Writing Eyes: My Experience With Dilated Pupils

 So I have a nevus in the retina of my right eye and it showed up there sometime in the last four years.

 Nevi are basically freckles in the eye, they can appear on the front of the eye, like in the iris, or they can be like mine and show up inside the eye. Like freckles, they are usually benign, and also like freckles, they can turn malignant.

 Due to it appearing recently and the fact that it's very close to the macula (vision centre) of my eye, my optician wanted to have a better look at it to make sure it was benign.

 This meant that she put tropicamide drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils to make it easier to see my retina.

 Yes, this stuff has the same basic function as belladonna, the fancy name for deadly nightshade.

 Since this was a thing that fashionable ladies did once upon a time to make their pupils look larger, I thought it would be a good idea to write about my experience of having ridiculously large pupils.

Is this pretty? I don't know.

  It doesn't kick in immediately, so when it started I was in Boots (regular Boots, not the Opticians Boots who put the drops in) buying vitamin pills and a new hairbrush, and the thing I noticed first was that everything between one and two arm lengths away was incredibly and unnaturally clear.

 Everything else was intensely blurry.

 I'm short sighted, so I'm used to things at a distance being blurry, but not my own cleavage being blurry and difficult to make out.

 Yes, I could not see my own boobs clearly.

 It was really weird.

 This also meant that I had a really hard time taking the picture above because I couldn't see what was on my phone without holding it at arm's length and my eyes look really dark when they're photographed in anything dimmer than direct sunlight. (I had to expose the shit out of that picture.)

 So I took about five pictures while unable to see if the camera had picked anything up.

 For the first half hour or so, I had this weird relationship with light.

 If I kept my eyes open for too long, I started getting a headache that was centralised in what I like to call 'the migraine warning area'.

 No wonder migraines show up in oldy timey fiction if people were doing this to themselves.

 The other thing that happened was that I kept getting after images of the weirdest things.

 One thing this happened with was a poster advertising half price frames where the frames themselves would singe themselves onto my retina for a few seconds. Which is odd as they were by far the darkest thing on the poster.

 I'm also pretty sure I got an afterimage of a large mirror at one point. It was very strange.

 After my appointment was over I had some shopping to do in my local town centre, which is a mid range activity most of the time, so I was too busy to really notice much for the next few hours.

 Well, apart from how weirdly difficult finding stuff in Lakeland was. Which was the first shop I went in and has been rearranged for Christmas stuff.

 Once I got home though, I found that sitting at my computer was giving me a mild headache and felt really uncomfortable for my eyes. I was about half way through the life span of the effects, so I chickened out and took a nap because everything was really bright.

 So bright, in fact, that I had to use a long sock as a makeshift blindfold because my room is white and closing my eyes only made it so that I couldn't perceive my surroundings but I could still see a lot of light.

 By the way, it doesn't look like my nevus will cause me any problem in the short term, but I have an appointment for proper eye doctors to look at it. Which may or may not change my lens prescription depending on if I need treatment and what that might be.

 So sadly I can't get new contacts for up to three months.

 Eye based drama aside, I hope this comes in handy if you want to write about Georgian era ladies or women from Italy back when this was in vogue.

Catchphrases

 Oh my god, if you are creating a world with any, and I repeat any, pretence to being dark or serious, do not have a major character have a catchphrase.

 It gets old really fast.

 Not to mention that people do not talk like that. Well, most people.

 Game show hosts, sure, but not the average person.

 Why do I mention this?

 Well, I've actually started playing 358/2 Days and Axel's 'got is memorised?' thing makes me want to rip his head off, it's so damn annoying.

 And it is a catchphrase.

 Some people do have words and phrases that they repeat a lot in everyday speech, my dad was very fond of the word prevaricate for example, but this 'got it memorised' thing clearly isn't a case of naturally repeating the phrase.

 How do I know this? Because Axel's dialogue is built around giving him opportunities to say it. He looks for opportunities to say it.

 He says it when he's asking if Roxas understands what he's just been told.

 He says it when he introduces himself.

 He says it when Roxas tells him he's been keeping track of how long he's been in the organisation.

 He says it like someone who has heard a catchphrase and wants to use it all the time to seem cool says it.

 It's not natural, and it is really annoying.

 Do not make a character like Axel.

 For my sanity, please do not make a character like Axel.

 The Doctor in New Who is a much better example of how to pull a repeated signature word or phrase off. As much as I do not like Stephen Moffat, he's managed to do this reasonably well.

 Russell T Davies did it best with the Ninth Doctor because although he's strongly associated with the word 'brilliant' it was only ever said in regular dialogue.

