Oct 11, 2024 13 min read opinion

Weekly Update - Oct 11, 2024

Novel

Here is a list of things that are done, in the context of this draft.

If you're a student, please note that some of these have been done over a decade, but are getting context now due to draft I, and me talking about how they all fit together.

Objectively speaking, here is what is done, so far. It's going to be a very, very, very long read.

And includes one potential spoiler / thought of mine, on Jiujutsu-Kaisen - I have a lot of opinions on Satoru Gojo.

Speaking of whom, if you analyze fight scenes like me, I recommend this video

Let's get started.

Number of Words

4164 words of draft 1.

Plot outline for dramatis major, draft 1

I have an outline.

It's not a good outline - For example, when I did the draft, I didn't take into account the ages of the characters, even though I fixed them before hand.

Imagine having time travel because a character has 2 different ages at the same time.

Very little lore

Very little world history has been finalized.

For now, this is fine - more research will only enrich this, most of my work needs to go into structured world building and plotting.

Both lore and world-building are synonymous, but I think they are different.

Lore is what I would call knowing Gimli's ancestry.

But world-building would be Gandalf's history, and how he fits into the pantheon, and how his existence affects the world - whether it's through plot, or his view on how the world works.

Barebones World Building

Starting from the start of time, till start of novel.

I have divided history into time periods, following my node theory. I have filled some folders - but not all.

I would say most are incomplete. Not a good sign.

Some Sense of Characters

Who they are, what they want, and why they want it. I still sense a lot of problems here.

For example, some characters are barely developed - I think I have been focusing on characters I like, without realizing it.

It's easy to write what's nice, or fun, and I think I have frequently fallen into that trap.

This needs work too, and a lot of it - but for now, it's fine.

Magic System

Which character can do what, why, and how, for a lot of characters. Quality is between 80% and 90%.

This, I did a good job.

Research on Theoretical Physics

Specifically, on the junction between classical and quantum mechanics.

There is a very particular reason I am doing this, and this is the only thing I actually overthought in all the things I spent time thinking, about worlds.

For that, a brief detour.

My sister once sent me a link to Mohs scale of hardness. It struck a chord, and never left. It describes the different levels of realism in science fiction, and subdivides them on a practical scale.

It justifies the frustration I used to feel when being unable to explain that Star Wars is not science fiction. For example, there is no gravity in space, and so you can't drop bombs - they won't fall down.

Similarly, just because something is ~~fake~~ speculative, it doesn't mean the quality of other components needs to go down.

In Mohs scale, this speculative thing can be one fake thing - they call it 'one big lie'. Everything else can follow from this 1 thing.

Good case in point: Inception.

There is no dream-share tech; but if there were (our 1 fake thing), then everything else follows logically. We do have sedatives on earth, and yes, our ears help us with balance.

Fiction becomes a plot point when Arthur needs to figure out how to kick people awake, when the previous dream level was a falling car - free fall, means no gravity.

No gravity means no more fall.

No falling, no kick.

Arthur improvises, and uses explosives to make an elevator move fast.

In the Mohs scale of hardness, Star Wars and Marvel fall on 1. This is something I agree with.

On this level, science and fantasy is bent to serve the needs of story, plot, world building, and other things crucial to the writer.

The Martian, with Matt Damon, get's a 5 on this scale - here's a detailed review if you're interested. Snippet for my argument, here:

I decided to make sure my novel hits at least a 4.5 on that scale - even if it's fantasy.

The concept of realism in fantasy is not new - for example, Seth Dickinon's debut novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and Brandon Sanderson's general outlook do focus a lot on realism.

I have stopped focusing on making my novel a 4 on the scale - but I've wanted to make it a 5, in at least 1 area.

Since my novel is primarily fantasy, and having a 5 like The Martian will require scientifically corroborated studies on spirituality, I can't achieve this goal.

Though, I have done the next best thing in fantasy - I have been researching spirituality, and have limited myself to achieving a 5 in just one area.

Hence, the focus on theoretical physics. I have to start somewhere.

I remember my mother wondering out loud if the events in Mahabharata were advanced inventions of their time - for example, flying vehicles, or nuclear weapons.

This is a good hypothesis in my opinion, but this view also assumes one can't create nuclear fission naturally.

Unless you're Satoru Goju?

Research on Culture

Especially where culture meets engineering, society, military, art, and religion.

