Tag: just for fun

Trope Tuesday: Space Cossacks

I’m going to take a break from the hero’s journey trope posts for a while, until I have the time to do them justice.  In the meantime, let’s have a little fun.

Some of my favorite science fiction stories are the ones about a culture of nomadic starfaring people wandering the universe in search of a new homeworld.  Earth is usually a half-forgotten legend, and their starships have probably seen better days.  On tvtropes, the page for these stories is Space Cossacks, named after a real world culture in historic Russia that basically experienced the same thing, albeit on a terrestrial scale.

The description of this trope on the tvtropes page is so good, I’m just going to repost it here.  Seriously, every one of those cross links is worthy of your click.

There is no hope and You Can’t Go Home Again. The Empire is spreading out. Even The Federation has too many Obstructive Bureaucrats. There is no way for free men to get out of the reaches of The Government and even mounting La Résistance will be of no avail.

So what do you do? You become Space Cossacks.

You flee to the border and live in a tough area where you all have to be sharp. You set up as Space Pirates or as Hired Guns or as Intrepid Merchants. Or all of these at once.

With you are various dissidents like people who feared being Made a Slave. There might be a Noble Fugitive or two, perhaps even a Defector from Decadence. You and your brave band of Fire-Forged Friends will struggle on to survive and maintain your freedom and heed no laws but your own.

One of the things that I think should qualify a story for this trope is that the society of space cossacks is just that: a community of people who share at least a few cultural bonds.  Battlestar Galactica definitely qualifies, but I’m a little on the fence as to Firefly, since that story is more or less about a ragtag band of failed revolutionaries.  Are the Browncoats all from the same culture, like the Kurds or the Circassians or the Ossetians, or are they just a pologlot group of frontiersmen from all over the settled worlds?  Does it even matter?

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t.  The spirit of this trope is a lot like that of Fighting for a Homeland: a bunch of displaced underdogs on the fringes of civilization trying to make their way in the universe.  The nature of the conflict is such that by the end, they can’t help but form their own distinct subculture.

I don’t know why I love this trope so much.  Maybe it has to do with the way it blends elements from the Western genre in a classic Science Fictional setting.  Maybe it’s because I was born in the wrong century and naturally dream of settling the frontier.  Maybe it’s because this is one of the best ways to get awesome space battles.

Whatever the reason, I can’t get enough of it, as you can probably guess from reading my books.  In Bringing Stella Home, Danica and her band of Tajji mercenaries fit this trope to a T.  Stars of Blood and Glory delves quite a bit deeper into their background, with Roman as a major viewpoint character.  In Heart of the Nebula, the people of the Colony basically become Space Cossacks over the course of the novel.  Both of those novels are currently unpublished, but I hope to put them up in the next year.

On the subject of roving bands of displaced Eastern Europeans, I listened to this Circassian folk song maybe a dozen times while writing this post:

Awesome stuff–I’m totally putting it in the soundtrack for my next Gaia Nova novel.  Also, I’ll have to name a moon or a planet in the Tajjur system after Mount Elrus or something.  Space Cossacks indeed!

Grape harvest update

Sorry for missing the last Trope Tuesday post.  We’re in the tail end of the grape harvest here in Georgia, so I’ve been spending a lot of time helping out with that.  The next trope post is going to be a big one, so rather than trying to pound it out in the village (where most internet sessions are cut short by a power outage), I figured I’d just wait until next week.

In any case, here are some pictures from the harvest that you might find interesting.  Georgia is pretty famous for its wine and grapes–there are over 500 different varieties in the country, many of them indigenous to the Caucasus region.  Almost everyone in the village has their own vineyard, so most of the stuff you buy in the market is locally grown and locally produced.  Let me tell you, there are few things more awesome than being able to get freshly picked fruit right in your own backyard.

