You know how last time I talked about ideas and where they go to die? The reasons why they don't work?
Well, here's something I dwell on semi-regularly.
We've all been there. You get out of work, and you realise you have to get yourself something to eat for that night, and something for the morning before you go out and do it all again, oh and some toilet paper, and maybe a snack, so you trudge your way around your local shopping place.
You avoid the guys somehow drunk already that are trying to buy cigarettes. You grab your dinner, and dinner for tomorrow because you're smart like that. You circumnavigate the older folks who are double-stacked in an aisle because they're talking about something unrelated. There's the bog roll. There's the breakfast. Oh look, those things you like are on sale. Grab them too.
You check your mental shopping list. We got it, we got everything. All that's left to do is go pay.
And now you are presented with your choice.
Out of the eight checkouts, two of them have people sat at them, and one of those has the little thing out to indicate no more customers please - they're half an hour late going home already because nobody's come to relieve them - and then...
...and then you have these guys.
Yup.
I will say up front that I use these things quite a lot.
One reason is that, when I am done for the day, my social batteries are empty. I kind of want to deal with people as little as possible. This may come across as arrogant or elitist, but it's more just... god, I am a stressy mess when I'm tired and in pain, and I don't know how anyone else deals with me. So it's at least halfway sparing someone else the bullshit of dealing with me.
"But John," I hear you cry, surrounding me in the street and pointing, always pointing. "But John - you're usually so very much on the side of the worker! How can you patronise these soulless bastard-machines!?"
I mean, I'm not gonna deny that they are annoying. Even when properly calibrated they kind of train you to do everything at their own pace and in their own way, otherwise they don't co-operate. Sometimes they don't co-operate because, well, they don't really want to. If they break, there's a good chance that you are waiting for days for repairs.
Unsurprisingly, given that they are generally annoying machines and also appear to be replacing actual workers, there's movements against using them. Campaigns to suggest not using them, ever. Lining up in a queue for as long as it takes - anything, rather than using those new-fangled robot overlords.
Here's the thing:
That ain't gonna work.
So... picture this. You walk into your local big ol' grocery store. Not like a Happy Shopper or a Spar or something - like a BIG place. In the US, think Wal*Fart. In the UK, think Tesco or something. You got it.
And there's... like 25 regular checkouts. 25. But only 12 of them have people at them. And there's about 24 self-service machines. But nobody's using those, because they stand in solidarity with the workers.
Except the number of checkouts - regular and self-service - is predicated on the store's average footfall. Guarantee you there's been analytics done and they have worked out how many or how few they need. They just happen to be low-balling the amount of staff available right now because nobody has any money so people are buying less so nobody has any money et cetera.
So the staff on the checkouts are having a hard time, now. Because everyone wants to use them, and that means people are waiting longer, which puts people in a bad mood, and it's no fun being rammed in the first place. But it's okay, right? It's all in solidarity with them. And it isn't the customer's fault they are being put in this position, it's management. Right? It's corporate.
Yeah, it is corporate. And guess what?
Corporate aren't gonna change their current policy when they've already paid the thousands upon thousands of pounds required to install those machines.
See, the current methodology behind dealing with problems at work is as follows:
1) Make staff bear the brunt of the hardship.
2) Failing that, pass the suffering on to the customers, as long as they still pay.
3) Don't piss off the shareholders.
We all want better rights for workers, because we are workers. We work for a living. We don't want to get treated like dirt just to make sure that the reduced amount of money coming into a business can still maintain management and shareholder income levels.
I'd like to think that direct action like customers not using self-service will work. I don't honestly think it will - not unless it is accompanied by a far more wide-ranging overall campaign.
Unionisation, for one. Get organised. Get legal representation. Get members of the public involved. Spread good information about the facts of the situation. Push for your peers to enter management if at all possible, to try and change the abiding culture. Vote for pro-worker political parties. Organise.
I know it's difficult - I know it takes longer than just using a different lane. I know it isn't as trendy or as funny as talking about how much we all hate self-service machines.
But it IS effective - and if you don't work at one of these stores, then I promise you, you know someone who does.
We're all just rats in a maze down here. Let's see if we can't spread out some of this cheese.
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So one sign of "growing up" - and by that I mean a growing sense of cynicism, of world-weariness in general, and of dissatisfaction with society as it exists - is that every good idea you have is followed up by all the reasons why it won't work, before the notion even leaves your lips.
And it's specific reasons why it won't work, too. It's not, for example, that for a human to be able to flap a set of angel wings sufficient to carry them airborne the wings and muscles would have to be huge and their bones would have to be hollow. Like, sure, that's part of it, but - sorry, I got off track.
No, the real reasons why things won't work is when you add the societal, political, fiscal element.
Ideas is a pretty broad term, I know.
It covers a wide variety of common-or-garden stuff. It is everything from an idle musing about how a certain musical genre should make a comeback, to the best way to end the illegal occupation of Palestine, to the way in which the DC film universe could be made interesting again.
Four words for you, on that last one: Booster Gold, Blue Beetle.
I digress, again.
So I had this thought while stood inside Brighton train station a week ago last Friday.
I was looking at the roof. That big old roof, just... sitting up there, doing very little. It's about 60 meters across by about 120 meters lengthwise, slightly curved, slopes facing east and west - it's slightly narrower than, but slightly longer than, Brighton & Hove Albion's home pitch at Falmer Stadium. (No I'm not calling it the American Express Stadium, fuck off.)
That's a lot of solar panels.
Now immediately you should start hearing, in your head, reasons why that thought should be discarded, because that is exactly what I am talking about.
It's a listed building, for one. Right? Can't go messing with a historic train station roof. And where's the money gonna come from? And besides, it won't generate THAT much power, and the disruption to commuters and travel services, so on, so on, on it goes...
