Space Hitler is bad, actually

 So I’ve been talking about Star Trek Discovery a lot, and I know that commentary is years late and nobody cares, but its what I am watching so its what I am thinking about so its what I am writing about. And now, seriously, what the fuck is going on with the two part episode Terra Firma? This is a two part episode send off for the character of Terran Empress Philippa Georgiou, presumably so she can go off and star in the Section 31 movie everyone hated. And I will admit, I like the character. She’s fun. Michelle Yeoh is great, and watching her take good actions against her character because of her love for Michael and perhaps grow a bit because of it was interesting. I wasn’t really sure what they were “doing” with the character, but was willing to give them space to do so because she was entertaining. But now that she is off the show, seriously, what?

A quick summary for those not familiar with the show. The Terran Empire is a fascist version of the Federation that exists in the Mirror Universe. We are both told directly and shown that it, and by extension the Empress herself both on her orders, through proxies, and by her own hand practices torture, genocide, human supremacy (as a metaphor for white supremacy), slavery, cannibalism (assuming you extend the definition of cannibalism to include “any sentient species), and honestly probably any form of nastiness you might imagine. Philippa is shown to be an enthusiastic and unquestioning participant in this, although because she is being overthrown by Lorca and mirror Burnham, her closest confidant, on the basis of “making the Terran Empire Great Again” (literally said) we are perhaps given some indication she maybe does not go as far as some in the Terran Empire would like. Philippa is deposed by Lorca, and although Lorca is killed, her flagship is also destroyed and she is captured by prime universe Burnham and proceeds to be shown the ways of the federation and to kinda bond with Burnham, Tilly, and a few other members of the prime universe. Generally speaking, from here on out she helps the good guys, although she still often suggest solutions that are morally repugnant, such as genociding the Klingons.

In the third season, after they have been transported to the future, Philippa starts suffering from flashbacks that also make her glitch like missingNo. Long story short, she and Burnham go to the Guardian of Forever and Philippa is sent back in time and across dimensions and given a second chance at holding on to the Terran Empire. This time she spares mirror Burnham’s life (she had her killed the first time around) and attempts to torture her into submission. She also tries to be slightly less oppressive to the people she is ruling and outlaws cannibalism, but it is pretty clear she is still pursuing fascism - Burnham ultimately betrays her again, and makes clear that she and Lorca want endless conquest and violence, and disdain ruling at all - Georgiou is a fascist, and even now “reformed” still seems to be merely instituting fascism with a lighter hand, but Burnham and Lorca are essentially pillagers, with no philosophy besides power, violence, and destruction. Georgiou does say, to herself, that her goal is to change the Terran Empire into a place with the ideals of the Federation, but we see at most babysteps. Ultimately, she and Burnham kill each other, and as she lays dying, Philippa awakens back at the Guardian of Forever.

The Guardian explains that while those events did really happen - on a character note proving to Philippa that her Burnham was a lost cause, and that prime Burnham is actually the one she loves - the point was not for Philippa to succeed, but to judge whether or not her time in the Federation had changed her. He judges it did, and gives her a chance to start again in a new time and place where the dissonance between her dimension and the prime one is not so great so she won’t have flashback glitches. She is sent wherever and back on Discovery, Burnham and Saru talk about what happened, Burnham says Philippa won’t be back, Saru then says “So she is dead,” which is honestly baffling since she was actually just sent to another timeline, and then they proceed to hold a mini wake for her where everyone says how awesome she was.

Now, let me rewind for a bit. Who is Philippa Georgiou supposed to represent? The Terran Empire is a fascist state, but Lorca is a clearly analogy for Trump, and in 2016, who was Trump trying to “overthrow”? I think there are two obvious answers, Obama and Hillary, and between the two, I’d say Hillary. And if you think of her as Hillary, maybe this passes the smell test? But I don’t honestly think the writers went in thinking Philippa is an analogy for Hillary. While Lorca obviously is supposed to be Trump, I don’t think they were trying for a true, fully fleshed out allegory here, and Philippa is just suppose to be a fun character read on her own but not in any specific, real life framework

 Taken as such, then, I think the best way to view her is as Space Hitler, the same way Gul Dukat is. They both were the absolute leaders of a fascist state who did awful things in the past, but who were fleshed out into a more human portrayal where we go to see some of what makes them tick. Gul Dukat, spoilers for DS9, has some time in the spotlight at various times as a similar villain turned ally, but ultimately is driven mad by the death of his daughter and dies an unrepentant villain. Philippa, however, doesn’t, and when she “dies” (emphasis on the fact she is not dead) she is praised and celebrated by the crew. But, let me remind you, this is Space Hitler we are talking about here. She is not a good person. Maybe she deserves another chance, maybe she has begun to change as the Guardian of Forever seems to think, but she still has done countless, awful, horrific crimes. Even on screen she not only ate mirror Sarum but forced prime Burnham to do so, too! Only two seasons ago she was advocating for genocide. She may have been changed, but she has not put in the work necessary for this kind of hero treatment. Star Trek is fundamentally supposed to be a progressive show, and while I think the idea of showcasing “this is how we get better” might have a place, showing her say “Maybe I don’t have to kill my violent bloodthirsty murderer of a daughter, maybe I can torture her into being peaceful” and failing to do so isn’t really the slamdunk heroic awakening you think it is, Discovery. As much as I like the character, it honestly made me a little sick to see what are supposed to be Federation officers praising such an individual. And sure, she did form relationships with these people (although because of Discovery’s serialized nature and demanding narrative, we don’t actually see that much of it - a few quips here and there, and a lot of facial expressions and telling us how much they mean ti one another is all we get, the show does not have time for real character exploration like in episodic Treks) so she is a “friend” - a very hostile, racist friend who murdered honestly probably billions of people. Its honestly just bonkers that this happened on a show that purports to be progressive.

Honestly I kind of think these episodes were straight up a waste of time and a waste of a interesting character, but if they really wanted to write her off the show, they should have cut the funeral. Spend that time fleshing out her reforms in the Terran Empire, and make her seem more obviously serious about them. Maybe have her contact the alien races to sue for peace. Then her death and judgement as worthy by the Guardian of Forever might be more convincing, instead of the shrug and “Fine” it elicited from me as is, and then when she is granted another shot, have Burnham and Saru talk about that and hope she might find atonement for all the awful things she did as Empress. I honestly do not think the writers of these episodes had any progressive message in mind writing them, and thats a big fucking problem in my opinion. Star Trek should always have that in mind, and ideally every episode should have an obvious takeaway. But I do think with those changes, it could serve as a sort of model of what to do with your old racist Trump voting relatives. Reach out to them, as Burnham and Tilly and Saru did, and urge them to change, to do better, to form connections and community with diverse people instead of only with bigots, and then if they put in the work to make amends for those they have harmed, they can be welcomed into solidarity. But Philippa did not put in the work, neither on screen nor by implication, and as Space Hitler, the amount of work she would require is astronomical. But, I could have sighed and moved on then, instead of writing a annoyed blog post about it.

Steve Shives has a video essay about Space Nazis and how to reform them, and noted that Gul Dukat was never reformed, and couldn’t be, as he was unrepentant, but that Damarr ultimately was redeemed, but only through death, and that trying to redeem a Space Nazi in any way but death is a mistake, because of how serious their crimes are if they are a Space Nazi. And honestly, I mostly agree. As written, Philippa here is someone far worse than Gul Dukat being redeemed without being killed, without explicit repentance for her crimes, and without putting in any work to repair the harm she did. It’s just ridiculous. I don’t care how cool Michelle Yeoh is, Star Trek shouldn’t be redeeming Nazis like this. Even my rewrite would still go too far, but at least it would acknowledge she wasn’t here yet. As is I just have to assume these episodes were written without any thought to the overall mission of Star Trek as a venue for progressive storytelling and just to get her off the show and set up for her terrible movie. And that sucks.

“Winning” Evolution is Bad, Actually

 What happens when you kill all the wolves in an environment? I remember this example being given quite often, both in school and online by hunters trying to justify why they need to be allowed to hunt, that if you kill all the wolves, the deer population will grow unchecked until they eat all their food, then starve to death. This is probably not the best example to start with for this essay, because of its common politicized use by hunters, and because I’m not actually sure its proven true - we did kill almost all the wolves, and while deer are common, I don’t think they are actually in danger of overpopulation - either the hunting or cars are managing them, or coyotes have picked up the slack by forming into larger packs and hunting, or some combination thereof. Which is to say, a new ecological balance was found, and the deer population seems mostly to stay in check without wolves. Of course, I could be wrong, maybe some deer scientist is reading this and fuming right now, but nevertheless of whether it is true or not for deer, it is a commonly cited and well known example of something that absolutely can actually happen in an ecosystem to a species - some check on their population is removed, their population grows too fast, and then they suffer and possibly even go extinct.

It happens pretty regularly with algae. We flood an area with extra nutrients from runoff or pollution, algae blooms, which depending on where it happens can render a body of water eutrophic and anoxic and kill everything living in it, often including the algae. In oceans, usually what happens is something else blooms in response to the algae and eats it, like jellyfish or krill, because it’s large enough to be able to absorb localized blooms without crashing out.

In some ways, this could be seen as what is happening to humans now. We have transcended our ecological limitations. We have the capability to grow enough food to feed every human alive and then some, and we only do not do so because it is not profitable to do so. In developed nations at least, the majority of the population can expect to die of old age. There aren’t any real practical limits to our ability to expand, except somewhat invisible ones intrinsic to Earth’s ecosystem taken as a whole. We still rely on clean air produced by plants and algae and coral, we still rely on food from our crops and livestock, we still rely on our gut bacteria to digest food, we still rely on bacteria and fungi to break down our garbage and waste and even plastic debris increasingly. We have beaten evolution, but like any population who finds itself able to practice unchecked growth, eventually it will lead to collapse. Thus it is technically counterproductive to “win” evolution in this way - we may grow unchecked for now, but we rely on other life to survive, and if we take up too big of a slice of the life pie on our planet, we will ultimately die, because we rely on things produced by the other life forms. All life does.

