This was posted as a comment on Rodrigo Lopez's article here: http://www.majorspoilers.com/gamer%E2%80%99s-corner-puzzles
My theory on why puzzles don’t work in role-playing games is that the two are just related and unrelated enough to be weird together.
Let’s try and think of some analogies. Here’s one: CG faces. There’s a certain sweet spot, or hump, between totally unrealistic and totally realistic, where CG faces become really weird. Unrealistic faces, like on toy cowboys and anthropomorphic cars, work fine. But people react badly when they think you’re trying to fool them into thinking a face is, or could be, real.
Here’s another analogy. Puzzles in RPGs are like taco sandwiches. You don’t butter a taco and put two slices of bread around your taco.
And a third analogy. Many of us get really pissed off at writers who pull the “it was all a dream” trope in a comic, novel, video game, television series, or movie. It’s kind of like the inverse of breaking the fourth wall. Instead of having four walls, there are now eight walls, as well as the possibility of an infinite regression of inner narratives.
Basically my point is that a D&D game is already a kind of puzzle. You can think of any RPG encounter as an elaborate versions of Chess puzzles, where the PCs themselves are the pieces. A good Chess puzzle makes creative use of the space of the board, and the conceptual space of what is allowed by the various theories of piece movement.
In Chess puzzles, it is virtually inconceivable that you would have the pieces stand in the centre of the board and hand the players a substitution cipher, and state that the Chess puzzle will be won when they complete the cipher. In that situation you might as well just get rid of the Chess board and play a different kind of puzzle.
I haven’t actually implemented this, but I have a theory about a sort of Denny’s placemat-and-crayons type of D&D adventure. In which combat and role-playing are just two of the half-dozen or so activities that make up the entire evening. Basically instead of personifying your characters, you are asked to look at them from six or seven different angles, sometimes from far above, sometimes close up, sometimes over longer periods of time, and sometimes over shorter periods. Your characters might not even resemble themselves when you change the lens you’re looking at them through.
What this also means though is that a character sheet might be insufficient to really represent all the facets of a single character. On the other hand, we already know that character sheets are notoriously complex and contingency-based, so it should be possible to use some of those numbers in interesting ways that aren’t always necessarily moving the players around on a 1-inch grid.
I don’t mean to denigrate the 1-inch grid though. I think the game can be perfectly rewarding if it is cast as a series of puzzles that all play out on a 1-inch grid. I still think there’s infinite possibility there.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Simpsons Outdated?
This is a response to Chris Doggett's post on the Simpsons. http://thatbeerguy.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-more-reason-why-simpsons-changed.html
Some very good points about the changing of society, and I hadn't really thought about it. I suppose like anything else, the Simpsons is due to get outdated eventually. I'd have liked to see supporting statistics, which I could probably google, and will, if it wasn't already past my bedtime. It was only a rant though, so I don't entirely expect a lot of work to go into it. Just like I don't plan to put a lot of work into this post either.
Conan was apparently one of six children in his home growing up, so his own experiences couldn't have synced completely with the Simpsons. And my experience, along with a number of my friends growing up, was somewhat similar to the Simpsons model, with minor variations like my mom having the occasional teaching job.
I mean, we all have our own little versions of what's real and relatable, but I think that the standard sitcom 2.5 kids format is treated as a kind of vanilla flavor for television (with unfortunate consequences for questions of ethnicity and television). If anything, the Simpsons was riffing on the TV trope more than it was basing its foundation on real life.
The other reason they need to have all these things in the show is because they want to relate to as many people as possible. How many dads, single, married, divorced, or remarried, get compared to Homer Simpson on a regular basis? If Marge was single, and there was no stupid dad character, well that whole cultural phenomenon of "D'oh!" wouldn't exist. There's a similar reason for the show having a cat, a dog, a baby, a boy, and a girl. Because the cat people will ask why the Simpsons don't have a cat. Or the dog people will ask why the Simpsons don't have a dog. Or worse, they'll simply never have that laugh-out-loud moment when the dog eats something gross, or scoots his butt across the carpet, and they'll never get hooked into the Simpsons.
And it's not just the audience, but the writers will want characters and material to work with too. What if a writer has a great story about a baby? Can they somehow adapt it to use Bart instead? Not really.
But maybe we shouldn't even be asking about viewers' actual life experiences, but instead look at what else they're used to seeing on television (and to a lesser extent other media). How many examples of *fictional* families conform to the 2.5-kid-picket-fence standard? And has this decreased significantly over the years?
But I take your point about it feeling alien, at least to some people, to imagine that all these useful characters somehow managed to end up in the same house for a significant length of time (how many years has Bart been in 4th grade and living at home? How come we're not talking about that?). My argument that it's necessary doesn't make it any less weird, at least to people who have not had that specific experience.
How would a new generation create the Simpsons today? Would they find a way to fit all these interesting characters in one household, or would they create another setting? One of the things about animation is that it ought to be cheaper to create new sets and environments, so there's really no need to confine the franchise to one household, which is what they did with live-action family sitcoms.
Southpark accomplishes some of this by having the focus on the friendship of four (five with Butters?) elementary school kids, rather than exclusively their families. But like the Simpsons, when a sister story or a cat story ("NO KITTY! That's MY pot pie!") is needed, they have those characters somehow built into the town.
Some very good points about the changing of society, and I hadn't really thought about it. I suppose like anything else, the Simpsons is due to get outdated eventually. I'd have liked to see supporting statistics, which I could probably google, and will, if it wasn't already past my bedtime. It was only a rant though, so I don't entirely expect a lot of work to go into it. Just like I don't plan to put a lot of work into this post either.
Conan was apparently one of six children in his home growing up, so his own experiences couldn't have synced completely with the Simpsons. And my experience, along with a number of my friends growing up, was somewhat similar to the Simpsons model, with minor variations like my mom having the occasional teaching job.
I mean, we all have our own little versions of what's real and relatable, but I think that the standard sitcom 2.5 kids format is treated as a kind of vanilla flavor for television (with unfortunate consequences for questions of ethnicity and television). If anything, the Simpsons was riffing on the TV trope more than it was basing its foundation on real life.
The other reason they need to have all these things in the show is because they want to relate to as many people as possible. How many dads, single, married, divorced, or remarried, get compared to Homer Simpson on a regular basis? If Marge was single, and there was no stupid dad character, well that whole cultural phenomenon of "D'oh!" wouldn't exist. There's a similar reason for the show having a cat, a dog, a baby, a boy, and a girl. Because the cat people will ask why the Simpsons don't have a cat. Or the dog people will ask why the Simpsons don't have a dog. Or worse, they'll simply never have that laugh-out-loud moment when the dog eats something gross, or scoots his butt across the carpet, and they'll never get hooked into the Simpsons.
And it's not just the audience, but the writers will want characters and material to work with too. What if a writer has a great story about a baby? Can they somehow adapt it to use Bart instead? Not really.
But maybe we shouldn't even be asking about viewers' actual life experiences, but instead look at what else they're used to seeing on television (and to a lesser extent other media). How many examples of *fictional* families conform to the 2.5-kid-picket-fence standard? And has this decreased significantly over the years?
But I take your point about it feeling alien, at least to some people, to imagine that all these useful characters somehow managed to end up in the same house for a significant length of time (how many years has Bart been in 4th grade and living at home? How come we're not talking about that?). My argument that it's necessary doesn't make it any less weird, at least to people who have not had that specific experience.
How would a new generation create the Simpsons today? Would they find a way to fit all these interesting characters in one household, or would they create another setting? One of the things about animation is that it ought to be cheaper to create new sets and environments, so there's really no need to confine the franchise to one household, which is what they did with live-action family sitcoms.
Southpark accomplishes some of this by having the focus on the friendship of four (five with Butters?) elementary school kids, rather than exclusively their families. But like the Simpsons, when a sister story or a cat story ("NO KITTY! That's MY pot pie!") is needed, they have those characters somehow built into the town.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Ancient Roman D20
This 20-sided object appeared on the internet somewhere around 2003, or so my evening of Googling tells me. Apparently it was up for auction by Christie's at http://www.christies.com/Lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4205385 and ultimately sold for something like $18 000 US.
(A 20-sided object is called an icosahedron, and it is one of the five Platonic Solids; one other example is the cube. 20-sided dice are used in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and are sometimes called "D20s", pronounced "Dee-twenties" or "Die-twenties")
I was on the internet at that time in 2003, I believe, but like most people, I didn't really pay it much attention. I did wonder to myself what the symbols were, but nothing I could Google at the time would even tell me.
So today I really determined to find out what those symbols were. The first thing I found was that they are apparently Greek, not Roman (or Latin, I should say).