Picking grapes. A bunch of the neighbors came out and helped, in exchange for a basketful of grapes and a nice dinner.
Grapes, fresh on the vine.
It takes a little more infrastructure to grow them this way, but the end result is much better.
The best part of picking grapes is being able to snack while you pick them. 🙂

In terms of writing, I’m making fairly decent progress on my next novel.  It’s a fantasy story, so it’s a pretty big shift from all the space opera stuff I’ve done over the last few years.  At least, that’s what it feels like.  I’m trying not to worry about how much it sucks right now, but if it’s anything like all my other books, it will turn out a lot better than I think it will.

That’s about all for now.  I’ll leave you with this hilarious youtube clip of a bunch of Koreans going ape over a Georgian dance troop.  The Georgians are awesome, but it’s worth watching for the Koreans’ reactions alone.  Seriously, best thing I’ve seen in a long time.

See you around!

I cannot tell you…

…how much I’m looking forward to being back in Georgia.

My flight leaves from JFK on Saturday and arrives in Istanbul at about 6 am on Sunday.  The flight to Tbilisi doesn’t leave for another seven hours, so I plan to take the tram downtown and see some of the sights.  I’ll arrive in Tbilisi late that afternoon, spend the night at a hostel…

…and then take off the next morning for Kars, Turkey.  I plan to meet up with a friend there and go tour the ruins of Ani, ancient capital of Armenia.  I have no idea yet how I’m going to get there, but there should be some buses in Tbilisi or Akhaltsikhe, and from Kars you can charter a taxi.

So after all that, I’ll head out to Baghdati to meet my new host family!  For the fall semester, I’ve been assigned to the school in the village of Rokhi:


View Larger Map

It’s about an hour south of Kutaisi, right up against the Lesser Caucasus mountains, and it looks like an awesome place!  A couple of other TLGers have been there before me, and they tell me it’s really great.  It’s definitely going to be a change of pace, going from city to village, but it’s one I’m looking forward to.  There are only 300 students in the school (grades 1-12), so maybe I’ll learn all my students’ names this time.

The family I’ve been assigned to sounds a bit older, with a thirty year old son who works at the school.  It sounds a bit rustic, with Turkish toilets and no internet at home, but I’m looking forward to that, especially the no internet part.  Don’t worry, I plan to get out and blog regularly–I’m sure there are local internet cafes, plus Kutaisi isn’t that far and I know where to get internet there.

Getting out to church is going to be a bit tricky: I’ll probably go into Kutaisi on Saturday, take the noon train into Tbilisi (5 GEL) and spend the night at a hostel (15 GEL), or take the sleeper train (10 GEL) and show up in the morning.  Getting back shouldn’t be too difficult: the Baghdati marshrutka leaves from Didube at 16:00 (or so I hear), and from there it’s only about 6 or 7 kilometers.

I have no idea how long I’ll be in Georgia this time: my contract runs until the end of December but I may extend again, depending on what other options open up.  I’ve really fallen in love with Georgia since coming there, and may just choose to stay on another year.  The Caucasus is a really amazing place, full of hidden treasures and remote places.

Which reminds me: I’m bringing a tent and sleeping bag this time, to do some backpacking in Borjomi and Tusheti.  Packing them was tough: the airline restriction is 20 kg total of weight (44.1 lbs), and after a whole lot of work, I finally got it down to 42.5 lbs.  The disassembled backpack frame is going to have to go as a separate piece of luggage, since it was too big to fit in any bag, but it shouldn’t be too hard to reassemble it out in Georgia.

That’s about it.  I’ll leave you with this awesome Georgian song I found on youtube.  The dance troop is Erisioni, and they put on an amazing show that’s kind of like Riverdance, except for Georgia.  Let me tell you: when it comes to dance (folk or ballroom), I don’t think anyone in the world is as amazing as the Georgians.

Magaria!

My Muse

A long time ago, I did a whimsical post about my muse and what she is like.  Imagine my surprise when I found a picture of her on Deviant Art!