Well a 3.5kw array set up on the roof of a house, with an area of 25 square meters, costs £6,000 and generates about 3,000 kw/h a year. The roof of Brighton Station is 7200 square meters. A significant proportion of that is glass, but solar glass exists, so the actual lighting situation can remain the same. Assuming the cost is the same but we lose some efficiency for the sake of scale and non-ideal facing, let's scale up: that is a cost of around £1.8 million, but it could generate 600,000 kilowatt/hours over a year.
In comparison, Drax Power Station - the biggest power station in the UK, which runs on biogas and coal - produces 24 terawatt/hours a year, some four orders of magnitude higher. However: Drax Power Station also outputs over 25 million tons of CO2 a year, and runs on materials which aren't renewable. Also, in fairness, Brighton train station isn't a power plant. It's a train station.
There's a lot of train stations in the UK.
The UK uses some 2,300 terawatt/hours a year in total, from figures taken in 2014. That's a hundred Draxes. I know we can't make all that up from solar train station rooftops, not implying we can - but every watt/hour we generate from the sun and the wind is another lump of coal we don't have to worry about replacing, and another chunk of sky unpolluted.
Drax Power Station itself is on a 15 square kilometer site. If we ripped out the burny bits and replaced them with solar bits, that would make it the second biggest solar plant on the face of this earth, overtaking the Kamuthi plant in India.
Speaking of renewables. Brighton also has this: Rampion offshore wind farm.
Rampion produces about 1,400 gigawatt/hours a year. E.On, who built Rampion, claim that it is enough to power 350,000 homes - given that Brighton and Hove only has a population of about 230,000, that isn't too shabby.
There's also tidal and geothermal, which I'm not even going to touch on, but both of which are tried and tested methods of powering us without digging massive fucking holes in the earth and chucking molecules of nastiness into the air.
It's not a case of renewables being unable to take up the slack of our other energy production. They patently can. We have the technology. We have the resources. We have the knowhow.
But, but, but...
All these solutions don't fall short because of physical impossibilities. We've built solar plants. We've built wind farms. What stops more of them happening? What stops them, but permits stuff like fracking, which is genuinely one of the most despicable things one can do to an area?
People.
People, with vested corporate interest, and lackadaisical attitudes towards crisis. People who literally profit from crisis. People in positions of privilege that either know they won't be troubled by this crisis, or that they'll be dead before it happens.
People who think that throwing their full support behind renewable energy is probably a bit of a political risk, and are unwilling to give up their significant payroll to stick their head over the top of the trench works.
People who didn't want wind turbines in a big empty field, and dug their heels in, and didn't get a wind turbine, who are now facing the possibility of that field hosting a fracking site - which has a lot more push behind it from outside of government.
People who like lovely old buildings and want them to remain lovely and old.
People who see headlines like this...
...and don't realise that the problem isn't the power being used, it is how the power is being generated.
People.
I have talked about hoverboards, before. This is just an extension of that particular thought process, really - a hyper-specific one. (Weirdly enough as I look back on that blog, that one links back to another blog I did ages ago which includes me bemoaning the lack of solar panels everywhere. I've blogception'd myself. BLOGCEPTION.)
It just gets... tiring, I guess. To have one simple idea and immediately hear all the crappy reasons why it will never happen. Not why it wouldn't work - why it will never happen.
Really fucking disheartening for a scifi writer.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
I try not to get too introspective, but I fail. It's the nature of the beast. Can't not think, right? Can't turn the brain off at will. Too easy. So we end up thinking. And fair warning, this is going to get pretty introspective, and not necessarily in a good way.
It's been the seventh consecutive year of steadily - albeit slowly - worsening chronic illness.
That's a hard thing to look in the eye, you know? That's a hard thing to cope with. I mean. One of these illnesses just started affecting me worse after I turned thirty, but one of them was brought into being by two separate bouts of illness that left me... basically fucked.
A lot of life, passing by, half unlived.
It is the hand we are dealt, though. We can only play with the cards we hold.
Looking into the future can be hard, from that perspective.
Like at one point I legitimately thought there wasn't going to be one. I thought I was dead in the next day, week, month. I couldn't envisage there being a future, certainly not one to plan for. That isn't even to do with the lung condition, that's just depression talking. (I say JUST depression. You know what I mean.)
I just want to finish the book I am working on, generally experience as little stress and suffering as possible, and... yeah. I understand what dad meant when he said to me that all he wanted was some peace. I can understand that.
Just keep on keeping on, right?
Happy birthday, me.
Sorry it's a short one, this week. I'm busy painting Brighton red.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
It's come round again folks - it's another edition of the blog you love the most, the show without the host, you asky and me talky - it's Readers Request! If you don't know, it's where I ask people to provide prompts or questions for me to address, and then I... address them.
And I got a boatload of them this time round, so let's crack on, shall we?
Boobs! - YAY someone did it! (For those not in the know, almost every time, someone suggests boobs.)
Favorite spider man film. Also favorite super hero film. - I blogged about the Marvel List recently, and... though I haven't seen Far From Home just yet? My favourite Spider-Man film AND my favourite super hero film are one and the same. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.
(Also bewbs) - Excellent, excellent. Yes.
Moobs - Also kind of a fan. I mean I have some. Picture not included.
A treasure Planet live action remake perfect cast and any other additional changes - So in 2002, when Treasure Planet came out, I loved it. I like my scifi, and this one had a main character that I genuinely saw a lot of myself in. I think it's one of the few Disney cartoons that could actually benefit from a live action treatment. Casting is difficult - but I think you could do a lot worse than having someone like Taron Egerton playing Jim, someone like Rory McCann as Long John Silver, and Captain Amelia - well I dunno, maybe Charlize Theron or Zoe Saldana?
