I hate action Trek, I want Talk Trek

 I know I just wrote a bunch of random thoughts about Star Trek Discovery, but I’m still watching it so suck it. I am pretty sure I forgot some of my random thoughts I wanted to share yesterday, and if any more occur to me while writing this, I’m gonna include them, but I actually have something more specific I want to discuss regarding it, which of course means this will likely be much shorter than the random thought explosion of yesterday. As I was watching and enjoying episode 1 of S5 - and I was enjoying it - it really settled in why, even though Discovery works for me so much better now than it did in Season 1, why I am still not happy with it, and why it still doesn’t really feel much like Star Trek to me, and its honestly pretty simple and I’ve even touched on it before without, at least to my memory, fully articulating it: its got too much action.

Honestly if anyone were actually reading these posts I suspect they could point at my older posts and be like, “No you totally have already said this before,” but jokes on you, imaginary reader, I’m gonna say it again anyway, because while I definitely have alluded to it I hadn’t quite been able to crystalize it as my fundamental complaint - and I think it really is my fundamental complaint. Everything else has either been fixed by this point, or I just had to get used to it, or even in some cases I was just wrong - like when I first watched and I thought they might be doing fascist apologia because I didn’t realize they were bait and switching you in the first season and that actually, most of what they did is wrong and bad (TM) and thats the point, and the show eventually makes that clear. But now, in the final season, where it feels like the show has finally nailed down its identity and found a successful formula (for now, anyways, maybe the rest of the season will suck), this is the one element which still feels off to me.

And like, at the end of the day, its kind of a matter of taste. I think that if the original series was remade with modern technology by all the same people who somehow magically had all the same resources and knowledge of modern filmmakers, its very likely it would be as action packed as Discovery is. But they didn’t have those resources, so their action set pieces were just shirtless kirk fighting a man in a rubber suit, and thus they had to fill the run time with a lot more dialogue and narrative twists and characters shooting the shit and, especially in the TNG era, conference room scenes debating morality. They had all that at least in part not merely because they wanted to, but because it was a budgetary necessity. Now with CGI and streaming budgets, Star Trek can afford to become Star Wars, have some giant action set pieces every episode and frame the episodes around them, and you know? I just don’t care for it.

I like Star Wars movies okay. I’ve never been a HUGE Star Wars fan, but I’ve seen all of the nine core films, plus Rogue One, and even several of the TV series. I also used to be a big MCU fan, and thats all about huge action set pieces tied together with plot conveniences and snark. But neither was ever my favorite like Star Trek, and I came to Star Trek not for action set pieces, but for character, narrative, dialogue, and boring conference room scenes debating morality and politics and diplomacy and other big questions of existence. And I love that shit. And Discovery over time has included more and more of that, as they worked out the kinks in their formula as well as just getting enough total screentime to actually fully develop their cast (which it still hasn’t - everyone but Burnham, Saru, and Tilly feel underdeveloped to me still, especially the bridge crew, but progress has been made). But they still have their huge action set pieces. This episode was chock full of fight scenes and chases and two whole starships nosediving into dirt and its all super cool and hype… except honestly I was extremely bored? Not because it was bad action but just because, thats not what I am here for. A lot of people are probably happy that now Trek has both great action AND a political message, but for me, I know we are only getting so much Trek, and every second they spend on an action set piece is less time we spend discussing the nuances of morality or exploring the characters and their relationships, and I just don’t care about the action and do care about those other things.

And like, this is probably mostly a me problem. Like, most people eat this shit up. I even eat it up, in other franchises, when I’m in other moods, But its not what I come to Star Trek for, so when I watch Star Trek, I want something different. I am not looking for action. The most action I want in a Star Trek show is some karate chops or neck pinches or a few phaser shots. To dunk on Andy Weir, all I want in my Star Trek is the Federation and the Romulans sending diplomatic envoys at one another, not all this fucking action. And like, Discovery has shown that you can make politic points in an action heavy show. Discovery is not “not Star Trek” because it lacks a political viewpoint. But that viewpoint is definitely tempered by the amount of time spent espousing it versus showing cool action set pieces, and I just would rather they spend that screen time and production money on writing and character and narrative and politics driven dialogue scenes.

I know I am not the only one with this preference. Literally every other Star Trek fan I have ever spoken to in real life agrees with me, as have many I have seen online who aren’t chuds. Even hardcore defenders of New Trek usually will concede the new stuff is very effects and action heavy. And its undoubtable that has helped New Trek to keep succeeding and getting made. This is honestly the same issue I had with the reboot movies as well, and the only reason it took me longer to understand that it was my fundamental issue with Discovery as well is it had so many other glaring issues overshadowing it. But I don’t think I can fairly say that Discovery “isn’t Star Trek” even when that is kind of how I feel, because what I think defines Star Trek (aside from lore) is a scifi adventure story with an emphasis on diverse casting and representation and bearing politically progressive messages, and thats Discovery to a T. TNG set a very philosophical, thinky tone for the nineties, and thats the Trek I grew up on, but different shows are allowed to iterate on that, and a more actiony version isn’t a betrayal of that, merely a variation. One I like a lot less, but 🤷‍♀️ I’m allowed to like it less without it no longer being Star Trek. I do hope that we will eventually get a Star Trek thats allowed to not be about action set pieces, though. I am very behind on modern Trek, due to my difficulty getting through Discovery, and my impression is that while Discovery is the most actiony of the new Treks, they are all far more actiony that 90s Trek. But most of Starfleet Academy seemed willing to break out into a new and more classic feeling formula while still innovating in a new genre, and while it got summarily canceled, that does raise my hopes that maybe the era of talk Trek is not entirely dead or impossible to make profitable.

Also, apologies to Discovery, I really thought Tilly was gone for good, but seems she is still here. I hope she continues to show up most episodes. Also what the fuck was supposed to be going on between her and that guy when she was drunk? It seemed flirty at first but then they kind of just mutually separated without anyone saying anything very meaningful and maybe its just because I’m autistic but I did not understand the takeaway.

Some Random Star Trek Discovery thoughts

 So I definitely hoped that by taking the weekend off from writing blog posts, I’d find the time and motivation to edit a chapter of my novel for my blogpost today. But, guess what, I didn’t. It did, however, accomplish my more reasonable goal of “giving me a break to respawn my creative juices more generally” so I have some more ideas about things to write. Instead of actually doing any of those ideas, though, I’m gonna just start blathering on about something I thought of ten seconds ago, and see how far it takes me.

Okay so in the process of just writing that paragraph I somehow managed to completely blank on the subject I wanted to write about, but I am pretty sure it had something to do with Star Trek Discovery, so what I am actually gonna do is just say a bunch of random thoughts about Star Trek Discovery until I either run out of thoughts, get tired or writing, or remember my original topic.

First thing, I’ve noted how much I’ve been enjoying S4 over previous seasons, and I’ve spoken as to why, but one thing that clicked for me recently is I think a big thing that helps is Michael Burnham is Captain now. Honestly I started off a bit peeved that Saru only got one season as Captain and now he is relegated to serene old master giving her advice, but he excels in that role, and even though its extremely awkward, weird, and unrealistic how the show got there, the shows narrative and characters and feel itself all improve because of it, so I can hardly fault it.

As to why this is a good thing, its pretty simple: the show has always been about Michael Burnham. Every plot always has and probably always will revolve around her. You can argue this is true about previous Treks to a degree - Picard features in most TNG episodes, almost assuredly more than any other single member of the crew, and is often the focus of at least one of the plots. Same with Sisko, with the addition of him playing a promiment role in its serialized plot and even being a sort of chosen one religious figure in the narrative, highly unusual for the normally secular Star Trek series. ToS heavily focused on only Kirk, Spock, and Bones, so again, Kirk is very often the focus. But the big difference with all those shows, and every other Star Trek show aside from Lower Decks (presumably, I have not seen it) is that the main character getting all that focus is the Captain. We expect the Captain to be the most important character in the show and in the setting of the show. If events are going to revolve around anyone it makes sense for it to be the Captain. Moreover, even stories which do not revolve around the Captain, it makes sense they would nevertheless be looped in - if they are meeting a new alien species, the Captain will likely be handling that meeting. If the Chief Engineer needs to go on a personal mission, they will need to ask the Captain’s permission. Its a natural consequence of a hierarchical structure that the head of it will come into focus more, and it feels natural.

