery." That's not a fact -- we don't know that Rowland got up one morning and said "dude -- I'm going to do a pastiche on Tex Avery." For one thing, I don't think Rowland uses either the words "pastiche" or "dude" on a regular basis. However, it's a perfectly valid interpretation.
And Tyrrell goes on to support his thesis:
Wigu Tinkle lives in a world where anything can happen. The only rule is that reality conforms to the perceptions of an eight year old boy, and when you’re eight, your big sister is a serious weirdo that you know deep down sorta really loves you, parental fights are the scariest thing in the world, and your dad can beat up anything. Everything else is possible: Cartoon characters come to life? Check. Magic fridge? Check. Coolest car ever invented (complete with eleven TVs)? Check.
Et cetera. It's a good essay. It's well supported. It's good criticism. I'm looking forward to reading more of what Tyrrell has to say.
But it's no more objective than me writing about Narbonic. And me writing about Narbonic is no less valid than Tyrrell's writing because I write Gossamer Commons. It's an opinion, vindicating a storytelling technique that Tyrrell approves of, and tying it back to a broader tradition. Which is precisely what it's supposed to be.
(What it isn't, by the by, is journalism. Any more than what I'm doing is journalism.)
I have said all along that I'm hopeful that the critical discourse in webcomics will continue to grow and flourish. I think Fleen is going to be an excellent addition to that discourse. However, I think Rosenberg does it a disservice by setting it in diametric opposition to all webcomics blogs and critical outlets that have ties to webcomics. There's no good reason to create enemies here. None at all. Neither do I think Comixpedia, The Webcomics Examiner or I'm Just Saying going to vanish because Rosenberg thinks they're flawed.
Neither, of course, is Websnark.
Maybe Fleen will be better than Websnark. Maybe it won't. I'm not going to sweat it either way -- I'm going to write the stuff I want to write, and I hope you guys like it. However, it's not going to be Gossamer Commons that sets the difference between them. It's going to be those same criteria I listed before. If my theses become muddled, if I don't support my writing, if I don't write entertainingly, then people will stop reading.
Regardless, I'm going to keep writing. I invite you all -- no matter what your credentials -- to do the same.
Coleridge was wrong, in my opinion. An artist doesn't have to be a critic. Heinlein was wrong, in my opinion. A critic doesn't have to be an artist. Rosenberg was wrong, in my opinion: an artist can be a critic, and a critic can be an artist.
What matters is the art, and the criticism.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:18 PM | Comments (99)
December 21, 2005
Eric Burns-White: What do I do when Wednesday leaves? Here's four thousand words about Star Trek. Geeks cope with absence in geeky ways.
Since there's a (really well laid out, nicely paced, and pleasant) discussion on ID and evolution going on in the comments of the last snark, I thought I'd follow it up with a post that...
...actually, might make everyone mad. But on the positive side, it's about absolutely nothing that matters, and that's the best kind of angry.
See, I was thinking about evolution, and I was thinking about science fiction. After all, science fiction is where some truly hardcore speculation both about scientific debate and the consequences of that debate get played out. And it occurs to me that there's a very prominent example of science fiction tackling evolution. And in so doing, it's not doing evolution or societal development any favors.
The science fiction in question? Star Trek. All of them.
Star Trek fetishizes evolution.
All kinds of evolution. Biological evolution. Microevolution. Macroevolution. Societal evolution. Technological evolution. Even Intelligent Design gets into the act.
And it does so in a wholly incoherent way. It simultaneously buys into a divine plan -- never so stated, but implicit -- and wholly uncontrolled evolution. And it blurs the lines of evolution of society, technology, and species until they all end up being the same thing.
The first example is one of the most prominent. The Prime Directive states that the United Federation of Planets "cannot interfere" with the proper development of an "immature" world. The Prime Directive is social Darwinism of the first order -- if a planet hasn't independently come up with Warp Drive, then the Federation isn't supposed to help them do anything. Warp Drive is the magic bullet for inclusion in galactic culture. Without it, that society is supposed to sink or swim on its own merits.
Of course, the Prime Directive gets violated constantly. Almost casually. In a first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard said (paraphrased) that "Starfleet takes violations of the Prime Directive very seriously." And ten million Trek fans around the world fell off their chairs, laughing. As near as we can tell, no one has ever taken the Prime Directive seriously. It's there to provide dramatic tension before the given Captain of a given starship goes in and does whatever the Hell he wants.
