[ssf] The Ca$h Ninja Grant

[ed. it has been a while ]

Title: The Ca$h Ninja Grant
By: Grant Chambers
Image Credit: KDA

To: Descendants of Counter-Inversion Veterans

It is neither our intent, nor desire to cause controversy. However, history provides little insight into the early life of the war hero, Antoine Clark, aka ‘Tha Ca$h Ninja.’ Contemporaneous records re-inflated from submerged computronium memory cores indicate that he was, at best, a middling third age hip-hop troubadour. Like other members of the genera superset, Tha Ca$h Ninja existed in a fragmented entertainment space deeply riven by notions of sub-genera purity and domain exclusivity. Pre-Inversion Artists frequently eschewed popular appeal, and Tha Ca$h Ninja was no different. For most members of various crews, clans and assorted musical combines, the widespread acclaim reached by classical artists (e.g. B.I.G., The Notorious) was considered a betrayal of artistic integrity. Musical balkinization resulted in flourishing, if not necessarily lucrative, hyper-local music scenes.

History should not judge the Tha Ca$h Ninja harshly for his lack of commercial success, both for his later contributions to the Second Refactoring of the Western Convergence, and the fact that artists who did achieve some measure of cross-genre appeal usually did so through a combination of exploitative cultural appropriation and deployment of unregulated memetic-catalyzed Langfordian Syrens. Given the gross storage and algorithmic processing requirements necessary to deploy such vectors, Tha Ca$h Ninja, despite assurances regarding his personal net worth, would not have been financially able to support such domain violations.  

Instead, Tha Ca$h Ninja’s core support grew out of a loyal fanbase cultivated from the dense urban conglomerations doting Bayou Country.  He innovated a fork of ‘southern’ hip-hop that incorporated  الدحية  and full VR simulacrum of mundane events and various prior sexual conquests engaging in Dabke-style erotic dancing. To wit, his seminal hit “Ca$h Ninja is günna’ Ninja that A$$!” featured amelodic, and at times rambling, exposition on the nature of ontological empiricism paired with bass loops and FVR recordings of interactions with surgical and germ-line modified gender-fluid individuals and constructs.

As our hypothesis (attached) posits, etho-phrenol recognition shows that many of the exotic dancers were likely Greco-Syrians recruited from the large populations settled in and around Mobile after the Burning Sands War.  If conclusively proved, it lends an explanation as to why the later incarnations of the Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary organization contained analogous command structures with various Levent-originated ‘Free’ forces.   

By Tha Ca$h Ninja’s own statements, he was an avid and enthusiastic student of both Bushido and Wing-chun. While other historians take these statements as boastfulness in keeping with the hyper-masculinity of the genera, we aim to prove these claims. What is not in dispute is that Tha Ca$h Ninja did exhibit considerable proficiency in light energy weapons during the Reclamation of Texarkana from Class 2 autonomous, non-metabolizing carnivorous forms.

During the later stages of the Inversion, when the Silicon Lords retreated to western Rockies, Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary was one of the first outfits commissioned by the Distributed Republic to halt the advance of Semi-sentients across the Mississippi. Though apocryphal, it is said that Tha Ca$h Ninja, accompanied by his most loyal retainers "These Amazonian Bitches!", could be seen battling amphibious-mechs on the river bank, his white mink coat trailing behind him and his crisp athletic shoes caked with red mud.

We hereby submit this grant to the Descendants of Inversion Veterans and ask permission to excavate the sites indicated, and recompile any imprinted data structures such that a complete understanding of the Second Battle of Vicksburg can be had.

Antagonist frequency in Fiction

During the discussion of high-quality and low quality fiction, an argument is usually made concerning antagonistic frequency rates. Simplified, this argument goes something like this:

Book proponent: "Sexy Vampires IV is the best Historical Slash-Vamp Dom Fiction out there!" 

Book Detractor: "Man! Slash-Vamp fiction is totally played, everyone is doing that these days." 

Insert you proposed antagonist into that conversation and you will get someone who will tell you that the Genre is over done, played out, or no longer interesting.  Additionally, any conversation of reasonable length with agents, publishers and marketers will eventually result in them telling you which particular genera of fiction they are tired of seeing.

The rise of self-publishing has pushed this situation into overdrive. Where originally there were maybe a half-dozen entries in a particular genera per year from major and minor publishers, you now have hundreds, if not thousands, of attempts to tell a particular story. But does that mean that you should abandon your attempt at telling the greatest Vampire Zombie Love Story?

What is lacking is historical perspective. Google's Ngram viewer gives some imperfect, but interesting, historical context to the antagonistic frequency debate.

As shown above, the frequency of various antagonist (this is current through 2009) in English fiction is charted. Generally, in current fiction debates, Vampires and Zombies are singled out as being over-done in terms of genera.  However, Aliens as a concept has held a pretty consistent lead, and it currently, even though there has been some decline, is at a historically above average position.  Interestingly, the concept of plagues, which can be related to Zombies, has been on a historical downward slop ever since a peak some time in the 1810's.

Robots, the term being unknown prior to Capek's seminal work, takes off after the publication of R.U.R., and hits a peak in the mid eighties (think original Terminator, transformers, etc.) that surpasses the popularity of vampires today. Sadly, we appear to be living in a world of "Peak Robot", due possibility in part to the rise of non-fictional robots in our everyday lives (e.g murderous drones, vacuum cleaners).

As a point of comparison, the next chart looks at the frequency of some events in fiction (we use aliens as the cross reference to the above chart)


As shown, the concept of the Rapture is down from its historical heights, but has recently made a resurgence, and appears to be on track to overtake Aliens in frequency.  However, from a Genera standpoint, no one argues if Rapture based fiction has reached "peak rapture". [ed. This chart only goes to 2009, if goes to 2012, it might be that there was a serious crash after the Mayan Calendar failed to turn us into orbs of pure something.]