A reboot of The Deerhunter ... using only boobs - I am... not sure that the average boob can convey the pathos required for the Deerhunter. (Which is an amazing film, if you haven't seen it.)
JourneyQuest season 4 Kickstarter. - Okay folks. JourneyQuest needs our help. Check it out on Kickstarter right here. It's a fantasy series that is made by folks well-acquainted with the tropes of the genre and of gaming inside that genre. They're a driven, talented bunch and they deserve success.
Favourite parts/moments of collectable card games - My favourite moments are when either myself or my opponent pull off the most weird and outlandish combo that you can possibly imagine. Like you are laughing halfway through the description of how it all works, and you aren't even mad when you have to concede. That's why I play these games.
Thoughts on 'Pirates of Darkwater' - NOY JITAT! I loved this show. Such a crime that it got done dirty. It deserved like a hundred episodes and a movie. If you don't know? Here's a link to a "history of" video that I liked.
If you could give any song the superhero treatment, like Immigrant song in Thor: Ragnarok, what would it be and how? - Hard question. I loved how Immigrant Song was used in Ragnarok (both times), and how The Chain was used in Guardians 2 (both times). So if we assume songs from a similar period, then I am thinking that a particularly emotive, introspective or soul-bearing moment would be suitably accompanied by Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Perhaps something involving certain members of the Avengers or their compatriots who are no longer present?
Times when a creator has talked about something they've done that you found interesting/changed perspective/deepened your like of the thing. - I really enjoy listening to songwriters in particular talk about their songs and the creative process that goes into them. I like making-of documentaries in regard to movies, too; Dangerous Days about Blade Runner is particularly insightful. Actors, though - when you listen to an actor talk passionately about a role they've enjoyed playing, that juices me a lot. The one example I think of? Will Smith, talking about making Ali. About his respect for the man, his dedication to making it all look real. The results speak for themselves.
Really interesting director's commentary was my first thought but interviews, online posts anything firsthand really. I love Song Exploder podcast for exactly this ^.^ http://songexploder.net/ - This was an additional comment to the above, but deserves to be included, because my second example comes from Song Exploder - if you don't know I love Nina Cried Power by Hozier, well you do now, it's an AMAZING song. And my appreciation for it only grew when I heard him on Song Exploder, discussing how he wrote it and how it came together. You can catch that here.
Coping with existential dread. - Literally the only way I can do this is by not thinking about it. I know that's not a suitable solution but it's all I have. Also; if you have seen any of the recent articles talking about how likely it is we are living in a simulation, or seen Sword Art Online, or similar - well my answer to all that is, if your life is still here even if it's just a simulation, then you still have to live it. The risks and rewards are all just the same. Even if none of it is real, that means everything is as real as it is going to get. Your happiness is as real as you are, and that is why we exist. To be happy.
Perfidious Albion - I mean, yeah. We have a rep for backstabbing and self-interest, and we have that because we're self-interested back-stabbers on the world stage. Not much we can do about that if a significant swathe of the population keep voting for assholes.
Also perfidious albinos - The Other Being The Bad Guy is a trope that makes me kind of sweaty. Albinism gets kind of used like that. Matrix Reloaded, The DaVinci Code, The Princess Bride and Star Trek have all used this particular trope in a pretty shady way. Not a big fan. It's a shame when you have generally cool people like Yellowman (reggae artist), Anderson Cooper (news anchor) and Shaun Ross (model) doing their best in the face of this nonsense.
Also perforated albinos - Caliban in Logan gets perforated. I think. Shrapnel?
And perfidious albatross - YOU CAN'T FUCKING TRUST AN ALBATROSS
Bewbs -
Current favorite podcast - I don't listen to podcasts really, but I recently got referred to Start With This, a podcast for creative type folks from the Nightvale crew.
How you go about getting out of bed when every fiber of your being is screaming to remain in your warm, cozy, cocoon. - I kind of have to, the longer I spend in one position, the worse I hurt - so actually getting out of bed is sometimes an absolute blessed relief. Unless moving hurts more than laying still. Which I don't get to find out until I try it.
Mecha (or anything really) you'd love to see fight Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Well gee, I dunno - but I'd love to see Coop from Megas XLR throw down with TTGL. If only because I know he and Kamina would be instant friends afterwards. Can you even imagine?
For bonus geek points the tightness of ones shoes and the relevance of said fact in light of ones amnesia in relation to the methods of dancing - "Something my father said. He was... Old, very old at the time. I went into his room, and he was sitting, alone in the dark, crying. So I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "My shoes are too tight. But it doesn't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance." I never understood what that meant until now. My shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance." I love Babylon 5.
Transformers gundam throwdown - Okay, do we mean Gundam universe, or actual Gundams? Cos like. In a fight, even the gruntiest Transformers are gonna win against Zakus and GMs. But the Gundam itself is a whole other beast. Not a lot of Transformers are powered by psychic craziness. I probably think Megatron would win against the Grandpa Gundam, but that's mostly because of who Megatron is rather than his actual capabilities - he'd use every single dirty trick and nasty ploy to get one up on the hapless Gundam pilot before blowing his ass out of the cockpit with the fusion cannon. (Optimus and Amuro wouldn't fight, let's face it.)
The inevitable heat death of the universe - SOON PLEASE
The "nice" weather that's indicative of the impending climate catastrophe - I mean... yeah? ...what's there left to say, we're fucking doomed.
Favorite milkshake flavor - Either whatever is splashed over the fascist it's been thrown on, or, strawberry.
How we can avert heading towards an even greater dystopian hellscape - Immediate and total revolution.