I had a lot of fun with that post, so I thought I’d revisit it.  Enjoy!


Young Universe by *DestinyBlue on deviantART
My muse is about fifteen years younger than me and three thousand years older. She listens to my philosophical dabblings like a younger sister, but is a lot closer to the pulse and rhythm of this world than I have ever been.

She has a soft spot for Homer and the old Greek epics (I suppose that’s right around the time when she got her start at being a muse), but she’s been deeply in love with space adventures since the days of Wells, Burroughs, and Heinlein. Her love of the stars must have started back in the days of the Greeks and Romans, because that’s the only thing that’s ever on her mind. She’s definitely a night owl and I think she spends her nights stargazing while I’m asleep.

In contrast to my blunt, forward, and sometimes overly-aggressive manner, she doesn’t really speak to me unless she knows that I’m listening. She doesn’t slap me upside the head to get me working, and she usually doesn’t come to me until I’ve been slaving away for a good long while. If I choose not to listen to her, she shrugs and walks away without an argument.

As much as I love to toy with ideas, she likes to touch, taste, see, and smell things directly with her own senses. She’s the kind of person who would take off her shoes to walk barefoot in the grass, even if it makes her late to where she’s going. She’s easily distracted and she never really lets me know where she’s going until we get there. However, if I listen and humbly follow her, she always leads me someplace worthwhile.

My muse is very mischievous. Her favorite thing is to give me random flashes of inspiration when I’m in the middle of something else. I can’t tell you how many crazy ideas I’ve had while driving on the highway, or taking a class, or working a mind-numbing job. She teases me, too–if I don’t write everything down in the moment of inspiration, she won’t tell me again until I fall on my knees and beg her.

My muse looks young and innocent, but don’t be deceived. She’s a wanderer who isn’t likely to settle down anytime soon. Blood, violence, battle, and death excite her. She gleefully urges me to torture and confuse my characters as much as I can. Still, deep down, I think she wants the good to win out in the end, and the evil to be revealed for what it really is.

I have no idea why she chose me out of all the writers out there, but she’s been with me long as I can remember. Whatever I do and wherever I go, I know she’ll always be there.

Trope Tuesday: Slap Slap Kiss

There aren't enough scoundrels in your life.

Unless you have an unhealthy aversion to kissing books, you’re probably familiar with Slap Slap Kiss.  It’s common in genre romance, but you’ll often find it in science fiction & fantasy too.  When done well, it’s a great way to make sparks fly, but when done poorly…I think you can fill in the rest.

The basic underlying concept is that love and hate are just two sides of the same coin.  Both involve strong feelings for another person, the kind that drive you crazy and make it hard to think straight.  According to this theory, it’s a lot easier to fall in love with someone you hate than to fall in love with someone you don’t really care about.  And once you fall in love, the rest is easy. <snark!>

Kiss Kiss Slap is the Tsundere’s standard MO.  An effective way to end the will they or won’t they? phase, though the trope is so common that you can spot it almost as soon as the slapping starts (Dinosaur Comics has a good commentary on that).  Sometimes happens in conjunction with Foe Yay, though the couple doesn’t have to start out as sworn enemies.  The kiss itself is usually one of those “lovely trick[s] designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” When set up properly, is often accompanied by a Love Epiphany.

Of course, it’s possible to go too far.  There’s a fine line between “all’s fair” and kicking the dog, and if you cross it…good luck.  Alternately, if the slapping doesn’t cross the line, but the kiss doesn’t live up to expectations, it’s also going to fall flat.  And if the main reason you invoke this trope is because the plot demands it…let’s just say, you’re doing it wrong.