But, we're discussing the theory. And the theory, passionately defended on countless episodes, is that each species and society must be allowed its "natural development" to reach out for the stars. Until then, they're not even supposed to know there's a galactic culture out there. And if they should find out, then they're essentially treated like backwards tribes. The Outrageous Okana -- one of the worst episodes of Next Generation written -- detailed a number of backward starships who knew all about the Federation (and at one point, Worf snorts about how a ship is locking 'lasers' on target at them -- lasers that wouldn't even penetrate their navigational deflectors, much less the shields) but who limp along generations behind galactic culture because "they're not ready" to join it. It also featured a spectacularly unoutrageous Okana nailing Transporter Chief Teri Hatcher, but I digress.
The pairing of societal and technological evolution goes back to the original series. Remember the episode of Star Trek where the Klingons started arming a bunch of American Indians aliens with flintlocks, so Captain Kirk began doing the same with a different tribe. And the two groups began doing an arms race, each pacing the other? At no point did the Federation say "okay. The Klingons have already poisoned the well. It's time to land Federation observers and teach these people something about the universe they live in and how to survive in it." No, instead, they gave them rifled barrels "just to keep things fair." At this point, societal and technological evolution is as much out the window as using the cheat system in Civilization IV to give your Civilization musketeers because your enemies has them. However, they're not "interfering." They're "balancing the interference the Klingons already started."
Next Generation had an answer to this, by the by. In one first season episode, a decrepit Starfleet Admiral goes to mediate a peace on a world he "interfered" with a generation before. That time, when a demand for advanced weapons was given to one faction, he gave them those weapons -- but also armed their enemies. "My own interpretation of the Prime Directive," he said. And when we remember that the Prime Directive really is just enforced Social Darwinism -- if they get smart enough, survive and emerge in a Warp 1.1 ship, then they get the keys to the Kingdom -- I suppose he has a point. Though it's a point that seems to contradict everything else we've seen to date.
This variable (and capricious) enforcement of a Prime Directive that states that the Federation must not interfere in "natural development of species and cultures" was highlighted extremely well in an episode of Next Generation. In this episode, it turned out that David Marcus from Star Trek II was an alien whose planet had a "disease" and Khan's aide Joachim from the same movie was from a world whose entire economy was devoted to selling them medicine. Only, of course, we were actually talking about drugs. And their ships were breaking down. So, the Enterprise started rendering aid to fix the ships. Then, of course, the Federation determined that this was all a drug run and there was an entire planet of addicts on their hands. But Joachim laughed in their faces. "Your own Prime Directive says you can't interfere with our development," he laughed. "So you can't tell David Marcus that we're just pushers and they're a planet full of bitches. Hah hah hah!"
And Picard agreed with them, but then announced that they couldn't actually fix the starships. Prime Directive, don't you know. If they can't fix them themselves, they can't fix them at all.
Are you seriously telling me this policy isn't insane? These are two cultures who know about the Federation. If anything, Picard should never have been able to offer to help fix their ships in the first place, but should have been able to say "you know you're not sick, right? I mean, you're addicted to that medicine. That's all." Certainly, there's no possible justification to perpetuating a lie against a culture aware of space and of the Federation to begin with.
Except, of course, the cold justification of social Darwinism. If David Marcus's alien race is strong enough, they'll survive the withdrawal symptoms, and figure out they've been duped. Of course, if Joachim's race is strong and smart enough, they'll figure out how to fix their own starship, and the next thing you know it all starts back up again. That's life in the cold universe!
"Okay, fine," you say. "A disproportionate number of Star Trek episodes are dedicated to an inconsistently applied policy of social Darwinism. That's hardly the same thing as fetishizing biological evolution." Ah, but it is. It certainly is. Because biology -- and genetic engineering -- are also a recurring theme in Star Trek. An eeeeeeeeevil theme.
We learned, back in the original series, that humanity had a "eugenics war." This was when well-meaning but critically blind scientists gengineered a superior life form out of humanity. That life form, specifically bred for aggressiveness -- man, that's some careful genome mapping they did -- turned around and with their superior brains, their superior speed, their superior coordination, their superior strength, and their superior accents (dude, we are discussing Ricardo Montelban here) they killed millions of people, conquered most of the earth, and were only beaten back by humanity's innate pluck, vim, vigor and superior numbers. And, after all of that, humanity swore to never again tamper in God's domain try to genetically enhance humanity.
We also know that a generation or two later, Data's creator's progenitor, Dr. Arik Soong, tried to revive the whole thing, and made a whole new generation of feral adonises. And at the end, of course, he too had decided -- despite a lifetime of work thinking of ways to safely enhance humanity and unprecedented genius -- that it would be better to make androids.
Only... one of the things he mentioned to Captain Archer by Doctor Soong was that Archer's father died of a genetic disorder. One that they could apparently have cured through genetic engineering. Only, all such programs have been stopped. Which means, they didn't just foreswear the creation of genetic supermen capable of destroying humanity, they shut down all genetic engineering, regardless of reason. If mankind were to evolve, it would evolve in its own way.