The symbols visible and immediately identifiable (to me) were:
Omicron Ο
Xi Ξ
Rho Ρ
Eta Η
Theta Θ
that left three symbols which I'm still not sure about, but I think they're:
Alpha Α or Lambda Λ
Tau Τ
Zeta ζ
I basically had to go digging around with Google image search, and ultimately end up at the http://www.dicecollector.com/ to Mr. Kevin Cook's old dice page http://www.dicecollector.com/THE_DICE_THEME_OLD.html
and I had to examine the totally different Greek die that he happened to have in his collection. I basically had to turn the image around in my head, because even four angles wasn't enough for me to be absolutely sure what was on that die.
However, I did compare that die with what I found on Wikipedia's page on the Greek Alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet , and I managed to deduce that the first twenty letters of the Greek alphabet, or what was called the "Attic script" were arranged, in order (luckily) around Mr. Cook's Greek die.
The symbol that gave me the hardest time was the one that ultimately turned out to be Zeta, because on every webpage I could find, Zeta is represented as a pretty straight-forward "Z". The only time I've ever seen Zeta represented with those little curly loops has been on the two examples of ancient Roman/Greek d20s. However, it was pretty clear on Mr. Cook's die that the squiggly symbol appeared in the exact spot that the letter Zeta should have appeared, leaving me with little room for doubt.
The other two difficult symbols were Alpha/Lambda and Tau. Alpha because it had a pointy middle, which our modern "A" doesn't have (except in rare stylized and decidedly modernist examples), and which I have also never seen in any ancient version of "A" or Alpha that I have ever seen. But Mr. Cook's Alpha was a lower-case Alpha, and isn't it possible that that middle bit is just a bit of scarring? So perhaps it was Lambda ("Λ").
Add to that the fact that for some reason Mr. Cook's version seems to have a lower-case Alpha ("α") that looks like a Rho ("P") since it's not clear that the orientation of the characters on the die is correct, and part of the letter seems to have worn away.
Tau ("T") confused me because there seemed to be a bunch of extra flourishes present on that particular face of the die. But my speculation there is that they are markings due to wear and tear, and not actually part of the intended letter.
The reason I've gone through all this trouble though, is because the original question I had about that "Ancient Roman d20" (and take note that the Romans often used Greek as a language of literacy, so it's entirely correct that the die is Roman even though the language is Greek) is whether I could get myself a replica.
Now that I'm pretty sure about which characters are supposed to go on all the faces (ie. the Attic letters of the Greek alphabet), I can go about looking for dice makers on the internet who can make it for me. In the meantime, I do have blank dice that I can put stickers on, and I'll have to be satisfied with that for now.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Quick Plato Epiphany
Okay, I haven't actually read Plato's Republic, not all of it. But I have heard that he posits a perfect society, and in that perfect society, there are no poets. And by poets, I've been told, he basically means artists of any kind. In other words, in Plato's perfect world, there are no artists. Therefore, in an ideal world, there is no art.
Keep in mind that I'm speaking from ignorance here, not actually having studied or even read Plato. This is the idea I came up with while thinking about why on earth Plato would come down so harshly on artists. After actually reading and researching, I'll probably have a different opinion, and I worry that the genesis of this particular epiphany will have been lost.
I've always been bothered a little by hearing this, though never quite enough to actually look up the reference. No art in a perfect society? That's odd. Weren't the ancient Greeks great lovers of artwork? Isn't our own society one that elevates artists and prizes artwork? Isn't art a good thing?
My point is simply this: that Plato's ideal or perfect society has no artists because it needs no artists. The function of art is to operate within and upon an imperfect world. We have art because the world is an imperfect place. Artists are always thinking of ways in which the world could be different. If society were perfect, there would be no need for art of any kind, because there would be no need to imagine the world as any different than it already is.
But I'm probably wrong.
Keep in mind that I'm speaking from ignorance here, not actually having studied or even read Plato. This is the idea I came up with while thinking about why on earth Plato would come down so harshly on artists. After actually reading and researching, I'll probably have a different opinion, and I worry that the genesis of this particular epiphany will have been lost.
I've always been bothered a little by hearing this, though never quite enough to actually look up the reference. No art in a perfect society? That's odd. Weren't the ancient Greeks great lovers of artwork? Isn't our own society one that elevates artists and prizes artwork? Isn't art a good thing?
My point is simply this: that Plato's ideal or perfect society has no artists because it needs no artists. The function of art is to operate within and upon an imperfect world. We have art because the world is an imperfect place. Artists are always thinking of ways in which the world could be different. If society were perfect, there would be no need for art of any kind, because there would be no need to imagine the world as any different than it already is.
But I'm probably wrong.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Engineering To-Do List
So I kind of like the idea of the colonization of space, and eventually seeing human beings live permanently off-planet. Sort of as our species insurance policy, but also to make the solar system a more interesting and accessible place. But, space colonization is hard, and mainstream scientists say that we'll never establish a living presence in space. Sure we'll go to Mars, but we probably won't ever colonize it.
This might be disappointing at first, until you take a look at what's left to do to really conquer our own planet. Let's get these things done first, and when we've run out of big projects like these, then we'll tackle colonizing, maybe even terraforming, the other planets in the solar system.
Living inside or on top of mountains.
Giant airships, like cities in the air.
Cruise ships that people can permanently live and work on.
Platforms in the sea
Bubbles or structures at the bottom of the sea
Tunnels connecting cities on the land with cities under the sea
Tunnels stretching across ocean floor
Tunnels beneath the ocean floor
Tunnels floating beneath the surface
Bridges between all the continents. Including over the Bering Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar, and maybe even a North Atlantic bridge/tunnel.
Colonizing Northern Canada.
Colonizing Greenland: on the ice, in the ice, under the ice and in the rock.
Colonizing Antarctica: see Greenland
Superskyscrapers, including skyscraper scaffolds and lattices, like the Tokyo Pyramid City.
Land Reclaimed from the sea by dikes and levies, a la Netherlands.
Rail networks connecting up South America with North America.
Rail networks criss-crossing Africa.
Greening the deserts of the world.
Damming all major rivers to manage flooding and to generate power. (make sure to leave space for wildlife)
Solving the problem of nuclear power and urban development. Ie. The NIMBY problem.
Figuring out how to use or dispose of nuclear waste.
Cheap access to orbit, especially for the continued development of communications. Ie. space planes or private shuttle.
Space Elevator.
Tidal power management.
Tsunami and earthquake protection for vulnerable areas, ie. Ring of Fire.
This might be disappointing at first, until you take a look at what's left to do to really conquer our own planet. Let's get these things done first, and when we've run out of big projects like these, then we'll tackle colonizing, maybe even terraforming, the other planets in the solar system.
Living inside or on top of mountains.
Giant airships, like cities in the air.
Cruise ships that people can permanently live and work on.
Platforms in the sea
Bubbles or structures at the bottom of the sea
Tunnels connecting cities on the land with cities under the sea
Tunnels stretching across ocean floor
Tunnels beneath the ocean floor
Tunnels floating beneath the surface
Bridges between all the continents. Including over the Bering Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar, and maybe even a North Atlantic bridge/tunnel.
Colonizing Northern Canada.
Colonizing Greenland: on the ice, in the ice, under the ice and in the rock.
Colonizing Antarctica: see Greenland
Superskyscrapers, including skyscraper scaffolds and lattices, like the Tokyo Pyramid City.
Land Reclaimed from the sea by dikes and levies, a la Netherlands.
Rail networks connecting up South America with North America.
Rail networks criss-crossing Africa.
Greening the deserts of the world.
Damming all major rivers to manage flooding and to generate power. (make sure to leave space for wildlife)
Solving the problem of nuclear power and urban development. Ie. The NIMBY problem.
Figuring out how to use or dispose of nuclear waste.
Cheap access to orbit, especially for the continued development of communications. Ie. space planes or private shuttle.
Space Elevator.
Tidal power management.
Tsunami and earthquake protection for vulnerable areas, ie. Ring of Fire.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Six Facial Expressions and Seven Dwarfs
I was doing some thinking and combining the other day, and I realized that the six basic facial expressions seem to superficially correlate to the Seven Dwarfs of Disney's 1937 animated film.
Here are the Six Basic Facial Expressions
Happy
Sad
Angry
Afraid
Disgusted
Surprised
I've always been puzzled that "neutrality" doesn't seem to count as one of the Six.
Anyways, then there are the Seven Dwarfs. A quick Google Search on the seven dwarfs reveals a myriad of explanations for what the different dwarves represent. One popular one is the Seven Stages of Addiction, or the Seven Stages of Cocaine Addiction, and was parodied in the Simpsons as the Seven Duffs, or Seven different kinds of attitudes when one is drunk. One of my favorite Google results was a clinical diagnosis of a different mental illness for each of the dwarves, along with a prescription of medication to solve each dwarf's problems.
The consensus of thinking people seems to be that there is no real system to the dwarves, but that they were chosen pretty much at random by the Disney team. However, the criteria of an animator and creator of a cartoon is driven by some desires. Cartoons are by their nature, iconic. In order to be memorable and interesting, and funny, characters, the dwarves need to stand out. They also need to be distinct from each other. Disney had the right idea in portraying the fairy tale this way, and I'm frankly surprised that the dwarves didn't have names before Disney.