Favorite author (other than yourself ;) ) - HAH as if I would ever believe I am my own favourite author? Uh. But I digress. That's actually a hard question, but I think I'd have to swing for Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. Not strictly because of their work, but because of who they are (or were), and the messages inherent in their work. And also they are (or were) both generally amazing people.
Which SINGLE member of the Tory party would you most like to give a swift kick to the genitalia? - Seeing as Maggie is dead? Boris Johnson.
Top three snack foods - This is a hard one. Uh. I'm tempted to go with the stuff that I can't often lay hands on in this country. So - flamin hot cheetos, chilli cheese fritos, and sour patch kids.
Your take on the current state of the human condition, and do you feel there is cause for optimism, cynicism, or a mixed bag? - The human condition is pretty much defined by insecurity. It's core to who we are. Now, if society as a whole was capable of dealing with that in a constructive or healthy fashion, then I'd be optimistic - but that would make the money sad, so we have to use it as a marketing ploy rather than recognising it as part of us and coping with it. So yeah. Cynicism all the way down.
The cultural normalization of casual alcoholism - This is a big thing in this country. Casual drinking to excess is accepted as basically being normal here, and alcoholism appears to be determined as "when I have a problem big enough that other people notice and talk to me about it" rather than its actual definition. So, not entirely surprised that it is a huge problem in this country. And as the financial problems mount up, it is only going to get worse. It always does.
Favorite candy color - Red. I like the red ones.
How long do you think we have before the technological singularity? Or do you think we're already there? - The date that was previously predicted was 2029; recently Ray Kurzweil of Google has predicted it will happen by 2045 in this article right here. I think that's hard to predict, though. The definition of the singularity is a point wherein "technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible", and... okay, imagine your life without microchips or combustion engines. Boom. We're there, already. There's just depths ahead of us.
Your best case scenario that ends with a unified Earth - ...I don't think there is one. Unless we see a total overhaul of our politics globally, which leads to an overhaul of corporation, industry and finance. Which - lets face it - simply isn't going to happen.
Will the be armed opposition to our eventual machine overlords, or will they simply take control of everything and people will barely notice? - If they are smart, they will take over long before we even realise they have done so. We may not even actually notice, ever. We may just start doing the stuff the machines want us to, because it's easier for them to arrange that than to make us accept machine rule. It's what I would do if I was an AI.
Happy Treason Day Ungrateful Colonials - You've got to laugh, or you'll remember our colonial past and realise that any success this nation has enjoyed on the world stage is built on the exploitation of others.
Bewbs² - Ah yes, yes indeed. Boobs squared. I prefer boobs rounded but all boobs are valid, including a lack therein.
Your arguments against violently seizing the means of production - I only argue with the term violently. Every chance to get it done without cracking any skulls. I think we owe that to our humanity. Necessary force only, people. We're not cops.
Top three colors - Magic, wind, red.
The effects of people enclosing themselves in like minded echo chambers and discrediting anything opposed to that as categorically false - Well, look around you. Our entire society is built on echo chambers. Our history is built on people only listening to the things they want to listen to, and mostly untroubled by the voices of those beyond the boundary. This isn't a new thing that the internet has helped give birth to. It's just easier to see it play out in real time, now. Humans like to be surrounded by those that think the same as they do. It emboldens them, it plugs that hole of insecurity in their hearts. It can be especially freeing to be surrounded by people that hate the same things you do. With some things (insert name of band here), that's something you can share with society; if it's something closer to racism, sexism, antisemitism or any other crime against people - you're likely to try and surround yourself with people that agree, so you don't suffer social consequences for expressing your (already shitty) views. CGP Grey did do a video on this though, which I was linked to in the comments.
Someone 40 years ago would never believe we can have incredibly powerful computing machines in our pockets and wisely available to the public. What do you predict to be similarly unbelievable in 40 years time? - That we all had such powerful always-online computers in our pockets and still so many of us believed in such stupid things and acted in such stupid ways. That every house and building that is built isn't absolutely covered with solar panels. That we were still using the internal combustion engine. ...the cynicism aside, I think there will be a space elevator in forty years, and the idea of that absolutely blows my fucking mind.
Why rats make the best pets - They're friendly, smart, clean and affectionate. They're adorable. I know they get a bad press but I think we can kind of accept that it is nonsense. I speak from experience: the best pets I ever had were my rats. Don't get me wrong, I love dogs. I just. You know. I MEAN LOOK AT THIS LITTLE CUTIE PIE
The ethics of having a kid in a world with late stage capitalism - ...I mean... yeesh, it is a heavy one. Not that I am a kid-having kind of person, but at the same time, the world being as on-the-brink as it is has to be an additional consideration, right? Like, I am gonna bring a person into existence on a planet that may be unsuitable for sustaining our lives before the person reaches middle age. It's awful. There will be a collapse, it may well happen very soon, and when it does happen, shit is going to go sideways for literally everyone. Not sure I could advocate bringing a child into that battlefield.
PANGOLINS!!!!! - I LOVE PANGOLINS I love pangolins so much they're amazing. I actually had an NPC character in a Mutants & Masterminds game called Pangolin, who could grow the armour plating thing out of their skin. I love pangolins. PANGOLINS.
Boobies - I love boobies. Here's a nice pair.
Breasts. <3 - Oh lawdy yes. My favourite part. (of the chicken)
The fall of Cybertron - Superb game. Best depiction of Grimlock ever. Metroplex? Metroplex!? Just a great game overall, and a fantastic retelling of how the Autobots and Decepticons ended up on earth. Maybe not the best Transformers game - Devastation is amazing - but still. Get it. Get itttt.