In general, I think it’s important to keep the following in mind:

  • The attraction needs to be properly foreshadowed.  If the characters start slapping each other without even a hint of sexual tension first, no amount of backpedaling is going to make up for it.
  • Neither of the characters should tear each other down.  There’s a big difference between a slap and a punch (and a roundhouse kick, for that matter).  Even though the characters may abuse each other, they have to have at least some mutual respect.  After all, Han still called Leia “your highness,” and Leia still complimented Han on his “bucket of bolts” (albeit sarcastically).  Once the respect is gone, so is any hint of romance.
  • The kiss needs to be proportional to the slap.  Lots of slap with an innocent little peck is going to feel anticlimactic, while a tap on the chin with a giant make out moment immediately afterward is going to feel melodramatic.  The two need to be balanced in order for the trope to work.
  • The couple should have at least something in common. “Opposites attract” is often just an excuse for shoddy character development.  In real life, if the two people don’t have at least something in common, value-wise and personality-wise, the romance is pretty much doomed to fail.  As always, however, Your Mileage May Vary.

Finally, even though there are a lot of reasons to hate this trope, there’s a reason we keep coming back to it.  What that reason is exactly, I can’t say, but I know it when I see it.  After all, you really shouldn’t over analyze some things.  Like this video:

I think my work here is done.  What sayest thou?

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, aka the best 4x strategy game of ALL TIME

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is, without a doubt, the best strategy game I have ever played.  I have many fond memories playing it into the early morning hours while I was in college.

I just bought it for $2.99.  What have I done??

The last time I played this game, it quite literally consumed my life.  I eventually had to delete it from my computer just to keep up with my schoolwork.

But wow, it’s so good.  And the best part, in my opinion, is the story.  Unlike other 4x strategy games, where everything is basically up in the air, Alpha Centauri has a very distinct storyline full of interesting twists and turns.

It starts out with a colony mission to (where else?) Alpha Centauri that fractures into seven factions, based not on ethnicity or nationality, but on ideology.  These are: the scientists, the religious fundamentalists, the communists, the free-market capitalists, the diplomatists, the militarists, and the environmentalists.

The last faction is my favorite, because the planet itself is a character in this story.  As you settle and explore new territory, you come across giant patches of fungus and swarms of hostile mind-worms.  The more the game progresses, however, the more you realize that the fungus is part of a giant neural network, and that it’s trying to communicate with you.  When you finally learn to communicate back–THAT’S when things get interesting.

Oh man, I love this game.  It’s a science fiction classic, reminiscent of Orson Scott Card and Arthur C. Clarke.  I just hope I can exercise some self-restraint this time–but hey, if I can moderate how much time I spend on Minecraft, surely I can do the same with Alpha Centauri.

Famous last words…

STARS OF BLOOD AND GLORY 1.1 is finished!

That’s right!  After what felt like six hours of un-anesthetized brain surgery, Stars of Blood and Glory 1.0 is finally complete!  Here are the stats:

words: 76,326
chapters: 18, prologue & epilogue
ms pages: 360
start date: 20 Dec 2011
end date: 2 Feb 2011

Some extended stats, just for fun:

days spent writing: 36
miles traveled: ~5,500
viewpoint characters: 5
characters from other novels: 9
major characters who die: 3
space battles: 5
planets slagged: 1

The wordsplash:

Wordle: Stars of Blood and Glory 1.1

And the most influential song while writing:

It’s good to finish another novel, but this one definitely needs a lot of work before I feel that it’s of publishable quality.  I think I know how to fix it, but my mind needs a break in order to give it a fresh approach.  I’ll probably let it settle for a few months, then come back either this spring or summer.

I’m pleasantly surprised with how quickly I was able to finish this book.  Thirty-six writing days is something of a personal record.  Still, it feels like it needs a little more fleshing out.  76k is definitely too short for a novel of this type; hopefully in the second draft, I’ll be able to bring it up to 80k or 90k.