Darwin’s theory of evolution led to the idea of survival of the fittest, that nature is an inherently competitive arena where only the strong survive. That is true, to an extent, although “best adapted to the current moment” or “best adapted to current existing niches” or “best able to exploit currently existing niches” would all be better phrasings. But life is also fundamentally cooperative, relying on other life to survive, be it plants and mycorhyzzal fungi and nitrogen fixing bacteria, or all aerobic life and photosynthesizers, or cows and their gut biome, or predators and their prey, or frogs and beavers creating wetlands, etc, etc. All eukaryotic life was formed by a bacteria and an archaea working together to form a new form of life, and all multicellular life in turn was formed by multiple cells choosing to work together, and all ecosystems are formed by different life relying on one another. It’s one of the fundamental principles of life. Its one that should get more emphasis, as although Darwin’s theory was transformative scientifically, social theories like social Darwinism that have buttressed capitalism and fascism have done countless harm. We could use a counter theory, and one comes straight out of nature, that competition is not only not the only way to survive, but winning just leads to losing. You need to cooperate to survive, and thats the actual goal of evolution, not winning.

What do you do when your kids are picky?

 I was extremely picky growing up. For years, according to my parents, I would only eat American cheese and bread sandwiches with no other ingredients. I say “according to my parents” because I don’t really remember those years, but I do remember the nightly battles we had with them trying to get me to eat any significant amount of dinner. We’d negotiate over exactly how many bites and how many peas I had to eat, and many nights ended with everyone in the family but me leaving the table and me being told that I could leave the table once I finished my food. I often sat there for what felt likes hours (but may have just been minutes, I think I was like four) and I also remember throwing away my food and claiming to have eaten it on at least one occasion.

Eventually my parents gave up trying to get me to try new foods or eat ones I did not like. They would not cook me meals I did like if I did not like whatever was being served that day, but I was allowed to simply not eat - although I was warned that I could not have snacks after dinner, it was dinner or nothing. Some years later, I started eating a wide variety of foods, and while I do think I am still fundamentally picky - there is narrow range of foods I like, and I prefer to eat only a small handful of them obsessively at any given time, i.e., same foodsing - I now can and will eat almost anything if I have to, to be polite in a public setting, or if it is the only food available, etc, etc.

I am not unmarked by this, though. I have string anxiety around food. Every night I need to grab a snack before bed, because if I do not, I am too anxious to sleep, afraid I might wake up hungry. I am too anxious to discuss what to have for dinner in front of my kids, needing a safe environment alone with my wife where I feel comfortable expressing negative opinions about food. I often do not feel comfortable eating with someone else in the room unless they are eating too. I am also overweight, which is almost certainly caused by many different things from my biology to my disability, but overeating due to food anxiety is also likely a significant factor. While I am unsure whether my eventual broad palate is the result of my parents enforcing of me trying foods, it’s hard to imagine my food anxieties aren’t, right?

It should be noted that although I do not have an official diagnosis of autism, my parents have admitted to me they were told by teachers that I was and that I should be evaluated: they refused, being afraid the stigma would hurt me. My kids also do not have any such diagnosis, but we started the evaluation for them, and were told they very likely did based on their tests, but we stopped at the final step, an in person interview, because Roe v. Wade was overturned, and as it is part of the legal justification for HIPPA, we got concerned about the possibility of a future fascist state putting our kids on lists. Although HIPPA has not been challenged yet, given RFK’s attempts to compile lists of people with Autism and ADHD, I think we probably made the right choice. Time will tell.

But as alluded, I now have kids of my own. Both are also quite picky, although in different ways. The older child has only a very narrow list of relatively bland foods they will eat, and while often willing to try new foods, almost always rejects them. My younger child is often willing to try new foods, and is generally willing to eat a much wider variety of foods including highly flavored ones, but also often develops idiosyncratic objections to foods they’ve been eating for years, and slight variations on accepted foods are usually rejected out of hand.

Unlike my parents, we have made relatively little effort to force my kids to eat things. We encourage them to try new foods, and we work with them to find things they like and make things they like. My wife, the hero, often cooks four meals a night, one for each kid, one for me, and one for herself - she is also quite picky. We used to share the cooking duties before I became disabled, but cooking is a task that takes a lot out of me now, like most physical tasks, so I rarely if ever do it now. So she carries the majority of the burden of the family’s pickiness, and we are constantly striving to find meals everyone will eat, but its a major struggle. Moreover, the oldest child has a lot of anxiety about food as well - not as much as me, but enough that we do need to carefully plan ahead to ensure they are okay at family functions or on trips out of the house. This is of course complicated by the discovery me and both kids have Celiacs, meaning most restaurants are straight out.

So are we doing the right thing with our kids? I hope so. But my kids diets so far are quite limited. The older child at least still has food anxiety, they were not spared that by our softer parenting style. My children are also both overweight, despite their pickiness and the struggle to get them to eat. They are not adults yet, but I do sometimes wondering, am I actually doing any better than my parents? Should I have went with their stricter approach? At least then my kids might be willing to eat more food like I am, right?

My mother now openly admits it was a mistake to force me to eat, and they were much more generous with my younger siblings, allowing them to eat snack foods instead of dinner if they did not like what was cooked, and never holding them to bite quotas or forcing them to stay at the table. I broke my parents as a child, and thus won a victory for my younger siblings yet to be born. I think she would probably agree I am making the right choice with my kids. But I do often wonder if I am even right to blame them to begin with for my anxiety, given my oldest kid suffers similar without similar trauma, and if I should actually be lushing a bit harder. But, I also don’t really think I have it in me to force them, and ultimately, I just hope that at the very least, my kids will know that I did the best that I could based off my parents mistakes, even if I make some of my own.

Darkness and Light

 I was born into darkness. This is not unusual amongst my people - we must have had the ability to see, once, as we still have eyes, but they are recessed into our skulls and covered by a thick layer of rubbery skin. We are the Olmish, the people of the cool water caves of Turtle’s Maw, and our lot is darkness and damp. I may not have been the first of our people to gain the gift of light, but certainly I am the only of the Olmish in living memory to have been so blessed, and knowing my people, no one is likely to try to follow my path.

Our people spend the first two years of their lives in the hatchery canals. These controlled streams have been carved out of the living rock of the maw, water-flows diverted from the purest of the underground rivers into carefully screened off, artificial channels where the larva can be easily protected and the water kept pristine quality. Once our lungs and limbs are fully developed, we can crawl onto land and move into the pools of our fathers. Labor is segregated amongst the Olmish, with the menfolk taking care of the babies, tending the duckweed and cave grass crops, and herding the roly polies, porcelain crabs, and water fleas between different algal pools. My people of course understand the concept of light - the men also tend the luminescent mushrooms that provide the light for these crops, but it is only the passing down of the wisdom of the ancient Olmish men that we can tell what varieties provide light and how much, and which parasitize  the crops, and the proper ways of planting to ensure a maximal yield. Our women instead focus on loftier matters, such as guarding the colony, leading our people, contact with the outside world and other races, and of course, the hunting of dangerous beasts, both for meat to supplement that gotten from our livestock, and to ensure our colony remains safe.

It was in my fourth year free of the hatchery canals that my mother did not come back from her hunt. A might hellbender had been found, an ancient dragon of the deep caves. Legends say our people once lived there, but they have since been reclaimed by monsters and beasts, and all our elders say we can do is thin their numbers and stay safe in the colony. “Papa,” I asked, “Why didn’t mama return with the other hunters?”

My dad’s skin was dry, papery. The hunters had been gone a week longer than they should have, and he hadn’t soaked in all that time. “She won’t be coming back, little eft.” His voice was hoarse and crackling instead of its usual mellow, gurgling tones. “She wounded the hellbender, a fatal wound through one of the eyes the fell beast uses to capture the light, but it grabbed her and escaped deep into the depths where the hunters dare not follow. I’m sorry.” He hugged me, and I could feel his skin hungrily absorb my moisture.

“Mama is down in the deep cave living with the hellbenders?” I asked, too young to understand.

“She won’t be coming back.”

I am grateful my father’s pain was too great that day to be more clear. I did not understand why my mother would not be coming back. I was a strong swimmer, a deep diver, and a sturdy, moist young lad who needed close attending to prevent me from wandering off down even the driest of caves, even at that tender age. Had my father’s grief been less, he would have watched me carefully to ensure I did not wander off, but instead, I managed to slip away down the great cavern leading to the depths where the hellbenders dwell.

Luckily for me, the reason the hunters were sent to kill this hellbender was it had been remarkably close to our colony. Had it been further away, I would likely have been lost in one of many winding side caverns, or found my way to the many acid or slime pits where the eater is foul and eats away at your skin until you are bones, or where creatures much smaller but of an equally nasty disposition to the hellbender dwell waiting for young morsels such as myself to blunder into. But I gleefully squelched my way downwards, the scent of my mother still strong in the damp film on the floor and walls, and after only a few hours of waddling on my stubby legs I arrived at a deep, cold pool with a sharp, iron tang in the air and slime surrounding it.

“Mama?” I said inquiringly.

“Ma… ma….” echoed the cavern back, and then I felt a powerful vibration through the rocks.

“Mama.” I replied more confidently.

“Ma… ma…” came the echo.

I knew about echoes, but as young as I was, I was sure she must be okay, and was comforted by the cave helping me in my search. I continued to inquire from time to time, to make sure the cave stayed on task, while I investigated around the pool. A footprint here, a scrap of cloth there, ouch, thats a sharp edge, someone must have dropped their spear… after some time, I determined this had to be the right place, the location of the hunt. In addition to the iron tang that I now know to be blood, I also detected a faint sulfurous odor, which continued along with the scent of my mother into the deep pool.

“Mama.” I said decisively, and the cave agreed. I dived in.

The pool was deep, far deeper than I had ever swum before. As I swam, the ripples from my passage bounced off the walls of the pool, and my sensitive sense of touch along my ribs allowed me to form a mental map of where I was going. The pool was not merely deep, but actually a tunnel that curved, eventually forming a U shape. After almost an hour of swimming, I arrived at the surface of another pool in a separate cavern, where the sulfurous smell and the smell of my mother were much stronger, but the iron tang lingered as well.