 This goes further to the basic problem with Axel and characters like him, he never just says it. He always says it with this air of self awareness that makes it clear that he knows this is something he says a lot and wants to make it his 'thing'.

 Basically, what I'm getting at is that Axel may be the perfect example of how not to do a repeated word or phrase.

 Not just because it's annoying, but also because it manages to overshadow the rest of his character.

 I'm always expecting him to say it, so I can barely stand to see or hear his dialogue.

 And that's a real problem.

 Do not make this mistake.

Writing Hair: THE Problem with 'White' Dreads

 Now, last time I went a little bit mental with my problems with dreadlocks on white people, and while I maintain that they're legitimate, they're not the big problem.

 No, the big problem is that dreadlocks, and other protective styles, have come with racially motivated scorn and social censure.

 I would make the argument that to people who don't know the difference dreadlocks would look unpleasant, but the thing about that is that it takes about a five minute conversation to 'know the difference'.

 It isn't hard to know better. Heck, live around black people for long enough and it's harder not to.

 Some would make the argument that 'well it's just personal preference!'. Which would be fair, if it wasn't such a wide spread attitude.

 That's the real issue here.

 For all I rant about it looking bad on white people, and being bad for natural European hair and being nothing but artifice by pretentious people, the real problem is that these hairstyles are ones that black people have been and are scorned and punished for having.

 To make something that other people are punished for doing, despite it being a sensible thing for them to do, a fashion statement just isn't okay.

 Of course, that's just my opinion, for a more relevant opinion you should see this article on forHarriet.com.

 Since this is a post nominally related to writing, I'll share my thoughts on writing white characters (or members of other non-black ethnic groups) with protective styles.

 Basically, it's always going to be a big deal. (Well, varying size of deal, depending on ethnic group, but whiteys are our focus in this post.)

 Unless they're a dirty hippie type, meant to attract scorn, and/or are going to learn better as part of a character arc, I'd say don't do it.

 Unlike with black characters, this isn't just an aesthetic choice on your part. It's going to inform the reader about the character in an unflattering fashion. No matter how nice they are, the fact that they're appropriating a hairstyle like this shows them as being unpleasant.

 Self absorbed, racist and/or stupid. Which are just what I'd gather from a character like that.

 If they're meant to be any of those things, that's fine. You want to physically reflect those traits, this isn't a terrible way to do it. But even then, boy you need to be careful. If you don't have the confidence that you'll do it well, don't.

 If they're not meant to be any of those things... just don't do it.

 You're bound to regret it if you do.

Writing Hair: Problems with 'White' Dreads

 UPDATE: I've expanded on the biggest problem with 'white' dreads in this post.

 I was going to just put up a ramble about various things that I've been up to lately and dedicate a large part of the ramble to my burning envy of natural African hair (my hair is straight, like the tracks of my tears) but literally as I started this post I realised that there's a really important point I'm going to make and it deserves a post in its own right.

 It's also a point that bears keeping in mind when you're writing.

 The point being:

 It takes a specific kind of white person to get dreads.

 Or at least it used to. Whatever the hell Kylie Jenner thinks she's playing at has somewhat muddied the waters, but I can't see that lasting.

 Why?

 Because dreadlocks look awful on white people and are really bad for straighter and oilier hair types (which includes you, Japan. Don't think I haven't noticed this trend). It won't take long for people who actually care about their physical appearance and the health of their hair to notice that the dreads look dirty, are dirty and are putting completely unnecessary stress on their hair.

 Now, don't misconstrue that, I said they look and are dirty on people with straighter and oilier hair types. I never said that they look or are dirty on black people. Natural African hair and natural European hair (which is our main concern in this post) are two very different animals.

 You can see this just through traditional methods of maintaining and dressing hair.

 Just sixty years ago it wasn't unusual for white women to only wash their hair once every two weeks, and a scant few decades before that, white women would avoid washing their hair for as long as they could. This often meant upwards of a month.

 What did they do instead? They brushed their hair with boar bristle brushes and combed their hair with wooden combs. This evenly distributed the oils down into the length of the hair and allowed it to be conditioned. What they couldn't reach with their natural oils, they supplemented with botanical oils.

 Let me be clear here, they did this every day.

 Hair styles could be left in, but not for more than a few days at a time.

 Contrast this with African hair care which developed the 'protective style'.

 Natural African hair can't handle the same amount of combing and brushing as European hair. Because of the nature of tight kinks and curls the hair is more fragile and needs to be protected from environmental stress. The scalp is also less oily, so brushing the hair everyday wouldn't have the same effect as it does on a European head anyway.