 But in the first three seasons of Discovery, our focus is on Burnham, who is not the Captain, yet the stakes are always sky high - a war with the Klingons, the fate of all life in two universes, some mysterious unexplained lights appearing all over the known galaxy, a rogue AI trying to destroy the federation, the fate of all sentient life (again), the fate of the precariously balanced Federation, all things which naturally could or would loop in the involvement of a prominent Starfleet Captain, but not necessarily a lesser officer. So they need to make excuses for why Burnham is being looped in. Its because she started this war singlehandedly (even though she didn’t), its because Lorca has the hots for her, its because the one sending these lights is her mom or her future self, its because her brother is Spock, its because the time travel suit is keyed to her DNA, its because she arrived in the future a year earlier and knows more than everyone else, its because she is a citizen of both Earth and Ni’Var and thus uniquely positioned to broker peace, etc, etc. All these reasons are fine in isolation, but when a show is constantly making excuses for why this character is the most important person in the universe, it begins to feel forced and stale - especially when the show also really likes having in universe speeches about how awesome that person is, which Discovery loves to do.

Season 4 fixes this simply by putting Burnham in the Captain’s chair - and more importantly, the Captain of Discovery, the only ship with a Spore Drive (for the most part, details unimportant). The show no longer needs to stretch for excuses for why everything in the universe revolves around her - she is by formal rank and strategic positioning one of the most important people, period. This subtle change makes it stop feeling like the writers really WANT her to be the most important to it being a natural consequence of who they chose to write about. Whats especially bad about this, though, is there really is no reason it had to be this way. The writers of Discovery said they wanted to do something different so they wanted her to have to earn her way to Captaincy, but like… why? And also, she didn’t? No other show required their Captain to earn in on screen - honestly feels a little suspect the first black woman Captain was made to. Plus, Discovery is not the story of her whole damn career - she is a Commander and First Officer on the Shenzou at the start of the series, literally a single breath away from the Captaincy, and her Captain even dies pretty immediately - if that wasn’t arguably caused by Burnham’s fuck ups, she’d have been Captain right at the start. You honestly would not even necessarily need to change THAT much - Burnham blames herself for starting the war, but we see the Klingon’s were looking for any excuse to start a war - its not her fault, and the fact everyone on the show seems to accept that its her fault is frankly a bit silly. She does commit mutiny, of course, but she is stopped before her mutiny actually has any effect. Later, she and Georgiou try to stop the war by capturing the Klingon head honcho, and Georgiou is killed, and Burnham in turn kills him, even after she explicitly had told Georgiou they should not do this, as it would make him a martyr, and like yeah, thats a bummer, but its also understandable? If you just made Burnham not actually mutiny but simply express her distrust in Georgiou’s more cautious approach vociferously, and then she goes on the mission as planned, she could have started out as a Captain who was promoted deservedly, but perhaps she does not feel so - like Sisko in Deep Space 9 where he is deeply conflicted about his inability to save his wife, just like Burnham would now feel about Georgiou.

In this version, Lorca could be an admiral ordering Burnham to do various things, or he could be someone under Burnham’s command simply luring her to the dark side, either could work, but aside from a few restructuring things due to these changes the rest could have stayed the same. Like I dislike S1 of Discovery and would like to change more, sure, but even these small changes would have, IMO, fixed a big issue with S1 where by it felt really artificial that everything in two universes revolved around the same person. But, I dunno, maybe this is something which only really bothered me.

That took a lot longer to suss out that I expected. I guess I’ll still plop out some other thoughts. I love Saru’s love interest in President T’Rina. They are very cute together and its also really nice to just see more of everyone doing non urgent things, so we can actually get to know them. I liked Tilly’s arc this season but hate that it meant she was absent for 2/3rds of it and presumably all of S5, all so she could be in one episode of Starfleet Academy which is already cancelled. Way to fucking destroy my favorite character on the show. I like the Stamets and Culber adopting Adira and Gray? plotline but it needed WAY more onscreen time. We went from them saying hello to you are now my child to we have an unbreakable bond and also your mind boyfriend is my child too in the space of like ten on screen minutes across like three episodes. It was not earned. Also like, it probably should be just Adira, don’t adopt them and their boyfriend, that makes it incestuous, okay? Like I’m kinda joking but its weird enough Adira is dating someone who was once part of them. As a cis man I don’t want to shit on queer stories which perhaps resonate better with queer audiences but honestly this felt kinda like it was a trans story written by cis people who don’t quite get it, and not the least of which because it ends up with what feels like it could be a confused metaphor for a trans person dating their deadname identity.  But maybe its fine and resonates well with a queer audience my only bellweather is when I explained it to my enby kid they were like, “WTF thats super weird.”

Tarka was more interesting that I expected him to be but I am a little lost on what exactly he is supposed to represent. I initially pegged him as an Elon Musk stand in - and I’m not sure thats wrong - but his plotline of willing to potentially sacrifice billions of people to get back to his gay lover does not map to anything about Elon Musk I know, which, to be clear, is fine - political media need not be a 1:1 allegory - but I am also not really sure what we are suppose to do with that other than be like, “Bummer for him, I guess, but that doesn’t justify potentially starting an awful war and setting off a dirty bomb and potentially destroying two whole planets.” Like that just doesn’t feel like that deep of a message to me, and that could be solved if he is representative of something IRL, but I am at a loss for what. Honestly his desire to get to this perfect world felt like it was a model of American conservatives wanting to get back to the fifties, but the boyfriend angle complicated that, and it never really felt like it paid that off. Even when Book and Reno explain to Tarka at the end that the people Book misses in that perfect universe won’t really bring back the dead ones from this, because they are different people, that argument falls flat because Tarka’s dude IS there, or Tarka thinks he is, anyways, and it would thus be real for him, so at the end all I can really pull from this is, one guy’s boner is not worth the deaths of billions, and yeah I agree, but so what? Tarka would be more interesting as a villain if he had an or represented an actual philosophy of some kind other than “I miss my boyfriend and I’m making everyone else pay for it.” But I do acknowledge that there might be some hidden depth here I am missing.

Speaking of, I really thought the Burn in S3 was going to end up being caused by Discovery coming to the future, and was going to be a metaphor for running out of fossil fuels, but after watching Steve Shives review, he interpreted it more about disconnection from COVID, which totally does make sense for when it was made (and me watching it years later makes sense I might have more difficulty picking up on that) but like… I dunno. Felt lame that everyone in the universe got fucked over by one guy’s trauma. The show makes it clear we should empathize with him and not blame him, but I kinda would rather it have been written to not all be one guy’s fault to begin with? They tried to make it seem more systemic by emphasizing the Federation was running out if dilithium before the Burn, but like, legitimately, I think it somehow being either our heroes or the Federation’s fault and them needing to fix it would have been a much more satisfying conclusion.

Detmer and Owoshekun should get focus episodes. Airiam shouldn’t have been killed off - they wanted emotional stakes and they achieved them, but its a dirty trick to have a character be set dressing for two seasons, make us care in one episode, and then kill her off immediately. How dare you. Either make us care the whole damn time, or make us care and let her live so we can keep being invested in her.

Okay I’m done for now.

Can you see me? I hope not.

 I have a big fear of being perceived. I’m not sure I can fully explain - its not merely being seen, since I’m 6’4” and nearly 400 lbs, its hard for me to avoid that, but I think it will become more clear with examples. Several times throughout college and grad school, my girlfriend and now wife and I would frequent restaurants with regularity, up until the proprietors took notice of us and started remembering us, or, god forbid, our orders, at which point we’d stop going to those places. Similarly, on Twitch, when I streamed, for a long time I did so under the name Thrower of Stones, but at one point I decided to rebrand under the name Dude Love. This ended up setting off several additional name changes, and now even though I don’t stream anymore, I change my name every couple of months whenever it seems people on Twitch seem to know who I am. The idea of people I don’t know knowing who I am bothers me for some reason.

I think its part of why I left social media pretty much entirely, and its definitely why I have never linked this blog to anyone I know in real life. I do post it on my defunct social media, and occasionally in discords I am in, but even that with hesitation. There is just something about being perceived I hate.

Is story always the most important thing in a work of fiction?

 I really enjoy watching media analysis videos on youtube. I also in general just enjoy thinking about media and storytelling and the like in general - whenever I watch something or play something or read something part of my brain is always mining away at it for hidden meanings or allegories or what not. I also like watching videos that give advice on writing, which has a lot of overlap with media analysis, but not entirely.

