Tag Archives: Opinion

Digging into things

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Since I wrote up my post about the gap in my blog I’ve been going back and digging stuff up that I’ve been meaning to talk about. I often grab and save links to articles that spark something in me. I want to be timely in my discussions, but never at the expense of decent writing and forethought.

Back in July I saw this article over at Tor.

Was 1999 the Year Nerd Culture Began to Take Over the World?

You should read it. The two things that caught my eye were the claim of a ‘coming out’ year for fandom and an acceptance of the label(s) geek / nerd.

The first part about the coming out year caught my eye. I’ve written before about the influence of films on my own fandom. Movies that are still resonating today came out when I was a young teen (Terminator anyone?). I somehow thought this was a thing that might not have been repeatable, but then there was 2015. The movies that hit during that year were big and amazing. I’ve written a couple of times about how I think / hope my daughter will have positive memories and just as much influence from these films as I had with the crop from back in 1984. What I failed to understand was that this type of influence could be just about any year. The author of that article could have been on to something. I don’t agree with all the movie choices, but I wasn’t a teen in 1999. I absolutely agree with the assertion of the Matrix being a massively influential film. Things since then really have heated up.

The second part of that is more problematic for me. For a very long time my “nerdom” was something I made every attempt to hide. It was never popular to be called that when I was growing up. D&D wasn’t accepted as an influential part of culture, it was a derided thing that cost me friendships because some parents bought into the panic about the game. I learned to avoid talking about my favorite hobby. I was not immune to the social pressure to fit in and get along. That formative experience hasn’t left me.

No matter how popular “nerdy” things become I don’t think I’ll ever shake that. I hold my fandom close and tend not to share it.

I actively question the hot new trend to claim to be a nerd or a geek or a comic fan because you’ve seen all the Marvel movies. I’ve seen some of the so called celebrations of geekdom and I don’t think they’re as celebratory as people want to believe they are. The amount of things out there relating to science fiction and fantasy is stunning. It’s an unprecedented level of availability. All of those things feel temproary to me. It’s a bunch of people that don’t really care about fandom, but they DO care that they can make a buck from it. Media and movie folks are looking for any way possible to come up with, package, and sell the next ‘hot’ nerd thing. They don’t care about what’s in the package, just that they can sell it.

Suddenly everyone is claiming to be a geek or a nerd of some variety. The glut of marketing material for these ‘geeky’ things brings to mind a quote. “It’s the burning of the library of Alexandria by way of the Hot Topic t-shirt printing press”.

In short, I don’t buy it.

Another topic belongs right here – and that is toxic fandom. I won’t go into it right now (perhaps another post) but it’s a real thing. I suspect it’s a backlash to the popular thing. The ever present push back of being ‘cool’ by not buying into the trend.

I’m very glad there are folks out there who enjoy so many of the same things I do. I love the level of availability of all the cool things that tie in to my favorite books or games or movies. I’m thrilled to see an influx of diversity. I will continue to be wary. I’m in fandom for the long haul. I hope you are too.

Endgame

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Fierce

There are a lot of reviews out there for Endgame. There are vast numbers of opinions about the movie. I’m not going to dig into plot holes. I’m not interested in dissecting the merits of this giant movie on the basis of critical storytelling or decry a movie that will clearly crush all records.

This was more than a movie. This was an event. This lands in the same place as Harry Potter premiers. It was more than that even – the last time I genuinely recall people clapping and cheering and openly weeping in a theater like this was WAY back when I went to see Rocky IV in the theater. There were huge lines and nobody was arguing or pushing or being rude – we were all desperate to see the story. Where were we going? Who was going along for the ride? We sat in the aisles and nobody cared, it was just about packing in everyone to see the event.

I WILL PUT SPOILER MATERIAL IN HERE – TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE IT.

What I am going to talk about is something very specific. During the huge battle between Thanos with all his forces and the Avengers with all the people they “snapped” back into existence – there is one particular scene where a large number (all?) of the female characters on the Avengers side of the battle stepping up into the heroic line up pose – you know the one, where they’re all shoulder to shoulder with the wind blowing their hair while they look fierce – they pose, they say something to the effect of, “she won’t be alone” and then they go and kick ass.

It’s a super contrived moment. It actively pulled me out of the battle scene. I found it startling that they would do something so completely… I want to call it pandering. I do. That’s a strong word, but I’m not feeling too generous right now. That bit stands out to me as a blatant money grubbing, make people happy because we think this is what they want kind of nonsense that turns me off to films.

