Too Many Cooks

It turns out I may have something against cooks.

Let me back up a bit: a few months ago, my daughter decided that it was time to switch up our car adventures; we would now be ninjas.  Tragic ones, of course (I had told her a heavily, heavily, HEAVILY edited version of the anime Basilisk).

We picked different powers.  I had 'whisper powers', used to disorient foes and communicate long distances.  She could, uh, cut herself and create blood constructs (like dragons, or dragons, or... actually, her constructs were always dragons).  We belonged to different clans, and due to events of a suspicious nature, our clans fought each other to near extinction.

Of course a third party was involved, and as the last surviving members of our clan, it was our duty to hunt down those responsible and terminate them.  In order to do so we had to destroy four competing ninja clans: a wind clan, a water clan, an earth clan, and a fire clan.

We started with the water clan, whose stronghold was located within the hollows of twin rocks jutting out of the sea.  Carefully swimming to the entrance (which was located near the bottom of the ocean), we made our way up to the peak of the rock... only to have an alarm sound.

With little options, we ducked into a nearby room.  This was the kitchen.  There was a ninja cook inside.  And my daughter TOOK CARE OF BUSINESS ("you know what that means," she said).

After we finished off the water clan, we started hunting the earth clan.  They were located, well, below the earth.  So even though we knew the general location of their hideout, it was impossible to find the way in... that is, until we thought to survey the skies on the back of her, uh, blood dragon.  From there we were able to spot a thin plume of smoke seeping out of the ground.  It was a tiny chimney, one that we used to gain entrance through the use of explosives, and once the hole was big enough we jumped into a kitchen, only to have...

"Wait," my daughter interrupted.  "Are we fighting another ninja cook?"

"Oh.  Uh.  Yes.  Yes, we are."

"Do you not like cooks or something?"

"I like them fine!  It's just that..."  I trailed off, unable to give a satisfactory answer as to why we kept murdering ninja cooks, and the next day we switched to a different game.

I still don't know why my mind kept getting drawn to ninja cooks.  I can say that creating adventures on the fly in the car is a situation that does not always lend itself to inspired creativity.  Either that, or I really do have something against cooks.

Fiction: The Samurai

The Samurai

The girl slumbers as the samurai whispers into her dreams.  One of her fingers brushes the crest on his helmet that arcs up like a golden moon.  She clutches her toy and does not sleep well.

Earlier that afternoon, the girl pranced up the museum steps, action figure in one hand, invisible lightning bolts in the other; for she was, of course, a samurai who knew magic.  A large banner draped above the entrance depicted an imposing warrior charging forward, cherry blossoms floating over his head.  "For the shogunate!" her father said, grinning.  "For the choco-nut!" the girl shouted.  They laughed together.

The first display held a collection of katanas.  "What does that say?" the girl asked, pointing at a plaque.  Her father squinted.  "Carbon steel. . . polished and glazed. . . cut through armor and. . ."

"No," the girl declared.  "That's wrong.  Swords don't hit armor, they hit other swords."  She frowned as she swung her arm to demonstrate.

"Let's look at other things," her father said.

The girl asked no more questions, and spoke only with the tightening grip of her hand.  But as they wandered deeper through the dim and hushed corridors of the exhibit, she heard glimmers of whispered conversations, saw glimpses of meaning.  And the samurai, of course, understood everything.

A red battle mask, carved with empty eyes and a mouth turned down in an immortal scowl.  A stained banner depicting two birds, one ripped in two.  A wakizashi, used first to stab through a fallen foe's neck, then to saw through it completely.

And then the dioramas: the boy-Emperor Antoku held aloft by his grandmother, the eternal moment before she jumped with him into the sea.  A samurai stumbling backwards, two arrow shafts protruding from his chest.  A kneeling man clothed all in white holding a knife with its tip pointing towards his own abdomen; his second behind him, ready to deliver the decapitating stroke.

The girl ignored her father's increasingly insistent pull.  She studied each object, each display, before looking away.

As soon as they exited, her father picked her up.  She dropped her head on his shoulder in a way he thought she had forgotten.  Her samurai dangled loosely from her hand.

He murmured a comfort:  "You're still my samurai with lightning powers."  They both knew it was false.  The girl said nothing and fell asleep in the car.

