The limits of alternate universes

Song of the day: Nothing to Prove - Geek Girls & The Double Clicks

To distract myself from the amazing fact that I am going to my first con (AlCon, Leicester, England) in just a few days on top of seeing London for the first time (sweet jesus I can't breathe.) I have been thinking about alternate universes, particularly in fiction.

So in Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, there is a conversation between the History Monk Lu-Tze and Commander Sam Vimes on the subject of Alternate Universes. For plot-relevant and spoileriffic reasons, Lu-Tze indicates the possibility that that means there must be at least one universe where Vimes, for example, has killed his wife. Vimes, of course, doesn't buy this for a second; for him it's literally impossible. And Lu-Tze says that, yes, there is no universe where Sam Vimes, as he is now would ever do such a thing. This indicates that people's choices really do matter, something which has been a running theme throughout the whole of Discworld, and that's a pretty freeing thought. Something might not make a difference historically, but it will certainly matter personally.

That brings me to the potential of fiction AUs. It seems that there are some things so deeply ingrained in a story and the characters that make them (and are made by them) that some fundamental things would not change. For example, I' pretty sure there is no universe where Samwise Gamgee does not follow Frodo on his quest, or where Elizabeth Bennett does not reject Mister Collins, because it's such a big part of their character. It's probably even stronger when it comes to interpersonal relationships; there is no Holmes without Watson, there is no Kirk without Spock.

The subject of as he is now brings up that other space/time continuities where things do in fact not go that way. But there you have to interfere a lot earlier in the timeline and essentially make them into completely different people for them to do those things in the first place. And even then that gets Jossed sometimes, as exemplified by the Mirror Verse and the reboot in Star Trek, where Kirk and Spock are very different from who they are in the original series.

I find it fascinating to try to figure out what the set-in-stone part of a character is based on this observation. Of course this can be debated back and forth, but there are probably one or two things that most people can agree on. Back to the first point, everyone who has so much as sniffed a Watch book knows the idea that it would even occur to Sam Vimes to harm his family is ludicrous, just as he would never take a bribe or not uphold the law. That's what makes him Sam Vimes.

Of course that doesn't mean that AU fics aren't lovely and give us a whole lot of potential for awesome stories - go nuts, give us more great fics to read!

Back on the subject of my trip to England (ooh, boy) I shall be cosplaying as Zee Captain!

 Just another day after the end of the world

Yes, the insane maybe-protagonist of the equally insane webcomic Romantically Apocolyptic. I am quite apprehensive, and have been working on my bad German accent (which he (she?) might not even have, but is just something that sticks with me. It's something which I am really excited about both because this will be my first cosplay and because I feel like I've been pretty successful with it. I'll post some photos and stuff from the con some other day.

I shall henceforth be known as the Baron of Bucharest

Song of the day: Jazz me Blues - The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

My evening could be summed up a little something like this

Well, really it was a restaurant, and about a week ago (I'm a lazy blogger). And it was five Muslims, not just one (which makes the Catholic Europa and me the atheist) Take that, xenophobic societal expectations!

Yes, I have arrived back from Romania (Transylvania, really. Or TRANSylVAnia!!1!) And it was unimaginably lovely in every respect; lovely nature, lovely architecture, lovely weather, lovely food (though with a distressing lack of sauce) and most of all, lovely people. Without them, the whole trip would have been nothing in comparison (but, lets face it, still pretty damn awesome). Amazingly enough the only people I didn't absolutely love were my own countrypeople (excluding Europa. Sssh, don't tell her) and that's because I'm not supposed to; I know what we're like. Well, that and the fact that Icelanders are notorious for getting outrageously swazzled every time they step outside their territory. Not pretty, a fall-down-drunk Icelandic tourist on a foreign airport (especially because they've generally got enough practice still to be standing, despite being fall-down-drunk.)

But it's my country; I'm supposed to grumble about it. It's a sign of patriotism.

After having spent eight days at Cristuru Secuiesc (where it almost took all my time just to learn to say that) we arrived back in Bucharest (where we had spent one day before moving on, and got seriously lost at least three times) and proceeded to get lost again some astounding four times more. Urban planning? Not really a thing in that city.