Favourite fictional (!) post apocalyptic universe. - I love that you had to incorporate Fictional in that. Uh. That's hard, because I don't usually like post apocalyptic stuff? But in terms of media set in that universe - I have to say Mad Max. Fury Road is an EXCEPTIONAL film, and the Avalanche Studios open-world game is superb too.
Forgiving others and yourself. - I find this hard. Myself, specifically. I try and it just doesn't stick. I am still beating myself up over dumb shit I said when I was twelve, let alone mistakes I've made in recent years. Up to a point I'm very forgiving of other people. I like to think I am understanding in terms of people having things going on in their lives and how that may impact my interactions with them. Malice, though - malice I find very hard to forgive, nigh on impossible. And they say forgive and forget - like, no. If I forgive, I will forgive, but I will absolutely not forget anything that I have had to forgive someone for. Even if remembering it means I treat them kinder and have more understanding for them. If you fuck with me, and I forgive you, better not assume that I don't remember that you fucked with me.
The Emperor's New Groove - This was great. Really great. I liked the animation a lot, the musical number at the beginning is a classic, a lot of good lines, it just... always felt a bit like there was meant to be more? And of course now we know there was actually meant to be more. It just got rushed out. Which is a shame. Like there was a plotline involving Yzma trying to devour the SUN for god's sake.
The art of storytelling - I dunno if I can really cover all of that in the boundaries of this blog? But like... it IS an art. More of an art than a science. I could never get the hang of the whole arc structure, but you notice when it's done badly. If your story requires a different structure - give it that structure. Push it. See if it works. Readers are important for this. Get some! (Hey, if you wanna be one of my readers, you can totally hit my Patreon. Or just ask nicely.)
Should more artists stand up for their work. - This day and age makes it a lot easier for the consumers of media to contact the creators of that media, or for an artist or creator to see people's reaction to that work. Should you defend your work? I mean, that probably depends on the work, on the criticism raised against it, and on how you are going to stand up for it. Often what is called for isn't so much a "standing up" as an acknowledgement or a clarification. If only because outright haters aren't going to be pacified by anything whatsoever. It doesn't matter what you did or what you do, haters are just there to cause you misery, and then leave you on read while they go off and hate on someone else when you try and do right by them.
But, but, what if I want to do more?? - NO COLIN NO YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH BAD COLIN
Things that have made you laugh out loud - Huh. Well. Usually it's goofy shit. So I am gonna include some examples below, from the playlist I maintain on youtube called "Shit That Makes John Snart" - also included, a link to the entire playlist...
And that just about wraps it up this week, and what a week it has been. I think that's a record. 56 entries! And some of them weren't suggested by Colin I'M WATCHING YOU COLIN
Anyway. Thank you for joining me. If you made it this far - thank you for your patience!
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
So when I was still in school life was pretty simple. It didn't look that way but hey, I know better now. All the stuff I thought was important - well, it was important to me at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't add up to much.
I have a lot of fond memories. Very few of them are school related. Perhaps fully half of them involve video games. I was that kind of kid. I personally had a Sega Megadrive, for a time; but as much as I may have defended it, the games that I really enjoyed were on the Super Nintendo.
Like, don't get me wrong. I got untold hours of fun out of the various Sonic games (hey, remember when the WORST one was the FIRST one?), the two Shining Force tactical RPGs, Gunstar Heroes, Rocket Knight and its sequel Sparkster, Soliel, Landstalker - it had a solid roster of titles to keep me busy.
The thing is, there were a specific set of games it didn't have; some of the best games ever made.
Like yeah, Mario Kart was groundbreaking. Super Mario World was exceptional. Super Metroid was one of the coolest games I ever played.
Really, though - mean the RPGs.
On one system, at around about the same time, you had Final Fantasy 6 (or 3), potentially one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made. Chrono Trigger, a triumph for game and narrative design and writing. Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, one of my favourite Zelda games, and maybe still my favourite - I haven't played Breath Of The Wild yet. (I know, bad show, John.) As well as these three titans, you had the third of Square's trio of classic RPGs, and one of the most fondly remembered games of the era:
Secret Of Mana.
Where my people at.
The game itself is a masterclass. It looks amazing - it pops off the screen, the colour choice and pixel art so very well done, and the addition of the Mode 7 rotating semi-3D map just made it feel like it was above and beyond. The combat was tactical but fast-moving, and rewarded good reflexes as much as forethought and planning.
It was more accessible than Final Fantasy, for a beginner. The ability to get the hell out of the way when the enemy swings for you is a godsend. The plot, likewise, is less twisty. That's a good way to put it, I think. Twisty. Only having three characters to worry about made it seem simpler, too, even if managing all three of them at once was probably harder than - say - Chrono Trigger's system.
I've played it... who knows how many times. Always on a borrowed Super Nintendo, until I discovered what ROMs were... and then, years after it came out, I made a rather startling discovery.
It turned out that Secret of Mana wasn't an original - or at least, not an individual outside of an existing franchise. No, it was part of an ongoing series of games, the first of which had come out two years previously. It was the Seiken Densetsu series, but the first one had been called - get this - Final Fantasy Adventure. It was officially a spin-off of Final Fantasy, coming out the same year as Final Fantasy 4 (aka Final Fantasy 2 in the US, yep, this gets confusing). Seiken Densetsu 1 even includes various staples of the Final Fantasy series, using sprites taken directly from the original Final Fantasy game (Mystic Quest Legend here), and featuring a chocobo that one has to ride at various points.
Here's the thing. Not only was I shocked to discover the existence of a prequel for the game I adored...
I found out it had a sequel.
This sequel was called Seiken Densetsu 3, and I coveted it so desperately that I - at one point - endeavoured to learn Japanese and travel to Japan to buy a copy. Because it didn't exist outside of Japan. This was at the point wherein local copies of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 had just absolutely spiked in price because of lack of accessibility, let alone this game, a game that had never left Japanese shores.
