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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201512/why-does-caveman-parenting-influence-adult-morality

Babies develop dynamically in response to the care they receive, which influences later moral sensibilities too.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scotusblog/pFXs/~3/gLd9b0lYzVs/

http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=236283

Sarah Escalante is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. Ryan C. Black is Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. Matthew Hall is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Ryan J. Owens is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin. Eve M. Ringsmuth is Associate Professor of Political Science at Oklahoma State University.

Supreme Court opinions in recent years have employed controversial emotional language aimed to tug at the heart strings and to provoke ire. For example, one Court watcher recently called Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges “gorgeous, heartfelt, and a little mystifying;” another called Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the case a “temper tantrum on paper.” One commenter called Scalia’s twenty-one-page dissent in King v. Burwell “one of the most scathing and linguistically creative dissents in recent memory.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor also got in on the action, and wrote what one observer called a “blistering” dissent in Glossip v. Gross. Perhaps it should be unsurprising that the Justices use such language. After all, they decide controversial issues that carry emotional weight for millions of people.

Yet those same Justices counsel lawyers to avoid such emotional language. In her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor stated: “Judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart. . . . It’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it’s the law.” Scalia, in his legal-writing book with Bryan Garner, advises attorneys not to “make an overt, passionate attempt to play upon the judicial heartstring” as “[i]t can have a nasty backlash.” Even Supreme Court Rule 24.6 – a rule the Justices themselves created – directs attorneys that a brief shall be “free of irrelevant, immaterial, or scandalous matter.”

There are strong reasons why an attorney should avoid highly charged emotional language. An attorney’s persuasive power resides in his or her perceived credibility in the eyes of the Justices. A primary way for an attorney to communicate this credibility is through the quality of the language employed in his or her legal briefs to the Court. The Justices pay close attention to language and they expect others to do so as well, and so they pay careful attention to the briefs that come before them. (To be sure, oral arguments also serve an important purpose, but it is the written brief that largely communicates and emphasizes attorneys’ points.)

The question we sought to examine was whether the language attorneys use in their briefs might correlate with case outcomes. While prior legal research has suggested how to write effective and readable briefs, there has been little empirical insight shed on whether these recommendations actually enhance an attorney’s credibility and win Justices’ votes. In a forthcoming study to be published in the Journal of Law and Courts, we provide some empirical findings.

We ask whether the inclusion of emotionally charged language in briefs disadvantages an attorney’s credibility and influence before the Court. To do so, we examine the initial merits briefs and individual Justice vote data from the 1,677 orally argued cases decided during the Court’s 1984-2007 Terms. We hypothesize that a Justice will be less likely to vote for a party whose brief employs more emotional language. We ground this belief in the fact that the Justices have been trained and socialized in the traditional rule of law, which emphasizes appeals to logic and legal authorities. By structuring an argument in measured, objective language that the legal community widely expects, a lawyer can most effectively enhance his or credibility and ability to persuade.

To test our expectations, we use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program to analyze the content of the parties’ briefs and identify emotional words (such as “outrageous,” “apprehensive,” and “wonderful”). The data confirm our hypothesis. Parties employing overtly emotional language are less likely to capture the Justices’ votes. Our findings suggest that the language attorneys choose when crafting arguments plays an important role in determining a party’s ability to win the votes of the Justices and provides yet another mechanism by which attorneys are in a position to influence policies set by the Court.

More specifically, our model predicts a 0.61 probability that the petitioner wins a Justice’s vote when supported by a brief with a low level of emotional content. Holding all else constant and increasing the emotional content to a higher level reduces that probability to 0.56 – a relative change of about 9%. (Note: We use the 10^th– and 90^th-percentile values of emotional language for “low” and “high” hypotheticals, respectively.) The effect for the respondent is stronger. We estimate a 0.44 chance that the respondent wins a Justice’s vote with a brief containing relatively little emotional content. Exchanging that respondent’s brief with another containing higher emotional content reduces that probability to 0.37, which is a relative change of about 16%.

To put the magnitude of these values in perspective, the effect of petitioner-brief emotion is about the same as the effect of increasing the amount of previous experience the petitioner’s attorney has arguing cases before the Supreme Court. For emotive content in the respondent’s brief, the effect is almost triple the size of increasing the amount of oral argument experience the respondent’s attorney has.

The bottom line: attorneys looking to enhance their credibility and attract Justices’ votes are best served by listening to the advice offered up by the Court and avoiding overtly emotional language. Leave those words to the Justices.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sfsignal/~3/_jFxBu54veI/

http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=131524

Next month, Scribner is re-releasing a batch of Stephen King eBooks with attractive minimalist covers by Jim Tierney and art direction by Jaya Miceli.

I like minimalist covers because they’re so different than the covers we usually see on bookstore shelves. The key is to perfectly capture the essence of the books, which I think these do quite nicely.

Check out the covers below!

(Note: The first four books of King’s Dark Tower series are also seeing reprints. The covers, while not minimalist, are also nice looking and are included below.)

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The post Stephen King Gets Eye-Catching Minimalist (Mostly) eBook Covers appeared first on SF Signal
Copyright © SF Signal

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/22/lovecraft-reread-merry-christmas-from-the-void-holiday-poems/

http://www.tor.com/?p=200343

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s original stories.

Today we’re looking at three seasonal poems: “Christmas,” “Festival,” and a holiday greeting to Frank Belknap Long’s cat. Spoilers ahead, assuming you can spoil a plotless poem.

 

Christmas

The cottage hearth beams warm and bright,
The candles gaily glow;
The stars emit a kinder light
Above the drifted snow.

Down from the sky a magic steals
To glad the passing year,
And belfries sing with joyous peals,
For Christmastide is here!

 

Festival

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o’er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallow’d and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun’s turning flight,
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of earth’s kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwin’d
By mad misteltoes choke,
For these pow’rs are the pow’rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

 

Christmas Greetings to Felis (Frank Belknap Long’s Cat)

Little Tiger, burning bright
With a subtle Blakeish light,
Tell what visions have their home
In those eyes of flame and chrome!
Children vex thee—thoughtless, gay—
Holding when thou wouldst away:
What dark lore is that which thou,
Spitting, mixest with thy meow?

 

What’s Cyclopean:  The Yule-altar is fungous! Clearly we’re getting a late frost this year. Or very hardy mushrooms.

The Degenerate Dutch: We love you all, but not enough to read that poem.

Mythos Making: Could “Festival” be another take on the rites described in “The Festival”? These honestly seem much more sedate, maybe closer to the services observed by the Outer Ones in “Whisperer in Darkness.”

Cats, of course, are always heroic in the Mythos—if sometimes viciously so.  Probably best to listen to the dark lore that Felis is spitting.

Libronomicon: Little Felis earns a Blakean shout-out.

Madness Takes Its Toll: Something truly terrible must be encrypted in the simple verses of “Christmas.” It’s simply not plausible that the master of horror himself meant to extend unproblematic holiday cheer to his correspondents… or is it?

 

Anne’s Commentary

All right, let it never be said that Lovecraft is unfailingly gloomy – at least not until our second poem.  “Christmas” would feel right at home between the cozy covers of a Hallmark card, fronted with a picture of that cottage, candles in the diamond-paned windows, glitter-strewn snow below and sequin stars above.  Why, there’s not an unidentifiable color or questing tentacle in sight!  Nor can we possibly imagine the Terrible Old Man in this house of seasonal cheer, or that other old man who likes to gloat over woodcuts of cannibal butcher shops.

In fact, the inhabitants must either be hobbits or cute little elves of the sort who people Tim Burton’s Christmas Town.  I can see Lovecraft as Jack Skellington, peering into the windows, mesmerized by the sheer LIGHT of it all.

That the stars emit a kinder light does imply that their usual luminescence is less than kind.  You know, cold and distant and unconcerned with human affairs.  Plus there’s magic stealing down from the sky, or should we say filtering, like all those Great Races, Elder Ones and Outer Gods?

Oh, let’s give it up.  There’s no hope this poem can be rendered either eldritch or Cyclopean.  Its very form is bland, a couple four-lined stanzas of tripping iambs, reminiscent of the rhythm of a carol.

Or, yeah, a Hallmark card.

With “Festival,” we’re back in true Lovecraft country, perhaps Dunwich or the shunned hills around Exham Priory.  The epic turn of the sun from shorter to longer stays in the sky, critical to human survival, has always seen celebrations far older and darker than the Christian one.

