The Legend of the White Snake

Shu Shian meets Xiao-Ching and Lady White.

The Year of the Snake always calls to my mind the legend of the White Snake. There are many versions of the story, but the one I heard as a child goes like this:

There once was a white snake who lived in the West Lake, beneath the Broken Bridge. She was captured by a peddler and sold to a young apothecary named Shu Shian, for the organs of snakes were useful as medicine. Shu Shian, however, took pity and released her instead.

She meditated long and transformed herself into a human woman, rescuing a little green snake from the fate that almost befell her. The green snake becomes her companion and also learns to take human form. Longing to repay her debt of gratitude, the white snake set out with the green snake, calling themselves Lady White and Xiao-Ching, to find Shu Shian.

They met on the shore of the West Lake during the Clear Brightness Festival. Shu Shian fell in love with Lady White and married her. Together they opened an apothecary, which became very successful thanks to Lady White's magic, Shu Shian's skill, and Xiao-Ching's cunning. They never turned away a patient, treating for free those who could not afford medicine.

One year, during the Dragon Boat Festival, a monk named Fa-Hai saw Lady White and recognized her true nature. He warned Shu Shian that his wife is not what she seemed. When Shu Shian refused to believe this, he instructed him to burn sulfur incense in his house and give his wife sulfur wine to drink, as is customary during that festival.

Not knowing any better, Shu Shian convinced his wife to drink the wine, causing her to revert to the form of gigantic white snake, which literally frightens the man to death. Lady White traveled with faithful Xiao-Ching to find a magical mushroom (yeah, yeah) that brought her husband back to life.

However, Fa-Hai came to confront Lady White for killing Shu Shian. He defeated her, in part because she was weak from her journey and being pregnant, and imprisoned her beneath the Thunder Peak Pagoda. There she delivered a son named Shu Meng-Jiao. Heartbroken, Shu Shian became a monk himself, leaving the child to be raised by his family.

When Meng-Jiao grew up, he passed the civil service exam and became an official, which was a pretty big deal in ancient China. Thus empowered, he went to the Thunder Peak Pagoda and wept endlessly for his mother's release The gods were so moved by Meng-Jiao's filial piety that they commanded Fa-Hai to reunite Lady White with her son.

I have also heard versions of the story where Xiao-Ching defeated Fa-Hai and compelled him to release her mistress, or where Lady White herself took down her foe with a magic flood. In each case, though, Lady White is the hero--one with a sidekick, no less!

Snakes are usually regarded as dangerous pests in Chinese stories, and women as weak or treacherous. Instead, Lady White and Xiao-Ching epitomize honor, courage, and loyalty. I guess I just like the stories that turn stereotypes on their heads? Or maybe there's something about snakes...

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sith

I find myself drawn to certain archetypes or tropes across many genres--well, mostly science fiction, but you know what I mean. I create my own versions of them again and again in novels and roleplaying games. Some of these probably already have more scholarly appellations, but here are my names for them.

• The Fallen Antihero
  'Antihero' can refer to either a flawed hero or a sympathetic villain. I find the combination of those two the most poignant--the Hero who falls from grace.
  Examples: Lucifer (Paradise Lost), Anakin Skywalker (Star Wars), and Captain Ahab (Moby-Dick).

• The Genius Advisor
  Not exactly a mentor, not exactly a sidekick, the Genius Advisor is an oft-overlooked character and a role model to many geeklings. His intelligence is the key to the Hero's success, and he is the 'good' counterpart to the Evil Vizier.
  Examples: Zhu Ge-liang (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Spock (Star Trek), and Thufir Hawat (Dune).

• The ÜberGeek
  If the Genius Advisor is a young geek's role model, the ÜberGeek is his fantasy self. He is intelligent, studious, and a complete badass in spite/because of it.
  Examples: Daniel Jackson (Stargate), Hiro Protagonist (Snow Crash), and Oracle/Barbara Gordon (Batman).