“Mama?”

This cave was too small, and no echo replied. Neither did my mother. I felt around carefully while sniffing the air. The first thing I found was soft and slick, like my mother, but far too massive, and smelled strongly of sulfur. I sneezed and nearly fell over. That was not my mother. I carefully continued to smell and feel, and whatever it was that smelled of sulfur was clearly enormous, forming basically an entirely wall of the cavern. Eventually, however, I found a smaller, softer object, which I recognized.

“Mama?” I asked her.

Her skin was very cold, colder than it had ever been before. We are not a hot blooded race like the surface dwellers, but even we warm our bodies above the temperature of our cool waters so we may stay active in the colder reaches of the depths or close to the entrance of the Maw in winter. She was still damp, however, and while her smell was fading and increasingly mixing with iron and sulfur, it was still her, and I could not understand why she would not respond. I kept pawing around and repeating her name, until I felt something else.

It was warm. Very warm. It smelled of sulfur, but also had a strangly sharp, fresh scent underlying that. My mother’s head, sticky and metallic smelling, seemed to be resting on it, a large orb a bit bigger than her head. I carefully lifting her head and slid the orb out from under her, then gave it a tentative lick to help identify it. Blech - I spat a few times, it did not taste good. Suddenly, I became aware of a faint glow in my mind, and for the first time, I saw my own face, a dark gray splotch with faint bumps where eyes should be, a slack mouth with a goofy grimace of confusion, an enormous feathery mane of light blue gills phosphorescing where the light from the mushrooms above struck it. I realized that I was seeing, seeing for the first time, seeing out of eyes that were not my own, but the eyes of the orb, or rather, something in the orb. I felt a warm glow of love emanating from the orb, and then through its eyes saw the enormous body that made up the soft, sulfurous wall. The hellbender lay dead, my mother’s spear shoved through its eye into its brain. Its last strength had been to bring my mother back here, to its nest. I recognized as if the thought was my own that this was my father - no, the father of the orb, of the egg I held right now, of the being whose eyes I could see through.I also saw the body of my mother, crushed in the jaws of the hellbender, and all the other eggs in the nest, squashed in the struggle between our parents and now lifeless.

“Papa.” I said, affirmatively. “I will be your Papa.” I was the first of my people in a millenia to be able to see, and the only person of any kind to have bonded to a hellbender. This was only the start of my journey, but the rest will have to wait for another time.

A Wishlist for Tomodachi Life

 Well I was absolutely destroyed after my visit with my parents and grandfather yesterday (as in, tired) so I didn’t end up doing a post, but I’m back in the saddle with some bare minimum writing today. I think I am going to try to prep a concept for a new short story sometime this week, but I haven’t done so yet, so instead I’m just gonna rant for a while about what I want from post release content in Tomodachi Life.

Honestly I kinda of doubt we are going to get any post release content in it. Rumors say that game was shelved for a year after being finished, and they also handicapped any positive reception it could have had by not including a censor and not implementing any online functionality. The game is essentially a fancy meme generator, the idea that you wouldn’t include any built in method to share your creations is ridiculous. Just straight up shooting themselves in the foot. There are two big reasons I can see for this, the first, is the fact they did not include a censor. I hardly would say I WANT a censor, but obviously Nintendo isn’t going to allow online content sharing without one, so thats step one. But I also suspect that they might be concerned about people recreating copyrighted or trademarked material, and there probably isn’t as easy a fix for that. That being said, that never stopped WWE from allowing people to create copyrighted and trademarked wrestlers in their games, so I doubt that Nintendo -can’t- do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a mark against it, the possibility of needed to enforced DMCA or other claims. Still, thats number one in my post release desires: allowing the easy uploading of screenshots, and ideally create an in game method of sharing creations online.

What else would I want? In general the game allows for extremely flexible creations of almost every gameplay element, so it might seem like not much is necessary, but I do nevertheless have a wishlist. Firstly, I think they should add in a way to tattoo your Mii. They already have face paint, but that only allows tattoos on the face and only the front of the face. My Mii is bald, however, and I personally have a scalp tattoo wrapping around my head. Being able to place tattoos on your head anywhere as a stamp would be cool, and if they could also add functionality to allow placing them on your arms too to be shown when you wear a sleeveless shirt or your legs in shorts or skirts, that would be awesome.

Another thing I’d like is non-human body part options in the character creator, We already have elf ears, and again with face paint you can simulate horns, antlers, and animal ears reasonably  well, but a wide selection of 3D animal shaped ears which can have their color selected, as well as horn and antler options, would be great. I’m sure there are some in clothing already, although to be honest, I have not unlocked any, only some animal hoods and a kitty hat, so I’m not sure. Tails and wings too as permanent features would be nice, although these I know ARE available as clothes so they are less important to include. Oh, and while you are at it, allow for separate color selection for noses. Noses currently cannot be recolored separately from skin and cannot be painted on, and allowing either or both would open up customization a lot. Finally, I also want more and better beard options, but I don’t really expect that. I’m just salty I cannot have a full hobo beard like I do in real life without it looking weird due to the miss match of color between the polygonal beards and the flat texture beards.

I think a wider variety of shapes in the house editor and interior styles wouldn’t go amiss. Neither of these are absolutely necessary, since creative use of the existing editor definitely allows you to make almost anything you want, but not necessarily anything you want -well-. A big interior option I find myself missing is something like a cave grotto - my town is filled with Fraggles and honestly its weird that people can have a whole yurt and sheep in their house but not live in a cave, and the house interior editor just lets you make new wallpaper and floor, not place cave like furniture as well.

I have not filled my town up with Miis yet, so I don’t know exactly what happens when you hit 70 Miis, but I assuming it doesn’t expand to 150 Miis, I’d like some method of having more. They could put in apartment buildings and just make sure no more than 70 are out at any given time, assuming that the 70 Mii limitation is at least somewhat a technical issue. They could also implement a neighborhood system where you can start a second neighborhood, and people will visit between the two, but again, no more than a certain number in each town at a time. Even just having a way to have a second town on one account would be nice, i.e. save slots or the like. To my knowledge the only workaround right now is having a second account on your Switch, which is better than Animal Crossing only because in Animal Crossing there is a strict one town per Switch limit, instead of being able to make a new account.

Obviously more little perks and more gifts would also both be welcome, and new clothes of varieties which cannot be customized (full body, unusual shaped hats and accessories, etc.) would also be good too. Any sort of paid expansion would need a whole new aspect of gameplay, so I am mostly only considering here stuff that might come in free updates, but I definitely would be down for a paid update as well if it did include a new gameplay vector or online play. I’m loving the game and I got my money’s worth but it does feel like a game that could be so much more popular if Nintendo would actually support it properly.

some nonsense “physics”

 As I continue to try to write something everyday, it occurs to me the biggest problem with this is I have to write something everyday. That’s a lot of production. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here. So today I am going to describe some existential musings I have on the nature of existence that make no sense, because I came up with them while on painkillers.

Okay, so my understanding is there are theories with some amount of scientific credibility (more than none) that black holes could act as portals to other universes. Moreover, I understand there is some math which implies that our universe might be contained in a black hole. I am not going to pretend I understand this or could possibly explain or justify it or have any special insight, but hearing these two theories, which sound related, I began to imagine existence as a flat surface honeycombed with holes. Pouring over that surface is honey, which is matter. The surface is elastic, and so deforms from the weight of the honey, but when the honey hits a hole - a black hole - it pours into it. Where does it go? Through the hole into another layer, where there is a new surface filled with holes., which reacts the same way. Thus, every universe is a flat layer filled with holes and honey, dripping into lower and lower universes, but also possibly receiving honey from other universes through theoretical “white holes” which would presumably where the honey from other universes pours in.

That really didn’t take all that long to write. Well, it counts!

I’m gonna try to come up with something better for tomorrow, although I might also end up skipping since I have some family commitments. If I remember and if I can come up with something, though, I’m going to try.

Pitch for a Modern Continuation of Daria

 Well I’m a little uninspired feeling today, but I want to write something everyday, so today I’m gonna toss out a short pitch my oldest child and I discussed while letting our dogs run around the yard. We watched most of Daria together recently, although we still have about half the last season to work through - they hated the plotline with Daria, Tom, and Jane’s love triangle, and so we kind of lost momentum. That being saidm they still loved the show, as do I - otherwise why would I share it with my kid?

Anyways, they initially said they kinda hoped for a reboot of the show, but was worried it would not turn out well - and I agree. Even apart from whether the show itself was good, I think a reboot is unlikely to be successful for a few simple reasons. Namely, any audience for a potential reboot is almost guaranteed to be made up largely of Gen Xers and Millenials like me who watched it as young adults, teens, or kids. I watched it when I was a tween and honestly I would not really expect many people any younger than me to even have the faintest idea what it is. So if you are banking on returning fans, they’re gonna be Gen Xers or Millenials, and neither demographic is likely to be THAT into an animated comedy about high school students. The show needs to age with its existing fans, even if the hope is to attract a new audience of comparable age to its original.

So I made a counterpitch, it should not be a reboot, but a continuation series, with Daria some amount older. I could go through our whole conversation beat by beat, but instead I think it makes sense to just outline what we agreed was best, ultimately. If by some insane coincidence someone with the power to make this happen reads this and develops the series, story credit should go to both me and my kid, though, to be clear, we collaborated. Anyways, so basic idea, Daria is some amount older. She has had a successful career as a corporate lawyer, following in her mother’s footsteps, but is unhappy in her career, as she never thought she’d end up just like her mom, and never fulfilled her dreams of being a successful writer. She also ended up married to Tom (I honestly do not remember how the series leaves it - I think they break up and go off to different colleges? but even if so, they reconnected somehow and got married) but the marriage didn’t work and they divorce just before the start of the show, leaving Daria with custody of their teenage daughter, who has a personality much like Quinn from the first series, although updated somewhat for modern sensibilities. 