“Festival” and “Christmas” share snow, but that’s about it.  “Festival” might make us recall that Lovecraft had a strange hypersensitivity to cold, so snow on the ground and cold valleys?  Not good.  The hearth of “Christmas” becomes the hill-fires and fungous altar of “Festival,” and there are no kinder stars.  No stars at all, because death-bearing clouds render this midnight deep and graceless as it squats, all black.

What’s the problem here?  Well, first, this landscape features a forest of the classic Lovecraft type, full of big old twisted and diseased oaks; they are not adorned by the Christmas icon mistletoe but choked by it.  And on top of being parasitic, this mistletoe is mad.  No swain in his right mind would lure his beloved under it to get a kiss.

Of course an ancient oak forest must have been the sacred resort of Druids now dead but still pretty lively on festival night, when they don their best shrouds to hail the sun and dance and chant.  Sounds like a great party – I’ll bring the mead!

In a sharp twist of the typical “have yourself a merry (and/or blessed) little Christmas” close, Lovecraft instead wishes the reader dark priesthood, cannibal greeds, and the sign of the beast.  Why thanks, Howard, and the same to you!

“Festival” has a much more sophisticated form than “Christmas.”  It took me a while to figure out how that very long last line in each stanza could be made to scan.  So I cast back to my halcyon student days and analyzed the sucker.

We’ve got an overall form popular in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the cinquain or five-lined stanza, with common rhyming schemes of ababb or ababa.  Poe also used this form, as in “To Helen:”

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Compared to Poe’s tranquil iambic tetrameter, Lovecraft goes as formally odd in “Festival” as his subject is weird and ominous.  In each stanza we get four lines of anapestic dimeter (that is, of metrical feet in the pattern short-short-long or unstressed-unstressed-stressed, two anapests per line.)  The last line in each stanza is, whoa, three times as long as the preceding lines.  It is, in fact, anapestic hexameter (six anapests per line.)  This gives the poem an interesting look on the page, kind of like a series of hills, narrow on top, broad at the base.  The four short lines mix the languor of the anapest with the choppiness of only two feet, a combination I find effectively unnerving.  That last line!  It’s tough to read aloud and sustain the rhythm of the piece unless you realize that we’re still dealing with anapests.  A tiny pause at the middle of each long line will help maintain the rhythm:  “But a LIGHT/on the HILL/tops half-SEEN/(Pause)/hints of FEAST/ings unHAL/low’d and OLD.”

The long fifth line can take on a rushing, breathless feel after the choppier lines.  Fitting, again, with the macabre subject matter.  Like the speaker has built up, through many fearful fits and starts, to a torrent of terrible truth, about feastings and altars, Druids and beasts.

Pretty nice.

“To Felis” is an example of the kind of verses Lovecraft often wrote to friends at Christmas.  It’s a clever parody of William Blake’s “The Tiger,” turning the jungle beast into a (superficially) tame tabby.  Lovecraft’s love for the feline shines through, as well as his sense of the cat’s superior awareness – and acceptance – of the supernatural.  Good old Felis reminds me of that unfortunately named cat of “The Rats in the Walls,” except maybe not so cuddly, since he curses the rotten kids that won’t let him go about his important Solstice duties.

Come over here, Felis.  You’ll toast the season with a bowl of cream, while we and the Druids quaff our mead and munch unmentionable hors-d’oeuvres.  Mmmm, are those finger sandwiches?

 

Ruthanna’s Commentary

There once was a man from Rhode Island…

No.

There once lived a Bard who from Providence hailed…

No.

Higglety pigglety, matters cyclopean…

Ahem.

With trepidation I began this read
Half-‘membered lore delightful and disdained
Trellis on which my best creations trained
Beneath those vines do roses lurk, or weeds?

Grand horrors fungous I knew to expect
His horrors “of their time” repell me still
The prose, though varied, startles with its skill
The worldbuilding rewards the close-read text.

But—best surprise of all, as Howard found
Is correspondence with one’s fellow minds
Even in disagreement being kind
And offering new ideas that astound.

So to the greatest commenters on Mythos
I wish to you a very merry Christmas!

Hey, that almost rhymed. Don’t judge, I could have given you a limerick cycle.

 

Next week, we’re taking a hiatus for the holiday (and for editing, and childcare, etc. etc.) In two weeks, refreshed by our vacation, we’ll return with Robert Chambers’s “The Repairer of Reputations.”

Top image from Flickr user liquidnight.

Ruthanna Emrys’s neo-Lovecraftian novelette “The Litany of Earth” is available on Tor.com, along with the more recent but distinctly non-Lovecraftian “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” and “The Deepest Rift.” Winter Tide, a novel continuing Aphra Marsh’s story from “Litany,” will be available from the Tor.com imprint in Spring 2017. Ruthanna can frequently be found online on Twitter and Livejournal, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic household—mostly mammalian—outside Washington DC.

Anne M. Pillsworth’s short story. “The Madonna of the Abattoir” appears on Tor.com. Her first novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with the recently released sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwen’s underground laboratory.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/22/sleeps-with-monsters-looking-back-on-2015/

http://www.tor.com/?p=199524

As the long year draws to its close, I think it’s time we looked back at some of the highlights from 2015. I’m not normally a fan of “Best Of” lists, but I think this is a good season for “Favourites.”

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but 2015 left me with two genre shows that stick in my mind as examples of complex narratives done well. Both of them, rather surprisingly, are made-for-Netflix series, and both of them are strongly character-focused.

Sense8 is a many-faceted gem of a show about eight people across the world who abruptly find themselves mentally connected to each other, and under threat from a mysterious organisation. Despite the background of global conspiracy, on an emotional level the narrative impact is intensely personal: it succeeds in making you care, almost painfully, for each of its characters.

Jessica Jones is, on the surface, a much more traditional narrative, focused more closely on a single protagonist—the eponymous Jessica Jones—but it does so much so well that it really sticks with you. It’s a story about abuse and survivors, about boundaries and recovery, about women and friendship. And the way in which Kilgrave and Simpson mirror and reflect particular—typically masculine—real-world monsters is downright eerie. Also, explosions, snark, Shit Getting Real, excellent characterisation, excitement: it’s an absolute gem of female-focused superhero noir.

I suppose Agent Carter really deserves an honourable mention. But despite the awesome that is Hayley Atwell in the title role (and despite the snark and explosions), it never satisfied me quite as well as my other two favourites. Still! Mostly a good year for interesting new genre TV, I think.

I’ve no idea if it was a good year for genre film, because at the time of writing I’ve only seen one new-release film. Mind you, I saw Mad Max: Fury Road three times in the cinema, which is probably the whole of my cinema-going budget, so… draw your own conclusions. It might be my favourite film of the decade, and not just for Charlize Theron being brutal and brilliant.

If I read more short fiction, I might have more than three favourites from the whole year. But I didn’t fall harder in love with anything short published this year than Arkady Martine’s “When The Fall Is All That’s Left,” Elizabeth Bear’s “And The Balance In The Blood,” and Aliette de Bodard’s “Of Books, Earth, and Courtship.” They are very different stories, but each is in its own way memorable—whether for gentleness or the sharp, scalding point.

On the other hand, I’ve read too many novels this year to have an easy time choosing favourites. (And too few: there are still so many I’ve missed.) But could I say Justina Robson’s Glorious Angels is better science fiction than Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, or that Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings is better fantasy than Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory? Did I love Leah Bobet’s An Inheritance of Ashes more than Heather Rose Jones’ The Mystic Marriage, or Kate Elliott’s Black Wolves? Is Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library more batshit fun than Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown, or Fran Wilde’s Updraft more than Amanda Downum’s Dreams of Shreds and Tatters? Is Jo Walton’s The Just City not pure classics-geek joy, and is Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet not a bit like a giant space operatic hug?

(I’m not even mentioning Max Gladstone’s Last First Snow or Django Wexler’s The Price of Valor.)

It’s been a really good year for books, is what I’m saying. Will 2016 manage to top it? I somehow doubt, but I’m looking forward to seeing if it does.

What favourite things do you all have from this year?

Liz Bourke is a cranky person who reads books and other things. She has recently completed a doctoral dissertation in Classics at Trinity College, Dublin. Find her at her blog. Or her Twitter.

