In which strange things are afoot at the Circle K...

Things are happening at the moment.  Some of them I can't talk about, not least because those are the ones where I don't actually know what's going on myself.  I have my suspicions, but they're so wildly implausible that I'm sure I must be wrong.

But I didn't just come here to be intentionally mysterious.  There are things that I can talk about, like the fact that I'm about to start learning to support some new stuff at work.  We're being given stuff to do with Enterprise Service Bus, TIBCO and XMLM messaging.  It all seems a bit daunting at the moment, but then it's not been that long since I was having to learn COBOL from scratch, so I'm sure I can handle it.  And it all ties in nicely to my team's general conviction that we're the only ones who actually get stuff done.

Also new is the cat that's currently curled up asleep on the sofa next to me.  I'd take a picture, but he's solid black so photographs don't come out well, especially when his eyes are closed.  His name is Garrus, he's about three and a half, and he is the Softest Cat Ever.  Soft as in his fur, but he's also extremely placid and fond of company.  We acquired him from a friend who's about to move to Sweden and can't take him along.

Last but not least, I have multiple stories out acquiring rejections these days.  I've got quite a fine collection that I'm lovingly curating.  So far, only one story has been a disappointment and actually got itself accepted somewhere...

Yes, that's right, I'm having a story properly published.  It will be appearing in the very first issue of Shoreline of Infinity, which is due out next month.  Clearly fame and fortune beckon from here on in.  I'd be up for a Hugo next year if I hadn't foolishly made the protagonist a Japanese woman...

In which I actually get stuff done, for once

I've been writing a lot just lately. My laptop is positively bursting with stories. That's pretty unusual for me, so I've been musing on the reasons in the hope of sustaining it.

A goodly portion of the credit (blame?) has to go to the folks in the Sort-Of-NaNo-Based-Writing-Group. Having finally succeeded in keeping things going outside of November, it means there are people who want to know what I've written lately, and who keep throwing out writing prompts. Turns out all I ever needed to write a short story was for somebody to give me a title.

Then there's the COBOL factory. No, it's not also stuffed with writers (to the best of my knowledge), but one should never underestimate the power of one's mental state on writing, or of the day job on one's mental state. I'm finally in a job that I love, that challenges me, and that I'm genuinely good at. That feeling spills over into other things. Kicking ass at work makes me want to kick more ass when I get home.

Last but not least, there's the Mighty Power of Procrastination. Writing is a wonderful way of putting off other things. Specifically at the moment there's a jacket I should be sewing together. I'm just putting it off because I foolishly decided to go off-pattern and put proper pockets in it. I don't have a lot of experience of making pockets, so there's a real danger that I'll ruin the whole thing. I'll get around to it eventually, but in the mean time I'm putting it off by writing All the Stories.

Maybe this habit will continue, maybe it won't, but I'll be making the most of it while it lasts. There are stories to write, stories to edit (when my beta-readers get back to me, at least. The trouble with writing more is it leads to demanding more feedback), and if all else fails there's a novel to work on.

*puts on Boots of +3 to Ass-Kicking*

In which I dabble with cosplay

I've never been much of a cosplay person. Partly that may be because I can count the number of conventions I've been to on the fingers of one finger, but there are other reasons. A dislike of people looking at me. An aversion to spending money on something that can only be worn on specific occasions. An overwhelming fear of dressing up only to discover that nobody else has. I'm in awe of those who do cosplay and do it well, but I've never really seen it as something for me.

All of which is, of course, setup for writing about a recent brush with cosplay that I'm actually rather proud of. Many of the issues above didn't apply, because I wasn't the one wearing it. It was a costume for Small Girl, made at her request.

This last weekend, the National Space Centre in Leicester were having a special Doctor Who weekend, and on the Sunday the special guests in attendance were Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. Being the age that I am, I naturally consider them the finest Doctor and Companion ever to grace our screens, and so tickets were acquired to go and check out the event.

The website was encouraging people (and particularly children) to come dressed as their favourite character, and Small Girl does not share my fear of dressing up. Husband suggested that with her hair she should be Amy Pond, but she declared that she wanted to be Ace. That's my girl.

Step One was to acquire the base of the costume. We got lucky and found that Asda were selling 'leather' bomber jackets in their children's clothing section (even if they did shelve them in the 'boys' section). A skirt was easy enough to acquire, and she already had a t-shirt that would work. Bonus points for these all being items she can continue to get use from.

Step Two was to convert the jacket into something more Ace-like. The internet furnished me with a flat image of the logo from the back of the jacket that I could print and use as a template. I already had coloured felt to hand to make the pieces from. Rather than apply them directly to the jacket, I used some spare black cotton fabric as a backing. The felt was appliqued to the cotton using the sewing machine for a good strong finish, then I trimmed away the excess cotton and hand-stitched the pieces to the back of the jacket. That made it easier to position the logo correctly, and ensured the stitching didn't go right through the lining of the jacket. It also minimised the number of holes being made in the leather, keeping the jacket strong.