In other news, I heard back from the TLG program, and I’m happy to say I’ve been accepted!  I’ll fly out to Georgia in a little less than two weeks, have a seven day orientation period at Kutaisi, then ship off to wherever the Ministry of Education decides to send me.  I’ll be there until at least June, then either renew for a second semester or go somewhere else, maybe Eastern Europe or the Middle East.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited!  Hopefully, this new career will be a good fit, and I’ll have many awesome adventures in the next few years.  Even if my writing starts to take off and my books start selling hand over fist, I’ll probably keep teaching for a while just for the experience.  Writing is fun, but when you have nothing else to keep you busy it can also get quite boring.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty freaking busy, so I’m probably going to ease off on the writing, at least until I get settled into the new routine.  Before I leave, I need to:

  • Find affordable expat insurance.
  • Pick up a 220 to 120 volt converter and plug adapter.
  • Publish Journey to Jordan on Amazon and B&N.
  • Get some new clothes.
  • Clean my parents’ guest room.
  • File state taxes for Utah (federal taxes are already filed).
  • Write up the last couple of Trope Tuesday posts for the backlog.
  • Finish the covers for Star Wanderers (while I still have access to my desktop computer).
  • Read up on Georgian customs and mentally prepare myself for the inevitable culture shock.

Shouldn’t be too hard, but it’s only going to get crazier once I’m over there.  I’ll be sure to keep you updated as much as I can, though; this is going to be fun!

So yeah, another novel down; this one makes my sixth.  Just another 94 to go before I reach my lifetime goal of one hundred!

Character Interview: Master Sergeant Roman Andrei Krikoryan

So I recently heard about a really interesting blogfest, where the goal is to blog about the characters in your story, as well as have a little fun with flash fiction.  The prizes look pretty good, too: a couple of free books and a manuscript critique, from a couple of up-and-coming editors.

Not bad…but the 250 word limit on the character interview seemed a little too restrictive.  The idea really caught my imagination, though, so I decided to go ahead and do it for the main character of the book I’m writing now: Stars of Blood and Glory.

It was really fun!  Stuff like this can be great for working out different aspects of your character.  I already knew most of this stuff about Roman, but the exercise helped to solidify it.

And so, without further ado: enjoy!

========================================

Hello, and welcome!  I’m here on the Tajji Flame with Master Sergeant Roman Andrei Krikoryan, one of the Tajji mercenaries in Bringing Stella Home and a major character in the sequel, Stars of Blood and Glory.  How are you doing today, Roman?

How do you do, my friend.

Very well, thank you.  Let’s get started shall we?  First question: What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?

What is my vulnerability?  This is strange question to be asking a mercenary.  Why do you wish to know? <narrows eye>

Um, it’s not meant to be intrusive, more just as ah, um…well, what would you say is your biggest emotional vulnerability?

“Emotional vulnerability”?  Look at me.  I am not a man anymore, but a cyborg; what “emotions” I still feel, they are distant and weak.  Rare pleasures, like sweet, unbidden memories.

I tell this to the doctor every time at check up, but she does not believe me.  She is still young, and wishes to believe that there is some humanity left in me.  Who knows?  Perhaps she is right.  But cyborgs do not die, my friend: their humanity fades until they are a ghost within a machine.

I have wandered the stars for over seventy standard years; I have seen my homeworld conquered not once, but twice.  I have killed many men, I have slept with many whores, I have watched my old friends die, and had other friends watch me, thinking I was dead.  I am old–too old.  And yet cyborgs do not die: they fade.

So if you consider this as “emotional vulnerability,” then this is mine: to be alive, and yet not truly living.  And it is no secret.  I am a man of very few secrets.

What do people believe about you that is false?

Many things, some more false than others.  You cannot be soldier for as long as I without learning how to cultivate a certain, how do I say?  Persona.  My men, they see the side of me that is strong–and it is a true side, for in battle, it is impossible to live a lie.  But the side that they do not see, that is the pain–the memories, the weariness, the silent longing.  It is dull now, but it is still there, even if I do not show it.