Last year for Christmas I wrote my mom a story that included all these elements. This year I decided to put it on my website for free to share with all of you. Here it is: How to Wrap a Roc’s Egg. It was inspired by a pair of earrings made by Elise Matthesen, by the work of the great taxonomist and general all-around eccentric Carl Linnaeus, and of course tea. Happy Solstice, merry Christmas, and on through all the rest of the holidays ahead. Enjoy.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/0NuaiN4iBYY/pigouvian-leaf-blowers-with-coasian-solutions.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67331

[James] Fallows supports the notion of a kind of trade-in program, where loud, old leaf blowers are exchanged for the less offensive kind.

Rueter, in fact, facilitated one such scheme. In the heat of his front lawn dispute with his neighbor, he offered a solution.

“If you agree to use them, I will buy you two new leaf blowers,” he told his neighbor. The offer was accepted and the noise level in his front yard was restored to a peaceful level. When it comes to the balancing act of protecting landscaping jobs while reducing noise and emissions, it helps that someone was willing to pay for progress.

The article is interesting throughout, and I thank the excellent Brian Slesinsky for the pointer.

http://feeds.nature.com/~r/news/rss/most_recent/~3/Y93ZMJElmrY/nature.2015.19082

Leak in French-built seismometer cannot be repaired in time.

Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.19082

http://feeds.nature.com/~r/news/rss/most_recent/~3/eKEubzcY9jQ/nature.2015.19040

Fabiola Gianotti talks to Nature ahead of taking the helm at Europe's particle-physics laboratory on 1 January.

Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.19040

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=22979

Philip B. Corbett, "Me and Myself", NYT 12/22/2015:

Several readers have lamented a tendency, in The Times and elsewhere, for writers to misuse so-called reflexive pronouns — the ones that end in “-self” or “-selves.”

Mr. Corbett tells us what he thinks the rule is — more on this later — and then gives a list of five examples of (what he considers to be) mistakes from past NYT stories.

It’s a small point, but careful readers detect a lack of polish when we get this wrong. Here are a number of recent cases where reflexive pronouns were used incorrectly, all involving “like” phrases:

Ms. Syz says her clients, primarily in Europe and the United States, many of whom are art collectors like herself, find traditional jewelry too staid and appreciate her mix of haute and tongue-in-cheek style.

“Herself” is not referring to the subject of the clause (“many”); there’s no need for a reflexive pronoun here. Just say “many of whom are art collectors like her.”

Mr. Corbett's concern for "lack of polish" can be added to a list of complaints given in the entry for myself in Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, gleaned from a stack of self-appointed usage authorities "from as early as Ayres 1881 ":

… snobbish, unstylish, self-indulgent, self-conscious, old-fashioned, timorous, colloquial, informal, formal, nonstandard, incorrect, mistaken, literary, and unacceptable in formal written English.

 MWDEU responds by quoting Goold Brown (from The Grammar of English Grammars): "Grammarians would perhaps differ less, if they read more."

MWDEU has this comment on the various sources that complain about alleged misuse of reflexives:

Two general statements can be made about the what these critics say concerning myself: first, they do not like it, and second, they do not know why.

In contrast, Mr. Corbett is quite precise about the reasons for his displeasure:

A reflexive pronoun is called for when the subject and object (direct or indirect) in a clause are the same person. For example, in the sentence “She chided herself for the error,” the same person is the subject of “chided” and the object. Using a regular personal pronoun — “She chided her for the error” — would indicate that the object “her” refers to someone else, not to the subject.

Reflexive pronouns can also be used for emphasis: “He will do it himself.”

But writers sometimes use a reflexive pronoun where an ordinary personal pronoun is called for — perhaps in the mistaken view that the reflexive is more formal or correct. This often occurs in prepositional phrases such as “like himself.” 

But as MWDEU observes,

The handful of commentators who have done real research have found the usage surprisingly widespread in literary sources.

And dozens of examples follow. I'll give a few more examples of my own below, from thousands that could easily be found.

In the end, it's clear that Mr. Corbett's proposed rule — use a reflexive pronoun if and only if it is an object or indirect object that co-refers with the subject of the clause's main verb — is one of those plausible grammatical hypotheses that simply turns out to be a mistake. At least, for Corbett to be right, we would have to conclude that nearly all the greatest English-language writers over the past couple of hundred years have been wrong.

Indeed, the fact that allegedly wrong uses of reflexives are so common in the published stories in the NYT ought to be a clue.

This leaves open the question of what principles really do govern the use of reflexive pronouns. There's a linguistic literature on this topic, and I have my own ideas, but for now I'll leave the commenters to discuss among themselves.

Below are a few examples involving what Mr. Corbett feels to be incorrect uses of like herself. I've marked the clausal subjects in blue and the reflexives in red.

Jane Austen, Sanditon:

All that had the appearance of incongruity in the reports of the two, might very fairly be placed to the account of the vanity, the ignorance, or the blunders of the many engaged in the cause by the vigilance and caution of Miss Diana Parker. Her intimate friends must be officious like herself, and the subject had supplied letters and extracts and messages enough to make everything appear what it was not. Miss Diana probably felt a little awkward on being first obliged to admit her mistake.

Jane Austen, Emma:

They all walked about together, to see that every thing was as it should be; and within a few minutes were joined by the contents of another carriage, which Emma could not hear the sound of at first, without great surprise. "So unreasonably early!" she was going to exclaim; but she presently found that it was a family of old friends, who were coming, like herself, by particular desire, to help Mr. Weston's judgement; and they were so very closely followed by another carriage of cousins, who had been entreated to come early with the same distinguishing earnestness, on the same errand, that it seemed as if half the company might soon be collected together for the purpose of preparatory inspection.

 

Charlotte Brontë, The Duke of Zamorna:

Disquisitions succeeded on Mrs Young's beauty, on the splendour of the diamond ear-rings she had worn at the opera on the very night she ran away with Lord Caversham; then, lamentation about her children – her eldest daughter, who was said to be like herself, very beautiful but too frolicsome for any nurse or governess to manage; her only son, who was at school and whom his father would never allow to come home in the vacations.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

Henry James, Preface, The Tragic Muse:

If Nick Dormer attracts and all-indifferently holds her it is because, like herself and unlike Peter, he puts "art" first; but the most he thus does for her in the event is to let her see how she may enjoy, in intimacy, the rigour it has taught him and which he cultivates at her expense.

Henry James, The Wings of the Dove:

The handsome girl had, with herself, these felicities and crudities: it wasn't obscure to her that, without some very particular reason to help, it might have proved a test of one's philosophy not to be irritated by a mistress of millions, or whatever they were, who, as a girl, so easily might have been, like herself, only vague and cruelly female.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh:

It was Lucy! Her bonnet  and shawl were lying at her feet; and when they  had passed, she waded far out into the shallow  stream, laid herself gently down in its deeper  waves, and floated slowly away into the moon-light,  among the golden leaves that were faded  and fallen like herself,—among the water-lilies, whose fragrant white blossoms had been broken  off and polluted long ago. Without a struggle,  without a sigh, without a sound, she floated downward,  downward, and silently sank into the silent  river.

Thomas Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta:

She became teacher in a school, was praised by examiners, admired by gentlemen, not admired by gentlewomen, was touched up with accomplishments by masters who were coaxed into painstaking by her many graces rather than by her few coins, and, entering a mansion as governess to the daughter thereof, was stealthily married by the son. He, a minor like herself, died from a chill caught during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followed into the grave by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had bequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely.

George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life:

How dreary the moonlight is! robbed of all its tenderness and repose by the hard driving wind. The trees are harassed by that tossing motion, when they would like to be at rest; the shivering grass makes her quake with sympathetic cold; and the willows by the pool, bent low and white under that invisible harshness, seem agitated and helpless like herself. But she loves the scene the better for its sadness: there is some pity in it. It is not like that hard unfeeling happiness of lovers, flaunting in the eyes of misery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:

Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth:

The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily, and she was often bored by the relation of her friend's philanthropic efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty's 'cases'. These were young girls, like herself: some perhaps pretty, some not without a trace of her finer sensibilities.

Bret Harte, Mliss: An Idyl of Red Mountain:

The idea of consulting a lawyer had seized  firmly hold of the young girl's mind. There  was no reason why she should select Mr. Shaw  in preference to another, except she heard that he  was an elderly gentleman, distinguished in his  profession, who was above the meanness of  stealing from a little girl like herself. The fact  of his being an elderly man and the father of a  family was much in his favor.

