Yep, “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley was released on the 11th of August 1987. In other news, on this day in history, Leonidas, King of Sparta, died at Thermopylae (480 B.C.E.);  a few centuries later, Peter Cushing—who played Victor Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and Grand Moff Tarkin—died at the age of eighty-one (1994). Also, exactly one year before “Never Gonna Give You Up” was released, voice actress Fukuhara Kaori (Tsukasa in Lucky Star) was born; exactly one year after it was released, Al Qaeda was formed (1988). Hmmm…

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Lame excuses, I know, but now that I’ve got them out of my system, I can move forwards.

I’ve set my daily writing goal a little lower, at a more sustainable 1,000 words per day, and so far, after eight days, I’ve managed to exceed that even without trying too hard.  This means it will likely be August or September before Rikuzentakata is available.  Still, I think that even though this is a step backwards, it’s still a positive move overall.  The story starts stronger, I think, weaving some action and exposition together in the prologue before settling into the story of a rookie mecha pilot’s first battles and a veteran mecha pilot’s last ones.  Just compare the first paragraphs of my original–

The previous pilot of the twenty-meter-tall mecha that Special Warrant Officer Enokido Harumi now sat at the controls to had committed suicide in the predawn hours of the previous day. Enokido had not known him–he had been part of a unit based in Saitama, whereas she was with the 389th Battalion, ‘C’ Company out of Itoigawa–but the specter of his tragic end weighed heavily upon her. The final act of the mecha’s former pilot had been to press the barrel of his standard JGSDF issue handgun, a Minebea 9mm, into his right eye socket, and then pull the trigger, while seated in the cockpit where Enokido now sat. Thankfully, it had been thoroughly cleaned, but Enokido found the harsh antiseptic odor lingering in the cockpit disturbing.

Enokido carried an identical Minebea handgun strapped to her side. That could have been me, she thought, and for a brief moment, imagined herself turning the pistol to her own head and–

Don’t think like that!, she told herself, pushing the ominous thoughts away. Enokido focused her mind on staying connected to the mecha’s control system as she piloted it. Known as a ‘titan’, the mecha was forty-three metric tons of steel and composite armor. As the light of dawn broke over the hills of Iwate in early spring of the year 2013, she jogged eastward towards Kamaishi, paralleling one of the national highways at a little over seventy kilometers per hour, the titan guided by Enokido’s mental commands. Just don’t think about it. Focus on the task at hand. Get to Kamaishi, find the dismounted pilot, give him the titan, and then wait to be picked up. Then, I’ll go find a temple and pray for the deceased. But try as she might, she could not keep the morbid thoughts from dominating her: That is, if I survive. Maybe someone will be praying for me instead? Maybe Hisagi-nee, or Miyuki-san, she thought, the names of her friends from the 389th coming to mind. That is, if they survive…

–to what I have now–

The previous pilot of the twenty-meter-tall mecha that Enokido Harumi now sat at the controls to had committed suicide in the predawn hours of the previous day. Enokido had been transferred into the 389th Battalion only two months ago, and she was in a Charlie Company, so she had barely known the young man, who had been a member of Alfa Company. Even still, the specter of his tragic end weighed heavily upon her. It was a harsh reminder of the nature of the lives that mecha pilots like herself lived.

The final acts of the deceased were to climb into this mecha’s cockpit, securely strap himself in, press the barrel of his standard-issue handgun into his eye socket, and pull the trigger. He had given no warnings, and he had left no farewells. The cockpit had been thoroughly cleaned, but Enokido found the harsh antiseptic odor that still lingered inside disturbing. Enokido’s sidearm was identical to the one the pilot had killed himself with, a Minebea 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

That could just as easily have been me.