And now the samurai whispers, and what he says, no one knows.  Does he speak of blood and mortality, transience and the void?  Are those half-formed concepts infecting her even now, a patient contagion that will manifest itself over time as thoughtful outbursts, contemplative sulks, honest silences?

Or perhaps he is planting a different kind of seed.  The samurai knows that no day is without shadow, no year without storm.  And someday, when the woman who was once a girl reaches a moment of darkness, perhaps the samurai wishes her to remember this: she once believed that she could call to the clouds, and the heavens would answer.

---

This feels less like a story than a meditation.

I've always told stories to my daughter that some might argue are a bit too mature for her.  No, not in the sex-and-violence sense; but in the thematic sense, most often with the idea that the world can be unkind, uncaring, and simply unfair.  Why?  Because I think it's true, and because I think it's a realization that many people eventually come to without having the proper emotional support.  Better to have my daughter learn now when she's still young enough to come to her father with her sadness and concerns.

All that being said, it's not like I keep my daughter in a Box of Tragedy.  People who know us know that we're both pretty... I'll be kind and say 'whimsical'.  We both like making people laugh, and I think we both have genuine hope for the future.

I think this story is my attempt to bring these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints together.

A Horrible Lesson

Stories are an avenue into worlds unknown.  Sometimes these worlds are magical and wondrous.  And sometimes they are dreary and frightening.  Sadly, I recently (and accidentally) introduced my daughter to one of these latter worlds.

Here's how that happened.  As I've mentioned before, my daughter and I play through story-adventures in the car.  Our current one involves being members of Final Fantasy Type-0's "Class Zero" - battle-trained cadets asked to go on secret missions for the sake of their country.  I am "Diamond", who wields a giant axe and a fiery temper.  My daughter is "Spade", a quiet and thoughtful ninja with "shurikens attacked to ropes".  Sure, why not!

On this particular day we were embarking on a mission to infiltrate the capital city of the belligerent Milites empire.  They were on the verge of creating a supremely powerful mech, you see, and the prototype just had to be destroyed before the Milites could start mass producing the new model.  Otherwise, all... would be lost.

Since this was a "sneaky mission", we couldn't simply fight our way through the city and into the research laboratory; we had to go through the sewers.  And of course (since I'm the way I am) we emerged from the sewers... into a bathroom.

There was a Milites soldier peeing as Spade cautiously lifted the floor grate and peeked his head through.  "I'll go up quickly and wait then," my daughter said.

"Are you sure?  He can just turn his head and see you."

"Really?  How?"

"He just has to turn his head," I explained, confused by my daughter's confusion.  She hesitated, shrugged, and jumped out from the floor and knocked the soldier out with a single punch.

"Oh no!" I exclaimed.  "There's a flush from the stall with the closed door!  You didn't realize that -"

"Wait," my daughter interrupted with dawning horror.  "Wait.  Wait.  Does this mean that... boys can see each other when they pee?"

"Oh.  Uh, yes.  I mean, you're not supposed to look - and most don't - but in theory it's -"

"GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!" she shrieked as I instinctively hit the brakes.  "OH.  MY.  GOSH.  I am so glad I am not a boy!"

And that's how a story taught my daughter a fundamental truth of the world: boys are definitely gross.






(Later, after a few minutes of stunned reflection: "Wait.  Daddy, you're a boy, aren't you.")

"I Dodge Away From The Psychically Controlled Car And Have It Hit The Giant"

Shadow of the Colossus is one of the best games for the Playstation 2, mixing jaw-dropping battles against panoramic gargantuan beasts with a contemplative mood that adds a sense of disquiet to your actions.  I sneaked a review of the game's story into Goodreads; if you're curious, you can read it here.

For some reason the game popped back into my mind recently, and as is my tendency I immediately ran to my daughter and started babbling all about it (I'm lucky that she's of an age where she still listens).