Mark Twain, The Guilded Age: A Tale of To-Day:

Did this seem like a damnable  plot to Laura against the life, maybe, of a sister, a woman  like herself? Probably not.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, "The Waltz: An Apostrophic Hymn":

Blest was the time Waltz chose for her début!
The Court, the Regent, like herself, were new;

Update — responding to a comment that these examples "sound a little dusty", here are some more modern quotations:

Muriel Spark, Curriculum Vitae:

The older ones were part of family groups. There were students or brides-to-be like myself. There were a few valets or lady’s maids (whose employers were up in first class).

Colin, like myself, was temporarily separated from his child by the war;

Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle:

She had sufficient experience with the nobility to know how they looked upon women like herself, who through no fault of their own were forced to earn their own livings.

At such times, contempt for his readers and for himself hovered in the room like a cloud of smoke, and his temper after one of these sessions was foul but cold, like smog.

Ursula LeGuin, The Disposessed:

He found the workmates dull and loutish, and even those younger than himself treated him like a boy.

Masturbation was preferable, the suitable course for a man like himself.

Thomas Pynchon, V:

Subalterns, enlisted men and gangers like himself shared them out of a common pool, housed in a barbed-wire compound near the B.O.Q.

The New Yorker, "The Joy of Hating":

Mostly, people hate Duke because they win; they have more Final Four appearances than all but three other teams. “ ’Cause they jealous,” Charles Barkley, another notable heel, said last week, when I asked why fans hated players like himself and Laettner, and programs like Duke. “They don’t get mad about the worst player. They only get mad about the great player.”

The New Yorker, "Why Biden would be a serious contender":

He’s still full of energy, he’s served President Obama loyally, he loves the game, and he thinks—pundits and pollsters be damned—that this might be the moment for an old-school, shit-kicking, hand-grasping, mouth-running, stick-up-for-the-working-stiff pol like himself.

The Atlantic, "Ebola's Body Collectors":

“This was completely new for us,” writes Ballah, explaining that local Red Cross authorities like herself had to lean on their international counterparts for guidance.

The Atlantic, "Even Candy Land Isn't Safe from Sexy":

Using a different set of dolls for each question, the researchers then asked each girl to choose the doll that: looked like herself, looked how she wanted to look, was the popular girl in school, was the girl she wanted to play with

I'll also elevate from the comments one of my responses to TR, who is not convinced that the deprecated examples are "reflexive pronouns" at all:

There's a terminological question here — should all uses of PRO-self in English be called "reflexive pronouns"? The general answer seems to be "yes" — that's what CGEL does, for example.

And then there's a question of morphosyntactic analysis — how many (and which) types should we divide the uses of such pronouns into? CGEL (pp. 1483-1499) distinguishes "complement" vs. "emphatic" uses, and also "basic reflexives" vs. "overrides". "Basic" reflexives are then subdivided into those with a "single-head domain" vs. those with a "dual head domain", along with quite a bit of further taxonomizing.

A few of the examples under consideration here are "emphatic" uses in CGEL's terminology. A few more are "basic" reflexives, where the antecedent is (say) a preceding object rather than subject. But most are "override" reflexives, where "there is not the close structural relation between reflexive and antecedent that we find with basic reflexives".

The critical part of CGEL's analysis is this:
(1) "the constructions concerned admit a 1st or 2nd person reflexive with no antecedent at all";
(2) "Overrides with 3rd person reflexives characteristically occur in contexts where the antecedent refers to the person whose perspective is being taken in the discourse".

I'd add that there seem to be some cases where the antecedent is the theme of the discourse, even if that individual's perspective is not clearly being taken.

Update #2 — I'll also add a link "Clarity, choice, and evidence" (5/23/2008), which contains some discussion on "rules" as opposed to "house style", mentioned in a comment below by Roger Depledge.

https://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/the-writers-journey-staying-the-course-from-newbie-to-master/

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/?p=18381

Some of you may or may not know that I practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. BJJ is unique in that there are only FOUR colored belts (blue, purple, brown, black) and new practitioners are a white belt for roughly a year an a half before they can test for blue. I just earned my blue belt last Thursday. This is no small feat, seeing as how I am the ONLY female in a dojo of males much larger and most far younger than I am.

The parallels for BJJ and writing are profound though. In the beginning it really doesn’t seem all that difficult. Yeah, you just grab that leg, pull that knee, sure! Got it. Then? Once you get on the mats?

*head explodes*

The more you learn, the more you come to know how much you don’t know.

One would think I’d feel more skilled and capable with each class, but I don’t. Quite the opposite. As I peel back the layers and nuance? All I can see is how far I have to go.

Back to writing.

The mark of a pro is they make whatever we want to do look easy. From running a business to playing guitar to wicked cool Kung Fu moves, masters rarely seem to even break a sweat. Same with authors. With the pros? The story flows, pulls us in, and appears seamless and effortless.

As we take off for the holidays to rest and relax and ponder over what we’ve achieved in 2015, what we hope to still achieve in 2016, I want to close out the year with this elucidation regarding the process so that you have no surprises….

Many of us decided to become writers because we grew up loving books. Because good storytellers are masters of what they do, we can easily fall into a misguided notion that “writing is easy.” Granted there are a rare few exceptions, but most of us will go through three acts (stages) in this career if we stick it through.

Act One—The Neophyte

This is when we are brand new. We’ve never read a craft book and the words flow. We never run out of words to put on a page because we are like a kid banging away on a piano having fun and making up “music.” We aren’t held back or hindered by any structure or rules and we have amazing energy and passion.

But then we go to our first critique and hear words like “POV” and “narrative structure.” We learn that maybe we don’t know as much as we think we do and that we need to do some training. We also finally understand why so many famous authors drank…a lot.

Act Two—The Apprentice

The Apprentice Phase comes next. This is where we might read craft books, take classes, go to conferences and listen to lectures. During the early parts of this phase, books likely will no longer be fun. Neither will movies. In fact, most of your family will likely ban you from “Movie Night.” Everything now becomes part of our training. We no longer look at stories the same way.

The apprentice phase is tough, and for many of us, it takes the all the fun out of writing. The apprentice phase is our Act II. It’s the looooongest, but filled with the most growth and change. It’s the span of suck before the breakthrough.

I’ve studied other forms of martial arts, but I am relatively new to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Right now I am in the span of SUUUUUCK. When I started as a neophyte, I “seemed” to do better because I just muscled my way around on the ground and being naturally strong? It worked…against an equally green opponent.

But it also wore me out and gave me more than a fair share of injuries. I had to learn technique. Technique looks awesome when Professor does it. It looks easy on theYouTube videos.

When I do it? Eh…not pretty and NOT easy.

But I am improving. As a beginning white belt, the upper belts just instantly laid waste to me. They had me in a choke or an arm bar in less than a minute. I made all kinds of stupid and reckless mistakes. I worked too hard. I used up too much energy. I used muscle power instead of brain power.

I had to learn to relax and breathe, which is counterintuitive when a 260 pound guy is smashing you. I had to instead, learn to use my small size, my speed, and my crazy flexibility. I had to learn to THINK. Now? I’m not winning my rounds, but I rarely ever lose and I fight some pretty big opponents who far outclass me. And YES, it is frustrating. There are times I’ve had to walk off the mat so they can’t see me cry. But, I have to give myself permission to be learning.

Same in writing. This gig is tough. There is a good damn reason not everyone can do what WE DO.

 

Many new writers will shy away from craft books because they fear “rules” will ruin their creativity. Truth is? They will totally ruin your creativity, but only for a little while ;) . It isn’t permanent.

Eventually we realize that rules were made to be broken. BUT, the difference between the artist and the hack is that the artist knows the rules and thus HOW to break them and WHY and WHEN. We start to see rules as tools.

In fact, one thing we do in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is we grapple blindfolded. The trick is to not get fixated visually, but to be able to flex and move in response to the opponent. THAT is how sensitive you want to become. Same in writing. We want to become so immersed that we can do this stuff blindfolded. We instinctively feel what needs to happen where without having to say “Oh, this is a scene, and this is a sequel.”

As we move through The Apprentice Phase and we train ourselves to execute all these moves together—POV, structure, conflict, tension, setting, description, dialogue, plot arc, character arc—it eventually becomes easier. In fact, a good sign we are at the latter part of the apprentice phase is when the rules become so ingrained we rarely think about them.

We just fight write.

