Saturday 9 March 2002

Pic of the day: Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot. Just setting the mood.

Apprentice gods

Had a quite relaxing day, not thinking about work at all. (Why do I think about that now?) Eating in moderation. Ice cream seems to be one of the few foodstuffs that don't give me acid reflux these days, and I eat a bit now and then. And some other stuff in between. No actual dinner, though. That would invite disaster. Besides, why eat dinner when you have ice cream?

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Spent the walk to the shop and back rewriting chapter 2 in my head. I'm really not good with battle scenes, so I removed most of that and restricted myself mostly to the emotional reaction. Of course, this boy is more emotional than I am. I honestly don't know how I would react to seeing people being killed in cold blood, if they were enemies. A part of me thinks I would enjoy it, but realistically I'd probably be sickened just like most humans. I subscribe to the hypothesis that we have an instinct that prohibits killing other humans. Like most instincts in humans, it can be overridden, but only a few don't have it at all. Certainly this is the conventional wisdom in the military, where overcoming that barrier is a major part of basic training.

Be that as it may, my tentative main character is not in any way a warlike person. I like to think that he would be literally sick at the sight of such slaugther, even if it was for his own good.

No, I haven't put up any of it on the Web yet, except the character descriptions. I want to wait until chapter 3, so as to not take Cneko's name in vain. Cneko is an online friend, or at least acquaintance. The use of her name in the story - even if she does not personally appear - should not be left hanging with a wrong impression.

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The Cneko that exists as a rumor in the story is of course not the actual girl, but her RP character, also called Cneko, a goddess in training. I think you all know my opinion on gods other than the One; but as a fantasy concept they are kind of nifty. Especially small gods, and especially young inexperienced gods.

Ironically, one of my favorite comics is still Acid Reflux, and it is about a quite small god (or rather goddess), a small girl who has inherited her sister's pet universe and visits it. Confusion ensues. Highly recommended. Actually "God" is barely even the main character, there is so much going on. But her quest to learn to run her little world is the background for all the other stories.

Another comic, less whimsical by far, more literally deals with the concept of a god in training. "Apprentice to a god" is a quite slow moving storyline on the Circle Weave, and there is no actual godstuff going on yet. Well, barely any at least. But it is well told and well drawn anyway, so why not join in already?

I remember when I designed the imaginary massive multiplayer online fantasy roleplaying games of the year 2005 (for use in one of my near future fictions) I decided to have "deity" as one of the many available character races, along with more conventional ones like elf, mermaid and centaur. You'd think that such a class would be over-populated very quickly, due to the advantages and because it is really a small niche. So I designed it as a class playable only by the extremely dedicated player, requiring far more time to rise in levels than any other class. A deity player would be required to quite literally learn how to run the game world; he or she would have to demonstrate knowledge of a wide array of magic as well as the various races and regions of the game world. There would also be a lot of peer pressure among the gods; basically anyone playing a deity would have to learn from "parents" and "teachers" among the other gods, so they would know each other inside and out. I still think this is a viable concept, incidentally. And it's not 2005 yet.

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And yes, my most dedicated readers may remember this: For years, I considered myself apprentice to a god. I guess in a way all Christians are that. A Christian is supposed to be a disciple of Christ, after all; and a disciple is simply a student of a more practical kind, watching his master and learning to do likewise. Much in the same way as Jesus himself claimed to always do what he had seen from his Father. It's pretty awesome, and I can sure understand people who don't believe a word of it.

But personally, I have found that it was wrong of me to try to skip my humanity. You have to go through that. Surely if Jesus had to be human, I can't except to pass it by. After that ... we shall have to see, shall we not?