Fast forward a few days, and my daughter decides that we are going to play a new game in the car: each of us will take turns creating a Colossus, and the other person has to try and defeat it.  Here are my daughter's creations:

• A Colossus found in what I can only imagine is an abandoned multi-story parking lot (and nevermind the early medieval feel of "Shadow of the Colossus").  It's made of cars and can also control "loose"cars, using them to try and ram you.  Defeated by having those cars ram it instead.
• A Colossus that is a giant turtle.  Lives in a giant swamp surrounded by ravenous alligators (I got close to one and... "GAME OVER DADDY!  It ate your head!").  Has three holes on its back, only one of which is a true weak point; the others are distractions.  Its final weak point is located on the top of its head.  The turtle doesn't attack you; instead it swims around in desperate circles.  I felt bad defeating it, which just proves that my daughter was actually listening to my description of the game ("And you should feel bad!").
• Some sort of armored Colossus dragon that blots out the sun, yet is small enough for the hero to quickly shimmy up its legs (my daughter does not really have a sense of scale).  Defeated by having it try and eat you, at which point you have to stab at its tongue.
• A humanoid Colossus riding a giant horse.  It attacks by summoning one of four ephemeral avatars: a phoenix made out of fire energy; a tiger made out of light energy; a turtle made out of earth energy; and a dragon made out of air energy.  Reveals a different weakness each time it summons an avatar.

"Wait," I said.  "That last one sounds like it was inspired by the four kingdoms in 'Final Fantasy Type-0'".

"Yeah!  It's really cool, isn't it?"

 "Yes, but... do you just want to play a Type-0 game instead?"

"Yep!"

And that's why we each created our own cadets of Class Zero and are now running them through the plot of 'Final Fantasy Type-0'.

Cheering Up My Daughter with Insect People

I was away on a business trip during the past week, and one night I begged out of dinner with my co-workers in order to Skype with my daughter, whom I missed dearly.  I caught her during her own dinner, and after she made a few grudging remarks I realized she was a bit out of sorts.  So I fell back on one of my parenting techniques, one that begins with the question, "Did I ever tell you about this book I read?"

In this instance I started telling her about China Mieville's "New Crobuzon" novels, a loosely connected series of three books: "Perdido Street Station", "The Scar", and "Iron Council".  And boy, I knew these books had some crazy ideas, but I never quite appreciated how crazy until I tried to verbally explain various concepts to her, including:

• Handlingers: Sentient hands that come in pairs - dextral, and sinstral.  Can parasitically control a person.
• Scabmettlers: A humanoid race whose blood hardens immediately upon contact with air.  Will cut themselves pre-battle to compose intricate patterns of armor upon their own body.
• The Possible Sword: A blade with an attached "possibility engine" that allows it to strike in multiple locations at once.
• Remaking: A punishment imposed on criminals and dissidents in New Crobuzon where...  ("Wait, forget I said any of that," I said to my daughter.  "I don't want to give you nightmares.")
• Slake Moths: Giant moths with hypnotically shimmering wings.  They entrance their sentient prey and suck their consciousness away.
• Toro: A dissident who forged a helmet in the shape of a bull's head.  Its horns allow Toro to tear space itself, and the reason Toro... ("Nevermind, I can't go on without spoiling the book.  I guess you'll just have to read it some day."  "Daddy!")
• Armada: A city on the ocean consisting of thousands of ships and boats linked together.  Split into several ridings, each governed by its own ruler.  Rulers include...
• The Lovers: A man and a woman who "love each other so much" that they share thought and movement
• The Brucolac: A "good" vampire who imposes a blood tax on his citizens so as to provide sustenance for himself and his fellow vampires without killing anyone in the process.
• Khepri: A humanoid race with scarab heads.
• The Malarial Queendom: A long-vanished empire of - mosquito people (I forget the name of their race).  The males appeared as normal humans, but the females suffered from blood hunger where they would rush towards other humanoids with their long proboscis fully extended and drain them completely.
• The Golemancer (his name is Judah Low, but I couldn't remember it at the time): A man with the power to make golems, but not just out of earth and stone; he can create fire golems, moonlight golems, and in an extremely cool sequence near the end of "Iron Council" he... nevermind, spoilers.

 I'm lucky that my daughter's mother finally came to rip her away from Skype in order to go take a bath; by the end I was running out of child-appropriate things to tell her.  But I'm glad to say that she left far more cheerfully than she arrived.

Thanks, China Mieville!