We’ve read so much fiction, watched (and studied) so many movies, read so many craft books, heard so many lectures, and practiced so much writing that all the “rules” are now becoming instinct and, by feel, we are starting to know where and how to bend, break or ignore them.

Like anything, there is NO substitute for DOING. Watching Holly Holmes videos is a good idea for understanding ground-fighting, but it can’t take the place of mat time. Reading, taking classes, studying cannot replace writing crap until we don’t write crap.

At the end of the apprentice phase, writing is now starting to become fun again, much like it was in the beginning when we were banging away on the piano keyboard. Like the fighter who instinctively knows to arm bar an opponent without conscious thought, we now find more and more of the “right” words and timing without bursting brain cells.

The trick is sticking it through the apprentice phase long enough to engrain the fundamentals into the subconscious.

Master

This is where we all want to be. In fact, we all want this on Day One, but sadly, I believe this Day One Master is reserved for only a handful of literary savants. Mastery is when we return to that childlike beginning. We write with abandon and joy and, since the elements of fiction are now part of our DNA, our literary marrow, what we produce isn’t the off-key clanging of a neophyte, it’s actually a real story worth reading. Granted, it isn’t all kittens and rainbows. Masters have a lot of pressure to be perpetual geniuses.

I believe most of us, if we stick to this long enough, will always be vacillating between the Advanced Apprentice Phase and the Mastery Phase. If we choose to try a totally new genre, we might even be back to Neophyte (though this will pass more quickly than the first time).

We have to to keep growing. The best writers still pick up craft books, refresh themselves in certain areas, read other authors they enjoy and admire to see if they can grow in some new area. Masters seek to always add new and fresh elements to the fiction.

The key to doing well in this business is to:

1. Embrace the Day of Small Beginnings—Starting is often the hardest part. Enjoy being new. Enjoy that feeling because you will reconnect with it later because you recognize it.

2. Understand We All Have an Apprentice Phase—We will all be Early, Intermediate, then Advanced Apprentices. How quickly we move through these will be dictated by dedication, hard work and, to a degree, natural talent.

3. No One Begins as a Master and Few Remain Permanent Masters—Every NYTBSA was once a newbie, too. When we understand this career has a process, it’s easier to lighten up and give ourselves permission to be imperfect, to not know everything. Many writers get discouraged and give up too soon because they don’t understand there is a process, and they believe they should be “Masters” right away.

Hey, I did.

We need to give ourselves permission to grow. If we love and respect our craft, we will always be learning, so we will continue to dip back into “Apprentice” to refine our art even further.

Does this make you feel better to know this career has a process? Are you in the Act II span of suck and getting weary? It is okay, REALLY! It’s natural. What are you doing to remain focused? Which part has you the most discouraged? Write with the abandon of the Neophyte then edit with the eyes of an Advanced Apprentice or Master ;) .

I love hearing from you!

Just as a warning, I may blog between now and the new year. I am working on this “resting” thing, but then I do miss y’all. Alex also has some more amazing posts but I am saving those for the new year. They are too good to miss. Make SURE you sign up for my upcoming classes!

Remember to check out the new classes listed at W.A.N.A International. Your friends and family can get you something you need for Christmas. Social Media for Writers, Blogging for Writers, and Branding for Authors. 

Also, I have one craft class listed. Your Story in a Sentence—Crafting Your Log-Line. Our stories should be simple enough to tell someone what the book is about in ONE sentence. If we can’t do this, often there is a plot problem. This class is great for teaching you how to be master plotters and the first TEN SIGNUPS get their log-line shredded for free, so you will be agent ready for the coming year.

Enough of that…

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of DECEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201512/do-you-need-push-the-reset-button-your-relationship

Over time, long-term relationships evolve until they may no longer resemble the way they looked in the past. These 4 tips will help you push the reset button on yours.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/22/top-ten-christmas-miracles-on-television/

http://www.tor.com/?p=200038

So when you’re watching Christmas on TV, there are usually only a few plots to contend with. There’s your “update of A Christmas Carol / It’s a Wonderful Life / Gift of the Magi“—all solid Yuletide choices. There’s your “codger or child learns the true meaning of Christmas” option. And there’s your “Christmas is saved by a real, bona fide, inexplicable miracle” plot. I’m most intrigued by this last category; since Christmas has many different traditions tied to it, these miracles can come from some conception of the Christian God, or they can come from Santa, or they can just come from some sort of vague universal force that wants to be nice to people on holidays. So in honor of the season, I’ve rounded up ten of my favorite Christmas miracles.

I didn’t restrict myself to any particular genre, but I did keep only to episodes that are part of a regular series, rather than one-off Christmas specials. Let me know if I missed any of your favorite Christmassy moments in the comments!

 

10. My So-Called Life, “So-Called Angels”

Christmas Miracle: Juliana Hatfield teaches us all to love.
Who’s Responsible? The God of Very Special Episodes
Why Is It Here? This is at the bottom of the list because it contains several things I don’t like on TV: Very Special Episodes, Very Special Guest Stars, Very Special Empathy Lessons From Angels (when there are wonderful human characters like Rickie right freaking there, who you could talk to instead), Guitar Wielding Guest Stars/Angels

The opening of the infamous My So Called Life episode “So Called Angels” features Best Character Ever Rickie spitting blood onto snow. This is because he’s just run away from home after a fight with his uncle. As many have noted, this episode feels far more like an after school special than an MSCL. The miracle here is that the spirit of Homeless Teen Angel Juliana Hatfield visits Angela and her mother (who think she’s a Homeless Still Alive Teen Juliana Hatfield) to point out that given slightly different circumstance, Angela herself could be Homeless Teen Claire Danes. Angela gives the Angel her new Docs, her mom allows Rickie to come stay with them, and the Homeless Teen Angel presumably goes back to Heaven, to lurk until she’s needed by another Very Special Episode.

 

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Amends”

Christmas Miracle: Snow! In southern California!
Who’s Responsible? Snow Miser! No, probably The Powers That Be, who can’t let Angel die yet, as it would deprive them of opportunities to kick him in the stomach, existentially speaking.
Why Is It Here? I never like it when Buffy goes Very Special Episode, but there are good moments here.

Angel’s all like, “I’m evil, and I’ll never be good, so rather than trying to redeem myself I’m going to go sit on the beach until the sun comes up and fries me.” Buffy, meanwhile, is all like, “Dude, I just got you back? Could you stop trying to suicide, please? I have a lot on my plate right now”. The episode ends with the one tiny inkling the show ever gave us that maybe the PTB were looking out for their Slayer: a snowstorm rolls in, so the sun’s rays aren’t able to make it through the layer of clouds and touch Angel’s delicious vampiric skin. At least, that’s what the show wants you to think: the real miracle is that everyone in California didn’t simultaneously die in the roughly one billion car wrecks the snowstorm would have caused, as Californian drivers had to reckon with the thing we humans call “weather.”

 

8. The Addams Family, “Christmas with the Addams Family”

Christmas Miracle: A Santa-based miracle restores Christmas for the Addams family!
Who’s Responsible? Santa!
Why Is It Here? I want to spend every Christmas with Gomez and Morticia.

Here is the sitcom 101 plot: a mean older person tells Wednesday and Pugsley there’s no Santa. The family conspires to restore the kids’ faith in the Claus, through the time-honored method of everyone dressing up as jolly St. Nick, with varying results. (Morticia, for instance, inspires thoughts that no one should ever think about Santa; Cousin Itt is just hilarious.) The miraculous twist is that, just when the kids have unmasked all of their family members, and embarked on the depressing phase of adolescence known as “grown-up-Christmas”—where you know all the loot comes from your family, and that’s nice and all, but is it really a substitute for Santa?—the real immortal gift-giver delivers a brand new tree and a pile of presents, thus convincing child and adult alike of his existence.

 

7. MacGyver, “The Madonna”

Christmas Miracle: Troubled teens are brought back to the Light Side through aggressive theological wackiness; a widower rejoins the church.
Who’s Responsible? God, presumably, since we’re dealing with Mary. And that’s really weird given that MacGyver is usually super secular.
Why Is It Here? I love MacGyver, but this is a clunky muther of a Christmas episode.