Including enhancements that somehow, magically, would work on everyday people. The smooth foreheaded Klingons of the original series turn out to have genetic damage after augmented human DNA was turned into a disease that made Klingon supermen who were dying. As a result, Klingons looked human for a long time. Who knew you could catch superpowers?
One link I find staggeringly hideous between the philosophies happened on a different Enterprise episode. The Enterprise comes across a sublight ship crewed by a couple of people desperately looking for help. (And dying of a disease.) Visiting the world, they discover there are two species of sentients on the planet. One species is fully intelligent and sapient. The other species is far less intelligent. The former species is the one with the disease. They have been desperately seeking a cure, but -- as they know there are more advanced civilizations out there -- they have also been sending out missions to find faster than light travel or otherwise bring compassionate people to their world to help.
Doctor Phlox isolates a cure inside of a day, proving this race was right to do what they were doing. But he also realized that the inferior species is evolving up... and it seemed likely that the dominant species was meant to die out so the inferior species could replace them.
As a result... the Enterprise didn't help them find other worlds and didn't share the cure with them. They had to let the natural order of things go through. They couldn't tamper with the natural order.
I'm sorry, but what respect I had for what would, later in Star Trek's chronology, become "the Prime Directive" died right there. That's like a team of scientists discovering a cure for a plague affecting a tribe of Australian aborigines, only to withhold it from them until they developed microbiology and cured themselves, or died out trying. It's absurd. It's obscene. It's unjustifiable, given that Starfleet does, now and in all future iterations, "interfere" with cultures that have passed their acid test by getting warp drive.
Well, almost unjustifiable. There's one justification that can be used... and that brings an interesting specter into the room: it's justifiable -- and even morally defensible -- if one assumes that evolution is meant to occur the way it is.
In other words, the Prime Directive -- and its Enterprise antecedent discussions -- is moral and justifiable as it is, if one presumes Intelligent Design.
While you think about that, let's move ahead a few hundred years, and consider the case of Doctor Julian Bashir.
Lieutenant Bashir was an absolutely brilliant, albeit young doctor. Second in his class at Starfleet Medical -- and embarrassed at coming in second. One of the finest minds ever seen. Nominated for awards that only went to people after decades more service than he had shown. You know the drill.
And several seasons in (in what was a clear and somewhat clumsy retcon, given that before then Bashir 'wasn't good enough' to be a professional tennis player, but was a champion racquetball player at the Academy -- and then not a good enough actor to fake being beaten by O'Brien, even though by definition he would need to have been an expert at downgrading his own athletic performance) we discovered that Bashir's parents subjected him to a highly black market series of genetic enhancements as a child. He is an augmented human.
As a side note: Khan Noonian Singh. Doctor Arik Soong. Doctor Julian Bashir. Is there a particular reason that all the genetics/augmentation stuff is coming out of the Indian Subcontinent in the Star Trek universe?
And, decades later, Bashir almost lost his position in Starfleet as a result, and his father ended up going to prison for it. And we learned that other black market augmentations had been performed, with varying levels of success -- but that in almost every case, the augmented humans turned out to have a staggering level of brilliance. As Bashir himself had. And working with other augments led to stunningly powerful work.
In other words... from Khan's time through Bashir's time, what has been shown time and time again is that genetic engineering and augmentation techniques work and can be applied retroactively. And that the results are human beings who are stronger, faster, healthier and -- and this is the crucial point -- smarter.
But, not only doesn't the Federation pursue this technology... but neither do the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, Ferengi or anyone else.
(As a side note -- why aren't the Ferengi making an absolute killing going to every planet the Federation won't give the time of day and giving them technological doodahs right up until the planet is bereft of valuable resources. And then at that point give them warp drive and tell them to go ask the Federation for help with their environment and economy. I mean, if the Federation is going to give them an opportunity like that, why wouldn't the Ferengi of all races take it. But I'm digressing.)
The only galactic culture to use genetic engineering are the Dominion, from the other side of the Wormhole. And they use it both as a weapon and to build their tools. The Jem'Hadar have been built as genetic supersoldiers, tailored for absolutely loyalty and absolute dependence. The Vorta have been augmented and built up into the perfect aides de camp for the Dominion. Both species are cloned to keep their numbers up, and brain-transfer technology allows one clone to remember what the last clone did. (What Car Wars fans think of as the Gold Cross option.) We also know that the Dominion uses it to curse a race with "the quickening--" a genetic disease that is killing off an entire species, slowly and horribly, over many generations.