 Protective styles include things like canerows(/cornrows), mini twists, box braids and dreadlocks.

 How long can you leave these in?

 This depends on a number of factors, but with proper upkeep and depending on the style and the individual, somewhere between three weeks and a couple of months.

 Dreadlocks specifically have a potential life of years if properly maintained. I had a hard time finding out about natural African dreadlocks because if you search for information about them on Google then you're going to encounter a lot of white people explaining how to do it on natural European hair.

White People: Ruining everything for everybody.
Always.

 Okay, so what's all this got to do with my opinion that white people with dreadlocks always tend to be the same kind of people?

 Because they are, and that kind of person is a dirty hippie.

 You know the type, organic food, probably vegan, sometimes a raw foodie, goes on about mother nature and the 'chemicals' in everything. Maybe an anti-vaxxer, possibly into new age religions, that kind of person.

 Basically every parent's worst nightmare during the Nixon administration.

 Notice earlier that I said people who actually care about their appearance and the health of their hair. Dirty hippies do not care about their appearance.

 Well, not in the sense that the average square Joe does, you dig? (I know that's more beatnik than hippie, but it'll do.)

 Being a hippie means not conforming to society's standards on things, which includes appearance. Since white society values clean, sleek and styled hair, these people have chosen a hair style that has been considered ugly and 'dirty' by white society and decided to roll with it.

 All without understanding why dreadlocks were considered undesirable in the first place.

 Natural European hair doesn't lock, it mattes. The only way to get European hair to look like dreads is to matte it, so to people who didn't know the difference, dreadlocks would look dirty.

 Yeah, hippies are basically like those early European douches who originally coined the term, they do not know the difference between locked hair and matted hair. All they care about is the artifice, the appearance.

 They want to appear natural and down to earth, so they wear their hair in a way that they think advertises that, despite the fact that natural European hair cared for by traditional methods does not look like that.

 Wanna know what it does look like?

Yeah, that's her own hair. She was famous for it.

You can find information on her haircare here.

 But that's too old fashioned and square.

 So the only thing to do is to appropriate hair dressing techniques developed for a completely different ethnic group.

 So yeah, if you're writing a white character and you're considering giving them dreadlocks, this is the kind of person you're going to make them look like. A pretentious idiot who doesn't understand how their own hair works.

 Since I am attempting to illuminate here, here's a link to a website that has information on the upkeep of natural African hair types, go and research my children and write natural African hair appropriately.

 Please don't just take my word here, you've seen me, I'm clearly not an expert.

Vitalism Part Two: Spontaneous Generation and the Breath of God

 Okay, looking back, I was kind of vague on what the vital force actually is in my original post.

 Yes, it's what makes the difference between living and non-living things, but that's not the whole story.

 One of the things that Vitalism leads to is the prediction that Spontaneous Generation occurs.

 What's that?

 Well, before the last few hundred years, people didn't understand a lot about the world. One of the things they didn't have a good grasp on was why food goes bad.

 Leave out meat and maggots appear, or mold or rats.

 People used to think that these things were spontaneously generated out of the air.

 Which is fair enough for people who couldn't observe things on a microscopic level, like fly eggs or mold spores, but not so much when it comes to the rats. I'm not inclined to be kind when it comes to those.

 This probably sounds absolutely ridiculous, especially about the rats, but this is a thing that people genuinely believed for a rather long time.

 It was supposed that the vital force is present in the air, and when exposed to dead matter (such as meat) life forms would appear spontaneously and fully formed.

 It seems obvious to us that this doesn't make sense, that life has to come from life via reproduction, but things like the reproduction cycles of insects and fungi weren't fully understood at that point. This was a time where it wasn't fully understood that what a mother saw during pregnancy or conception wouldn't impact on the appearence of a child (but we'll get to that another time).

 On the subject of biogenesis (life from life) it's important to draw a distinction between spontaneous generation and abiogenesis.

 Abiogenesis is the name given by science to describe the origins of life in the first place. The development of biological reactions and molecules from simpler non-biological chemicals. It's a complicated process that's not fully understood by science, but we do have a number of details worked out. From what we know, it's definitely possible, even if we can't fully describe it yet.

 Unlike spontaneous generation, abiogenesis does not require some nearly undetectable force in the air and it doesn't create complicated life forms such as maggots, mold and rats.

 I'm bringing this up because on a superficial level, these two things do sound similar.

 Another reason for bringing it up is because some people try to poopoo the idea of abiogenesis by comparing it to spontaneous generation, so it is important to make the distinction clear.