Mary (like the actual, legit Mary) incarnates as a wacky homeless woman to teach an angry teen (the awesomely-monikered ‘Breeze’) to renounce violence, which then inspires other teens to keep coming to the…ummm…I think it’s supposed to be a Boys and Girls Club, but they also seem cool with elderly homeless people hanging out, but it doesn’t seem to be a full shelter? It’s the sort of organization that only existed on 1980s dramas. She also seems to inhabit a statue that was made by an angry widower, who believes he was forsaken by God when his wife died. (Angry teens and faithless ministers? These are the kinds of situations Christmas episodes dream about at night.) But Mary herself shifts between violence and whimsy so often that it’s hard to get a handle on the show’s tone. It’s also worth noting that on this steadfastly science-loving show, the writers went for one of the more overt miracles on 1980s TV. But it wisely keeps MacGyver himself clear of the mystical moments. Mac is all about science, engineering, and duct tape, and suddenly making him believe in supernatural occurrences would be a dent in his character.

 

6. Walker, Texas Ranger, “A Matter of Faith”

Christmas Miracle: Troubled teens are brought back to the Light Side through the aggressive quoting of scripture; a pastor comes out of a coma; a stillborn baby comes back to life.
Who’s Responsible? God, obviously, who is both a Texan and quite possibly a Ranger as far as this show’s concerned.
Why Is It Here? This is the single most over the top, explody, action-sequence-stuffed Christmas episode I’ve ever seen, and it still manages to fit, like, twelve miracles into its 45-minute running time.

Oh man, this Walker special… this combines so many Very Special Plots that it’s difficult to know where to start! Here goes: Evil Santas are robbing banks, and must be roundhouse kicked into submission; one of Walker’s many racially coded gangs breaks into a church to literally steal toys from the toy drive; one gang member menaces the pastor straight into a coma and a former gang member/current youth group leader swears vengeance; another former gang member needs to get his pregnant wife to the hospital (of course they’re named Jose and Maria, who do you think you’re dealing with here?); and nobody knows what to get Walker for Christmas! These plots all come together in a fiery car crash on Christmas Eve, when, mere moments after Walker has talked the youth group leader out of killing the gang leader, Jose crashes his wife and not-quite-born-kid right into the town’s largest Nativity set. Walker roundhouse…wait, no, he delivers the baby like a normal person, but it isn’t breathing! The Texas Rangers, the youth group leader, and the gang leader are all united in prayer for the baby, while at that same moment across town, a different Ranger is praying for the comatose pastor! The baby starts breathing just as the pastor wakes up, and everyone has a merry Christmas.

 

5. Quantum Leap, “A Little Miracle”

Christmas Miracle: A well-timed star inspires a miser!
Who’s Responsible? Gee, Davy…
Why Is It Here? It’s a classic QL episode, doesn’t go full saccharine, and makes great use of Al Calavicci as a Dickensian Ghost.

The episode is literally called “A Little Miracle”! A normal Quantum Leap episode is like the Christmas episode of a regular show, so naturally, their Christmas episode doubles down, giving us a 1960s-era miser, Michael Blake, who is trampling over the rights of the poor. I think this is the only Quantum Leap episode where Sam and Al straight up say that they have to save someone’s soul, which, how exactly does Ziggy quantify that? But whatever, Al plays all the ghosts from A Christmas Carol, and he’s supposed to zap Blake with the star you see in the above picture…but he never does! But the star effect happens anyway! And here, in a commercial that was sadly never turned into a full episode, Sam leaps into Santa Claus himself. Ho ho ho boy.

 

4. Northern Exposure, “Seoul Mates”

Christmas Miracle: Chris in the Morning hears his dog talk.
Who’s Responsible? I think we can chalk this one up to God.
Why Is It Here? As I mention below, it makes me cry. More importantly, it walks a delicate line between poignancy and schmaltz very well, and that’s kind of my jam.

Northern Exposure often edged into magical realist territory, usually by treating either Native Alaskan or Jewish tradition as fact. In their Christmas episode, “Seoul Mates”, they keep things pretty grounded except for one heartbreaking story from KBEHR DJ Chris in the Morning. When Chris was a kid, his mom was gone, his dad was in prison, and he was spending Christmas Eve alone with his dog, Buddy. He waiting up, because he’d heard a story that animals were granted the ability to speak at midnight. And, though he can’t remember exactly what Buddy said, Chris insists that Buddy did speak to him. Miracle? Fuzzy childhood memory? I’m willing to give it a spot on this list, cause this story makes me cry.

 

3. Mystery Science Theater 3000, “Santa Claus”

Miracle: Snow IN SPAAAAAAACE
Who’s Responsible? I think you should really just relax.
Why Is It Here? Mike Nelson always had more issues with being in space than Joel. He was miserable up there, so it’s nice that the show gave him one purely happy moment amongst all the experiments and planet destruction.

In MST3K’s second Christmas episode, Mike and the ‘Bots riff a terrible Mexican film in which Santa battles a demon. At the end of the episode Mike is pining for a Christmas at home in Wisconsin—until Crow, Tom, and Gypsy notice that weird white stuff falling outside the Satellite. How is snow falling in space? Where is it falling from? No one knows, but they all agree it’s a miracle (“A wet miracle, and I ain’t shovelin’ it!” is Crow’s take) and Mike declares a snow day so they can go play. Meanwhile, Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank get to host a battle between Good and Evil when Santa shows up to get revenge on their lunch guest, the demon Pitch.

 

2. Smallville, “Lexmas”

Christmas Miracle: Supes Saves Santa
Who’s Responsible? Suuu-per-mannn
Why Is It Here? Come on, Superman saves Santa from Suicide.

This one is great because there’s an enormous miracle packaged within such a heartbreaking episode. Lex Luthor’s in a coma, and the spirit of his dead mother is showing him the life he can have with Lana if he’ll just be a better person. Wait, that’s not the miracle yet. As the episode unspools, Lex has to make a nearly impossible choice, while unconscious, while his evil dad is running around in the waking world playing God, and Clark makes the difficult decision to celebrate a Kent family Christmas to help Chloe distribute toys to children in a hospital. In the midst of the mystical Luthor storyline, and the “what’s the true meaning of Christmas” Kent storyline, Clark finds a man (who just happens to be dressed as Santa Claus) about to commit suicide rather than live in a world without any Christmas spirit. Naturally, Clark saves him. And obviously, since we’re in TV Miracle territory, the man turns out to be the real Santa Claus. So, Santa not only exists, he suffers from seasonal depression, and oh yeah, Superman saves Christmas.

 

1. The Twilight Zone, “The Night Of The Meek”

Christmas Miracle: There is a real Santa Claus, and he’s one of us!
Who’s responsible? This is left pretty ambiguous. The spirit of Christmas itself? Is that a thing?
Why is it here? A purely subjective reason: I’d love it if Henry Corwin was Santa.

I’m putting this one on top for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s The Twilight Zone. But more importantly, it’s the rare TZ episode that offers a glimmer of hope, both to its characters and its viewers. When depressed department store Santa Henry Corwin discovers a magical bag of holding, he’s able to give everyone he meets the things they truly want. Naturally, people think he might be thief, and remarkably, the show’s universe actually  rewards him for his faith in the Christmas spirit.

 

So what do you all think? Did I miss any of your favorite miracles?

Leah Schnelbach is pretty sure that Walker, Texas Ranger episode is the greatest Christmas miracle she’ll see in her lifetime. Come carol with her on Twitter!

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/22/a-daunting-ice-planet-phantasy-star-ii-replay-part-2/

http://www.tor.com/?p=200068

Phantasy Star II is one of the greatest JRPGs of the 16-bit era. Its first act was sublime and tragic, a narrative arc that pushed the envelope of storytelling while stirring my 12-year old soul. The second act was less endearing, more of a teenage tribulation wrought with grinding than a genre defining experience. Here is the second part of the Phantasy Star II retrospective where I get a little more into the future of humanity.

 

The Sad Fate of Parma

After your party defeats Neifirst, the Climatrol begins to break down and the delicate weather balance established on the planet is completely disrupted. Water is overflowing and the whole continent will flood unless you go open up the four colored dams. But you have to learn how to play music first in order to unlock the individual dams using lyrical keys.

The musician who teaches you, Ustvestia, will actually charge your male companions less than the women. His reasoning is that: “He looks cute.” The dialogue was changed for Western audiences and Ustvestia says instead, “He looks smart,” though the price reduction remains. I really liked Ustvestia for making the entire soundtrack available to you by actually performing them live. This great video breaks down why Sega Genesis songs are so memorable, in part attributed to the existence of two audio chips working in conjunction to produce some of the most unique melodies in gaming. I used to plug in earphones in the headphone jack on the Genesis console to listen to the music in full stereo. Phantasy Star II has one of the best soundtracks on the Sega Genesis from the intensity of Pressure to the pivotal boss battle music of Death Place drawing on the opening Phantasy track.