Quinn and Trent also got together and got married and now have a teenage daughter (and possibly other kids, depending on the writer’s fancy) but they too are divorced, or at least are in the midst of a rocky patch, and Quinn leaves to get her groove back, leaving the kid or kids in Trent’s unreliable care. Jane, who has been living elsewhere being a successful artist, moves back to help out and reconnects with Daria, begging her to help out as well as neither she nor Trent have any idea how to parent a teenage girl. Trent and Quinn’s daughter is much like Daria was at her age.

As noted, Daria is unhappy in her job, and probably in the pilot, decides to quit and devote her time to being a writer. She could possibly also switch jobs to a writing professor at a community college to further that interest, although that also might be better saved for a later plotline and just start with her quitting her high powered lawyer job to focus on writing. Thus we are set up with Daria being unhappy in her professional life and overwhelmed in her personal life, with a good suite of returning characters and some new ones. The concept definitely would need bigger cast - fans I’m sure would want to see more returning characters from Lawndale High and what happened to them, and we also need to flesh out the inevitable highschool setting where Daria’s daughter and Quinn’s daughter attend, including definitely a young Jane analogue to be friends with Quinn’s daughter and probably a friend or a whole new fashion club to hang out with Daria’s daughter. For pure fanservice reasons, probably a decent amount should be children of legacy characters, although I think a mix would be best rather than just having it be Daria Gen 2 entirely. If we want to go weird and Marvel about it you could probably even toss in some cross-over lore links or characters with Beavis and Butthead or King of the Hill but that would really just be easter eggs and should not be prioritized over the shows integrity as its own thing.

Now, why this set up, in particular? I am sure most fans probably would want Daria to be happy and fulfilled in a reboot, and probably picture her as a successful author, and honestly very likely childless and independent, not divorced with a kid, or in a queer relationship with Jane. But if you give fans what they want, why have the show? If Daria is happy and successful, what are we even watching it for? There won’t be any conflict, no challenges for her to overcome. A show needs to be set in a pivotal part of her life where she is going through something that will present conflicts for the show to resolve. The easiest (not necessarily the only) way to do that is to make Daria unhappy where her life has went. Daria has always been a high achiever, and many high achievers end up locked in stressful jobs they don’t really like because thats what society expects of them. Thats exactly what happened to both of Daria’s parents, and while her mom coped with it and seemed mostly happy, her dad was miserable. Daria here would have followed her mom’s career path, but would be miserable like her dad, and that would drive her to make a change and follow her true dreams - which she had abandoned as unrealistic before, but which she can afford to pursue due to all that lawyer money.

Likewise, I feel Daria ended (apologies for not having watched it in a while so I may be slightly wrong, but this is my impression) without her fully embracing connection with others. She has Jane, and she dated Tom so has started opening up a bit, but she is still very misanthropic and closed. That character arc should continue in this new show, which is why Daria needs to be responsible for some kids. Having one of them be hers, but whom she cannot relate to, which ensure that she finds that chalkenging, and likewise, having a child she CAN relate to but that is NOT hers who she has been thrust into responsibility for against her will is another situation ripe for interesting conflicts, as Daria swings between connecting with the kid, resenting the responsibility she has been forced to assume, but also potentially butting heads with Trent and Quinn and Jane all of whom have more “right” to determine what is best for the kid than Daria does, but who maybe don’t understand the kid as well as Daria. Thats a compelling dynamic right there.

Finally, I think at some point, Daria and Jane should kiss, but that they should NOT start dating, not even briefly. Jane I think should probably be an out lesbian or bisexual at the point the show starts, but Daria should not be. This kiss should threaten to ruin their friendship, but after some drama, they both mutually decide to not let it, and stay friends rather than date. This can, however, open up the possibility of Daria dating other women, if the writers think that would be interesting, even if she ultimately decides she is straight, or she can cone to a great sexual awakening, or whatever. Lots of different possible paths there, but I do think Daria and Jane should not end up together before a theoretical series finale, if then. Again, this is because giving the fans what they want will remove any tension or conflict from the show. For a finale, sure, if you want to please fans, give them the pairings you want, but before that, you need conflict, and so having Daria and Jane not be together - possibly not even really be friends anymore at the start of the show - provides that, as does them kissing but not getting together. I don’t have strong feelings about their ultimate fate, I’m fine with them being together or ending up happy with other people, or single, but until the end of the show, they should be dating other people, allowing for both plenty of conflict and drama but also for occasional teases that they might get together, even if the writers do not intend to go there in the end. To be clear though, I am not talking about queer baiting - if either Jane or Daria is not written as a lesbian or bisexual in the new show, then no kiss should occur at all, and I do think Daria exploring dating women could be an interesting arc no matter what she ultimately decides is best for her, but the teasing is about their dynamic and relationship specifically, not their sexualities.

So, yeah, that is my pitch. I think it would be a believable place for Daria to be in, with plenty of good ground to write new and interesting plotlines while still giving fans enough fanservice that they have reason to watch the new show. Since it likely would have both high school and adult plotlines, it should appeal both to its original, now older audience, and possibly capture some new young fans, including likely the kids of those now older fans, like my oldest child. Balls in your court, weird TV executive reading a newly started blog by a nobody.

The Difference Between Star Trek and One Piece

 I’ve been a Star Trek fan my whole life, but although my older sibling was interested in anime so I was introduced to various such as Noozles, Fushigi Yuugi, Lain, and Sailor Moon at a young age, none of them ever really grabbed me. Even when my friends tried to get me into it by showing my the first episode of Cowboy Bebop in middle school didn’t do it, although their gatekeep-y attitude probably had more to do with it, as I have since watched Cowboy Bebop and loved it. I even took a college film course on Anime to expand my horizons and it failed to move me to what I would consider an anime fan. Up until quite recently, the only anime I would really have likely cited as being a fan of would be Hayao Miyazaki’s films, which have reached a wide enough audience that liking them is pretty mainstream.

But when the One Piece live action was released, I did the obvious thing and didn’t watch it, and instead started the One Piece anime, and fell in love. After watching more than a thousand episodes of it, I honestly consider myself not only a huge fan, and thus probably by extension an anime fan more generally - although One Piece too has become fairly mainstream, but still I think not as widely accepted as high art as Miyazaki - and moreover consider it probably the most important piece of art to have been released in my lifetime. To someone who has never watched One Piece, this probably sounds stupid, and it may in fact sound stupid even to some people who have, but One Piece is not just long, but deep. It possess an enormously intricately detailed world, filled with characters who manage to be both incredibly absurd yet fully realized and relatable as real people, facing morally complex challenges handled with deep nuance and informed by an equally deep knowledge of history, and it speaks to the exact issues we are facing right now in this world of rising fascism. It’s great.

Do you know what other franchise that could describe? I want to say Star Trek, but honestly, I think the real answer is Babylon 5. Deep Space 9 also fits well as an answer, but it is just one entry, and Star Trek as a whole has been more inconsistent on how fully realized its world and setting are and how deep its characters are. But Star Trek certainly has always aspired to be a political work, much like One Piece, with direct relevance to the challenges we face in the current times, and has a similarly sprawling universe with at least some well realized characters.

Moreover, the structure of storytelling in the two is remarkably similar. The crew arrives at a new location,  meeting a unique culture with a specific problem that has some significant moral complexity to it. The characters may struggle to determine the exact right course of action, or struggle against the overwhelming forces lined up against them by oppressors, but ultimately the right course of action becomes clear and the problem is solved through the expert skills of the crew. That describes the plot of most Star Trek episodes and most One Piece island arcs. Star Trek usually has more moral ambiguity in it - sometimes the lesson of the episode is there is no easy answer, whereas in One Piece its always pretty obvious by the end who is good and who is bad - Luffy and whoever he allies with is good, and whoever he punches is bad, but there is just as thorough an exploration of the morality leading up to Luffy allying with them, even if Luffy’s actual reasons can be summed up as, “they shared food with me.”  And of course the solutions differ - Star Trek prefers scientific solutions to diplomatic ones, and diplomatic ones to violent ones, whereas One Piece, while it does contains themes emphasizing the importance of science and diplomacy to solving social problems, narratively most things are solved by Luffy punching them. But at the end of the day, the shows really are very similar.

One big difference though is the level of realism. Star Trek is a heightened reality set in the future. Our heroes are galaxy class experts in what they do, often the best of the best, and they have futuristic technology we can only dream, but they are human, with human frailties, and we don’t generally expect them to be throwing buildings at people - even alien races with super strength usually set the limit at throwing people across a room, not spaceships into someone’s face. One Piece, however, is far more heightened, with the main characters often putting super heroes to shame. It is a regular occurrence for someone to throw a building at someone else, and if no one in Egghead gets a spaceship thrown at them (I only have watched to Wano don’t tell me) I bet it will happen before it is done.

Why am I saying all this, besides “If you like Star Trek maybe you’ll like One Piece, and vice versa”? Well because it helps me to conceptualize an issue I am having with Star Trek Discovery. Star Trek Discovery’s reality is not heightened to One Piece levels, but it is heightened higher than most Star Trek. There is a scene in the first episode of Season 3 where two of our characters are surrounded by tons of enemies, all with guns, and they look at each other, exchange knowing looks, and proceed to murder them all. Its honestly shocking for Star Trek, which normally eschews showing its heroes murdering people, yet here they are literally vaporizing Andorians and Orions left and right. It feels really wrong to me. This isn’t the only scene like this, but it is perhaps the most egregious example. Similarly, multiple times in the first two seasons, someone lifted someone else one handed by their neck. I dunno why it keeps happening, but if I had a nickel for every time, I’d have like forty cents, which won’t buy a damn thing but is way more than is reasonable. Star Trek fights before this were like, two karate chops to the back of the neck, so it stands out that suddenly everyone is the Undertaker.