As animators, Disney probably were aware of at least a variation on the Six Facial Expressions. I'm not sure when the idea first came out, but if you begin to do some tweaking, you get some interesting results.
1. Happy and Joy pretty much work on a 1-to-1 correlation. Happy and joy are also covered in the Four Humors as "sanguine".
2. Grumpy seems like he should be a combination of Anger and Sadness. Perhaps Disney didn't want to get too depressing, and so they combined these expressions into a single dwarf, so that the rest of the dwarves could be relatively positive, seeing as they are "good guys" in the story. Personally, I would have split this dwarf into two: Sulky and Feisty. Of the Four Humors, these cover "choleric" and "melancholy".
3. Sleepy, described in the Four Humors as "phlegmatic", has no correlation in the Six Facial Expressions, which gets me to thinking that perhaps there should be a seventh. However, since I'm not an artist, I'm not sure I could say whether sleepiness is a real effect on the facial expression or not. When you imagine a sleepy face, you see bags under the eyes, perhaps from a swelling of the blood vessels there. You may also see droopy, or half-closed eyelids, and a slight slackening of the jaw, followed by drooling at the extreme. Sleepiness might also tend to affect the rest of the expressions, as a sleepy person is less capable of being taken to extreme stages of anger, disgust, happiness, etc. When Sleepy experiences other emotions, his eyes tend to close quite readily. A happy sleepy closes his eyes in contentment, and an angry or disgusted sleepy shuts his eyes in an attempt to shut out the source of his emotion.
4. Also brought to mind by the English association of the word "phlegmatic" is, of course, Sneezy. But I'm not sure sneezing is specifically associated with that particular one of the Four Humors. Either way, I was at first puzzled as to what Expression to assign Sneezy, but it became obvious when I looked at what was left. Sneezy is an example of Disgust, of course. Sneezy is somewhat unique in that his expression is less voluntary than the rest of the dwarves, (except perhaps Sleepy) he can't help the "disgusted" look on his face, when his body is preparing to expel a real or imagined intrusion of particles.
5. Bashful and Afraid correlate quite well. We seem to have exhausted the Four Humors at this point. Perhaps Bashful is just a variation on Sneezy, or Bashful and Sneezy come from a common parent named Aversion. In which case, we're talking "phlegm" again.
6. Dopey also seems to lack an analogue in the Six Expressions, until we look at what's left if we've eliminated the previous ones. Surprise is the only expression not yet covered. It is tempting to call Dopey just another Sleepy, but that would get us nowhere. Instead, I prefer to think of Dopey as young, ignorant, and curious. At the very least, Surprise fits if he's delighted by everyday things, like flowers and birds. Probably the weakest correlation so far, but I'll take it.
7. Last, and possibly the odd dwarf out, is Doc. What does Doc feel? He's not Happy, although like the rest of the dwarves (even Grumpy), he contains an element of jolliness. Well, apparently he's some kind of Doctor, or at least enough like a doctor to earn his nickname from the rest of the dwarves. He wears glasses, also indicating that he's a dwarf of learning. I really want to call Doc the Neutral dwarf, since all the expressions, plus Sleepy, are used up. But Doc also has a bit of that element of Surprise that comes with learning. He might just be an older version of Dopey in that respect. But what if we had a dwarf called Pensive? Wouldn't he fill the same role as Doc? And couldn't we say that his expression would be "neutral"?
So my version of the Seven Dwarfs becomes eight dwarfs, since I've split Grumpy into Sulky and Feisty. And my version of the Six Expressions becomes eight expressions, since I've added Neutrality (pensiveness, Doc) and Sleepy.
Here are the Six Basic Facial Expressions
Happy
Sad
Angry
Afraid
Disgusted
Surprised
I've always been puzzled that "neutrality" doesn't seem to count as one of the Six.
Anyways, then there are the Seven Dwarfs. A quick Google Search on the seven dwarfs reveals a myriad of explanations for what the different dwarves represent. One popular one is the Seven Stages of Addiction, or the Seven Stages of Cocaine Addiction, and was parodied in the Simpsons as the Seven Duffs, or Seven different kinds of attitudes when one is drunk. One of my favorite Google results was a clinical diagnosis of a different mental illness for each of the dwarves, along with a prescription of medication to solve each dwarf's problems.
The consensus of thinking people seems to be that there is no real system to the dwarves, but that they were chosen pretty much at random by the Disney team. However, the criteria of an animator and creator of a cartoon is driven by some desires. Cartoons are by their nature, iconic. In order to be memorable and interesting, and funny, characters, the dwarves need to stand out. They also need to be distinct from each other. Disney had the right idea in portraying the fairy tale this way, and I'm frankly surprised that the dwarves didn't have names before Disney.
As animators, Disney probably were aware of at least a variation on the Six Facial Expressions. I'm not sure when the idea first came out, but if you begin to do some tweaking, you get some interesting results.
1. Happy and Joy pretty much work on a 1-to-1 correlation. Happy and joy are also covered in the Four Humors as "sanguine".
2. Grumpy seems like he should be a combination of Anger and Sadness. Perhaps Disney didn't want to get too depressing, and so they combined these expressions into a single dwarf, so that the rest of the dwarves could be relatively positive, seeing as they are "good guys" in the story. Personally, I would have split this dwarf into two: Sulky and Feisty. Of the Four Humors, these cover "choleric" and "melancholy".
3. Sleepy, described in the Four Humors as "phlegmatic", has no correlation in the Six Facial Expressions, which gets me to thinking that perhaps there should be a seventh. However, since I'm not an artist, I'm not sure I could say whether sleepiness is a real effect on the facial expression or not. When you imagine a sleepy face, you see bags under the eyes, perhaps from a swelling of the blood vessels there. You may also see droopy, or half-closed eyelids, and a slight slackening of the jaw, followed by drooling at the extreme. Sleepiness might also tend to affect the rest of the expressions, as a sleepy person is less capable of being taken to extreme stages of anger, disgust, happiness, etc. When Sleepy experiences other emotions, his eyes tend to close quite readily. A happy sleepy closes his eyes in contentment, and an angry or disgusted sleepy shuts his eyes in an attempt to shut out the source of his emotion.
4. Also brought to mind by the English association of the word "phlegmatic" is, of course, Sneezy. But I'm not sure sneezing is specifically associated with that particular one of the Four Humors. Either way, I was at first puzzled as to what Expression to assign Sneezy, but it became obvious when I looked at what was left. Sneezy is an example of Disgust, of course. Sneezy is somewhat unique in that his expression is less voluntary than the rest of the dwarves, (except perhaps Sleepy) he can't help the "disgusted" look on his face, when his body is preparing to expel a real or imagined intrusion of particles.
5. Bashful and Afraid correlate quite well. We seem to have exhausted the Four Humors at this point. Perhaps Bashful is just a variation on Sneezy, or Bashful and Sneezy come from a common parent named Aversion. In which case, we're talking "phlegm" again.
6. Dopey also seems to lack an analogue in the Six Expressions, until we look at what's left if we've eliminated the previous ones. Surprise is the only expression not yet covered. It is tempting to call Dopey just another Sleepy, but that would get us nowhere. Instead, I prefer to think of Dopey as young, ignorant, and curious. At the very least, Surprise fits if he's delighted by everyday things, like flowers and birds. Probably the weakest correlation so far, but I'll take it.
7. Last, and possibly the odd dwarf out, is Doc. What does Doc feel? He's not Happy, although like the rest of the dwarves (even Grumpy), he contains an element of jolliness. Well, apparently he's some kind of Doctor, or at least enough like a doctor to earn his nickname from the rest of the dwarves. He wears glasses, also indicating that he's a dwarf of learning. I really want to call Doc the Neutral dwarf, since all the expressions, plus Sleepy, are used up. But Doc also has a bit of that element of Surprise that comes with learning. He might just be an older version of Dopey in that respect. But what if we had a dwarf called Pensive? Wouldn't he fill the same role as Doc? And couldn't we say that his expression would be "neutral"?
So my version of the Seven Dwarfs becomes eight dwarfs, since I've split Grumpy into Sulky and Feisty. And my version of the Six Expressions becomes eight expressions, since I've added Neutrality (pensiveness, Doc) and Sleepy.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
"V" and the Reptilians
[SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from the pilot episode of the science fiction television series "V". I'm commenting as I watch, so you may learn plot details shortly after I do.]
So I'm still on the pilot, and now it's just been revealed that the aliens are real actual aliens with human people skin grafted on top of them. Of course this is highly implausible, and their explanation makes no sense. They mumbled something about "grafting human DNA", but what it looks like is they're human only on the top inch or so of skin, and then they're a reptilian alien underneath. Really it looks more like a suit than anything to do with DNA. Also, it doesn't explain how the aliens are able to walk and talk exactly like normal humans.
I think it's pretty clear though, the metaphor that they're trying to go for. The "aliens" are metaphors for humans who act without the empathic nature of a human being. They're essentially reptilians. Animals, stripped of individual will and emotion. They're human, but it's only skin deep. Beautiful on the outside, ugly reptilian on the inside.