BUT

You know who that moment wasn’t for? It wasn’t for me. Just like when I talked about Black Panther not being a film that was directed at me. I am not the demographic they’re looking for. The big Jedi mind trick right here. This is not the moment you were looking for… It was NOT for me.

Who was it for? It was for my 14 year old daughter. My amazing, wonderful, fierce daughter who has not spent years being jaded by shabby story telling or dissecting plot lines looking for weakness. Guess what happened when she saw that scene? She clapped and cheered and whooped like I have not seen her do before. THAT was the target demographic. She was the one meant to see that scene, just like thousands and thousands of other amazing young women out there that have somebody on screen that is like them. They have heros now. I believe this will be a film, and a particular scene that will stay with my daughter for a very long time and that alone makes the entire thing worth while. She is going to have so many worlds filled with imagination and stunning stories to take with her as she grows and ventures out into the world.

I hope she keeps that moment. I hope it gets stuck in her head and gives her a place to go when the world becomes its shitty self and I can’t shelter her. I hope she has some joy and tears and fun that was the event of going to see Endgame.

That would make it all worth it.

Just to avoid ending on a completely serious note – there was one other thing about this movie that I am really happy about. One blonde wig, one pair of sunglasses and one bathrobe and I can totally cosplay Thor now.

On Fandom

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This was originally published in Watch The Skies for the January 2019 issue.

Fandom is a wide ranging place. There are folks from across the spectrum of humanity and all around the globe… or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be. Somehow that’s not how it’s working out.

There have been a number of actresses that have recently departed from social media after being harassed to the point that they felt interacting with fans was not worth the effort anymore, or worse it was actively dangerous to them. An actress, long out as gay, was the target of huge amounts of harassment for being picked to play a gay character. Let that sink in for a moment.

A gay actor is not right to play the part of a gay character. Cue Rage Spew and foulness from the dim glow of a screen in a basement.

It almost sounds like this is something new. Social media has been around for more than a decade now, but it has become ubiquitous. Say Facebook and everyone knows what you mean (and likely has an opinion on it). There are other platforms and many methods to be more connected to the people that help to create the things we all know an love.

This harassment is not new and that is what makes it more shameful to me. I listened to an actor talk about how he almost killed himself because of how he was treated after the role he played was deemed unworthy of the franchise he was part of. This was twenty years ago. Yes, twenty (20). This young man thought that his life was done, was not worth moving forward with because of the extraordinary backlash to his role. People hated what he had been part of creating and it almost killed him.

Link Jar Jar

My opening statement means you. Yes you. Fandom is not yours. It is communal property and you do not have a right to harass, threaten, demean or otherwise be shitty to the people that create it. The people creating this art are more open and accessible than any other time in history, and people that can’t behave any better than a four year old that missed snacks and nap time are driving them away. This is NOT acceptable. As a fan I love being able to connect with the folks that make some of the most amazing things. The more people are terrible to these creators (actors are not alone here) the more the creators pull away and become less available to us. All of us.

Fans love to disagree and then expand those discussions over far and wide ranging topics. Arguing about the latest film, book, play or adaptation to whatever form is right down at the core of fandom. Fans should discuss things. Fans absolutely have every right to dislike any media they consume. Fans do not have the right to abuse the people that helped to create it. Fans don’t own the things they love, the can only love or hate them from a distance. Our biggest responsibility as a community is to act with the future in mind. We must create a sense that all are welcome. More than welcoming, we must create an atmosphere and place where the children who see our actions will come to love and understand the same things. The best and only thing we can hope for is that our children see examples of the wonderful creations in fandom and the fantastic people involved and choose to continue making amazing things far into the future. We must show others how to have a good time so that good time will continue.

Fandom is not yours. It belongs to the future. Make that future the best it can be.

Failbook

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Facebook has become a known and common method of communicating with friends, family, associates and all manner of folks. It is a beast. It is huge… and it will do as it pleases.

Social media in general has come under fire for being a terrible thing that allows people to do and say rotten things to each other. It has become a storm of political hyperbole and equally outlandish backlash. I have grown to hate it. I joined Failbook almost a decade ago. It’s stunning to put it that way. Ten years of “like this post” and everything that goes with it, but now I am reconsidering.