A sentiment I’ve encountered a lot in writing advice videos and from speaking with people with Opinions on writing is that you should not include something in your story if it doesn’t further the story. Generally this is directed at world-building details - we don’t need to know the tax policy of Aragorn’s kingdom (unless its plot relevant, as George RR Martin strove to make it Game of Thrones). But I’ve also seen it directed at scenes and subplots - don’t include this scene or that subplot if it isn’t furthering your narrative - as well as, somewhat more obliquely, characters - mostly people saying X or Y character is pointless and adds nothing to the story, but is just there for eye candy or as a mascot or as a token X or Y or for no reason at all.

Perhaps its just because, if I was forced to choose a favorite medium to experience a story, my choice would be video games, but I find this a little wrongheaded. I’ve always been a big fan of world building, and actively seek out details about the worlds in media I consume - when I got into One Piece, I spent hours reading the wiki, same with Mass Effect, and one of my favorite games of all time is Xenoblade Chronicles X because its really a masterclass in worldbuilding, with its sidequests all focused on literally developing a colony on an alien world. For me, seeing a fully realized, complex, interactive world is just as satisfying as a good narrative, and so certainly I might choose a game just for its world building, no matter how bad its story is - and indeed Xenoblade Chronicles X has a somewhat lackluster story, especially compared to its worldbuilding.

Although conventional writing advice contradicts, this, I don’t think I am alone in this preference. I think its ultimately the preference behind the sort of nerdy obsessiveness common in fandoms like Star Trek. Why did Klingons change appearance between The Original Series and the movies? Its not enough that the answer is obviously budget - we want an answer that holds together in universe, some way that can reconcile the two series and make it make sense to us as a coherent universe. I think a lot of people dismiss these concerns as silly, but others consider them incredibly important, and although over the years I have found rationalizations that keep me from being insufferably pedantic about things like this, I’m still very sympathetic to the idea, and think its kind of small minded to assume that details like world cohesion aren’t important. Steve Shives, a prominent Star Trek youtuber, has opined that such details shouldn’t matter and should be ignored as long as the story is good - but why should story necessarily trump the believability of the world?

Watching classic Star Trek - by which I mean 90s era and earlier Star Trek - for me feels a lot like sitting down with family. This isn’t just nostalgia, but a function of how those shows were written. They are episodic, telling a single story each episode. If there is any overarching story at all, it functions not as a narrative per se, but a setting - TOS “story” was their five year mission to explore the galaxy, TNG has a similar mission plus occasional smaller arcs like the Borg, and DS9 has an overarching Dominion War, but those stories mostly serve as the backdrop to the smaller story happening that week, rather than a normal serialized plot. In each episode we see a smaller scale story, with plenty of time spent getting to know esch characters, seeing them during downtime, hanging with friends, eating food, goofing around, being on the holodeck, etc. This makes me really feel like I know and care for these characters and the world they are in in a much deeper way than I do in Discovery, which focuses on overarching narrative over all else. Even in the later seasons of Discovery, where they put more focus on episodic storytelling, there is still always a strong sense of urgency induced by the overarching plot which makes these small world and character building moments difficult to include, and thus makes me just give massively less of a shit about everything.

Most modern shows are written this way. Yet I have also seen a sentiment decrying “lore” in modern stories, that people are focusing too much on worldbuilding to the detriment of story. This, I think, is maybe a misuse of terms. I don’t want to put words in peoples mouths, but I usually see these comments placing blame on the MCU, claiming that it focuses on worldbuilding over narrative, but what they really mean is it focuses on franchise building over narrative. MCU shows and movies don’t spend much time at all making their worlds feel fleshed out and real - they spend time setting up other shows and properties to come. Thats a -kind- of worldbuilding, but its not the same as what I think is missing in a lot of shows, because these same shows have heavily serialized plots and little down time, rushing through plot beat to plot beat to finish their jammed packed narratives in six or eight or ten episodes. If anything I think this is just another symptom of people prioritizing story over worldbuilding, the stories have just gotten so large they span individuals shows and movies.

Super Mario 64 is a great game. It has a shit story. Its good because of its gameplay. For games, the idea that story is always the most important element is obviously untrue and easy to prove. But for other media, I think most people instinctually will agree that story is the most important. But, Firefly was one of my favorite shows in high school and early college, and it was not for its story that I loved it. What I loved most about it was its characters, who felt real and believable and I loved them, and the show spent a lot of its time letting us to get to know them. Its overarching plot? Forgettable. I think it was about some evil dudes who wanted River Tam because of her psychic powers? Snore. I also liked its worldbuilding a lot, although in retrospect it was cribbed from civil war America mashed up with random Chinese influences and is pretty fucking problematic, but my point is, I don’t think the story really mattered much - certainly not its serialized story, and even its story per episodes mostly was in service to the characters, which was the show’s strength. Even outside of video games, I think its entirely possible for a work of media to be successful and enjoyable for a reason other than story.

Mad Max Fury Road is another example. Its story is that the gross dude has some sex slaves, and Furiosa wants to save them, and Max gets caught up in it. It really is nothing to write home about, and is just a vehicle for some of the most impressive visual effects ever shown on screen, and some amazing cinematography and blood pumping action. And its fucking art. One of the best movies ever made if you ask me. Story isn’t even secondary here. Its not even really adding anything. Its just there to keep things moving.

Books might be the hardest sell here, since a book cannot be about its gameplay or visuals, but it certainly can be about its characters, or its world. Those are aspects which should be able to sell you on a media property. I loved Dragonlance as a kid and it was absolutely because I loved Raistlin and Tasslehoff and Tika and Flint and Fizban (or is it Zifnab?) not because the story was amazing. I think its okay to recognize different works of fiction can have different strengths, and those strengths are legitimate reasons to enjoy them, and story is not always the most important aspect of something just because it tells a story. Fuck, I didn’t even touch on political messaging and symbolism. Animal Farm, anyone? Anyways, I think I’m done for today.

po eem

 an iron gauntlet

grabbing my spine

pulling me down

a rock lodged between vertebra

binding my energy

stealing my life

random writing about my writing

 I am thinking I might switch to posting only on weekdays. I’ve been pretty good at posting everyday, I think I’ve only missed one day and it was a day I specifically said I might miss ahead of time where I was visiting with my grandfather, so I’ve proven I can stick with this, but the need to produce every single day has begun to wear on me. I think I’ll enjoy it more and be more creative if I give myself the freedom to not post sometimes, as long as I maintain whatever schedule I set. I don’t think slowing down to once a week makes any sense, though - while in theory that could let me write longer, more in depth pieces, I am pretty positive that I’d only produce marginally longer and more in depth works, but be far more likely to forget to do it entirely, and since the biggest point of this is just to keep me writing for practice sake, I should avoid anything that might lead to me stopping. I also think just allowing myself one or two skip days a week would likely lead to me forgetting, too. I deal best with rigid restrictions. Thus, I think I’ll post daily, except the weekend, from now on.

I started this post unsure if this would just be an intro or the whole post for today, but I’ve managed to write enough I think I might make it the whole post. Given that, though, I’m gonna keep extruding thoughts on what I want to do here until I’m out rather than just give up now that I have accomplished communicating that message. I have a novel about half written, that has lain fallow for a while, that I’d like to finish, and I think at some point I’d like to start editing and posting chapters. Maybe I’ll set a goal of, every Monday, edit and post a new chapter, giving me the weekend to get that done if I need it. I don’t think I’ll do that now, but its something to think about. Lets just try to weekend thing for now.

I also want to do more short stories, although length is an issue. Most ideas I have are too long to execute in a daily blog format. I haven’t really decided what I want ti do about that. I guess I could post what I wrote for a day, then the next day add to it, and the next, until its done, and then possibly delete the old posts and leave up only the final product. I don’t want to just not post for a few days until its done, again, I think that will lead to me forgetting and stopping. Managing my motivation is more important than pretty much anything else at this stage.

Is sexual dimorphism an evolutionary dead end?

 So right up front, I’m not an evolutionary biologist. My degrees are in Classical Archaeology and Law. I just am a science and biology enthusiast who is physically disabled, cannot work, and so spends a lot of his time consuming popular science content. I watched a Journey to the Microcosmos video the other day about Ostracods, which are a clade of crustaceans who generally invest very heavily into sexual dimorphism, with males being excessively large compared to females so they can have longer penises and bigger sperm which then translate into greater reproductive success because females prefer males with longer penises, or because its easier to for big sperm to survive or something, I honestly don’t remember the exact reason big penises are good for them. The major point is, being bigger and having a bigger penis and giant sperm are not adaptive beyond their contribution to reproductive success for males. They don’t help any other aspect of survival and are thus essentially evolutionary dead weight from a survival perspective.