 So, according to vitalism, there is a vital force in the air that can react with certain things and make complex life forms appear like magic. What is this exactly?

 One interpretation is the breath of god.

 Yeah, sounds super cool doesn't it?

 This one is derived from the god of the bible. According to Genesis, he breathed the breath of life into Adam (and possibly Eve too, it's a touch contradictory on this front, but we can cover that another time).

 This is partially what leads us to interpret the god of the old testament to be a wind god. Yes, there's some sun god stuff in there (particularly when you take into account the new testament) but we're more concerned with the wind god aspect.

 The Christian and Jewish god is generally believed to be omnipresent, and wind does that a heck of a lot better than the sun does.

 As a quick experiment, wave your hand around in the air. You can feel the air molecules brush against you skin, so you can see why a wind god would have a more compelling claim to be omnipresent than a sun god would. Clearly a sun god isn't, I'm writing this after the sun has set, after all.

 So, when combined with the idea of vitalism, we have the notion of a god that imbues everything with life by his mere presence.

 With this all in mind, how can this help your worldbuilding?

 Well, as with the phlogiston, it's all about creating a world that is superficially similar, but fundamentally different.

 The natural fit for vitalism, spontaneous generation and the breath of god, is fantasy fiction, but I do think that any kind of spec fic could use these concepts. It would make a very interesting twist for the reader.

 If twists aren't your hing, then if you do have an omnipresent god in your world, you could very effectively use spontaneous generation to show that. You could also use it to demonstrate the absence of such a god if that is part of your story.

 This is just one suggestion of what you can do with these concepts, the sky is the limit when it comes to how these ideas can be exected in your world.

Damn, That's One Whacked Out Chick

 Like Jack Chick, I don't understand the youth culture of the 1970s.

 Unlike Jack Chick, I have the excuse of not having existed.

 So, who's Jack Chick?

 Well, you've probably heard of him if you move in one of two circles: fundamentalist Christians (subsection: Evangelicals) or vocal atheists.

 If you're part of category one, you probably don't want to read the rest of this post.

 On the other hand, if you haven't heard of him because you're neither an Evangelical or a vocal atheist, an explanation is required.

 Jack Chick is a publisher of Christian evangelical (small 'e', this time) media.

 He's most well known for his small comic books known as 'Chick Tracts'.

 You may very well know of at least one of these if you're in yet another circle: D&D players.

 Oh yes, he's responsible for this:

  Now, I've played D&D, and you are not kicked out if your character dies.

  Your character generally gets replaced by a new character with the same stats.

 It's a communal activity, the entire point is to have fun with your friends! They covered this in the Dragon Strike VHS for Christ's sake!

 Also, doesn't usually involve witchcraft.

 Most of the people in our D&D group were secularists of one sort or another.

 Atheists love dragons.

 It's the second thing you learn when you become an atheist. One, you don't believe in god, two, you bloody love dragons.

 You're probably wondering how this is really relevant to writing.

 Well, I do have a reason.

 The reason is story arc.

 Also, characterisation.

 Story arcs are a big problem in Chick tracts, people are generally converted in about five minutes in a single conversation.

 Now, I get that he doesn't have a whole bunch of space, but this is not a compelling story arc in the slightest.

 Another problem in terms of story arc is that people tend to convert to his flavour of Christianity largely through being threatened with hell. Even tiny children.

 Which is a terrible way to present one's heroes. Think about it, if the hero of a story threatens and scares the antagonist into doing what they want, then they're not really very heroic, are they?

 Oh, that's a low blow.

 Also, a terrible example.

 Because the whole 'I am vengeance, I am the night' routine doesn't actually work. He still has to get into fights and he still has to do detective work. He still has to try, and he often fails.

 Jack Chick's heroes threaten people and it actually works. Minimum amount of effort required.

 Characterisation suffers because of this lack of effort on the part of heroes.

 Also, because Jack Chick and his cohorts don't understand why people aren't Christian.

 If you're going to present antagonists in your story who are part of a group you do not agree with for whatever reason, make sure that you actually know what it is that they actually believe and why they believe it.

 Let me make this really clear.

 Atheists aren't atheists because we're mad at god. We just don't believe in god because the arguments aren't compelling to us.

 If you aren't accurately representing your enemies, you're presenting what is known as a strawman argument. It's a logical fallacy and it's associated with having no real arguments. Also, being a dick.

