Journal #2

What's the habit? Needing to make a habit and a discipline of actually outputting something at a regular cadence. The need to not feel seethingly frustrated that I start taking it out on my family. The need to feel that I'm not faking my way through my career and my professional life, and actually have the mettle to put what I dream of into action. Write a book.

Make a game.

Create. Create something lasting. So here are things I want to make, without being distracted by the easy conversations I want on Discord and the community I'm grateful for Scott in given me an in. How then, do I work to prove myself further. Not to them, all of whom seem easy going, accepting and supportive. But to the gremlin in my mind, put there long ago by a psychotic hypocrite of a teenage boy. A whispering echo that fester in my brain.

A story, a book. An exploration of man, a man, and the history and culture. Qi Dynasty is several ideas in a ratty trenchcoat that's been kicking around my head for more than a decade. It started with a simple line, "what if China has achieved industrialization before the West", and became a vehicle for wanting to explore the intersection of technology, spirituality, confucianism, culture and an entirely different fantasy context than the pre-dominant look into Western's fiction love affair with feudal fascism and golden era hero worship. I just wanted a story, fantastical as it were, to be more inspired by Asian culture than western concepts. Which was difficult as I wasn't as steeped into Asian historical stories, finding as I do, a lot of them difficult reads because of their attitudes towards character development, thematic writing. My casual, unscholarly take is that what I come across briefly is plot driven with heavy handed themes, rather than imbuing theme through a character arc, the way I gravitate towards the western fiction that does this. And so several stories were born from this concept. Very few, and more like story germs that didn't germinate.

The current one is something of a crime fiction. Inspired by Gorky Park, and RJB's Ana and Din series, Guy Gavriel Kay's Khitai Duology. It's supposed to be about a mid-level bureaucrat in an Alt-History Chinese setting. They've industrialized spirit energy into spiritpunk machines. Steampunk clockwork energy sources and code concepts to power National Progress. They are only vaguely understanding what the spririts do and how it might harm them.

Our hero is a Confucianist, or this setting's version of a what he sees as a ethical man, someone who is trying to live a life according to its ethical principals. But philosophy as an all-ecompassing method of life is often going to be fraught with contradictions. The story is also a little about his love life. About how one can live a life as prescribed by ethical frameworks, and feel wholly unsatisfied at the choices they end up having to make, because it lacks the personal agency. But the character shouldn't have the western ideal of individualism, but a more dedication towards harmonious society, and the conflicts that arise from it. Plotwise, it's a murder mystery, conspiracy about spritipunk, corrupted government officials, student rebellions, and wuxia fight scenes. It's a bit of a mess, a rojak of various things I want to think are cool, and various things which I rarely actually see in current media. Although there are some really good examples that are very close. Fonda Lee's jade city being an example that I should read soon. And the game, which is an Stealth Extraction ImmSim. Which I really should just keep making. I'm rambling, this post is rambling. This post in not going to be published. This post is building habit. I hope the habit sticks. but I have to do the work. So I'm writing this now, because I don't know if this will ever stick around decades from now to remind myself that I didn't commit. So commit.