Lots of species have traits like this. Peacock tails are the obvious go to, but antlers and horns probably fall into this - although there is likely some survival advantage defensively against predators, not enough to justify the level of investment you see in highly sexually selected species. Fangs in primates is another, as is any species where the male is larger than the female due to male combat or female choice having a hand in sexual selection - which is most mammals and a decent chunk of fish and reptiles and birds. Basically, its all over the natural worlds, traits that species - usually males - invest in which do not convey a direct survival benefit but do convey a reproductive advantage, possibly even though they are in fact detrimental to survival, or at least detrimental when invested in so heavily.

None of this is new, but what was interesting about the video is apparently a study was done on ostracod lineages that showed that those lineages which heavily invest in male size and penis size tend to go extinct at a much faster rate than those which do not. And while I had vaguely wondered how it can actually be advantageous for a peacock to have such a huge useless tail, this really got me wondering - is this true beyond ostracods? Are species which invest heavily in sexual selection shooting themselves in the foot, or perhaps more accurately in the dick? That is apparently true for ostracods, at least according to this one study, and it makes logical sense - investing in sexual selection will have short term dividends for the individual who can survive in their current environment, but without an actual survival advantage, if the species’ niche becomes threatened, the sexually selected traits will be a constant drag on survivability, and while it may continue to provide success to an individuals chances of success at mating when compared to other members of the species, the species as a whole is likely to lose the survival contest against other species without such a drag on them.

Obviously this one study of ostracods doesn’t prove that this does apply to all animals or all life, but it is thought provoking. Specialists of all types tend to go extinct in trying times, and it makes sense that would apply to sexual selection specialists too, probably even more-so, since they are essentially investing evolutionary resources into sucking worse at everything but making ladies fuck you. It even is interesting to think about socially. Might the same be true for societies - societies which invest in patriarchy, which grants men more reproductive control, be less able to survive hard times because they are investing resources in making women less free instead of taking full advantage of all their society’s resources? Anyways, I don’t think any real conclusions can or should be drawn from this, but I would be curious if we can do studies on other groups - or if such studies have already been done - which show a general trend for evolutionary groups with high sexual dimorphism being less successful. I can even imagine reasons why this trend might not stay true beyond ostracods - for instance, having multiple body types could prove an advantage in being able to take advantage of more resources, especially if male and female individuals can niche partition and take advantage of different things, like how male marine iguanas can dive deep for algae but females and juveniles cannot. Anyways, just some random, inexpert musings.

Yes, Season 4 of Discovery has the sauce

 I watched Episode 6 last night of Season 4, and yeah, its got the sauce. In this episode they get stuck in the dark matter anomaly and need to get out. During it their ship, Zora, who has recently become sentient, has an autistic meltdown from sensory overload and needs to be talked down by Gray. This finally gave Gray something to do other than be Adira’s partner or being a trans allegory without any further development, and it was a breath of fresh air. While Burnham once again was the ultimate hero of the episode, needing to stay behind on the ship to keep Zora company - honestly it would have made more sense thematically to let Gray be the one since they were the one who bonded with Zora - just giving other characters more screen time is a great change of pace, and while the idea that the computer is sentient has been drip fed for more than a season now, there was literally zero payoff or interesting consequences from it until now, and its great to actually get some payoff. I admit to getting a little lost halfway through the episode during the action-y-er parts, so I don’t know if I’d say it was a perfect episode, but it was a very good one, which gave people other than Burnham time to shine without actually changing from Discovery’s identity as he Burnham show, and whose solution relied on something other than people yelling about how cool science is or extreme violence, the two most common solutions on Discovery, only one of which feels very Star Trekky. The cringey song the ship sings to Burnham was super cringey, but like, I kinda liked it? It felt like a throwback to Uhura singing weird shit to Spock or crazy holodeck episodes. All around, I liked it a lot.

Does Season 4 of Discovery finally have the sauce?

 So I love Episode 4 Season 4 of Discovery, and last night I watched Episode 5 of Season 4, and it feels like the show has finally hit its stride. And honestly, that probably shouldn’t be surprising. Most people think Next Gen doesn’t get good until somewhere between Seasons 2 and 4, same with DS9, to the point its become a generalization about all Star Trek, even though its plainly not true of the Original Series and I’d argue Season 1 of DS9 is actually quite good, just not as good as later seasons. Since Discovery has half the episodes of less that TNG and DS9 did, it makes sense that it would take at least as long or longer for it to find its voice, and its beginning to feel like it has.

Episode 5 was nearly as good as episode 4. Its A plot is about Burnham and Booker saving some refugees from the path of the BIG PLOT of this season, the DMA. Quick side note, I hate they call it the DMA, call it the fucking Dark Matter Anomaly. DMA sounds like a government regulation. Whatever amount of playtime they save by saying DMA they lose in audience clarity and understanding and atmosphere from using the actual science terms/technobabble in my opinion. But thats a minor issue and I’m sure someone out there vociferously disagrees, but what was great about this episode was that even though Burnham was the main character most focused on, she was not the focus of the episode, the refugees were. It was their story, something which honestly is usually the case in older Star Treks - the star of the story is the guest star that week, and all the characters are serving supporting roles in solving their problems. This really felt like that, with the leader of the prisoner refugees legitimately being the main character and incredibly impactful throughout. The actor did a great job, and I cried, which although not a super high bar - something about how me and my autism and alexithymia process emotions means I cry whenever I feel any strong emotion of any kind I cry, and because I rarely can identify my emotions easily I increasingly do not hold back in an effort to learn to better identify them, but still. If a show makes me cry, with whatever emotion, I usually mark it as a good episode.

The B plot with Stamets and risky scientist McGee was also fun. I was a bit worried whether the show wanted us to like Mr. Risky, but by the end it was clear we are not supposed to like him, even if nothing disasterous happened this episode. I just in general am not a fan of serialization in Star Trek, and early seasons often drip fed plot points across entire seasons before getting to the point, but here even though there was no payoff this episode, they did make it clear that this guy was bad news, and I appreciate that. Star Trek is a show that deals with deep philosophical points, and its easier to digest when those points are made in forty five minutes, not 450 minutes, so I appreciate they made it clear that even if we don’t know what bad thing will come of this guy taking risks, that he is a certifiable untrustworthy dude.

Inside the Star Trek fandom Discovery at least seems to be widely disliked, but it was a big commercial and critical success and spawned a renaissance of Star Trek content, so me saying its only good at Season 4 might hit some people as confusing, and to be honest it likely is at least somewhat informed by me being a Star Trek fan. When I watch Star Trek I am looking for a very specific experience, and while early seasons of Discovery might be a quality serialized scifi show, it did not scratch the right itches for me for a Star Trek show. The serialization undermined and watered down the political messaging, as did the darker tone, the single main character felt very different than the usual ensemble cast, and the focus on effects and fight sequences are not what I come to Star Trek for, even if I can appreciate them in other works - when I put on Star Trek, I want to see a bunch of friends solving social problems in space with diplomacy, science, and unwavering devotion to social justice, not by disintegrating space monsters or punching out aliens. Discovery still has a lot of the latter, but its beginning to have enough of the former that it feels like Star Trek to watch. If every episode going forward is this good, it might even stop being my least favorite Star Trek, although I honestly don’t know what its competition is. Probably Voyager? Anyways, I hope it does, even if its cancellation means I won’t ever get more of it.

Review of Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Episode 4 All is Possible

 I’m not really sure how much I actually have to say about this, but I watched this episode last night and fucking loved it, so much so I rewatched it with my kids his afternoon to introduce the character of Sylvia Tilly to my kids before we watched the episode of Starfleet Academy that features Tilly, so I figured, why not talk about it for my blog. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a complicated relationship with Star Trek Discovery, and I am currently trying to get through it all for the first time after two failed previous attempts. The best summary of my feelings towards the show generally are frustration. Broadly, it feels like it has a lot of good ideas which are wasted, it feels like its serialized plot is both too big to fit in its limited season run time AND that they would all fly much better if they were gutted and shrank down to two part episode length, its main character gets way too much focus and they don’t even really seem to know what they want to do with her, and most criminally, they have so many interesting characters with potential that take a backseat to Michael Burnham because this is the Michael Burnham show and she needs to solve every problem.