The platform itself has privacy and security issues. To paraphrase some younger folks I know, “DUH!”. A socially connected computer program that reaches millions of people is going to have issues. That many people can’t be mixed together and have everything come out perfect. Just can’t happen. The biggest solution to that is I don’t put things out there that I don’t want others to know or that aren’t already public knowledge. I don’t connect it to my bank information or anything that I can’t drop or replace (yes, that includes my phone – it would be a pain in the ass, but I could do it).

It doesn’t connect my website posts automatically anymore. I will admit this is annoying. I prefer to work here when I can and link this site over. It used to be an automated thing, and now it doesn’t work. I have a series of developer messages that would require some amount of research and picking and pecking here on the site to get the connection to work again. I am not a web developer. I am not a programmer. I maintain this site on my own with my bare minimum amount of knowledge. Bluntly I don’t want to spend my time on a web site. Every bit of time I spend working on a web site problem or looking up programming connections or whatever other nonsense doesn’t work now is just more time away from the work I want to be doing. I don’t want to be a programmer, just an author.

Even if I could get it to work, there’s a fair chance nobody would see it anyway. The Failbook folks have decided that your small business links shouldn’t be seen in everyone’s feed… just the big companies that they work with. The site itself is worse than any needy significant other you have ever had. Constant messages about new posts, new friend suggestions, things YOU’VE MISSED! OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU NOT ON THERE LOOKING AT THIS THING RIGHT NOW!?! They will do anything in a desperate attempt to capture your attention. They want you to scroll and click and like and all the other crap they’ve got going on. It has become intensely annoying. I have complained about it, out loud, frequently. This prompted my wife to yell at me, “Quit bitching! That’s how they make money. You react, you check, you click and they get paid. If you don’t like it, get off there and shut up about it!”

She’s not wrong. The purest distillation from that is a single fact. What you put up there IS NOT YOURS. I’m sure there’s a volume of legal mumbo-jumbo somewhere that declares what words are yours to use or not use and how they can collect it and catalog it and… whatever. It’s all bullshit and it’s not yours. They hold all the keys. They want to change something, they will. They want to deny you access, they will. You get the point. That is why I go through the trouble to maintain this site. It is mine (to the extent that any web based service is truly possessed). If I want to turn the whole thing purple I can. I will post as I please, when I please and all six of my readers will still see my words (after they check their news aggregators because this isn’t cross posting any more). I like the simplicity of it. It’s not going to win any awards, but it is mine. All the changes, all the anger, frustration and screaming into the void over what Failbook should or shouldn’t do amount to nothing. In the end it hasn’t dramatically changed my true friendships. It’s nice to be able to connect, but then I was also on Myspace and Livejournal. We see how those turned out.

I’m planning on staying on Failbook for now, but I’m not jumping through the hoops to make posts from here connect. Their site really isn’t worth the effort.

Showing Up

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Showing up. This is a topic that I’ve wanted to take on for quite a while now. I went to a meeting that wasn’t a couple of weeks back. I was more than a little put out at the idea that a meeting (associated with a professional trade organization) would be advertised and then nobody would show up. It reminded me of a news article I saw back during the winter Olympics. The article (here) was about an Olympic skier who apparently is not very good. She is world ranked simply because she keeps showing up – particularly when others can’t. The question in my mind becomes, is showing up enough? I’ve been rolling this around in my head for a while now and I’m still not sure I have a good answer.

To some degree showing up is the only thing that matters.

Showing up, and showing up consistently is the one thing that I’m actually quite good at. It’s something that I think is a virtue or a value and it was clearly and stated or installed I’m not sure exactly how you phrase that, by my parents. It has been a really long time since I was in high school but even then showing up, and showing up on time, was a thing that I was very good at. I actually had perfect attendance all four years in high school. Perfect attendance meant never missed a day (unscheduled – I wasn’t in class one time while I was off looking at a college) and never late. I don’t remember how many people did that in my class, but I don’t think it was many. I don’t know if I got anything from that perfect attendance. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right way to phrase that, because I did get something, I got a pin (I actually I think I also got a piece of paper or some kind of award too) but beyond that I don’t think I got anything. The part I question about this now becomes, is there something to regret? I know other people who took days and very specifically did not show up. Some of those days were apparently the Grand Adventure or the wild story that formed a significant part of their youth. I’m not sure, and never will be, that I didn’t miss something that I could have been out doing.