The thought came unbidden into Enokido’s mind, and for a brief moment, she imagined turning the handgun to her own head and–

“Harumi! What are you doing?” Over the radio, the voice of one of her senior teammates, Sakuraba Hisagi, sounded staticky, distorted, garbled, but the sense of urgency came across loud and clear. Enokido turned to look at her, or more accurately, to look at the mecha she piloted, a drab olive green humanoid machine crafted of steel and composite armor. Known as a ‘titan’ , the mecha was decorated only with the insignia of the Ground Self-Defense Force and the 389th Battalion’s logo. With a wave of her titan’s arm, Sakuraba beckoned Enokido. “We’ve orders to intercept the Eskies at Tanohata–they’ll be making landfall any minute now! Let’s go!”

I think the second one just works better.  Both work to set the mood, both get almost the same bits of exposition out of the way, but the latter gets to some action quicker.  I’d have started with Enokido in the midst of conflict from the first sentence, but I like putting the bit about the suicidal pilot up there first.

In any case, I have at least two potential buyers lined up, too: one of my co-workers and one of my former co-workers, after hearing a brief description of the main story arcs, have both stated that they would be buying it when it came out.  Which means I’ve also got people who will be disappointed if I don’t actually finish writing it.  This is good and bad: good, because it is encouraging, but bad, because of the pressure.  So it goes.

In other slightly related news, I’ve been following Mark Coker’s Official Smashwords blog, and seeing his post on serialized novels makes me feel compelled to make a clarification: even though Rikuzentakata is Book One of a (hopefully) larger series, it is not a serial.  It will be a complete novel.  I’m not saying every little thread I introduce in the narrative will be neatly tied up by the end, but all the major ones will be.  Each book of the series will be written so as to allow it to be enjoyed regardless of whether or not any of the other books in the series have been read.  While sequels and trilogies and similar formats are all good and fun, I just don’t like the idea of serialized novels.  Even if there was one that caught my eye, I probably would not buy it, instead waiting until the entire series was completed and then buying a compendium or collection.

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Before watching Summer Wars (an excellent movie, by the way), I had only a dim awareness of the traditional Japanese game of hanafuda.  Well, to be honest, about all I knew about it was that three of the characters from Naruto (Shikamaru, Ino, and Chōji) were named for a particular hand in hanafuda (ino-shika-cho).  But Summer Wars’ charm provoked an interest in hanafuda, and after learning one variant of the game thanks to a flash animation version I found online, I decided to buy myself a deck of hanafuda cards.  For about $36 (including shipping costs), I got a set of two decks of hanafuda cards through Amazon, made in Japan and distributed by The House of Rice.

Shown above are the contents of one deck of hanafuda cards.  The cards are thick, and do not bend; as one can see in the above pictures, they are about one-third the size of a Western-style playing card.  These two factors combine to present an interesting challenge when trying to shuffle the deck.  Riffle shuffling is nigh impossible and would likely damage the cards; an overhand shuffle works reasonably well.  There are forty-eight cards, four for each of twelve suits, each suit being associated with a flower and a month of the year, some of which are designated as ribbon cards, animal cards (which don’t always depict an animal, by the way), and bright cards.

The variant of hanafuda played in the Summer Wars movie, and in the Hanafuda Flash game linked to above, goes something like this: eight cards are dealt to each player, and eight are dealt face-up in the center.  On each player’s turn, they play one card from their hand.  If that card matches the month to one of the cards in the center, they capture both cards; otherwise, the played card is added to the central group of cards.  Then, the player draws one card from the remainder of the deck, and attempts to play it in the same fashion.  The player is trying to capture certain combinations of cards, called yaku, for points.

There are variations, but the list of the yaku used in the Hanafuda Flash game are:

• Kasu (plains): ten plain cards.  This yaku is worth 1 point, plus 1 extra point for each additional plains card captured.  The Sake Cup (the ‘animal’ card of September) card can be regarded as a plain card as well as an animal card for the purposes of this yaku.
• Tanzaku (ribbons): five ribbon cards.  This yaku is worth 1 point, plus 1 extra point for each additional ribbon card captured.
• Tane (animals or types): five of the animals cards.  Like kasu and tanzaku, it is worth 1 point, plus 1 extra point for each additional animal card  captured.
• Ino-Shika-Cho (boar-deer-butterfly): this yaku consists of the three specific animal cards, and is worth 5 points.  This is the yaku that the characters from Naruto I mentioned above were named after.
• Akatan (red poetry ribbons): all three of the red poetry ribbons (the ones with the writing on them).  This yaku is worth 6 points.
• Aotan (blue ribbons): all three of the blue ribbons (although they tend to look more purplish than blue to me).  This yaku is worth 6 points.
• Sanko (three brights): any combination of three bright cards, excluding the Rain Man card.  This yaku is worth 6 points.
• Ame-Shiko (Rain Man): any combination of four bright cards that includes the Rain Man card.  This yaku is worth 8 points.
• Shiko (four brights): all four of the bright cards other than the Rain Man card.  This yaku is worth 10 points.
• Goko (five brights): all five bright cards.  This yaku is worth 15 points.
• Tsuki-fuda (monthly cards): Each round of the game has an associated month, with the first round being January, the second February, and so forth.  Collecting the four cards of the round’s month constitute this special yaku that is worth 4 points.

When a player achieves a yaku, they have two choices: they can either end the round, or allow the round to continue.  If they end the round, they earn the points for the yaku they have collected, and then a new round begins.  If they choose to continue (preferably with an emphatic call of Koi koi!), then the round continues until another yaku is achieved by either player.  If the other player achieves the yaku, and then choses to end the round, the first player does not gain the points for their yaku.  If the same player gains the yaku, they can chose to end the round and earn the points for all the different yaku they have achieved.  Of course, the option to continue (Koi koi!) remains, as long as the players have cards left to play.

I believe (but am not 100% certain) that multiple yaku stack: if one has five ribbon cards, of which three are the blue ribbons, they have achieved two yaku: Tanzaku and Aotan, and earned a total of 7 points.

If both players end up playing all eight of the cards in their hand without either player earning a yaku, it is called Oya-Ken (dealer’s privilege), and whoever the dealer was earns 6 points.  In any case, play continues, round after round, until one player achieves a predetermined number of points (often 50).

Hanafuda seems like a fun enough game, and all that remains is for me to A) con the people I know into trying it, and B) teaching them how to play.  Surely that can’t be that hard.  I mean, we’re only talking about an obscure game from a foreign culture which uses small, difficult to handle cards with very esoteric imagery on it…

Koi koi!

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#!/bin/bash

# this script should compress a single file and then save it to both of my internal hard drives
# This is to preserve the novel I’m writing, hopefully against minor catastrophes

# this is the location and name of the file to be backed up
backup_file=“/media/hitagi-storage/Writing Projects/The Mecha Monogatari – Twilight of the Fierce God/The Mecha Monogatari – Twilight of the Fierce God [v2].doc”

# a shortened version of the name of the story file, for use in the backup file’s name
short_name=“TMM-TOTFG”

# the two places where the compressed file will end up
backup_destination_1=“/home/doug/Documents/TMM-TOTFG Backups”
backup_destination_2=“/media/hitagi-storage/Writing Projects/The Mecha Monogatari – Twilight of the Fierce God/Backups”

# generate a unique name for the compressed backup in the format, which should look something like “TMM-TOTFG-19-May-2010[20:33:12].tgz”
day=“$(date +%d)-$(date +%h)-$(date +%Y)”
time=“$(date +%T)”
archive_file=“$short_name-$day[$time].tgz”

# this line would get the name of my computer for use as part of the name for the compressed backup file, but I decided against using it
# hostname=$(hostname -s)

# these echoes were used for testing and have no function in the final script
# echo “$hostname”
# echo “$backup_file”
# echo “$short_name”
# echo “$archive_file”
# echo “$backup_destination_1″
# echo “$backup_destination_2″

# this one compresses the file and puts it in the first backup location
tar czf “$backup_destination_1“/“$archive_file” “$backup_file“

# this one copies the backup to the second backup location
cp “$backup_destination_1“/“$archive_file“ “$backup_destination_2“

# this puts a notification up on the screen saying it’s done
# requires libnotify-bin
notify-send “File $archive_file successfully created”

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