And so, if there is something that people believe about me that is false, it is that I feel no pain.  I have always felt pain, until even before the rebellion was lost.  It is way of life for me now.  When the pain finally stops, then I will know that I am no longer human.

What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?

My best friend is the captain, Danica Nova.  She knows of my pain; she shares in it.  And what would she say is my flaw?  That I suffer in silence, perhaps.  Every time she has question, she is asking me for help, seeking for my guidance.  She believes that everyone must have someone on whom they can lean, that without this, no one can truly stand.  And so she sees me suffering, and wishes that I would talk with her, so that these wounds might heal.

But I do not wish for my wounds to heal.  They are the last thing I have left–the pain which tells me I have not yet faded, that I am still human.  I have lived many years with this pain, and I do not know what would become of me without it.  And so, it is not my friends, but the pain, that has been my constant companion these many long years.

I do not know if this is flaw, but I do know that Danica would say that it is.

What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?

That question, I know without a doubt what is the answer.  It is that I will do anything–anything–for my men.  You see my arm, how that it is prosthetic?  I lost the original fighting in a battle that all of us thought we would lose.  If I am fading, it is because I have given my life for my men–and I will continue to do so until I have nothing left to give.

What do you want most? What will you do to get it? 

<laughs> A strange question, with an even stranger answer.  As you can see, I am man of war–but if there is one thing that I wish for, it is peace.  Peace!  And what sort of peace, you may ask?  I will tell you.  I wish for the peace that one feels by coming home. <throws back head and laughs again>

And so you see, my friend, this is a peace that I can never feel.  My homeworld is gone–slagged into oblivion.  My country has been destroyed, my people scattered across a hundred stars. I have nothing left but to keep on fighting; and so, even though I long for peace, I continue to make war, because it is all that I am.

But what will I do to get this peace?  I will tell you.  Since I do not have a homeland, I will find this peace by dying for my men.  It is fitting, is it not?  That the man of war should only find peace in his own death?  This is as it should be.  But it must not be a selfish death–it must be a sacrifice, so that others may live.

Thank you very much, Roman.  I enjoyed writing Bringing Stella Home, and look forward to chronicling your further exploits in Stars of Blood and Glory.

My pleasure.

========================================

As an interesting side note, if Roman had a theme song, this would be it.  Have a great day!

Am I swamped, or am I lazy?

This post might get a little emo, so I apologize in advance.

I feel like I have so much on my plate right now, and yet when I look back at what I’ve accomplished each day, I wonder if I couldn’t have been more productive.  I’m moving out of my apartment on the 21st, so that’s the deadline for pretty much everything, and here’s what I’ve got to do before then:

  • Run through the copy edits for Desert Stars and rewrite the epilogue.
  • Get the cover art and publish Desert Stars.
  • Write the epilogue for Journey to Jordan and publish it.
  • Finish Star Wanderers and submit to Writers of the Future.
  • Do a guest post for Slava Heretz.
  • Finish the application for the TLG program.
  • Get rid of all my remaining books.
  • Figure out electronic W2 and other forms for taxes (before leaving in January).
  • Write up the “About My Books” page on blog.
  • Do a couple of recap posts on the travel blog.
  • Pack and ship my desktop computer.
  • Pack all my remaining stuff.
  • Get post office to forward all mail to home address.
  • Clean apartment for move-out inspection.
  • Find suitable traveler’s insurance.
  • Go clothes shopping.
  • Half a dozen other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

In other words, this is not the time to be playing minecraft.

And yet, taken individually, most of these tasks are not all that difficult.  A lot of them are just mindless chores associated with moving, and the other ones, while requiring hard work, are pretty straightforward.  So am I really swamped, or am I just disorganized and lazy?