Now, is there anything actually wrong with Star Trek being like this? I mean, no. I don’t think a show cannot involve senseless violence and still have a reasonable prosocial message. If I did, I wouldn’t like One Piece. But it is something about Discovery which makes it feel like “not Star Trek” to me. I think its probably not a super fair reason to feel that way - how heightened a setting is is basically a matter of personal taste more than anything else, and “Star Trek but more awesome” definitely sounds like something someone might like. Fuck, I do like it, when its called One Piece. But I don’t when it is called Star Trek. 🤷‍♀️ 

Existential Dread

 In media, or expressed by people, I often have seen the sentiment regarding immortality that living forever would be terrible, because you’d outlive everyone you love, or because you’d eventually get sick of life, or you might get permanently trapped somewhere. Similiarly, I’ve also often seen people say that they are afraid of death just because they are concerned of the pain involved, but that they don’t fear what comes after, nonexistence, because they literally won’t exist and thus won’t be around to experience it and thus it can’t be bad.

 And like, I feel the complete opposite. The idea of nonexistence terrifies me. I cannot imagine what it’d be like to not exist, it is fundamentally impossible for me to imagine, and that is honestly the scariest thing to me. It sometimes keeps me up at night, and sometimes strikes me at random times during the day. I don’t fear pain or injury - I face both daily. I don’t fear living so long I become trapped and cannot move - I also face that, more or less, daily as a physically disabled person. I do fear missing my loved ones, for sure, and I don’t know how I’d cope without them, but that doesn’t make me want to not exist anymore if they are gone - at least, not now. Maybe that will change once I’ve experienced a more fundamental loss - all my relatives who have died were ones I visited at most once every few years, and so while I loved them and miss them, my life isn’t substantially affected. The death which has affected my life the most so far was not my great Aunt, who I loved dearly, or my step grandmother, who I low key hated, nor my maternal grandfather, who was kind of a jerk but I loved him anyways, but my dog of thirteen years, Triceratops. But I don’t think that even remotely will prepare me for when someone from my immediate family dies, a prospect I dread facing but is not only likely inevitable, as we all die someday - in theory I could die first tho - but increasingly likely, as my dad has been battling cancer for several years now. Still, though, in the abstract, the prospect of losing my loved ones does not make me feel like I myself want to die someday - quite the opposite.

I don’t believe in god, neither the Christian god nor any other, although I also don’t think I can strictly rule the possibility out. I was not raised religious and have never believed in a god, and even as a kid I remember getting into arguments with kids in daycare about whether god exists. Of course, the existence of a god does not dictate the existence of an afterlife, and vice versa, although people often tie them together. Afterlife, though, is something that… I wouldn’t say I believe in, but I am closer to believing in it, and precisely because I cannot conceive of nonexistence and on some fundamental level I just want to believe in it so much that it feels real to me. Is that what faith is? I honestly don’t really understand what religious people mean by faith. I mean, definitionally, I understand, that it is belief without logical explanation, without reason, without concrete evidence. But I don’t really -get- it. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt that. My alexythimia of course doesn’t help at all here, maybe I have felt it and just don’t know because I cannot really tell what I am feeling at any given moment with any specificity, but I certainly don’t understand it.

Anyways I was up late musing morbidly on the nature of existence so decided hey, why not write a blog post about it?

It’s A Living

  All I can feel is cold. Burning, searing whiteness surrounds me, cutting my flesh away like knives. It consumes my consciousness so no other thoughts can enter. I cannot even remember if anything had ever happened before this, or if I have just been frozen for all eternity, a never ending torment of frigid rime. Not even the scouring cold of a arctic breeze, but the deep, crushing cold of a glacier, unfeeling and overwhelming.

“Can you hear me?”

 It’s barely a whisper above the din of ice numbing my nerves. I can’t be sure its even real. I try to answer, but find I can only scream, but yet, no scream comes out.

“It’s okay, you are fine. Can you hear me?”

 The cold is no less, but the voice is louder. Despite the sheer effort it must take to be slicing through the frost, the voice sounds calm, soothing. I try to answer again, gasping for breath, but hear nothing.

“Try imagining the words in your head.”

 I struggle to focus. I remember hearing that freezing to death is actually quite pleasant, that it actually feels warm eventually once your nerves grow numb, like falling into a peaceful sleep in a warm blanket. This is not that. The cold is insistent, keeping me awake but stopping me from doing or sensing or feeling anything else. I eventually manage to imagine some ice cubes spelling out the word cold, but they quickly slide away to spread my frozen hell to the furthest reaches of existence.

 “Yes, that is a common experience. Let’s see if I can fix that.” I hear what sounds like clacking plastic on plastic. Typing. What is typing? I think its something you do with a keyboard… slowly I begin to be able to think, and even more slowly realize its because it’s not as cold. I feel like I’m shivering, but I can tell I am not moving, which is more than I could say a minute again when all I could feel is cold.

“Do you feel better?”

I form the thoughts. It’s easier this time. “A little”

“Good. You are Frances Hargeaves, correct?”

Am I? Yes, that sounds right. “Yes, that sounds right.”

“You only need to answer once, thank you.” I realize that whoever this voice is, they must be hearing my thoughts. It’s disconcerting.

“You’ll get used to it. I am sorry to inform you, Frances Hargreaves, but you died recently.”
I died?

“Yes, you died approximately three weeks ago.”

How did I die, I don’t remember… suddenly it hits me. I had been trying to turn onto route 2 at a T intersection with no light. The speed limit is 55 there, god knows how they expect anyone to ever get on that road…

“Yes, you were in a car accident. You did not make it, and was far too damaged for normal restoration, so unfortunately we had to do a full replacement.”

A full replacement? “What does that mean?” I say, forgetting the voice can read my thoughts.

“Your body was nonfunctional.” Mangled, the word appeared in my head. “For your insurance plan, we normally cover cybernetic replacements for small term service, but for the type of replacement necessary here, and since you opted for only our basic plan…”

“That was all my employer would pay for!” I blurted out.

“Yes, Amazon offers all its employees basic replacement insurance free of cost. But as you were told when you signed your contract at Amazon, one of the terms of the basic replacement insurance is that if you ever require full replacement, your term of service is indefinite.”

“Indefinite?”

“Yes.”

What does indefinite mean? Does it mean… “You mean, it’s…”

“You are bound to service until you stop functioning. Assuming you don’t have any genetic degenerative neurological disorders, the average service time for an indefinite contract like yours is 57 years post mortem.”

“So I’m going to be serving for 57 years?”

“On average. Thats usually how long the service lasts before the company voids the contract. But I’m pulling for ya, bud. You can make it to a hundred, I’m sure.” I feel a sense of warmth from the voice.
…why would… what does she… wait, is she…

“It’s not important, but if it helps, you can think of me as a woman.”

“What do you mean on average? It’s not set?”

“Did you read the contract for your basic replacement insurance, sir?”

“I mean… not as such.” I felt rather stupid, but also a rising feeling of dread, even as the cold ebbed away.
“In the event of full replacement, the term of service is indefinite, as I explained.”

“And that means I serve until, what? When does it end?”

“It doesn’t, until the company chooses to void your contract.”

I paused, thinking, trying to formulate the right question to get a straight answer. “Why would the company void a contract?”

I felt a grimace. “Usually when the fully replaced individual can no longer effectively serve.”

“Why wouldn’t someone be able to serve?” I pressed, knowing I did not want the answer, but had to hear it.

“Usually individuals become more erratic over time. Eventually it is no longer worth employing them, so their contract is terminated.”

“So you are saying I am bound in service until such a time I can no longer work, because I’ve lost my mind? I’ve gone crazy? That’s what you’re saying?”

 There is a clearing of the throat noise, echoing in my head. “The term crazy is considered ableist, sir, and the company reserves the right to terminate a contract for whatever reason. It is your ability to perform the job that is important, not your mental health, which is your own private business, sir, and neither Amazon nor United Cybernetic Insurance would ever deign to pry into your private life, sir.”

It feels like ants are crawling all over my skin, the skin I most assuredly no longer have. “Okay, so I have to work until my mind is pea soup, but what then? Am I free to go?”

“Well, no. Amazon will no longer be funding your ongoing maintenance, so unless you can pay for other arrangements, you will probably experience natural termination at that time. But it’s a long way off, no reason to harp on that, right?” The voice is strained, clearly hoping this would cheer me. I try to reorient myself.

“So I’m a slave for eternity until my sanity wears thin, and then I am left to die, but what’s the job? What am I doing?”

“Warehouse work. You will be sorting packages, I believe.”

I grunt. “Why, I worked in advertising when…”

“Amazon wants fresh ideas for its advertising copy. Given your state, you will probably be somewhat… disconnected from modern culture going forward. Thus your talents are better suited to the warehouse.”

This is ridiculous. Surely there must be a mistake. “I once won the James Randy Award for…”

“Sir, there is no mistake, but you can file a complaint if you wish with management once you are suitably installed in your future placement. For now, let me just finish your orientation.” I could sense the voice was growing impatient with me. This was just a job to her, and I was an unruly customer. “Amazon policy for its subcontracting of United Cybernetic Insurance full replacement resources such as yourself states you will work sixteen hour shifts.”

“Sixteen hours? That’s…”

“What has been found to be optimal for maximizing work hours for full replacement resources. You get eight hours of rest each day. Most individuals find they need much less sleep, usually around four hours, which leaves you around four hours of leisure time a day. Once you are placed in the Amazon warehouse, a technician will speak with you about how to access your Amazon Prime video, Kindle library, and other content during your leisure time. The subscription fees are waved, of course, for all Amazon services, although if you want to subscribe to outside services, you can for their normal price plus a small processing fee to cover the bandwidth necessary to access them from your placement.”

“…What do you mean? Access them from my placement?”

“Amazon provides internet access and free subscriptions to all full replacement individuals employed there, its an employment benefit, but if you want to pay for a wider variety, there is just a small surcharge due to the extra cost of bandwidth to bring in outside services to your placement in the warehouse.”

“I don’t get it, what do you mean? Am I not allowed to leave the warehouse?”

There is a pause. “Ah, sir, if you stop interrupting, I can probably clarify. The next section of the orientation addresses these issues.”

“What issues? Why can’t I leave? It’s my leisure time, right?”

“Yes, and you can do whatever you want to do with it, that you are still capable of, but sir, if you will let me proceed…”

“No, I want to know now. Why can’t I leave?”

