I apologise in advance for the shortness and poor quality of these journal entries, as I have been ill over the last few days- doesn't make for interesting reading, and I'm still a little groggy. I'll try my best, but unfortunately it won't be to my highest standards.
January 3rd 1912
After the chaos of the holiday season, today was to be a day of rest. I eagerly awaited the postman in the hopes of receiving the new games I had ordered, but to no avail. Instead I settled on spending the day observing my simulacrums going about their daily lives- I have named them after the characters from the fantasy games I play, and some of the similarities are striking. Admittedly they are little more than a glorified flea circus, and it's like watching ants or brine shrimp, but still fascinating and enough for me to lose track of time- before I know it, the day has passed me by.
January 4th 1912
Determined to have a more productive day than yesterday, we decided to head to the city to spend more of the money I received for Christmas. Before that, however, the postman arrived bearing the games I had been awaiting- one is about pirates and nobles from the medieval era, and the other is a tactical war game featuring various fantastic creatures. I shall enjoy playing them once I finish this journal entry. We headed to the city despite my desire to play with my new toys, as I was in desperate need of a new coat- was being the most important word of that sentence, as I found one after seemingly hours of shopping around. The fashions are most definitely changing for the worse, but I managed to find a coat similar to those worn in the Dickensian times of several decades past. It did prove rather costly, but ultimately worth it at £1/8/- from Debenham and Freebody (or just Debenhams, as I should be calling it now). It was also nice to treat ourselves to some Hamburg style beef with french fried onions, a tasty combination from the self-proclaimed 'Hamburg King'.
January 5th 1912
Most annoyingly, today I have fallen ill. Not much more than a sore throat at the moment, though it will no doubt worsen. Luckily, I have my new games to play and the last of my Christmas money to spend- I shall mail order my new writing apparatus, as having seen some of the selection at the market I now have some idea of what I want. We also took down the Christmas decorations today, as it is said to be bad luck to leave them up after Epiphany tomorrow. We also received the pleasure of hearing the story of Nausicaa again this afternoon, an interesting tale of a girl caught in a battle between humans and nature.
January 6th 1912
Still ill, with the added ailment of a bleeding tongue- I was told it would help my sore throat to suck on a boiled sweet, though when there was little left then the jagged edge sliced my tongue. Not very pleasant, to say the least. Regardless, we did some grocery shopping today and whilst we were out then the lady in front of us spilt her milk- not particularly interesting (certainly no use crying over it!), though it was quite shocking to see the incompetence of the shopkeeper dealing with the matter, as my partner had to step in to help clean up! On returning home, I was introduced to yet another new game- a theoretical exercise in breeding animals. Named 'Ovipets', the game has no real goal other than that which you set- commonly to breed a creature with the purest colour, done by assigning colours a code and when you breed two creatures together, you find the halfway point between colour codes, then add a bit of variation for natural selection, which can be done with a dice. It's simple once you learn it, yet surprisingly addictive.
January 7th 1912
Today I was woken by the Bible Student movement. Normally, I would not mind dealing with them and hearing about their theories about the end of the world in a couple of years time, but I'm still ill and have no time for them. Luckily one of our neighbours got talking to them, enough to let me slip away back to bed for a couple of hours- not that it did much good as I had to keep getting up to have a glass of milk in the hopes of soothing my throat. We were also supposed to play our weekly fantasy game tonight, but as it's the game I'm running and I'm in no fit state to be talking constantly for six hours then we had to pass on it. One of my friends came regardless as he did not receive our message, and we had a good enough time, mostly speculating on what would happen in the event of the dead coming back to life. Interesting the subject should be brought up on the same day as the religious visit.
January 8th 1912
Another quiet day at home, as my illness worsens. As some consolation, my partner baked some cupcakes which are unlikely to last long, and we heard another story about a boy and a girl who create their own fantasy world. Unfortunately the girl died, and the story mostly dealt with the boy's feelings of loss. It was quite sad, definitely not what we were expecting, but enjoyable nonetheless.