This is something I’ve struggled with since graduating last year.  When I was in school, I was constantly busy, but I was also constantly producing.  Even though my writing suffered a bit when I was swamped, I still found time to write three novels (Ashes of the Starry Sea, Genesis Earth, and Bringing Stella Home) and hold down a student job.  For the last year, I haven’t had any school and most of the time I haven’t had a job, and yet my productivity doesn’t seem to have improved.

Part of it has to do with structuring time and organizing myself.  In the past year, I’ve learned that a routine isn’t something you should hang onto doggedly, but something you need to constantly reinvent.  And yet, when I’m staying up until 2am-3am and not getting up until 8am-9am, I can’t help but feel that something’s off.  The whole moving limbo thing certainly doesn’t help, but hey, the work’s still got to be done.

Maybe it’s just deer in the headlights syndrome.  I’ll try making a checklist of everything I want to accomplish in the next two weeks and go for it.  In the meantime, I’m going to get out of this apartment and take a walk, because if I don’t, I’m going to go insane.

Also, as a token of gratitude for putting up with my babbling, here’s something cool I made the other day:

See you around!

Trope Tuesday: Walking the Earth

Oh there’s sober men in plenty
And drunkards barely twenty
There are men of over ninety
That have never yet kissed a girl.
But give me a wandering rover
From Orkney down to Dover
We will roam the country over
And together we’ll face the world.

When a character decides to walk the Earth, they leave behind friends, family, and earthly possessions to wander from town to town in search of adventure. In real life, we think of these people as bums, but in fiction these characters are often the protagonists–or if not, then some sort of wise figure or noble adversary.

There are two character archetypes that tend to fill this trope: the drifter (or “the stranger” as Joseph Campbell called him) and the knight errant. For the knight errant, walking the Earth is simply part of the job description: always in search of evil to slay and damsels to rescue, he cannot stay in one place for long. It’s the same with the drifter, though he might not have the same skill set or code of honor.

As you can imagine, this trope tends to be most prevalent in Westerns, with the knight errant transformed into a gunslinger and the drifter wandering the wide frontier. American culture has definitely embraced this trope; what else did you expect from the nation that invented cars, highways, and the road trip? However, it’s also quite prevalent in East Asia as well, with the ronin and other wuxia archetypes.

Of course, this trope is only possible in a society that has a long tradition of sacred hospitality; otherwise, the wandering hero will almost certainly starve. That’s one way to spot stories where this trope is done poorly: if the wanderer has no visible means of support, yet appears clean and well-fed, the author hasn’t connected the dots. Also, characters who walk the earth are almost always male, since women who travel alone are more likely to get raped or assaulted.

One of my favorite examples of this is Van Hoenheim from Full Metal Alchemist. <SPOILER: highlight to read>After he unwittingly helps the first humunculous to sacrifice the population of Xerxes to make two giant philosopher’s stones, Hoenheim sets off to wallk the Earth as an immortal being, his sorrow too great to allow him to settle down. However, while the humunculous uses his stone to acquire even greater power, Hoenheim becomes familiar with every damned soul trapped in his and enlists their help. In the final battle, we learn that Hoenheim has used his centuries of walking the Earth to bury the damned souls in such a way to counter the humunculous’s transmutation circle, thus saving the people of Amnestria.</SPOILER>

There’s a dark side to this trope, however: the flying dutchman, cursed to wander the earth forever. By definition, every adventure must come to an end; when it doesn’t, it becomes instead a sentence of exile. Perhaps this is why characters who walk the Earth in a post-apocalyptic setting (like the wandering Jew in A Canticle for Leibowitz) tend to lean more towards this: after the world ends, there is no going home.

Which makes me wonder: in order for this trope to be positive, is it necessary for the main character to have the option of settling down whenever he wants to? Certainly there are those who choose a life of eternal adventure, but that implies that they have a choice. Even if they would have chosen not to settle, when that option is taken from them does that always make the story darker and less hopeful?

Either way, this trope intrigues me. Expect to see it in my own work soon.

Lyrics from “The Ramblin Rover” by Silly Wizard.