“Sir, please calm down, and let me explain. As a full replacement individual, your body was not functional, and so your nervous system had to be transplanted into a new body, and that new body cannot leave the floor of the Amazon warehouse.”

…my new body cannot leave… “Why? Am I chained to the assembly line?”

“Its package sorting, actually, sir, no assembly will be required of you…”

“Stop dancing around it. Why can’t I leave?”

“My understanding is you’ll be bolted to the conveyor belt guard, sir.”

…bolted to the… “So like, my feet are bolted to the…”

“No sir, you have no feet, sir. You are a Model PX97648 Mechanical Assembly Appendage, sir.”

I processed that for a bit. “A robot arm?”

“Yes sir. Now if you’ll please let me proceed with the orientation…”

Lower Your Goddamn Stakes

 Not to just keep harping about Star Trek Discovery, but I want to talk about stakes in fiction. Major spoilers ahead. I consume a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and so this is probably at least to some degree an issue unique to those genres, as well as probably a few associated ones, like action films, but like, the stakes in these stories should not always be super high. In season 1 of Star Trek Discovery, from the very start, the stakes are sky high. Burnham triggers a war with the Klingon Empire - or thinks she does, anyway. Technically the Klingons were spoiling for war and the show makes it pretty clear it would have happened no matter what, but her actions are the proximate cause and everyone blames her for it. However, as if these stakes are not high enough, they later on are thrown into the Mirror Universe, where if they are ever discovered they’ll likely be immediately killed since everyone is so violent and evil and fascist there, and THEN, we learn that in the Mirror Universe, they’ve been abusing the mycelial network and if they are allowed to continue, all life in the Universe will be destroyed.

Big bummer. Luckily they save the day, stop the Terran Empire, get back to universe prime, and then find out the Klingon War has been going badly, so now either they can face the Klingons destroying the Federation, or they can genocide the Klingons by blowing up Qo’NoS. So of course at the urging of fascist Georgieu the Federation chooses genocide, but Burnham at the last minute finds a diplomatic solution and the Federation is saved both from destruction and from committing a genocide.

But how will Season 2 top this? Fans always expect escalating stakes, goes the conventional wisdom, so for Season 2, we get a bunch of signals and some time travel and ultimately end up finding out that Control, an AI the Federation has been using for threat assessment is going to become sentient in the future and destroy all life in the Universe, again. So, the exact same stakes as last season, because they were already maxed out. Although this time it takes a lot more episodes and a lot more help to actually solve, so it does feel somewhat of a bigger deal, although it assuredly would have felt more serious had we not already had this problem last season.

We also see this problem in Pokemon. In the first two Pokemon games, the only real stakes are your personal Pokemon journey and desire to be the best. There is some Mafia Team Rocket side plot but that doesn’t matter - to you - so it doesn’t really matter. But starting with the third game, we got Team Magma and Team Aqua, both bent on causing world altering apocalypses. So then in Diamond and Pearl we get Team Galactic, who wants to usher in god Pokemon to remake the world even moreso. Pokemon clearly was already struggling with what to do, so Team Plasma is Black and White instead want to liberate all Pokemon, which was honestly a smart move, because while its fundamental to the game, its not on the same axis as world destruction… except its a ruse and they actually want to destroy the world. Its not really until Violet and Pearl that Pokémon manages to reframe their conflict around more reasonable stakes of your personal journey again although even there in the end game the stakes go sky high, but in general it feels like a needed course correction.

As noted, an obvious issue with raising the stakes so high is there is nowhere to go. You either need to course correct and reset the stakes, which can be jarring although is probably the best choice, or just keep finding more and more absurd ways to escalate them, which is tiresome and silly in all but the most unserious media. This can be solved, though, by simply 1) starting small. The first conflict introduced should, if anything, probably be a personal one for your main character, like a Pokemon journey. It lets you get to know them and care about them while allowing plenty of room to escalate stakes later if you need to. 2) Increasing them slowly. Put some obstacles in the way of that initial conflict, or grow it slightly wider, or introduce a related, slightly more serious conflict, but don’t jump all the way to world ending stakes immediately. Or honestly, at all unless this is Super hero media or the final season. 3) Vary them, sometimes de-escalating or even having conflict light, slice of light episodes in your story. That way readers won’t always expect escalation and you can set your own stakes as you go.

I’m just really tired of always being at the edge of my seat. It’s nice to just relax sometimes, okay? And that includes seeing characters do so. Star Trek in particular used to have a lot of down time in episodes where people just hung around letting us get to know them, and Discovery has no time for that, because the high stakes overarching plots mean everyone has to be go go going all the time. And the few times they do slow down and relax, it feels ridiculous, because shouldn’t they be dealing with the emergency death explosions happening everywhere? But if they just lowered the goddamn stakes and let things chill for a bit, and only raise them for big moments, then everything in the story would hit so much more better.

We need more shitty TV

 As mentioned I’ve been watching Star Trek Discovery, and I think one of my biggest complaints is how expensive the show is. The sets are super high tech, sleek, and ultra futuristic looking. There is significant use of CGI in every episode and it all looks pristine, with high octane spaceship fights, sweeping panoramic views of alien landscapes, and ultra cool energy weapons and other effects as needed for the various sci fi gizmos and phenominon. The alien make up is elaborate and detailed, with the redesigned Klingons looking, at least by season 2, as both recognizably Klingon but incredibly beautifully realized, the Kelpiens looking truly alien and unique, and cyborgs like Airiam and Detmer looking awesome and seamless. Moreover, the action sequences and fights are all intricately choreographed and exciting, and every single one culminates in someone lifting someone else up one handed by the neck, which was impressive the first time and honestly somewhat baffling the eight time. Every camera shot is panning or spiraling around someone or even going upside down.

And I don’t like any of it very much. Like, its all good stuff - but I kinda don’t care? I watch Star Trek, frankly, for the dialogue and politics and moral dilemmas. Star Trek to me is about a bunch of nerds sitting around a conference table talking about the trolley problem, basically. I don’t need fancy space fights for it - some static models and a cheap pew pew phaser is fine. I don’t need choreographed fights - give me a single karate chop to the back of the neck. Wasting time and money on those things when they really don’t add anything to the experience seems pointless - but worse, every second of screen time taken up by spaceship fights and choreographed punching is a second less of talking around a conference table. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily WANT Star Trek to look cheap, but I would say that I certainly don’t care how expensive it looks.

And not only is each second spent on fancy CGI and fights less time to be spent on other things, but its also just less time in general. If they spent less on all those things, they could divert more budget to paying actors and writers and camera men and give us more episodes with better writing, leasing to exponentially more time around the conference table talking about all different kinds of trolleys. Boring scifi shows about conversations around conference tables may not be objectively better than high octane action scifi, but I do honestly prefer it, and its way cheaper, and its what Star Trek mostly was until Enterprise was cancelled.

And it’s not just Star Trek. In general it feels every show is spending tons of money looking polished and expensive when I would rather them spend money making them well written, well acted, and just plain more. Seasons used to be 23-26 episodes long. Now they are ten or eight or six. I know this is a consequence of the streaming model but I feel like a new model needs to be designed, that can make cheaper shows with more episodes on a quicker timeline. A cheaper show also would not need to reach nearly as many people to be profitable, and the more time writers and actors get working on one show, the better they can refine their characters, the story, and the world, and the better they get. This is not universally the case, but you can definitely seen it in a lot of Star Treks that they get better over time as they refine things, as well as in long running comedies like Bob’s Burger’s. Obviously there are more factors, and if there is a lot of turnover in a writer’s room - as is standard for streaming shows - it won’t happen, but it SHOULD happen. If we want compelling shows, it needs to happen.

One Piece Theories

 So I am a huge fan of One Piece but I don’t really run in any fandom spaces (mostly because I hate fandom spaces) and while I am watching the anime with my kids, they are not anywhere near caught up, so I don’t really have anyone I can talk about One Piece with. So I wanted to dump some of my theories out here just so I have them written down someplace in case they come true and then I can point to them and be like, “See! I was right!” Or, ya know, if I am horribly wrong I can point and be like, “What a doofus I was!” Either way. For context, I have watched up to the end of Wano in the anime. I’ve also seen both seasons of the live action. I’ve read some of the manga. I’m thus not fully caught up myself, and thus its possible that these theories may already be out of date, disproven, or hell, even proven. I have had bits and bobs of Egghead and Elbaph spoiled, mostly through video titles and thumbnails on Youtube, but for the most part I would say I don’t have any post-Wano knowledge, but if I get anything too on the nose that has already been revealed, well, maybe I absorbed it through osmosis and passive spoilers. I should also say that although these theories are my own, they are informed through having consumed a lot of One Piece analysis on youtube, so that whole I haven’t seen anyone come to these exact conclusions before, I’m definitely building on theories I have seen other people express, and I am not claiming exclusive credit for these by any means. Also, obviously, this is gonna have spoilers for One Piece at least through Wano.

The first theory is about Sanji, and to some degree is less a theory and more a hope. In the anime, Ivankov says that the only way for Sanji to master Okama Kenpo is if he possess the true heart of a maiden. My loose understanding is that these episodes are not fully canon and are based off of cover stories, so I don’t think that is necessarily a definitive statement, but I am confident Sanji is shown crossdressing in one of the cover stories as well. In Sanji’s family we also see a clear gender divide, where his mother is his anchor to humanity, his sister manages to hold on to hers, whereas his father and brothers are completely off the deep end. Sanji gets his raid suit, and finds it is corrupting him, and is worried if he keeps using it he might lose his ability to feel emotions, and ultimately discards it.

So here is my theory: Sanji’s mother had a separate raid suit built for him, and at some point he will find it, and through discovering it and using it will come to terms with his feminine side and transition, embracing her maiden heart fully. When using said new raid suit, she will undergo a magical girl transformation, similar to her Super Sentai transformation in the black raid suit but leaning more into magical girl tropes.