Frankly, I'm not impressed by this metaphor much either. What is it about a reptilian-looking alien that makes them so sinister and evil? Why do they think that disguising themselves among humans is going to accomplish their goals any better than just appearing in their natural forms and actually attempting to do what they say they're trying to do (which is to share knowledge)?
One interesting mind-fuck is the black guy who appears human at first, then it is revealed that he's actually an alien beneath his skin, but it's all good because he's actually one of the good aliens who want to help the humans and prevent the aliens from committing genocide. I'll give the writers credit for making this one just plain confusing, and I won't say if I think it's a commentary on race, or actual human skin colour, because I couldn't figure it out.
Also, if the aliens appear confused and messy, that's becoming acceptable as a plot device to me now too, as it explains some of the confusing stuff I mentioned in my earlier posts. They claim to be united in one nation on their home planet. Apparently they have no room for dissenting voices. Now, maybe that was enough to get them off their planet and headed to earth. After all, it worked for the Soviets with their space program. But then dealing with a situation like actually running a country with diverse opinions in it, seems to require a degree of flexibility that didn't exist in the Soviet Union, and doesn't exist in the Visitor Aliens. What ends up happening is colossal screw-up after colossal screw-up, one after another, because the Alien bureaucracy isn't equipped to deal with a planet like earth. Instead, they operate in crisis-management mode all the time. Put simply, the aliens are stupid.
Speaking of political systems, another thing they outright say on the show is that the aliens are here to bring us "Universal Health Care." Interesting that this should appear in a television program right at the same time that it's a national debate. To be fair, universal health care has been a national debate in the USA for several decades now. And other countries are at varying stages in the process of making health care available to all their citizens, Europe doing notably well in this department.
So what, the aliens have a united nation and universal health care, and they're "media savvy"? I think we have our metaphor here again. They're clearly meant to represent the "Liberal Media Elite". Is US President Barack Obama a reptilian? Maybe he is. Or maybe he's one of the good ones, like that other black dude.
So I can see that the show is taking a somewhat libertarian turn, which to be honest, is kind of okay with me. Technically, I think my own politics would be described as Libertarian also. I don't think we should implicitly trust the government, or corporations, or the churches. But at the same time, we can't be totally paranoid. In the end, governments, corporations, and churches are made up of people too, and we just have to remember to keep some of them at arm's reach.
I actually like the idea of things like universal health care, education, and welfare. I think these are reasonable things for the government to "redistribute wealth" to. I retain an ideal vision of a world with private hospitals, schools, and employment insurance that covers everybody through the magic of capitalism, but I know that our world just isn't designed that way, politically. Given a chance though, I think the free market can and will ultimately out-perform government programs of education and health care.
As for "V" as a metaphor for today's United States government's Democrat-dominated politics, I'm not sure how far the metaphor can carry. The aliens are pretty obviously inept, big-government types. So I guess they stand as an exaggerated, satirical caricature of the so-called "left wing" of American politics.
So I'm still on the pilot, and now it's just been revealed that the aliens are real actual aliens with human people skin grafted on top of them. Of course this is highly implausible, and their explanation makes no sense. They mumbled something about "grafting human DNA", but what it looks like is they're human only on the top inch or so of skin, and then they're a reptilian alien underneath. Really it looks more like a suit than anything to do with DNA. Also, it doesn't explain how the aliens are able to walk and talk exactly like normal humans.
I think it's pretty clear though, the metaphor that they're trying to go for. The "aliens" are metaphors for humans who act without the empathic nature of a human being. They're essentially reptilians. Animals, stripped of individual will and emotion. They're human, but it's only skin deep. Beautiful on the outside, ugly reptilian on the inside.
Frankly, I'm not impressed by this metaphor much either. What is it about a reptilian-looking alien that makes them so sinister and evil? Why do they think that disguising themselves among humans is going to accomplish their goals any better than just appearing in their natural forms and actually attempting to do what they say they're trying to do (which is to share knowledge)?
One interesting mind-fuck is the black guy who appears human at first, then it is revealed that he's actually an alien beneath his skin, but it's all good because he's actually one of the good aliens who want to help the humans and prevent the aliens from committing genocide. I'll give the writers credit for making this one just plain confusing, and I won't say if I think it's a commentary on race, or actual human skin colour, because I couldn't figure it out.
Also, if the aliens appear confused and messy, that's becoming acceptable as a plot device to me now too, as it explains some of the confusing stuff I mentioned in my earlier posts. They claim to be united in one nation on their home planet. Apparently they have no room for dissenting voices. Now, maybe that was enough to get them off their planet and headed to earth. After all, it worked for the Soviets with their space program. But then dealing with a situation like actually running a country with diverse opinions in it, seems to require a degree of flexibility that didn't exist in the Soviet Union, and doesn't exist in the Visitor Aliens. What ends up happening is colossal screw-up after colossal screw-up, one after another, because the Alien bureaucracy isn't equipped to deal with a planet like earth. Instead, they operate in crisis-management mode all the time. Put simply, the aliens are stupid.
Speaking of political systems, another thing they outright say on the show is that the aliens are here to bring us "Universal Health Care." Interesting that this should appear in a television program right at the same time that it's a national debate. To be fair, universal health care has been a national debate in the USA for several decades now. And other countries are at varying stages in the process of making health care available to all their citizens, Europe doing notably well in this department.
So what, the aliens have a united nation and universal health care, and they're "media savvy"? I think we have our metaphor here again. They're clearly meant to represent the "Liberal Media Elite". Is US President Barack Obama a reptilian? Maybe he is. Or maybe he's one of the good ones, like that other black dude.
So I can see that the show is taking a somewhat libertarian turn, which to be honest, is kind of okay with me. Technically, I think my own politics would be described as Libertarian also. I don't think we should implicitly trust the government, or corporations, or the churches. But at the same time, we can't be totally paranoid. In the end, governments, corporations, and churches are made up of people too, and we just have to remember to keep some of them at arm's reach.
I actually like the idea of things like universal health care, education, and welfare. I think these are reasonable things for the government to "redistribute wealth" to. I retain an ideal vision of a world with private hospitals, schools, and employment insurance that covers everybody through the magic of capitalism, but I know that our world just isn't designed that way, politically. Given a chance though, I think the free market can and will ultimately out-perform government programs of education and health care.
As for "V" as a metaphor for today's United States government's Democrat-dominated politics, I'm not sure how far the metaphor can carry. The aliens are pretty obviously inept, big-government types. So I guess they stand as an exaggerated, satirical caricature of the so-called "left wing" of American politics.
Getting Further into "V"
I guess this show is ever so slightly more intelligent than I initially gave it credit for, but I'm still not buying a lot of it. A number of characters are also questioning the sincerity of the message of the Visitors, but the majority of planet earth seems to be buying what they're selling. I really honestly hope this isn't the world we live in, in which people just go ahead and buy into obvious lies. My opinion of the aliens hasn't changed since the beginning of the show. It's obvious that they're not telling the truth, and the fact is, these aliens are pretty bad at it. And yet, we get scene after scene of people getting duped by the aliens.
And once again, why do the aliens look like humans? If they can cross the galaxy, then it stands to reason that they can assume the forms of humans if they want to. It's even plausible that they might think this is a good idea for their spokesperson, but apparently all the aliens are indistinguishable from humans. There's really no reason or explanation for that. And how would you even manage to get an entire population of aliens to consent to having their forms altered to look like humans? If would be like telling a small country, say Luxembourg, "okay, from now on you are all going to have the form of a small dog."
I noticed an interesting commentary on the media, which I think is worth noting, and may be a clue to the point of the whole show. That is to say, it's a commentary on the media game and how that is played.
The alien spokeswoman decides that she wants to do an interview for earth media, so she chooses an ambitious-yet-hapless young reporter who asks silly questions like "how come you're so beautiful, Mrs. Alien-lady?" from an ambitious, small, and hapless news organization that will do anything to get access to a big interview like the Alien Queen. It's really weird how the Alien Queen suddenly got media-savvy, when the aliens have been getting so many other things blatantly wrong. Maybe it's just luck that the aliens happen to also have a media culture like ours. Or it might be a case of convergent evolution, if you will, the same way a dolphin and a shark evolved similar body types through distinct evolutionary paths.
However savvy she might be, she's also brutally clear about her desires for being portrayed in a positive light. Again, so much so, that she appears to be playing the human game a little bit wrongly. She refuses to give any interview unless she can be promised that she'll only get easy questions.
Again though, what I don't get about the aliens is why they're playing the Public Relations game so aggressively. You'd think if you had access to alien technology and alien lifespans (how did they cross the galaxy if they aren't incredibly long-lived?) they'd have all the time and confidence in the world about being perceived in a good light. And any little problems, like protesters in the streets, are problems for local human government, not a concern for the aliens. And they will eventually go away as society adapts.