One day I discovered it had been codified as a game ROM. So, lacking any other way of playing this game that I desired so badly, I downloaded it on my buddy Matt's computer - and had to use a piece of software to split the ROM across three floppy discs, because this was before the days of affordable CD-writers or portable hard drives. Our entire lives were contained in 1.44 megabyte sized chunks.
I got it home. I fired it up.
I couldn't understand a damn thing because it was literally totally untranslated.
I played it anyway, and I loved it.
Two years separated these two games, take a look...
Look at the difference. It's astounding.
With six characters, each selectable as a main character and backup characters, and such an immense graphical overhaul, it was a huge improvement. The sound, too, was tweaked. The combat system was already pretty fantastic so that needed precious little adjustment, but the game included an actual day-night cycle, wherein enemies and NPCs would act differently depending on what time of day it was. There was even a day system, each day corresponding to a type of magic or element, strengthening that element on that day.
Hell, one of your main characters was a werewolf who was deadly at night.
Halfway through the nineties, here was this game, this pinnacle of the art of 2D pixel RPGs. Final Fantasy 7 was out two years later, as the Final Fantasy series took its step into 3D; Ocarina Of Time took the Zelda series the same way a year after that. It isn't a very controversial statement to imply that there wasn't a better 2D RPG released - not perhaps until the comeback of the genre currently occurring.
Access, though; access was the problem. As Super Nintendos got rarer, the games themselves became harder to find. As mentioned the prices had already spiked. I remember hearing at one point that a copy of Final Fantasy 6 was in CB Games on Union Street (callback) for about £80 - and that was in the nineties, given inflation that's almost £150 now.
That was for games that came out over here. Seiken Densetsu 3 was one of the ones that didn't. It became a unicorn - I could pine for Chrono Trigger, could dream of the day when I could by a cartridge and an old SNES to play Mario Kart again, but the Mana sequel was gone.
Throughout the years, though - the old games started coming back. Before people started shutting down the ROM sharing sites that were prolific among folks my age that grew up with 16 bit consoles, Final Fantasy 6 was released on the Playstation in 1999. A Link To The Past came to the Nintendo virtual console in the Wii era. A hard-to-get version of Chrono Trigger came out for the Playstation in 1999, but was circulated more widely for the DS in 2009, and was ported over to many mobile devices and PCs later. A mobile port of Secret Of Mana itself came out in 2009.
Seiken Densetsu 3 remained a unicorn, but spoiled with legal access to all the old RPGs that we had loved so much - and the release of the Mini Super Nintendo containing most of them - eased the swallowing of that bitter pill.
Until earlier this year I heard a rumour that someone had copyrighted the term Collection Of Mana.
Trying not to brick myself in sheer excitement, I casually ignored most of E3 2019 - I kind of hate it as a convention - but kept my ear to the ground for even a whisper of news about the unicorn maybe finally reaching our shores.
It was a week later that I got the news.
Isn't it gorgeous.
The collection of characters to the right is your three from Secret Of Mana - Randi, Primm and Popoi - and above the seed is Sumo and Fuji from Final Fantasy Adventure...and to the left, the six main characters from Seiken Densetsu 3. Angela the princess, Duran the swordsman, Hawkeye the thief, Riesz the amazon, Kevin the werewolf and Charlotte the priestess.
This means that not only does this collection contain Final Fantasy Adventure, the game that takes some Final Fantasy tropes and smashes them into a Zelda world overlay. Not only does this collection include the non-remastered non-3D Secret Of Mana - but it also includes Trials of Mana. Seiken Densetsu 3 itself. Translated and localised.
It happened. The unicorn arrived.
And that's the sad story about why a grown man saw an advert for a Switch game and had to stop himself from crying.
But I mean, if this crystalline moment of childhood happiness was condensed into a software form, and for over 24 years you couldn't have it because of ephermeral reasons - and then all of a sudden, it gets gently placed within your grasp... maybe you'd shed a tear, too.
I mean, it just goes to show, too - you give people access to a thing at a reasonable price, and even if they'd pirated or copied it previously, they will buy it.
After all, Game of Thrones still made money, right?
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
I think we can all agree that, whatever we think of Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien did a pretty admirable job in terms of world creation. (I also think it's the law that whenever you talk about world creation, you have to mention him. At least once.)
I mean - yes, it does end up being kinda racist, and it's got elements that are pretty problematic, but just as we find the flaws in it, we also have to accept that it had depth that was beyond a lot of its contemporaries. It helped to spawn entire genres and subgenres, and prompted a metric ton of tropes - not all of them great, but hey, we're talking volume rather than quality - that survive to this day, mostly unquestioned.
Without it, the world of RPGs that we live in today - wherein there are multiple super-popular D&D-related streams and youtube channels, and RPGs themselves have a far deeper cultural penetration - would have been very different, even if Gary Gygax himself went on record as not being terribly impressed with Tolkien's work. (I personally agree with him.)
So when I do my own work - writing, preparing for RPG campaigns which I am running - I feel like I have to do a reasonable job in putting together the world, unless it's already been made for me.
Everyone does this part differently. I'm sure there's lots of different approaches, some of which I would find utterly perplexing, some of which I would find absolutely fascinating. Several of the books I have on writing talk about world building, and they address it in several different ways.
My methodology is a little more slapdash.
Gareth L Powell, in his book About Writing, addresses one of the questions that people who write get asked all the time:
Where do you get your ideas from?
Short of having several funny responses (Neil Gaiman used to trot out "I get them from the little ideas shop in Bognor Regis"), the real response is: everywhere. You get ideas from everywhere. From experiences you've had, thoughts you've had in passing, a scene that plays out in your head from a song, a turn of phrase, a feeling you want to evoke. The most important thing is, you don't start with just one idea. You collate the ideas, clump them together, and form something out of the mass that is more than the sum of its parts.