And I loved it. I didn't think you could fall in love with a place in less than four days, but apparently you can. I loved the strangely often fried food, I hated (but still kinda loved) the searing heat, how (in the words of Europa) it always felt like you were on your way out of a sauna but never actually made it out. I loved the total unnecessity (not a word but the best I can come up with) of blankets while sleeping (or pajamas, for that matter). I loved the totally weird architecture, where you'd just be walking down the road and then BAM suddenly there is this palace-like gorgeous thing next to you and it looks totally run down which somehow makes it even more beautiful. I love the total lack of tourists. I love the public spaces, the insane traffic, the fact that there are almost six times as many people living in that one city than in my entire country. I will declare my life successful should I ever make it back to București, România.

It's strange that a place I had almost no knowledge of previously would become so voluminous in my mind. I mean, the extend of my former connection to it was that my grandfather was sometimes called 'the Baron of Bucharest' (the joke being that he was a graveyard keeper and in Icelandic the literal translation of Búkarest would be 'a place where corpses rest.' Yeah, my family is morbid.)

But yeah, there we were, me and Europa and our five friends from Turkey (Alliteration!) the only ones attending the project left in the country. We had decided to stick together while we were still there (and as formerly mentioned we got lost quite a lot) and had a really grand time; visited a bunch of museums, restaurants, shops and landmarks. But most of all I remember talking about everything and nothing, and learning how that the more we seemed different due to our cultures, the more I realized we were the same. Like, intellectually I am aware of all the biased or just untrue crap media and society pours into our brains on everything different, but fully realizing it is a whole different pack of lemmings. And it was a great thing to have happen to me, good for my social and mental health. It, to quote a certain YA author, let me imagine people more complexly (which will come in handy while writing, I imagine.) It is probably what I appreciate the most about this trip, retrospectively.

I'll probably write more on our various exploits when I can be arsed, since it seems I will have plenty of time (stupid economy...) Don't cheer all at once.

Salutări.

Operation Vampire Hunt and predicting the future

Song of the day: Þjóðvegur 66 (Road 66) - KK

Today started out pretty good, and promises to get better. DOMA got overruled, I had a croissant for breakfast, and oh, yeah. I'm going to Romania tonight.

That's right, who's going vampire hunting? This guy.

So this might for the time being turn into a travel blog (exciting, isn't it.) and document my discoveries and trials at a course/convention on youth unemployment. After that, me and my friend who shall henceforth be known as The Queen of the Flying Tigers (at her request; I'll think of something shorter) will frolic about the country, and among other things visit Castle Bran; one of the several places linked for marketing purposes  to the disturbing individual known is pop culture as Count Dracula. Full name Vlad 'The Impaler' Dracul III.

We will be staying at a location in Transylvania, and this will cause me quite a bit of distress for the reason that after watching that awful Sandler flick Hotel Transylvania, I am utterly incapable of pronouncing it normally. Instead it will sound like I am being injected with a syringe full of clichéd stereotypical accents while being electroshocked at the same time and it goes something like 'TRANSilVANia!!!'

I will therefore resist all and any impulse to ever say the name. This may prove difficult.

From what I've seen, the temperature in Romania at the moment and for the foreseeable future will be hanging somewhere around 30 degrees Centigrade. This, of course, means that my brain is going to melt and I am going to DIE. Because, you see, here in this particular part of the northern hemisphere, we call it summer when the temperature rises over ten degrees, and 17 degrees for any amount of time is considered a heat wave. We do occasionally get something like 24 degree, at which point we stop wearing clothes at all and sleep outside. But I exaggerate (only a little bit:)

I'm not even going to get a tan, because I don't get tans; I get slightly weathered, or in extreme cases bleached, rather like a piece of driftwood on a foreign beach. And if I don't wear sunscreen at, like, strength 30-50, I'll burn so badly I won't be able to move. But I shall prevail; I have churches and museums and weird shops to see and people to meet! I even intend to wear my Pizza John shirt as much as I can in the vain hope that I will meet other Nerdfighters, and that they won't be discouraged from talking to the maniac with the giant map getting lost as soon as she steps outside her hostel in midtown Bucharest.

It's odd, though, how things turn out. I didn't ever expect going to Romania of all places; I don't even know anyone who's gone there, but I immediately got excited when the Queen (let's just call her Europa. For the moon/continent, not the mythological figure. Though I could of course make some nasty and uncalled for joke regarding her love of animals) told me about the project and since we could both afford it we thought why not? Although when looking at the photos she was a tad discouraged by the fact that the architecture looked very similar to Poland, from whence she originally hails. But we think it will still be different enough to be very interesting and worth visiting. It will be an adventure.

So I'll try to upload some pictures of interesting things and some interesting facts/happenstances as well once we've began our journey.

Now all I need is Rafiki to shower us with pieces of wisdom and make us get lost and we're set.