Well, if one episode existed to prove me wrong, its this one. The A plot of this episode focuses, in perhaps a series first, not on Michael Burnham, but on Sylvia Tilly. I exaggerate, there have been other episodes focuses on other characters - I think Burnham is barely in Season 3 Episode 2 perhaps which tells the story of how Discovery reconnects with her after journeying to the future - but generally speaking almost every episode features Michael in the A plot, and usually ever problem is resolves directly through her action, and frankly, thats exhausting. It makes her feel like a superhuman, in a bad way. This episode, though, focuses on Tilly, by far the most relatable of the cast on Discovery for me, and honestly I suspect for a lot of its audience. She’s strongly autistic coded, and while she is not my particular flavor of autism - I am more the quiet, withdrawn, low affect type, whereas she is bubbly, effervescent, socially awkward but constantly optimistic type, I can still see myself in her far better than the arguably also autistically coded Burnham with her Vulcan logic or whatever is supposed to be going on with her frankly somewhat confusing characterization over the series. But I’m getting sidetracked.

Going into this episode, I was skeptical of this plotline. I knew it was coming, because I knew Tilly was on Starfleet Academy, but it felt inorganic to me. Why would Tilly want to leave the command track and become a teacher? Its all we have ever seen her express a desire to do, and while the show insisting through the mouths of Saru and Burnham that Tilly is command material always rang a bit false to me - how is a total mess like her (like me, like me) suppose to be command material - her doubting that did not seem to come from anything. Yeah, I know its suppose to have been triggered by the stressful situation on the Star phase or whatever, but it just felt out of left field.

However it started, though, I think they delivered in this episode. We see her journey with these cadets, struggle to command their respect, struggle to get them to connect with each other, and then succeed to do so because of her unique skillset and charm and ability to show vulnerability, which is a natural outgrowth of her character, and then reflect on the experience, and explain her prior desire to be a Captain was because of parental expectation, that her parent is gone now and will never know of her achievements, and thus she needs to live for herself now, and that perspective would be a helpful one for cadets. They stuck the landing. It makes sense, and was very emotionally resonant. Even if it is a retcon, even if this episode exists solely to justify writing Tilly off Discovery and onto a different, already cancelled by now show, they made this character change believable and relatable, something I find has been a big struggle of the show to this point.

I also liked both the Saru and Burnham Ni’Var plot. Saru flirting with the Vulcan head honcho was very cute, I hope it goes somewhere. Burnham being chosen to be the head of the exit clause counsel or whatever is another example of the show making it clear Burnham is the most important person in the universe at all times, but in the context of the episode it makes sense and its played well. Its neither here nor there but honestly I really wish Burnham were a Romulan, her repeated use as a branch to Vulcan when she is a human who was adopted by Vulcans always feels weird and out of place - I’m not a big fan of her connection to Spock at all, it feels like pointless fan service - but if they were going to do it, I feel it would have made more sense for her to be a Romulan, not a Human. You’d still be able to keep the issues she had adjusting to fitting in to a society that was not her own and emotional regulation in an overly strict, rigid society, which serves as a metaphor for a black child raised by white parents, which I believe is the metaphor they were shooting for with Burnham, but without the constant weirdness of the show needing to remind us she is technically Vulcan, since Vulcan and Romulus have since merged. She’d also make even more sense as an emblem of their unity. Anyway, tho, I should stop rewriting their show, the point is, I like this plot. Its was mostly self contained in this episode, it had cute moments, and while Burnam’s role still seemed outsized, it worked for this episode.

The C plot with Culber and Book was also resonant, and honestly is one of the first times I felt a real connection to Book as a character. He felt like kind of a big nothing all of season 3, and largely because, like everyone else in the show, he is always playing second fiddle to Burnham. Giving him scenes on his own, with other characters, to grow and expand so we can know who he is, is great. I was initially hesitant about them blowing up his goddamn planet just to give him some characterization, but it’s working. I do wish it had come a season earlier, and honestly maybe could have just been a backstory introduced to us in flashbacks in his introduction, but again thats me rewriting the show to what could have and should have been rather than what it is, and for what it is, I am glad he is finally being fleshed out in a way that makes him feel more real.

Adira also got some growth here. They are another character who generally feels underdeveloped due to the show always focusing on Burnham, and in particular their constant hostility to others correcting them was a bit confusing until it was further explored in the past few episodes. Honestly I think Discovery as a whole struggles with how to characterize its characters because it has so much plot it wants to get through they rarely have time to breathe, but this episode, with its comparatively lower stakes gave all these characters time to grow. I hope this continues. I’d still love to see literally anything happen to Gray that isn’t in Adira’s mind, directly related to them being a trans allegory, or both, because as is they are woefully underdeveloped and feels very much like a token character that exists merely to be a love interest for Adira, who themselves feels a bit like a token character who exists merely to be nonbinary and a child for Stamets and Dr. Culber, so Gray as a token of a token is especially thin. But again, thats really just because the show rarely has time for anyone but Burnham, and this episode did a good job otherwise, and I hope that continues.

All in all, this was definitely my favorite Discovery episode so far, and honestly stands up with some of the better Star Trek episodes in general. Its a shame it came so late in the show’s run, I don’t have much hope for my opinion of the show overall changing over the remainder of the season and a half that is left, but it definitely makes me wish it was given more seasons to continue to grow these characters. It feels like they are figuring things out.

Masculinity and the Left

 In a discord I am in there was some discussion a few days back about whether there are elements in leftism which unfairly target and alienate men who otherwise could be converted to the cause, and I wanted to express my thoughts on that, but in a less public place, because I am anxious about being misapprehended, or accidentally simply saying something I don’t really mean, or, lets be honest, outright saying I do mean that is dumb and being called on it. So I’m posting it here, nominally public but where no one is likely to call me out.

Anyway, some people were identifying it as pop culture feminism, but honestly I think it is overly reductive to say that only pop culture feminism could possibly alienate men who could otherwise be converted. Those people saying it, I think, were doing so out of a similar impulse to my own impulse to discuss it here rather than publicly - because publicly stating that leftism broadly might alienate men is an opinion that will absolutely get you attacked in leftist spaces, not necessarily even because anyone disagrees, but because of the idea that men who would be alienated by leftist positions are worth reaching out to. And to some degree, that encapsulates the problem fairly succinctly - the mainstream position among leftists is that any man alienated by the statement of leftists positions is essentially already a Nazi and not worth engaging with.

I think that the truth is more nuanced. Definitely there are some “pop feminists” on the left, particularly among liberals whom, to be honest, are not really left at all and certainly not “leftist” if that term is to have any meaning, that say things like, “All men are trash” unironically and very possibly do not even mean for it to be an unfair generalization said to make a point but straight up literally, and certainly those statements likely do alienate some men. I do think that there are two other things that should be addressed. First, are there more truly leftist people who say things, either similar to these or different ones, which would also alienate large groups of men? And if so, could these men be converted through some other approach?

For the first question, this is controversial, but I think the answer is yes. A more nuanced, accurate, non-controversial among leftists statement might be “The patriarchy must be overthrown.” And I think a lot of the men who are alienated by “All men are trash,” would also be alienated by that statement. There are probably some who can draw the distinction, but I think most men who are incapable of making the mental jump from “I do not need to be offended at ‘All men are trash’ if I am a man who treats women and other oppressed groups with respect” are similarly incapable of making the jump of “Calls to overthrow the patriarchy do not necessarily mark me, a man, as an enemy.” The difference, however, is the first statement is an unfair generalization (which nevertheless gets said by those nominally on the left and which I would also nevertheless say a leftist man should just take in stride, knowing they are one of the good ones) while the second is absolutely a uncontroversial statement for a leftist to make, so any man who is going to be converted to a leftist needs to be able to understand that the second statement is not an attack on them, even if they cannot do so for the first.

So, to the second question, can these men be converted to leftism? I would say the answer is yes, and would even go further and say the answer is probably yes even for significantly more extreme people and yes, even actual Nazis. However, I do not think that simply refraining from making statements like these will do it. I also do not think any reasonable amount of organized leftist “outreach” to men like these makes a whole lot of sense. Men who are offended at these statements are not lost causes, but what they are, is difficult. There aren’t likely to be converted by token mass outreach unless said outreach compromises leftist principles by deliberately catering to men - something which absolutely always will compromise leftist principles, because a leftist movement that centers men is not a leftist movement. Leftism should be sensitive to men’s needs, to be sure, as it is about intersectionality and solidarity, but as an oppressor group, they cannot be the center of the conversation, and any leftist men need to understand that to be real allies.