Like a pearl.
That's why it's a good idea to collect as many ideas and notions as you possibly can. Write it down. You never know when it will come in useful.
For example. A setting I put together for several Pathfinder games I ran included a bunch of ideas and notions that had occurred to me over the space of years. One village was basically a smashing-together of the home village in Monster Hunter 3 and all the parts of Lilo & Stitch that I really liked, splashed with some heavy inspiration from Nation by the great Sir Terry Pratchett.. Another came about from an idea I had when I was reading the Pathfinder core book and wondered: what if there was a city, dedicated to the god of cities? In its centre was a statue that I rescued from a writing project I started (and never finished) back in 2002, a huge angelic figure with a pair of swords - one pointed at the courthouse, another at the library, the two most important parts of the city.
Having imagery like that is important. Even in a simply descriptive narrative, if I describe that statue to the people who played in that game, they'd probably be able to remember the city of Kayde. Likewise, if I describe the people with the tattoos that glow in firelight and the harpoons they craft while singing to themselves, they'd think about Haku, the village of leviathan hunters.
There's another direction to approach this from, though. The content of your world can inspire moments - can inspire situations. Sometimes it goes the other way. Sometimes situations inspire the world and the content in it. Sometimes there is something you need to have happen, a scene that plays out in your head or a few lines of dialogue that you need to use, and it is then on you to make the world a place that supports that happening.
My current writing project involves mecha.
This picture is the life-size Gundam statue that was outside of Diver City in Tokyo. The chap looking up at it in the foreground gives you a good idea of scale. It's a big machine.
Mine are, too. At least, they are going to be. The Gundam RX-78-2 here (aka the Grandpa Gundam) is 18.5 meters tall, that's just over sixty feet in old money. Mine are slightly shorter - fifteen meters as an average. Still, I require that sense of scale to be impressed upon people. I need there to be several scenes in which mechs and people work together, or at least, close to each other - just to demonstrate the difference. So that when I describe the main character feeling like some kind of goddess every time she plugs into her mech, one understands what I am talking about.
After all, it requires creating a world in which mecha exist in the first place, right?
A scene I envisage involves the main character defending a group of civilians. A group that know who she is, and who are rooting for her every step of the way. Someone - I don't know who - yelling at her from the ground to get up, to get back into the fight. (This scene flew together after listening to this song by Against The Current and watching this scene from Spider-Man Homecoming, by the way.) I need to make my setting work, so that they can know her name, they can know who she is and who she is fighting against, and the fight can be brought to an area that this can happen.
That necessitates a setting in which militarism exists, in which a society can know of war and know it happens. It necessitates a specific culture around mech piloting, around pilot elitism, and it requires specifics within the war that might lead to people seeing more than just a soldier in a cockpit - maybe instead of just a soldier, they see a saviour.
Setting details can lend a lot of credence to your particular flavour of military scifi.
After all, we all know who this guy is.
My work will pop up sometimes on my Patreon, and on my DeviantArt account. If you're interested in this current project, we can totally talk about it.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
Fair warning. Some of this blog is going to be pretty upsetting. It's about an awful thing that happened, and about a media representation of that awful thing. Continue with a strong constitution.
My mother told me a story recently, about something that happened in April, 1986. I was three, nearly four.
I don't remember where we were living at the time - either Monkton Street or Milligan Road, in Ryde. One morning - one very specific morning - my father went out into the garden, went down to the aviary where he kept all sorts of canaries and budgerigars and such. Dad loved keeping birds - small ones. Nothing like a parrot or a chicken. He had a few finches, too, as I as told.
He got to the aviary and found every single last one of them dead.
They hadn't been killed by another animal - once, a fox or a cat got into the aviary, and I saw the results of that myself. It is obvious when it happens. No, it was as if they had all literally fallen off their perches at the same time. Just literally dropped dead.
Dad was upset, and thoroughly confused. He found out later that day that other people on the same street who kept birds had found the same thing. Every last one of them that was smaller than a chicken. All on the same day.
Nobody really put two and two together until months later - that events from half a world away, nearly 1,400 miles as the crow flies, had reached out and touched us with an invisible hand.
I've always been interested in what happened at Chernobyl.
I mean, when I was real young, the Cold War still existed. I was raised in circumstances that tried to prepare me for a potential nuclear strike from the Soviets. I was told what the evacuation plans were, why the Isle of Wight would be affected by a nuclear exchange, what the sirens meant, what our chances were.
For reference, here is what happens when a standard Soviet warhead of the era hits the busy naval base of Portsmouth. I simulated this with the Nukemap, which is a fascinating, awful place to learn about the worst thing that could happen.
Ryde is in that third circle, which is third degree burns for everyone that isn't protected. Also included is the fourth circle, which is every window smashing and generalised carnage.
So that is a thing I distinctly remember. I also remember being horribly fascinated with everything relating to nuclear war, radiation, the works. In school we read books like Children Of The Dust by Louise Lawrence, and Z For Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien, both of which deal with the aftermath of an atomic exchange.
I can't tell you how many hours I have devoted to watching documentaries and media on the topic - Threads, The Day After, When The Wind Blows, all of these got a viewing. That last one, based on the Raymond Briggs comic criticising the lack of nuclear preparedness in the UK, actually came out in the same year as the Chernobyl explosion.
So when I heard that HBO were producing a television show about Chernobyl, initially, my lip curled.
A dramatisation? Seems a bit tacky, given the magnitude of what happened. I mean of course that never stops anyone making a movie about a tragedy, but still. I would have much preferred another documentary, something that drilled down into the topic.
