Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2005-11-25 11:23 am
edenfalling) wrote2005-11-25 11:23 am
Entry tags:
Thanksgiving report and more of Liz beating her head against the novel
Thanksgiving happened. It was good. I did the non-denominational, non-actually-religious blessing, as usual (I'm getting pretty good at them by this point), and we had turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (without which it simply is not a proper Culmer family holiday meal), stuffing (which I don't eat), sweet potato something-or-other (which I also don't eat), a nice mixed-greens salad, and colossal black olives (which really are colossal -- truth in advertising: who'd have thought?). Dessert was pumpkin pie and a tiramisu cake, which was good but the whipped cream topping was a little too much. It threatened to overwhelm the nice flavor of the cake-and-custard bits.
The rest of the family went to watch Good Night and Good Luck at about 1pm, leaving me to watch football and occasionally baste the turkey. Well, that football game (Detroit vs. Atlanta) was disappointing. When I don't much care about either team, I want a game with tension. Atlanta casually walking all over Detroit is not what I'd call tension.
The Dallas vs. Denver game at 4pm was much better. It even went into overtime. I like it when that happens. :-)
(I am a terribly casual football fan -- like most things on TV, I can take it or leave it, and I pay no attention if it's not right there in front of me -- but watching the games is a Thanksgiving tradition.)
----------------------------------
I have been plotting ways to fit magic into the various religions of the Eastern Lands. It works most easily, I think, down in Tvikar, because Lonai is a singularly flexible and forgiving religious tradition. Witches and wizards must have done some wild contortions to keep magic accepted in Halo -- Novi Samhiva si Temor is very doctrinaire and suspicious -- but I suspect they may have managed to wind magic into the very framework of that religion, as a fundamental part of the conflict between the Savior and the Lords of the Wheel. (Novi Samhiva is one of my favorite pet religions -- it's incredibly fatalistic, massively xenophobic, and violently evangelical. It's a weird conflation of some native Haloro traditions, early Rosaism, bits and pieces of Manakardit beliefs, and a reaction against early Rosaism. Plus, it has holy wars. From a region that's geographically like Scandinavia. This amuses me.)
However, I think that magic is most 'developed,' so to speak, in Rosaic lands, because Rosaism is more likely to drive people to organize and codify ideas than Lonai is, and yet it's more flexible and open than Novi Samhiva. It also has a rather complicated cosmology and depth of symbolism -- which can be interpreted in many varying ways, since there is no single authoritative text, tradition, or religious leader/center of worship. Plus, Rosaism isn't focused on worship as much as Lonai or Novi Samhiva are. It's more focused on philosophy and on rituals and the organization of a person's life. This is not to say that worship is unimportant, but that the powers of the world aren't considered to be 'above' humans in the central ways that matter, so most prayers are more like requests of potential patrons than like a spiritual channel between the worshipper and a deity.
Anyway, what that means for magic (and science/technology) is that the Rosaic lands are a little more biased toward experiments and attempts to make sense of the world. In Halo, there already is a way to make sense of the world, and it's very hard to challenge or change that system. Down south, the impulse to generalize and systematize isn't as embedded in the culture -- this is not to say that Tvikar, Ghisa, Skyora, and Monadnok haven't produced interesting cosmologies and philosophies, but that that sort of thing is not really an issue they focus on.
Mneh. I call myself a writer, but it's so hard to put concepts into words sometimes. Or to make them explicit, I suppose -- it's much easier, in some ways, to write the story and let them be implicit in the characters, actions, description, and dialogue.
The rest of the family went to watch Good Night and Good Luck at about 1pm, leaving me to watch football and occasionally baste the turkey. Well, that football game (Detroit vs. Atlanta) was disappointing. When I don't much care about either team, I want a game with tension. Atlanta casually walking all over Detroit is not what I'd call tension.
The Dallas vs. Denver game at 4pm was much better. It even went into overtime. I like it when that happens. :-)
(I am a terribly casual football fan -- like most things on TV, I can take it or leave it, and I pay no attention if it's not right there in front of me -- but watching the games is a Thanksgiving tradition.)
----------------------------------
I have been plotting ways to fit magic into the various religions of the Eastern Lands. It works most easily, I think, down in Tvikar, because Lonai is a singularly flexible and forgiving religious tradition. Witches and wizards must have done some wild contortions to keep magic accepted in Halo -- Novi Samhiva si Temor is very doctrinaire and suspicious -- but I suspect they may have managed to wind magic into the very framework of that religion, as a fundamental part of the conflict between the Savior and the Lords of the Wheel. (Novi Samhiva is one of my favorite pet religions -- it's incredibly fatalistic, massively xenophobic, and violently evangelical. It's a weird conflation of some native Haloro traditions, early Rosaism, bits and pieces of Manakardit beliefs, and a reaction against early Rosaism. Plus, it has holy wars. From a region that's geographically like Scandinavia. This amuses me.)
However, I think that magic is most 'developed,' so to speak, in Rosaic lands, because Rosaism is more likely to drive people to organize and codify ideas than Lonai is, and yet it's more flexible and open than Novi Samhiva. It also has a rather complicated cosmology and depth of symbolism -- which can be interpreted in many varying ways, since there is no single authoritative text, tradition, or religious leader/center of worship. Plus, Rosaism isn't focused on worship as much as Lonai or Novi Samhiva are. It's more focused on philosophy and on rituals and the organization of a person's life. This is not to say that worship is unimportant, but that the powers of the world aren't considered to be 'above' humans in the central ways that matter, so most prayers are more like requests of potential patrons than like a spiritual channel between the worshipper and a deity.
Anyway, what that means for magic (and science/technology) is that the Rosaic lands are a little more biased toward experiments and attempts to make sense of the world. In Halo, there already is a way to make sense of the world, and it's very hard to challenge or change that system. Down south, the impulse to generalize and systematize isn't as embedded in the culture -- this is not to say that Tvikar, Ghisa, Skyora, and Monadnok haven't produced interesting cosmologies and philosophies, but that that sort of thing is not really an issue they focus on.
Mneh. I call myself a writer, but it's so hard to put concepts into words sometimes. Or to make them explicit, I suppose -- it's much easier, in some ways, to write the story and let them be implicit in the characters, actions, description, and dialogue.