(Please note -- there may have been genetic engineering episodes of Star Trek: Voyager I'm not referencing here, on the principle that why in God's name would I have watched Star Trek: Voyager?)
So. You have to go fifty thousand light years to find a galactic power that doesn't "naturally" assume that genetic augmentation is wrong and bad. Fifty thousand light years.... or travel through time. Remember, the Suliban were cooperating in the Temporal Cold War because the future alien people thingies were giving them genetic enhancements. Useful ones, like being able to deflate. And of course, Archer derided their "impatience" with "natural" evolution.
We have a more "natural" example of the conflation of racial evolution, societal evolution and technological evolution as well, by the by. The Pakled race, in The Next Generation, was dumber than a bunch of hammers. "We like him! We are strong! We make things go! We like power! He is smart! Make us strong!" But, recognizing that other races had stuff that would make them powerful, they went out and stole what technology they could get their hands on. (And somehow managed not to blow themselves up, in the process.) They were clearly meant as a (humorous) cautionary tale, underscoring the essential truth of the Prime Directive. Step outside the natural order, and you end up playing with things you dassn't understand.
So. Bad guys genetically engineer. Typically, genetically engineered people are bad guys, or else have to continually atone for their superiority. It is better to let a race die out so someone else can take their place than help them "unnaturally." It's okay to fix a sublight cruiser's flat tire, but not tell a galactic culture they're being abused by another culture of drug pushers. If your enemies give new technology to one tribe on a world, it's "balancing" to give another tribe the same technology, so long as you don't overcompensate. This restores the "natural" balance. In all ways and all times there is the sense that there is a proper form of evolution, and that subverting it subverts the implicit design.
A design, by the by, which was demonstrated during the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was discovered that, back in prehistory, a race of progenitors visited worlds all over the quadrant and uplifted and genetically modified them -- encoding their genetic code with a sequence which could ultimately be decoded into a freaking Quicktime movie. (It's a good thing those genes never... you know, mutated in any way during the evolutionary process. If they had, they might have gotten compression errors or something.) This is why, canonically, so many races look like human beings wearing prosthetic foreheads. (It's know that the Cardassians, the Romulans -- and therefore the Vulcans -- the Klingons and the Humans all were augmented in these ways.) I wonder if Khan had the message in his genes too, or if it was unnaturally and evilly eliminated when he was augmented.
(Actually, had Khan's DNA been used, the movie's narrator would have had his glorious Mexican accent. And you know, that would have made the line read superior.)
(Yes, Mexican, not hispanic or spanish. Ricardo Montalbán was born in Mexico City. But I digress.)
There is even a reward for all of this. There is even a Heaven -- a brass ring -- being held out for the good races of the universe who patiently wait for evolution to take its course. If you wait long enough... you become immortal beings of energy. The Q and the Organians alike said that they were once corporeal "much like you are." Evolution let them be vastly more, after they passed all their tests and ate their vegetables. And Wesley Crusher is clearly meant to be a precursor for humanity's own evolution into higher beings.
If, you know, he manages to pass his genes on to another generation.
I kid. I kid.
In the end, it comes back to the natural order of things. Societies progress. Technology improves. And different species will, left to their own devices, either die out or manage to struggle their way to the stars, whereupon they can be welcomed into galactic society. Species themselves will evolve, from slime all the way up to divine beings, in this selfsame process. Anyone who tries to shortcut these processes -- through stealing technology, infecting young cultures with mature ideas, or genetic engineering -- are sinning against the natural order... the unwritten plan. They are wrong. They are bad. And they don't get to become omnipotent letters of the alphabet.
Which, in a lot of ways, makes no sense. I mean, when you know that it is possible for corporeal beings to ultimately evolve into balls of light capable of stopping the Klingons and Federation from going to war, wouldn't you immediately start trying to figure out the mechanisms for doing it? Wouldn't you go on the fast track to posthumanity, lest the Klingons become superpowerful balls of light imposing a thirst for blood wine and gutteral opera on your entire species?
Not, it seems, in the Star Trek universe.
Here, at the end of this essay, I want to talk about one last episode of Star Trek. One last episode dealing with evolution. Not the ones where Picard or Kirk or Sisko talk about how when a culture is "ready," they get to sit at the big boys' table in the Federation. Not the ones where savage races with magical healing herbs or drugs never seem to be able to say "give us your warp drive, your computer database and membership in your Federation before we give you our life giving vaccine," but instead decide they want Denise Crosby's hot bod.
No, this was an episode that seemed to fly absolutely in the face of everything I've said above. An episode that has never been referred to again, despite a ton of philosophical and practical questions raised.