I've been reading about, studying, and researching culture, through the viewpoint of history, for as long as I can remember.

I tend to have a bad factual memory - I forget facts very easily, but I remember what I feel when reading something factual.

It's true - in my interview prep for coding rounds, I manually derive the algorithm from the basics, every time. I don't remember the algorithm.

Starting from scratch takes a lot of time, so I am working extra hard by repeating the process a lot, to increase my speed.

Recognizing this in the context of research, I started using 1947 as a base point for reading history. That way, I can just memorize 1 or 2 things.

India got independence in 1947, and my first introduction to history, was Indian history. This was in high school - I also had a lot of books, credit for which goes mostly to my mother....

She bought me a World War II encyclopedia for research purposes for my high school project - at that age, I didn't know wikipedia was enough, and I read the whole encyclopedia, back to back, to make my project accurate.

Anyway, before 1947, India was a colony of the British, and this year helped me conceptualize different concepts throughout millennia.

For example, when I read World War II ended in 1945, I don't remember this. It's something I need to google, or reference.

I might think something like this, though, intuitively, and not this clearly:

Ok, World War II ended around the time of Indian independence - that explains the participation of sepoys on behalf of the British, in World War II.

I wonder if this is why there are so many Sikhs in the Indian military?

A sense of loyalty - in some books I read as a child, a lot of Sikh Gurus were martyred due to the Mughals.

Maybe they ended up as sepoys, and then following British infrastructure, in India, they became pivotal members in the Indian army.

Or maybe it's because Punjab is in the north, and India borders Pakistan in the north. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Is it?

What if there is a cultural component to Sikhs being in the Indian army?

One of the 5 precepts is self-defense.

I think I am onto something - or maybe this is something I read online, and think I came up with, but actually it's realizing someone is right.

So when I see Akshay Kumar in a Bollywood movie, I know it's realistic, but not intellectually.

This long process is finally bearing fruit, as I am beginning to understand where different disciplines converge.

For example, in a documentary I saw on ancient engineering, apparently every Roman soldier was also an engineer.

This makes sense right?

Soldiers are always on the road, so it's useful if they create a bridge if needed, instead of retreating.

Knowing a little about a lot of things, a lot about the important things in these disciplines, knowing what is important, and how to learn it, is something that happens naturally when I am interested in something.

I realized this only when I started adding computer science to this gigantic model of the world in my head. It's comforting to know the progress is very slow for a reason.

For example - computer science itself is a confluence of electronics, programming such hardware, and information science.

It was probably the in-thing in my parents generation.

I have a Mac - the Mac. The one mac Jobs himself signed - it's a prototype you know -

And I have it.

I spent all my money on it....

It's Apple.

Going back to computer science, or cybersecurity, I am pretty sure the Caesar cipher was invented in the time of Julius Caesar, to encrypt messages.

I think in the Ceasar cipher, you push every letter by 1 - so A becomes B, and C becomes D.

Some ~~riddles~~ interview problems in computer science have to do with rotation - here is a sample problem.

I find it fascinating, that what I find fantastical, and cool, was very practical in a certain time period.

It's a good metric to compete against:

A fictional world, versus a strong, surviving, functional society that is also bizarre, quite weird, and consists of a rich history, called Earth.

I am now qualified for Fantastical Evolution - a process I began at least 6 years ago.

Specifically, I now know enough to do the following:

Research on Spirituality

Is magic natural, belief-based, supernatural, divine, or demonic?

Is God needed for magic?

Is there magic in our world?

Is there a difference between being human, superhuman, and super-natural? What is god - and who is he? Is it a he?

Why is a bachelor born at 0 AD, crucified in his youth, said to have walked on water - 500 years after Buddha's Twin Miracle?

Is Krishna's Vishwaroopam, and the concept of Gathothkacha's Maya, related conceptually to the Astasiddhi of becoming bigger than normal?

Was it just a perception of a larger than life figure - or something magical?

By research, I mean me:

Thinking a lot, and meditating
Practicing on myself
Studying the results
And going through whatever I could find online.

I don't think real-world magic is regulated - there is no ministry of Magic, like in Harry Potter.

If only magic were standardized....Maybe it would be science then. Never mind.

So the sources I do find online, are either esoteric systems, or anecdotes by people with blogs.

I started reading Daaji's Spiritual Anatomy, but even he advocates a system of skeptical, intentional practice.