Grade school is a different topic. There clearly is value to showing up, if not every single day, at least consistently. Not being there will actually cause you to miss out on things you’re supposed to learn. Beyond the simple fact that you would miss things, there are actual legal requirements for kids to attend. I don’t know what the exact requirements are, but I believe there is a limit of either 4 or 6 days that kids are allowed to miss during the school year before there becomes an issue. Clear value and legal requirement.

Moving forward. College does not have the attendance requirement that public school has. I have always understood that showing up for class in college was meant to be an exercise and self-discipline as much as it was for learning whatever the topic was you were supposed to be studying. No college that I had heard of before had placed specific attendance requirements on their classes. This might be something that’s changing. I have recently heard of specific classes instituting attendance requirements in order to receive passing grades. A portion of this stems from the fact that an online presence and virtual classes now allow students who are ambitious enough to cover the topics that would normally be talked about in class on the internet without any interaction with other people. In the past as long as you turned in your homework assignments and sat for your exams those were the pieces that made up your grade. There were certainly classes when I was in college that attendance wasn’t mandatory but made a significant difference in my understanding of what the concept was we were supposed to be covering or learning about. I think that attendance or showing up certainly has value in being able to discuss ideas with others around you and garner some extra level of understanding about topics while giving you viewpoints that may differ significantly from your own.

College, showing up may not be mandatory but clearly is advantageous.

As an adult showing up is something that becomes more difficult to quantify. Any number of day to day, normal 9 to 5 jobs have very specific requirements about showing up. You must be there, you must be there on time, you cannot leave early, and there are a very limited number of days when you are allowed to not be there and even then must have an excuse. That is not to say that there are aren’t jobs available that allow you to set your own schedule. I think schedule is a completely separate question from attendance. There’s a subtle difference attendance and showing up. There are a lot of jobs out there that allow you to work on something other than a normal 9 to 5 schedule. Those jobs while not requiring specific attendance certainly require dedication and work. Essentially you have to ‘show up’ at some point and apply yourself to whatever work it is that you’re doing. The more you do that with a non-traditional job the higher the likelihood that you will be successful. Clearly attendance and the intent behind my phrase ‘showing up’ are two separate issues. Perhaps I need to define what I mean by ‘showing up’. Narrowing that down will help me understand better.

I think it’s relevant to look back at the skier example at this point. She has a world ranking. It’s her job, but also her passion (I suspect). Many people don’t think she’s a good skier at all, let alone world ranked. How can you be bad at your job but still ranked as one of the best in the world? The shortest answer here is there aren’t enough people doing what it is that you do. In this girl’s case I think it’s more subtle than that, and also more important to the chosen field of endeavor than that. No, she might not be great at what she does, but she is consistently there and consistently promoting something that she wants to see succeed. I think that’s the heart of what I mean by showing up. If you want something to succeed, you have to keep showing up. Having the idea, having a desire for something to succeed is not enough. At some point somebody has to keep showing up and doing the work. I suspect that this sport will benefit in the long run from this person continuing to show up. I know in certain professional organizations that I am part of showing up is something that has mattered a great deal and continues to matter a great deal. Membership in our professional group is declining at a significant rate. Good, bad, indifferent, doesn’t really matter if nobody’s there to see what you’re doing. What you do or promote doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough people to have a meeting. All of the benefits that go along with this group simply go away if not enough people keep showing up.

I think I’ve talked myself into the understanding that I’m trying to achieve. Attendance is different than showing up. Showing up and doing the work matters. It will continue to matter because in order for there to be greatness there has to be something available to be great at. Whether or not I will actually be great at anything can be less relevant then continuing to show up so that there is something for others to be great at.

Consistency matters. now that I’ve talked about it I recall that I have written about consistency before. I’ll need to go and dig out this old article that I had written and post it again.

Will the name of this skier be remembered in history? Maybe not. Will that matter to people in the future? It will only matter if the thing that she is promoting continues on and become something greater than what she’s a part of now. Will being remembered to history matter to her? I can’t really say as I’m not in her head. Something I can say with certainty is that consistently showing up and getting out the door and doing things absolutely matters. Showing up makes all the difference in the story of what it is that you do. In the end it will make a difference that you have a collection of fantastic stories that accumulate to make your life. Make your story a great one. Get out there and show up to something.

YouTube and Silo Entertainment

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Voice typing is something that requires more setup then I think works well with actually getting started on my treadmill. With time I think this will become something better than what it is right now but I need to have a lot more things preset before I start. There’s also a lot more editing to be done after the fact. My typing is slow, but the edits are a whole lot faster. More set up, more follow up.