January 9th 1912
My sore throat is starting to fade, but in it's place is a light-headedness. Today's treat was a milk-shake, and my writing apparatus arrived! I can't wait to try it out, but today I just don't feel well enough. Hopefully the worst has passed, and I will make some recovery tomorrow.
Showing posts with label apocalypse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apocalypse. Show all posts
Monday, 9 January 2012
Friday, 6 January 2012
Religious Musings
This following blog will be regarding religion, a touchy subject for many but I'll try not to offend anyone on my third post on this site... Mostly this will just be speculative fiction, with lots of 'what if's.
These friday blogs are primarily meant to be annotations on my other blogs, particularly my wednesday blog, the last of which had strong religious themes that don't necessarily reflect my true opinion. In reality, the gods in my story were used as a narrative device and I don't intend on them featuring any other time in my story, apart from perhaps next week when I explain the origins of the more fantastic races in my setting.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that my story is set in the future of this world, and although I mention that humanity had lost it's faith, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise at the present time when the news is dominated by stories of muslim terrorists, american extreme christians, and mayan prophecies; but as explored in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, many worship technologies and tradition for traditions sake rather than the core philosophies of respective religions and their origins.
It is implied that every God that exists or has ever existed is present in my setting, with appearances from the big bearded man in the sky to the warriors dripping with blood in the jungles, and everything in between. However, if a god is truly omnipotent then they could easily manifest themselves as all of these at once, and could just be doing it as a point that no religion can be proved or disproved, so forget about the man and concentrate on the idea. Generally a good idea for those that believe in goodwill to all men and being generally nice to each other, not so much for those that believe god must be appeased with regular ritual sacrifice. I hope that this is the message that whatever god there is in reality wants to be conveyed, and the fact I just received a large tax rebate may enforce the fact that they approve of me acting prophet... Although I am also ill at the moment as well as having cut my tongue on a throat lozenge, so perhaps not.
I also believe that the humans' response to this is entirely within the realms of probability. I can't see everyone accepting that all religions are true, and there will be hundreds of people trying to dismiss it as some form of propaganda or aliens or something. I see no flaw in the gods' method- surely everyone will unite in peace and harmony if they see that in a way, everyone's right so we can get on with life. But humans are unpredictable, and we know it would instead cause chaos, which could well be why no gods have revealed their presence thus far in real life. In my experience, atheists are stubborn and would dismiss it as a hoax, agnostics wouldn't know what to believe with everything going on, and believers wouldn't want to admit they wasted their lives believing in something false- perhaps making them the most dangerous, as they try to make up for the things they were forbidden to do in their previous belief system.
Another product of all gods existing simultaneously, or being one and the same, would mean that the 'evil' gods still exist too which is where the apocalyptic aspect comes in. Think of all those blood-soaked jungle gods, Loki, Set, and the various destroyers all rolled into one and how they would respond to being ignored by humans- especially once the 'good' gods have allowed them to do as they wish. I see the gods as wanting to create a clean slate, meaning exterminating the parasites currently infesting the planet- though those level-headed enough to believe the evidence in front of their own eyes would be spared, much like Noah (the similarities have only just struck me...). In this new world, the animals without a voice would have their place as well- it has long been thought that those that can't object either lack the capacity to know what is happening, or don't care, but I do not believe this is the case which is why another fundamental theme of all my stories is giving animals a voice. Not all embrace this gift, as you will see next week, but will those that learn of their new power use it as intended, to speak out against oppression and express their gratitude in words, or abuse it to take control as humans once did?
At this point, I feel the need to say that I'm not an insane animal rights campaigner, and that many animals look like they do enjoy being around humans (dogs, cats, horses etc.) and some look like they probably do lack the mental faculties to experience the pain that we would feel in their situation (cows, fish etc.). But that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.
I'm not sure what else I can add without offending people, so I'll leave with my own religious belief. I'm not affiliated with any organised religion, as they have all done wrong in the past and any religion that worships 'human' prophets isn't for me- whether the prophet is Jesus, Mohammed, the Dalai Lama, or whatever. There may well be a god or many gods, but they have a whole universe to run and probably aren't concerned with a tiny insignificant race on a small blue planet. As it is, I'm content to believe that the universe just sort of happened, but am happy to speculate on the possibility of gods.