 Of course, it's not just us. He clearly doesn't understand D&D, Catholicism, fascism, communism, Masonry, Islam, homosexuality and LGBT rights, secularism, evolution and science in general, paganism, Wicca, ancient British druidic religions, the origins of Thanksgiving, the religious make up of the United States, the origins of Halloween, or even his own religion and holy book.

 Pro-tip: Do Your Research

 But most of all, he doesn't understand basic storytelling.

 Which becomes incredibly obvious in the Chick Tract Humbug!

 He's stripped the entire story of A Christmas Carol of its themes of redemption, charity, personal growth and love in order to turn it into a story of an atheist in Victorian times who learns the ways of the lord and changes his ways because he's terrified of burning in hell and god told him to.

 Yes, not because it's the right thing to do, but because he's scared.

 At least, I assume Scrooge is meant to be an atheist in this tract. He doesn't appear to know anything about Jesus despite being born and raised in a highly, and even strictly, Christian society.

 Which shows another thing that Jack Chick doesn't understand, that being an atheist could get you imprisoned in the Victorian era.

 Basically, what I'm driving at here, is that you can take Chick Tracts as a great example of what not to do in story telling.

 Also, animation.

 Just look at it.

Phlogiston and the Vital Force

 I'm planning to post about my kimchi once it's fermented into tasty kimchi goodness.

 For now, I'm going to talk about phlogiston and the vital force and their application in fiction.

 So, what is phlogiston?

 Well, it's not real, which is probably not a surprise to you.

 In a more useful sense, it's an explanation that early sciencey types came up with to explain how fire works.

 The idea was that there was this substance in all flammable things that allowed them to burn. As well as explaining why things burned, it also served to explain why things tend to lose mass when they burn.

 One of the other points of this idea was that when things burned in an enclosed space, like a jar, the air would become saturated with phlogiston and unable to hold anymore, thus causing the fire to go out.

 Now, that alone must be raising alarm bells for you all because you know why that happens.

 Phlogiston is an outdated scientific concept that explains what we now understand as combustion.

 More or less, the original explanation of what phlogiston is runs as almost a perfect opposite of how oxygen works in terms of combustion and respiration.

 Additionally, as combustion is chemically similar to metabolic processes, phlogiston was also used as an explanation for why animals can't survive in an enclosed environment. Like flammable things, animals contain phlogiston and dephlogisticate as they breath. Once the environment becomes saturated with phlogiston, they lost their ability to breath and die.

 Today we know that this is because of the way that both combustion and respiration cause oxygen in the atmosphere to be converted into part of carbon dioxide which cannot be used in either process. When the idea was first proposed by Johann Joachim Becher, chemistry wasn't really out of the age of the alchemists, so they came up with all sorts of odd ideas to explain the world around them.

 (Isaac Newton was kind of the poster boy for this.)

 Of all of these odd ideas, phlogiston is my personal favourite.

 Yes, it's useless for explaining the gains in mass of burning metals, but I don't like it because it's accurate, I like it because it's cool.

 On the other hand, I'm not a great fan of vitalism.

 This is somewhat similar to phlogiston, but it isn't as naturalistic.

 Both do ascribe some kind of substance that imparts life into living things, but unlike phlogiston, the vital force is only part of living things. Life is the only thing that uses it and it creates a stark and fundamental difference between living and non-living things.

 Which is the entire point.

 Okay, okay, maybe not in the beginnings of the idea.

 It has something of the phlogiston/classical element of fire to its original conception back in antiquity, but as science has improved and presented more and more naturalistic explanations, vitalism has been a desperate attempt to hold onto the ghost in the machine.

 Remember, phlogiston is a naturalistic explanation that was wrong.

 Vitalism is not.

 Of course, in the realms of fiction, we can do as we please.

 So, how can the vital force work for you?

 Well, a world of vitalism is a world that would be very different from our own.

 If life is a substance that you can bottle, say, then that gives rise to a lot of possibilities. Especially in fantasy world where alchemy is practiced.

 As I previously complained, vitalism is not a naturalistic explanation, which lends itself incredibly well to the intervention of the gods. Something like that was seen in the Disney film Hercules (which is a fun romp through the gigantomachy, but not the titanomachy as it claims).

 So, you've got gods and/or alchemy? Then vitalism is a great addition to your world building toolset.

 Phlogiston, on the other hand, is more suited to just alchemical settings. Or even to a sort of alternate science science fiction.

 A world with plogiston as the explanation for combustion, respiration and rusting would be superficially similar to the world we live in, but fundamentally different.

 Which is possibly the best kind of fictional world.

 You draw them in with characters just like them, and then bam! You hit them with the fact that oxygen doesn't exist.

 Now that's what I call a twist.