Funeral Rites in Fiction

Everyone always seems to assume that traditional funeral rites are formed solely in the many Christian and Catholic denominations, not realizing that other cultures have their own, very real practices.


So it should be in fiction. I just realised that I needed to have a unique funeral rite on my space-ship, thousands of years into the future. No way would the "traditional" western funeral exist in a world where Christianity may never have existed.


Writing a funeral is the hardest thing I have ever done. I'm still only  a few paragraphs in, with a favourite new poem insert. The first few bits are from what I remember of a Maori welcoming. This welcoming is usually used to welcome people onto sacred ground. While I used that, I changed the words, and made my own specific poem: 

"Hello to you my trusted friends,

Together we've loved and lost,

Together we'll play the host,

Now that we gather here,

Two lives can come to their rightful end,

                                                           Goodbye to you, my sweet friends."


That's not all of it, sadly. I don't and wouldn't have time to write it all in my book. And my MC isn't feeling well so its probably a good idea if she doesn't hear the whole thing. Now the next stages is a little harder. I've come up with a number of possible ideas, but only one is plot related. Except I have a small problem with that, because I'm combining Maori and Japanese cultures -- in the strangest way possible, during a funeral.


Except I'm not borrowing the funeral rites. Oh no, just the concept of a debt to be repaid. The link is here, http://animewriter.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/death-in-japan-japanese-funeral-customs-practices-and-a-story-of-obligation/ the debt is quite an interesting concept and I'm not sure how to apply it to someone in an Science fiction world, whereby the people involved doesn't even know the victims that well. But it'll provide the sole motivation for her to figure out the plot.


Interested? 


I am. Let's see where this takes me. 

Distant Sun: Dream Sequence

Bed should have been one of the best time of the day. I used to love curling up in  my blankets. Back at home, I'd spend half the morning in denial. The sun wasn't up. It wasn't time to go and look for a job. I had everything I needed beneath the covers. Soft pillows, a comfortable mattress and plenty of money. If my parents hadn't cut me off, I would've still been living in their rather large basement. I felt the blankets warmth about me and slipped into one of my greatest fears.

            The Beast gave a happy hum. All systems were working to their  full efficiency, with nothing at all to worry about. The flight plan of this race wasn't high stakes. Bex had said something about it being a practice run, and had jabbered on a good length about how they were important. Especially when it came to checking the safety of the equipment and technology that made the hovercraft important. But nevertheless, I'd make sure we won the race simulation, whether Bex liked it or not.

"Shields activated," Bex parroted, his usual cheerful self. I blinked. Where were our enemies? I couldn't see them on radar and as Bex had said, this wasn't a race we were supposed to be 'winning' in the direct sense of the word. "Get ready to fire in three..."

Wait? What was I firing at? These people were goddamn insane. It was like trying to figure out what a schizophrenic was thinking. I know what most people thought about them was just another urban legend, but in all seriousness Bex shouldn't be preparing to fire when he didn't have those controls. As the onboard navigator, he knew what every little detail of the ship meant. He had control of the controls and equipment. I just drove the Beast and  fired weapons. I'd fire a weapon if I figured out where my target was, at any rate.

"Bex!" I shouted through the earpiece. "What the hell am I firing at?"

 It was too late. The ship had winked into full view. Through my windscreen I could tell that it was in position for a direct hit. My heart leapt to my throat. For a practice run it looked pretty serious. I hoped our pods were up to scratch. They'd be taking us to Control, should something go wrong. I slammed my fist down hard on the trigger. That's when the system started squealing at me. In the old timer jet planes, all the bells and whistles would go off as warning signs before imminent death. The pilots would be given the smallest of chances to battle it out against whatever force was pulling them down, and the in-flight data's bells and whistles would do little to help. Within a hovercraft, those same bells and whistles were telling me that something was wrong. Only instead of things like altitude we were running out of a little something called fuel, oxygen, and the very stuff that made me able to breath the artificial air. Within minutes the initial shut down phase began to set in motion. The life-preserving sequence burst into life as all technology that needed power to run disappeared one by one. This had happened to me only once before, on the Saint. Except the Saint hadn't decided to let me down this badly, with the attack brief and the technology alive just enough to get us to the finish line. My breaths became harsh and ragged, struggling to find even the tiniest drop of oxygen that a human being could safely breathe.

"Sam, Control, someone ..." But barely did I get the last word out when the last piece of oxygen left the ship. 

January

Hey

I've been away for a while. A lot of things have happened within the few months I've been quiet. The short and long of it is that I have become a statistic, one of the vast number of people who are unemployed this year. Only I hope to rectify that problem soon, while working on several writings this year. Luckily for me, I will not be "unemployed" for much longer, needless to say I can head myself under the "student" banner and hope that stops all untoward questions about where I may or may not work. Hopefully.

As this is both a personal and writing blog, don't expect writing things all the time -- I'll learn from my mistakes, just as  the average person would.

Obviously I'm having a little trouble on the writing front. I've gone past 10k on my work in progress, and thusly am having trouble (I just like the word thusly, whether it is in correct grammatical use or not). I figure that this might be because of the size of the beast. I think that there might be a mental block preventing me from writing the romance between Detective Cameron Gage and his lovely love interest, Elliot Moss. Even though Elliot is a male name, I prefer it for use as a  female name, having borrowed it from Scrubs. I do watch television, just not often. Haha.

Once I figure out what this block entails, I will do my best to work past it. Part of it belongs to the fact that I know further back in the depths of the wip, I have never wrote this far and still found myself floundering about in the beginning of the novel. Its new territory for me. Usually the beginning is over by oh, 5 - 6k words, then I'm in the arms of the middle. Which goes to show that the middle might arrive by the time I get my head around the fact that I really hate chapter six, and am considering revising it now out of pure spite.

This will take the word count down, but enevitably I can still save the words in another word document, which will mean that I can access the general idea of what I want to do in a later chapter. Perhaps I have started later plot points too early, and have made things much worse without thinking it through properly. I had intended for chapter six to happen later, and mugging my character really didn't help thicken the plot. So with that reasoning in mind, I'll take it out.

I suppose all that remains is to figure out the cause of this block. Hopefully taking out chapter six doesn't do too much to the wip and doesn't rewind the wordcount too far, but an update to this blog will determine what's going on, why, how, and when Elliot and Gage will finally fall in love and put their differences aside, while trying not to get themselves killed. :D