How does it look? Pretty Ace, actually...

Then it was on to the badges. There was no question of even attempting accuracy here. Achieving an accurate collection of badges involves a lot of time and expenditure, and getting certain ones custom-made. It was never going to happen when I only had two weeks and no desire to spend more money than strictly necessary. Instead I gathered up every badge and patch we already had in the house, plus a couple of extra patches picked up cheaply enough from craft shops. The finished jacket has NaNoWriMo merit badges, Shakespearean insults, Firefly and Monty Python references and some random bands all thrown together in a glorious mashup.

You want badges? She's got badges

So, was it worth it? You betcha. Not only because Small Girl loved it, though that was all I really needed from it. While we were at the exhibition, we attended a Q&A session with Sylvester and Sophie. Despite our sitting right over to one side, amongst a great crowd of people, Sophie spotted Small Girl's costume from the stage and came over specifically to talk to her and compliment the outfit. Seal of approval from Ace herself? Wicked! Hard work paid off in the best possible way, not least in the look on Small Girl's face afterwards.

Maybe I could get to like this cosplay malarkey after all...

Coding and Poetry

It's National Poetry Day, apparently, so I thought I should finally tie up the loose ends from the COBOL poem I posted the other week.  Loose ends like what on earth possessed me to write a poem in COBOL...

It all started with a blog post from Girl on the Net, detailing the filthy things she'd like to do to programmers (link probably NSFW, needless to say).  More power to her elbow, I say, though since I work in an open plan office none of the things she's thinking of would be even remotely feasible.

Anyway, that was where it started.  Following on from that, via the magic of Twitter, I found myself reading an elderly article about poetry in Perl.  And this is where the trouble started.  That article makes a couple of snarky comments about COBOL, like "getting a volunteer to write poetry in COBOL is likely to be impossible."  So what was I supposed to do?  Just let it pass?  No, I couldn't really ignore the gauntlet that had been thrown down, even if it was a gauntlet that only I could see.  So I sat down, and I wrote a COBOL poem, and I posted it on here.  And then I sent it to Girl on the Net and the individual who'd linked to the Perl article, just because.

Don't worry, I'm not about to announce that I've now compiled an entire anthology of poems in COBOL, or in other obscure programming languages.  Though I did write a haiku in Spectrum BASIC while messing around on Twitter:

10 PRINT "Forever"
20 PRINT "I will love you"
30 GOTO 10

Anyone who bothered to look at the comments on the COBOL poem, however, will have seen that I was challenged to write something using Inform 7.  Something that would work as a code poem and as a piece of interactive fiction.  In the end, I wrote two.  Sort of.

See, although Inform 7 is practically English anyway, it's still code.  And it's code designed for a very specific job.  The closest I got to actual poetry in the code wasn't a very good piece of IF; you can examine a couple of things and there's a single command that allows you to win, and that's it.  Otherwise you just expire after about five turns.  It's very poetic and lovely, but it's a bit rubbish to actually play.  The other one managed to be slightly (but only slightly) more engaging as IF, but wasn't much cop as poetry as a result.  To make good IF you need to build a rich environment and then nail down absolutely everything the player might consider doing; poetry works better when you skirt around the edges and hint at things.

So I shan't be posting the results, as interesting a challenge as it was.  They were sent to my challenger, as proof that the challenge had been completed (and since he didn't write anything I win by default!), but they won't be seeing the light of day as poems.  Maybe as IF, if I work on them a little more someday.  Or maybe I'll write something else instead.

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike...

COBOL Poetry

 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

 PROGRAM-ID. POETRY.

*

***********************************************************************

* THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I READ ABOUT PEOPLE WRITING POEMS IN PERL *

* AND THE ARTICLE SUGGESTS NO ONE WOULD EVER WRITE ONE IN COBOL       *

*            CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!                                      *

***********************************************************************

*

 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.

*

 DATA DIVISION.

 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.

*

 01 WONDER-IF-YOU-LOVE-ME  PIC X(1).

      88 YOU-LOVE-ME         VALUE 'Y'.

      88 YOU-LOVE-ME-NOT     VALUE 'N'.

*

 01 MY-BEST-SIDE  PIC X(40) 

                  VALUE 'ALL NEUROSES HIDDEN SO YOU WILL LOVE ME.'.

*

 PROCEDURE DIVISION.

*

 HOW-TO-MAKE-YOU-LOVE-ME.

*

     IF YOU-LOVE-ME

        CONTINUE

     ELSE

        PERFORM TO-WIN-YOUR-LOVE

     END-IF

*

     GOBACK.

*

 TO-WIN-YOUR-LOVE.

*

     PERFORM UNTIL YOU-LOVE-ME

        DISPLAY MY-BEST-SIDE

     END-PERFORM

*

     EXIT.

