From strick@osc.versant.com Sat Jun 25 00:58:12 1994 Received: from osc.versant.com (gwarn.versant.com [192.70.173.14]) fnord by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id AAA04527 for ; Sat, 25 Jun 1994 00:56:16 -0700 Received: by osc.versant.com (TAZmail-0.0) id AA00636; Sat, 25 Jun 94 00:59:27 PDT Received: from versant.com by osc.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02845; Thu, 23 Jun 94 21:16:11 PDT Received: from well.sf.ca.us by versant.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA06322; Thu, 23 Jun 94 21:14:58 PDT Received: (from strick@localhost) by well.sf.ca.us (8.6.9/8.6.9) id VAA12583 for strick; Thu, 23 Jun 1994 21:11:51 -0700 Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1994 21:11:51 -0700 From: Henry Strickland Message-Id: <199406240411.VAA12583@well.sf.ca.us> To: strick@well.sf.ca.us Subject: 033The_Characters Status: O WRITERS & CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT HOW TO MUTATE & TAKE OVER THE WORLD revolves around two primary characters, four secondary characters and numerous contributing characters. We see it as our gift and our duty to bring humanity and personality to the technos at the center of MUTATE. Four of the six primary and secondary characters are based on real individuals; these are R. U. Sirius, St. Jude, Scrappi DChamp, and Simone 3Arm. Also, the band, MONDO Vanilli, to which Sirius, DChamp and Simone 3Arm are aligned in this book, is an actual recording group with a record contract, and they will most likely have a CD recording for sale before the release of this book. All the real individuals will supply some of the text for their characters, as well as provide Sirius and Jude with information and ideas in this regard . Simone 3Arm will also will add a visual element to the book through photographs of her astonishing surreal performances. The other two characters, who will be activists in the book's Underground, will almost certainly also be written by real individuals. These people haven't been selected, but there are many people within our circle of friends with the technical knowledge, writing ability and radical spirit who would be up to the task. The "short list" includes some published science fiction writers. We will also invite many of our knowledgeable, creative and (occasionally) famous friends to write "cameo appearances" for themselves, or to allow us to collaborate with them on same. Sirius and St. Jude will open each year with an entry written from the perspective of 2002, casually reflecting on what the year was like to them, and what was happening in the world in general. These are the narrative voices that will bind the otherwise fragmented scrapbook bits. Additionally, diary notes, email letters between the two, email letters written to others, and transcriptions from the psychiatrist's couch may appear from time to time. These make specifically personal the self-doubts, fears and bitching about others involved in all great enterprises. Character Descritions: R. U. Sirius is -- along with St. Jude -- the major mouthpiece for this entire book. Sirius is a writer, a blabbermouth and a reluctant cultural activist. Though not quite a foaming pompous ACADEMIC cultural theorist, Sirius loves to theorize, and his comments will be the most explicit in providing a point of view for the book. Sirius is known for his perpetually bemused expression, and within the context of his diary notes and occasionally through his commentary, the ironic distance that is essential to his point of view will also be expressed in personal terms. Sirius views himself as sort of a hapless puppet of an absurd historical destiny, driven forward by some unexplained mystical force that -- combined with an overwhelming lust and a peculiar gift for stumbling into the maelstrom-- makes it impossible for him to have the kind of life at an amused distance from human affairs that would much be his preference. So while Sirius is perceived publicly as a sort of happy-in-the-fast-lane, slightly daemonic clown, he sees himself from a tragicomic perspective. Since most aspects of Sirius' persona are already public in reality, his entire personality will be pretty much explained up front, by himself, in the context of interviews, song lyrics etc. His reluctant activity will further be explicated in the media portrait and in interaction with the group. St. Jude is a satirical writer on cyber-culture and a radical pornographer. She's had the handle since she first signed on: somebody had her real name so she mutated into stjude, patron of the hopeless, the hapless, and children's aspirin. She is shy sometimes unto agoraphobia, happy to put her life on the Line. She has a fashionably evil reputation thereon: she's into S&M, that