While all the monsters have been vanquished after Neifirst’s defeat, a robot army has been unleashed to take you down (where were they when all the monsters were out of control?). This is where your party member, Kain, a “wrecker” comes in handy as his techniques specialize in robotic extermination.

But an even more valuable party member provides what is probably the most important item of the game. Shir is a thief; unlike most games where thieving happens in battle, she steals randomly from shopkeepers in town, purloining a combination of valuables and rare items. If you strengthen her to level 10 and take her to the baggage claim in the Central Tower, she will steal the visiphone, which lets you save anywhere at anytime (except during battles). For what might be the most difficult JRPG of the 16-bit era, the portable saving system was a godsend. Add to that the fact that Shir is the fastest character in your party, and she’s arguably the most underrated member of your group. Armed with the visiphone, the dams seem much more manageable as you make your way through them. Unfortunately, after you release all four to relieve the flooding, your reward is to be taken captive by a trio of Army Eye sentry robots.

You’re imprisoned in a space satellite called Gaira, stripped of your items and unable to use any techniques. Laser rings restrain motion and painful beams restrict access. The government informs you that you’re here until they carry out their death sentence. Rolf’s vulnerability and weakness is moving in the scene as he declares, “I tried to open the dams because I felt responsible for making too much rain fall, but I was caught. I don’t want to die here not even knowing who was trying to destroy Mota by using the Mother Brain.” Your party has to flee from every fight or they will be overpowered and killed. I’ve written about being helpless and defenseless in games, and this section of Phantasy Star II would be right up there on the list. Just when things seem like they can’t get worse, an explosion rocks the craft and you start plummeting towards the planet of Parma. You hear a burst before everything fades.

Fortunately, you’re not dead yet. But you dream the same nightmare that has haunted you from the opening cutscene. A woman you don’t recognize is fighting against an evil force. When you wake up, a space pirate named Tyler informs you that he saved you just in the nick of time. The satellite you were on collided with Parma (also called Palm or Palma interchangeably throughout the series) and destroyed it. The main planet of the first Phantasy Star and the biggest center of civilization in the star system is gone.

After Nei’s death, I didn’t think anything could make me feel worse. Parma’s destruction did just that. I couldn’t get the question out of my head: did my actions precipitate its destruction? The government was saying so, but were they just trying to put the blame on me? I talked about the implications of reptilian genocide in the Chrono Trigger retrospective. I felt much more conflicted in this instance because even though I hadn’t visited Palm, with the Reptites, at least they were my enemies. I felt devastated that I had both caused the death of millions and prevented it from happening. It’s the Alderaan moment of Phantasy Star and the Kefka moment from Final Fantasy VI combined. I wished I could crawl into a corner somewhere and hide. But a robot army was after us and the party had no choice but to go on the run to the second planet in the Algo Star System, Dezo.

 

Dances with Dezorians

Dezo is desperate, an ice planet that is as brutally cold and desolate as the sense of guilt that wracked me. The first destination on the planet is the spaceport of Skure, an abandoned station that is infested with monsters. You land your ship without any idea of where you’re going or what you’re supposed to do. The order in how you approach the rest of the game is left in your hands. Just as Mota was all about guiding you from one tubed bridge to the next, Dezo is the opposite, being almost open-world. The sudden freedom is daunting.

The Dezorians are a counter-Mother Brain society. They have rejected the utopian perfection of Mota, believing an over reliance on technology will lead to a civilization’s decline. They worship the holy fire of the eclipse torch which unfortunately seems less comforting than an all knowing AI. In many science fiction or fantasy tales, the Dezorians would probably represent a different type of ideal a la Avatar or Dances with Wolves, an alternative that is more appealing in some way (usually being in tune with nature). But living with the Dezorians feels worse than life back on Mota, and the alien civilization reminds me why I wished Mother Brain was in control. I hated wandering the unforgiving Tundra of Dezo.

When I finally discovered a city, I couldn’t understand a word they said as they spoke a different language (this site tries to decipher the Dezorian language, also revealing that its native name is duTorus^oor buvikvaa). The only way to understand it is to get a universal translator in the form of a Mogic Cap. If you mistakenly get the Magic Cap instead, shopkeepers will charge double the normal price and the citizens will be more deceptive and aggressive.

I wandered the cities, disappointed by the lack of any discernible culture amongst the Dezorians. They seemed like religious automatons spitting back gibberish someone somewhere told them they should say. “The Palm people were punished because they didn’t take good care of the eclipse-torch,” one Dezorian citizen claims, a ridiculously righteous and judgmental thing to say after an entire planet has been annihilated.

 

Tedious Questing as Atonement

Dezo essentially amounts to a snowy hub where you undergo multiple fetch quests while combating an interminable onslaught of monsters. I made my way through as quickly as I could. Quickly, of course, is a relative term, as you’ll be fighting enemies every step of the way. In the first part of the retrospective, I mentioned I have Phantasy Star II in the Genesis collection for GBA and PS2. For the purposes of this walkthrough, I used an emulator and turned off random encounters for long stretches. Even then, it took me a long time to navigate Skure and the Crevice as I kept on getting lost and running into dead-ends.

It was almost by accident that I finally reached the Esper Mission, a place whispered about by suspicious Dezorians. There, I met Lutz, one of the main characters from the first Phantasy Star. After waking from his hibernation, he informs you that in order to prepare for the final battle, you need to collect all the Nei weapons. He sends you off to tackle the four dungeons with the hardest enemies in the game.

The story revelations in the second act are disappointing. Lutz informs you that he saved you during a space mission when you were young and an accident killed your parents. It also turns out you’re the descendant of Phantasy Star’s heroine, Alis, though its significance was lost on me as I hadn’t played the first game at the time. Unfortunately, these two revelations are never mentioned again and a part of me has wondered if cartridge memory restrictions prevented further exploration of Rolf’s origins.

As for the Nei treasures you have to find, I initially thought your fallen companion, Nei, had left the special equipment for you, giving the journey a special significance. Admittedly, it didn’t make sense how she could place these weapons in four separate dungeons a whole planet away. But I didn’t question it back then. Just recently, I learned Nei means “ancient” which makes more sense although it decreases the emotional impact of the quest. The four dungeons are meant as a rite of passage for the heroes. Each of them are twisted labyrinths, mind numbingly difficult and complex. There’s a mix of gothic statues, genetically engineered trees, and antiquated architecture designed to get you lost, whether through the hole-ridden depths of Ikuto or the wing-like array of Menobe.

There’s no way to get around it. This whole middle section of the game isn’t very fun. There’s almost no redeeming nature to it and it felt like punishment for failing to save Parma. I was in an alien Siberia, paying one random battle after another. Even if it was atonement for my failure to save the Parmans, the whole process was tedious and RSI-inducing.

You need a whole lot of patience and endurance to collect all the Nei weapons, even though it’s never specified what lies beyond. Rolf is driven by his desire to learn the truth and prevent a Parma-like catastrophe happening to anyone else. But it’s an arduous road. This is the part where most of my friends gave up and put the cartridge away, even with the invaluable hint guide helping them. Understandably so as the second act is extremely difficult. At the same time, it’s unfortunate because if they had persisted, their redemption would have climaxed in one of the best concluding acts in gaming history.

Peter Tieryas is the author of United States of Japan (Angry Robot, 2016) and Bald New World (JHP Fiction, 2014). His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Kotaku, Tor.com, and ZYZZYVA. He dreams of utopias at @TieryasXu.

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Helen Lowe, is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013 and Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night Series, Book Three) is forthcoming in January 2016. Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we.

by Helen Lowe

In “Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World” I am shining a spotlight on my favorite Fantasy heroines, not only revealing who they are but why I believe they kick butt and take names as characters.

To give just a little background, Teresa Frohock’s Miserere: An Autumn Tale is centered in Woerld, which is one of four interconnected realms of existence: our Earth and Woerld, Heaven and Hell. Woerld is the battleground in which fighting orders based on all of Earth’s religions battle to contain the hordes of Hell , which are constantly striving to break out, overwhelming first Woerld and then Earth, with the ultimate objective of retaking Heaven.