Or perhaps this is the message of the show. Society never really adapts. We've been changing our society at an increasingly rapid pace over the last, let's say 200 years, since the industrial revolution. And still we have troubles like terrorism, corruption, ignorance, and so on. Maybe we'll never really adapt to a truly modern society. In some ways, this is a horrible thought, because it means we will have to deal with a 9/11 every couple of years. In other ways, it is a check on the steady advance of corrupt leaders.
And once again, why do the aliens look like humans? If they can cross the galaxy, then it stands to reason that they can assume the forms of humans if they want to. It's even plausible that they might think this is a good idea for their spokesperson, but apparently all the aliens are indistinguishable from humans. There's really no reason or explanation for that. And how would you even manage to get an entire population of aliens to consent to having their forms altered to look like humans? If would be like telling a small country, say Luxembourg, "okay, from now on you are all going to have the form of a small dog."
I noticed an interesting commentary on the media, which I think is worth noting, and may be a clue to the point of the whole show. That is to say, it's a commentary on the media game and how that is played.
The alien spokeswoman decides that she wants to do an interview for earth media, so she chooses an ambitious-yet-hapless young reporter who asks silly questions like "how come you're so beautiful, Mrs. Alien-lady?" from an ambitious, small, and hapless news organization that will do anything to get access to a big interview like the Alien Queen. It's really weird how the Alien Queen suddenly got media-savvy, when the aliens have been getting so many other things blatantly wrong. Maybe it's just luck that the aliens happen to also have a media culture like ours. Or it might be a case of convergent evolution, if you will, the same way a dolphin and a shark evolved similar body types through distinct evolutionary paths.
However savvy she might be, she's also brutally clear about her desires for being portrayed in a positive light. Again, so much so, that she appears to be playing the human game a little bit wrongly. She refuses to give any interview unless she can be promised that she'll only get easy questions.
Again though, what I don't get about the aliens is why they're playing the Public Relations game so aggressively. You'd think if you had access to alien technology and alien lifespans (how did they cross the galaxy if they aren't incredibly long-lived?) they'd have all the time and confidence in the world about being perceived in a good light. And any little problems, like protesters in the streets, are problems for local human government, not a concern for the aliens. And they will eventually go away as society adapts.
Or perhaps this is the message of the show. Society never really adapts. We've been changing our society at an increasingly rapid pace over the last, let's say 200 years, since the industrial revolution. And still we have troubles like terrorism, corruption, ignorance, and so on. Maybe we'll never really adapt to a truly modern society. In some ways, this is a horrible thought, because it means we will have to deal with a 9/11 every couple of years. In other ways, it is a check on the steady advance of corrupt leaders.
"V" and Architecture
Strange how very human-centric the architecture of "V" the science fiction television series is. It looks a lot like 21st century human architecture, mixed with the concept sketches that you sometimes see in the 20th and 21st century for proposed massive human housing projects like arcologies and space stations.
"V" and Religion
A quick word on something that came up in the opening scenes of the science fiction television series "V". Apparently in the world of "V", the Roman Catholic Church, or the Vatican, had not come up with an answer to the question of extraterrestrial intelligences, and were forced to react "in crisis mode" and come up with a ruling on the fly, that the aliens count as "God's creatures" too. I've now read a few spoilers about the series online, and it seems that the decision might not be totally on the fly, as apparently governments and organizations may have already known about the existence of the aliens.
For the information of anyone who happens to be reading this, in our world, the Vatican actually has issued a statement about the possibility of the existence of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and it's pretty much the same as the one in the show "V". In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were quoting directly from the Vatican's statement. According to today's world's Roman Catholic Church, if ETIs are discovered to exist, then they will also be "God's creatures".
On another note, the spokeswoman for the aliens appears to be a real flesh-and-blood entity, and not a computer-generated entity, as I initially expected. This is really weird, because no one would expect aliens from another star system to look virtually identical to humans. In the show, the reporters awkwardly ask the alien spokeswoman basically "How come you're a purty lady and not a butt-ugly alien?" which is a rude question in itself, but I wouldn't put that past today's media, although I'd expect such a question more from an outfit like TMZ than anything like the LA Times or CNN.
Also, why are the media not interviewing Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, or any number of NASA folks, SETI folks, or just plain amateur astronomers. Surely they're not all bought by the alien conspiracy. And you gotta know that Neil DeGrasse Tyson has some serious questions for the aliens. In fact, probably any astrophysicist who is watching this whole Alien Introduction thing play out is probably pointing out the same inconsistencies as I am, and probably a number I haven't even thought of.
But then, even if you have serious concerns, what can you really do? Can you lob nuclear missiles at them? They probably have defenses against nuclear weapons, and even if you did manage to destroy the aliens, you're wiping out huge economic centres in the process. New York City, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Moscow, Cairo, all the financial and industrial capitals of the world.
When you look at it this way, you can only conclude that the aliens' utter proximity is a show of force, and they intend to be threatening. The alien spokeswoman talks about peace and trade, but the body language of the alien spaceships says "invasion" pretty clearly. It says "yes, we're in your face now, and there's nothing you can do about it."
What would I do about it? Well, I do believe in diplomacy and talking. Clearly the aliens are technologically superior, so there's no point in fighting. And they did take the trouble to learn human languages, so apparently they are somehow invested in the continuity of the human race, or else they wouldn't have bothered communicating. The first thing I would do though, would be to ask the aliens to back off from the cities of earth, like I said in my last post, go park in orbit around the moon, and then we'll talk.
One more problem with science fiction film and television is of course the fact that we tend to pick human actors to play the aliens. There are numerous strategies to tackle this problem, and "V" has gone with the idea that the aliens are so technologically advanced and so eager to please the human race that they've taken on a form that would be considered "beautiful" in Southern California. Don't get me wrong on this: I happen to share many of these standards of what I consider "beautiful" with Southern California. I just don't see why the aliens should place such a high priority on "looking good".
Well, I shouldn't say I can't totally see it, because the fact is, aliens would have mainly had access to our media that was broadcast by radio waves, and this type of media is somewhat weighted toward Southern California.
However, again, if the aliens took the time to learn English, French, and Arabic, then you'd think they'd learn a little bit about how humans perceive beauty, and they would rather quickly realize that it's just another one of our silly evolutionary quirks, and there's no real reason to play along with the beauty game.
Remember, the aliens have humanity completely at their mercy. They say they want water and mineral resources, but they could easily get these from the comets and asteroids, cheaper than they could get them from earth. So what do they want? Well, maybe they actually do want to play the beauty game. Maybe they crave a feeling of superiority over every intelligent creature they find. Maybe they just want to see if they can do it. Hell, maybe they're scientists.
Remember Jane Goodall, who lived with the great apes in the Congo? She went to great lengths to learn how the apes communicated. In effect, she learned their culture. She never tried to dominate a tribe of apes by being the most beautiful or desirable. But in some senses she did attempt to be seen as "a member of the troop". She tried to blend in, in order to learn more about the apes.
Perhaps with the aliens of "V", this is what they're doing. Of course they're horribly misguided. Just like you don't walk into a troop of apes and start pushing around the biggest silverback you find, you shouldn't park an alien spaceship above the economic hearts of the most powerful countries on Earth. Someone is going to get hurt.
If you're the scientist among the silverbacks, hey maybe you have a gun. Good for you. Bad for the poor silverbacks, and bad for your scientific experiment if you kill your subjects.
So for the aliens in "V", their experiment is rather ham-handed, but I think I might actually be able to forgive them for this, because I have no idea what alien culture might be like. Maybe the differences are so great that they simply cannot comprehend the intricacies of human culture. And I say "human" culture with some hesitation because even in our global human society, we have cultural differences that can really mess with diplomatic relations. Just take the standards of beauty I was talking about earlier. What would happen if this alien lady showed up in Saudi Arabia? Could they take her seriously? Somehow I doubt it. She seems very well dressed and positioned to take a position of power in Europe or North America, especially New York or Washington, but I'm not so sure she'd fare as well in the rest of the world.
For the information of anyone who happens to be reading this, in our world, the Vatican actually has issued a statement about the possibility of the existence of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and it's pretty much the same as the one in the show "V". In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were quoting directly from the Vatican's statement. According to today's world's Roman Catholic Church, if ETIs are discovered to exist, then they will also be "God's creatures".
On another note, the spokeswoman for the aliens appears to be a real flesh-and-blood entity, and not a computer-generated entity, as I initially expected. This is really weird, because no one would expect aliens from another star system to look virtually identical to humans. In the show, the reporters awkwardly ask the alien spokeswoman basically "How come you're a purty lady and not a butt-ugly alien?" which is a rude question in itself, but I wouldn't put that past today's media, although I'd expect such a question more from an outfit like TMZ than anything like the LA Times or CNN.
Also, why are the media not interviewing Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, or any number of NASA folks, SETI folks, or just plain amateur astronomers. Surely they're not all bought by the alien conspiracy. And you gotta know that Neil DeGrasse Tyson has some serious questions for the aliens. In fact, probably any astrophysicist who is watching this whole Alien Introduction thing play out is probably pointing out the same inconsistencies as I am, and probably a number I haven't even thought of.