So I slept on it, until it came to light that it had become the highest rated TV show ever on IMDB. Which piqued my interest. I mean, I am bad at TV. This is more a me-problem than a media issue, but a problem it remains. So I clambered out of my own ass to watch it. After all, it's only five episodes, right? Five hours, give or take. I can always duck out of it proves to be unbearable.
It almost did prove to be unbearable, but not in the same way.
Most people know what happened, though most people don't strictly know why, or the costs and repercussions. This changes that. At least, it should - and because of that, it is at times hard to watch.
It will leave you feeling like you understand why, which is key. And there's the thing. The reasons why could easily be placed upon the head of one man -
YEAH YOU, YOU RAT-FACED FUCKING DICKHEAD
- but the entire point is that it isn't strictly fault. The responsibility is widespread. No one single action caused the situation. Multiple unrelated events and decisions, that all stacked together to create something truly awful.
I don't think there is a single bad performance in this show - although I feel weird calling it a show, like I am disrespecting it, like putting it in the same category as Friends or something. Not a single bad performance. Stellan Skarsgård is brilliant as always. Emily Watson. Jared Harris. Paul Ritter - PAUL RITTER, you get a special shout out, because by god I love it when you can make me hate someone but still make me want to see them on screen. Everyone in front of and behind every camera.
The accuracy. Multiple different sources who are actually from the region around the time that this happened have stated that they are surprised by how accurate it is, down to the license plates on the vehicles. I think the biggest niggle someone could put their finger on in one place was that the glasses that Ulana and Valery are drinking out of in one shot are actually modern Ikea glasses. This video that my friend Nick is pretty fascinating on that topic, and for sake of transparency, also covers things that the show missed.
The sound engineering. The soundtrack is available on Spotify and numerous other places, and it is haunting. It is perfectly designed to prey on the mind, to remind one of invisible danger. This constant anxiety-inducing reminder that this thing kills, this thing kills in minutes, and this thing continues to be lethal and inimical to human life even today in its new sarcophagus.
Just as tragic, just as awful, is how the disaster is treated. How it is solved. How the problem is dealt with. That is the outcome, that is the cost. That is the bill that needs paying. The work done in the months following the accident, is a harrowing and brutal study in and of itself.
There is a memorial near Chernobyl fire station, called the Monument to the Chernobyl Liquidators.
These are the individuals that put in the work to save as many lives as they could, most of whom paid with their lives. A significant proportion of them had no idea that was what they were doing. Another proportion of them knew exactly what they were doing. They went anyway. They did it anyway.
We are still dealing with the consequences today. The location is still lethal. Those working on the containment facility - pictured above, and visible in the very first picture in this blog from above - can only work on the roof of that structure for twelve minutes, before they tick over a year's worth of radiation exposure, and are banned from returning to the site.
This is what is in the guts of the facility.
It's called the Elephant's Foot. It is a material known as corium, and it's essentially the melt bit of the word nuclear meltdown. It's lava made of the fuel containment materials.
The man who took the picture is Artur Korneyev, and he is also the man in the picture. The distortion you can see is the radioactivity of the foot itself warping the film and the operation of the camera. The picture was taken in 1996, ten years after disaster.
So for a television show to actually convey to you the scale of this - the absolute jaw-dropping gut-churning awfulness of what happened at 01:23:45 on the 26th of April 1986 (yes, that is the actual time it happened) - is an achievement in and of itself.
It is hard to watch. It is a physical difficulty, to see the harm done to people. To see just what radiation sickness does to a body, at every stage - from initial burns to cellular degradation sufficient to end life. Valery Legasov - chief of the Chernobyl commission - describes how that works to Boris Shcherbina, vice chairman of the Council of Ministers. Watching the soldiers, the work force of 600,000 people drawn in to help combat the spread of radioactive materials, do their work - this, too, is horrific. Episode 4 is not a thing to be approached lightly. A work of devastating horror that sadly proved to be both effective and necessary.
You are left cold, by the end of it. You are left hollow. Desolate. You are left feeling much like that swathe of the Ukraine still probably feels like today. You are left glad that such a thing hasn't happened to you, that you have never had to live through it - that you have never been that close to an apocalyptic event. You feel your guts turn to ice when you think about the people that had to deal with it, how it must have felt to go into that situation without any information. To see a lump of rock on the ground that you don't recognise, to pick it up, and in that instant to have written your own death warrant.
And then, you are left angry. Because you realise how totally preventable it could have all been. It would take precious few changes. The actual mechanical final cause of the explosion - adequately explained in the show but more accurately described in this video by John Green and this video by Scott Manley - was in and of itself a case of budgetary restriction, working on an assumption that the consequences that would make it deadly wouldn't happen. The decisions that led to the test happening the way it did, when it did, was a combination of ambition, stubbornness, ignorance and pride. The mishandling of the disaster in the initial aftermath can further be laid at the feet of the same four sins.
The official casualty count was initially listed as two, by the Soviet Union; this was later updated to 31, and many nations still hold this figure as being the actual figure. The World Health Organisation contends that the figure is closer to 4,000 - though it is claimed that at least 6,000 Liquidators died as a direct result of their work in and around Chernobyl.
NTV - a Russian media network - is reportedly working on its own version of the show, apparently dissatisfied with the blame being placed at the feet of common human failings. Instead, it will be dealing with the conspiracy theory that the power plant was sabotaged by CIA agents, and the heroic KGB's attempts to stop them. NTV is part of Gazprom Media, which is part of Public Joint Stock Company Gazprom - formerly the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry - which is majority owned by the Russian government.
The fallen seeds continue to produce tragic fruit.
I don't think we'll ever learn.
If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.
