LNH/ACRA/WRIMO: Anal-Retentive Archive Kid: A Judicious Use Of Overkill #11

Scott Eiler seiler at eilertech.com
Thu Dec 30 19:15:04 PST 2010


On Dec 30, 12:36 pm, Andrew Perron <pwer... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 30, 3:24 pm, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Oh, put a sock in it Lite," groused ARAK. "This isn't the time
> > for your ninja jokes." He shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled
> > rather than risk bursting into tears. "My life is absolutely fscking ruined."
> > Signal watches. Shit. He was doomed.
>
> > And thus is the *DOOM* that falls upon those who defy the will of
> > the gods^H^H^H^H the will of the Writers.
>
> ...well I certainly didn't see *that* coming.

Honestly, I didn't see *anything* coming.  This is now the second time
I've assumed the series was over and been proven wrong.

> > He has quite justifiable pride in his intellectual
> > abilities, but in a number of previous stories I've also established that
> > he's quite aware of his own limitations of not being able to pull of
> > superhero stunts. This, combined with his generally obsessive nature,
> > meant that he performed a number of extreme actions without necessarily
> > taking much in the way of physical risks, and was always covering his
> > own back from the moral risks.
>
> Interesting.  I just figured that he didn't have nearly the karmic
> justification he thought he did. (Killing a baby?  Even if 87% of
> future timelines have it growing into a Very Bad Person?  C'mon, man.
> The right thing to do is to put it in the hands of the right person
> for one of the other 13%.  Certainly, if you have something that can
> predict possible futures with that degree of accuracy, you can find
> them.)

I figured the series was leading toward some combination of
overambition and failure of super-technology.  I still think these
"karmic sifters" must of necessity be untested, because of the
Heisenberg principle in which the observation affects the result.

> > So finally I did an end run around ARAK's actions and preparations,
> > retconned in that he had overlooked something, and had Ultimate Ninja
> > point it out. Fortunately Scott Eiler had made observations in the
> > comments threads about the nature of the interaction between Wendle and
> > Elizabeth that I had included as a carry over from Elizabeth's previous
> > appearance.

And here I was, worried that I was inserting a tired old comic book
trope into a nice healthy Usenet adventure.  (Though I often feel the
secret love among people who argue in real life...)

> The above comments said, this is a weird and interesting way for this
> to play out.  Invoking cliches to protect you only to find yourself
> trapped in a web of them is the kind of karmic punishment that Kafka
> would be proud of.

I admire ARAK more and more for his perceptions of reality.  None of
my own characters have advanced to where they realize that justice is
a farce for at least *some* universes controlled by Higher Powers.

Wyatt Ferguson sympathizes with ARAK in his karmic predicament.  Wyatt
avoided something much like it earlier this year, but only by not
acting like a fictional character.


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