I think that goes with the theme of what I want to talk about.

There are a lot of things that the computer does really really well. There is an amazing amount of information and entertainment that is at my fingertips all day, every day. I have discovered that there are certain things that I enjoy watching on YouTube. Problem is, I also like to use YouTube to find new things that I’m interested in watching or listening to. I say this is a problem not because there isn’t an infinite variety of things on YouTube, but because YouTube makes an effort to specifically cater to the other things that you have already watched. There are two particular, I’ll call them chat show hosts, that have very interesting guests and interviews.

I’m not quite sure how to express what it is that YouTube does. I have watched an interview with a particular host, therefore YouTube me a huge list of other things that this particular host has done. The two chat show hosts that I found interesting have hundreds of videos available. Now my “suggestions” page is nothing but videos from these particular chat show hosts or music from the one or two artists that I have listened to. Literally nothing else.

This list of suggestions is fantastic when that’s what I want to listen to. If I don’t want to listen to one of them or I’ve gone through all of the interviews or items that I found interesting from these particular interviewers and want to find something different, I now have two type in specific search words in order to find anything. Then even if I have searched for something different, still about half of my list are items related to the videos I’ve already seen. Not only does that make it very difficult to find other things that are new and interesting, but it narrows my selections to things that this computer program believes are my taste. This doesn’t give me an opportunity to find things that might not necessarily match exactly what I have watched before. It becomes a silo. It’s almost as if there is nothing else in the world except what I have seen already or the people that I have already indicated that I enjoy listening to.

YouTube is not the only entertainment provider that does this. Netflix is actually another provider that does something very similar. The list of videos that are recommended to me from Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, or any other place where I actually watch videos has become an extremely narrow selection. I only see things similar to what I’ve seen.

I think one of the things we need is an ability to have what I would call an anti-logarithm. The computer has the search pattern that it thinks it gives me all the things I want to see, but I want an alternate search pattern that gives me a list of other things with an opportunity to find something I didn’t know I was interested in. It is a struggle to find something new and interesting when my entire recommendation list is a bunch of things that match or closely match what I have already seen. It’s insular and boring.

Entertainment videos are not the only place where this becomes a problem. Facebook is another example of only showing you the things you want to see. It becomes very easy, very quickly to only ever see opinions that match your own. While I understand that there are number of times one doesn’t want to see inflammatory opinions or the ideas and concepts that make you angry, there is still a need for the availability of those things. It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy? You put an opinion out and the only people who see it are those who already agree with you. You gain a warped View of exactly how popular something really is. There is no reality check.

I wish I was better at math and/or computer programming. I think it would be a best selling app or program, that would be the “find me something new” button. I don’t know if simply applying and negative prefix to any of the programming language would provide the alternates that I’m thinking, but I’m sure there has to be a way to develop a search engine that picks out either popular or specifically different trends that might not necessarily match the things you’ve already seen. I think more people need this in greater quantity than ever before. Not just from an entertainment point of view, but also from an information standpoint. Most people these days receive and process more information than ever before. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of filtering all the information to become just the things you want to hear it gives a warped perspective and it’s terrible for actual entertainment value.

Perhaps what I need to do is float this idea out there for free. Somebody needs to make that app or program that is called “change my mind”. Even that is actually a meme that I’ve already seen before. I don’t know its origin, I just know that it’s really popular. A guy sitting behind a card table in a park with a cardboard sign hanging in front of it. Written on the cardboard is an inflammatory or challenging question, ending with “change my mind”. I don’t think asking the people who like the same things you like to change your mind is necessarily an effective tool. I think if there were a statistical or mathematical based program it would work in a much healthier manner.

I may regret this part, but they’re only about a half a dozen people that read this. Give me a comment that is something I should search for on YouTube or Netflix that will change the search patterns that has narrowed my entertainment. I both look forward to, and cringe at the thought, of what you all have to say.

Bright

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In a rare moment of timeliness I’ve actually had the opportunity to watch “Bright”, the new film from Netflix. It was released yesterday (December 22, 2017). I watched at home with a couple of close friends. I think that’s the most telling thing ~ this is a movie production with a number of well known Hollywood actors that I didn’t go to the theater to see when it opened, I went to the couch. Best seat I’ve had for a new movie in a while. That was a good thing because this movie felt like it was longer than the listed two hours it was supposed to be.