*

Time And Relative Dimension In Blanket

I'm... not exactly unambitious when it comes to my projects.  Or at least, once I get an idea in my head I won't talk myself out of it for flimsy reasons like the amount of work involved.  Like, say, crocheting 264 granny squares and assembling them into a blanket that looks like the TARDIS:

It's actually longer than the bed

As crochet practice goes, it's actually been quite a good method.  Plenty to focus on, it breaks down into manageable chunks, and the pattern for a granny square is extremely simple.  The repetition is excellent for getting the hang of crochet.  It took me an hour to make a single square at the start, but by the end it was more like twenty minutes.

Apart from those awkward two-tone ones at the edge of the information panel

The writing across the top is just chains, made to length and then stitched on top of the blanket.  Granny squares being full of holes, there's a limit to how small the writing can go.  Which is why I didn't make all the writing for the door - "Pull to Open" and all that.  I considered it, but it simply wasn't feasible.  The white panel breaks up the front, though, which is why I made it rather than just crocheting a different side of the TARDIS.

Yes, I took this picture just so I could make a 'P please, Bob' joke

This wound up being about six months of work from first conception to finished product, though there was a certain amount of getting distracted by other things along the way.  But I had it done just in time for the first episode of the new series, and now the whole family gets to snuggle under it while we watch.  That's really all I made it for, so I'm calling this a success.

In Which I Get All Serious And Political, Part Two

[I promised I'd write a continuation of my thoughts, wrote it, then failed to actually post it.  But in that intervening time we've had Malorie Blackman getting abused for asking for more diverse characters in children's books, and the latest round of hate for Anita Sarkeesian looking at how women are portrayed in video games.  Clearly this is a conversation that needs to keep happening.  So here, at last, are more thoughts of mine.  But read Part One first, if you haven't already.]

When people aren't arguing that minority characters should be represented in fiction in the same numbers that they exist in real life, they tend to swing the other way. We shouldn't be including characters just to fill some sort of quota, or to make a point. People don't like to be preached at. They should only appear when it's relevant to the plot. Any number of characters could be gay, or trans, but it's just not mentioned because it's not important to the story. Just look at Dumbledore.

It's a seductive argument. Stories whose sole purpose appears to be to deliver a diatribe on a topic dear to the author are tiresome, whether one agrees with the message or not. And characters should always be connected to the plot, because that's the point. We leave out all sorts of things that don't move the story along, like visits to the toilet where nothing out-of-the-ordinary happens. We don't need to see a character peeing – we can just assume that it happens.

But these aren't questions of diversity. These are questions of storytelling. If you can't find a way to reference a character's sexuality without making it a message or an integral part of the plot then you're just not that good a writer. We talk about our lovers and our ex-lovers all the time, because they're important parts of our lives. These are people we willingly spend a lot of time with; why wouldn't they come up in conversation with other people? So unless you're writing a story set somewhere that a gay person would feel the need to hedge and say 'partner', it should be easy to include that information. And even if they are reduced to saying 'partner', the contrast with other people should still signify something to the reader.

I didn't always think like this. There's a tendency to be suspicious of the 'token' character who deviates from the norm set by the rest of the group, and of the 'rainbow' group where every member carefully fits a different demographic like a manufactured pop band. I would tell myself that it was enough for me to know a particular character was gay, without having to put it into the story and risk making them the 'token'. Drawing attention to their sexuality felt like shouting, "Look! I put a gay character in the story! Aren't I inclusive? Give me a biscuit!"

And then people who are much better than me at this sort of thing (I love you guys) pointed out that if you don't make these things clear to the reader, it will be assumed that they're straight. People don't read books and assume that anything unstated is open to any possibility. They assume that it's the default. If you don't mention that a character has a catheter up their hoo-hah, we'll assume that they pee like anyone else.

I've been using sexuality as the example here. Signalling the presence of non-white characters is easier, because it can be in their name, or the physical description when they first walk onto the page. It's not information the character has to volunteer. Sexuality has to be offered, if you're not including a lover in the story. And gender? That, I will agree, is tricky.

Trans characters are unlikely to reveal their status in normal conversation, if the story isn't specifically about their transition. Why would they? Who they used to be, or what's inside their pants, is unimportant. What matters is their own identity. But that doesn't mean we have to entirely ignore the possibility of non-binary gendered characters. Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice has non-gendered characters. Iain M Banks' Culture universe gives us characters that can and do change gender on a whim, and Player of Games includes a species with three genders (in which the female still gets the short end of the stick) Julian May's Galactic Milieu has intersexed aliens, and Iron Council by China Mieville has Qurabin, a monk who can access hidden secrets at the cost of losing something else in the process, and lost their own gender early on. No one knows if Qurabin is male or female, not even Qurabin. There are any number of options out there, if only we think of them.

Thinking is key. If you never come up with a character who deviates from the Cis White Straight Able-Bodied norm, you lack imagination. You shouldn't need 'quotas' for minority characters, because they should be showing up anyway. Especially in speculative fiction, where the world and its peoples can be anything you can think of. Why limit yourself?