You cannot simply expect right leaning men to understand that from any kind of mass messaging campaign. The only way these type of men are going to be converted is if someone they trust and respect sits down with them and talks through these issues with them. That sort of outreach is not going to happen on social media, where most of these alienating statements happen. Its gonna have to be sons and daughters and wives and coworkers and pastors reaching out to these men, and it will probably take some time and a lot of effort to get through to them. Some might get it after a single talk, but others will require a lifetime of work. And while doing that work is valuable and should be done, it should not be a priority of the leftist movement as a whole. Rather, individual leftists who have personal connections to right leaning people should be taking it upon themselves to do this outreach, as they are the only ones who can, while the movement focuses on outreach to oppressed peoples who are politically disaffected, who are a more natural and responsive group for the left to convert. Once a man understands and has internalized leftist principles, statements like those above should not be significant issues, as they’ll understand the context and that they are not meant as personal attacks on their identity, but until they have that perspective, you cannot expect them to grasp that. I also think that many leftists are unwilling to put in this work, they’d rather freeze out family members and friends who express right wing views, either for safety reason, which wre understandable, or just because they view such as so abhorrent, and I can totally understand and empathize with that perspective, but I do also think it is counterproductive in the long term. Do what you need to do to exist, and if that means cutting off all contact with right wing people in your personal life, then so be it, but if you can put in the effort to reach out to these people and talk them off a cliff, thats the better route.

As such, however, I honestly do not think it really matters that much if leftists say these alienating statements amongst themselves. Ones which are above reproach cannot be avoided if we are not compromising our values, and they will be alienating regardless, which makes sloppier, more mean spirited generalizations nevertheless a bit shrug worthy. Best practices would be to avoid them, but am I as a leftist man going to ask a woman who has just been sexually harassed not to say all men are trash? No, I am not. I can just shrug and ignore it knowing she doesn’t mean me, or even if she does, that she has a good reason to be mad.

I do think, though, that it makes sense for leftist men specifically to try to create and foster a new model of masculinity, The manosphere is, IMO, more a symptom than a cause of our social ills, but its a self feeding system. It may not be the origin, but it’s making it worse, and leftist men providing a counter model and a counter narrative has value. It needs to be leftist men doing this, though, because the movement as a whole has other priorities that should be focused on, and any such model should also be sure to include issues of general class consciousness, intersectionality, and how the patriarchy and capitalism harm men in its pitch so that young men who have not yet been captured by the manosphere can understand left principles as a whole, but also that it is possible to be a masculine man on the left without compromising your leftism or your manhood.

 My personal relationship to masculinity is difficult to explicate, and to be honest I am not sure whether or not I truly identify as a man, or what it means to do so, as I’ve never experience gender euphoria or identification with a gender as far as I can tell. When I was younger I did experience dysphoria related to whether or not I was manly enough and whenever I was challenged for not being manly enough, but in my early twenties, a female friend of mine scoffed at me mentioning offhandedly mild insecurity about drinking a pink drink and said I was the manliest man she knew, which for some reason freed me from that, and since then I haven’t really felt any feelings regarding my gender at all, or at least none that I can explain adequately. That being said, I also do not identify as anything else - I present masculine, I have no issues with male pronouns, so I consider myself male by default. It is the gender I was assigned and while I feel no ownership of it, it does not bother me to be labeled as such. I am getting a little sidetracked here, but where I was trying to go is I do feel some affinity for what my wife terms the “dominant orangutan” model of masculinity. I wrote an essay about this a few years ago, but to quickly summarize, in orangutans, there are essentially three genders: females, dominant males, and nomadic males. These are not necessarily the terms used by scientists, I am speaking from memory, but broadly speaking, dominant male orangutans claim a territory that overlaps with several females, and they protect those females. They also grow larger than nomadic males, with a distinct broadened face and longer, dreadlocked fur all over their bodies. Nomadic males stay small with normal faces, and attempt to reproduce stealthily by avoiding dominant males and forcing themselves on the females. I see myself as a husband and father first, and am very protective of my wife and kids - I am also extremely large, and so I do kind of identify with that as a possible model of my masculinity, if you want to call it that, but I do not identify with a masculinity concerned with sexual conquest, public displays of competitiveness or strength in order to intimidate others, or other toxic masculine traits. I think something along those lines, a masculinity focused on protection and advocacy for others could serve as a model for leftist men, although it need not be the only one. There can be others. I do think developing one or more is of value, but I also do think its not going to solve the problem. The problem with the manosphere, the loneliness epidemic among men, and the alienation of men from the left is one which I think can only be solved slowly by building personal connections.

Who or what do the Borg represent?

 Star Trek is and always has been a progressive show that addresses whatever political issues are relevant to the current times through use of allegory. Anyone who denies this is simply wrong: this is an explicit part of Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the show, and he never concealed it. You can like if if you are a conservative, you can choose to ignore the political allegory, but you cannot deny that it is there or that it is intended. That being said, its not always a one to one and while its usually pretty obvious, there are definitely things in the shows which have no obvious real world counterpart, or have multiple, or perhaps were not intended to be allegorical at all but to serve other purposes such as narrative convenience, character backstory, or simply because the writers think its cool. Thus, while any political allegory you can suss out of Star Trek has a high chance of being intended, we cannot automatically assume everything is allegory and has meaning.

The Klingons in the original series were intended to be the Russians, and the Federation the United States. Thats fairly obvious and uncontested. I think said allegory falls apart in later series, but that was definitely the intent originally. The Cardassians are the Nazis. The Bajorans and the Maquis both can serve as metaphors for the Jews, the Palestinians, the Native Americans, and the French resistance that inspired their name. The Ferengi are capitalists writ large. But… who are the Borg?

I used to think that maybe they are supposed to represent Communism, which bothered me the Federation is supposed to be a utopian, post scarcity, socialist or at the very least highly egalitarian future version of the United States, and while communism is an enemy of the United States in our time, I felt having an alien race represent the spectra of communism so directly undermine the utopian vision of what the United States could be, since although the shows are rarely explicit about the political ideology of the Federation, its no money, no greed, benefits for all ethos definitely seems Communist adjacent despite its connection to the United States. Having the Klingons represent Soviet Russia is one thing, since that is a specific political entity who not all socialists and communist necessarily think is well meaning. Communism generally though portrayed as a foe seems to be a more pointed statement, and one that did not match the supposed politics of the show to me. But that did seem the obvious connection, since US propaganda against communism often portrays it as requiring all consuming conformity and a subduction of independence and freedom, just like the Borg. But if they don’t represent communism, what do they represent?

At this point I want to make clear that I have not read any political analyses of the Borg on Star Trek. I say this both because, maybe there is some obvious, well accepted interpretation of them I am missing. This should not be interpreted as me disagreeing with such, I’m just ignorant. By the same token, though, if what I am about to say IS the standard interpretation, well, then I want credit for coming up with it independently, even if the credit amounts to, “Yeah, duh, we all knew that.”

I think the Borg are actually suppose to represent the monoculture we are indoctrinated under in late capitalism through mass media and social pressure to conform. That was a big concern in the 90s, when the Borg were introduced, that mass culture was forcing conformity on people, that we were all being forced into the same boxy homes and the same tedious jobs and buying the same products and watching the same TV shows. Night of the Living Dead is about this, and the Borg are basically just zombies in space, with the added theming if technology, making them even more apropos for the comparison. You could probably narrow it even to American monoculture and its spreading over the world, bulldozing native cultures and appropriating elements into its own. Resistance is futile, your cultural and technological uniqueness will be added to our own, and so on and so forth. This does make the fact that the Federation, usually a proxy for the US, is facing them a little odd, but as noted, the allegory need not be 1:1, and the Federation itself is an idealized vision of the US, so it makes sense if one thinks that mass culture threatens the possibility of a utopian version of the US that you’d make a villain based around it, just like the Ferengi represent the threat capitalism poses to Utopia.

Honestly I thought I’d have more to say about this, but now that I have written it out it seems 1) plainly apparently true and 2) I don’t have much more to say since I didn’t watch any episodes in preparation for this, so I cannot really easily point to an example and say, “See?” I also suspect that this allegory probably does loosely hold for the danger they represent, but past their initial introduction it would not surprise me if they get used in ways that don’t track with this, particularly in Voyager. Since I am rewatching that now, maybe I’ll revisit this theory when I get to those parts of Voyager.

Bargaining with God

 I’m not religious. I never have been, and I expect I never will be. Some of my earliest memories are arguing with classmates about the existence of god, and to be clear, this was in daycare and kindergarten. I may have been a bit of an asshole. In any case, I would say that I don’t really “get” the idea of religion. But I will also admit, I sometimes entertain the existence of god, and attempt to pray? Communicate? Not honestly sure what the best thing to call it is.