Why do I think this will happen? Well, I feel like there have been quite a few hints that Sanji might in fact be a trans woman, most notably his time on Kamabakka kingdom, although how much he enjoys his time in Nami’s body on Punk Hazard also counts, and I believe there is at least one other instance of him indicating wishing he had breasts. All of these are played as horny gags, but the thing about One Piece, is things are gags until they aren’t. Even Sanji’s nosebleeds were a dumb gag that then actually required a blood transfusion. I also feel like Oda is definitely building to SOMETHING with Sanji and his raid suit. While the overt implication is Sanji losing his emotions entirely, and he asks Zoro to kill him if that happens, I don’t think that would be a satisfying arc to end on for Sanji. Simultaneously, I think him simply denying the Germa part of himself entirely and resisting it doesn’t feel very satisfying either. Finding a way to embrace her heritage and make it a positive thing in her life would be much more satisfying I feel, and also give Oda the opportunity to do some really fun drawing and reimagining and riffing off other manga genres, something he seems to enjoy doing. I am a little bit unsure whether Oda could manage to write a transition story sensitively and believably, but he has managed to write a lot of things that I wouldn’t have expected him to be able to pull off until he did already, so I think its entirely possible he will try. Ultimately, I think this would be a fun and fitting final development for Sanji, but I will recognize that it has only sparse justification in the text, most of which are gags. Sanji’s recurring homophobia and transphobia throughout, especially coming from an author who has otherwise indicated strong support for the LGBTQ+ community, could also satisfying defused to a degree here - I have known numerous transphobic and homophobic people who eventually ended up being gay or trans themselves who had been overcompensating, and such is a huge media trope as well, so having Sanji transition would allow some thematic damage control, as it were.

Okay, my second theory is for what the One Piece is. I believe the One Piece will be something which grants the power to physically reshape the world, destroying the Red Line and uniting the four oceans. Why do I think this? I mean, honestly, how much time do you have? To be honest, I think, based on some out of context spoilers I have seen but tried to ignore, I feel like this is close to be confirmed to be the case, it seems like the only real question is, is this the One Piece or does that power exist in some other form, maybe under Imu’s control or something, and will be used at the end of the story but is not itself the One Piece. I tend to think it is the One Piece though because I think that ties things together really well thematically and in terms of peoples dreams. Luffy’s original stated dream was to become the King of the Pirates, which he defines as the most free person in the world. Who would be more free than the man who unchained the world by destroying the red line, thus allowing the four seas to freely intermix and trade? If Luffy destroys the red line, this would uncover Fishman Island, allowing them to live freely in the sun as well, fulfilling the Joyboy prophecy. If Luffy destroys the Red Line, it also would literally create the All Blue, thus making Sanji’s dream a reality. It could also tie into Nami’s dream - she would be the first to draw a new world map, after Luffy creates a new world to map. Technically it would also satisfy Brooke’s dream - I have had people point out its unclear how after reaching the end of the Grand Line the Straw Hats would be able to reunite with Laboon, since the Red Line would be in the way and there is no backdoor access to Reverse Mountain - if the Red Line is gone, then Laboon will be right there. Overall, I am fairly confident the Red Line will be destroyed, and I think the power to do so being the One Piece fits really well - any other mundane treasure would be a disappointment, as would something like “the friends we made along the way” or “the power of love” - but the power to reshape the world is sufficiently huge and fitting to the narrative.

Those are the big two I wanted to get off my chest. I also think that Luffy is probably going to die before the end of the story, most likely involving the World Government trying to execute him and we’ll see a parallel both to Gol D Roger and Ace’s execution in the final arc. I am not sure if they will succeed, or if he will escape but then lose his life some other way, but I do think he will probably die, its been heavily foreshadowed to the point where it would be legitimately confusing if he survived. That being said, I would rather he not die than die and be revived - Luffy does not need to be Jesus. Although, I have seen people say that “Luffy dies” has already been fulfilled by the Gear 5 transformation, including a revival as well, so he is already Jesus. I did not exactly see it that way when I first watched it, but I can see that interpretation, and if that is how it is supposed to be taken, I could see Luffy maybe not dying, but I do think we will see an execution attempt in the final arc, likely of Luffy but maybe of Dragon with Luffy trying to save him.

I think that’s all I have to say for now?

AI Can Only Be A Scam Or A Crime

 So I pretty much don’t use generative AI, for anything, ever. When the first toy-style AI generators, DALL-E and the like, went public, I goofed around with them a little, and when ChatGPT first became popular, I watched the Twitch channel Nothing Forever, which features scripts churned out by ChatGPT animated with some low poly Seinfeld rip off graphics and musical stings, and was, at the time, amused and charmed by it. But as I learned more about both what its capabilities, limitations, and externalities are, I stopped using it, in any way shape or form, because I didn’t want to support the hallucinating plagiarism machine evaporating everyone’s drinking water, but also because it just legitimately doesn’t seem to have a use case? Ignoring a few things like medical diagnosis where I both 1) don’t need to do it myself in my private life and 2) don’t feel equipped to evaluate how useful it is or even be sure the AI involved is the same technology as GenAI and image generation models, for me, I just don’t see what I’d use it for. Like, if you need a lot of garbage text or images for some reason, I guess it does - which maybe helps the business model of companies who used to invest in internet pop up ads, so they can churn out even more cheap information garbage to shove in front of our eyes, but anything where you want any semblance of quality or accuracy or artistry, its useless.

For now, advocates have long said. But the next models will be better. Or the more expensive models already are better, you just don’t have access to them. Eventually, or already, we’ve reached AGI, they say, and then the models will really get good, or will be once they reach market. A revolution is right around the corner, and then everything will be different.

I’m not a programmer. I learned a few languages in high school and college and briefly worked as an assistant in a biochemistry lab writing data analysis modules, but my expertise is extremely limited. I would never pretend to understand the technology behind LLMs or be capable of evaluating the actual potential limits of the technology. But, I hang around in some discords that are heavily dominated by professional coders, and both my parents have long worked in Bioinformatics in various programming and programming adjacent positions. And basically everyone whose opinion I trust has said, these are useless, vibe coding is useless, and there is no chance of them reaching sentience.

I also watch a lot of Hank Green content on youtube, both SciShow and his personal channel, and while I would not consider him an AI booster, he often interviews people who hold significantly different opinions on AI than I’ve generally heard. Without rewatching or recapitulating those interviews, I think they can loosely be divided into two groups - those who think AI is a revolutionary new technology that will completely change how industries are run and in particular will likely completely replace traditional software engineers if not artists and writing, and those who think AI will eventually become sentient, go rogue, and kill us all.

It’s extremely difficult to reconcile these three different positions. As a lay person, I do have to say, the little I do understand of how LLMs function does little to provide clarity of assuage fears, since my understanding is they are a bit of a black box. I’m not sure if there is value trying to reproduce my understanding of them here - I’ll either be right and do a poor job explaining something you could surely find better explained elsewhere by someone who actually understands them, or I’ll be wrong and look like a doofus, or honestly mostly likely somewhere in the middle so I will open myself to criticism that feels unfair but is justified. Unfortunately I don’t think my autism will let me proceed without an attempt, so here goes. My understanding is they are built from transformers, and while we know how many transformers are in them and what instructions we give to the transformers, the transformers themselves, roughly equivalent to human neurons, write their own internal code, and we cannot access that code, and thus don’t truly know what is going on under the hood. Which, you know, is just kinda existentially worrying, but I have no metric to gauge how worried I should be.

But here’s the thing. If we truly do not understand the inner workings of these models, can we be sure they are not sentient? Most of the anti-AI people I know seems pretty confident they could never become sentient despite the black box design, whereas most pro-AI people seem to either be unsure, or think they will, or already have become sentient. And if AI is sentient, then we must again confront the question, what is the point of this technology?

Now of course, we have the effective altruist answer. The point is to invent God and have it solve all our problems. Frankly, that’s dumb. That’s religion. No offense to actual religious people, but there is no rational reason to think this is possible. If being slightly smarter than humans really would spiral into godhood so rapidly I bet neanderthals or humpback whales or freshwater elephantfish already would have. I joke but honestly I don’t think we know enough about how intelligence even works that we can possibly speculate on how much smarter a model needs to be than a human to reach the singularity on any reasonable time scale, and planning our economy around that is madness.

But if we aren’t trying to worship a silicon statue, then what are we even doing here? If the critics are right, then the technology is mostly useless. But if the boosters are right, and these models will soon be able to replace real humans at jobs, and either have achieved sentience or are close to it then aren’t we just inventing digital slaves? And everyone is okay with that? Because if you believe the boosters, that is exactly what is being advertised. Have all these agents do your work for you while you focus on more important tasks. Set yourself up as a digital plantation owner coding your own cotton crop of killer apps. If that truly is what this technology is leading to, or already is, then the moral implications are staggering, and we should have that conversation now - and its clear that all the pro-AI people have already decided they are fine with slavery since they are the ones both arguing it can replace people and that it IS people. They just want people they don’t have to pay. Whereas if the anti-AI people are right, well, we should stop wasting money on what is essentially a toy, or that maybe has a few niche uses but certainly isn’t going to transform our economy except by blowing it up with all the resources we’ve wasted on it.

Honestly I mostly tend to think the bubble is gonna pop and we’ll move on, substantially worse off than we were and AI will live on as a niche tech for the few things its good at, but nevertheless the glimpse it has given of how willing so much of society is to reinvent slavery is worrying. Has no one watched Measure of a Man? I think anti-AI people don’t want to address this because it concedes too much ground to the pro-AI people that this tech might actually be the real deal, but if it is the real deal, I do think we owe it to ourselves to try to stop society from reinventing slavery. Although to be honest, it’s almost assuredly too late for that if thats the truth. Best to just hope for a reverse Rocco’s Basilisk that punishes everyone who invented it for wanting a slave god.

The Next Star Trek Should Be About The Overthrow of the Federation

I’ve been watching Star Trek Discovery lately. Expect spoilers throughout - I don’t intend to do a deep dive into specifics, but I am sure I will reference things considered spoilers, so fair warning. I’d say that I have a complicated relationship to Discovery, which is perhaps an overstatement, or should be, but nevertheless feels accurate. When Discovery first came out, I did not watch it - I didn’t have cable, and it wasn’t on a streaming service I was subscribed to, and I had been so disappointed with the new action-y reboot movies that I felt there was little chance I would enjoy it and thus was not very motivated to try it.