Committing to a Story; or, Why I Talk To Myself In Public

Last Sunday my daughter was in a foul mood, overtired after an exhausting day.  It was the early evening, and after finishing her work she slammed her butt down in a chair and slumped over to play a computer game.  I was a bit concerned.  I tried talking with her, I tried teasing her, I tried making her laugh - but everything I did resulted in a grunt or an annoyed stare.

It's possible that I should have just waited her mood out; sometimes that's all you can really do with a person.  But I had to leave for a week-long business trip in a few minutes, and it hurt my heart to see her like this.  So I decided to try one more thing.  After seeing that her game involved guiding a polar bear through arctic waters, I went to her room and fetched her stuffed polar bear.  Then I sat next to my daughter and slowly guided the polar bear next to her hand.

She looked down.  "Oh," she said.  "Hi polar bear."

The polar bear jumped up and down excitedly and nosed at the polar bear on the computer screen.  Then he backed up slowly, confused, and looked up at her with a questioning sound.

"It's not real," my daughter said.  "It's a computer game.  I'm controlling the polar bear.  See?"  She demonstrated the keyboard and mouse controls to the fascinated polar bear, and as she did so her body quickly filled with the liveliness and energy that I'm used to seeing and that I love so much.  And right before I left for the airport I was rewarded with three hugs and eight kisses (yes, I counted).

My daughter and I share many similar traits, and I'm telling this story because it made me realize that we share one more: we both fall easily and naturally into the stories that we see around us.  Whether it's a curious polar bear or a head pig or a cabal of small stuffed animals planning on getting rid of the mean dragon that keeps punting them off the bed ("CHARIZARD! We talked about this!"), I can count on my daughter to perk up and join the tale with much enthusiasm and delight.  She is a storyteller's dream.

It's something that I do as well, except I can't always control the stories that pop up inside my head; put another way, the problem with having an imagination is that you imagine things.  This scenario has happened to me more than few times: I'll be walking by myself down the sidewalk when some odd environmental detail suddenly catches my eye.  A story ravels itself together, and the next thing I know I'll be audible actor in the theater of my mind, and there'll be a person half-a-block in front of me quickening his pace and glaring back at me.

It's something that I've learned to control to a certain extent; experience has taught me the dangers of falling too deeply into the fictions that my mind can create.  And yet I don't think it's the worst quirk a person can have.  For example, I suspect it's the reason that I can read other people's moods so quickly.  Plus, a credulous imagination can certainly liven up a boring day!

This trait that my daughter and I share is probably neither good nor bad in and of itself, but merely something else that needs to be moderated within.  Here's hoping that we succeed!

Ninjas My Daughter Has Known

Ninjas are a big thing in second grade right now.  My daughter plays ninjas with her friends at recess, and we have an ongoing 'Ninja Story' that we relate to each other during trips in the car.

Of course, these aren't just ordinary ninjas.  No, these are ninjas with Powers!  And our ninja clan is often forced to fight against another enemy ninja clan, only discovering too late that both clans are being manipulated by a cruel and uncaring shogunate (I may have told her a heavily edited version of the manga Basilisk).

Here are some ninjas that she has created (I've forgotten all their names - but that's okay because she forgets them too):

• A ninja with the power to cut himself and shape his blood into different forms.  Oddly enough, this form is almost always 'dragon'.
• A ninja with hair that grows - and I quote - "six inches every two minutes".  This ninja can control her hair like a whip, and also cut it off with sharpened finger-claws.  When the hair is off her head, the ninja can mold it into different shapes, like a sword or, uh, a sword.  I pointed out that this power would invariably leave the village completely buried under hair, so she decided that the ninja can also set the hair on fire with her mind.  Except it's not hot fire, because "then the world would, you know, burn up".
• A ninja covered with eyeballs.  He can pop his eyes, creating a sort of eye-goop that is impervious to slashing cuts.  His eyes grow back at an unbelievable rate (actually, any positive rate of 'regrowing your eyeball' is pretty unbelievable).
• A ninja that can blow his breath at you and cause your head to explode.  Oh, ouch.
• A ninja that could turn into a cloud.  Mostly used by others to disguise their movements.  Defeated by, uh, a giant fan.

The Fable of the Circle and the Rectangle

This is the first story I ever wrote for my daughter.  Note the extreme artistry.

---

---

For some reason I always crack up whenever I read the last line of this story - maybe because after a certain point blatant moralizing becomes funny rather than annoying.