• The Disciplined Sociopath
  Lack of empathy does not mean lack of self-control; the (typically hyper-intelligent) Disciplined Sociopath uses his powers for good...or not.
  Examples: Hannibal Lector (The Silence of the Lambs), Rorschach (Watchmen), and Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock).

• The Razorgirl
  The original Razorgirl was Molly, a bodyguard/killer for hire in Neuromancer, but this type of ruthless female warrior is common in science fiction. Unlike the Femme Fatale, her power lies not in sex appeal, but martial prowess.
  Examples: Miranda Lawson (Mass Effect 2), Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell), and Catherine Li (Spin State).

• The Crossdressing Warrior
  Typically a girl disguised as a boy so she can go adventuring, but occasionally a man dressing in drag to evade detection, the Crossdressing Warrior serves as the heart to many a comedy of errors.
  Examples: Hua Mu-lan (The Ballad of Hua Mu-lan), any of the protagonists in All the Queen's Men, and Éowyn (Lord of the Rings).

• The Faithful Retainer
  Under-appreciated and overlooked, the Faithful Retainer accepts his lot out of love for his master. He can be a font of wit, wisdom, and courage, morphing into the Everyman Hero in his master's moment of need.
  Examples: R2-D2 and C3PO (Star Wars), Samwise Gamgee (Lord of the Rings), and Sancho Panza (Don Quixote).

• The Childlike Posthuman
  Maybe he can bench-press a car or recite Pi to the millionth digit, but he does not understand friendship or innuendo. Even if he kills without blinking, he retains a certain innocence, wonder, and vulnerability.
  Examples: Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Darman and other clone troopers (Star Wars: Republic Commando), and Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager).

Game Masters All

My favorite tabletop RPG (Mage: the Ascension) gives players the power to alter the game setting in fundamental ways. Although the game master--or 'storyteller', to use White Wolf's lingo--still has the final say, players wield a stupendous amount of power compared to 'traditional' RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons.

Eight of Wands

Mage does give the GM tools to keep overly ambitious players in check. Seriously, there is a mechanic called 'Hubris'. However, I have the fortune of GMing for a group of very cooperative players in that game. Their eagerness to portray PCs in a balanced and immersive fashion gives me a lot of freedom to world-build with them rather than around them.

I allow the players to contribute, both knowingly and unknowingly, in and out of character, to the shared reality of the game. I incorporate elements of the PCs' machinations and the players' wild speculations into the story--sometimes directly, sometimes retroactively, and sometimes in barely recognizable form. In effect, this inflicts a limited version of the Bard's Tongue flaw on every single character.

As I do this more and more, I realize that I will eventually hit a wall, which is the fundamental structure of a game like Mage--and most other tabletop RPGs--that separates GMs from players. Every now and then I halfheartedly investigate game systems that either distribute GM responsibilities (e.g. Prime Time Adventures) or have no GM at all (e.g. Narrative Cage Match), but so far I have not found exactly what I want.

What exactly do I want? I want a fully collaborative storytelling game system where each participant is both a game master and a player. The Narrative Cage Match system for the game Patheon is fairly close in concept, being a kind of themed Exquisite Corpse with dice and counters. Its mechanics, however, are centered on competition and scoring, and gameplay seems heavily reliant on the scenarios (essentially modules) presented in the rulebook. I am looking for something a bit more free-form than that, but not so free-from that it devolves into the Oldest Game.

Nothing Unreal Exists

I seem to lack an intuitive confidence in reality that most people exhibit.

The first piece of philosophy that made any sense to me was Zhuang-zi's 'butterfly dream'. For those unfamiliar with the story: Zhuang-zi has a vivid dream of being a butterfly, then wakes up and wonders whether he is a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a man.

In other words, we have no means of independently confirming our perceptions of reality.

That idea later drew me to the practice of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. For the same reason, the only part of Western Classical philosophy that immediately interested me was Skepticism. Perhaps ironically, my uncertainty about perception also led me to place a high value on the scientific process and empiricism.

