Asakiyume mita

We're entering the home stretch now!

December 19 is a Christmas tree:



December 20 is stuck Santa--he just needs to wriggle a little to pop himself out.



December 21 is a raccoon receiving a present. What's in there? osprey_archer had the good idea of a box of corn, but I think for missroserose's sake it has to be a colander, which the raccoon can use to rinse his vegetables--including his corn--in.



And today's drawing is a shepherd, watching his flock by night.



Last night it rain/sleeted, so it was just luck that things dried up enough for that picture. Here's what the driveway looks like after the weather--only one bright square:

... I can see why/how people flag with their October art posts.

On December 14, I drew a trumpet. When I was a child, there was a horn Christmas ornament that went on our Christmas tree. Therefore, horns--and musical instruments more generally!--are good for an Advent calendar. So I hereby declare.



Yesterday, December 15, I drew oranges. Buying those boxes of mandarins seems very December-January, and we used to always put oranges in the bottom of our kids' stockings for Christmas--except for the ninja girl, who didn't like fruit. Also, for New Year's celebrations in Japan, people make a display with mandarins on top of mochi, so bonus bonus!



In the early afternoon yesterday, the Advent calendar looked like this:



Then it poured very hard with rain, washing away the outlines of the calendar quite completely. Rather than restore them today, I decided to just do single images from now on. Here is December 16's, a reindeer with a glowing nose! I'm disappointed that his wooly mane looks like some kind of a boa he's wearing rather than his actual coat (see reindeer image for comparison) but eh, it's a learning process.




(Source: "Fun Facts: Reindeer vs. Caribou," Edmonton & Area Land Trust, December 18, 2019.)

Just a quick note: yesterday it rained heavily all day, so I didn't add an image. Today it's brilliantly sunny, but I'm traveling, so probably I'll update tomorrow at some point, hopefully with three images.

Here is what the driveway looked like at noon, when I cleared it:



By 4 pm it had mainly melted, but dusk was approaching, so today's drawing is a very basic snowman:



It's kind of fun dealing with the weather--it makes it more of a game. I'm thinking maybe I won't try to refresh the numbers of the still-to-be-filled in boxes from now on--that way I can put a new picture in whatever box is still free.

So today, in addition to redrawing the frame, I revitalized the images, too. Here's what the whole calendar looks like as of today

So yesterday I created the driveway advent calendar and filled in days 1–5. Last night it rained, of course! So today I did what I'd resolved to do in that event: touch up the frame (all the squares), and then just continue going forward.

So here's what the frame looks like now--you can see how the images I drew yesterday have blurred:



And here's December 6's offering: a candy cane




... Even though I promised myself I wouldn't touch up the others, I just might, depending on how work and other obligations play out.

Something you notice very quickly when you start reading Ninefox Gambit is the importance of the calendar. It’s the foundation stone of empire: things that subvert empire cause “calendrical rot,” and, conversely, things that cause calendrical rot are subversion, or, as the story terms it, heresy—like rebellion but even more rebellious.

This focus on calendars is a stroke of genius. Calendars **are** powerful mechanisms of cultural control. Think about how the international standard calendar for business and commerce is the Gregorian calendar, which ties its start date to Christianity. (People do use other calendars in various places and for various purposes, but the Gregorian calendar dominates for international exchange.) Less so now than in the past, but Sunday is designated a no-work day in accordance with that tradition. And think how the rest day figures for other calendars, too—the Jewish calendar or the Islamic calendar. If you don’t know the proper rest day, you can be in trouble—and this is even if you’re an outsider: things stop. And if you don’t stop—depending on the degree of observance—you might be punished. And if the community gradually moves away from this, it can be perceived by the more-faithful as cultural weakening. Calendrical rot is threatening!

The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar that has complicated, intersecting base 10 and base 12 recurring features and indicates certain days as auspicious or inauspicious for various activities. When you combine it with geomantic principles (powers or traits related to compass directions—feng shui), which happens naturally, as feng shui is tied to the solstices and equinoxes, which are calendrical as well as astronomical occurrences, boom, that’s a whole lot of Chinese folk culture you’ve got—and, like the Chinese writing system, it spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

In Japan (and probably in other East Asian countries, but Japan’s the one I know about), magical powers were attributed to people who could advise on and manipulate the calendar—something that required some good math skills, what with those mixed number bases and various repeating units. If you’ve ever seen the film Onmyōji, you’ve seen the story of one famous example of such a person, Abe no Seimei. In Ninefox Gambit, this magic translates to the “exotic effects” that can be generated in war, relying on the calendar. These same effects don’t work if the calendar is subverted—beware calendrical rot!

There’s one notable instance in Ninefox Gambit in which the protagonist manipulates the heretics’ calendar to gain a tactical advantage—Buuuuuut I can’t spoil it.

This isn’t a review of the book—I have one of those at Goodreads, covering some of the same territory, but in less detail—it’s more of an appreciation of this one aspect of the book. It’s me saying “I SEE WHAT YOU DID HERE, YOON HA LEE! VERY CLEVER!”