[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.

The Mechanics of World Building

One of the things that stands out as the deliminator between great fiction and mediocre fiction is the ability to build credible worlds.

 Building a credible world is more than a sweet premise, like say Vampire Ninjas who wear awesome reflective ninja suits (Ed. Sparkly Ninja Vampire Boyfriend: coming soon from Moorsgate Media).  A credible world starts from a reasonable (or not so) premise, and then builds a realistic world around that premise.  Credibility in world building comes from making the incredible credible.
 If upon reading your story or your game plot summary, your testers keep telling you "I don't understand why Ninja Vampire Lestapolizes would rebel against the Triamphumphrate of Zoldan?" then you have a credibility problem.

However, solutions to the credibility problem are easier than you think. One of the reasons that A Song of Fire and Ice is so popular is that the author has taken a fairly fantastic premise and built a credible world around that premise. Sure, dragons and ice zombies are fairly fantastic notions. However, backstabbing alliances of rich people, wars over rightful succession, and the obligations of a liberating power, are all credible everyday topics. GRRM has explained that most of his source material comes from The War of the Roses,  British civil war that took place in the 15th century. GRRM added fantastical elements to a historically supported story and wound up with a massive hit that has spawned a hit TV show and a legion of fans this is giving Tolkien a run for his money.

While not everyone's story will take off like GRRM's, there is no reason to not explore the possibility of using a historical platform to tell an ahistorical story. Human history, written and oral, is full of tales of heroes and villains and political machinations.  A story can not be hurt by researching a historical event that has parallels to the world you are building.

 Writing a zombie apocalypse story? Check our the Black Death for inspiration. What did people do when faced with the seemingly realistic proposition of the end of the world? Alien invasion? Look to the Macaque, the Sioux, the Taliban (depeding on your character's POV).

The world building process does not have to take place in a vacuum. Science Fiction is built on historical allegories, there is no reason to abandon that path. If you are finding that your world isn't credible, motivations are murky, check to history, and it might provide the future.

Obligations of the Creator

The people that contribute to Moorsgate Media in general, and I particular, think a lot about world building. Be it the setting of rules for a role playing game, the types of magic and monsters that should lurk in the corners of Urban Fantasy, or the types of FTL technologies available to any one race. 

However, there are other considerations that always come up in the scope of world building. What, we wonder, is an author's or designer's obligation to his audience?

Is the writer of a Zombie Apocalypse story required to have his scrappy band of survivors represent, and represent well, every strip and strain of humanity. If he doesn't, has he committed some cardinal sin of fiction? Is a game designer's option to have her female character be a lesbian, mean that she is implicitly writing off the hetrosexual gaming population? Is the reverse true? Is a Gay Male hero saving his boyfriend a "damsel in distress" trope? If not, why? 

Recently, GRRM, author of the widely successful Song of Fire and Ice series ( and TV Show under the Game of Thrones label) has come into some criticism for both the "ethnic" casting of certain characters, and his depictions of whole (made up, but historically analogous) regions. Anyone interested in the specifics of those arguments can find them on the intertubes. 

Similarly, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, and others, go into great detail the way that gender is construed in mainstream and indie video games.  Both sets of criticisms are valid and worth your time. However, there is an uncomfortable vagueness of concern that lurks at the core of the criticism. 

Obligation. 

What is the author's obligation. Is a straight, white male obligated to create "others" for the benefit of his audience? Do we want him to? Do we want positive role models for underrepresented peoples to be crafted by the over-represented? If a black lesbian writes a novel, is she obligated to have a positive portrayal of straight white men? Should she? Is the opposite always true?

This is not to say that there is an equivalence between those authors whose trade is tropes and stereotypes and those whose aren't, but the question needs to be asked. Who is the arbitrator of your work?  If the market is, then the market decides if a story-line is a trope, or a re-invention, sufficiently diverse or not. If it is society, then society should be able to produce enough voices that one successful GRRM is countered by other depictions of POC in a fantasy setting. 

If that's not the case, and I think any cursory reading of widely successful new IP in the sci-fi and fantasy space says its not. Then we have to ask why? Where are the sweeping Tolkien-esq epics featuring POC characters? Where are the gripping video-games with all female-leads? Do the underrepresented have an obligation to create for themselves, as well as criticize. 

Character Customization and Diversity in games.

Smokey Shep

I am working my way through the Mass Effect Trilogy.  I know, a bit late to the party. While the story so far is great (i am in the middle of ME2) I am aware that there is some disappointment coming in the form of multiple shady endings in ME3. From what I hear, this has been compounded by Bioware's attempt to correct the problem by asking people to buy a better ending.

Outrage at customer gouging aside, this is all besides the point.  Right now, my Shepard, who happens to be black-ish, is having a great time working for the Illusive Man and whipping the Normandy-2 around with Miranda and Jacob.  What struck me was that this was the first time I had ever experienced a Space-Opera with Non-white males as the leads. Sure, some Sci-fi (Avery Brooks and DS9 is the gold standard) feature non-white leads. However, that is baritone exception to the rule.   Space Opera, as a genera, is consistently homogeneous is its heroes.

However, in ME I am able to change the dynamic. Between myself, Miranda and Jacob; the majority of the speaking roles in ME2 main are taken by non-traditional voices. This would be even more the case if I had decided to play as female Shepard. (Lesbian space commander FTW!).  What really struck me was that this situation is not explicitly called for by the game designers. Alternatively, the selection of ethnic identity and gender is not forbidden or frowned upon. There is no downside for a dark skinned Shepard, Reapers are equal opportunity villains.

This all begs a question. If interactive story telling is the wave of the future, does it matter who is telling the story and what their point of view is? Is it even important to worry about the background of major and minor characters.  For instance, there was a dust up with certain fans of the Hunger Games reacting negatively to the character of Rue. While I thought it was clear that she was a person of color (even a bit heavy-handed ) a great number of readers were shocked (and sadly) disappointed when they went to the movie and saw Amandla Stenberg. If the future, authors might try to obscure the ethnicity of their characters so as to avoid the problem altogether. This works even better if your hope is to have a movie made. Let the director decide what the characters look like.

people got mad I was accurately depicted as I was described in the book

Alternatively, interactive media reduces, if someone wanted to, these unpleasant circumstances. The writer merely tells a universal story; the hero's journey; the fight against the evil empire; the war against the un-dead, and then lets the recipient pick the look of the character.
This creates a frame work for the user/reader to import their own ideas of the character.

While this could mean that more stories become accessible to different people of different backgrounds, there is a danger. Some people are never able to separate a character from their own baggage regarding race or gender.  One of the great powers of story telling is to make the reader witness the eyes through the author's intended vessel. Sometimes that is a standard hero cut from central casting, but sometimes its not. Discourse would be lost if you were never tasked with following a specific person, with a specific background and specific world view. Simply making a character look a certain way is not the same as creating a believable member of a particular group. Believable characters, regardless of background is something the story teller should always aspire.

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