Even verifying an observation with instruments or other observers relies on information gathered by our senses and interpreted by our brains, which (as illustrated by the butterfly dream and cognitive experiments) are notoriously inconsistent. However, given that all other methods are also prey to the fallibility of human cognition, science provides the most reliable known framework for interpreting the world around us.

I accept consensus reality as a plausible theory, and usually behave in a manner consistent with it. Even if suffering is an illusion, it still feels unpleasant, so I do my best to avoid it. All the same, I consider it good practice to entertain other hypotheses, hence my fascination with fiction in general, and speculative fiction in particular.

Recently, my partner coined a phrase ('conspiracy chic') that gave me insight on a pet peeve of mine: I revile fiction that puts too much emphasis on its (supposed or actual) basis in reality. I do not mean historical fiction or hard sci-fi, but rather conspiracy thrillers, true crime stories, and the like. Well-known examples include The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and The Blair Witch Project.

Realism in fiction (or lack thereof) does not bother me, but I reject the notion that I ought to find a story more compelling just because it is 'real'. Dan Brown begins The Da Vinci Code with a list of 'facts'; the (very poor) pedigree of those 'facts' aside, that gimmick relies on the conceit that fiction is inferior to non-fiction.

I understand that people want to believe stories, but I do not grok how a story's alleged reality makes it more believable. As I see it, a 'true' story has a higher burden of proof than a fictitious one. This does not mean I cannot enjoy true stories, but somehow I always feel a need to independently verify them, which damages my ability to suspend disbelief. Fiction frees me from that uncertainty.

Beyond my own peculiar preferences, fiction communicates many things as well as--if not better than--non-fiction. Consider the fables and parables that litter various philosophies and philosophies, or thought experiments in theoretical physics, not to mention the entire linguistic concept of metaphors. Literal existence is not a requirement for relevance.

Just as we can question reality without losing touch with it, we can value fiction without conflating it with reality. Besides, all ideas and all fiction (and all fake non-fiction, too) have some measure of reality--if not in their effects on our agency, then at least in the chemical, electrical, and metabolic activities our bodies go through when we think about them. That opens another can of butterflies in terms of theories on how reality works.

Storyteller

As a child, my exposure to English came exclusively from my father. At the age of five, I went to live with my Chinese grandmother and only saw my parents on the weekends. If I did all of my homework on time, however, I was allowed to call my father for bedtime stories.

Major Farrington was a fine storyteller, and gave me to understand that it was an Irish gift I would surely inherit. He told me twisted fairy tales, his own takes on classical literature, Loony Tunes-inspired dinosaur hijinks, and probably more than anyone should tell a small child about the Korean and Vietnam Wars. I could not get enough, and from an early age started reading everything in sight and weaving clumsy imitations in my mind.

I loved playing make-believe, casting myself and my friends into the roles of favorite anime characters. When I discovered Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager, I ended up playing Dungeon Master a lot (for those not familiar with tabletop roleplaying, the 'Dungeon Master' or 'Game Master' narrates the adventure for the other players).

I wrote my first sci-fi story at age ten (trust me, it was awful) and my first fantasy novel eight years later (also awful). My primary consideration when seeking employment is how it will impact my writing and gaming. Those two activities now consume the vast majority of my spare time.

When you think about it, the whole idea of a story is really quite remarkable. A storyteller creates entire worlds with his mind and then transmits it through language to other people. In collaborative storytelling endeavors (such as make-believe or roleplaying games), each participant modifies the constructed reality, bringing to it his own knowledge and imagination.

Whether the work of a lone soul or a massive group, though, stories unite people. They link minds together across vast gulfs of space and time. They create common experience in their own dimensions, where we can explore strange, dangerous, or improbable ideas in relative safety.

The human experience contains plenty of other fascinating endeavors. I find many of them interesting, but I could take them or leave them if it suited me. Whether or not it has anything to do my Irish blood, I have a need to tell stories. So, I tell stories.