The idea that your relationship with god would be transactional seems ridiculous to me. What could we have that god could possibly want, and why would he want to reward people who beg him for things? And to be fair, I don’t think any serious Christian theologians would argue a proper relationship with Jesus should be transactional. Jesus, to my understanding, wants your faith, wants you to believe in him - which, to be fair, is something you can do or give that he presumably cannot on his own, or at least cannot without forcing you, which would defeat the purpose, and all he offers in exchange is salvation after death - nothing in this material world and thus no way to actually know whether he is holding up his end of the bargain. Since that still does feel kind of transactional, to be honest, but the transaction occurs entirely in your own mind and in the afterlife, not on the material plane, and I guess thats better? Regardless, my impression is that any Christian worth their salt would tell you its different, and although I don’t really “get” it I’m willing to accept that for them, it isn’t.

But Christianity isn’t the only religion, My understanding is that Judaism traditionally DOES think God rewards you on the material plane - my understanding, which I want to stress is one of a lay person who has Jewish friends and who in college took several Near Eastern and Judaic Studies classes, but is not an expert either religiously or anthropologically and thus would willingly take correction, as well as I am of course by necessity generalizing here - but yes, my understanding is that the deal in Judaism is they have a covenant with God, and in exchange for honoring that covenant - which I believe includes, if I’m not mistaken, an exhortation to be fruitful and productive on this world - God will grant you success here. Not being Jewish, I definitely wouldn’t say I fully understand the implications of that, but it is my understanding that at least traditionally Judaism did not countenance an afterlife and thus the rewards for being one of God’s people were meant to pay off here and now, not in the hereafter.

Regardless of whether I am right about that - and part of me wants to delete that paragraph because its the sort of thing that if I am wrong I feel is likely to leave me open to a lot of criticism - most ancient religions were not only similar, but if anything more explicitly transactional. The gods want sacrifices, they even have preferences for specific types or colors of animals, and specific parts of those animals must be offered to them, and in exchange they will grant appropriate blessings according to their sphere of influence, and if you do not receive those benefits, its because the god did not accept your sacrifice - either it was inadequate for what you asked, or maybe they just hate you. Regardless, the gods were definitely seen as someone you can bargain with - which just feels incredibly odd for me for divine beings, even if, practically, if the cosmos did really work that way, I’d kind of appreciate it, since how to lead a happy life would be plainly apparent - make proper sacrifices to the gods, and ask them for favor. You’d still have the issue of how to get a proper sacrifice, this would not make the world fair, but it would make the world predictable, which has its own merits.

In many ways this is my biggest complaint about actual reality. As a kid I was sold on the idea that America was a meritocracy, and that if I was smart and worked hard, I’d find success. By any standard metric I achieved great things in school, I got through graduate school and law school working the whole time, and then I failed to pass the bar, failed to secure a job, and my body fell apart because I was pushing myself too hard. If there are rewards due to me for my faith in capitalism and the American dream they must be coming in the afterlife. Although unfortunately I’ve lost my faith since, so I guess I will no longer get them. Anyway, though, as this has kind of gotten off track, as where I was going is, I sometimes do think thoughts at “god”. Things like, hey god, if Z happens, I’ll believe in you. If X happens, I’ll find w religion I think seems reasonable and join it. If Y happens, I’ll sacrifice a goat in your honor. These requests vary from mundane and silly, like Mother 3 getting localized, to serious, like having another baby, or absurd, like giving me magical powers. If any of these have ever been granted, even remotely, I forgot about the prayer before it was granted. And like, if what god really wants is faith, thats understandable. I don’t have faith. I don’t understand faith. But living in an unjust world with little control over anything, even my own life, engaging in magical thinking is often a comfort, so I toss out some prayers? demands? requests? into the void, just to see what happens, in hopes that if there is something out there looking over us, they’ll take pity on me and actually communicate back and tell me what they want, what the secret is to their favor, what I can do to fix my back or at least shoot some lasers out of my eyes.

When has a man beaten a game?

 Is it when he rolls the credits? Or is it when he experiences 100% of the developer intended content of that game? Or is it when he sets himself a stupid goal and then achieves said goal? Or is it when the game is forgotten? I was sitting here thinking what I wanted to write and also thinking about Pokopia, which is what I stopped doing to write this, and this weird and really not that funny mash up of Dr. Hiriluk’s dying speech from One Piece and my thoughts on Pokopia occurred to me, so I decided to write it out and see what I could say about it.

So, I beat Pokopia’s main story yesterday. I’ve had the game for approximately a week, and I played the fuck out of it: 55 hours in 7 days according to my profile, which is less per day than when I beat Xenoblade Chronicles X in eleven days and 160 hours of gameplay, but still a lot. I’m still playing, however, as I at minimum want to unlock every Pokemon in the game, which could be considered roughly 100% the game, although there is also a catalog of items and unlocks to get and I’m sure you could rack up some other things to do for true 100% if you wanted to. But I also have another self appointed goal, and this one is not one the game necessarily points you to doing, at least not in the way I am doing - I want to build an underground city in Palette Town, which I named Moonside.

Palette Town is the free build area in Pokopia, the one town without a main plot, but it is not entirely without direction. You start with Eevee there, and are given a set of challenges which when completed unlock various eeeveelutions, which will likely shape most peoples choices when building this custom town. It also has three plans hidden in it for giant temples that when completed spawn legendary pokemon, so most peoples Palette Towns will likely contain these temples eventually. My goal, however, innspired by Dwarf Fortress, is to dig down and mine out an underground complex, which I will then fill with these three temples and enough housing for all the Pokemon who live there, and decorate the cave with glowing stone for a cool glowy underground cave aesthetic. This will prove to be a huge effort - I managed to place the blueprint for the ice temple today and the amount of rock I need to mine out just to start building is ridiculous, not to mention the other two and anything else I want to build in this city.

So why am I doing it? Well, for fun, obviously. But I do have an issue with games. I used to always quit games right before I beat them. A big reason is likely ADHD - I get distracted and hyperfocused on something else. But I also think part of it was if I beat something, I tend to lose interest in it. By never beating games, I’m more willing to go back to them later, and thus prolong the enjoyment. Before I started streaming, I had beaten relatively few games - FF7, 8, 10, and Tactics, Earthbound, Super Mario RPG, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Fallout 3 are ones I know I had beaten before streaming, I’m honestly not sure how many more. Oh, a bunch of Pokemon games. So maybe a decent amount, but far more that I played for twenty or forty or sixty hours but stopped before the final moments. But streaming made me feel like I -had- to beat games or my audience would be disappointed. Was that true? Probably not to be honest, but it gave me motivation and ultimately changed my habits so that now I tend to stick through games I like and beat them.

But I also found that once I beat a game, I pretty much always lose all motivation to play further. I’m not a 100% person. I’ve beaten FF7 probably more than ten times, yet I have beaten Emerald Weapon twice and Ruby Weapon never. Once I’ve finished the main content, even if I was super into a game and had elaborate post game plans, I usually lose motivation and move on. Sometimes I can sustain it for a while, particularly in games less story focused or with a lot of post ending story, but I only on the rarest occasions can do anything close to calling 100% of a game. This is only really a problem because I often have quite elaborate post game plans - the last time I played FF7 I wanted to master all materia and had complex post game builds planned out for my characters and intended to beat Emerald weapon for the second time and Ruby Weapon for the first. I ended up beating Emerald Weapon at like L55 before going into Midgar while still on Disc 2, put down the game for six months and then came back to beat it the game, which still quit there, and I was even streaming it so had extra motivation. Actually thats a lie, I’ve started FF7 twice since then, but thats the last time I got out of Disc 1.

So will I end up finishing either of my post game goals in Pokopia? I dunno. I hope at least to actually get all Pokemon, but I kinda doubt I’ll get my city anywhere close to complete. And if mining out area for the temples proves arduous, I may not even get all Pokemon. But I’m having fun, for now, which is all that actually matters.

Another Star Trek Pitch

 I haven’t seen all Star Trek that exists, so I do risk when I make pitches like this recapitulating something that in fact already has been done. For instance in my previous pitch that the next Star Trek should be about rebelling against the Federation grown corrupt and evil, I definitely was concerned that maybe Discovery in fact WAS that show, since most of it was produced under Trump’s first administration, and I legitimately did not know more at the time than the plot of the first two seasons and that the remaining seasons took place in the future, and also that the future Federation was somewhat compromised. I have now finished the third season and it doesn’t seem like it is going that way, although it remains to be seen - my opinion of Discovery is that it is an interesting show, and a frustrating one, and one that if it was not named Star Trek I’d probably like more, but it is undoubtedly my least favorite Star Trek - although I have not yet seen Picard, or Strange New Worlds, or Lower Decks, or the Animated Series. I probably dislike the reboot movies more I guess, Into Darkness especially.

