Idoru (EE-doh-roo): katakana phoneticization of idol, a speculative science fiction creation consisting of an artificial intelligence that has taken the form of a virtual media star. See Idoru by William Gibson.
Idora (EE-doh-ra): a park in the USA, a Croatian figure skater or, at a higher degree of relationship, a minor virtual character created by myself and controlled by a rudimentary artificial intelligence system in a computer game. Known as an NPC, a CCC or a mob (mobile). See the Akanbar MUD.
Anyone can create an Idora (the NPC). However, not anyone can create an idoru (the Rei Toei of Gibson’s work). Is it coincidence that Idora can also be taken as the plural of idoru?
Quote from Idoru: “Man, Rozzer’s sittin’ down there makin’ eyes at a big aluminum thermos bottle.”
An editor friend of mine says that fiction = fluff. I qualify that for her: the majority of fiction is fluff, for the reason that the majority of fiction, like the majority of anything, is mediocre at best. If it was good, we wouldn’t be calling it fluff.
(Idoru, by the way, is not fluff in my view.)
Expand the metaphor, and we can say that the majority of NPCs are Idoras, but only a few – or only one – are idorus. Then narrow it back down, and we can conclude that the majority of a person’s creative acts will be fluff, with the exception of one or two outstanding items. The phenomenon of one-hit wonders illustrates this quite appropriately.
Is this a bad thing? Not at all. When that one stellar piece of work comes into being, it’s worth all the time and effort spent on the fluff. To follow Maslow’s oft-quoted hierarchy, it is the pinnacle of self-realization.
After reaching a pinnacle, however, the only place to go is down, in much the same way that one can’t stay at the top of Everest forever or, in censorable terms, maintain an erection forever. (Technically speaking, Viagra could make that possible, but who in their right mind WANTS to go around with a permanent tent in their pants?)
Idora-Idora-Idora-Idora-IDORU-Idora-Idora-Idora…
The average Idora looks a bit like this…
Idora the dark and pale stands here, head lifted arrogantly.
With her ivory-white complexion and jet-black hair, Idora cuts a striking figure. Her dark eyes blaze imperiously at you and a faint, cruel smile hovers on her thin lips as her hand suggestively strokes the butt of the whip on her belt.
Since most mobs will suffer the occasional indignity of being beaten to a pulp by one sadistic player or another, her last will and testament had to be inserted for their satisfaction…
The cold beautiful corpse of Idora lies here, a dagger still clenched in one hand.
This line was unabashedly borrowed from the discovery of Canna Moidart’s death in Harris’ Viriconium. I bet none of the players, or for that matter none of the other immortals, recognized it.
Now if I could produce just one idoru, I might die happy. Even if everything after that turned out to be an Idora-clone.
The drive to find my idoru began when I was eleven, and meandered slowly through the angst-ridden halls of teenhood – littering the corridors with Idoras, Idora-clones and leftover black leather whips in the process – losing power as I outgrew the psychological disorder known as adolescence, nearly dying out as my acne and baby fat disappeared and were replaced by a powerful predatory urge to get a life. Occasional semi-idorus popped their heads up, and can be seen on my lazy-design, low-maintenance, outdated website. But somehow or other the real thing remains trapped in the junk heap that makes up my brain’s storage space.
Here I am nearly two decades later, still searching – with a long train of bizarrely malformed Idoras following me in some sort of warped caterpillar congo line. Right now, all of them are holding up signs saying ‘ONE ESSAY A WEEK’. The idea is that if I force myself to write at least one sane essay a week, I’ll somehow manage to get the congo line back on track and finally produce the idoru.
(What do they do with all the words, eat them?)
As mentioned earlier, the majority of a person’s creative works will prove to be fluff, and a good many of the non-creative ones will be just as bad. For this reason, the signs do not say ‘ONE SHORT STORY A WEEK’. The last time I tried that, the malformed Idoras came tumbling out like a goldfish’s wee. (It is scientifically proven that fish take in and pass out immense quantities of water daily as part of their biological processes. Who says water is clean just because fish live in it?)
Song running through head: 问 (Wen) (Question(ing)) by Chen Shu Hua. Video link available at time of posting.An old-fashioned voice, old-fashioned concert hall, and a tune that pulled at something inside me in the way few modern tunes do any more. After hearing it on FM88.3 for a few weeks, I snapped and went looking for a copy of it on Baidu. If the rest of the album reaches me in the same way, my next stop will be a CD shop.
I regret to announce that this particular essay has attained the status of malformed Idora-clone, and is nearly 1,000 words long to boot. It can probably reveal a great deal about my current psychological state, which I personally summarize as irritated, frustrated, disorganized and highly perverse. Causes: multiple. Work pressures, guilt for my own laziness, annoyance with various individuals and a general urge to bite something, all aggravated by the song above.
WHAT? STILL NO IDORU??