sexual default common to nerds -- hey, it's easier than sex! -- she's a bisexual nymph, a sex magician and a weapons nut, all extrapolated from her postings on the Net. Maybe not: playing with the non-meat identities is one of the things this book is about. As an ex-programmer she shares the nerd bias that intelligence and audacity are as good as nine-tenths of the law, at least. Her self-view is almost entirely satirical: she feeds her writing on twitching morsels torn from her most sincere beliefs. A long-time warrior against censorship, she's become completely engaged by the fight for privacy for the real individual -- ironically, protected by pseudopersonas -- in a mass-mediated, too-virtual world. She has a long-standing lovership with a perceived Cypherpunk "leader." In their (encrypted and steganographed) email they make each other laugh about their personal and political hoop-la. SAMPLE _________________________________________________ ____ HACKING THE WETWARE: THE GIRL NERD'S PILLOW BOOK started circulating on the Internet in the Spring of 1994 under the byline "NerdGirl." It's a hands-on operating manual for optimizing hetero nerd sex. [PILLOW BOOKS WERE EITHER DIARIES, OR INSTRUCTIONAL PICTURE PORN LEFT IN PRE- LITERATE TIMES IN JAPANESE NEWLYWED'S BED.] In 1997, I copped to writing it. I offered in evidence some *timestamp-encrypted early drafts much funnier than the release. [TIMESTAMPING IS A WAY OF DATING AND CLAIMING AUTHORSHIP IN A COPYFREE OR COPYLEFT SITUATION.] Section A: Booting Up If you like each other, you may want to have sex immediately, just to get the expectations out of the way. But expect little: unpracticed sex is usually useless. Even if the sex is better than okay, really good sex is built on trained mutual coordination, rather like dancing the tango. So you might make him take ballroom dance classes with you. This is strangely arousing and satifying at the same time: in fact, dancing seems like a transform of sex. atisfying at once, rousing and sMore and more nerds of all genders are learning ballroom nowadays, and maybe this is why. * * * * Section B: Learning the configuration After you both get the idea that fitting tab A into slot B is actually feasible here, repeatably, he will want to customize for the individual case. Let him practice but don't crowd him. (Even if he's badly trained or inexperienced, if the early phase seems like a tutorial he may quit the project before it gets interesting.) Let him hack around on his own. If he's not going to be completely useless he will discover the following things for himself: a) While fitting A into B, merely kludging angles and pressures takes one only so far b) A very small vector shift can make enormous differences in sensation and response c) The intensity of one's own sensation is closely coupled to how enthusiastic one's accomplice is d) Logically, you must find strategies to optimize both your responses This is good. It's time to hit the manuals. Machine Architecture (Anatomy). Principles of operation (Physiology). And some hands-on work. This leads logically to... The Erotic Pelvic Treat this like the mutual research project it is. If he's going to use the systems he must learn them. The ideal male nerd will be developing a functional 3D model of your unique sexual apparatus,that he can rotate in, and around, hoopla, his head. The truly gifted nerd will develop this goal without prompting, but you can propose the idea. As it operates with this model the penis is not a blunt instrument. It's a probe and a button- pusher. It's a *sensor*. But the hand is a more efficient data gathering device while it's all terra incunnita. For the erotic pelvic it's helpful if your boynerd has a thing about latex. He may not realize that he does, yet. You can help this by assuring him that latex is definitely the kink of the future, unless somebody invents a yummier material for gloves and booties and things. The best-case learning environment involves: a) Rubber-sheeted bed b) Armpit-length latex gloves, yesss. c) Large pots of flavored and unflavored lubes d) An angle lamp with a magnifier attached e) A pot of warm water with a couple of soft facerags in it f) Anatomy texts with pictures g) A spirit of earnest intellectual inquiry in all participants * * * * ...but any mis-step of the hand, any move that causes discomfort should be offset at once by the above counterpleasuring techniques. If he goes seriously over the line say "OW OW OW," and wrestle him around a little, playfully. Then give him the irresistible offer: "Let's go get our email." The hackerly attitude is that it's just something that doesn't work yet, some bugs remain -- not that it's a horrid failure. Soon he'll hit the sheets with the same look he gave