Anyways, I’m getting side tracked. My point is, I have not seen every Star Trek in existence, but one thing that I am fairly sure hasn’t been done in more than a single one off episode is having a series where the concept is essentially the same as TOS and TNG - that is, an episodic series with relatively little ongoing plot, although I’d be fine with a DS9 level plot where each season has some major events but most episodes are purely episodic and just use the major plot as a setting backdrop - and where specifically they are on an ongoing exploratory mission. Instead of exploring the Alpha and Beta quadrants as in those series though, or the Gamma and Delta as was done in DS9 and Voyager, although neither series focused on exploration, but in new galaxies entirely. Introduce some new technology that allows galaxy hopping, and then have that be the premise.

This opens up a big opportunity for writers to do whatever the hell they want, similar to the promise of Voyager, although hopefully the writers would take better advantage. Discovery could have, and perhaps should have been this series - its name heavily implies it would be about exploration, and it is the first Star Trek series set explicitly on a science vessel, but instead Season 1 was about a war and Season 2 about evil AI and time shenanigans and Season 3 was about an apocalypse, none of which have anything to do with Discovery, but I’m getting side tracked, because the biggest reason that Discovery could have been this series is the spore drive. We don’t really know that much about the mycelial network, and in at least the first three seasons it is never shown capable of doing that, but since it IS capable of going to the Mirror Universe and damage to it there damages it in the Prime Universe, I think it is safe to assume the Spore Drive could do it. I am under the vague impression that at the end of Season 5 of Discovery the Spore Drive is retconned out of existence somehow, put in a box and never seen again, but if that is wrong, then the obvious time to set such a series would be after Discovery, coterminous or right after Starfleet Academy, and certainly even with a different technology, any technology capable of travel between galaxies should probably be set after the existing Trek series, since such is not shown as common in them - although again, that did not stop Discovery from introducing such a Trek before The Original Series timeline and then retconning it as classified and sent to the future, so 🤷‍♀️.

This should be the first ship sent outside the galaxy to explore for an extended period - IIRC there is a TNG episode where they are teleported outside the Galaxy by Q, and an early TOS one where they attempt to just fly out at Warp 1 (and someone becomes a god because of it?!?) but to my knowledge none where that is the basic premise ongoingly. I think the technology also should be fairly limited in power - this is the only prototype, and using it should require enough resources of whatever kind they cannot use it as an easy escape button. Watching The Original Series I am struck by how limited the tech is and how refreshing that actually is in a Star Trek series - while most problems in any Trek are solved by a paragraph of fake science and some keypresses, it comes up a LOT in TOS that they simply cannot do something due to lack of resources, time, equipment, etc, far more than even on Voyager, a show explicitly about being stranded notorious for ignoring it constantly, and its honestly a great source of conflict. Even in a far future setting, a galaxy hopping ship would constantly be facing such challenges, and thats a good thing for writers of the show. Even something as simple as the engine requires a cooling down period between uses could make things interesting - Sliders essentially did a version of this with the portals opening and closing at random times, leaving them stranded between. One Piece has a similar mechanic with Log Poses needing to acclimate, although that is one of the few elements in One Piece that never comes back; IIRC its mentioned in Little Garden that it would take 100 years, and I think its occasionally mentioned in context of “We can do X while it acclimates” or “Don’t worry this isn’t a real island so we won’t lose our log pose magnetism” but is never actually a source of conflict again. Anyway, point being, limitations are interesting, and even in a far future setting, writing in some excuses to give limitations is smart.

Thats about it for the pitch. Set it in the future so it doesn’t need to worry about contradicting future lore, let them galaxy hop, and basically let writers make whatever crazy setting and problem of the day for each episode, a new frontier wild west in space helping the needy with the power of conversations around a conference table, with a fresh concept but an old formula. Thats what Star Trek really needs to please old time fans, in my opinion - or at least this old time fan - and I think if its good, you can find ways to attract young fans without reinventing the wheel. Just having hot young characters and making them kiss works, especially young hot queer characters. You could also cast famous people. But bring the formula back to a version of what it was, and free it from all this legacy baggage that has plagued this prequel series.

stream of consciousness

 so I have a topic I want to write on at some point but i am not particularky invested in spending a really long time today writing this post so I dont want to write that post yet, but I still want to do somethjng. I intially thought I might do a poem again, but after trying to make a limerick about discovery in the shower for really no reason whatsoever and then abandoning it after I realized what the fuck I was dojng, I decided to instead just write some stream of consciousness. thus this post won’t be edited, at least not more than my autism allows, as eveytime I make a typo I am dying to correct it (but I am leaving most of them) and just trying to keep going.

i remember being told this was useful for brainstorming or idea generation or something,but honestlyI am not sure I ever wuite understood the pointl But I am doing it anyways just to see what kight come out of ke. Keke. Baba is you looks like a great game, and I evenknow the developer, but I still have jot tried it after years. I bought it, I own it, I have seen others play it, but I have jevr actually sat down and played it muself. Puzzle games tend not to appeal to me, as I don’t get more satisfaction fr9m solving puzzles. I think it comes from being a “smart kid” and high achiever where I expect to be able to solve puzzles easily, and so if it takes any significant amount of effort, I feel like a failure. Logically I know this is silly, that puzzle games are meant to be challenging and it is not actually an indication that I am a failure if I struggle - and objectively, I don’t realky struggle, I am not -bad- at puzzle games, I just usually do not find them fun.

In particular the yoe of ouzzles I don’t like are ones where you have to read the mind of the ouzzle maker.  There are a couple different kinds of these, but basicalky thr commonality is that multiple logical solutions existm but only kne is valid, because it is the one the ouzzle maker thought of. A simple example I can think of is common in “Connections” games where the goal is to group sixteen words into four groups of four. Oftentimes the goal of these games is in fact to set up multiple false groupings to, in essence, bait this sort of failure, yet the few times I have attempting these - and I should admit upfr9nt that I do mean “few” as in, I’ve looked at maybe ten and completed less than five - I have found multiple alternative solutions depending on just how technical you want to get, oftentimes i;volving things like, “words with an I in them” and “animals who have scales” other really specific groupings that may not have ever been thought of by the creatir because they were thinking if four other categories, and their false leads were additional categories different than the ones I an invwnting. I’d also toss anything that involves “finding something hidden” as an example of these types of ouzzles - there you need to read the mind of the puzzle maker of where the thing is hidden, or that there is something hidden at all. Classic Zelda games are often full of these types of puzzles.

Here are toes of ouzzles I di like, tho. MAN THAT SENTENCE WAS POORLY SPELLED. woops capslck. Okay, puzzles I like. I like puzzles that follow strict rules and are predictable. Namely I reallyenjoyed the physics based puzzles in breath of the wild, because it was usually very apparent what the goal was, and solving it was merely a matter of applying the physics of the game and the way your specific, limited toolset works. Thus I enjoyed Breath of the Wild far more than any previous Zelda, despite the fact I have been playing them since… well, technically Zelda 1, as I played it in daycare, but Link to the Past was the first one I owned and Ocarina the first one I beat.

So why am I talking about Zelda? Well it occurs tk ke this may not even seem that much like stream of sc9nsciouness as opposed to poorly edited normal writing if mine, and thats because I usually write kind of like this anyway and tend to build structures of sriting in my mind ahead of time to fill. Anoutline in my head, as it were, and thus the diversion about Zelda was actually preplanned to provide examples of whether I might like Baba is You. From what I have seen, kt seems like it does in fact follow rules and that results should be fairly predictabke and 8ntuitive in it, and thus I might like it. But, I have also heard it is extremely hard, which makes me doubt that assessment, as in my experience hard often means, involves puzzles which require some degree of rrading the puzzle creators mind. Monkey Island and other adventure games are very much filled with those kind of puzzles. I love watching people play those,but playing them myself, I do not enjoy - I’d sooner look up a guide than play them naturally. Baba is You though feels like I kight like it. I’lkhave to play it someday.

Should I stop writing now? I have def8nitely settle into a specific rhythm, wrote on a specific topic, and then finished basically what I have to say about it, Had I sat down wih an idea of what I was writing in mind I would call it done now. Is this how stream of c9nsciiness is supposed to go? I don’t know. 23kll call it quits for now because nothing new is soringing up right jow, although I did just think the word crococidles, im not fixing that

Celebrating my wife’s birthday, so here’s a quick poem

 fields of straw waving

the shy reaper minds her work

conflict in the clouds