That episode's name was "Unnatural Selection" -- which should be a giveaway. And it featured the U.S.S. Enterprise being summoned to the Darwin Genetic Research Station on Gagarin IV. There, despite rules against eugenics and genetic engineering (rules which put Julian Bashir's father in prison years later), we find a funded research group building a race of superchildren. These superchildren are telepathic, telekinetic, and have active immune systems capable of sending antibodies out of their bodies to kill germs from across the room.
Sadly, those antibodies are lethal to normal humans, causing them to age rapidly and die tragically. Because... um....
...oh, right. Because tampering with the natural order is wrong, and bad. And because genetic researchers are apparently dumb enough to think they could create an aggressive immune system and then never suspect it might have some effect on the immediate environment surrounding the child.
We never hear from the superchildren again, of course. Nor do we hear of the transporter's use to reverse the aging process, reverting Doctor Pulaski back to a younger self. You'd think that would make the news or something, but apparently not, as people continue to get old and die in the Star Trek universe. But that's an entirely different discussion.
No, it's the children I'm thinking of. See, we knew that they were going to be put into isolation, to protect others from their deadly immune systems. (I get stupider just typing "deadly immune systems.") And we know, implicitly, that all such research will end. The superchildren will be studied, but that's it. No more messing up the natural order. No more messing up the plan.
Babylon 5, in the meantime, postulated a world where many different races have many different technological levels. These become matters of intense concern, militarily. Exploration vessels seek out new life and new civilizations so that technology can be stolen and sold from them. In the end, an Intersteller Alliance is founded. One of its first acts is to start sharing advanced technology like artificial gravity with many other races and worlds as an inducement for joining.
In the course of Babylon 5's run, we met a race called the Lumati. The Lumati were being courted by Earth Force, for diplomatic relations. But the Lumati wouldn't treat with Earth -- wouldn't even directly speak to Earth representatives -- until they determined that humanity was sufficiently evolved, as a race and as a society. It was buried, somewhat, but it was also clear that they stood for Star Trek's Prime Directive -- inverted, because it was now being directed at humanity instead of by humanity.
That episode said, far entertainingly, everything I said above.
If you need proof that it was a Star Trek reference, remember: at the end of the negotiation, the Lumati ambassador immediately sealed the deal with sex. The single finest sex ever performed on American Television, in fact.
Jim Kirk would have been proud.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:01 PM | Comments (142)
December 20, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Live from just outside the airport I saw Wednesday off at... another Howard Tayler inspired snark.
Howard Tayler and I are very different people in many ways. We have different theological positions. We have different philosophies. Many of our political stances are different. Our backgrounds are at least moderately different.
In his blog post on today's Schlock Mercenary, Tayler talks about how much -- and why he dislikes Intelligent Design. The whole thing deserves to be read, but I want to quote a small piece:
Let me explain it more simply: My faith enables me to live happily. Science and technology enable me to live LONGER. I don't want to see science used to discredit religion, because that will make people live LESS happily, and I don't want to see religion used to discredit science, because that will further delay the delivery of my flying car. If this simple dichotomy can be honestly and openly explained to our children, they can embrace the apparent paradox, and get on with the important things in life: being happy, and figuring out how to build me a jetpack. It's 2005, for heaven's sake. I was supposed to have a silica farm on the moon twenty years ago, and I can't even get my replicator-bots onto the roof of the house.
We may be very different people, but in this matter, and in his essay, Howard Tayler absolutely speaks for me.
(One caveat I think Tayler would agree with -- a theory is not a fact, as Tayler so eloquently said. However, a theory is a scientific term. Something can only be described as a theory when appropriate experiments have been designed to demonstrate that theory, and the results of those experiments -- conducted more than once, by several differing scientists -- demonstrate that the theory fits what we currently know. Evolution is a theory, by that definition. Gravity is a theory, by that definition. Relativity is a theory by that definition. None of them are facts, but what we currently know fits. Intelligent Design is not a theory, because no one has yet developed any kind of experiment that can measure, demonstrate or derive it. It is, in the end, a philosophical position -- and a perfectly legitimate one. However, just because it's a legitimate orange doesn't make it a tasty apple.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:09 PM | Comments (157)
December 19, 2005
Eric Burns-White: This really is startlingly cute stuff.
(Click on the thumbnails to get full sized pictures! They're worth it! Whoo hoo!)
I'm using the magic of Movable Type to post this... from the past. As this post appears, Wednesday's flight should be just touching down, and I (with luck) will be waiting in the terminal alongside some of her other friends trying not to get Homeland Security angry at me.
Yes, I'm dressing up. Yeesh. I wasn't born in a barn.