Spoilers ahead ~

I thought it was a very interesting choice by the storytellers to just dump us into a modern day society where elves and orcs simply live. There was no long text explanation about why or when this happened. There was no “this is when things changed”, it was simply the way things are. Interesting, but maybe not the best choice. I get it, you can’t do a LOTR thing where you’ve got 6 hours of movie… OH, wait. It’s Netflix, so yes that totally could have been done. Netflix routinely posts entire seasons of shows all at once. People then watch when and where they can. I hear some folks out there, “but this is a movie…” and I will counter that with the abomination that was a string of special effects and made up romances supposedly based on The Hobbit. Those three awful things are one film. As much as I dislike the result, the example stands. Netflix and the storytellers could have really expanded this world and given a deep, rich background that wouldn’t leave people looking at light up milk bath trees and thinking “what?”.

I will actually compare this to a role playing game / series of novels from the 90s – Shadowrun. Shadowrun did the world building behind the change. They brought magic and magical races into the world and then shook society up to make the changes in the world understandable. In Bright ‘Elves run the world’ really felt like a cosmetic application that allowed for comparison to how “gritty” the part of the story we’re dealing with really is. In Shadowrun Native Americans gain power based on how the world changed. It’s explained in terms relative to the story. It mattered and followed through. Bright felt like they wanted to paint over a things as they are today with a makeup brush and say “it’s allegory” without explaining what happened to bring us there. Telling me you’ve got 2,000 years of history isn’t the same as making me believe it in the story without being told. We never learn anything about the background that makes a “prophecy” believable in this context.

On to that portion of our program. OF course Will Smith was capable of picking up the wand with his bare hand and not blowing up. Saw that coming all the way. That’s why we’re riding with these guys. OF course they were going to win, there was very little doubt of that.

I will say I didn’t see the resurrection of the orc coming. I thought it would have been really interesting if they’d just let him die and deal with the results of that. OF course that would have meant a movie that went a very different direction and that’s never where we were headed. Now ANY future show or movie in this franchise will be required to deal with the idea that people who were dead can be made NOT dead by waving the magic stick around – even if the person waving the stick has only a “new recruit” level of training. The cost looked totally survivable, although that was tossed directly into the “obscure character death” category so we didn’t need to deal with what that meant in this world.

The other thing that bothered me was a standard thing with films. It’s so standard that I’ve actually taken to trying to avoid watching movie trailers altogether. I used to love to see what was coming out. Now all those trailers do is spoil all the best parts of any movie. The same was totally true for this film. I saw all the best parts in the previews. That was the most disappointing part of it all. Not only was the story predictable, but the best and funniest moments were all shown before I started watching. There were really funny parts that still landed in context, but I knew they were coming.

All of this might sound really negative, but I did actually enjoy watching the film. I don’t think I’m rushing back to watch it again but I will be interested to see how this all plays out ~ will there be more from this world? Go, check out some urban fantasy and see if you think this will be the next trendy thing in film or if it will just die and go away… and maybe be brought back by magic wand.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

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I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t read further if you’d like to avoid spoilers for the movie Star Wars The Last Jedi.

You’ve been warned.

As I move through all the comments I have on this movie please keep in mind that I really enjoyed this movie. It’s a good film. There are issues, there is no perfect film. I still found myself excited and filled with anticipation. I will admit it might be nostalgia that works for me when the music starts and the letters start to scroll up the screen. It won’t ever match the first time a star destroyer thundered over my head and into the top of the frame – how could it? The visuals and the music were as amazing as they were expected to be. The ships, the worlds, the creatures and the outfits are always the best. I was not disappointed in any of that.

The biggest thing that bothered me was bad casting. Not the main characters, the secondary characters. Give me more folks like Kelly Marie Tran. Please. We don’t need big name people in secondary roles. I would have loved any unknown woman leading the rebel fleet but I was pushed out of my suspension of disbelief and right out of the flow of the movie when I first saw Laura Dern. She’s a fantastic actor. Love her stuff – great in October Sky, really liked her Jurassic Park role. It took me another third of the movie to remember who she was and where else I’d seen her and that just broke the flow of the story completely. The only thing worse than that? Benicio del Toro. I hate that he’s in there. I do not like his work at all – never have. I recognized him right away, so less distracting on that front but just aggravated me every time he was on the screen. His character wasn’t meant to be likable, but putting him in that role made me wish some officer channeled Vader and altered the deal… with a blaster. Get out of Star Wars you giant distractions!

