On Monday, November 17, 1997 3:57 PM, Ranma Al'Thor wrote:
On Sun, 16 Nov 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:
Well, that's it. This story is not like a Davies or a Biles... er, I
mean
it's not like a story written by Davies or Biles... but heck, like I
said,
I had a lot of fun with it. ^_^
Not so different as you might think :)
Doesn't hold a candle to "Dance of Shiva". :)
She finished up and looked at him. Years had melted from her. Now she
looked no older than sixteen. Yet it was still her, still the woman
who
Interesting.
(One way to make sense of that shot with them all standing on the cliff
over the city and none of them have aged except Serenity.)
That's exactly the scene that compelled me to write it this way. It just
didn't make sense that the Sailors all looked sixteen despite the passage
of many years.
It all ties into some bizarre anime rule for women. Not yet married/no
kids? Sixteenish. Married, a couple of kids? Mid-twenties, maybe a young
thirty, though without any sagging or wrinkles. Over fifty? Cologne.
Splendor, Ranma reflected, was a word he had known the meaning of but
had
never used to describe anything. The throne room was the living
embodiment
of the word. It seemed to be carved entirely of crystal. Light pulsed
at
irregular intervals through the crystal, leaving pleasant little chimes
in
its wake. Trees grew right out of the floor, forming an aisle that
lead to
the throne. They were green and beautiful and birds sang in them.
Ranma
gaped up at them, mesmerized.
I wish I had a picture of this :)
Me too. I truly I wish I had any drawing ability whatsoever. I'd love to
try and illustrate some of my stories.
How's your drawing coming along, John? Got anything you can scan in?
"Well, you did mention light and happiness. All has been peaceful
since
the evil was defeated. We've begun to revitalize the rest of the Ea
rth.
We call this period the Silver Millenium. It has proved to be ample
reward for the people who suffered through the years past."
The Silver Millenium was the time of the Moon Kingdom. I believe Crystal
Tokyo is the Crystal Millenium (Or it may not have an age name. can't
remember)
Oops. Didn't know this.
I don't know why, but too many paragraphs in a row here started with
Ranma's name for my tastes. This is something I do myself a lot, now I
understand why people chew on my head for it :)
Yeah, I know. I do this far too often. I try to catch myself, but I don't
always. :)
Ranma winced. "I, uh could use that power. I don't if I can take many
more like that."
I don't know if
D'oh!
Feel free to disagree with my interpretation of the old Queen's
actions.
Sure seemed like the equivalent of setting off a nuclear bomb in order
to
keep the enemy from having your city. We are told so little about the
attack of the Negaverse on the Moon Kingdom that there's not a lot of
data
to extrapolate from, but it sure seems to me that the ol'
super-powerful
Queen shoulda done something *before* her daughter was zapped by Beryl.
Well, despite the fact that SM uses the crystal like a mad dog :), I have
the impression that the use of it was something that was not normally
contemplated. As long as there was hope of winning by less destructive
means, she held back. But given a lack of evidence, your interp. is as
good as mine.
Yeah, I understand. I just wonder at what point the old Queen should have
gone past that restriction. The war seemed a lost cause long before the
Queen nuked the moon. The only thing I can think of is that the crystal is
an all-or-nothing weapon. Much like a nuclear bomb, in fact. The thing
that argues against this is the fact that Serena was able to use it at
non-lethal levels many times.
So I dunno. It's certainly open to speculation. It's just always
disturbed me on a fundamental level that the old Queen thought that the
only way to save her people was to destroy them and allow a select few to
be reborn.
That's not the problem I have with this story, it's the idea of
"Conservation of Evil" which bothers me. In a universe in which such was
true, all human striving to improve the world would be futile, for if you
solved one problem, you would only, and always create another one. It
also conflates natural evil (Earthquakes, fires, floods) and human/moral
evil. If you did have progress in fighting natural evil (which clearly
has occurred in at least some respects in our century), then you would
have to lose ground somewhere else.
If evil is TRULY conserved, then every advance you make has to occur at
someone else's expense. By helping someone, you would have to hurt
someone else.
Ultimately, this story is a tragedy. Serenity saves her soul at the
expense of humanity. If evil is truly conserved, then all human striving
is futile. No matter what our heroes and heroines did, they could not
win, for any victory would have to be balanced by defeat in something
else.
Or am I misunderstanding your point?
Hmm. How to put this.
It's not so much that there must always be as much evil as good. Those
philosophies have always bothered me, too. It's that Serena's method of
dealing with evil - by making sure no one ever feels pain, ever - is not
the right way of diminishing evil. Part of it is my belief in the
fundamental right of everyone to *choose*. We must be allowed to choose
evil, if we want. Serena was depriving people of that choice, and I
believe that's wrong. Of course, we can always hope to create a world
where no one will ever choose to do evil, where being good is the only
reasonable thing to do. But creating a world where the choice is removed -
that's evil in and of itself. That's kind of the point "Brave New World"
and "1984" were making.
I probably didn't state that very well in my pontificating. :)
Side note:
My own vision of Crystal Tokyo is that of a society in which the problem
of physical evil has been solved, but not that of moral evil. Moral evil
is less of a problem, because some needs and wants that drive people to
immoral actions are more easily met in moral ways. Eventually, I'll get
around to writing Black Moon Rising, which will actually set this vision
out. All I have to do is finish my 20000 other projects...:)
Heh. Well, when you get to it, I'd find that a *very* interesting vision
to read about. When you get the other 1,999 projects out of the way. :)
John Walter Biles
Thanks for the thought-provoking C&C, John.
-Richard
sterman@sprynet.com
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