On wednesday next week, I will continue the origin story with how my fantasy races came to be, and friday I will hopefully enlighten you on real-world origins of some fantasy creatures and why I picked them for my novel.
These friday blogs are primarily meant to be annotations on my other blogs, particularly my wednesday blog, the last of which had strong religious themes that don't necessarily reflect my true opinion. In reality, the gods in my story were used as a narrative device and I don't intend on them featuring any other time in my story, apart from perhaps next week when I explain the origins of the more fantastic races in my setting.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that my story is set in the future of this world, and although I mention that humanity had lost it's faith, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise at the present time when the news is dominated by stories of muslim terrorists, american extreme christians, and mayan prophecies; but as explored in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, many worship technologies and tradition for traditions sake rather than the core philosophies of respective religions and their origins.
It is implied that every God that exists or has ever existed is present in my setting, with appearances from the big bearded man in the sky to the warriors dripping with blood in the jungles, and everything in between. However, if a god is truly omnipotent then they could easily manifest themselves as all of these at once, and could just be doing it as a point that no religion can be proved or disproved, so forget about the man and concentrate on the idea. Generally a good idea for those that believe in goodwill to all men and being generally nice to each other, not so much for those that believe god must be appeased with regular ritual sacrifice. I hope that this is the message that whatever god there is in reality wants to be conveyed, and the fact I just received a large tax rebate may enforce the fact that they approve of me acting prophet... Although I am also ill at the moment as well as having cut my tongue on a throat lozenge, so perhaps not.
I also believe that the humans' response to this is entirely within the realms of probability. I can't see everyone accepting that all religions are true, and there will be hundreds of people trying to dismiss it as some form of propaganda or aliens or something. I see no flaw in the gods' method- surely everyone will unite in peace and harmony if they see that in a way, everyone's right so we can get on with life. But humans are unpredictable, and we know it would instead cause chaos, which could well be why no gods have revealed their presence thus far in real life. In my experience, atheists are stubborn and would dismiss it as a hoax, agnostics wouldn't know what to believe with everything going on, and believers wouldn't want to admit they wasted their lives believing in something false- perhaps making them the most dangerous, as they try to make up for the things they were forbidden to do in their previous belief system.
Another product of all gods existing simultaneously, or being one and the same, would mean that the 'evil' gods still exist too which is where the apocalyptic aspect comes in. Think of all those blood-soaked jungle gods, Loki, Set, and the various destroyers all rolled into one and how they would respond to being ignored by humans- especially once the 'good' gods have allowed them to do as they wish. I see the gods as wanting to create a clean slate, meaning exterminating the parasites currently infesting the planet- though those level-headed enough to believe the evidence in front of their own eyes would be spared, much like Noah (the similarities have only just struck me...). In this new world, the animals without a voice would have their place as well- it has long been thought that those that can't object either lack the capacity to know what is happening, or don't care, but I do not believe this is the case which is why another fundamental theme of all my stories is giving animals a voice. Not all embrace this gift, as you will see next week, but will those that learn of their new power use it as intended, to speak out against oppression and express their gratitude in words, or abuse it to take control as humans once did?
At this point, I feel the need to say that I'm not an insane animal rights campaigner, and that many animals look like they do enjoy being around humans (dogs, cats, horses etc.) and some look like they probably do lack the mental faculties to experience the pain that we would feel in their situation (cows, fish etc.). But that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.
I'm not sure what else I can add without offending people, so I'll leave with my own religious belief. I'm not affiliated with any organised religion, as they have all done wrong in the past and any religion that worships 'human' prophets isn't for me- whether the prophet is Jesus, Mohammed, the Dalai Lama, or whatever. There may well be a god or many gods, but they have a whole universe to run and probably aren't concerned with a tiny insignificant race on a small blue planet. As it is, I'm content to believe that the universe just sort of happened, but am happy to speculate on the possibility of gods.
On wednesday next week, I will continue the origin story with how my fantasy races came to be, and friday I will hopefully enlighten you on real-world origins of some fantasy creatures and why I picked them for my novel.
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