Stuff that other fans freaked out over. Snoke. He was what I would call a standard Sith let down. I haven’t seen a Sith since Vader that was worth a damn. They die in short order every time. I have no idea why people expected anything else. It was a sneaky, deceptive way that he was killed and that was cool. Where an outright fight would be lost, deception took the day. Moving on from that ~ Rey’s parents. This movie supposedly answers that. I disagree. We just said how sneaky Kylo Ren was, why would you believe that he would tell Rey the truth? He’s a lying liar who lies – manipulate to get what you want, rage when you don’t get it. I am fine with the “reveal” that really wasn’t. Didn’t matter to me. A lot of other things mattered more.

I love that Yoda was back in this film. It made me smile. I missed him as much as me missed “young Skywalker”.

Skywalker. I could see the tie backs to the other movies. I was waiting for Luke to pull an Obi-wan on Ben Solo. He did, but in a far better way than I expected him to. That was really well done. Loved it. Punched me in the feelings when he simply said, “where’s Han?” and then the movie cut away. The film makers let you do the emotional work on that one.

I didn’t like that Leia used the force to save herself. I would have been fine with her not surviving the bridge blast. It’s terrible, but that’s how war goes. It would have given a certain amount of realism to their battle. There’s real danger to the main characters. Now I don’t know what they’ll do, but I’m thinking it won’t be a satisfying story reason for not being on screen again.

And that leads me to another thing about this movie. For as much as I loved it, the feeling was certainly bittersweet. No more Luke. No more Han. Yes, they’re going back in time to show us who he was before all the Star Wars stuff, but it’s not the same. No more Leia. No more Vader. We’ve got BB-8 rather than R2-D2. It’s a marker that shows an ending point to things from my youth. Perhaps, like Luke I make a choice to move on without the Jedi. I’m sure that Disney will wring out the franchise for everything they can, but I’ll certainly have to wait and see if I go back for more in the theater. As much as anything else, this really felt like an ending for me. A good ending, but and ending none the less. I hope there’s a kid out there right now looking for a Poe Dameron action figure flying an X-wing around. I hope that generation can come back in 40 years and still enjoy this story.

Goodreads Technology

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I shouldn’t be grumpy about the wonderful technological thing I’ve been able to do… but I am.

I have been posting personal reviews of books I’ve read to Goodreads since 2009. I’ve got hundreds of books up on there. I like being able to share my thoughts with friends both local and distant. I like being able to go back and look at the list of things I’ve read and be able to sort them into various categories or descriptions. Others have tried to tell me there are better systems out there, but I haven’t really felt the need to move.

Much like any other business that wants to remain relevant, Goodreads has an app. I can access my account from my phone to look things up while I am out and about. Excellent. I love having access to the data. They also have a little part of that app that allows users to scan books by the ISBN code on the cover of the book. I can basically let my phone look at a picture of a code and the book in question will come up on my phone. IF the code doesn’t work, I can just let the phone look at the cover of the book and it will likely find the book that way. Amazing.

I needed to clear up some space in the back room. I moved a recently acquired book shelf (thanks mom!) in there and needed to put a stack of books on it so that I could reclaim the various flat surfaces where they’d been living. It was a random collection of stuff. I went into Goodreads, made up new “shelves” so that when I scanned the books I could put them together as actual, physical copies that reside in the house rather than the Kindle variety.

Here’s where I get picky about this little app. Of the 40(ish) books I scanned, 5 of them didn’t work. Some were old and didn’t have the right code but a couple just failed. Not a big deal – I’ve got weird stuff in the collection (I think you’re only allowed to use eccentric if you’re rich…). The problem was the process. First, there are 3 base categories that ALL your collection falls into – want it or not – “want to read”, “currently reading” and “read”. That’s it. No matter what other virtual shelves you create your book automatically falls into one of those, you can’t change it or avoid it. I hear somebody out there saying, “well, yeah – why would you have a book if you don’t actually want to read it or have read it?”. What if it’s an additional version that’s part of a collection? Yes, it’s likely that it falls into the “read” category or why would you have it, but I found the lack of an option there to be really annoying.

I also didn’t really want those books to qualify under the “read” category for other reasons. I have specifically resisted putting all the books I read before I was a Goodreads member up on the site. It seemed disingenuous to post something without a review while claiming to have read it. As I re-read titles I go back and add them. If I’m not re-reading them, I’d like the option to qualify my listing in another way. I don’t want the 40 books I scanned today to be added to my “read” count for the year. That’s bad data. I want it to sort better than that.