I am also extremely proud of the expressions on the characters' faces.  Well done, me!

Magic Origins: Extended Edition

This summer's new Magic: the Gathering release is titled Magic Origins.  It details the beginnings of five Planeswalkers - powerful beings with the ability to travel from plane to plane in the Multiverse - and examines both their lives before they became Planeswalkers ("pre-spark"), and the traumatic event that caused their powers to flare into existence.

Here's a trailer:


But wait!  Why stop at only five Planeswalkers?  There are 31 active Planeswalkers represented in the card game, and the five in Magic Origins aren't even the coolest ones (according to my daughter).

So, well, here are the origins of two more Planeswalkers, as speculated upon by my daughter and me.

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Would you like to bump into this - thing - in a dark alley late at night?

I surely would not!

Ashiok is a mage of unknown gender who harnesses the power of nightmare magic to bring the fears of others to life.  The use of this magic has had a toll on Ashiok, however; see if you can spot what it is...

(Sidenote: I like to imagine Ashiok as a human with a normal face who suffered a literal brainfart that blew off the top half of his/her face.  Come on, you know that'd be hilarious!)

Where did Ashiok come from?  After much meditation soul searching, my daughter decided that Ashiok was clearly once... Ashiok, Underwear Weaver.

And here Ashiok is in all, uh, its glory, scissors and thread in hand, ready to weave yet another piece of underwear on its loom.  What's the 'Wump'?  Why, it's the sound of a Planeswalker's spark igniting, of course!

Person 1: "And do you know what happens when he cuts your underwear?"
Person 2: "You die?"
Person 1: "Nope!  You poop your pants!"

I would dearly love to claim that my daughter was Person 1 in this conversation, with me being Person 2; but honesty compels me to admit that I was Person 1.  Hey, at least my daughter is popular with the boys at school.


Nicol Bolas

Nicol Bolas is perhaps the most powerful Planeswalker still living.

Ancient, devious, and possessed of immense power, Nicol Bolas has a mind full of plane-spanning corruptive schemes and the will and cleverness to see them through.  He engineered the release of the mana-devouring Eldrazi from their prison; he had a hand in the complete corruption of the plane of Mirrodin by the resurgent Phyrexians.  If Magic: the Gathering could be said to have a single archvillain, Nicol Bolas would be that being.

Sadly for my personal continued existence, there is a creature in my household that harbors similar ambitions.  Charizard has been a thorn in my side ever since my daughter liberated him from an import store.  He merrily punts other stuffed animals off my daughter's bed, hogs all my ice cream for himself, and burns my face whenever I protest.

My daughter does nothing to rein Charizard in (and may secretly encourage his depredations).  Because of this freedom of unconscionable behavior, he now has an ambition: to grow up to be a supervillain.  And what better villain than Nicol Bolas?

Yes, Charizard has decided that he is the younger time-shifted version of Nicol Bolas.

I... don't know what else there is to say.

Please Tell Me I Don't Have To Pay For Your Friends' Therapy

A week or so ago I picked my daughter up from school and asked her what she had played during recess.

"Just a game.  I was a doll."

"A doll?  Really?"  My daughter is not one to play with dolls.

"Yep.  And the boys were so surprised at what I could do!"

"Uh, what could you do?"

"Kill them."

My silence must have contained a species of audible shock, because she quickly reassured me that people pretend-died all the time in playground games. Still, I had to ask what kind of doll she was.  It turns out that she was talking about this one:

I wish I knew how she playacted it out.

A Fear of Tears

One Monday morning, I logged into work and greeted my co-workers online.  Talking a bit about our weekends, I listed my high point as making my daughter cry.  The amused shock that followed (my co-workers know me pretty well) was probably warranted by the way I made that statement - and yet I meant each and every word.

So how did I make my daughter cry?  Simple: I watched Return of the Jedi with her.  Say all you want about the Ewoks (my daughter loved them, by the way), but Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader's story arc is gripping, emotional, and well-executed.  And as their story resolved, I found myself hugging a sniffling seven year old... and feeling strangely proud.

It's this pride that I don't think my co-workers understood, and in all likelihood I badly mangled the explanation for it.  But it comes down to this: what's wrong with being sad when something is sad?  Isn't it more dangerous to learn to brush aside or suppress your feelings?