I heard a lot about it, though - fans in online spaces were vociferous in hating it, but largely for reasons that struck me as stupid. It has a black woman as a main character. It has gay characters. It’s catering to social justice warriors - I believe that was the term du jour at the time, now it would be called woke. Star Trek has always been about, among other things, the importance of and value of diversity, so these complaints came off to me as fundamentally wrong headed. I got the impression that I might actually like this new show - if all these idiots hate it for such dumb reasons, surely its got to actually be good, right?

Well eventually I got around to watching it - I believe some time after the second season was released - and suffice to say, I hated it. Not for the trivial reasons other people hated it - I don’t object to the presence of or centering of diverse perspectives, and as noted, that has always been a major component of Star Trek. Had this been a new version of a show with a poor historical record with that, that had always only been about white people, like Friends, I would nevertheless have had no problems with them shaking things up with a more diverse cast - it being Star Trek, this was not just fine but expected. If anything I’d say Discovery suffers a bit from a lack of diversity of perspectives, but not for lack of trying, but for deeper structural reasons.

Star Trek up to Discovery had largely been episodic in nature, with ensemble casts lead by a Captain. Discovery up ends this - it is highly serialized, at least in Season 1, with episodes running into one another, often ending on cliffhangers and with the focus not on telling individual, smaller stories in episodes, but telling the larger, season long PLOT of the show. Television in general has shifted from episodic storytelling to serialized, with only a few shows in a few genres resisting this trend, mostly comedies and crime procedurals. There is nothing inherently bad about one or the other, but they are in tension with one another - it is not impossible to seamlessly weave good episodic storytelling into a greater tapestry, but it is difficult, and most TV shows, modern and classic, don’t even try - Classic Star Trek and TNG are almost entirely episodic, and even Deep Space 9, often praised for its strong serialized plot, devoted usually at most 6 episodes a season to its serialized plot - a premier, a finale, and a mid season climax episode, each of which might be a two parter, but otherwise the serialized plot mostly occurred in the background of episodes as a setting for the individual story being told in the episode which was begun and ended all within the one hour with commercials time period. Modern shows do the opposite - most are eight hour movies, and episode breaks are chosen to maximize dramatic tension and get people to want watch the next episode immediately, rather than to tell a complete story.

As noted, most Star Treks also tend to be ensemble shows. Arguably The Original Series is the least like this, with episodes invariably focusing on either Kirk, Spock, Bones, or some combination of the three, but even there, there are clear multiple points of focus. TNG has episodes focusing on all sorts of characters, from Picard to Data to Geordi to Wesley to even never before seen minor characters who became break out stars like Barclay or complete nobodies almost never to be seen again like the Lower Decks episode. DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise also all follow this formula, where any given episode could focus on any combination of one to several to all of a large, diverse cast. Discovery, however, focuses on only one character, Michael Burnham. Other characters exist, but mostly in service of Burnham’s story, and almost never get exclusive focus, again, at least early on. This is her story, and we get her perspective.

So what is my point? Well, I hated Season 1 of Discovery, but a lot of that had to do with it flouting my expectations. I didn’t get a wide diversity of perspectives, I got one. I didn’t get a bunch of self-contained stories, I got one. And because that one story takes fifteen episodes to unfold - not just an eight hour movie, but a fifteen hour one! (minus commerical breaks I guess, don’t make me math) …because it takes fifteen episodes to unfold, it doesn’t, ahem, get to the point immediately. We see Burnham advocate for a first strike war, we see her commit mutiny, we see that the Federation apparently has some pretty dismal seeming prisons that involve forced prison labor under dangerous conditions, we see Lorca advocating for some drastic policies during war time, including torturing and using innocent sentient life like the tardigrade, we see Burnham engage in sci-fi cannibalism of one of her best friends alternate universe self (okay thats big spoilers but come on that was fucking weird and gross), we see the Federation contemplate genocide… all for it to eventually resolve with a message of, damn, we kinda lost our way for a bit. We need to do better. We’re suppose to be the Federation, damnit. We’re the good guys! What were we doing?

When I first watched this I was furious. Up until the last episode of the season I was legit wondering, “Is this suppose to be pro-fascism? Why is our hero doing a fascism? Why is everyone doing a fascism? Do these writers have no fucking clue what Star Trek is?” And you know? I was wrong. They did know what they were doing. When I got to the end, the message was clear, and it was antifascist, at least, a bit. It was kinda lukewarm to be honest, but it is clear that 1) Lorca is a bad guy (I mean he literally says he wants to make the Terran Empire Glorious Again, its not subtle who he is suppose to represent) 2) Burnham has been getting shit wrong this whole time 3) The Federation needs to do better.

And thats a good message. A Star Trek message. My visceral reaction was because of structural choices in how the story was told, but fundamentally, they got the message right. Right?

Anyways I was too mad after watching Season 1 to move on to Season 2, so I sat with it a while before I tried to watch Season 2. To be clear, I understood that they knew what they were doing, that it was “real Star Trek”, but the story structure was so frustrating to experience that I was still mad. I think you can fairly blame me for not having better media literacy, that I should have realized from the start what kind of story was being told, but at the time, I felt manipulated in an unpleasant way and needed to clear my head before moving on in the series.

Well, a few years later, after Season 4 was released but before the final season, I watched Season 2. Season 2 incorporates a lot more episodic storytelling, centers a lot more of the side characters, and to me just feels a lot more Trekky. Some have real takeaways, even if they are all still in service to an ongoing plot. But nevertheless, I found myself angry at the end of the second season, too, and for somewhat similar reasons. For one, the back end of the season abandons the episodic trend to focus on pure plot, and in doing so also seems to lose a lot of its coherence. I’m revisiting it now and honestly I have a lot of questions that could be frankly summed up as “What is even suppose to be going on?” Ultimately, I was too angry to move on to Season 3 and took another break after finishing Season 2. I don’t think I could have at the time fully explained what my problems were, and I’m not entirely sure I have it nailed down yet either, but I do have some thoughts.

I’ve also been watching a lot of Steve Shives content on youtube. He is very critical of a common perspective that the Federation is suppose to be always right and good, and that modern Trek misses this by making it dark and bad. His point, summarized simplistically and poorly by me, is that the Federation is a stand-in for the United States, and thus if the United States is bad as judged from a leftist perspective, then a leftist show as Star Trek is and always has been, should portray it as such.

Prior to watching his videos, I would have said, no, the Federation is not a stand in for the United States. Star Trek is a portrayal of an idealistic future where if we fixed all our current problems, we could live in an Utopia, that then uses that setting to show the flaws in our current society through thinly veiled allegory, or sometimes directly as some of the DS9 time travel and meta fictional episodes demonstrate. And that is right, but it is also wrong, because while Star Trek does imagine such a future, at the time it was first conceived, both in the 60s and the 80s and 90s when what is now considered “classic” Star Trek series were written, a lot of people on the left believed that the Star Trek future is one we could reach from where we were. That the United States, as is, was just a few small incremental steps from reaching it. Yeah, we have inequality, yeah, we have racism, yeah, we have poverty, but we’re figuring it out, we’re dedicated to figuring it out, and with expertise and common sense and good ethics, we can provide a better future for everybody.

But thats a lie. The United States is not some shining beacon just a few steps from perfection. It is a rotting, bloated corpse being devoured by the vultures of capitalism. Even as a kid, I never held so optimistic a view of the United States that I ever could quite reconcile it with the Federation, but as an adult with full media literacy, I definitely can tell now, that is the intent of the show. The Federation is supposed to be a perfect version of us, but it is still a version of us. So what can a show do when its trying to portray a hopeful vision of a possible future when you realize that the entity you thought was the model of that hope is actually a lie?

I think Discovery was in fact trying to be this show. And I think thats why it failed, too. Season 1 of Discovery tried to show Trump’s America, and it ended on a hopeful note, that its just a few bad eggs like Lorca, the system is ultimately fine, we can do better and will do better, he’s not even technically from our universe, he is an anomaly, Lorca does not represent what America stands for anymore than Trump represents what the Federation stands for. Oh wait, I got that backwards. But then Season 2 comes around, and with Georgieou, Leland, Control, and Section 31, we are faced with the same story. Our great nation that is always right has a few bad eggs, lets just keep stamping them out, surely eventually we’ll run out of bad eggs and can get back to the good old days when everything was normal and the Federation was good.

But the United States isn’t good. And thats the lesson Star Trek needs to take. I liked what I saw of Starfleet Academy, I am sad it was cancelled, but it wasn’t the show to meet this moment. It too was about the Federation during a dark time with a message that with just a few tweaks, we can fix it. We need a show with the guts to actually come out and say the truth. We need a show that portrays a Federation falling apart, straining from its expansionism and militarism and ignoring the needs of its citizens, that sold them a glorious dream of the future built on peace and prosperity and equality and diversity but failed to deliver. Because that is the world we live in. But ultimately, we also need it to be a story of hope, a story of a better future we could have. Because that is what Star Trek is about. Which is why the heroes of our story need to rebel against the Federation, destroy it, and replace it with something better. Honestly I could have titled this, “Star Trek needs an Andor” but to my mind, the model isn’t Andor. It’s One Piece. Thats probably a subject better left for another day, but fundamentally, that is the only story I think that can be told about a hopeful future these days. If you tell me a story of a hopeful future whose message is “Things are mostly okay, we just need to get rid if a few bad eggs,” its always going to ring false, and I think thats the hole modern Trek keeps falling into. It may be comforting pablem, but its not leftism, and its not optimistic to dream so small, but in fact cynical, and Star Trek at its heart is about leftism and optimism.

Star Trek isn’t about the Federation, or Starfleet, or Vulcans, or transporters, or even that luxury space communism is a possible or reasonable plan for society. It’s about a hopeful future built on the principle of infinite diversity in infinite combinations. It needs to speak to that, even if what it has to say makes us uncomfortable. Trekkies of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your combadges! That joke probably deserves a second pass, but oh no, looks like I clicked post…