Anyhow. As I have no idea when (or if) I'll so much as post tomorrow (she flies back out -- this time to, you know, other places -- in the early evening), I wanted to leave you on some bits of sheer squee. And so, I have two -- count them, two -- pieces of fan art to spread.
First comes from long time Snarkoleptic and all around astounding person Indigo Skynet. Indigo has been a good friend to a lot of our creative endeavors, and that has to be one of the most adorable renditions of Snarky I've seen so far. Indigo Brings The Cute. Click on the thumbnail and have yourself a looksee.
Our second piece of artwork comes from "Tayley-Chan," and it's astoundingly pretty. It is a hypothetical front cover for a children's book based on the bedtime story that Wednesday and I built together some time ago. I'm absolutely charmed in every way by this picture -- it catches the dust wyvern perfectly, and that does indeed look like a Dolomite castle being defended by the pennywhistle playing Viscountess. If we ever did a children's book based on that story, this is precisely the sort of art I would want for it, and I think Weds would agree. (Which means Tayley-Chan should probably let us know if she's looking for a gig.)
So, I have no idea when next I will turn my pen to Snarkish Ways. It might be tomorrow. It might be Wednesday. (I suspect I'll need distraction, having gone back into withdrawal). Or it might be some other mythical time. But whenever it is... I hope you'll enjoy this artwork.
God knows we did.
And if you're absolutely jonesing to discuss matters Snarkish, never forget there is a Snarkoleptics Livejournal Community, run by Snarkoleptics for Snarkoleptics. With good things writ there! Go! Read! Comment! Write!
And stay alive! We will find you!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:00 PM | Comments (11)
Eric Burns-White: Oh, like you haven't been there.
(From The Coffee Achievers. Click on the thumbnail for full sized snrk!)
I'm rushing around like a madman, grabbing the "things" and "stuff" and the like before running down to pick Wednesday up from the airport, but wanted to pause and say something about today's Coffee Achievers.
Unfortunately, all I can come up with is "it made me laugh. Underwear jokes are funny."
So, that's what you get!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:17 PM | Comments (11)
Eric Burns-White: So... we need to have a little talk....
It's an interesting day. As we speak, Wednesday "Wednesday" White is preparing to enter a long tube that will fling her across the Atlantic. I'm going to pick her up tonight... only to see her fly back off tomorrow so she can... you know, spend Christmas with her family in a less distant land than she usually is, but still. (Stupid family.)
As a side note? Yeah, don't expect tremendous punctuality over the next couple of days. Life's good.
But, with one half of the action team in a plane, it seemed like a good time to... well, have a little chat. because I'm a bit concerned.
A few days ago, Cat Garza -- who I've recently begun to have some discussions with, usually under the aegis of the Webcomics Examiner, announced the birth of his daughter, Beatrix Cayce Garza.
This was tremendously cool, of course. As it was when Jerry Holkins, of Penny Arcade, announced the birth of his son, Elliot Jacob Holkins, back at the end of November.
In both cases, I thought Dude! I need to post a congratulatory note! Because in both cases this was tremendously cool. And because congratulating people on what is, after all, one of the defining moments of their life is the sort of thing I want to do with my time and my part of this here blog. In fact, you might remember that last year I did congratulate Mike Krahulik on the birth of his son.
(As a side note, I also mentioned that we just needed to get Holkins bred and we'd officially have them both chained to their jobs to keep providing sweet sweet food to their children. Mission accomplished, kids.)
But. I didn't post a congratulatory note for Holkins or Garza. Because I was scared someone would use the opportunity to trash the new father in the comments. Both Holkins and Garza have plenty of... whatever the opposite of "fans" are who don't seem to be able to set aside that enmity even in the short term.
Now, I figured I was being a little ridiculous. I mean, who would try to burst that balloon? Honestly. Especially among we the Snarkoleptics. We're a generally cool and froodish bunch.
Well... when I posted last week about the charity and its astounding good fortune... I figured out I was right to be concerned.
Please note, this is not a discussion of the people involved in that incident. Nor is it an excuse to trash them now. Those involved have contacted me privately to apologize. One person who needed to apologize publicly to another reader, in my opinion, did so before contacting me to apologize. We closed comments on that particular post, and this is not an invitation to reopen them. This is about me.
See... I love Websnark.
I love the venue. I love the chance to write. I love the chance to be read.
And I love the dialogue. The discourse. I love the snarkoleptics. I love having feedback. I love the debates.
But... I don't like not being able to congratulate a man on the birth of his child without feeling it might turn ugly. I don't like that at all. And I won't stand for it.
Only, I'm not entirely sure what that means. "I won't stand for it." Because I don't want to kill the discussion.