Yes, in the end it’s great technology to be able to do what I have done. No, it is not perfect. Hopefully there will continue to be improvements as the site keeps moving forward. I also hope they make it possible to cross post to Amazon reviews – but that’s another post.

Balticon 51

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I made a quick note on Facebook about giving a longer and more detailed review of this year’s convention. IF you’re seeing this connected to FB – here it is!

I started going to Balticon back at number 27. Yup, that puts me at about 24 years for this one. Sounds impressive until you realize that I know at least one person (Hi Ray!) that’s been to them all. Yes, all of them. That’s impressive.

First and I think most importantly credit where credit is due. Programs this year were smooth. Really smooth, not simply as juxtaposed with the struggle of last year. Got my invitation early, got my survey and panels early, and the schedule was posted and available before the week of the convention. WELL DONE!

I had 4 panels and 2 book launch events over the weekend.

The panels I had were editing the short story, reading outside your genre for SFF writers, being a fan of problematic things and the xenoarchaeology road show.

I think editing the short story went relatively well. I also thing reading outside your genre went well – I did my best to toss ideas out there of things I’d read that I felt could be of interest to folks. I got the biggest reaction when I mentioned Devil in the White City as apparently some others have read it. All in all, not bad.

Being a fan of problematic things was going to be a contentious panel. Intellectually I knew this. Emotionally it took a lot bigger toll on me than I thought it might have. It was a difficult panel. I have written about this topic before (Your Protest May Vary published in Watch the Skies and again here at my site) and given the topic a great deal of consideration.
I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. Part of it was the audience. There were a couple of attendees that talked over almost everyone for the duration of the panel. It can be a very personal subject, but I felt it was a disservice to the rest of the folks in the room to do what they did. The moderator struggled against them the entire time. The other struggle was sitting between two panelists with definite thoughts on the matter. I could feel tension just sitting there. I can say that S.M. Stirling impressed me with the depth of knowledge he could bring to hand without notes or references. While I don’t know that I shared his opinions, he recalled the specifics of an example I pulled from a very old novel. I pulled the example based on the clarity of the language that might show it to be problematic. He knew the context of the characters and brought all that out in defense of his position on the matter. Agree or not, he had that information rattling around upstairs. By the end of the hour I was just done. It took a lot of effort to stay level and calm for me in there – and it didn’t really have much to do with the topic itself.

I’ve really enjoyed attending the Xenoarchaeology road show in the past. The panel pretends to be archaeologists digging up long forgotten things from a human world. See something come out of the box and make up a great explanation for what it obviously is. I signed up to be a panelist on a whim for this one. It was an hour after the problematic panel, and being funny at the drop of a hat is not easy. Clever, maybe. Witty, perhaps on a good day but not for an hour straight. I don’t know that I’ll sign up to be on that panel again because I just don’t feel like I brought the humor that panel deserved. It was something of a let down to me. I was disappointed in myself, I can only hope the audience had a good time. I know I enjoyed what my fellow panelists came up with as much as the audience did. The running gag of “it’s clearly a ritual item…” was pretty funny.

The launch events were Fortress Publishing (TV Gods Summer Programming – available now) and E-spec books (DTF – Man and Machine – available now). The Fortress launch was wedged into the hour between the problematic panel and the road show. I couldn’t stay nearly as long as I wanted to, but I did get to sign a few books while I was there. The E-spec launch was a pretty big shin-dig. It took over the con suite for 2 hours. It was really well done and it looked like everyone involved had a really good time.

In between all this programmed goodness was the chance to play test a game for a friend. I can’t give out details but I can say I think I’ll be jumping on a copy when it comes out! Lots of fun trying to break the mechanics of it and stretch the rules to see where the holes show up.

Surprisingly, I didn’t come away from the weekend feeling the creative charge I normally do. I really enjoyed having dinner with friends. I liked sitting and chatting with people that I don’t get to see nearly enough. It’s a silly thing, but I was extra excited to recognize a ‘Sky High’ cosplay and earn the pink ribbon you can see in the picture (hey – the preferred term is hero support). Somehow I just didn’t feel that juice flow, that battery charging jolt I usually have when I get back to the house.

I would call this year a successful year even without that jolt. It’s always good to see old friends and add new ones. I’m going to dive into some projects that have been waiting for me while already plotting and planning for next year!