But then, even if you have serious concerns, what can you really do? Can you lob nuclear missiles at them? They probably have defenses against nuclear weapons, and even if you did manage to destroy the aliens, you're wiping out huge economic centres in the process. New York City, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Moscow, Cairo, all the financial and industrial capitals of the world.
When you look at it this way, you can only conclude that the aliens' utter proximity is a show of force, and they intend to be threatening. The alien spokeswoman talks about peace and trade, but the body language of the alien spaceships says "invasion" pretty clearly. It says "yes, we're in your face now, and there's nothing you can do about it."
What would I do about it? Well, I do believe in diplomacy and talking. Clearly the aliens are technologically superior, so there's no point in fighting. And they did take the trouble to learn human languages, so apparently they are somehow invested in the continuity of the human race, or else they wouldn't have bothered communicating. The first thing I would do though, would be to ask the aliens to back off from the cities of earth, like I said in my last post, go park in orbit around the moon, and then we'll talk.
One more problem with science fiction film and television is of course the fact that we tend to pick human actors to play the aliens. There are numerous strategies to tackle this problem, and "V" has gone with the idea that the aliens are so technologically advanced and so eager to please the human race that they've taken on a form that would be considered "beautiful" in Southern California. Don't get me wrong on this: I happen to share many of these standards of what I consider "beautiful" with Southern California. I just don't see why the aliens should place such a high priority on "looking good".
Well, I shouldn't say I can't totally see it, because the fact is, aliens would have mainly had access to our media that was broadcast by radio waves, and this type of media is somewhat weighted toward Southern California.
However, again, if the aliens took the time to learn English, French, and Arabic, then you'd think they'd learn a little bit about how humans perceive beauty, and they would rather quickly realize that it's just another one of our silly evolutionary quirks, and there's no real reason to play along with the beauty game.
Remember, the aliens have humanity completely at their mercy. They say they want water and mineral resources, but they could easily get these from the comets and asteroids, cheaper than they could get them from earth. So what do they want? Well, maybe they actually do want to play the beauty game. Maybe they crave a feeling of superiority over every intelligent creature they find. Maybe they just want to see if they can do it. Hell, maybe they're scientists.
Remember Jane Goodall, who lived with the great apes in the Congo? She went to great lengths to learn how the apes communicated. In effect, she learned their culture. She never tried to dominate a tribe of apes by being the most beautiful or desirable. But in some senses she did attempt to be seen as "a member of the troop". She tried to blend in, in order to learn more about the apes.
Perhaps with the aliens of "V", this is what they're doing. Of course they're horribly misguided. Just like you don't walk into a troop of apes and start pushing around the biggest silverback you find, you shouldn't park an alien spaceship above the economic hearts of the most powerful countries on Earth. Someone is going to get hurt.
If you're the scientist among the silverbacks, hey maybe you have a gun. Good for you. Bad for the poor silverbacks, and bad for your scientific experiment if you kill your subjects.
So for the aliens in "V", their experiment is rather ham-handed, but I think I might actually be able to forgive them for this, because I have no idea what alien culture might be like. Maybe the differences are so great that they simply cannot comprehend the intricacies of human culture. And I say "human" culture with some hesitation because even in our global human society, we have cultural differences that can really mess with diplomatic relations. Just take the standards of beauty I was talking about earlier. What would happen if this alien lady showed up in Saudi Arabia? Could they take her seriously? Somehow I doubt it. She seems very well dressed and positioned to take a position of power in Europe or North America, especially New York or Washington, but I'm not so sure she'd fare as well in the rest of the world.
About the Science Fiction Series "V"
Alright, I just started watching the science fiction series "V" starting with the pilot, and I thought I'd give some impressions before I forget about them and get lost in the rest of whatever this series turns out to be.
I'm always into shows' first episodes, or pilots, since the writers tend to put their best feet forward, and though the execution is usually poor, it is where the raw idea shows through. "V", for now though, strikes me as somewhat unoriginal so far.
So it starts: We have a few opening shots of regular people going about their lives in Southern California, and suddenly there's an earthquake.
You can tell it's an earthquake because in every scene and location, there's a shot of a little thing rattling off a table, or a glass of water rippling like in that famous scene from Jurassic Park. What seems funny to me right away, is that no one just says "oh yeah, we're in California. It's an earthquake. I'd better do the earthquake thing and get under a table." Instead, they're all like "What's happening! I've never felt the earth shake before!"
Also, their emergency procedures seem chaotic and unorganized. We're led to perceive, from the opening shots, that this is a movie set in our world. Two historical events are referenced in the first scene: The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963
, and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City in 2001. We are also shown the ID card of one of the presumably main characters, who works for Homeland Security. Regardless on this emphasis on American paranoia, the scenes that result are, as I pointed out, chaotic. In this show, people still don't know what to do if there's an earthquake or a terrorist attack. There's still panic and chaos.
Anyways, there's no reason for panic, because it very quickly turns out that it's an alien spaceship that's responsible for the earthquakes, which people realize as soon as they look outside and up. Hmm, where have I seen this before? The 1999 movie "Independence Day", to name just one, but I've seen it before. Aliens come to invade by parking spaceships above every major city in the world. Most recently, this trope was used as a powerful and satirical device when, in the 2009 film "District 9", an alien ship parks itself over the dysfunctional city of Johannesburg, South Africa.
In "V" though, there's apparently no mystery, as the first thing the aliens do is turn the bottoms of their spaceships into giant video screens and broadcast a friendly message of peace and trade to the people of earth.
And that's where the show completely loses me.
If they have video screen technology, as well as the capability of interstellar travel, then clearly they should have the ability to communicate directly with "earth's leaders" whomever they might consider them to be. I'd contend that this remains the heads of state of the G8 most powerful countries on earth, the most important of which is the USA. But an argument could be made for the aliens contacting the United Nations, or perhaps one of the numerous scientific organizations with the capability to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors, like maybe NASA, or SETI.
[Speaking of SETI, I feel bad for them. They kind of get kicked around in funding and political circles because they haven't found anything yet. At least, they haven't found ETI, which is what they're Searching for. But as soon as they do find ETI with the capability of communicating with earth, it won't be SETI's job to communicate anymore. Some other agency will take over, and SETI will pretty much remain how it is today. Yes, they'll win awards for having found something, and by awards I mean they will get trophies, one-time cash prizes, and scientific apparatuses named after them, maybe even a planet or two. But the rewards that SETI will never be able to cash in on is the actual opportunity to communicate and deal with alien intelligences. This will be granted to someone with earth-bound experience in diplomacy and negotiation. SETI will instead be set loose on the universe again, searching for the next ETI, while at the same time searching our own planet for sources of funding which no one will want to do, since we'll have already found ETI. In many folks' eyes, SETI will have served its purpose, and made itself irrelevant. But the truth of SETI is that it will always be relevant, because there will always be more ETIs to discover. And it will always be questioned as to its relevance, no matter how many ETIs it ultimately finds.]
So for some reason, the "V" aliens decide that they want to communicate "democratically" with the "people of earth" by parking above our big cities and broadcasting a picture of a human woman. Interestingly, the human woman is a white woman, speaking English. Fortunately, the aliens speak French too, and the spaceship parked over Paris is conveniently in French.
But I'm beginning to wonder about these aliens. Apparently they speak English and French, and they've somehow determined that their spokesperson should be a white human woman. Usually when people have a message to get out to the mass media, they conduct focus groups to determine how to affect the recipients of their message most favorably. It turns out, in many cases, that a woman's face will garner a more positive response than a male face, if the topic is diplomacy and peace and love. A male face, on the other hand, tends to work well with messages of threats of war, economic sanctions, deadlines, and ultimatums.
So anyways, pop psychology aside, the aliens somehow got extensive knowledge of humanity long before they arrived, managed to reproduce a convincing female face, and yet for some reason never communicated with the governments or scientific agencies of Earth? And for that matter, where was SETI? Where was NASA? Where were the amateur astronomers of Earth? These spaceships are as least as big as middling asteroids, so why was no one able to detect them? No, they somehow manage to fly in, under the radar, and announce that they just want to be friends.
Look, if the aliens really want to be friends, they should park themselves in orbit. Not around Earth, because that's where our satellites are, and we don't want them interfering with our satellites. Preferably somewhere comfortably distant. Like the moon. Let them park themselves in orbit around the moon. And rather than fly in with giant TV screens, all Big-Brother-esque (have they not read George Orwell's "1984"? Are these aliens completely oblivious to irony?) if they really want to communicate with earth, all they have to do is hack into the major TV networks. Or hey, get on Twitter.