There are steps I can take. I can enable screened comments, for example, which means they wouldn't show up until I went in and said "yeah, that's kosher." Only that inexorably changes the positive aspects of our current system -- and adds a billion times the workload on the server side of things.
I can turn comments off entirely. Point people exclusively to the Snarkoleptics community to post comments on their own dime and off my server, and just write essays here. I've had a number of people suggest I do just that.
But I don't want to. I want to believe that people are basically kind and decent, and while they might get passionate, they don't get mean for no reason.
Some of our out there just started snickering. "Welcome to the internet, newbie," they snort.
Others say "hey -- I have a good reason!"
Here's the thing. I'm not a newbie. I've been doing this since 1987. I was on Usenet and bulletin boards. I've been on every iteration of the Web since the Web came to life. I've been on fora and on BBSs. I've been part of fandom. I've flamed and I've been flamed.
But I honestly believe that, barring a few people who just get off on making others miserable, the internet can be a place where people can come together, can disagree, but be polite about it. And more to the point, I honestly believe that just because we're on the internet doesn't mean we surrender the rules of basic society, of reasonable behavior, of discourse.
I work at a school. In some cases, I'm a teacher. In all cases, I'm responsible for educating my students about proper behavior online. And what has become clear, time and time again, is that the kids honestly forget there are real human beings on the other side of the electronic divide. They forget that this isn't some kind of game. This isn't some kind of contest.
It's just people. It's just communication.
I think of all of you as my friends. And I say things here that inflame passions. And I accept, as part of the cost of doing business, that you guys will insult me, sometimes. That's why the rule is as it is. "You get to insult Eric, when he writes an essay. But you don't get to insult each other." The point is to provide feedback. The point is to present opposing points of view. The point is to tell me I'm full of shit when I need to be told that.
The point is not to be mean to people, just because you can be. Or puncture someone else's balloon for no damn reason except you can.
I remember telling a friend, back when the incident happened last week, that the worst part -- more than disgust, more than shock, more than even what was said -- was the sheer disappointment I felt. I had asked people, just that once, to say nice things or not say anything at all. And I said to that friend that I had learned my lesson.
Maybe. And maybe not. Because I'm here, right now. And I'm being stupid enough to come out on stage and say "guys? We need to remember the spirit of what we're doing here. We want to discuss issues, and debate theses, and knock around ideas. Not people. Okay?"
Okay?
Because I like what Websnark has become too much to just give up on it.
Congratulations, Cat. Congratulations, Jerry. May you both know all the joys that new life brings, and may both kids grow up to be a thousand times cooler than you are, in every way, so that you both become bitter old men while your children win Nobel Prizes and discover life from the Andromeda Galaxy.
As for me? I need to finish cleaning the bathroom. Wednesday's coming for dinner.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:03 AM | Comments (67)
Eric Burns-White: Look, just because one is on the supply side of the industry and the other is on the regulation and tariff side doesn't mean they're not both in that industry, does it?
(From Evil Inc.. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.)
Here's a brief little study on the difference between a shocking twist of events in your storyline, and a shocking twist of events for your readers.
I know of any number of webcartoonists who, when their readers guess or anticipate the shocking twist in their storyline, begin wailing and gnashing their teeth. "Damn it," they cry. "They figured me out! Now I have to change things!"
(How well do I know this? I've received bitter hate mail because I speculated about where a comic strip may be going, over here in Websnark. Not with "inside knowledge," mind. Purely a "this is exciting, here's my guesses" kind of thing. The weird thing is, I've never received this mail from the actual cartoonist of the strip in question. But sometimes I've received it from other webcartoonists "on an artist's behalf." Which has usually bugged the actual webcartoonist in question because... well, anyway.)
I can understand this impulse. There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction in being able to say "Hah! See? Didn't see that coming, did you!? But look back over the past year, and you'll see the clues! The clues you missed, Steve!" To have someone in week three of your buildup say "I bet the perky goth girl's actually a ninja and she's drugging Shlomo's food with Ninja Love Drops" can make a grown man pound his head into the wall until the drywall cracks.
And many of those cartoonists then change their plans. The shock becomes more important than the storyline. The clues already embedded get reinterpreted and stretched and pushed until they look entirely different.
This is almost always a mistake -- it's the sacrifice of the long term development of your story for a single day's hah! And that single day's hah! won't be nearly satisfying enough to make up for a damaged storyline. It's sacrificing tomorrow for brief pleasure today.
Besides, it also can discourage your hard core fans from emotionally investing. Look, it says something when your fanbase starts speculating on your plotlines. And if you're going to lay in clues that your fans can read after the fact and say "oh yeah -- the signs were always there, weren't they?" you're going to give ammunition to that one zealous fan who lives for puzzles.