When I first read Miserere, I wrote to Teresa afterward that it was a story which “spoke to my heart.” The character that spoke to me most strongly in that respect was Judge Rachael Boucher, whose former lover betrayed her, abandoning her to Hell and possession by a demon. When the story opens, we learn that although Rachael escaped Hell, she is still fighting the demon’s possession—a fight that is now balanced on a knife edge since no exorcism throughout the subsequent years has been able to expel it:

“She was slipping. A tendril of fear burrowed into her heart; she killed it before it could take root. Fools whined.”

This early quote illuminates Rachael’s character: she is staunch—and tough as an old tree root. She has to be, because otherwise she would not have withstood the demon this long, but also because the possession means that she is effectively outcast in her own community. Shortly after the book opens, she is dispatched shortly to finally bring in the former lover who betrayed her. Yet all the while:

“The Wyrm scratched against the back of her mind, rapping, tapping, seeking a way into her so it could use her for its own, but she cried aloud…and drove it back.”

Rachael isn’t just staunch in spirit, she is also a fighter:

“Rachael shrieked like a demon and just before Speight’s horse could run her down … [her] blade bit deep, and the animal screamed. The forward motion of the horse dragged Rachael for several feet, then Speight’s mount went down … Rachael rose like a spirit to drag [Speight’s] head down and plunge her knife into his throat.”

Yet the reason Rachael spoke to my heart as a character is not only because of her fierce courage, but because she tempers it with self-discipline:

“…for one blind moment she wanted to run him through with her sword … For once she wanted to let the rage she harbored in her heart give her license to kill. But she didn’t.”

Not only does Rachael not give in to rage or the desire for revenge, she is forced to trust her judgment in almost impossible circumstances—when it seems her former lover may not be the traitor after all and she must rely on his help to expel the wyrm:

“She looked at Lucian, tears of blood streamed down her face … and mouthed, Help me. Her body convulsed…”

The title of the book, Miserere, “have mercy”, is also a clue to its theme, particularly in terms of Rachael and Lucian’s difficult backstory. But although Rachael’s final judgment in terms of that past may be to “have mercy”, it is not an out pass for the real betrayal that occurred.

“ ‘Love doesn’t cure everything.’ She signed and rubbed the patch over her missing eye. ‘We can’t go back to the way we were before all this happened.’ ”

I’ve posted on my concerns about re apparently “consequence-free” fiction before, so I am pleased that Miserere does not fall into that trap. This is entirely consistent with Rachael’s character. Part of her strength is that she feels deeply, so the betrayal of love, as well as redemption of that betrayal and the love itself, is not something that will be glossed over lightly. Quite aside from her role as a Woerld judge and having to remain true to that calling regardless of her personal concerns.

Staunch of arm and of spirit, but also self-disciplined and willing to trust her own judgment against the odds; not least, merciful: small wonder that the character of Rachael Boucher spoke to my heart. In fact, she downright rocked my world.

The post Helen Lowe on the Fantasy Heroines That Rock Her World: Rachael Boucher in Teresa Frohock’s MISERERE: AN AUTUMN TALE appeared first on SF Signal
Copyright © SF Signal

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1. Lots of debate in this MR comment thread between Campbell, Spolaore, and Wacziarg.  Fireworks.

2. Many consumers can’t pick the right health insurance plan, paper here.

3. Tom Sietsema rates America’s ten best food cities, I say LA is number one, in any case I am happy to see NYC downgraded.

4. Tracking down Jimmy Page the holdout.  And the Ewoks are dead: all of them.

5. Why 2015 is the tale of two shipping sectors.

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http://scienceblog.com/?p=479850

Researchers at the University of Georgia found that pathogens, like salmonella, can survive for at least six months in cookies and crackers. The recent study was prompted by an increased number of outbreaks of foodborne diseases linked to low-water-activity, or dry, foods. Larry Beuchat, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and researcher in the UGA College of […]

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http://scienceblog.com/?p=479852

All over the planet, every day, oceans send plumes of sea spray into the atmosphere. Beyond the poetry of crashing ocean waves, this salt- and carbon-rich spray has a dramatic effect on the formation and duration of clouds. Yes, clouds, which cover 60 percent of the Earth’s surface at any given time. In a new […]

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/12/22/note-today-is-my-last-productive-day-of-the-year/

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Which is to say that if you have any outstanding business with me for 2015, you’ll want to let me know about it today, because starting tomorrow and through to Monday, January 4, I am off the business clock and any outstanding business will be unceremoniously punted into 2016.

With that said: People still waiting to hear back on January Big Idea slots: Don’t panic (and don’t send me a raft of reminders today), they’re in process.

Inasmuch as I think most people who can have already clocked out for the year, businesswise, this will not be a hardship on anyone.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert says “Access to sex is strictly controlled by the women.”

Maybe if you’re Scott Adams. I’ve turned down sex.

And I don’t think I’m unusual in that; I’ve turned down sex because I was in other commitments at the time, I’ve turned down sex because I was tired, I’ve turned down sex because I found the woman unattractive.

I’m not gonna say I turn down sex all the time, but… it happens.

Yet I think there’s this narrative in Western Society that men are these poon-seeking beasts who would hump a dead moose in a bathroom if you slapped a lady-mask on it. Every guy? Wants every girl. All the time. The “Harry met Sally” model, if you will.

And because we’re saturated in that concept of men being sex-crazed beasts, we obscure the times when men do turn down sex. If a guy doesn’t want to have sex with a willing girl, there’s something wrong with him – that guy’s clearly a pussy, right? Or the girl must have something so terminally wrong with her that it’s actually a defect in her character – she’s too ugly, she’s too loose, she’s too something.

If you’re saving yourself for marriage, you’re some kind of brainwashed religious nut.

If you’re too tired and just want to get some sleep, you must be low on testosterone, it’s a medical condition.

If you’re a demisexual who’s only turned on by personality and a mere body doesn’t flip your switches without context, man, that’s crazy.

Because we all know a real guy would fuck a rolling donut if he got the chance, amiright?

What’s happening here is that there’s a narrative that “women control the sex”… And so the times men control the sex get quietly erased. Either there’s a good excuse why the guy shouldn’t have had sex, or the refusal is presented as a man with a problem.

Which would be fine on some level, except this narrative of “women are the gateway to sex, and they’re always *stopping* us” leads to resentment from certain strains of men. They’re taught that women are like some sort of stingy stockbroker millionaire who could pay their mortgage but just won’t – and as a result, women become an obstacle. The reason they’re not having sex? Women. Women are selfish, women are hypercritical…

Women are the problem.

And that leads to a stagnation among that strain of men. They don’t ask the necessary questions like, “What do I bring to the table? What makes me compelling enough to have sex with? How can I improve myself to make the women I find attractive attracted to me in return?”

No. It just degrades into a seething feeling that women somehow owe them sex, and all the times the men don’t want to have sex with someone are, well, different. Somehow.

All that is in quiet opposition to a more sane model that says, “People turn down sex for all sorts of reasons, and nobody is obligated to have sex with you.” I suspect if Scott Adams were societally obliged to have sex with all the gay men who were attracted to him, he’d suddenly switch to the traditional woman’s perspective and complain that he didn’t want to get pounded in the butt by Chuck Tingle.

None of this is to erase the very real reality that women do turn down sex more, of course. They do. But that might not be because women don’t want sex, it might be a combination of “a random guy is likely to suck in bed” and “I’m worried this guy might get too attached and start stalking me.”

But that doesn’t matter. It should be okay if women want sex for different reasons than men do, or even want sex less. The point is that everyone should be able to turn down sex for whatever reason they desire, and that should not turned into some sort of battle scenario where “The person who turns down sex is controlling the supply of a resource that should be FREE TO ALL!”

I get the frustration. There are all sorts of people I’d like to have sex with who don’t want to have sex with me. That happens.

But I think for most men, if they look at it honestly, there are people they turned down sex with as well – because they were the wrong gender, because they were the wrong body type, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Phrasing these refusals as “controlling access” implies that your body is like a computer, where every resource should be available to the collective unless there are good reasons to restrict it.  Whereas the truth is that your body is owned by a conscious human being, and you are not an unmoderated comments section where any idiot can come in and do whatever they please whenever they want.

It’s not wrong when you turn down sex. And it shouldn’t be wrong for anyone else.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/515972.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.