Alternatively, just get in contact with a spokesperson on earth who can disseminate information to the rest of the planet on a want-to-know basis. Because believe me, at least at first, if there are aliens on TV, or aliens on the internet, that's where people are going to be clicking. You don't need to hack in, you don't need to broadcast on a huge screen above every major city. People are going to want this information, and they're going to go to our numerous and extensive media outlets to get it. There's absolutely no need for the aliens to beat us over the head with the fact that they're here and they "just want to trade and be friends".
If you just want to trade and be friends, then why did you disrupt our most economically active regions, cause minor earthquakes and widespread panic (never mind your soothing message; what about deaf people, or people who just happened to be indoors at the time)?
And then there's this business about a "mineral" on earth that is found nowhere else in the entire galaxy. I happen to know that this is utter bullshit too. Any element found on earth can be easily found elsewhere in the solar system, and it would be far easier to extract from pretty much any other planet.
Want water? Try the comets, the minor planet Pluto, or Jupiter's moon Europa.
Iron? The asteroid belt is full of it, and far more pure than what you find on earth.
Carbon? Try the atmosphere of Mars, or Saturn's moon Titan.
Silicon? Back to the asteroids, or hey, how about Earth's moon, since there aren't any people or ecosystems there to disrupt with interstellar scale mining operations?
Hey aliens, we appreciate the fact that you want to trade and all, but right now, the most valuable thing we have to offer is our knowledge. And likewise with you to us. Anything material, from matter to energy, you can pretty much take from the solar system and there really wouldn't be much we could do to stop you. We'd certainly appreciate getting something in return for "letting" you mine the asteroid belt, but we're just not in a place technologically to have a real voice in the matter.
So anyways, that's all from the first five minutes of the pilot episode of "V". My guess is that some of the things I brought up here will turn out to be questions that the human characters ask the aliens, and maybe there will be satisfactory answers, and maybe there won't.
I'm always into shows' first episodes, or pilots, since the writers tend to put their best feet forward, and though the execution is usually poor, it is where the raw idea shows through. "V", for now though, strikes me as somewhat unoriginal so far.
So it starts: We have a few opening shots of regular people going about their lives in Southern California, and suddenly there's an earthquake.
You can tell it's an earthquake because in every scene and location, there's a shot of a little thing rattling off a table, or a glass of water rippling like in that famous scene from Jurassic Park. What seems funny to me right away, is that no one just says "oh yeah, we're in California. It's an earthquake. I'd better do the earthquake thing and get under a table." Instead, they're all like "What's happening! I've never felt the earth shake before!"
Also, their emergency procedures seem chaotic and unorganized. We're led to perceive, from the opening shots, that this is a movie set in our world. Two historical events are referenced in the first scene: The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963
, and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City in 2001. We are also shown the ID card of one of the presumably main characters, who works for Homeland Security. Regardless on this emphasis on American paranoia, the scenes that result are, as I pointed out, chaotic. In this show, people still don't know what to do if there's an earthquake or a terrorist attack. There's still panic and chaos.
Anyways, there's no reason for panic, because it very quickly turns out that it's an alien spaceship that's responsible for the earthquakes, which people realize as soon as they look outside and up. Hmm, where have I seen this before? The 1999 movie "Independence Day", to name just one, but I've seen it before. Aliens come to invade by parking spaceships above every major city in the world. Most recently, this trope was used as a powerful and satirical device when, in the 2009 film "District 9", an alien ship parks itself over the dysfunctional city of Johannesburg, South Africa.
In "V" though, there's apparently no mystery, as the first thing the aliens do is turn the bottoms of their spaceships into giant video screens and broadcast a friendly message of peace and trade to the people of earth.
And that's where the show completely loses me.
If they have video screen technology, as well as the capability of interstellar travel, then clearly they should have the ability to communicate directly with "earth's leaders" whomever they might consider them to be. I'd contend that this remains the heads of state of the G8 most powerful countries on earth, the most important of which is the USA. But an argument could be made for the aliens contacting the United Nations, or perhaps one of the numerous scientific organizations with the capability to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors, like maybe NASA, or SETI.
[Speaking of SETI, I feel bad for them. They kind of get kicked around in funding and political circles because they haven't found anything yet. At least, they haven't found ETI, which is what they're Searching for. But as soon as they do find ETI with the capability of communicating with earth, it won't be SETI's job to communicate anymore. Some other agency will take over, and SETI will pretty much remain how it is today. Yes, they'll win awards for having found something, and by awards I mean they will get trophies, one-time cash prizes, and scientific apparatuses named after them, maybe even a planet or two. But the rewards that SETI will never be able to cash in on is the actual opportunity to communicate and deal with alien intelligences. This will be granted to someone with earth-bound experience in diplomacy and negotiation. SETI will instead be set loose on the universe again, searching for the next ETI, while at the same time searching our own planet for sources of funding which no one will want to do, since we'll have already found ETI. In many folks' eyes, SETI will have served its purpose, and made itself irrelevant. But the truth of SETI is that it will always be relevant, because there will always be more ETIs to discover. And it will always be questioned as to its relevance, no matter how many ETIs it ultimately finds.]
So for some reason, the "V" aliens decide that they want to communicate "democratically" with the "people of earth" by parking above our big cities and broadcasting a picture of a human woman. Interestingly, the human woman is a white woman, speaking English. Fortunately, the aliens speak French too, and the spaceship parked over Paris is conveniently in French.
But I'm beginning to wonder about these aliens. Apparently they speak English and French, and they've somehow determined that their spokesperson should be a white human woman. Usually when people have a message to get out to the mass media, they conduct focus groups to determine how to affect the recipients of their message most favorably. It turns out, in many cases, that a woman's face will garner a more positive response than a male face, if the topic is diplomacy and peace and love. A male face, on the other hand, tends to work well with messages of threats of war, economic sanctions, deadlines, and ultimatums.
So anyways, pop psychology aside, the aliens somehow got extensive knowledge of humanity long before they arrived, managed to reproduce a convincing female face, and yet for some reason never communicated with the governments or scientific agencies of Earth? And for that matter, where was SETI? Where was NASA? Where were the amateur astronomers of Earth? These spaceships are as least as big as middling asteroids, so why was no one able to detect them? No, they somehow manage to fly in, under the radar, and announce that they just want to be friends.
Look, if the aliens really want to be friends, they should park themselves in orbit. Not around Earth, because that's where our satellites are, and we don't want them interfering with our satellites. Preferably somewhere comfortably distant. Like the moon. Let them park themselves in orbit around the moon. And rather than fly in with giant TV screens, all Big-Brother-esque (have they not read George Orwell's "1984"? Are these aliens completely oblivious to irony?) if they really want to communicate with earth, all they have to do is hack into the major TV networks. Or hey, get on Twitter.
Alternatively, just get in contact with a spokesperson on earth who can disseminate information to the rest of the planet on a want-to-know basis. Because believe me, at least at first, if there are aliens on TV, or aliens on the internet, that's where people are going to be clicking. You don't need to hack in, you don't need to broadcast on a huge screen above every major city. People are going to want this information, and they're going to go to our numerous and extensive media outlets to get it. There's absolutely no need for the aliens to beat us over the head with the fact that they're here and they "just want to trade and be friends".
If you just want to trade and be friends, then why did you disrupt our most economically active regions, cause minor earthquakes and widespread panic (never mind your soothing message; what about deaf people, or people who just happened to be indoors at the time)?
And then there's this business about a "mineral" on earth that is found nowhere else in the entire galaxy. I happen to know that this is utter bullshit too. Any element found on earth can be easily found elsewhere in the solar system, and it would be far easier to extract from pretty much any other planet.
Want water? Try the comets, the minor planet Pluto, or Jupiter's moon Europa.
Iron? The asteroid belt is full of it, and far more pure than what you find on earth.
Carbon? Try the atmosphere of Mars, or Saturn's moon Titan.
Silicon? Back to the asteroids, or hey, how about Earth's moon, since there aren't any people or ecosystems there to disrupt with interstellar scale mining operations?
Hey aliens, we appreciate the fact that you want to trade and all, but right now, the most valuable thing we have to offer is our knowledge. And likewise with you to us. Anything material, from matter to energy, you can pretty much take from the solar system and there really wouldn't be much we could do to stop you. We'd certainly appreciate getting something in return for "letting" you mine the asteroid belt, but we're just not in a place technologically to have a real voice in the matter.
So anyways, that's all from the first five minutes of the pilot episode of "V". My guess is that some of the things I brought up here will turn out to be questions that the human characters ask the aliens, and maybe there will be satisfactory answers, and maybe there won't.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
One Minute in my Brain
One Minute in My Brain
Ten ten two one zen eleven Ben
Where are all my riders then?
Grieve the poem and knock the rain
Don't go down the drain again
Buzz the ear and roll the street
Let's walk down and market meat.
Eat some food and drink some wine
Get it down the íntestine.
Break for me and die for me
And let's get making symphony
La, la, siss boom bah
Be a man and dance all night
And tender man
man man man man man man man
Look him in his tender booms
And sweep away his misty rains
And let's be funny, let's be men
Let's pull up our skirts again.