Making that one fan wrong at the sacrifice of your story's long term plan is a mistake two ways -- it weakens the story for all the other fans, and it makes all the time and effort the zealous fan put into your webcomic wrong even though he was right.
On the other hand... you can stick to your original plan. You can be coy. You can continue to put in the clues. You can let your fans argue the point, sometimes vehemently. And then, when you have your payoff... when your comic has its shocking twist... you can have those few fans squeal with joy, throw their hands up in the air, and shout "I was right!"
Brad Guigar knows his trade. And today, he had a payoff on a core mystery of Evil Inc. since the transition from Greystone Inn began. We've known all along that Captain Heroic is one of the greatest heroes of our age. We've known that Doctor Haynus, one of the top mad scientists at Evil, Inc., has been angling to become a nemesis of Captain Heroic's, and that Miss Match -- one of the stars of the Plots-and-Schemes Department has been working both to find him a perfect plan to fight Captain Heroic and yet (on orders from her boss, Evil Atom) subvert him -- specifically to keep Haynus from either defeating or being defeated by Captain Heroic. And we know Evil Atom seems to have reasons beyond simply keeping Doctor Haynus from supplanting his position... and Evil Atom has implied Miss Match has had reasons of her own to keep the Captain from losing.
As Captain Heroic, in his secret identity, is a stay-at-home dad, we also know he's married. And that his child's mother (his wife, we presume) is particular about how her son is raised.
For weeks now, one speculation has been that Miss Match is actually Captain Heroic's wife and the mother of his son. Today, we learned that at least the latter is true. It's a shocking turn of events.
And at least one of his regular readers (and one of our regular readers, for that matter) on his tagboard absolutely squeed with delight. "This is the first time one of my predictions has ever been right!" she shouted on his tagboard. She was absolutely thrilled.
Now, Guigar probably had to wrestle with the fact that some of his fans had been speculating that Miss Match would turn out to be the mother of Captain Heroic's son. He had to have been tempted to say "well, I guess I need to rework this." But he resisted it. He resisted it because this setup makes perfect sense for his strip -- the comedic potential of a household consisting of a stay-at-home dad who's also the premiere superhero of the city and a mother who's a professional supervillain is too rich with potential. Especially when we know that Heroic's parents are themselves superheroes. (And I'm not ruling out the theory that Evil Atom is Heroic's father-in-law. It seems less likely today, but he could be Miss Match's father, you know.)
And he resisted it because the urge to shock everyone had to be tempered by the delight he had to feel seeing his fans be so thrilled to have gotten it right.
He made the right call. For his comic, and for his comic's fanbase.
Also? Captain Heroic is a lucky, lucky man. But we knew that.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:25 AM | Comments (37)
Wednesday Burns-White: Dear Ms. Othmar, please excuse Wednesday from class this month, as she has astigmatism.
The past several weeks have been daunting, with little to no time to post on top of everything else going on. This next little while is no exception; I'm off to the US for a month, and the first two weeks of that trip will likely afford no writing opportunities to speak of.
Something might emerge, but don't rely upon that.
Next month, I'll be with Eric for a while. Goodness only knows what will happen then, but New Hampshire during the day can do weird things to a person's head.
Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 12:30 AM
December 18, 2005
Eric Burns-White: All these decades later, they're still *pests!*
So, I own several seasons of SCTV. I think it's probably the funniest television show... well, ever.
And on one of the Season 2 discs, there's a Christmas Special.
And on that Christmas Special, there is a "Liberace Christmas Special" being promoted.
And on that special within a special, Orson Welles gives a dramatic reading of "Good King Wenceslas." Only he kept interrupting it, and ranting about people moving on set, finally storming off. "I wouldn't rehearse an actor in Shakespeare under these conditions!" he ranted. "No money is worth this!"
Now, if you remember back a few months, you'll remember a meme that went around the internet, pointing to a real life bootleg recording of Orson Welles complaining about the copy of a Frozen Peas commercial. It's hysterical because... well, Welles sounds insanely concerned about this peas commercial.
The above SCTV piece was clearly directly a parody of this bootleg. Clearly. And was well enough known that they felt they could parody it. In 1982.
We sometimes think that, because we now have the internet, that we have vastly better access to such gems as Orson Welles screaming about "pests" and "the depths of their ignorance," that it's hard to remember that yes, there was an underground bootleg community in the 70's and 80's too, and embarrassing recordings could spread through it like wildfire. I was astounded at having the connection between a bootleg I saw on the internet in March and a twenty-three year old television program made so clear.
And I share that astonishment with you.
What do you want with me? It can't all be A-material, you know.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:25 PM | Comments (46)