I don't think this topic is provable, or debatable - at the most, I can argue theology, the philosphy of religion.

In the end, I have decided to write about it, but ultimately leave my experiences for the reader to judge for themselves.

I am not sure how this process started, but I would trace it to something I told my mother, this year, or last year.

I told her that I wanted to understand spirituality, scientifically.

I thought this will help my writing, so I can theorize better, and faster, about the supernatural, thereby speeding up the process of writing.

Understanding the divine completely, as a human, was a very unexpected, and unpleasant process, but at least now I can reason about the magic system in my world, very fast.

Martial art

I want my characters to have a martial system that is real - not just realistic.

I am doing research on systems like knife fighting, staff fighting, and different styles of kung fu. All YouTube videos - I think there is a lot more content available online, than before.

I believe that the gods of eastern religions have had a significant historical influence, in ways that are practical (Anjaneya asana, the 8 drunk gods for Drunken Kung-fu), religious (hanuman chalisa, Tao Te Ching ) and cultural (stories of hanuman, Jackie chan).

So while I technically can abstract the fights with good writing, take or adapt existing systems, I wanted to study the essence of what makes a martial art, a martial art.

Since I follow the essence of 100 meter training, I am beginning to sense, on a theoretical level, what it is to be martial.

From a world-building standpoint, a whole new world has opened for me, and it's good to know that my hunch was right:

"The essence of a martial art, is the essence of what a master thought millennia ago, and has irrevocably changed culture, philosophy, storytelling, and world history." - Suman P. Jampala

Here, I would rate myself 2/10 - but progress here is subject to plotting better.

Interesting things...In order of reference

If the above is what I accomplished, below is what you will find interesting. It has nuggets of interesting, and weird things I read in my journey.

Culture

"Buddhists felt threatened by the success of new religious practices, and began to create their own visual images. Indeed, there is a correlation not only in the date of the earliest statues of the Buddha, but also in their appearance and design.

"Hitherto, buddhists had actively refrained from visual representations; competition now forced them to react, borrow, and to innovate

Why is this interesting?

I think Buddha had complex views on fun, for himself.

See one of the 8 precepts:

7. Nacca-gita-vadita-visukkadassana mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusanathana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami -

I undertake the precept to refrain from dancing, singing, music, going to see entertainments, wearing garlands, using perfumes, and beautifying the body with cosmetics.

Can you imagine going to a buddhist temple, and there is no statue of Buddha, because Alexander didn't go east?

I have a statue of Buddha, that my uncle gave me.

When he gave it to me, I was grateful, and thanked him - but I remember explaining to my cousin the dilemma of understanding attachment when given a gift (that is either expensive, or from love).

Finally, a nice video on whether Bodhidharma really founded Kung-fu - for me, it drew lot of connections between Silambam, Zen, medieval royalty, and Buddhism. I found him funny too.

Spirituality

Heat

In college, when I was selected to appear on stage to be a participant in an entertainment performance, the entertainer moved a piece of chalk in a box in my hand, without touching my hands - I felt heat in my hands when he did that.

Again, when he asked me to think of something, I panicked, and thought of 2 things. If my memory is right, it was both a tree and cloud - he might have asked me to keep it simple.

He asked me if I was thinking about more than 1 thing - classic experience in my life.

Point being, he said angels help him, and he seemed a devout Christian.

Now, here is an account of a miracle because of Mother Teresa.

One of the miracles attributed to Mother Teresa. Link to article, here

Heat manipulation is also part of Tibetan meditation. Link to an article from Harvard.

Now, is my experience because of Christ, or Buddha?

In my understanding of the Catholic tradition, Reiki is not allowed. Link to an article on PBS, which references this incompatibility.

Supernatural Abilities

According to Wikipedia, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH):

On several occasions he provided food and water supernaturally.^[25]

In anime, Hindu-Buddhist abilities are very wide spread. Naruto cloning himself, or Satoru Gojo's manipulation of space-time, are great examples.

This scene in Dr. Strange, shows Dr. Strange being pulled towards the villain, and no matter how much he runs, he can't escape the villain. This happens to Dr. Strange at 0:32.

At first, I thought it referenced Angulimala- no matter how fast Angulimala ran, he couldn't escape Buddha.

But I had it backward - Angulimala was a serial killer, and decided Buddha was his 1000th victim. and no matter how fast he ran, he couldn't reach Buddha.