Sing a song for loving prove
And all the world is fun and love
I love it, and I feel it now. Just
Through my senses is all I feel
Like I must know you but it's gust
A récognition down the mind
Yet still I see your face it sets
It off.
the neurons shoot
Let's get down. Let's get down
Jump around.
And touch the ground.
Feel the love and reach your arms
Around the world
Poems have a logic too.
What am I doing?
Who are you?
Josh Treleaven, July 2009. Edited February 2010
Ten ten two one zen eleven Ben
Where are all my riders then?
Grieve the poem and knock the rain
Don't go down the drain again
Buzz the ear and roll the street
Let's walk down and market meat.
Eat some food and drink some wine
Get it down the íntestine.
Break for me and die for me
And let's get making symphony
La, la, siss boom bah
Be a man and dance all night
And tender man
man man man man man man man
Look him in his tender booms
And sweep away his misty rains
And let's be funny, let's be men
Let's pull up our skirts again.
Sing a song for loving prove
And all the world is fun and love
I love it, and I feel it now. Just
Through my senses is all I feel
Like I must know you but it's gust
A récognition down the mind
Yet still I see your face it sets
It off.
the neurons shoot
Let's get down. Let's get down
Jump around.
And touch the ground.
Feel the love and reach your arms
Around the world
Poems have a logic too.
What am I doing?
Who are you?
Josh Treleaven, July 2009. Edited February 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
To a Spojwoggner
Oh mamsantical spojwoggner
in the whilent glade:
Thy spamtiggles glisten breeble
under the cooling shade.
Behold now thy honk doffnet
with a gaffinour bleeze,
And sheggle forth the nonpellure
to gazble among the trees.
in the whilent glade:
Thy spamtiggles glisten breeble
under the cooling shade.
Behold now thy honk doffnet
with a gaffinour bleeze,
And sheggle forth the nonpellure
to gazble among the trees.
Friday, February 5, 2010
I Just Realized I'm a Nerd
I never thought I was qualified to be a nerd. I've always known that I'm socially awkward, but that's only ever part of the equation. To truly qualify as a nerd or a geek, I've never believed that it's enough to know how to play, and enjoy, eg.: chess, video games, pen-and-paper role playing games, literature, etc.
Two things put me over the edge though. One was listening to Wil Wheaton's podcast. One of the things Wil pointed out was how he ranted at his friend Brent Spiner who had made absolutely zero effort at consistency in his portrayal of the android character in Star Trek. Brent's response to Wil's criticism was "You're the nerd, Wil. I just did what was fun." That was when I realized that I was treating Star Trek exactly the same way as Wil and countless nerd Trekkies, who treated it as if it was meant to be "real", as if you were really supposed to lose yourself in the narrative, rather than just kind of laugh at the idea of weird people in space.
Okay, evidence that I'm a nerd: I know who Wil Wheaton is. I know he was Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: the Next Generation. I know that he plays role-playing games, which I also happen to play. I know what a podcast is.
But, I'm still hesitant to call myself a true nerd, because I don't own any copies of Wil Wheaton's books, neither in DTF (dead tree format, ie. paper) nor even in electronic format. I can't list the names of every Star Trek episode, and I don't remember what stardate it was that Wesley Crusher ascended to a higher plane of existence and left the Enterprise. I've forgotten most of what I know about role-playing games, and my extent of role-playing knowledge only ever really covered about one and a half Editions of the game of Dungeons & Dragons. I was never nerdy enough to go all the way back to Second Edition D&D, even though I did manage to acquire the books, I could never get through them. And when Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons came out, I was too lazy to learn a whole new ruleset. I tried, but I just couldn't get into it.
I know what a podcast is, and how to download them, but I don't have my own podcast. I don't know how to use XML, let alone other complicated programming languages like HTML, Java, C++, or even the names of other languages. Perl? I think.
I know how to edit Wikipedia, but I don't know how to create a template. See? I really don't deserve to be called nerdy.
The second thing that put me over the nerd edge though, was when I watched a video game review appear on The Young Turks radio show, for a video game called "Dragon Age." I don't know about the average guy on the street, but if you mention "dragons" to me, I think it's pretty awesome. But the host of the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, immediately went to "Dragons? Aren't dragons kind of gay?"
Gay? I was not expecting that at all. I was expecting "Dragons? Isn't that kind of nerdy?" or "Dragons? That's a Chinese thing, right?" or "Dragons? Like as in King Arthur, right?" I do get it though, the psychological implications of being obsessed with dragons. If I was a true nerd, I could tell you if it was a Jungian or Freudian idea that dragons represent unbridled sexuality in the subconscious. Maybe it's a mix of both. But yes, I do get that dragons represent male sexuality, and a man obsessed with dragons might be expressing some unfulfilled desires in other areas of his life. But that doesn't change the fact, to me, that dragons are cool! Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said. And sometimes an awesome literary trope is just an awesome literary trope. And an author or a reader armed with this information can actually get a whole new level of understanding out of literature and video games, but it doesn't erase the other meanings that dragons carry to those of us who think about them and use them in our imaginative dealings.
Anyways, I'm just saying I think I might be a nerd if my first reaction to the idea of a dragon is "Cool!" rather than "Ew, gay!"
Two things put me over the edge though. One was listening to Wil Wheaton's podcast. One of the things Wil pointed out was how he ranted at his friend Brent Spiner who had made absolutely zero effort at consistency in his portrayal of the android character in Star Trek. Brent's response to Wil's criticism was "You're the nerd, Wil. I just did what was fun." That was when I realized that I was treating Star Trek exactly the same way as Wil and countless nerd Trekkies, who treated it as if it was meant to be "real", as if you were really supposed to lose yourself in the narrative, rather than just kind of laugh at the idea of weird people in space.
Okay, evidence that I'm a nerd: I know who Wil Wheaton is. I know he was Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: the Next Generation. I know that he plays role-playing games, which I also happen to play. I know what a podcast is.
But, I'm still hesitant to call myself a true nerd, because I don't own any copies of Wil Wheaton's books, neither in DTF (dead tree format, ie. paper) nor even in electronic format. I can't list the names of every Star Trek episode, and I don't remember what stardate it was that Wesley Crusher ascended to a higher plane of existence and left the Enterprise. I've forgotten most of what I know about role-playing games, and my extent of role-playing knowledge only ever really covered about one and a half Editions of the game of Dungeons & Dragons. I was never nerdy enough to go all the way back to Second Edition D&D, even though I did manage to acquire the books, I could never get through them. And when Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons came out, I was too lazy to learn a whole new ruleset. I tried, but I just couldn't get into it.
I know what a podcast is, and how to download them, but I don't have my own podcast. I don't know how to use XML, let alone other complicated programming languages like HTML, Java, C++, or even the names of other languages. Perl? I think.
I know how to edit Wikipedia, but I don't know how to create a template. See? I really don't deserve to be called nerdy.
The second thing that put me over the nerd edge though, was when I watched a video game review appear on The Young Turks radio show, for a video game called "Dragon Age." I don't know about the average guy on the street, but if you mention "dragons" to me, I think it's pretty awesome. But the host of the Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, immediately went to "Dragons? Aren't dragons kind of gay?"
Gay? I was not expecting that at all. I was expecting "Dragons? Isn't that kind of nerdy?" or "Dragons? That's a Chinese thing, right?" or "Dragons? Like as in King Arthur, right?" I do get it though, the psychological implications of being obsessed with dragons. If I was a true nerd, I could tell you if it was a Jungian or Freudian idea that dragons represent unbridled sexuality in the subconscious. Maybe it's a mix of both. But yes, I do get that dragons represent male sexuality, and a man obsessed with dragons might be expressing some unfulfilled desires in other areas of his life. But that doesn't change the fact, to me, that dragons are cool! Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said. And sometimes an awesome literary trope is just an awesome literary trope. And an author or a reader armed with this information can actually get a whole new level of understanding out of literature and video games, but it doesn't erase the other meanings that dragons carry to those of us who think about them and use them in our imaginative dealings.
Anyways, I'm just saying I think I might be a nerd if my first reaction to the idea of a dragon is "Cool!" rather than "Ew, gay!"
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
What is a blog for?
I'm going to set myself a challenge. Fear of failure is my biggest obstacle to my daily writing. So I'm going to try to fail and see what happens. My new goal is to get a piece of writing rejected five times. That's five rejection letters for one small piece of writing. As soon as I collect all five, the piece will become a blog post.
And hey, if I'm as good as I think I am, maybe I'll never get those rejection letters, and this blog will continue to suck, or at least dwindle away to even less frequent postings, because it won't have any real writing on it. Or I'll be a famous writer posting my speaking and book signing tours on this blog, or answering questions from all the other new writers.
And hey, if I'm as good as I think I am, maybe I'll never get those rejection letters, and this blog will continue to suck, or at least dwindle away to even less frequent postings, because it won't have any real writing on it. Or I'll be a famous writer posting my speaking and book signing tours on this blog, or answering questions from all the other new writers.
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