The point here is that antagonist come and go, but without data, it is difficult to determine if present, or short term historical bias is altering peoples' perception of what is or is not a popular genera. Having some data is always a good rule of thumb changing behavior, concepts or positions.

Vampires are terrible

By the title of this post you can probably guess that that I am about to rant about sparkly vampires or loving vampires or generally any sort of vampire that would not feature predominantly as a villain in a Blade reboot (ed:  Blade Reboot? awesome sauce!). 

For the most part, you would be wrong. There is nothing wrong with twinkle vampires, sensitive vampires, or any other form of vampire-based fiction that explores wish fulfillment.  True, there is a lot of "my rich boyfriend is a secret badass", to a lot of modern vampire stories. As a result, people think the genera is over. "No more vampire stories!" people (namely book agents) cry!

There is nothing wrong with the genera. It might just be that the current story slate, ( i.e., rich boyfriend), needs to be investigated further. Economic theory says that if nothing else, most vampires should be at least affluent, if not down right uber-wealthy. Figure out a story that explains how your sexy vampire got his cash, and you might have a new angle on an old idea.

ISSUE 1: Vampires are (or should be) rich.

Vampires, without direct violence, can be expected to live anywhere from "A Very Long Time" to "Infinity." While that sounds great in and of itself, it is really great from an economic stand point. Compound interest is wonderful, as is, the stock market. Most vampires lack the need of actual economic inputs (read: food, clothing, shelter, sleep...air). As such, their actual cash outlays are minimal to non-existent. If they possess special powers, such as super speed or flight, then generally they have zero to minimal transportation costs. Think about the cost of an average transatlantic flight. Vampires pocket that for fancy hotels and ebony-wood coffins.

However, most vampires lack a normal occupation (with the exception of the one that was a rock star and that other one that ran a medical clinic in Washington State) and hence a steady income. However, one assumes if you rob your food source (i.e. people); you can make do. In fact, after a few years you probably have acquired some sizable assets.

Now, let's assume that your vampire boyfriend is nice and does not commit regular robbery/homicides every other lunch period. However, lets also not assume that he hails from some degenerate landed gentry or b) employs some sort of glamer on people, thereby hypnotizing them into giving them money.  Assuming he was, in his mortal incarnation, middle class; then by investing some portion of his money (which he really does not need)  in the sock market (say in General Electric stock in 1915) and living solely off the dividends (or reinvestment or diversifying in times of economic struggle), then by the time he hit the 90's tech bubble he would be a millionaire several times over. By not touching the principal, each vampire more than 50 or 60 years old should have a sizable amount of the worlds money locked up in various modern, well-appointed, seaside homes.

So any story that I encounter that does not explain why a) the vampire is or isn't rich; or b) lacks the assistance of a good financial adviser; should be suspect to the tiny Alan Greenspan that lurks within us. Money is part of the world, an essential part. Relative wealth, and how it was acquired, is a necessary component of any fleshed out character.

ISSUE 2: Vampires Are Bad at Science.

Vampires, as stated above, are considerably long lived. Generally, society mourns the loss of great intellects, from Newton to Einstein. One would think that vampires would scoop up these top notch scientist at the bargain basement price of "almost dead".  Why stop there? Why not selectively "convert" the top graduate(s) of  highly prestigious technical universities.

Truth be told, there should be vampire covens of geniuses. Each one, a collection of immortals sitting around creating fantastic works of art, literature, and science. One should assume that the internally produced vampire literature is significantly superior to human literature. Most vampire stories take the position that only good looking people, of an artistic bent, become vampires (see rock star). However, rarely do we get a story about the great and fabulous vampire museums featuring the "post-turned" works of Picasso, Muro et. al.

Most vampires stories paint the species at a significant technological and ecological disadvantage relative to humans. Vampires rely on a slowly reproducing natural resource that is subject to plagues, pandemics, endemic violence, and natural or cosmic disasters. Farmers wouldn't tolerate the level of uncertainty in the long term viability of their stock. Likewise, surveillance technology, networked infrastructure, high-capacity ammunition, and directed energy weapons all level the playing field against the natural gifts of the supernatural. Vampires should be concerned about the technological prowess of their food-stuff in the same way we would be worried if we started seeing pigs collaborating with cows to build catapults.

ISSUE 3: Vampires lack vision.

With unlimited life spans and budgets, individual vampires should be able to privately fund all manner of Manhattan Project-style endeavors.

For example, given their superhuman abilities, vampires are almost specifically designed for Deep Ocean and Deep Space exploration.

A round trip to Proxima Centuri, at 1/10 the speed of light (which is all we could ever be capable of with modern technology) would take 80 years. This is seen as a barrier for humans, but with a steady supply of cryogenically frozen blood (not to mention "Deep Vampire Sleep", it would be a cake walk for vampires.

Assuming ambitions closer to home, one would expect that at least some vampires use their vast wealth and time horizons to devise counter-measures to human extinction (since one prefaces the other), and are ready to deploy them at a moment's notice.

At the very least, you would assume that Vampires operate technology that is several generations ahead of our own. Faster computers, smaller devices, robots . (ed - see Vampire Hunter D series for technologically advanced vampires).

The point here is to note that "Vampire" as a genera, just like any other genera, has room for interpretation or reinvention. Just because there have been a spate of successful, "Vampires are my Boyfriend", books doesn't mean that every story that could be written about them has been written. Now, a book on Vampire Economics might not get turned into a best selling novel series, but it would definitely set the author apart.

@Moorsgate
www.moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com