There's a lot of things I want my daughter to grow up to be - happy, healthy, smart, funny, generous - and up there on that list is empathetic.  I've long believed that stories are a pathway towards that goal, but only if the audience is willing to truly put itself into a character's shoes.  Laugh when someone laughs, shiver when someone's scared... and cry when someone cries.

So maybe it's weird that I'm okay that my daughter is the only child I know that audibly sobbed during The Lego Movie.  But I guess I'd just rather she feel too much than feel too little.

Head Pigs

What does every storyteller want?  Here's one possible answer: an audience that fully commits to a story.  But such a person is hard to find!  Unless you have a singularly captive audience, that is.

Some backstory: my daughter decided to dress up as the Horned King for Halloween.  The Horned King is the primary villain in The Book of Three, the first book in the Chronicles of Prydain.  In the beginning of the book, he kidnaps Hen Wen, the oracular pig.  Naturally, I insisted my daughter carry a stuffed pig around on Halloween.

That night, with my daughter stuffed full of candy and goodwill, I tossed the pig onto the bed.  It started jumping up and down frantically.

"What's its problem," my daughter asked, a little grumpily (her sugar high had long since crested and turned into a sugar crush).

"Hm," I said, studying the pig I was wildly flailing around with my right hand.  "I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's worried that it'll be put back into, you know."

"I don't know.  The what?"

I whispered the next two words.  "The Box."

The Box is a large cardboard box that resides in my daughter's closet.  It is filled to the brim with toys that she has outgrown.  The pig had come from there.

My daughter rolled her eyes.  "Okay, fine," she said, and opened her arms.  "Come here pig, you can sleep with me."

The pig continued to flail around in my hand.  "That's strange" I said, puzzled.  "It's still scared."

"Why?  What does it want?"

I cocked my head and brought the pig up to my ear.  "It... hm...  Really?  But...  Okay.  Okay."  Then I turned back to my daughter.  "It wants to sleep on top of your head."

My daughter stared at me, eyes narrowed.  Then she said a single word, one that I hear often: "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

And that is why for the past four months, my daughter has been sleeping like this.

Did I think my idea would work?  Well, honestly... yes.  My daughter has a long tradition of buying into the stories I create for her, and so I thought that maybe for a night or two...  But for four months?  To the point where my daughter places the pig on her head herself before falling asleep?  Nope, I didn't expect that!  And no, I'm not ashamed.  I'm damn proud of myself!

There's a lot of reasons why it would be hard for me not to love my daughter, and I can't deny that one of them is: she definitely buys into my stories.

Yes, but what did you look like?

So what game did my daughter create for her friends in the second grade recently?

"They were ninjas, of course.  (Ed: Of course.)  I was something, but they didn't know what.  Things were going weird in the present - you know, things like dinosaurs and computers appearing where they shouldn't - so they had to go through these portals that I created to fix problems in the past.

"What they don't know is that I'm time itself.  And I'm corrupted!  They'll have to fight me tomorrow, and they're going to be so surprised!"

I gotta say - not bad!

I admit to being a little confused as to what it means to be "time itself".  I asked her what her character looked like, and she shrugged and said, "You know.  I looked like time.  Time-y stuff."

Okay, so not the most descriptive answer,.  But when something takes hold of someone's imagination, all you can say is... go forth!  Go forth and be free!

"Daddy, I'm bored."

Perhaps only those of you who are parents know the special sort of terror that comes when your child declares that he or she is bored.  Of course that declaration comes with the unspoken assumption that you will be the one that solves that particular problem.

We all have different ways of coping with our children's boredom.  Mine is to tell my daughter stories.  When she was between the ages of 5 and 7, I'd send her on a Pokemon journey to befriend Pokemon and train them and lead them to battle.  These days the stories tend to involve ninja and samurai and planeswalkers (from Magic: The Gathering).

Not-so-coincidentally, my daughter is apparently the scenario-leader of her little group of friends; during recess, she's the one who comes up with the stories that they all play out.  If you're wondering whether this makes me proud, the answer is "yes".  Very much so.

You'll see the occasional blog entry relating to the above.  Sometimes it'll be because I think something's funny; sometimes because it makes me think; and sometimes it'll simply be because I want to remember.