his monitor when he was mastering UNIX. Now the interior landscape is an intellectual challenge. He may start talking aloud to himself as he does a readout of your personal data, muttering "lateral nerve plexuses" or "Gr fenberg" as he goes along. Do not correct his Latin plurals. Forget about umlauts. Just concentrate... focus finely... and give him, as they say, feedback. Your nerd will accept standard English: "don't ever touch that again," for example, or "I shall now have an orgasm." But he would prefer precise reports in his wonderful new language. Nerds love jargon. You should know. Practice issuing calm statements like "5 cm to the right produces a fasciculation in my right sartorius." This sort of thing is good fun, and produces lots of good data for y'all's notes, but if you want to help him with his interpersonal skills, devolve to whimpers, self-defense postures, toe-clenching, and howls. Being able to infer *good*, *blah*, and *don't stop* will benefit him lifelong. This research phase may wake up his kinkiness. Many nerds have startling fantasies stored up since pubescence -- or from even before. (You hear enough pre- pube fantasies, you start rethinking this famous Latency Period. Some of us were less latent than others. Just how nonnegotiable must the age of consent BE? How many of us had our lives ruined by *not* being molested in a timely way? Didn't YOU long for that mysterious Other when you were twelve? Damn.) I was saying: kinkiness. Given the basic situation, he may, for an obvious example, want to insert his *entire* hand into one of your orifices. What the hell? Let him try, whyever not? Just make him take his time and use the pain-countering techniques slatheringly. If it works, good for everybody. You might like it a lot. But if you don't, at least he's made his benchmark on that particular kink, which might be sufficient for him. What the hell? _________________________________________________ _____ Scrappi DChamp is the even more reluctant creator of the music, art and some of the more humorous realizations of MONDO Vanilli theory. Somewhat reclusive, DChamp's pop musical ear and visual art abilities, his enthusiasm for the new technologies and his spontaneous verbal and literary wit help him develop a reputation as "the one with the talent." Later in the book, he also emerges as a strong voice for the concept of MONDO Vanilli as a media multinational and, in response to the ever-increasing puritanism of the cultural and political environment, helps MV to adapt a new, clean-machine (though still deeply ironic) image for the 21st Century. Though a weirdo by most standardsm Scrappi is the most normal of the six main characters. He's singularly dedicated to creativity and success in media and the arts, interested in having a real life, and skeptical regarding the excesses of Sirius and 3Arm, and of any association with the underground movement. In this sense, DChamp provides a touchstone for the average reader. Simone 3Arm, otherwise known as the CyborGoddess, manifests a profoundly Dal-esque ability for the perverse and the surreal, in the context of inexplicable yet affecting combinations of imagery, which she uses in sexually explicit public performance. While not as text-oriented as Sirius or DChamp, her personal ideology involves the modern primitivist thirst for extraordinary and extreme experience in the body and a sense for pagan ritual as a manifestation of her own peculiar Goddess. She is also a practicing dominatrix and a performer in erotic films. Simone 3Arm combines a peculiar sense of earnestness about what she does with an ever-present sense of the ridiculous. Of the 3 faces of MONDO Vanilli, she is the one most seen and most available in the context of public performance, and she handles public life with almost none of the reluctance expressed by the other 2 Vanillians. Other Two Supporting Characters The guerrilla underground will be the context for presenting the two final main characters, (like the others, based on real persons and--to a degree--writing their own lines) as yet unselected, probably male, who will complete the main ensemble of personalities for this book. Both characters will be radical technophreaks. One will probably be a cypherpunk or crypto-anarchist and the other more of a media pirate. They should probably have that Che Guevara heroic earnestness, nerd-style, but not without a sense of humor. Since these characters are warriors fighting for freedom-- not merely showoffs--they will perforce generate sympathy--in spite of the implicit possibility of actual physical, not to mention electronic, violence. A distinct possibility is that these characters could be written by a science fiction writer in consultation with the "real thing."